The Noble Outlaw

by Bernard Knight

  He was the one who had sounded the alarm and had found Gwyn in his usual haunt, the guardroom of Rougemont, gambling with Gabriel and a couple of other soldiers.

  'According to Osric, the dead 'un was seen early this morning, but the First Finder ran away,' grunted Gwyn as they turned the last corner.

  'So who reported it?' demanded John.

  'The sexton of the church.' replied his officer. 'It seems that no one else noticed it because the corpse is on the other side of the tree, facing away from the nearest lane.'

  By now they were at the low wall running around the churchyard, which was an untidy plot with a number of large trees growing around it. The small church was towards the town side of the burial ground, which was dotted with irregular grave mounds, some carrying wooden crosses, but most being covered with grass and weeds. A small crowd had already gathered around the wicket gate that led into the churchyard, held at bay by Theobald, the other constable. John pushed his way through the throng of curious sightseers, consisting mostly of old women and noisy urchins.

  'Where's the sexton?' snapped the coroner. Theobald, almost as fat as Osric was thin, pointed to the side of the church, an old wooden building with a small bell tower. Against the pine end was a bench and on it sat an aged figure in a shabby brown tunic, with thin bare legs ending incongruously in large leather boots. As John strode across to him, he raised his head, revealing a face badly disfigured by old cowpox scars. He looked shaken and John, in an uncharacteristic mood of gentleness, sat beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  'Tell me what you found,' he said quietly to the old man.

  The sexton turned to him, his toothless mouth quivering with emotion. 'It was horrible, Crowner,' he quavered. 'I am well used to foul sights after forty years of putting corpses into the ground here, but this was different.' He ran a dirty hand through his sparse hair. 'To see a man standing on his own two feet, stone dead yet held up by a spear through his head, was almost too much to bear.'

  'When did you find him?'

  'Soon after the second morning service. St Bartholomew is no cathedral and our priest does not keep the canonical hours, but his Mass finished shortly before dinner time. Yet I was not the first one to see him.'

  John nodded, yet cursed under his breath that these crimes were dealt with so casually by the populace. 'So who was that?' he asked with forced calmness.

  'Willy Madman, a young fellow from Pig Lane. He's not right in the head, but our priest gives him a penny a week to help clear up the churchyard - not that it does much good.' This last was said with a scathing look around the tattered plot, the first sign that he was recovering from his shock.

  'Where can I find this lad?' grunted John, eager to get to view the body.

  'There he is, behind that tree,' said the sexton, lifting a wavering hand and pointing across the yard. De Wolfe saw a ragged figure cowering at the base of an old elm, one arm raised over his head, as if sheltering from some peril. John rose and began walking over towards him, but as if prodded by a sharp knife, the lad took off and vanished over the boundary wall.

  'Bloody hell!' snarled the coroner. 'Osric, get after that fellow and bring him back here.'

  With mounting impatience, de Wolfe beckoned to Gwyn and Thomas, who were speaking to Theobald at the gate, and began making his way between the irregular grassy mounds towards the trees on the further side of the churchyard. Osric had been right: the body was not easily visible from the lane nearest the church, and it was not until they had reached the further wall, almost in the shadow of the city battlements, that John could see the corpse.

  He stopped to look as his officer and clerk came up to him. Thomas de Peyne gave an audible gulp of horror, and for a moment John was afraid that he would vomit over his boots, but Gwyn surveyed the scene with professional admiration.

  'I've seen many a death in my time, but this one is new even for me,' he proclaimed.

  Standing with his back flat against a stout oak was a man dressed in a good tunic of blue serge, with cross-gartered breeches visible beneath. His arms hung by his side, palms facing outward, and his head was held stiffly erect, because it was skewered to the tree by a metal shaft penetrating one eye. The other eye was wide open, and with a slack jaw revealing toothless gums, the face carried an expression of indignant surprise. Some blood was running down the cheek below the left eye, but otherwise there appeared to be no signs of violence. On the ground nearby was a crumpled cloak and a woollen hat, presumably belonging to the dead man.

