The Grim Reaper

by Bernard Knight

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In which Crowner John goes to court

  Early next morning, the King’s Justices attended Mass at the cathedral, and the Bishop himself officiated, which was rare indeed. It was an official event, the preliminary to the opening of the Eyre and, like it or not, all the law officers and their hangers-on had to attend.

  A ll the canons who were not away from the city were there, as were the sheriff, coroner, constable, Portreeves, many burgesses, clerks, and a bevy of lesser officials and priests. When the service was over, the leading participants paraded solemnly through the city streets to Rougemont. They were escorted by a troop of Ralph Morin’s men-at-arms, led by Sergeant Gabriel, who, to the accompaniment of raucous blasts on their war-horns, pushed aside the curious onlookers to make way for the austere quartet of Justices and their acolytes.

  At the castle, an attempt had been made to make the barn-like Shire Hall more presentable for this important session, which would last well over a week. Banners and tapestries had been draped at each end, and along the walls a line of shields sported freshly painted armorial bearings of the Devon barons. Another dais had been erected at the other end, so that two sets of proceedings could be held simultaneously: the two pairs of Justices had to work at the same time to get through all the cases. More trestle tables had been brought in for the clerks, and towards the front of the platforms, several large chairs borrowed from the keep and from various burgesses, provided seating for the judges and senior officials.

  In the body of the hall and spilling outside into the inner ward of Rougemont, a mass of people milled around. They were mainly jurors, called from the many Hundreds of the county, with witnesses, petitioners, appealers and their families, all trying to get what passed for justice. As the session wore on, relays of soldiers brought bedraggled prisoners from the cells under the keep and the two constables, aided by some hired thugs, escorted more miscreants from the larger burgesses’ gaol in the towers of the South Gate.

  The aloof Sir Peter Peverel sat with Gervase de Bosco, the archdeacon from Gloucester. They dealt mainly with civil proceedings, mostly disputes about land and boundaries, matters of inheritance and claims from widows on their late husbands’ property. Sir Walter de Ralegh took the Chancery clerk, Serlo de Vallibus, with him to the other end of the hall, where most of their labours concerned felony, outlawry, suspicious deaths and the seedier side of Devonshire life.

  The sheriff and the coroner were obliged to stay at the court the whole time, unless pressing business took them elsewhere. De Wolfe had to justify his title, Keeper of the King’s Pleas, by presenting the numerous cases with which he had dealt and Thomas de Peyne found he had no time for miserable reflection.

  Though de Wolfe had attended an Eyre before, this was the first since he had become coroner. Somewhat bemused by the frenetic activity, he had little time to speak to either Gwyn or Thomas. The latter was almost panting with exertion as he ran around with plea rolls and Gwyn was doing sterling service in delivering and collecting parchments from various benches, at the direction of John or his clerk.

  After a couple of hours, the Justices, well used to their routine, called a halt for refreshment and the strangely subdued sheriff escorted them across to his chambers in the keep for wine and pastries. As he left, he gestured for John to accompany them, but the coroner wanted to use the lull to speak to his assistants.

  ‘Gwyn, did you learn anything from the crowd in the street last night?’

  ‘Nothing worthwhile – no one seemed to know who was lurking inside.’

  ‘Did anyone see anything suspicious?’

  Gwyn scratched his crotch vigorously as an aid to memory. ‘One young lad said he thought he saw someone in a black mantle coming out of the side passage a few minutes before the fire was spotted, but he might have been romancing – though another old fellow also claims he saw a tall figure with a hood standing in the entrance to the passage alongside the house, but he spoilt it by saying that men are always slipping in and out of there, the place being partly used as a bawdy house.’

  De Wolfe turned to the silent clerk. ‘What about you, Thomas? Did you get the mattress in the Bush?’

  ‘I did indeed, master. God bless you for your kindness – and that of Mistress Nesta, who fed me too.’

  ‘We needed you last night, but Brother Rufus took over your task of deciphering that text.’

