The Awful Secret

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Not much, but enough to survive a day.’

  ‘As an old Templar, he should be used to roughing it. Now, ride up and tell him that he must stay there until dusk, when we will fetch him. Then come back. There is work for you down below.’

  As the clerk hurried away, de Wolfe dismounted and tied Odin to the rough gate in the thorn hedge around the churchyard. He walked through the circle of yew trees and pushed open the church door. Immediately there was a scuffle at the far end and five men crowded together to put a hand on the altar, a plain table with a tin cross and two candlesticks. The rest of the building was empty, the narrow window openings throwing a dim light on to the bare floor of beaten earth. They watched with apprehension as the menacing figure stalked up the nave towards them, a tall, dark, hunched figure in an armoured jerkin and metal helmet, with a huge sword swinging from his baldric.

  ‘We claim sanctuary!’ shouted one tremulously, and the cry was taken up by the others, as they shrank back from the approaching apparition.

  ‘Sanctuary! Sanctuary!’

  The coroner stopped a few yards away to study them. Three were fairly young, another middle-aged and the last was a short, misshapen figure, with a large head and short arms and legs. De Wolfe remembered the captive from Lundy mentioning the name Eddida Curt-arm, which would fit this one very well.

  ‘I am Sir John de Wolfe, the king’s crowner,’ he boomed, in a voice that instantly silenced their cries. ‘I respect sanctuary and, indeed, if you persist in claiming it, you will need me to save your necks, as all your accomplices look as if they will hang today.’

  He looked at the group, all dressed much the same in tattered, faded fisherman’s tunics and short breeches. All except the dwarf had tangled hair and bushy beards and moustaches.

  He was round-faced, with a high forehead, his little eyes glinting with a cunning that de Wolfe marked down as dangerous. ‘What do we do now, Crowner? Surely we have forty days’ grace?’ asked Eddida.

  The coroner stood, arms folded, glaring at the men. ‘First, you are murderous scum, and if you had not gained the safety of this consecrated place, you would be hanged like the rest. But now you have several choices. You can give yourselves up to the sheriff and stand trial today down in Lynmouth. Or you can stay here for forty days, when you will be fed by your village folk, who must guard against your escape on pain of heavy amercements. At the end of the forty days, if you have not confessed your guilt and agreed to abjure the realm of England, you will be shut up in here without food or water and allowed to die. If you try to escape from here, you are deemed outlaw and any man can cut off your head without penalty. Finally, at any time from this moment forth, you can confess to me and abjure the realm.’

  After this long speech, he stepped back a pace and waited as they murmured amongst themselves. As they did so, Thomas came in through the door and rather nervously came to the coroner, jerkily bending his knee to the altar and making numerous signs of the Cross. ‘Bernardus will stay where he is until tonight,’ he murmured, looking apprehensively at the gang of rough-looking men clustered around the altar. Then their spokesman, Eddida, broke away and came to the single step that separated the rudimentary chancel from the body of the church. ‘We will all confess and abjure, Crowner.’

  ‘Then I will return later today. You are safe both here and in the churchyard – there’s no need for you to clutch at that altar. There will be soldiers at the gate to prevent your escape.’ He turned and walked towards the door, calling over his shoulder, ‘You should get outside and cut some wood from the yews. You’ll each need a rough cross to carry, and I’ll see if I can find sackcloth robes for you.’ With that he shooed Thomas out of the church and slammed the door behind him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In which Crowner John takes confession

  Richard de Revelle was far from pleased when de Wolfe informed him that some of the pirates had sought sanctuary in Lynton church. He was in the process of setting up his Shire Court in the alehouse when the coroner rode back to the lower village. The sight of Thomas behind him seemed to arouse suspicious interest in the three Templars, and John noticed them in deep conversation with Abbot Cosimo. Soon afterwards, Godfrey Capra rode away and de Wolfe was sure that he had gone up to Lynton to check on the village and look in the church to confirm the identity of the five sanctuary seekers.

