The Pardoner's Crime

by Keith Moray

  ‘But wouldn’t there be a pardon, one of those papers on his body?’ Hubert queried.

  ‘Not necessarily. Not if the Pardoner just took pity on a wretch in the stocks. Such things are possible. And it would fit the case.’

  Hubert bit his lip. It was clever, and fitted, he had to admit, but usually his master was able to convince him more so than he had. He felt unsure as to whether Richard believed his version himself.

  ‘But until we can actually question Robert Hood, we still don’t know anything for certain,’ Richard went on. ‘But at least we know that Matilda is safe.’

  ‘But why should he wish her harm, my lord?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘If he is mad, and as good a shot as they say, then no one is safe until he is brought before the court.’ He sighed. ‘It pains me to say it, Hubert, but we might need Sir Thomas to finish off the job he promised to do and bring him in.’

  They both covered their noses as they left the Moot Hall and quickly made their way from it. As they passed the parish church, they saw Emma Oldthorpe and her servant Gilbert crossing the street in front of them. She strode in front and he hobbled slowly behind her with a basket laden with various bottles and jars, presumably delivering medicines to some of her husband’s housebound patients.

  ‘I think I am in love, my lord,’ Hubert said abruptly. Richard had been about to hail Mistress Oldthorpe, but at his words he stopped in his tracks and stood staring at his assistant.

  ‘Beatrice Quigley?’ he ventured.

  Hubert shuffled his feet and flushed with colour. ‘Aye, my lord. She is the sweetest, the most comely of buxom wenches.’ Then he frowned at his choice of words and corrected himself, ‘I mean, she is a beautiful lady.’

  ‘And does she feel the same way?’

  ‘Aye, my lord. We slept together.’

  ‘You have slept with many women since I have known you, good Hubert, but this is the first time you’ve ever used the “love” word.’

  Hubert beamed at him. ‘I know, sir. Yet it is the first time that I have ever felt like this.’ His expression grew sheepish. ‘It is all right, isn’t it, sir? Me falling in love, I mean.’

  Richard gave him a look of mock seriousness until his expression grew sad. Then he cuffed him playfully on the side of his head. ‘Of course, it is all right. And if she feels the same, I am glad for you both. She is, as you say, a beautiful woman.’

  As they walked on, Richard was disappointed to see that there was no longer any sign of Emma Oldthorpe and Gilbert. ‘Let us go to the back of Bread Street,’ he said, walking faster. ‘The yard behind the manor bakehouse is being used by the guilds to rehearse their Corpus Christi plays. The pageants are all there ready. I need to talk to Father Daniel, and he told me that he would be there this afternoon.’

  As they approached the great manor bakehouse, which was almost perpetually in use, for most of the township were obliged to have their bread baked there, they heard the sound of a lute and a familiar voice singing. He sang of a beauteous lady, a ravishing beauty and of a man with lust in his heart.

  They turned the corner and saw Alan-a-Dale sitting at the top of a flight of wooden steps, strumming his lute. He looked up at them, smiled and touched his prodigious forelock.

  ‘Hm, that fellow always seems to crop up,’ said Hubert, once they had passed him. ‘Methinks he seems to know when I am coming, and his songs always seem to have a suggestive edge to them. Mayhap I shall have words with him sometime.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘Leave it, good Hubert. He is a minstrel and they always either sing of love, lust or the pursuit of either. Think nothing of it.’ He himself would have preferred to let the matter drop, but Hubert clearly had love in mind.

  ‘Your pardon, my lord,’ he began, ‘but it has been a year since your wife, my mistress died. Have you not seen any … ladies who tempt you?’

  Richard was taken aback by the question. Indeed, since coming to Wakefield he had thought a great deal about the fairer sex. And that thinking had been associated with much guilt.

  ‘Hubert, I —’ he began. But he was cut off as they turned the corner again into the great yard and were immediately spotted by Father Daniel, who hailed Richard. He came running across.

  ‘Sir Richard, I heard about your misadventure!’ he said, turning his head and pointing to the figure of Lady Katherine, the Prioress of Kirklees Priory, who was standing in front of two pageants on which men in costumes were rehearsing their parts in their respective plays. ‘The prioress and I were most upset to hear of it. Are you quite unhurt?’

