The Awful Secret (21 page)

The clerk’s droning voice was interrupted by the coroner. ‘Is this the fellow who wants to turn approver?’

‘Yes, Crowner. If the others are caught and confirm that this Pagnell was equally one of them, then they may all hang, whether he has his hand struck off now or not.’

Pagnell joined his fellow prisoner on his knees in the damp earth, his chains rattling as he wagged his clasped hands in supplication to de Wolfe. ‘Sir Crowner, I wish to confess my small guilt and earn your mercy by confessing the names of these other men who led me astray,’ he whined.

The distant bell of the cathedral tolled faintly in the distance and Richard de Revelle slapped his gloves in impatience. ‘Come on, clerk, get on with it. I have more important work to do.’

The pompous official turned to the coroner with a questioning look. ‘Will you accept him as an approver, Crowner?’

‘Yes, if it means that by his confession we can catch the greater thieves,’ he grunted.

Pagnell gabbled his thanks then ventured a little further. ‘And if I confess every syllable I know and make promises in the name of the Holy Mother and every saint never to trangress again, may I keep my limb? Without it, I and my family will starve, for I am a wood-carver. I have had no work for two months and I only took that trinket to buy bread for my children.’

Richard de Revelle gave an exasperated snort. ‘Every evil wretch that comes here spins the same lying excuses and promises to reform, only to steal or slay the moment he is released.’

As much to confound and aggravate his brother-in-law as from any feeling of compassion, de Wolfe gestured at the guards and the gaoler. ‘Take him back to his cell. I’ll hear his confession and then decide on what is to be done with him.’

‘What right have you to interfere with the decision of my County Court, Crowner?’ snapped the sheriff.

‘The duty to take confessions of approvers was laid on me by the Article of Assize last year,’ retorted de Wolfe, glaring across at de Revelle. ‘And maybe you remember that that Article was promulgated by the royal justices – the judges of our lord king!’

With a barely concealed grin at his master’s loss of face, Gabriel gave the order for one of the guards to take the prisoner away and when Stigand had slouched back to stand near his fire, the grisly proceedings went ahead. They were rapid and efficient, with none of the ceremony that attended an execution. Two men-at-arms grabbed the blond Saxon and one unlocked his arm fetters with a crude iron key. The obese gaoler rolled a large log across the floor, stained an ominous ruddy-brown, and set it on end to form a block about two feet high. The victim was forced to his knees, Stigand grabbed his right hand and pulled it across the block. Reaching for a cleaver, he spat upon the blade and sent it whistling down to sever the wrist with one blow.

In spite of his previous impassive mien, Britric gave a high-pitched scream and fainted as the arteries in his arm spurted across the block, the hand falling to the muddy floor. Wheezing with the effort of delivering the blow, the gaoler pulled a rag from the wide pocket of his soiled leather apron and slapped it over the end of the wrist to staunch the haemorrhage temporarily. The Saxon had fallen to the floor, but one of the soldiers held up his arm, whilst Stigand turned to the pot of tar on the fire. He stirred it with a piece of stick, which he then used to lift a large dollop of the sticky brown mess. Pulling away the cloth, he slapped the tar on the raw flesh and bare bone ends, spreading it over the stump, where it rapidly set solid as it cooled. Then he picked up the hand nonchalantly by its thumb and threw it on to his fire where, as it hissed and blackened, the fingers contracted to form one last agonal fist.

The official party watched all this indifferently, with the exception of Thomas de Peyne, who although he had seen it many times since entering the coroner’s service, still felt nauseated at the sight of blood and the severed hand being so casually treated.

Two soldiers dragged Britric back through the iron gate and came back to repeat the performance on the whimpering butcher, Robert Thebaud, who began screaming as his chains were released and did not stop until he was hauled back to his cell.

Anxious to be off to his chamber, Richard de Revelle started for the doorway but, almost as an afterthought, turned to speak to de Wolfe. ‘The expedition to Lundy is arranged for Monday, John. We shall leave at dawn and hope to get to Barnstaple that night.’ With a last flourish of his gloves, he vanished about his business, with his constable following reluctantly behind, leaving the coroner to enter the gaol, where the thief’s confession could hardly be heard above the screams and moans of the two mutilated men.

