A Plague of Heretics (3 page)

At the side of the cart lay a large pit, a dozen feet square and almost the depth of a man. Some distance away, three labourers leaned on shovels, their noses and mouths swathed in rags, knotted at the backs of their necks.

As the pedlar watched, he saw four other men, swaddled in cloaks and gloves, with hoods over their heads and cloths tied around their faces, begin to carry the bodies to the gaping pit. Near the east end of the small church, from which a bell tolled mournfully, a group of silent people watched, taking care not to come within fifty paces of the cart. The only exceptions were a tall man, dressed in sombre grey, and a diminutive priest with a slightly humped shoulder. On the side of the pit, the tall one stood, his black hair blowing in the breeze as he held the edge of his cloak across his mouth. The little priest took no such precautions, but was standing boldly on the very edge of the grave, reading loudly in Latin from a small book, his other hand making the sign of the cross as each corpse made its final short descent down into the earth.

The chapman turned to a burly man standing next to him, the foul smell from his soiled leather apron marking him out as a fuller.

‘What’s going on, friend? What tragedy was this?’ he asked.

The fuller looked suspiciously at the pedlar. ‘Where’ve you been these past few weeks?’ he snapped.

‘Just got off a boat down at the quayside.’

The other fellow backed away, his suspicions deepening. ‘Not from abroad, are you? From foreign parts?’

His aggressive tone made the packman hurriedly shake his head.

‘No, I’ve come no further than from Paignton, down the coast. Hoping to sell more of my needles and threads up this end of the county.’

The fuller relaxed with a grunt. ‘The yellow plague is back again, no doubt brought in by seamen from across the Channel. Twice it’s struck this village since last month.’

He nodded towards the churchyard, where the last body was being laid in the common grave. ‘A whole family there, laid low inside three days. Yellow as gorse flowers, the lot of them.’

They both watched as the men with spades advanced on the heap of red earth alongside the pit, preparing to fill it in without delay.

‘So who are the two men at the graveside?’ persisted the pedlar, a naturally inquisitive soul.

‘The tall one is the king’s coroner from Exeter, Sir John de Wolfe. The bailiff called him because there were six dead in one house. Why he was summoned, I can’t fathom, for it’s obvious that it wasn’t foul play.’

‘The other one’s the parish priest, I suppose?’

The fuller spat contemptuously on the ground. ‘Not him! Our craven bastard’s too scared to go near anyone with the plague, even to shrive them. That brave little fellow is the crowner’s clerk.’

As the crowd in the churchyard began to drift away, the chapman shouldered his pack and trudged away from the village, heading for open country. Weary though he was, he had no desire to stay around Lympstone, if the yellow sickness was stalking its lanes.

‘You can’t keep riding around half of Devonshire just to look at folks dying of a murrain,’ objected the sheriff, pouring de Wolfe some wine from a pitcher on his table. ‘There’s no profit in it for the king’s courts if there’s no crime – and sooner or later you’ll catch it yourself!’

As he picked up the cup and drank, the coroner grunted, his favourite form of response. ‘I agree, but what do I do when I get a message from a bailiff or a Serjeant of the Hundred? The law obliges them to notify me of any unusual deaths.’

Henry de Furnellis, a grizzled old knight almost a score of years older than John, shook his head. ‘Now that this yellow distemper is becoming more common along the coast, we’ll have to tell the local officers not to bother you with such deaths. I hope to God that it doesn’t spread further inland.’

The coroner, sprawled in a leather chair with his long legs sticking out towards the hearth, nodded his agreement. ‘The folk down there are blaming it on vessels coming in from across the Channel, but from what my shipmasters tell me, at the moment there’s no such disease in Normandy, Brittany or even Flanders.’

De Wolfe was a partner in a thriving wool-exporting business in Exeter, which had three vessels that regularly sailed back and forth to the places he had mentioned.

‘Well, just be careful, John!’ rumbled the sheriff. ‘We don’t want to lose you again, after just getting you back in harness.’

