The Witch Hunter

by Bernard Knight

  Outside the door, which opened directly on to Fore Street, they found a small crowd gawping at the unexpected drama that had enlivened their afternoon.

  Blocking the door was one of the two city constables, a bean-pole of a Saxon named Osric. Alongside him was Thomas de Peyne, Gabriel, the grizzled sergeant of the castle guard and two of the gaolers from the burgesses’ prison, from where the outlaw had escaped.

  The crowd, a score of old men, grandmothers, urchins and cripples who had little else to divert them, parted to let the coroner and his officer through.

  ‘It’s that fellow Stephen Aethelard,’ grunted Gabriel. ‘I’ll wager he had the gaolers bribed, though these fellows deny it.’ He jerked his head at the two warders, brutish men with short necks and glowering expressions.

  ‘Weren’t us, Crowner,’ grunted one of them. ‘We only came on duty an hour ago and when we checked on who was being hanged tomorrow, this bastard was missing.’

  ‘And as usual, nobody knew nothing about it!’ added the other.

  John ignored them and went through the small door into the church, Gwyn close behind. Thomas bobbed his knee and crossed himself repeatedly as soon as he entered this diminutive house of God. St Olave’s was little more than a large room, with a tiny chancel at the far end. This contained an altar, covered in an embroidered white cloth on which were a metal cross and candlesticks.

  It now also contained a sanctuary-seeker, who looked even more scruffy that he had in the Shire Court that morning. Stephen Aethelard was sitting dejectedly on the step below the altar, staring at the floor and scratching at some sores on the side of his neck. Halfway down the nave, the resident priest, Julian Fulk, was standing with his back to the door, glaring at the intruder with a marked lack of Christian compassion.

  ‘Let’s get this over with,’ snapped John, after taking in the scene.

  ‘Be a damned sight easier just to let the fellow run back to his forest where he came from, to save all this rigmarole of abjuring,’ growled Gwyn.

  Though privately he may have agreed, the coroner was a stickler for the law and shook his head. ‘It must be done properly – the quicker the better.’

  He moved into the body of the church, which had the luxury of a paved floor and the sound of his footsteps caused Fulk to swing around. He was a short, rotund man in early middle age, without a clerk’s tonsure, for he was as bald as an egg. His round face with its waxy complexion usually bore a fixed smile, but today he looked anything but pleased. ‘Ah, Sir John, I’m very pleased to see you. This fellow has lodged himself in my chancel at a most inconvenient time.’

  Julian was nominally the coroner’s own parish priest, as it was to St Olave’s that Matilda dragged him about once a month. He was a reluctant worshipper, to say the least, as although actual atheism had never occurred to him, he found the rituals of the Church dull and meaningless.

  ‘I have heard that you have a service for Robert de Pridias here tomorrow,’ he responded. ‘I will do my best to get the fellow out of here before then, but it cannot be earlier than the morning – assuming that he collaborates.’

  Leaving Fulk standing forlornly in his bulging black cassock, the coroner loped down towards the chancel, Gwyn and Gabriel following behind.

  The fugitive had by now clambered to his feet and groped behind him to put one dirty hand on the altar, causing the priest to cluck with annoyance at the soiling of the fine lace cloth worked by one of the richer ladies in his congregation. Fulk assiduously cultivated the wives of burgesses and knights with his obsequious manner and false smiles, which was the main attraction of the place for Matilda de Wolfe.

  ‘You needn’t grab the altar, fellow,’ snapped John. ‘The whole church is a sanctuary – the churchyard would be equally safe, if there was one.’ St Olave’s, like many of more than two dozen city churches in Exeter, was built directly on to the street and had no land around it all.

  ‘You were in the court this morning,’ said the outlaw, in a coarsely aggressive voice. ‘But you can’t throw me out, I know my rights!’

  John gave him a twisted smile. ‘As an outlaw, you don’t have any rights! That’s what the name means, you don’t exist in the eyes of the law. I’m not even sure you can claim sanctuary. I could probably drag you out now and get my officer to cut off your miserable head!’