An hour later, de Wolfe made the climb up to his chamber in the gatehouse and joined Gwyn and Thomas in their customary bread, cheese and cider.

Thomas had nothing new to report about the Italian abbot from his eavesdropping in the cathedral precinct. Cosimo had not visited the bishop again and he had no means of knowing if he had yet returned to St James’s Priory.

‘What about you, Gwyn?’ growled de Wolfe. ‘Did the taverns provide any more news than the cathedral?’

Before replying, his officer peeled a strip of hard green rind from his cheese with his dagger. ‘Not a lot, Crowner. You said your wife already told you the names of these other two Templars. I went to a couple of low alehouses in Bretayne last night and spoke to an ostler and a porter from St Nicholas’s. It seems the leader of the three is this Roland de Ver, who comes from the New Temple in London, though before that he was in Paris. He has reddish hair and beard, says the porter, but little else is known of him.’

‘What of the others? One is that Godfrey Capra, whom we saw at Gisors when the great aggravation took place between Prince Richard and that bastard French king!’

‘I just recall him. He was a thin, dark fellow, with a sour face. He was born in Kent, I was told – he never went to Palestine with us.’ He bit off a chunk of his rock-hard cheese and champed on it. ‘The other one we both know of is this Brian de Falaise. The ostler said he also came from the Templar Commandery in London, though he is really from Normandy.’

Thomas had been listening quietly to this from his stool at the table, where he was writing out a précis of the approver’s confession that John had so recently heard in Stigand’s foul prison. ‘When I was in Winchester, there was a priest in the train of the Bishop of Rouen who had been at Gisors at this meeting in ’eighty-eight that you keep talking about. He told me that though it was mainly a political wrangling between old King Henry and Philip of France, something else went on there that affected the Templars.’

‘Do you know what it was, dwarf?’ grunted the Cornishman.

Thomas’s lazy eye slewed from the coroner to his officer. ‘It seems that when the Templars were founded, they were really controlled by some obscure religious organisation in Jerusalem called the Order of Sion. It was supposed to have been founded by Godfrey de Bouillon several years before he captured the Holy City from the Saracens. He then installed the Order in the abbey of Notre Dame de Mont Sion, just outside the city walls.’

‘What in Hell has this got to do with Gisors?’ demanded Gwyn irreverently.

‘At that meeting there in ’eighty-eight, at which you were present, the Order of Sion fell out with the Grand Master of the Templars so that they each went their own way after that, the Order changing its name to the Priory of Sion.’

The little clerk paused to give emphasis to his dénouement.

‘The point is that the so-called “Splitting of the Elm” is really a cryptic reference to the final schism between the Order and the Templars and is nothing to to do with that silly squabble of whether the English or French sat in the shade of the tree. And what might matter to your current problem with Gilbert de Ridefort is that the meeting at Gisors was only a matter of months after his uncle, Gerard de Ridefort, lost Jerusalem again to the Muhammadans, in what some called treasonable incompetence!’

This was all beyond Gwyn of Polruan, who went back to his bread and cheese in disgust, but de Wolfe pondered Thomas’s words for a while. ‘So in Exeter now we have a priest from Paris associated with the Inquisition, a senior Templar from the Paris Preceptory and a Templar who was at Gisors – all of whom arrived within days of the nephew of a disgraced Grand Master!’

At the coroner’s words, the clerk lifted his humped shoulders and gave his master a leer to show that he believed that these events were inescapably linked.

‘The sooner we get rid of this errant knight, the better!’ growled the coroner. ‘But he won’t go until this other fellow de Blanchefort joins him.’

Gwyn finished his food and took a giant swig from his cider pot. After a gargantuan belch, he wiped his moustache and spoke. ‘At least it’s not crowner’s business,’ he said, with no notion of how soon he was to be proved wrong.

The cathedral bell was tolling for the terce, sext and nones services when de Wolfe got back to Martin’s Lane to see how the farrier was getting on. At the livery stable he found Odin tethered by a head-rope to a ring in the wall. The large stallion was contentedly munching oats from a leather bucket; his hoofs had been trimmed and a few loose nails fixed back into his shoes.

