The Grim Reaper

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Fitz-William has a cook as well, but he lives elsewhere and comes in only during the day. These two look after his other needs.’

  The constable’s tone made John aware that this might be no ordinary household, but he concentrated on the immediate situation. ‘So, what’s the story?’ Before Osric could start explaining, the coroner swung round to Gwyn. ‘Better find some way of getting him up from there. I presume this is William Fitz-William down the well?’

  The elder boy spoke for the first time, in a dull subdued voice. ‘It is, sir. That’s the master’s tunic, with that embroidery on it.’

  As Gwyn picked up the rope from the bucket and went to the edge of the well to ponder the best way of recovering the corpse, Osric continued his interrupted tale. ‘The lads sleep in the house, in a closet under the staircase. They say they heard their master come home late last night from some Guild meeting and go up to his bedroom as usual. This morning, they were up at dawn to light the cook-shed fire and begin preparing William’s breakfast.’

  ‘He always wants it soon after the sixth hour, when we hear the church bells for Prime,’ cut in Harry. His cherubic face was deathly white and he was shivering.

  The constable took up the tale again. ‘Fitz-William failed to appear in his hall for the meal and after a time, Edward here went up to knock on his bedroom door.’

  ‘There was no answer, so I looked in and he wasn’t there, and the bed hadn’t been slept in.’ The older boy was blond and would be handsome when he grew, but he had the same pallid, pinched expression as the other lad, with wary, anxious eyes.

  ‘So what did you do, if your master was missing?’ demanded de Wolfe.

  Edward shrugged. ‘He never likes us prying into his business, sir. He can get very angry with us.’ His eyes strayed to Harry’s, and de Wolfe noticed some mutual signal seemed to pass between them.

  ‘If this happened early in the morning, why did it take until this afternoon to discover him?’ Brother Rufus entered the questioning.

  ‘We didn’t need water until then,’ explained Edward, hesitantly. ‘I had filled the big jar in the kitchen last night and only went to the well about an hour ago as I had to carry a few buckets for the young plants in the vegetable patch.’ His voice went up a few tones. ‘It was then that I saw him. I almost hit him with the bucket, but pulled back on the rope in time.’

  Though both boys looked scared, de Wolfe could see no signs of sorrow for the sudden death of their lord – he suspected that it was not a matter of particular regret to them.

  Gwyn had worked out a way to retrieve the master shoemaker from his pit. ‘Someone will have to go down and pass this rope under his shoulders.’

  He looked speculatively at the elder boy, but de Wolfe shook his head. ‘You can’t ask him to handle his master’s corpse. I’ll go, you take the strain.’

  Osric vetoed this. ‘You are too big a man, Crowner, and Gwyn is even bigger. I’m thin and light so I’ll do it.’

  Gwyn untied the bucket and wrapped the line twice around his middle, then threw the free end down the well. The skinny constable tucked his tunic up into his belt, revealing his nakedness underneath, apart from his thigh-length woollen hose. He climbed nimbly down the rope, his feet against the inside wall, Gwyn’s bulk taking the strain.

  ‘It’s not deep,’ said Edward reassuringly. ‘Only a couple of feet, since this dry weather.’ He seemed to have become more confident since these strange men had not treated him unkindly.

  Osric lowered his feet into the water and sank well above the knees, his feet squeezing down into soft mud at the bottom. Quickly, he bent over the corpse and passed the rope under an armpit and across the chest. He tied it firmly between the shoulder-blades, then signalled to the ring of faces above.

  Gwyn stepped on to the rim of the well, one foot each side and hauled straight up, with the burly monk leaning out to keep the line in the centre to avoid the body scraping against the rough stones of the shaft.

  With a squelch and a splash, it left the water and, almost at once, Osric gave a yell. ‘There’s a damned great stone hanging around his neck!’

  With Gwyn straining every sinew to hoist Fitz-William up, there was no chance to pause for an investigation. Grunting and cursing breathlessly, he hauled the body level with the parapet, and Rufus and John reached out to pull it in to the side and roll it over on to the ground. Red in the face, Gwyn stepped down and threw a look of triumph at his master. ‘What did I tell you, Crowner?’