  Gwyn leered happily at this, and rattled his huge sword ominously in its scabbard. ‘Right, Crowner, I could use the five shillings’ bounty!’

  Both of them knew that they were play-acting, but felt that this man should suffer some grief for the nuisance he was causing.

  ‘If you want to abjure – assuming I agree – then you will have to confess your guilt,’ grated de Wolfe.

  ‘How can I confess to something I didn’t do?’ objected Stephen, running thick fingers through his matted hair.

  The coroner shrugged. ‘Please yourself, man. Either confess or stay in here for the allotted forty days and then be slain.’

  There was a howl of protest from Julian Fulk, who had padded up to the chancel step. ‘I’m not having this creature sitting before my altar for forty days! Do something, Crowner – get rid of him!’

  John looked down his big hooked nose at the indignant priest. ‘What happened to your Christian charity, Father? It was the Church that invented sanctuary, not the King’s justices.’

  He turned back to the ragged prisoner, who was now squatting on his haunches. ‘For forty days from today, you can stay in here, with guards on the door. You will have bread and water at the burgess’s expense and be provided with a bucket. If you so much as put your head outside the door, it will be cut off! If you fail to confess to me in that time, the church will be boarded up and you will be starved to death. Is that clear?’

  Stephen Aethelard gave a surly nod, but Julian Fulk uttered another squeal of protest at the prospect of his beloved church being boarded up for a long period. ‘Confess, you evil man and get yourself away from here!’

  After a moment’s cogitation, the fugitive decided to cooperate. ‘What do I have to do, then?’ he muttered.

  ‘First of all, we need a jury,’ replied John. He told Gwyn and Gabriel to go outside and call in all the men over twelve years of age from the crowd outside. More must have drifted to the church since John had arrived, as within a few moments a dozen men and boys sidled into the nave, driven by the two officers like sheep before a dog.

  They were marshalled into a semicircle around the chancel step and the tall, brooding figure of de Wolfe gave them their orders. ‘You are here to witness the confession of this man, who has sought sanctuary and wishes to abjure the realm – so pay attention!’

  He turned back to Aethelard, grabbed him by the shoulder of his soiled tunic and pushed him to his knees on the flagstones. ‘This is supposed to be done at the gate or stile of the churchyard, but as we don’t have one, this will have to do.’ He looked across at the priest. ‘We need the use of a holy book, Father.’

  Only too pleased to help in getting rid of the unwelcome intruder, Fulk hurried across to his aumbry, a carved wooden chest against the north wall of the chancel, and took out a heavy book bound in leather-covered boards. ‘Here is my copy of the Vulgate. Be careful with it, I beg you.’

  De Wolfe took the testament, laboriously handwritten on leaves of parchment, and handed it to Thomas, who, after crossing himself once again, held it out to Stephen.

  ‘Place your hand on that and repeat my words,’ commanded the coroner.

  Haltingly, the outlaw muttered a confession to having broken into the dwelling of John de Witefeld in the vill of Dunstone on the eve of the Feast of St Michael and All Angels and stealing fifteen shillings. He stubbornly refused to confess to having assaulted his daughter Edith, but the coroner decided that a longer confession would make not the slightest difference to the process, so did not pursue the matter.

  ‘Now repeat the oath of abjuration after me,’ boomed de Wolfe and Stephen stumbled through the ritualistic wo
rds.

  ‘I do swear on this holy book that I will leave and abjure the realm of England and never return without the express permission of our lord King Richard or his heirs. I will hasten by the direct road to the port allotted to me and I will not leave the King’s highway under pain of arrest or execution. I will not stay at one place more than one night and I will diligently seek a passage across the sea as soon as I arrive, delaying only one tide if that is possible. If I cannot secure such passage, then I will go every day into the sea up to my knees, as a token of my desire to cross. And if I cannot secure a passage within forty days, then I will put myself again within a church. And if I fail in all this, then may peril be my lot.’

  At the end of this, Thomas handed the vulgate back to the priest, who with obvious relief locked it back in his aumbry.

