The Tainted Relic

by The Medieval Murderers

  In the early morning light Baldwin could see that the corpse had been a young man. He had blue eyes, fair to mousy hair, with eyes set rather close together, and a nose that was long; it had been broken. He was clad in dingy grey fustian with green woollen hose, from his leather belt dangled a short knife.

  It was the tunic which caught Simon’s attention. The fustian was open from breast to cods, and his belly and torso had been slashed in a frenzied attack. His bowels spilled on to the alley’s filth, and the stench even so early was already repellent.

  ‘Christ Jesus!’ Simon muttered thickly.

  ‘He has been stabbed in the back,’ Baldwin said, after rolling the body over and studying the naked back. He saw Simon’s expression.

  It was endearing to Baldwin that Simon was still squeamish; on occasion it could be annoying. Today, though, Baldwin could all too easily understand Simon’s reaction.

  ‘Why would someone open him like that?’ Simon demanded harshly.

  ‘A drunken brawl?’ Baldwin guessed. ‘Rage at some perceived slight? Whoever did this hacked at him like a madman.’ He turned to a sergeant. ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘I think his name’s Will Chard. He’s got a common fame as a draw-latch, I think.’

  ‘Where’s the First Finder?’ Simon demanded.

  ‘’Tis him over there, Bailiff,’ the sergeant said, jerking his chin towards a man slumped against a wall, his face in his hands.

  They walked to him. Baldwin said, ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Rob, master. Rob Brewer.’

  He was in his early twenties, Baldwin guessed, a scrawny lad in a faded green woollen tunic and heavy hose. About his neck was a worn cloak of some heavy but badly worn material. Once it would have been worth a lot of money, but now it showed its age. He looked terrified: his eyes kept returning to the body on the ground, to the blood all about.

  ‘You found this man?’ Baldwin demanded.

  ‘I was walking past and almost fell over him! Christ’s pain, but I’d have done anything to miss him!’

  ‘It is no surprise,’ Baldwin mused. ‘The sight…Exposing his entrails like that…’

  ‘Paunched,’ Simon said. ‘Like a cony.’

  Rob whined, ‘Who’d do that to a man?’

  ‘Men will bait traps with rabbit’s guts, won’t they?’ Baldwin said. ‘Strew rabbit’s intestines about a field and wait, and soon a fox will arrive. Release the hounds and they’ll take the fox.’

  ‘You say this is a trap?’ Simon asked drily. ‘To catch what?’

  Baldwin smiled thinly. A figure was hurrying towards them, a rotund shape clad in clerical black–a clerk from the cathedral sent to record their inquiry–and Baldwin beckoned him. ‘I doubt this was a trap. This looks like a vengeful rage…but revenge for what?’

  ‘I was up early to fetch bread from the baker’s, and found him on my way.’

  ‘Have you seen him before?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Never!’ Rob declared with a shudder. If he admitted he knew Will, they might decide he was a felon and arrest him. He had to protect himself, deny everything.

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘In the Blue Rache,’ Rob said without thinking. Christ’s balls! He shouldn’t have said that! He closed his eyes and swallowed. ‘I slipped on his entrails!’

  Simon could all too easily imagine him; walking here just after dawn, down a dim alley with little light to show the way, and suddenly coming across this foul corpse. It must have been terrifying–although the lad must have been distracted not to have seen the mess, or smelled it, in even the dullest daylight. He leaned against a door, queasy, and had his weakness rewarded with a long splinter in his thumb. Swearing under his breath, he stuffed his thumb in his mouth.

  Rob couldn’t help his eyes going to the pool of vomit near a doorway.

  Baldwin continued, ‘You are sure you do not know him?’

  ‘Me? I…no.’

  ‘Which baker’s were you going to?’

  ‘Ham’s–behind Chef’s Street.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Out near the corner of Westgate Street and Rack Lane. There’s a little yard behind Elias’s stables. I live there.’

