‘More or less … certainly in the same vein of unbelievable nonsense about Alice’s activities. Seeing her ride through the air in the moonlight, of her cat turning into a huge bat — and casting spells on men so that they lost their potency — that was a favourite among those deluded liars.’ Again the archdeacon sounded more bitter than John had ever known him.
‘But was all that sufficient for the bishop’s court to find her guilty?’ he asked.
The priest shook his head. ‘No, as I told you before, canon law requires that some criminal damage have resulted from her actions — but that was easy for the court to substantiate, especially when the court was solely Gilbert de Bosco. That Cuffe fellow swore that he knew of a sow and a whole litter of pigs that had dropped dead because of a curse that the woman had placed on them at the instance of a spiteful neighbour. And another witness said that she knew of two women who miscarried, having been interfered with by Theophania. That was more than sufficient to constitute criminal damage.’
‘And with Jolenta of Ide?’
De Alençon shrugged. ‘As I said, the spurious facts matter little. There was some hint of salacious evil there, as there were allegations of an incubus being involved.’
‘What the devil is an incubus?’ growled de Wolfe.
The glimmer of a smile crossed the priest’s face, in spite of the seriousness of the topic. ‘You’ve already said it, John! An incubus is a masculine devil that comes at night to have carnal relations with a woman — I believe that the female equivalent is called a succubus. They are supposed to give birth to witches.’
There was silence for a moment as they sipped their wine in gloomy outrage.
‘Was there nothing that you could do or say on their behalf, John?’ asked the coroner, almost reproachfully.
‘I could do nothing, God forgive me,’ answered de Alençon, as he crossed himself. ‘I had no standing at all in that court. Henry Marshal had specifically appointed Gilbert as chancellor and I was but a spectator. I tried to reason with him before the court began, but he stiffly told me that he was the bishop’s nominee and to mind my own business. I had no valid answer to that.’
‘So the poor women are now committed to the sheriff’s court for sentencing?’
The archdeacon nodded sadly. ‘At least they can stay in the proctors’ cells until then and not be humiliated further by being dragged to that foul pit in Rougemont, to be mishandled by that pervert Stigand.’ He was referring to the obese and mentally retarded gaoler who guarded the filthy cells beneath the castle keep.
‘But it will mean hanging, John,’ said de Wolfe sadly. ‘When the sheriff gets back he’ll take his allotted part in this rotten conspiracy.’
‘I’m afraid so, there is no other penalty. Just the lies about the dead sow, the miscarriages and the ravishment by an incubus are more than enough to send them to the gallows. And many of the townsfolk are happy with this — they were clamouring outside the chapter house, waiting for the verdict, shouting and yelling, demanding death for all witches. It was disgusting!’
There was another silence as they contemplated the situation.
‘One dead and two others on the way! What’s going on, my friend?’ asked the coroner. ‘Why this sudden vendetta against old wives, when for centuries they have been left in peace to peddle their potions and mumble their spells?’
De Alençon shook his grey head. ‘I just don’t know, John, but I fear we’ve not seen the end of it yet. One wonders who will be next?’
While John de Wolfe was eating his supper with Matilda in their usual glum silence that evening, Walter Winstone was in the upper room of his shop in Waterbeer Street, looking lovingly at the strongbox where he kept his money. He had even unlocked it in anticipation of adding the cash that Henry de Hocforde was sending to him.
Outside, it was raining again, to the despair of bailiffs, reeves and the peasantry, who were beginning to accept with fearful resignation that the harvest would be dismal and that winter would again see starvation stalk the land. The apothecary cared nothing about this, as for those with money there was always food to be bought, albeit at high cost from imports from across the Channel. Impatiently, he waited for his finances to be swollen by de Hocforde’s capitulation, once again cursing the man for not accepting that his poison was the cause for the other mill-owner’s demise.
There was a gruff shout from below and Walter hurried to the top of the ladder that led down to his storeroom. He had given his apprentice a rare evening off, to prevent the nosy youth from overhearing any talk about money, so the voice had to be that of the promised messenger.
‘Have you brought me a package, fellow?’ he called down.
A burly figure appeared at the foot of the steps and stared up at him.
‘Are you the apothecary? Henry de Hocforde sent me with this.’ He was clutching a large hessian bag which he hoisted up to show Walter.
The apothecary nodded. ‘Leave it there. I’ll fetch it up in a moment.’
‘No, the master said you were to count it in front of me,’ growled the messenger. ‘He says he doesn’t want to be accused of short-changing you — and I don’t want it said that I dipped my hand into it on the way here.’
The thought of losing some of his coins made Walter stump down the ladder, his stiff leg clacking on the wide rungs as he went. As he reached the bottom, the man reached into the bag, but pulled out not a handful of silver pennies but the head of a pole-axe with a sawn-off handle. On the reverse of the axe-blade was a wicked spike as long as a hand, and before the apothecary had time to understand what was happening, it was buried deep inside his skull. Hugh Furrel, the supposed messenger, was in fact a professional slaughterman from the Shambles and was used to swinging a full-length pole-axe at cattle, so dispatching a small man with a shorter one posed no problem. In fact, this was the second this evening, as he had come directly from Fore Street, where he had performed the same service on the wizard Elias Trempole, leaving his body in a pool of blood in his back yard.
Dropping his truncated weapon back into the bag, Hugh Furrel went cautiously to the door of the shop and peered out. When he was satisfied that no one was near the house, he slipped out and sauntered along to his favourite haunt, the Saracen, where he celebrated his success by spending some of Henry de Hocforde’s blood-money on a few quarts of Willem the Fleming’s ale.
The bodies were found almost simultaneously, less than an hour later, but the coroner was first called to Waterbeer Street. Without Gwyn or his clerk he felt vaguely incomplete, but made do with the two burgesses’s constables, Osric and his plumper colleague, whose name John could never remember. The downtrodden — and now unemployed — apprentice had discovered the murder when he returned from his unexpected break and had hared off around the corner to the Guildhall, behind which the constables had a small hut as their headquarters. Osric had summoned de Wolfe, but by this time a trio of excited townsfolk had run up from Fore Street to report that their neighbour Elias Trempole had been found dead in his yard by his wife, when she returned from visiting her sister in Curre Street.
When the constable arrived in Martin’s Lane, John was about to take his hound for a convenient walk in the direction of the Bush inn, as Matilda had already retired for the night. However, his irritation at the frustration of his amorous intentions faded when he realised that not only was the first victim one who was Canon Gilbert’s supporter in the witch-hunt, but that Elias Trempole, according to Osric, was a well-known cunning man. The coincidence was further strengthened when he was told that the mode of death in both cases was identical.
In the back room of the apothecary’s shop, which was now being guarded by the other, fatter constable, he found the remains of Walter Winstone lying crumpled at the foot of the ladder. On the top of his head was a large circular hole, from which blood and brains welled out. There were no other injuries to be seen, and on the apothecary’s face was an expression of utter astonishment, the eyes being open and staring almost beseechingly at the coroner, asking for some explanation of this highly inconvenient event.