The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

John decided to keep Thomas’s doubts about the genuineness of the priest to himself for the moment, else Richard’s interest would rapidly evaporate. With a muttered promise to keep the sheriff up to date with progress, he left his brother-in-law to continue his embezzlement of funds from the county’s finances and went back to his own bleak office in the gatehouse.

With both his assistants out on the streets, de Wolfe felt obliged to occupy himself and reluctantly turned back to his reading lessons, slowly tracing the Latin script with a forefinger and mumbling the words under his breath. An east wind whistled through the open window slits and he huddled deeper into his cloak as the morning wore on. In spite of the discomfort, which he had learned to endure after twenty years’ campaigning in a range of climates from Scotland to Palestine, he eventually fell asleep from the sheer boredom of his lessons, and jerked himself awake only several hours later when Thomas de Peyne limped up the stairs and pushed through the sacking over the doorway.

‘I’ve found who he was, master-and where he came from!’ squeaked the little ex-priest excitedly, proud of himself for being able to be of help to this grim man to whom he owed so much for giving him a job after his disgrace. John, still half asleep, glared bleary eyed at his clerk. ‘Tell me about it,’ he grunted.

‘I went first to the cathedral and made enquiries among the vicars and secondaries, but no one had any news of such a priest. Then I went down to St John’s Priory on the river, but again they had seen no one like that. I tried a couple of the city churches with no result, then ventured into Bretayne to call at St Nicholas Priory.’

John groaned. ‘You’re getting as bad as Gwyn for spinning out a tale! Get to the point, man!’

Unabashed, Thomas dropped on to his stool and gesticulated as he spoke. ‘One of the younger brothers there told me that a rough-looking priest had called yesterday and had talked with Prior Vincent. I asked to see the prior, but he refused to talk to me. However, his secretary told me that the man said he was Gervase of Somerset and that he tried to sell a valuable relic to the prior, but wanted far too much money for it.’

‘Did he say where he was going after leaving St Nicholas?’ demanded the coroner.

The clerk shook his head ruefully. ‘No, but he muttered something about other great abbeys being glad of the offer, like Buckfast or Glastonbury.’

De Wolfe reached out a long arm and clapped Thomas on the shoulder.

‘Well done, young man! I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

The clerk glowed with pride at such rare praise from his master.

‘The secretary didn’t tell me how much the man wanted for the relic, sir-but it must have been many pounds, by the indignation in his voice. Well worth killing for, I’m sure.’

The coroner jumped up from his table and strode to a window slit, staring blankly down over the city as he pondered. ‘But where is it now? And who the hell knew that this Gervase possessed it? And who is this priest, anyway? Where did he get the relic?’

Eager to please, Thomas applied his sharp mind to the problems. ‘If he really was a priest! I’ve got my doubts, he looked much too rough. And as to where he was going, then the two abbeys he spoke of seem the most likely places to raise money on a religious relic.’

De Wolfe turned from the window. ‘Well, he’s not going anywhere now, other than a pauper’s grave! But his killer must be trying to sell the thing in his place.’

He was interrupted by Gwyn lumbering into the chamber, to report that he had found a score of men who were in the Bush the previous night and had warned them to assemble as a jury in the back yard of the inn later that day. Thomas proudly repeated his story for the Cornishman’s benefit, and the coroner’s officer tugged at his long ginger moustaches as an aid to thought.

‘Then we’d best get those monks from St Nicholas down to the inquest,’ he suggested. ‘At least they can identify the dead ’un.’

De Wolfe agreed and told Gwyn to go up to the priory after his dinner and summon them to the Bush. ‘Better take Thomas with you, he might be more tactful with a bunch of Benedictines than you. They can be an awkward lot, if they’re not handled right.’

His warning was all too prophetic, for when he came back to the gatehouse after a silent meal with Matilda in Martin’s Lane, a glowering Gwyn reported that Prior Vincent had refused point blank to come to any inquest and forbade any of his monks to attend. ‘He said you had no authority over men of God and if you didn’t like it, you could appeal to the Pope!’

John cursed all intransigent monks, but failed to see what he could do about it. He was not sure how far a coroner’s powers stretched, as the whole system had been set up on the strength of one paragraph in the Articles of Eyre at Rochester in September.

For once Thomas, usually a fountain of knowledge on all matters ecclestiastical, was unable to help him. ‘I know the cathedral precinct is outside the jurisdiction of both the city burgesses and the sheriff, as well as yourself, master,’ he offered. ‘But the Lord Bishop has voluntarily handed over his rights in respect of killings or other serious crimes of violence within the Close.’

‘I know, but that doesn’t help us in respect of monks inside a closed community like St Nicholas,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘I’ll have to seek the advice of your uncle.’

Half an hour later, he was sitting in the house of the Archdeacon of Exeter, one of the row of canon’s dwellings that formed the northern boundary of the cathedral Close. John de Alençon was a thin, ascetic man with wiry grey hair around his shaved tonsure. His face was lined and care-worn, but relieved by a pair of bright blue eyes. The two Johns were good friends, though de Wolfe had little love for many of the other twenty-four canons, who, like the bishop himself, tended to be supporters of Prince John. De Alençon was fervently loyal to King Richard, as was the coroner, and this contributed to the bond between them. De Wolfe explained the situation, as they sat over two cups of good Poitou wine.

‘So can I insist that this prior and his secretary appear at the inquest? They are the only ones who met the fellow before he was killed.’

The lean canon rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘Like you, I have no idea of the powers of this new office of coroner. It seems to have been dreamed up by Hubert Walter to squeeze more money out of the populace for our sovereign’s benefit.’

Hubert Walter was the Chief Justiciar and virtually ruler of England, now that the King had gone back to France, never to return. Hubert was also Archbishop of Canterbury and had been second-in-command of the King’s armies when John was in the Holy Land.

‘If they were your vicars in the cathedral, would you order them to attend?’ persisted the coroner.

De Alençon shook his head. ‘That’s a different matter, John. St Nicholas is not only a priory, outside the control of this cathedral-it’s also a daughter establisment of Battle Abbey in Sussex, a powerful institution. Only their abbot could decide the issue-and it would take you the best part of a fortnight to get an answer there!’

De Wolfe swore under his breath. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ he asked testily.

The archdeacon smiled and downed the last of his wine, before rising.

‘We can both take a walk up there and try a little gentle persuasion. I should leave that big sword at home, John-this requires diplomacy, not brute force!’

As the cathedral bells tolled for the late afternoon vespers, a crowd began assembling behind the Bush tavern in Idle Lane. The muddy back yard was big enough to accommodate them between the cook-shed, the brewing hut, the pigsties and the privies. Gwyn made them shuffle into a half-circle around one of the trestle tables brought from the taproom, on which lay an ominously still figure covered with a couple of empty barley sacks.