Sword of Shame (12 page)

‘Your man? What man is that?'

‘Elias Palmer, my protector. He runs three of the girls in this house.'

John nodded his understanding. The premises were used by several pimps and their girls, paying a rent to the owner of the house, who could be anyone, even one of the city burgesses. In some towns, there were brothels owned by senior churchmen. However, this was not getting him anywhere in respect of his investigation.

‘What about the night he was killed nearby? Anything different about that night? Was he alone?'

‘He was always alone, sir. He never talked to me much, he was too busy doing other things.' She smiled up at de Wolfe innocently.

‘Did you see him paying your man? Did he have a purse on his belt?'

A cloud seemed to pass over the girl's face and her manner changed. ‘He did have a purse, sir. He always did.'

De Wolfe's instincts were aroused. There was something here. ‘Come girl, tell me exactly. Was this Elias in the room here with you then?'

She shook her head, looking decidedly evasive now. ‘He never came in, in case the gentleman was still having his pleasure. He always waited at the bottom of the stairs for his money.'

‘This night, did he follow Walter Tyrell out into the street?'

Bernice's open nature seemed to return, as she felt on safer ground. ‘No sir, he came back up to me as he always did, to give me the two pennies I had earned.' There was a ring of truth about this, but John still smelt a rat.

‘Bernice, you are not telling me everything!' he barked, bending down towards her so that his intimidating dark face was pushed almost into hers.

The girl suddenly burst into tears. ‘I told Elias that Walter had a very large purse that night. I even saw the glint of a gold bezant, when he opened it to give me an extra penny for myself.'

A feeling of triumph began to steal through John's soul. Here was something worth pursuing. ‘So what did Elias do then?' he demanded.

Bernice shrugged, two tears coursing down her pleasant face. ‘Nothing, sir. Just went downstairs again.'

De Wolfe straightened up and on an impulse, stroked the top of the distressed girl's head. ‘Calm yourself, girl. I'm going now. But where can I find this Elias Palmer?'

The round face came up again, the smile back in place. ‘Old Maud might know, sir. He's always around somewhere.'

Downstairs, he found the woman sitting on an upturned bucket in the unkempt backyard. At his demand, she waddled back into the passageway and yelled for Elias outside the first door on the left. Impatiently, de Wolfe thrust aside the leather curtain and saw a man lying face down on the bed, his breeches around his ankles.

As he jumped up in surprise, grabbing for his nether garments, there was a squawk from beneath him and a girl rapidly hoisted a tattered blanket over her head.

‘Who the hell are you, damn it?' demanded the man furiously, as he pulled his breeches up below his short tunic and fumbled with his belt.

‘Sampling your own goods, eh?' replied John sarcastically. ‘I'm the coroner and I want a word with you. Come out into the yard when you're decent.'

A moment later, Elias Palmer appeared reluctantly through the back door. He was a dandified fellow of middle height, with a shock of light brown hair. His otherwise unremarkable face was disfigured by a livid birthmark that covered the whole of one cheek and part of his temple.

‘What do you want from me, Crowner?' he mumbled. ‘There's no law against running a few girls.'

John was not sure if there was or not, but it was of no interest to him. ‘What did you do with the money, Elias?' he snapped, poking his head forward like a vulture examining its next meal.

‘What money? I don't know what you're talking about?' stammered the whoremonger, but his whole attitude shouted that he did indeed know.

‘Walter Tyrell, that's what I'm talking about!' yelled de Wolfe. ‘Bernice told you he had a fat purse with gold in it, didn't she?'

‘What if she did?' faltered Elias. ‘There's no harm in gossip.'

‘But there's harm in murder, Elias!' snarled the coroner. ‘You followed him out to that side alley, killed him and stole his purse. Admit it now, for you're going to swing for it, one way or the other.'

