The Witch Hunter (31 page)

The thought of some companionship, as opposed to the frosty atmosphere that would undoubtedly reign in his house for the rest of the day, persuaded him to visit his friend the archdeacon. Late afternoon was the quietest period for the cathedral clergy, after all the many services had ended, until the cycle started again at midnight.

He spent a calming hour drinking wine and talking over the problems, though no new solutions presented themselves.

‘Those two women will surely hang later this week, John,’ said de Alençon sadly. ‘I tried to talk some sense into Gilbert de Bosco yesterday – and I had an audience with the bishop this morning – but both showed no interest whatsoever in softening their attitude.’

‘Even the bishop is against them, then?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘He professes a neutral attitude, saying that it is entirely a matter for the consistory court – not mentioning the fact that it was he who set it up, with Gilbert as chancellor! He also mouthed the expected platitudes that the Church must be ever vigilant against heresy and sacrilege and would listen to no argument of mine that those sins were not remotely involved in the matter of these poor good-wives.’ He sipped his wine abstractedly. ‘This has become a political affair, my friend. The bishop sees himself attracting merit from Canterbury and even Rome by putting himself forward as a guardian of Christian doctrine – and the proud canon sees advancement for himself as a champion against the works of the Devil. Both have little concern for the actual substance of the matter, but they have a cynical self-interest in promoting their own careers. I suspect that the same goes for the sheriff, though his eyes are turned more to the Count of Mortain than towards archbishops.’

Reluctantly accepting that there was nothing more that either he or John de Alençon could do for the unfortunate Jolenta of Ide and Alice Ailward, the coroner took himself off to his chamber in the castle, rather than endure Matilda’s wrath and sulks until supper-time.

He strode up to Rougemont in the early evening sunshine, for the weather had improved and manor-reeves and freemen were crossing their fingers and touching wood that there might be a reasonable harvest after all, if the rain held off for a few weeks. As he walked across the drawbridge and under the gatehouse arch, a worried-looking sentry banged his pike on the ground and stepped forward to mutter under his breath. ‘Crowner, if I was you, I’d go straight across to the keep. There’s a bit of trouble going on over there!’

John’s head jerked up and when he looked across the inner ward, he saw a few saddled horses near the steps up to the high entrance of the keep. One he instantly recognised as the big brown mare belonging to Gwyn of Polruan and knew that his officer and clerk had now returned from Winchester. With a groan, he realised too that his hour of respite from the recent crises was over and that his bloody brother-in-law was undoubtedly intent on making more trouble for him.

He hurried across and soon heard raised voices, indicating that the problem was not up in the keep but in the undercroft, its semi-subterranean basement. Part of this was used as the gaol serving the county court and for remanding prisoners for the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery and the Eyre of Assize, when they paid their infrequent visits to Exeter. For offenders taken to the burgesses’ court, there was another foul prison in one of the towers of the South Gate – and of course, the cathedral proctors had their own cells, where the two helpless women were presently awaiting their fate.

De Wolfe clattered down the few steps and ducked under a low lintel into the gloomy cavern that was the undercroft, roofed by arched vaults of damp, slimy stone that supported the keep above. A barricade of rusty bars on the left marked off the half of the chamber that contained the prison cells. The rest was partly a store and partly a torture chamber where the repulsively fat gaoler, Stigand, extracted confessions and applied the painful and mutilating tests of the ordeal.

Today, however, the main function of the place seemed to be as a forum for a heated argument between a group of men standing in the centre of the soggy earthen floor. As John marched up to them, he saw Gwyn confronting the gaoler, with Ralph Morin, Sergeant Gabriel and two men-at-arms clustered around them. Thomas de Peyne, looking like an agitated sparrow, pattered around the group, flapping his arms and crossing himself repeatedly. When he saw de Wolfe approaching, he ran to him, his peaky face distraught with concern.

‘Master, do something! They want to put Gwyn behind bars!’

Ralph Morin swung round when he heard de Wolfe coming. ‘No, we don’t
want
to, John. It’s the last damned thing we want. But that bloody man upstairs has ordered it and I am in a difficult position, to say the least!’

‘I’m not going to force my best friend into the lock-up,’ wailed Gabriel. ‘I’ll leave the garrison and go back to being a shepherd first!’

