The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

by Michael Jecks

  ‘This is Roger de Gidleigh, Coroner of Exeter,’ said Dean Alfred unhappily. ‘Ahmm, he claims the right to perform the inquest.’

  ‘It is my duty under the King’s laws,’ the man stated.

  ‘But not Canon law,’ the Dean said miserably. ‘Um, I have to ensure that the Cathedral itself is represented within the Cathedral’s walls.’

  ‘You could as easily send a cleric as your representative.’

  The Dean ignored his loud, rasping voice. ‘Sir Baldwin, Bailiff Puttock, hmm, would you please help the Coroner in his enquiries? Poor Peter is dead.’

  ‘It would be a pleasure,’ Simon lied, wondering who ‘Poor Peter’ could be. It didn’t take long for the Dean to tell them, explaining how the boy had died during the service.

  Baldwin was puzzled. ‘So this fellow went into convulsions and collapsed?’

  ‘Just like a man who had been poisoned,’ said Coroner Roger grimly. ‘And he had been showing symptoms of illness for some days, so I am told.’

  ‘As if he was being slowly poisoned?’ Baldwin asked. No one answered.

  ‘Why should someone wish to kill a cleric?’ Simon asked.

  The Dean looked at him with an infinity of sadness in his eyes. ‘Some men would do anything for revenge, Bailiff.’

  ‘Revenge? What makes you mention that?’ Simon pressed sharply.

  ‘This cleric helped identify a robber and felon in the city recently. I wonder whether the outlaw’s leader might have wanted to avenge his hanged associate.’

  Coroner Roger had been listening with growing impatience. ‘Rubbish. It was because the dead boy had been supposed to take jewels and money to a glover in the city . . .’

  ‘The glover who was killed by his apprentice?’ Baldwin demanded. First there was the fact that the cleric had been with the merchant Karvinel, now he was connected to the dead glover as well.

  ‘The same, yes. Only since his death, the money and some of the jewels have disappeared.’

  ‘And the gloves, too, were gone?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘No, they were found and have gone to another glover to be finished. Most of the jewels were already on them, and they only need a little work to be completed,’ the Dean sighed. ‘Ummm, it means the Cathedral must buy even more gems and pay more money to finish the work on time. It is terrible, especially since we only recently lost money to the hanged outlaw. You er probably saw him hanging?’

  Baldwin wanted to concentrate on the central point. ‘How many jewels are missing?’ he asked. ‘You have a receipt, I suppose, to check against the gloves as they stand?’

  ‘Of course. Ahm . . .’ the Dean produced a roll of vellum. ‘Here is the account held in the Cathedral, and er here,’ he set a sheet on top, ‘is the ah receipt. As you can ah see, it is dated on sixth December, the Feast of St Nicholas.’

  Baldwin read aloud, ‘“Four rubies, fifty assorted gemstones and fifty small pearls with two pounds five shillings and sixpence for the trouble, etc, etc.” Yes. This is signed by two men – Golloc and Bolle . . .’

  ‘Peter Golloc is the dead Secondary.’

  ‘I see. And it is marked with a cross and a seal for the glover himself.’ He looked up. ‘So you know that the gems and everything tie up; you have proof that the glover received his delivery. What could they have to do with this dead fellow?’

  ‘If the Secondary decided they would be pleasant to have,’ Coroner Roger said with an unpleasant leer, ‘he could have gone back and stolen them. Even perhaps killed the glover, if he was discovered in the act.’

  ‘That is a most ahm unreasonable and er unwarranted suggestion,’ cried the Dean, his face flushing with anger.

  ‘Anyone could have taken them,’ Baldwin said reasonably. ‘There is nothing in what you have said to suggest that this poor fellow might have robbed and killed his victim. Could Peter have committed suicide?’

  ‘What reason would he have to do a thing like that?’ the Dean protested in a squeak.

  ‘A woman, a debt, a guilty secret . . . the reasons for murder are varied – and self-murder is no different from ordinary homicide. People can hate themselves as much as they can detest others,’ Baldwin mused.

  Coroner Roger responded slowly. ‘Certainly I have seen another cleric wandering the streets at night. Whether this one did as well . . . I’d have to speak to the Bailiff and the Constable.’