  ‘We are all well, I thank you. Matilda Oxley has been recovered and taken back to the Bucket Inn. I am, however, most surprised to know that you had intelligence of it.’

  Father Daniel bowed. ‘Wakefield is a small town, my lord. Especially after all the violence of the past few days, it is not surprising that virtually everyone is taking note of anything untoward.’

  They had walked across to join Lady Katherine. Richard and Hubert bowed to her, and she bowed back as became her position as a prioress.

  After reiterating her concerns for their welfare, Lady Katherine held up the neatly written parchment in her hand. ‘We are running through two of the plays,’ she explained. ‘Here on the left is The First Shepherd’s Play, by our Guild of St Oswald, and on the right is the Guild of Grocers with their play Herod the Great. After that, we are going to go through our The Talents and the Grocers’ The Deliverance of Souls.’

  Richard made appropriately approving noises about the pageants themselves with their elaborate stages. Each pageant was about twice the size of a normal wagon, built by the guilds of carpenters and wheelwrights. The Guild of Grocers in particular was the most impressive, since it had two tiers and a facade that looked like a face.

  ‘The lower part drops, you see,’ Lady Katherine explained, ‘so that it looks as if the mouth of Hell has opened. This is for The Deliverance of Souls play, when the fiends emerge from Hell’s mouth to consume the world.’

  ‘You will be glad when it is all over, I am sure,’ said Richard. He pointed to the parchment in her hand. ‘Are these the stage directions?’

  ‘My notes,’ returned Lady Katherine with a smile.

  Richard nodded approvingly. Yet he seemed distracted.

  ‘You look somewhat puzzled, Sir Richard,’ Father Daniel commented.

  ‘Do I? My apologies. I was just admiring Lady Katherine’s handwriting. It looks familiar — and yet unfamiliar.’ Then he gave a short laugh. ‘But I must not keep you from your work. I actually came to ask you something, Father Daniel. About the two murdered men.’

  Both Father Daniel and Lady Katherine looked ineffably sad, almost professionally sad. ‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘By allowing me to have their bodies buried — temporarily, I mean — in consecrated ground. They are beginning to putrefy, and I think they should be laid to rest.’

  ‘Of course, Sir Richard. But why only temporarily?’

  Richard shrugged. ‘It is just that they might need to be re-examined.’

  They all looked round as Lady Katherine gave a short gasp. Then they saw her slowly slide to the ground in a dead faint.

  It was early evening before Richard and Hubert arrived at the Bucket Inn. Lady Katherine had recovered to find herself surrounded by three concerned male faces and was given a cup of wine by one of the Grocers’ guildsmen. She had been embarrassed and admitted to having felt overcome by the thought of the bodies starting to putrefy. After that they stayed to watch the first rehearsal of two of the plays, while one of the carpenters prepared two large rough coffins. Then Richard accompanied Father Daniel to the town cemetery while Hubert trundled off on the carpenter’s cart with the two coffins to collect the two bodies. Ned Burkin happened to be the constable on duty, and he marshalled a couple of watchmen to locate two of the town gravediggers.

  ‘There have been many deaths in the last few years, I see,’ Richard remarked, as he and th
e priest watched the gravediggers prepare two shallow graves.

  ‘The great famine of 1315 caused a lot of it, and then we had an epidemic that took many children.’

  Hubert approached with his neckcloth drawn well up to cover his mouth and nose. ‘Are you sure you don’t want them a bit deeper, my lord?’ he asked. ‘They are pretty ripe, the pair of them. We had a devil of a job getting the coffin lids shut.’

  Richard pulled up his own neckcloth. ‘That is why I had the carpenter build large coffins. The gases inside their bellies will have swollen them up to almost twice their normal size. But no, they must be shallow enough for us to exhume them if the need arises.’

  Father Daniel said a short blessing once it was all over, and then excused himself to get back to the rehearsals. Richard dismissed the others, then he and Hubert stood looking down at the two fresh mounds.

  ‘This burial ground is well protected from animals,’ Richard commented, pointing at the surrounding trees and mulberry hedging. ‘And it is not visible from the streets with all these bushes.’

