Sword of Shame

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘He’s being kept in the city gaol in the South Gate,’ muttered Gabriel. ‘The cells in Rougemont are full until the next hanging day.’

  The substantial towers that flanked the southern entrance to the city were used to house prisoners remanded by the burgess’s court of the city, as well as for some sent there by the sheriff’s County Court. It was a foul, cramped dungeon and like most gaols, many of the inmates in there died from disease or being killed by other prisoners, before they ever came to trial.

  ‘The only hope is to find the real killer,’ sobbed Nesta, clinging on to John’s arm.

  ‘That’s almost impossible, given the short time we have,’ snarled the coroner.

  ‘So we need more time!’ declared the sergeant. ‘Which means we’ve got to get him out of there…now listen to me!’

  Four heads bent together over the table and began muttering in conspiratorial tones.

  The following night, several shadowy figures moved around the city, in addition to the usual drunks and furtive patrons of the numerous brothels.

  One who was not out and about was the coroner, who as a royal officer himself, needed to stay well clear of any nefarious activity. To establish his innocence in advance, he stayed in his own hall all evening, much to his wife’s surprise, for he usually found an excuse to take his old hound Brutus for a long walk each night, a transparent excuse to go down to the Bush Inn to visit his mistress.

  John even raided his wine cupboard and opened a stone jar of his best Loire red, insisting that Matilda sample a few glasses, as they sat by their hearth. This considerate domesticity made his wife somewhat suspicious, but she could hardly complain at his solicitous behaviour, however unusual it might be. Later that evening, when she retired to bed in her solar, John feigned tiredness and insisted on accompanying her, though he drew the line at anything but a rapid descent into sleep.

  Meanwhile, out in the darkened city, Thomas de Peyne was slinking around the back of the Guildhall to reach the constable’s hut, at a time when he knew they would be fortifying themselves with bread, cheese and ale before going on their late night rounds. Sympathetic to Gwyn’s plight and like most people, contemptuous of the sheriff’s corruption, they readily agreed to the clerk’s request for them to direct their feet towards the north side of the city for the next hour or so, keeping away from the cathedral area.

  The disgraced priest then slipped away towards the Close, the large area around the massive cathedral of St Peter and St Mary. This was mainly a burial ground, flanked by the houses of the canons and various small chapels and churches. It had a series of entrances from other streets, in one of which, Martin’s Lane, the coroner lived. Thomas kept well away from there and lurked under an arch leading to Southgate Street. It was too early for the bell to summon the clergy to Matins, so the Close was quiet, with just a few beggars and drunks fast asleep against the burial mounds.

  Soon, footsteps approached and the figure of Sergeant Gabriel appeared, a hooded cloak over the leather jerkin that was part of his military garb.

  ‘All’s well,’ reported Thomas, in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Osric and Theobald have decided to patrol up near the North Gate tonight.’ He reached into a pocket inside his shabby cassock, the only remnant of his ecclesiastical past, and handed over a heavy purse. ‘The coroner says that this should be sufficient for your purpose.’

  Gabriel, with a furtive look up and down the dark alley, slid the purse into his own cloak. ‘Wait here, Thomas! We should be back within a few minutes.’

  He vanished into the darkness, leaving the little clerk in a state of acute anxiety, his teeth chattering partly from the chill night, but mainly from fear of being discovered. The few minutes promised by Gabriel seemed to lengthen into hours and the prospect of being arrested and cast into a cell himself began to strengthen in his fevered mind. He was just trying to decide if the penalty for gaol-breaking would be hanging or mutilation, when the sergeant materialized again, with Gwyn close behind.

  ‘Thank God and all his angels!’ gabbled the clerk, crossing himself convulsively in his relief.

  ‘No time for gabbing now,’ snapped Gabriel. ‘Let’s get him safely put away.’

  They hurried across the Close, passing before the great West Front of the cathedral, dimly seen in the starlight. A muddy path between open grave-pits and older mounds took them diagonally across to the opening into Martin’s Lane, but instead of passing the coroner’s dwelling, Thomas stopped before a heavy door set into the front of a small white-washed church with a plain, narrow tower. Twisting the iron ring, he pushed it open and ushered the others inside.

