A Plague of Heretics (9 page)

The monk bent down and picked up something wrapped in a rag from alongside the cadaver. ‘This is his tongue and throat parts,’ he said, unrolling the bloodstained cloth. ‘It should be buried with the body, for decency’s sake.’

Gwyn poked at it with a finger, while Thomas contrived to look elsewhere. ‘Must have been a damned sharp knife, Crowner,’ he observed. ‘Clean cuts, very little ragged edges.’

‘I try to heal bodies, rather than disordered minds,’ said Saulf gravely. ‘But I would have thought that whoever did this was making retribution for something that this poor man had said.’

De Wolfe stared thoughtfully at the Benedictine. ‘You suggest that cutting out the tongue and voice-box, the organs of speech, might mean that the victim had caused offence?’

‘Must have been a bit more serious than just telling him to bugger off!’ offered Gwyn facetiously.

They examined the body carefully, but apart from the wound on the head there was nothing else of significance. The scrip on his belt contained four pence and a tarnished medallion of St Christopher. The fingers were slightly callused and had some small healing cuts, consistent with his work as a woodcarver. The monk pulled the sheet back over the body when they had finished. ‘What happens now?’ he asked. ‘Did he have any relatives that will attend to his burial?’

De Wolfe straightened his back and moved away from the corpse. ‘We will have to make enquiries at his home, then I will have to hold an inquest. I will let you know about disposing of the body as soon as I can.’ He offered a dozen pennies to Saulf, which the monk gratefully received as a donation to the funds of the hard-pressed hospital, then left with his two assistants. They made their way down to Curre Street, which was one of the small lanes that led from the High Street towards the North Gate. It was lined with a mixture of houses and tenements, varying in size and shape, some with shopfronts and others being the work premises of various crafts. They found Osric outside a cordwainer’s shop, talking to the owner.

‘I was just asking about Nicholas Budd, Crowner,’ the town constable explained. ‘His workshop is next door, and this man says that Nicholas was at home the day before yesterday, but he’s not seen him since.’

‘Kept himself to himself, did Budd,’ volunteered the shoemaker. ‘Nice enough fellow, but very quiet. Lived alone, can’t say as if I’ve ever heard of him speak of family. Certainly, he never had no visitors here.’

There was no more to be learned, and Osric confirmed that his enquiries elsewhere along the street had been equally barren.

‘Let’s have a look in his house,’ commanded John, pushing open the door, which was unlocked. Nicholas Budd had occupied the ground floor of the small thatched house, the upper storey being used by a family of six who gained access by steps from the backyard. The woodcarver used the front part of his premises for his trade, with two workbenches, stacks of seasoned timber and a rack of tools on the wall. The floor was ankle deep in shavings and offcuts, but beyond a flimsy wattle partition, the rear part of the premises was clean. A firepit, now cold and dead, occupied the centre, and a table, a stool and a blanket-covered palliasse on the floor were the only furniture in Budd’s living quarters. Some food and few pots were on the table, and a small keg of cider stood in one corner.

John sent Gwyn into the yard to look around and to make enquiries among the people upstairs, while he and Thomas looked around the ground floor. There was little enough to study, and within a couple of minutes they had drawn a blank.

‘So why was the poor devil so cruelly mutilated?’ muttered de Wolfe pensively. ‘It seems he had no life other than carving his bloody wood, by the looks of it.’

Thomas nodded, his beady eyes roving around the living room.

‘Not even a cross or a pilgrim’s badge on the wall. Yet something he did must have caused great offence to someone.’

Gwyn came down to report that the goodwife upstairs had not heard her neighbour since the day before yesterday. ‘Usually, she hears him sawing and chopping down here. So it looks as if he met his death the night before last.’

‘Did she say anything about relatives who might wish to know of his death – and who might pay for his burial?’ asked John.

Gwyn shook his head, his ginger locks swinging wildly. ‘She knew very little about him, it seems. Thinks he came here from Bristol a couple of years ago. Doesn’t attend any church, which apparently causes offence to some of the neighbours.’

