31 - City of Fiends (4 page)

But it is difficult to conceal a dog.

That night, while Thomas slept, it had escaped from the makeshift kennel and began to bark and howl in the yard. That had sounded scary, too. Thomas had heard it, and the noise woke him in the
end. He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes, and then felt his whole body grow cold as he realised that if it had woken
him
, John might hear it and go down and hurt it.

Thomas quickly climbed from his bed and stole to his door, hoping to get outside before anyone could waken. And then, as his finger lifted the latch, he heard a horrible, wet sound, and the
barking changed into a screech of agony. There was that wet thudding sound again, and then once more, and the noise died.

He never saw his dog again. There was a patch of redness on the dirt by John’s old shed, where he stored the ales and wines in their barrels, near to where a plank had been badly
scratched. It looked to Thomas as though the little dog,
his
little dog, had been scrabbling to get in there, under the raised floor, to escape the spade of the bottler.

Thomas had never brought another dog home. He couldn’t bear to think of a second being killed.

‘Mother?’

‘It’s all right, dear. Go back to sleep. It’s nothing to worry you,’ his mother called from the next room, and with renewed confidence, knowing that she was there, he
rolled over in bed and closed his eyes.

But in his mind, he still saw that poor dog. His darling little dog.

Alley beside the Paffards’ House

Standing in the gloom, Henry Paffard tapped his foot impatiently as the neighbours gathered. A boy with a horn lamp shed a pale glow over the scene, his own eyes fixed on the
corpse.

Henry had been standing here since the first alarm. It really was time they got on with things. A man of his status shouldn’t be forced to wait out here like a peasant.

‘Where is Juliana Marsille and her boys?’ he demanded, but nobody answered. His wife looked at him, then glanced away. She was shivering with cold.

Henry Paffard was tall and strong, with the blue eyes and fair hair of a king, but today as he looked along the alley at the huddle of death, he felt the sadness again. Poor, sweet Alice.

All his life he had been fortunate. He had sired two boys and a girl: the boys to secure his future, the girl to bring him a noble connection. Agatha would one day be a useful bargaining chip.
The boys, meanwhile, were healthy and intelligent. Not like others. He had not even suffered the loss of a child.

Only this maid, he told himself with a frown. Only Alice.

The watchman who had been sent to beat on the Marsilles’ door at last returned with Philip and William.

Philip looked as peevish as ever, Henry reckoned, while his younger brother William was his usual self, ducking his head in polite acknowledgement to the others before glancing down at the body
with every appearance of sorrow.

The reaction of his brother was shocking, womanish.

When Philip recognised Alice, he seemed to crumble, his face a mask of anguish. It was ludicrous behaviour, Henry Paffard thought impatiently. Most lads his age would bear up, show a little
backbone. Not Philip Marsille. He’d simply fallen apart after his father’s death. While his brother held himself like a petty baron, Philip was going to pieces.

Henry sighed, deeply. They really should hurry along. Poor Alice couldn’t be helped by any of them now.

‘Let us get this over with,’ he called.

The watchman nodded and looked at the four neighbours. ‘This girl is dead, and I believe she was deliberately killed and left here. You are the nearest families. Do you recognise
her?’

It was a formality, of course. As the boy with the lamp held it to the girl’s face, they all recognised Alice, maid to the Paffards. Henry mumbled his assent, while a lump grew in his
throat. It was hard to speak with the sight of that lovely face so spoiled. However, he had no intention of displaying any emotion in front of these churls.

‘Good. I name Joan, maid to Henry Paffard, to be First Finder. You know what that means, maid? When the Coroner arrives, you’ll have to come and tell him how you found the
body.’

‘I know.’

‘You are all to come as soon as the Coroner is here,’ the watchman said more loudly, staring at the men of each household in turn. ‘Any who don’t come will be attached
and fined. All understand? Right, then. You will need to guard this body. Who volunteers?’

Henry avoided the man’s look. It was a bit much to expect a man like him to stand out here in the alley all night. He was relieved to hear William Marsille say he would stand guard for the
first half of the night, his brother for the second. They were younger, after all. Better suited for this sort of duty.

There was a sharp cry from behind him, and Henry turned to see Juliana Marsille pelting down the narrow way.

‘What is this? Oh, God, no!’ she cried as she saw the body, and looked as if she might faint at any moment.

‘Mother, it’s fine,’ William said quickly, stepping around the body and holding out his hands. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll guard her till morning. That’s
all.’

But Henry had seen the way her eyes had gone to her sons – accusingly, or so he thought.

Petreshayes Manor

Sir Charles walked about the manor with the excitement of the battle still thrumming in his blood.

He had been alarmed when some of the men had formed a wall before the manor’s doors, but it took only one charge of his mounted force to shatter that, and soon all the villeins were dead,
while a few of the manor’s lay brothers were captured. Two were too badly injured to be of any help, and Sir Charles motioned to his men to finish them off. They died quickly.

The others soon led him to where the Bishop’s accounts and money were stored. There was a good strongbox in a locked cellar, and the key on the dead steward’s belt opened both.

‘Bring the Bishop’s carts in here,’ he shouted at the men milling in the open yard area before the manor, and walking inside again.

The buttery had a small barrel of good Bordeaux wine, and he broached it, filling a horn he found on a shelf. Draining it, he topped it up and walked to the hall.

Ulric was in there, sitting with his back to the wall, arms about his knees.

‘Boy! You will keep this horn filled for me.’

Ulric looked up, but said nothing.

‘I can understand your feelings,’ Sir Charles said. ‘You think I have forced you to betray your faith, to make you complicit in the death of the Bishop.’