  The prisoners had been marched to another barn-like shed just behind the tavern and locked in, with guards at the door. Outside, the womenfolk were gathered, crying and keening, or shouting through the flimsy walls to their doomed men inside.

  The sheriff had taken over the single large room of the alehouse, bringing in a trestle table and a few rough benches. A quantity of fresh fish, from this morning’s catch, had been commandeered and some of Gabriel’s men were cooking it over a fire at the back. Bread had been taken from the nearest houses, over the protests of the owners, and soon a scratch meal was being put before the leaders in the tavern, while the soldiers ate around their fire.

  The prospect of a mass execution had no effect on anyone’s appetite, but as they ate Richard de Revelle went back to complaining about the men in the church. ‘Why should they escape a hanging, just because they were craven enough to leave their friends to fight, and because they could run faster than our men?’

  De Wolfe pulled the meat off a grilled herring with his knife and waited for it to cool. ‘Don’t ask me. I didn’t make the law.’

  Abbot Cosimo, his fish on a slice of bread in his hand, looked up with a frown. ‘Sanctuary is one of the sacred traditions of Christianity. In fact, it existed long before Our Saviour – the Hebrews had six Levitical cities of refuge and the Greeks and Romans also recognised the concept.’

  The sheriff voiced his disapproval of anyone being able to escape the noose and cost the community money for his keep while doing so. ‘I’ve a mind to go into that church and haul the bastards out!’ he muttered, but the alert Cosimo heard him and was shocked.

  ‘I forbid you, Sheriff! You would bring damnation upon yourself for such sacrilege – and I could excommunicate you.’ As with many others, de Revelle’s religious beliefs were a matter of habit rather than conviction, and the prospect of exclusion from the Church did not weigh too heavily upon him.

  De Wolfe knew this, so added a more practical discouragement. ‘The laws of the first Henry stipulate penalties for laying violent hands on fugitives in sanctuary – a hundred shillings for a cathedral or abbey and twenty for a parish church.’ Still muttering, de Revelle abandoned the subject, but for once, de Wolfe was thankful for Cosimo’s presence as any violation of sanctuary would upset his plans.

  When the meal was finished, the room was rapidly converted to the Shire Court, though still smelling strongly of grilled fish. The sheriff sat in the middle behind the crude table, with de Wolfe on one side and Ralph Morin on the other. The Templars and the abbot formed an interested audience on a pair of benches at the side.

  In the absence of a court clerk, Thomas was sat at one end of the table, with his bag of parchments, quills and ink to make a brief record of the proceedings, a copy of which de Wolfe intended to place before the king’s justices when they eventually came to Devon.

  The twelve captives were marched in two at a time by Gabriel and two soldiers, their wrists roped together behind their backs. De Revelle demanded their names and a statement as to whether they were Saxon, Norman or indeterminate. So much intermarriage had taken place in the century since the Conquest that mixed blood was common, especially when stray Celts arrived from Cornwall or even from Wales, just across the water.

  Then he accused them of piracy and murder, which they all denied. He yelled ‘Liar!’ at the top of his voice, and pointed out that each man had run away and seized arms to fight the king’s law officers. Furthermore, they had two galleys and a shed full of goods that could only have been acquired by either piracy or smuggling, both of which crimes were a felony and a capital offence.

 
The reactions of the men varied: some defiantly admitted it, some denied it, others said nothing, and a few collapsed to their knees in sobbing heaps, pleading for mercy. Whatever their demeanour, de Revelle’s decision was the same for each: he declared them guilty of piracy and murder, and sentenced them to be hanged later that day. The whole proceedings lasted barely half an hour and soon the condemned were back in their hut under guard.

  De Wolfe was uneasy about the summary justice, and if it had been in or near Exeter he would have fought the sheriff tooth and nail to commit them to the next Eyre. But in this case, he saw the practical difficulties – and also had to admit that there could be no realistic alternative to a guilty sentence, given the circumstances. His only contribution to the proceedings was to ask each pair of captives if they recalled attacking the vessel Saint Isan a couple of weeks before and if they admitted to slaying most of the crew. Two of the most brazen rogues admitted that this was the last ship they had attacked and also confessed to dispatching the seamen. But they had no idea who killed whom, reasonably pleading that in the heat of a fight no one recalled details of their victims. However, this was good enough for de Wolfe, as he could now get Thomas to tidy up the inquest record on the corpse from Ilfracombe and eventually deliver a firm verdict to the Eyre.