  John went up close and inspected the bizarre tableau, peering behind the victim's head to see how deeply the missile was embedded. Thomas had backed off as far as he dared, but Gwyn was anxious to get on with the examination.

  'Can I pull the poor bastard down, Crowner?'

  De Wolfe stepped back and nodded, noting that the morbid audience from the gate had moved around the outside of the wall and was gazing slack-jawed at the dramatic sight.

  'Yes, get him off there,' he growled. 'This isn't a mununer's play for the benefit of those nosey swine.' He turned and shouted at the score of onlookers, but though they shuffled back a few yards, they refused to disperse.

  Gwyn went up to the oak tree and as he supported the corpse under the armpits, John wrenched the weapon out of the wood. It took quite an effort, as it was stuck three fingers' breadth into the trunk. As the body sagged, Gwyn lowered it to the ground, the long spike still stuck through the head.

  'The point has come a long way through the skull at the back,' reported the Cornishman. 'Much more blood there, running down the nape of his neck. And he's as stiff as board and freezing cold.'

  John bent to look at the instrument of death. It was a cylindrical metal rod, well over a yard long, blunt at one end, but tapered to a point where it had stuck in the tree.

  'What the hell is this thing?' fretted John. 'It's not a spear or a lance.'

  Gwyn, coming from a more rural background, suggested that it looked more like a crowbar. 'The sort of thing they use in the villages for levering rocks and tree stumps out of newly won ground.'

  The coroner shrugged. 'Could equally well be part of a railing or one of the bars of a gate. Whatever it is, it hasn't been used for a long time. It's covered in rust.' Indeed, the rod was roughened with shards of brown-red flakes that had stained John's hands as he tugged at it.

  'Are you going to pull it out here?' asked his officer as they stared down at the body on the grass.

  'May as well - he can't be carried through the town with a pole sticking out of his eye.'

  With Thomas looking on in horrified fascination, de Wolfe held the head steady while Gwyn pulled and rotated the spike out of the murdered man's eye socket.

  With a grinding of fragmented bone, it finally jerked free with a soughing sound as the suction of the soft tissues was overcome. The last foot of the iron was plastered in blood and brain and Gwyn casually wiped it in the weeds growing on a nearby grave mound.

  'Now what?' he asked gruffly. 'Here's Osric with that simple fellow.'

  Across the graveyard came the lanky Saxon constable and the old sexton, each firmly gripping the arm of a reluctant youth. William, as he was known to his mother, was short and squat, with bandy legs and a round, vacant face. He had loose, blubbery lips and pale blue eyes that kept rolling upwards as if he was seeking heaven every five heartbeats.

  'You'll not get much sense out of Will,' predicted Osric gloomily. 'He's harmless, poor fellow, but was missing when the good Lord handed out wits.'

  The next few minutes confirmed the constable's predictions, as the youth was hardly able to make himself understood, fearful of these strange men's presence.

  The sexton was the only one who could get any sense from him, and he translated for the coroner.

  'He says that he saw the man when he went around the yard picking up fallen twigs for the parson's fire.

  He was so frightened that he ran away and hid in his mother's chicken shed. It wasn't until after
second Mass that he plucked up enough courage to come and tell me.'

  'I doubt you'll bother to call him at the inquest!' muttered Gwyn. John ignored this and spoke again to the sexton. 'What did you do then?'

  'Came across to look. I thought Will might have been crazier than usual, but this time he was right. I ran and told the priest, who was still in the church taking off his vestments. He came out to look for himself - he hasn't recovered yet.'

  Osric chimed in here. 'It was Father Robin who recognised the dead man, Crowner. Seems he buys all his church candles from him.'

  John looked down at the corpse and then around the churchyard. The gawping crowd was still there, staring from a distance. 'Have you got a dead-house here?' he asked the sexton.

  The old man indicated a dilapidated shed leaning against the back of the church. 'We can put him in there, sir. There's a bier inside the hut, he can be carried on that.'

