Crowner John gave one of his rare barking laughs. ‘Maybe we can tempt him to move to St Olave’s. My dear wife would love that, it being her favourite praying place. And, talking of the de Revelles, how is our beloved sheriff taking this?’
Morin grinned, his plain face lighting up at the thought of his superior’s discomfiture. ‘He’s keeping his head down as much as possible. When I told him that the villain was in the cathedral, he scuttled off to see the Bishop, who for a wonder is actually staying in his palace here for a few days.’ He shifted his bottom on the edge of John’s table and hauled his sword scabbard into a more comfortable position. ‘What’s the next move?’ he asked. ‘There’s a crowd around the cathedral already. News gets about quickly in this town.’
‘No chance of his escaping again?’ queried John.
‘The place is sealed up tight as a drum. A mouse couldn’t get out.’
The coroner got up from his bench behind the parchment-littered trestle and walked restlessly across to look down through one of the wall slits. The town looked as it usually did in early morning: all the action was out of sight in the cathedral Close. ‘I’d better get down there, I suppose, to make sure those damned churchmen don’t have some scheme up the sleeves of their cassocks.’
As Gwyn and Thomas cleared up the remnants of their breakfast, the constable had a sudden thought. ‘This Baldwyn, whose corpse lies bleeding in my cart shed down below. Will there have to be an inquest upon him?’
John stared at him in puzzlement. ‘Of course. He certainly came to his death unnaturally.’
‘But you slew him yourself! Can a coroner stick a sword between someone’s ribs and then investigate the death?’
John hadn’t had time to consider this problem. ‘What choice is there? I’m the only coroner in the county.’
The constable still felt the situation was difficult. ‘But how can you be a witness in your own court? For that’s what an inquest is, even if it’s often held in the open air.’
As they walked down the winding steps, one behind the other, the coroner considered this problem. ‘I’ve no answer to that, Ralph – and I doubt if it has happened anywhere else yet. Maybe I’ll have to turn to Dorset or Somerset, to ask one of them to officiate – though, as far as I know, they’ve no jurisdiction in Devon.’
Morin laughed at John’s obvious dilemma. ‘That’ll teach you to go hunting felons with your own sword. Leave it to the professionals, like me and the sheriff!’
John was scornful, though in good humour with the constable, whom he much admired. ‘Leave it to you lot? Where were you and your merry men last night, when those two were trying to mash my head with a mace? If the coroner of this county wants something done, he had better do it himself!’
The banter went on for while as they walked away from the castle. Both men knew that the real object of their derision was Richard de Revelle, whose deviousness made the keeping of law and order by his military servants a stock joke in the county. The constable was uncomfortable with this, as the men-at-arms were mainly under his command, yet the unpredictable behaviour of the sheriff reflected badly on his own performance. They strode on down High Street, the citizens greeting them with affability, respect, suspicion or downright hostility, depending on their current relationship with law and authority.
When they reached St Martin’s Lane, they turned in towards the cathedral Close. John looked up at his house as they passed, but made no effort to go in. He hoped that Matilda’s new-found compliance was standing the strain of the night’s events.
When they entered the Close, they found that the idle section of the population had discovered a new source of entertainment. Groups of people, mostly women and old men, stood around the doors at the west end of the huge building. Even the children and imbeciles who usually roved among the graves, playing ball and touch-tag, had gravitated to gape at the cathedral entrance. There, men-at-arms were stationed at each door and the older sergeant was parading restlessly between them, anxious to disprove their reputation for letting fugitives escape. Morin went off to talk to him, while John, his officer and clerk in tow, pushed through the sightseers. Leaving their swords with one of the soldiers, they went in through one of the side entrances that flanked the big main doors of the Cathedral of St Mary and St Peter.
Inside, the poor November light left the huge building dim and shadowy. None of the side windows were glazed and birds flew in to perch on the corbels of the wooden ceiling, high above John’s head. The body of the building, with its wide nave and flanking aisles, was an empty, bare vista of flagstoned floor. The many services each day were for the benefit of the clergy, and the public, who could stand in this open space, were merely passive spectators. Only at the many small altars scattered about the inner walls was there contact between priest and supplicants, where masses were said at frequent intervals.
Many religious relics were scattered around the building, most in side-chapels and on altars, where people came to pray and plead for favours to cure body, mind and purse. One of the lesser clergy acted as a guide to the splinters of the Cross, hairs of Christ, St Mary Magdalen’s finger and part of the manger from Bethlehem.
But today no one had eyes for these holy artefacts as John marched the trio up the centre of the nave until they reached the quire-screen. This stood level with the sixth pair of massive columns that supported the building, separating the nave from the aisles. The quire was an ornately carved wooden cage, running back past the two huge towers towards the High Altar and the apse of the curved east end.
A few canons and lower-caste priests scurried about, disturbed by the unwanted secular activity that had descended on them this day.
‘Where is this damned fellow hiding?’ growled the coroner, as they came up against the high wooden screen that separated the quire from the nave.
Gwyn saw to his left a pair of cassocked priests with their heads together, one pointing up the north aisle. ‘Something going on over there, by the look of it,’ he said. Bishop Warelwast’s building was not truly cruciform in shape, in that the two massive towers on each side did not open as transepts to form a central crossing. Instead, the inner walls went right down to ground level, but there were small arched openings to give internal access into the base of each tower.
John walked around the corner of the quire to look up the narrow space leading to the east end, which passed the doorway to the North Tower. Here, several clergy were peering with mixed curiosity and timidity through the doorway.
‘He must be in there, as Morin said. Let’s have a look at the murdering bastard!’ John was in no mood for delicacy or forgiveness after the events of the night.
They moved up alongside the columns of the nave to the opening that led into the bottom of the tower, a high, square chamber with a small door to the outside in the nearest left-hand corner. The gaggle of priests moved aside for them, Thomas de Peyne at once reverting to his former life by genuflecting and crossing himself. He repeated this as soon as he saw two altars against the right-hand wall of the chamber.
In front of the further one, almost in the north-east corner, a man sat on the floor, one hand firmly gripping the white cloth draped over the simple altar, dedicated to the Holy Cross, a relic of which was housed in a small brass-bound box on a shelf above it.
‘There he is, our runaway hero!’ shouted Gwyn, his red hair bristling, unconcerned about disturbing the sanctity of the place.
‘Be quiet, you barbarian! You’re in the House of God!’ hissed the outraged Thomas, standing alongside the three priests, who glared disapprovingly at the noisy, roughtly dressed Cornish giant.