‘What was that? Speak up, damn you!’ snapped Sir Peter Peverel, muffled in a brown cloak against the cold of the dank undercroft, where the outside air never seemed to penetrate.
‘I said I have done nothing wrong, sir, so what can I confess?’
The sheriff stamped his foot in annoyance. ‘Stop wasting our time, I say. You were caught running away from the scene of your cowardly attack on Serlo de Vallibus.’
Thomas mumbled, ‘I was going to get help,’ but Walter de Ralegh interrupted, ‘De Peyne, you have been under suspicion for some time. This merely confirms your guilt.’
‘The only suspicion he was under came from malicious gossip!’ cut in de Wolfe angrily. ‘There has not been a shred of proof against this man — only mischievous tittle-tattle.’
Peverel seemed determined to blacken Thomas’s chances. ‘Not gossip, Coroner. As a former priest — and one with a grudge against the world, so I understand — he can read, write and has a good knowledge of the Vulgate. That narrows down the field a hundredfold in this city.’
‘And he cannot account for his movements on any of the occasions when these outrages occurred,’ brayed the sheriff triumphantly.
‘Can any of us account for our movements at all those times?’ demanded the coroner. ‘Though I know where you were on one occasion, Richard.’ This was an oblique threat to the sheriff, but he knew it was insufficient to help Thomas. Desperately, he looked again towards the bright square of the entrance, hoping against hope that relief would arrive. De Ralegh began to lose patience and started to shout at the prisoner. ‘If your lips are sealed by malice, there are ways to open them! As a servant of the Crowner, you must know better than most how confessions can be obtained. See sense, man, and speak now!’
Thomas’s response was to fall to his knees in a rattle of chains and burst into tears. ‘I am innocent!’ he screamed. ‘Master, save me!’
This was no prayer, but a direct plea to John de Wolfe, who stood impotent, swinging between intense anger and deep sorrow. ‘This is intolerable!’ he shouted. ‘There is no evidence whatsoever to link this man with the crimes. Let a jury decide tomorrow! What use is there in torturing a false confession from this poor soul?’
At this, de Revelle rounded on his brother-in-law. ‘You should not be here, John. As this creature’s master, you can have no balanced view of how things really are. You should leave well alone!’
Archdeacon de Bosco had been silent until now, but looked uneasy at the prospect of a fellow priest, albeit one dishonourably discharged from the Church, being subjected to peine forte et dure like a common felon. The procedure to extract confessions varied, but should have been performed by placing increasing weights of iron on the chest of the victim, lying flat on his back, until he either spoke or expired. However, the practice had been widened to include many forms of torture, some sadistically ingenious.
‘Perhaps it should be left to the court tomorrow, brothers,’ said the Archdeacon tentatively.
‘You are biased because the man was once in Holy Orders,’ retorted Peverel nastily. ‘But he’s not now, so that can no longer be an issue.’
De Ralegh walked over to the clerk and hoisted him to his feet by grabbing a handful of his hair. ‘Tell us why you did it, wretch!’ he bellowed. ‘All those deaths, were you trying to play God, eh? Is not the King’s justice enough to punish evildoers that you have to take the law into your own hands?’
Outraged at seeing the puny clerk mishandled, de Wolfe stepped forward and seemed ready to strike de Ralegh, a move which would have had disastrous consequences, given that he was a Justice of the King. Almost casually, the bulky figure of Brother Rufus stepped sideways in front of him and pressed him back, giving enough time for de Wolfe’s passion to subside.
Then, providentially, a cry came from the entrance arch, which distracted them from the mounting tension. ‘Stop! I have orders from the Bishop.’
It was John de Alençon, looking more haggard even than usual as he stumbled across the uneven floor towards them.
‘Is he granting Benefit of Clergy?’ De Wolfe asked eagerly.
‘Not as such, no,’ panted the Archdeacon. ‘Bishop Marshal declines to refer the matter to the Consistory Court, as he rightly points out that my nephew is no longer an ordained priest. But he takes great exception to a former man of the cloth being put to the torture for a confession and forbids you to proceed.’
The sheriff looked as if he was going to object, then thought of his relationship with the Bishop and decided not to risk damaging it for the sake of a fleeting victory over the coroner. He kept silent, but Walter de Ralegh and Peter Peverel felt no such inhibitions. They protested strongly that even the head of the Church in this diocese had no power over a secular court, especially the will of the King’s Justices. However, Archdeacon de Bosco came down firmly on the side of the Church, as this confirmed his own recent misgivings.
They argued for a few minutes, while the dishevelled Thomas, red-eyed and forlorn, looked from face to face seeking any crumb of hope.
Richard de Revelle settled the matter. ‘Our Lord Bishop in his wisdom has made no attempt to take the judgement into the hands of the Church so, confession or not, we can proceed with the trial tomorrow morning — and I suspect there is little doubt of the outcome, so any bickering tonight is hardly worth the effort.’
Tired, irritated and in need of their evening meal, the others agreed grudgingly and Thomas was dragged back to his foetid cell by a disappointed Stigand. The others dispersed, most of them confident that the murderous clerk would be swinging at the end of a rope within a day or two.
De Wolfe spent a miserable night worrying about Thomas’s fate. Though he was grateful for John de Alençon’s intercession with the Bishop as far as the forced confession was concerned, he had little hope that the Eyre of Assize would acquit him in the morning. As he had told a depressed Gwyn and a tearful Nesta, when they had sat discussing the crisis in the Bush that evening, it was the attack on de Vallibus, one of their own number, that was likely to seal the clerk’s fate.
Nesta clutched de Wolfe’s arm and rested her head against his shoulder for comfort. ‘They mustn’t hang the poor fellow, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone kill a string of people,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s had nothing but trouble and misery all his life, being afflicted in his back and his leg and his eye, then being falsely accused of rape and thrown out of his beloved Church.’
‘Maybe he’ll be glad to leave this earth,’ said de Wolfe, mournfully. ‘He tried to go the other month, when he jumped from the cathedral roof.’
‘Is there nothing more we can do for him?’ demanded Gwyn, his great red moustache drooping as low as his own spirits.
‘There is so little time,’ answered John. ‘If the sentence goes against him tomorrow, as surely it must, they’ll demand a hanging next day — and I’ll wager all the Justices will turn out to watch it.’
‘Can you not petition the King or the Justiciar or someone?’ wailed Nesta.
‘The Lionheart is in France, God knows where Hubert Walter is, but it would take a week or more to reach him and another to get back here. It’s hopeless, even if they would listen to a plea for clemency.’
‘The only miracle that would save him would be another Gospel killing before he’s hanged,’ said Nesta sadly. ‘And though we’ve had a string of attacks these past few days, the swine who’s doing them will now no doubt lie low, just to avoid obliging us.’
When he came home to Martin’s Lane, de Wolfe went straight to bed, despondent about the morrow. Though Matilda was still awake, he could not bring himself to tell her what had happened, as she was likely to crow over the disaster that had befallen Thomas. After a restless night, when sleep came only fitfully between bouts of anxious worry, de Wolfe reluctantly made his way up to the castle. Before the court began its session, he made a last attempt to influence Richard de Revelle, even threatening to revoke his promise to keep quiet about his involvement in the brothel fire, but the sheriff called his bluff: ‘You gave me your word, John, that you would stay silent. As a knight, you know you will disgrace yourself if you go back on that — and it would be futile, as you undoubtedly know.’