In the bare hall of the dead prebendary’s dwelling, the coroner was waiting, sitting on a bench at one side of the oak refectory table. He motioned Langton to stand opposite him and launched straight into his interrogation, his long dark face glowering at the young vicar. ‘What were you doing in the Saracen tavern last night, associating with a hired adventurer and a painted whore?’ he demanded. Both descriptions of Eric’s companions were a little exaggerated, but the coroner believed in the power of over-statement when confronting a witness.
Langton was normally pallid, but now the remaining blood drained from his scarred cheeks. Between his dark hair and the black cloak he had thrown over his church robes, his pinched face was ashen and his lips quivered, but no words emerged. Eventually, though, after de Wolfe had harshly repeated his questions, the story came out, reluctantly and hesitantly.
‘Canon Roger sent me with a message to Giles Fulford,’ he said, in a low voice, his eyes avoiding John’s. ‘It was urgent, so I had to seek him out in one of the taverns he often frequented.’
‘One that you also often frequented,’ snapped the coroner. ‘You went upstairs with a drab, so you must be well acquainted with the Saracen.’
The vicar’s white face suddenly flushed scarlet. ‘I have a – a friend I see there sometimes, yes.’
De Wolfe gestured impatiently, his black brows lowered scornfully. ‘I don’t give a damn about your morals, priest, though your archdeacon and bishop might have a word or two to say to you after this. I want to know what was going on between your master and this man Fulford.’
The wretched cleric, staring ruin in the face, twisted in anguish. ‘I know little of the reasons, Crowner, I swear. Some weeks ago, the canon took me aside and asked me if I knew any bold man who might help him in a private venture that would need strength and determination. I took it that he meant someone who would act for him in some enterprise unfit for a man of the church.’ He looked down at his pointed shoes. ‘Canon Roger knows that I have some weaknesses – he is a tolerant man and has overlooked my lapses in the past.’
The coroner could not be bothered to explore Langton’s ‘weaknesses’; he was not concerned with this erring priest, but with what lay behind his story. ‘So what followed?’ he demanded.
‘I had this friend in the town – a woman I knew. I asked her if she knew any persons who could aid Canon Roger. She took me one night to meet Rosamunde of Rye.’
‘A harlot’s coven!’ observed John sarcastically.
‘In turn, she brought Giles Fulford, and I arranged for him to meet my master.’
De Wolfe grunted at this sanitised version of a vicar’s nocturnal activities in the less savoury streets of Exeter. ‘Where did they have this meeting and what was discussed?’
‘Giles came to the cathedral one day, after the morning services. They talked in the nave after everyone had left. It seemed a safe and private place. I have no knowledge of what they discussed. I was told to keep well clear of the meeting.’
‘Did your canon meet him on other occasions? And was anyone else involved?’ grated the coroner.
Langton shook his head energetically. ‘I cannot tell – I heard nothing more of the matter at that time.’
‘What about your doxy in the town? Surely, between your bouts of carnal lust, you discussed this unusual happening,’ asked John cynically.
‘Yes, I asked her about it – naturally I was curious. But the girl said that Rosamunde had told her to mind her own business or it would be the worse for her.’
There was a ring of truth about this that de Wolfe accepted. ‘So what about this latest meeting last night?’
The vicar looked even more furtive and downcast than before. ‘The canon took me aside yesterday, after the inquest you held. He told me to seek out Fulford at once, to tell him that everything was over between them, whatever that meant. He said that he did not want to see him or hear from him again as all their plans had been confounded by the death of Canon de Hane.’
‘And you claim to know nothing more about the matter than this?’ snapped the coroner. ‘I find that hard to believe!’
Eric’s face was a picture of abject misery. ‘It is the truth, Crowner. I swear by God and the Virgin and every saint in the calendar! I was but a messenger in this, I have no idea what lies behind it. You must ask the canon himself. After this I am finished. I care not what happens to me now.’
This struck a sympathetic chord with Thomas, himself an unfrocked priest, and he laid a comforting hand upon the vicar’s arm. But the coroner was in no comforting mood: though he believed Langton’s story, he was now grimly determined to discover the whole truth – and Langton had just suggested the obvious way.
‘Indeed, Canon de Limesi will need to answer a few questions – and that very soon! As for you, just get out of my sight. You should be glad that you have the benefit of clergy or you’d soon be languishing in a cell in Rougemont. But, no doubt, your Archdeacon and the Bishop will have a few scores to settle with you in the near future.’
The wretched vicar slunk away and the coroner turned to his clerk. ‘What do we make of that, Thomas?’ he asked, in a rare show of familiarity with his underling.
The little man was confused: he was overjoyed that his master had actually asked his opinion about something, an unusual honour indeed, but he was also grieved that a colleague in his own beloved Church, of which he still felt an integral part, in spite of his own scandal, should have been caught out wenching and frequenting taverns. He hedged. ‘We don’t yet know that Canon de Hane’s death has anything at all to do with Roger de Limesi. Odd though this story is, it may have some innocent explanation.’
De Wolfe made a rude noise with his lips. ‘For God’s sake, Thomas, you must be able to see the facts clearer than that, even with your swivel eye! De Limesi hires a thug and then, on the day of the murder of a colleague who sits with him in the archives every day, makes a panic call to the said thug to call off whatever was being plotted!’
Put like that, even Doubting Thomas had to admit that de Limesi had a great deal to explain.
‘As soon as those priests come out from their endless singing and chanting this morning, I want Roger de Limesi brought here for me to question. Get yourself over to the cathedral steps and catch him before he vanishes to fill his stomach.’
‘What if he refuses me? I am nothing compared to the rank of a prebendary in this cathedral.’
‘Thomas, stop thinking of yourself as a derelict priest. You are my servant, a deputy of a royal law officer. You will insist that he comes. If he refuses, go to your uncle the Archdeacon and tell him that I say it is of the utmost urgency that de Limesi comes to see me. And tell John de Alencon that he might wish to be present when I interrogate his fellow prebendary to see that there is no impropriety.’
Reluctantly the clerk went off on his unwelcome errand and waited at the west front of the huge church until the morning devotions were over. These religious services, though open to anyone who was content to stand at a distance in the nave, were really for the benefit of the cathedral staff in their endless glorification of God rather than for public worship, which was the function of the seventeen parish churches in the small city. Thus there was virtually no exodus of a congregation through the doors, the services having been confined to the canons, vicars, secondaries and choristers assembled in the choir just below the chancel.
But now the saga took a fresh and unexpected turn, as the first person to emerge was a young secondary. He hurried across the steps towards de Peyne, whom he recognised as the coroner’s clerk, lodging in the next house. ‘Well met, Thomas! I’ve just been sent to find your master. The Archdeacon wishes to speak most urgently with the Crowner. He wants him to come to the Chapter House without delay.’