‘I wish to make confession, Father,’ murmured Ralph.
The other priest glared at him. ‘Again? It was but a fortnight since you were here last. Is it the same trouble, hey?’
Abashed by his reception, de Capra dropped his eyes to stare at his feet. Adam’s response was hardly encouraging to a penitent seeking absolution.
‘I need to speak to someone about it. I’ll not take up much of your time.’
Impatiently Adam banged down his tray of paints on the stone bench at the side of the nave and rubbed his hands on the grubby cassock he kept for his artistic labours. ‘Very well, but I must finish that head before Vespers.’
He marched away to the tiny sacristy that opened off the chancel and came out with his second-best stole, a faded length of brocade that he draped around his neck, where it clashed incongruously with the paint-stained robe. Standing on the step between the nave and the small chancel, he rapidly made the Sign of the Cross in the air, with a vigour more appropriate to slashing with a sword. ‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ he commanded testily.
De Capra knelt on the hard flagstones before him. He bowed his head and clasped his hands over his waist. ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ he said, then began a low, incoherent mumbling that soon ended in sobs.
‘Speak up, man! And lift your head, I can’t hear a word you say.’
De Capra’s head rose slowly, to reveal two tears trickling down his distraught face. ‘My soul tells me I must make confession, yet my mind denies that there is any God to whom I can confess!’ he blurted out.
Adam of Dol glowered down at him, his face darkening with his ever-ready anger. ‘Then you should listen to that soul, wretch, before you lose it altogether,’ he snapped. ‘Take a grip on yourself, man! You’re an ordained priest, you’ve been brought up in the faith, you’ve been trained in the ways of the Church! How can you not believe in all that you have been professing these past years?’
Ralph stared upwards beseechingly, seeking some understanding in the furious red face glaring down at him.
‘I spend my life trying to believe. I win the fight for an hour, then the doubts creep back in. Where is God? Why does He not give us signs? Why does He allow cruelty, pain, misery, poverty, warfare? All we know of Him is relayed by the mouths of men or their writings in the Vulgate. Where is God Himself?’
Momentarily, Adam softened at the agonised and impassioned words of de Capra. He reached out a hand and laid it on the other’s head, until he noticed the skin ailment and rapidly withdrew his fingers. ‘Ralph, we all have had our doubts at some stage. Thankfully, mine came when I was but a young secondary in Wells and lasted half a day, no more. For proof of God’s presence, you must accept the learning and assurances of the thousands of greater men than us over hundreds of years. And look about you, where did the world come from? Did it make itself? You can see God in the trees and hills and bodies of your fellow men.’
To Ralph, this began to sound like a catechism learned by rote, rather than Adam’s inner conviction. ‘I have tried all that, a dozen times a day! But the doubts creep back. How can I minister to my flock, give them the sacraments and preach to them of heaven and God’s forgiveness, when deep down I don’t believe any of it?’
At this, the priest of St Mary Steps lost his temper again. ‘Forget heaven and forgiveness! You want to beware of hell and everlasting damnation! Satan has invaded your soul and is working your destruction. That is what you should be preaching to your congregation, not milk-and-water promises about the afterlife. Neither they nor you will have anything after death, except eternal damnation and torture unless you root out Lucifer without delay!’ Red in the face, he advanced down the steps and de Capra stumbled to his feet to retreat before him. Prodding the man’s chest with a fleshy finger, Adam drove him back down the nave, ranting the same advice as he went. ‘Pray every hour of every day, de Capra. Keep the fires of hell in the forefront of your mind! Strengthen your own resolve by telling your flock of the mortal dangers of their sinning.’
De Capra backed away rapidly, nodding his agreement as a sop to the other man’s fiery temper, which seemed in danger of giving him apoplexy. ‘I will try, Father, I will try, believe me,’ he stammered, as he sought his escape. Turning to seek the door, he twisted into a halfbowing, half-running shamble to get away from the priest who was now more accuser than confessor.
‘It were better that you died soon, even by fire or water, if you can achieve a state of grace, than linger on in sin and spend eternity in Satan’s hellfire.’ Adam shouted after him.
The words echoed in de Capra’s ears as he hurried, sobbing, along the road, in a far worse state of mind than when he had gone to find help and absolution.
De Wolfe spent the rest of the afternoon going over many of the coroner’s rolls that were to be presented to the Justices in Eyre the following week. Thomas had been working indefatigably to complete extra copies and was reading out lists of names and verdicts to his master in the upper room of the gatehouse. Gwyn, bored by the proceedings, had gone to the guardroom below for a gossip and a jar of cider with Gabriel. He came back with the news that a welcoming cavalcade was being organised for Monday to meet the judicial procession as it came along the road from Honiton. ‘You are expected to be on it, of course,’ he concluded, ‘not us lesser fish, but Ralph Morin, the Portreeves and the archdeacons. Some of the other burgesses, the guild masters and a few canons will be there too. Gabriel has to organise a score of men-at-arms as escort, he says.’
As coroner, John had expected to be among those who formed a reception party for the Justices in Eyre, but this seemed too much. ‘Damned mummery, I call it,’ he growled. ‘We only went as far as the West Gate to receive the Chief Justiciar when he came last year, not go flouncing halfway to Dorchester to meet a handful of working judges. It’s that bloody sheriff, trying to impress them so that they don’t notice his embezzlements — a wonder he doesn’t have a troupe of musicians and tumblers prancing in front of us!’
Gwyn grinned and Thomas went back to his pen and parchment. De Wolfe pulled out the scrap of parchment they had found on Aaron’s body and scowled at it for a long moment, as if he could read some secret message among the marks. Thomas had carefully spelled out each word, so that with the rudimentary knowledge he had acquired about the alphabet, John could now follow the sense of the biblical text. His lips slowly and silently re-formed the words, but he was still no wiser as to the author. Impatiently, he dropped it on to the table.
‘Thomas, look at that writing again, will you?’
The clerk put down his quill obediently and leaned across the trestle to pick up the text.
‘I know I’ve asked you this before but d’you think there’s any prospect of matching it with the writer’s hand?’
The pinched, sad face stared at it for a moment. Then the bright, bird-like eyes swivelled to the coroner. ‘I suspect he has thought of that himself, Crowner, and deliberately disguised his penmanship.’ He held up the torn scrap so that it faced his master and pointed out the words with a thin forefinger. ‘See? The letters slope mainly backwards. Some scribes write like that, but they are constant in their leaning. These vary from word to word — some are even upright and, in a couple of places, he has forgotten himself and they angle slightly forward.’
Gwyn, interested in spite of his professed disdain of clerks and literacy, ambled across to look over Thomas’s head at the parchment. ‘The bottom of all those marks are not on the same level, not straight, like the way you do them,’ he observed.
‘That’s another sign that the writer is disguising them. He might have done this with his left hand, instead of the usual right.’