  Still unconvinced, de Wolfe gave one of his grunts. ‘Could be a suicide – we’ve both seen folk tie a weight to themselves to make sure.’

  Gwyn snorted his derision as he untied the rope from both himself and the corpse. He threw the end back down the well to rescue Osric, who nimbly scaled the shaft with Rufus taking the strain at the top.

  When they were all together again, they turned to the body, which lay crumpled, face down, in the yard. The two boys stood at a distance with Thomas de Peyne, Edward with his arm still around Harry’s shoulders, as if protecting him against the world as they watched with horrified fascination.

  ‘Turn him over, Gwyn. Let’s make sure it is Fitz-William.’

  As soon as de Wolfe saw the face, discoloured though it was, he knew that this was the master shoemaker, for he had seen him about the town and at various Guild functions. Of middle age, he had fair hair cut short on his neck and a sparse beard and moustache.

  ‘He’s pretty blue in the face. Is that cord strangling him?’ asked the chaplain, pointing at a thin line wrapped around his neck.

  De Wolfe bent down and put a finger between the cord and the skin. ‘No, it’s loose – the blueness is because he was face down for many hours, the blood sinks that way.’

  ‘No wonder he was face down with that damned great weight hanging around his neck.’ Gwyn lifted a crudely circular stone from Fitz-William’s chest. It was about a foot across and had a hole chiseled in the centre, through which the cord passed to suspend it from his neck.

  ‘That’s the top half of a hand quern, surely?’ exclaimed the monk.

  The Cornishman slid the twine loop over the dead man’s head and stood up with the stone in his hands. He hefted it to gauge its weight then passed it to the coroner. ‘A good many pounds, that. It would certainly drop him head first under the water and keep him there.’

  De Wolfe grinned lopsidedly at his officer, as he well knew what was in his mind. ‘Go on then, Gwyn. Perform your usual trick.’

  The ginger giant dropped to his knees and placed the palms of his hands on the corpse’s chest and pressed hard. A gush of froth, tinged pink, erupted from Fitz-William’s nostrils and lips. Gwyn looked up, a satisfied smile on his face. ‘Drowned, no doubt about it. He was certainly alive when he went down the shaft.’

  ‘So why did he let someone hang a quern around his neck?’ demanded Rufus, to whom coroner’s enquiries were a novelty.

  ‘Perhaps for the same reason that the priest at St Mary Arches let someone push his face into a bowl of communion wine. Have a look, Gwyn.’

  Still on his knees, the officer ran his big fingers over the sodden hair of the deceased and almost immediately found what they expected. ‘Swollen at the back – and I can feel a cut, with the bone crackling underneath. No blood, as the water has soaked it off.’ He stood up and wiped his fingers on his tattered tunic. ‘Exactly the same as the others. A hefty whack on the head from behind.’

  Thomas, who had kept his distance while they prodded the corpse, left the two lads to come across to them. With a rather furtive glance at the boys, he pointed to the quern, which John still held. ‘That’s part of a hand-mill for corn, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, a woman’s mill for the cook-house. It sits on another flat stone and she pours grain through the hole, then turns it round with her hands.’

  ‘Then I know what it means here – the scriptures again,’ said the clerk.

  Before he had a chance to explain, Brother Rufus be
at him to it. ‘Yes, Crowner, it’s obvious. The Gospels say, “Who so shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea.” ’ He jerked his head significantly in the direction of the two boys.

  Thomas glared at the chaplain, outraged that he had stolen his thunder in front of his master. It was his task to interpret for Sir John, not this fat stranger! But worse was to come for the little clerk, as Rufus leaned over to look more closely at the quern. ‘Now that it’s drying, there are marks appearing – there!’ He pointed to some small scratches on the top surface, which appeared as fresh as those on the parapet of the well.

  De Wolfe looked at them, but could make no sense of them.

  ‘Turn it round – they’re upside down this way,’ commanded the monk. ‘Now, see there – they read MT, MK and LK. That can only mean Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Gospels that record those particular words of Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Yes, St John doesn’t mention it,’ snapped Thomas, but he was too late, the monk had already stolen his glory.

