The Grim Reaper

by Bernard Knight

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In which Crowner John discovers the truth

  The coroner left the priory of St Nicholas at dusk, going from there to Priest Street to find Julian Fulk. Matilda’s news that the priest of St Olave’s was leaving suddenly was curious, but John had little expectation that it was in any way connected to the Gospel killings, unless Fulk was running away in expectation of being exposed.

  Most of the dwellings in Priest Street were lodging for clerics and he had to ask directions to the right house. The priest was at home, living in two comfortably furnished rooms, which suggested that he had some means of his own as well as his pittance from parish tithes.

  Fulk was resting after his meal before preparing for the midnight Matins, which he insisted on holding even though sometimes he had no congregation at that hour. Confident that one day he would be officiating in some great cathedral, he drove himself to observe most of the canonical hours, even in a tiny church like St Olave’s. He was surprised to see the coroner, but invited him in civilly and gave him a cup of good wine. He seemed more subdued than usual and his normal false heartiness had evaporated. As de Wolfe sat drinking his Anjou wine, he felt that whatever oddities might be in the priest’s nature, he was unlikely to be a serial killer. But, for Thomas’s sake, he had to pursue every chance to the bitter end.

  ‘They say you are leaving Exeter rather suddenly?’ The plump priest gestured impatiently. ‘This city is like a village. Every time you fart, the news is around the taverns within five minutes.’

  De Wolfe agreed with that, but it was no answer to his question. ‘Is there an urgent reason for us losing you? There is nothing wrong, I trust, between you and the Church authorities?’

  The priest began to spit out a litany of complaints against the religious establishment in England – their indifference to his ability, their deliberate campaign to keep him in some ecclesiastical backwater and similar expressions of outrage that soon convinced John that he was quite paranoid about the Church’s attitude towards him. But nothing in his tirade gave the coroner hope that Julian Fulk was anything but a vain, self-opinionated wind-bag.

  Tiring of the repetitive monologue about the iniquities of bishops, abbots and priors, John finished his wine and took his leave, more depressed than ever that nothing now could save Thomas.

  His feet took him the short distance to Idle Lane and he flopped down on his usual bench in the Bush, feeling ten years older than he had the previous day. Even the usually loquacious potman was subdued when he brought over a quart of ale, and when Nesta came in, she sat quietly by his side, with little to say once he had told her of the fruitless efforts he had been making.

  He described his visit to Thomas and the clerk’s apparent calm. ‘I’ll see him again in the morning – and, along with John de Alençon, go with him to the gallows at noon,’ he said sombrely.

  He saw that tears were running silently down Nesta’s cheeks at his mention of the hanging-tree beyond Magdalen Street, for it brought home with awful finality the fact that this tragedy was really going to take place. ‘I’m a coward, John, for I can’t bring myself to visit him,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say and all I’d do is weep and make things worse for him. Neither can I come out beyond the walls with you tomorrow, for I couldn’t bear to see him die. But Gwyn will be with you – he called in here earlier looking for you.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Only to know if you had any good news, poor chap. He said he would call to see Thomas on his way home to St Sidwell’s, before the gates closed.’

  He sat with Nesta a little while longer, then decided to go home. The lack of anything useful or comforting to say to each other had depressed them even further. It was now quite dark outside, but his feet knew every pothole in the twisting lanes without him being conscious of guiding them. However, he was certainly conscious of his full bladder as he crossed the rough wasteground at the side of the tavern. After two quarts of ale, he needed to relieve himself against the trunk of a gnarled elder tree that was dimly visible at the edge of Smythen Street.

  As he stooped to hoist up the hem of his long tunic, a figure materialised out of the gloom behind him and struck him a violent blow on the back of the head, pitching him forward to lie stunned at the foot of the tree.

  John de Wolfe was found less than ten minutes later by three men coming up from the Saracen ale-house. One, who was quite drunk, tripped over his legs and, cursing, stumbled against the elder tree. Though it was so dark, they heard a body on the ground groan, though the sounds were strangely muffled. The other two, who were less inebriated, bent over him, just able to make out the shape of a man. The groans became louder, now being mixed with slurred words, but were still indistinct.

