The Tainted Relic Read online

  Blundus grinned to himself as he carefully put away the vial and parchment and wrapped up the wooden box. Thankfully, the Crusader’s certificate of authentication made no mention of Barzak’s curse, which might well have reduced the value of the relic to almost nothing.

  As he lay back on his pallet, trying to ignore the influx of strange fleas that entered his clothing to breed with his own French mites, he sleepily went over in his mind what the abbey clerk had told him. The man was a priest in lower orders, employed in the chancery of Fontrevault, the famous abbey in Anjou, and was thus well acquainted with the gossip and legends of that place. Sweetened by his translation fee and several cups of red wine, he told Blundus that the relic had been brought to the abbey over ninety years earlier, in the first years of the century. It had been sold to the then abbot by one Julius, who had travelled from Marseilles, where he had landed by ship from the Holy Land.

  He was paid for it in gold, on the basis of Sir Geoffrey’s authentication, but that evening, on his way to the nearby Loire to take a boat down to the coast, Julius had been struck by lightning in a sudden violent thunderstorm that had appeared from a clear blue sky. The clerk was happy to relate the gruesome fact that when the blackened corpse was found, the gold had been fused into a molten mass which had burned into Julius’s belly!

  The abbot had had a special gilded box made for the relic, which was placed in an ornate casket upon the altar of the Chapel of the Holy Rood, off the main nave of the great abbey. Though originally vaunted as a most important acquisition, it soon fell out of favour, as pilgrims and cripples who came to pray and supplicate before it either gained no benefit or actually became worse. Within a few years, the relic was shunned and ignored, especially after ominous rumours began circulating about the curse, brought back by knights and soldiers returning from the First Crusade, especially some of the newly formed Templars. The chancery clerk had told Blundus that the present abbot had plans to remodel the chapel and either consign the relic to a remote corner of the crypt or even send it to Rome for others to deal with the unwelcome object as they saw fit.

  Robert Blundus had been making his way back through Aquitaine and Anjou to reach the Channel ports to return home after his autumn forage for relics as far south as Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He had called at Fontrevault on the off-chance of picking up a final bargain, perhaps from one of the other relic hawkers trying their luck at selling to the famous abbey. He followed his usual practice of seeking out and bribing some servant of the religious house who knew all the local gossip, and this time struck lucky with the abbey clerk. On the basis of what he learnt from him, Blundus hired a thug from a low tavern to steal the fragment, the side chapel being virtually deserted at certain times of the day. The thief easily levered open the reliquary with his dagger and removed the gilded box. It could well be days or even weeks before anyone noticed that the shunned relic had vanished–and according to the clerk, the abbey authorities might well be relieved at its disappearance.

  Without opening the box, the incurious thief had promptly handed it over to collect his reward, and by nightfall Blundus was well on his way north astride his pony. He kept a wary eye open for pursuit, in case the ruffian had given him away, but he reached St-Malo without incident and here sold his steed and took ship for England.

  Now he settled back on his bag of straw and contentedly looked forward to going home to his house and his wife in Salisbury. Once he had sold the relics he had acquired, he could live in comfort on the proceeds throughout the winter, until the spring sent him off again on his travels.

  Blundus set out soon after dawn, buying a couple of mutton pastries and a small loaf at a stall in Topsham High Street. He ate as he trudged along, well used to long journeys on foot–he felt it was not worth haggling for another pony on this side of the Channel. He was aiming for Glastonbury in the next county of Somerset, before turning eastward for home, but there was no great hurry. He reckoned on covering at least fifteen miles before each nightfall, even during the shorter days of late autumn.

  He had enquired of the best route at the inn and the tactiturn landlord had directed him as far as Honiton, beyond which the man had no idea of the roads. The chapman was told that the village of Clyst St Mary was his first landmark, and within an hour he had passed through the small hamlet, the manor of which belonged to the Bishop of Exeter.

