The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Thank you for your confidence in my talents, lady,’ he replied rather sourly. ‘And who do you suggest we could consult?’

  ‘I hear that the new infirmarian at Keynsham Abbey is greatly to be recommended. The mayor’s wife told me that he attended the university in Bologna.’

  ‘Certainly one of the most famous schools,’ he admitted. ‘Even older than Salerno and Montpellier. I’ll think about it, before we decide.’

  ‘And I’ll watch the kitchen like a hawk,’ said his wife resolutely. ‘Nothing will go on your plate or in your cup that I have not tasted myself!’

  The physician’s house on High Street was in the lower part, just above the bridge crossing the River Avon to Redcliffe. At the top of that street was the High Cross, the focal point of the city, from which four main roads radiated out to the gates set in the city wall. On one of them, Corn Street, three men sat in a back room of the Anchor alehouse. On a table before them stood a jug of wine, a fresh loaf and half a small cheese. They were not real friends, merely acquaintances, their only common bond being that they were members of the medical profession.

  ‘He’s no better. I saw him yesterday and he looks worse than last week,’ said William Blundus, wrapping his fingers around his wine-cup. ‘He has strange symptoms; I don’t know what’s wrong with him.’

  Blundus was a thin man, slightly stooped and though hardly forty, had grey hair speckling his mousy thatch. A sad, lugubrious face was creased with worry lines and his down-turned mouth suggested that he was a chronic pessimist.

  The man next to him was very different. A rotund fellow of about fifty, he had a puffy face with rolls of fat beneath his chin like a prize porker. Bald but for a rim of ginger hair around the back of his head, he had a pink complexion from which a pair of gimlet-like blue eyes stared aggressively at the world.

  ‘You don’t know what’s wrong him?’ he repeated in a rasping voice. ‘Well, diagnosis was never your strong point, William!’

  Humphrey de Cockville’s sarcasm was ignored by the others, who were used to his waspish tongue.

  ‘I wish the man no harm,’ said the third doctor, Erasmus Crote, though the others knew full well that he was lying. ‘But it’s an ill wind that blows no good, for I’ve picked up three of his patients since he’s been indisposed.’

  Humphrey leaned forward to cut a wedge of cheese with a knife he took from the pouch on his belt.

  ‘It’s unfair that profitable work for us in Bristol is spread so unevenly,’ he complained. ‘Robert Giffard must have twice the number of patients that I see – and he attends upon most of the important families in the city and county.’

  ‘And wealthy ones, as well as being important!’ Erasmus added enviously. ‘Most of the ships moored along The Backs belong to patients of his.’

  Blundus nodded his scrawny head in agreement. ‘All my flock are as poor as a village priest – the richest man I have is a saddle-maker!’

  There was a silence as they poured more wine from the jug and Crote hacked the loaf into three, putting the two ends in front of his companions, keeping the softer middle for himself.

  ‘I think I’ll call to see him today,’ he said. ‘We must all show a little concern for one of our medical brethren,’ he added piously.

  Humphrey de Cockville cackled at his colleague’s hypocrisy. ‘You want to make sure he’s dying, eh? Then you can chisel away a few more of his patients before we get them.’

  Erasmus scowled, his long face creasing in dislike of the fat physician. Crote was older than the other two, being in his early fifties. A sour, humourless widower, he always felt resentfully inferior to them. Blundus had trained in St Bartholomew’s in London and de Cockville in Montpellier, both prestigious medical schools, whilst Crote had been merely an assistant to a physician in his native Dublin. However, he considered himself equally skilful and prided himself on his ability to treat skin diseases better than anyone in the West of England.

  ‘I merely wish to show my concern for him and to offer any help I can,’ he growled.

  ‘And to ogle that beautiful wife of his at close quarters, no doubt!’ sneered Humphrey. ‘Though you’re a score of years too old to be thinking of bedding her if he dies.’

  Crote’s sallow face flushed with annoyance, partly because there was some truth in de Cockville’s taunt. Eleanor Giffard was indeed very handsome, but he would have little to offer her if she became a widow, especially with a dozen rich merchants all eager to snap her up if she became available.