‘I didn’t know I was sent to ensure my Lord Bishop’s murder!’

‘No. I daresay you didn’t,’ Sir Charles said. He sipped. ‘But in reality I have not. I have helped you to ensure that God’s will is done. Would you gainsay His
wishes?’

‘No!’

‘The Bishop was installed after the death of Sir Walter Stapledon, who died in London last year, and the Canons of Exeter elected Bishop Berkeley. But the Pope did not. The Pope was hoping
for another. And the Pope is God’s own vicar on earth, is he not? Quite.’

‘He was the Bishop, though.’

‘He was the brother of Lord Berkeley, who is holding your King in his gaol. King Edward, who was anointed by God as King of England, was captured by traitors, and even now is in a cell,
while his son has been told to take his throne from him.’

‘How does killing the Bishop help?’

Sir Charles was becoming irritated. ‘His death will begin to bring Lord Berkeley to reconsider, I hope. Berkeley has betrayed his own oaths to his King, and this is but the first of his
punishments. And meanwhile . . .’

‘Sir?’

‘Meanwhile, my horn is empty, boy. Fetch me wine!’ Sir Charles rasped.

There was no need to tell Ulric about the other force, led by the Dunheved brothers, who even now would be trying to release the King from his prison at Berkeley Castle.

For the death of Bishop Berkeley was only the beginning. Soon, armed men would rise up all over the country, working to destabilise this inept and illegal government, and return King Edward II
to his throne.

Paffards’ House

Joan sat on her palliasse, her arms wrapped about her legs as she shivered, staring at the door.

She had a vision rising up before her horrified eyes: Alice’s body. But even as she saw her friend’s dead face another picture intruded: naked bodies writhing on the floor beside the
fire, the orange flames illuminating their passion. It was so shocking, she had gasped.

And then Gregory Paffard heard her; he looked up and saw her and his little brother Thomas watching, and there was rage in his eyes. The sort of rage that promises punishment and
retribution.

She was petrified.

Morrow of the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist
²

Precentor’s House, Exeter Cathedral

He was not fussy, he told himself as he sat at his table, but he did like things
just so.

If asked, Adam Murimuth would have described himself as an affable man in his fifty-second year. His face had the look of one who had never known hunger or hardship. He had spent all his adult
life in the Church, and was a Doctor of Civil Law as well as being a priest. He enjoyed the trust of the Pope and of kings, and his friendship was sought out by bishops – which was why he was
simultaneously a Canon of Hereford and Exeter.

For some years he had clambered up the ladder of promotion in the Church. He had taken patronage where it was available, buying positions when he could, retaining friends who were powerful,
discarding those who could embarrass him. He was a highly respected figure – and yet here he was, scrabbling about, trying to find a knife for his quill.

It was annoying. When he came to his table this morning he discovered that his little penknife was missing, and that his ink had been mixed weak. His quill, a good new one, was unprepared, and
how on earth could he write his journal without a decent pen?

He had begun to write this little memoir twenty years ago. Of course, then he had still been a callow young man, without the experience that life could bring. No man, he believed, should
contemplate recording a life until he had lived one.

At last he found his knife on the floor, where it had fallen beneath the table. He stripped the fletchings from his quill and began laboriously to shape the pen’s end. Satisfied, he dipped
it into the insipid ink and stared at the greyish staining on the nib with distaste while he prepared himself to write. For some moments he did not move, holding the quill over the paper, staring
at the window ahead of him, the strip of parchment as blank as his mind.

Mornings like this were infuriating. There was nothing much to note. Little happened in this quiet little Close. There was some bickering about how the Close was looking, scruffy and unkempt,
with horses wandering over the grass, men standing and haggling over deals, or gambling or brawling – even women plying their unsavoury trade. He had found one rutting with her client behind
the Treasurer’s House last week – a disgraceful site for fornication!

But these were not the memories he wished to record. Ach!

Setting the quill on his desk, he rose and walked around his room, head down, contemplating, and then as inspiration suddenly came to him, he resumed his seat and picked up his quill once
more.

The door opened and his steward slid around it like oil under a gate. Adam looked up irritably. ‘What on earth is the matter? You know that this is my time to write.’

‘Sir, I am sorry, but Janekyn would like to speak with you.’

‘What about?’

‘Something to do with the murder last night.’

‘Murder? What – here?’ Adam hadn’t heard of a killing. ‘In the Close, do you mean?’

‘No, sir, out along Combe Street, I heard.’

‘What of it? It’s a city matter. Oh, never mind. Show him in,’ Adam said grumpily. He put his pen back down and stared at the empty sheet. Today, he felt sure, he would never
write a thing.

Soon Janekyn Beyvyn, the porter from the Broad Gate of the Close, entered, shooting little glances all about him with that expression of nervous awe that servants so often exhibited. They were
unused to such magnificence.

‘Porter, my steward tells me you want to speak to me. Well?’

Janekyn nodded. ‘Sir, last night there was a maid killed. It was a way away, but as I was closing the gates, I heard running.’

‘Did you see the man?’

‘No, sir.’

‘So, then? What of it?’

‘My fear was, where the footsteps went.’

‘Explain yourself, man!’

Janekyn cleared his throat. ‘I think they came into the Close, sir. It was someone from the Cathedral.’

Combe Street, Exeter

It had been an unprofitable day for William Marsille. Again.

He had set aside thoughts of Alice lying dead in the alley as soon as he had risen, and had come here to the Cathedral in the hope that his prayers might succeed in winning him work with the
masons. He must earn some money somehow, and he had tried every other possible avenue.