The Witch Hunter (6 page)

‘The master will be with you now, sir,’ he piped, keeping his eyes down to appear industrious when Walter came in. The apothecary appeared in the dooway and bowed his head obsequiously to his visitor. He was a small man, with a marked limp in his left leg due to a childhood illness. A sallow face with projecting yellow teeth gave him the look of a large coney, an appearance that was strengthened by his large stuck-out ears. A frizz of short sandy hair was matched by a narrow beard that rimmed the edges of his face. He wore a nondescript tan tunic over cross-gartered leggings, a long leather apron hanging from his neck. Walter opened his mouth to greet his esteemed customer, but Henry de Hocforde cut him short.

‘Upstairs – now!’ he snapped, crossing to the inner door and almost shoving the apothecary back through it. In the storeroom behind, there was a wide wooden ladder going up to the next floor and Winstone clambered up ahead of his visitor, apprehensive at his obvious ill temper.

At the top was a work-room, with benches where ointments and potions were made, and behind it were the apothecary’s living quarters, a dismal room with a straw mattress on the floor in one corner and a table, stool and cooking utensils along the far wall. An unglazed window, its shutter half open, looked out on to a yard where more herbs were drying on lines stretched between poles.

Walter Winstone nervously indicated the stool, but de Hocforde ignored him and perched on the edge of a table, where he was still taller than the other man.

‘I want to know why I wasted my money on you. In fact, I want it back, as you did nothing for me!’

The apothecary squirmed at the harsh, uncompromising tone of the merchant. ‘Give it time, master! I will devise some other means, never fear.’

Henry gave a humourless laugh, almost a bark. ‘You haven’t heard, then? You’re too late, you useless worm. The man’s dead!’

Walter gaped, then a false smile cracked his face, pushing his teeth even farther out. ‘Then it did work! I told you to be patient.’

‘No thanks to you, you charlatan! Fifteen shillings I’ve paid you altogether, over the past months – and for what?’

‘But he’s dead – which is what you wanted all along!’ protested the smaller man. ‘My tampering with his medicaments had the desired effect in the end.’

De Hocforde leaned forward threateningly. ‘You’re changing your tune now. The last time I was here, to complain that nothing had happened, you said you had stopped the poison, as it was without effect. You were working on something else. So how has he just died, when you ceased your efforts four weeks ago, eh?’

The apothecary wrung his hands in agitation. ‘I told you, sir, this is a slow poison, it had to be to avoid any suspicion. Its action is cumulative. It continues to reside in the body long after the dosing has ceased.’

‘Nonsense, man! The fellow stayed as fit as a fox after two months of your pathetic efforts.’

Winstone shook his head emphatically. ‘Indeed not. I attended him weekly and he showed certain signs of the plumbism I was inducing. He had belly-ache and was almost totally costive – his wife told me that he spent hours in the privy with no result.’

Henry de Hocforde went red in the face. ‘I don’t give a damn whether he could shite or not! I paid you to kill him and you failed dismally. So just give me back my fifteen shillings and I’ll not darken your door again!’

Although Walter was a timid man, the thought of handing over a hundred and eighty silver pennies provoked some desperate defiance. ‘So why then did he die, if it wasn’t from my efforts?’ he bleated.

‘Because I took other measures, my patience with yours being exhausted!’ hissed the fulling master. ‘Last week I sought out a witch to place a curse on de Pridias – at a fraction of the cost that I wasted on you!’

Walter’s watery eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘A curse? Surely you can’t believe in that old witch’s nonsense?’

‘This old witch did the trick. This afternoon the fellow fell from his horse, stone dead!’

‘Sheer coincidence. It was the long-term effect of my
Plumbium acetas
, without a shadow of doubt!’ stammered the apothecary.

For answer, Henry held out his hand menacingly. ‘My money – now!’

Walter Winstone backed away slightly, but his defiance remained, mixed with cunning. ‘It would go ill with you if the news leaked out that you had done away with a rival merchant … all Exeter knows that you have been trying to wrest the ownership of his mill from him!’

