The Witch Hunter (25 page)

He sighed with resignation as he set about examining the corpse. There was little to be seen, apart from the obvious signs of hanging.

‘Cut right into her skin, she’s a heavy woman,’ observed Gwyn, with clinical detachment, as he studied the deep groove where the thin rope had sunk into her neck.

‘A blue face, blood spots in her eyes and eyelids – she didn’t die easily,’ agreed the coroner, who since taking office almost a year ago had attended scores of hangings.

‘What about a jury for the inquest?’ asked his officer. ‘There’ll be no finding any of those bastards who did this, they’ll be skulking in their holes all over the city by now.’

De Wolfe considered the problem for a moment, standing hunched over the cadaver like some grey-and-black vulture contemplating its fallen prey.

‘I’m going to leave it until tomorrow. There’s nothing to be gained until we’ve learned some of the names of those involved, if that’s possible. I’ll have to talk to the damned sheriff about this. It’s his responsibility to curb mob violence in his own city and county.’

‘He’s away for a few days, Crowner,’ volunteered Gabriel. ‘He’s gone to Winchester to take the extra taxes that the King’s chancellor demanded for the new campaign in France. And he’s taken that box of treasure trove with him, so I hear.’

De Wolfe’s face darkened as he forgot all about the lynching for a moment. ‘Taken the treasure already? Damn him, I expressly said that the Justices at the next Assize should decide what was to be done with it. I impressed upon him that I wanted it stamped with both our seals before it went anywhere! And that only after checking that everything we counted at Cadbury was still inside! He agreed to it, the lying bastard!’

John paced up and down the small room, glowering at the floor as he considered what was best to do. He swung around and jabbed a finger towards Gwyn. ‘I want you to take Thomas and the inventory we made in Cadbury of that treasure and ride to Winchester straight away. Get Thomas to seek out the chief clerk to the treasury at the castle and get him to check whatever de Revelle has delivered against the list. I don’t trust my brother-in-law farther than I can throw my horse, and there’s no way I’m going to let him get away with anything that belongs to our king, who needs every penny he can get!’

Leaving the monks and the motherly neighbour to cover up poor Theophania, he stalked away, suspicion about Matilda’s brother hovering over him like a black cloud.

With Thomas away with Gwyn on their three-day journey to Winchester, which was England’s joint capital with London, the coroner had no spy to worm his way into the consistory court on Tuesday morning. However, later that day he had a full report from John de Alençon, who made it his business to attend. Although he was the Archdeacon of Exeter, he had no special standing in the court, the sole arbiter of justice being its chancellor. It was no surprise to anyone that Bishop Marshal had appointed Gilbert de Bosco to this office and so he was effectively both judge and jury in the proceedings.

‘Fair-mindedness was a scarce commodity in the chapter house today,’ said de Alençon cynically, as he sat with the coroner at the table in his study that afternoon, sharing the usual flask of wine. ‘My fellow-canon was puffed up with his importance and imbued with missionary zeal – so the truth was low on his list of priorities.’ He took a sip of the red nectar of Anjou and shook his head sadly. ‘I must give myself a penance later for my cynical lack of charity towards Gilbert de Bosco, but the whole affair was a charade, a complete travesty of justice.’

For a normally mild man, the archdeacon sounded bitter and de Wolfe pressed him for more details of what had gone on that morning in the chapter house, where Gilbert had hastily added Jolenta’s case to that of Alice Ailward and tried them both together.

‘The poor women were not allowed to say a word in their own defence and the couple of neighbours who were allowed to speak up for them were treated like imbeciles by the chancellor.’

‘So what were the charges against them?

‘Almost identical, though it mattered little as to the details, the result was inevitable. As far as the Ailward woman was concerned, that she was guilty of sacrilege in summoning up Satan in defiance of God’s law, that this meant she had committed apostasy by denial of God and that there was implied blasphemy by seeking other gods but the true one.’

John scratched his head where a flea was biting his scalp. ‘All that on the uncorroborated lies of an ignorant boor like Adam Cuffe? I can’t believe he has the brains to invent all that rubbish about Satan. Someone must have put him up to it.’

