The Manor of Death

by Bernard Knight

  John shook his head. 'The tradition is too well ingrained in the Church. A mere archdeacon would have no power, nor even a bishop. But I have to speak to John de Alençon soon on another matter, so perhaps I'll raise it with him.'

  That 'other matter' was one that caused the little devil from Dawlish to peep over his shoulder unbidden.

  Though most activities came to a halt on the Sabbath, certain of the more unscrupulous members of the population were willing to forgo their day of rest, given that the rewards were sufficient to make it worth their while. So it was that at dead of night a certain ox-cart creaked its way along the lonely track that ran from Honiton towards Ilminster. The moon appeared fitfully through broken cloud, but at the speed the beasts walked there was little danger of the cart going off the highway, especially as the ruts of hardened mud kept the big wooden wheels on the track.

  On the driving-board, two men sat hunched, silent and sleepy. The one on the right held the reins, though they had little function, as the pair of oxen plodded on regardless of human intervention. Behind them, the canvas hood was squared off over a framework of hazel rods to leave a roomy interior. Part of their original cargo had been off-loaded at Honiton, and the rest was destined for Ilminster, a few miles further on. They passed through the usual varied countryside, dimly seen in the moonlight. Where there were hamlets, strip-fields ran off away from the road. Then common land and waste alternated with long stretches of woodland, where the forest had not yet been assarted to increase the acreage of cultivated ground. The road undulated like the country it passed through, but there were no steep hills to challenge the oxen.

  There was no other traffic, every God-fearing person being sound asleep. With no monastery or cathedral within many miles, even the midnight office of Matins was lacking, as parish priests kept to their beds until dawn, many of them having done a hard day's work in the fields alongside their parishioners.

  The only accompaniment to the creaking of the axle-pins was the hoot of an owl, the distant bark of a dog-fox and the occasional snuffle of a badger at the side of the track. They passed the village of Rawridge, but if any of the inhabitants were still awake they took care not to peer out at the trundling cart but pulled their sheepskins over their heads and pretended that they were deaf.

  Yet a mile further on, the dozing driver and his companion were suddenly confronted by someone who was well and truly awake. In the road ahead, a dim light was waving, and as the patient oxen slowed to a halt a voice rang out in the still night air.

  'Halt, in the name of the king!' The feeble candleglow from the horn lantern reflected off the steel blade of a sword held by the man who had shouted, and it dimly revealed another figure standing behind him wielding a pike.

  'Can't be another thieving pedlar!' muttered the driver to his mate. Aloud, he demanded to know who was holding them up. 'If you are seeking to rob us, you'll have to answer to the bailiff of Axmouth - and the Prior of Loders. '

  The two men standing in the middle of the track approached, and as they did so the moon slid out from behind a cloud and gave a far better light than the lantern.

  'I am the Keeper of the Peace for this Hundred, fellow,' snapped Luke de Casewold. 'I want to know what you are doing hauling a cart around the king's highway at this hour of the morning?'

  'There's no law against that, is there?' growled the driver truculently. 'This isn't a borough or city with a curfew.'

  The Keeper brandished his long sword. 'Get down from there! I want to know who you are and what you have in that wagon. Quickly now!' He motioned to Hugh Bogge to go around to the tailboard of the cart. 'See what they have in the back. Here, take the lantern!'

  The driver, a thickset man with a face like one of his oxen, made no move to climb down, and his companion, an equally ruffianly fellow, also ignored the law officer's demand.

  'We are just delivering goods from Axmouth,' growled the carter. 'One of the wheel bearings cracked in Honiton and we wasted hours finding a blacksmith. I have to deliver the rest of the goods to Ilminster by morning, so we had no choice but to travel all night.'

  De Casewold cackled derisively. 'Don't give me that, you liar! Do you crack your wheel bearings regularly, then? Several times now I've seen a cart like this on the roads late at night.'

  The driver looked at his companion and shrugged. 'We've done our best,' he muttered cryptically and began to climb down from the driving-board.