  Now John had to issue instructions to the abjurer. ‘Tomorrow, you will leave this place, casting off your own clothing.’ Looking at the man, who had spent months in the forest and weeks in a filthy gaol, John felt that the loss of his rags would be a blessing. Legally, they should have been confiscated and sold for the benefit of the Crown, but it was doubtful that a beggar would have bothered to pick them from a midden. ‘You will wear a garment of sackcloth and walk bare headed, carrying a cross of sticks which you will make yourself. You will tell passers-by what you are and you will not stray by so much as a foot from the highway. I charge you to go to Topsham to seek a ship and you will be given sufficient coins to pay for a passage to France. If you ever set foot in England again, your life will be forfeit.’

  Thomas thought that his master was being too magnanimous in nominating Topsham as the port of exit, as it was only a few miles down the river. He knew that many coroners acted perversely in sending their abjurers vast distances – some from the North Country had been sent all the way to Dover, for example. But John himself knew that it was irrelevant which harbour he nominated, as he had a shrewd suspicion that as soon as Aethelard was out of sight of the city, he would throw away his cross and vanish back into the trees to make his way back to his outlaw comrades, which probably happened to more abjurers than actually reached their ports. As Gwyn had suggested earlier, it would have saved all this trouble if the fellow had been allowed to run out through the city gates and vanish into the forest.

  While Thomas fumbled pen, ink and parchment from his shoulder bag to record the event and get the names of the ad hoc jurors, Julian Fulk approached him. ‘So how soon can we get rid of this fellow?’ he asked peevishly.

  ‘As soon as you can find him a length of hessian and two sticks for him to make his robe and his cross. I’ll leave that to you, as you’re so keen to see the back of him.’

  ‘And who is going to give him his passage money to Cherbourg or St Malo?’ huffed the priest, suspicious that the burden might fall on him.

  John winked, keeping a straight face. ‘I should forget about that. I’ll wager that Topsham will not see hide nor hair of him. But once he’s out of the city, our duty is done.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which Crowner John goes to a funeral

  John de Wolfe managed to avoid a return visit to St Olave’s the next morning, although his wife pestered him to accompany her to the private obsequies over the body of Robert de Pridias. He claimed that his official presence at the Thursday hangings was inescapable, which was almost true – but he had to compromise by agreeing to attend the funeral service at the cathedral later that day.

  He had risen at his usual early hour and made his way to his chamber high in the castle gatehouse. Here Gwyn assured him that Stephen Aethelard had been seen off from the church in his sackcloth at dawn, leaving on the road to Topsham as soon as the city gates were open. The fact that the abjurer had not even asked for his passage money confirmed John’s suspicions that the man would melt into the woods before he had gone a mile from the city, but that was of no concern to him. He had not yet told the sheriff of Stephen’s escape, keeping that until after his second breakfast, looking forward to it as a comforting item with which to irritate his brother-in-law.

  It was the custom of the coroner’s team to gather each morning in their barren room, to arrange the day’s work and to have a little sustenance, especially as Gwyn seemed unable to survive for more than a few hours without refuelling his large body with food and drink. The usual fare was a fresh loaf of coarse rye bread and a hard chunk of cheese bought from a stall at the bottom of Castle Lane, washed down with either ale or rough cider from a gallon jar that the Cornishman kept in the office. Thomas usually nibbled at the food, but avoided the drink. In better days he had been used to wine, but now, in his near-destitution, he reluctantly had to make do with ale at his lodging in the Close, but baulked at the cruder liquid that Gwyn purchased from a nearby tavern, which to him was a cross between vitriol and horse piss, with shreds of what looked like rotted sea-weed swirling at the bottom.

  ‘Is that widow still pestering you to hold an inquest?’ asked Gwyn, between mouthfuls of bread.

  ‘No doubt she will this afternoon, unless I can keep clear of her,’ replied the coroner glumly. ‘Though I doubt I’ll manage that, with Matilda hovering over me, anxious to aid and abet her.’

