The Poisoned Chalice (35 page)

The faces of the onlookers reflected their varying reactions to this sudden development. The sheriff wore a self-satisfied smirk, the coroner seemed unconvinced and Stigand looked disappointed.

‘Do you know what you're saying, boy?' John rasped. ‘You are not just moved by pity for your fellow worker?'

Garth's expression was now impassive and resigned. ‘It was me all right. That girl preyed on my mind ever since she came to the master's shop some weeks past.'

‘So how did it come about, then?' demanded John, still not sure of the truth of the younger man's confession.

‘The young woman left our shop just before we closed. I was burned up with desire for her, so I followed her to the cathedral. At first I had no intent to have my way with her, only to look at her from a distance, to see that face, those full lips. But the way her hips swayed, the curve of her breast – I lost my senses. When she left through the little side door, I followed – and outside, in the darkness, my wits gave way altogether …'

The passion in his voice as he relived those moments, convinced John, but as Alfred seemed now on the verge of death, the constable interrupted to send one of his men to displace the iron plates, while they settled this new twist in the story.

‘So were you in it as well, you evil swine? I suppose this Alfred took his turn with the poor girl, eh? They're both in it, didn't I say as much, John?' cried Richard de Revelle, self-satisfaction oozing from every pore.

‘Not as well, I tell you,' shouted the deep voice of Garth. ‘It was me on my own, see. Not him. The old man is past ravishing, though his eyes still fancy a pretty woman.'

Richard drew on his soft leather gloves nonchalantly. ‘Perhaps, but I'll hang both of you next week, just to make sure, I can't believe any of the lies that you rabble give me.'

This was too much for the coroner, even though he was used to the sheriff's arbitrary sense of justice. He drew him aside and muttered, close to his face, ‘You have no authority to hang them, Richard. Rape is a Plea of the Crown, you know that well enough. I let you waste time with this charade here to get your confessions, but they must be tested before the King's court.'

Richard waved a hand dismissively at the coroner. ‘The shire court has been good enough for centuries and it's the same gallows at the end of it. Why are you so obdurate, John?'

‘Because the King's law is the law. The families have the right to speak and to choose either compensation or death.'

Ralph Morin came across to interrupt. ‘What are we to do with these men? The older one is surviving though he'll not get his breath back inside an hour. Are we to press the younger one?'

De Revelle was annoyed at the coroner's interference, but could hardly torture a confession from a man who had already proclaimed his guilt. He waved a hand at Stigand, who still stood by his fire with the branding iron in his hand, looking vaguely disappointed at the turn of events. ‘Take both of these vermin back to their cells. I'll decide later what's to be done with them.'

The guards led the two men away, Alfred still gasping for breath and the doomed Garth stolidly silent. As they passed close to where Gwyn was standing, his bulbous nose wrinkled and he sniffed noisily. He moved to the coroner's side and murmured into his ear in Cornish-Welsh, to keep it confidential, ‘That smell on them. It's surely the acrid fumes from that silver furnace hanging about their clothing.'

John looked at his officer blankly. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Remember when Christina Rifford confronted Fitzosbern, she hesitated about some familiar smell in connection with her ravisher. Maybe Fitzosbern had that same stink upon him as those men have, from living near that furnace – but it came from Garth, not Fitzosbern.'

The coroner nodded. ‘You may be right, Gwyn. I'll ask her when we next meet. It might explain her uncertainty, which worried me at the time. Though, with Garth's confession, we have all we need – assuming it's true,' he added cynically.

Gwyn pulled the end of his luxuriant moustache as an aid to thought. ‘I reckon it's true enough. No young man would falsely let himself in for the gallows-tree, even to save a friend.'

With the sheriff glaring at them suspiciously for speaking in a tongue incomprehensible to him, the group broke up and made their way into the castle courtyard. Ralph Morin asked John what would happen next about Fitzosbern's death. ‘An inquest first, in two hour's time. Though that will not take us very far in discovering who beat him to death,' replied John. ‘My clerk Thomas is looking into it now,' he went on, as they strode over the frost-hardened mud towards the gate-house. ‘Fitzosbern's injuries bled a great deal and we need to look at certain persons and places to see if fresh stains can be found.'