  The afternoon wore on, and as the fitful sun showed itself just before it slid behind the high western rim of the glen, the condemned men were led out to death. The parish priest was conspicuous by his absence, even with fugitives in his church. When de Wolfe enquired where he was, he was met with evasion from some older men of the village, but eventually one said that they had had no parson for the last three months, though no one had yet told the archdeacon of Barnstaple that the parish was bereft of pastoral care. Discovering what had happened to the priest was even more difficult, but it seemed that he had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff.

  Gwyn’s explanation was as likely as any: ‘He was either drunk and fell off or they threw him off for threatening to inform on their crimes.’

  John thought that perhaps the parson had fallen out with the villagers over his share of the loot, but speculation seemed futile. In any event, he was not here to shrive the condemned men in the hour of their death, but Abbot Cosimo agreed to say the appropriate Latin words over them. Thomas would gladly have volunteered, even though long unfrocked, and was greatly disappointed that the Italian denied him even such a dismal task.

  As the sun set, the men were dragged out of their shed by the soldiers, who in truth were not unsympathetic to these poor people who made life a little less frugal by stealing from passing ships. But duty was duty and, one by one, they were pushed up a ladder propped against the branch of a tree at the bottom of the cliff. A noose secured to the branch was dropped over each head, and as the abbot muttered and made the sign of the Cross in the air, they were shoved sideways off the ladder.

  The drop was the height of a man and some died instantly, their neck broken or its arteries hammerblowed, though they still jerked and twitched for a few minutes in full view of those still waiting their turn. Others went blue in the face, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, and danced obscenely for long minutes, until a soldier dragged on their legs to end the agony.

  As the grotesque ceremony went on, the wives and families of the victims stood sobbing and screaming in the background, some fainting and many yelling obscenities at the sheriff and his men. A line of men-at-arms kept them away from the hanging tree, using staves to whack them back when emotion drove them to desperation.

  But the executions went on with grim efficiency and, as with the trial, were all over in half an hour. The bodies were laid in a row on the riverbank with those killed in the fight, and the families were allowed to take their dead for burial.

  In the twilight, de Wolfe sought out his brother-in-law to talk to him again about the men in sanctuary. They had taken over the tavern for the night and were eating more bread and fish, though some enterprising soldier had also ‘acquired’ a few scrawny fowls for roasting.

  The Templars and the abbot were there as usual, still regarding the coroner with some suspicion, though John knew they could have no inkling that de Blanchefort lurked less than a mile away.

  De Revelle again began a tirade against allowing the men in the church to escape, but John held up a hand peremptorily. ‘It’s no good going on about it, Richard. They are entitled to abjure the realm and the sooner the better. I have no intention of staying in this godforsaken village for any longer than I need to see them depart.’

  He explained that he had spoken to the shipmaster of the Brendan, who was leaving – without his casks of wine – on the morning tide. Though bound for Falmouth, he was willing for a fee to add a day to his voyage and cross to Swansea to drop off the abjurers.

  ‘Where’s the money coming from?’ snapped the sheriff.

  ‘The fugitives say they can scrape together a few marks, with the help of their families, if it will save their lives,’ lied de Wolfe, as he intended de Blanchefort to pay for the passage – he seemed to have ample funds to sustain his travelling.

  The sheriff rapidly lost interest in the matter, though the abbot seemed to approve this most Christian of acts and the Templars, devout monks that they were, nodded assent.

  ‘As soon as I’ve eaten, I must go up there and take their confessions, getting my clerk to record such details as are needed,’ said de Wolfe. He saw Roland de Ver exchange glances with Godfrey Capra and Brian de Falaise.

  ‘An interesting process, sanctuary,’ said de Ver easily. ‘We would like to see it at first hand, never having encountered the coroner’s role in this.’

