‘What’s wrong with his neck?’ asked the sergeant, pointing to an angry red line of swelling across the throat. This surrounded the slight cut he had received from Hugh Ferrars, but now it was obviously inflamed and going septic.
John tried to communicate again with the sick man, but only incomprehensible gargling noises came back. The twitching began again and the trembling of the fingers was more obvious.
He looked up at Mary, huddled anxiously under her blanket shawl. ‘Did he say anything sensible to you?’ he asked.
‘I could make out only one or two words among the groans and muttering. He said, “Burning, it’s burning”, and “poisoned”.’
John’s black eyebrows rose. ‘No doubt about him saying poison?’
‘It was definite. When he said it, he pointed that shaking hand towards his throat.’
John knew that his maid was a level-headed and reliable woman and he took what she said without question. ‘He has this suppuration of the wound in his throat. Maybe the poison from that is sufficient. But we can’t leave him here.’ He stood up. ‘The monks of St Nicholas will be aghast when I take them another patient or corpse within these few days.’
Gabriel had a suggestion. ‘I know the prior at St John’s and it’s nearer than St Nicholas’s. Why not take him there? There are three brothers who are skilled in caring for the sick.’
Just within the East Gate was a very small monastic house which had come to be known as St John’s Hospital, from the labours of the four celibates who lived there.
‘We’d better move him quickly, while he’s still alive,’ suggested Gwyn. He looked around the room and, with Gabriel’s help, lifted the hinges of the inner door from their wrought-iron pintles and laid it flat alongside the twitching silversmith. Two of the onlookers were recruited and Fitzosbern was lifted on to the planks and carried away at a trot, around the corner into the main street and away up to St John’s.
De Wolfe sent the remaining bystanders about their business and closed the front door. ‘Well done, Mary, you’re a good, sensible girl,’ he said. ‘Now I’d better get back to that bloody banquet or all my good work with Matilda will have been for nothing.’
Several hours later, he was back inside the silversmith’s house with Gwyn. The festivities at the Bishop’s Palace were over and, as he had been absent barely a quarter of an hour, Matilda made no great complaint, especially when he regaled her with this new piece of drama from next door.
After seeing her up to the solar and the attentions of Lucille, who would dismantle her finery to allow her to get to bed, he collected Gwyn, who was drinking ale with Mary in her hut in the back yard. ‘Let’s see what’s been going on in the house next door. Maybe we can tell if he really has been poisoned or whether this is some sickness from that neck wound.’
As they entered the absent Fitzosbern’s premises, Gwyn had a question. ‘If it is suppuration from that neck wound and he dies, would that not make Hugh Ferrars liable for unlawful killing?’
‘It’s for a jury to decide, but it seems very likely. Let’s not run ahead of ourselves, we must see what’s here.’
They looked around the shop, where there was nothing untoward to be found. The workbenches held the usual clutter of tools and metal, and the table that displayed finished wares was bare of anything as the valuable stock was locked up for safety every night.
‘There is light upstairs,’ observed the Cornishman, putting his head through the now doorless opening to the back workroom. They went through the pungent fumes from the ever-burning furnace, each holding aloft a tallow light, which showed nothing out of the ordinary in the downstairs area. Climbing the wide ladder, John rose into the living space above, which was deserted.
‘Does he not have servants?’ queried Gwyn.
‘The maid went with Mabel when she left him, so the gossip says, and my wife is always abreast of the latest tittle-tattle,’ replied the coroner. ‘There was a kitchen servant, but God knows where he is. Drinking in some tavern, I expect.’
They looked around the room, holding up their lamps, as only one candle still burned, the stump guttering in a silver candlestick. Another room was partitioned off at the front, in which was a large bed. In the main room, John saw a half-eaten meal on a silver-rimmed wooden platter with a silver chalice alongside. ‘What’s this? The chair is overturned and there’s a soiled knife on the floor.’
Gwyn picked up the platter and looked at it closely. ‘Half a roast fowl, much of the leg eaten. Carrots and cabbage with it, some spilled on to the table,’ he reported. John, meanwhile, had picked up the elaborate goblet, which looked as if it was better suited to a church altar than a dinner table. It appeared to be half full of red wine, some of which had been splashed on to. the table near the base of the chalice. He sniffed at the contents, but could detect nothing unusual. Dipping the tip of a finger into the deep rose-coloured liquid, he gingerly touched it to the end of his tongue, but again could taste nothing but wine.
The coroner thought for a moment, looking around the room. ‘We had best keep this food and the wine, to see if some better examination can be made of it,’ he decided.
‘Did the wine come from there, I wonder?’ asked Gwyn, pointing to a small grey-stone jar with a wooden stopper, that stood on a shelf nearby.
John took the flask and removed the bung, sniffing at the contents. He shook it and estimated that it was about half full. ‘We’ll take this as well – and this.’ He picked up a small round wooden box, alongside the wine jar. There was some cabalistic inscription on the lid and inside was a brown fibrous powder that had a faint herbal smell.
Gwyn looked at the specimens they had collected. ‘So what do we do with them now?’
‘I’ll keep them next door until the morning, then I’ll take them to an apothecary to see what he makes of them.’
Gwyn’s blue eyes looked frankly at his master. ‘Not to an apothecary’s apprentice?’ he asked pointedly.
John sighed. ‘I already guess how my brother-in-law’s mind will work. If this is a poisoning, then Edgar of Topsham will be the prime suspect, after the threats and attack he has made on Fitzosbern.’
Gwyn gave one of his grunts. ‘For once, it is hard to blame the sheriff if he comes to believe that. Edgar is the obvious choice.’
John led the way back to the steps, taking the flask and medicine box, while Gwyn followed with the platter and chalice.
‘We had better go up to St John’s, to see if we are dealing with a murder or just an attempted one.’
The priory, tucked just inside the massive East Gate, was but a series of rooms attached to a small chapel. Living quarters for the four monks, a tiny refectory and a kitchen were adjunct to several cells and a larger room that acted as the hospital. It was always full of sick people from the poorest section of the town, but Brother Saulf, a Saxon who was the elder monk under the prior, had shifted a patient out of a cell into the main ward so that Fitzosbern could be accommodated.
When the coroner arrived, the silversmith lay on a pallet, deathly pale, still clammy and sweating. As John went into the cell with Saulf, the patient suddenly vomited and retched, a stream of almost clear fluid gushing from his mouth and nose. Saulf knelt to wipe it from his lips and nostrils and tipped the man’s head to one side to see if any more could escape. Then, to John’s surprise, he picked up a pitcher from the floor and bending Fitzosbern’s head back, poured a generous amount of fluid into his mouth.
There was a spluttering and coughing, but the monk clamped the man’s jaw shut with his hand so that he was forced to swallow, though he seemed almost to suffocate in the attempt. A moment later, he retched again and more fluid shot from between his lips to join the mess on the floor.