  ‘Here you are, Gwyn, a safe haven for the next forty days! Even the sheriff won’t dare to have you dragged out of here, this is God’s sanctuary!’

  ‘How did he take it, John?’ asked Nesta the next evening, as they lay together on her mattress in the Bush, where a corner of the loft had been partitioned off as a bedroom for the landlady.

  De Wolfe’s craggy face split into a rare smile as he recalled the sheriff that morning, almost incandescent with rage at the news of Gwyn’s escape into sanctuary.

  ‘He was fit to have a seizure, I thought he might have attacked me!’ he chortled. ‘It was his pride that was most injured, when he discovered that his cunning plot had been thwarted.’

  ‘Did you confront him about the chicken blood?’ she demanded, indignantly.

  ‘I did indeed! Of course he denied it and said I had no proof that it was chicken blood. I said he had no proof it was human, so it was a stalemate, but he knows that I know the truth.’

  ‘What about the gaoler at South Gate?’ asked Nesta. ‘He must be in dire trouble over this.’

  ‘The sheriff was all for locking him into his own cells and throwing away the key!’ grinned de Wolfe. ‘Thankfully Gabriel got Gwyn to punch his face a few times and then tie him up. The man didn’t mind, as he’s three marks the richer for it! We let four others escape from Gwyn’s cell at the same time, just to avoid making it look too obvious. It’s not as if bribing gaolers is uncommon, it happens all the time.’

  ‘But de Revelle must know that you were behind it?’

  ‘Of course he does! But he can’t prove it, whereas his own sister can testify that I was never out of her sight all that evening.’

  The auburn-haired Welsh woman cuddled up to him under the sheepskin that covered them, but she looked worried. ‘But isn’t this just delaying the outcome?’ she fretted. ‘What happens to Gwyn at the end of the forty days?’

  Though she knew something about sanctuary, her lover had just explained it more fully. Gwyn could stay in St Martin’s church for that period, safe from arrest, but unless he confessed his crime to the coroner in a set form of words and agreed to ‘abjure the realm’, he would be locked in and starved to death when the forty days was up. ‘Abjuring the realm’ meant leaving England for ever, on pain of death if he ever returned.

  ‘We have to clear this matter up long before the time runs out,’ replied John, serious once again. ‘Discover who really slew Walter Tyrell and expose de Revelle’s trickery.’

  Nesta suddenly sat up, the candlelight revealing her nakedness until she modestly clutched the coverlet to her bosom. ‘I did hear something today, John,’ she said earnestly. ‘A weaver from Tiverton was in here this afternoon. He’s a regular customer, calls in for a meal and ale every time he comes to Exeter to buy wool. Everyone was gossiping about Tyrell’s murder and I asked if he knew him.’

  John pulled her back down and covered her with the fleece, waiting with interest for the rest of her story, his bare arm about her shoulders.

  ‘We got talking about it and I led him on as well as I could.’

  ‘You brazen hussy! Am I to be jealous?’ he jested.

  ‘Be serious, John! He said that it was well-known that Walter’s brother, this Serlo, has for a long time been trying to buy out his brother’s share in the mills, so that he can become sole owner. But Walter refuses and
there has been bad feeling between them.’

  The coroner considered this, even though it did not prevent him from massaging a shapely breast while he did so.

  ‘Every bit of information helps,’ he murmured. ‘Though would anyone kill for something like that?’

  ‘There’s more,’ said Nesta. ‘While we were talking, Henry Ockford, the carter, said that there was gossip about Serlo and his sister-in-law.’

  ‘That Christina?’ grunted John. ‘I’d not be surprised. She seemed hardly grief-stricken at the sight of her husband’s bloody body, even though she put on a great act when de Revelle showed his stained kerchief. As for Serlo, he couldn’t keep his hands off her at the inquest.’

  Nesta rolled towards him and put her arms around his neck. ‘I know someone else who can’t keep his hands off a lady!’

  Further discussion about the problem was postponed for some time.

