There was a loud slapping of feet on the cobbles outside, and the two Punctators turned, eyebrows raised, as the Secondary Jolinde appeared panting in the doorway. He marched in, head down, almost forgot to bow to the altar, and when he inclined his head respectfully to the Dean, Stephen saw the lad was red-faced, as if he had run a long distance.
Stephen watched the youth shuffle along the stalls until he reached his own, next to the Secondary Peter Golloc. Stephen studied the two. Jolinde would be in for a reprimand later, he thought. The fellow should have risen earlier: from the look of him he had been drinking heavily last night. His appearance was scruffy, his complexion feverish, like a man who had been up until late in a tavern and whose sole desire now was to return to his bed.
Next to him, Peter looked even worse. His face was pale, almost waxen, his lips grey, as if he was suffering from some kind of mental torment. Stephen sighed. The lad should be in the infirmary if he was unwell. There was no benefit to God in having a cleric collapse. An ill man was better advised to visit the infirmarer and make sure he got better. At that moment Jolinde jerked forward, and Stephen’s attention whipped back to him. The boy was carrying something under his robes – something he was concealing, Stephen was sure. Jolinde had half-dropped it.
But before Stephen could consider the matter further, the calm, clear voice of the Succentor led the choir in the first song and the Canon forgot all about the incident.
Ralph’s apprentice, Elias of Iddesleigh, tore along the alleys on his way home. Mary had made him delay his return to his master’s rooms, coquettishly offering him a kiss and then insisting that he should sit with her a while before returning home.
‘Mary, I can’t! I’ve got to get back with Ralph’s bread.’
‘You don’t care for me at all,’ she pouted. ‘Won’t even spare me a few moments before rushing off to your precious master.’
‘I have to,’ he protested, seeing her sullen expression. ‘But when I am free and can call myself a craftsman in my own right…’
‘By then I may have found another,’ she said tersely and flicked her hair from her eyes with a practised jerk of her head. It had taken him an age to soothe her with promises of his infatuation and ever-lasting devotion and now he was late. Very late.
When he arrived at Ralph the Glover’s front door, Elias was surprised to find it locked against him. His master rarely locked his door. He always said, ‘If someone is so desperate that they would steal my rubbish, good luck to them – they’re welcome to it!’ All knew Ralph had few enough possessions, and the poor would be given money for food by asking, so the glover had not been burgled in all the time Elias had lived with him. That was why he frowned to find the door of the house locked. His own keys, he recalled with a sinking heart, were still by his bed. He had thrown them there after hurrying to answer the door to Peter, earlier. Walking to the shop-front, he tried the handle but that too was secured and he stood there a while, baffled.
‘Master?’ he called. There was no answer.
Ralph, he knew, was set in his ways. The glover’s day was normally as predictable as the passage of the sun through the Heavens. He would rise before dawn, drink a little watered wine, wash his face, and as the bell tolled for the opening of the Cathedral’s gates and the first service, he would make his way to it via a cookshop, returning as soon as the service was ended to break his fast properly with the loaf which Elias should by then have bought. Recently Elias had taken to returning later and later from his assignations with Mary, but his jovial and tolerant master had never minded that. He merely chuckled indulgently when Elias eventually arrived, but that didn’t mean Elias was happy to let his master down. If anything, he felt all the more guilty when he failed in his duties.
Elias had no idea anything could be seriously wrong. He was only annoyed to think that the fire which he had eventually managed to light might well have gone out by now. It made him click his tongue but there was nothing he could do. Usually he would grab his keys before he hared off to see his Mary, but not today. He had woken late when Peter knocked, and left all his keys tied together with a thong lying on the floor near his truckle bed next to his knife.
He was a slow thinker and it was some little while before he bestirred himself to consider the entrance round at the back of the house.
Gervase the Succentor glanced sidelong at the Choristers below him. He could see from here that the young devils were still at it: every so often the boys in front jerked and cast suspicious looks over their shoulders.
