The Witch Hunter

by Bernard Knight

  VIRGATE

  A measure of land, varying from place to place, but usually about thirty acres.

  WIMPLE

  Linen or silk cloth worn framing a woman’s face and covering the throat.

  PROLOGUE

  August 1195

  The old woman sat on the cold stones of the ledge that ran around the walls of the little church, waiting her turn to take the sacrament. The rest of the congregation stood on the earthen floor of the bare nave, which was barely twenty paces long and half that wide. They were few in number, as the priest of St Martin’s was not popular and there were another twenty-six churches within the walls of Exeter to compete with his ministrations.

  Theophania Lawrence could sit down because of her age and presumed infirmity, though in fact she was quite spry for her sixty-six years. As in many other matters, she was crafty and full of guile and ‘going to the wall’ in church was a convenience, rather than a necessity. She sat and watched the dozen communicants shuffle towards the chancel, which was little more than a raised platform. It carried a simple altar, a table covered with a white cloth, on which was a cross of Dartmoor tin and two pewter candlesticks. Theophania was in no hurry and she let the last few townsfolk get near the priest before hoisting herself up and walking with an exaggerated hobble to stand at the end of the queue. Her face was round and smooth, with a pair of mischievous little eyes which stared out below the headband of a frayed linen cover-chief that enveloped her head and hung down the back of her much-darned brown kirtle.

  As she stood behind the tall back of a pious cloth merchant from Southgate Street, she could hear the priest muttering the unintelligible Latin as he doled out the wafers and wine. Thin and fair haired, Edwin of Frome was unique in Exeter, as he was the only Saxon priest in a solidly Norman enclave. His sermons were laced with half-concealed diatribes against the invaders, though they had been here for well over a century and none of his parishioners was now likely to rise up in rebellion.

  As the three people at the chancel step rose and returned to the nave, Theophania followed the pair in front. With a grunt, she lowered herself to kneel on the edge of the wooden dais. Her eyes darted around and settled with satisfaction on Father Edwin as he took a couple of steps towards the altar to replenish his paten. He refilled the shallow metal dish for holding the wafers from a new supply kept in the pyx. This was a carved wooden box, in which he stored the small pieces of pastry he bought at a cook-stall in High Street. He held the paten up to the cross and mumbled some more Latin to bless them. The old woman glowed internally, as freshly sanctified, they were all the more powerful.

  The priest came back to the step and bent over her, mouthing more phrases as he placed a wafer in her supplicant palm. Edwin scowled at her suspiciously, knowing her of old. He waited until she had lifted the scrap to her mouth and made swallowing gestures, before moving on to the clothier. Theophania waited patiently until the priest came around again to offer a sip of cheap wine from the chalice, which she pretended to take. Then she stood up, crossed herself and unobtrusively walked out of the church without waiting for the completion of the Mass.

  St Martin’s was at the corner of the cathedral Close and she looked around in the early morning air to make sure that no one was watching her, before putting a hand to her mouth. Spitting out the consecrated Host, which she had kept stored inside her cheek, she carefully wrapped it in a scrap of cloth taken from a small pouch on her girdle, before replacing it and stepping out quite briskly up Martin’s Lane, past the coroner’s house. It was the first step towards an appointment with a noose that would be thrown about her wrinkled neck.

  CHAPTER ONE

  In which Crowner John finds a strange doll

  Robert de Pridias was feeling out of sorts on this hot Tuesday afternoon. He rode his big bay gelding slowly along the high road towards Exeter, wondering uneasily what he might have eaten to give him this burning under his breastbone and the frequent belches that erupted from his belly. He had left Buckfast Abbey that morning, but the good breakfast that the monks had given him in the guest hall was surely as wholesome as one could wish. He had settled a mutually-satisfying deal for two hundred bales of new wool from the abbey’s famous flocks and the abbot’s satisfaction had been reflected in the hospitality he had been given.