De Hocforde’s hand shot out and grabbed the smaller man by the shoulder. He dragged him close and bent so that his inflamed face was inches from the man’s nose. ‘You little rat! Who was it who had been feeding poison to the man for weeks? D’you think anyone would take you word against mine, you miserable little tyke? You’d hang from the gallows tree and I’d be there to see you off!’

He shoved the apothecary away and Walter staggered back and fell heavily against the far wall.

‘Now give me that money – or you’ll wake up one morning soon and find your throat’s been cut! I know men in this city who’ll kill for a shilling – a pity discretion stopped me from employing them on de Pridias.’

Defeated for now, the apothecary fumbled at his belt for some keys and went reluctantly towards a locked chest in the corner.

When John de Wolfe strode out into Martin’s Lane with his hound, he had intended to go straight down to the Bush tavern, but he was accosted by a familiar figure as he entered the Close. As he began walking between the mounds and grave-pits of the burial ground towards the huge bulk of the cathedral, he saw a lean, cassocked figure approaching from the direction of the West Front.

It was John de Alençon, Archdeacon of Exeter, one of the four archdeacons who under Bishop Henry Marshal, administered the various parts of the large diocese of Devon and Cornwall. Though de Wolfe was by no means an enthusiastic churchgoer, the two Johns were firm friends, their main bond being mutual loyalty to King Richard and antipathy to his treacherous brother, Prince John, Count of Mortain.

The priest waved a greeting and the coroner waited for him to approach, as he was obviously heading for his dwelling in the row of canons’ houses that formed the northern side of the cathedral Close. He was a thin man, not overly tall, but erect. Some years older than John, the shock of wiry hair that surrounded his shaven tonsure was iron grey. A bony, somewhat sad face was relieved by a pair of clear blue eyes, which twinkled as he grasped his friend’s arm in greeting.

‘Another fine evening, after all those terrible weeks of rain. Let’s hope the harvest will be saved, God willing.’ The words were spoken fervently, not as a casual remark. The awful growing season of that year might mean starvation for many next winter, unless the crops could revive within the next month. That the day was unusually hot was demonstrated by the absence of the archdeacon’s hooded cloak, an almost obligatory part of a senior priest’s outdoor dress.

‘Come over for a cup of wine, John. I have some new Poiteau red I’d like you to try.’

John de Alençon was an ascetic man, unlike many of the twenty-four canons of the Exeter chapter, some of whom revelled in luxurious living. But his one weakness was fine wine, which he appreciated for its quality, rather than quantity.

The two Johns walked together through the mess of the Close, weaving along paths of hardened mud between heaps of rubbish strewn among the graves. Beggars, cripples and drunks squatted on their haunches and pedlars rattled their trays at them as they passed. Urchins and louts ran across the resting-places of the dead, playing ball or tag and ignoring the screeches of protest from mothers and old crones when the infants in their charge were pushed over.

‘This place is becoming a disgrace,’ grumbled the coroner, glowering at the incongruity of these squalid acres, compared to the majesty of the cathedral that soared above them.

His friend agreed, with a sigh of frustration. ‘With only a couple of men working under our proctors, it’s impossible to control it. And it’s the only open space in the city where the people can escape the squalor of the streets.’ The cathedral Close was an enclave belonging solely to the Church, where only canon law applied, even the sheriff and coroner having no jurisdiction here, except along the main pathways.

They passed the treasurer’s house, built against the north wall of the cathedral and reached Canons’ Row, the narrow road that bounded the north side of the Close. There they made for one of the central houses of the dozen or so that stretched from St Martin’s Church across to the city wall. It was an old two-storey structure of timber, with a thatched roof. A side passage went around the back, where the usual stable, kitchen-shed, privy, wash house and pigsty were set in a muddy yard, alongside a small area that the archdeacon kept as a private garden.

John commanded Brutus to wait outside as they went up to the iron-bound front door. They were met by John’s steward-cum-bottler, one of only three servants that the austere priest employed. They went into his study, a small room on the ground floor, where de Alençon spent most of his time. A table, two stools and a low cot in one corner were the only furniture, apart from a large wooden crucifix on the wall. The rest of the house was occupied by his two vicars-choral, who deputised for him at some of the nine services each day – and several secondaries and choristers, young men who were prospective priests in training.