  ‘You mean that you could see how the rape of the maid Lillian could have taken place?’

  ‘Exactly. And the Pardoner, Albin of Rouncivale who confessed to the crime, but who was murdered, lies here. As beside him lies William Scathelocke, who was cruelly murdered while a captive in the stocks. It is a bitter irony that it is likely that neither of them had anything to do with the crime.’

  ‘And meanwhile, Robert Hood goes free.’

  ‘Hardly free, Hubert. He is an outcast now. An outlaw thrown out by his fellow outlaws.’

  ‘Yet he came close to adding us to his tally, Sir Richard,’ said Hubert, shivering despite himself. ‘We could be lying there this evening.’

  Richard punched his arm playfully. ‘Yet we are here to tell the day. And so now let us retire to the Bucket Inn, for I need to have words with the women there.’

  Beatrice met them as they came into the busy inn. Her expression registered all too clearly the fact that she was happy to see Hubert, Richard noted with some pleasure.

  ‘I would like to have words with the three of you, Beatrice,’ Richard told her. ‘May we come up?’

  The atmosphere in the upstairs room was fraught, as expected, but Richard was heartened to see that Matilda no longer glowered at her cousin. Indeed, they sat together on a settle, both of them red-eyed from recent tears. As Richard told them of his suspicions about Robert Hood, Matilda reached out and squeezed Lillian’s hand.

  ‘I know what you are saying, Sir Richard,’ she said. ‘It is just hard to believe that my Robin could have turned so wicked. I can only think that it is this business of being declared a contrariant. He is —’ she gulped hard as fresh tears threatened to flow — ‘he was a good and kind man. But I must now look to protecting my cousin.’

  Seeing them somewhat reconciled, Beatrice led the two men downstairs again.

  ‘I think we should sup here,’ Richard said, ‘then I think that I shall stay the night in Wakefield.’

  ‘Are you not expected at the castle, my lord?’ Hubert asked.

  He was suddenly knocked forward and, turning rapidly, found himself looking into the bleary eye of Hector Lunt. The man swayed on his feet.

  ‘Your pardon — my lords!’ he slurred sarcastically. ‘I have drunk my fill and now I must go, for I do not like the smell around here.’

  ‘Why Hector Lunt, you drunken fool!’ said Beatrice between clenched teeth. ‘How dare you talk to my guests like that?’

  Hubert was about to grab him, but Richard stayed his hand.

  ‘You would do well to get home before it gets too dark, my man,’ Richard said. ‘Or you may find yourself in front of me in court. And possibly might find yourself facing a spell in the stocks.’

  Hector’s one eye opened wide in alarm and he gave a drunken bow and staggered towards the door. As he did so, George-a-Green detached himself from the group he had been sitting with and came over.

  ‘He isn’t a bad fellow, my lords,’ he explained. ‘He just can’t say when he has had enough ale.’ He looked at Beatrice with mock accusation in his eyes. ‘Your ale is too tempting.’

  Then he bowed to Richard. ‘I am sorry if I have seemed rude, my lord. My friend Hubert here set me straight about a lot of things. We need the law around here. It is that that keeps us all safe.’

  From somewhere outside, a blood-curdling scream rang out. It was followed moments later by a second, shorter and more muffled cry, and then silence.

  Hubert and George-a-Green were out of the tavern door in seconds, followed by Richard and half of the clientele of the Bucket Inn. The light was fading fast, but up a side street some fifty yards from the inn they found the bodies of two men.

  One was Hector, lying on his back with an arrow through his chest. Half-sprawled on top of him was the body of a well-built man in a cloak and hood.

  Hubert and George-a-Green lifted him off Hector and laid him on his back. He was dead, that was clear, for the gaping wound in his neck where his throat had been cut from ear to ear no longer pumped blood. Beside him was a bow.

  ‘He shot Hector!’ gasped George-a-Green.

  ‘And then Hector slit his throat in defence when he was leaning over him,’ said Hubert, pointing to Hector Lunt’s hand, in which was still grasped a bloodstained knife.

  Suddenly, Hector’s eyes fluttered open and he coughed up blood.

