Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries)

by Bernard Knight

  John was afraid that Ranulf would die before he could discover what had happened, and the landlord said that he would get some men to carry him to St Bartholomew’s, this being the only place nearby with reputable medical care.

  As he went off to organise this, John went over to the fallen marshal, who was slumped forwards, murmuring indistinctly.

  Gwyn had kicked his dagger away for safety, but there seemed little chance of Ranulf becoming a danger ever again. Hawise was sitting weeping on her bench, but when John placed a consoling hand on her shoulder, she looked up defiantly.

  ‘Have I killed him? He was going to murder me, after all we’ve been to each other these past two weeks.’

  John looked down at the small ivory-handled knife, still sticking out from the centre of the man’s back, below the shoulder blades. ‘That was your eating knife?’ he asked gently.

  She nodded, wiping her eyes angrily with the hem of her sleeve.

  ‘He was stabbing my neck, I could feel the blood running.’ She lifted her chin to prove it. ‘I thought he was going to kill me there and then, so I reached behind me to the table and grabbed the knife. I thrust it at the nearest part of him I could reach, to make him stop hurting me!’

  She burst into tears again and he patted her shoulder awkwardly. Crying women frightened him more than a horde of Saracens.

  ‘We’ll get you taken back to Westminster as soon as we can arrange it. But you had better let me have that necklace, it would be better for you not to be seen wearing it.’

  As she took it off, he made sure that she was not in possession of any more of the looted treasure. ‘It’s all in his saddlebag in the chamber upstairs,’ she confessed. ‘He said we would be rich when it was sold in Germany and that he’d win even more in the great tournaments.’

  Gwyn came up and muttered in his ear. ‘I reckon this fellow’s going to die. If you want to get him to talk, we’d better look sharp about it.’

  As if they had heard him, two servants pushed their way into the chamber with a door unhinged from one of the bedrooms.

  They laid it alongside the injured man, then looked at John.

  ‘We can’t lie him down with that knife in his spine. Shall I pull it out?’

  De Wolfe looked at Ranulf’s back, where a thin stream of blood was running from around the knife blade staining the green cloth of his tunic. He shook his head.

  ‘It might kill him, for all I know, stuck in his backbone like that. Put him face down, with his head turned to the side.’

  As they jogged off up the road, John had a grim memory of Canon Simon being carted off to the same hospital in much the same fashion.

  ‘You are going to die, my son, do you understand?’

  These solemn words were uttered by Brother Philip, the same Augustinian monk that had attended the poisoned canon.

  Ranulf nodded weakly. ‘I need to confess and be shrived, father,’ he said. With the knife now removed, he lay on his back on a mattress on the floor of a cubicle in the hospital.

  The monk-physician had earlier told John and Gwyn that there was no hope for the younger knight. ‘The point has not only cut the vital pith that runs inside the backbone, but the amount of bleeding both outside and under the flesh, shows that some major vessel has been punctured. It is only a matter of time before he dies.’

  ‘How long has he got?’ asked Gwyn.

  The monk turned up his palms. ‘Impossible to say. It could be minutes, if the bleeding increases. Or it may be weeks, but he has lost the use of his bladder as well as his legs and that usually means that corruption of the kidneys will come sooner or later.’

  He stopped and crossed himself. ‘It would be better that a fit young man like that dies soon, rather than suffer the distress and indignity of his paralysed condition.’

  ‘I had best speak with him right away,’ said de Wolfe. ‘He has committed heinous crimes against both the king and his fellow men. I suspect he was the one who poisoned the canon you treated some time ago.’

  They went back into the small ward and John crouched alongside Ranulf of Abingdon.

  ‘William Aubrey is dead and I fear that you will be joining him before long. You now have nothing to lose and perhaps by full confession, your soul will have something to gain in purgatory. Do you understand?’

  The under-marshal nodded, tears in his eyes as he realised that his legs would never move again, even for the short time he was expected to survive. Brother Philip pressed a crucifix into his hands and murmured a prayer.

