The Pardoner's Crime

A
lbin of Rouncivale, he who proclaimed himself a Pardoner, a granter of indulgences from His Grace the Bishop of Rochester himself, pulled his damp cloak about him and tossed his hood back to shake his lank yellow hair free. He was uncomfortable. His buttocks ached from his long ride to Pontefract; he was wet from a fresh drizzle that had only just abated, and his stomach had been urging him to stop to break his fast for at least an hour. He halted his donkey for a moment to straighten his cap, on the front of which he had sewn a vernycle, a copy of the
handkerchief
with which St Veronica had reputedly wiped Christ's face on the way to his crucifixion. Then he again shouldered his staff, a stick of beech capped by a cross of base metal studded with glass beads, which was his badge of office, or, as he liked to think of it, his crowd-drawer. Finally, he hawked and spat to clear his lungs.

‘There is money to be made this day,' he said to the back of the donkey's head. ‘I can feel it in my bones.' And so saying, he wheezed as he rattled the sack which contained his jar of small pig bones that did him such good service in his daily trade. ‘By the bones of St Peter, let us see what stirs in Pontefract today. And from the sound of it we have hit the town upon a special feasting day.'

Cresting the rise, the great limestone castle of Pontefract with its corbelled turrets came into view. The land dropped from where he was to rise again to the great mound on which the castle stood. And at its base arose a clamour that was greater than the Pardoner would have expected even upon a market-day in the height of summer, let alone on a crisp morning in March.

As he began the descent into the town he smiled with smug satisfaction as he began to gather the inevitable following of urchins and loafers. He knew that they were attracted by his ornate staff, and his sack of relics, indulgences and pardons.

An unholy crowd of sinners, he thought to himself, as if mentally assessing their potential for trade. He nodded at some of the dirty faces looking up at him with expressions of awe and curiosity.

‘Beati paupers spiritu
!' he piped up in his thin reedy voice. Then, sure in the knowledge that none of his followers would have any knowledge of Latin, he added for their benefit: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.'

This occasioned laughter, though he doubted if many of these simple folk considered themselves to be blessed.

‘Have you come far, Master Pardoner?' cried one.

‘Aye, from Ware, on my way to Berwick.'

‘Come for the execution, have you?'

Albin of Rouncivale was as used to seeing hangings as any traveller. He shrugged non-commitally. He would probably wait to see what poor soul or souls were going to have their life choked out of them, or if they were lucky, their necks snapped by relatives or by ruffians paid to jump on them as they dangled. On balance executions were usually good for business. Lots of guilt, lots of sins to be pardoned
in absentia
. And fear of a similar fate at the end of the day made many a neighbour pay for a precautionary pardon.

The road began to climb towards the castle mound and the Pardoner was grateful of his stout little beast.

‘There hasn't been anything like this as long as I have lived
here,' said one oldster, who looked, the Pardoner thought, as if he had spent his years working in the liquorice fields that surrounded the area. ‘The king himself is here.'

And at the name of the sovereign there came mutterings of disgust and what sounded like curses of blasphemy. The Pardoner turned his head as if scandalized.

‘King Edward? Here?' he asked, with a frown. ‘But Pontefract Castle belongs to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster!'

There was general laughter. Then: ‘Where have you been, Master Pardoner? The King's army under Sir Andrew Harclay, the Warden of Carlisle cut off the earl's army at Boroughbridge. They say old Thomas had been trying to get help from the Scots.'

‘But instead he was captured and brought here in chains, to his own castle. Two days ago six rebel barons were hanged, drawn and quartered before this castle. They made Lancaster watch, then the King and that dog John de Warenne, the Earl of Surrey, the Dispenser Lords and Edmund FitzAlan the Earl of Arundel tried him in his own hall yesterday. And just as Lancaster had denied Piers Gaveston, the King's former favourite any defence, they didn't allow him to speak for himself.'

‘He's to die for treason!' cried a youngster of about eight. ‘God save the King.'

The Pardoner's eyes widened. ‘Treason? That means he will be hanged, drawn and quartered?'

