The Tainted Relic

by The Medieval Murderers

  In less than two hours, the posse was in position, half the men forming a line that entered the forest from the side where the chapman had been killed, the rest two miles away, approaching from the main track to the north. The men-at-arms, dressed in partial battledress of iron helmets and boiled leather jerkins, alternated with the city volunteers.

  De Wolfe and his officer were with the southern party, the constable and his sergeant with the others. They had little hope of catching all the scattered outlaws, who infested every patch of forest, but within three hours their pincer movement through the almost bare trees and scrub managed to grab two men, one found cowering in a bramble thicket, the other up a tree. The latter betrayed his presence when the branch broke and he fell with a scream and a crash within fifty yards of the nearest soldier. With a twisted ankle, he was unable to make a run for it, and when the two lines of searchers met up, de Wolfe and Morin decided that, given the failing light, they had done all they could that day.

  The two captives, desperately frightened, ragged wrecks of humanity, were forced to their knees inside the wide circle of their hunters. As outlaws, they were well aware that their lives were forfeit and it was only the means of their deaths which lay in the balance.

  John stood over them, sliding his great sword partly out of its scabbard, then slamming it back again.

  ‘We are entitled to strike off your heads here and now!’ he rasped. ‘The men I appoint to do it will be pleased to earn an easy five shillings’ bounty. So is there anything you have to say that might delay that moment?’

  Nothing could have been more effective in loosening their tongues than the sight and sound of that sword, and within a few moments John learned that Gervase and Simon Claver had indeed been members of their outlaw band.

  ‘Simon reckoned he was entitled to a bigger share of Gervase’s loot, so he said he was going after him in Exeter,’ quavered the older captive, a toothless scarecrow with some pustulous disease of his hands and neck.

  ‘Just before he left, Gervase let slip the fact that some relic in a little box might be valuable,’ croaked the younger man with the injured leg.

  ‘That set Simon thinking and he left us the next day.’

  The cavalcade set off for Exeter, the older man half supporting, half dragging the other along the track, both destined for the cells in Rougemont until they were dispatched on the next hanging day.

  As the four leaders marched at the head of the column on the four miles back to the city, they discussed the results of their expedition.

  ‘It’s clear what happened now and we know the identity of the two villains,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘Ralph, there’s no reason now why Nesta should be kept locked in that damned chamber!’

  The constable pulled at his beard, worried at his own position in all this. ‘I agree, John, but I can’t let her out until de Revelle gets back. I’ll be in enough trouble with him as it is, taking a troop of soldiers out of the city against his inclinations.’

  ‘He’ll be back in a couple of days, Crowner,’ said Gabriel, soothingly. ‘My wife will see she’s comfortable until then.’

  John gave an angry grunt and Gwyn tactfully changed the subject.

  ‘What about finding this bastard Simon Claver? That would really put Nesta in the clear.’

  De Wolfe rasped a hand over his black stubble as they walked faster in the gathering dusk, anxious to get to the South Gate before it closed at curfew. ‘Nesta said that this Gervase claimed he was going to get a bed at Buckfast Abbey the next night, though I wouldn’t trust anything he said.’

  ‘As your clerk mentioned, he has to sell the relic to a bunch of monks or priests to realize any profit on his theft,’ added Ralph Morin. ‘But from the direction that chapman was going, he could have been aiming east, to sell it somewhere like Wells Cathedral or Glastonbury Abbey.’

  Gwyn nodded his shaggy head. ‘That old fellow in Clyst reckoned the dying man mentioned Glastonbury just before he passed out.’

  With this information as the only clues they possessed, the coroner and the constable agreed to search in both directions as soon as the city gates opened in the morning.

  ‘You and Gwyn go east towards Somerset,’ suggested Ralph Morin, ‘and I’ll send Gabriel and a couple of men down the Plymouth road towards Buckfast. This fellow is on foot, so horsemen should catch him up, even though he may have had two days’ start.’