  ‘That might be worthwhile. Then again, you said immediately that it could be poison. It could as easily be a severe illness.’

  ‘One that causes a man to shit his hose and puke blood?’ Coroner Roger said.

  ‘There are such diseases,’ Baldwin said. In his mind’s eye he could see the foul, beleaguered city of Acre in 1291. The city had been under siege for ages when he arrived, and there were many pale, skinny folks there who suffered from a bloody flux and vomiting. Honesty made him add, ‘Although I have only seen them in battlefields and in camps. When they occur, God sends them to afflict many at the same time.’ He gave an enquiring glance to the Dean, who shook his head.

  ‘Nobody else has exhibited the same symptoms as far as I know.’

  ‘Did he live alone?’

  ‘No, he was in a hall with a friend. Jolinde Bolle.’

  Baldwin saw the Coroner peer at the Dean through narrowed eyes. ‘Bolle?’

  ‘Who is he?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Another Secondary,’ the Dean answered. ‘Men here at the Cathedral are all of different ranks, Sir Baldwin. Ahm, when the voices of the Choristers break, they often remain here to study and learn all they can, hoping to be promoted later if they can win the patronage of a Canon, er, but sometimes they cannot and stay on as Secondaries, mere assistants to the priests and clergy. Jolinde is one such.’

  ‘He also spends much of his time in alehouses and taverns in the city,’ Coroner Roger said sternly. ‘I’ve seen him about the place often enough.’

  ‘Jolinde was never going to be a priest,’ the Dean said. He was washing his hands more vigorously now as his anxiety grew. ‘Oh, may God forgive me if I am wrong! Hmm, Sir Baldwin, um, I fear that Peter was murdered by someone who wanted to avenge the dead felon. Only a man who wasn’t a priest could behave like that, poisoning a clerk in the Cathedral.’

  ‘A man like Jolinde, you mean?’ Coroner Roger enquired dryly.

  ‘It’s always the same with the blasted Dean and his Chapter,’ Roger said as he walked with Simon and Baldwin over to the cemetery at the northernmost point of the Cathedral. He stopped and gestured at the Cathedral. ‘They keep everything hidden that they can. If they’d been able to, they’d never have told me about the lad’s death. Tchah! What can a man do?’ He turned and stalked off, but Baldwin and Simon followed more slowly.

  ‘What do you think?’ Baldwin asked his friend.

  ‘I don’t know what to make of it. We need more facts.’

  ‘Yes. It is intriguing, however. A robbery and this Secondary recognised the felon; a glover is killed and this lad was the one whom the Coroner suspects took the money – although the apprentice has been charged with the same crime – and now he himself dies. I find this all fascinating,’ Baldwin observed. He called after the Coroner, forcing him to slow his furious pace. ‘Coroner, were you serious when you implied that this lad Bolle could have killed Peter?’

  The other man was still seething with frustration over the secretiveness of the Cathedral staff.

  ‘I’d suspect myself for that amount of jewels and cash!’ he snapped.

  There was something about him that Baldwin rather liked. The Coroner was a thickset man, with a slightly flabby belly that showed his practise with his sword was not so regular as it should be, but whose solid posture revealed his strength. He had a square, kindly face, with warm, slightly bulging brown eyes, and a short, cropped hairstyle. His gaze was frank and honest, unlike so many corrupt officials Baldwin had met, and his brow was strangely unwrinkled for a man who must surely be no younger than Simon. His hair was frosted about the temp
les, but that was the only proof of his increasing years.

  He was appraising Baldwin in his turn, saying, ‘They guard their privacy jealously, do the staff here, but from what the Dean told me, they were preparing gifts of gloves for some of the more senior citizens for the Holy Innocents’ Day feast. You among them.’

  ‘Yes,’ Baldwin agreed. Simon remained silent, looking over the rebuilding work which continued around the Cathedral even today in this cold and miserable weather.

