De Wolfe jumped up at once, as did Gwyn and a number of the other men. Fires in the city were a very serious matter, as many a town had been razed to the ground from a single house going ablaze. Part of the coroner’s remit, irrespective of whether there were deaths, was to hold inquests into fires with a view to trying to prevent similar ones in the future.
The men hurried out, jostling through the door after the coroner, and began jogging to the end of Idle Lane, then up Smythen Street towards The Shambles. Darkness had fallen several hours earlier, and the pulsating glow from the fire was plainly visible over the roofs to the left. Before they reached The Shambles, Milk Lane branched off to the left, meeting Fore Street just above St Olave’s Church on the other side.
As they ran, Osric was alongside John and panted out what he knew of the conflagration. ‘It’s in one of the dairy houses, halfway along. Thank God they are well spaced out because of the beasts, so there’s less likelihood of the fire spreading!’
Milk Lane was named after the half-dozen cottages that kept cows and goats in their large yards, the tenants — or usually their wives — milking the animals and selling dairy products around the city streets. The beasts were fed with hay and cut grass and often taken on halters down to Bull Mead or Exe Island to crop the grass on the common land.
As they reached the corner, they saw a low dwelling well ablaze, with a crowd of people outside doing what they could to quell the flames. There was little water available, other than what could be carried in wooden and leather buckets from a couple of wells, but half a dozen men were dragging down the blazing thatch with long rakes.
As they hurried up to the cottage, Gwyn looked up at the sparks and shreds of burning straw that were flying into the lane.
‘This damned wind is making it worse!’ he shouted. ‘Better if those men threw some water on to the thatch of the houses opposite. It’s too late to save this one.’
Osric raced off on his long legs to divert some of the men with buckets, while John and his officer ran into the garden, keeping upwind of the flying embers. Cattle were lowing and goats bleated in fright, but those belonging to the burning house had been taken out into adjacent yards to keep them safe.
‘Is there anyone inside?’ he shouted to one of the neighbours labouring to pull off the burning straw.
The man, his hair singed and face blackened, came up close. ‘It seems so, but we can’t get near enough to get in until this thatch is taken down!’
He was right, as over the front door, the only entrance, a cascade of flame dripped down from the low roof.
‘I’ll try a window,’ boomed Gwyn and lumbered off around the back, dodging sparks and handfuls of burning straw. He saw that a low shed, used as a dairy, projected from the back wall, but it had no door and was well alight. In each side wall of the cottage was a small window opening, firmly blocked by heavy shutters barred on the inside. John came after him with another man, and they cast around for some way to get into the building.
‘Use this as a ram!’ hollered de Wolfe, pointing to the ground. A stout feeding trough, made of long planks nailed together, lay on the earth. In a moment he and Gwyn had lifted it up and smashed one end against the shutters on the nearest window. These were strong and the bar inside must have been even stronger, but half a dozen blows shattered both the trough and the window frame. Gwyn tore at the splintered wood with his big hands and pulled the whole structure down on to the ground. He stuck his head into the ragged aperture, but withdrew it instantly, coughing and gasping, his eyes running with tears as a blast of hot, suffocating air rushed out to meet him.
John pulled him out of the way and shoved him back to recover his breath, while he grabbed an empty oat-bag that was lying on the ground nearby.
‘Bring that bucket here!’ he yelled to a man who was bringing water to throw on the fallen thatch. Dipping the coarse cloth in the bucket, he wrapped it around his head, with only a slit for his eyes, and advanced on the window. The burning straw above gave plenty of light, and in the moment before his eyes filled with tears he glimpsed several bodies lying inert on the floor inside.
Forced to draw back, he grabbed Gwyn’s arm as he pulled off the soaking bag.
‘There are people in there — at least one is a child!’ he gasped. ‘We must get in straight away!’
Two other men heard him and instantly set about knocking down the house wall. The window was set between two oak uprights that stretched from ground to eaves, the wall below being made of cob, a mixture of lime, mud and straw plastered on to a framework of woven wattle. The men ran to the front gate and rocked out one of the posts, a length of tree trunk the thickness of a man’s thigh. Using this as a heavier battering ram than the trough, they rapidly smashed the brittle wall from between its supports, making a doorway out of the window.
Gwyn, the ends of his red hair and moustache singed from his earlier attempt, was first through, and he dashed in and grabbed the smallest body from the floor. A rain of burning and smouldering thatch floated down on him, but the main structure of rough rafters and hazel-withies was still intact, though beginning to burn through. As he came out with the inert little body, John and three more neighbours ran in and took out a larger child, then struggled out with two adults.
All were laid on the earth well away from the burning cottage, immediately surrounded by a ring of concerned men and women.
A quick examination in the flickering light soon confirmed the worst — all were undoubtedly dead. The wives began sobbing and wailing, especially over the pathetic bodies of the two children, a boy of about three and a girl of four years.
‘They haven’t been burned to death, thank God,’ muttered Gwyn, trying to wrest some comfort from the tragedy. ‘Look, they have no burns worth talking about, apart from what’s fallen on them from bits of roof straw.’
John, saddened as much as any of them, nodded. Experience had taught them the signs of fatal burning, thankfully absent in these bodies.
‘Look at the faces of the mother and father,’ he murmured to one of the rescuers. ‘Pink, that’s what they get when they breathe in these noxious fumes.’
He stepped back and turned to the shocked neighbours, all the wives — and some of the men — openly crying at the tragedy. ‘These are the folk who lived here?’ he asked, just to officially confirm who they were.
A grizzled man wearing a smith’s apron nodded. ‘I live next door to them. My wife also keeps a couple of cows. These did the same, though Algar was a fuller, just as I am an ironworker in Smythen Street.’
John stared at him. ‘Algar the fuller? This is the man?’ He pointed down and then bent to get a better look at the face in the poor light, as the flames were now dying as all the thatch was pulled down.
‘Yes, that’s Algar, God rest his soul, even if he did have some strange ideas.’
‘The same Algar who was hauled up before the cathedral canons last week?’ persisted John.
The smith looked at him suspiciously. ‘Do you think there’s some connection, then?’
De Wolfe rubbed some smuts from his eyes. ‘I don’t know, but I’m damned well going to find out!’ he said grimly.
The inquest held next day was different from almost all the others that John de Wolfe had held in Exeter. This was mainly because of the size and mood of the crowd who attended. Usually, it consisted of a dozen or a score of reluctant jurymen, plus the immediate family, unlike in the countryside, where the whole village turned out to watch and listen.
On this Monday afternoon, well over a hundred people gathered in the churchyard of St Bartholomew’s. This was the nearest available burial ground to Milk Lane, as the canons had denied burial of a self-confessed heretic in the cathedral cemetery in the Close. This in itself had angered many townsfolk, given the tragic circumstances of the four deaths, especially of two children and their mother.