With nothing more to be learned, the trio took themselves off to the castle gatehouse, where they ate some bread and cheese and drank ale mulled with an old sword heated in the brazier.

Thomas was never keen on ale, a great handicap in a world where it was almost the only safe drink, given the dangers of all water, whether drawn from wells, rivers or ditches. However, when heated, Thomas could tolerate it better, though he preferred cider.

‘You must round up a jury for this afternoon, Gwyn,’ said de Wolfe. ‘Osric, Theobald, the lad who found the body and a few folk from Raden Lane who were knocked up by the constables. We’ll look on them “First Finders”, though as usual they’ll know damn all about what happened.’

‘Best add that shoemaker and the woman upstairs from Curre Street,’ said the Cornishman. ‘I wonder if he was in a craft guild – they might pay for his burial expenses?’

‘Who did he work for, I wonder?’ mused de Wolfe. ‘Must be a freeman on his own, I expect. If he carved stuff for churches, maybe my friend the archdeacon might know of him?’

The coroner was correct in this, but not in quite the way he expected.

Some time before noon, John made his way back towards Martin’s Lane for dinner, taking his horse Odin back to the livery stables opposite. He had ridden out to the gallows on Magdalen Street to witness and record the hanging of two thieves and a captured outlaw, a sight which in no way put him off his expected meal. However, on the doorstep he met Mary clutching a basket filled with new bread and a brace of sea fish from the market.

‘Your dinner will be another hour, Sir Coroner,’ she announced firmly. ‘My fire went out, thanks to the damp wood that old fool Simon has been chopping, so I had to relight it.’ In spite of her protests, he tore a chunk off one of the loaves and loped away, chewing the warm bread.

‘I’ll go down to see the archdeacon while I’m waiting,’ he called over his shoulder as he headed for Canon’s Row. This was where some of the prebendaries of the cathedral lived, only a few hundred paces from his house. It lay along the north side of the Close, the large burial ground outside the huge twin-towered church of St Mary and St Peter.

One of the houses was occupied by Canon John de Alençon, one of the four archdeacons of the diocese. An uncle of Thomas de Peyne, he was the one who several years before had prevailed on John to take on the disgraced and penniless priest as his clerk. He was an old friend of the coroner, an ascetic with a strong sense of justice and piety, his only worldly weakness being a love of fine wines. As usual, he offered the coroner a cup of an excellent Anjou red as a preprandial drink. They sat in de Alençon’s study, a spartan room contrasting strongly with the luxurious accommodation beloved of many of the senior churchmen.

‘It’s good to have you back as Exeter’s coroner, John,’ said the archdeacon warmly. ‘But I hear you have already had a distressing problem?’

‘This strange murder up near the East Gate? It’s not every day we get victims with their tongues and throats slashed out.’

‘Who was he? I’ve heard no details of the tragedy.’

John took a sip of the luscious red fluid. ‘That’s partly why I called, to see if you knew of him. He was a carver of devotional objects, so I thought maybe you had had dealings with him.’

De Alençon stared at his friend in surprise. ‘A woodcarver? Surely you can’t mean Nicholas Budd?’

‘You knew him, then? I thought you might and wondered if you could tell me something of him.’

The archdeacon looked suddenly very sombre, his thin face and crinkled grey hair giving him a stern appearance above his black cassock.

‘I can tell you a lot about him, John! In fact, Nicholas was due to get into the public eye very soon, though not in the horrific way you describe.’

De Wolfe placed his wine-cup down carefully on the table. This was far more than he expected and he thought again how often chance ideas turned up vital information. ‘Tell me, then,’ he said, and his friend continued his story.

‘The cathedral chapter and the bishop’s legal deacon have been debating what to do about Budd for some weeks – and only last Friday, several of the canons gave instructions for him to be arraigned before a special court.’

John’s black eyebrows rose. ‘What’s he been up to? Ravishing the nuns at Polsloe?’