  Baldwin glanced at the clerk and repeated: ‘Elias’s stables…You work there?’

  ‘Yes. I muck out and look after the horses. He lets me exercise them, sometimes.’

  Baldwin nodded thoughtfully. He turned his back, staring at the cathedral’s towers. The workmen intent on rebuilding the place were like so many bees about a hive. ‘What were you doing here, then?’

  Rob gazed at him. ‘Sir?’

  ‘This alley does head in the rough direction of the Westgate, but it’s hardly direct to or from the baker’s, is it?’

  ‘I wanted a walk–to clear my head after last night. I’d had a lot to drink, and I needed to clear my head.’

  ‘Were you alone in the tavern last night?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rob met Baldwin’s disbelieving eye with determination. No good could come from admitting he had been drinking with Will and Adam all night. It wouldn’t bring Will back.

  Nor Andrew either, he reminded himself.

  He looked a fool, Moll thought. Sitting there so forlorn, like a child who’d lost his mother. Telling lies like that was stupid. The Keeper might not know him yet, but as soon as he asked anyone else, he’d learn that Rob and his brother were close confederates of Will, and then where’d he be? In the shit, that’s where. He’d already told them he was in the Rache.

  She’d not tell them, mind. She had enough problems with the law without courting more trouble from felons like Rob and Adam. No, better that the Keeper learned all he wanted from others.

  Not that she could help much. She’d been upstairs with that poor bastard when Rob had knocked, and it was only when she saw the state Rob was in that she realized she could have been protecting a killer. References from past clients were all very well, but if this fellow was a killer…still, he’d run out like a scalded cat, and she was safe when he was gone, so that was that. Rob, though, he was different. If he wasn’t careful, the Keeper would put two and two together and realize Rob had been here earlier and found the body in the middle of the night.

  He didn’t believe me, Rob told himself.

  Christ, save me! When he’d run over that mess last night, he’d almost emptied his own bowels. His foot had stuck on something, and when he looked down he thought it was a lump of pig’s liver, until he realized it came from no pig, and that was when he collapsed and threw up. He couldn’t think straight.

  It was like being in a trance. The First Finder always woke the neighbours to witness the death, and they raised the hue and cry together. Last night he’d banged on Moll’s door first because he recognized it.

  Shit, she’d scared Rob! She’d had the door open in a flash when he banged on it, and a man pelted into him, running off into the night almost immediately. She told him the sod was nothing to do with this, he was a well-paying bedmate, but it’d embarrass his wife if she learned he’d been here, so Rob agreed to forget him.

  Moll was clever. She took charge: he was drunk, as she said, and it would be better if he ‘found’ the body in the morning. Men had been executed for less than being drunk in the presence of a body, and if the city’s sergeants found an easy answer, they’d stop looking for a killer.

  Now he thought about it, the man was curious. Strange for him to be up and bolt from a whore’s house just because someone knocked. If he feared his wife finding him, why didn’t he just hide and let her open the door? Rob wondered who the man was. All he’d seen was the shadow of dark cloak. He’d worn a cowl that covered his face; not that it was needed in the gloom of the alley.

  Wandering here today, the previous night had seemed dream-like. Andrew missing, Will dead…he came back hoping it was a dream, but there was Will, so he raised the neighbours, and the hue and cry.

  Not that it was much help. The neighbours were
here now, shivering in the cool morning air. An old candlemaker and his woman, a dyer and a tawyer with a daughter. None of them sharp witted, none of them heard the attack. All denied hearing anything.

  Neither had Rob, come to that. And he couldn’t have been far behind Will when whoever it was did this to him. The bastard was still warm when Rob fell over him.

  Simon drew a small knife and hesitated before running the blade along the splinter’s path. It stung, but he inserted the point and levered it out, listening as Baldwin asked his questions.

  It should have been the new coroner, Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple, investigating this, but he had left for Topsham after the Gaol Delivery hangings because of a brawl between sailors: three of them had died. In his absence, it was only natural that the Keeper should take over. The Keeper had the right to order the posse and lead it to find a felon.

