‘Ralph! Ralph, come to me, good man!’
De Capra stared vacantly at his brother priest, then turned and began running away along the battlement walk towards his own church, which came straight out of the wall, the stone-tiled roof sloping up just below the parapet, a small bell-arch level with the walkway.
Seemingly afraid that Ralph was going to go beyond the church and throw himself off to certain injury and perhaps death, the priest of St Mary Steps put on a burst of speed and threw himself at de Capra. The pair overbalanced and fell off the parapet — but only a couple of feet down on to the church roof. De Capra struggled, yelling and wailing, but the burly Adam held him with ease as Osric stepped down carefully on to the roof. Between them, they hauled Ralph back to the city wall, conscious of the ominous cracking of thin stone tiles under their feet.
By now several other spectators had climbed the steps and were staring open-mouthed at the unexpected entertainment, but Adam of Dol roared at them and waved them away furiously. Then he glared at Osric and told him to clear off too: this was a matter between men of God. The constable retreated a few yards, but felt it his duty to stay within earshot: he crouched at the top of the steps, down which the banished townsfolk were retreating.
‘What are you thinking of, you foolish man?’ bellowed Adam at his colleague, his tone as abrasive as when he had yelled at the onlookers. ‘Why the sackcloth and ashes? The devil is fighting for your soul, Ralph, and you must resist him!’
Osric felt this was hardly the way to pacify a deranged man on the point of committing suicide, but he had no intention of clashing with the pugnacious priest, whose reputation for anger was legendary.
Ralph de Capra sagged into submission, his struggles ceasing. His face was gaunt under the streaks of grey ash that had run down from his hair and his hollow-eyed expression was one of abject misery. ‘I have sinned, Adam, sinned most grievously,’ the constable heard him say. ‘There is no hope for me, either in this world or the next — if there is a next, which I often doubt.’
His fellow priest shook him angrily by the shoulders. ‘You must fight back, man! Faith has to be earned. I have said time and again that the great horned devil never sleeps. He waits for such doubts to weaken your armour. And throwing yourself from this wall is no answer — you’d probably break a leg rather than your neck. Preach hell-fire, Ralph! Keep it in the forefront of your mind that failure means eternal agony in the great furnace below. Be like me — never let your flock forget that the wages of sin are not death but unceasing torture until and beyond the end of time. That way you will keep Lucifer at bay.’
With that, Father Adam hauled his brother priest back along the parapet towards the steps, still cursing the powers of darkness. Osric wisely retreated before them, determined to tell the coroner what he had heard.
John had returned reluctantly to the court but without Thomas to guide him it was far more difficult: he had to borrow one of the junior clerks of Assize to help him with his rolls, and put up with smirks and knowing glances from the sheriff. The scowls of the Justices, especially Peter Peverel, boded ill for Thomas’s future.
His visit to the cells under the keep had been brief and unhelpful. The obese gaoler, Stigand, had tried to prevent him and Gwyn entering Thomas’s cell, until Gwyn pinned him against the wall by his throat and threatened to tear out his tongue by the roots.
Poor Thomas sat in a pathetic heap on the dirty straw inside the almost dark cell. He had been vomiting with fright into the battered bucket that was the only furniture, apart from the slate slab of a bed. All de Wolfe could get out of him was a flat denial of any wrongdoing. He had gone to the New Inn as ordered, taken the bundle of rolls upstairs past the guard on the door, whom he recognised from the gatehouse duty at Rougemont. The door to de Vallibus’s room was open — Thomas had known it from a visit with rolls the evening before — and when he had gone in he had found the Justice groaning on the floor, with a bloody wound on his head. Serlo was just conscious but incoherent. In panic, Thomas had rushed to knock on the other doors upstairs, but found the rooms either locked or empty. Then he heard a crash and saw that de Vallibus had crawled out of the room and fallen down the upper flight of stairs to the half-landing. Even more frantic by now, Thomas had pounded down to the ground floor, looking for help, and run straight into the arms of the soldier, who grabbed him: he had just seen the judge crash on to the landing above. The pandemonium that followed led to the little ex-priest being hauled off to the cells in Rougemont without the chance to explain anything.
‘You saw no one else upstairs?’ demanded de Wolfe, and Thomas’s denial was his only other contribution to a sterile investigation.
Now the coroner waited impatiently for the court session to end so that he could try to do something more for his clerk. But as the raucous trumpets signalled the end of the day’s cases and the three judges solemnly paraded out, Richard de Revelle sidled up to him, a supercilious sneer on his face. ‘John, the justices have decided to be present tonight at the interrogation of that rat-like servant of yours. A confession will be drawn from him and they will bring him before them tomorrow morning, for that superfluous trial you’re so keen to have. Then we can have him hanged by afternoon.’ With that he hurried after the judges before John could think of a forceful enough protest.
Gwyn had overheard the sheriff’s gloating message and his already worried face became even more disconsolate. ‘Is there nothing we can do, Crowner? They’ll hang the poor sod, just to prove their point.’ Though he had endlessly teased Thomas, the amiable Cornishman was protective towards the little man and the prospect of him being executed was too much to contemplate. For a moment de Wolfe stood in the doorway of the court, brooding and chewing his lip. Then he drew himself up and loped off towards the gatehouse, beckoning Gwyn to follow. ‘I must talk to his uncle. The Archdeacon is the most honest and sensible man I know, as well as being Thomas’s relative. Let’s see what he has to say.’
At this slack period in the episcopal day, John de Alençon was usually at home and they found him in his austere room, reading a treatise on Eusebius of Caesaria. When he heard of his nephew’s arrest, he groaned. ‘Thomas, Thomas! He’s been nothing but trouble to his family since he was born! Yet none of it was his doing, I’m sure.’
De Wolfe was blunt in his summary of the situation. ‘They’re keen to hang him, no doubt of that. These rumours have been going around for days, started by de Revelle and that malicious colleague of yours, Thomas de Boterellis.’
‘What can we do about saving him?’ asked the Archdeacon, his lean face etched with concern.
‘We have to get him out of Rougemont. Tonight they’ll torture him to get a confession — and knowing Thomas’s lack of courage, he’ll give it in the first half-minute. Then they’ll hang him, unless we can plead Benefit of Clergy.’
John de Alençon’s face fell. ‘But he’s no longer a priest! When he was unfrocked, he lost the privilege of being tried by a consistory court.’
‘I thought that proving he could read and write was sufficient,’ objected de Wolfe.
The Archdeacon hesitated, deep doubt showing on his face. ‘I agree that this is a popular notion, as virtually everyone who is literate is in Holy Orders. But it’s not a definition that can be relied on, especially when you have the King’s Justices, a sheriff and a Precentor eager to deny it.’
‘It’s his only hope, short of Gwyn and I storming the castle’ growled John. ‘If the Bishop threw his weight behind the idea, then surely it would succeed?’
The Archdeacon looked dubious. ‘You know quite well that he has no love for you, especially since you crushed de Revelle.’