The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

‘And you’ve no idea why he left in such a hurry? Did a message come for him?’

Mary shook her head. ‘Maybe it was guild business. He didn’t often tell…’ She suddenly pressed her hand to her mouth, as if she was trying to stop herself crying, reaching for the back of a chair for support.

Grey eyed her suspiciously. A wife would hardly be so distressed if she thought her husband had simply gone out on business. There was something more to this, which she was not telling him. Did she perhaps think her husband was visiting another woman?

‘In the absence of Master Richard, I must trouble you with the matter that brings us here. Your husband brought the reliquary of Beornwyn into this house. I am here on Cromwell’s orders to take it to be inspected and authenticated.’

The colour drained from Mary’s face and she took a pace forward, sinking into the chair.

‘I don’t… know anything about a reliquary,’ she muttered, without looking at him.

Grey paced slowly, very slowly, towards her. Not until he was standing over her with his knees almost touching hers did he speak again. He kept his voice low and even.

‘Mistress Mary, understand I have the power to arrest anyone, man or woman, who tries to conceal a relic. I will take them for questioning and those who are suspected of deliberately defying Cromwell’s orders or thwarting the purposes of the King’s enforcers will be punished, that I can assure you.’

Mary gave a wrenching sob, shrinking back in her chair. ‘I don’t-’

But Grey cut her off, pressing his fingers to her mouth. He could feel her trembling beneath his hand, her breath coming in short, hot snorts.

‘Think, Mary, think very carefully before you lie to me. I know the reliquary is in this house, just as I know that the hiding of it here was none of your doing. A wife cannot gainsay her husband. It’s her duty to obey him. No one will consider you other than a virtuous woman for your loyalty to him, but now is the time to help him.’

Grey took a pace back from Mary and raised his voice so that the maidservant and any others who might be listening should hear him.

‘Just tell me where the reliquary is, or where you suspect it to be, and I shall take no further action against either you or your husband. You’ll be saving him by surrendering it to me. But if you don’t tell me the truth, then both you and he and all your servants will be arrested, for you will all be deemed as guilty as Master Richard.’

He was gratified to hear a terrified squawk from the maid, behind him in the hall. It was exactly the reaction Grey had hoped for.

Jennet rushed to her mistress’s side. ‘Tell him, Mistress. Please tell him! You heard what he said, they’re going to arrest us all. You have to tell him.’

Mary shook her head, struggling in vain to control her sobs.

Jennet stared at her, then turned to Grey. ‘It was in the chest in the solar. Leastways, I think it was…’

Grey nodded. ‘You’re a sensible girl to tell me the truth. Your master and mistress will have much cause to be grateful to you.’ He motioned to the sergeants-at-arms. ‘Bring the reliquary here. The maid will show you where it is.’

But the girl shook her head, twisting the cloth of her apron in her hands. ‘I can’t… that’s what I was telling you. It was there, but it’s not now, sir. You go and look. You can see the lock’s been forced; wrenched off, it has. I found it so when we returned. St Beornwyn’s gone!’

Grey spent a restless night in the inn, lying awake in a guttering candlelight, for ever since he was a boy he’d never been able to bring himself to extinguish the light and fall asleep in the dark. The feather pallet on the narrow bed was hard and thin from being compressed by countless sweating bodies. The straw mattress beneath had evidently not been replaced for years, judging by the stink of it. But Grey had slept on much worse and it was not entirely the fault of the bed that he tossed and turned now. It was the missing reliquary that kept him from sleep.

William, the manservant, had been questioned thoroughly and finally admitted that contrary to his master’s instructions he had left the house unattended to take meat to his mother and bedridden father, as he did most days. But, he was swift to add, only what meat the master allowed him as part of his wages. William hadn’t troubled to wait for the mistress to return. He’d never done so in the past, and couldn’t see any need to do so now. Though his master had told him about the gang of robbers, no houses had been broken into in Blidworth, and nor were they likely to be, for what cause would any robbers have to come to a little village when there were much better pickings in Nottingham or Mansfield?

William had had no reason to go upstairs to the solar on his return, so had seen nothing amiss. He’d occupied himself with chopping wood for the fire and drawing the water that the women would need for cooking on their return. He was adamant that while he knew the reliquary had vanished from the church, as indeed did the whole village, he did not know it was in the house.

Of course, William would have had every opportunity to steal the reliquary himself or to carry it off on his master’s instructions to hide it elsewhere. But Grey suspected Richard would never have entrusted such a task to a servant, and as for William having stolen it, even broken up, the gold and jewels would be impossible for a servant to sell locally without arousing instant suspicion.

But if William was telling the truth, then either the reliquary had been stolen that afternoon and Richard, discovering the theft, had charged out in pursuit of the culprit, or more likely, Richard had removed it himself, breaking the lock on the chest to make it appear stolen, and had carried it off to a safer hiding place. It would explain why Master Richard had unexpectedly returned home in the afternoon without apparent cause.

Grey had waited in the butcher’s hall until well past ten of the clock, but Richard had not returned to the house, and, utterly weary, Grey had finally made his way back to the inn, leaving the sergeants-in-arms in Richard’s house, ready to seize him the moment he returned.

The following morning, Grey was half-way through his breakfast of mutton chops and ale, when one of the sergeants-in-arms appeared in the doorway of the inn. He scanned the dark little ale room rapidly and when he spotted Grey he came hurrying over.

Grey wiped his greasy mouth on a napkin. ‘Did he return? Have you taken him?’

The man gazed longingly at the remains of the juicy chops and flagon of ale, almost drooling like a hound. ‘Master Richard’s been seized all right, but it wasn’t at his house. It was at the Royal Hutt in the forest.’

Grey flapped the napkin at him. ‘I don’t care where he was captured, so long as he is safely held. But what of the reliquary, was that found with him?’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘No sign of it whole or in pieces. But that’s not the worst of it. There’s been murder done.’

Grey leaped to his feet, almost overturning the table. ‘Richard Whitney’s been murdered!’

‘Not him, sir. Master Richard’s not the victim, he’s the murderer.’

It was nearly noon before Grey and his two sergeants-at-arms arrived at the Royal Hutt in Sherwood Forest. It had taken some time to find a man who was prepared to guide them there. Most villagers denied even knowing of its existence, though Grey suspected that they knew very well where it was, but were not going to help an enforcer whom they all knew had come to take their saint from them.

Eventually, but only after he’d been offered a good purse, a wagoner who lived in another village offered to show them the track that wound through the trees. Grey and his men travelled behind the wagon on horseback at the wagon’s infuriatingly slow pace until it eventually ground to a halt, and the wagoner pointed down a narrow path that led to a small stone lodge among the trees. It had, so he told Grey, been built to shelter the Royal Wardens of Sherwood Forest as they made their rounds searching for poachers and for any man cutting wood without leave or illegally carrying a bow in the forest. For centuries it had been a welcome refuge for the King’s men, especially in the bitter winters.