  De Wolfe cursed them under his breath – they were intent on making matters more difficult for him. This was compounded when Cosimo too invited himself to attend, allegedly ‘to see the compassion of the Holy Church being applied in practice’.

  Before they left, the coroner managed a covert word with Gwyn, ordering him to find Bernardus in the wood beyond the village and bring him to the church at midnight.

  In the last of the twilight, they walked their horses up the glen to Lynton. Earlier, when he had examined the pirated contraband in the shed on the beach, de Wolfe had noticed a roll of hessian and commandeered it. Now he carried it on his saddle to the church and threw it down on the altar step. The five anxious fugitives had lit the stumps of the altar candles to produce a dim light and looked down at the roll of sacking with puzzlement. ‘You can tear that into five lengths and make yourselves long tabards. Rip a hole in the centre and put them over your heads. Did you make those crosses?’

  They mutely produced sticks broken from the churchyard trees, crudely lashed together.

  John pulled Thomas forward and pushed aside one of the altar candles. ‘Here’s your writing table – you even have light near at hand.’

  The clerk seemed reluctant to put the sanctified board to such a mundane purpose, but he had little choice. Tentatively, with much genuflecting and crossing himself, he spread out his parchment and prepared his pen.

  De Wolfe was conscious of the Templars and the Italian watching the process keenly, scanning the five men for any sign of recognition. The dwarf seemed to fascinate Cosimo, who licked his lips as he stared at the strange figure with the peculiar limbs. At least there was no way that Eddida Curt-arm could be de Blanchefort, but the coroner could see that the other men were subjected to close scrutiny.

  ‘You can act as a jury of witnesses, sirs, as the law demands, when I take the oath and confession of these men.’

  De Wolfe made the abjurers kneel on the chancel step and each one in turn repeated his words. Each gave his name and village, then confessed to having been a pirate and murderer against the king’s peace. The oath of abjuration was a problem, as it should have been sworn on the Gospels, which neither de Wolfe nor the priestless church appeared to possess. However, Cosimo came to the rescue by pulling a small breviary from the folds of his cassock. Holding this each man had to
say, ‘I swear on the Holy Book that I will leave the realm of England and never return without the king’s permission. I will hasten by the direct road to the port allotted me and not leave the King’s highway under pain of arrest or execution. I will not stay at one place more than one night and will seek diligently for a passage across the sea as soon as I arrive, delaying only one tide if possible. If I cannot secure such passage, I will walk into the sea up to my knees every day as a token of my desire to cross. And if I fail in all this, then peril shall be my lot.’

  After they had all sworn, John instructed them formally about the procedure next morning, extemporising as he went. ‘You should have cast off your own clothing, which would be sold, but because time is short you cannot make proper garments of this sackcloth so drape it over your clothes. You will go bareheaded and you will have your hair and beard shorn off. You will carry a cross in front of you and not leave the pathway, and you must never set foot in England again, or you will be outlawed and may be treated as the wolf’s head, to be beheaded by any man who can lift a sword. Do you understand?’

  There was a mumbled chorus of agreement.

  ‘Then before dawn I will come again and take you down to a vessel below, which will sail on the high tide for Wales, as I told you earlier.’

  He made sure that Thomas had written down a summary of the facts then that the men had a sharp enough knife to hack off their hair and beards and attempt to shave their chins.

  Their business done for the night, the party left, leaving two soldiers on guard, and went back to the alehouse. On the way Cosimo queried part of the ceremony he had just witnessed. ‘Sanctuary is common to all Christendom and I am more familiar with Italy and France. But I never heard of the hair and beard being shorn as a requirement.’

  As de Wolfe had just invented it, this was not surprising, but he felt that the priest’s question came of curiosity rather than suspicion. ‘This is part of the abjuration process, not sanctuary,’ he said gravely. ‘England is different from your continental countries in that we are an island and therefore abjuration has to be by sea. Our formalities vary from other lands and this shaving of hair is to further mark out the abjurer as outside the pale of ordinary men.’