  ‘It’s the Bush’s best ale–and Nesta made the pasties herself,’ said Thomas anxiously, as he watched Gwyn wolf down the basketful of food that he had brought into the little church. He came faithfully twice a day to keep the big man fed and to offer him some company.

  ‘Your wife is well and so far there are no signs that she has miscarried,’ he added comfortingly. ‘She says she will visit you as soon as she is able–and bring the lads with her, for hopefully, they should soon be on the mend.’

  Gwyn looked up from where he sat on one of the stone benches that ran around the walls. ‘How long am I going to be stuck in here, then?’ he asked, between mouthfuls of mutton pasty. ‘Two days already seems like two months!’

  ‘The Crowner is doing his best, but he needs to discover the real killer.’

  The Cornishman nodded. ‘I know–and I’m grateful to you all! I only wish I could be out of this place to help you.’

  He glowered around the bare chapel with its earthern floor and simple altar that carried only a brass cross and two wooden candlesticks.

  ‘It’s better than the gaol at South Gate, but only just,’ he growled, but then cursed himself for his ingratitude and apologized to the little clerk. ‘Forgive me, Thomas, I’m in low spirits today. Ever since I got that damned sword, everything seems to have gone wrong.’

  The former priest nodded his understanding. ‘Perhaps it carries the taint of its former owner, the treacherous Henry. And who knows what shameful deeds it performed before that?’

  They went on to talk of the escape, the bribed gaoler pretending to be overpowered by the five men in one cell, when he undid the crude lock to pass in their stale bread and tainted water. ‘I may have hit him a bit harder than I needed, especially as he was a Cornishman like me, but it had to look realistic, for his sake!’ Gwyn said with a grin, as he finished the last of the food and ale.

  ‘Sir John says he’ll come in to see you as soon as he can,’ said Thomas, putting the remains back into Nesta’s basket. ‘He doesn’t want to make it too obvious, as the sheriff is rightly convinced that the crowner organized the whole affair.’

  Gwyn settled back on to the stone ledge, the only seating provided for the elderly and infirm of the congregation. It also had to serve as his bed, softened with a blanket provided by the kind landlady of the Bush.

  ‘The parish priest here seems quite content to let me stay here,’ he commented. ‘Not like that fat bastard down at St Olave’s, when he had that real murderer sheltering in his church.’

  ‘He doesn’t have any choice,’ observed Thomas. ‘Sanctuary is a merciful privilege given by God, not the clergy. But we chose St Martin’s for you as Father Edwin is one of the very few Saxon priests in Exeter. He’s a bit of rebel and no lover of the Norman aristocracy, which includes the sheriff!’

  ‘Good for him!’ muttered Gwyn. ‘But I wish he’d put padding on this ledge–my arse will be covered in blisters after forty nights of this!’

  John de Wolfe decided to start his investigation by following up the rather tenuous motives suggested by Nesta’s tavern gossip. If the two Tyrell brothers had any dispute, then the obvious place to begin was the fulling mill.

  Next morning he took himself off down to the West Gate and strode out on to the large area of marshy ground along the river that was known as Exe Island. Cut through by ditches and reens, it flooded when there was heavy rain up on distant Exmoor, but was an ideal place for the mills, of which there were at least a dozen. They needed copious quantities of water for washing and processing the raw wool, which was the main foundation of Exeter’s–and indeed, England’s–wealth. The Tyrells had two of the mills side by side, rather ramshackle wooden buildings with short canals bringing water directly in from the river. There was a ragged collection of huts around them, mostly for storage of the fleeces and the finished wool.

  De Wolfe enquired for Serlo Tyrell, but was told he was away buying raw material at Buckfast Abbey, the large Cistercian monastery fifteen miles way, which had the largest flocks of sheep in Devon. Instead, he was directed to a shed where he found a harassed clerk poring over a confused mass of parchment rolls. The man looked up in irritation at being disturbed, but when he recognized the King’s Coroner, he jumped up and bowed his head obsequiously.

  ‘How can I be of assistance, sir?’ he gabbled. ‘This is a terrible business.’

