Bernard Knight - The Grim Reaper

‘What did he want?’

‘Only to know if you had any good news, poor chap. He said he would call to see Thomas on his way home to St Sidwell’s, before the gates closed.’

He sat with Nesta a little while longer, then decided to go home. The lack of anything useful or comforting to say to each other had depressed them even further. It was now quite dark outside, but his feet knew every pothole in the twisting lanes without him being conscious of guiding them. However, he was certainly conscious of his full bladder as he crossed the rough wasteground at the side of the tavern. After two quarts of ale, he needed to relieve himself against the trunk of a gnarled elder tree that was dimly visible at the edge of Smythen Street.

As he stooped to hoist up the hem of his long tunic, a figure materialised out of the gloom behind him and struck him a violent blow on the back of the head, pitching him forward to lie stunned at the foot of the tree.

John de Wolfe was found less than ten minutes later by three men coming up from the Saracen ale-house. One, who was quite drunk, tripped over his legs and, cursing, stumbled against the elder tree. Though it was so dark, they heard a body on the ground groan, though the sounds were strangely muffled. The other two, who were less inebriated, bent over him, just able to make out the shape of a man. The groans became louder, now being mixed with slurred words, but were still indistinct.

‘There’s a bloody bag over his head!’ exclaimed one man, feeling around with his hands. ‘Let’s get some light, quickly.’

The other, a porter from Milk Street, looked up Smythen Street for any glimmer of a candle behind a shutter. The street was mainly occupied by forges and blacksmiths, hence the name, though a couple of houses had lately become schools. Seeing a faint flicker across the road, the porter ran across and hammered on the door, shouting, ‘Stop thief!’ at the top of his voice, then ran next door and repeated the cry.

Meanwhile, the rapidly sobering drunk and his friend squatted alongside the victim, who was fast recovering his senses. His stifled groans became more strident and he dazedly lifted his hands to the covering over his head, which the third man, a weaver from Curre Street, was already trying to remove.

‘There’s a purse-string around his neck!’ he complained, but then managed to undo the knot and pull off the leather bag. Groggily, John struggled to sit up and by this time, several people had run across from nearby dwellings. By the light of a horn lantern they propped him against the tree, at which he started to curse fluently and hold the back of his head gingerly with one hand.

As soon as the faint lights fell on his face, the rescuers recognised him. ‘Holy Mary, it’s the crowner!’ yelled the porter. Half a dozen neighbours were now clustered around, some risen from bed and wearing only their under-shirts. A buzz of excitement went round when they realised that it was John de Wolfe, known to every person in the city.

‘You’re bleeding, Crowner,’ said the man with the lantern. ‘The back of your head has taken a nasty knock.’

De Wolfe looked blearily at his bloodstained fingers, then tried to get to his feet. He failed miserably, and fell back against the tree.

‘Stay quiet, sir, you need someone to attend to that cut. We must get you to St Nicholas’s, that’s the nearest place.’

Though his head was throbbing like a drum, de Wolfe’s senses were rapidly returning. ‘Did you see anyone running away? he demanded thickly.

‘Not a chance,’ said the weaver. ‘It’s as black as the inside of a cow’s stomach tonight, Crowner.’

‘What was that over my face?’ he demanded, his memory returning piecemeal.

The weaver held up a large leather bag with a plaited string threaded around the neck to close it. Even in the poor light, de Wolfe saw that it was similar to the one that had been over the moneylender’s head, though such bags were commonplace.

‘Lucky you didn’t suffocate with that cutting off your air,’ said some morbid Jonah amongst the cluster of onlookers.

The weaver shook his head. ‘The seam around the bottom has ripped. There’s a hole in it, thank God.’

‘The footpad must have tugged it down too hard over your head, Crowner, and torn the stitching,’ added the porter. He thrust a hand into the bag and poked three fingers through a gap in the bottom. ‘There’s something in here, Crowner.’ He pulled out a crumpled scrap of parchment and held it close under the flickering light of the lantern. ‘There’s some writing on it. Can anybody here read?’

No one could, but de Wolfe stretched out a shaking hand to grab the fragment, his fury over having been assaulted fading as his fuddled senses realised what this meant. A warm feeling of relief flooded through him as it dawned on him that Thomas must now surely be saved. He slumped back and a contented smile relaxed his face in the gloom. If the Gospel killer was still active, then his clerk, locked in Stigand’s foul gaol, must be innocent! As the townsfolk fussed over him, he sent up a short and rather curt prayer of thanks to the God whom he was not convinced existed. Though he had killed many men himself and seen thousands more die on a score of battlefields, he surprised even himself at the depth of feeling he had experienced over the hanging of a miserable little scribe. He knew that Gwyn felt the same and wanted to tell his officer the good news — but that was impossible until the morning: Gwyn was at home in St Sidwell’s, outside the locked city gates. But at least he could tell Nesta, who otherwise would probably cry half the night.

‘Help me back to the Bush!’ he commanded, trying to struggle to his feet.

‘You’re in no fit state yet, Crowner,’ protested the weaver. ‘We’ll take you to St Nicholas’s to have your head seen to first.’ A forge-master from a nearby workshop dragged across a loose hurdle from around his yard and, though he protested, they laid de Wolfe gently on it and four of them trotted the few hundred yards to the little priory, with a posse of concerned neighbours running behind. The coroner was a respected and popular man in Exeter and his fellow citizens were determined to do all they could for him in this emergency.

As they went, he bellowed orders from his stretcher, his strength returning rapidly. ‘Send for Osric the constable, and all of you be sure to tell him exactly what happened, especially about the bag and that parchment.’ He wanted to make sure that independent witnesses confirmed the circumstances, so that the damned sheriff could not claim that he himself had fabricated them.

‘And someone go to the castle and call out whoever they can find — the sheriff, Ralph Morin or Sergeant Gabriel. We should have the streets searched, though God knows who we are looking for!’

He ended his stream of orders with a final demand that someone should go back to the Bush and tell the landlady what had happened.

The one person he failed to remember was his own wife, Matilda.

If the pockmarked prior of St Nicholas’s was annoyed to see John de Wolfe back again so soon, he concealed it well. He immediately sent the infirmarian to deal with the coroner’s head wound and, with the porter and the weaver standing solicitously by, the old monk cleaned and anointed the cut on the back of his scalp. ‘Nothing terrible, Crowner, but keep this length of linen bound around your head for a day or two to keep out the dirt,’ he instructed, as he wound cloth around de Wolfe’s scalp like a Moorish turban.

De Wolfe thanked him, then held up his fist, in which he still clutched the fragment of parchment found in the leather bag. ‘Can you tell me what is written here, Brother?’

The infirmarian took it and held it towards the pair of candles on a shelf nearby. ‘A few words, but I cannot fathom their meaning.’