The Witch Hunter

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Fair-mindedness was a scarce commodity in the chapter house today,’ said de Alençon cynically, as he sat with the coroner at the table in his study that afternoon, sharing the usual flask of wine. ‘My fellow-canon was puffed up with his importance and imbued with missionary zeal – so the truth was low on his list of priorities.’ He took a sip of the red nectar of Anjou and shook his head sadly. ‘I must give myself a penance later for my cynical lack of charity towards Gilbert de Bosco, but the whole affair was a charade, a complete travesty of justice.’

  For a normally mild man, the archdeacon sounded bitter and de Wolfe pressed him for more details of what had gone on that morning in the chapter house, where Gilbert had hastily added Jolenta’s case to that of Alice Ailward and tried them both together.

  ‘The poor women were not allowed to say a word in their own defence and the couple of neighbours who were allowed to speak up for them were treated like imbeciles by the chancellor.’

  ‘So what were the charges against them?

  ‘Almost identical, though it mattered little as to the details, the result was inevitable. As far as the Ailward woman was concerned, that she was guilty of sacrilege in summoning up Satan in defiance of God’s law, that this meant she had committed apostasy by denial of God and that there was implied blasphemy by seeking other gods but the true one.’

  John scratched his head where a flea was biting his scalp. ‘All that on the uncorroborated lies of an ignorant boor like Adam Cuffe? I can’t believe he has the brains to invent all that rubbish about Satan. Someone must have put him up to it.’

  ‘Quite possibly, but I’ve no idea who that could be – or why he did it. And as for being uncorroborated, a trio of equally great liars were called, some of them I strongly suspect from that gang who lynched the other woman yesterday.’

  ‘Did they spin the same story?’

  ‘More or less … certainly in the same vein of unbelievable nonsense about Alice’s activities. Seeing her ride through the air in the moonlight, of her cat turning into a huge bat – and casting spells on men so that they lost their potency – that was a favourite among those deluded liars.’ Again the archdeacon sounded more bitter than John had ever known him.

  ‘But was all that sufficient for the bishop’s court to find her guilty?’ he asked.

  The priest shook his head. ‘No, as I told you before, canon law requires that some criminal damage have resulted from her actions – but that was easy for the court to substantiate, especially when the court was solely Gilbert de Bosco. That Cuffe fellow swore that he knew of a sow and a whole litter of pigs that had dropped dead because of a curse that the woman had placed on them at the instance of a spiteful neighbour. And another witness said that she knew of two women who miscarried, having been interfered with by Theophania. That was more than sufficient to constitute criminal damage.’

  ‘And with Jolenta of Ide?’

  De Alençon shrugged. ‘As I said, the spurious facts matter little. There was some hint of salacious evil there, as there were allegations of an incubus being involved.’

  ‘What the devil is an incubus?’ growled de Wolfe.

  The glimmer of a smile crossed the priest’s face, in spite of the seriousness of the topic. ‘You’ve already said it, John! An incubus is a masculine devil that comes at night to have carnal relations with a woman – I believe that the female equivalent is called a succubus. They are supposed to give birth to witches.’

  There was silence for a moment as they sipped their wine in gloomy outrage.

  ‘Was there nothing that you could do or say on their behalf, John?’ asked the coroner, almost reproachfully.

  ‘I could do nothing, God forgive me,’ answered de Alençon, as he crossed himself. ‘I had no standing at all in that court. Henry Marshal had specifically appointed Gilbert as chancellor and I was but a spectator. I tried to reason with him before the court began, but he stiffly told me that he was the bishop’s nominee and to mind my own business. I had no valid answer to that.’

  ‘So the poor women are now committed to the sheriff’s court for sentencing?’

  The archdeacon nodded sadly. ‘At least they can stay in the proctors’ cells until then and not be humiliated further by being dragged to that foul pit in Rougemont, to be mishandled by that pervert Stigand.’ He was referring to the obese and mentally retarded gaoler who guarded the filthy cells beneath the castle keep.

