Bernard Knight - The Grim Reaper

‘If the matter had been heard before the judges next week, you might have had a different result,’ he snapped at the ironmonger.

Still protesting, Nicholas was pushed towards the doorway by Gabriel and stumbled out, shaking his fist at Matthew, who cheerfully made an obscene gesture at him. He had put on his shoes and was trying not to show that his feet were smarting with a growing pain that would be far worse by the time he had hobbled into the nearest ale-house to celebrate his escape — if burns had appeared on his soles for the witnesses to see, he would have been hanged that week for the theft of something that was worth more than twelve pence, which constituted a felony.

An hour later, John went to the stable opposite his house and climbed on to the back of Odin, his destrier. He had called at home to tell Matilda that he would be away for the night and was relieved to find that she was at St Olave’s for noon service. Mary had fed him a meat pie, cheese and half a loaf, while Andrew the farrier saddled Odin, ready for the journey.

De Wolfe walked the stallion through the crowded high street to the Carfoix crossing, where he had arranged to meet the others, and the quartet, which included the manor reeve from Sidbury, made their way down South Gate Street, past the bloody mayhem of the Shambles, then the Serge Market to the gate. Beyond the city walls, the crowds vanished and they kept up a brisk trot along Magdalen Street, past the gallows, which today was deserted although a rotting corpse hung in an iron frame from a nearby post. They continued on the main highway eastwards, which was the road to Lyme and eventually Southampton and Winchester.

As usual, Thomas lagged behind, jerking awkwardly on the side-saddle of his reluctant pony, his features looking as if he expected to hear the Last Trump at any moment. The reeve, Thomas Tirel by name, pulled alongside the coroner to offer more details of what had happened in his village.

‘This was a lad of thirteen, Crowner, the fifth son of one of our villeins. His father offered him to work in the mill as part of the family’s manor service, and he had been there almost a year, carrying sacks and cleaning the floor.’

‘This is the lord’s mill, I presume?’

‘Indeed it is. Everyone is obliged to have their flour ground there and the fee goes to the bishop.’

De Wolfe was aware that the small village of Sidbury was one of the many manors that belonged to Henry Marshal, Bishop of Exeter.

‘So what happened to the boy?’

‘He fell through the floor, which was rotten, and was caught in the pinion of the mill-wheel shaft. His head was crushed, poor lad.’

John failed to visualise exactly what the reeve meant. ‘I’ll have to see the place for myself,’ he growled. ‘But what about this rotten floor?’

‘Many a time the miller complained to the Bishop’s bailiff that it was unsafe, but he was unwilling to stop the mill while new joists and boards were laid — he said the expense was unnecessary.’

The aggrieved tone of the man’s voice suggested to de Wolfe that this was a source of discontent in the village.

Sidbury was about fifteen miles from Exeter and they reached it in less than three hours’ easy riding. Thomas Tirel took them straight to the mill, a wooden structure astride a brook that ran underneath it. Upstream there was a deep pool formed by an earthen dam, and a crude sluice-gate controlled the flow to the wheel.

A rumbling noise came from the mill and John saw a cloud of dust drifting from an open door at the side. ‘They are still grinding corn?’ he demanded.

‘The bailiff insisted. The gear was not broken, so he had the blood washed away and told the miller to carry on.’

‘So where’s the body?’

‘Taken to the church, poor boy. We couldn’t give it back to the mother in the state it was in.’

With Gwyn at his side and Thomas de Peyne trailing behind, de Wolfe followed the reeve into the mill, coughing at the cloud of dust and chaff that filled the atmosphere. In the single room, a large circular stone, four feet across and a hand’s breadth thick, was slowly revolving below a similar but stationary wheel resting on top. A large wooden hopper fed grain into a hole in the centre of the upper stone and a circular tray around the moving lower quern collected the flour that dribbled from the joint between the stones.

The miller, a large, perspiring man dressed in a thin smock and a hessian apron, was adjusting the flow of grain from the hopper. Because of the noise, he was unaware of their presence until the reeve tapped his shoulder. Almost guiltily, the man turned around and, on seeing the coroner, tugged at his ginger forelock, which was almost white with dust.

‘Turn it off!’ yelled Gwyn, pointing at the stones.

The miller nodded and gestured at a young boy, who was up on a platform tipping a sack of grain into the hopper. Without a word, he ran out like a frightened rabbit and Gwyn, peering around the door, saw him racing up the bank of the stream.

‘He has to close the sluice to stop the wheel. That’s why we took so long to free the lad yesterday,’ explained the miller, looking uneasily from the reeve to the coroner.

A few moments later, the rumbling beneath slowed, then stopped. The silence was almost as oppressive as the grinding judder had been.

‘There’s where the floor gave way, Crowner,’ explained Tirel, pointing down at a series of loose boards laid across half of the floor on one side of the millstones. De Wolfe stamped experimentally with his heel on the planks where he was standing. The edge of his riding boot made indentations in the soft surface of the timber.

‘This whole place is decaying, for Christ’s sake!’ he exclaimed. ‘How old is it?’

‘My father was the miller here — and his father before him. It was here in their day, that’s all I know,’ said the ginger man defensively.

At the reeve’s demand, the miller took them outside and down the grassy bank towards where the stream gushed out from under the building. He opened a low, rickety door and led them into a cramped chamber below the millstones. Looking up, de Wolfe could see a splintered hole a few feet across, with a length of rotten joist hanging loose. To his left was the now silent water-wheel, eight feet high, with a shaft like a small tree-trunk lying horizontally at his feet. This ended in a stout wooden wheel with projecting pegs which interlocked with similar pegs studded around a larger wheel at the base of the vertical shaft, which went up to drive the millstone.

‘The poor little devil was caught in those gears, Crowner,’ explained Tirel. ‘Tore his throat open, it did. Blood everywhere by the time we got down here.’

‘It stopped the wheel for a moment, the gears being jammed,’ added the miller, with morbid relish. ‘But then the pressure of water built up behind the wheel and it broke two of the pegs off, throwing his head aside — but by then he must have been dead. Had to make two new pegs this morning to get the mill going again.’

John peered more closely at the crude gearing. In spite of vigorous washing, part of the flat gearwheel and some of the pegs were ominously ruddy-brown. Straightening up, he made for the door, leaving Gwyn to squint inquisitively at the machinery.

‘How much does the Bishop get for milling?’ de Wolfe demanded.

‘A ha’penny for five bushels, sir. Everyone in the manor must have their corn ground here, they’ve no choice. Anyone found using a hand quern is amerced at the manor court.’

This was usual: the lord had the monopoly of milling and guarded it jealously as a steady source of income. De Wolfe thought angrily of the mother mourning her youngest son, and determined to have some strong words with the bailiff — or even Henry Marshal himself. ‘Then the Bishop can spend a little of his profit on a new floor — though he needs a whole new mill, before it collapses into the brook,’ he said acidly.