The Witch Hunter

by Bernard Knight

  ‘He refused to investigate the death or even hold an inquest,’ complained Cecilia. ‘He treated my accusations with contempt, even in the face of the evidence!’

  ‘And what was that, cousin?’ Gilbert was now attentive and solicitous, the oil of self-interest lubricating his manner.

  ‘You will have heard of the feud between my poor Robert and Henry de Hocforde, over Henry’s desire to acquire our mill?’

  The priest had heard no such thing, but he nodded sagely. He could soon catch up on the gossip, if needs be.

  ‘Well, failing to persuade Robert to sell by legal means, he arranged for his assassination! But that fool coroner will have none of it.’

  Gilbert’s interest began to waver. If this silly woman had some obsession about a murder conspiracy that would lead nowhere, he wanted to keep well clear of it. But her next words reclaimed his attention immediately.

  ‘He was done to death by witchcraft. An effigy was hidden under his saddle, with a spike through its heart!’

  Ecclestiastical politics apart, Gilbert de Bosco had a deep, unshakeable devotion to Christianity and the doctrines of Rome, free from some of the doubts and crises of faith that were admitted to by some of his colleagues. One manifestation of this dedication to the Church was a fierce hatred of any competitor to Holy Writ. This included the manifold remnants of paganism and pantheism which pervaded the countryside, in spite of many centuries of Christian influence in the islands of Britain. In the years when he had been a village priest, his sermons had often contained vehement condemnations of the everyday practice of superstition and rural magic, with demands to his flock to abandon the ancient customs of folk medicine, spell-casting and sooth-saying. The fact that his exhortations fell on the deaf ears of folk who had no alternative but to turn to their cunning men and women, did little to dampen his crusading efforts. Since he had moved to the city with its slightly more sophisticated community, his ardour had subsided, but now Cecilia’s words ignited the slumbering embers into sudden flame.

  ‘Witchcraft! Tell me more of this,’ he commanded.

  His cousin had little more to tell, but she repeated and embellished the few facts, then called her daughter and the abashed Roger forward to confirm her story, especially the discovery of the corn-dolly under her husband’s saddlebag.

  ‘Leave this with me, cousin,’ he snapped, after some very quick thinking. ‘I will look into this matter at once. The archdeacon should be told and perhaps even the bishop himself. When is the funeral to be held?’

  Cecilia, gratified that her relative was taking this seriously, told him that Julian Fulk, the priest of St Olave’s, was holding a service the next morning and after that, the burial would take place in the afternoon, following a Mass in the cathedral. As the family was relatively rich, they had bought the right to bury Robert under the flagstones at the back of the nave, rather than out in the chaos of the Close outside, where most of Exeter’s dead had to be deposited. In spite of the multitude of churches in the city, none had the right to bury their parishioners; this was jealously guarded by the cathedral, which collected all the fees for the funeral formalities.

  Gilbert de Bosco noded sagely. ‘As this is a family matter, I will deliver an oration at the requiem – and I will make sure that your concerns are voiced in the strongest terms.’

  As well as his own genuine crusade against necromancy, he saw an opportunity to bring himself to prominence over this issue. It was a timely move, as one of the archdeacons was in poor health and there were rumours of his post soon falling vacant. Becoming a champion for the Church against what he considered the powers of darkness, should help to persuade the bishop and chapter to consider him more energetic and enthusiastic than the other twenty-three canons. The fact that he had not the slightest evidence that Robert de Pridias had died from anything other than a seizure or stroke hardly occurred to him, for he had the single-mindedness of an obsessive personality.

  ‘I must go now, I have important business,’ he said solemnly, thinking of his breakfast cooling on the table. ‘I will take action this very day and see you at the sad occasion here tomorrow.’

  He ushered them back into the nave and then hurried away importantly, leaving Cecilia well pleased with her morning’s work.

  For very different reasons, the apothecary Walter Winstone was even more opposed to the activities of cunning folk than was Canon Gilbert de Bosco. Still smarting from the pain of giving back the money to Henry de Hocforde, he marched around his shop that morning in a foul temper. The apprentice had already felt the rough edge of his tongue and the palm of his hand across his head. Sitting low over his pill-board, the lad was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible as Walter finally tore off his apron and went to the door.

  ‘I’m off to Northgate Street to speak with Richard Lustcote,’ he snarled. ‘Behave yourself whilst I’m away or it’ll be the worse for you.’

  With this happy valediction he hurried away down Waterbeer Street, muttering curses under his breath at the idlers who got in his way. His oaths worsened as he dodged the contents of a chamber pot thrown from the window of a brothel, while he headed for the shop of his nearest colleague. It was a man he disliked, but at the moment he had need of him. There were four other apothecaries in Exeter, too few to have a proper guild, though they paid a small fee once each year to a visitor from London, who kept their names on the register of the Company of Apothecaries and brought any news concerning their craft. Walter was not an enthusiastic member and grudgingly attended their ‘feast’ each Easter, which, owing to their small number, was held in one room of the New Inn.

