‘I know of that monk Alan de Bere,’ said Thomas. ‘There is no doubt that his mind is unhinged, poor fellow. He was ejected from St Nicholas Priory several years ago for beating up another brother over some obscure point of religious belief. It was not the first offence, it seems, for he was originally in the mother house at Battle, but was posted out of there for some such similar offence.’
‘What about this Reginald Rugge?’ asked the coroner. ‘Do you know anything of him?’ Thomas was usually a mine of information about all things ecclesiastical, but this time he had little to impart.
‘I know the name and have seen him about the town — but your wife might know more, for he has some connection with St Olave’s. He helps the priest keep the place in order and assists in a lowly way at the Mass. I think he actually lives in a hut at the back of the church.’
They talked for a little while longer, though de Wolfe was a poor sick visitor, never knowing what to say. Thomas told him that the monks at St John’s had kept abreast of the outbreaks of plague in the locality, and it seemed that no new cases had been reported for a few days, raising hopes that the present epidemic might be over.
He left the priory after seeking out Brother Saulf to thank him for his care of Thomas and leaving some more money as a thank-offering, then went up to Rougemont. Here he found Gwyn playing dice in the guard-room with Sergeant Gabriel and a couple of soldiers. They chatted for a few minutes about the drama down on the quayside the previous day, and Gabriel confirmed that the Saint Augustine had sailed on the tide with the fugitives without any further interference.
‘What about those two troublemakers you have in the undercroft?’ asked the coroner.
‘Ha! The cathedral have already demanded their release,’ growled the sergeant disgustedly. ‘Some lawyer fellow from the cathedral is with the sheriff at this very minute.’
Hearing this, de Wolfe hurried across the inner ward to the keep and clattered up the wooden steps to the high entrance door. In the sheriffs chamber he found the weaselly deacon from the bishop’s palace seated across the table from Henry de Furnellis. The sheriff looked relieved to see the coroner walk in.
‘John, I’m glad to see you! It seems that the cathedral want me to release those two instigators of yesterday’s riotous assembly.’
De Wolfe had half-expected this turn of events, as he knew that the Church was jealous of their jurisdiction and objected on principle to the secular authorities dealing with anyone with the hair shaved from the top of their heads. But from sheer perversity, he did not want to make it easy for them and immediately objected.
‘How can that be, sheriff? These two ruffians are charged with serious offences. Encouraging citizens to become an unruly mob, to assaulting and unlawful imprisonment, to grievous bodily harm — and if they had not been stopped in time, to murder by hanging!’
He winked at Henry, out of sight of the deacon, and the sheriff carried on with giving the man a hard time.
‘Yes, that is indeed the case, Sir John! They must be brought before the king’s justices or his Commissioners, who will probably get to Exeter within the next few months or at most a year!’
‘That is not acceptable!’ squeaked the lawyer, a drab little fellow by the name of Roger de Boltebire. ‘The bishop will not countenance such a delay. These men are in holy orders and must be tried by a consistory court held by the bishop’s chancellor.’
John decided to persecute de Boltebire a little further by contradicting him.
‘Several years ago, Bishop Marshal agreed that he would renounce his ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the most serious offences — which these most certainly are.’
De Boltebire waved his hands vigorously in denial of John’s provocation. ‘That is not strictly true, sir. He said he would allow it for crimes committed within the cathedral precinct, which as you well know is outside the control of the city and county authorities.’
The sheriff shrugged. ‘Then serious offences committed down on the quayside, far away from the cathedral, are even more correctly dealt with by our secular courts!’
‘No, no, no!’ howled the deacon. ‘I am instructed to say that if you are unwilling to allow “benefit of clergy” in this matter, we will take it to the Archbishop in Canterbury!’
‘Who is Hubert Walter, also the king’s Chief Justiciar, the head of the legal system in England,’ said John mischievously. He knew this was a contest they could not win, once the bishop returned, but was determined to make the clergy work for their success.
But the decision was the sheriff’s, not his, and after a further period of wrangling Henry de Furnellis gave in, as John knew he had little choice.
‘But how do we know they are really in holy orders?’ demanded the coroner, awkward to the last. ‘Anyone can shave their head or put on a monk’s habit.’
There was a further argument about proving their literacy and being able to read the Vulgate, but by then Henry had tired of the game.
‘Take the damned fellows, will you! They’ve had a taste of prison down below, under Stigand’s tender care for a night, so that alone might curb their desire for rabble-rousing.’ Stigand was the evil, obese gaoler in the cells under the keep, a sadistic moron who revelled in inflicting the tortures of the Ordeal. Roger de Boltebire jumped to his feet, eager to leave these two big men who enjoyed baiting him.
‘I’ll send up the two proctors’ bailiffs to take them back under guard. They will be lodged in the cells in the Close.’
‘Sheer luxury compared with our accommodation here,’ grinned the sheriff.
While John was helping Matilda to settle back in Martin’s Lane, a man on remand for robbery with violence decided to turn ‘approver’, choosing to try to avoid execution by turning ‘king’s evidence’ against his accomplices, who had escaped when he himself was arrested by the hue and cry.
So the coroner spent the rest of the morning in the warder’s tiny room at the base of one of the towers of the South Gate, which acted as the city gaol. The few cells in the keep of the castle were for short-term prisoners and those to be subjected to the tortures of the Ordeal, but suspects awaiting trial at the burgess courts, the sheriff’s county court or the very intermittent Eyres and Commissioners’ courts were housed in the South Gate.
John’s function was to take his confession for eventual submission to the royal justices and, in the absence of Thomas, he had one of the sheriff’s clerks to make a record.
As the terrified man’s confession was punctuated by sobbing, screaming and grovelling on his knees before the coroner, the process took up most of the time until dinner, when John went back to Martin’s Lane. Treading delicately, he managed to survive the meal without any major outburst or denunciation from his wife, before announcing that he must go again to Stoke to visit his brother.
‘It is too late for me to go there and then return tonight,’ he said cautiously. ‘I will have to stay with my family and come back early in the morning.’
He expected Matilda to launch into her usual whining about being left alone once again — not that she ever relished his company when he was there, he thought bitterly. But she made no protest as she informed him that it mattered little, as she had an important meeting at St Olave’s early that evening.
‘Father Julian has called his congregation together to organise a protest to the canons about the shockingly lenient way in which those heretics were allowed to escape!’ she said in the strident tones of a determined campaigner. ‘We are going to send a deputation to demand proper action against this hateful seed of ungodliness that is being allowed to take root in our city! Some of the canons are of a like mind, but we need to influence the bishop into taking a firmer stand, as the Holy Father has commanded!’
Glad that his wife’s new-found crusade was at least turning her attention off himself, he encouraged her to tell him more.