  ‘None of us has a chance there,’ agreed William Blundus. ‘I have heard that Jordan fitz Hamon has been a frequent visitor to the Giffard household and that the fair Eleanor looks upon him with some favour.’

  Humphrey Cockville’s pale eyebrows rose up his podgy face. ‘Your long nose has been more active than usual, Blundus! The fitz Hamon family owns probably a third of the ships that ply their trade from Bristol.’

  The three physicians were well aware that Jordan fitz Hamon was the eldest son of Sir Ranulf fitz Hamon, and would undoubtedly be the heir to his business, making him one of the most eligible widowers in the city, as well as one of the richest.

  ‘And he’s barely forty years of age, not like you two middle-aged paupers!’ continued Blundus waspishly.

  ‘You are just a younger pauper!’ countered de Cockville. ‘Being of the same age as Ranulf makes you no less unattractive to a woman like Eleanor Giffard!’

  ‘Stop bickering about fantasies,’ snapped Erasmus Crote. ‘It’s no concern of ours what happens to Giffard’s wife if he dies – we are only concerned with its effect upon our practices.’

  This cooled the sniping between the other two physicians and they brought their minds back to the main issue.

  ‘At least there are no other doctors in Bristol and none nearer than Bath or Taunton,’ said Blundus. ‘So we will have no other competition, unless Eleanor marries some fashionable physician from London.’

  ‘We are talking as if the man is dead already!’ complained Crote, who, alone amongst the three of them, showed a vestige of decorum. He rose to his feet and placed a few coins on the table to pay for his ale and food. ‘As I said, I’m off to pay a call on the Giffards, both to see how the man is faring and to wish him a return to good health.’ He marched out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him to cut off the snide remarks that he knew would follow him.

  Humprhey de Cockville glared at the closed door. ‘Two-faced hypocrite, he’s off to discover how to wean a few more patients away from Giffard, if the man can’t attend to his business.’

  William Blundus looked thoughtful. ‘That man Stogursey that Robert Giffard thinks so much of – he’s been holding the practice together these past few weeks, even though he’s nothing but an amateur apothecary.’

  De Cockville gave a rare nod of agreement. ‘It’s not right that a mere servant should pass himself off as a doctor. If we only had a proper guild for us physicians, we could put a stop to it. The tanners or the silversmiths wouldn’t tolerate such improper competition for half a day!’

  Blundus sighed as he reached for the dregs in the wine jug. ‘Yes, it’s bad enough having the religious fraternity taking trade from us. If the common man can get free treatment from the nearest abbey infirmary, why should he pay a doctor’?

  ‘Let’s see what Crote discovers over in High Street,’ advised Humphrey. ‘Then maybe we can see how best to turn this to our own advantage.’

  Erasmus Crote gained very little from his visit to the Giffard household. After barely five minutes there, he was back on High Street again and began walking aimlessly along the river bank outside the city wall as he considered the situation. He had not seen Robert Giffard, or even his wife, for he was courteously, but firmly barred at the front door by the Stogursey fellow.

  ‘I fear, sir, that the master has taken a turn for the worse since dinner-time. The mistress had him taken back to bed, after he had a species of fit.’

  Erasmus did h
is best to gain admittance by energetically offering his services as another doctor, eager to provide help and advice, but the servile apothecary’s assistant was adamant.

  ‘I regret that Mistress Eleanor gave strict instructions that he was not to be disurbed, sir. She is with him now, though he has drifted into sleep.’

  Crote’s argument that the sick man needed urgent medical attention fell on deaf ears.

  ‘I am sure that you are right, sir – and that is why we have sent for an eminent physician, who will visit us in the morning.’

  Erasmus noted the ‘we’, which suggested that the servant was now on an equal footing with the lady of the house. He also jumped on the news that another doctor had been called and for a moment wondered if he had missed a summons, which in his absence might now have gone to Humphrey de Cockville or William Blundus. But common sense told him that this was highly unlikely in the mere half-hour since he had left them.