His friend ignored his flippancy; this was a serious matter. ‘In the opinion of some of my fellow canons, that would be a trivial offence compared with what they consider his mortal sins. They want him to be tried for heresy.’

‘Heresy? I thought that was something that was known only in France and Germany – not that I know much about it,’ admitted the coroner.

His friend shook his head sadly. ‘I agree that it is not openly evident in England, where thankfully the rule of Rome is rarely challenged. But under the surface there are still those who doubt or even strongly dispute the right of the Church to be the only channel of intercession between man and God.’

De Wolfe was neither an educated person nor had he much interest in religion, other than a passive acceptance of the inflexible dominance of the Church, instilled into everyone from childhood. He was more interested to know why Nicholas Budd had had his throat torn out.

‘So what has this woodworker been doing, to bring down the wrath of your chapter upon him?’

The archdeacon sighed. ‘It was not what he was doing, John, but what he was
saying.
One of the proctors’ bailiffs heard Budd talking to a group of labourers on the quayside, dispensing the usual nonsense about every man being his own salvation. The proctor told one of my colleagues and he began a crusade against this man.’

He paused to sip his wine and sighed again. ‘I’m afraid the matter has escalated since then, as this canon found supporters for his views and has forced the chapter to take the matter to the bishop. It is difficult for me, as I admit to not having such strong feelings about the issue as some of my colleagues.’

The archdeacon paused to top up John’s cup before continuing. ‘Somewhat to my discomfort, I am the one who will have to deal with this matter, as the bishop appointed me as his vicar-general. Unlike some other dioceses, the bishop here has no chancellor to deal with such administrative and disciplinary matters.’

‘But I thought that the chapter dealt with such things?’ objected John, to whom the labyrinthine workings of the Church were a mystery.

De Alençon shook his grey head. ‘It has been traditional for the archdeacon of the see to be given this duty. In fact, we are sometimes called the
oculus episcopi
, “the eye of the bishop” – which does not increase my popularity with my brother canons, who sometimes suspect me of being Henry Marshal’s spy!’

De Wolfe looked at the priest from under lowered brows. ‘I get the feeling that you are not as enthusiastic as your brothers about pursuing this man?’

‘I am not, John. Our Church has been plagued by such critics since its early days in Rome. Then they posed a more serious threat, but stern measures over the centuries have repulsed them until, certainly in this country, they are mere irritations like the fleas and lice in our hair.’

‘I have heard somewhere that in the south of France there are many who challenge the supremacy of the Roman Church,’ said de Wolfe.

‘That is true. That area has always been full of strange beliefs, such as claiming that the Holy Mother herself fled there with Mary Magdalene – ludicrous, when everyone knows that after the Crucifixion she went to Ephesus to live out her days near St John.’

The coroner did not know that, but he failed to see the relevance. ‘Are they not called after the town of Albi?’ he asked as he stood up to leave. ‘I once rode through there to get to some campaign in Toulouse.’

De Alençon nodded. ‘The Albigensians, sometimes called the Cathars. They might pose a threat one day and will have to be dealt with, but I doubt we have many adherents in Devon.’ He finished his wine and saw his friend to the door. ‘If you want to know more, get my nephew Thomas to give you a lecture! He’s always keen to show off his knowledge.’

As they stood on the doorstep, John had a final question. ‘What will happen to this enquiry now that Budd is dead?’

John de Alençon shrugged. ‘No doubt it will be dropped, as Canon fitz Rogo can hardly press for the prosecution of a corpse.’

With much more to think about than when he came, the coroner left the cathedral precinct and went home to Mary’s grilled fish.

The inquest on the woodcarver that afternoon was a brief and unhelpful formality. For convenience, John held it in the yard behind St John’s, adjacent to the ramshackle mortuary. Gwyn had assembled a dozen men and older boys for a jury, which included anyone who might be of use as a witness. The enquiry had to be held with a viewing of the corpse, so Gwyn had lifted it out of the shed and laid it gently on the ground. He left the sheet over it for as long as possible, but at some stage the dreadful wound had to be displayed to the jurymen.