Elias looked wildly about him, stammering denials. At the back door, the faces of old Maud, Bernice and the other girl peered out in fearful fascination. With
a sudden lunge, Elias turned and made for the fence that ran around the small yard. With de Wolfe pounding after him, he got to the rickety gate to fumble with the rusty catch. John remembered that he had Gwyn's sword hanging from his baldric and with a swish, he drew it from the scabbard. There was a flash of sunlight reflected from its blade as he swung it high and brought it down on the top bar of the gate, an inch from Elias's feverish fingers. The steel sliced clean through the wood and stuck quivering in the thicker central bar, pinning the loose hem of the man's tunic to the gate.

Almost gibbering with fear, Elias dropped to the ground, his tunic ripping, as he held his hands up in supplication to the coroner.

‘I didn't kill him, sir, I swear. I just took the purse from his dead body.'

John hauled him to his feet and jabbed him none too gently in the back with the point of the sword.

‘You can tell that to the king's justices at the next Eyre of Assize,' he promised grimly.

 

St James's Priory was a small religious house on the bank of the river, between Exeter and Topsham. The prior and four monks were Cluniacs, their mother house being St Martin's in Paris and they led a quiet existence, tending their vegetable plots and fish-traps on the Exe.

When Thomas had visited Gwyn, he had found him well-fed and comfortable, but fretting at his incarceration, unable to visit his wife and children. On the afternoon following his visit to the brothel, de Wolfe went down to see his henchman. He took care to ensure that none of the sheriff's spies was following him, as he knew that de Revelle was still trying to discover where John's officer was hidden.

‘How long am I going to be stuck here?' demanded the Cornishman. ‘Thomas has been very good, bringing me news of my family, but if I stay here much longer, I'll turn into a bloody monk myself!'

John brought him up to date on events, especially his arrest of Elias Palmer, who was now confined in Rougemont, where the cells had been emptied by this week's hangings. The pimp, while steadfastly denying the murder, had confessed to taking the purse from Walter's belt and, in fact, led John to a chest in his own room in the brothel where he produced the bag, still filled with coin.

‘But the damned sheriff still won't accept that he killed Tyrell, the obstinate swine,' fumed John. ‘He still believes that I have spirited you away somewhere and says that he'll wait until doomsday to bring you before his court.'

‘Does he admit that he worked that swindle over the chicken blood on my sword?'

‘Not at all! Even though I told him that Christina had admitted knowing about it–which is stretching the truth a little.'

‘That poxy sword!' muttered Gwyn. ‘It's got me into trouble again, damn it.'

John pulled aside his riding cloak to show the ornate sheath dangling from his baldric, the diagonal strap over his shoulder that took the weight of the weapon. ‘I've brought it down for you, in case there's any trouble if de Revelle does discover where you are.'

‘Thank you, Crowner,' said Gwyn, rather diffidently. ‘But that thing has brought me nothing but ill-fortune. Grateful as I am for your gift, I think I'd like to see it exchanged for a less grand weapon, as I'm convinced there's something about it that brings bad luck.'

Gwyn's pure Celtic blood gave him a strongly superstitious nature and John had learned that it was futile
to argue with him. He agreed to return it to Roger Trudogge and negotiate for a less ornate blade.

Feeling frustrated with his lack of progress in closing this affair, de Wolfe rode back to Exeter, pondering his next moves in trying to lift the cloud of suspicion that still hung over Gwyn. Every so often, a worm of doubt wriggled in his mind, whispering that the big man might really have killed the fuller, but each time John crushed the notion, knowing in his heart that though Gwyn might swing at someone in a raging temper, there was no way that he would lay in wait for them in a dark alley.

The problem was that the sheriff resolutely refused to give up this golden opportunity to hurt his brother-in-law, in revenge for John's earlier exposure of him as a potential traitor and rebel. Only Matilda's intercession had saved Richard from the ignominy of dismissal and possible arrest.

‘How in God's name can I convince everyone that this thieving whoremonger is the real culprit?' he muttered under his breath, as he rode Odin through the same South Gate where his officer had been briefly imprisoned. He thought of putting Elias to the Ordeal, a form of torture involving hot irons or boiling water, but that was intended to try the issue of guilt or innocence, not to extract a confession. Maybe he could submit him to a ‘pressing', usually reserved for suspects who refused to answer any questions, being ‘mute of malice'. The unfortunate victim was manacled to the ground and had iron weights placed on his chest, the number being increased until he either confessed or died. However, a coroner could not order this without the agreement of the sheriff, which was hardly likely to be granted.

