The Elixir of Death (15 page)

As they jogged along, he mumbled continuously to himself, perhaps to compensate for the permanent silence of his tongueless servant. They were strangers to this area, having jogged slowly for the past week from Bristol, which, in spite of his Scottish origins, had been the home of Alexander of Leith for the past ten years.

Now, hopefully, they were on the last lap of their journey, if only they could find their destination. The retainers of Prince John, Count of Mortain, who now spent much of his time at his restored possessions in Gloucester, had given Alexander a crude map drawn on parchment, which he studied every few miles and which provoked new bursts of muttering. Earlier that morning, they had awoken in a barn where they had spent the night, rode to a village where they bought bread and ale and received some more directions to Bigbury, alleged to be about ten miles distant. Now the little man turned in his saddle and yelled back at the Fleming in strangely accented English.

'Another couple of hours should see us there, you great useless oaf!'

Abuse was his normal form of address to his bodyguard, given and received without any apparent rancour. When he twisted to face Jan, however, the Scot fancied he could hear a clinking from the load carried by the sumpter horse, and he came to a stop.

'Did you pack those flasks well enough this morning, you dumb animal?' he snapped. 'If any of that glassware gets broken, I'll whip you within an inch of your life!'

The Fleming grinned amiably and made some finger signs that only Alexander could interpret. Then he got off his horse, an easy task as his stirrups were already almost touching the ground. Walking to the patient packhorse, he rummaged around in the panniers and rearranged something, which gave rise to a muted rattling of porcelain and glass. With more signs that must have meant satisfaction, he climbed aboard his nag again and they set off, hoping to come across some local who could confirm that they were on the right track for this Bigbury.

After another half-hour, the monstrous Fleming spied a boy herding goats near a thicket away to their right, and he attracted his master's attention by clashing a small pair of brass cymbals that hung on a leather thong around his neck. When Alexander turned, Jan pointed, and the little alchemist turned his horse off the track and walked it the few hundred paces to within speaking distance of the lad. The Fleming watched the youngster staring slack-jawed at this apparition, but the Scotsman seemed to get a satisfactory response, for he came back to the track and waved at his servant to continue.

A mile farther on through the undulating countryside, the alchemist saw the smoke from a village some distance ahead, which he assumed was Bigbury, but following the goatherd's directions, he turned left on to a path that meandered through trees. These became more dense as they went much deeper into the forest, but hoof marks in the damp ground showed that the track was still in use, though it was in a very remote area. After another half-dozen furlongs, they came into a large clearing that was dotted with scrubby bushes and some saplings. In the centre was a small hillock, standing about twenty feet high. It had a flat top and was obviously artificial, some blackened and rotted wooden foundations indicating that this must be the remains of an old 'motte and bailey' castle, now abandoned and derelict. Around the base of the mound was what was left of the bailey, an overgrown bank and ditch with the ivy-covered remnants of a stockade extending out to surround an egg-shaped enclosure. A few derelict huts still remained within this compound, and from one of them some thin smoke escaped from under the edges of the dilapidated thatch. Alexander of Leith came to a halt to survey this dismal place, then took from his belt a small pewter horn shaped like a trumpet. Putting it to his flabby lips, he blew a series of discordant blasts which sent birds flying in alarm from the nearby trees. A moment later, a rickety door scraped open and a figure appeared from the hut - a tall man, well dressed and with every appearance of a gentleman. He stared across the clearing, recognised the pair and beckoned energetically as he shouted, 'You have arrived on the very day we calculated, Alexander! Come on in, this place is not as bad as it looks!'

Just before noon that morning, the coroner went back to Martin's Lane for dinner, resolving once again to try to be more pleasant to Matilda. Their relationship seemed to get more strained by the week, and he was aware that he himself was far from blameless in this respect. Regularly, he would try hard to appease her, only to be rebuffed by either indifference or outright abuse. Then his short temper would flare up and make the situation worse than it was before.