John waved his guest to one of the stools and sat on the other, pushing aside a pile of leather-bound books on the table to make way for a flask of wine and two goblets that his servant brought in. The goblets were another luxury, being of heavy glass, instead of the usual pottery or pewter. When they had sampled the French wine and commented on its taste, the archdeacon turned to current events, especially his friend’s recent activities. He always seemed fascinated by the coroner’s work and liked to be kept up to date with happenings outside his sheltered ecclesiastical world.

After relating a few tales about various inquests and cases at the last Shire Court, de Wolfe told him about the death of Robert de Pridias that day.

‘I met him several times,’ mused the canon. ‘Both at guild feasts and when our treasurer purchased a large consignment of cloth for garments for our secondaries and servants. He had many weavers working for him, as well as his fulling mill, so he must have been quite a rich man.’

When the coroner told him of the widow’s accusations against Henry de Hocforde – and the finding of the pierced effigy – de Alençon frowned. ‘Defaming a man like that is unseemly, even allowing for the distress of a bereaved wife,’ he said sadly. ‘But this business of the straw figure is a sign of the Church’s failure to banish magic from the common mind. I despair of ever completely wresting superstition from our flock.’

John gave one of his rare lopsided grins. ‘Isn’t religion just a different kind of superstition, John? We worship a God that none of us has ever seen and we revere his son who was a Jew living in a distant land a thousand years ago!’

If the archdeacon hadn’t known his friend’s penchant for teasing him on the subject of his faith, he would have been shocked – might even have accused him of heresy. As it was, he smiled gently.

‘I know full well you don’t mean that, John de Wolfe! But seriously, the efforts of priests like myself over centuries have only managed to lay a thin skin of Christianity over most of our population.’

He stopped to savour his wine, then continued. ‘Many find it hard to distinguish between the mysteries of the Holy Sacrament and the antics of the old wives and witches who cast spells for a wench to get a good husband or to make their neighbour’s cattle fertile.’

‘So you don’t think that de Pridias was done to death by necromancy?’ asked the coroner, half jokingly.

‘It’s too ridiculous even to contemplate,’ said the archdeacon, rather sharply. ‘You did right in refusing to pander to the woman’s nonsense, though of course I’m sad for her in her loss, God rest his soul.’ He made the sign of the Cross, reminding de Wolfe again of his own clerk’s irritating habit.

‘If the Church so disapproves of the widespread belief in magic and the casting of spells, why does it not proscribe it more severely?’ asked John, the wine putting him in a ruminative mood. ‘Your masters in Rome have always been quick enough to pounce drastically on any whisper of heresy or other activity which is not to their taste.’

De Alençon smiled wryly at his friend’s deliberately provocative cynicism. ‘That day may come, John, but at present we have more pressing enemies at the gates of God’s kingdom, as you should well know, having been a Crusader yourself.’

The coroner continued to worry at the topic like a dog with a bone. ‘But such widespread superstition surely cuts at the heart of your teachings that there is only one God. If he is the jealous God that the Scriptures describe to us, then should not his servants – the Church – be trampling these witches and wizards underfoot?’

The archdeacon, warming to a theological debate, raised his eyebrows at his friend. ‘Where does all this philosophical talk come from, John? You always pretended to be a rough, blunt soldier. You must have been listening too much to that strange relative of mine.’

Thomas de Peyne, the coroner’s clerk, was de Alençon’s nephew and it was through his influence with de Wolfe that the disgraced little priest had at last been given a job. Once a teacher in the cathedral school at Winchester, he had been defrocked when a girl had accused him of interfering with her. Only ‘benefit of clergy’ had prevented him being hanged for attempted rape, but he had almost starved after being ejected from holy orders, until he walked all the way to Exeter to throw himself on his uncle’s mercy.

De Wolfe drank the rest of his wine and refused another glass, as he intended drinking ale at the Bush. Before he left, he made one last assault on his friend’s implacable faith.

‘So you’re not going to round up and hang all the cunning women in Devon? They can continue to compete with the bishop and all his minions in working miracles, without any challenge?’

The archdeacon prodded him hard in the chest with a finger. ‘You’re trying to provoke me, John. You must be short of other challenges this week.’