  No, it must have been that damned inn where he had eaten some dinner an hour ago. He had thought then that the pork was over-spiced, probably to conceal the fact that the meat was going off in this hot weather. Robert belched again and tried to ignore the fact that he had had these pains on and off for some weeks. He was forty-eight years old, comfortably rich and considerably overweight. Red of face and short of neck, the fuller had inherited his woollen mill on Exe Island from his father. He had built it up into a good business during the long years of peace that was turning Exeter into one of the most prosperous towns in England. As well as turning the raw wool into yarn, he now had a dozen looms working for him around the city, making the cloth that sold so well at home and abroad.

  As he jogged along the dusty road, he tried to ignore the ache across his chest, which felt as if an iron band was being tightened around his ribs. Instead, he diverted his thoughts to his beloved wife Cecilia, who, as with so many successful men, was a powerful spur to his ambitions. A strong character, there was no doubt of that, and she was handsome even in her middle age. She had borne him three strong daughters, but unfortunately not a single son. He supposed that one day he would have to pass on his business to the eldest son-in-law, who was decent enough, though rather stupid – but he would have preferred to see a de Pridias as mill-master. The alternative, which he vowed would happen only over his dead body, would be to sell out to Henry de Hocforde, his main rival in the fulling trade and as obnoxious a man as ever trod the soil of Devon.

  The thought of Henry seemed to increase the ache in his chest – now he fancied it was even spreading up into his throat. Though the city was now only a couple of miles away, he felt the need for a rest and something to drink, even it was only the poorest ale. The afternoon was hot, but surely not enough to cause this sweat that was beading on his forehead and sticking his undershirt to his skin?

  He was passing through Alphington, a hamlet on the west side of the river, within sight of the cathedral towers. It was little more than a score of thatched wattle-and-daub cottages, a wooden church and a larger hut with two old barrels and a brewing-pole outside to mark it as an alehouse. He pulled the horse to a halt in front of its door and stared down groggily at two old men sitting on a plank placed across two large stones against the front wall. They had earthenware pots in their hands and were staring up uneasily at this well-dressed stranger on such a fine horse. He was not the usual type of client for this mean tavern – and he certainly looked unwell.

  The aged peasants knew their place and waited for him speak first – but all they heard was a gargling noise from his throat as he bent forward in his saddle and clutched his arms around his chest. Suddenly, he felt violently sick; the pain had increased to an intolerable degree and radiated like lightning down both arms into his fingers.

  He fell across his horse’s neck, but his feet stayed in the stirrups, preventing him from falling off. Alarmed, the old men got to their feet, one stumbling towards the distressed man, the other going to the door of the inn to call in a quavering voice for the ale-wife. A buxom woman hurried out and between them they freed his fine leather boots from the stirrups and managed to slide him off to lay him on the ground, his horse champing and pawing unhappily alongside. The ale-wife also acted as the village nurse and layer-out of corpses, so had no difficulty in recognising a new client when she saw one.

  ‘He’s dead … dead as a salted ham!’ she proclaimed, after holding a capable hand over the place where a light summer tunic covered his heart. For good measure she thumbed up his eyelids and looked at the sightless orbs staring at blue sky.

  ‘But he can’t be – he rode up on this horse not three minutes ago!�
� protested one old man.

  ‘I know a corpse when I see one, Wilfred Coe!’ the widow snapped. ‘He’s had an apoplexy or a visitation of God. But dead he is and you’d better get the reeve and the priest, for he looks like a rich man – and that can only mean trouble for the likes of us if it’s not handled properly!’

  The ale-wife was right in her gloomy foreboding, for the complex demands of the law could eventually cost the village many precious pennies in fines by the time the King’s coroner had finished with them.

  The dead man lay in the dust at the edge of the road while the reeve was sent for, the priest being away in Exeter for the day. A reeve was the villager who represented the manor-lord and who organised most of the activities in Alphington, especially the work in the fields. As the manor was a royal one, belonging to the King himself, there was no local lord, the demesne being managed by a bailiff, who had several similar villages to oversee.