  ‘But it will mean hanging, John,’ said de Wolfe sadly. ‘When the sheriff gets back he’ll take his allotted part in this rotten conspiracy.’

  ‘I’m afraid so, there is no other penalty. Just the lies about the dead sow, the miscarriages and the ravishment by an incubus are more than enough to send them to the gallows. And many of the townsfolk are happy with this – they were clamouring outside the chapter house, waiting for the verdict, shouting and yelling, demanding death for all witches. It was disgusting!’

  There was another silence as they contemplated the situation.

  ‘One dead and two others on the way! What’s going on, my friend?’ asked the coroner. ‘Why this sudden vendetta against old wives, when for centuries they have been left in peace to peddle their potions and mumble their spells?’

  De Alençon shook his grey head. ‘I just don’t know, John, but I fear we’ve not seen the end of it yet. One wonders who will be next?’

  While John de Wolfe was eating his supper with Matilda in their usual glum silence that evening, Walter Winstone was in the upper room of his shop in Waterbeer Street, looking lovingly at the strongbox where he kept his money. He had even unlocked it in anticipation of adding the cash that Henry de Hocforde was sending to him.

  Outside, it was raining again, to the despair of bailiffs, reeves and the peasantry, who were beginning to accept with fearful resignation that the harvest would be dismal and that winter would again see starvation stalk the land. The apothecary cared nothing about this, as for those with money there was always food to be bought, albeit at high cost from imports from across the Channel. Impatiently, he waited for his finances to be swollen by de Hocforde’s capitulation, once again cursing the man for not accepting that his poison was the cause for the other mill-owner’s demise.

  There was a gruff shout from below and Walter hurried to the top of the ladder that led down to his storeroom. He had given his apprentice a rare evening off, to prevent the nosy youth from overhearing any talk about money, so the voice had to be that of the promised messenger.

  ‘Have you brought me a package, fellow?’ he called down.

  A burly figure appeared at the foot of the steps and stared up at him.

  ‘Are you the apothecary? Henry de Hocforde sent me with this.’ He was clutching a large hessian bag which he hoisted up to show Walter.

  The apothecary nodded. ‘Leave it there. I’ll fetch it up in a moment.’

  ‘No, the master said you were to count it in front of me,’ growled the messenger. ‘He says he doesn’t want to be accused of short-changing you – and I don’t want it said that I dipped my hand into it on the way here.’

  The thought of losing some of his coins made Walter stump down the ladder, his stiff leg clacking on the wide rungs as he went. As he reached the bottom, the man reached into the bag, but pulled out not a handful of silver pennies but the head of a pole-axe with a sawn-off handle. On the reverse of the axe-blade was a wicked spike as long as a hand, and before the apothecary had time to understand what was happening, it was buried deep inside his skull. Hugh Furrel, the supposed messenger, was in fact a professional slaughterman from the Shambles and was used to swinging a full-length pole-axe at cattle, so dispatching a small man with a shorter one posed no problem. In fact, this was the second this evening, as he had come directly from Fore Street, where he had performed the same service on the wizard Elias Trempole, leaving his body in a pool of blood in his back yard.

  Dropping his truncated weapon back into the bag, Hugh Furrel went cautiously to the door of the shop an
d peered out. When he was satisfied that no one was near the house, he slipped out and sauntered along to his favourite haunt, the Saracen, where he celebrated his success by spending some of Henry de Hocforde’s blood-money on a few quarts of Willem the Fleming’s ale.

  The bodies were found almost simultaneously, less than an hour later, but the coroner was first called to Waterbeer Street. Without Gwyn or his clerk he felt vaguely incomplete, but made do with the two burgesses’s constables, Osric and his plumper colleague, whose name John could never remember. The downtrodden – and now unemployed – apprentice had discovered the murder when he returned from his unexpected break and had hared off around the corner to the Guildhall, behind which the constables had a small hut as their headquarters. Osric had summoned de Wolfe, but by this time a trio of excited townsfolk had run up from Fore Street to report that their neighbour Elias Trempole had been found dead in his yard by his wife, when she returned from visiting her sister in Curre Street.