  Leaving Osric and the sexton to see to the moving of the body, John went back to the church, Gwyn carrying the iron rod like a javelin. Inside the small building, they found Father Robin slumped in the only chair, placed in the tiny chancel in case the archdeacon or even the bishop might one day visit. The parish priest was a corpulent, red-faced man, and to John's experienced eye it looked as if he had been treating his shock with communion wine.

  'There's little I can tell you, sir,' he said thickly. 'This is a shocking thing to happen in my churchyard. I will never fully get over it. I must consult the archdeacon to see if the grounds need reconsecration.'

  De Wolfe was more concerned with the dead man than with the father's religious dilemma. 'This man was your candle supplier?'

  The priest nodded, but his eyes roved as if he was seeking a wineskin. 'Robert de Hokesham, of Goldsmiths Street. A master craftsman and a prominent guildsman. He makes candles and other articles of wax and tallow for virtually all the churches, as well as the cathedral!'

  'Why should he be in your churchyard today?' asked the coroner.

  The parson shuddered. 'Because he must have been there all night. He came yesterday evening to receive his payment for the last batch of altar and chancel candles. He came regularly every two weeks to collect.' Father Robin put his face in his hands. 'I saw and spoke to the poor man only last evening. He must have met his terrible end soon after he left- and has been there all night, poor soul.'

  There was nothing else the priest could offer, and when John and Gwyn left the church, the compassionate Thomas stayed behind to try to comfort his fellow cleric.

  Outside, the constables were carrying the body on a wooden stretcher. When it was on the floor of the shack, the coroner made one last examination, pulling up the clothing to make sure that there were no other wounds.

  Attached to the man's belt was a bulky purse, which contained a large number of silver pennies, amounting to almost one pound's worth.

  'So again, this wasn't a robbery, Gwyn,' he mused.

  'Many people would know that he collected his debts on certain days, but this can't be some cut-purse chancing his luck.'

  'No thief walks the city streets carrying a four-foot crowbar,' boomed his officer. 'He must have lain in wait for de Hokesham, perhaps with the rod already hidden here beforehand.'

  De Wolfe shook his head in perplexity. 'Three guild members found dead inside a week. Admittedly, the first one must have been killed months ago, but it's still beyond my understanding.'

  Having seen the body decently covered until the inquest could be held, John and Gwyn left St Bartholomew's, Thomas de Peyne staying behind. He had done his best to console Father Robin - a task that seemed better achieved with a flagon than with soothing words. Then the kindly little clerk took himself to the dead-house, where with much mumbling of Latin and signing of the Cross, he attempted to put the candlemaker's soul on the right path to Purgatory and thence onwards to Heaven.

  John had been cheated of his afternoon rendezvous with his Welsh mistress, but fate allowed him to get down to the Bush that evening. Though Matilda had spent an hour that afternoon on her knees in St Olave's - and another hour gossiping with her matronly friends afterwards - she announced that as it was the eve of the celebration of Christ's birth, she was off to the cathedral that evening to attend the traditional special service leading up to Matins.

  This was the cue for Brutus to need his daily exercise, and by the eighth hour, John was sitting comfortably at his favourite table near the firepit of the Bush.

  Gwyn was at a nearby table when he arrived, just finishing a gargantuan meal, and again proclaimed the Bush to be the best cook-shop in Exeter. A boiled pork knuckle and a pile of fried onions, cabbage and carrots were being augmented by half a fresh loaf and some goat's cheese. He had failed to leave the city before the gates slammed shut at curfew and could not get home to his cottage in St Sidwell's, a village just beyond the east walls. There was nothing new in this, and his placid wife was used to his spending many a night in the soldiers' quarters at Rougemont, the eve of Christ Mass not excepted.

  'Where's the little fellow?' asked John, as he sat with his arm around the landlady.

  'In the cathedral, I'll wager,' declared Nesta. 'He said this is his first Christ Mass since he was restored to the priesthood and he's going to join the rest of them in the celebrations there tonight. I don't know how he manages it, for every day he has to get up before dawn to get to the cathedral and prepare his duties for the dead - yet he's always there at midnight to attend Matins!'