They parted inside the arch of the main gate, and the coroner and his henchman climbed to the cramped chamber high above the guard-room. Here de Wolfe was surprised to find Eric Picot waiting for him, muffled in a long, dark green cloak, the hood thrown back to reveal a rich red lining.

John pulled off his own cloak and sat behind his trestle table, motioning the wine merchant to the only other stool, while Gwyn hauled himself up on to his favourite perch on the window-sill.

John looked expectantly at Picot who, his swarthy face set in a troubled frown, began hesitantly, ‘I wanted to tell you something before the inquest begins on Godfrey Fitzosbern. For me to say it openly at the inquisition may cause an injustice – and might also expose me to anger and perhaps even violence.'

John sat hunched behind his table with arms outstretched to grasp its edges, a puzzled look on his dark face. ‘Why should this be, Eric?'

The other man continued to look uneasy. ‘What I want to say may lead to suspicion of certain persons. That may be quite false, but they will still blame me for it, whether it be true or not.'

The coroner looked past the Breton to catch Gwyn's eye, but his officer merely raised his bushy eyebrows and lifted his shoulders.

John returned his gaze to Picot. ‘You'd better tell me what you know and then I'll judge what to do about it,' he suggested.

Picot hunched forward on his stool, hitched his cloak up on his shoulders, then pulled off the close-fitting felt cap that covered his curly black hair. ‘Last night I decided to call on Fitzosbern, now that he was recovered from his poisoning or whatever it was. About three hours before midnight I went to his house, next to yours.'

‘And why did you do that? You are hardly friend enough to enquire after his health.'

‘I went to plead with him to release his wife.'

John frowned his deep frown, the old crusading scar on his forehead whitening as the skin furrowed. ‘Release her? What do you mean?'

‘Not to oppose us pursuing an annulment that would allow Mabel and me to marry. She had left home for ever and was living at my home in Wonford, but we needed her freedom to become man and wife.'

‘A difficult ambition, Eric. Most marriages offer freedom only when one partner enters the grave,' said John sonorously.

Gwyn thought that he spoke with too much feeling to make it a casual observation, and Matilda's face swam briefly into his mind.

‘I know it's difficult, John. An expensive process, with appeals to the King, to Canterbury and perhaps even to Rome. But it was the only route open to us.'

‘Until today, with Godfrey's death,' commented the coroner with no apparent irony.

The wine merchant shrugged resignedly. ‘I didn't even contemplate that last night when I stood before his house. But, in any event, I got no answer there. I banged on his door endlessly and waited for a long time, but there was no response, no light behind the shutters. So I went away, despondent.'

The coroner waited expectantly until Picot continued. ‘I left Martin's Lane, walked towards the cathedral and entered the Close. The moon was out and there was more light from those flares outside the farrier's.'

John interrupted, ‘You were going home, across the West Front of the cathedral, then through the lanes to Southgate Street?'

‘Yes, but as I crossed the Close, I saw two men in the distance, in front of the canons' houses. By then, I had turned down the path in front of the great doors of the cathedral and they were going back towards Martin's Lane.'

He paused, then launched himself into the most difficult part of his story. ‘They didn't see me, I'm sure. I always worry about footpads at night, so I stood still behind a great pile of earth from a newly opened grave until they passed, looking over my shoulder at them.'

‘And who were they?'

‘Undoubtedly one of the men was Reginald de Courcy – and the other the younger Ferrars, the one they call Hugh.'

There was a pregnant silence in the chamber.

‘You are sure of this, Eric?'

The dark head nodded emphatically.

‘As I said, there was a clear moon – and as they passed near your house, the yellow light from the farrier's torches fell upon them. I have no doubt who they were.' He rubbed a hand over his face in agitation. ‘As to why they were there, I have no comment. They may well have had legitimate business, but the fact is that they were hurrying at night from the place where the injured man was found next morning.'