  When the constable arrived in Martin’s Lane, John was about to take his hound for a convenient walk in the direction of the Bush inn, as Matilda had already retired for the night. However, his irritation at the frustration of his amorous intentions faded when he realised that not only was the first victim one who was Canon Gilbert’s supporter in the witch-hunt, but that Elias Trempole, according to Osric, was a well-known cunning man. The coincidence was further strengthened when he was told that the mode of death in both cases was identical.

  In the back room of the apothecary’s shop, which was now being guarded by the other, fatter constable, he found the remains of Walter Winstone lying crumpled at the foot of the ladder. On the top of his head was a large circular hole, from which blood and brains welled out. There were no other injuries to be seen, and on the apothecary’s face was an expression of utter astonishment, the eyes being open and staring almost beseechingly at the coroner, asking for some explanation of this highly inconvenient event.

  The apprentice was shaking in the background, his face ashen, as if he half expected to be accused of killing his master. It was common knowledge in Waterbeer Street that he hated the apothecary for the way he was treated, but de Wolfe sensed his fear and reassured the boy that he was not a suspect. He knew nothing of any visitor that evening, but the very fact that he had been sent away by his master suggested to John that someone had been expected.

  ‘Best have a look around,’ he growled at the constables, once they had looked at the body. There was nothing to be seen out of place in the storeroom or back yard, and when they climbed the ladder, the upper rooms, though dismal and untidy, seemed undisturbed.

  ‘That chest is unlocked,’ quavered the apprentice, who had followed them upstairs. He pointed to the stout box, which had the lock lying open on the top. ‘The master never leaves it like that!’

  Knowing of the apothecary’s reputation for covetousness, Osric suggested that he might have been robbed, but when the coroner lifted the lid he whistled in surprise at the sight of so much money. ‘Selling pills and lotions must be a profitable business!’ he commented. ‘Whoever came to slay him certainly didn’t commit armed robbery.’

  John saw the lad gaping at the mass of bags and loose silver, more money that he was ever likely to see again for the rest of his life. On impulse, de Wolfe bent and grabbed a handful of coins, which he stuffed quickly into the boy’s pouch.

  ‘You’re out of a job now, so this will tide you over.’ He glared at the two constables. ‘You didn’t see that, understand? Now put the lock back on the chest and keep your mouths shut, both of you.’

  He marched back to the ladder and climbed down, calling up orders to Osric. ‘Send someone up to Rougemont and get the guards to take the corpse up there. I’ll hold the inquest tomorrow.’

  There was no way in which he could cram it into the storeroom of the priory, both because it would be indecent to lodge it with a female body – and because the prior, a miserable man at the best of times, had already grumbled about the frequency with which his premises were being used as a dead-house.

  ‘We’ll have another corpse to house very soon,’ said Osric, as they set off for Fore Street. ‘It’s been a busy day!’

  As Thomas was absent, the coroner was glad to see a familiar figure coming towards them as they turned into Northgate Street, garbed in a black Benedictine robe. It was Brother Rufus, the rotund priest from Rougemont who acted as the garrison chaplain at the chapel of St Mary in the inner ward. He was an amiable if garrulous fellow, who seemed to have a fascination for the investigation of crime and who had several times latched on to de Wolfe’s inquiries, to the annoyance of Thomas, who was very jealous of his own position.

  ‘Just the man I need,’ shouted the coroner. ‘One who can write for me on a parchment roll!’

  He explained his lack of a clerk to record the events of the evening and the priest was more than happy to oblige. As they had to go past St Olave’s on the way, Rufus went in and persuaded Julian Fulk to loan him a quill, ink bottle and a sheet of parchment. The chaplain was agog to know what was happening, and John gave him a summary as they hurried on down to the next scene of death. He was glad to hear that the chaplain was strongly against this persecution of witches and had condemned Gilbert de Bosco’s obsessive campaign.