‘No!' exclaimed a whitebeard, who had been limping alongside the donkey. ‘The earl is cousin to the King. Royal blood. It is the axe for him.'

The tumult had been getting louder as they approached the crowd that milled about the walls of the castle. Then the noise of the rabble was drowned out by the sound of numerous trumpets and the beat of side-drums. The crowd murmured and gradually fell silent as a procession emerged from the gatehouse. Men at arms formed a column around a group of drummers, followed by a mail-clad messenger bearing the
royal flag. Behind him a youth led an ass upon which sat Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, with his hands lashed behind him and a friar's hat upon his head.

Albin of Rouncivale joined the throng, urging his donkey on with a few jabs with his heels. The earl was paraded through the streets of the town, his head hung on his chest as his former vassals jeered, gesticulated and threw dirt and refuse at him. Then once again the parade started to climb a gentle rise.

‘It is the Monk's Hill,' an urchin informed the Pardoner. ‘They always hack their heads off there.'

And indeed, waiting there, his face concealed behind a black mask, his thick torso covered in a leather apron stood the executioner. His arms were bare to the shoulders, the biceps rippling.

The earl was hauled from the ass and prodded towards the block of wood.

He looked up at the castle – his castle – and saw several richly dressed figures looking down from one of the turrets of the keep. Even from that distance there was no mistaking the crown that the middle figure was wearing. King Edward II, of Caernarvon, Lancaster's cousin surrounded by his new-found lackeys. They were drinking wine and seemed to be enjoying this ignominious end to the man who felt that he should have been King of England.

‘As the Lord is my witness—' the Earl of Lancaster began.

But, at a signal from the King's mail-clad messenger, he was immediately silenced by a gag that was thrust into his mouth.

Gasps and protests rang out from a few members of the crowd, but they were soon silenced by a show of steel from the men at arms, and gradually a dominant jeering noise rang out as the mob began to bray for blood. The drummers continued a slow, sonorous beat of their drums. Then, as the messenger produced a proclamation, the drumming abruptly stopped.

‘By order of His Majesty, King Edward Plantagenet the
Second of Caernarvon, on this day, the 22 March 1322, Thomas of Lancaster, cousin to our sovereign, has been tried by his King and his noble peers, the Earls of Surrey and Arundel, and their lords, the Dispensers, and found guilty of high treason against the person of his sovereign. He is duly stripped of his titles, and his lands, possessions and honours are forfeit to the crown – as his life is committed to the Lord.'

A nod from the messenger and Lancaster was thrust down over the block.

‘Wait!' cried the messenger. ‘It is the King's order that he must face north, to Scotland, where he had tried to seek help from the murderous Bruce!'

No longer defiant, his body shivering from either cold or fear, he had to wait until a priest appeared and mumbled over him in Latin.

Then the headsman's axe rose, fell and severed the earl's head from his body in one horrifically bloody moment.

The headsman bent and lifted the head by its hair and held it aloft, the eyes still eerily twitching as blood gushed from the severed vessels upon the ground and the mouth hung open, while below it the decapitated body still sprawled over the block convulsed for a further moment then lay still.

Slowly the crowd began to recover itself; gasping, cursing, and laughing.

Then the messenger went on with his proclamation, announcing that all members of Lancaster the traitor's army who had not surrendered would be outlaws and would suffer the pain of immediate execution. No concession would be given to rank or title.

But few people were listening intently. They were either ogling the gruesome scene on the execution ground or trying to imagine what was going through the King's mind at that moment, for the party in the turret seemed to be making merry.

Albin of Rouncivale was no longer listening either. Although he had been shocked by what he had seen, that
shock did not last long. He made a silent sign of the cross as he watched the Earl of Lancaster's head dangle from the hand of the executioner.

His mind saw profit ahead.

I
t was a hot morning in June and travelling through the Outwood, the great forest of oak, holly, beech and hazel to the north of the township of Wakefield, was a welcome retreat from the sun for the two riders. They had been making their way slowly from town to town and from village to village in order to familiarize themselves with this part of their liege lord, King Edward II's northern holdings. The ride from Sherburn-in-Elmet to Methley had left them hot and
uncomfortable
and they were all too aware of the weight of their chain-mail hauberks that they wore under their surcoats.