  ‘Tell me all about it, Ranulf,’ urged de Wolfe. ‘Simon Basset was another of your conspirators, eh?’

  ‘Yes, it was his idea from the start,’ muttered Ranulf, fumbling with the rosary attached to the cross. ‘He was overfond of the good life. You have seen his house, his rich furnishings, his love of the best food and wine – especially his fondness for whoring. Well, he has an even grander house in Lichfield and he was always in need of money to buy more luxuries and to pay his debts for the ones he had.’

  ‘So he came to you with a plan? But how did you come to conspire with a canon?’

  ‘As marshals, we have several times brought treasure boxes from Winchester, which were received by Simon as a senior Exchequer official. He also was fond of secret gaming, and we came to know him well from that. He said that if we could get an impression of both keys of one of the money chests, he could manage to steal from the strongroom and we could share the proceeds.’

  ‘So when the special box of treasure trove was to be moved, you decided to act? But how did you get the keys, I had them all the time?’

  The dying man smiled weakly. ‘Not all the time, Sir John. Remember the fire in the barn? We set that deliberately.’

  De Wolfe was still mystified. ‘But how could that benefit you?’

  ‘William Aubrey pretended to go out for a shite at the back of the barn. He took a brand from the remains of the fire and set the thatch alight. When it was going well enough, he raised the alarm, but I pretended to sleep on. You rushed out in your bare feet, but left your belt with your pouch behind, next to where I made sure I was lying.’

  ‘You bastard!’ said John, forgetting for a moment that he was speaking to a dying man. ‘But I was gone only a moment or two. I suspected it might be a diversion to rob the chests on the cart, so I rushed back again.’

  ‘It was but the work of a few seconds to take the keys and press them into that box of wax which I held ready under my blanket.’

  John shook his head in amazement at the sheer nerve of the thieves and the risk they had taken.

  ‘But how could you know that we were going to be forced to stop at that village, where there was a convenient barn to set alight?’

  ‘We didn’t! It was a fortunate chance which we took on the spur of the moment. Originally, we were going to creep up on you at night and strike your head to knock your wits out, then take an impression of the keys as well as stealing the contents of your purse to make it look like a casual robbery.’

  De Wolfe was aghast at the casual way the man spoke of an assault which might well have killed him.

  ‘How did Canon Basset spirit away the gold?’ he demanded.

  ‘I do not know the details. I did not want to know them!’ whispered Ranulf. ‘I presume he managed to be left alone with the chests in the Tower for long enough to stuff some of the better trophies under his cassock.’

  ‘Then what happened to them?’

  The knight looked towards the Augustinian. ‘Am I really going to die, Father?’

  The monk nodded. ‘You cannot survive this, my son. After you have made your legal confession to the coroner, we will take another for the sake of your soul.’

  Ranulf sighed and held the crucifix to his lips for a moment.

  ‘I did not fully trust Simon Basset. He used to cheat at cards, which is a bad sign as to a man’s true character. At first, he did not want to tell William and myself where he had hidden the treasure, but we threatened
to expose him and then run away ourselves, so he gave in. He had placed them in a pottery jar concealed behind a loose stone in the abutment of the bridge next to his house – the one where the Royal Way crosses the Clowson Brook.’

  Gwyn groaned. ‘We would never have found that hiding place, if we looked until Doomsday!’

  Ranulf sank back weakly, the cross falling from his fingers.

  The monk looked at him with some concern and reached out a hand to feel his pulse. ‘His breathing is becoming very shallow. I think that perhaps the blood in his spine is rising towards his brain.’

  ‘What about that ironmaster?’ asked John, urgently. ‘I am sure he was the one who made the copies of the keys?’

  ‘Yes, we were afraid that he might betray us, as he was asking for a larger reward, so Simon said he had to go.’

  ‘And you did it?’ rasped the coroner.

  ‘Yes, God forgive me. He was too much of a risk.’

  His face was very pale now and his lips were taking on a violet hue, so John hurried on. ‘And the canon, what of his death?’