After being the county coroner for two years, de Wolfe had recently spent a few months in London at the king’s command but was now back and, three weeks earlier, had resumed his old duties.

They were sitting in the sheriffs chamber in the keep of Rougemont, Exeter’s brooding castle in the upper corner of the old walled city. Outside, the November morning was grey and cold, with an easterly wind hinting at early snow. John usually called upon his old Crusader friend each day, to discuss cases, politics and generally grumble about the world going to the dogs, in the way that older men do, though de Wolfe was only forty-two. Together they were the main law officers in Devon, the sheriff being the king’s representative in the county, responsible for keeping the peace and the collection of taxes, while the coroner had a multitude of functions, including the complicated business of bringing cases to the royal courts.

‘Are you settling back in again, John?’ asked his grey-haired colleague solicitously. He looked across at de Wolfe, who he thought was looking a little drawn and haggard. At the best of times, the coroner was hardly a cheerful soul, but now his long face, large hooked nose and the deep-set eyes below the dark eyebrows looked even grimmer than usual. His jet-black hair, worn long and swept back, unlike the neck-crop of most Norman gentry, was still without a trace of grey, but de Furnellis thought he detected signs of ageing in the coroner’s face.

‘I’m glad to be back home,’ said John in his deep, sonorous voice. ‘Westminster didn’t suit me. There was too little work and too much palace intrigue for my liking.’

‘And Matilda? How is she taking her return home?’

He spoke carefully, for he was well aware that this was a delicate subject. The coroner’s scowl deepened.

‘Bloody woman! Without her, life would be so much easier. She’s trapped with me, just as I am trapped with her.’

‘The convent didn’t suit her once again?’ probed Henry, though he knew the answer well enough.

De Wolfe shook his head, swallowing the last of his red wine before replying. ‘They won’t take her back again in Polsloe, that’s for sure. Twice she’s gone in there and twice she’s left. The beds are too hard, the food is too plain and they wear dowdy raiment, she says! What the hell does she expect in a nunnery?’ Moodily, he banged his wine-cup back on Henry’s desk.

‘Her main complaint now, one that’s eating her up inside, is that I deprived her of living in the royal court of Westminster when I resigned as Coroner of the Verge. She’ll never forgive me for that, as long as she lives.’

The sheriff decided to back away from such a sensitive subject, and he was saved further embarrassment by his chief clerk entering, to hover with a sheaf of parchments and an impatient expression on his lined face. De Wolfe took the hint and pushed himself to his feet to pick up his wolfskin cloak from a nearby bench.

‘I’ll see you in the Shire Court tomorrow, then,’ he promised. ‘I’ve only one case to present, left by Nicholas de Arundell.’

The mention of that name caused de Furnellis to shake his head sadly. ‘A nice young man, but not cut out to be a coroner,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a man so relieved when he was told that you were taking over once again.’

John gave a lopsided grin. ‘He wasn’t the only one! Even though I have to stay up in that damned draughty chamber in the gatehouse, it’s better than staying home with Matilda!’

He swung his cloak over his shoulders and loped out into the great hall of Rougemont.

The little priest who had braved the risks of pestilence in Lympstone was having his hair cut. This was a very public process, as he sat on a stool at the edge of Exeter’s High Street near Carfoix, where the four old Roman roads crossed at the centre of the city. The portly barber, who also pulled teeth and cut toenails and corns, charged half a penny for a haircut, though in Thomas de Peyne’s case this was hardly a bargain, as much of his thin lank hair was already shaved off for his priestly tonsure, a wide, bare circle on top of his head. Short of stature, Thomas had a thin face, a pointed nose and a weak chin, as well as a lame leg from the effects of spinal phthisis as a child, but an agile mind and a good education more than compensated for his poor physique.

