The Witch Hunter (11 page)

They stood together to look down the narrow shaft and John, after a quick look up at the stairs to Matilda’s solar, slid an arm around the maid’s waist. They had had many a tumble in the past, but the handsome woman, a by-blow of an unknown Norman soldier and her Saxon mother, had recently refused him, being wary of Matilda’s suspicions, strengthened since the nosy body-maid Lucille had arrived to spy on them.

Now Mary smiled and twisted away from him. ‘What would your mistress Nesta do, sir, if she saw you? To say nothing of your wife – and the pretty woman from Dawlish?’

The mention of John’s other paramour down at the coast was enough to make him grin sheepishly. His childhood sweetheart Hilda was now married, but that had not stopped them from an occasional bout of passion when it could be managed. As Mary went back to her kitchen-shed, where she not only cooked, but slept on a pallet in the corner, John was aware of a distant crash as his front door slammed shut. Heavy footsteps followed and Gwyn hurried out of the narrow passage at the side of the house. His dishevelled ginger hair was wilder than usual and the armpits of his short worsted tunic were dark with sweat, as he had been trotting across the city in the sultry heat.

‘Crowner, d’you recall that outlaw in the court this morning – the one the sheriff sent to be hanged?’

John stared at his perspiring officer – it was unlike the normally imperturbable Gwyn to exert himself, unless there was a fight on offer.

‘What about him? Has he cut his own throat to cheat the gallows?’

‘No, he’s done better than that. He’s escaped from the South Gate and he’s gained sanctuary. He’s calling for the coroner to take his confession so that he can abjure the realm.’

De Wolfe’s hawkish face creased in doubt. ‘I’m not sure an outlaw can do that,’ he growled.

‘Don’t see why not. Convicted felons can seek sanctuary,’ objected the Cornishman.

John rubbed his black stubble, a mannerism he had as an aid to thought, just as Gwyn scratched his crotch and Thomas made the sign of the Cross. ‘True. I know nothing against it, though I’ve never heard of it being done before.’

‘The sheriff will be against it, so soon after sentencing the fellow to death!’ observed Gwyn, craftily.

His master took the bait immediately. ‘Then that’s a good reason for me to grant it! Where has he taken refuge?’

Gwyn grinned impishly. ‘You’ll like this, Crowner. He ran straight to St Olave’s!’

John burst out laughing, a rare phenomenon for the dour knight. ‘God’s guts, man, my wife will have a fit!’ Then he quickly sobered up, giving another anxious glance up the steep stairs to Matilda’s solar, as a new thought occurred to him. ‘There’s to be a special service there tomorrow, for Robert de Pridias. My wife will be in a frenzy if she finds some ruffian clinging on to the altar cloth – or if we have to lay siege to the building to keep him inside. And it’ll be all my fault, no doubt!’

‘If we hurry, maybe we can get rid of him before then,’ suggested the ever-practical Gwyn. It was a faint hope, considering all the legalistic ritual that went with abjuration of the realm, but the sooner they started, the better.

The pair hurried out into Martin’s Lane and down the high street towards the tiny church dedicated to St Olave, the first Christian king of Norway, where Gwyn said that he had told their clerk Thomas to meet them. De Wolfe had recently had some acrimonious dealings with its priest, Julian Fulk, which had not endeared him to his wife, who revered the man only slightly less than the Pope or Bishop Henry Marshal.

Outside the door, which opened directly on to Fore Street, they found a small crowd gawping at the unexpected drama that had enlivened their afternoon.

Blocking the door was one of the two city constables, a bean-pole of a Saxon named Osric. Alongside him was Thomas de Peyne, Gabriel, the grizzled sergeant of the castle guard and two of the gaolers from the burgesses’ prison, from where the outlaw had escaped.

The crowd, a score of old men, grandmothers, urchins and cripples who had little else to divert them, parted to let the coroner and his officer through.

‘It’s that fellow Stephen Aethelard,’ grunted Gabriel. ‘I’ll wager he had the gaolers bribed, though these fellows deny it.’ He jerked his head at the two warders, brutish men with short necks and glowering expressions.

‘Weren’t us, Crowner,’ grunted one of them. ‘We only came on duty an hour ago and when we checked on who was being hanged tomorrow, this bastard was missing.’