Little fiends! Gervase tried to extend his neck without being too conspicuous and distracting the Archbishop of Totnes at his side. Peering down and a little to his left he saw that the main perpetrator was Adam. While smiling seraphically and singing as best he could (since his voice had dropped he was a sad embarrassment on occasion) he was casually tilting his candle and letting gobbets of hot wax fall on the boys in front. Gervase was not surprised. Adam was a nasty piece of work; he was jealous of the Choristers now his own voice had failed him and he was relegated to the ranks of the Secondaries. One or two Secondaries could hope for promotion provided that they kept their heads down, worked, and demonstrated intelligence sufficient for their calling, but Adam was probably not bright enough when set against that measure, Gervase reckoned. He privately thought the boy would have to leave the Cathedral. His scholarship was not up to standard.
That thought made him look farther along the line of boys. There, up at the end nearest the Dean were Luke and Henry. Two more causes of friction.
Henry and Luke were always at logger-heads; each detested the other. They must grow out of it, and the sooner the better, because for all that Luke could draw and paint and sing so well, Henry was sharper and usually got the better of him in their exchanges. At least today Luke should be all right, Gervase thought, because the election of the boy-Bishop was due to take place – and Luke would win that.
Gervase had never paused to wonder where the tradition started. It was irrelevant: the election was an annual event, as important as Christmas itself to many of the Choristers and clergy. Each year, on twenty-first December, the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle, the Choristers would vote one of their number to become the Bishop, and for one day, on twenty-eighth December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which recalled Herod’s slaughter of the boy-children of the Jews just after Christ’s birth, the elected boy would become the city’s Bishop. For those twenty-four hours, the order of the city would be turned upon its head: the Choristers would become the Canons and the church hierarchy would be upside-down. For that one day in the year, children were permitted to behave as children. All sorts of tomfoolery was allowed.
Of course, only the best-educated and most scholarly could win the election. The boy-Bishop had to be someone bright, well-mannered and versed in the services. And Gervase would have to see to it that the Bishop knew what to do and say, but that shouldn’t be hard. Luke had an excellent memory.
The foul brats – Gervase was responsible for the discipline and teaching of the Choristers so he felt entirely justified in his choice of language – would recognise that. They must vote for Luke because he was the better of the two: the better singer, the better writer, the better scholar, the better behaved generally, and easily the better born. He came from the Soth family, which was connected to John Soth, who had been Mayor of Exeter some years ago. In every way, Luke was the right choice.
Henry was only the son of a widow woman who was little more than a peasant. He had shown some promise, certainly, when he was younger, but Gervase knew how boys who showed promise at an early stage could change later on. Boys in their early teens were like different people – or, rather, animals. The sods became argumentative – worse still, the cleverer ones learned to dispute. That was when they caught the sharp end of Gervase’s tongue or felt the lash of his rope’s end. If they wished to remain in the choir, they must learn obedience, not answer back their master.
Henry was of the latter
type. Wilful for his ten years, he had an insolent manner and invariably questioned the validity of any command. More often than any other he had felt the full force of Gervase’s rope, but still he remained unruly, disputatious and a disruptive influence on his peers.
Gervase sighed as he leaned back against the small shelf of the misericorde. It was many years since he himself had been ten years old, but through living with so many youngsters he could recall his own feelings with alarming clarity: the rebellious determination to behave as he wished, the desire to kick out at an unheeding remote and aloof Authority. In his heart of hearts, Gervase had a fear that Henry might be behaving as badly as Gervase himself would have liked to, had he dared, when he was younger.
Yes; when Gervase considered the other children at the Cathedral he had to reflect that it was fortunate that Luke would become the Bishop.
John Coppe would not have disagreed with his choice. Coppe sat at the side of Fissand Gate, plaintively calling out to passers-by, his bowl in his hand. He had been a sailor for most of his life, working for merchants in the city, convinced in his nautical optimism that he would one day return home rich. Instead his sanguine nature had led to him spending all his money in taverns and whore-houses before his final disaster when he was crippled. During a vicious attack at the hands of French pirates, he had had a leg cut from under him and received an axe-stroke full in his face. Now he was a beggar.
