Michael Jecks: City of Fiends

‘Let us get this over with,’ he called.

The watchman nodded and looked at the four neighbours. ‘This girl is dead, and I believe she was deliberately killed and left here. You are the nearest families. Do you recognise her?’

It was a formality, of course. As the boy with the lamp held it to the girl’s face, they all recognised Alice, maid to the Paffards. Henry mumbled his assent, while a lump grew in his throat. It was hard to speak with the sight of that lovely face so spoiled. However, he had no intention of displaying any emotion in front of these churls.

‘Good. I name Joan, maid to Henry Paffard, to be First Finder. You know what that means, maid? When the Coroner arrives, you’ll have to come and tell him how you found the body.’

‘I know.’

‘You are all to come as soon as the Coroner is here,’ the watchman said more loudly, staring at the men of each household in turn. ‘Any who don’t come will be attached and fined. All understand? Right, then. You will need to guard this body. Who volunteers?’

Henry avoided the man’s look. It was a bit much to expect a man like him to stand out here in the alley all night. He was relieved to hear William Marsille say he would stand guard for the first half of the night, his brother for the second. They were younger, after all. Better suited for this sort of duty.

There was a sharp cry from behind him, and Henry turned to see Juliana Marsille pelting down the narrow way.

‘What is this? Oh, God, no!’ she cried as she saw the body, and looked as if she might faint at any moment.

‘Mother, it’s fine,’ William said quickly, stepping around the body and holding out his hands. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll guard her till morning. That’s all.’

But Henry had seen the way her eyes had gone to her sons – accusingly, or so he thought.

Petreshayes Manor

Sir Charles walked about the manor with the excitement of the battle still thrumming in his blood.

He had been alarmed when some of the men had formed a wall before the manor’s doors, but it took only one charge of his mounted force to shatter that, and soon all the villeins were dead, while a few of the manor’s lay brothers were captured. Two were too badly injured to be of any help, and Sir Charles motioned to his men to finish them off. They died quickly.

The others soon led him to where the Bishop’s accounts and money were stored. There was a good strongbox in a locked cellar, and the key on the dead steward’s belt opened both.

‘Bring the Bishop’s carts in here,’ he shouted at the men milling in the open yard area before the manor, and walking inside again.

The buttery had a small barrel of good Bordeaux wine, and he broached it, filling a horn he found on a shelf. Draining it, he topped it up and walked to the hall.

Ulric was in there, sitting with his back to the wall, arms about his knees.

‘Boy! You will keep this horn filled for me.’

Ulric looked up, but said nothing.

‘I can understand your feelings,’ Sir Charles said. ‘You think I have forced you to betray your faith, to make you complicit in the death of the Bishop.’

‘I didn’t know I was sent to ensure my Lord Bishop’s murder!’

‘No. I daresay you didn’t,’ Sir Charles said. He sipped. ‘But in reality I have not. I have helped you to ensure that God’s will is done. Would you gainsay His wishes?’

‘No!’

‘The Bishop was installed after the death of Sir Walter Stapledon, who died in London last year, and the Canons of Exeter elected Bishop Berkeley. But the Pope did not. The Pope was hoping for another. And the Pope is God’s own vicar on earth, is he not? Quite.’

‘He was the Bishop, though.’

‘He was the brother of Lord Berkeley, who is holding your King in his gaol. King Edward, who was anointed by God as King of England, was captured by traitors, and even now is in a cell, while his son has been told to take his throne from him.’

‘How does killing the Bishop help?’

Sir Charles was becoming irritated. ‘His death will begin to bring Lord Berkeley to reconsider, I hope. Berkeley has betrayed his own oaths to his King, and this is but the first of his punishments. And meanwhile . . .’

‘Sir?’

‘Meanwhile, my horn is empty, boy. Fetch me wine!’ Sir Charles rasped.

There was no need to tell Ulric about the other force, led by the Dunheved brothers, who even now would be trying to release the King from his prison at Berkeley Castle.

For the death of Bishop Berkeley was only the beginning. Soon, armed men would rise up all over the country, working to destabilise this inept and illegal government, and return King Edward II to his throne.

Paffards’ House

Joan sat on her palliasse, her arms wrapped about her legs as she shivered, staring at the door.

She had a vision rising up before her horrified eyes: Alice’s body. But even as she saw her friend’s dead face another picture intruded: naked bodies writhing on the floor beside the fire, the orange flames illuminating their passion. It was so shocking, she had gasped.

And then Gregory Paffard heard her; he looked up and saw her and his little brother Thomas watching, and there was rage in his eyes. The sort of rage that promises punishment and retribution.

She was petrified.

Morrow of the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist 2

Precentor’s House, Exeter Cathedral

He was not fussy, he told himself as he sat at his table, but he did like things just so.

If asked, Adam Murimuth would have described himself as an affable man in his fifty-second year. His face had the look of one who had never known hunger or hardship. He had spent all his adult life in the Church, and was a Doctor of Civil Law as well as being a priest. He enjoyed the trust of the Pope and of kings, and his friendship was sought out by bishops – which was why he was simultaneously a Canon of Hereford and Exeter.

For some years he had clambered up the ladder of promotion in the Church. He had taken patronage where it was available, buying positions when he could, retaining friends who were powerful, discarding those who could embarrass him. He was a highly respected figure – and yet here he was, scrabbling about, trying to find a knife for his quill.

It was annoying. When he came to his table this morning he discovered that his little penknife was missing, and that his ink had been mixed weak. His quill, a good new one, was unprepared, and how on earth could he write his journal without a decent pen?

He had begun to write this little memoir twenty years ago. Of course, then he had still been a callow young man, without the experience that life could bring. No man, he believed, should contemplate recording a life until he had lived one.

At last he found his knife on the floor, where it had fallen beneath the table. He stripped the fletchings from his quill and began laboriously to shape the pen’s end. Satisfied, he dipped it into the insipid ink and stared at the greyish staining on the nib with distaste while he prepared himself to write. For some moments he did not move, holding the quill over the paper, staring at the window ahead of him, the strip of parchment as blank as his mind.

Mornings like this were infuriating. There was nothing much to note. Little happened in this quiet little Close. There was some bickering about how the Close was looking, scruffy and unkempt, with horses wandering over the grass, men standing and haggling over deals, or gambling or brawling – even women plying their unsavoury trade. He had found one rutting with her client behind the Treasurer’s House last week – a disgraceful site for fornication!