The words sounded ominous in the dank, echoing vault.
‘I fail to see what you hope to achieve, when there is no useful evidence from anywhere,’ retorted John, who had a good idea what the sheriff was planning.
‘I hope to gain confessions, Crowner! Your methods of seeking a solution to these crimes that have plagued Exeter this past week and more have led nowhere. So now let me try my way, if you please.’
He turned imperiously towards the two workers from the silversmith’s shop, who stood cringing behind the apothecary and his apprentice. Their forebodings of this morning, when the law officers came into their workshop, seemed to have come true with awful rapidity. ‘Alfred and Garth, I seem to remember you are called that,’ he began menacingly, ‘I suspect you, either one or both, of being the ravisher of Christina Rifford. Will you now confess to that crime, eh?’
Both broke out into a cacophony of denial, Alfred falling to his knees on the cold slime of the floor, pleading with his hands outstretched. The sheriff impatiently gestured to the guards and they silenced the two men, dragging the older one to his feet and giving the boorish Garth a clout over the head to close his mouth.
‘Right, we’ll see if we can loosen your tongues in a little while. First, I want to deal with you, Edgar of Topsham.’
At a sign from Morin, Gabriel pushed forward the young apprentice to stand right before de Revelle. He began his usual loud protests, but the sheriff slapped him across the face with a gloved hand. ‘Be silent when I speak to you, boy. Your father is not here now to threaten me.’
John, silently observing his brother-in-law’s tactics, felt that he was building up trouble for himself, unless he knew something of which John was unaware – which he doubted.
‘I am sure that our master silversmith was poisoned, whatever the leech here says, and I’ll question that opinion very soon. It’s thanks to our good brothers at St John’s that he failed to die – but attempted murder carries the same penalty as one that is successful.’ He leaned forward to put his face close to Edgar’s – the young man was as tall as the sheriff and their noses almost touched. ‘I think that you gave that poison to Fitzosbern – you, the one who repeatedly threatened him, publicly said you wished him dead and who attacked him on his own doorstep.’ His voice rose to a crescendo, reverberating from the uncaring stone walls. ‘Who else is a better candidate for murder, eh?’
Edgar flew off into his usual denials, this time tinged with terror as he saw the way things were going. But the soldier behind him gave him a kick in the back of the knees that sent him sprawling before the sheriff.
Richard stepped back a pace and looked down at the young man. ‘If you refuse to confess, then the law approves a process called peine forte et dure to encourage the memory – and no one need be a scholar to know what those words mean.’
Edgar, on his hands and knees in the mire, looked up in unbelieving horror. ‘You cannot torture me – my father will petition the King, he told you so himself.’
‘The King is over the seas. It would take your father months to get there and find him – if he ever returned, as his ships seem prone to sink. And we are here today. I do not have months to spare.’
John felt it was time to intervene. ‘Attempted murder is a Plea of the Crown, like rape. You cannot take it upon yourself to deal with the matter in this summary fashion.’
Richard sneered at this. ‘Wrong, Sir Crowner! Fitzosbern has appealed Edgar for attempting to kill him and it will be heard in the shire court tomorrow. No jury of presentment has sent the matter for trial by the King’s Justices, so the Crown has no say in the issue. And today I am not trying the case by the Ordeal, I am merely seeking evidence in the form of a confession by the accepted means of peine forte et dure. So you have nothing to do with it, John, until you attend his trial by battle or declare him an outlaw if he should escape.’ He stood back triumphantly.
John chewed over the words in his mind but could find no valid objection in law, much as the Crown authorities disliked the King’s courts being bypassed by these residual old laws.
De Revelle waved a hand in the direction of Stigand and his fire. ‘Take him over there. That offensive old swine should soon have his branding irons hot enough for his purpose.’
Now screaming, rather than objecting, Edgar was dragged by two soldiers across to the archway, where the flabby gaoler was wheezing with the effort of thrusting some heavy iron rods into the red heart of the fire.
The sheriff sauntered over, leaving the two silver-workers trembling with awful anticipation of their own fate as they stood between their own guards. Nicholas of Bristol, who had not uttered a word since being brought in, stood pale-faced but impassive as he watched what was going on around him, his mouth hanging grotesquely as spittle leaked out unheeded.
At the fire, Ralph Morin was speaking in a low voice to Gabriel, his sergeant, then went to talk quietly to the sheriff, who shook his head impatiently. Like John de Wolfe, Morin thought this afternoon’s adventure ill-advised – not because they had any particular aversion to torture, which had been an accepted method of law enforcement for centuries, but because he thought that it was a mistake to use it against the son of such an influential person as Joseph of Topsham.
Gabriel, acting on his commander’s instructions, stepped up to Edgar and, with a single movement, ripped his tunic from neck to waist and pulled the torn cloth from his shoulders.
Now shrieking and twisting in the grip of two soldiers, who impassively held him by each arm, Edgar was pushed nearer the fire, as Stigand pulled out an iron and examined the red-hot cross-piece at the tip with professional interest. He spat upon it and heard the sharp sizzle with apparent approval.
‘I ask you again, and for the last time, Edgar of Topsham,’ intoned the sheriff, ‘do you confess to poisoning Godfrey Fitzosbern?’
‘Jesus Christ help me! How can I confess to something that never happened?’ screamed the young man, as the repulsive-looking gaoler, satisfied with the heat of his iron, advanced on with the glowing cross aimed at his left breast.
‘We have plenty of irons – and a good fire,’ observed Richard, casually.
The branding iron was close enough for the few hairs on the young man’s chest to begin shrivelling, when a shout came from behind. ‘Stop that! It was not him. He knows nothing of it.’
Stigand hesitated and the sheriff motioned him to go back. Everyone turned and looked back towards the entrance, where Nicholas of Bristol stood between his two captors.
‘Let Edgar go free. I will confess to the poison – and much more besides.’
In the approaching dusk, John walked with Nesta along the top of the city wall, between the towers of the South Gate and the Water Gate. She had wanted some air after a heavy day in the tavern and they strolled along the rampart behind the battlements like a pair of young lovers, she holding his arm. The weather had improved and, though cold, there were breaks in the cloud towards the west, where the setting sun threw a pallid pinkness over the countryside. Nesta had a green scarf wrapped over her head and a thick dun woollen cape down to her feet. ‘They’ll hang him, of course?’ she asked, as they stopped to look at the sunset.
‘Most likely – or perhaps instead they will use combat or the ordeal. Someone will have his life, one way or the other,’ agreed John, slipping his arm around her. ‘But it’s a strange situation, and depends on what happens with Fitzosbern.’