  Thomas’s beady eyes settled on his master’s face. ‘I have seen some strange things over the years, Crowner. I’d not dismiss witchcraft too readily,’ he said uneasily.

  ‘That goes for me, too,’ boomed Gwyn. ‘In Cornwall, there are many fey women – and some men, too! I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end.’

  The coroner glared sourly at his acolytes. ‘What are you two trying to do – scare me into taking this death under my wing? We’ve all seen strange things, but I’m damned if I’m going to turn up at the next Eyre and present the King’s justices with a death by magic! I’d be the laughing-stock of the county.’

  Gwyn wiped ale from his luxuriant moustache, then shook his head. ‘Most folk would agree with you, if you did. Especially when they heard of that stabbed straw figure.’

  De Wolfe bristled. The more he was pushed, the more he dug in his heels. ‘Damned nonsense! I’m surprised at you, Thomas – a man of the cloth like you. Doesn’t your Church condemn all this pagan belief as heresy?’

  They argued back and forth for a while, until all the bread and cheese had gone, but the coroner was adamant about keeping de Pridias’s death at arm’s length. When the good-natured bickering faded, John announced that he was going over to the keep, to goad the sheriff about the loss of his felon, before the trio went out of the city to attend the executions.

  As John crossed the inner bailey, he saw that the weather was threatening rain again, but although there had been more thunder, the black clouds were still holding back the inevitable deluge. The air was still and sultry and people seemed enervated as the cloying atmosphere stuck their clothes to their perspiring skin. In the crowded main hall of the keep it was even more of an effort to breathe and John was glad to escape though the small door into de Revelle’s quarters, away from the stench of sweltering humanity.

  In the outer chamber, where the sheriff conducted his official business, he found the dapper man checking piles of money that his chief clerk had set out on a side table. As John barged in unannounced, Richard whirled round, his hand going to his dagger, as if he was afraid that some robber was about to steal all the taxes of Devonshire. ‘Oh, it’s only you!’ he snapped ungraciously, turning back to his counting. The clerk, an old grey-haired man in lesser religious orders, had set out orderly rows of silver pennies in piles of twelve, arranged in islands of twenty, so that the sheriff could count them as pounds, an accounting device that, like marks, had no actual coin. Alongside the table was a massive oaken chest, bound with bands of black iron. At the moment it was open and empty, but when the money had been replaced, it would be sealed with a pair of locks, to which only de Revelle had keys.

  De Wolfe watched as his brother-in-law continued to count, using one forefinger to tap the piles
of coins, while in the other hand he held a sheet of parchment, covered in columns of figures provided by the clerk. De Revelle was quite literate, having been educated when young at Wells Cathedral – a fact that he never failed to rub John’s face in, the coroner never having had any learning other than the hard school of battle.

  ‘Have you come into a fortune, Richard – or have you taken to highway robbery?’ asked de Wolfe sarcastically.

  The sheriff held up a hand for silence until he got to the last row of coins, his lips moving silently as he counted. Then he motioned to the clerk to start replacing the money in the treasury and turned to his sister’s husband.

  ‘It’s part of the county farm, John. I have to keep a strict check on it.’ His voice conveyed the importance of his office and the depth of his responsibility, although John suspected that his auditing enthusiasm was mainly driven by a desire to see how much he could siphon off into his own purse.

  ‘I thought that your next submission was not due until Michaelmas?’ commented the coroner. Twice a year, on alternate Quarter Days, every sheriff had personally to deliver the ‘farm’, the taxes squeezed from each county, to the King’s treasury, which was an even larger box kept at Winchester. Originally, payment was made on to a chequered cloth derived from the chessboard, to help the poorly numerate officials make an accurate count, hence the name ‘exchequer’.

  Richard ignored John’s question and stalked back to his chair behind the main table which he used as his desk. Today he was attired in a long tunic of dark red silk, with a large silver buckle on his leather belt and a chain of heavy silver links around his neck. His mid-brown hair had been freshly cut into a new style, a thick pad on top surmounting an almost shaven neck and sides. John thought his head looked a little like a mushroom, but he kept his opinion to himself.