The coroner began a conversation with Andrew, the young farrier, and they were deep in discussion about rival types of battle-harness when a figure hurried across from de Wolfe’s front door. It was Mary, her fair hair flying loose from under her cap, the strings of which were untied in her haste. ‘Sir John, come quickly! The mistress is in a terrible state – Alsi, the steward from Stoke, is here.’

As he followed her hurriedly across the lane, she explained that she had not known he was at the stables and had already sent Simon up to Rougemont to look for him.

Inside the hall, Matilda was sitting in one of the monk’s chairs, bent forward and sobbing uncontrollably, whilst Alsi was hovering over her helplessly.

‘What in the name of God is the matter?’ said John, going to his wife and laying a hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Has something befallen my mother?’

Instantly, Matilda stopped her keening and jerked up her head to glare at him. ‘It’s all your fault, you heartless man!’ she yelled, getting up on her stocky legs and beating her hands against his chest.

Her husband pushed her down on to her chair and she subsided into sobs again. He turned to the steward, a man he had known since childhood. ‘Alsi, what’s going on? Why are you here?’

The thin, greying Saxon, still in his riding clothes, raised his hands in supplication. ‘I should have found you first, Sir John, and told you before Lady Matilda. I am mortified to have caused her this distress, but I didn’t know it would affect her so profoundly.’

‘What, man? What’s happened?’

‘Your guest at Stoke, Sir Gilbert. He’s dead – murdered!’

Though violent death had been part of de Wolfe’s life for more than two decades, both as a soldier and now a coroner, this news was particularly shocking. De Ridefort’s fears, and the increasing confirmation that they might be well founded, had climaxed in tragedy.

With Matilda still rocking herself whilst she moaned her grief for her lost hero, John dropped heavily into the other chair and stared up at the steward. ‘When did this happen – and how?’

Alsi fiddled agitatedly at the large clasp that held his heavy brown riding cloak in place. ‘He went out for a ride late yesterday afternoon, Sir John. He fretted that he was tired of skulking indoors, so he borrowed a mare from the stables and rode off, saying that he would stay within the manor lands. But towards dusk when he had not returned your mother sent some stablemen out to search for him, in case he was lost in the woods between Stoke and the river.’ He paused and gave a trembling sigh. ‘Just before dark, they found him – or, at least, they first found the mare wandering. Then, within a few hundred paces, just inside the tree-line on the banks of the river, they discovered him lying dead on the ground with blood upon him.’

‘Could he not have fallen from his horse, or struck a low branch?’ As he uttered the words, de Wolfe knew they sounded futile: any Templar knight, especially one who had fought in Outremer, would hardly let himself fall to his death on a gentle afternoon trot.

Alsi soon confirmed this. ‘It was no accident, as you will see when you look at his wounds. He was deliberately slain, sir – and in a most bizarre manner.’

‘Even though he was your friend and a guest, John, you are still the coroner and I thought we had better observe the rules. We left the body where it lay.’ William de Wolfe spoke sadly, conscious that a man who had been left at his house for safety had ended up dead within two days.

His brother tried to reassure him that he need feel no guilt over the tragedy. ‘He should not have ventured out alone, especially in a place that was strange to him, William. In Exeter he was more than nervous, but he seems to have assumed that the wilds of the countryside held no risk.’

They were trotting their steeds along the track that led from the manor-house towards the river Teign, with Gwyn, Thomas, Alsi, a reeve and two grooms from Stoke following behind. De Wolfe had left Exeter as soon as he had managed to calm Matilda, who blamed him incessantly for not ensuring that de Ridefort was guarded night and day. He suspected that she was using the tragedy partly as a weapon to accuse his family of being negligent in failing to protect de Ridefort.

Simon had brought Gwyn and Thomas down from Rougemont to the house in Martin’s Lane and within an hour they were on the road to Stoke-in-Teignhead, covering the sixteen miles in four hours, having to wait a little for the tide at the ford at Teignmouth. Arriving in the afternoon, they rode straight to the scene of the death, which was guarded by two of the village freemen, set there the previous night by William. ‘I sent our steward as messenger to Exeter, rather than a bailiff as you say the law demands,’ explained his brother, as they rode. ‘He set out a few hours before dawn with one of the ostlers, going by the inland road as we knew the tide would be high then. There seemed no point in raising a hue and cry in the middle of a forest at nightfall.’