  As the small man pattered testily towards the North Gate, he reflected on the reasons for his dislike of Richard Lustcote. They were mainly based on jealousy of the older man – his seniority in the craft, his long-established and more successful business and his popularity with the townsfolk, mainly because of his pleasant nature. Although their rudimentary guild had no warden, Lustcote was looked on by the other apothecaries – and by the populace – as the father figure of the healing art in Exeter. There was no secular physician nearer than Winchester, and as monks and nuns provided all that was available in the way of hospital care, the apothecaries dispensed medicines and visited the paying sick in their homes. This function they jealously guarded, as it was their livelihood. Now Walter felt threatened – cunning women not only competed with his healing herbals, but were usurping his illegal trade in surreptitious poisonings and abortions.

  His hurrying feet had taken him around the corner and on towards the North Gate in the city walls, where the road went out towards Crediton. The buildings lining the narrow street were the usual mixture of styles in this thriving city. New houses were being squeezed between the old, taking over garden plots and progressively replacing the ancient timbered structures with stone. There was a whole range of roofing, from mouldering thatch through wooden shingles to thick tiles. The height and width of every dwelling were different and some projected over the road as new-fangled solars became the fashion. One thing that did not change was the smell – the packed-earth street had a central gutter of crude stones, down which a stream of filth oozed towards a conduit alongside the gate, which was downhill from Carfoix, the central crossroads of the city. As Walter walked along, he unthinkingly avoided the stinking trench, keeping away from both the middle of the road and the edges, where the perils of waste water – and worse – thrown from doorways and windows were another hazard. However, he reached Lustcote’s shop without undue soiling and pushed aside the thick leather flap that hung over the doorway. The establishment was twice the size of his own, with display shutters lowered from windows on either side of the central door. The interior was roomy and no fewer than three apprentices sat working behind counters, one of them dealing with a pair of matrons who were seeking relief for their aching joints. Apart from its size and tidier appearance, the place was very similar to Walter’s – and almost every other apothecary’s shop in England
– but he still felt envy creeping over him as he asked one of the young men for his master.

  ‘In the store behind, sir,’ was the reply. The lad knew Walter by sight and reputation, though he was an infrequent visitor.

  The room behind the shop was again similar to his own, but much larger. Here he found Richard Lustcote hunched over a small charcoal stove, boiling a copper pan containing a quart of some liquid that smelled strongly of vinegar. He was a round, chubby man with white hair that hung down to the collar of his green tunic, over which was a tabard of thin leather, stained with several years’ worth of splashed medicines. His amiable face smiled a greeting, which was not something that the miserable Walter Winstone often received. After a guarded conversation, mainly about the novel brew that Richard was preparing as a treatment for dropsy of the legs, Walter came to the substance of his visit.

  ‘This is a guild matter, Richard and you are the acknowledged leader of our small band here in Devon. We need to be united on this, as it affects our trade and our purses.’

  The old apothecary moved his pan from the trivet over the glowing embers and looked quizzically at his visitor. ‘Do you wish us all to raise our prices?’

  Walter shook his head irritably. ‘Nothing like that. I am talking about competition – and unqualified competition at that. It’s not only against the interests of our guild, but dangerous to the public.’

  Richard looked uncomprehendingly at Winstone. Not for the first time, he considered him to be a strange man – resentful, ungrateful and envious. He had never heard anything against his ability as an apothecary, but he was certainly not a personable character. No wonder he was unmarried and lived in rather squalid loneliness over his shop, even though he could obviously afford better. He had arrived in Exeter about seven years ago, from Southampton, so it was said, but no one knew anything about him before that. The guild-man from London said that he had not previously been registered with the Company of Apothecaries in Southampton and had told him some vague story about having served his apprenticeship in Brittany. The older apothecary waited for some fuller explanation, which tumbled from Walter’s lips as bitter as the vinegar that simmered on the stove.

  ‘These self-appointed healers are meddling more and more in our business,’ he complained. ‘Most are what we know as “cunning women”, though there are some men as well. I have lost customers to them and that means money lost. They charge far less, but provide nothing but ridiculous charms and spells, which are nothing more than attempts at magic.’

  Richard Lustcote smiled indulgently. ‘Many of the things that we sell are little more than attempts at magic, brother! We rely heavily on the faith our customers have in us, so that they feel we are doing them good. In reality, we keep them occupied while we wait in hope that God and time will alleviate their sicknesses.’

  Walter Winstone looked shocked at this cynical, if realistic view of their noble craft. ‘You cannot really believe that, Richard!’ he brayed. ‘We have been trained and have studied the precepts of others learned in the art, from Galen onwards. These interfering impostors are charlatans, casting their spells and gibberish, little better than witches!’

  His indignation made him gabble and flecks of spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth.

  Lustcote tried to soothe him a little. ‘Come now, Walter, there is room for all in trying to do good for the sick and distressed. We have no quarrel with the monks at St John’s Hospital and St Nicholas – nor with the good sisters at Polsloe Priory. Beyond a few miles from our city walls, we have no patients – and they have no apothecaries, so they must fend as best they can. Name me a hamlet between here and Totnes or Tiverton that boasts an apothecary’s shop?’