  The four men looked at each other then rather covertly at the two boys, who still stood together, watching them warily.

  ‘Is there no one else in the house?’ asked John.

  ‘No one. Fitz-William’s wife died in childbed years ago,’ answered Osric. ‘The lads work in the cordwainer’s shop during the day and wait upon the master when they return home. They were orphans, it seems, whom he brought here from a priory near Dorchester a couple of years ago.’

  John rubbed his black stubble reflectively. ‘Then for their own sakes they had better be looked after in another priory here. St John’s is but a few yards away and they have almshouses and few orphans, as well as their hospital. I know Brother Saulf, who runs the infirmary. I’m sure he will take them in, at least for the time being.’

  He lowered his voice to avoid the boys hearing him. ‘If this millstone business is what we think it means, then some delicate questioning is needed – but not at the moment.’

  Together with the nearby hospital of St Alexis, founded by a wealthy city merchant a quarter of a century earlier, the priory of St John cared for most of the sick in Exeter. A mile or so away, the nuns at Polsloe Priory specialised in childbirth and women’s ailments. For the destitute, the aged sick and the beggars, St Alexis was the main refuge, but abandoned or orphaned children usually found a home in a priory or monastery, where they were often brought up to enter the Church.

  Brother Saulf, a tall, wiry Saxon, administered the infirmary at St John’s and had helped the coroner on several occasions, the last when Thomas de Peyne had injured himself in his abortive suicide attempt. He sat now with the coroner, Gwyn and Thomas in a small room inside the porch of the priory. Brother Rufus had taken himself off to his little chapel in Rougemont and Osric had gone about his business, which included informing the two Portreeves that the city had just lost one of its burgesses.

  The two boys had been delivered to the priory an hour before, and Saulf had settled them down in the refectory until it had been decided what was to be done with them. ‘They are apprentices of a sort, though Harry is very young,’ he explained to de Wolfe. ‘I had a long talk with them and they would like to continue at Fitz-William’s shop, to get themselves a trade for the future.’

  ‘Will the business survive his death?’ asked John.

  ‘No doubt of it. He has a partner with an equal share. They have half a dozen craftsmen making shoes in Curre Street,fn1 as well as the shop in High Street. The lads can carry on there and come back here to sleep until some better arrangement can be made. Maybe eventually the partner can accommodate them at the workplace.’ He gazed candidly at de Wolfe. ‘I think it best if they stayed here for some time, where they can feel safe and not be preyed upon as they were before.’

  De Wolfe nodded, understanding. ‘You think it’s true then, that they were maltreated by Fitz-William?’

  ‘They admitted it to me, softly and reluctantly. He had brought them from Dorchester because they would not be known in the city.’

  John had difficulty in suppressing the outrage he felt at two lonely boys being preyed upon by a pederast like Fitz-William. ‘Osric said he had heard rumours about Fitz-William from men in his shop, but there was no proof. He thinks the boys were too cowed to mention anything outside that damned house.’

  ‘Our killer obviously knew the truth of it,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘For once, I feel he’s done the world a service in getting rid of that bastard.’

  ‘It should have been through the process of the law, though I agree that dangling from a rope was too good for Fitz-William,’ snapped the coroner.

  Saulf brought them back to practicalities. ‘What are we to do with the corpse?’ he asked. ‘It lies in our little mortuary now, but with this weather warming up it won’t last long.’

  ‘I’ll hold my usual fruitless inquest in the morning, then he can be buried. Osric is finding out whether he has relatives hereabouts. If not, his damned Guild will have to pay for his funeral.’

  ‘It seems wrong to give such a man a decent plot in the cathedral Close,’ growled Gwyn. ‘He should be left to hang in a gibbet cage until he rots!’

  ‘We can’t bring a corpse to trial, so he can never be judged guilty.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be judged and sentenced by Almighty God,’ promised Brother Saulf, whose voice confirmed his absolute faith in heavenly justice.

  ‘I wonder what He will make of his killer, though?’ mused de Wolfe.

