The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

The coroner’s impatience and foreboding got the better of him. ‘What is the point of these questions? If he knows anything, he should have come forward before.’

‘Well, he’s coming forward now, thanks to the orders of his master, the precentor,’ replied the sheriff complacently. He turned back to the bottler. ‘What did you see last night?’

‘Well, it was as usual, sir. Many people inside, comings and goings up the ladder to the loft. Some I knew, some I didn’t. Mistress Nesta herself climbed up a few times.’

‘What of it?’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘She has her sleeping-room up there.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re well aware of that!’ said de Revelle, sarcastically, this time ignoring the suppressed snigger from the audience. ‘But Martin, you were also here this morning for your breakfast, so what did you see then?’

The wizened servant shuffled his feet as he gave an abashed glance at both Nesta and the coroner. ‘I saw the landlady coming down the ladder, looking pale and shaken. There was blood on her apron, sir.’

A buzz of concern ran around the crowd assembled in the yard. But de Wolfe gave a derisive bark. ‘For God’s sake, she had just been up to see if she could aid the man! Look at him, he was weltered in blood, of course she would get soiled!’

‘The other maid had no blood upon her!’ retorted the sheriff.

‘Then she probably kept well clear of the corpse!’ roared de Wolfe.

‘Probably? You make assumptions, Coroner.’ The sheriff turned back to the discomfited Martin. ‘Was this before or after the alarm was raised by this other “unsullied” maid?’ Richard emphasized the word sarcastically.

The bottler looked more embarrassed than ever. ‘I feel pretty sure it was before, sir.’

‘Pretty sure?’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘What sort of evidence is that? De Revelle, you are wasting my time!’

Now Thomas de Boterellis pushed forward and stood alongside the sheriff. He was a heavily built, podgy man, with a waxy complexion to his face, from which two rather piggy eyes looked out coldly upon the world.

‘My servant told me this early this morning, de Wolfe. I felt it my duty to notify Richard de Revelle, as it was a matter relating to a serious crime.’

John snorted in disbelief. ‘Since when does a cathedral precentor go running to a sheriff over a death in an alehouse?’

‘Sir Richard is a particular friend of mine. We had business this morning and I happened to mention the matter,’ retorted the canon pompously.

‘And cockerels may happen to lay eggs!’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘Did the pair of you just happen to be coming all the way down here to the lower town this morning?’

The sheriff blustered his way back into the acrimonious conversation.

‘The fact remains that this man was done to death in this woman’s tavern. She sleeps within a few yards of where he was killed, she was seen to go up and down repeatedly, she denied any knowledge of the death, apparently a valuable object is missing-and she was seen by a reputable witness to have blood on her clothes!’

‘All of which means absolutely nothing!’ roared John. ‘This stupid man can’t even remember if he saw the blood on the lady before or after the body was discovered!’

‘I seem to recollect that it was before,’ bleated Martin, trying to claw his way back into his master’s favour.

Now de Wolfe completely lost his temper. ‘Listen! My inquest is over, my jury has agreed the verdict and that’s the end of it, until we find the real culprit!’ he roared. ‘So clear off, all of you, and attend to your own affairs!’

The crowd, hugely intrigued to see this public row between their betters, stood gaping at the performance until Gwyn started to shoo them away, but de Revelle and the precentor stood their ground.

‘Unless you produce this “real culprit” very soon, John, the execution of my own duty to keep the peace by arresting malefactors might not be to your liking!’

With this parting threat, he took the arm of de Boterellis and pushed through the dispersing crowd, leaving the coroner to stand fuming with rage, tinged with a little apprehension.

An hour later, a council of war was held in the Bush, with all the staff of the inn and the coroner’s team clustered around a table, food and ale before them. John was concerned at the naked threat that the sheriff had made against Nesta.

‘That bastard’s got it in for you, Crowner,’ said Gwyn, through a mouthful of bread and cheese. He was feeling a little crestfallen for having failed to track down the precentor’s bottler to include him in his inquest jury, but his master had no blame for him, realizing that it was impossible to identify everyone who might have visited the alehouse the previous night.

‘As usual, de Revelle’s trying to get back at me for antagonizing him over his support for Prince John,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘That damned precentor is the same way inclined, currying favour with the bishop, who was one of the main players in the last revolt.’

When Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned in Germany, his younger brother John had made an abortive attempt to seize the throne, and many of the barons and senior clerics who supported him were still covertly plotting another uprising.

‘How can we protect dear Nesta?’ broke in the ever practical Thomas, who worshipped the Welshwoman for her unfailing kindness to him.

‘As the bloody sheriff said, by finding the real killer,’ replied de Wolfe. ‘And quickly, for I suspect that de Revelle is keen to cause me as much trouble as possible, may God rot him!’ He turned to his mistress, who was looking defiant, but apprehensive. ‘Let’s get the story quite clear, cariad . Lucy screamed out when she found the body, so you ran up to the loft and went to look at it. That’s when you got blood on your apron?’

‘Of course! I bent down to make sure he was dead and got blood on my hands from the edge of the blanket. I wiped them on my apron, which was also soiled at the hem from blood on the floor.’

‘We need to find the bastard who did this, that’s the best way of getting Nesta off the hook,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘I’ll get back on the streets and find every man-jack that was in here last night and this morning-and every whore, too! I’ll shake them all until their teeth rattle, to get ’em to tell me all they know!’

As good as his word, he swallowed the last of his ale and lumbered out into Idle Lane, leaving Thomas de Peyne to continue the debate.

‘We know now how that gold leaf got from Clyst St Mary to this place,’ he declared. ‘This man Gervase must have stolen it from that chapman.’

‘Which surely means that he was no priest, but a robber-probably an outlaw,’ observed Edwin.

‘Or had been a priest once, like me,’ added Thomas sadly. ‘But who would have known that he was carrying a valuable object, worth killing for?’

‘He wasn’t flashing it around in here, was he, Nesta?’ asked John.

She shook her head emphatically. ‘No, he sat and had his food at that table over there, then drank a quart of ale and went up to bed. I hardly noticed him. Certainly he had no conversation with anyone else, as far as I remember.’

Edwin, Lucy and the other maid agreed, confirming that the murder victim seemed a shadowy figure who met no one else that evening. They talked a while longer, but nothing new came to mind, and with considerable unease at having to leave Nesta behind at the inn, John reluctantly left for Martin’s Lane and another cheerless supper with his wife.

Two hours before noon the next day the coroner, together with his clerk Thomas, were at the gallows field on Magdalene Street, half a mile outside the South Gate. Executions took place once or twice a week, depending on how many felons had been sentenced by the Shire Court or the Burgess Court. When the royal judges came to the city, either as Commissioners of Gaol Delivery or at the very infrequent Eyre of Assize, the gallows was busier, but this morning there were only three customers to be dispatched into the next, and hopefully better, life. The coroner had to be present, as he was responsible for confiscating all the worldly goods of the victim for the King’s treasury and recording the event on his rolls.