The Grim Reaper

by Bernard Knight

While the festivities went on in the Guildhall, the parish priest at the church of St Mary the Less, known to everyone as ‘St Mary Steps’, was preparing for Matins, the first Office of the new day, which began at midnight. The numerous churches scattered all over Exeter did not keep to the strict regime of the nine daily services that were celebrated in the cathedral. The number varied according to the diligence of each incumbent.

  At St Mary Steps, at the bottom of Stepcote Hill near the West Gate, the attendance at a Thursday midnight service was likely to be sparse. Although many of those who lived within the few hundred paces served by the church would come on a Sunday, Adam of Dol knew that only a handful of the most devout would appear in the middle of a week-night. No one would come to Prime at dawn, so Adam had given up any pretence at public devotions then, reserving his efforts for High Mass in mid-morning and Vespers in the afternoon.

  He was a stocky man of medium height, thick-necked and red-faced, his high colour tending to deepen rapidly when his short temper was aroused. This evening, as the May light was fading, he moved about his church with short, jerky steps, as if he was always in a hurry, though the tempo of life at St Mary’s was hardly demanding.

  The building was slightly larger than All-Hallows-on-the-Wall, its near neighbour just along the road. The rectangular nave was quite high and the end facing the road had a new stumpy tower with two bells. Originally wood, it had been rebuilt in stone about fifty years previously, with a bequest from the wealthy owner of a fulling mill on Exe Island, just the other side of the city wall; the man had wished to ensure the welfare of his immortal soul with such generosity.

  Dedicated to St Mary, as were three other Exeter churches, it took its nickname from the cross-steps that traversed Stepcote Hill alongside the church, which was so steep as to need shallow terracing to prevent man and beast from falling flat on their faces. Though better endowed than All-Hallows, it was not a wealthy establishment and Father Adam remained disappointed that this was all that had been allotted to a priest of his talents.

  At forty-two, his ambition to become a canon had stagnated, but he had insufficient insight to realise that his own abrasive nature was the main stumbling-block to his advancement. As he strutted around his domain, adjusting the embroidered altar-cloth and pointlessly moving the brass candlesticks half an inch, he irritated himself – as he did several times a day – by rehearsing his life history and bemoaning the cruelties of fate that had held him back.

  Born in Brittany, under the shadow of St Samson’s great church, he was the second son of a second son of a noble of Dol. When Adam was a child his father had crossed the water to Devon and with family help, had become a substantial land-owner near Totnes. With an elder brother, Adam had had little inheritance to look forward to, so he had been packed off at an early age to the abbey school in Bath and followed the expected route into Holy Orders. At sixteen, he moved to Wells and although it had long lost its bishop in favour of Bath, there were still canons there and eventually he became a secondary, then a vicar. He had hoped to stay in Wells and eventually obtain a prebend, which would elevate him to the rank of canon, but his short temper and argumentative nature caused him to fall out with both members of the Chapter and many of his fellows. At twenty-seven, he cast the dust of Wells from his feet and moved to Exeter as a vicar-choral, with the same ambition to obtain a prebend.

  Once again, the pattern was repeated, and although he stayed in the cathedral precinct for half a decade, his imperious manner won him few friends and he was repeatedly disappointed in his hopes to become a canon-elect. Finally, the Archdeacon of Exeter, a predecessor of John de Alençon, took him aside and whispered a few home truths, but offered him the solace of a living at St Mary Steps where he would at least be his own man.

  He had accepted reluctantly, and there he had stayed, a disgruntled priest convinced he was cut out for higher office, an attitude he shared with Matilda’s hero, the priest of St Olave’s. Adam still had a modest income from a share in his father’s estate at Totnes and, with some money saved from that, he had purchased a richly embroidered alb and chasuble, which he kept locked in a chest in his lodgings behind the church, ready for the time when he would become an archdeacon or even a bishop.

