Bernard Knight: A Plague of Heretics

November 1196

The chapman could see that it was an unusual sort of funeral, even for such an outlandish place as Lympstone. There were corpses, bearers, mourners and a grave, but it was nothing like he had ever seen before.

He shrugged his bulky pack from his back and set it down with some relief on the dusty road outside the church gate. Behind him, the track led down to a primitive wharf, where the river lapped against the muddy banks of the estuary of the River Exe. From where he stood, he could see over the low hedge around the churchyard to a corner well away from the existing grave-mounds. Here a flat farm-cart had just arrived, with a patient ox between the shafts. Six sheeted bodies lay on its bare boards, but there was no sign of coffins. Two of the shrouded shapes were pitifully small.

At the side of the cart lay a large pit, a dozen feet square and almost the depth of a man. Some distance away, three labourers leaned on shovels, their noses and mouths swathed in rags, knotted at the backs of their necks.

As the pedlar watched, he saw four other men, swaddled in cloaks and gloves, with hoods over their heads and cloths tied around their faces, begin to carry the bodies to the gaping pit. Near the east end of the small church, from which a bell tolled mournfully, a group of silent people watched, taking care not to come within fifty paces of the cart. The only exceptions were a tall man, dressed in sombre grey, and a diminutive priest with a slightly humped shoulder. On the side of the pit, the tall one stood, his black hair blowing in the breeze as he held the edge of his cloak across his mouth. The little priest took no such precautions, but was standing boldly on the very edge of the grave, reading loudly in Latin from a small book, his other hand making the sign of the cross as each corpse made its final short descent down into the earth.

The chapman turned to a burly man standing next to him, the foul smell from his soiled leather apron marking him out as a fuller.

‘What’s going on, friend? What tragedy was this?’ he asked.

The fuller looked suspiciously at the pedlar. ‘Where’ve you been these past few weeks?’ he snapped.

‘Just got off a boat down at the quayside.’

The other fellow backed away, his suspicions deepening. ‘Not from abroad, are you? From foreign parts?’

His aggressive tone made the packman hurriedly shake his head.

‘No, I’ve come no further than from Paignton, down the coast. Hoping to sell more of my needles and threads up this end of the county.’

The fuller relaxed with a grunt. ‘The yellow plague is back again, no doubt brought in by seamen from across the Channel. Twice it’s struck this village since last month.’

He nodded towards the churchyard, where the last body was being laid in the common grave. ‘A whole family there, laid low inside three days. Yellow as gorse flowers, the lot of them.’

They both watched as the men with spades advanced on the heap of red earth alongside the pit, preparing to fill it in without delay.

‘So who are the two men at the graveside?’ persisted the pedlar, a naturally inquisitive soul.

‘The tall one is the king’s coroner from Exeter, Sir John de Wolfe. The bailiff called him because there were six dead in one house. Why he was summoned, I can’t fathom, for it’s obvious that it wasn’t foul play.’

‘The other one’s the parish priest, I suppose?’

The fuller spat contemptuously on the ground. ‘Not him! Our craven bastard’s too scared to go near anyone with the plague, even to shrive them. That brave little fellow is the crowner’s clerk.’

As the crowd in the churchyard began to drift away, the chapman shouldered his pack and trudged away from the village, heading for open country. Weary though he was, he had no desire to stay around Lympstone, if the yellow sickness was stalking its lanes.

‘You can’t keep riding around half of Devonshire just to look at folks dying of a murrain,’ objected the sheriff, pouring de Wolfe some wine from a pitcher on his table. ‘There’s no profit in it for the king’s courts if there’s no crime — and sooner or later you’ll catch it yourself!’

As he picked up the cup and drank, the coroner grunted, his favourite form of response. ‘I agree, but what do I do when I get a message from a bailiff or a Serjeant of the Hundred? The law obliges them to notify me of any unusual deaths.’

Henry de Furnellis, a grizzled old knight almost a score of years older than John, shook his head. ‘Now that this yellow distemper is becoming more common along the coast, we’ll have to tell the local officers not to bother you with such deaths. I hope to God that it doesn’t spread further inland.’

The coroner, sprawled in a leather chair with his long legs sticking out towards the hearth, nodded his agreement. ‘The folk down there are blaming it on vessels coming in from across the Channel, but from what my shipmasters tell me, at the moment there’s no such disease in Normandy, Brittany or even Flanders.’

De Wolfe was a partner in a thriving wool-exporting business in Exeter, which had three vessels that regularly sailed back and forth to the places he had mentioned.

‘Well, just be careful, John!’ rumbled the sheriff. ‘We don’t want to lose you again, after just getting you back in harness.’

After being the county coroner for two years, de Wolfe had recently spent a few months in London at the king’s command but was now back and, three weeks earlier, had resumed his old duties.

They were sitting in the sheriffs chamber in the keep of Rougemont, Exeter’s brooding castle in the upper corner of the old walled city. Outside, the November morning was grey and cold, with an easterly wind hinting at early snow. John usually called upon his old Crusader friend each day, to discuss cases, politics and generally grumble about the world going to the dogs, in the way that older men do, though de Wolfe was only forty-two. Together they were the main law officers in Devon, the sheriff being the king’s representative in the county, responsible for keeping the peace and the collection of taxes, while the coroner had a multitude of functions, including the complicated business of bringing cases to the royal courts.

‘Are you settling back in again, John?’ asked his grey-haired colleague solicitously. He looked across at de Wolfe, who he thought was looking a little drawn and haggard. At the best of times, the coroner was hardly a cheerful soul, but now his long face, large hooked nose and the deep-set eyes below the dark eyebrows looked even grimmer than usual. His jet-black hair, worn long and swept back, unlike the neck-crop of most Norman gentry, was still without a trace of grey, but de Furnellis thought he detected signs of ageing in the coroner’s face.

‘I’m glad to be back home,’ said John in his deep, sonorous voice. ‘Westminster didn’t suit me. There was too little work and too much palace intrigue for my liking.’

‘And Matilda? How is she taking her return home?’

He spoke carefully, for he was well aware that this was a delicate subject. The coroner’s scowl deepened.

‘Bloody woman! Without her, life would be so much easier. She’s trapped with me, just as I am trapped with her.’

‘The convent didn’t suit her once again?’ probed Henry, though he knew the answer well enough.

De Wolfe shook his head, swallowing the last of his red wine before replying. ‘They won’t take her back again in Polsloe, that’s for sure. Twice she’s gone in there and twice she’s left. The beds are too hard, the food is too plain and they wear dowdy raiment, she says! What the hell does she expect in a nunnery?’ Moodily, he banged his wine-cup back on Henry’s desk.