Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

Gwyn was looking up rather than down, and nudged his master.

'No need to ponder if this is connected with Shillingford, Crowner! Look at those lashings and the cord around his neck.'

The coroner followed his officer's gaze and nodded. 'More red silk. And I'll wager two marks that those stab wounds are far wider than usual.'

De Wolfe felt nauseated by the evil nature of this killing. Though he had seen far worse mutilations in battle, this cold-blooded perversity both sickened and infuriated him.

'Cut the poor old devil down!' he snapped. 'He's suffered enough indignity.'

As Gwyn and Osbert the reeve supported the frail body, one of the younger men shinned up the tree and clambered out along the branch to cut through the thin but strong cord that was knotted over it.

'We left him there for you to see, Crowner,' said William Vado apologetically. 'There were those in the village who said it wasn't seemly to leave him hanging for two days, but in the circumstances I thought I'd best abide by your rules.'

'It's a dilemma, with Exeter so far away,' admitted John, with uncharacteristic sympathy. 'But you did right, Bailiff, we need all the information we can get to catch these bastards.'

'But where do we start?' growled Gwyn pessimistically. 'Have any strangers been seen around here?' demanded John of the bailiff.

Vado shook his head. 'This is a lonely spot, sir. Even the river fishermen rarely come up from the water's edge. Who's to see any strangers?'

They paused as Gwyn and the reeve went forward to gently take the victim's body as the lad finished cutting through the silken cord. The old hermit was laid on the ground away from the fire, and one of the men took off his ragged cape and laid it over the anchorite's body, a simple act of compassion that was not lost on the coroner.

'When was he last seen alive?' he asked.

'I saw him the day before he went missing,' volunteered one of the fishermen. 'About noon, it was. He was up on the top of his hut, looking out to sea. He does that for us, scanning the water for shoals.'

'Why should he be here?' boomed Gwyn. 'I was wondering whether he was brought here forcibly or whether he was ambushed.'

'Old Joel used to wander the woods looking for fallen branches for his fire,' said the reeve. 'I know this was one of the places he came for that.'

De Wolfe looked around as if for inspiration, but all he saw was the silent trees. If only they could speak, he thought whimsically.

'There are no horse tracks here. Whoever did this must have come on foot,' observed the bailiff.

'No mysterious hooded monks this time?' said John bitterly. This was a mystery with no clues, as far as he was concerned. They watched as the youth with the knife cut the cords holding Joel's arms to the crucifying branch and allowed the dead limbs to be pushed against his side.

'The death stiffness is passing off,' said Gwyn. 'That fits with him dying more than a couple of days ago.' He knelt down alongside the pathetic figure of the old man and gently pulled back the cape to look at Joel's face and trunk. The coroner came to bend over him, hands on knees.

'He didn't die of hanging, anyway,' commented John. 'His face isn't discoloured and there's no swelling around the cord on his neck.'

'Doesn't have to be like that, though I agree it usually is,' said Gwyn, unwilling to be overshadowed in his knowledge of violent death, even by his master.

De Wolfe pointed to some of the stab wounds, which, as he had prophesied, were seen on closer inspection to be very wide.

'The blood dribbling from some of them show he was lying down when they bled, not hanging from a tree.' This time even Gwyn failed to argue, just nodded his head. He turned the body over and looked at several similar wounds on the back.

'Ten wounds all told, including those on his belly. Only one is needed to kill, so why inflict all these?'

'Does that mean the killers were in some sort of frenzy?' asked the bailiff.

John shrugged. 'Could be — though I've known of some cruel bastards stabbing a man many times just for the pleasure of it.'

Gwyn collected up the cut cords and stuffed them into the shapeless pouch on his belt. 'I'll keep these to add to the others. You never know, maybe we can match them with something if we catch these swine.'

There seemed nothing further to do in the wood, so John told Vado that they would take the body back to Ringmore.

'This is in your manor, I presume?' he asked, looking around.

The bailiff nodded. 'Only just. The boundary with Bigbury is over there.' He waved a hand vaguely. 'No use expecting them to do anything, anyway! They don't have a resident bailiff, he's in Aveton — and their reeve is a drunken idiot.'

They set off through the trees in the opposite direction to which they had come, moving down the side of the estuary towards the sea. The path was narrow and they had to thread their way through the trees, leading their horses by the reins. When they came out of the woods, it was about noon and the tide was in, so John's intention to go on to Burgh Island to look at Joel's hermitage was frustrated. They rounded the point and were able to mount their horses again for the mile or so to the village, leaving the others to tramp in their own time with the skinny body, which four men carried between them, a limb each.

In the old manor-house of Ringmore, William Vado soon organised food and drink and afterwards they sat around the fire-pit in rather muted mood, saddened by the apparently senseless murder of a penniless recluse.

'How long has this Joel been here?' asked Gwyn. 'Since I was a child, and that's more than twenty years ago,' answered William. 'I don't remember him coming.' The reeve, Osbert de Newetone, was a decade older and recalled Joel's arrival.

'He just walked into the village one day. Autumn, it was, a real good harvest year. He wore a plain tunic and a pilgrim's hat, was bare-foot and carried a pilgrim's staff. He kept those clothes for years until they fell to pieces. Then someone in the village gave him the cast-offs he wore to this day.'

'And you know nothing of where he came from?' persisted the coroner.

The bailiff turned up his hands. 'He never said and it wasn't our place to ask. But he spoke well, and he could read words on parchment when someone needed to. I don't remember where this story came from about him being a former nobleman or knight, but I could quite believe it.'

'How did he come to settle on that island?' queried

Gwyn, sucking ale from his moustache.

'When he arrived, he said he was a looking for a place of solitude to live out his life, praise God and atone for his sins,' said Osbert. 'The loneliest place we could think of was the island of St Michael de la Burgh. Our priest said there was no reason to object, so off he went and built that hut.'

Further questioning produced nothing useful, and when they had finished their ale and warmed up by the fire, John and Gwyn reluctantly shrugged on their riding capes and followed the local men outside, where the overcast sky was threatening snow or sleet, though at the moment it was dry, but with a biting east wind.

As they trudged up the road, John turned to the bailiff. 'I suppose your Father Walter will have housed the corpse in the barn again,' he said cynically.

To his mild surprise, Vado shook his head. 'When I told him what had happened, he said that as a solitary hermit and a man of God, he was entitled to be laid before the altar until we buried him.'

When they got to the tiny church, they found that this was indeed the case. The mortal remains of Joel, draped in a rather grubby linen sheet which was probably a spare altar-cloth, lay on a rough bier in the centre of the square room where God was worshipped in Ringmore.