‘Quite possibly, but I’ve no idea who that could be – or why he did it. And as for being uncorroborated, a trio of equally great liars were called, some of them I strongly suspect from that gang who lynched the other woman yesterday.’

‘Did they spin the same story?’

‘More or less … certainly in the same vein of unbelievable nonsense about Alice’s activities. Seeing her ride through the air in the moonlight, of her cat turning into a huge bat – and casting spells on men so that they lost their potency – that was a favourite among those deluded liars.’ Again the archdeacon sounded more bitter than John had ever known him.

‘But was all that sufficient for the bishop’s court to find her guilty?’ he asked.

The priest shook his head. ‘No, as I told you before, canon law requires that some criminal damage have resulted from her actions – but that was easy for the court to substantiate, especially when the court was solely Gilbert de Bosco. That Cuffe fellow swore that he knew of a sow and a whole litter of pigs that had dropped dead because of a curse that the woman had placed on them at the instance of a spiteful neighbour. And another witness said that she knew of two women who miscarried, having been interfered with by Theophania. That was more than sufficient to constitute criminal damage.’

‘And with Jolenta of Ide?’

De Alençon shrugged. ‘As I said, the spurious facts matter little. There was some hint of salacious evil there, as there were allegations of an incubus being involved.’

‘What the devil is an incubus?’ growled de Wolfe.

The glimmer of a smile crossed the priest’s face, in spite of the seriousness of the topic. ‘You’ve already said it, John! An incubus is a masculine devil that comes at night to have carnal relations with a woman – I believe that the female equivalent is called a succubus. They are supposed to give birth to witches.’

There was silence for a moment as they sipped their wine in gloomy outrage.

‘Was there nothing that you could do or say on their behalf, John?’ asked the coroner, almost reproachfully.

‘I could do nothing, God forgive me,’ answered de Alençon, as he crossed himself. ‘I had no standing at all in that court. Henry Marshal had specifically appointed Gilbert as chancellor and I was but a spectator. I tried to reason with him before the court began, but he stiffly told me that he was the bishop’s nominee and to mind my own business. I had no valid answer to that.’

‘So the poor women are now committed to the sheriff’s court for sentencing?’

The archdeacon nodded sadly. ‘At least they can stay in the proctors’ cells until then and not be humiliated further by being dragged to that foul pit in Rougemont, to be mishandled by that pervert Stigand.’ He was referring to the obese and mentally retarded gaoler who guarded the filthy cells beneath the castle keep.

‘But it will mean hanging, John,’ said de Wolfe sadly. ‘When the sheriff gets back he’ll take his allotted part in this rotten conspiracy.’

‘I’m afraid so, there is no other penalty. Just the lies about the dead sow, the miscarriages and the ravishment by an incubus are more than enough to send them to the gallows. And many of the townsfolk are happy with this – they were clamouring outside the chapter house, waiting for the verdict, shouting and yelling, demanding death for all witches. It was disgusting!’

There was another silence as they contemplated the situation.

‘One dead and two others on the way! What’s going on, my friend?’ asked the coroner. ‘Why this sudden vendetta against old wives, when for centuries they have been left in peace to peddle their potions and mumble their spells?’

De Alençon shook his grey head. ‘I just don’t know, John, but I fear we’ve not seen the end of it yet. One wonders who will be next?’

While John de Wolfe was eating his supper with Matilda in their usual glum silence that evening, Walter Winstone was in the upper room of his shop in Waterbeer Street, looking lovingly at the strongbox where he kept his money. He had even unlocked it in anticipation of adding the cash that Henry de Hocforde was sending to him.

Outside, it was raining again, to the despair of bailiffs, reeves and the peasantry, who were beginning to accept with fearful resignation that the harvest would be dismal and that winter would again see starvation stalk the land. The apothecary cared nothing about this, as for those with money there was always food to be bought, albeit at high cost from imports from across the Channel. Impatiently, he waited for his finances to be swollen by de Hocforde’s capitulation, once again cursing the man for not accepting that his poison was the cause for the other mill-owner’s demise.

There was a gruff shout from below and Walter hurried to the top of the ladder that led down to his storeroom. He had given his apprentice a rare evening off, to prevent the nosy youth from overhearing any talk about money, so the voice had to be that of the promised messenger.

