The Elixir of Death

by Bernard Knight

  Thomas paled and turned to stare out of the doorway as Gwyn handed the bolt to his master, oblivious of the blood dripping on to the earthern floor.

  'It's a hunting quarrel, Crowner. A nasty piece of work.' John took the short arrow and examined the bloody front end. He stooped to pick up a piece of sacking that lay across a crate and wiped most of the blood away. The tip of the bolt was of iron, shaped like a four-sided pyramid, designed to cause more damage than a flat arrowhead. Now that it was less bloody, Godfrey stared at it with disgust.

  'I've known Adam almost all my life. Now the poor man is dead from a mistake.' He took the short arrow from John's hand. 'This was meant for me, I'm sure.'

  Thomas wandered back from the doorway, hoping that the more disgusting parts of the examination were over. 'Can you tell anything from it, Sir John?' he asked in his reedy voice.

  'It's just an ordinary hunting quarrel,' replied the coroner. 'A deadly weapon at close range. I was hit by a Saracen bolt at Ascalon. Thank God it was a glancing shot which bounced off my chain mail, though I had a bruise there for weeks.'

  'Speaking of Saracens, can I have another look?' asked Gwyn. He took the bolt from Godfrey and turned it over in his hands. Then to Thomas's disgust, he held it to his nose and sniffed at the flights, before passing it over to de Wolfe.

  'Smell anything, Crowner? And look closely at the fletching.'

  John had considerable faith in his officer's intuition and did as Gwyn suggested. His black eyebrows rose and he turned to the elder brother.

  'Let's see the other quarrel, the one that injured William,' he commanded, and they made their way back upstairs. The bolt had been picked up by the bailiff when they rushed to William's aid and brought back to the hall, where it lay discarded on one of the tables.

  The coroner picked it up, sniffed it and then compared it with the other one.

  'Exactly the same - and the smell is identical,' he declared.

  Godfrey and several servants gathered near by, staring at him blankly. They were all well used to cross-bow bolts, used in hunting everything from foxes to otters, but they had never seen anyone smell one before.

  'What are you saying, Sir John?' asked Godfrey.

  'Gwyn spotted it first. On the leather of the flights there are some faint hammerings. And they smell of spices or scent.'

  He held out a bolt to le Calve and with a long forefinger pointed to some marks pressed into the leather of the triangular flights.

  'That's Moorish writing, though God knows what it means. Together with that smell, it suggests that these bolts came from the Levant. And presumably so do the bastards who fired them!'

  John de Wolfe was careful to delay his departure from Shillingford until well past the time when his brother-inlaw and his wife would have left Exeter to ride on to Tiverton. He managed this by accepting the hospitality of Godfrey le Calve and having a good meal in the hall. Then he had another few words with William, to see whether there was anything at all he remembered which might help to identify the assailants. The younger brother was still very pale and thankfully showed no signs of fever from his wound mortifying, though it was early days yet. Lady Isobel sat with him and impressed John with her air of calm efficiency. He wondered what would become of her now that her protector Peter le Calve was dead. She was much younger than he had been and the coroner idly speculated that perhaps the affections of one of his sons might turn her way, though it was probable that they were already married themselves.

  William had nothing to tell him, knowing only that his steward had suddenly stumbled against him, probably saving his life by knocking him out of the line of fire of the accurate killer in the trees. The second quarrel had sliced through the outer part of his arm and from then on he lost all interest in anything except his pain and bleeding.

  The next activity that the coroner used to delay his departure was a visit to the scene of the crime. With Godfrey and several of the senior manor servants, he went with Gwyn and Thomas past the strip-fields behind the manor-house. These were still partly in stubble from the last harvest, though two ox-teams were slowly ploughing, ready for harrowing and winter planting. Beyond these were meadows where sheep and a few milk cows were competing with pigs and goats for the last of the autumn grass. A few lads were guarding them, with much yelling and waving of sticks.

