A Plague of Heretics by Bernard Knight Page A

him.
    ‘Better out than in!’ bellowed Gwyn jovially as he slapped Thomas on the back. Then he turned back to de Wolfe and carried on their conversation. ‘There would have been blood splashed six feet away, if that wound had been caused while he was still alive,’ he boomed confidently. ‘I remember seeing a Saracen beheaded outside Acre once – there was a fountain of bright blood as long as my arms could span!’
    De Wolfe nodded absently. ‘But it all must have been done here. The corpse wasn’t brought from elsewhere, or there’d be a trail of blood all the way up this lane.’
    ‘But he could have been hit on the head somewhere else,’ observed Osric, who had rejoined them, after having failed to find anything nearby that could have been a weapon.
    ‘Must have been, as I can’t imagine anyone coming up this alley of his own free will,’ agreed John.
    Thomas de Peyne had recovered his nerve a little and after wiping his face with a kerchief came to stand shakily alongside his master, carefully averting his gaze from the corpse. Jerkily, he made the sign of the cross as if this might ward off the horror.
    ‘Who is he, Crowner?’ he asked. ‘And who would do a terrible thing like that?’
    John shook his head. ‘Can’t answer either of those questions, Thomas. When he’s been cleaned up a bit, hopefully someone will recognise his face, if he’s a local man.’
    A few minutes later a couple of lay brothers came up the path, carrying a canvas stretcher supported by two poles. Behind them strode a tall, gaunt figure in a black Benedictine habit. This was Brother Saulf, the infirmarian of the small priory of St John, which was virtually the only place in the city where the poor could get medical attention. The coroner explained the situation and the monk readily agreed to house the cadaver in the lean-to shed at the priory, which acted as a mortuary. As the lay brothers hoisted the corpse on to the stretcher, Thomas joined Saulf in intoning some Latin prayers over it as the best they could do by way of shriving the dead man.
    With an old blanket draped over him, and his tongue tucked under his armpit, the victim went off at a jog down the path, the coroner’s trio following more sedately around to St John’s.
    It was growing dark by the time de Wolfe arrived back in Martin’s Lane and, inevitably, found his wife in a bad temper at his lateness.
    ‘Our neighbours will be attending on us in an hour!’ she grated. ‘You had best change into some decent raiment. I don’t want to be disgraced by them thinking we are too poor to have good clothing!’
    With a sigh, he went off to the solar where they slept, to rummage in his chest to find something to wear. As everything he had was either grey or black, it was hardly likely to dazzle the popinjay next door, but he was in no mood for a confrontation with Matilda over it.
    When he returned, his wife went off to persecute her handmaiden, Lucille. With a face like a rabbit and a timid nature to match, she was servile enough to tolerate Matilda’s bad temper. When her mistress had gone into the convent at Polsloe some months earlier, she had been fobbed off on to Matilda’s sister-in-law, Eleanor de Revelle, but as soon as she returned to Martin’s Lane Eleanor threw her back again like some cast-off slave, with the excuse that she had not been satisfactory.
    Lucille lived in a box-like cubicle under the timber supports that held up the solar built on to the back of the house. Now she was hauled out and taken up the outside stairs to primp Matilda’s lacklustre hair and array her in a suitable gown for the entertainment of their supper guests.
    Supper was another à la mode innovation of Matilda’s, who had heard that an evening meal was becoming popular with the privileged classes. For centuries, a noon dinner had been the main meal of the day for almost everyone, but she felt obliged to adopt these new fads so that she could parade them before her