Coppe was not like the other beggars. Many – indeed most – were bitter, tortured men and women who wheedled and pleaded, then resorted to hurling abuse at the backs of passers-by who ignored them. They thought that God had marked them out for special punishment because of the sins of their parents or some appalling offence of their own, and the knowledge gnawed at them, turning them either into whining, fawning wretches who craved the society of ordinary people or, more commonly, into crabbed, twisted souls who despised all other people.
Their avowed loathing for mankind while at the same time desiring above all things to be able to join in with ordinary life, Coppe found sad. And silly. As far as he was concerned, he had been marked out by God, it was true, but he retained the conviction that God would reward him in Heaven. When Coppe died, he knew he would be taken up before all the richest in the city, and would be fed and watered with as much ale as he could drink. That was what the friars told him, and he saw no reason to disbelieve them. As far as he was concerned, he was almost privileged.
He was given money regularly by folk who passed along the road, often by the women who averted their eyes from his dreadful, twisted visage with revulsion, but because Coppe was always polite, always ducked his head respectfully and smiled as best he could with his face so wrecked where the blade had smashed through jaw, cheekbone and eyesocket, he won their sympathy as well as their money.
And although it was cold, wet and miserable in the winter, Coppe knew that when the weather grew foul, Janekyn the porter would mutter and grumble, but would still drag a brazier out here for the beggars. Usually he would bring a small pot of spiced wine, or a tankard of ale for the old sailor. Coppe knew that Janekyn himself had been a fighter in the King’s host and didn’t grudge Coppe a sup, knowing that their rôles could so easily have been reversed.
No, Coppe wasn’t the kind of man to be introspective and question his place in the world. As far as he was concerned, he was harmed, but there was nothing he could do about it. Railing and complaining was pointless. It wouldn’t alter his position.
Coppe was content. He could talk to the people who passed by here – especially the priests. Most of them were happy to stop for a moment to talk to him. Of course, not everyone was like that. Lots turned from him. Some would meet his eye or chat, but more commonly folk would smile nervously, realising that what had so ruined Coppe’s life could affect any of them. He was a living reminder of the brutality men could show to each other. Some women would stop and talk to him gently.
He frowned a little at that thought. Usually she would stop to talk to him, but today she had run past with her head averted, as if ashamed.
Or scared.
Chapter Three
‘Master Ralph, are you there?’ Elias called hesitantly at the back door. There was no answer. He had been here for several minutes, jiggling the handle up and down as he tried to loosen the wooden peg that locked the latch, but it wouldn’t shift.
He stood there, the bread cooling in his arm as he stared up at the house in consternation. His master should be back by now, but if he wasn’t, the fire would be sure to have gone out after being left untended for so long. Elias felt the guilt lying upon him. Ralph was an old man now. In this weather he needed a warm hall and a good fire. Elias didn’t fear a beating from his master, but the idea that he should have let down the kindly gentleman was nearly as painful as a blow from a cudgel.
While he stood there undecided, he heard a movement indoors. Then there was the sound of a door slamming, and he felt himself relax a moment. His master was back! Almost immediately he felt the trepidation return. If his master was back, he would notice that Elias was not, and even the kindliest, most generous master would be sure to be irritable with an apprentice who had forgotten to take his keys with him. It wouldn’t have mattered normally: it was Ralph’s own lateness that had forced Elias to wait outside. Not that that was an excuse.
Hurriedly, Elias darted back down the long, narrow garden, past the raised beds filled with cabbages and kale, carrots and alexanders, past the herbs and the fruit trees that lay further down near the wall, then out of the gate, slamming it behind him and running round to the front of the house. Here, panting, he pushed at the door, kicking it shut behind him and walking down the corridor.
‘Master?’ he called. ‘I was locked out, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Master, but I have the bread for your breakfast.’