  ‘He took my life!’ he gasped. ‘He … he said…’

  Richard bent down and gently lifted his head. ‘What did he say? Tell me and we shall get help.’

  ‘He … said … it was for the eye … and for … the tooth. He … took my…’

  He clutched at Richard’s tunic, his open eye staring into eternity as his death rattle proclaimed the passage of his soul.

  ‘A revenge killing?’ Hubert suggested.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ volunteered George-a-Green, pointing at the face of the other dead man. ‘But that man has been about the town for a day or two. Why, I think he was drinking in the Bucket Inn earlier this evening and the other night as well. He’s not from round here, though. I reckon he’s a foreigner, from Pontefract or thereabouts.’

  Richard did not say anything immediately, for he seemed to be trying to work something out in his mind. Then he stirred himself from his momentary reverie.

  ‘Hubert, I know it is late, but I want you to summon the bailiff, John of Flanshaw. I want the town alerted. There will be a court session at nine bells tomorrow. We have two more deaths to investigate.’

  Hubert sighed and pointed to the two corpses. ‘It is just as well that we emptied the Tollbooth, my lord.’

  12

  John of Flanshaw had done a good job, having risen at four o’clock to marshal the constables, their men and the town reeves to ensure that the townsfolk all turned out for the extra session of the court. The Moot Hall was packed by the time that Sir Thomas Deyville and his daughter, Lady Wilhelmina arrived and took their places behind the bench on the dais.

  As the nine bells of All Saints rang out, Richard entered from the Roll’s Office. He bowed to them both then took his seat.

  ‘If I did not think better, I would declare you a jinx, Sir Richard,’ said Sir Thomas with a cold smile. ‘Death seems to follow you.’

  ‘Father!’ Lady Wilhelmina whispered protestingly. ‘Two men died last night: it is no time for your jokes.’

  Suitably rebuffed, the Deputy Steward slumped back in his chair and Richard gave the Lady Wilhelmina a grateful smile, which she accepted with a slight nod of her head and the hint of a returned smile.

  The bailiff had already assembled the jurymen who waited by their stools.

  ‘This special court is now in session,’ Richard announced with a rap of his gavel. ‘It is my sad duty to announce that last night, as many of you will no doubt already know, there was a double killing. It took place up Greenwood Street, but fifty yards from the Bucket Inn.’

  And he
described how he himself had seen Hector Lunt in the Bucket Inn, in an inebriated state, and of how he had left after having been given a warning. Then he described the two screams: the first loud and blood-curdling, the second more muffled and shorter.

  ‘When we investigated, we found the two bodies in Greenwood Street. Hector Lunt was lying on his back with an arrow in his chest, and the other man was sprawled half over him. His throat had been cut. It looked as if he had shot Hector Lunt with an arrow and it seemed as if his throat had been cut, by Hector, before he collapsed. It is possible that the second man, the bowman, had been leaning over what he thought was a successful kill. At any rate, Hector Lunt had a knife in his hand.’

  The crowd made suitable noises of alarm and horror, yet without any of the rowdiness that had occurred in the first court session.

  Richard went on, ‘The bowman was dead when we arrived, but Hector Lunt lived and managed to blurt out something about an eye and a tooth.’

  He noted Father Daniel’s presence in the crowd. He was standing with Lady Katherine. ‘Can you tell the court where that expression comes from, Father Daniel?’

  The priest nodded. ‘I believe he would have been referring to the Gospel according to Matthew, Sir Richard: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Its meaning is, I think, quite apparent.’

  Richard nodded. ‘It sounds as if he was saying that it was an act of vengeance. Well, those are the facts of the case, or so they seem. Bailiff, have the two bodies brought in.’

  The crowd moved about restlessly as people craned necks to see the entry of the men of the watch with the two bodies, both wrapped in old blankets. They were laid down before the bench.

  ‘We will start with the body of Hector Lunt. Uncover him,’ Richard ordered. He scanned the crowd and saw Wilfred Oldthorpe standing as usual with his wife, Emma and their servant Gilbert. Emma’s expression seemed somehow strained, as if she, like him, would like to have had words in private. She put a hand on Gilbert’s shoulder and patted it gently, like a mother comforting a child.