The Manor of Death

by Bernard Knight

  The agent was jerked forward by two of the soldiers and stood before de Furnellis, who looked him up and down before starting his inquisition.

  'Tell us how you and Martin Rof worked this criminal conspiracy, which has cost the lives of many innocent seamen,' he began sternly.

  'I've nothing to say, for I am innocent,' growled Crik sullenly.

  The sheriff repeated the question in various ways several times; Crik either ignored him or snarled that he had nothing to say. Eventually, de Furnellis gestured to the soldiers, who held Crik by the arms and led him across to an alcove beneath an arch a few yards away. The sides of the undercroft were formed by these stone arches, green with slime and mould. Most of the alcoves were used for the storage of building materials and old timber, though one held the squalid living quarters of Stigand. The area that Crik now faced was empty apart from an unlit charcoal brazier, but had four rings set into slabs in the damp earthen floor, positioned in a square. Everyone listened as the sheriff began to speak again.

  'Henry Crik, I declare you wilfully 'mute of malice'. The law has prescribed a treatment for this sad condition, the peine forte et dure.' He waved a hand at the gaoler. 'Show him the plates, Stigand.'

  The obese man went to the side of the alcove and, wheezing with the effort, picked up a heavy iron plate about eighteen inches square. He took it over to the sheriff, and de Furnellis hit the rusty metal with the hilt of his dagger, producing a dull thud.

  'To encourage your memory to return and to loosen your tongue, we can tie you down to these rings and place this plate upon your chest. If you still feel unable to tell me what I wish to know, then Stigand here can fetch another - and another. We have no shortage of iron, I assure you.'

  'You can't do this to me, it's not allowed!' howled Crik, turning pale with fright.

  De Furnellis made a show of turning around and staring about the undercroft. 'Can you see anyone here who says I can't? I am the sheriff of this county and there is no one this side of Winchester who can prevent me.'

  Crik made one more attempt to call his bluff, but at a sign from the crafty old sheriff Stigand dropped the plate with a clang and went to pick up some lengths of rope, which he began to thread through the rings on the floor. Sweating, Henry Crik began to weigh up which form of death he must choose. He, like most people, knew exactly what the peine forte et dure meant - increasing pressure on the chest, inability to breathe, blueness of the face and lips, burst blood vessels in the face and eyes - and eventually a horrible death from asphyxia.

  If he confessed, he would be convicted and hanged - but because of the tardiness of the courts, that might be some time away, and many prisoners escaped, either by bribing the gaolers or escaping to claim sanctuary or to vanish into the forest to become outlaws. As his guards jerked him towards the rings, he suddenly broke and screamed out that he would talk.

  'Too late, Crik. I can't deprive my gaoler of his sport. He might lose his touch if he fails to get enough practice.'

  The wily sheriff had no intention of torturing the man, but he knew that an extra dose of terror would ensure that Crik did not change his mind.

  Just as Stigand held up a rope to tie around the screaming man's wrists, the other Henry clapped his palms together to halt-the charade.

  'Give him once last chance, then. Crik, I want everything you know, or you'll be tied down on that floor! '

  It took the rest of the day to squeeze the truth from the crowd of suspects and for Thomas to write down all the facts and confessions on his rolls. Once Crik had broken and implicated others, it was just a matter of time and threats to extract the truth about the long-running conspiracy in Axmouth.

  The proceedings were interrupted in the afternoon by the arrival of the Prior of Loders with his chaplain and cellarer. They had ridden as fast as their horses could travel to bring them to the rescue of their brother Absalom. Behind him was Archdeacon John de Alençon, whom the prior had roused out of the cathedral before coming to the castle. Robert of Montebourg was in a state of high indignation at the arrest of his servant, and when he saw him in such a bedraggled state, shackled like a common criminal, he became incandescent with rage.

  'Release him at once, sir! He is a cleric, albeit in lower orders, but still immune from the secular power! What are you thinking of, treating him like a felon!'

  Henry de Furnellis was unmoved. 'Because he is a felon, prior! He has admitted it from his own mouth, and you are welcome to read the confession that Brother Thomas here has written for consideration by the king's justices.'