  This good pasture petered out into waste ground, which had been assarted earlier in the year and in which tree stumps and bushes still remained to be grubbed out and burned. The edge of the standing forest ran along like a dark wave at the top of a rising crest of land. Though many of the leaves had fallen, the trees were not yet bare and there was a mass of bracken, bramble and scrubby undergrowth along the edge to give cover to anyone lurking in the woods.

  As they approached the spot where the hawk-master said the two men had fallen, they were met by the bailiff, the reeve and several villeins, who were emerging from the forest after searching for several hours.

  'Nothing at all, my lord,' reported the bailiff, touching his cap to Godfrey. 'We've been a mile in both directions. Nothing to see anywhere, not even a hoof print.'

  A spattering of fresh blood blackened the grass where William had fallen. Standing near it, de Wolfe scanned the edge of the forest, which was about fifty paces distant. Then he loped to the nearest trees and pushed into the undergrowth, the brambles snagging his calf-length grey tunic. With Gwyn at his side and Thomas creeping uncertainly behind, he studied the ground, the trees and the bushes for a few yards each way and back into the darkness of the wood. As the bailiff had said, there was nothing to see - no strands of cloth caught on thorns or discarded arrows on the ground. On the walk back to the hall, he questioned the search party, which comprised most of the senior servants of the le Calve manor, asking whether any strangers had been seen since the previous day. The answer was in the negative once again.

  'No mysterious monks this time?' he demanded, thinking of the old man's recollection when Peter le Calve had been done to death so horribly. Once again, there was much reluctant shaking of heads, and all that remained for John to do was to hold a quick inquest on Adam le Bel, to save him returning to Shillingford yet again. With the manor servants as jury and witnesses, he held his inquisition over the body of the old steward in the undercroft. As the circumstances were so straightforward, even if totally obscure, the formality took no more than a few minutes. In fact, the longest time was spent in waiting for Thomas de Peyne to inscribe the proceedings on a roll of parchment, a process that consisted mainly of recording the names of the jurors.

  'Yet another bloody inquest with no result!' snarled John as the three rode back towards Exeter later that afternoon. 'The four shipmen, the lord of Shillingford and now its steward - all verdicts of 'murder by persons unknown'! We're losing our touch!'

  'What about this notion that we are dealing with Saracens?' grunted Gwyn, pulling the collar of his jerkin closer against the biting east wind.

  'It bears thinking about, as the signs are adding up,' replied the coroner. 'We have those curved wounds, which would fit a Moorish blade. Then those silken cords seem strangely oriental, as does the embossing on these leathern arrow flights and their spicy odour.'

  Thomas, who, since he had taken to riding a horse like a man, was more able to keep up with them, spoke from John's other side. 'I also think, Crowner, that the mode of killing Sir Peter is significant.'

  John turned his long face to his clerk and waited for him to elaborate. In spite of his often disparaging manner towards the little man, he was well aware of Thomas's intelligence and learning and had come to respect his opinions.

  'I sense that his death was a deliberate insult to our Christian faith!' stated the clerk, emphatically.

  Gwyn of Polruan groaned. 'To you, little turd, everything turns on your bloody religious fancies!'

  'Let him speak, man!' snapped the coroner. 'What do you mean, Thomas?'

  'The victim was subjected to a parody of the crucifixion, his ou
tstretched arms lashed to that branch. Then his severed head was impaled not on some pole at a crossroads or on the Exe Bridge, but in the holiest of Christian sites in western England, our Lord's cathedral church of Exeter! Surely no Christian, however depraved, would go to such deliberate lengths to so contemptuously disparage our faith!'

  De Wolfe nodded slowly, digesting the priest's earnest argument.

  'And if not Christians, then they are likely to be Moors?'

  Thomas eagerly agreed. 'Sir Peter had been a Crusader, like his father before him. Maybe this was a gesture of revenge for his taking the Cross against their own faith. There were many awful atrocities committed against them, which also affected innocent civilians.'