‘And as usual, nobody knew nothing about it!’ added the other.

John ignored them and went through the small door into the church, Gwyn close behind. Thomas bobbed his knee and crossed himself repeatedly as soon as he entered this diminutive house of God. St Olave’s was little more than a large room, with a tiny chancel at the far end. This contained an altar, covered in an embroidered white cloth on which were a metal cross and candlesticks.

It now also contained a sanctuary-seeker, who looked even more scruffy that he had in the Shire Court that morning. Stephen Aethelard was sitting dejectedly on the step below the altar, staring at the floor and scratching at some sores on the side of his neck. Halfway down the nave, the resident priest, Julian Fulk, was standing with his back to the door, glaring at the intruder with a marked lack of Christian compassion.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ snapped John, after taking in the scene.

‘Be a damned sight easier just to let the fellow run back to his forest where he came from, to save all this rigmarole of abjuring,’ growled Gwyn.

Though privately he may have agreed, the coroner was a stickler for the law and shook his head. ‘It must be done properly – the quicker the better.’

He moved into the body of the church, which had the luxury of a paved floor and the sound of his footsteps caused Fulk to swing around. He was a short, rotund man in early middle age, without a clerk’s tonsure, for he was as bald as an egg. His round face with its waxy complexion usually bore a fixed smile, but today he looked anything but pleased. ‘Ah, Sir John, I’m very pleased to see you. This fellow has lodged himself in my chancel at a most inconvenient time.’

Julian was nominally the coroner’s own parish priest, as it was to St Olave’s that Matilda dragged him about once a month. He was a reluctant worshipper, to say the least, as although actual atheism had never occurred to him, he found the rituals of the Church dull and meaningless.

‘I have heard that you have a service for Robert de Pridias here tomorrow,’ he responded. ‘I will do my best to get the fellow out of here before then, but it cannot be earlier than the morning – assuming that he collaborates.’

Leaving Fulk standing forlornly in his bulging black cassock, the coroner loped down towards the chancel, Gwyn and Gabriel following behind.

The fugitive had by now clambered to his feet and groped behind him to put one dirty hand on the altar, causing the priest to cluck with annoyance at the soiling of the fine lace cloth worked by one of the richer ladies in his congregation. Fulk assiduously cultivated the wives of burgesses and knights with his obsequious manner and false smiles, which was the main attraction of the place for Matilda de Wolfe.

‘You needn’t grab the altar, fellow,’ snapped John. ‘The whole church is a sanctuary – the churchyard would be equally safe, if there was one.’ St Olave’s, like many of more than two dozen city churches in Exeter, was built directly on to the street and had no land around it all.

‘You were in the court this morning,’ said the outlaw, in a coarsely aggressive voice. ‘But you can’t throw me out, I know my rights!’

John gave him a twisted smile. ‘As an outlaw, you don’t have any rights! That’s what the name means, you don’t exist in the eyes of the law. I’m not even sure you can claim sanctuary. I could probably drag you out now and get my officer to cut off your miserable head!’

Gwyn leered happily at this, and rattled his huge sword ominously in its scabbard. ‘Right, Crowner, I could use the five shillings’ bounty!’

Both of them knew that they were play-acting, but felt that this man should suffer some grief for the nuisance he was causing.

‘If you want to abjure – assuming I agree – then you will have to confess your guilt,’ grated de Wolfe.

‘How can I confess to something I didn’t do?’ objected Stephen, running thick fingers through his matted hair.

The coroner shrugged. ‘Please yourself, man. Either confess or stay in here for the allotted forty days and then be slain.’

There was a howl of protest from Julian Fulk, who had padded up to the chancel step. ‘I’m not having this creature sitting before my altar for forty days! Do something, Crowner – get rid of him!’

John looked down his big hooked nose at the indignant priest. ‘What happened to your Christian charity, Father? It was the Church that invented sanctuary, not the King’s justices.’

He turned back to the ragged prisoner, who was now squatting on his haunches. ‘For forty days from today, you can stay in here, with guards on the door. You will have bread and water at the burgess’s expense and be provided with a bucket. If you so much as put your head outside the door, it will be cut off! If you fail to confess to me in that time, the church will be boarded up and you will be starved to death. Is that clear?’