  John whimsically assumed he meant the death of his employer, not the state of the fulling industry. ‘I want some information, which may help in discovering who killed your master.’

  The man’s eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘I thought this was already known, sir!’ Then he appeared to recollect that the assumed culprit was this knight’s own squire and managed to look embarrassed.

  The clerk, who looked about John’s own age of forty, was a pasty-faced, overweight man, with thin, fair hair cropped short at the sides and back. He had rather full, pink lips, which covered uneven and badly discoloured teeth. A nondescript brown tunic had splashes of ink on the front and his fingers showed the same trademark of a scribe.

  ‘I am Martin Knotte, sir, chief clerk to the Tyrell mills. What can I tell you?’ Without any real justification, the coroner had taken an instant dislike to the man after only half a minute in his company. There was something distasteful about his fawning manner and his moist, mobile mouth. Aware that this snap judgement was quite unfair, John pressed on with his questions.

  ‘You were clerk to both Walter and Serlo Tyrell?’

  ‘I had the honour to serve them both, Crowner. There is a second clerk at the other mill, but he is merely a junior who works under my direction.’ He said this with a disdainful air, like a bishop referring to a choir-boy.

  ‘The two brothers were partners, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, but Walter had the bigger share, as he was older and inherited from their father when Serlo was little more than a boy.’

  De Wolfe decided to get to the nub of the matter without delay. ‘Did they get along harmoniously, or was there any friction between them?

  Martin looked slightly affronted. ‘I am a steward, sir, my only concern is the smooth running of the accounting and the other chores of running a busy mill.’

  The coroner was in no mood for fencing with clerks. ‘Come now! I am enquiring into a murder. I have no time for the niceties of polite behaviour. Chief clerks always know more of what goes on than anyone else.’ His stern tone and perhaps the slight flattery about the omnipotence of trusted servants, loosened the clerk’s tongue.

  ‘Well, between you and me, sir, Master Serlo has chafed somewhat at always being the follower behind Walter’s leadership. He has had many notions of improving the working methods and expanding the business, but his brother always over-ruled him.’

  ‘With what consequences?’ demanded John.

  The clerk rather dramatically looked over each shoulder before answering in the empty hut. ‘Serlo has repeatedly offered to buy out Walter’s share, suggesting that the older man could retire–or at least use the time and money to expand his other interests, such as buying and
renting out dwelling-houses. I think Serlo badly wanted to rise amongst the city burgesses and even had ambitions to become a portreeve.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Master Walter should have taken the offer, for now it’s too late.’

  ‘Did their dispute become acrimonious–or even violent?

  Martin shrugged dismissively. ‘Some harsh words were spoken, but nothing more.’

  John had the impression that he was considerably understating the truth here. He cleared his throat, one of the mannerisms he used to cover awkward moments. ‘And what of Serlo’s relations with his brother’s wife?’

  Again Martin’s pale eyebrows climbed up his forehead in surprise. ‘Mistress Tyrell? I don’t know what you can mean.’

  John sighed at the tedious fidelity of the clerk. ‘I’m not blind, nor are the citizens of Exeter! Serlo Tyrell, an unmarried man, seems overly fond of his sister-in-law.’

  Martin’s eyes again cautiously roved the empty room, before he answered in a quite unnecessary whisper. ‘It is true that he was devoted to Mistress Christina, but I’m sure there was no impropriety between them. Since the death, he has been most supportive and if they eventually tie the bond, then I’d not be surprised–and most happy about it.’

  De Wolfe was irritated by the clerk’s pedantic manner, but further questions produced nothing of substance. When he left, he felt that the man’s grudging admissions meant that the city gossips were almost certainly correct. Serlo had coveted his brother’s business and his status, as well as his handsome wife. He now had all three in his grasp, but had it been a sufficient motive to have hacked through Walter’s neck?

  Not only did the sheriff continue to harangue de Wolfe about the escape of Gwyn from the gaol, but John’s wife joined in the condemnation.

  ‘It is glaringly obvious that you connived at it, husband!’ she grated yet again, this time as they sat at dinner. ‘No doubt you used our money to bribe that gaoler.’