  There was the usual straggle of people on the rough track beyond the village, a man herding goats to market, an old woman with a pig on a rope and a number of pilgrims in their wide-brimmed hats, on their way back from Canterbury. An ox-cart rumbled past him, filled with turnips, then the road was empty as it curved through a dense wood of tall trees, their browned leaves fluttering to the ground in the east wind. It was hardly a forest, as just around the bend behind him the strip fields of Clyst St Mary ran up the slopes on either side of the road, but it was a substantial wood, a westerly extension of the forest that stretched eastward for miles towards Ottery St Mary and Sidmouth.

  Robert Blundus was not a nervous man and he was used to tramping alone along the tracks of several countries. He had no sword, but carried a stout staff which was mainly for support. He reasoned that a common chapman was hardly worth the attention of highway robbers, though when he could, he tried to travel in the company of others for safety.

  Today there was no one going the same way on this part of the road and he stepped out along the empty avenue of trees with no particular apprehension, thinking more of the pitch he was going to make to the Abbot of Glastonbury, to get the best price for his notable relic. It was therefore all the more of a shock when suddenly he heard a rustle in the undergrowth at the side of the track, and before he could turn he was grabbed from behind and violently thrust to the ground. He had a quick glimpse of two ragged figures tearing at the straps of his pack, before he managed to swing his staff and strike one of them on the shoulder. With a bellow of pain, the ruffian raised a club made from a twisted branch and struck Blundus on the head. Cursing, he repeated the blows, and when the pedlar had fallen senseless, gave him some heavy kicks in the ribs and belly for good measure. Pulling the large pack free and rifling the pouch on his belt, the two footpads made off into the trees, leaving the injured man unconscious on the verge.

  Perhaps somewhere in Heaven–or maybe Hell–the spirit of Barzak the Mohammedan was content that his curse was still as potent as ever.

  High up in the narrow gatehouse tower of Exeter’s Rougemont castle, the county coroner was sitting in his cramped and draughty chamber, painfully mouthing the Latin words that his bony forefinger was slowly tracing out on a sheet of parchment. Sir John de Wolfe was learning to read, and at the age of forty was finding it a tedious process. His clerk, former priest Thomas de Peyne, sat at the end of the rough trestle table that, with two stools, was the only furniture in the room that the sheriff had grudgingly allotted them. Thomas watched covertly as his master laboriously mispronounced the words, wishing that he could help him, in place of the stupid vicar who was ineptly teaching the coroner. The clerk, once a tutor in the cathedral school of Winchester, was a fluent reader and a gifted calligrapher–it pained him to see the slow progress that Sir John was making, but he knew the coroner’s pride prevented him from asking for help.

  On a window sill opposite the table sat a giant of a man, staring out through the unglazed slit through which moaned a cold wind. He had wild red hair like a storm-tossed hayrick, and a huge drooping moustache of the same ruddy tint. Gwyn, a Cornishman from Polruan, had been de Wolfe’s squire and companion for almost twenty years, in campaigns stretching from Ireland to the Holy Land. When the Crusader had finally sheathed his sword a couple of years ago, Gwyn had remained as his bodyguard and coroner’s officer. He lowered the hunk of bread and cheese that he was chewing and focused his bright blue eyes on the road that came up from the High Street to the gatehouse drawbridge below.

  ‘There’s a fellow riding up Castle Street as if the Devil himself is on hi
s heels,’ he announced, speaking in the Cornish Celtic that he used with the coroner, who had a Welsh mother from whose knee he had learned a similar language.

  ‘Why can’t you speak in a civilized fashion, not that barbaric lingo!’ whined the clerk in English. He was a runt of a fellow, his excellent brain betrayed by a poor body. He was small, had a humped shoulder, a lame leg and his thin, pinched face had a long pointed nose and a receding chin. The fact that he had been unfrocked as a priest over an alleged indecent assault on a girl pupil in Winchester made him not the most eligible of men. Gwyn ignored him and, wiping the breadcrumbs from his moustache with the back of his hand, addressed himself again to John de Wolfe.

