The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

Matilda was a short, heavily built woman, four years older than her husband. They had been pushed into marriage by their parents sixteen years earlier, and both had regretted it ever since. Until he gave up warfare two years previously, John had managed to stay away from his wife for all but a few months of those sixteen years, at endless campaigns in Ireland, France and in the Holy Land at the Third Crusade.

Their meals were usually silent affairs, as each sat at the far ends of the long table in the hall, the only room apart from Matilda’s solar built onto the back of the house, reached by wooden stairs from the yard behind. Tonight, John made an effort at conversation, telling Matilda of the unknown victim of outlaws at Clyst St Mary. She showed little interest, as usual, and he thought sullenly that if the dead man had been a canon or a bishop she would have been all ears, having a morbid fascination with anything to do with the Church. She spent much of her time at her devotions, either in the huge cathedral a few yards away or at her favourite little parish church, St Olave’s in Fore Street, where he suspected that she had a crush on the fat priest.

He pressed on doggedly with his tale, telling how he had held an inquest in the tithe barn of the village, getting Gwyn to gather as many of the male inhabitants over twelve years of age as a jury. They had to inspect the body and the First Finder, the old man, had to relate how the corpse was discovered. As he was a stranger, it was impossible for the village to ‘make presentment of Englishry’, to prove that he was a Saxon and not a Norman, though as well over a century had passed since the Conquest, this was becoming more and more meaningless as the races intermarried. It was another ploy for the King’s Council to screw more money from the populace, however, as without such proof the ‘murdrum’ fine would be imposed on the village, as a redundant penalty for Saxons assassinating their invaders.

There was little else the inquest could achieve, he concluded to the inattentive Matilda. The only possible verdict was ‘murder by persons unknown’, and there seemed little chance of ever finding the outlaws in those dense woods that threaded through cultivated land all over the county.

When they had finished their meal, boiled salmon with onions and cabbage served on trenchers of thick stale bread, their maid Mary came in to clear up and bring a jug of Loire wine, which they drank seated on either side of the blazing log fire in the hearth. John had made one concession to comfort in the high, bare hall by having a stone fireplace built against the back wall, with a new-fangled chimney going up through the roof, instead of the usual fire-pit in the centre of the floor, which filled the room with eye-watering smoke.

They sat in silence again while they finished their wine, then his wife predictably announced that she was retiring to her solar to have her French maid Lucille prepare her for bed. John sat for a while with another cup of wine, fondling the ears of his old hound Brutus, who had crept in from the back yard to lie before the fire. Some time later, the dog rose to his haunches and looked expectantly at his master, part of a familiar routine.

‘Come on, then, time for our walk.’ With Brutus as an excuse that fooled no one, least of all Matilda, John took his wolfskin cloak from a hook in the vestibule and stepped out into the gloom, heading across the close for the lower town. Here, in Idle Lane, was the Bush Inn-and its landlady, his Welsh mistress, the delectable Nesta.

At about the same time that the coroner was loping through the ill-lit streets of Exeter, the outlaw Gervase was committing yet another felony in the village of Wonford, just outside the city. By the light of a half-moon, seen fitfully through gaps in the cloud, he crept up to the village church. It was deserted in the evening, as the parish priest had no service until the early morning mass the following day. When Gervase trod quietly up to the church door, he knew from his own experience that the parson would be either sleeping or drinking after his supper in the small cottage at the far end of the churchyard. Gently opening the door, he made his way in almost pitch darkness to the back of the building, below the stubby tower that had been added when the old wooden church from Saxon times had been reconstructed in stone twenty years earlier.

Here he groped about and was rewarded by the feel of a coarse curtain which hung over an alcove, a space for a birch broom and a couple of leather buckets as well as ecclesiastical oddments, such as lamp oil, candles and spare vestments. Gervase pulled the curtain aside and felt around the walls inside until his fingers found some garments hanging from a wooden peg. Taking them down, he went back to the door and waited for the moon to appear again, so that he could see what they were. With a grunt of satisfaction, he found that he had a broad-brimmed pilgrim’s hat and an old cassock, a long black tunic that reached to the ankles, as well as a thin white super-pelisse, usually called a ‘surplice’. This last was of no use to him and he took it back to its peg, then made off into the night with his spoils.

After sleeping under a bush just within the forest’s edge, he rose late and ate the remnants of the food he had saved from the gang’s last meal. In the daylight, he saw that the cassock was patched and threadbare, but still serviceable. His next task was to take his small knife and, after honing it well on a piece of stone, use it not only to rasp three weeks’ growth of stubble from his face, but also from the crown of his head, roughly restoring the tonsure that he used to have before he was ejected from holy orders. It was a difficult task to perform on himself, but with patience and determination he made a fair job of transforming himself back into a priest, especially after he had stuffed his own meagre clothing into his pack, put on the stolen cassock and jammed the battered hat on his head.

Around what he judged to be noon, he went back to the road and with his ash staff in his hand, set off boldly towards Exeter. He decided that it was highly unlikely that he would be recognized by someone from his past life in distant Yeovil, especially as the drooping brim of the pilgrim’s hat helped to obscure his face. There were a few others on the track, going both to and from the city, but the main traffic of people going into Exeter with produce to sell had long since dwindled, most entering the city as soon as the gates opened at dawn. To those whom he passed he gave a greeting and sometimes raised his hand in a blessing. After a while he began to feel as if he really was a priest again, and he became more confident as he approached the South Gate. He slowed his pace so that he entered together with a group of country folk driving a couple of pigs and carrying live ducks and chickens hanging by their feet from poles over their shoulders. The porter on the gate was too interested in munching on a meat pie to give him even a cursory glance, and soon Gervase was striding up Southgate Street, past the Serge Market and the bloodstained cobbles of the Shambles, to reach Carfoix, the central crossing of the four main roads. He had been to Exeter a few times, some years ago, but now had to ask directions from a runny-nosed urchin.

‘Where’s St Nicholas Priory, lad?’

The boy decided that this cleric was too tough looking to risk some cheeky reply and pointed out the way. ‘Not far down there, Father. A rough part of town, that is.’

Gervase entered some narrow lanes and found himself in a mean part of the city known as Bretayne, filled with densely packed houses, huts and shacks, the filthy alleys running with sewage, in which urchins, goats, dogs and rats seemed to survive in squalid harmony. After a few turns and twists, he saw a small stone building, enclosed by a wall that marked off a vegetable plot and a few fruit trees.