  There was a cry from the back as Bogge unlashed the cords holding down the tail-flap and the Keeper hurried around to him, followed closely by the two men. Luke found his clerk holding up his lantem and staring aghast into the back of the wagon. Two men, brandishing long daggers and heavy cudgels, were advancing towards them past a pile of kegs and bales. As they stepped back, the law officer and his clerk found that the driver and his mate were blocking their retreat, both now having wicked-looking knives in their hands.

  It was Tuesday before the bodies were found. A mile outside the hamlet of Rawridge was a large area of common land, rising to the edge of dark forest. Soon after dawn, a shepherd had rounded up several score of his flock to check on new lambs that were appearing late in the season. His two black bitches had done their work, and the sheep were safely inside a crude pound with a hurdle across the entrance.

  An old man of almost sixty, he squatted with his back against the dry-stone wall and pulled a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese from a cloth pouch on the belt that clinched his ragged tunic. His dogs lay nearby, watching him intently with their pink tongues hanging out, until he shared the scraps with them. Then, with an effort, he hauled himself to his feet and forced his aching joints to take him up towards the trees, where a clear spring bubbled out of the hillside. As he bent to scoop water to his lips with his cupped hands, one of the bitches ran off into the woodland. When he called sharply to her to come, she stood uncertainly, whining and looking back at him.

  Alfred knew every nuance of his dogs' behaviour, probably better than he could read his wife's moods. He realised that something was worrying the animal, especially when the other bitch ran after her and began snuffling in the scatter of last autumn's leaves. Ambling after them, content that his sheep were safe for the moment, he pushed through the sprouting brambles and nettles along the tree-line to where the dogs were keening.

  It was obvious at first sight what was upsetting them.

  The beech and oak leaves had been disturbed, older black mould from below being mixed with the paler leaves. The younger dog had been scratching at the pile, and a human hand projected like a claw.

  Alfred was in a dilemma, as he knew a little about the rules announced by the manor-bailiff a year or two ago concerning dead bodies. He was now the 'First Finder', and his instincts were to turn around and forget all about it, as any involvement with the law was bad news. He stood for a few minutes staring at the hand, which was undoubtedly attached to a corpse beneath. Then a combination of a sense of duty, a fear of retribution and a touch of pride at being the centre of attention for a short while decided him that he had better do something about this. Gingerly, he kicked away some of the soggy leaves and exposed an arm, which was bloodstained above the wrist. As a shepherd, he was well used to gory dead animals, such as sheep ravaged by foxes and the occasional wolf, as well as to slaughter-time and the pig-killings. He gripped the dead hand and pulled vigorously, when a shoulder and a head surfaced above the leaf mould. Hardened as he was, the sight of a gaping cut throat that had nearly severed the head was something of a shock, especially when the disturbance of the corpse had caused a leg to appear at the other side of the heap of leaves.

  Dropping the wrist, he backed away, muttering little-used prayers under his breath and making the sign of the cross. Then, whistling at his dogs, he began hurrying back down the common, intent on fetching his manor-reeve as soon as possible.

  By mid-afternoon the coroner was approaching the scene with his officer and clerk, brought urgently from Exeter by the news that a king's
law officer and his clerk had been foully slain. They had been summoned by the bailiff of Honiton, after the manor-reeve from Rawridge had brought him the news.

  'I went straight up to this vill, Sir John, to check for myself,' he reported as they rode the last half-mile to Rawridge. 'I recognised the poor souls straight away. I knew the Keeper fairly well. Though to tell the truth he was something of a nuisance, he should not have come to an end like that.'

  'And the other one? That was his clerk, Bogge?' growled de Wolfe.

  'It was indeed. A harmless fellow, he put up with the Keeper's odd ways well enough.'

  They passed the village, away to their left, and continued for almost a mile, before leaving the Ilminster road and climbing across the common land to where a group of men were standing, where the grass gave way to forest. One was the manor-reeve, another the old shepherd who was now firmly the First Finder, whether he liked it or not. The rest were villagers, including the parish priest, a fat Irishman who was mumbling prayers over the corpses. Inevitably, Thomas de Peyne soon joined him, adding his supplications in much better Latin, though averting his squeamish eyes from the carnage as he chanted.