He entered the hall. The table was against the wall, with Ralph’s chair at one side, Elias’s stool at the other. The cupboard with Ralph’s small collection of pewter stood in one corner, the large chest with Ralph’s belongings was opposite, near the outer wall. Elias stared about him. The fire was crackling merrily in the middle of the floor, letting a thin, sweet-smelling smoke rise to the roof high overhead. A sudden spark glittered upwards, rising up to Elias’s eye-level before gradually fading out and falling away as ash. Elias walked through to the service room behind, but here again there was no one. He touched the backdoor latch gently. The peg had been thrust through the latch to lock it in place, and he pulled it free, opening the door with a frown of confusion. No one there.
‘Master?’
The only other place to look was the chamber, and he went to it, climbing up the ladder. There was still no sign of his master, however. He went to the small chest by Ralph’s bed and tentatively checked the lock. It was a relief to see that the chest was still there, but to his surprise the clasp yielded to his hand; it wasn’t locked. He began to lift the lid, but let it fall shut when he heard something. It sounded like someone downstairs, but not in the hall, in the shop. He listened and soon was rewarded with the squeaking of a cart with a bad wheel. He must have misheard things: it was just a fellow in the street.
Elias returned and lifted the lid once more and then his face went blank with dismay. It was empty; all Ralph’s money was gone. ‘Oh, oh!’ Elias wailed and bit at his lip. Somebody had robbed his master. What would Ralph say when he got back? Mostly that he had employed a fool, a cretin, as an apprentice.
‘Ralph? Ralph, where are you? Elias? Are you here? Where’s your master?’ came a voice from the hall as the door slammed again. Elias was pleased to recognise the voice as that of William de Lappeford, the Bailiff of the City.
Slipping hurriedly down the ladder, Elias gave the tall, stern-looking Bailiff a nervous smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I got here after fetching bread for his breakfast, but he’s not back yet.’
William glanced about him. ‘Is he late? I thought he was a regular man in his habits.’
; ‘Oh, I expect he decided to go out to another shop when I didn’t turn up,’ Elias said. ‘But I couldn’t get in. I’d left my key behind. And his money has been stolen!’
‘Strange,’ William said. He was a large man, as a Bailiff must be if he is expected to fetch rents from rougher areas of town, solid, with a deceptively slow manner of moving. Dark Celtic features gave him a harsh appearance, but his bright blue eyes were often crinkled at the edges. There was no humour in them now. ‘He asked me to come and see him today. He was worried about something – said he thought he’d discovered a theft.’
Elias gaped. ‘A theft? But it’s only just happened!’ William nodded slowly, eyeing him with a sharp expression and Elias suddenly felt a cold sweat break out upon his brow. ‘What is it?’
‘Who else would a man suspect of theft but his own servant?’ William asked.
‘I wouldn’t steal from my master!’ Elias squeaked. ‘He’s been good to me, better than I should have expected, and…’
The Bailiff ignored him. He had walked out to the back room while Elias spoke and was slowly climbing the ladder to the upper chambers. Elias trailed after him, plaintively declaring his innocence and his complete bafflement as to where Ralph could have gone. The Bailiff stood a long while staring down at Ralph’s open chest.
‘I opened it in case someone could have robbed him,’ Elias explained, his voice breaking.
The Bailiff had a blank expression, as if all his thoughts and suspicions were secured inside until he should choose to release them. ‘The lock wasn’t forced,’ he said. He studied Elias silently for a moment, then turned away and went to the ladder, slipping down to the ground with an agility that looked out-of-place in a man with such a large body.
‘I told you he wasn’t here,’ Elias said sulkily.
‘What about the shop?’
‘It’s locked. Wait a moment, I’ll get my key,’ Elias said and scampered back upstairs. He went straight to the truckle bed in his chamber and put his hand to where his bunch of keys should have been, but there was nothing there. His heart lurched in his chest like a wild animal trying to fly, and he scrabbled about urgently for it: gone! And with it, his knife. His knife should have been here! While he searched, he heard the door open and shut as William left to stand in the street. Elias stopped and listened with every nerve in his body.
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