As the man snipped away with his rusting scissors, Thomas’s attention was drawn to a small crowd on the opposite side of the crossing. They were listening with varying degrees of attention to a man standing outside a baker’s shop, earnestly lecturing them, with many flourishes of his arms. Due to the rumble of carts and barrows and the constant cries of stallholders yelling the merits of their goods, it was difficult for Thomas to follow what he was saying, but what he could hear obviously had some religious significance. However, the words ‘free will’ and ‘man makes his own destiny’ were enough to tell the little priest that the man haranguing his unresponsive audience was one of those who followed an alternative path to God from that offered by the Church of Rome.

When the barber had brushed off the remaining hairs from his worn cassock and relieved him of his halfpenny, Thomas dodged a porter jogging past with huge bales of wool balanced on his shoulder-pole and limped across the narrow street to listen to the orator. His interest was mainly professional, as Thomas was a conventional, devoted servant of the Church, faithful to all its tenets and rituals. However, though his faith was rock solid, he had an academic interest in the beliefs of those outside the Roman Church, ranging from Mohammedans to the various critics and non-conformists within the Christian world itself.

As he neared the fringe of the dozen people, including a couple of matrons clutching market baskets, he heard mutters of discontent from some.

‘It’s blasphemy. It ought not to be allowed!’ came a wavering voice from an old grey-bearded man.

‘The cathedral should lock him up, the scurrilous bastard!’ came a more forthright comment.

Thomas stopped to listen for a few moments, as the crowd shifted, some leaving and a few more stopping as they passed along the crowded street. He heard nothing he had not heard before, as mild heresy was not that uncommon, either from unguarded tongues loosened by drink in alehouses or more discreet discussions behind closed doors. The present exponent, an emaciated fellow dressed in poor clothing, was broadcasting his beliefs about the way in which the Father and Son should be worshipped. It was somewhat unusual, and certainly risky, for such views to be shouted abroad in a city street, but Thomas had no intention of doing the cathedral proctors’ work for them by denouncing or arresting the fellow.

He listened for a few moments and decided that the arguments that the man was setting forth were typical of those heretics who declared that all men had free will and that the Catholic Church was corrupt.

‘Man can only be saved by knowing himself, not by intercession with the true God only through the priesthood,’ the man brayed.

Thomas sighed at the obviously Gnostic preachings of the poor fellow and moved away from the crowd, who were becoming more irate at the blasphemies of the speaker. If the onlookers did not beat him up, then the orator was in danger of being picked up by the emissaries of Bishop Marshal, thought Thomas, especially if some canon or vicar happened to be passing by.

As he made his way back up the crowded High Street, he consoled himself with the thought that Rome had had to contend with heretics for almost a thousand years and that some poor crank yelling on an Exeter street was hardly likely to bring the Christian Church crashing to its knees.

It was still only about the eighth hour of the morning and he had no duties at the cathedral until two hours before noon, when he was due to teach Latin grammar to a class of unruly choirboys. A couple of months had passed since the coroner’s team had returned from London, and since his master had been reinstated in his old job they had returned to their long-established routine of meeting each morning in the bleak chamber at the top of the castle gatehouse.

He limped along the High Street and then up the steep slope of Castle Hill and across the drawbridge of the dry moat, to the inner gate of Rougemont. A young soldier, who looked hardly old enough to handle sharp weapons, was on guard duty and waved him through with a cheerful greeting. Inside the arch, Thomas turned into the guard-room, where three more men-at-arms were squatting on the earth floor playing dice. They ignored him as he crossed to a low doorway and laboriously began to climb a stone staircase set into the thick wall. Two floors up, he pushed through a curtain of sacking meant to reduce draughts and went into a barren room with two arrow-slit windows that gave a view down over the city.

‘Here’s our favourite dwarf!’ cackled a huge man sitting on the sill of one of the window embrasures. He had tangled ginger hair and large pair of drooping moustaches to match. A ruddy face with a large bulbous nose was relieved by bright blue eyes. Gwyn of Polruan was the coroner’s officer, a former Cornish fisherman who had spent the past twenty years as John de Wolfe’s bodyguard, squire and faithful friend. He had a very large body, encased as usual in coarse serge breeches and a tattered leather jerkin.