  ‘He said that as he had taken all the risks in taking the treasure from the Tower, he also should have a greater share. We had agreed to split it three ways, but he wanted a half share. Aubrey and I decided that if there were going to be half shares, we should have one each. I arranged to meet him at the Falcon and I slipped a large dose of foxglove into his food.’

  ‘Where did you get that?’ demanded Gwyn.

  Ranulf managed a slight shrug. ‘William got it somewhere. Any shady apothecary will sell you anything, if the price is right. I think he told the man he wanted to get rid of a sick dog.’

  John looked across at Gwyn and they both shook their heads in wonder. The cunning, deviousness and lack of honour shown by two knights of the realm and an ordained canon was beyond belief. All for the love of money and the things it could buy.

  ‘Have you done with your questions, Sir John?’ asked the monk. ‘I think this man, evil though he has been, has had enough for the moment.’

  Ranulf certainly looked as if he was at death’s door; rising, John had one last question.

  ‘You were prepared to attack me to get the keys – so was it you who tried to strangle me in the chapel crypt and then fell me with an arrow at Greenford?’

  Even in his failing condition, Ranulf managed to look astonished. ‘Why should I want to do that? I know nothing of those incidents, Sir John, as God is my judge.’

  Though John would not now have believed anything the rogue said, there was ring of sincerity about the denial.

  ‘God soon will be your judge, Ranulf! You have caused deaths, a great deal of distress and besmirched the name of the knighthood you hold. I hope that you have sufficient remorse to allow God in heaven to show you some compassion.’

  He walked out with Gwyn behind him, into the sunlight of the large precinct around the hospital. Then he stopped and looked down sadly at the ground between his feet.

  ‘I have not come out of this well, Gwyn! I was given charge of those bloody keys and I failed, even though it was but for a few moments. Those cunning bastards outmanoeuvred me and once again I have betrayed my king.’

  Gwyn began to demur, but de Wolfe raised a hand to silence him. ‘This makes me all the more determined in what I had planned to do,’ he declared obscurely. ‘I need to see Hubert Walter as soon as possible, tell him how this business has turned out – and then tell him I no longer feel able to keep the post of coroner.’

  Three mornings later, the dust had settled on the hectic events that had involved the Coroner of the Verge. The palace was relatively quiet, as Queen Eleanor had ridden off for Portsmouth two days earlier with William Marshal and her retinue.

  John sat in his chamber overlooking the Thames, with Gwyn perched on the window-ledge and Thomas at his usual place at the table. A few sheets of parchment now lay completed in front of the clerk, as he had just finished writing the account John had given him of the past few days, to be placed in the Chancery records.

  ‘So the Lady Hawise is now safely restored to her husband,’ said Thomas reflectively.

  ‘When we got back to Westminster, I sought out Renaud de Seigneur, who was prowling the palace like a man possessed,’ said John. ‘I think he was more angry at being cuckolded than at the loss of his wife, but when I told him that she was in the city, left in the care of the wife of the landlord of the Falcon, he yelled for his servants and galloped away to fetch her.’

  ‘I saw them returning some time later,’ reported Gwyn, relishing the memory. ‘She was riding pillion behind him and neither looked very pleased with each other. He almost dragged her away into the guest quarters and she looked far from happy at being reunited with her husband.’

  ‘They went off with Queen Eleanor’s procession, so by next week they’ll be back in Blois. God knows what will become of them then, they are hardly a pair of lovebirds!’

  ‘She’ll no doubt find some good-looking knight to amuse herself with,’ prophesied Gwyn, with a guileless look at his master, who was heartily relieved at the departure of the feckless beauty.

  John was still smarting at the news that Hubert Walter had given him when he reported the success of his mission to find Ranulf and William Aubrey. His visit to the Justiciar’s chambers was made even sweeter when he was able to dump a saddlebag on the floor and produce all the golden objects that had been stolen from the Tower, including the heavy Saxon necklet that he had retrieved from around Hawise’s neck. But this triumph was somewhat dampened when he told Hubert of his suspicions that the lady and her husband may have been spies for Philip of France and his regret that they had left before he had the chance to expose them.