  The prior angrily scanned the parchment that Thomas handed to him, then deflated like a pricked pig's bladder. He strode over to the hapless lay brother and glared at him. 'Is this true, Absalom? Have you been deceiving me?'

  The man's sullen scowl and his silence were enough for the prior. He gave Absalom a resounding slap across the face and marched back to confront the sheriff. 'Nevertheless, it is not seemly that one of the priory's brothers should be held in this place. I want him released into my custody,' he demanded.

  'And that would be the last we or the court would see of him, eh?' said de Furnellis stubbornly. 'He is party to piracy and murder. He must be called to account, like the others.'

  As it seemed an impasse, John de Alençon stepped forward to intervene. 'I see both points of view, gentlemen. I suggest that this clerk is transferred to the custody of our cathedral proctors. We have secure cells in the cathedral Close and robust men to guard them, until the bishop and the prior come to some agreement as to how the matter should be resolved.'

  Rather grudgingly, the sheriff agreed, and two soldiers unshackled Absalom and took him stumbling out after the churchmen.

  De Furnellis turned back to the line of prisoners, now wilting badly after their long ordeal. 'Right, now let's hear from you, Martin Rof - unless you want a hundredweight of iron to keep your chest warm!'

  With Henry de Furnellis in such an unusually bullish mood, John had been more than content to stay in the background. He felt somehow remote from what was going on, his mind full of images of Nesta. The years they had had together now seemed like some dream, already fading but shot through with clear images of times they had made love or had sat together in the warm fug of the Bush's taproom, as well as the several crises that had bonded them even closer. As he stood in the dank undercroft, the yells from the prisoners and the bark of the sheriff's voice faded in and out as he recalled learning that Nesta was with child, then the loss of the babe, her attempt at drowning herself - and the time when she came near to being hanged as a witch, let alone her close escape from death when the Bush was set on fire.

  The many hours and the frequent nights that he had spent in her little cubicle screened off from the public loft wafted in and out of his consciousness as he stood alongside Gwyn in Stigand's domain, half-listening to the cries, the pleas and the protests of the men from Axmouth.

  The sheriff's voice snapped him out of his reverie and he pulled himself together, chiding his own inattention at such an important point in their investigation.

  'The bastards are contradicting themselves and starting to accuse each other, John, which is just what we need. But I'm getting confused about who did what, so I hope your clerk is making more sense of it than I am!'

  Poor Thomas, now seated on a box dragged from one of the alcoves, was sitting where he could get enough light from the doorway to write on the parchment resting on a board across his knees. A pot of home-made ink rested precariously on one corner, and he was scribbling away as fast as he could.

  'Are you getting the gist of this down, Thomas?' said de Wolfe, leaning over his shoulder. He saw an irregular series of marks, which although he could not read looked different from his clerk's usually immaculate script.

  'It is my own method of making brief notes, master,' answered the harassed Thomas. 'Everyone is speaking too quickly for me to record it verbatim; it is not like dictation. But afterwards I will transcribe it into a fair copy f
or you - and presumably the Justices in Eyre.'

  'Well said, Thomas!' cut in the sheriff. 'This is getting so damned complicated that I suggest we should keep the sods locked up and push the whole problem over to the king's judges or the Commissioners, when they next come to the city.'

  When all the half-dozen prisoners had been interrogated and shouted at sufficiently, they were forcibly herded back into the cells. The law officers and their assistants adjourned to the hall upstairs for some refreshment and to discuss what they had learnt. The sheriff commandeered one of the long tables, clearing off the people who had been sitting there, and the castle constable yelled at some servants to bring them food and drink.

  'So what did we manage to squeeze out of those lying swine?' asked John, determined now to give his full attention to the matters in hand.

  Thomas spread his tattered palimpsests on the table and scratched his shaven crown with the end of his quill as he began deciphering the shorthand he had scribbled down.

  'We know that Martin Rof strangled Simon Makerel, as the young shipman admitted that he had seen him do it. Whether or not the other conspirators like the bailiff and portreeve sanctioned it, is not clear.'

