Bernard Knight - A Plague of Heretics

De Wolfe groaned at the explanation. Matilda was prepared to follow her conscience, in spite of her antipathy to him — but she had left it too late.

‘So he silenced her, just as he tried to silence you?’

Cecilia sobbed and Enyd held her tight. ‘He came for me and I ran in here, but he seized me by the throat. My poor little maid heard the commotion, ran in and tried to pull him off, but he felled her to the floor. He ranted that I was a heretic at heart, avoiding church when I could and refusing to join their petition to the canons. I shook him off and ran into the yard, trying to escape, but he followed … and that was the last I remember until you kind people revived me. He must have thought that he had left me dead!’

‘She has had enough now!’ said Enyd de Wolfe firmly. ‘We’ll put you to rest for a while, my dear.’

As the other women went to settle Cecilia on her bed, the men continued to sit around the table in a subdued mood.

‘What happens now?’ asked Ralph Morin, who had been a silent listener to this drama. ‘Where does John stand in this?’

Henry de Furnellis poured himself a pint of cider and drank half of it before replying. ‘Legally, he’s a sanctuary seeker and stands committed by a coroner’s jury to trial before the king’s judges,’ he said. ‘But as that idiot de Courtenay was so grossly influenced by Richard de bloody Revelle, I intend ignoring his verdict in the light of what has happened since.’

‘The facts will have to be put before the Justices of Assize, as a matter of record,’ said John doggedly, even though it might be to his disadvantage.

‘I hope so — otherwise that persistent troublemaker de Revelle will wriggle out of it once again,’ growled Morin.

Thomas de Peyne ventured a suggestion, which was always worth heeding. ‘The Chief Justiciar knows the situation in Devon very well, sir. Should not a letter be sent to him, explaining what has happened? As he’s Archbishop of Canterbury as well, the fact that this grew out of a heresy problem makes it all the more relevant.’

Archbishop Hubert Walter was an old Crusader and knew John de Wolfe better than most other men. It would be a good insurance against any repercussions over this affair, and the sheriff approved of the idea.

‘The next time I go to Westminster with the county farm for the Exchequer, I’ll take such a letter — and see Hubert myself to explain what’s been going on here.’

They sat drinking for a moment longer, then Gwyn opened up a different aspect of the drama.

‘What about these other killings?’ he grunted. ‘Are they all down to this doctor fellow?’

De Wolfe reflectively scratched a flea bite on his head. ‘Maybe we’ll never know! With Clement’s confessed guilt about my wife and to burning that family to death, as well as attacking his wife and her maid, everyone will be happy to lay all other crimes at his feet.’

‘I suppose there’s no reason why he couldn’t have done them,’ boomed Ralph Morin. ‘As a physician, he travelled about outside Exeter. It’s no distance to Wonford, and the other murders were actually in the city.’

The sheriff shrugged. ‘As John says, we’ll never know the whole truth, though he seems the most obvious culprit. The way that poor man’s voice-box was cut out smacks of medical knowledge to me.’

‘Yet that mad monk Alan de Bere and his fanatical friend Rugge were crazy enough to have been the killers,’ countered John.

‘And I wouldn’t put it past those proctors’ men, either!’ added Brother Rufus darkly. ‘Whoever it was, God will know well enough when it comes to the Day of Judgement.’

Thomas nodded fervently and crossed himself, and with a sense of anticlimax the meeting broke up, John taking Mary back next door, leaving his mother and Hilda to care for the bruised and battered women.

Gwyn and Thomas thought it best to leave their master to his own thoughts, so John settled in his chair in the empty hall, with only Brutus and a cup of wine for company.

He sat brooding darkly on what he had just heard. This was the very chamber in which that bastard Clement had ended his wife’s life, and though John was not sufficient of a hypocrite to shed crocodile tears, it was still his wife and the woman who had shared his life for so many years, albeit intermittently. What right had that swine to take her away in such a violent fashion? The sudden horror of that episode even overshadowed the obvious liberation that it had given him, the freedom now to be with Hilda. His blonde mistress and lifelong friend was sensitive enough to avoid the subject for now, until the emotional avalanche had levelled out.

She said she would stay at the Bush for another two nights, to attend Matilda’s funeral, which John de Alençon had arranged for tomorrow in the cathedral. Then she would have to go back with Enyd, who was keen to return to help Evelyn look after William, who was still very weak. John was determined to escort them back himself, as he was desperate to see his brother returning to health.

He sat for a while longer before going up to Rougemont, where Gwyn said a local case needed his attention. He would also have to hold an inquest on Clement of Salisbury later that day — on reflection, it was fortunate that he had killed himself, as John had been fully prepared to run his sword through him if he had found him alive, getting himself into more trouble.

Richard Lustcote, whom John called to look at the body and the broken flask, had said that from the smell and tentative taste, the black fluid was a strong extract of monkshood and belladonna and possibly other poisons that the physician would have had in his pharmacopoeia.

With a sigh he hauled himself out of his chair and, with a final pensive glance at the empty one on the other side of the hearth, he went out of the hall to carry on with his life.

Three months later, on a clear winter’s day, Sir John de Wolfe was married to Hilda of Dawlish in the porch of St Andrew’s Church in Stoke-in-Teignhead, the parchment with the banns still nailed to the door as they faced it for the ceremony, as was the tradition.

The slim blonde, in a long gown of blue satin under a fur-lined pelisse of dark blue velvet, was attended by a beaming Evelyn as maid of honour. John, in a new grey tunic and mantle, had his brother William as his wedding squire, still thin and pale but happy to be back in charge of his beloved manors.

After Father Martin, assisted by Thomas de Peyne, had completed the ceremony and taken them inside the church for the nuptial Mass and a blessing, they all adjourned to the nearby Church Hostel for the ‘bride-ale’, a lavish feast, which overflowed on to the street, where trestles were spread with food and drink for the whole village, the festivities lasting until well after dark.

Many guests had come down from Exeter by cart and on horseback the previous day, so that all John’s friends were there to wish them good fortune. Gwyn, Martha, Mary, Henry de Furnellis, John de Alençon, Hugh de Relaga, Ralph Morin, Gabriel were there — even Andrew the livery man, who provided the transport. A further large contingent came across the river from Holcombe, including all Hilda’s extensive family.

As John stood with an arm around the slim waist of his lovely bride, a hand grasping a cup of mead, a thought penetrated the haze of his happy confusion. He wondered where Nesta was at this moment, the Welsh woman whom he had undoubtedly loved, as he now loved Hilda. Was she still happily married to her stonemason in Chepstow and was there perhaps a chubby infant at her breast? Would she ever learn of Matilda’s death?

Another person who did not attend the wedding was Cecilia, who, as soon as she fully recovered, left the house and returned to live with her family in Worcester, taking Lucille with her as her maid, as her own did not wish to leave her folks in the city. Cecilia had confessed to John that she felt out of place in Exeter, being a reminder to the citizens of the harm that her husband had done there. Though de Wolfe did not appreciate it, the perceptive Mary suspected that Hilda was secretly pleased that the handsome widow was going far enough away not to be a temptation to a susceptible next-door neighbour!