The Medieval Murderers - Sword of Shame

‘Sir.’

Later that day, Sir Ralph smiled to himself as he picked up the sword again.

It was a perfectly balanced weapon, beautiful and strong. There were only a couple of little nicks in the sharp steel, very little after a vicious battle like today’s. It was a marvellous weapon, this. Astonishingly good for a mere local thegn in a quiet district like this. He would have it engraved with his name. Yes, a shield to show it was owned by a nobleman, and de la Pomeroy engraved underneath it, the letters filled with silver, so that all who saw it would know it was Sir Ralph’s weapon.

He whirled it over his head and smiled to himself.

Shameful, of course, that it hadn’t protected the thegn or his land. Because it hadn’t. Its owner was dead, and Sir Ralph was perfectly confident that this country would soon be his Duke’s. God was on the side of the Normans.

‘You know it?’ Sir Ralph asked again.

Bartholomew recalled those hideous days, running from the beaches, finding King Harold’s host hurrying down from London, joining them in the hope that they would hurl the invaders back into the sea and destroy them all, and then the despair, the total, overwhelming despair, as Harold died, run down by a Norman knight’s lance

It had taken weeks to make his way back to the cathedral. His wounds were not extensive, and he had been well nursed with the prayers of his companions. Later, the Normans had arrived, laying siege to the city, hanging and torturing those they caught until the city surrendered. Then came the new rule: houses were torn down to make space for the castle, the symbol of King William the Bastard’s power. And when men like Sir Ralph de la Pomeroy arrived to take control, they viewed simple dissent as an excuse for murder.

Bartholomew had seen so many deaths now. So many. And many had been killed by Sir Ralph using this very sword. He shook his head and set the sword back in the scabbard. His fingers were revolted by its very feel. He could not wait until he had returned to the little chapel in Exeter where he had been made chaplain. Perhaps by the time he died he would have grown to comprehend this appalling catastrophe. He doubted it.

Too many good people had died, and brother had killed brother. Dudda and Brada among others. Yes, he had heard Dudda’s last words to his brother: ‘Brother, I love you…forgive me!’

This shameful sword, their father’s greatest creation, had killed his line. His fingers touched the silver engraving. ‘De la Pomeroy,’ he read, and felt sickened.

Sir Ralph was welcome to it.

Exeter, April 1195

There was a thunderous crash as the roof fell in and a fountain of sparks erupted into the night sky. The air became filled with specks of black ash and fragments of burning straw floated from the flaming thatch of the cottage. With a crackling roar, Gwyn’s home of twelve years was destroyed in as many minutes.

The big Cornishman stood impotently in the road outside, watching the destruction in company with his neighbours, who although sympathetic to his loss, were more concerned over the threat to their own roofs by the flying sparks. They had carried leather buckets of turbid water from the well, but there was nothing they could do to save the little building, made of wood-framed wattle plastered with cob-a mixture of clay, straw and dung.

The villagers of St Sidwell, a hamlet just outside Exeter’s city walls, had helped Gwyn of Polruan to save what he could of the family’s possessions, few that they were, but most of what was in the single-room had gone up in flames. In the plot behind, the hut that his wife Agnes used for her cooking was emptied before it also fell prey to the flying embers-and their three goats, the fowls and a pair of pigs were also taken to safety in a nearby croft.

‘How did it start, Gwyn?’ asked the man from next door, a mournful fellow who always stank, as he worked in the tannery.

‘That bloody roof again! A chunk of withies and straw as big as my head fell down into the firepit. By the time the smoke woke me up, it was too late!’

The thatch had been laid on woven hazel withies supported by the rafters, always a hazard in dwellings where the fire was in the centre of the floor beneath.

‘Thank God that Agnes and the boys weren’t here,’ said the tanner, relishing the drama that was enlivening the humdrum life of the village.

‘Nothing but damned trouble, this week,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘Both lads are sickening for something, so she took them down to stay with her sister in Milk Lane. She’s good with herbs and potions and suchlike.’

As they spoke, the front wall fell in with a crash and fresh streamers of fire spewed up into the night sky.

‘What’s our landlord going to say about losing his house?’ asked another neighbour with ill-concealed satisfaction. He rented his own dwelling from the same man, the owner of several fulling-mills on the river, which processed raw wool for the spinners and weavers of the city.

‘Sod him, the tight-fisted bastard!’ growled Gwyn. ‘If he won’t mend a rotten roof, he has to put up with the consequences.’

The tanner nudged him. ‘Talk of the devil! Here he is.’

The fire made the midnight scene as bright as day and in its glare, they saw a dark-haired man hurrying towards them, his whole demeanour suggesting pent-up anger.

‘What have you done to my house, you Cornish savage?’ he yelled as he came close. ‘This is all your fault!’

Though Gwyn, like many large men, was normally of a placid nature, this unjust accusation coming so soon after the loss of his home, made him lose his temper.

‘Don’t give me that, Walter Tyrell!’ he boomed. ‘Your lousy roof collapsed on to my fire. God knows I’ve asked you often enough to get it mended!’

A shouting match soon developed, each man vociferously denying the claims of the other. Surrounded by a circle of neighbours, whose sympathies were totally with Gwyn, the pair squared up to each other, as red-faced as the fire behind them. The two antagonists were as unlike as could be imagined. Gwyn of Polruan was a huge, ginger-haired giant, with long moustaches of the same hue hanging down each side of his chin. Walter Tyrell was of average height, but looked small alongside the coroner’s officer. About forty years old, he was coarsely handsome, with dark wavy hair and a rim of black beard around his face. Where Gwyn wore a shabby leather jerkin over his serge breeches, hastily pulled on before he escaped from the burning house, the fuller had a long tunic of blue linen with expensive embroidery around the neck and an ornate belt of embossed leather.

‘You’ll pay for this, you drunken oaf!’ yelled Tyrell, his anger fuelled by Gwyn’s refusal to defer to what he considered a social superior. ‘No doubt you were too full of ale to bank down your fire before you fell unconscious with drink!’

This was totally unjust, for though Gwyn was as fond of ale as the next man, he had a prodigious capacity and had never been seen to be obviously drunk. In addition, though he often stayed in Rougemont Castle overnight, drinking and playing dice with his soldier friends, this particular evening he had come home before the city gates closed at curfew, to feed his animals and worry about the sickness that was afflicting his two young sons.

‘Pay for it?’ he snarled at his insolent landlord. ‘I’ve been paying for this pox-ridden slum for a dozen years! At four pence a week, I could have built a mansion in that time!’

As the average wage was only two pence a day, this was an appreciable sum, but Tyrell’s unreasonable wrath was now in full flow.

‘You’ll pay me five pounds towards the cost of rebuilding-or I’ll take you to the sheriff’s court for judgment. And he’s a good friend of mine!’