  Even now Simon was sure that Baldwin doubted Rob’s evidence. Something had caught his fancy about the ostler, although now he was squatting and frowning at the pooled vomit. Simon left him: he was more intrigued with the young woman.

  This Moll was an auburn-haired woman of maybe three-or four-and-twenty, with a dumpy figure but a face that would have been pretty, in a soft, pale, round sort of a way, but for the calculation in her eyes when she looked at a man. From this Simon was convinced she was a prostitute, maybe one of those who inhabited the cheap taverns and alehouses along the South Gate road.

  While Baldwin left the puke to talk to the neighbours, Simon wandered to her side. ‘What do you think really happened?’

  ‘How should I know? I was safe in my bed.’

  ‘All alone?’

  ‘Why–you jealous?’

  ‘Could be! Did you know this man?’

  ‘Never seen him before,’ she said, but her eyes moved away from Simon.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Did he try something on? You called your pander to pull the bugger off you, and he took offence at the fellow’s cheek? If your pimp killed him, there’ll be no blame attached to you.’

  She smiled at him with quick contempt. ‘You think my pander would do something like that? He’d shit himself at the thought. It’s only women he bullies.’

  ‘Then you’re protecting someone else? Who? Why? Whoever did this could attack again. Such frenzied butchery–it must be a madman. He could strike again, maid. Maybe he’ll attack you next.’

  She eyed him a moment. ‘No. I think I’m safe.’

  When they released him, Rob ran all the way from the alley to the place up at the old Friars’ Hall, and then ducked down another alley and waited, heart pounding savagely. He’d almost been caught, and his terror was only increased by the sudden approach of heavy feet. It sounded like the city’s bailiffs, and he closed his eyes. At any moment the Keeper’s voice would rasp out an order for his attachment. He’d be hauled off to the gaol until he could be brought before the justices and hanged. He just knew it. Why had he ever…

  The steps passed by the alley and on down towards the West Gate, and he felt his breath leave him in a sharp gasp, as though it would be his last.

  It was awful. He was lost, confused. His brother was gone, Will was dead…who could he trust? There was only Annie, no one else. He must tell her what had happened.

  He shot off up the lane past the priory of St Nicholas, and on to the shanty town. Once this had been the abode of Franciscans, but recently they’d moved away. In the space of two years nine of the brethren had died because of the foulness of the location, so they’d moved to a new six-acre site outside the walls.

  In their place a series of huts had been built. Bays were made from scraps of timber lying about. Wattles were thrust between them and smeared with daub, and thatch was thrown on top to keep out the rain.

  None was strong; none was proof against more than a mild wind or shower, and yet people flocked here. It was proof of the misery of life in the outlying areas that so many were keen to come to this place, which was already known for its malodorous air and the illnesses the foul air caused. The friars had been driven away, yet others more desperate were happy to live here.

  The place he wanted was up near the northern walls. It was a scruffy place, the daub falling from the walls while the thatch was worn thin and penetrated in many places where birds had made their homes, or stolen the straw for their nests. What remained was green and little use in a storm, but neither was the rest of the house. The door was an old blanket, which fluttered and moved with every breeze.

  Rob hesitated, then cleared his throat. ‘Annie? Are you there?’

  ‘Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?’

  She pulled the curtain aside and he walked in, revelling in the nearness of her body as he ducked under the low lintel.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  Annie was about twenty years old, as tall as Rob, but better built because during the famine years she had been in the service of a lord who had seen to the well-being of his servants, and bought in food even as prices rose. Fodder prices rose by six times before the end of the first summer, and buying grain for the serfs of his manor finally ruined him. Three years earlier she had been turfed out when the old man died, brought down by fear of God and the struggle to support his people. His wife, the bitch, hadn’t the same sense of responsibility, and she’d seen to it that all the ‘useless mouths’ were evicted.