  'What else have you got written down, Thomas?' asked John.

  The clerk shuffled his parchments on the table. 'The carter Adam Grendel blamed Dolwin Veg for killing the pedlar who had spotted them delivering at dead of night - and for the death of the Keeper and his clerk, though it seems that both Grendel and some others were involved. It seems that they had a sideline as paid assassins as well as running an ox-cart.'

  'Remind me of what Henry Crik had to say,' grunted the sheriff. 'He was the real breakthrough, of course. The threat to crush his chest certainly made him talkative.'

  Thomas found the correct page and studied it short-sightedly, running his finger along his hieroglyphics. 'He says that Martin Rof and the portreeve were the ones who first decided to start indulging in piracy, about two years ago. The evasion of Customs duty had been going on much longer, though it got more lucrative when the' King's Council brought in the wool tax and increased the other import duties. As they had had such success with that misdemeanour, they thought they could make even more profit from stolen goods brought in by The Tiger.'

  'And Henry Crik got involved because he was the cog's agent and they also needed him to help find buyers for the illicit goods,' added the sheriff.

  John rubbed a hand over his black stubble, often an indication that he was puzzled. 'So how did this bloody lay brother from Loders come into it?'

  'Crik says that he soon tumbled as to what was going on and demanded a share in the racket, or he would denounce them to the cellarer and prior. Absalom denied it all, of course, but Crik says that he was keen to put a nice nest egg aside and then vanish from the priory to live comfortably far away.'

  The food and ale had arrived and they broke off to cut fresh bread, hack hunks of cheese and chew some hot meat pastries that the castle cooks had provided. Then Henry de Furnellis returned to the main issues.

  'So we have Elias Palmer, Martin Rof, Henry Crik and Brother Absalom certainly guilty of either murder, piracy or evasion of Customs dues. Then these two carters killed the pedlar and the Keeper, according to both Crik and Grendel, who tries to shift the blame on to the other carter, Dolwin Veg.'

  'And I suspect they attempted the murder of Gwyn and myself,' growled de Wolfe. 'They are most likely the bastards who laid an ambush for us with crossbows, when we were getting too close to their misdoings. The business with the false call to a corpse in Ottery St Mary was too clever for those dullards. No doubt the Axmouth gang set it up, with some stranger paid to impersonate the Ottery reeve.'

  The sheriff put his tankard down on the table with a bang.

  'What about the bailiff, this Edward Northcote? And that John Capie, the fellow the county employs as a Customs collector, God preserve us? What are they guilty of?'

  The little clerk thumbed nervously through his notes. 'No one has actually said that either of them were involved in the piracy and the selling of the stolen goods, sir. But everyone seems to accept that the whole village knew about evading the taxes, so they must have been aware of that, for Capie was the man responsible for counting the stuff.'

  John strove to keep his mind on the problem. 'I'll wager the bailiff knew every damned thing that went on in that village. He may not have taken an active part in the piracy nor perhaps shared in the loot. But there's no way that he wouldn't have known about it, and at the very least he must have turned a blind eye.'

  Henry tossed the crust of a pastry to a thin cat that was slinking from under the table. 'Well, as I said earlier, I'm going to dump the problem in the lap of the king's court. The Commissioners of Gaol Delivery are due here next month, so let them sort it out! The villains from Axmouth can rot down the cells until then and I'm letting the Church decide what they want to do with that fellow from Loders.'

  John thought rather sourly that the sheriff's recent revival of enthusiasm had suddenly petered out, but in a couple of weeks he would be in London, so it would not be his problem.

  What was his problem was managing the upheaval in his private life, and the sooner he got down to dealing with it, the better.

  De Wolfe had expected that having to go down to the Bush again would be an ordeal, but somewhat to his surprise he found that a certain calmness had entered his soul. That evening he walked Brutus around the Close for a while, not to disappoint him, but then returned him to Mary and set out alone for Idle Lane.

  He entered the taproom without hesitation and strode across to his table, as he had done for several years. Gwyn was already there, as arranged earlier, a bowl of fish soup and a hunk of bread before him. As John sat down, Edwin came across as usual and placed a pot of ale in front of him but hovered about, an uneasy look on his aged face.

