The others now crowded around him, solicitously asking after his welfare, offering the services of an apothecary or to take him to St John’s infirmary nearby. Serlo shook his head, which made him wince, then struggled to a sitting position on the bed. ‘My head is hard, I’ll survive, thank you.’ He touched his scalp gingerly. ‘But I think I’ll not sit in court for the rest of the day.’
The others jabbered protests at the idea of his returning to the Shire Hall, and the sheriff was almost bursting with the desire to smooth over this dangerous fiasco, although he still delighted in John’s discomfiture. ‘Did you actually see that it was this evil clerk who tried to kill you?’ he demanded. ‘I have him in chains already and will hang him as soon as possible.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, damn you,’ yelled de Wolfe. ‘He’ll have a fair trial and, if guilty, be condemned on good evidence, not at your whim.’
Walter de Ralegh, whose large size and dominating presence always made him the leading figure in any group, held up his hands. ‘Wait, wait! Of course the fellow will be tried — though a confession would ease the process.’
‘He’ll confess, I’ll guarantee that!’ snarled the sheriff. ‘I have a gaoler who, though he is an imbecile, is a genius at extracting confessions.’
De Ralegh ignored this and spoke again to Serlo, who was now hunched on the mattress, holding his head in both hands. ‘What happened, de Vallibus? Can you help us?’
Unable to shake his head because of the throbbing pain in his cranium, the Chancery clerk murmured his reply: ‘I remember nothing after sitting on this bed for a short sleep after our meal. The next thing I recollect is tumbling down those damned stairs. I must have staggered out of the room after receiving this blow and lost my footing at the top.’
‘You remember nothing about my clerk being here?’ demanded de Wolfe eagerly.
‘Nothing at all. But those rolls of yours were not there before I lost my senses.’
Richard de Revelle gave a triumphant cry. ‘Ha! There is the proof. De Peyne comes with them as an excuse, de Vallibus is attacked, the clerk runs away and is caught by the guard. The complete story!’
The coroner glimpsed the landlord hovering anxiously outside the door. ‘Alan Spere, are these stairs the only way up to these chambers?’
The normally jovial host was as white as sheet, wondering whether it was a capital offence for a King’s Justice to be attacked on his premises. ‘No, Crowner, the passage goes past the other five rooms then down at the back into the stabling yard.’
‘Was there a guard there?’ the coroner demanded of the silent Ralph Morin.
The castle constable was glad of the chance to deflate the sheriff, for whom he had the same lack of regard as de Wolfe. ‘No. The escort was a mark of respect rather than a necessity.’
John shrugged and held up his hands in a Gallic gesture. ‘So whoever made this cowardly attack on Justice Serlo might have come into the yard from the lane alongside the inn and up the back stairs — for the man-at-arms at the front saw no one.’
‘He saw this bastard de Peyne, that’s who he saw!’ objected Peter, Peverel, who sided with the sheriff’s prejudices. The party was already dividing into two factions: those who were ready to hang Thomas out of hand and those who had a more open mind.
‘This is getting us nowhere, unless de Vallibus’s memory returns,’ said de Ralegh reasonably.
‘And we need to hear what my clerk has to say on the matter,’ snapped de Wolfe.
Ralph Morin agreed to send a soldier to St John’s to fetch Brother Saulf to attend to Serlo’s head and prescribe some salve, while the other three Justices returned to the court to carry on the afternoon session. With a couple of extra men-at-arms guarding them, the sheriff, constable and coroner walked behind them to the inner ward and the Shire Hall. De Wolfe kept silent during the five-minute walk, ignoring the smirk of triumph that lurked on the sheriff’s face.
When they reached the wide entrance to the Shire Hall, de Wolfe stopped. ‘I’m going to see Thomas first,’ he announced.
‘The fellow is in my custody, I’ll not have you interfering,’ retorted de Revelle, rejoicing in this unexpected return of his supremacy.
‘Go to the devil, Richard! A coroner is empowered — indeed, obliged — to investigate all serious crimes in his jurisdiction. Not only murders, but also assaults. So I am going to investigate this one, whether you like it or not.’
The sheriff became red in face and began to huff and puff about his absolute powers in the county.
‘Talk all you like, Sheriff, I’m going to the undercroft to see him now.’
As he stalked off, de Revelle hissed after him, ‘You dare to interfere or try to engineer his release and I’ll have the full force of the Justices on you. They’re not taking kindly to one of their own number being half killed, so don’t expect any aid from them!’ With that, he turned on his elegant heel and strode into the Shire Hall.
About an hour later on this tumultuous Wednesday afternoon, another drama was being played out in the lower part of Exeter. A small crowd, which increased by the minute, had gathered in the narrow street between the West Gate and the church of All-Hallows-on-the Wall. A cluster of street traders, porters, good-wives, children and beggars were pointing and gesticulating at a figure parading agitatedly along the narrow walkway that topped the city wall, twenty feet above the street. He was barefoot and dressed in a shapeless, ragged garment of what looked at that distance to be of sacking. In his hand, he grasped a rough wooden cross made of two thin sticks tied together.
‘Is it an absconder from sanctuary?’ asked one onlooker of her neighbour, for the figure’s garb was that of someone abjuring the realm after seeking refuge in a church.
The crowd was soon joined by Osric, attracted by the rising hubbub in the street. Shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun, the constable stared up and asked the nearest man, a crippled pedlar with a tray of dusty pies hung around his neck, ‘Who is it up there? And what’s he think he’s doing?’
‘Gone raving mad, whoever it is,’ answered the pedlar, exposing broken, yellowed teeth as he squinted up at the top of the wall.
Osric watched for a moment, uncertain as to what to do. He was responsible for keeping order in the streets of Exeter, but it was hard to decide whether a man prancing about on the city wall, shaking his cross at the sky, was a hazard to the citizens. The fellow seemed to be chanting and wailing alternately, his face upturned towards the heavens, as he capered about. Suddenly, he turned and faced the crowd below, teetering on the edge of the parapet as if gathering the courage to jump. The crowd fell silent at his dangerous pose, then voices began to shout: ‘It’s the priest! It’s Ralph de Capra — it’s the father from All-Hallows!’
Now that he faced them, they could see that de Capra’s face had a wild, haunted look, and his head was plastered with wet ashes.
‘I’d better get up there to fetch him down,’ muttered the constable, and made for a flight of steps built into the back of the wall, almost against the pine end of the little church.
Before he could reach the bottom stair, there was a pounding of feet behind him and he was pushed aside. Adam of Dol was climbing up ahead of him to the parapet. He was well known to Osric as the priest of St Mary Steps, just along the street. He had heard the tumult of the crowd as he came out of his church and had hurried down the lane to see what was amiss.
Hoisting up his black cassock in both hands, the cleric mounted the steps surprisingly fast for such a burly man. At the top, he turned right and, followed by the constable, slowed down as he approached the wild figure of the All-Hallows priest as he rocked on his bare toes at the very edge of the stone precipice.