  Gwyn was still dubious, though he never missed an opportunity to contradict the clerk. 'Both Sir John here and myself were at the Crusades, but no one has tried to cut off our heads! And what of the younger le Calve sons? They have never set foot in Palestine, but someone has loosed off cross-bow bolts at them.'

  Thomas looked crestfallen at this logical demolition of his argument, but John came to his rescue.

  'What you say has good sense behind it, Thomas. But we must wait and see what develops. God knows how we are to further this quest, as these attackers seem to melt away like the snow that is surely coming soon.'

  He looked up at the grey sky and was glad to see the skyline of the city appear around the bend in the trackway. The return to Martin's Lane also meant, however, that he would soon have to meet the wrath of Matilda for absenting himself from lunch with his brother-in-law.

  With a sigh, he touched Odin's flank with a spur, wishing he had to face Saladin and a thousand screaming Saracens rather than his wife.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In which Crowner John falls out with Matilda

  The old hound Brutus slunk to the door of the hall, his tail between his legs. As he nuzzled it ajar and slipped out to seek solace in Mary's kitchen shed, he left a blazing row behind him.

  'Does shaming me come naturally to you, John - or do you practise it daily until you reach this perfection?' snarled Matilda, standing by the long table, which was cluttered with the debris of the meal he had missed.

  'I have the King's duties to attend to, woman,' he yelled back, his short temper now well alight. 'Duties which, as I recall, you were desperate for me to undertake last year when you insisted that I become coroner.'

  Arms akimbo, fists placed on her thick waist, his wife abandoned all pretence of being a sophisticated county lady and descended to the body language and vocabulary of a fishwife from the quayside.

  'Duties! Duties! By Christ and his Virgin Mother, have you no duties to your wife and family? My brother, who you ruined by your cheap jealousy and spite, gave you unstinting hospitality at Revelstoke barely more than a sennight ago, yet you insult him by deliberately shunning your duty as host for a mere single dinner.'

  'Did I deliberately arrange for William le Calve to be sorely injured by a cross-bow bolt - and have his steward killed on the spot?' raved John. 'What would you have me do - tell the lord of Shillingford that I cannot attend his crisis, as my brother-in-law is coming to dinner?'

  Matilda crashed her substantial fist on to the table, making the platters and pots rattle. 'You always have some glib excuse, damn you!' she shrieked. 'No doubt you waited until it was near dinner-time before you set off - and took good care not to return until Richard and Eleanor had left!'

  There was half a truth in this, but John was in no mood to make any admissions.

  'I went as soon as the messenger arrived, damn you! This attack is plainly related to the atrocity against Peter le Calve and, for all I knew, there was a chance of catching the murderers red handed! You are so proud of your Norman lineage, but would you now recommend that I allow fellow knights and manor-lords to be slain, with only casual regard for seeking justice? Eh? Answer me, woman!'

  And answer him she did. The battle of words went on in the same vein for many more minutes, each combatant convinced of the righteousness of their own cause. From Matilda came a flood of accusations that she had pent up for- months, blaming John entirely for her brother's downfall and dismissal from the post of sheriff. Since going to spend a week at Revelstoke, she seemed to have revived her adoration of her elder brother and, by inference, her husband's part in bringing him down became all the more dastardly.

  This was a dispute that could have no solution, so entrenched was each one in their own attitude. Eventually, when both were red in the face and hoarse with shouting at each other, Matilda stalked towards the door, pushing him roughly aside as she went.

  'I cannot bear to remain in the same chamber as you, husband!' she hissed. 'I am going to my solar and then to my cousin's dwelling in Fore Street. If I set eyes on you again today, it will be too soon.'

  As she jerked open the door savagely enough to tear it from its leather hinges, he bawled at her retreating back. 'And if I set eyes upon you ever again, it will also be too soon!'