Sir Richard Lee, Sergeant-at-Law and newly appointed Circuit Judge of the King's Northern Realm wiped the patina of perspiration that had formed on his brow and leaned down to rub his left calf muscle.

‘Does the wound still pain you, my lord?' Hubert of Loxley, the tall broad-shouldered, clean-shaven man riding at his side, asked concernedly.

‘I fear it festers, for it throbs so,' returned Sir Richard. He too was tall, although more willowy in physique than Hubert, his friend and assistant. He had a short well-groomed beard, as befitted one of his class and position, and would have been considered handsome by most women, his eyes blue and piercing, his nose slightly bent, having been broken in a joust some years previously.

‘Those accursed bowmen!' said Hubert. ‘I suspect that they dip their arrows in poison and have them cursed by witches before they go to war.' He turned his head and spat, then immediately made the sign of the cross over his heart.

They were of about the same age. Richard knew that he was precisely thirty-one years old at his last birthday, while Hubert had an idea that he was within a year or two of that. Hubert had, like his father before him, been groomed in all manner of fighting as one of Sir Jasper of Loxley's personal men at arms. As such he had followed his master whenever he had been called to take up arms and had seen action against the Scots at Stirling when he was a youngster of thirteen, and actually saw the rebel William Wallace taken in chains south to his grisly fate. When Sir Jasper's daughter, Lady Eleanor was given in marriage to Sir Richard Lee he was assigned to escort her and stay as her personal bodyguard. Strong, well built and skilled in hunting and fighting he had readily formed a bond with his mistress's new husband. Hubert had been able to teach Richard much about hunting and weaponry, while Richard, a scholar and Sergeant-at-Law had taught Hubert the rudiments of reading and writing. Unfortunately, when tragedy struck Sir Richard's house and Lady Eleanor died in childbirth, and their baby son died a few days later, the bond between them was strengthened far beyond that of master and servant. Within weeks Sir Richard answered his sovereign's call and fought against the Marcher Lords at Hereford, Pembroke and Shrewsbury. Later, they had been involved in the rout of the Earl of Lancaster's army at Boroughbridge, as they tried to cross the River Ure.

Richard had been assigned a troop of his own and,
seemingly
without fear, had led from the front. Unfortunately, an arrow had caught him in the left calf, penetrating his leg greave and the muscle itself to embed itself in his horse's belly, so it fell, literally pinning him under it. Then at the mercy of Lancaster's infantry with their bollock daggers, which were used to such effect to slit the throats or slip inside
the helmet eye slits of unhorsed knights, he was saved by Hubert's timely intervention as he dispatched two men with two swipes of his great sword.

After the battle Richard was taken to the Abbey of St Mary in York where he lay raving in the hospital with pain and fever for two weeks. And when he recovered, there was Hubert watching over him, ever suspicious of the potions with which the Benedictine monks were wont to ply him. When he was
sufficiently
recovered, Hubert gave him the sealed orders from the King himself, craving his presence at York Castle. It was then, in a private audience with King Edward that he was given his special commission as Circuit Judge of the King's Northern Realm. It was the sovereign's wish to introduce just law to his realm, and Richard, as an already honoured Sergeant-at-Law, had been an obvious choice. That had been the start of their laborious and lengthy round of all the towns and villages in the area of the Manor of Wakefield and the Honour of Pontefract.

Richard tossed back his head with his mane of coal-black hair and laughed. ‘Hubert, how many times must I tell you not to be so fearful of witches, sorcerers and the like. It is all nonsense. All superstition.'

Hubert was not so easily convinced. ‘Aye, well, you may say so, Sir Richard. I have not so much learning as you, but I have seen things with these eyes of mine, and I don't intend taking any chances.' He patted his chest. ‘I wear an arrowhead around my neck that was pulled from the back of a Crusader at the Siege of Antioch.'

