The Medieval Murderers - The Lost Prophecies

Unsurprisingly, the jury at the short inquest decided that the finds from the new well were treasure-trove, as the original owner must have buried them deliberately in the expectation that he would one day recover them – as opposed to an accidental loss from a hole in a man’s purse or pocket. In that case, the booty would belong to the actual finder, but obviously this could not apply to a sackful of coins and jewellery. Thomas de Peyne had recorded the findings on his rolls, to be presented to the king’s justices when they eventually arrived in Exeter to hold the next Eyre of Assize. When the proceedings were finished, he went back to the cathedral to get on with his other work. The archives and library were also the scriptorium and exchequer of the cathedral, where clerks laboriously wrote out all manner of documents, from orders of services to the financial accounts of the diocese.

The library formed the upper floor of the Chapter House, a wooden building adjacent to the huge church, where the daily meetings of the Chapter were held. This was the controlling body of the cathedral, consisting of the twenty-four canons, who included the four archdeacons, as it would be some years before Exeter followed other cathedrals in appointing a dean.

The benches for the members were on the ground floor, below the lectern from which a ‘chapter’ of either the Gospels or the Rule of St Benedict was read, giving the meeting its name.

In the corner was a steep stairway up which Thomas de Peyne now climbed to the large chamber that contained the mass of documents which he had the task of organizing. A dozen high desks filled the centre of the room, around a charcoal brazier which stood on a slab of slate on the wooden floor. Its heat barely warmed the atmosphere, as the shutters on the un-glazed window openings were wide open to admit light to the handful of shivering clerks who were working at the desks. Around the walls were sloping shelves on which to rest the heavy books, the more valuable of which were chained to the wall, such as the Exon version of King William’s Domesday Book. Other shelves and pigeonholes contained a mass of parchment rolls, and a number of boxes and chests on the floor were filled with more documents.

Thomas stood and stared at the collection with a mixture of pride and exasperation. An intelligent man, he had been schooled in Winchester and was unusually well informed about all manner of topics, from history to theology, from geography to the classics. He was delighted to be given a free run of all these literary treasures, but the task of putting them all in order was a daunting prospect. Many of the smaller tracts and loose parchments had never been listed, and Thomas suspected that some of the boxes below the shelves had not been opened in decades.

He had appropriated a corner desk to himself, where he had begun the marathon job of cataloguing each item before putting them in order on the upper shelves. One of his problems was that he could never resist reading through anything that seemed interesting, which slowed down his progress considerably, even though it added to his already compendious knowledge. Now he settled himself on the high stool at his desk and began sorting through the pile of documents that he had selected the previous day, working steadily for the next hour.

‘How are your labours going, Thomas?’ A deep voice dragged him from his efforts to read the crabbed Latin script of a long-dead priest who had listed the donations for the building of a shrine in the cathedral some sixty years before. The speaker was Jordan le Brent, the canon who acted as archivist and master of the scriptorium. He was an amiable, elderly man with a devotion to learning and history similar to that of the coroner’s clerk.

‘Well enough, sir, though slowly,’ replied Thomas. ‘At least we seem to have at last been spared all those who came searching for maps to buried treasure!’

The older man shook his tonsured head ruefully. ‘Perhaps not, my son. This new find we heard about today might well fire up even more interest in hidden silver.’

Thomas crossed himself fervently. ‘Dear God, I hope not! They have disturbed enough of my papers already, scrabbling through all this.’ He waved a hand at the dusty shelves and the mouldering parchments.

‘The lust for silver and gold seems ingrained in mankind,’ pondered the old canon. ‘No wonder greed is classed as one of the seven deadly sins. Even my own brethren are not immune, for I found one of my fellow canons rooting through the shelves yesterday, when you were away on coroner’s business.’

He avoided naming the person, but Thomas knew that many of the canons were fond of an expensive lifestyle, far removed from the austere rules laid down by St Benedict and St Chrodegang.

‘We should limit those who can have access to our archives, canon,’ said Thomas earnestly. ‘Some of these old parchments are brittle and faded. They could be damaged beyond repair and much information about olden days be lost for ever.’

Jordan le Brent nodded slowly. ‘I agree that we should keep out the clerks of burgesses and merchants, but we cannot bar clergy in the upper orders. But I will ask the proctors to keep an eye on the place at night and make sure the door is locked.’

He wandered away and Thomas went back to his pleasant labours.

Meanwhile, down in the Bush Inn in Idle Lane, where the city sloped steeply down towards the river, John de Wolfe was enjoying a quart of best ale and the company of his mistress Nesta, the pretty Welsh redhead who owned the tavern.

He sat at his usual table near the firepit, where the cold weather was being defeated by a large heap of crackling logs, spitting sparks on to the floor rushes which had frequently to be stamped out by old Edwin, the one-eyed potman. Nesta was taking a few minutes off from harrying her two maids, who were cooking in the kitchen-shed at the back of the inn. John told her all the details of the find of treasure that morning, and inevitably she also brought up the curious fact that so many finds had been made in recent weeks. He explained about the Saxon panic of a century or more ago, when much of their wealth had hurriedly been hidden in the hope of saving it from the invaders.

‘But why is it being found now, for it’s been lying there for long enough, God knows!’ she said.

They spoke in Welsh, her native language and one that John had learned at his mother’s knee. In fact, Gwyn’s native Cornish was close enough for all three to converse in the Celtic tongue, as did a sizeable proportion of the country people in both Devon and Cornwall, who spoke Western Welsh.

‘Such hoards have been turning up regularly for many years, Nesta,’ he said. ‘The one just before Christ Mass was a chance find, but then this note being found in the cathedral that led to the discovery in Alphington has started a kind of madness amongst the population. A number of mounds have been dug into around the city, but all they found were ancient pots and a few bones.’

‘Thomas tells me that many people have been hampering his work in the cathedral by demanding to search the books there,’ she said rather indignantly, for the little priest was a favourite of hers.

‘Thank God so few can read!’ said John fervently. ‘Otherwise half the population of Exeter would be rooting through the archives.’

Only about one in a hundred were literate, this being confined to those in holy orders, both ordained priests and deacons, as well as those in the lower clerical orders, who also provided the clerks to merchants and the authorities.

De Wolfe dallied at the tavern for as long as he could, enjoying the company of his vivacious lover, but as early dusk fell he had to tear himself away to go home, where he would be expected for supper, a newfangled idea of Matilda’s, who always wished to be abreast of new fashions. The noon dinner was most people’s main meal of the day, but she insisted on eating again in the early evening, as did the nobility.