  Instead of expressing concern, the archbishop let out a loud guffaw and slapped his hand on the table in a gesture of good humour.

  ‘Don’t fret about that, John! They were indeed spies – but for me, not the French! Renaud de Seigneur came across to report what he had recently picked up in Blois and neighbouring counties about Philip Augustus’s intentions in that area.’

  The coroner was mortified. ‘Did his wife know about this?’

  Hubert grinned roguishly at his old comrade. ‘John, the old dog used Hawise and her insatiable appetite for younger men, to gather intelligence wherever it might be found – often in some large French bed, no doubt!’

  De Wolfe felt sullied by the knowledge, though later he consoled himself with the thought that at least she had wanted him for his body, rather than to worm French secrets from him.

  It also deepened the mystery of who had ordered the two attacks upon his life, as several times he had falsely claimed in the presence of the de Seigneurs, that he was on the point of unmasking some foreign spies. But if they were on the side of England, this ruled them out as the instigators of the assaults.

  Since his interview with the Justiciar, he had had news of Ranulf’s death in the Hospital of St Bartholomew. Though the man was a murderous rogue, John felt a twinge of sadness for both him and William Aubrey. They had been amiable companions, even though their duplicity was unforgivable.

  Gwyn had felt no compunction or guilt about so effectively dispatching the younger marshal, as his philosophy was ‘kill or be killed’ and anyone who drew a sword or knife upon him was fair game for fatal retaliation. Now he hauled himself off the windowsill and stretched his hairy arms above his head in a lazy movement.

  ‘Are we really going to get out of this miserable place and go home to God’s own land?’ he asked.

  De Wolfe nodded, almost afraid to tempt fate by parading his good fortune. ‘I have promised to wait until next week, until other arrangements are made,’ he said. ‘Hubert Walter has committed himself, though I still have concerns about what King Richard might have to say.’

  After settling the affair of the treasure with the Chief Justiciar, John had stood squarely before Hubert’s table and, after a few preliminary throat clearances to cover his nervousness, launched into hi
s plea.

  ‘Your Grace, though this matter has ended satisfactorily, in that the gold has been recovered intact and the miscreants have paid the ultimate penalty, I feel that I have failed you and the king. I was charged with the safe keeping of that treasure and, as I have explained, I was tricked into losing possession of the keys, albeit for a brief few moments.’

  He paused for breath, but Hubert sat with his fingers interlaced and did not interrupt.

  ‘Once before I failed in my duty to my king and I consider that I should no longer hold this position of trust as Coroner of the Verge. I have to say that the problems of jurisdiction and the dearth of work here, also make me feel redundant. I humbly seek your consent to my release, so that I may return to Devon and live out my years quietly.’

  He swallowed hard, partly from emotion and partly from the effort of making an unusually long speech, then waited anxiously for the Justiciar’s response.

  ‘By St Peter’s cods, John, that’s bloody nonsense!’ said Hubert, in most un-ecclesiastical language. ‘The king himself absolved you from any blame over the Vienna capture. If anything, it was his own fault for being so rash! And as for this present escapade, you brought it to a successful conclusion single-handedly, apart from the help of that great ginger fellow and that remarkable little clerk of yours.’

  De Wolfe opened his mouth to repeat his confession of failure, but Hubert held up his hand.

  ‘No, John, you were duped by clever and unscrupulous men, and no blame can be attached to you. The king will be well satisfied that the gold has been recovered and the perpetrators dealt with in a summary fashion, with no jeering tales to be bandied about.’

  ‘I still feel unable to continue as Coroner of the Verge, sire,’ said John stubbornly. ‘I am sure you can find some knight or baron more suited to the life of the court to take my place – the duties are far from arduous.’

  After some more contrary argument by Hubert, he eventually gave in.

  ‘If you are really set upon this – and I suspect it is as much your wishing to return to your beloved Devon as eschewing the duties here – then so be it. I will have to concoct some tale for the king when I see him in Rouen next month, but I trust that he will agree, as a reward for your recovering his precious gold!’