Bernard Knight - A Plague of Heretics

‘I have already spent a few hours today in the scriptorium,’ he said proudly, referring to his work cataloguing the manuscripts in the cathedral archives on the upper floor of the chapter house. ‘So I see no reason why I cannot return to scribing for you, Crowner.’

He seemed so keen that John agreed to let him come each morning that week, provided he sat quietly at his table. When Thomas asked after the coroner’s brother, John had to tell him how concerned he was that William seemed to make no progress — at least, he had not improved the last time John had seen him.

‘I must visit him again very soon,’ he said. ‘I hope to go down to Stoke tomorrow, depending on what duties await us in the morning.’

As always, the little priest was very solicitous about his master’s problems and promised to continue praying earnestly for William’s recovery. He also passed on some encouraging information.

‘When I was in St John’s, Brother Saulf explained to me that sometimes even when the poison of the plague has left the body, it can have already damaged some of the entrails, so that they cannot function properly. Maybe that is what has happened to your brother — and hopefully those functions will slowly return.’

John hoped he was right and told Gwyn and Martha about it when he got to the tavern.

‘Both that Saulf and our dear Thomas are clever, learned people,’ said Martha. ‘Perhaps when you get to Stoke tomorrow, you will find William much improved.’

John sat at his usual table, glad of the warmth of the firepit as a cold, wet wind had arisen outside. While he waited for Martha to chivvy her cook-maid into making him a meal, he sat over a quart of Gwyn’s latest brew, talking to the Cornishman and several other acquaintances. Old Edwin hovered nearby, clutching empty pots and eavesdropping on the conversation. His religious fervour seemed to have diminished markedly since the quayside riot and especially since the outrage in Milk Lane. When John mentioned finding Alan de Bere down on Exe Island, the ancient potboy’s indignation overflowed.

‘An evil lunatic, that man!’ he croaked. ‘I’d not put it past him to have set that fire. I hear that he’s found another three so-called heretics in the city since last week and reported them to the proctors.’

Another man, a florid baker and pie-maker from the High Street, chipped in with similar news. ‘One of my customers told me today that Herbert Gale, that miserable proctors’ bailiff, had heard from his spies of two more from Alphington, just outside the town.’

There was a rumble of discontent from those sitting nearby.

‘I reckon that folk in the city have lost their appetite for hounding heretics, since that awful business on Sunday night,’ said a brawny smith from Smythen Street. ‘Time we let the bishop sort out his problems in his own way, not by taking affairs into our own hands.’

John was glad to hear that common sense was reestablishing itself in Exeter, but then he was diverted by the arrival of Martha with a wooden bowl of steaming potage, smelling deliciously of thyme and mint. She was closely followed by a young maid with a platter bearing a shank of mutton with beans and boiled leeks.

‘Get that down you, Crowner!’ she said cheerily. ‘It will raise your spirits in these dark days.’

He found that he was ravenously hungry, having left part of his dinner behind in his fight with Matilda and now gone well beyond his usual supper-time. He attacked the food heartily and soon finished it all. When he ended with a bare mutton bone, he realised that he had no Brutus beneath the table, as he had left him with Mary, where the dog spent most of his time when John was away from the house. He recalled that she was going to visit her cousin in Curre Street that evening and would probably have taken the dog with her, as Matilda had no time for the old hound and was probably at St Olave’s anyway.

The evening passed pleasantly in drinking and gossiping, but after a couple of hours John decided that he had better go home to bed, as tomorrow would be another hard day, if he was to ride to Stoke-in-Teignhead and back. He bade goodnight to his friends and trudged back along the familiar route to Martin’s Lane, a path he had taken a thousand times before, so the darkness was no hindrance.

In the cathedral Close he passed the guttering pitch-flare at Bear Gate and aimed for the next one stuck in a ring on the wall of St Martin’s Church, fifty paces from his house. As he reached the front door, he frowned because it was ajar. Though they rarely locked it, it was normally closed against the draughts that blew through the lane. He pushed it open and went into the small vestibule that connected the inner door to the hall with the passage to the backyard. A tallow dip in a wall niche gave him light enough to hang up his cloak, before he went into the hall.

The fire was burning low, but two more tallow lamps on each side wall dimly illuminated the high, gloomy chamber. No one was sitting near the hearth, so he assumed that his wife was still at her devotions. Going to the fire to throw on a couple of the logs stacked at the side, he suddenly saw a pair of feet sticking out beyond the further monks’ settle. Aghast, he thrust the seat out of the way and saw that his wife was lying motionless on the flagstones.

‘Matilda! Matilda, what’s wrong?’ He dropped to his knees alongside her, fearful that she had had a stroke or a seizure. She was lying on her side, and he tugged at her substantial body to turn her on to her back. Then, even in that poor light, he could see the bruises on her throat. She was dead — stone dead.

De Wolfe had seen too many corpses in his time to even attempt to revive her, and he rocked back on his heels, stunned by the realisation that his wife was dead. To his credit, the thought that he was now free of her never entered his head. Though he had made many empty threats in the past, these were just an angry retaliation to her jibes and he had never contemplated her demise as the answer to his marital problems. Now he felt confused, as if this was all happening to someone else.

‘Matilda, what the hell happened to you?’ he croaked, then berated himself for being such a fool. A practical man of action, he pulled himself together and stood up, a cold fury slowly overtaking him at whoever had robbed him of his wife, however undesirable to him she might have been.

He stared almost maniacally around the chamber, as if he might see some murderer skulking in a corner. Was this anything to do with the heretic hunt or was it some random robbery with violence? What about those two evil bastards from Polsloe? They had already attacked someone inside the city — and that was also an attempted throttling.

Or could it be someone getting back at him for his actions against those who wished to exterminate heretics? Perhaps that madman Alan de Bere? Or the lay brother Reginald Rugge — he knew Matilda well, as he was always lurking around St Olave’s. The possibilities swirled around in his head, confusing him, making him yell out in anguished frustration.

But he was the coroner, he told himself sternly … For God’s sake, pull yourself together, man!

He suddenly realised that he was now the First Finder. It was different being on the other side of the fence that usually divided a law officer from the people in the street or the village. What was he to do? Should he raise the hue and cry?

He stood indecisively, looking down at the inert body of the woman he had been married to for over seventeen years. For once unsure of what to do next, he stood transfixed, trying to get his thoughts in order.

There was a click behind him as the hall door opened and he swung around in a crouch, automatically whipping out his dagger to confront the return of the killer.