  The first problem for the reeve was to discover who the dead man might be. There were parchments in his saddle-bag with writing upon them, but as no one in the village could read, apart from the absent priest, these were of no help. Luckily the next rider to come along the high road from the direction of Plymouth, within a few minutes, was a merchant from Exeter, who recognised the victim. Seeing the knot of people clustered around the door of the tavern, he reined in his steed and slid from the saddle to investigate.

  ‘This is surely Robert de Pridias, of the weavers’ guild,’ he exclaimed in concern. The pallid features looked very different in death and he squinted at them from several angles, then bobbed his head in confirmation. ‘No doubt about it, it’s de Pridias, poor fellow.’

  The reeve, an emaciated fellow with a skeletal face and a hacking cough which suggested he had the phthisis, offered the parchments to the newcomer, but he shook his head.

  ‘I can’t read those, I do all my trading on tally sticks! But it’s him alright, he owns a fulling mill on Exe Island.’

  This was the large area of flat, marshy ground just outside the city. Exeter was built on a marked slope, running down from its castle on the east side to the river on the west. The swampy island was cut through by leats and gullies and after heavy rains up on Exmoor, these often overflowed to flood the low-lying ground and the mean huts of the wool workers perched upon it. However, the many fulling mills that cleaned and prepared the raw wool needed great quantities of water and the site was ideal for industries such as those of the late Robert de Pridias.

  When the traveller was told how his fellow-citizen had fallen dead across his horse, he offered to take the sad news to his family. ‘I can be at his house in well under the hour,’ he said solicitously. ‘Where shall I tell his family to seek his body?’

  The reeve looked at the ale-wife, but she shook her head firmly. ‘No, I’m not having a corpse in my taproom, it’s bad for trade. The church is the place for him.’

  With an assurance that the fuller would be handled reverently, the merchant rode off with his doleful message. The reeve called two younger men from the nearest strip-field and they went to fetch the village bier, a wooden trestle with handles at each end, which was kept hanging from the roof beams of the church. On this they carried Robert into the small building and left him lying before the altar until the priest returned. However, the family arrived first, within two hours of the messenger leaving Alphington. The first was the son-in-law, Roger Hamund, whose feelings of grief were secretly alleviated by the unexpected prospect of inheriting de Pridias’s business. He had cantered ahead in his enthusiasm, but within a few minutes his wife and mother-in-law appeared, sitting side-saddle on their palfreys, escorted by their household steward. They were all well dressed and well fed, contrasting markedly with the threadbare inhabitants of the village, as they stalked past them into the church.

  The new widow, Cecilia de Pridias, marched towards the tiny chancel and stood looking down at her dead husband, more in anger than desolation.

  ‘I knew it, I knew something like this would happen!’ she snapped, sounding as if her husband had dropped dead purely to annoy her.

  Roger Hamund stared at her, habitually open mouthed because of his adenoids. He was not an intelligent man and his mother-in-law’s strong personality always overawed him.

  ‘He must have had a stroke, Mother,’ he ventured tentatively. ‘The apothecary said he was in poor health.’

  ‘Nonsense, boy!’ grated Cecilia. ‘He was done to death by that swine Henry de Hocforde and I’m going to call the coroner.’

  Though by August the long summer days were beginning to shorten, there was still plenty of time for Roger Hamund to ride back to the city and fetch Sir John de Wolfe. He found him in his dismal chamber at the top of the tall gatehouse of Rougemont Castle, listening to his clerk reciting some inquest proceedings from a parchment roll. The soldier on guard duty at the gate had directed him up the steep, winding staircase inside the tower and when he pushed his way through the sacking curtain that hung over the low doorway at the top, he found himself in a small room with rough stone walls and two narrow unglazed windows. The furniture consisted of a crude trestle table flanked by a couple of stools, which were occupied by a little man with a slightly humped shoulder and a tall, gaunt figure dressed in a grey tunic. The light from one of the windows was blocked by a giant of a man sitting on the sill, pouring ale from a large pot into his mouth, which was just visible beneath a huge ginger moustache which matched a wild thatch of hair.