  ‘And who might that be?’ he demanded of Stogursey.

  The servant, obviously eager to shut the door in Crote’s face, informed him that it was Brother Xavier, the new infirmarian at Keynsham Abbey and a man of high repute trained at the University of Bologna.

  Before the door was finally closed on him, he managed to order Stogursey to give his felicitations to his mistress, hoping that her husband would rapidly improve and that if there was any possible help that he could give, she was to send a message to him at any time of day or night. The man, with a deadpan expression that conveyed a total lack of interest, said that he would do so, then Erasmus found himself staring at the oaken boards of a firmly closed door.

  Now the physician was walking along the waterfront, the many ships that were tied up along the wharfs reminding him of Jordan fitz Hamon, who would probably benefit the most if Robert Giffard died and left his desirable widow available for remarriage.

  As he loped along, he contemplated the city where he lived and earned a meagre living. Bristol was now the third largest city in England after London and York, due to the maritime trade that made it the busiest port after London. Erasmus looked ahead of him along the muddy river to where it curved northwards through a steep gorge before meandering down to the sea, some seven miles away. The banks were lined with ships, now tilted against the quays as they lay on the mud at low tide. Twice a day, they were able to descend to the sea at high water, to make money for the city and especially the fitz Hamons.

  Once again, Erasmus felt it so unfair that while he worked so hard to scratch a living amongst the poorer folk of Bristol, the rich merchants lived off the fat of the land, sitting on their treasure chests of gold and silver, merely from having accumulated wealth. Such wealth begat even more, with no further effort than employing clerks to administer a fleet of ships, manned by sailors who risked their lives in order to line their masters’ pockets.

  Erasmus Crote sighed and began retracing his steps back into the city, his melancholy being increased by the prospect of having to deal with a handful of patients when he got back to his dismal consulting room. No doubt it would be the usual collection of chronic coughs, scabies and suppurating sores that would bring in a few miserable pence. Just half a dozen of Robert Gifford’s rich patients would set him on the road to success.

  Robert Giffard was in a bad way by the time that the infirmarian from Keynsham Abbey arrived next day. Late in the morning, a placid palfrey arrived at the physician’s house carrying the monk, a tall cadaverous man, accompanied by a groom on another horse. He was admitted to the house and at once taken by Edward Stogursey to the sickroom, where Eleanor Giffard was sitting alongside the bed.

  She rose to greet the figure dressed in the robes of an Augustinian canon, a black cloak over a white habit.

  ‘My husband is sinking fast, sir,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I fear he will not see out this day.’

  Brother Xavier went to the bedside and looked down at the sick doctor, who lay deathly pale as he lay on his pillow. ‘Has he spoken to you today?’ he asked Eleanor. ‘Has he shown any signs of consciousness?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Last evening he was fairly well and fell into what I thought was a normal sleep. But he has not responded to anything I say today.’

  The infirmarian began examining his patient, lifting his eyelids and peering at the pupils. He gently felt the sides of the neck and probed the armpits, then pulled aside the bedclothes and placed his ear on the chest. Straightening up, he courteously suggested that Eleanor wait outside the room whilst he examined the more intimate parts of the husband’s body. With the aid of Stogursey, who stood patiently on the other side of the bed, they pulled down the blankets and Xavier carefully surveyed and palpated the belly and genitals. Then the servant gently pulled the body of his master towards him so that the monk could study the back, noting some small haemorrhages scattered over the skin.

  ‘Do you have a sample of his urine?’ he asked the doctor’s assistant. Stogursey produced a glass bottle from under a cloth and the Augustinian held it up to the light from the window, studying the colour and sniffing the odour. Realising that Stogursey had a considerable knowledge of medicine, he extracted a detailed history of Robert Giffard’s illness from the man. Eventually, with a resigned shrug, he left the bedchamber and went into the hall of the house, where Eleanor Giffard had ordered the servants to bring food and wine for the visiting infirmarian.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance, madam,’ said Xavier in a grave voice. ‘And I fear you are right about your husband’s condition; he is unlikely to live much longer.’