‘But that’s the rub, dammit,’ snapped the castle constable. ‘You’re still one of his men-at-arms and if you refuse you can be hanged for disobeying orders. So what the hell are we going to do, John?’

Before de Wolfe could assemble his thoughts to reply, Gwyn suddenly gave a roar and shook off Stigand, who was trying to pull him towards the gate in the iron fence that led to the cells. ‘You touch me again, you slimy bastard and I’ll knock your bloody head off!’ He raised his massive fist to the man, who cowered back, his slug-like features twisted in fear.

Thomas began squeaking in terror, Gabriel was yelling at the gaoler and the two soldiers were looking uncertainly at Gwyn, mutttering to each other about what they ought to do. John found his voice, a deep bellow that brought momentary silence. ‘All right, all right! Let’s deal with this calmly, shall we? First of all, what exactly has happened?’

Gwyn, his normally amiable face creased in concern, lowered his threatening arm. ‘Thomas and I got back not more than a few minutes ago and as soon as I dismounted in the bailey, these two soldiers grabbed me and said that I was wanted down here. The god-damned sheriff came and said I was under arrest for stealing part of the Cadbury treasure, but walked out before I had a chance to get my wits back. Then the constable and the sergeant here appeared and we have been arguing until you came. I’m damned if I’m going to be locked up, it’s the bastard sheriff who should be jailed!’

John turned to Ralph Morin, who looked more unhappy than he had ever seen him before. ‘De Revelle threatened me with this, as I told you. I didn’t think he’d go through with it, though.’

The castellan turned up his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘He’s desperate, John. I think he wants to use Gwyn as a hostage, something to bargain with for you withdrawing your claim that he dipped his hand into that box of gold and silver. I’ve the feeling that he’s got something else nasty up his sleeve too, but I don’t know what it is.’ He paused and tugged at one of the points of his forked beard in an angry gesture of concern. ‘Anyway, he gave me orders – point-blank orders – to clap Gwyn in a cell. As the sheriff represents the King in this county and I’m a royal appointee in a royal castle, I don’t see any way of disobeying such a direct order, if I want to keep my own neck from being stretched!’

‘The King, God bless him, would never sanction this,’ cut in the sergeant, outraged at the whole affair.

‘Nor would Hubert Walter, if he knew about it,’ grunted Ralph. ‘But it would take a couple of weeks to get a message to him and a reply, for he’s in London.’

The mention of the Chief Justiciar, virtually the regent of England now that King Richard had gone back permanently to France, decided de Wolfe that this was probably the only course. ‘De Revelle has gone too far this time. I must get word to Hubert Walter as soon as I can, but that’s not going to solve our present problem.’ He sighed and looked across at Gwyn, whose whiskered face showed both anger and apprehension. ‘I’ll have to go up and talk to that mad brother-in-law of mine and try to do some kind of a deal with him.’

Ralph Morin nodded his big head – he was as tall as de Wolfe and almost as burly as the Cornishman. ‘But what about Gwyn? We can’t stand here undecided all night.’

The coroner’s officer solved the problem himself. ‘Duty is duty, I know that very well,’ he said with a sad air of resignation. ‘I don’t want to get my friends into trouble that could end on the gallows-tree. I’ll go and sit in a cell to satisfy that swine upstairs, until the crowner sorts out this mess.’ He swung around to Stigand, who was still standing a little way off, his slack mouth half open and his piggy eyes darting from one to the other. ‘But only if this slobbering idiot goes and cleans out a cell of its filth and puts some clean straw in there!’ He made a sudden mock leap towards the gaoler, who squeaked in fear and waddled off towards the iron gate.

‘I’ll bring some food down for you, Gwyn,’ promised Thomas, worried out of his mind at the predicament of his big friend.

‘And I’ll fetch some ale,’ added Gabriel. ‘We can sit and play some dice until this nonsense is settled, eh?’

John felt that the others were putting a brave face on the situation for his officer’s sake and although he gave Gwyn a reassuring slap on the back and bade him a confident farewell, he followed the constable out of the undercroft with heavy foreboding in his heart.