  ‘There’s a bloody bag over his head!’ exclaimed one man, feeling around with his hands. ‘Let’s get some light, quickly.’

  The other, a porter from Milk Street, looked up Smythen Street for any glimmer of a candle behind a shutter. The street was mainly occupied by forges and blacksmiths, hence the name, though a couple of houses had lately become schools. Seeing a faint flicker across the road, the porter ran across and hammered on the door, shouting, ‘Stop thief!’ at the top of his voice, then ran next door and repeated the cry.

  Meanwhile, the rapidly sobering drunk and his friend squatted alongside the victim, who was fast recovering his senses. His stifled groans became more strident and he dazedly lifted his hands to the covering over his head, which the third man, a weaver from Curre Street, was already trying to remove.

  ‘There’s a purse-string around his neck!’ he complained, but then managed to undo the knot and pull off the leather bag. Groggily, John struggled to sit up and by this time, several people had run across from nearby dwellings. By the light of a horn lantern they propped him against the tree, at which he started to curse fluently and hold the back of his head gingerly with one hand.

  As soon as the faint lights fell on his face, the rescuers recognised him. ‘Holy Mary, it’s the crowner!’ yelled the porter. Half a dozen neighbours were now clustered around, some risen from bed and wearing only their under-shirts. A buzz of excitement went round when they realised that it was John de Wolfe, known to every person in the city.

  ‘You’re bleeding, Crowner,’ said the man with the lantern. ‘The back of your head has taken a nasty knock.’

  De Wolfe looked blearily at his bloodstained fingers, then tried to get to his feet. He failed miserably, and fell back against the tree.

  ‘Stay quiet, sir, you need someone to attend to that cut. We must get you to St Nicholas’s, that’s the nearest place.’

  Though his head was throbbing like a drum, de Wolfe’s senses were rapidly returning. ‘Did you see anyone running away? he demanded thickly.

  ‘Not a chance,’ said the weaver. ‘It’s as black as the inside of a cow’s stomach tonight, Crowner.’

  ‘What was that over my face?’ he demanded, his memory returning piecemeal.

  The weaver held up a large leather bag with a plaited string threaded around the neck to close it. Even in the poor light, de Wolfe saw that it was similar to the one that had been over the moneylender’s head, though such bags were commonplace.

  ‘Lucky you didn’t suffocate with that cutting off your air,’ said some morbid Jonah amongst the cluster of onlookers.

  The weaver shook his head. ‘The seam around the bottom has ripped. There’s a hole in it, thank God.’

  ‘The footpad must have tugged it down too hard over your head, Crowner, and torn the stitching,’ added the porter. He thrust a hand into the bag and poked three fingers through a gap in the bottom. ‘There’s something in here, Crowner.’ He pulled out a crumpled scrap of parchment and held it close under the flickering light of the lantern. ‘There’s some writing on it. Can anybody here read?’

  No one could, but de Wolfe stretched out a shaking hand to grab the fragment, his fury over having been assaulted fading as his fuddled se
nses realised what this meant. A warm feeling of relief flooded through him as it dawned on him that Thomas must now surely be saved. He slumped back and a contented smile relaxed his face in the gloom. If the Gospel killer was still active, then his clerk, locked in Stigand’s foul gaol, must be innocent! As the townsfolk fussed over him, he sent up a short and rather curt prayer of thanks to the God whom he was not convinced existed. Though he had killed many men himself and seen thousands more die on a score of battlefields, he surprised even himself at the depth of feeling he had experienced over the hanging of a miserable little scribe. He knew that Gwyn felt the same and wanted to tell his officer the good news – but that was impossible until the morning: Gwyn was at home in St Sidwell’s, outside the locked city gates. But at least he could tell Nesta, who otherwise would probably cry half the night.

  ‘Help me back to the Bush!’ he commanded, trying to struggle to his feet.

