Bernard Knight - The Witch Hunter

Roger recoiled slightly at Thomas de Peyne’s vehemence. Although he had seen the clerk about the town, at close quarters he even more strongly resembled a priest, in his threadbare black cassock and the shaved tonsure on top of his head. A pair of bright little eyes darted intelligently from a thin face, which carried a long pointed nose and receding chin.

‘My mother-in-law is convinced he was done to death. There have been threats uttered against him and she claims it is murder.’

John de Wolfe rumbled in his throat, his usual way of expressing disbelief. ‘I have been the King’s coroner for almost a year now, but this is the first time that witchcraft has been alleged as a cause of death.’

He managed not to sound sarcastic and Roger Hamund was encouraged to carry on, mindful of the tongue-lashing he would get from Cecilia if he failed to return without de Wolfe.

‘There was certainly bad blood between him and another merchant,’ he said carefully, not wanting to name another influential citizen whose patronage might yet prove useful. ‘Perhaps it were best if my mother-in-law explained the situation herself.’

‘So who is the dead ’un?’ demanded the untidy giant from the window sill. This was Gwyn of Polruan, a former Cornish fisherman who had been Sir John’s squire, bodyguard and companion for almost twenty years of fighting from Ireland to the Holy Land and who now acted as the coroner’s officer. He was not renowned for his sensitivity and Roger cringed at the description of his father-in-law as ‘the dead ’un’.

‘It is Robert de Pridias, Crowner, the master of the guild of weavers in this city.’

John’s black brows rose at this. He knew de Pridias slightly, as he had done some business with him over the last year or so. Since hanging up his sword after returning from the Third Crusade, de Wolfe had ploughed much of his campaign plunder into a wool business. He was a sleeping partner to his friend Hugh de Relaga, a prominent burgess and one of the two portreeves that ran the city council. Though they exported most of their wool purchases to Flanders, Brittany and the Rhine, they sold some locally to the fulling mills and Robert de Pridias had been one of their customers, so John felt that perhaps he should indulge his widow’s fantasies about murder. Rising from behind the table, he stood with his characteristic slight stoop and looked down at his little clerk.

‘Get on and finish those other rolls, Thomas, they’ll be needed at the Shire Court tomorrow.’

With a jerk of his head to Gwyn, he left Thomas reaching thankfully for his pen and ink. The clerk disliked both corpses and sitting on a pony to get to them. De Wolfe ushered Roger to the stairs and Gwyn lumbered after them.

The newly bereaved son-in-law explained where de Pridias was lying and on reaching the arch of the gatehouse the coroner led them across the inner ward of the castle to one of the lean-to sheds where their horses were tethered. Though it had been a very wet summer, the last two weeks had been unusually dry and the almost grassless mud of the ward had dried into hard rough-cast, churned by the hoofs of horses and oxen, wagon wheels and soldiers’ boots.

Rougemont took its name from the red sandstone from which it had been built by William the Bastard soon after the Conquest. It occupied the high north-east corner of Exeter, in the angle of the city walls first built by the Romans and improved upon by both the subsequent invaders, the Saxons and the Normans. The inner ward was demarcated by a high wall, pierced by the gatehouse, which guarded a drawbridge over a deep ditch. This led out into the much larger quadrant of the outer ward, bounded by another ditch and an embankment topped by a palisade. The Conqueror had torn down over fifty Saxon houses to make space for his new fortifications. Three buildings stood inside the inner walls — the tiny chapel of St Mary, the bare stone box of the Shire Hall and the larger two-storey keep near the far end, where the sheriff and the castellan lived. All around the inside of the walls were sheds and lean-to buildings, which housed forges, stables and living quarters for soldiers and a few families.

An ostler saw them coming and with a boy, led out Odin, de Wolfe’s retired warhorse, together with Gwyn’s big brown mare. Roger’s gelding was hitched to a rail outside the stable and when all three were mounted, they trotted back out beneath the portcullis and down into the outer ward. This large area was part village and part army camp, where most of the garrison and their families lived in huts and shanties behind the outer line of defences, which had not been needed for the past fifty years since the civil war between Stephen and Matilda.

At the bottom of Castle Hill, the road joined the high street, which ran from the East Gate to Carfoix, the central crossing of the streets that joined the four main gates of the city. Beyond that, Fore Street dipped steeply down towards the river. They pushed their way through the crowded narrow streets, jostling aside townsfolk lingering at the stalls and booths along the sides of the main thoroughfare. Porters pushing barrows or bent double under bales of wool stumbled out of their way and beggars shrank back out of reach of the hoofs of the three horses.

Near the bottom of Fore Street, the West Gate let them out on to Exe Island. There was a wooden footbridge across the main channel of the Exe, but the grand new stone bridge lay half completed, as the builder, Nicholas Gervase, had run out of funds. With the tide out and the water at a low level from the recent dry weather, they splashed across the ford with their stirrups clear of the surface and went up the far bank to complete the mile to Alphington. Roger Hamund seemed reluctant to enlarge upon the circumstances of the death and was relieved to see his wife and mother-in-law waiting with a small knot of people at the entrance to the churchyard.

Willing hands took the reins as they slid from their horses and the sickly manor-reeve came forward to knuckle his forehead to the coroner. He had never had dealings with this official before and was vague as to his functions — but all he had heard by way of gossip seemed to indicate that unless you trod very carefully you risked getting both the length of his tongue and a hefty amercement.

‘The cadaver’s in the church, Crowner. We sent for you straight away, though there’s no call to think it was anything but a seizure.’

He said this deliberately, as if the death was not natural, a ‘hue and cry’ should have been set up to chase any possible culprit and the failure to do so might be grounds for the first of the unwelcome fines. However, his words were brushed aside by the advancing figure of the widow, Cecilia de Pridias. She was a formidable woman of ample proportions, with a bust like the prow of a ship.

‘Nonsense, my poor husband was done to death by some cunning means!’ she snapped, in a voice that reminded John of the crack of a whip. ‘There have been omens these past few weeks. I know the signs, someone has caused a spell to be put upon him. He told me he had presentiments of death.’

De Wolfe sighed, as it was obvious that she was going to be a difficult woman to placate. Like her daughter, who stood behind her, and her son-in-law, she was round of face as well as body, showing that the de Pridias family were affluent enough to over-eat. She wore a dark red kirtle of light wool, with a gold tasselled cord wrapped around her full waist. Instead of a wimple and cover-chief around her head and neck, she had a tight-fitting helmet of white felt, tied firmly under the chin. A short summer cape of fawn wool hung around her shoulders.

‘Perhaps I had better view the body first, then you can tell me what you know,’ he said with a mildness that Gwyn felt was uncharacteristic. John had just remembered that Cecilia attended St Olave’s Church, where his own wife Matilda was a devout supplicant. They knew each other quite well and if he trod too heavily on Cecilia’s toes, he would suffer a verbal lashing at home when the complaints reached Matilda.