Since her brother had been dismissed as sheriff, largely because of John's accusations of corruption, Matilda had been more difficult, and nothing he could do or say was acceptable in her eyes. She blamed him not only for Richard's downfall, but also, as the sister of a disgraced sheriff, for her own loss of face and prestige among her peers, mostly the snobbish wives of rich merchants who were her cronies at St Olave's church. John had bouts of conscience and compassion over her grieving for this brother who turned out to have feet of clay, but his repeated efforts at reconciliation were constantly rejected.

Today, his attempts at conversation at dinner-time were met only with grunts or stony silence, especially when he told her of the new sheriffs departure for Winchester and unwisely mentioned that the despised Thomas had travelled with him.

'We should never have married,' he groaned to Nesta, later that afternoon. 'Neither she nor I wanted it - we were pushed into it by our parents. Old Gervaise de Revelle wanted his daughter married off to the son of a manor-lord - and my father saw a chance to get his younger son into a rich family, for the de Revelles have lands at Revelstoke, Tiverton and in Somerset and Dorset - not that I have a cat's chance in hell of seeing a penny from them!'

'I wonder who you would have wedded instead of Matilda,' mused Nesta, wistfully. They were sitting by the hearth in the taproom of the Bush, with a quart of cider, a cold lamb shank and a bowl of flummery on the table, and a salivating Brutus beneath it.

'God knows! Perhaps some simpering third daughter of another baron or manor-lord,' he muttered. 'Certainly no chance of her being a beautiful Welsh girl with red hair and a bosom straight from heaven.'

Even the flattery failed to deflect a sudden barb from the landlady.

'Maybe it would have been a willowy Saxon blonde from the seashore?'

Once again a warning bell sounded in the back of John's mind. He had not expected Nesta to become so jealous of Hilda, especially as she had seemed so much at ease with her when they had met some months earlier.

John had not bedded the attractive blonde for a long time, though in spite of his genuinely deep affection for Nesta, he could not deny to himself that he might succumb again if the opportunity arose. He managed to turn Nesta's attention to other matters. He told her of his return visit to Shillingford that afternoon, where he had held a frustratingly short inquest over the body of Sir Peter le Calve, which, as he had expected, turned up no new evidence at all and was merely a legal formality to get the meagre facts into the record. The sons were concerned about burying their father without his head, but John assured them that if and when it turned up, there could be an exhumation and the missing part reunited with the rest.

After this rather grisly account, John lightened the conversation by wondering how Thomas was faring on such a long journey, as he was probably England's most reluctant horseman. The sheriff's party would take three full days to cover the hundred miles to Winchester, stopping overnight somewhere around Dorchester and then Ringwood. Nesta asked whether the clerk would have to be reordained into the Church, but John had questioned his friend the archdeacon about this and was quite knowledgeable on the matter.

'It seems that whatever crimes a priest has committed, he can never lose that status which was bestowed by God,' he explained. 'Once a priest, always a priest, it seems. But the Church can take away all the attributes of priesthood, ejecting him from any office he held and forbidding him to administer the Sacrament, take confessions or exercise his ministry.'

'So how does he get reinstated?' asked Nesta, with terrier-like persistence.

'John de Alençon says that during a celebration of the Mass in the cathedral, the bishop will publicly read out the judgement of the Chancellor of the Consistory Court, which decided that there is no longer any barrier to Thomas resuming his ministry, then bestow a personal blessing on him. And that's all that's necessary, except to find him a position afterwards to give him a livelihood.'

'But he's already your clerk - and wishes to remain so,' objected Nesta.

John smiled wryly. 'That's what he says now - and I'm sure he means it. But that's just his loyalty and gratitude. Before long, his deep desire to take an active part in his beloved Church will overcome him. His uncle says that he hopes to find him some sinecure in Exeter, so that he can combine the two jobs, though I'm sure he'll drift away little by little - and I'll not stand in his way when the time comes.'

