The Witch Hunter (4 page)

‘Tell me what happened,’ demanded the coroner, fixing the reeve with his deep-set eyes. The two old men from outside the tavern had tentatively followed them into the church, along with the ale-house keeper. Between them, they gave an accurate account of the sparse facts of de Pridias’s demise, but his widow remained adamant that he had been done to death by magical means.

‘I saw five magpies cross his path a week ago, when we visited my sister in Topsham,’ she snapped. ‘That’s certain sign of bewitchment. And not two days ago, my husband dropped his knife and horn spoon from the table and they fell to form a cross at the ground near his feet.’

She voiced these occult manifestations with rock-hard certainty, as if defying anyone to query them as harbingers of doom.

‘You said your husband thought himself to be under some … some noxious charm?’ rumbled de Wolfe, cautious as to how he should approach this nonsense. If it had been a man offering this foolery, he would have given him a buffet around the head and told him not to waste his time, but a guildmaster’s wife was another matter, especially one who would have the ear of Matilda.

‘Indeed, he began having tight sensations in his throat every time he walked past a certain house in Fore Street, where a certain cunning man lives.’ Her son-in-law restrained himself from pointing out that this was the steepest part of the hill coming up from Exe Island.

‘Anything else?’ demanded the coroner.

‘For many weeks he has been waking in the early morning with a terrible headache, after dreaming morbid thoughts. He agreed with me that some hag somewhere was putting a curse on him.’

‘Was his health good? Did he take any pills or potions?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘He was a hale and hearty man! Perhaps he had a little shortness of breath, but he indulged at table a little too liberally. As master of his guild, he had to attend many feasts and I had told him that he needed to watch the size of his belly.’

John noticed that the daughter and her husband looked a little askance at these protestations of rude health. ‘Did he take any medicaments, I asked?’ he repeated, gazing sternly at the weakest party, Roger Hamund.

‘He was attended now and then by an apothecary, it’s true,’ mumbled Roger.

‘Which apothecary would that be?’ snapped the coroner.

‘Walter Winstone, who has his shop in Waterbeer Street,’ said Roger. ‘But he merely gave him regular potions for his indigestion. As my wife’s mother says, he was overweight and often had eructation of wind and an ache in the upper belly after a heavy meal. This Walter gave him some foul liquid for it – though the only good it did was to the apothecary’s purse.’

Cecilia became impatient. ‘This is all of no consequence, Sir John! My husband was done to death by witchcraft.’

John blew out a long breath in muffled exasperation. ‘Why should anyone wish to harm your husband?’

Her pugnacious face, which reminded him too readily of his wife, glared up at him. ‘I know fine well who has commissioned these evil acts! It is Henry de Hocforde, who wishes him dead so that he may take over the mill.’

Gradually, de Wolfe pieced together the accusation, explained disjointedly by Cecilia and the daughter and her husband. It seemed that de Hocforde, who owned an adjacent fulling and carding mill, had long wished to buy out de Pridias, partly to remove competition and also to gain a better site on Exe Island, as the leat that drove Robert’s mill-wheel was larger and more powerful than his own. He had made many offers of purchase and used every means of persuasion without success, until the matter became acrimonious in the extreme.

‘And you claim that de Hocforde has resorted to attempted murder to gain this mill?’ demanded the coroner, unable to keep incredulity out of his voice.

Cecilia glared back at him, entirely unabashed. ‘And why not indeed? Men have killed for far less – a crowner like you should know that better than most!’

John shook his head in disbelief, then turned to the son-in-law. ‘Do you think the same way, young man?’

Roger squirmed as his gaze shifted uneasily between his dominating mother-in-law and the masterful coroner. ‘Well, I know that de Hocforde has become most aggressive about the matter these past few months. What started as a merchant’s offer drifted into a fierce dispute.’

The daughter chipped in with her own forceful opinions. ‘In the end, he came to the mill and to our house, shouting and raving at my poor father, threatening to put him out of business if he didn’t see reason and sell up.’

‘But did he threaten his person, as well as his business?’

The new widow glowered at de Wolfe. ‘Perhaps not in so many words, but the threat was plain to see. The bad blood between them became so vicious that I forbade my husband to go out at night without a servant to accompany him with a cudgel.’