  Winstone would have none of this argument. ‘I give not a fig for those peasants in far-flung villages. I am concerned with this city and the few miles around it, where we are increasingly losing business to what is little better than irreligious witchcraft! It is a danger not only to us, but to the sufferers, who are exposed not only to God knows what harmful potions, but to forces of the Devil, which is what some of these harridans rely upon.’

  His eloquence deafened the sound of his own hypocrisy, considering that he had been feeding Robert de Pridias the poisonous sugar-of-lead for weeks on the pretext of treating the ache in his chest.

  They argued the matter for some minutes, although Robert turned back to his copper dish, which had gone off the boil, while they spoke. He was a mild-mannered man and played down Walter’s fears, saying that he had not noticed any falling-off of his trade. Furthermore, he thought that the clientele that could afford the services of an apothecary, was generally unlikely to seek the more dubious offerings of cunning women.

  However, his colleague from Waterbeer Street continued to rant about the iniquities of common good-wives interfering in their noble profession. ‘It should be a matter for the law!’ he snapped. ‘The guilds were strengthened by old King Henry and they should be looked on as a monopoly, exclusive to those trained in the art. Think what would happen if some damned peasant masquerading as a mason came and offered to build a cathedral on the cheap! Or a goldsmith or draper usurping the established companies. There would be a riot and the guilds would drag such an impostor away and hang him! So why should we be different, just because we purvey medicinal knowledge, rather than stones or gold rings?’

  The even-minded Richard had to admit to some logic in this and finally he reluctantly agreed to bring the matter up at the meeting of their tiny guild to be held the following week – and also to discuss it with one of the portreeves. These were the two prominent burgesses who ran the city council, though there was talk of replacing them with a mayor, a new idea imported from the Continent, which had already been adopted in London four years earlier. Both of them were wardens of their own guilds and were knowledgeable about such matters.

  With that Winstone had to be satisfied and he eventually left, still muttering under his breath about unfair competition.

  Later that morning, a pale-faced young woman turned off Fore Street, just down the hill from the Carfoix crossing. She entered a short lane called Milk Street, which crossed the head of Smythen Street, noisy with the banging and hammering of the smiths’ forges. There was no mystery about the name of Milk Street, as the dozen huts and cottages were almost all occupied by dairiers, purveyors of milk and cream. Halfway along, she hesitantly approached a lopsided hut of wattle and daub, crowned with a tattered thatch roof. In the dozen square yards of dung-strewn earth that formed the front yard, she saw a patient donkey chewing on a pile of cut grass, with two large churns slung across its back, formed of dented and tarnished copper. They were empty now, but the handles of two ladles stuck out of each container.

  The young woman, dressed simply in a patched linen kirtle bleached by innumerable washings, had her hair swathed in the usual linen head-rail, tucked closely around her face and under her chin. She appeared nervous as she went up to the open door in front of the windowless shack and tapped on the scarred boards, the bottom few inches of which were frayed with dry rot.

  There was no response from the dark interior and after a few moments she plucked up enough courage to walk around the back of the dwelling. Here she found a larger yard backing on to the buildings at the upper end of Southgate Street. Although in the centre of one of England’s major cities, it seemed full of cows, bony dun-coloured beasts with great udders. There were at least eight of them filling the small area, tethered by ropes to a ramshackle fence, munching away like the donkey at piles of freshly cut green grass. Beyond the side fences, the visitor could see similar groups of cows in the adjacent properties.

  In the middle of the yard, squatting on a tiny stool, was an elderly woman, pumping away at a cow’s teats as she directed a stream of warm milk into a leather bucket gripped between her knees, her head jammed against the beast’s flanks. Alongside, a small calf cowered against its mother’s legs.

  The new arrival watched for a few moments, fasc
inated in spite of her own troubles by the almost artistic flourish of the milker’s hands, as the little fingers spread upwards and outwards at every stroke.

  The jets from the udder gradually diminished and with a grunt, the old lady pushed back her stool and stood up, becoming aware of the spectator.

  ‘Looking for me, dear?’ Her sharp eyes peered out from beneath the grimy helmet of felt that covered her head, its front soiled from rubbing against her cows.

  ‘If you be Avelina Sprot,’ answered the woman, diffidently.

  The good-wife nodded, then pointed to the bucket half full of milk that she had in her other hand. ‘Let me just give this to the orphan first.’

  She waddled bent-backed across the yard and poured the milk into a trough made from a hollowed-out log, placed in front of another, larger calf tied to the fence.

  ‘Primrose has too much milk, she needs some taking off her that her own babe can’t drink. This one needs it more, since its mother died.’

  She came back towards the hut and dropped the bucket, motioning the woman to come to the back door of the cottage. As they went into the dark interior, Avelina asked what had brought her visitor here. ‘Is it the usual, my girl?’