  ‘You’re in no fit state yet, Crowner,’ protested the weaver. ‘We’ll take you to St Nicholas’s to have your head seen to first.’ A forge-master from a nearby workshop dragged across a loose hurdle from around his yard and, though he protested, they laid de Wolfe gently on it and four of them trotted the few hundred yards to the little priory, with a posse of concerned neighbours running behind. The coroner was a respected and popular man in Exeter and his fellow citizens were determined to do all they could for him in this emergency.

  As they went, he bellowed orders from his stretcher, his strength returning rapidly. ‘Send for Osric the constable, and all of you be sure to tell him exactly what happened, especially about the bag and that parchment.’ He wanted to make sure that independent witnesses confirmed the circumstances, so that the damned sheriff could not claim that he himself had fabricated them.

  ‘And someone go to the castle and call out whoever they can find – the sheriff, Ralph Morin or Sergeant Gabriel. We should have the streets searched, though God knows who we are looking for!’

  He ended his stream of orders with a final demand that someone should go back to the Bush and tell the landlady what had happened.

  The one person he failed to remember was his own wife, Matilda.

  If the pockmarked prior of St Nicholas’s was annoyed to see John de Wolfe back again so soon, he concealed it well. He immediately sent the infirmarian to deal with the coroner’s head wound and, with the porter and the weaver standing solicitously by, the old monk cleaned and anointed the cut on the back of his scalp. ‘Nothing terrible, Crowner, but keep this length of linen bound around your head for a day or two to keep out the dirt,’ he instructed, as he wound cloth around de Wolfe’s scalp like a Moorish turban.

  De Wolfe thanked him, then held up his fist, in which he still clutched the fragment of parchment found in the leather bag. ‘Can you tell me what is written here, Brother?’

  The infirmarian took it and held it towards the pair of candles on a shelf nearby. ‘A few words, but I cannot fathom their meaning.’

  ‘What are they?’

  The elderly Benedictine screwed up his eyes and held the parchment further away. ‘It says, “For thou do not enquire wisely concerning this” … whatever that might mean.’

  De Wolfe looked blankly at him, forgetting the pounding in his head. ‘Is that from the scriptures?’

  The infirmarian looked again at the words. ‘It certainly sounds biblical – but to my shame, I have no great knowledge of the Holy Book, being more concerned with potions and salves.’

  The prior was hovering in the doorway, listening to what was said. He came forward and took the scrap of parchment from the monk’s fingers.

  ‘Neither do I recognise that quotation – but there are some further letters at the end …’ He pulled the fragment towards his nose, for unlike the older man, he was short-sighted. ‘They seem to be “Ecc”, which must surely refer to Solomon’s Book of Ecclesiastes – though it could also be Ecclesiasticus, the Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach, in the Apocrypha.’

  John was not concerned with the academic origins of the words. As long as they came from the Vulgate, that was good enough to lay them at the feet of the murderer. At the moment, all he cared about was saving Thomas de Peyne from the gallows tomorrow and even the prospect of catching the killer took second place to that.

  The significance of the quotation was at first obscure, but on thinking about it a little more, his still-shaken brain decided it was a rebuke for being too searching in his investigations. That was good, he thought, for it meant that the culprit was getting worried that the law was closing in on him.

  Events moved quickly after this, as did de Wolfe’s return to full activity. He was a tough old soldier who had suffered a multitude of injuries far worse than this and, within an hour, was able to stand and walk about, though his head still ached abominably. Before that, though, Nesta had arrived breathless and, ignoring the gossip that was sure to follow, threw her arms about John and tearfully celebrated both his lucky escape and the reprieve it surely must mean for Thomas.

  ‘You could have been killed,’ she snuffled. ‘And almost in the backyard of my own tavern! I feel responsible for letting you walk out into such danger,’ she added illogically.

  ‘The crowner was a lucky man, mistress,’ said the weaver, grinning at the sight of the coroner and his mistress showing such public affection, and in a priory, of all places. ‘The knock on the head was not too bad, but that bag over his chops would have smothered him, had not the stitches given way.’

