The coroner stared up the road again. ‘What have you done with de Blanchefort?’
‘I hid him in a small wood, just off the road outside the village. After finding those men, I thought it better to leave him there until I had seen you.’
John nodded his agreement. ‘This may be to our advantage, but he must keep out of sight, at least until tonight. Has he some food with him?’
‘Not much, but enough to survive a day.’
‘As an old Templar, he should be used to roughing it. Now, ride up and tell him that he must stay there until dusk, when we will fetch him. Then come back. There is work for you down below.’
As the clerk hurried away, de Wolfe dismounted and tied Odin to the rough gate in the thorn hedge around the churchyard. He walked through the circle of yew trees and pushed open the church door. Immediately there was a scuffle at the far end and five men crowded together to put a hand on the altar, a plain table with a tin cross and two candlesticks. The rest of the building was empty, the narrow window openings throwing a dim light on to the bare floor of beaten earth. They watched with apprehension as the menacing figure stalked up the nave towards them, a tall, dark, hunched figure in an armoured jerkin and metal helmet, with a huge sword swinging from his baldric.
‘We claim sanctuary!’ shouted one tremulously, and the cry was taken up by the others, as they shrank back from the approaching apparition.
‘Sanctuary! Sanctuary!’
The coroner stopped a few yards away to study them. Three were fairly young, another middle-aged and the last was a short, misshapen figure, with a large head and short arms and legs. De Wolfe remembered the captive from Lundy mentioning the name Eddida Curt-arm, which would fit this one very well.
‘I am Sir John de Wolfe, the king’s crowner,’ he boomed, in a voice that instantly silenced their cries. ‘I respect sanctuary and, indeed, if you persist in claiming it, you will need me to save your necks, as all your accomplices look as if they will hang today.’
He looked at the group, all dressed much the same in tattered, faded fisherman’s tunics and short breeches. All except the dwarf had tangled hair and bushy beards and moustaches.
He was round-faced, with a high forehead, his little eyes glinting with a cunning that de Wolfe marked down as dangerous. ‘What do we do now, Crowner? Surely we have forty days’ grace?’ asked Eddida.
The coroner stood, arms folded, glaring at the men. ‘First, you are murderous scum, and if you had not gained the safety of this consecrated place, you would be hanged like the rest. But now you have several choices. You can give yourselves up to the sheriff and stand trial today down in Lynmouth. Or you can stay here for forty days, when you will be fed by your village folk, who must guard against your escape on pain of heavy amercements. At the end of the forty days, if you have not confessed your guilt and agreed to abjure the realm of England, you will be shut up in here without food or water and allowed to die. If you try to escape from here, you are deemed outlaw and any man can cut off your head without penalty. Finally, at any time from this moment forth, you can confess to me and abjure the realm.’
After this long speech, he stepped back a pace and waited as they murmured amongst themselves. As they did so, Thomas came in through the door and rather nervously came to the coroner, jerkily bending his knee to the altar and making numerous signs of the Cross. ‘Bernardus will stay where he is until tonight,’ he murmured, looking apprehensively at the gang of rough-looking men clustered around the altar. Then their spokesman, Eddida, broke away and came to the single step that separated the rudimentary chancel from the body of the church. ‘We will all confess and abjure, Crowner.’
‘Then I will return later today. You are safe both here and in the churchyard – there’s no need for you to clutch at that altar. There will be soldiers at the gate to prevent your escape.’ He turned and walked towards the door, calling over his shoulder, ‘You should get outside and cut some wood from the yews. You’ll each need a rough cross to carry, and I’ll see if I can find sackcloth robes for you.’ With that he shooed Thomas out of the church and slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Sixteen
In which Crowner John takes confession
Richard de Revelle was far from pleased when de Wolfe informed him that some of the pirates had sought sanctuary in Lynton church. He was in the process of setting up his Shire Court in the alehouse when the coroner rode back to the lower village. The sight of Thomas behind him seemed to arouse suspicious interest in the three Templars, and John noticed them in deep conversation with Abbot Cosimo. Soon afterwards, Godfrey Capra rode away and de Wolfe was sure that he had gone up to Lynton to check on the village and look in the church to confirm the identity of the five sanctuary seekers.
The prisoners had been marched to another barn-like shed just behind the tavern and locked in, with guards at the door. Outside, the womenfolk were gathered, crying and keening, or shouting through the flimsy walls to their doomed men inside.
The sheriff had taken over the single large room of the alehouse, bringing in a trestle table and a few rough benches. A quantity of fresh fish, from this morning’s catch, had been commandeered and some of Gabriel’s men were cooking it over a fire at the back. Bread had been taken from the nearest houses, over the protests of the owners, and soon a scratch meal was being put before the leaders in the tavern, while the soldiers ate around their fire.
The prospect of a mass execution had no effect on anyone’s appetite, but as they ate Richard de Revelle went back to complaining about the men in the church. ‘Why should they escape a hanging, just because they were craven enough to leave their friends to fight, and because they could run faster than our men?’
De Wolfe pulled the meat off a grilled herring with his knife and waited for it to cool. ‘Don’t ask me. I didn’t make the law.’
Abbot Cosimo, his fish on a slice of bread in his hand, looked up with a frown. ‘Sanctuary is one of the sacred traditions of Christianity. In fact, it existed long before Our Saviour – the Hebrews had six Levitical cities of refuge and the Greeks and Romans also recognised the concept.’
The sheriff voiced his disapproval of anyone being able to escape the noose and cost the community money for his keep while doing so. ‘I’ve a mind to go into that church and haul the bastards out!’ he muttered, but the alert Cosimo heard him and was shocked.
‘I forbid you, Sheriff! You would bring damnation upon yourself for such sacrilege – and I could excommunicate you.’ As with many others, de Revelle’s religious beliefs were a matter of habit rather than conviction, and the prospect of exclusion from the Church did not weigh too heavily upon him.
De Wolfe knew this, so added a more practical discouragement. ‘The laws of the first Henry stipulate penalties for laying violent hands on fugitives in sanctuary – a hundred shillings for a cathedral or abbey and twenty for a parish church.’ Still muttering, de Revelle abandoned the subject, but for once, de Wolfe was thankful for Cosimo’s presence as any violation of sanctuary would upset his plans.
When the meal was finished, the room was rapidly converted to the Shire Court, though still smelling strongly of grilled fish. The sheriff sat in the middle behind the crude table, with de Wolfe on one side and Ralph Morin on the other. The Templars and the abbot formed an interested audience on a pair of benches at the side.
In the absence of a court clerk, Thomas was sat at one end of the table, with his bag of parchments, quills and ink to make a brief record of the proceedings, a copy of which de Wolfe intended to place before the king’s justices when they eventually came to Devon.