Bernard Knight - A Plague of Heretics

‘The poor child must have had a heavy blow to the face,’ added Hilda, who sat next to John and held his hand under cover of the table.

‘My husband hit her when she tried to stop him assaulting me,’ whispered Cecilia. She had insisted on leaving her bed when the others came, saying that it was her throat that was afflicted, not her legs or brain. She wore a heavy blue brocade surcoat over her nightgown, the collar turned up over a swathe of bandage that Richard Lustcote had wound around her neck to hold his poultice in place.

‘Don’t strain your throat, dear woman,’ advised Enyd solicitously, but Cecilia said that whispering was not a problem.

‘I want to expose all the facts of this terrible matter, so that no one carries any further blame,’ she breathed earnestly. ‘The fault lay entirely in this household, I fear, for my husband was quite mad, though I did not fully realise it until last night.’

The others listened in horrified fascination as she slowly and quietly revealed the extent of Clement’s obsessions.

‘He did not move to Exeter to set up a better physician’s practice,’ she said. ‘We were forced to leave Salisbury because of his behaviour.’

‘In what sense, lady?’ asked Brother Rufus in a gentle voice.

‘His obsession with religion, which he must have had all his life, grew more extreme there. His first choice was to become a priest, not a doctor, but his parents would not allow it. Perhaps even then they suspected his strange notions.’

‘Which were?’ prompted Thomas, fascinated by this story of religious distortion.

‘That the perfection of the Church was established by the early founders in Rome and this was the only thing that mattered. Adherence to their precepts was the salvation of the world and any deviation from their rituals was the work of the devil.’

‘But many priests, especially in the higher orders, would fully agree with that!’ objected Rufus mildly.

Cecilia coughed and paused a moment to rest her voice, Enyd patting her shoulder and offering her a cup of watered wine.

‘Not to the exclusion of every other topic,’ she continued after a while. ‘He preached at me continually, always on the same theme of the purity of the Church of Rome and the need to be always vigilant against its enemies and detractors. It became so monotonous that I tried to turn away from God, but he punished me for it.’

‘Punished? You mean by force?’ asked Hilda aghast.

For answer Cecilia pushed up the loose sleeves of her surcoat and exposed her arms. They bore many yellow and green bruises, some of considerable age.

‘He often pulled and punched me, if I dared disagree with his ranting or was reluctant to go to devotions with him. But he took care to mark me only where it did not show in public’

‘The bastard!’ muttered John. ‘Who would have guessed it?’

‘The people in Salisbury, for a start,’ replied Cecilia. ‘Though he was an effective physician, as long as he was paid well enough, he could never resist preaching at his patients and became unpopular as a result.’

‘Was that cause enough to leave?’ asked Rufus.

‘The end began when he struck one woman who told him to leave religion to the priests and stick to prescribing pills!’ replied Cecilia. ‘The last straw was when he refused to treat a sick infant when he discovered it had not yet been baptised and it later died.’

‘And you say he was violent towards you — did he ever try to strangle you, like last night?’ asked Henry de Furnellis.

‘No, it was always shaking and striking,’ she said with tears in her eyes. ‘And he would also punish me by his strange ways in the bedchamber,’ she whispered, her pallid face flushing as she dropped her eyes in embarrassment.

The sheriff hurried to cover up her distress by changing the direction of his questions. ‘We need to know why he tried to kill you and how that was connected to the death of Lady Matilda next door,’ he said gravely.

Enyd held up her hand and then gave Cecilia a cup of warm honeyed milk. ‘She is talking too much, important as it is. Give her a moment’s rest, please.’

Mary, who was hovering in the background, occupied the break by handing round the platter of pastries filled with chopped meat and herbs and refilling empty cups from the jugs that stood on the table. Soon, Cecilia finished her soothing draught and handed the mug back to John’s mother with a grateful smile.

‘It all happened so quickly last night,’ she continued. ‘Clement had claimed he had a sore throat since the previous evening and had bound up his neck with a length of flannel, just as I am now!’ She smiled wanly at the ironic similarity. ‘Last evening he came in from his work and said he was going to apply more liniment to his throat, so went into the bedchamber. A few moments later I happened to walk in on him and found him with his tunic opened at the neck, as he pulled off the long strip of flannel.’

She stopped and stared down at her hands on the edge of the table, as if reliving that cataclysmic moment in her life.

‘And then?’ prompted John gently.

‘I saw that the skin of his neck was covered in scratches, running downwards under his chin and jaw. I knew what they were; they were made by fingernails clawing at his neck. Instantly, he tried to cover them up again with the cloth, to hide them from me, so I knew they came from some wrongdoing. My first thought was that they were from some woman’s passion in love-making, but then they should have been on his back and chest, not under his chin.’

There was a silence, partly from further embarrassment at the carnal nature of the explanation, but also because Cecilia’s eyes had again filled with tears.

‘I was afraid to challenge him on his infidelity in case he began beating me, but he started ranting about heretics, claiming that this was all their fault. If it had not been for them and the need to exterminate every one, he raved at me, he would not have been in this predicament!’

‘What did he mean?’ asked the sheriff mystified.

De Wolfe was quicker off the mark in his understanding. ‘Was he confessing to having set the fire that killed the fuller in Milk Lane?’

Cecilia started to nod, but the movement hurt her neck and she grimaced before replying. ‘Yes, Sir John. Without my even asking, he started to complain about the forces of the devil being against him, when he was trying to perform God’s work in ridding the city of those who denied the omnipotence of the Holy Church. Those were his actual words!’

She shuddered as she recollected that awful moment. ‘He said that as he was leaving Milk Lane after carrying out his duty as ordained by the Almighty, he saw Matilda de Wolfe standing in the doorway of St Olave’s and was sure that she had recognised him.’

John groaned with dismay as he heard this, recollecting his wife’s strange mood the following day, which must now be put down to her suspicions of the physician. For God’s sake, why did she not confide in him? he agonised.

Enyd offered Cecilia another cup, but she shook her head.

‘By now, my husband was advancing on me, his hands reaching for my throat, as he knew he had fatally compromised himself.’ Her whispers were vibrant with emotion, and John’s mother slipped a comforting arm around her shoulder.

‘But my wife?’ croaked John. ‘What had happened?’

‘Clement said that he could no longer bear the suspense of waiting for her to denounce him and went into her house to confront her. She admitted she had seen him slink out of Milk Lane immediately after the fire had started. Not sure of his guilt, she was going to tell her husband the next day, as it was her duty as wife of a law officer.’