  'Hear you're off to London, cap'n,' he said rather nervously. 'We'll all miss you greatly.' He hesitated for a moment. 'And we'll be lost without Mistress Nesta, too.' He swung away quickly, as if he feared a tear would appear in his one good eye.

  John took a deep swallow of the ale, thinking that he had better make the most of it, as it was unlikely that he would get such a good brew in London. He glanced around at the score of men drinking in the room and knew from the way they studiously tried not to look in his direction that the news was already all over the city ... 'the ale-wife's getting married and the crowner's leaving town!'

  A few moments later he broke off talking to Gwyn as he saw Nesta coming down the ladder from the loft. At the same time Owain ap Gronow appeared through the back door, carrying a large pitcher of cider which he placed alongside the ale barrels. An illogical feeling of relief flooded John's mind when he saw that the Welshman had not been up with Nesta in her tiny bedroom, until he realised that it was now none of his business.

  He stood up and stalked across the taproom to where the pair were now standing together, apparently discussing the ale and cider. When Owain saw John advancing upon him, he stiffened and looked as if he was expecting an assault upon his person, but John held out his hand and gave a twisted grin.

  'By rights, lad, I should give you a beating - but I'll settle for congratulations!' He gripped the mason's upper arm in a gesture of acceptance, and Owain smiled in relief as Nesta watched warily.

  'I don't know what to say, Crowner!' Owain blurted out in Welsh. 'Nothing can be adequate after what you've done for me. Saved my life, then led me to the best woman in the world.'

  Again, John smiled crookedly 'I'll not argue with the last part, though perhaps I should have let those outlaws cut your throat!'

  He turned to Nesta. 'We have important business to talk about, cariad. It now concerns your future husband, so let's all go and sit down with Gwyn, for he's involved as well.'

  Mystified, Nesta did as she was bid, and as she sat down Gwyn noticed with a sigh of sadness for times past that she placed herself on the bench opposite de Wolfe with O
wain close alongside her. John leant forward and the others did the same, not wanting their business to be heard by the other patrons.

  'Nesta, you had the silly notion of giving the Bush to me when you left for Gwent, but that just cannot be! I will purchase it from you and there will be no arguments. '

  He overrode the start of her protests. 'It is true that I helped you when Meredydd died, but you have repaid that to me from the success you made of running the inn. It is also true that I paid to repair the building after it burnt down, but in recent years Exeter has burgeoned with its trade. Now, property is worth more, so unless you object to the price I will repay you what Meredydd paid four years ago.'

  With flushed cheeks, she again started to reject his offer as too generous, but he would have none of it. 'Look on it as a dowry or a wedding gift, Nesta. Perhaps you might wish to open a tavern in Chepstow - it would be a sin if the world was deprived of the best ale in Christendom!'

  Then he went on to explain his plan to give the tenancy of the Bush to Gwyn, the place to be run by his wife Avisa in his absence. Gwyn, after his initial bewilderment at his master's generosity, had taken enthusiastically to the idea. He had already told John that Avisa was delighted with the proposal, a dream come true to get out of the squalor of their hut in St Sidwell's and have a bigger home and a business to run.

  Now knowing that her good friend Gwyn was to be the beneficiary, Nesta soon came round to accepting John's stratagems. She knew Avisa as a strong, sensible and capable woman and was sure that she would make a success of running the inn. It was also a relief to Nesta to know that the Bush would be in friendly hands, instead of being taken by a stranger who might let the place degenerate, like some of the other drinking dens in the city.

  At first, Owain was a little insulted that John felt that his bride might need her own money, when he, a master craftsman, could easily support her. However, Nesta's new-found enthusiasm soon weaned him around to the good sense of the scheme. It was not long before Nesta was plotting with Gwyn to have another partition in the loft to act as a sleeping place for the two boys, an almost unheard-of luxury in all but the most affluent homes. They talked for a time, and as they drank each other's health in her best brew, all trace of awkwardness between them faded away.