  John spent a restless night, even though he knew Nesta could come to no harm in the castle, with the sheriff away and the sergeant’s wife pledged to look after her. Matilda was as surly as usual and made no mention over supper of her unexpected intercession on the Welshwoman’s behalf. Once again, John realized how little he understood Matilda, who was capable of surprising him with acts of kindness, even though she maintained her grim façade most of the time.

  After a quick but substantial breakfast in his maid Mary’s cook-shed in the yard, the coroner went across to the stables opposite, where the farrier was saddling up the patient Odin, and a few moments later he rode out to meet Gwyn at Carfoix. They had agreed to leave Thomas behind, as his reluctant efforts at riding side-saddle on his miserable pony would only slow them down–and he was needed at Rougemont to write down the confessions of the two outlaws now incarcerated in the foul cells below the keep.

  Gwyn was waiting cheerfully on his big brown mare, ready for anything the day might bring. As they trotted out of the South Gate and along past the empty gallows on the Honiton road, the coroner’s officer debated their chances of finding Simon Claver.

  ‘If he went westward, then he would have reached Buckfast by now, even on foot. But Gabriel and his men should still get news of him there.’

  ‘We have the better chance, if he’s making for Glastonbury or Wells,’ called de Wolfe, over the clip of the hoofs. ‘Few men will cover more than fifteen miles in these shortening days.’

  Their fear was that, after Honiton, Simon might have turned off towards Bridport and Dorchester, if he was aiming for the abbeys and cathedrals of the south-east. But Somerset was still the best bet, thought John, and they kept on doggedly for the next few hours. The rutted track of the high road was in its best condition in this cold, dry weather, and they were able to put a good many miles behind them before dusk fell. They found an alehouse in a village beyond Ilminster and endured a poor meal there, before finding a heap of hay in a nearby tithe barn for a night’s sleep. The coroner and his officer had slept in far worse places during their campaigning days and were quite content with their accommodation.

  The next morning, after some stale bread and hard cheese from Gwyn’s saddlebag, they were on their way again, John still anxious about Nesta, now that Richard de Revelle might have returned to Rougemont from his marital duties at Tiverton. They passed the usual thin stream of travellers going in both directions–pilgrims, merchants, ox-carts, flocks of sheep and a few pigs and goats, as well as the occasional chapman and pedlar to remind them of the relic dealer’s fate. An east wind now blew a fine powdering of snow on to the grey countryside, and John huddled deeper into his wolfskin cloak and pulled the hood up over his head. Gwyn now sported a leather shoulder cape with a pointed cowl, under which he wore an old barley sack wrapped around his neck.

  They trotted on for another couple of hours, staring suspiciously at every traveller they passed, trudging along the highway. At an alehouse in a small hamlet, they stopped for some bread and meat, warming themselves with a pot of ale which the landlord mulled with a red-hot poker. They enquired whether any man with a rotted nose had called there in the past day or so, but no one had seen such a traveller.

  When they went on their way again, under a leaden sky that promised more snow, Gwyn voiced a question that had been in de Wolfe’s mind.

  ‘How long are we to keep going, Crowner?’ he asked.

  ‘Until nightfall. We’ll turn back in the morning,’ grunted John. ‘By then we’ll have outdistanced him on foot. If we don’t see any sign of the swine, it
means he must either have gone west or turned off to Dorchester.’

  ‘Then let’s hope Gabriel had better luck at Buckfast,’ prayed the Cornishman. But a mile farther on, the luck turned out to be theirs.

  Here the road passed between dense woods on either side, the trees coming right down to the edge of the track. A cart laden with straw passed them in the opposite direction, and on the empty road ahead, they saw a lone figure trudging along, a long staff in one hand. As they came nearer, they saw that he wore a shabby grey mantle with a hood and that he was limping slightly. From the back, he looked little different to scores of others they had encountered, but on hearing the clip of their horse’s hoofs, the man turned his head. Being an Exeter man, living near the Bush, he recognized the coroner immediately. Throwing down his staff, he ran for the shelter of the trees, only a few yards away. With a roar, Gwyn spurred his mare after him, but he was too late to reach him before the man vanished into the undergrowth that choked the spaces between the tall trees.