Picot shifted uneasily on his stool. ‘That's all I have to tell you, but de Courcy and Ferrars, even if they have nothing to hide, would be ill-disposed towards me if they knew I had told you about this.'

The coroner pondered a moment, ‘At the inquest, I can ask them about their movements last night. If they admit being in Canon's Row at that time, there is no problem. If they deny it, then it's their word against yours. Two of them to your one. And they might demand to know who challenges their denial.'

Gwyn rose from his seat at the window to ask a question. ‘Can anyone else back up your claim?'

‘I saw no one else at that moment. There was a beggar and a drunk further on, towards Bear Gate, but they would be no help as witnesses, even if they could be found.'

John stood up. ‘I'll do my best to keep your name out of this, but I can't promise it, Eric. It depends on what happens at the inquest. You'll be there, no doubt?'

The wine merchant nodded unhappily. ‘This has released Mabel and we should be overjoyed, but we wouldn't have had it happen in this unfortunate way, even though he made her life a misery these past few years.' He replaced his cap and made his way out, promising to be back at the Shire Hall for the inquisition.

After he had gone, Gwyn pulled out the pitcher, which he had replenished that morning, and they sat for a time over a contemplative quart of ale.

‘What about Picot's claim, Gwyn?' asked John.

The Cornishman sucked the ale from the whiskers around his mouth before replying. ‘Firstly, is it true? If not, why should he come to tell us a string of lies? And if is true, were Ferrars and de Courcy walking the city at night in innocence or with malice?'

John nodded agreement. ‘So what do we do next?' he asked rhetorically, as although he always valued his henchman's unfailing common sense, the responsibility was his alone. He carried on, musingly. ‘The errand Thomas has undertaken includes the city households of the Ferrars and de Courcys. I doubt we need visit their habitations outside Exeter, as any signs of what happened last night must still be within the walls. So let's wait until our ferrety little clerk returns from his adventures – hopefully with some intelligence for us.'

Late that afternoon, the Shire Hall was again in use, this time for an inquest rather than a trial.

The coroner occupied the centre chair on the dais, but Sheriff de Revelle sat alongside in a nonchalant posture that was aimed at suggesting that he who was presiding and that John de Wolfe was merely an underling.

Thomas de Peyne squatted on a stool slightly behind his master, quill and ink at the ready. Near him were Archdeacon John de Alecon and Thomas de Boterellis. On the floor below the platform, Gwyn of Polruan ambled about, shepherding the witnesses, the jury and the motley crowd of spectators that milled about the back of the hall. A more macabre duty was to guard the body of the dead man, which lay under a sheet on planks laid on trestles, immediately below John's chair. The jury were legally obliged to view the body, as was the coroner, to examine the wounds visible on the corpse.

Gwyn now called out his summary demand to the effect that all those who had any business before the King's coroner for the County of Devon, should ‘draw near and give their attendance'. Among those who were giving their attendance were Reginald de Courcy, Hugh Ferrars and his father, Joseph and Edgar of Topsham and Henry Rifford, the Portreeve. Eric Picot stood unobtrusively at the side of the hall, but Mabel, the dead man's widow, was not to be seen.

These major players were standing at the front, just below the dais, and to their right stood some twenty jurors, those who may have had some personal knowledge of the affair. Most were in clerical garb, comprising several of the junior residents of the canons' houses in the cathedral Close. The large contingent of vicars and choristers explained the presence of the Archdeacon and the Precentor, who were there jealously to guard their ecclesiastical rights against the secular authorities.

For the first part the inquest followed its usual course. The small boy who had found the mortally injured Fitzosbern was considered too immature to be called, though he stood at the side of the hall in fascination, his mother's hand grasping him firmly by the collar. The dog still played around his feet. The young vicar told of his first view of the dying man, after which he virtuously described his attempts to raise the hue and cry by rousing most of the occupants of Canon's Row.

The coroner himself then took up the story. ‘I was summoned myself at that point and can state that the injured man was alive when I saw him, but died shortly afterwards. I took a dying deposition from him about certain matters, but he was unable to say who had attacked him.'