'You are a kind man, Sir Crowner,' said the Welsh woman, squeezing his arm affectionately. They spent the next hour in amicable companionship before the fire, until it was time for him to go back to Martin's Lane for his supper.

The food he had eaten at the Bush in no way spoiled his appetite and Mary's poached salmon and eggs went down well with fresh bread and butter. Matilda's chronically depressed mood similarly failed to affect her partiality for well-cooked victuals and she ate everything the maid put before her, albeit in silence. Her husband sat hunched over his own trencher, wondering what was the point of a marriage in which the participants detested, disliked or at best were indifferent to each other. He felt trapped, as marriages could not be dissolved and an annulment was equally impossible after almost seventeen years.

After the meal, the same ritual was performed as on most other evenings - Matilda sullenly announced that she was retiring and went off yelling for Lucille, while he sat by his fireside, with his dog and his wine-cup, half asleep and dreaming of old battles in which he and Gwyn had fought side by side. Eventually, when he judged that his wife was sound asleep, he climbed wearily up the steps to the solar and slipped under the sheepskin coverlet to sleep away his cares until the dawn of another day.

John's expectations of a good night's slumber were ill founded. Soon after midnight, he was awakened by an urgent tapping on the door of the solar. Though thankfully it failed to rouse the snoring Matilda, the old soldier was instantly alert and he jumped up from his mattress to lift the wooden latch on the door. Shivering in the thin undershirt that did service as a nightgown, he stared out and saw in the dim light of the half-moon a tonsured young man in a black cassock. He recognised him as one of John of Exeter's 'secondaries', a lad of about eighteen who was training to become a priest. This other John was one of the senior canons, who was the treasurer to the Chapter, responsible for all the finances and accounting for the cathedral. He was a good friend of de Wolfe, mainly because he was a staunch King's man, like John de Alençon.

'Sir John, will you please come at once,' the visitor hissed conspiratorially. 'The treasurer urgently requests your presence in the cathedral!'

John was not all that fond of attending church at the best of times and even less so in his shirt in the middle of the night. He stepped outside on to the platform at the top of the solar steps and pulled the door closed behind him, to avoid disturbing his wife.

'What the devil for?' he asked testily. 'What time is it, anyway?'

'Just after midnight, Crowner,' answered the youth anxiously. 'That's the problem. We should be starting Matins now.'

'What's happened, boy? Why does he want me at this unholy hour?' He used the phrase unconsciously, even though Matins was anything but unholy.

'Please, sir, I think you'd better see for yourself! I have to get back. The canon was most insistent that I brought you without delay.'

Grumbling, de Wolfe went back into the solar to feel for his tunic, hose and shoes, then followed the secondary down the stairs, where Mary was standing looking sleepy and dishevelled, after having to get up to let the young man in through the front door. She looked questioningly at her master, but he just shrugged and hurried after the other fellow.

The cathedral was a mere few hundred paces away, the surrounding Close opening out from Martin's Lane. As they approached the massive West Front, he saw a small crowd of people clustered around the small wicket set in the huge doors that were opened only on ceremonial occasions. The weak moonlight was aided by flickering flames from a few pitch brands set in iron rings on nearby walls, and John could see that the group consisted of black-cloaked clerics, a flash of white visible here and there where linen surplices were exposed. As he came near, he recognised several canons, among them Jordan de Brent, the cathedral archivist, the precentor and John of Exeter. The others were a motley collection of vicars-choral, secondaries and a few wide-eyed choristers peeping between the skirts of their elders.

'What's going on, John?' he demanded, as he strode up to his friend, the treasurer. He was a large man, normally ruddy faced and amiable, but tonight the coroner could see, even in the dim light, that he was pale and shaken. 'Come and see! I wish to God that de Alençon was here and not on his way to Winchester.'

The canon motioned him towards the small door, and the others stood aside to let them pass. Inside, the huge nave was almost in complete darkness, with only pale glimmers of moonlight penetrating from the clerestory window-openings high above.