  ‘I know that man, he’s the manor-reeve from Clyst St Mary. I’ll wager he’s coming up here.’

  The coroner pushed his parchment aside in disgust, glad for some excuse to give up his lesson.

  ‘We’ve had nothing from that area for weeks,’ he growled. As the first coroner for Devon, appointed less than three months earlier, he was responsible for looking into sudden deaths, murders, accidents, serious assaults, rapes, fires, treasure trove, catches of royal fish and a host of other legal situations. This was mostly with the object of drumming up revenue for King Richard, to help pay for his costly wars in France, as well as paying off the massive ransom owing to Henry of Germany, after Richard’s capture on the way home from the Crusades.

  Gwyn was soon proved correct, as there was a clatter of feet on the narrow stairway that curled up from the guardroom below. The sacking that hung over the doorway as a feeble draught excluder was pushed aside to admit two men. The first was a man-at-arms in a thick leather jerkin and a round iron helmet, the other a thin man with a harelip, his serge riding mantle covered in road dust.

  ‘You’re too late, Gabriel, the ale is all gone!’ mocked Gwyn, grinning at his friend, the sergeant of the castle’s men-at-arms. The grizzled old soldier touched his hand to his helmet in salute to de Wolfe, who he greatly respected as another seasoned warrior.

  ‘This man wants to report a violent death, Crowner. Aylmer is his name, the reeve from Clyst St Mary.’ A reeve was the overseer of a manor, who organized the work rotas for the bailiff and was a kind of village headman. This was the first time he had had dealings with this new-fangled business of coroners, and he looked at the new official with curiosity and some unease.

  He saw a forbidding figure sitting behind the trestle, a man as tall as Gwyn, but not so massively built. He was dressed in a plain tunic of black, a colour that matched the abundant jet hair that curled down to his collar and the dark stubble on his long, lean face. Heavy black eyebrows overhung deep-set eyes and his big hooked nose and slightly stooped posture gave him the appearance of a great bird of prey. Aylmer had heard gossip about him and saw now why his military nickname had been ‘Black John’.

  ‘Well, what’s it all about, man? Don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open,’ snapped the coroner.

  The reeve was jerked into activity and quickly described how a man had been found that morning at the side of the road, with injuries from which he died in less than an hour. He had been discovered by a couple of villagers who were on their way to repair sheep pens on the other side of the woods. One had run back to Clyst to raise the hue and cry, but nothing had been found anywhere and the bailiff had sent Aylmer posthaste to Exeter to notify the coroner.

  ‘We have heard that we must tell you straightway of all deaths, Crowner,’ he said earnestly. ‘Not even to move the body, so we understand.’

  He said this as if it were a totally incomprehensible command, but de Wolfe nodded. ‘You did the right thing, Reeve. Do you know who this man might be?’

  Aylmer shook his head. ‘A total stranger, walking the high road. God knows where he was coming from or going to. Not a local, that’s for sure.’