  De Wolfe was only inches behind, and with a curse he slid from Odin’s back as Gwyn leapt from his own saddle and plunged into the forest after the fugitive. Though most of the leaves had fallen, there were tangled masses of bramble and bracken between the first trees, but once they were in deeper, the ground was almost bare and the three men pounded along, weaving between the trunks. Though Gwyn had a start, he was heavier than the wiry coroner and de Wolfe rapidly caught him up.

  The man ahead seemed to have forgotten his limp, as fear of inevitable death gave him wings, but the long legs of the coroner defeated him in the next hundred yards. With a final yell, de Wolfe threw himself at the man’s back and brought him down, with Gwyn hard on his heels to make sure that he stayed there.

  Panting with exertion, John drew his dagger and held it at the fugitive’s throat as soon as Gwyn turned him over. The grotesque corrugations on one side of the man’s nose removed any doubt that they had caught Simon Claver, who stared up at them in abject terror and the firm expectation that he was about to die.

  The coroner reached Exeter around noon the next day, having pushed his heavy warhorse as fast as he could, though Odin was no sprinter. In his haste to get back to secure Nesta’s safety, de Wolfe had left Gwyn to ride back more slowly, as he had Simon Claver walking behind his mare, his bound wrists roped to the saddle-horn. It would be another day before they arrived, but de Wolfe wanted to get his mistress out of custody as soon as possible. His task was not helped by the fact that Simon had stoutly denied killing Gervase, even though they had found the faded gilt relic box in a pocket of his mantle.

  On arrival at the castle, he hurried to the keep and found Ralph Morin in the constable’s chamber off the main hall.

  ‘He’s in a foul mood, John,’ were his first words as the coroner entered. ‘Lady Eleanor must have given him a bad time and he’s highly incensed that we took a raiding party into the forest against his wishes. You’ll have a hard task persuading him to release Nesta.’

  De Wolfe told him of their successful capture of the outlaw and the recovery of the holy relic. ‘But the bastard resolutely refuses to confess to killing Gervase–he says he met him after he had been to St Nicholas Priory and Gervase agreed to let him take the thing to Glastonbury to sell, whereupon they would split the proceeds.’

  Ralph gave a cynical snort. ‘A likely tale! But de Revelle will seize upon it, never fear!’

  He was right, for when John went down the hall to the sheriff’s chamber, he was met with a mixture of anger, sarcasm and sheer spite.

  ‘The man is to hang whatever happens, so why should he tell anything but the truth? I’ll certainly not release the prime suspect on such flimsy grounds. This Claver is obviously an outlaw and a thief, but that doesn’t mean he killed that man in the inn.’

  Nothing would shift the resolve of John’s obdurate brother-in-law, and the coroner left in a towering rage, promising to get the whole truth from Simon when he arrived, even if he had to torture him to within an inch of his life. On his way back to Martin’s Lane, he met his friend the archdeacon, and he poured out his problems to John de Alençon.

  ‘In some ways, this could be considered to be a matter for the Church,’ said the priest gravely. ‘I have heard of this relic and, given the provenance offered by that letter from Sir Geoffrey Mappestone, it has a good claim to be a genuine piece of the True Cross.’ His hand automatically strayed to his head, heart and shoulders, reminding de Wolfe of his clerk’s almost obsessive habit. ‘Even though apparently tainted, it is still a part of our Christian heritage and this outlaw should be made to fully confess how he came by it.’

  When John suggested that Simon Claver should submit to the peine forte et dure, even the usually compassionate archdeacon agreed. When he heard that the sheriff was reluctant to get at the truth for reasons of his own, de Alençon declared that he would call upon de Revelle and make his own ecclesiastical demand that they extract the truth from the outlaw.

  The next day, when Gwyn tugged the exhausted and footsore Simon up the drawbridge into Rougemont and across to the stinking undercroft below the keep, he found that preparations were already in hand to persuade the outlaw to speak more eloquently.