‘Have you brought me a package, fellow?’ he called down.

A burly figure appeared at the foot of the steps and stared up at him.

‘Are you the apothecary? Henry de Hocforde sent me with this.’ He was clutching a large hessian bag which he hoisted up to show Walter.

The apothecary nodded. ‘Leave it there. I’ll fetch it up in a moment.’

‘No, the master said you were to count it in front of me,’ growled the messenger. ‘He says he doesn’t want to be accused of short-changing you – and I don’t want it said that I dipped my hand into it on the way here.’

The thought of losing some of his coins made Walter stump down the ladder, his stiff leg clacking on the wide rungs as he went. As he reached the bottom, the man reached into the bag, but pulled out not a handful of silver pennies but the head of a pole-axe with a sawn-off handle. On the reverse of the axe-blade was a wicked spike as long as a hand, and before the apothecary had time to understand what was happening, it was buried deep inside his skull. Hugh Furrel, the supposed messenger, was in fact a professional slaughterman from the Shambles and was used to swinging a full-length pole-axe at cattle, so dispatching a small man with a shorter one posed no problem. In fact, this was the second this evening, as he had come directly from Fore Street, where he had performed the same service on the wizard Elias Trempole, leaving his body in a pool of blood in his back yard.

Dropping his truncated weapon back into the bag, Hugh Furrel went cautiously to the door of the shop and peered out. When he was satisfied that no one was near the house, he slipped out and sauntered along to his favourite haunt, the Saracen, where he celebrated his success by spending some of Henry de Hocforde’s blood-money on a few quarts of Willem the Fleming’s ale.

The bodies were found almost simultaneously, less than an hour later, but the coroner was first called to Waterbeer Street. Without Gwyn or his clerk he felt vaguely incomplete, but made do with the two burgesses’s constables, Osric and his plumper colleague, whose name John could never remember. The downtrodden – and now unemployed – apprentice had discovered the murder when he returned from his unexpected break and had hared off around the corner to the Guildhall, behind which the constables had a small hut as their headquarters. Osric had summoned de Wolfe, but by this time a trio of excited townsfolk had run up from Fore Street to report that their neighbour Elias Trempole had been found dead in his yard by his wife, when she returned from visiting her sister in Curre Street.

When the constable arrived in Martin’s Lane, John was about to take his hound for a convenient walk in the direction of the Bush inn, as Matilda had already retired for the night. However, his irritation at the frustration of his amorous intentions faded when he realised that not only was the first victim one who was Canon Gilbert’s supporter in the witch-hunt, but that Elias Trempole, according to Osric, was a well-known cunning man. The coincidence was further strengthened when he was told that the mode of death in both cases was identical.

In the back room of the apothecary’s shop, which was now being guarded by the other, fatter constable, he found the remains of Walter Winstone lying crumpled at the foot of the ladder. On the top of his head was a large circular hole, from which blood and brains welled out. There were no other injuries to be seen, and on the apothecary’s face was an expression of utter astonishment, the eyes being open and staring almost beseechingly at the coroner, asking for some explanation of this highly inconvenient event.

The apprentice was shaking in the background, his face ashen, as if he half expected to be accused of killing his master. It was common knowledge in Waterbeer Street that he hated the apothecary for the way he was treated, but de Wolfe sensed his fear and reassured the boy that he was not a suspect. He knew nothing of any visitor that evening, but the very fact that he had been sent away by his master suggested to John that someone had been expected.

‘Best have a look around,’ he growled at the constables, once they had looked at the body. There was nothing to be seen out of place in the storeroom or back yard, and when they climbed the ladder, the upper rooms, though dismal and untidy, seemed undisturbed.

‘That chest is unlocked,’ quavered the apprentice, who had followed them upstairs. He pointed to the stout box, which had the lock lying open on the top. ‘The master never leaves it like that!’

Knowing of the apothecary’s reputation for covetousness, Osric suggested that he might have been robbed, but when the coroner lifted the lid he whistled in surprise at the sight of so much money. ‘Selling pills and lotions must be a profitable business!’ he commented. ‘Whoever came to slay him certainly didn’t commit armed robbery.’