‘Antioch, eh?' Richard repeated, with a good-humoured twinkle in his eye. ‘That means it must be well over two hundred years old.'

‘Aye, old and valuable it is, my lord,' returned Hubert. ‘And priceless it is at deflecting arrows. Mayhap you should have worn one at that skirmish at Boroughbridge then you wouldn't have taken that arrow wound.'

Richard ignored his man's seeming logic. ‘By valuable I take it that you bought it with good money?'

‘It cost me several … groats,' Hubert replied evasively.

‘And it deflects arrows? How then was it taken from the back of a crusader?'

‘Why I suppose—'

There was the sudden whoosh of a missile travelling at great speed then a whumping noise a few feet ahead of them as an arrow embedded itself in an oak tree at the height of their heads.

‘Outlaws, Hubert! To arms!'

Both instantly reached for and drew swords as they wheeled round on their horses, in readiness for an attack.

‘Hold!' came a voice from nearby. ‘There are ten bows aimed at you at this moment. Attempt to escape and your horses will be brought down first.'

‘Show yourself, wolfshead!' cried Hubert. ‘Know you that we are fighting men and that this is—'

Richard had silenced him with raised hand. ‘What do you want, master bowman?' he cried. ‘And by what authority do you hold up honest and harmless travellers?'

There was a high-pitched whistle, which was followed moments later by another arrow striking the same tree, but from a different direction. This was immediately followed by another whistle and yet another arrow from another
direction
.

‘By the authority of the power of might,' came the mocking reply. ‘Now you can see that there are several of us. Throw down your weapons or fall with them.'

Hubert cursed, but Richard smiled. ‘Do as he says, Hubert.' And by example he cast his sword down.

‘But Sir Richard?'

‘There is a brain behind these men,' Richard explained softly. ‘Had they merely wished to kill us they could do so easily.'

With a surly oath Hubert acquiesced.

‘Now dismount and walk away from the swords,' came the commanding voice.

When they had done so there was a rustling of leaves and a hooded bowman stepped out from the dense undergrowth. He was of about the same age as Sir Richard, with several days' growth of beard on his tanned and grimy face. He was dressed in a short hooded cloak with a leather doublet
underneath
, with arms bared from the elbow. His forearms were muscular above leather wrist strappings. From a low slung belt hung a heavy sword and dagger, and upon his back he had a full quiver of arrows.

‘Why have you assaulted us like this, fellow?' Richard demanded. ‘And why have your comrades not revealed
themselves
?'

‘I ask the questions,' returned the other. ‘There is no need for my men to show their faces. And in case you had not noticed,' he said with an amused smile, ‘I am the one with a bow and an arrow trained at your chest. So my first question to you is a simple request for your names. My second is to know your purpose for travelling through our woods.'

‘I am Sir Richard Lee, Sergeant-at-Law and Circuit Judge of the King's Northern Realm. This is my man, Hubert of Loxley.' He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘And what mean you by saying this is your wood? All woods in England belong to the King.'

‘He may think they belong to him, but we say they do no longer. Any man passing through here must pay a toll. This wood now belongs to the brothers of the Greenwood.'

‘A fine name for thieves and robbers!' growled Hubert.

The bow was instantly turned on Hubert, the stance and steadiness of the holder leaving them in no doubt but that if he wished, the bowman could dispatch instant death.

‘I am a patient man,' said the archer calmly, ‘but that much cannot be said for my comrades. Do not risk your life more than you are already doing.'

‘You are not a King's man, I take it?' Richard asked.

The other sneered. ‘King's man, earl's man, what do these matters mean to slaves, serfs, villains and even freemen like
myself? Ordinary people are told to follow armies, they cannot choose.'

‘You are outside the law, then? I take it you fought at Boroughbridge. On the side of the Earl of Lancaster? Which mayhap makes you a contrariant?'

Again the bowman laughed. ‘Aye. Being on the losing side puts one outside the law. And contrariant makes you both outlaw and traitor!' Very deliberately he turned his head
sideways
and spat. ‘Whatever property or things that one might call one's own are confiscated and you are declared outlaw, common wolfshead that may be killed by any that choose to do so. Just another piece of sport for the rich and powerful.'