  An expression of mortification crept over the little man’s face. ‘Forgive me, Crowner. I was trying to find a secondary who had borrowed my precious book of the sayings of St Augustine. He was not in the Close and I had to search Priest Street to find him.’

  Uneasily, de Wolfe thought that although this was an excuse that might be true, it was impossible to prove or deny.

  ‘I found Thomas at the Bush and dragged him back to Waterbeer Street to check those scratches,’ declared Gwyn.

  The clerk bobbed his head in solemn agreement. ‘That castle chaplain was quite right – the text was from Paul to the Romans, though the words were used out of context. I suppose the writer needed to twist them to suit the circumstances.’

  ‘Do you read anything into them?’ demanded John.

  ‘The coals-of-fire part is obvious, naming the means he used to try to kill the––’

  Afraid that Thomas might blurt out the sheriff’s name in public, John jabbed a finger to his lips. ‘What about the vengeance part?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘It can only mean that this was revenge for some evil act. But God alone knows what that might have been.’ He jerkily made the Sign of the Cross as he uttered the words.

  At that moment the justices returned and carried on trying cases until late morning, when they broke for their midday dinner.

  All manner of events were looked into by the keeneared Justices, mainly with a view to squeezing money out of the population for the royal treasury. Many of these events involved deaths, both homicidal, accidental and suicidal, though the mortal sin of felo de se was relatively uncommon. It was in these cases that de Wolfe was constantly involved, reporting on his investigations, with the invaluable help of Thomas’s precious parchment rolls.

  They rushed through the hearings at breakneck speed, though de Wolfe was impressed by the fairness of most judgements, even though the penalties on conviction were harsh. Many cases were dismissed from lack of evidence, and quite a number of prisoners and men under attachment fines were released, to the noisy delight of their families.

  A few lawyers attended the more affluent defendants, though their efforts were mainly concerned with the civil arguments, where the fees and pickings were greater than with those accused of crimes, who were usually poor or destitute. John was glad when the halfday break was called and this time had no hesitation in joining the judges for food and drink in the hall of the castle, provided somewhat reluctantly by the sheriff out of his own purse. He sat on the main table, reserved for the Justices and law officers, finding himself next to Serlo de Vallibus, the Chancery clerk. Many low-born but able men, such as de Vallibus, rose to positions of power in the government of England and being appointed as a Justice of Eyre was a significant stepping-stone to such prominence. Opposite was the gruff Walter de Ralegh, with Richard de Revelle alongside him, and further down the table the two other judges sat with the Portreeves and senior churchmen, who had come to listen to the morning’s proceedings.

  After they had attacked their bowls of stew and trenchers loaded with meat, they began to gossip. The notorious Exeter grapevine had been busy already, as de Ralegh’s first words confirmed: ‘Now, de Revelle, tell us more about these remarkable murders you have had in the city. We had heard of them in Somerset, but I gather you have had more since then.’

  This was the last topic that the sheriff wanted to discuss, but he had little choice. He tried to make light of the killings and dismiss them as just another facet of urban life, but de Ralegh would have none of it. ‘Come, Sheriff, it’s a poor state of affairs to have a string
of unsolved slaughters within your walls at the very time that the Eyre of Assize is visiting. Puts a rather poor complexion on your stewardship here, eh?’

  This was just what de Revelle had feared so he tried to shift the onus on to the coroner: ‘De Wolfe here can tell you about them. He’s the investigator – not that he’s had much success, poor fellow.’

  De Wolfe scowled at his brother-in-law and flashed him a warning glance, given the fragile state of his credit.

  ‘Crowner, bring us up to date. I heard that even last night there was trouble that was likely to have been the work of this Grim Reaper.’

  This was Serlo, whose sibilant voice seemed always to carry a veiled threat. John wondered how he had got to hear of the arson attack so quickly and concluded that his clerks must be professional spies.

  Somewhat reluctantly, de Wolfe summarised the story of the four murders and the arson attack, carefully leaving out the slightest hint of the involvement of the sheriff.

