The Medieval Murderers - The Deadliest Sin

She shook her head sadly. ‘Last evening he was fairly well and fell into what I thought was a normal sleep. But he has not responded to anything I say today.’

The infirmarian began examining his patient, lifting his eyelids and peering at the pupils. He gently felt the sides of the neck and probed the armpits, then pulled aside the bedclothes and placed his ear on the chest. Straightening up, he courteously suggested that Eleanor wait outside the room whilst he examined the more intimate parts of the husband’s body. With the aid of Stogursey, who stood patiently on the other side of the bed, they pulled down the blankets and Xavier carefully surveyed and palpated the belly and genitals. Then the servant gently pulled the body of his master towards him so that the monk could study the back, noting some small haemorrhages scattered over the skin.

‘Do you have a sample of his urine?’ he asked the doctor’s assistant. Stogursey produced a glass bottle from under a cloth and the Augustinian held it up to the light from the window, studying the colour and sniffing the odour. Realising that Stogursey had a considerable knowledge of medicine, he extracted a detailed history of Robert Giffard’s illness from the man. Eventually, with a resigned shrug, he left the bedchamber and went into the hall of the house, where Eleanor Giffard had ordered the servants to bring food and wine for the visiting infirmarian.

‘I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance, madam,’ said Xavier in a grave voice. ‘And I fear you are right about your husband’s condition; he is unlikely to live much longer.’

‘But what is it that is killing him?’ she demanded. ‘Could it be some miasma that he has caught from one of his patients? Some are shipmasters who have returned from far overseas.’

The monk shook his head. ‘I do not believe so, Mistress Giffard. I think he has been poisoned – but by what, I cannot tell. There are scores, if not hundreds of noxious substances, most derived from plants and herbs, which could cause such symptoms.’

‘Have you no antagonist to such an evil thing?’ she said tearfully.

Xavier sighed heavily. ‘Without knowing what manner of poison it is, that is impossible. I am afraid that many people are misled into thinking that every poison has an antidote, but that is not so. Most methods of treatment are purely arbitrary.’

‘Then what can be done? Is he to die without any attempt at saving him?’

‘The problem is to discover how the poison has been adminstered,’ replied the infirmarian. ‘You say that all his food and drink has been tasted these past weeks since you suspected some evil doing?’

Eleanor once again assured him that either she or Stogursey had strictly supervised everything made in the kitchen and had both sampled it themselves. Xavier spoke gently to her for some minutes, though he knew that there was little he could do. After prescribing some bland treatment such as trying to get the patient to swallow white of egg and crushed charcoal, he had little else to offer other than his prayers. Eventually, after taking some refreshment, he mounted his horse and began the journey back to Keynsham. He had promised Mistress Giffard that he would return in several days, but as he made his way to the bridge, he knew that Robert Giffard would be dead before then.

Bristol Castle was on the eastern edge of the city – or to be more accurate, the city was continuous with the castle whose wide moat was fed from the small River Frome, which lay to the north. Inside the curtain wall of the castle was a massive keep, but there were numerous other smaller buildings, both in stone and wood. The sheriff, as befitted the King’s representative, had his quarters in the keep, together with the numerous officers who administered both the city and the county of Somerset.

One chamber on the ground floor of this forbidding mass of grey stone was provided for the coroner, Ralph fitz Urse. Like the sheriff, a coroner was a royal officer, who had multiple functions, mostly of a legal nature. He was responsible for bringing cases before the Eyre, the perambulating court presided over by the King’s judges. As part of his duties, the coroner had to investigate all deaths that were obviously not natural.

Most of his day-to-day work was carried out by his serjeant, William Hangfield, who had his own small office, little more than a cubicle, just inside one of the side entrances to the keep. This was a small arched gate some fifteen feet above the ground, reached by a wooden ramp, which in case of siege could be thrown down to avoid offering a weak point in the defences.

At about the eighth hour of the morning, William Hangfield was enjoying a quart of ale and a hunk of bread and cheese in the Great Hall, which during the day acted as a central meeting place of both the sheriff’s staff and many of the citizens who came to transact business with the officials. Benches and trestle tables lined one wall and those with some influence in the kitchens could obtain food and drink to fortify themselves for the working day. William lived with his wife and small son in a small house on Wine Street, but as he had to deal with coroner’s cases in all of the eastern part of the county, he was often out of the city. Today, he had no such tasks, and having just delivered some inquest records to the clerks for copying, ready for the next visitation of the judges, he had decided on some refreshment. He sat at a table, gossiping with some of his fellow officers, feeling relaxed, looking forward to an easy day in this hot weather. A rather short and heavily built man, now in his fortieth year, he had a thick neck and a round, rugged face, with black hair cropped to a horizontal line, in the old Norman style, which was long out of fashion.

He was a sociable man, popular with his friends in the castle and able to get along with his superiors, both the coroner and the sheriff himself. Both of these were not known for their patience or good nature, but William Hangfield was able to avoid any serious brushes with their authority, whilst still managing to get much of his own way in the methods that he employed to go about his duties. He sat with his pottery beer mug in a large hand, discussing the latest news about the ongoing antagonism between King Edward and the barons, who were demanding the expulsion of his favourites, the Despensers.

William’s political conversation was suddenly interrupted by the arrival at his side of one of the door-wards. These were servants who stood guard at the entrance to the Hall, to prevent any undesirables from entering.

‘William, there’s a lad at the gate who says he must see you urgently about a death,’ he reported. ‘Shall I let him in?’

A few moments later, the door-ward brought a nervous youth to the table, a thin boy about nine years old in the plain but decent clothing of a house servant.

‘If it please you, sir, I have a message for the coroner from my mistress,’ he said quaveringly, awed by his surroundings. He held out a folded piece of parchment, sealed with red wax.

The coroner’s officer took it and broke the seal, rapidly scanning the brief contents.

‘Good boy, tell your mistress that someone will attend upon her very shortly. Understand?’

The boy nodded and quickly vanished, glad to be out of the castle, which to most of the citizens had an evil reputation for dispensing unwanted justice.

‘More trouble?’ asked his drinking partner, a senior clerk in the taxation office.

‘One of our prominent citizens has gone to meet his Maker,’ replied Hangfield. ‘I had heard that he was ill, but not that he was in danger of death.’

‘And who might that be?’ asked the clerk.

‘Our best-known doctor, Robert Giffard. He was very well-regarded, especially by the more eminent residents of the city.’