Stephen Aethelard gave a surly nod, but Julian Fulk uttered another squeal of protest at the prospect of his beloved church being boarded up for a long period. ‘Confess, you evil man and get yourself away from here!’

After a moment’s cogitation, the fugitive decided to cooperate. ‘What do I have to do, then?’ he muttered.

‘First of all, we need a jury,’ replied John. He told Gwyn and Gabriel to go outside and call in all the men over twelve years of age from the crowd outside. More must have drifted to the church since John had arrived, as within a few moments a dozen men and boys sidled into the nave, driven by the two officers like sheep before a dog.

They were marshalled into a semicircle around the chancel step and the tall, brooding figure of de Wolfe gave them their orders. ‘You are here to witness the confession of this man, who has sought sanctuary and wishes to abjure the realm – so pay attention!’

He turned back to Aethelard, grabbed him by the shoulder of his soiled tunic and pushed him to his knees on the flagstones. ‘This is supposed to be done at the gate or stile of the churchyard, but as we don’t have one, this will have to do.’ He looked across at the priest. ‘We need the use of a holy book, Father.’

Only too pleased to help in getting rid of the unwelcome intruder, Fulk hurried across to his aumbry, a carved wooden chest against the north wall of the chancel, and took out a heavy book bound in leather-covered boards. ‘Here is my copy of the Vulgate. Be careful with it, I beg you.’

De Wolfe took the testament, laboriously handwritten on leaves of parchment, and handed it to Thomas, who, after crossing himself once again, held it out to Stephen.

‘Place your hand on that and repeat my words,’ commanded the coroner.

Haltingly, the outlaw muttered a confession to having broken into the dwelling of John de Witefeld in the vill of Dunstone on the eve of the Feast of St Michael and All Angels and stealing fifteen shillings. He stubbornly refused to confess to having assaulted his daughter Edith, but the coroner decided that a longer confession would make not the slightest difference to the process, so did not pursue the matter.

‘Now repeat the oath of abjuration after me,’ boomed de Wolfe and Stephen stumbled through the ritualistic words.

‘I do swear on this holy book that I will leave and abjure the realm of England and never return without the express permission of our lord King Richard or his heirs. I will hasten by the direct road to the port allotted to me and I will not leave the King’s highway under pain of arrest or execution. I will not stay at one place more than one night and I will diligently seek a passage across the sea as soon as I arrive, delaying only one tide if that is possible. If I cannot secure such passage, then I will go every day into the sea up to my knees, as a token of my desire to cross. And if I cannot secure a passage within forty days, then I will put myself again within a church. And if I fail in all this, then may peril be my lot.’

At the end of this, Thomas handed the vulgate back to the priest, who with obvious relief locked it back in his aumbry.

Now John had to issue instructions to the abjurer. ‘Tomorrow, you will leave this place, casting off your own clothing.’ Looking at the man, who had spent months in the forest and weeks in a filthy gaol, John felt that the loss of his rags would be a blessing. Legally, they should have been confiscated and sold for the benefit of the Crown, but it was doubtful that a beggar would have bothered to pick them from a midden. ‘You will wear a garment of sackcloth and walk bare headed, carrying a cross of sticks which you will make yourself. You will tell passers-by what you are and you will not stray by so much as a foot from the highway. I charge you to go to Topsham to seek a ship and you will be given sufficient coins to pay for a passage to France. If you ever set foot in England again, your life will be forfeit.’

Thomas thought that his master was being too magnanimous in nominating Topsham as the port of exit, as it was only a few miles down the river. He knew that many coroners acted perversely in sending their abjurers vast distances – some from the North Country had been sent all the way to Dover, for example. But John himself knew that it was irrelevant which harbour he nominated, as he had a shrewd suspicion that as soon as Aethelard was out of sight of the city, he would throw away his cross and vanish back into the trees to make his way back to his outlaw comrades, which probably happened to more abjurers than actually reached their ports. As Gwyn had suggested earlier, it would have saved all this trouble if the fellow had been allowed to run out through the city gates and vanish into the forest.

While Thomas fumbled pen, ink and parchment from his shoulder bag to record the event and get the names of the ad hoc jurors, Julian Fulk approached him. ‘So how soon can we get rid of this fellow?’ he asked peevishly.