‘I guessed you would be wanting this very soon,’ she whispered, with a knowing glint in her eye.
He slung it over his shoulders and pulled the top corner through the pewter ring on his right shoulder. ‘She’ll not speak to me for days after this,’ he muttered. ‘At least that’s some consolation.’
As he opened the iron-bound door and disappeared into the lane, Mary shook her head in despair. ‘What’s to become of you, Black John?’ she murmured.
There was no hesitation in de Wolfe’s step this time as he approached the Bush. With long, determined strides, he hurried down Idle Lane and pushed his way into the tap-room, which today was more crowded than usual. He stared around almost aggressively, until his eyes were used to the gloom and the smoke — Edwin had lit a fire in the hearth, as the day was cooler now. The back door opened and Nesta bustled through, bearing a tray with bowls and trenchers from the kitchen-shed. He barged across the big room towards her, pushing aside other drinkers. The landlady had just put the food before some travellers at a table near the potman’s row of kegs when she felt two lean hands gripping her waist. ‘Upstairs — now!’ came a gruff command.
Twisting round, she saw de Wolfe hovering over her, his dark eyes boring into hers. ‘I’m busy, John,’ she protested half-heartedly. ‘Look at them, they’re all thirsty or starving!’
‘I’ve been starving these two months, Nesta,’ he said in Welsh, and pulled her to the broad ladder.
With a few token protests, the landlady allowed herself to be propelled up the steps, the coroner’s hands still on her waist. He was oblivious to the sudden quiet in the room, the turned heads and curious eyes that followed them.
Above, the loft was deserted and seconds later, they were in her cubicle, with the bar dropped into its sockets behind the door. John’s hand slid from her waist to lie around her shoulders and he pulled her to him as if he would crush her body into his, rib against rib. He pulled off her linen helmet and buried his face in the loosened cascade of auburn hair that escaped, until her face turned up to find his lips. With a groan of pleasure, he lifted Nesta off her feet and fell with her on to the wide French bed. For long minutes, he did nothing but press her to him and smother her face with kisses. Then, as if by some silent signal that reached them at the same instant, they began to pull at the fastenings of each other’s clothing.
A few minutes later, in the room below, Griswold the Carter, one of the Bush’s most regular patrons, rapped on a corner table with the base of his quart pot, made an urgent gesture to the rest of the room and hissed for quiet, holding a hand to his ear in an exaggerated gesture. In the sudden silence, a score of men heard, faintly but distinctly, the rhythmic thumping of a bed-head against one of the thick supporting posts that came down from above through the ceiling.
Grins and chortles erupted among them and ale pots were raised all round. ‘To the crowner, God save him — the lucky bastard!’
John de Alençon had heard of the killing of a whore from the Saracen, but was mortified to hear from his friend that another Biblical reference had been found on the body. ‘You are sure that these marks on the brow did say what you claim — this is not some delusion of that poor nephew of mine?’
De Wolfe shook his head. ‘It was not only Thomas — the secondary who saw them first was of the same opinion.’
The Archdeacon, sitting at his table in Canon Row, sighed resignedly. He fingered the wooden cross hanging around his neck, seeking consolation from it. ‘At least this ogre has an apt quotation for each situation,’ he murmured wryly. ‘That dreaded part of the Book of Revelation is St John at his most pessimistic and threatening. I’ve read it a hundred times and still don’t understand it.’
‘The quotation may be apt for the situation — but this devil also makes the scene apt for the quotation,’ countered de Wolfe.
‘In what way?’
‘With Aaron, he overturned the table in the room, to fit the Gospel story. It wasn’t part of the assault. And with the woman last night, he left a cup near her hand, to fit the written version, for I’m sure she wouldn’t have been drinking wine in the dark backyard of the Bush.’
De Alençon considered this for a moment, his lean face frowning with concern. ‘So our man seems fond of play-acting, too? But it doesn’t help us in discovering who he is.’
The coroner sipped the wine his friend had provided, an excellent ruby imported from Rouen. ‘We urgently need the names of any priests whose nature is strange.’
‘It may not be a priest in the strict sense, John. There are many in minor orders in the city — and unordained monks, many of whom are well lettered.’
‘Not many of those — a few at St Nicholas and at the hospitals of St John and St Alexis. But I’m lumping all men of God together, those who can write and who know their Scriptures.’
‘It has to be someone within the city, you say?’
De Wolfe nodded. ‘Both killings were in the middle of the night, long after curfew. Unless he came into the city during the day and stayed overnight, the gates would have kept him out.’
De Alençon toyed with his wine-cup and sighed. ‘We need the advice of those who have been much longer in Exeter than I. Some of the older canons have been here almost a lifetime and know every cleric within the walls. We must take this to Chapter.’ He promised to consult some of his fellow canons, especially the Precentor and Treasurer and invited the coroner to attend the Chapter House after the regular meeting next day. ‘Probably they will insist on the sheriff being present as well,’ said de Alençon, wryly. Both he and de Wolfe were politically on the opposite side from de Revelle, the Precentor and even the Bishop himself, when it came to partiality between King Richard and Prince John. Hopefully, prayed the Archdeacon, this antipathy would not stretch to a murder investigation.
As he was leaving the priest’s Spartan room, de Wolfe returned to something that both the sheriff and the Archdeacon had raised. ‘Richard de Revelle keeps goading me with the thought that my own clerk might be involved. Surely you cannot believe that your nephew might be the culprit?’
De Alençon put a hand on John’s shoulder. ‘I trust to God that such a thing cannot seriously be entertained. Yet he certainly has the learning and writing skills — and he has been acting and speaking in an increasingly strange manner lately. But no doubt you can exclude him on other grounds. Where was he at the material times? And is that feeble waif capable of killing two healthy persons?’
John gave one of his ambiguous grunts. ‘Both were struck on the head, probably an unexpected blow. Any girl or even a strong child could have done that. And, no, I have no idea where Thomas was at the times of both killings — though that applies to almost all the citizens of Exeter, yourself included.’
The couple of hours before Vespers were free for most parish priests to do as they wished. The more earnest often visited the sick or read their Vulgate, others drank and slept or did their washing. Today Ralph de Capra used the time to leave his church in Bretayne and trudge dispiritedly along inside the city wall to St Mary Steps to call upon his nearest priestly neighbour, Adam of Dol.
De Capra had been wont to do this frequently, though of late his attendances at confession had become irregular: his problem was growing increasingly acute. Every priest took another as his confessor, though Adam did not disclose his own transgressions to de Capra.
When he entered the cool nave, he found Adam up a ladder, busily working on one of his lurid wall paintings. He appeared to be adding another small head to the confused tangle of faces suffering the agonies of the Inferno. Adam was not at pains to hide his irritation at the interruption, but eventually came down grudgingly to give his colleague a brusque greeting. As they stood face to face, the contrast between the two was marked: Adam was large, pugnacious and dominant, his colleague thin, diffident and dismal.