‘It is a delicate matter, but I know you for a discreet and considerate man, with a well-deserved reputation in this county.’
Her large eyes regarded him appealingly, but he saw that there was nothing of the coquette about her manner, for she looked genuinely worried.
He waited expectantly for her to continue, but for a long moment she remained silent, as if summoning up courage.
‘I am concerned about my husband, sir,’ she said hesitantly.
‘Is he unwell — or in some kind of trouble?’ asked de Wolfe with a frown of concern.
‘His body is in good health, thank God. But my concern is for his mind and what trouble that may lead him into.’
John was puzzled — though he disliked Clement for a being a supercilious snob, he did not see him as either a madman or an evildoer. He waited for her to explain further.
‘As you may know from your goodwife, Clement is very much concerned with this problem of heresy in the city,’ she began in a low voice. ‘He has always been of an unusually devout nature, passionately concerned for our religion. But I fear that it has become an obsession and I am deeply worried about where it may lead him.’
He stood close to her and, though she was tall for a woman, he looked down into her upturned face, which was tight with suppressed emotion.
‘You are no doubt referring to this meeting last night in the church,’ he said. ‘I understand it was held mainly at your husband’s instigation, but I have no knowledge of what transpired there, apart from a few words Matilda offered to our maid.’
Cecilia sighed. ‘He virtually took over the meeting! After Father Fulk gave a strong, though reasoned condemnation of the heretics, Clement became an impassioned orator, designed to whip up the anger of the congregation against these misguided people. He even demanded that they should be killed, drawing on biblical images of stoning to death!’
She shook her head and de Wolfe saw tears appearing in the corners of her eyes. ‘I sometimes fear for his sanity, Sir John! Though he can be cold and calculating, especially in his dealing with his patients — and with me, for that matter — once his religious zeal is aroused, he becomes a different man!’
John resisted an impulse to put a reassuring arm around her shoulders, in case Matilda had chosen to appear at that moment. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked lamely.
Cecilia dabbed her nose with a lacy kerchief which she pulled from her sleeve.
‘He is leading this delegation of parishioners to demand that the cathedral takes sterner action against the heretics. He is there at the moment and I think your wife is also attending.’ She sniffed back her tears. ‘He wanted me to go with him, both to the church last night and now to the chapter house, but I refused. I do not want to be associated with a persecution that might lead to the deaths of people who only wish to follow their own roads to God. Clement was very angry with me, for not sharing his outrageous views.’
‘He has not offered you any violence, I trust?’ snapped John, his chivalrous senses at once alerted, but Cecilia shook her head.
‘No, nothing like that. But I know you are of a like mind to myself over this issue, though I must warn you that many voices are being raised against you for it.’
‘Is there nothing I can do?’ he asked harshly. ‘This distresses me greatly, to know that you are in such an unhappy situation.’
‘You are a friend of the archdeacon, I know. He is also known to be moderate in his views, even though as a senior churchman his position is difficult. I thought perhaps you could warn him of my husband’s extreme views and his somewhat unstable mind.’
John promised that he would use all the influence he had, though privately he was unsure whether John de Alençon was either willing or able to stand up against his fellow canons’ thirst for blood, which would be greatly reinforced by Clement’s obvious obsession and the groundswell he had whipped up among the public.
They spoke for another few moments, but then several groups of people came from both directions in Martin’s Lane and it became difficult to continue this clandestine conversation. With a whispered ‘thank you’ and a quick press of his hand, Cecilia hurried back into her house and the door closed.
John regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, then loped off towards the High Street.
When he walked into the ward at St John’s Hospital, he saw a complete stranger on the pallet that Thomas had occupied and for a sickening moment thought that his clerk might have had a sudden relapse and died. Then Brother Saulf hurried towards him from a nearby patient, his smile telling John that all must be well.
‘He has gone home, Crowner! He insisted early this morning that he was restored to health, apart from his still-yellowed eyes.’
‘Was he really fit to go?’ asked de Wolfe, concerned for Thomas’s well-being.
‘To be honest, there was nothing more we could do here except try to make him rest — and we desperately need the space for other sufferers.’
‘I suppose he’s gone back to his lodgings?’
‘Yes, I impressed on him the need to rest and take regular meals to restore his strength. He claims the cleric who shares his room will keep him fed.’
On his way up to the castle, John was determined to make sure than Thomas was looked after, so when he met Gwyn in the gatehouse chamber, he arranged with him for Martha or one of the serving maids at the Bush to go around to Priest Street twice a day with nutritious food. The Cornishman reassured him with a big grin of pleasure.
‘Don’t worry, Crowner, we’ll see the little fellow is well fed. God knows his scrawny body could do with some fattening up!’
It was a great relief to both of them to know that their clerk seemed out of danger and likely to be back at work very shortly, in spite of the monk’s exhortations to rest for a while.
They brought their minds back to the business of the day. In the absence of any new dead bodies, rapes or fires, Gwyn wanted to know what was to happen to the two instigators of the quayside riot.
‘The sheriff has had to bow to the demands of the cathedral and give them back to the bishop’s jurisdiction,’ said John bitterly. ‘Though, as usual, the bloody bishop is conspicuous by his absence and I doubt if he would be very interested in such mundane matters, when he has the politics of England to amuse him.’
The coroner rose from his bench at the mention of the two renegades.
‘They were to be collected from the castle gaol yesterday. If they’re still there, I’d like a word with the bastards before they leave. I still wonder if they were the ones who killed our three heretics.’
With Gwyn clumping behind him, he hurried down the stairs and out into the inner bailey, where a cold rain had begun to fall from a leaden sky. They strode across to the keep but, instead of climbing the wooden stairs to the hall above, went down a few stone steps to the undercroft, a crypt partly below ground which occupied the whole of the base of the keep. A gloomy, damp cavern with stone arches supporting the building above, it was part prison, part storehouse and part torture chamber. Ruled over by the sadistic Stigand, the gaol consisted of a few filthy cells locked behind a rusty iron grille that divided the undercroft into two halves.
As they reached the bottom of the steps, Gwyn bellowed out in the near-darkness, lit only by a couple of guttering pitch-flares stuck into rings on the walls.
‘Stigand! Where are you, you fat evil swine?’ The gaoler was not one of Gwyn’s favourite people.
There was some grunting and shuffling and the man appeared from an alcove formed by one of the supporting arches. This was where he lived, between stone walls slimy with green mould, the floor covered with dirty straw. He had a hay mattress and a brazier for cooking and heating branding irons and the torture devices used in Ordeals.