John waved a hand towards the bier. ‘As you see, there’s not a mark upon his body – and we have witness to the fact that he had a seizure, madam!’

Cecilia de Pridias remained scornful of his dismissive attitude. ‘Of course there are no wounds, man! These cunning women spell their curses in occult ways. For a few pence, they will work any manner of mischief, from stealing your neighbour’s husband to killing a rival’s sheep.’

The coroner sighed. There was obviously no way of shifting this obstinate woman from her conviction that her husband had been magicked to death. However, he was damned if he was going to distort the system of justice just to pander to her delusions.

‘You are entitled to think what you may, good-wife,’ he said as reasonably as he could. ‘But I cannot see any reason to bring this sad event within the jurisdiction of the coroner and hold an inquest. There is no wound, the death was witnessed by several people as a seizure – and now I learn that he was under the care of an apothecary for pains in his belly.’

Cecilia glared at him and already he could feel the nagging that he would get from Matilda when she heard of this slight against her friend. ‘If you’ll not look into the matter, then I’ll go to the sheriff! Sir Richard will have a more sympathetic ear than yours seems to be.’

John shrugged. ‘It’s none of his concern, lady. I was appointed by the King to record all such matters in the county. A sheriff has no jurisdiction, unless you can show that a killer is on the loose and needs apprehending.’

‘Well, one is, you stupid man!’ she said shrilly. ‘Henry de Hocforde!’

De Wolfe regarded her sternly. ‘I’d be careful of proclaiming that too openly, madam. De Hocforde could take you to law for defaming his name if you persist in an accusation that you have no means of proving.’

He said this with the best of intentions, as he felt that a newly bereaved widow might declaim things in her grief that at other times would be left unsaid – though he had to admit to himself that she seemed more angry than distressed.

Gwyn sidled up to him and muttered in a low voice, ‘Are we staying, Crowner? This seems a waste of time.’

‘We’ll go through the motions, just to humour her fantasies,’ replied John, stepping away a few paces to avoid being overheard. ‘I’ll have a quick look at the corpse, to reassure them that he’s not been stabbed. You go and look at his horse and search through his saddlebags, just to make it appear as if we’re doing something.’

As Gwyn shambled off down the nave, the coroner turned back to the family, who were grumbling indignantly among themselves.

‘I’ll examine the body myself, to put your minds at ease. You must wait outside, please. It’s not seemly for me to undress the cadaver in your presence.’

Still protesting that he was wasting his time in looking for wounds, when the death was due to a malignant spell, Cecilia de Pridias stalked out of the little church, the others trailing behind her. John called to the reeve as he reached the door. ‘Shut that and come back here to help me, man. My officer is looking at his horse.’

Between them, they took off Robert’s wide belt and hoisted up the dead man’s long tunic, of best-quality brown worsted. Underneath, he wore long black hose tucked into a pair of leather riding boots. An undershirt of fine linen was pushed up to his armpits for John to examine his belly and chest, which were unremarkable apart from the size of his paunch. Turning him over, John confirmed that there was no injury on his back, then they restored his clothing to make him decent and stood back.

Death stiffness was beginning to appear and the coroner reached out to close his half-opened mouth before it set fast in that unbecoming position. As he did so, he noticed that although Robert still had most of his teeth, the gums were in a very bad state, being discoloured and darkened along the edges. He idly contrasted them with the perfect teeth of Nesta, his Welsh mistress, and recollected that during his visits to Wales he had seen many people cleaning their teeth with the chewed end of a hazel twig dipped in wood ash, a habit de Pridias could have adopted with advantage.

He straightened up and stood broodingly over the reeve. ‘Nothing here, so let the family arrange for a cart to take the poor fellow home for burial.’

As he stalked towards the door, it opened and Gwyn came in, his red hair as tousled as ever, the ends of his ragged moustache drooping to his collar-bones. His brow was furrowed and he came to meet the coroner with a hand outstretched, something clutched in his ham-like fist.

‘Don’t understand this, Crowner!’ he boomed. ‘It was pinned underneath one of the saddlebags. I only found it because I lifted the bag and the damned pin stuck in my finger.’