  This sent Nesta into another paroxysm of emotion, which was cut short by pounding feet outside and the entry of the huge castle constable, Ralph Morin, followed by Gabriel and Osric, the town guard.

  The story was told all over again and the leather bag and the parchment passed around, for de Wolfe was anxious for them to verify all that had happened, to defeat any counter-attack by the sheriff and the Justices. ‘Osric, make sure that you get the name of every man who came to my aid in Smythen Street tonight. They may be needed to give testimony.’ Ralph Morin, a good friend of de Wolfe and a covert adversary of de Revelle, promised he would send all the available men-at-arms from Rougemont to scour the streets, though this was little more than a gesture in the pitch dark, when they had no idea who they were looking for.

  ‘Have you any suspects we should put our hands on at the moment?’ he demanded. ‘You say it must be a priest, but who are the most likely candidates?’

  ‘There are a hundred to choose from, Ralph, and I have no evidence against any of them. One of the possibles is locked up just across the passage here, so it can’t be him.’

  The prior shook his head. ‘No, he’s not! He went out a few hours ago.’

  De Wolfe stared at him. ‘But he was raving mad when I came to see him. How can he have gone? Did he escape?’

  The prior shook his tonsured head. ‘After you left, he suddenly became calmer. He put on his clothes and asked us to send for his fellow priest and confessor, Adam of Dol. I had no reason to refuse. Adam came up and said he was taking de Capra back to his dwelling. I protested for a while, but had no power to keep de Capra against his will if a brother priest was willing to look after him, so off he went, as quietly as a lamb.’ The prior sounded glad to have been relieved of the responsibility. De Wolfe walked to the doorway. ‘I’ll go up to Rougemont myself very soon. My clerk needs to be put out of his misery about tomorrow – and I need to have a few strong words with the sheriff. Where is he, anyway?’

  ‘Eating and drinking with the Justices down at the New Inn,’ said Morin sarcastically. ‘He’s not one to let slip any chance of fraternising with the high and mighty!’

  John grunted. ‘We’ll call in on him and their lordships on the way. I’ll enjoy spoiling their digestion by telling them that the hanging is off.’

  De Wolfe set off for the New Inn, with Ralph Morin close by his side in case he staggered or collapsed. But his hard head and his exultation at Thomas’s rescue kept him on his feet as he walked with increasing confide
nce through the darkened streets of Exeter. With his white bandages swathing his head, he looked more like one of Saladin’s warriors than the King’s coroner. At the inn, the landlord told them that the sheriff had left for Rougemont and the judges had already retired, so they carried on to the castle, although John found the temptation to drag the Justices from their beds hard to resist.

  With Osric and the sergeant-at-arms following behind, they arrived at the keep. There, de Wolfe and Morin marched into de Revelle’s outer chamber without ceremony. It was empty, but John hammered on the inner door to the sheriff’s bedroom, remembering the time, some months earlier, when he had caught him in there with a whore.

  This time he was alone, and opened the door petulantly, dressed in a gaudy silk surcoat to cover his nakedness. He stared in sleepy incredulity at his brother-in-law’s Levantine headdress and was even more incredulous when he heard that the Gospel killer was still on the loose. For several minutes, nothing would convince him that this was not some underhand plot of de Wolfe’s. ‘But you weren’t killed, were you?’ he brayed. ‘This was just some opportunist cutpurse in that unsavoury part of town!’

  John jingled the coins in his purse to quash that notion. ‘Neither was de Vallibus killed, was he? Nor that harlot in the fire – and maybe there was another who didn’t die!’ He winked at Richard, who understood that unless he was careful the full story of Waterbeer Street might leak out.

  The sheriff weakened, but muttered again that there must be some mistake, so Ralph Morin yelled for Osric and Gabriel to come in from the hall. They told their story, listed the numerous eye-witnesses and then, as the coup de grâce, produced the leather bag and the parchment note.

  De Revelle stared at this, then feebly suggested it might be a forgery.

  ‘A forgery?’ roared de Wolfe. ‘It was found inside the bag that almost killed me. And d’you think I knocked myself unconscious, then swallowed the weapon that did it?’