  A modest cavalcade set out from the South Gate shortly after noon on the next day, to meet the King’s Justices and escort them into the city. Ralph Morin, the constable of Rougemont, was in the lead, with a dozen men-at-arms behind him. As Richard de Revelle was eager to make the best impression, they were all in full battle array, even though there had been no fighting in Devon for decades.

  Morin made an imposing figure on a big black stallion, his massive frame draped in a long hauberk of chain-mail, each link laboriously shined with fine sand to get rid of the rust. In a round iron helmet with a prominent nose-guard, the huge, bearded man resembled his Norse ancestors. Like the men behind him, he had a huge sword dangling at his waist, hung from the leather baldric over his shoulder, and his left arm was thrust through the loop of a kite-shaped shield. As they trotted proudly through the streets, the older Saxons and Celts they thrust aside had a brief but unpleasant reminder that these were still the invaders who had come with the Conqueror to dispossess them of their land and their heritage.

  Behind the military vanguard came the less belligerentlooking members of the procession. The sheriff was first, as the King’s representative in the county. Dressed in a dandified outfit of gold-trimmed green, he rode alongside Thomas de Boterellis, who had been told by the Bishop to represent him. Behind him was John de Alençon, appearing for the clergy of the city. His riding companion was Sir John de Wolfe, who as the county coroner ranked immediately behind the sheriff in the pecking order of law officers. Then came the two Portreeves, Henry Rifford and Hugh de Relaga, the latter outshining even de Revelle in a peacock-blue surcoat and feathered cap. The tail-end of the line of horses carried some clerks from the castle and court, as well as a pair of Guild Masters, the whole entourage protected at the rear by Sergeant Gabriel and another six soldiers, also attired in hauberk and helmet.

  As they jogged along, harnesses jingling, the horses’ hoofs threw up clouds of dust from the main road. De Wolfe was dressed in his usual black tunic and grey breeches, and was feeling warm under his short wolfskin cape. Unlike most of the others, who wore a variety of headgear, he was bare-headed and his thick jet hair bounced over his collar as Odin steadily thumped his great feet on the track.

  As they passed the public execution site on Magdalen Street, free from business on a Monday, the Archdeacon waved at the sinister shape of the empty gallows. ‘Any chance of finding a customer for that, John?’

 
De Wolfe had told him earlier of the latest killing and its now familiar biblical signature. ‘We have no idea at all. I had hoped that he would make some slip that would help us find him, but there’s been nothing.’

  ‘The royal judges are not going to be pleased, sitting in a town with a clutch of unsolved murders,’ the Archdeacon said, with a hint of grim satisfaction as he nodded towards the sheriff.

  ‘That’s why he’s looking so agitated today,’ replied John with a wolfish grin. ‘He has a cartload of problems already – the Dartmoor tinners want to get rid of him as their Warden, the Justices know of his leaning towards Prince John, his accounting for the county “farm” is more than suspect, and now he has four unsolved homicides perpetrated by a city priest.’

  The ‘farm’ to which he referred was the total annual tax revenue for Devonshire. It was fixed each year by the King and his ministers, and the sheriff had to ensure its collection from the people, then deliver it in person twice a year to the royal treasury in Winchester. If he could screw more out of the population than the agreed amount he could keep the excess – which was why so many candidates, including barons and bishops, competed fiercely, with bribes and inducements, whenever a sheriff’s post fell vacant. Some nobles even managed to be sheriff of two or more counties at the same time!

  The cavalacade trotted on for a few more miles along the road towards Honiton, the first town to the east. The countryside was pleasant in the late spring sunshine, primroses and bluebells still abundant. The trees were now in full leaf and white scented mayflower was scattered on the thorn bushes. They passed ox-carts, donkeys, flocks of sheep, squealing pigs and all the usual traffic until eventually, the castle constable spotted a distant cloud of red dust. One of the men-at-arms behind him blew a blast on his horn to signal that the judicial party was in sight. A few minutes later, the two processions met and pulled off into a clearing beneath the trees to make the formal greetings and assemble themselves for the march to Exeter. The sheriff of Somerset had provided a dozen soldiers as an escort from Taunton; they now turned round and made for home. Horses and ponies milled around as the arrivals moved among the Exeter party for the formal arm-grippings and hand-shakings.