  ‘I used to be a village priest in Somerset, before I became chaplain at Bristol,’ he explained. ‘I soon learned there that these women – and a few men – were invaluable in such places, far from apothecaries or monkish infirmaries.’ He puffed a little as he tried to keep up with the coroner’s long strides. ‘It’s true that sometimes they got up to no good, with a little sorcery against other village folk – but it was all in the mind of the victims. If they knew that a “hex” had been put upon them, they persuaded themselves that they were bewitched – all the rest was mere mummery!’

  His lecture was cut off as they reached the house, where Osric stood gesticulating outside. He had gone ahead when Brother Rufus had stopped off to get writing materials and was now pushing back a small crowd of sightseers from around the door. The house was on a narrow plot, its single room built of stone, with a high-peaked roof of wooden shingles. There was a bare yard of beaten earth at the back, reached by a narrow gap between the house and the next-door building. Here a wooden lean-to shed provided the kitchen and the usual privy and pigsty lined the back fence. The coroner pushed his way past the onlookers, some of whom were shoving at Osric and making threatening noises.

  ‘Good riddance to another bloody witch!’ shouted one man, who promptly got a buffet on the head from another, who yelled back, ‘What evil did Elias Trempole ever do you? He healed up the ulcers on my legs and charged me nothing!’

  A scuffle broke out, with abuse and counter-charges from both men and women in the crowd, which was rapidly attracting more people from the surrounding streets. John cursed himself for not wearing his sword, though he rarely needed to carry it within the city. Instead, he grabbed Osric’s badge of office, a wooden staff with a metal band at the top, and began laying into those in the crowd who seemed to be the worst troublemakers. With a series of smacks and prods, he roared at them to be silent, and such was the power of his dominating appearance that they all subsided into a glowering, muttering but more docile mood.

  At this point, the other constable, who John now remembered was called Theobald, came running up and Osric commanded him to keep everyone out of the plot, while he accompanied the coroner and Brother Rufus around the side of the house to the yard.

  Here they repeated the routine they had followed in Waterbeer Street, as the body of the more elderly Elias Trempole had an identical wound in the same place on his head and no other injuries. The castle chaplain poked about in the other sheds in the yard, then sat on the seat of the earth closet in the privy with his piece of parchment spread on the blade of a wooden shovel placed across his lap. As John prepared to dictate what Rufus should write as the coroner’s record, he admired the monk’s adaptability, thou
gh he recalled that Rufus had acted as a priest in several French campaigns and had learned to be as flexible as the soldiers to whom he administered.

  ‘You had best first set down the facts about Walter Winstone,’ he suggested to his new scribe and proceeded to give a quick summary of the apothecary’s death. Then he described the sparse findings concerning the alleged wizard of Fore Street, as he stood stooped over the man’s corpse.

  ‘Had you better have a look inside, Crowner?’ suggested the chaplain, cocking his head towards the back of the house, from which came wailing and weeping. He gathered up his writing materials and followed de Wolfe through the door in the lean-to addition at the back of the building. Inside, it was more of an alchemist’s den than a kitchen, with a clutter of flasks, pots and pestles and mortars on several benches and a haphazard collection of plant and animal remains hanging from the shelves and rafters. Bundles of herbs and strange dried plants competed for space with mummified reptiles and strips of fur and leather.

  ‘Best keep those troublesome folk outside from seeing this collection,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘It’ll only make them more convinced than ever that someone else was in the habit of raising Satan in his kitchen.’

  ‘Especially if they see these,’ added Rufus, drawing John’s attention to something on one of the littered tables. He pointed to two small straw figures, which John recognised as being almost identical to the one found under the saddle of Robert de Pridias. They had no cloth or hair attached, but near by were a couple of crude metal spikes similar to the one he had seen in Alphington. Like many in the city, the chaplain knew all the details of de Pridias’s death, as his widow had proclaimed them loudly around the town.