He flicked his wrists, pointing the arrow to the nearby shrubbery where the carcass of a doe deer lay with a
grey-goose
feathered arrow still protruding from its heart. ‘Just like that.'

Richard's eyes narrowed slightly. ‘That is a hanging offence, to kill the King's deer.'

The archer shrugged. ‘We are outside the King's law, but we must still eat. The deer belong to the wood and we claim the woods, so it is ours, not the King's.' His mouth curled into a smile. ‘Although if he should care to pardon us we would let him sup with us and feast on our good fresh venison.'

Richard was perspiring still and his calf throbbed. He ran a hand across his brow, striving to seem as casual as he could lest the outlaw perceived him to be afraid rather than in pain. In truth, he had little fear of death, or even very much of a taste for life since his Eleanor had died in childbirth. When his son died a day later he had for a time even hoped for death. That was why he had been perhaps less careful than he needed be at the battle of Boroughbridge.

‘You have a wound, Sir Richard,' the archer said. ‘I can tell the signs. It may be festering. You may sit down on that tree bough.'

Richard did as he was bidden. ‘I thank you – whatever your name is.'

‘My comrades call me Hood. I am Robert Hood of Wakefield.' Once again he gave a wan laugh. ‘Or rather I was of Wakefield.'

Richard nodded comprehendingly. ‘And I imagine you have guessed that we were also at Boroughbridge, but with the King's forces under Sir Andrew Harclay.'

The Hood nodded without betraying any emotion. ‘Mayhap you had more choice than we did.'

Richard put a hand on Hubert's wrist as he sensed an outburst from his man. ‘And what would you have of us, Robert Hood?'

‘A toll for using the Outwood. A mark for each man and his horse. And you will also tell us where you are going.'

Richard opened the pouch that hung from his belt and drew out money, which he lay on the bough beside him. ‘There is your toll, Master Hood. As for where we go, know you that we are on the King's business and are going first to Wakefield then to Sandal Castle. It is my mission from the King to sit at the Manor Court and administer the law.'

The Hood tossed his head back and laughed disparagingly. ‘Why, there is no law in Wakefield – and then again, too much! Yet it amounts to the same thing. There is no justice and little humanity.' His eyes suddenly became serious. ‘Yet I and my men may soon see that it is otherwise.'

‘It is not for those outside the law to take the law into their own hands,' returned Richard. ‘What riles you that you rant so?'

‘Apart from the merry state that you find us in,' said the Hood, relaxing the tension on his bowstring and bringing it down so that it pointed harmlessly at the ground. ‘Since Earl Thomas of Lancaster was murdered, Wakefield has fallen into greedy hands. The bailiff is a lackey, the constables are a bunch of dullards and drunks and the new steward is a buffoon. There have been two hangings, a spate of floggings and too many people put in the public stocks for the merest of trifles. My woman's kinswoman was raped and they have charged no one with the crime.'

Richard nodded his head in concern. ‘At difficult times order is often lost. Brutality and ignorance often make easy bedfellows. I will change this.'

‘I hope so, Sir Richard,' replied the bowman. ‘Or I and my men will wreak a savage revenge if the man who took away Lillian's maidenhood is found and goes unpunished.'

‘I am a Sergeant-at-Law, Master Hood, but you should understand that I will dispense the law, with no help from anyone outside it.' He rubbed his calf. ‘May we go now?'

The Hood stared suspiciously at him for a moment. ‘Do not think that you can send anyone after us. We come and go in the woodland and forest as we please. Barnsdale Forest stretches all the way to Sherwood and an army could get lost in there. Yet I shall be keeping watch on what happens in Wakefield. And there had better be justice for my Matilda's Lillian. As for you, Sir Richard, I advise you to seek out Wilfred Oldthorpe the apothecary. He has a shop on the Westgate. He has snakestones and the like and is skilled in treating wounds that fester.'