  ‘So this madman seems to have a grudge against whores, if one was also in that burning house,’ commented de Ralegh. John was happy to let him think so and went on to describe the biblical references that made it certain that the culprit was a priest.

  Walter, who seemed the dominant member of the judicial quartet, was impatient about the city’s inability to catch the killer.

  ‘If he’s a cleric, surely you can catch the swine?’ de Ralegh barked. ‘Interrogate every one, put any likely suspects to the torture until you get a confession.’

  Further down the table heads turned, especially those of the senior cathedral canons, the Archdeacon and Precentor. The look on their faces told what they thought of de Ralegh’s robust solution.

  Serlo de Vallibus had a more realistic notion of the situation. ‘Walter, that would be difficult. I gather there are more than a hundred religious men of various rank in this city. Almost all come under the jurisdiction and protection of the Lord Bishop – the cathedral precinct is not even within the purview of the secular law. The clergy cannot be coerced – the Pope himself would be enraged if it came to his ears.’

  De Ralegh, a former soldier with a fiery reputation, snorted at this but held his tongue. However, Sir Peter Peverel, listening across the table, took up the criticism of the law officers. ‘It seems incredible that in a walled city such as this, with the gates closed at night and constables walking the streets, that a killer can strike repeatedly and with apparent impunity.’

  Stung by these criticisms of his wardship, de Revelle launched into an exaggerated account of the investigations and hinted that lack of co-operation on the part of the cathedral authorities was part of the reason for their failure. This provoked an angry response from Thomas de Boterellis and soon a first-class argument had broken out along the table. It petered out after everyone had declaimed their pet theories and impractical solutions. Much to de Wolfe’s dismay, Serlo de Vallibus had the last word: ‘I also hear that a favoured candidate for these crimes is your own clerk, de Wolfe. A most unsavoury and unstable person, ejected from the Church, but well versed in the scriptures and adeptly literate. Neither has he any alibi for each of these evil events, so I am told.’

  Red with annoyance, John almost shouted his denials and ended with a final declaration of Thomas’s innocence: ‘I would stake my own life on it. And remember, he was the very one who deciphered the biblical clues in almost every case.’

  De Vallibus smiled his icy smile. ‘And that might be the best sign of his cunning, Crowner.’

  When the afternoon session began, de Wolfe was still smarting as the Justices’ criticisms of their hunt for the murderer and their accusations against Thomas de Peyne. He glowered throughout the long proceedings, making his many presentations with a thunderous face. After an hour or so, there was a diversion: Sergeant Gabriel pushed his way through the throng to report that a man had been knifed in a brawl down on the quayside. Unable to leave the Shire Hall himself, he sent Gwyn to investigate.

  The cases came and went, men shuffled and jostled as the juries of the various Hundreds were called to account. De Wolfe had to listen to an endless catalogue of rural dramas that had occured over the past ten months. The requisite twelve jurors of Teignbridge Hundred reported that Adam le Pale took refuge in the church after robbing a traveller and then abjured the realm.

  Budleigh Hundred produced only nine jurors and the missing three were ‘put in mercy’ by the judges to the tune of two marks each.

  The sergeant of Plympton Hundred reported the washing up of a tun of wine on the beach, worth six shillings and eight-pence, but as the barrel was only half full when viewed by the coroner, they were amerced five shillings.

  The cases went on and on – drownings, crushing by carts, rapes, murdrum fines, sentences of death, arguments over fences, declarations of outlawry, claims on land by ancient tenure and the finding of treasure trove were the endless grist to the legal mill. John was quite bemused by the early evening when the court adjourned, though one case remained in his memory. The jurors of Axminster Hundred presented that William de Pisswelle was suspect because he ate, drank and dressed expensively, yet they did not know where his money came from, but suspected that he stole pigs. They were unable to support their accusation with any evidence of William’s wrongdoing, so the Justices dismissed the case and fined the jurors ten shillings for malice!

