Bernard Knight - A Plague of Heretics

‘I was just asking about Nicholas Budd, Crowner,’ the town constable explained. ‘His workshop is next door, and this man says that Nicholas was at home the day before yesterday, but he’s not seen him since.’

‘Kept himself to himself, did Budd,’ volunteered the shoemaker. ‘Nice enough fellow, but very quiet. Lived alone, can’t say as if I’ve ever heard of him speak of family. Certainly, he never had no visitors here.’

There was no more to be learned, and Osric confirmed that his enquiries elsewhere along the street had been equally barren.

‘Let’s have a look in his house,’ commanded John, pushing open the door, which was unlocked. Nicholas Budd had occupied the ground floor of the small thatched house, the upper storey being used by a family of six who gained access by steps from the backyard. The woodcarver used the front part of his premises for his trade, with two workbenches, stacks of seasoned timber and a rack of tools on the wall. The floor was ankle deep in shavings and offcuts, but beyond a flimsy wattle partition, the rear part of the premises was clean. A firepit, now cold and dead, occupied the centre, and a table, a stool and a blanket-covered palliasse on the floor were the only furniture in Budd’s living quarters. Some food and few pots were on the table, and a small keg of cider stood in one corner.

John sent Gwyn into the yard to look around and to make enquiries among the people upstairs, while he and Thomas looked around the ground floor. There was little enough to study, and within a couple of minutes they had drawn a blank.

‘So why was the poor devil so cruelly mutilated?’ muttered de Wolfe pensively. ‘It seems he had no life other than carving his bloody wood, by the looks of it.’

Thomas nodded, his beady eyes roving around the living room.

‘Not even a cross or a pilgrim’s badge on the wall. Yet something he did must have caused great offence to someone.’

Gwyn came down to report that the goodwife upstairs had not heard her neighbour since the day before yesterday. ‘Usually, she hears him sawing and chopping down here. So it looks as if he met his death the night before last.’

‘Did she say anything about relatives who might wish to know of his death — and who might pay for his burial?’ asked John.

Gwyn shook his head, his ginger locks swinging wildly. ‘She knew very little about him, it seems. Thinks he came here from Bristol a couple of years ago. Doesn’t attend any church, which apparently causes offence to some of the neighbours.’

With nothing more to be learned, the trio took themselves off to the castle gatehouse, where they ate some bread and cheese and drank ale mulled with an old sword heated in the brazier.

Thomas was never keen on ale, a great handicap in a world where it was almost the only safe drink, given the dangers of all water, whether drawn from wells, rivers or ditches. However, when heated, Thomas could tolerate it better, though he preferred cider.

‘You must round up a jury for this afternoon, Gwyn,’ said de Wolfe. ‘Osric, Theobald, the lad who found the body and a few folk from Raden Lane who were knocked up by the constables. We’ll look on them “First Finders”, though as usual they’ll know damn all about what happened.’

‘Best add that shoemaker and the woman upstairs from Curre Street,’ said the Cornishman. ‘I wonder if he was in a craft guild — they might pay for his burial expenses?’

‘Who did he work for, I wonder?’ mused de Wolfe. ‘Must be a freeman on his own, I expect. If he carved stuff for churches, maybe my friend the archdeacon might know of him?’

The coroner was correct in this, but not in quite the way he expected.

Some time before noon, John made his way back towards Martin’s Lane for dinner, taking his horse Odin back to the livery stables opposite. He had ridden out to the gallows on Magdalen Street to witness and record the hanging of two thieves and a captured outlaw, a sight which in no way put him off his expected meal. However, on the doorstep he met Mary clutching a basket filled with new bread and a brace of sea fish from the market.

‘Your dinner will be another hour, Sir Coroner,’ she announced firmly. ‘My fire went out, thanks to the damp wood that old fool Simon has been chopping, so I had to relight it.’ In spite of her protests, he tore a chunk off one of the loaves and loped away, chewing the warm bread.

‘I’ll go down to see the archdeacon while I’m waiting,’ he called over his shoulder as he headed for Canon’s Row. This was where some of the prebendaries of the cathedral lived, only a few hundred paces from his house. It lay along the north side of the Close, the large burial ground outside the huge twin-towered church of St Mary and St Peter.

One of the houses was occupied by Canon John de Alençon, one of the four archdeacons of the diocese. An uncle of Thomas de Peyne, he was the one who several years before had prevailed on John to take on the disgraced and penniless priest as his clerk. He was an old friend of the coroner, an ascetic with a strong sense of justice and piety, his only worldly weakness being a love of fine wines. As usual, he offered the coroner a cup of an excellent Anjou red as a preprandial drink. They sat in de Alençon’s study, a spartan room contrasting strongly with the luxurious accommodation beloved of many of the senior churchmen.

‘It’s good to have you back as Exeter’s coroner, John,’ said the archdeacon warmly. ‘But I hear you have already had a distressing problem?’

‘This strange murder up near the East Gate? It’s not every day we get victims with their tongues and throats slashed out.’

‘Who was he? I’ve heard no details of the tragedy.’

John took a sip of the luscious red fluid. ‘That’s partly why I called, to see if you knew of him. He was a carver of devotional objects, so I thought maybe you had had dealings with him.’

De Alençon stared at his friend in surprise. ‘A woodcarver? Surely you can’t mean Nicholas Budd?’

‘You knew him, then? I thought you might and wondered if you could tell me something of him.’

The archdeacon looked suddenly very sombre, his thin face and crinkled grey hair giving him a stern appearance above his black cassock.

‘I can tell you a lot about him, John! In fact, Nicholas was due to get into the public eye very soon, though not in the horrific way you describe.’

De Wolfe placed his wine-cup down carefully on the table. This was far more than he expected and he thought again how often chance ideas turned up vital information. ‘Tell me, then,’ he said, and his friend continued his story.

‘The cathedral chapter and the bishop’s legal deacon have been debating what to do about Budd for some weeks — and only last Friday, several of the canons gave instructions for him to be arraigned before a special court.’

John’s black eyebrows rose. ‘What’s he been up to? Ravishing the nuns at Polsloe?’

His friend ignored his flippancy; this was a serious matter. ‘In the opinion of some of my fellow canons, that would be a trivial offence compared with what they consider his mortal sins. They want him to be tried for heresy.’

‘Heresy? I thought that was something that was known only in France and Germany — not that I know much about it,’ admitted the coroner.

His friend shook his head sadly. ‘I agree that it is not openly evident in England, where thankfully the rule of Rome is rarely challenged. But under the surface there are still those who doubt or even strongly dispute the right of the Church to be the only channel of intercession between man and God.’

De Wolfe was neither an educated person nor had he much interest in religion, other than a passive acceptance of the inflexible dominance of the Church, instilled into everyone from childhood. He was more interested to know why Nicholas Budd had had his throat torn out.