  Since his days in Wells, he had acquired a reputation as an impassioned preacher, and his fiery sermons were one reason for the respectable attendance at his church on Sundays: many of his flock enjoyed being thrilled and temporarily frightened by his graphic description of the horrors of hell that awaited them unless they trod in the paths of righteousness. He was under no illusions about the ephemeral nature of his threats and knew that most of his parishioners had forgotten them by the time they reached home for dinner or the tavern for their ale. But his outbursts were a welcome safety valve for his own frustrations and he enjoyed the reactions of his audience to the lurid pictures he drew of tortures in Hades – the groans, the blanched faces and even a dead faint from the more susceptible matrons.

  Now as he replaced the stumps of candle on the altar with new ones, he was already working on the horrors for his sermon on the coming Sabbath. This week he rather fancied tearing out tongues with barbed hooks and seizing nipples in red-hot pincers. These ideas gave him a sexual frisson, and he knew that before long he would have to make another journey to Bristol or Salisbury, ostensibly a pilgrimage but really to visit a brothel. Some of his priestly colleagues in Exeter were quite open about their mistresses or their whoring, but something had always inhibited Adam from fouling his own nest.

  As the years went by, his mind divided increasingly between his crusade to warn his flock of the perils of hell-fire that awaited them if they sinned – and the sins he himself enjoyed, both with harlots and the vicarious thrills of increasingly perverted imaginings of the reward Satan had in store for those who failed to heed their priest’s warnings.

  He stood back from the altar and crossed himself, checking that the new candles were straight in their holders. Wax candles were expensive and the rest of the church was lit by cheap tallow dips, pieces of cord floating in a dish of ox-fat. He took the remnants of the altar candles home to use in his small room where he read his religious books until the small hours.

  He turned from the altar to the body of the church, and surveyed the empty nave in the dim flickering light. This was where his flock would stand on Sunday for him to harangue them about their horrific sojourn in eternity. There were no seats, apart from stone benches around the walls for the old and infirm.

  Below the window slits some old tapestries depicted saints and scenes from the scriptures, but his pride and joy were the new wall-paintings alongside the chancelarch and on the west wall. He had paid to have parts of the rough masonry plastered and then had begun to paint lurid scenes from the Fiery Pit. Horned devils with tridents, cloven-hoofed goblins, loathsome serpents and misshapen ogres inflicted every imaginable torment on screaming wretches – among whom naked females seemed to predominate. He had recently discovered in himself a hitherto unsuspected artistic talent. Within the last couple of months, he had filled the plastered areas with these diabolical murals and had only one space left to fill, on the right of the chancel arch, which he had already started upon. Space was becoming so short that he had begun to add smaller figures and faces to the existing murals, so that some were a writhing mass of miniature agonised sinners and their tormenting imps.

  For a few moments he contemplated his dimly visible masterpieces, seeming to draw a little consolation from their threatening message, then picked up his mantle from the floor and went out into the street. Father Adam slammed the door behind him, then toiled in the dark up the terraces of Stepcote Hill to his dwelling and his frugal supper.

  It was midnight, and though the feast in the Guildhall continued, the participants were thinning out. Some had drunk so much that they were either vomiting in the backyard or had been helped home by their servants or angry wives. A few senior priests, including a couple of cathedral canons, had left to
attend Matins, but plenty of revellers remained. Some were singing, some fighting and others lying peacefully asleep across the wreckage of the meal on the trestle boards. The county coroner had consumed a great deal of ale and wine, but his hard head had resisted their effects – although he knew that the morning might tell a different story.

  He sat slumped glumly in his black clothing, shoulders hunched, looking melancholy and dejected, waiting for Matilda to finish gossiping amongst the wives at the other end of the table. His friend Hugh de Relaga had tottered out unsteadily some time ago, claiming he was going to empty his bladder, and had not returned. De Wolfe suspected that his servant had waylaid him outside and wisely decided that the best place for the Portreeve was home and bed.

  The candles on the tables and in the wall sconces had burned low and the light was dim, but John’s eye was caught by a familiar figure standing inside the draught screens that sheltered the main door at the far end of the hall. It was difficult to miss the shambling giant with a tangle of unruly hair on his head and face. Gwyn was beckoning with a hand the size of a ham, his gestures carrying more than a hint of urgency.