  There was little they could do at the scene, except to have the bodies pulled clear of the forest floor, where most of the leaf mulch and twigs could be brushed off, so that the full extent of the injuries could be seen.

  'Right mess they are in, poor devils,' grunted Gwyn, bending over the familiar figures as they lay grotesquely twisted on the coarse grass.

  Hugh Bogge had been beaten about the head so severely that his face was hardly recognisable. However, his death was due to several deep stab wounds in the neck and upper chest, soaking his tunic with blood, much of which had dried to a brown crust. Luke de Casewold had even more horrific injuries, in that his head was almost detached from his neck by a single massive cut that completely severed his windpipe and gullet and bit deeply into the joints between the bones of his spine.

  'That's no dagger wound; that must have been a sword!' said John decisively.

  'Perhaps this was the one?' said the bailiff, who had been kicking about in the base of the hollow where the bodies had been concealed. He held up a yard-long sword with a hilt wound with silver wire and a pommel engraved with concentric circles.

  'That's the Keeper's own weapon!' growled Gwyn. 'I remember seeing it at his side.'

  John shook his head sadly. 'That's the ultimate sorrow, to be slain by your own sword,' he said. 'Yet he was a former campaigner; he knew well enough how to defend himself. What in hell happened here?'

  The bailiff looked around the long sloping landscape, falling away down to the road a furlong distant. 'But did it happen here? Or were the cadavers just dumped here as a hiding place?'

  The shepherd piped up, nervous in the presence of these stern men from Exeter. 'If my bitches had not nosed them out, they may have lain here for years without being found.'

  The coroner followed the bailiff's eyes down to the track between Honiton and Ilminster. 'That's where it happened, without doubt. Somewhere along that road.' He turned to the reeve and the handful of men from the village.

  'You may have heard of a similar death near Honiton quite recently, when a man was killed and hidden away.'

  There were nods and grunts and throat-clearings. 'That pedlar fellow, the drunk Setricus,' muttered the reeve.

  'Is there any way of telling when these poor sinners went to the Lord?' asked the priest in a broad Irish accent.

  Gwyn was scathing about the religious euphemism. 'D'you mean when did they have their throats cut and their heads beaten in?' He looked at de Wolfe for his opinion.

  'The bodies are not at all corrupt, even though the weather is fairly warm,' mused the coroner. 'They still have their death stiffness, so I suspect their deaths were not before the weekend.' He glowered around the ring of faces. 'Have any of you noticed any strangers passing through your village in recent days?'

  The reeve shook his head. 'That is an impossible question, with respect, sir. The main highway there passes from Exeter to Ilminster and beyond to Yeovil and even London! And our village is not right on the road, which skirts it to the south. What chance have we of keeping tally of traffic?'

  'What about at night? I have my reasons for asking that.'

  A few shifty looks were exchanged between the men. 'We keep ourselves to ourselves, sir, when it comes to night-riders,' said the reeve. 'And hard work by day means sound sleep at night.'

  De Wolfe saw that it was pointless to pursue the issue.

  Both from fear and self-interest, the villagers were not going to divulge anything they might know about villains abroad at the dead of night. He looked down at the pathetic remains of the law officer and his clerk. 'We must move these bodies to the church with all the decency they deserve. They undoubtedly came to their death while doing their duty, which was the king's business. They must be treated with the respect that their office requires.'

  The parish priest wrung his hands. 'I will say a Mass over them directly. I hear they come from Axminster, so will they be returned there for burial?'

  John shrugged. 'Sir Luke is a widower, but I have no knowledge of other family. Nor do I know who will mourn his clerk, but no doubt enquiries can be made. Meanwhile, I must hold an inquest, which will be later this afternoon.'

