Watching him with varying degrees of patience were Richard de Revelle, Sergeant Gabriel and two of his men-at-arms, the latter grasping between them the subject of the ghoulish ceremony, a porter from Bretayne by the name of Matthew Bezil. As de Wolfe, Thomas and the monk approached, they were followed by the complainant, Nicholas Trove. He was a red-faced, angry-looking man, short-necked and short-tempered. At that moment, his mood had much in common with the sheriff’s.
‘Stigand, for God’s sake, hurry up!’ snapped de Revelle. ‘I’ve got better things to do than stand here while you puff away at the damned fire. Surely they’re hot enough now?’ He pointed impatiently at the iron ploughshares glowing on top of the brazier.
The gaoler hoisted himself upright with an effort, his bloated face almost purple. ‘They’ll do, Sheriff. I’ll set them out now.’
With a long tongs, he took a glowing ploughshare from the fire and set it over a flat stone embedded in the mud of the floor. A line of nine carefully spaced stones, each a pace apart, ran across the undercroft and as quickly as his shambling gait allowed, Stigand set a series of the triangular lumps of hot iron on each one.
‘Now, before they cool too much, damn you, get moving,’ snarled the sheriff. Everyone present, except the accused, was yawningly familiar with the procedure and wanted the charade over as quickly as possible.
The guards jerked Matthew across to stand immediately before the first ploughshare and released his arms. Brother Rufus made the Sign of Cross in the air and murmured something in Latin as Matthew gritted his teeth and with a yell of defiance, ran as if the devil was behind him, jumping from iron to iron in a gliding, springing movement he had obviously been practising for weeks to make the least possible contact with the smoking metal. His banshee wail lasted the whole nine steps and at the end he stumbled and fell in a heap on the fouled earth.
Stigand had moved to that end, where he had previously left a leather bucket of dirty water, which he promptly threw over Matthew Bezil’s feet — the fellow had paid him twopence in advance for the privilege.
The groups of observers moved towards him, carefully avoiding the sizzling ploughshares. Standing in a circle, they looked down at the man as if they were an audience after a cockfight, critically examining the result of the contest.
Bezil rolled over on to his back and Gabriel hoisted up both legs so that the soles of his feet could be seen. Stigand lit a bundle of rushes soaked in pitch at the brazier and held it near to give a better light.
There was silence while the experts critically regarded the calloused skin of Matthew’s flat feet.
‘They look clear to me,’ muttered Brother Rufus at length.
‘The man’s been hardening them off for weeks, by the looks of it,’ objected the sheriff.
‘There’s no law against that,’ retorted de Wolfe, always ready to contradict his brother-in-law.
In fact, since electing to undergo the Ordeal, rather than a trial by jury, Bezil had spent a month in running the streets barefoot, had passed hours chafing his soles against a rough flagstone and rubbing in a concoction of oak-galls and tannin. As a result, the skin was twice as thick as normal and of the consistency of old leather.
‘That’s not legal, having feet like that,’ howled Nicholas Trove. ‘He should have undergone a different Ordeal — like that of water or molten lead.’
‘He was given the Nine Ploughshares at the court, so that’s what he got,’ growled de Wolfe.’ You can’t change the rules now, if they don’t suit you.’
It was obvious, even to the sceptical sheriff and the outraged complainant, that Matthew’s feet bore not a trace of burns — though perhaps Stigand’s bucket of water had delayed the appearance of redness that was usually inevitable, even if scorching and blistering failed to appear.
De Wolfe called out to his clerk, who had squatted in readiness before an empty cask, on which he had spread his writing materials. Thomas had a ferocious scowl on his pinched face and his lips were moving in some soundless litany, unrelated to the events around him.
‘Record that Matthew Bezil underwent the Ordeal of ploughshares and his innocence caused his feet to reject the hot iron,’ he said, trying to conceal his cynicism.
Thomas scratched away with his quill, still muttering under his breath.
For a moment, John’s mind wandered from the Ordeal to wonder why his clerk was acting so oddly these days, but then he recovered himself. ‘Record also that Nicholas Trove falsely appealed the said Matthew Bezil in accusing him of the theft of a sword and is therefore amerced in the sum of two marks.’
The armourer howled in protest that he had not only lost his sword but now had to pay its value as a fine. Though the coroner felt some sympathy for him, he used the fiasco to promote his cause of encouraging the use of the king’s courts — and to further irritate his brother.
‘If the matter had been heard before the judges next week, you might have had a different result,’ he snapped at the ironmonger.
Still protesting, Nicholas was pushed towards the doorway by Gabriel and stumbled out, shaking his fist at Matthew, who cheerfully made an obscene gesture at him. He had put on his shoes and was trying not to show that his feet were smarting with a growing pain that would be far worse by the time he had hobbled into the nearest ale-house to celebrate his escape — if burns had appeared on his soles for the witnesses to see, he would have been hanged that week for the theft of something that was worth more than twelve pence, which constituted a felony.
An hour later, John went to the stable opposite his house and climbed on to the back of Odin, his destrier. He had called at home to tell Matilda that he would be away for the night and was relieved to find that she was at St Olave’s for noon service. Mary had fed him a meat pie, cheese and half a loaf, while Andrew the farrier saddled Odin, ready for the journey.
De Wolfe walked the stallion through the crowded high street to the Carfoix crossing, where he had arranged to meet the others, and the quartet, which included the manor reeve from Sidbury, made their way down South Gate Street, past the bloody mayhem of the Shambles, then the Serge Market to the gate. Beyond the city walls, the crowds vanished and they kept up a brisk trot along Magdalen Street, past the gallows, which today was deserted although a rotting corpse hung in an iron frame from a nearby post. They continued on the main highway eastwards, which was the road to Lyme and eventually Southampton and Winchester.
As usual, Thomas lagged behind, jerking awkwardly on the side-saddle of his reluctant pony, his features looking as if he expected to hear the Last Trump at any moment. The reeve, Thomas Tirel by name, pulled alongside the coroner to offer more details of what had happened in his village.
‘This was a lad of thirteen, Crowner, the fifth son of one of our villeins. His father offered him to work in the mill as part of the family’s manor service, and he had been there almost a year, carrying sacks and cleaning the floor.’
‘This is the lord’s mill, I presume?’
‘Indeed it is. Everyone is obliged to have their flour ground there and the fee goes to the bishop.’
De Wolfe was aware that the small village of Sidbury was one of the many manors that belonged to Henry Marshal, Bishop of Exeter.
‘So what happened to the boy?’
‘He fell through the floor, which was rotten, and was caught in the pinion of the mill-wheel shaft. His head was crushed, poor lad.’
John failed to visualise exactly what the reeve meant. ‘I’ll have to see the place for myself,’ he growled. ‘But what about this rotten floor?’
‘Many a time the miller complained to the Bishop’s bailiff that it was unsafe, but he was unwilling to stop the mill while new joists and boards were laid — he said the expense was unnecessary.’