As that particular drama was being played out in the undercroft of Rougemont, Cecilia de Pridias was meeting Canon Gilbert in his house in the Close. Although he was her cousin, she was chaperoned by her daughter Avise and her dull husband Roger Hamund. They sat in Gilbert’s study, furnished far more comfortably than the spartan room of John de Alençon, three doors away. Gilbert had several prebends, all serviced by under-paid vicars, so together with his perquisites from the cathedral and the rents from several properties he owned in Exeter and Crediton, he was relatively affluent and saw no reason to stint himself when it came to creature comforts. The room had an oak table and several chairs, two of which had padded seats and backs, a luxury indeed. There was a side locker with wine and Flemish glasses on top and several wall cupboards, between which hung tapestries to relieve the coldness of the stone walls. A small fireplace with a chimney rising to the ceiling was another modern innovation and the only token of an ecclesiastical establishment was a small gilt crucifix on one wall.

Gilbert’s guests sat around the table and his steward entered to serve wine, then discreetly left, closing the door behind him – though he listened with his ear to the crack for some minutes.

Cecilia had no particular reason for meeting with her cousin, other than to keep in touch over their campaign, making sure that the canon’s enthusiasm was not waning. She need not have worried, for once launched on this mission, Gilbert’s obsessive nature fed upon itself. Even though he kept his eye upon the long-term advantages to his progress in the hierarchy of the Church, the crusade itself had gripped him, and he felt that this was a mission that had been waiting for him for years. Although not particularly devout in terms of a desperate affection for the Holy Trinity, he had begun to believe that God had marked him out for this campaign and that ridding the area of heresy and apostasy in the shape of witches was now his life’s work.

His widowed cousin was equally enthusiastic and again the excitement of the hunt was for her a self-fulfilling emotion bordering on hysteria. Although her original motive had been to find and punish the sorcerer who had brought about her husband’s death by putting a lethal spell upon him, this had broadened out into a pogrom against all cunning men and women. However, the death of her Robert was still to the fore of her mind and soon surfaced in their discussion.

‘Do you think any of these wicked dames was responsible, Gilbert?’ she asked.

The canon heaved his well-covered shoulders. ‘There is no way of telling, cousin. The hanged one is now beyond any questioning and I doubt if the other pair will confess. Unfortunately, the proctors have no means of extracting the truth from them, and though the sheriff’s court will undoubtedly hang them for us, they will not administer the
peine forte et dure
to get a true account of their misdeeds.’

‘What about that strange episode some days ago, when that man in Fore Street was murdered?’ asked Avise. Although not nearly so keen on hunting witches as her obsessive mother, she was a great gossip and liked to keep abreast of all the news in the city.

‘They say that he was one of those cunning people, even though Elias was a man,’ added Roger, speaking for the first and only time.

Gilbert poured some more wine. ‘I heard the same rumour and I am quite prepared to believe it. All I can think of is that our exhortations, especially those I delivered through the parish priests, moved someone who had suffered from his devilish acts to take the law into his own hands, as did that crowd in Bretayne.’ He took a sip of wine and added sententiously, ‘I cannot bring myself to condemn either them or him, if that is what some aggrieved souls did to avenge themselves and to prevent him doing further harm to other folk.’

The quick mind of Cecilia saw a flaw in this explanation. ‘But what about the killing of our supporter, Walter the apothecary? I hear that the means by which he was killed was identical – and Walter was no magician.’

‘Neither was he much of a physician,’ added Avise cynically, which earned her an icy look from her mother.

Gilbert’s big, ruddy face creased in doubt. ‘That is strange, I admit,’ he confessed. ‘But I doubt it is anything to do with our interests – though it is a pity that he was taken from us, as he was as keen as we to see these shameful people brought to justice.’

Cecilia de Pridias was eager to look ahead. ‘Though four of these sorcerers have been dealt with, one way or another, there must surely be many more, both in the city and in the villages near by. How can these be flushed out, to rid decent Christian folk of their evil influence?’

The burly priest was glad see how keen his kinswoman was to help, and his ego persuaded him to part with a little knowledge that he had intended to keep to himself. ‘Since they saw what happens to their loathsome kind, the rest are lying low, to save their own skins – and for that we must be thankful, for it helps us achieve our object of protecting the God-fearing from their satanic activities.’ He smirked and rubbed his hands together in anticipation of good news. ‘But I am about to come by some more information that should lead to the unmasking of another cunning woman. Our good friend and supporter Sir Richard de Revelle says that he knows of an unfortunate person who wishes to denounce someone who has wronged her. He is sending this informer down to see me this very evening.’