John turned to Ralph Morin, who looked more unhappy than he had ever seen him before. ‘De Revelle threatened me with this, as I told you. I didn’t think he’d go through with it, though.’
The castellan turned up his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘He’s desperate, John. I think he wants to use Gwyn as a hostage, something to bargain with for you withdrawing your claim that he dipped his hand into that box of gold and silver. I’ve the feeling that he’s got something else nasty up his sleeve too, but I don’t know what it is.’ He paused and tugged at one of the points of his forked beard in an angry gesture of concern. ‘Anyway, he gave me orders — point-blank orders — to clap Gwyn in a cell. As the sheriff represents the King in this county and I’m a royal appointee in a royal castle, I don’t see any way of disobeying such a direct order, if I want to keep my own neck from being stretched!’
‘The King, God bless him, would never sanction this,’ cut in the sergeant, outraged at the whole affair.
‘Nor would Hubert Walter, if he knew about it,’ grunted Ralph. ‘But it would take a couple of weeks to get a message to him and a reply, for he’s in London.’
The mention of the Chief Justiciar, virtually the regent of England now that King Richard had gone back permanently to France, decided de Wolfe that this was probably the only course. ‘De Revelle has gone too far this time. I must get word to Hubert Walter as soon as I can, but that’s not going to solve our present problem.’ He sighed and looked across at Gwyn, whose whiskered face showed both anger and apprehension. ‘I’ll have to go up and talk to that mad brother-in-law of mine and try to do some kind of a deal with him.’
Ralph Morin nodded his big head — he was as tall as de Wolfe and almost as burly as the Cornishman. ‘But what about Gwyn? We can’t stand here undecided all night.’
The coroner’s officer solved the problem himself. ‘Duty is duty, I know that very well,’ he said with a sad air of resignation. ‘I don’t want to get my friends into trouble that could end on the gallows-tree. I’ll go and sit in a cell to satisfy that swine upstairs, until the crowner sorts out this mess.’ He swung around to Stigand, who was still standing a little way off, his slack mouth half open and his piggy eyes darting from one to the other. ‘But only if this slobbering idiot goes and cleans out a cell of its filth and puts some clean straw in there!’ He made a sudden mock leap towards the gaoler, who squeaked in fear and waddled off towards the iron gate.
‘I’ll bring some food down for you, Gwyn,’ promised Thomas, worried out of his mind at the predicament of his big friend.
‘And I’ll fetch some ale,’ added Gabriel. ‘We can sit and play some dice until this nonsense is settled, eh?’
John felt that the others were putting a brave face on the situation for his officer’s sake and although he gave Gwyn a reassuring slap on the back and bade him a confident farewell, he followed the constable out of the undercroft with heavy foreboding in his heart.
As that particular drama was being played out in the undercroft of Rougemont, Cecilia de Pridias was meeting Canon Gilbert in his house in the Close. Although he was her cousin, she was chaperoned by her daughter Avise and her dull husband Roger Hamund. They sat in Gilbert’s study, furnished far more comfortably than the spartan room of John de Alençon, three doors away. Gilbert had several prebends, all serviced by under-paid vicars, so together with his perquisites from the cathedral and the rents from several properties he owned in Exeter and Crediton, he was relatively affluent and saw no reason to stint himself when it came to creature comforts. The room had an oak table and several chairs, two of which had padded seats and backs, a luxury indeed. There was a side locker with wine and Flemish glasses on top and several wall cupboards, between which hung tapestries to relieve the coldness of the stone walls. A small fireplace with a chimney rising to the ceiling was another modern innovation and the only token of an ecclesiastical establishment was a small gilt crucifix on one wall.
Gilbert’s guests sat around the table and his steward entered to serve wine, then discreetly left, closing the door behind him — though he listened with his ear to the crack for some minutes.
Cecilia had no particular reason for meeting with her cousin, other than to keep in touch over their campaign, making sure that the canon’s enthusiasm was not waning. She need not have worried, for once launched on this mission, Gilbert’s obsessive nature fed upon itself. Even though he kept his eye upon the long-term advantages to his progress in the hierarchy of the Church, the crusade itself had gripped him, and he felt that this was a mission that had been waiting for him for years. Although not particularly devout in terms of a desperate affection for the Holy Trinity, he had begun to believe that God had marked him out for this campaign and that ridding the area of heresy and apostasy in the shape of witches was now his life’s work.
His widowed cousin was equally enthusiastic and again the excitement of the hunt was for her a self-fulfilling emotion bordering on hysteria. Although her original motive had been to find and punish the sorcerer who had brought about her husband’s death by putting a lethal spell upon him, this had broadened out into a pogrom against all cunning men and women. However, the death of her Robert was still to the fore of her mind and soon surfaced in their discussion.
‘Do you think any of these wicked dames was responsible, Gilbert?’ she asked.
The canon heaved his well-covered shoulders. ‘There is no way of telling, cousin. The hanged one is now beyond any questioning and I doubt if the other pair will confess. Unfortunately, the proctors have no means of extracting the truth from them, and though the sheriff’s court will undoubtedly hang them for us, they will not administer the peine forte et dure to get a true account of their misdeeds.’
‘What about that strange episode some days ago, when that man in Fore Street was murdered?’ asked Avise. Although not nearly so keen on hunting witches as her obsessive mother, she was a great gossip and liked to keep abreast of all the news in the city.
‘They say that he was one of those cunning people, even though Elias was a man,’ added Roger, speaking for the first and only time.
Gilbert poured some more wine. ‘I heard the same rumour and I am quite prepared to believe it. All I can think of is that our exhortations, especially those I delivered through the parish priests, moved someone who had suffered from his devilish acts to take the law into his own hands, as did that crowd in Bretayne.’ He took a sip of wine and added sententiously, ‘I cannot bring myself to condemn either them or him, if that is what some aggrieved souls did to avenge themselves and to prevent him doing further harm to other folk.’
The quick mind of Cecilia saw a flaw in this explanation. ‘But what about the killing of our supporter, Walter the apothecary? I hear that the means by which he was killed was identical — and Walter was no magician.’
‘Neither was he much of a physician,’ added Avise cynically, which earned her an icy look from her mother.
Gilbert’s big, ruddy face creased in doubt. ‘That is strange, I admit,’ he confessed. ‘But I doubt it is anything to do with our interests — though it is a pity that he was taken from us, as he was as keen as we to see these shameful people brought to justice.’
Cecilia de Pridias was eager to look ahead. ‘Though four of these sorcerers have been dealt with, one way or another, there must surely be many more, both in the city and in the villages near by. How can these be flushed out, to rid decent Christian folk of their evil influence?’
The burly priest was glad see how keen his kinswoman was to help, and his ego persuaded him to part with a little knowledge that he had intended to keep to himself. ‘Since they saw what happens to their loathsome kind, the rest are lying low, to save their own skins — and for that we must be thankful, for it helps us achieve our object of protecting the God-fearing from their satanic activities.’ He smirked and rubbed his hands together in anticipation of good news. ‘But I am about to come by some more information that should lead to the unmasking of another cunning woman. Our good friend and supporter Sir Richard de Revelle says that he knows of an unfortunate person who wishes to denounce someone who has wronged her. He is sending this informer down to see me this very evening.’