  The visitor knew all three by sight, as did most of the inhabitants of Exeter, for the coroner’s team was a familiar and usually unwelcome sight about the city. Wherever a King’s crowner appeared, it usually meant either a death or a lightening of the purse – and often both.

  Roger stood hesitantly inside the doorway and addressed himself to the lean, forbidding figure behind the table, whose swept-back ebony hair and dark-stubbled cheeks made it easy to believe that the troops in his campaigning days had nicknamed him‘Black John’. Now he was known as‘Crowner John’, and beneath the beetling brows, the deep-set eyes that used to rove over battlefields now sought out the crimes and tragedies that beset Devonshire.

  ‘Sir John? I have come with a sad request for you to attend the body of my father-in-law, who has died suddenly and most unexpectedly.’

  Three pairs of eyes swivelled around to stare at him. He was a podgy fellow of about twenty-eight, amiable but indecisive. His wife, a younger version of her formidable mother, directed his life from the security of their home near the East Gate, though she acted meekly and demurely enough when out in company.

  The coroner aimed his predatory hooked nose in the man’s direction and scowled at him ferociously. ‘Why should his death concern me, sir? Was he beaten, kicked or stabbed?’

  Roger shuffled his elegantly clad feet uneasily.

  ‘He fell dead across his horse, Crowner. I would think some form of apoplexy was the most likely cause, but his wife is insistent that he was put under a malignant spell.’

  The little clerk’s eyebrows rose and he rapidly made the sign of the Cross. ‘A spell? Nonsense, there is no such thing, it is against the precepts and teachings of the Holy Church!’ he squeaked indignantly.

  Roger recoiled slightly at Thomas de Peyne’s vehemence. Although he had seen the clerk about the town, at close quarters he even more strongly resembled a priest, in his threadbare black cassock and the shaved tonsure on top of his head. A pair of bright little eyes darted intelligently from a thin face, which carried a long pointed nose and receding chin.

  ‘My mother-in-law is convinced he was done to death. There have been threats uttered against him and she claims it is murder.’

  John de Wolfe rumbled in his throat, his usual way of expressing disbelief. ‘I have been the King’s coroner for almost a year now, but this is the first time that witchcraft has been alleged as a cause of death.’

  He managed not to sound sarcastic and Roger Hamund was encouraged to carry on, mindful of the to
ngue-lashing he would get from Cecilia if he failed to return without de Wolfe.

  ‘There was certainly bad blood between him and another merchant,’ he said carefully, not wanting to name another influential citizen whose patronage might yet prove useful. ‘Perhaps it were best if my mother-in-law explained the situation herself.’

  ‘So who is the dead ’un?’ demanded the untidy giant from the window sill. This was Gwyn of Polruan, a former Cornish fisherman who had been Sir John’s squire, bodyguard and companion for almost twenty years of fighting from Ireland to the Holy Land and who now acted as the coroner’s officer. He was not renowned for his sensitivity and Roger cringed at the description of his father-in-law as ‘the dead ’un’.

  ‘It is Robert de Pridias, Crowner, the master of the guild of weavers in this city.’

  John’s black brows rose at this. He knew de Pridias slightly, as he had done some business with him over the last year or so. Since hanging up his sword after returning from the Third Crusade, de Wolfe had ploughed much of his campaign plunder into a wool business. He was a sleeping partner to his friend Hugh de Relaga, a prominent burgess and one of the two portreeves that ran the city council. Though they exported most of their wool purchases to Flanders, Brittany and the Rhine, they sold some locally to the fulling mills and Robert de Pridias had been one of their customers, so John felt that perhaps he should indulge his widow’s fantasies about murder. Rising from behind the table, he stood with his characteristic slight stoop and looked down at his little clerk.

  ‘Get on and finish those other rolls, Thomas, they’ll be needed at the Shire Court tomorrow.’

  With a jerk of his head to Gwyn, he left Thomas reaching thankfully for his pen and ink. The clerk disliked both corpses and sitting on a pony to get to them. De Wolfe ushered Roger to the stairs and Gwyn lumbered after them.