  ‘But what is it that is killing him?’ she demanded. ‘Could it be some miasma that he has caught from one of his patients? Some are shipmasters who have returned from far overseas.’

  The monk shook his head. ‘I do not believe so, Mistress Giffard. I think he has been poisoned – but by what, I cannot tell. There are scores, if not hundreds of noxious substances, most derived from plants and herbs, which could cause such symptoms.’

  ‘Have you no antagonist to such an evil thing?’ she said tearfully.

  Xavier sighed heavily. ‘Without knowing what manner of poison it is, that is impossible. I am afraid that many people are misled into thinking that every poison has an antidote, but that is not so. Most methods of treatment are purely arbitrary.’

  ‘Then what can be done? Is he to die without any attempt at saving him?’

  ‘The problem is to discover how the poison has been adminstered,’ replied the infirmarian. ‘You say that all his food and drink has been tasted these past weeks since you suspected some evil doing?’

  Eleanor once again assured him that either she or Stogursey had strictly supervised everything made in the kitchen and had both sampled it themselves. Xavier spoke gently to her for some minutes, though he knew that there was little he could do. After prescribing some bland treatment such as trying to get the patient to swallow white of egg and crushed charcoal, he had little else to offer other than his prayers. Eventually, after taking some refreshment, he mounted his horse and began the journey back to Keynsham. He had promised Mistress Giffard that he would return in several days, but as he made his way to the bridge, he knew that Robert Giffard would be dead before then.

  Bristol Castle was on the eastern edge of the city – or to be more accurate, the city was continuous with the castle whose wide moat was fed from the small River Frome, which lay to the north. Inside the curtain wall of the castle was a massive keep, but there were numerous other smaller buildings, both in stone and wood. The sheriff, as befitted the King’s representative, had his quarters in the keep, together with the numerous officers who administered both the city and the county of Somerset.

  One chamber on the ground floor of this forbidding mass of grey stone was provided for the coroner, Ralph fitz Urse. Like the sheriff, a coroner was a royal officer, who had multiple functions, mostly of a legal nature. He was responsible for bringing cases before the Eyre, the perambulating court presided over by the
King’s judges. As part of his duties, the coroner had to investigate all deaths that were obviously not natural.

  Most of his day-to-day work was carried out by his serjeant, William Hangfield, who had his own small office, little more than a cubicle, just inside one of the side entrances to the keep. This was a small arched gate some fifteen feet above the ground, reached by a wooden ramp, which in case of siege could be thrown down to avoid offering a weak point in the defences.

  At about the eighth hour of the morning, William Hangfield was enjoying a quart of ale and a hunk of bread and cheese in the Great Hall, which during the day acted as a central meeting place of both the sheriff’s staff and many of the citizens who came to transact business with the officials. Benches and trestle tables lined one wall and those with some influence in the kitchens could obtain food and drink to fortify themselves for the working day. William lived with his wife and small son in a small house on Wine Street, but as he had to deal with coroner’s cases in all of the eastern part of the county, he was often out of the city. Today, he had no such tasks, and having just delivered some inquest records to the clerks for copying, ready for the next visitation of the judges, he had decided on some refreshment. He sat at a table, gossiping with some of his fellow officers, feeling relaxed, looking forward to an easy day in this hot weather. A rather short and heavily built man, now in his fortieth year, he had a thick neck and a round, rugged face, with black hair cropped to a horizontal line, in the old Norman style, which was long out of fashion.

  He was a sociable man, popular with his friends in the castle and able to get along with his superiors, both the coroner and the sheriff himself. Both of these were not known for their patience or good nature, but William Hangfield was able to avoid any serious brushes with their authority, whilst still managing to get much of his own way in the methods that he employed to go about his duties. He sat with his pottery beer mug in a large hand, discussing the latest news about the ongoing antagonism between King Edward and the barons, who were demanding the expulsion of his favourites, the Despensers.