  Gwyn came across and lowered himself to the bench opposite with a quart pot of Nesta's famous ale in his fist. Though he wanted to avoid playing gooseberry to his master's dalliance, he needed some guidance as to the morning's duties.

  'What are we going to do about this candlemaker, Crowner?' he growled. 'Did you get any more news of him this afternoon?'

  'No more than we did with the last one,' admitted John dolefully. 'He has a good house in the centre of the city and a plump wife and three strapping sons to carry on the business. But as to any clue as to why someone should use his head for target practice, there was not a whisper.'

  Nesta squeezed his arm compassionately. She knew how de Wolfe hated having to give bad news to families.

  'Did the poor woman take it badly, John?' she asked.

  'If screaming and fainting is taking it badly, then yes, she did. Thankfully, I took Thomas with me, he is always good at such tragic moments.' He sounded sombre at the memory of that visit.

  Gwyn swallowed the better part of a pint before coming up for air and then wiped his soaking moustache with his fingers. 'What about the other guild people - any opinions from them?'

  'I spoke to the men in his workshop - he has a large place behind the house, where they make all types of candle, as well as wax for seals and dubbin and polishes for saddlery and leather goods. He was in a good way of business, with four journeymen and the same number of apprentices.'

  One of the maids called across to Nesta about some problem out in the cook-shed and she rose to attend to it, but before leaving said, 'I knew Robert de Hokesham slightly. I bought candies, tallow and oil from him. He used to call regularly to collect the money due. He seemed a pleasant, honest man.'

  As she hurried away, Gwyn pursued the matter. 'Did you gain anything about the guild aspect, Crowner? All three of these dead men were prominent masters and had been active in their guilds. Is that just a coincidence?'

  De Wolfe sighed as he reached down to fondle Brutus's head under the table., 'Once again I consulted Hugh de Relaga, but he had nothing to offer. Of course, he knew de Hokesham well, he was a member of the city council, but as with the glazier Hamelin de Beaufort, there seems nothing whatsoever in his background to make him a candidate for such a gruesome killing.'

  'So what happens next?' demanded Gwyn.

  'As this obviously concerns members of guilds, I've arranged with Hugh de Relaga to have a meeting the day after tomorrow with the wardens of most of the major guilds in the city,' answered John. 'M
aybe they can throw some light on this matter, as it concerns them so closely.'

  Gwyn saw Nesta returning across the crowded taproom and hauled himself to his feet, as he diplomatically prepared to leave.

  'What about the inquest on this fellow today?' he enquired as he shrugged his scuffed leather jacket around his massive shoulders.

  'We can't hold it tomorrow, so arrange it for Thursday,' commanded the coroner. 'Though if the information is as sparse as with the other deaths, it will be another waste of time.'

  Gwyn planted a kiss on Nesta's cheek, getting an affectionate smile in return, then lumbered towards the door.

  She sat down again alongside de Wolfe and slid her hand under the table to rest on his thigh.

  'Forget dead bodies for a while, John,' she pleaded. 'If I get a nice big bone for Brutus, maybe he can wait a while before you go back to Martin's Lane.' She gave his leg a hard pinch and looked meaningfully at the wide ladder that led to the upper floor.

  That evening, in the great cathedral of St Peter and St Mary, one of the most important festivals of the religious year was being celebrated as the last hours of the eve of Christmas moved inexorably towards the day itself.

  As the evening wore on, Matilda de Wolfe, attired in her best gown and a heavy hooded mantle of fleecelined velvet, left her house .in Martin's Lane and made her way across the Close to the cathedral doors in the West Front. Her maid Lucille dragged behind her mistress, as a reluctant chaperone. They joined the stream of several hundred other worshippers, many of whom had, like Matilda herself, forsaken their parish churches for the spectacle in the cathedral, which was now virtually complete, more than eighty years since Bishop Warelwast began rebuilding on the site of the old Saxon church, his huge twin towers pushing up into the sky as if they intended to last for a thousand years.