  With an almost guilty look towards Matilda, de Wolfe stood up and squeezed behind the now slumbering silversmith, then threaded his way to meet Gwyn at the bottom of the hall. To de Wolfe’s surprise, old Edwin, the one-eyed potman from the Bush, was standing behind his officer. ‘Looks like we’ve got another, Crowner!’ Gwyn raised his voice above the babble in the hall.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ demanded John, fearful that something had happened to Nesta.

  ‘He came and sought me out, just after the bell for Matins,’ explained Gwyn. ‘I was in the Bush earlier and mentioned to Edwin that I was going on to the Ship Inn in Rack Lane, where he found me.’

  As usual, Gwyn was spinning out his yarn, but de Wolfe turned impatiently to the tavern servant. ‘What’s all this about? Is your mistress in trouble?’

  Edwin, an old sack draped about his thin shoulders, shook his head. ‘Not as such, Cap’n, but she’s mortal upset, so I slipped away and found Gwyn here. I reckon the sight of you might ease her mind a great deal.’

  De Wolfe fumed at this pair, who would never come to the point. ‘Hell’s teeth, damn you both, what’s happened?’

  Gwyn sensed that his master was about to explode and hurriedly explained. ‘Another corpse, Crowner. Girl this time, strangled in the backyard of the Bush. And your Nesta found her.’

  ‘She tripped over the body, in fact,’ added Edwin, rolling his one good eye ghoulishly. ‘Outside the brew-shed she was. The mistress come upon her when she went out to stir the mash.’

  De Wolfe glared at them, and waited for them to add the most obvious piece of information.

  ‘A whore, it was,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘That new fancy piece with the red wig – Joanna of London they call her.’

  De Wolfe’s mind was fixed on Nesta’s distress, rather than the murder of a harlot. He glanced back up the hall, to see that the knot of gossiping wives was at last breaking up. They were on their feet, still talking, but raising their mantles to their shoulders and arranging their head-rails and wimples. For a moment he stood irresolute. Though the Guildhall was but a few yards from Martin’s Lane, there was no way that he could leave his wife to walk home alone. Hugh de Relaga, who might have chaperoned her if he had been sober, had left, and although John was not much concerned for Matilda’s safety on a hundred-pace journey to their house, she would never let him hear the end of it if he abandoned her – especially when she discovered that it was to rush to the aid of his ex-mistress.

  ‘You go back to the Bush now and wait for me. Tell Nesta I’ll be there as soon as I’ve escorted my wife to our door – hardly a few minutes, with luck.’ He pushed them towards the screens, then loped towards the other end of the top table, pushing servants, diners and drunks out of his way in his hurry to reach his wife.

  As he came up to the four ladies, who were still shrugging their gowns and cloaks into position, he gabbled, ‘I am called out to a killing, lady. I have to go without delay, so I will see you home straight away.’ He grabbed Matilda’s arm and, with a jerky bow towards her friends, hauled her unceremoniously towards the doors.

  At first she was too astonished to protest, but soon found her voice and berated him for his rudeness all the way to the corner of Martin’s Lane. He managed to fob off her questions about the reason for urgency, except to claim that it was foul murder ‘somewhere in the lower town’, though he knew full well that by morning the exact location of the corpse would be known to the whole of Exeter, and that he would get the length of Matilda’s tongue when she discovered she had been hustled out so that he could rush off to his ‘Welsh whore’.

  However, that was trouble stored for the future and within minutes he had delivered his wife to her maid and hurried off across the cathedral Close, almost running in his haste to get to Idle Lane.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In which Crowner John deals with a harlot

  De Wolfe hurried across the wasteground to the side gate of the tavern, which opened directly into the large backyard.

  Gwyn was waiting for him inside the gate, which was the only entrance through a line of rough but sturdy palings that marked off the land belonging to the inn. The light was poor, but the moon and a pitch-brand stuck over the back door, in defiance of the curfew regulations, gave enough light for those who wanted to empty their bladders against the fence. As he arrived, Edwin came out with a horn lantern, which though feeble, threw a pool of light over a small area.

  ‘Where’s your mistress?’ de Wolfe demanded harshly.

  ‘Inside. She had a sit-down and cup of brandy-wine to settle her nerves, then went up to her bed. She had a terrible shock, Cap’n.’