  Rob first met her on the road from the north, up near Duryard, a mile or so north of the city. She had been a waif-like creature, all skin and gangling limbs, with huge eyes in a skull-like face, and he had at once taken pity on her.

  ‘Hello, where are you from?’

  ‘Tiverton.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Exeter.’

  Each word had seemed as though it must be dredged up, and each time it took a long while for her to mouth an answer, she was so exhausted.

  ‘Do you have somewhere to go?’

  ‘No.’

  She was one of hundreds who had come this way seeking employment or merely a roof. At first, when the city had stocks to be shared, people were permitted inside the walls, and the churches thundered the responsibilities of Christian to Christian, but that was seven years ago. When Annie arrived, the same men who had demanded that food and drink should be shared were more cautious. Only those who could help Exeter should be supported, and those who couldn’t must return home. Their parishes should shoulder the burden, rather than expecting Exeter to suck in all those without means.

  Rob had been lucky. He and Andrew had been orphaned when he was not yet ten. Andrew was already apprenticed with a metal smith, and Rob was accepted into the household, but Andrew was rowdy and unreliable. The smith kicked them out after Andrew fought another apprentice in the smith’s hall.

  It was Rob’s skill with horses which led to his being hired by the stables. That meant good food, a bed and some money, but not enough. He didn’t think he received his due, so when Andrew suggested something more profitable, he’d leaped at the chance.

  Annie obviously had a clear idea what she could do in Exeter.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said as kindly as he could. ‘You don’t want that game. I know a place…’

  She was so fragile, like a butterfly; she stirred something warm and protective in him, and Rob responded to it and the hope of companionship it brought. He brought her here to the old friary lands, where a friend lived with his wife, working on the cathedral’s rebuilding. She would be safe here, and in return for a little work about the place, and Rob paying a little rent, she could share their board until she found work.

  Annie soon filled out, and now she was a buxom maid, with a tunic of red-stained cloth, and a crimson sleeveless surcoat over it. Her apron was faultless, clean and fresh. Her shining dark hair was decorously braided and wound into a thick bunch under her wimple; a pity, for he adored to see it loose. She had once said, laughing, that he only ever lik
ed to see her wanton, and to be honest it was largely true. When she was naked over him, breasts free, her hair hanging on either side of her face like great raven’s wings, he felt true happy contentment. Yet it wasn’t just lust. No, it was more than that. The sight of her smiling face was enough to send a thrill of pleasure to his heart. To see her content was to fill him with joy.

  Her eyes were on him in the gloom, but today there was no delight in them. He hated to see her like this: suspicious and unhappy. Sometimes she could be a little peevish. He only hoped that this wasn’t one of those days. He had enough on his plate.

  ‘Annie, have you heard?’

  ‘About Andy?’ she said quickly.

  Rob gritted his teeth. ‘He’s missing. I don’t know where. And Will–he’s dead. I found him last night in an alley, and…Christ’s Bones, but it was awful. Someone had cut him up.’

  ‘Why do that?’ she asked.

  There was scant interest in her voice, but that was reasonable. Will had been his friend, not hers. It was one of the things he loved about her, this naturalness and refusal to feign feelings that she didn’t have. At no time would she lower herself to pretending affection for someone when there was nothing there. She’d have made a dreadful whore. He was also glad that she didn’t harp on about Andrew. It was hard enough for Rob without having to cope with her feelings as well.

  ‘Will had plenty of enemies. A thief who preys on travellers is never without foes. Someone recognized him and killed him,’ Rob said, thinking about the tall, dark keeper and his words about catching foxes.

  ‘Did he leave many alive?’ she said pointedly.

  Rob didn’t answer. Confirming what he and the others had done to win money was unnecessary. She knew what they were. It wasn’t as though she wondered where Rob had won the money to keep her happy. He hadn’t hidden anything; he could have lived on his stable’s income had he not put her up in this shack. It was the money for that which drove him to Will and robbery.