  ‘Well,’ the Coroner said, pulling his cloak closer about his shoulders, ‘the dead man, this Peter, was working in the Treasury – that is the building over at the north side of the Cathedral itself – and was tasked, along with his friend Jolinde Bolle, with delivering money and jewels to the glover who was to make your gifts. Except the glover himself is dead, murdered by his apprentice, and the apprentice denies taking the money. He denies killing his master, come to that, but they always do, don’t they? You asked me about the young man living with Peter, this Jolinde Bolle. If Peter had taken the stuff, Bolle could have been an accomplice. Maybe he got greedy – killed Peter and took what they had thieved rather than share it.’

  ‘Would Peter have known where the glover kept his strongbox?’ Simon interrupted.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the glover took them to it.’

  ‘And then he killed the glover to conceal his theft . . .’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘. . . Only to be robbed, and killed in his turn,’ Baldwin murmured. ‘It sounds complicated. Is it feasible that two murders could happen in so short a space of time?’

  ‘This is speculation, but two murders within a few days in a city this size is not unheard of. And what if Peter’s death was by his own hand? After all the Dean hinted at it: he seemed to suggest that if the lad had stolen the jewels and cash, he might have felt so remorseful that he could only see the one way out.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  Roger stopped dead and placed his hands on his hips. He gazed up at the sky, then around at the Cathedral’s grounds. ‘Do I think he killed himself? No. If he did, where are the jewels now? It’s not too far-fetched to suppose that there were two murders, but that there were two unconnected robberies as well does stretch my imagination.’

  Baldwin gave a dry smile. ‘Good. I would also add that I find it unlikely that a fellow would take a lethal dose of poison and then walk into his church to expire during a service.’

  ‘You say you’ve seen this Bolle about the city at night,’ Simon noted. ‘Couldn’t he have killed the glover and stolen the money? Perhaps Peter saw the jewels and recognised them – threatened to tell someone?’

  ‘So Jolinde Bolle placated him, said he would replace them or whatever, and then slowly poisoned his friend?’ The Coroner grinned cynically.

  ‘Yes, it does seem a little unlikely,’ Baldwin admitted. ‘What of the other people who live here?’

  ‘There are more than I can count: twenty-four Canons in the Chapter; the Dean and his four dignitaries . . .’

  ‘Go on,’ said Simon. ‘These places all have different groups of men. Who serves the Cathedral?’

  ‘There are the Precentor, the Sub-Dean, the Chancellor and the Treasurer. Then there are four Archdeacons, for Totnes, Barnstaple, Cornwall and . . . oh, for Exeter, of course. I think each Canon has his own Vicar; there are some twelve or so Secondaries like this Peter; fourteen Choristers; at least twenty Annuellars, the chantry priests. And there are all the other members of the clergy, too: clerks and sub-clerks to the Exchequer, clerks to the Lady Chapel, clerks of works, clerks of God knows what . . . There’s probably two hundred folk living here within these walls.’

  ‘They live within the grounds permanently?’ Simon asked. He had been educated by the Canons of Crediton Church and had a better understanding of the canonical life than Baldwin, whose Order had been divorced from other religious groups.

  ‘They all do, these choir members,’ Roger sniffed. ‘Keep themselves to themselves. Apart from a few of the youngsters they hardly ever mix with the likes of us, Sir Baldwin. We’re too far beneath them. Even the lowliest of the Choristers is probably looked upon as more important than you or me. They are all religious.’

  Baldwin nodded. The whole of the Cathedral grounds had been encircled by great walls some twenty years before, while he was still abroad. It had been a surprise for him when he had first seen the precinct on returning. They made the Cathedral feel divorced somehow from the city itself. ‘I presume that the gates are all locked at night?’

  In answer the Coroner pointed towards the city’s south gate. ‘Down there is the Palace Gate, called that because it’s opposite the Bishop’s Palace. There, in Bear Lane is the Bear Gate.’ He turned and pointed to their right. ‘Up there is Little Stile, for pedestrians only. Next is St Petrock’s Gate, which leads through the church itself. Then there’s the Fissand Gate, although many call it Broadgate now. And last,’ he said, turning and pointing back the way they had come, ‘there is St Martin’s up there, and the Bicklegh Gate. It’s called that because the Bicklegh family owns the house alongside. All of the gates are locked and barred from inside, every night, and only when the porter rises at dawn are they opened again.’

  ‘So this Peter would have found it hard to get out after they were locked?’

