The Medieval Murderers - The Lost Prophecies

The coroner hovered over them like some black hawk, as Gabriel pulled away the hoods from their faces. John did not recognize any of them, but he felt that they did not have the coarse features or rough dress of the usual violent robber.

‘I know who this one is, sergeant!’ cried one of the men-at-arms in surprise. ‘He’s the priest from St Lawrence’s.’

John felt a glow of satisfaction as his theory about a thieving priest was vindicated. If the soldier was right, this was the incumbent of the church of St Lawrence, in the eastern part of High Street.

At that moment the man in question was unable to confirm or deny his identity, as Gwyn was helping to pin him to the ground with a large foot placed on his throat. When he was released, he began gasping and gurgling, then launched into a series of lurid oaths unbecoming of a man of the cloth, until the coroner snarled at him. ‘What’s your name, villain?’

‘I am Ranulf de Fougères, an ordained priest of this diocese, damn you!’ howled the man. ‘Release me and my cousins this instant or the bishop will hear of this!’

Gwyn gave a roar of laughter. ‘He’ll hear of it right enough! Perhaps he’ll also attend your hanging.’

De Wolfe was more interested in what Ranulf had said. ‘Your cousins, eh? Are they both priests as well?’

The other two were still struggling in the grip of the soldiers, and John saw in the dim light that one had a shaven tonsure. They were both big men and had an equally large vocabulary of foul language.

At a sign from de Wolfe, Gabriel and Gwyn hauled the vicar of St Lawrence back on to his feet but kept a firm grip on his arms as he spluttered a reply to John’s question.

‘They are most certainly in lower orders of the Holy Church and like me claim benefit of clergy! We demand to be released at once; you have no jurisdiction over us.’

Ranulf was a narrow-faced weasel of a fellow, full of bluster and self-righteousness. ‘We are on consecrated ground here in Church property. You are trespassing!’

It was the coroner’s turn to laugh now. ‘You bloody fool! Just accept that you’ve been caught! We’ll gladly turn you over to the bishop. There are still enough proctors in the cathedral precinct to keep you locked up, even though you killed one of them!’

At this, one of the cousins let out a howl. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Simon here… though he says the proctor fell down the stairs.’

The other man struggled anew, this time trying to get at his relative. ‘Shut up, you lying bastard! I wasn’t even there. It was you that Ranulf sent to ransack the books!’

A barrage of accusations and insults began between the three miscreants, until the men-at-arms cuffed them into grumbling silence. De Wolfe, frozen to his bones and out of patience with the squabbling clerics, told Gabriel to march the prisoners back to Rougement and put them in the cells.

‘A night in that hellhole under the keep will cool their tempers!’ he growled. ‘Then in the morning the sheriff can negotiate with the bishop or the archdeacon about what happens to them. They won’t be very happy with a bunch of renegade clerics who have murdered one of their proctors!’

The next afternoon John called upon his friend John de Alençon to learn what the episcopal authorities had decided. As he had expected, the Church had closed ranks and refused to let the secular powers deal with the charges of murder and two assaults, as well as the theft of the Black Book and the illegal digging into a mound at Clyst St Mary.

Over a cup of wine in the archdeacon’s house, the wiry cleric told the coroner of that day’s meeting between Bishop Henry Marshal and the sheriff, which he had attended.

‘It was fortunate that His Grace was present in Exeter today, for much of the time he is away dealing with his various political interests,’ said de Alençon with a touch of sarcasm.

It was well known that the bishop was one of Prince John’s supporters in his long-running campaign to unseat his brother Richard from the throne. Henry Marshal had come perilously near a charge of treason over the prince’s abortive rebellion when the Lion-heart was imprisoned in Germany.

However, today’s problem was untainted by politics, and the bishop had no hesitation in requiring the sheriff to hand over the three clerical culprits to his custody for trial by his consistory court, instead of the usual machinery of the criminal law.

‘So they’ll not hang, that’s for sure,’ said de Alençon. ‘But our court will undoubtedly be hard on them, for the dead victim was one of our tonsured servants – and, of course, they also assaulted a priest, your clerk Thomas. My poor nephew always seems to be in trouble of some sort!’

‘He spends much of his time trying to make sense of that damned book that is partly at the root of this trouble,’ observed de Wolfe. ‘What happened to it, by the way?’

‘It was found in Ranulf’s house when it was searched early this morning,’ replied the archdeacon. ‘It proves that they were the ones who robbed little Thomas. The book is back in the archives, now locked away by Jordan le Brent, who seems frightened by it.’

‘What will happen to it, I wonder?’

‘Canon Jordan intends to dispatch it to Westminster as soon as possible. It seems the bishop has decided that Hubert Walter should see it first, as he spends more time there running the country than attending to the affairs of God in Canterbury.’

Once again a sarcastic note entered de Alençon’s voice.

De Wolfe drank some more of the archdeacon’s excellent wine before ruminating about the men he had arrested.

‘It seems odd that an ordained priest and two in lesser holy orders should have embarked on a campaign of violence and robbery,’ he observed.

‘As its says in Paul’s epistle to Timothy, “the love of money is the root of all evil” ’, replied the archdeacon sadly. ‘Our calling is no different from any other trade or profession, John. We have all types of men, some saintly, others pushed into the role because they were orphaned into the care of the Church as infants, rather than being called by God.’

‘Have these men confessed their guilt?’ asked the coroner.

De Alençon shrugged. ‘They could hardly deny being involved, being caught digging and with that Black Book in their possession. But they claim that the proctor accidentally fell down the stairs, though you say that his wound was a deliberate blow. They also protest that digging for treasure is no crime, as if they had found anything they would have declared it to the sheriff.’

‘A likely story!’ rasped de Wolfe. ‘And what about robbing Thomas and assaulting the bailiff of Clyst St Mary?’

‘They flatly deny being anywhere near that village, but I suspect that a few weeks in the dismal cells the proctors use will create such discord between them that one of them will start blaming the others.’

‘And poor Thomas?’

It was so often ‘poor’ Thomas, as the woebegone little clerk seemed to engender pity wherever he went.

‘They say they only wanted to borrow the book and that as it was Church property they had every right to see it. Once again, they claim that Thomas tripped and fell, quite accidentally.’

‘Too many folk become accident-prone when those three are around!!’ grunted the coroner cynically. ‘It’s fortunate for them that they didn’t contrive their accidents in Tavistock, for the abbot there has his own private gallows!’

By the end of the week, Thomas de Peyne had had enough of the Black Book of Brân. Though restored to the library, it remained locked in one of the iron-banded boxes until such time as Jordan le Brent could arrange for it to be sent to London, so Thomas worked from the copy he had made. Poring over the text occupied all his free time, as he wrestled with the challenge of the obscure quatrains.