  With this example of good sense in his mind, de Wolfe made his way home where, as he had anticipated, Matilda was in a ferment of excitement and anxiety about the banquet in the Bishop’s Palace that evening. He was banished to Mary’s kitchen-hut in the yard while his wife and Lucille fussed over her kirtle, apparently requiring the dining table to spread it out and run a heated smoothing iron over the skirt.

  There was no meal at home that night, in anticipation of lavish episcopal victuals, but Mary had made some honey-filled pastry cups and, with a cold leg of chicken, de Wolfe staved off the pangs of hunger. As he washed down the food with a quart of cider, Mary sat with him at the kitchen table, while he told her of the scenes in the Shire Hall that day. When he indignantly mentioned the Justices’ comments about Thomas, she nodded sadly. ‘It’s all over the town already,’ she said. ‘At the bread stall, I heard a man telling Will Baker that the crowner’s clerk was about to be arrested and hanged – stupid fool!’

  She looked up anxiously at her master for, like Nesta, she had a soft spot for the ex-priest. ‘There’s no chance that he––’

  Mary failed to get the words out, but John banged his pot on the table, his anger covering his own concern. ‘Of course not, woman! Can you see that poor wretch as a multiple killer? He faints if he as much as cuts his own finger!’

  Outside there was a babble of voices and crunching of feet as Matilda and her maid came through the side passage, holding the precious gown between them. De Wolfe jumped up, feeling guilty without knowing why he should, in time to see them climbing the steps to the solar, where no doubt Lucille would lever her mistress into the dress then start the laborious business of arranging her hair – a process that always invoked a stream of invective from Matilda. As they vanished into the upper room and slammed the door, John slunk back into the kitchen-hut to finish his drink.

  ‘I’ll give them half an hour, then I’d better go up and get into my best tunic.’ He rubbed a hand over his chin. ‘I’ll run a comb through my hair to please her, but I don’t need a wash, do I, Mary?’

  She examined his face critically, then planted a swift kiss on his dark-shadowed cheek. ‘You’ll last until next Saturday, Sir Crowner – though don’t go kissing any girls or your stubble will rip their faces!’

  Eventually he braved the two women upstairs to collect his best clothes from the chest in the solar and went down to the hall to put them on, where Mary gave him the clean linen shirt that was his only undergarment. Against Matilda’s desire for more flamboyant dress, he put on a grey tunic that reached below his knees, a wide belt of black leather with a Moorish silver buckle, b
lack woollen hose and a pair of ankle-length soft boots, with only modestly pointed toes. The evening was warm enough for him to dispense with a mantle or pelisse, but he pulled on an armless surcoat of a darker grey and was ready to go.

  However, familiar with Matilda’s dilatory ways, he sat down again by his empty hearth and fondled Brutus’s ears while he pondered his current problems, foremost of which was the apparent invincibility of the man he had come to think of as the Gospel killer. Linked to that was a nagging worry over Thomas – his continuing depression and the insidious rumours about his involvement in the murders. His hound seemed to share in his worries for, with a sigh, he laid his head on his master’s thigh, giving him a soulful look of sympathy and a streak of frothy saliva on his best tunic.

  De Wolfe’s ruminations were ended by the grand entry of his wife, with Lucille running behind to make adjustments to the new kirtle of green silk. Though Matilda could never have been beautiful, if she had lost her perpetual expression of sullen ill-temper, she might have been handsome. In her fine clothes, with bell-shaped sleeves sweeping the floor and a white satin gorget pinned under the snowy coverchief that framed her face, she looked every inch a Norman lady. De Wolfe sometimes felt that only her love of finery kept her from entering a nunnery and wondered whether the latest bitterness and shame over her brother’s behaviour might tip the balance in favour of her taking the veil.

  Lucille had her mistress’s mantle across her arm and now helped her drape the scarlet velvet across her broad back and secure it with a round gold brooch on the front of the right shoulder.

  ‘Are you ready, husband?’ grated Matilda, eyeing his dull outfit with distaste. Feeling like a crow alongside a peacock, he escorted her back through the screen around the door into the vestibule, where he took his wide-brimmed black hat from a peg and held the front door open for her.