She was truly astounded, as well as terrified, when at about the ninth hour on Monday morning she heard a fusillade of knocks on her front door and a chorus of angry shouts in the narrow street outside. The knocks were from stones thrown at the house and, as she opened the door, another rock crashed through the flimsy shutter covering her single window. Outside were a score of people, all shouting and making threatening gestures. Alice knew none of them, as they were not from Rock Lane and she was petrified with fear to find a mob inexplicably clustered in front of her house.
Thankfully, the noise had rapidly brought a dozen of her neighbours to her assistance and both the local women and their husbands gathered outside her door to face the noisy throng in the dusty road.
‘What in God’s name is going on here?’ roared her next-door neighbour, a burly porter built like an ox. A man half his size pushed forward, his bravado bolstered by the greater number of demonstrators in the road. It was Walter Winstone, the secret architect of this performance.
‘It’s none of your business. We have come to denounce this wicked woman here,’ he brayed, pointing dramatically at Alice Ailward. ‘She is a witch and a consort of the Devil.’
There was renewed shouting and gesticulating from the people behind him, one of whom was Adam Cuffe. He came forward on cue, as he had been instructed by the apothecary earlier than morning and flung up an arm to point accusingly at the bemused widow.
‘She put a spell on me, with the aid of the Horned One himself,’ he yelled and then, to validate his bewitchment, fell to the floor where he twitched for a moment before getting up again. It was a transparently false performance, and the porter from next door, who recognised him, gave him a hefty kick to help him to his feet.
‘You damned fool, Cuffe! What mischief are you up to this time?’
Walter Winstone shrieked in his high-pitched voice at the woman still standing distraught at her own front door. ‘I am an apothecary and this fellow came to me last night bidding me to treat his curse! You communed with Satan, woman, and your evil caused this poor man to have fits.’
Alice found her voice at last. She was no wilting violet and anger was rapidly replacing her fear. ‘What nonsense are you talking, man?’ she shouted. ‘He came to me yesterday with a headache and dizziness, probably from some suppuration inside his ear — together with too much ale the night before.’
‘You conjured up the Dark Angel to help you, I saw him in the room with you!’ yelled Adam, his acting skills now stretched to their meagre limit.
Before Alice and the porter could contradict him, there was a shout from the road and the tall, thin figure of Osric appeared, staff in hand. The Saxon was one of the city’s two constables, paid by the burgesses to keep order on the streets. Attracted by the racket, he had hurried to Rock Lane and now pushed his way through the small crowd to reach the figures arguing on the doorstep.
The apothecary got in first with a rapid accusation concerning the widow’s collaboration with the Devil himself. ‘She is one of those whom Canon Gilbert warned us against!’ he screamed. ‘This man unwisely came here for help and was cynically bound with spells by this evil woman. She called on the forces of darkness to aid her wicked desires.’
Osric was a conscientious official, but one not over-imbued with brains. He gaped at the main antagonists, bewildered at events. ‘What are you accusing her of, then? Did she wound him or attempt to slay him?’
‘Don’t be so bloody daft, Osric,’ snapped the neighbour, to whom plain speaking was a way of life. ‘For some reason this pig’s ass wants to cause trouble for the poor woman. You should lock him up, together with this scum from the quay-side, Adam Cuffe.’
The forthright common sense of the brawny porter, together with the constable’s obvious reluctance to do anything, had almost silenced the small crowd and if the matter had been left there, the whole episode might have faded away, in spite of Walter’s efforts to keep it alight. However, at that moment — and not by coincidence, for the apothecary had tipped them off — Cecilia de Pridias and her cousin Gilbert de Bosco appeared in Rock Lane.
The big priest, wearing his voluminous black cloak over his cassock, in spite of the sultry weather, strode down the slope, his cousin pattering alongside to keep up with him. Behind him came a thickset man carrying a heavy staff capped with silver, the symbol of authority of a proctor’s servant. These were the men who enforced order and discipline within the cathedral enclave, acting as ecclesiastical constables and even gaolers for the occasional errant priest or other offender detained in the cells in one of the buildings on the north side of the Close.
Gilbert marched up to the crowd around the door and addressed himself to the bemused Osric. ‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded of the skinny official.
Before the constable could reply, Walter cut in and tugged Adam Cuffe forward. ‘Your reverence, this man has been bewitched by this depraved woman! He came seeking a cure for a trivial ailment, which I could have treated properly, but out of spite the cunning woman used the forces of the Devil to curse him. She must be stopped from committing further evil, sir.’
Winstone covertly kicked Adam on the ankle and on cue he dropped to his knees and grabbed his throat, muttering in a half-strangled voice that he could not breathe and was in mortal fear of dying.
‘I did no such thing,’ yelled Alice, her anger now tinged with fear that some ghastly plot was being hatched against her. ‘I gave him but a few herbs to soothe his head, nothing more!’
‘This man says you called down the Devil, he saw apparitions in your dwelling,’ yapped the apothecary excitedly.
‘A great red-and-black monster with horns and cloven feet, hovering behind her!’ cried Adam, his voice miraculously recovered. There were murmurings and faint moans from the crowd clustered closely around.
‘You’re a liar, Adam Cuffe,’ roared the burly neighbour, grabbing the actor by the shoulder and shaking him. ‘This man is a well-known trickster, the dregs of the taverns down by the river. You can’t believe a word he says!’
‘Why should he lie? He has nothing to gain from it,’ bleated Walter Winstone, turning to the big priest for support.
Gilbert de Bosco, who had been silent until now, turned to the plump good-wife, trembling on her front doorstep. ‘Did this man come to you yesterday and ask for help?’ he grated ominously.
‘Yes, but only for a potion for his headache …’
‘Just answer my questions, woman, nothing more,’ snapped the canon. ‘And did you give him something and take money from him?’