‘And how are we going to achieve that?’ grunted Ferrars. ‘I’ve only a few men left in my retinue, the rest have gone to fight in France. And de Courcy here has none at all.’
‘Then we must petition the Curia, through the Chief Justiciar. I’ll have to ride to find him, wherever he is, though I cannot leave for some days, owing to personal circumstances.’
‘Ha, we all know what they are!’ sneered Richard, spitefully, but the others ignored him.
‘I’ll do that towards the end of the week, but first I need to ride down to Buckfast to satisfy myself about a certain priest.’
He caught his brother-in-law’s eye and held it until Richard’s gaze dropped.
Other duties kept him occupied for the rest of the day, including riding just outside the city to the village of Clyst St Mary to see to a thief who had taken sanctuary in the church. The man refused to confess his crime, which was stealing a silver candlestick from the house of the parish priest. As the object was a personal belonging of the incumbent, rather than in the possession of the church, the offence of sacrilege could not be brought. If it had, then sanctuary would have been forfeited and the miscreant could have been dragged out of the church. The manor of Clyst St Mary belonged to the Bishop of Exeter, which explained why the priest was affluent enough to possess such a valuable object.
John failed to persuade the miserable thief, who cowered near the altar, to confess his sins and abjure the realm, which would at least have saved his neck. As it was the coroner ordered the villagers to guard the church for the next forty days, unless the culprit had a change of heart. If, at the end of that time, he still refused to confess and abjure, the coroner would order that he be deprived of food and drink until he died.
In fact, a large proportion of sanctuary-seekers were allowed to escape, as the villagers begrudged the expense and effort of feeding and guarding the criminal for almost six weeks, even at the cost of being fined by the coroner. In this case, however, the irate priest was likely to exact his revenge on the man and force his parishioners to do their legal duty.
In the early evening, de Wolfe went again to Polsloe Priory to see Nesta. She was much as before, very weak and as pale as skimmed milk.
The Welsh woman was ineffably sad and spoke very little, but lay quietly, with her hand in John’s as he sat alongside her low truckle bed in the bare cell. He talked soothingly to her and gave her news of how Edwin and the girls were faring well in running the Bush in her absence. They hardly spoke about the loss of her child; John was too timid to risk provoking a flow of tears. Instead, he sat talking of other things, like his problems in the forest and his trip to Clyst St Mary. Between these tales, he awkwardly murmured repetitively that all would well between them and that she must get well and come home to the Bush, whereupon things would be just as before. Matilda was not mentioned between them and, when he left, there was no sign of her in the infirmary corridor.
As he went to the door, Dame Madge appeared and brusquely ordered him into the treatment room to have his wound inspected and a new dressing applied.
‘It looks healthy. You are a tough man,’ she proclaimed, tugging at the linen stitches, which made him wince. ‘The edges of the wound are a little red, but there’s no pus at all.’
As she skilfully wound a new strip of linen around his waist, she told him that Nesta was still quite ill, having lost a great deal of blood after her miscarriage, though this flow had now abated. When he hesitantly asked about his wife, she shook her head sternly and said that there had been no change in ‘Sister’ Matilda’s attitude towards him.
When he returned to Exeter, he could not face the Bush without Nesta there, so went with Gwyn to the New Inn in the high street and sat there drinking until dusk, when his officer left to go home to St Sidwell’s before the curfew. John told Gwyn about the increasing impatience of the barons to have some action over the worsening situation in the forest.
‘We’ll have to go to Winchester soon, though I want to make sure that Nesta is out of any danger before I leave, as we’ll be away for at least a week.’
‘You also said you want to see about this priest that Thomas suspects,’ grunted Gwyn.
‘Yes, we must ride to Buckfast before Winchester. Will there be time after the hangings tomorrow, I wonder?’
‘There’s no one to be turned off today,’ said Gwyn. ‘We’re right out of felons this week!’
So it was that the next day saw another early start as the trio set out along the Cornwall road for the three-hour ride to Buckfast Abbey. Thomas was more cheerful than usual when on a horse, as any opportunity to visit a religious house was a treat for him, especially Buckfast, which had treated him as a genuine priest when he was last there. He was a little anxious about their reaction if they recognised him as one of the coroner’s team, but Gwyn magnanimously suggested that he could pretend to be the coroner’s chaplain!
However, when they arrived at the abbey Thomas slipped away into the church and stood praying and crossing himself in the quiet gloom, to avoid drawing attention to himself outside.
Gwyn and his master left the horses at the stables and went to the guest house as travellers to claim a meal, for which they donated a penny to the abbey funds. As they sat at the long tables in the large refectory, John looked around at the dozen other people eating there.
‘No sign of that bloody horse-dealer,’ he growled. ‘I wonder where we can lay hands on him?’
‘If Winter’s men have told him that he’s been seen with them, he’ll be keeping his head well down. Though if he’s to continue making a living, he’ll have to keep appearing at horse fairs and the like.’
As they left the hall, John questioned the lay brother in charge, who was not aware of their identity, believing them to be a passing knight and his squire.
‘I thought I might have chanced upon my old friend Stephen Cruch, the horse-dealer,’ John said. ‘He calls here from time to time, I know.’
The amiable brother, always ready for a gossip, shook his head.
‘Haven’t laid eyes on him for almost a fortnight. He comes now and then to deal with Father Edmund, but there’s no knowing when we’ll see him. Depends on what animals the abbey’s got to sell, I suppose.’
They left him to walk across the wide outer court between the abbey itself and the various buildings opposite, which comprised the large guest hall, the manorial court, the stables and the smithy, as well as the two gatehouses. The court was clean and tidy, unlike most public places in the towns and cities, and beyond it were orderly gardens and orchards, dotted with the beehives for which Buckfast was famous.
‘Do you want me to collect the little turd from his devotions?’ asked Gwyn, as they approached the door to the abbey cloisters.
‘No, let him be for now. I know he’s afraid of being recognised if he’s with us. Give him an hour of make-believe, poor sod.’
They went into the passage and reached the arched cloister, Gwyn scowling at the sight of silent Cistercians perambulating the paved arcades.
‘How they can think that keeping their gobs shut for years on end makes them holy, I just can’t see!’ he muttered under his breath.
John grinned at his officer’s determined antipathy to religion, a most unusual phenomenon and one for which he had never discovered the cause. He asked a passing lay brother, who was lugging a leather bucket of hot water, where he might find Father Edmund Treipas.
‘He’s not here, sir,’ said the old man. ‘He went off to Plymouth yesterday to arrange a shipment of the abbey’s wool to Barfleur.’
De Wolfe cursed under his breath at the prospect of a wasted journey from Exeter. ‘Well, is the abbot in residence?’