  The slam of the door behind his wife actually shattered the wooden latch, but John was past caring whether the roof caved in on top of him.

  'Bloody woman, this is too much to bear!' he muttered.

  Five minutes later, he was striding across the cathedral Close, his feet taking him blindly towards Idle Lane.

  Alexander of Leith became a little more easy in his mind as the week went by, as he seemed to be making some progress with Nizam el-Din. Although their communication was still halting and imperfect, he began to follow the Turk's mixture of French and Latin more easily, especially when they discussed their mystic science, as much of the arcane vocabulary of alchemy was common to many languages.

  After his initial exasperation at Nizam's proficiency in the procedures needed to pursue their research, Alexander rather grudgingly came to accept that the Moor knew something of what he was about, as he watched him juggling with flasks, retorts, pestle and mortar. As he worked, Nizam kept up a mumbled commentary to himself in a language the Scot could not place, though he assumed it was Arabic or whatever the fellow had learned at his mother's knee.

  With the clumsy help of Jan the Fleming, Alexander had set up his own apparatus on the opposite side of the hearth, assembling a series of crucibles, retorts, distillation flasks and various other receptacles on a second table that they had pulled from the far end of the vaulted chamber. A large jar stood heavy with quicksilver, and small ingots of tin, copper and lead were stacked on the table-top. He had a thick volume of loose parchment folios held between two hinged boards that served as book covers and constantly referred to this as he primed his equipment with a variety of powders and liquids taken from a wooden box. The lid of this was intricately carved with symbols similar to those embroidered on his blouselike garment, and though he did not mutter endlessly like the Moor, his lips framed the recipes and formulae from his book as he went about preparing his materials.

  By the end of the second day's labour in the crypt, Alexander had reached the farthest point in his work which he had attained while in Bristol. He now wanted to push forward from there, hopefully inspired by the parallel discoveries of Nizam. But his initial optimism was soon to be confounded.

  The next morning, soon after dawn and a frugal meal in the hut above, he came down to his bench. Instructing Jan to heat up the furnace with the leather bellows, Alexander melted the contents of a small crucible half filled with good Devon tin, which had previously been alloyed with mercury. With much murmuring of esoteric spells, he added a variety of powders from small bags of soft doe-skin, then weighed out some copper and silver filings on a small brass balance. The little alchemist sprinkled these into the crucible and added carefully counted drops of various coloured fluids from small flasks. Then he placed the crucible back in the furnace and listened to the sizzling until it subsided. Turning a sand-glass over to time the reheating, he waited for the final part of his process to be completed.

  By now, the three Turks had arrived, the two sinister assis
tants carefully ignoring him. Nizam, bleary eyed and dishevelled, seemed only partly aware of his surroundings and bumped into several stools and the corner of the table before reaching his own workplace. Alexander thought he might be drunk, until he recalled that those of the Mohammedan faith eschewed all alcohol.

  Nizam dropped heavily on to a stool and sat staring at his array of apparatus as if he had never seen it before, making no attempt to get started, in spite of Raymond le Blois's repeated exhortations the previous day to get some results. Alexander sighed with annoyance and frustration, but his sand-glass then ran out, so with iron tongs he removed his crucible from the furnace and plunged it into a wooden bucket filled with cloudy water taken from a nearby stream. With a sizzling hiss and a cloud of steam, the small clay dish cooled sufficiently for him to hold. Placing it on the bench before him, he took a flat iron rod and scraped off the layer of blackish encrustation that covered the walnut-sized lump in the bottom. As he expected, this revealed a shiny metallic surface whose colour varied from silvery white to reddish gold, especially when he took a wet rag and some fine white powder and polished the exposed surface. A final dip in the bucket rinsed the cleaning material away and he held out the dish towards the drowsy Saracen sitting near by.

  'Ten years it has taken me to get thus far!' he said, with pride. 'I am almost there, so perhaps together we can achieve the final triumph.'