After some throat-clearing, another drink and a belch, he continued, ‘I was in the aleshop at the corner of Curre Street just now, talking to a tanner I know. He said that he had seen a fine procession coming up from South Gate earlier in the day, three knights on destriers, with three squires behind and two packhorses led by a groom.’
‘What was so fine about them?’ demanded Nesta. ‘There’s nothing unusual about a few knights – they were probably on their way to their term of service at some castle.’
Gwyn picked up a crust of bread that the maid had left behind and stuffed it into his mouth. When he had chewed it sufficiently to speak, he carried on with his story. ‘These men were in full chain-mail with aventails and helmets, as were their squires. They had swords but no lances nor shields, so there were no armorial emblems to identify them.’
‘And no surcoats, presumably?’ snapped the coroner. The long cloth garment worn over the mailed hauberk prevented the glint of metal signalling their approach and also kept off the sun, which might roast someone inside a hauberk padded with a gambeson. It was also a convenient place to display the wearer’s heraldic motif.
‘No surcoats, so no red crosses of the Knights of Christ,’ agreed Gwyn. ‘But it seems they all had full beards and moustaches and cropped hair.’
‘That’s common enough, even though it may be against the present fashion,’ objected Nesta.
The Cornishman grinned at her, though in deference to his master he avoided a playful pinch to her bottom. ‘There was one sure way to find out, lady – ask! Though the knights and their squires ignored the common crowd in the street, one cheeky lad ran alongside the groom and asked him where they were going. He said to the priory of St Nicholas and added that they were Templars, come all the way from London in less than a week.’
Gwyn went back to his ale while de Wolfe digested this news.
‘What in hell do they want here at this time?’ he muttered. ‘Is it just coincidence that Gilbert claims he’s being hunted? And now this business of the Templar claim to Lundy.’
The thought suddenly came to him that perhaps his dear brother-in-law had been keeping something from him. His change of heart in his uncharacteristic willingness to mount a campaign to Lundy might not have been as spontaneous as it appeared. He turned to Gwyn, speaking over Nesta’s head. ‘In the morning, get yourself down to St Nicholas’s and see what you can find out about them. If they are lodged in a priory, they must have a mandate from the Church for some purpose. The closest Templar land is near Tiverton, so whatever their business may be, it has to do with Exeter.’
‘And perhaps to do with their fellow Templar, Gilbert de Ridefort,’ said the officer ominously, putting into words what John already feared.
‘Unless they are going to join our invasion of Lundy next week,’ said the coroner sarcastically. ‘But to know of that, they’d have to be necromancers, to read the thoughts of our noble sheriff a week in advance!’ He paused. ‘Unless that crafty bastard up in Rougemont knew they were coming.’
Though the next day was a Wednesday, the sixteenth day of March, de Wolfe was dragged unwillingly by Matilda to the morning mass in the nearby cathedral. ‘Every Christian should attend mass at least once a day,’ nagged Matilda, but she managed to force him to church only twice a month at most. He resented every minute they stood in the huge, draughty nave of the cathedral, listening to the distant gabbling of a junior priest, or else in the tiny church of St Olave, suffering the unctuous tones of the fat priest his wife so admired.
After the service, he walked up to the castle and waited in the clammy chamber under the keep for Gwyn to return from the priory. He spent the time practising his Latin, mouthing the phrases written for him by Thomas. He was improving all the time, able to read better than he could write but making much more progress with his little clerk than he had previously under the tutelage of the cathedral priest.
Someone darkened the low doorway and, looking up, he saw that it was Thomas himself, his cheap shoes and hose spattered with mud for it had rained during the night. He had just ridden his pony the couple of miles from St James’s Priory and was bursting to tell his news to his master. ‘I stayed in the priory as you arranged, Crowner, and tried to find what brought Abbot Cosimo to Devon.’ He crossed himself fervently as he mentioned the Italian’s rank. ‘I could discover little, except that he came from Paris some weeks ago and rode here via London, where he stayed in the New Temple near the Fleet river.’
‘How did you find that out?’ grunted de Wolfe, interrupting him.
‘The priory stable-boy was talking to one of the guards the abbot brought with him. They were not very talkative, especially to me, but the priory servants seemed to get more out of them.’
‘Are they also foreign, these guards?’
‘No, they are English Normans, and I suspect they are also from the Temple in London, though they don’t belong to the Order. They are more lowly servants.’
‘We already knew he was from Paris and visited the Templar headquarters there – so what’s your real news?’
‘Yesterday he rode off on his fine mare, with the two men behind him. They are still away, they didn’t come back last night.’ Thomas shrugged his lopsided shoulder and looked more furtive than usual. ‘After he’d left, I slipped into his cell and had a look around. They must mean to return, for some of his belongings were still there, including a writing-bag, like this.’ He pulled forward his shabby satchel, in which he carried his quills, ink and parchments.
‘And you got a good look inside it, I trust?’
The little clerk nodded vigorously. ‘You said it was important, so I risked my immortal soul by searching the pouch of a papal nuncio, God forgive me.’ Guiltily, he made the Sign of the Cross.
‘And what did that tell you, my trusty spy?’ demanded John.
‘There was a letter there, dated about five months ago, from a Cardinal Galeazzo in Rome, giving Abbot Cosimo authority to seek out and report on any and all forms of heresy in France and neighbouring countries. And, also, there was a more recent missive, about six weeks old, from Hugh, Bishop of Auxerre, ordering him to pursue any renegades from the True Faith, wherever they may be found, even including the Isles of Britain.’
De Wolfe considered this for a moment. ‘Did these parchments name any particular heretics or renegades?’
Thomas wiped a dew-drop from his thin nose with the back of his hand and sniffed. ‘No, they were general directions to the nuncio – but this is typical of the Inquisition against the Cathars and Albigensians in the south-west parts of France.’
John knew next to nothing about heretics in France or anywhere else, but the fact that Cosimo of Modena’s mandate seemed mainly to concern religious problems in southern France, where de Ridefort’s expected fellow-fugitive came from, was yet another coincidence that was hard to swallow. ‘Did anything else emerge from your delving through his belongings?’
Thomas wagged his head from side to side. ‘No, that was all that was in his satchel, apart from a religious tract and some writing materials. But it is surely enough to prove that he is on a special mission to seek out heretics. The orders from both Rome and France come from persons of great ecclesiastical standing.’ Thomas paused for a quick tapping of his forehead, chest and shoulders, then continued. ‘Both letters had heavy seals, one with emblems of the Holy See and the other from Hugh of Auxerre, who is well known as the head of the Inquisition in France. So Abbot Cosimo is certainly not in Devon to enjoy the air and the scenery – he is on the prowl!’
De Wolfe relaxed his usual stern manner sufficiently to compliment his clerk on his efforts at espionage and Thomas glowed with the praise, which was all the more valuable because of its scarcity. His master sent him off to buy breakfast at one of the stalls in the outer ward, while he sat in his damp cubbyhole and pondered the significance of the information.