Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

' … so I thought it best to open the gates for him, Crowner,' concluded Osric. 'He said he knew you and that he had come on the authority of the lord of Totnes.'

De Wolfe nodded impatiently, and as soon as Vado had gratefully taken a long pull at his warmed ale, he demanded to hear his news.

'Another killing, Sir John, a real nasty one!' he began. 'When you were in Ringmore last, you told us about the death of that manor-lord near Exeter here — the one who was beheaded.'

John stared at him incredulously. 'Was this a beheading too? Who was killed, for St Peter's sake?'

William Vado shook his head. 'Not beheaded, Crowner. But you said the lord was sort of crucified and this poor man was lashed to a branch by his wrists, then hung by his neck from a tree! It was Joel, the old hermit from Burgh Island.'

De Wolfe and Gwyn recalled the cadaverous recluse who had heard the dying sailor mention 'Saracens'.

'But he was a harmless old fellow, surely?' exclaimed John. 'Not worth robbing and surely no threat to anyone!'

'You say he was hanged from a tree?' boomed Gwyn. The bailiff quaffed from his pot again before answering. 'Yes, but I doubt that killed him. He was covered in blood and had many knife wounds upon his body.'

More details came out bit by bit, as William related how, soon after dawn, one of the fisherfolk on his way to the beach smelt smoke. He soon found the hermit dangling from a tree, with a small fire still smouldering on the ground directly under the corpse, though there seemed little damage from the flames apart from some roasting of the feet.

'Bloody strange!' growled Gwyn. 'What's going on in our county these days?'

'At least Peter le Calve and his sons were Norman gentry,' muttered John. 'But this Joel was just some old anchorite, of little account except to God and himself.' A steaming bowl of mutton stew arrived in front of the bailiff, but before he attacked it with his spoon, he looked up at the coroner.

'I wouldn't hasten to dismiss Joel as of no account, Sir John. No one knows much about him, except perhaps our parish priest, who took his confessions, but years ago there was a rumour that he came from a noble family before he renounced the world to live on that island.'

Between dipping a hunk of rough bread into his stew and chewing at it appreciatively, William Vado explained how the fisherman had hurried to Ringmore to report the murder. The bailiff had sent his reeve and some other men to safeguard the body, having learned from the previous episode that the coroner wanted everything left undisturbed. He had taken his horse and ridden hard to Totnes, where he had been given some food and a fresh gelding to get him to Exeter as soon as possible. Thanks to the dry roads, he had made the marathon journey of thirty miles in one day, just failing to reach the city before curfew.

When he had eaten, de Wolfe arranged with Nesta to give him a straw mattress and a blanket up in the loft and, tired to the point of collapse, William gratefully hauled himself up the ladder.

'Remember, we leave at dawn!' shouted John after him, and with fresh jars of ale and cider before them, he and Gwyn sat with Nesta to discuss this latest act in the drama of the mysterious deaths.

'This crucifixion thing,' began the Cornishman. 'Thomas must be right in thinking it must be an unChristian abomination. That must surely mean Saracens.'

'But why now and in a remote English county?' asked Nesta. 'There's no crusading going on that must be avenged.'

'It's quiet out in Palestine, I'll agree,' mused John. 'The King negotiated a long peace with Saladin through the Treaty of Jaffa, though skirmishing never stops out there.'

'And Saladin died more than two years ago,' added Gwyn. 'So I don't see why some Saracens should turn up here and randomly start killing us.'

John shook his head. 'I'll wager it's not random. There's some reason for it, though I'm damned if I can see what it might be.'

They talked on to little effect for some time. To be truthful, John and Nesta were secretly glad that their unhappy heart-searching about Matilda and their own emotional dilemma had been diverted by this news from the far west of Devon. Eventually, mindful of an early start and a long day on horseback ahead of them, the coroner and his officer finished their ale and Gwyn left for Rougemont, where he often found a place to sleep with his soldier friends. They had agreed to let Thomas carry on with his own business, as though his horsemanship had improved since he had given up the side-saddle, he was still an encumbrance when they needed to ride far and fast.

John took himself up to Nesta's small chamber in the loft, passing a snoring William Vado on the way. De Wolfe intended lying awake in anticipation of Nesta's warm body joining him after she had attended to various tasks in the cook shed and brew-house, but when she finally came to bed, he was peacefully asleep. With an affectionate smile, she crept in beside him and snuggled up close, uncaring for at least one night as to what the future might hold for them.

The coroner's return to the banks of the River Avon was not quite as swift as the bailiff's ride to Exeter. His destrier Odin was built for endurance rather than speed and this applied in lesser measure to Gwyn's big brown mare. They got further than Totnes on the first day and slept on the floor of an alehouse in a hamlet a few miles farther south. After another early start, by mid-morning they were at Aveton Giffard, at the head of the Avon estuary. William Vado took them on a track alongside the river which was only passable at low tide, bringing them out near where Thorgils' ship had been moored on their last visit.

'The corpse is just a bit farther on,' promised the bailiff, pointing to a swath of trees along the steep side of the western bank. A few minutes later, they saw a small group of men waiting for them, some recognisable as having been at the inquest in Ringmore. Sliding gratefully from their horses and rubbing their aching bottoms, John and his officer followed Vado into the wood, where gnarled and spindly trees, most covered with grey-green lichen and moss, gave the lonely place a mystical air.

They followed a faint track through the fallen leaves, the river still visible down to their left, until they reached an area where the trees were more widely spaced. Here they came upon a grotesque and pathetic sight which was even more weird than their imaginations had led them to expect.

Hanging by the neck from a branch of an old oak was a thin, naked body. There was a slight breeze and the corpse turned eerily from side to side as if scanning the scenery with open, sightless eyes. It was not very high above the ground, the feet hovering barely a yard over the remains of a small fire, where the unburnt ends of a ring of small logs projected from a heap of grey ash.

As with Peter le Calve, the arms were kept outstretched by being lashed by the wrists to a length of dead branch passing behind the shoulders, though there were also lashings around each armpit to keep the branch in place. Again like the dead manor-lord, the chest was disfigured by stab wounds, though this time they were many more in number. There were also some on the belly, dribbles of dried blood streaking the skin below each stab.

For a moment, the new arrivals stared in silence at the horrific scene.

'At least he's not been disembowelled or castrated,' grunted Gwyn, as if this were something to the dead man's advantage.

'But he's just as bloody dead!' snarled de Wolfe. 'Poor old sod. Why do this to a harmless hermit?'

There was no answer to this, and they moved nearer for a closer look.

John noticed some scraps of part-burned cloth at the edge of the dead fire.

'That must be the remains of his clothing,' he grunted. 'Even in death they had to further humiliate the old man by stripping him naked!'