Bernard Knight - The Grim Reaper

The Archdeacon shrugged. ‘Perhaps he just hates Jews, which is not uncommon now in England.’

They discussed the affair until the wine jug ran dry and John’s stomach told him it was past time now for the midday meal.

He left the Archdeacon pondering on potentially wayward priests in his diocese and made his way back the short distance to the house in Martin’s Lane. When he entered his high, sombre hall, Matilda was already well into her dinner, seated at one end of the long oak table that was the main item of furniture in the gloomy chamber. She was ladling more of Mary’s hare stew from an earthenware pot into a wooden bowl, but paused to glower up at her husband as he sat down opposite. ‘You were late, as usual, so I began without you,’ she snapped. Along with religion, eating was Matilda’s main interest in life. Her appetite almost equalled Gwyn’s.

Mary came in with more bread and a quart of ale for her master, who drew a small knife from his belt and, with the aid of a large spoon carved from a cow’s horn, loaded his own bowl with stew. They ate silently for a few minutes, until John felt obliged to start a conversation, if only to fend off the sulky cloud that he sensed appearing over his wife’s head.

He told her about the murder of the moneylender that morning, which failed to grab her interest: Matilda classed Jews with Saxons and Celts as beneath the consideration of a Norman lady. Though she had been born in Devon and had spent but a few months of her forty-six years with distant relatives across the Channel, she acted as if she was a high-born Norman in exile in this inferior land. It was a matter of shame to her that even her husband was part Celt, his mother half Welsh and half Cornish.

However, when John came to the part of the story about the Gospel text, Matilda’s ears pricked up, for Church business was her favourite subject. Suddenly he remembered that she had a compendious knowledge of Exeter’s clergy, which might be useful to him. ‘The Archdeacon agrees with me, that the most likely culprit is a priest. Can you think of any cleric in the city who might be evil enough to do this?’

He had phrased his question badly, for she bridled at his words. ‘Indeed, I do not! They are almost all devout and righteous men — some are saints.’ She was incensed that her irreligious husband should cast such aspersions on her heroes.

Then her tone became a little less harsh. ‘Admittedly, there are some priests whose characters leave something to be desired. A few are fond of drink or women — though those failings are shared by most men,’ she added sarcastically. ‘But a murderer among our clergy? Never!’

But her husband sensed she was not as emphatic as her words implied and persisted in his question. ‘But who among them might have some hidden vice, do you think?’

Flattered against her better judgement to be asked for her opinion about her beloved priests, she twisted her square face into a grimace of concentration. ‘Well, Robert Cheever of St Petroc is certainly too fond of the wine cask. He has been helped to his lodgings more than once after falling in the street,’ she answered grudgingly. ‘And Peter Tyler of St Bartholomew’s lives in sin with that old hag who cleans the church. What he sees in her is beyond my comprehension.’ Warming to her theme she dipped deeper into the vat of gossip, filled by her cronies at St Olave’s. ‘I did hear tell, though there’s no proof, that Ranulph Burnell of Holy Trinity was overly fond of the young choristers at the cathedral.’

She threw down her spoon with a clatter. ‘But that’s no reason to suspect any of them of being a killer. Maybe you and the Archdeacon would be better employed in looking among some of the canons and their vicars down in the Close — there’s some odd characters there, God knows.’

Matilda glared at her husband and threw a final jibe at him, which echoed her brother’s remark earlier that day.

‘And if you are really seeking a weird priest, why look further than that perverted clerk of yours!’

There was a silence while Mary cleared the bowls and set down a dish of raisins imported from France. When she left, with a sly wink at John from beyond her mistress’s back, he once again pulled out the piece of parchment from his purse and showed it to his wife, still hoping to coax her away from her threatened black mood. ‘This was left with the corpse.’

She studied it, although like her husband she was unable to read it, as only one person in a hundred was literate. He explained the translation that Thomas had given him, that it was an apt quotation from the Gospel according to St Mark. ‘You don’t need to tell me, I know the passage well,’ she snapped, but she held the scrap of palimpsest reverently for a moment, then handed it back.

‘It may be possible to match the handwriting with whoever scribed it,’ he observed. ‘Only a priest would think of a trick like this and have the ability to write it.’

Grudgingly, she agreed. ‘One of the law clerks or my brother’s scribes could write the words but probably only a cleric would know the text.’ Now hooked on the mystery, Matilda had a new thought. ‘That’s obviously a copy made from a Gospel, isn’t it?’

Her husband stared at her, not understanding.

‘Yes, there’s blank space above and below it, nothing else,’ he said. ‘It’s not an actual leaf from a Bible.’

‘Then it must have been penned by a priest,’ she brayed triumphantly. ‘An unholy layman might have torn the page from a Vulgate, but a priest would revere the Holy Book too much to desecrate it. And he would know that copies of the Gospel are precious and expensive. He must have copied the passage out, even at the risk of having his script recognised.’

De Wolfe grunted his acceptance of her reasoning, though as he had assumed all along that the culprit was in Holy Orders, her assurance took him no further in identifying the villain. After a few more minutes of profitless discussion, Matilda abruptly pushed back her stool and announced that she was retiring to her solar for her customary nap before attending Vespers at St Olave’s.

After she had stumped off to command Lucille to prepare her for her rest, John took his pot of ale to one of the cowled monk’s chairs set alongside the hearth. Though the house was of timber, he had had this great stone fireplace, copied from one at a manor in France, constructed against the back wall. It was his pride and joy. Its tapering chimney rose up to the roof-beams to carry out the choking smoke that used to fill the chamber from the old fire-pit in the centre of the floor.

With his hound squatting alongside him to have his ears fondled, de Wolfe sat quietly until he judged that his wife would be snoring in their solar. Then, with a low whistle to Brutus, he left the hall, picked up a grey surcoat in the vestibule and let himself out into the lane. Taking the same route that he and Gwyn had followed at dawn, he went into the cathedral Close and strode along the rubbish-strewn paths between the grave-pits. Brutus loped hither and thither, sniffing at each pile of refuse and cocking his leg against every bush until they came through Bear Gate into the busy market street where the old Jew had died.

De Wolfe ignored the scene of the crime and dived into the lanes opposite, which led steeply down towards the river, where the West Gate and Water Gate lay. The alleys were crowded with the usual throng of porters carrying bales of wool, men pushing carts and barrows loaded with goods. Traders shouted the merits of their wares from their stalls, and hawkers pushed trays of sweetmeats, pies and trinkets under his nose. Beggars rattled coins in their bowls at him and cripples and blind men held out hands hopefully for alms.