  Coroner Roger gave a twisted grin. ‘Now, then, Sir Baldwin. What were you like when you were a horny young buck and you knew that women were over a wall waiting for a rutting? Jolinde Bolle has often been out in the alleys and streets; I’ve seen him myself.’

  ‘How would he get out when the gates were locked?’

  ‘Come on, Sir Knight! If the fellow is randy enough, he’ll find a way. And if Bolle knows how to get out, you can bet that his friend did too. And if they knew how to get out, they must have known how to get back inside again.’

  ‘It follows then that if this Peter was murdered with poison administered at night, then the killer is someone within the Cathedral, unless that person secreted himself in the grounds after the gates were locked last night or knew how to clamber over the wall,’ Baldwin continued musingly. ‘Anyone who knew Bolle or the dead clerk could have followed them and learned their route.’

  The Coroner shot him a quick look. ‘In other words, anyone in the city could have done it.’

  ‘Let’s just see whether this poor devil was truly murdered before we leap to conclusions, eh?’

  ‘It’s the Dean who’s doing that. He hardly needs my help.’

  Simon was unimpressed. ‘The Dean can invent what he wants. I’ve often seen priestly men like him. Their imagination is given too free a rein. Surely he has little understanding of the real world.’

  ‘Yes, Bailiff. Men like the Dean read books and learn more than is good for them, looking at odd stuff about all the temptations devils can throw in their paths to tease them. Think what it must be like! Temptations of the flesh tormenting them all the time and never allowed to touch . . .’

  ‘If they don’t they’ll be among the only clerics in the country who manage to keep from sheathing their daggers where they shouldn’t,’ Simon grunted. Although he had himself been brought up by Canons, he had grown more sceptical about the behaviour of religious men and women after his experiences in Belstone earlier in the year.

  The Coroner gave him a contemplative look. ‘You won’t be surprised to hear that the younger clerks here are no different from the ones you’ve come into contact with Bailiff. It’s not only Bolle and the dead lad. Any of them will leave the precinct and run about the town when they get a chance, whoring and drinking just like ordinary lads. And why shouldn’t they? I doubt whether God would concern Himself with a boy who enjoyed natural pleasures.’

  Baldwin was stung into objecting. ‘The Bible tells us that fornicating and wallowing in gluttonous behaviour is as obnoxious to God as it is to other men,’ he began, but Roger gave a short snort.

  ‘You think so, Sir Baldwin? If God cares
so much, why doesn’t He send a thunderbolt every so often, hey? No, for my part I’ll believe my own priest, who tells me that so long as I apologise and confess before I die, I’ll be all right. Not that I admit to any wrongdoing, of course,’ he added with a twinkle.

  Chapter Eight

  Hawisia le Berwe was in the Cathedral as the Bratton Chantry priest began the Mass. Her husband had left the house before she was dressed, muttering something about a meeting he must attend, but it was no surprise to her. Staring at the altar, she closed her eyes with patient suffering and prayed for him.

  She knew all about the rumours. Others saw him about the city; no doubt her own servants had told others that he rarely visited her bed any more. Her mother had heard a tale from some gossip or other, had written warning Hawisia that older men lost their urges, became phlegmatic and corpulent, and for a woman to find that her husband had deserted her was dreadful. Had he lost interest in her?

  The recollection of that message made Hawisia smile now. No, Vincent still showed her plenty of affection. When a man left his wife, he showed little concern for her feelings; that was what she had heard from other women who tried to broach the subject with her. Some were women who had lost their husbands to the warmer, more acrobatic beds of younger courtesans. Thinking Hawisia was a new recruit to their ranks, they had spoken candidly of their search for their own new bedfellows, seeking out younger men who would appreciate their wealth and patronage. Hawisia was appalled by their behaviour. It convinced her that they were dishonourable and it was hard for her to maintain her calm and courteous demeanour with them.

  For Hawisia was a polished hostess. She knew that in order for her to be accepted she must befriend all the women who visited. Especially the wives of the more influential men in the area. That was why she had been so meek and deferential to Jeanne when she had visited with her husband Sir Baldwin. Hawisia knew that she must not shine compared with the wife of so important a man.