He opened his hand and showed his master what lay across the palm – a small corn-dolly, no more than four inches long, with recognisable arms, legs and head, though it was crudely made. Stuck to the head was a small clump of what seemed to be human hair and around the body was a torn scrap of green cloth, secured to the dolly by a thin metal spike which transfixed the chest.

The reeve sucked in a sudden breath and crossed hinself rapidly, a gesture that the coroner and his officer associated with their own clerk, who did it a dozen times a day.

‘That’s a witch’s effigy, Crowner!’ he hissed in a frightened voice and edged away from Gwyn’s proffered hand.

‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ grunted the Cornishman. ‘I remember a cunning woman in Polruan when I was a lad. She made one of these once when she wanted revenge on a man who had stolen one of her sow’s litter. Didn’t work, though.’

De Wolfe took it from his officer’s hand and examined it more closely. It was little more than a bundle of straw stalks, bound up into the crude shape of a man.

‘That hair, it looks like a match for the dead ’un, I reckon,’ said Gwyn, pointing at the bier. John took the little effigy across and held it next to the corpse’s head. The fine, sandy hair did indeed appear to be identical with the fluff of hair on the dolly.

‘What about this bit of cloth? I wonder where that came from,’ said de Wolfe.

‘I can tell you that straight away,’ snapped a triumphant voice. Turning, John saw that the widow and her family had come back into the church. ‘It’s a shred from an old tunic of my husband that the moths had ruined. I threw it out some weeks ago.’

‘How can you tell that it’s his?’ demanded the coroner.

‘I know that pattern. It was made from our own wool by a weaver in St Sidwell’s to my own requirements. Some wicked person has salvaged part of it to use against him. So now will you believe that a spell was cast upon him?’

‘I believe, lady, that this thing was found under his saddlebag. That’s a long way from believing that it had anything to do with his death.’

Cecilia’s round face flushed with anger. ‘Then you are a stubborn, stupid man, Sir John! You hold in your hand an effigy that is clearly of my husband, carrying his hair and his clothing, with a lethal weapon stuck through its chest like a chicken on a spit – and you say it’s nothing?’

De Wolfe could see that he was in for a hard time from his own wife after this, but his sense of duty overcame any personal problems.

‘Calm yourself, madam. Let’s take this a step at a time. How would anyone come by this rag and this hair, which I do admit looks uncommonly like that of your husband?’

This time the daughter spoke up. ‘I remember throwing that moth-infested tunic on to our midden in the back yard. We pay a man with a barrow to collect our night-soil and other waste every few days. He takes it to the river and tips it in, downstream of the bridge.’

‘Anyone could have stolen the cloth or even just torn a piece from it,’ volunteered Roger, anxious to back up his mother-in-law’s case.

‘What about the hair?’ objected Gwyn.

‘My husband was very particular about his appearance,’ snapped the widow. ‘Every few weeks, he used to attend the barber who keeps a stool outside St Petroc’s Church. Any evil person could lie in wait and then pick up some trimmings from the ground as they pass.’

This woman has an answer for everything, thought John peevishly, but he admitted that he could not fault her explanations.

‘And who do you think was responsible for this flummery?’ he demanded, still obstinately opposed to giving any credence to Cecilia’s convictions.

‘You’re the law officer, it’s your job to discover that!’ she retorted. ‘But whoever did the actual deed was but an agent of the true culprit, that devil Henry de Hocforde.’

They argued the issue back and forth, the mother and daughter becoming more and more shrill and vituperative as the coroner dug in his heels more deeply and refused to hold an inquest.

‘How can I assemble a score of men here as a jury to examine a corpse without so much as a pinprick upon him and ask them to decide if he was murdered?’

‘Most sensible men believe in the powers of cunning women,’ railed Cecilia. ‘They see it often enough in spells for good weather, for fertile cattle, foretelling fortunes, banishing the murrain in their livestock and the like! So why are you so set against what is common knowledge to most people?’

The reeve was nodding his agreement and John could sense that even Gwyn, who came from the fairy-ridden land of Cornwall, was disinclined to dismiss the widow’s claims. However, de Wolfe remained adamant, as he could not square this situation with the letter of the law, which he had sworn to uphold on behalf of his hero, King Richard the Lionheart. He held up his hand to try to stem the torrent of indignation that was still pouring from the lady’s lips.