  ‘Want to see the cadaver first?’ asked Gwyn pointedly.

  De Wolfe gave one of his ambiguous grunts. He was more concerned with Nesta, but decided that he must salve his official conscience by delaying another minute or two. The potman held up his lantern and limped up the yard. It was almost square, about twenty-five paces each way. The brew-shed was the largest hut, facing the cookhouse and the privy, which were too close together for good health. Against the end fence was an open stable, a fowl-house and a pigsty, all set in a patch of grassless mud that, fortunately, was now fairly dry.

  A murmur of voices came from the back door of the tavern and, turning, John dimly saw a cluster of curious onlookers. Gwyn followed his gaze. ‘They were all over the damn place when I came, but I chased them back and threatened them with amercement if they set foot up here again,’ he boomed, as they reached the crudely boarded hut where the ale was brewed.

  ‘There she is, Cap’n!’ croaked Edwin, almost as if he owned the corpse. He held up his lamp and de Wolfe saw a still form lying on the hard earth. The woman’s head was almost touching the planks of the brew-house door, and she was flat on her back, with her legs crossed at the ankles. Her right arm was outstretched and just beyond her fingers was a pottery wine-cup, tipped on its side. The striped hood of her cloak was still in place, almost concealing her red wig. Its front edge was across her forehead, but the rest of her face and neck were exposed to the pale moon and the flickering lantern.

  ‘This time it’s a strangling,’ said Gwyn, unnecessarily, for it was obvious that a white band was cutting tightly into her throat, a loose end lying across her chest. The cloak had fallen open and her crumpled silk kirtle was visible all the way down to her ankles.

  It was hard to tell the colour in that light, but John thought that the cloak was purple and the gown a bright red. ‘Put that light down close to her face,’ commanded the coroner. Even his anxiety about Nesta had been temporarily dampened by his professional interest in the mode of death.

  ‘No doubt she’s been throttled,’ repeated his officer. ‘Her face is dark and swollen.’

  The boldly handsome face of the prostitute was reddish-purple in the light from the lantern. Her tongue protruded slightly
from between the carmined lips and a dribble of frothy saliva issued from one corner. De Wolfe placed the back of his hand against her cheek. ‘Still warm, she’s not been dead long.’ He picked up one of her outflung hands and dropped it again. ‘Not a trace of stiffness, either.’

  ‘She weren’t here an hour before the Matins bell, Crowner,’ offered Edwin. ‘I came out for a new cask then. The mistress found her a few minutes before the bell so it must have been done between them times.’

  De Wolfe rocked back on his heels alongside the body. A strangled whore was no great novelty, usually related to a dispute over payment or because the girl had taunted the client for his pathetic performance. In the great scheme of things, this was not a serious crime.

  Yet when he looked up at Gwyn, he had a foreboding of greater problems to come. The man was looking at him with a sly grin that John had come to know only too well over the past twenty years.

  ‘Well, what is it? Out with it, damn you!’ he barked.

  His henchman continued to leer at John in his infuriating way. ‘Lift up the cowl, Crowner, and you’ll see.’

  Suspiciously, John turned back to the dead girl and pushed back her hood. He stared at her forehead, then beckoned impatiently to Edwin to hold the lantern closer. ‘There’s some marks on her skin – looks like soot or lamp-black across her temples.’

  Gwyn nodded. ‘It’s surely writing. I can’t read a bloody word, but I know letters when I see them.’

  De Wolfe grabbed the lamp from the potman and held it almost touching the woman’s face, in an effort to make out what the marks were. They were certainly letters of the Latin alphabet, but the edge of the hood had smudged them. Desperately, he tried to recall all his lessons and managed to make out that it was a long word beginning with R, but he could not decipher the rest. He stood up quickly and yelled urgently at the crowd still loitering near the back entrance to the inn. ‘Is there anyone among you who can read? A priest or a merchant’s clerk?’ It was asking a lot to find someone literate among the late-night drinkers in a city tavern, but John was afraid that the writing on the girl’s face would smudge off before it could be read, as it seemed only to be made with a finger soiled with soot from a fire-pit.