  Stigand, the evil custodian of the gaol, was waddling across from an alcove with some thick plates of rusty iron, each about a foot square. With a loud clatter, he dropped these into a pile in the centre of the dank cellar, panting with the exertion, as his grossly obese body was not meant for heavy work. When the coroner’s officer arrived with the new prisoner, Stigand shackled his wrists to the barred enclosure that led through into the half-dozen cramped cells.

  ‘They’re coming at noon to listen to this fellow sing!’ lisped Stigand through his slack, blubbery lips. He kicked the prisoner, who had sunk exhausted to the floor, and received a heavy clout across his head from Gwyn.

  ‘Leave the man alone, you evil sod!’ snapped the big man. ‘Give him some water and a couple of crusts.’

  As he left, Gwyn wondered briefly why he should be at all solicitous to a man they were shortly going to torture, then hang in a few days, but there was something about the hopeless captive that reminded him of a beaten dog.

  When the cathedral bell announced the middle of the day, a small crowd assembled in the undercroft to view the proceedings. The reluctant sheriff was there, as was the coroner, his officer and clerk, the constable, and the Archdeacon of Exeter. Sergeant Gabriel, who had returned from his fruitless search in the west, was in charge of a trio of men-at-arms brought to handle the prisoner. Now partly recovered from his trek across the countryside behind Gwyn’s horse, Simon was dragged to the centre of the large space, struggling and mouthing obscenities. Two soldiers manhandled him to the ground and shackled his outstretched arms and legs to rusty rings set in stones in the damp earthen floor.

  As the sheriff stood aloof, with his arms folded under his bright green mantle, John de Wolfe took over the proceedings. Though he was no keen advocate of torture, it was part of the judicial process, and with Nesta’s freedom at stake he had no compunction in applying it to this evil man.

  ‘Simon, you have a last chance to tell the truth. You are well aware that as a captured outlaw, your life is already forfeit, so you have nothing to gain by being obstinate.’

  All John got for his words was a further stream of curses and denials, so he nodded at the gaoler, who stood by expectantly. Stigand bent with difficulty over his fat belly and lifted a metal plate, clutching it to his stained leather apron as he turned to the prisoner, crucified on the floor. With much puffing, he bent and placed the slab of iron on Simon’s chest. His breathing restricted, the man began to wheeze, and his curses became muffled as he ran short of air.

  ‘Speak now and ease your suffering!’ pleaded John de Alençon, making the sign of the cross in the air over the man.

  Laboriously, the gaoler lowered another plate, this time on the man’s belly, preventing him from using his stomach muscles to draw in air. His o
aths and obscenities became mere gasps and his face began to turn purple.

  ‘Speak, man, you have nothing to lose!’ shouted de Wolfe, as the outlaw’s lips became almost black. ‘Nod your head if you submit!’

  As Stigand puffed over with yet another plate ready to load on to the man’s chest, Simon’s stubborn wilfulness cracked. Blood spots had begun to appear in the whites of his eyes.

  ‘Relieve him, before he dies on us!’

  Somewhat reluctantly, the sadistic gaoler pushed the plates from the sufferer’s chest and belly, then took a leather bucket filled with dirty water and threw it over him. A few moments later, after his ravaged face had returned almost to its normal colour, Simon Claver began to speak, still pinioned to the floor. He now admitted everything, his jealousy at Gervase having the best part of the chapman’s loot, his following him to Exeter, finding him in the Bush and cutting his throat.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ he croaked. ‘But as I was pulling that golden box from his pack, he started to wake and I panicked!’

  Leaving Thomas to crouch down and write the confession as a record for his inquest rolls, de Wolfe went across to his brother-in-law and confronted him.

  ‘Satisfied now, Richard? You arrested my woman out of sheer spite, damn you! You’ve heard the confession from this man, so I hope you’ll not only order her immediate release, but go and give her a personal apology. Then I may not need to write every aspect of the matter in my presentment to the royal justices when they next come to Exeter!’

  Richard began to huff and puff, but he knew that he was beaten, and after a few more heated words, he turned on his heel and marched stiffly up the steps out of the undercroft.