  He turned to Gwyn, to give him the expected instructions for arranging for a jury to hear the case, futile though he expected the proceedings to be. As the day was advancing, they set the time for the inquest at two hours hence. John knew that they could not get back to the city before dusk and decided to spend the night in Honiton and ride back home in the morning.

  'While you and Thomas arrange for the removal of the corpses and organise the inquest, I will have a look at the road, to see if there is any sign of where this outrage took place.'

  He took the bailiff, a stolid, sensible man of about his own age and they strode back down to the road, where a couple of lads were minding the horses. Mounting up, John slowly walked his rounsey eastwards in the direction of distant Ilminster, scanning the track and the verges as he went.

  'What are we looking for, Crowner?' asked the bailiff. 'This road has been well used for a couple of days since, if you are right about when the men were killed.'

  De Wolfe agreed with him but said that he would ride half a mile further. 'I want to check if there are any signs of a fight, such as blood or crushing of the undergrowth at the verge. They are hardly likely to have moved two heavy bodies further than necessary,' he said. 'Though of course it is quite likely that they had a cart.'

  Eventually, they turned back and retraced their route, passing the sad procession of the two bodies laid on a handcart brought from the village. A few hundred paces beyond this, John abruptly reined in his horse and slid from the saddle. When the bailiff joined him, he was studying the mud of the road. It had not rained for several days and the ruts had dried into firm ridges, though they were still damp. At the place which he was inspecting, a number of these ridges had been crushed in a confused pattern and, looking four paces to the right, he saw that the weeds and spiky new grass of the verge were flattened. There were many other places where this had happened, and animals like foxes and badgers could have been responsible as they trampled their runs into the woods - but when he looked he saw brown staining on some of the vegetation. Kicking the undergrowth aside with his foot, he came across a drying pool of blood and some fragments of flesh, already buzzing with flies and other insects.

  'This is where it happened!' he said grimly as the bailiff joined him.

  By now the cortege with its handcart had caught up with them, and all the locals were staring in ghoulish fascination at the gory vestiges of the slaying.

  'Doesn't help in saying who did it,' grunted Gwyn, who was walking with the cart, his mare following behind in the care of a small boy from the village.

  John rubbed his stubble, his usual aid to deep thought. 'It suggests that a wagon was invo
lved. Why else would a fatal attack occur just here? There is no cover for an outlaw ambush, and the place where the bodies were hidden is a good half-mile away, a long distance to carry them without transport.'

  'So you need to find a cart with bloodstains, if the bodies were carried on it,' suggested Thomas.

  'A bucket of water and a broom would soon get rid of those,' said Gwyn pessimistically. 'And which cart are we going to look at, anyway?'

  An hour later they began the short inquest, which was like the previous ones in this area - indecisive and uninformative. The proceedings were held in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin, a plain building of pebbled stone set on a hillside. A ring of old yews suggested that the site was ancient long before the church was built. The two bodies were now decently covered with some sacks from the adjacent tithe barn. As befitted his rank, Sir Luke de Casewold lay on the parish bier, a wooden stretcher with legs, which was usually hung from ropes slung over the rafters at the back of the church. His clerk, Hugh Bogge, had to make do with a wattle hurdle laid on the ground alongside.

  Gwyn had dragooned a dozen men as a jury, including all those who had been up at the place where the corpses were discovered, together with a few who had gravitated to the churchyard to see what was going on.

  The routine was gone through, with evidence of identity from both Gwyn and the bailiff of the Budleigh Hundred, who knew the dead men in life. Presentment of Englishry was obviously impossible, as the Keeper was a Norman knight and Bogge was certainly no Saxon. The imposition of a murdrum fine on the hundred was inevitable, but by the time the justices considered it de Wolfe fervently hoped that the culprits would be found. The old shepherd haltingly said his piece and seemed relieved that he would not be clapped into gaol or be amerced for being the First Finder.

  There was no other evidence and all the coroner could do, after the jury had satisfied their morbid curiosity by peering at the wounds as they filed past the bodies, was to declare that the two victims had been murdered by persons unknown and that the inquest would be adjourned sine die when hopefully further evidence would be available.