De Wolfe reached Martin's Lane and delivered his horse to the stables opposite his house, then walked
the rest of the way up to the castle. He had thought to go straight to see Roger Trudogge and negotiate some kind of exchange for Gwyn's sword, but then decided to see if any new deaths or other mayhem had been reported in his absence. He found Thomas at work as usual on his parchments, as there was much copying to be done to provide duplicates for various courts and the royal archives. The clerk looked up as he entered and enquired after Gwyn, then went on to deliver a nugget of information from the cathedral Close.

‘You know, Crowner, that I sleep on a pallet in a passageway of the house of one of the canons. Well, early this morning, as people were stirring to go to Prime, I chanced to hear two of the canon's vicars talking in a room nearby, that had only a curtain for a door.'

John grunted, as he was well aware that Thomas was the most inquisitive person west of Winchester and that ‘chancing to hear' probably meant that he had had his ear pressed to the door-curtain.

‘One of them was asking the other's advice about repeated confessions he had been hearing from a particular supplicant,' the clerk continued. ‘Though he could not repeat the content, even to a fellow priest, he felt it was so serious that he would have to consult their canon, the archdeacon or even the bishop about whether he should break the sanctity of the confessional and divulge something to the secular authorities.'

John frowned at his clerk, puzzled as to why he was being told this, as it seemed a matter for the ecclesiastical community. Usually, such dilemmas concerned flagrant breaches of morals as well as the law, such as sexual transgressions like incest or the ravishing of women or even children.

‘But what's this to do with the coroner, Thomas?' he asked gruffly.

The clerk's bright little eyes glinted as he delivered his punch-line. ‘The man they were talking about was Martin Knotte!' he whispered conspiratorially.

 

The coroner hurried down through the city, his wolfskin cloak flying out behind him in the breeze like a large bat as he loped along, his dark head thrust out before him. Thomas pattered along behind him, unsure of what all this was leading to, apart from the fact that his master was going to have strong words with the chief clerk at the fulling mills.

For his part, de Wolfe turned over Thomas's news in his mind as he pushed his way through the crowded streets to reach the West Gate. What was all this about–or was it a complete irrelevancy? Perhaps the clerk's confession was merely about being unfaithful to his wife, but that would hardly be grounds for the vicar's grave concern.

Could it be that Martin Knotte had learned something damning about Serlo or even Christina? Had he discovered that one of them had in fact dispatched Walter Tyrell? And did loyalty to his employer conflict with his conscience and his public duty?

‘Only one bloody way to find out!' he growled under his breath, as he strode along. ‘Shake it out of the fat bastard!' De Wolfe always favoured the direct approach to problems.

At the mill on the river, he went straight to the clerk's hut, where he left Thomas outside, fearing that a witness might distract his quarry from John's intended verbal assault. Inside, he found Martin sitting at his table with a quill in his hand, poised over a parchment. The man looked ill, his podgy face almost a waxy colour.

He jumped to his feet and courteously pulled up a
stool for the coroner on the other side of his bench. As John sat down, the big sword jabbed against the wooden floor and became unhooked from his belt, not being designed for warriors who sat indoors. With a cluck of irritation, he pulled it from under his cloak and rested it against the table in front of him, before glaring at the man who had resumed his seat opposite.

‘Now then, what's the trouble, Knotte?' he demanded brusquely. ‘Never mind
how
I know, but it has come to my ears that you have information that is distressing you. Is it something that I or even the sheriff should know about, eh?'

If it had been possible for the clerk to grow any paler, he would have done so. Stutteringly, he denied any problems, but his demeanour patently gave the lie to his words. De Wolfe kept at him, rasping and demanding that he divulge anything that law officers should know about, but Martin Knotte remained adamant in his tremulous denials.

‘Those priests have broken their trust,' he complained bitterly. ‘How else could you know of this?'