The sheriff decided to back away from such a sensitive subject, and he was saved further embarrassment by his chief clerk entering, to hover with a sheaf of parchments and an impatient expression on his lined face. De Wolfe took the hint and pushed himself to his feet to pick up his wolfskin cloak from a nearby bench.
‘I’ll see you in the Shire Court tomorrow, then,’ he promised. ‘I’ve only one case to present, left by Nicholas de Arundell.’
The mention of that name caused de Furnellis to shake his head sadly. ‘A nice young man, but not cut out to be a coroner,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a man so relieved when he was told that you were taking over once again.’
John gave a lopsided grin. ‘He wasn’t the only one! Even though I have to stay up in that damned draughty chamber in the gatehouse, it’s better than staying home with Matilda!’
He swung his cloak over his shoulders and loped out into the great hall of Rougemont.
The little priest who had braved the risks of pestilence in Lympstone was having his hair cut. This was a very public process, as he sat on a stool at the edge of Exeter’s High Street near Carfoix, where the four old Roman roads crossed at the centre of the city. The portly barber, who also pulled teeth and cut toenails and corns, charged half a penny for a haircut, though in Thomas de Peyne’s case this was hardly a bargain, as much of his thin lank hair was already shaved off for his priestly tonsure, a wide, bare circle on top of his head. Short of stature, Thomas had a thin face, a pointed nose and a weak chin, as well as a lame leg from the effects of spinal phthisis as a child, but an agile mind and a good education more than compensated for his poor physique.
As the man snipped away with his rusting scissors, Thomas’s attention was drawn to a small crowd on the opposite side of the crossing. They were listening with varying degrees of attention to a man standing outside a baker’s shop, earnestly lecturing them, with many flourishes of his arms. Due to the rumble of carts and barrows and the constant cries of stallholders yelling the merits of their goods, it was difficult for Thomas to follow what he was saying, but what he could hear obviously had some religious significance. However, the words ‘free will’ and ‘man makes his own destiny’ were enough to tell the little priest that the man haranguing his unresponsive audience was one of those who followed an alternative path to God from that offered by the Church of Rome.
When the barber had brushed off the remaining hairs from his worn cassock and relieved him of his halfpenny, Thomas dodged a porter jogging past with huge bales of wool balanced on his shoulder-pole and limped across the narrow street to listen to the orator. His interest was mainly professional, as Thomas was a conventional, devoted servant of the Church, faithful to all its tenets and rituals. However, though his faith was rock solid, he had an academic interest in the beliefs of those outside the Roman Church, ranging from Mohammedans to the various critics and non-conformists within the Christian world itself.
As he neared the fringe of the dozen people, including a couple of matrons clutching market baskets, he heard mutters of discontent from some.
‘It’s blasphemy. It ought not to be allowed!’ came a wavering voice from an old grey-bearded man.
‘The cathedral should lock him up, the scurrilous bastard!’ came a more forthright comment.
Thomas stopped to listen for a few moments, as the crowd shifted, some leaving and a few more stopping as they passed along the crowded street. He heard nothing he had not heard before, as mild heresy was not that uncommon, either from unguarded tongues loosened by drink in alehouses or more discreet discussions behind closed doors. The present exponent, an emaciated fellow dressed in poor clothing, was broadcasting his beliefs about the way in which the Father and Son should be worshipped. It was somewhat unusual, and certainly risky, for such views to be shouted abroad in a city street, but Thomas had no intention of doing the cathedral proctors’ work for them by denouncing or arresting the fellow.
He listened for a few moments and decided that the arguments that the man was setting forth were typical of those heretics who declared that all men had free will and that the Catholic Church was corrupt.
‘Man can only be saved by knowing himself, not by intercession with the true God only through the priesthood,’ the man brayed.
Thomas sighed at the obviously Gnostic preachings of the poor fellow and moved away from the crowd, who were becoming more irate at the blasphemies of the speaker. If the onlookers did not beat him up, then the orator was in danger of being picked up by the emissaries of Bishop Marshal, thought Thomas, especially if some canon or vicar happened to be passing by.
As he made his way back up the crowded High Street, he consoled himself with the thought that Rome had had to contend with heretics for almost a thousand years and that some poor crank yelling on an Exeter street was hardly likely to bring the Christian Church crashing to its knees.
It was still only about the eighth hour of the morning and he had no duties at the cathedral until two hours before noon, when he was due to teach Latin grammar to a class of unruly choirboys. A couple of months had passed since the coroner’s team had returned from London, and since his master had been reinstated in his old job they had returned to their long-established routine of meeting each morning in the bleak chamber at the top of the castle gatehouse.
He limped along the High Street and then up the steep slope of Castle Hill and across the drawbridge of the dry moat, to the inner gate of Rougemont. A young soldier, who looked hardly old enough to handle sharp weapons, was on guard duty and waved him through with a cheerful greeting. Inside the arch, Thomas turned into the guard-room, where three more men-at-arms were squatting on the earth floor playing dice. They ignored him as he crossed to a low doorway and laboriously began to climb a stone staircase set into the thick wall. Two floors up, he pushed through a curtain of sacking meant to reduce draughts and went into a barren room with two arrow-slit windows that gave a view down over the city.
‘Here’s our favourite dwarf!’ cackled a huge man sitting on the sill of one of the window embrasures. He had tangled ginger hair and large pair of drooping moustaches to match. A ruddy face with a large bulbous nose was relieved by bright blue eyes. Gwyn of Polruan was the coroner’s officer, a former Cornish fisherman who had spent the past twenty years as John de Wolfe’s bodyguard, squire and faithful friend. He had a very large body, encased as usual in coarse serge breeches and a tattered leather jerkin.
The priest scowled at Gwyn, for although they were firm friends he sometimes tired of the Cornishman’s jibes at his small size and puny muscles.
‘You’ve had your hair shorn,’ grunted de Wolfe, almost accusingly, staring at his clerk’s head. ‘Is it some sort of religious penance?’ He glared up from where he sat at his trestle table.
‘No, Crowner, not at all!’ replied Thomas indignantly. ‘It’s just that I wanted less cover for fleas. My lodgings are infested with them.’ The clerk shared a room with a cathedral secondary in a house on Priest Street in the lower town.
He pulled a stool up to the table, which along with the coroner’s wooden chair and a small charcoal brazier was the only furniture in the spartan chamber. Sir Richard de Revelle, the previous sheriff and de Wolfe’s brother-in-law, had grudgingly allotted John the least desirable room in the whole castle, as a token of his contempt for the new office of coroner, which he looked on as usurping his own authority.
As Thomas spread out his writing materials on the table, John resumed his conversation with Gwyn. Usually, the pair conversed in the Celtic tongue, as Gwyn was Cornish and John had learned Welsh at his mother’s knee. However, they reverted to English in deference to Thomas.