Michael JECKS - The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

‘Nobody else has exhibited the same symptoms as far as I know.’

‘Did he live alone?’

‘No, he was in a hall with a friend. Jolinde Bolle.’

Baldwin saw the Coroner peer at the Dean through narrowed eyes. ‘Bolle?’

‘Who is he?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Another Secondary,’ the Dean answered. ‘Men here at the Cathedral are all of different ranks, Sir Baldwin. Ahm, when the voices of the Choristers break, they often remain here to study and learn all they can, hoping to be promoted later if they can win the patronage of a Canon, er, but sometimes they cannot and stay on as Secondaries, mere assistants to the priests and clergy. Jolinde is one such.’

‘He also spends much of his time in alehouses and taverns in the city,’ Coroner Roger said sternly. ‘I’ve seen him about the place often enough.’

‘Jolinde was never going to be a priest,’ the Dean said. He was washing his hands more vigorously now as his anxiety grew. ‘Oh, may God forgive me if I am wrong! Hmm, Sir Baldwin, um, I fear that Peter was murdered by someone who wanted to avenge the dead felon. Only a man who wasn’t a priest could behave like that, poisoning a clerk in the Cathedral.’

‘A man like Jolinde, you mean?’ Coroner Roger enquired dryly.

‘It’s always the same with the blasted Dean and his Chapter,’ Roger said as he walked with Simon and Baldwin over to the cemetery at the northernmost point of the Cathedral. He stopped and gestured at the Cathedral. ‘They keep everything hidden that they can. If they’d been able to, they’d never have told me about the lad’s death. Tchah! What can a man do?’ He turned and stalked off, but Baldwin and Simon followed more slowly.

‘What do you think?’ Baldwin asked his friend.

‘I don’t know what to make of it. We need more facts.’

‘Yes. It is intriguing, however. A robbery and this Secondary recognised the felon; a glover is killed and this lad was the one whom the Coroner suspects took the money – although the apprentice has been charged with the same crime – and now he himself dies. I find this all fascinating,’ Baldwin observed. He called after the Coroner, forcing him to slow his furious pace. ‘Coroner, were you serious when you implied that this lad Bolle could have killed Peter?’

The other man was still seething with frustration over the secretiveness of the Cathedral staff.

‘I’d suspect myself for that amount of jewels and cash!’ he snapped.

There was something about him that Baldwin rather liked. The Coroner was a thickset man, with a slightly flabby belly that showed his practise with his sword was not so regular as it should be, but whose solid posture revealed his strength. He had a square, kindly face, with warm, slightly bulging brown eyes, and a short, cropped hairstyle. His gaze was frank and honest, unlike so many corrupt officials Baldwin had met, and his brow was strangely unwrinkled for a man who must surely be no younger than Simon. His hair was frosted about the temples, but that was the only proof of his increasing years.

He was appraising Baldwin in his turn, saying, ‘They guard their privacy jealously, do the staff here, but from what the Dean told me, they were preparing gifts of gloves for some of the more senior citizens for the Holy Innocents’ Day feast. You among them.’

‘Yes,’ Baldwin agreed. Simon remained silent, looking over the rebuilding work which continued around the Cathedral even today in this cold and miserable weather.

‘Well,’ the Coroner said, pulling his cloak closer about his shoulders, ‘the dead man, this Peter, was working in the Treasury – that is the building over at the north side of the Cathedral itself – and was tasked, along with his friend Jolinde Bolle, with delivering money and jewels to the glover who was to make your gifts. Except the glover himself is dead, murdered by his apprentice, and the apprentice denies taking the money. He denies killing his master, come to that, but they always do, don’t they? You asked me about the young man living with Peter, this Jolinde Bolle. If Peter had taken the stuff, Bolle could have been an accomplice. Maybe he got greedy – killed Peter and took what they had thieved rather than share it.’

‘Would Peter have known where the glover kept his strongbox?’ Simon interrupted.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps the glover took them to it.’

‘And then he killed the glover to conceal his theft…’

‘It’s possible.’

‘… Only to be robbed, and killed in his turn,’ Baldwin murmured. ‘It sounds complicated. Is it feasible that two murders could happen in so short a space of time?’

‘This is speculation, but two murders within a few days in a city this size is not unheard of. And what if Peter’s death was by his own hand? After all the Dean hinted at it: he seemed to suggest that if the lad had stolen the jewels and cash, he might have felt so remorseful that he could only see the one way out.’

‘Do you believe that?’

Roger stopped dead and placed his hands on his hips. He gazed up at the sky, then around at the Cathedral’s grounds. ‘Do I think he killed himself? No. If he did, where are the jewels now? It’s not too far-fetched to suppose that there were two murders, but that there were two unconnected robberies as well does stretch my imagination.’

Baldwin gave a dry smile. ‘Good. I would also add that I find it unlikely that a fellow would take a lethal dose of poison and then walk into his church to expire during a service.’

‘You say you’ve seen this Bolle about the city at night,’ Simon noted. ‘Couldn’t he have killed the glover and stolen the money? Perhaps Peter saw the jewels and recognised them – threatened to tell someone?’

‘So Jolinde Bolle placated him, said he would replace them or whatever, and then slowly poisoned his friend?’ The Coroner grinned cynically.

‘Yes, it does seem a little unlikely,’ Baldwin admitted. ‘What of the other people who live here?’

‘There are more than I can count: twenty-four Canons in the Chapter; the Dean and his four dignitaries…’

‘Go on,’ said Simon. ‘These places all have different groups of men. Who serves the Cathedral?’

‘There are the Precentor, the Sub-Dean, the Chancellor and the Treasurer. Then there are four Archdeacons, for Totnes, Barnstaple, Cornwall and… oh, for Exeter, of course. I think each Canon has his own Vicar; there are some twelve or so Secondaries like this Peter; fourteen Choristers; at least twenty Annuellars, the chantry priests. And there are all the other members of the clergy, too: clerks and sub-clerks to the Exchequer, clerks to the Lady Chapel, clerks of works, clerks of God knows what… There’s probably two hundred folk living here within these walls.’

‘They live within the grounds permanently?’ Simon asked. He had been educated by the Canons of Crediton Church and had a better understanding of the canonical life than Baldwin, whose Order had been divorced from other religious groups.

‘They all do, these choir members,’ Roger sniffed. ‘Keep themselves to themselves. Apart from a few of the youngsters they hardly ever mix with the likes of us, Sir Baldwin. We’re too far beneath them. Even the lowliest of the Choristers is probably looked upon as more important than you or me. They are all religious.’

Baldwin nodded. The whole of the Cathedral grounds had been encircled by great walls some twenty years before, while he was still abroad. It had been a surprise for him when he had first seen the precinct on returning. They made the Cathedral feel divorced somehow from the city itself. ‘I presume that the gates are all locked at night?’

In answer the Coroner pointed towards the city’s south gate. ‘Down there is the Palace Gate, called that because it’s opposite the Bishop’s Palace. There, in Bear Lane is the Bear Gate.’ He turned and pointed to their right. ‘Up there is Little Stile, for pedestrians only. Next is St Petrock’s Gate, which leads through the church itself. Then there’s the Fissand Gate, although many call it Broadgate now. And last,’ he said, turning and pointing back the way they had come, ‘there is St Martin’s up there, and the Bicklegh Gate. It’s called that because the Bicklegh family owns the house alongside. All of the gates are locked and barred from inside, every night, and only when the porter rises at dawn are they opened again.’