  At the moment when the reeve was telling his story, a small group of men were squatting around a dying campfire in a forest clearing, a couple of miles from Clyst St Mary. All were dishevelled, some were dressed in little better than rags, and none looked well fed–a pathetic band of outlaws, bound together only by their hatred of authority and their fear of the law officers of Devonshire. Each one of the nine had a different reason for being outcast in the forests–some had escaped from gaol, either before trial or after they had been convicted, and were waiting to go to the gallows. Gaol-breaking was common, as every prison guard was open to bribery, and often the local community was eager to save the expense of feeding them until they were hanged. Others had sought sanctuary in a church after some crime, then chosen to abjure the realm. The coroner would have taken their confessions, then sent them dressed in sack-cloth to a port to get the first ship out of the realm of England–but as soon as they were around the first bend in the road, many such abjurers would throw away the wooden cross they had to carry and melt into the trees to become outlaws. The remainder had just run away when accused of some crime, whether guilty or not. Many did not trust the rough justice meted out by the manor, shire or King’s courts–others knew they would be convicted and, as the penalty for most crimes was death, they chose the leafy refuge of the forest or the wilderness of the moors. If such suspects failed to answer to four calls at the shire court, they were declared outlaw and henceforth were ‘as the wolf’s head’–in other words, any man could legitimately slay them on sight and, as with the wolf bounty, claim five shillings if they took the outlaw’s head to the sheriff. This particular group eked out their existence by preying on travellers on the roads between Clyst St Mary and Honiton, though they also stole sheep and poultry from neighbouring villages. One or two even earned a few pence by working in the fields of certain villages, where the reeves turned a blind eye to outlaw labour when the need arose. They lived rough in the forest, sleeping in shelters of woven branches or holes dug in hillsides or river banks, stealing food from isolated crofts or buying it with money thieved from passers-by.

  Today, they clustered around the two men who had assaulted and robbed the chapman on the high road, to see what they had stolen.

  There was no communal spirit among these men, no sharing of booty, and, unlike the larger gangs, they had no proper leader. Each man kept what he had stolen, and those who failed to make a hit went hungry. But curiosity was a powerful thing, and they all wanted to see what Gervase of Yeovil and Simon Claver had managed to get today.

  ‘We had to beat the bastard quite hard,’ grunted Gervase. ‘He fought back well enough.’ As he spoke, he untied the straps on Blundus’s pack and tipped the contents on to the ground.

  ‘What in God’s name is this rubbish?’ snarled Simon, stirring a collection of small boxes and packets with his foot. Apart from a moderately clean spare tunic, a couple of undershirts and some hose, the packets were the only things in the pack.

  ‘I thought you said he was a chapman?’ sneered one of the other outlaws. ‘Where’s all his stock, then?’

  ‘He had twenty pence in his purse,’ countered Simon defensively, aggrieved at the critical attitude of his fellows. ‘I took that and Gervase here snatched his pack.’

  ‘You came off best, then,’ cackled the other man. ‘What he’s got doesn’t look worth a ha’penny!’

  Gervase was looking thoughtfully at the collection of oddments on the ground, and began sorting through the packets and rolls, mostly wrapped in bits of leather or parchment. One particular object, a small wooden box wrapped in soft leather, caught his attention, and he unwrapped it and studied a small piece of parchment with interest, Simon looking over his shoulder suspiciously.

  ‘I might get a few pence for some of this stuff, if I can get into the city,’ he said with false nonchalance. He threw the clothing at Simon as he stuffed the other objects back into the pack.

  ‘Here, you can take these, you could do with some clean clothes, the way you stink!’

  Simon, a tall, sinewy man of thirty, with a nose horribly eroded by some disease, looked suspiciously at his fellow-
robber, afraid that he was being outwitted.

  ‘What’s that stuff, then? It was me that hit the pedlar the hardest, maybe I should be getting a share of it?’

  To appease him, Gervase, a stockier older man, unrolled one of the packets and displayed a shrivelled piece of skin in a glass vial.

  ‘Some lucky charm to peddle to a gullible widow, no doubt. Probably claimed to be St Peter’s foreskin! Worth tuppence, if I’m lucky!’

  Though Simon continued to look suspiciously at Gervase, the others soon lost interest in this mundane collection and, after kicking the last glowing embers of the fire into extinction, drifted away, leaving Gervase to shoulder the half-empty pack and wander off deeper into the trees, headed in the general direction of the road to Exeter.

  As he walked, he again gave thanks for the fact that he was better educated than these dolts among whom cruel fate had thrown him. He had plans to escape the outlaw life as soon as he could, and this might be the opportunity he had been seeking for over a year. Gervase knew that many other outlaws had unobtrusively slipped back into normal life after an interval, usually at a place well away from their original haunts. One had even become a sheriff, until he was found out several years later.