Crowner's Justice 17

[ismenin]

Good morning, dear friends! Well, as promised, here is Part 17 of Crowner's Justice. I hope you'll like it.
Thank you for all your kind comments of yesterday. I hope to be well enough, soon, to answer them. Hugs ya.





Thanks to ladysunrope for beta


Part - 17


They went downstairs, and Elijah sent Bean straight off to fetch Father Anselm from the cathedral. Elijah had warned Bean not to hint to anyone else, or tell Father Anselm why he was being summoned, until they were clear of the city gates. "And get him to bring a small cart," Elijah concluded.

"Tell the Father I have need of him, if Boniface declines to let him come," Vincent barked. "He will not deny my authority over his priests, even if he should deny the crowner's."

Vincent had handed over several pennies, and the goodwife had provided blankets to carry the hapless man downstairs. Fortunately, there were few customers present, as it was still fairly early, and none did more than throw a cursory glance at the pathetic bundle as it was carried out of doors, and into the wood shed where Master Wimble had said they could place the body on a board and two trestles from the back room of the inn.

Elijah asked Wimble if the customers present were known to him, and he said he had known them all for the fifteen years he had run the place.

But there was something else on Elijah's mind, as he answered the comment with an abstracted nod.

"Is there anyone hereabouts who has a good hound, or other hunting dog?" Elijah asked of the innkeeper.

The man scratched his head, obviously an aid to thought, for his expression lightened. "Aye, sir crowner, Penda Hunter has two, over that way, about a mile. He catches coneys and other creatures with 'em, sir."

He consented to send an ostler over on a cob, to fetch the man and his dogs. "Tell him he must come, it is crowner's business, and I will amerce him the sum of two marks if he refuses.’’

"That'll bring him, running," sniffed Master Wimble with a grim smile. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got ale to strain. Call for me if you need me."

Will was sitting on a stump, busily writing, and Elijah asked him to let him know when he was finished.
"How do you know he is still writing?" Dom asked, puzzled, as he leaned against the tree.
Elijah smiled. "I can hear the quill scrape upon the parchment."

When Will had finished, they went into the shed for another look at the body. "Can you see anything else about him, that you missed inside?" Elijah said, from the doorway, as the place was small.

Dom bowed low over the body, subjecting it to minute scrutiny now it was laid on a board, not on the floor.

"Yes," he said, in an excited voice. "There is gold mixed in with the ink, ground into the skin on his fingers. What does it mean?"

"He is a manuscript illuminator. I hope Father Anselm will know him."

"It'll be difficult without his head - to identify him, I mean," Vincent grunted.

"He has a scar on his wrist that I missed, too," Dom said, glad to get out of the shed. "Shaped like an L."

They all sat in the shade, under the trees, waiting for Father Anselm, and the man with the dogs. The dogs arrived first - their owner, in fear of being amerced more money than he saw in four years, came running after them.

After Elijah had let the hounds get the scent of the body, he instructed the man. "Let them go as far as they might along the road away from the inn," he said. "If they wish to delve into the undergrowth either side, do not stop them. You know you are looking for the dead man's head - do not touch it, just mark its place, and come and fetch us. Speak to no-one of your task, if you should meet anyone upon the road."

The man hurried off, glad not to have been ordered to bring back the head, if he found it, and while the others sat down again, and availed themselves of a fine cheese, and some very good bread, Dom asked, "why did you not send him in the other direction, Elijah? Towards the city, I mean?"

Elijah swallowed his cheese, as the others watched several men on horseback, and one woman with a basket, pass towards the city. One man stopped at the inn, but only glanced at them as he hurried inside for a mug of fresh-brewed ale. No doubt the other customers would tell him a body had been found, but that did not matter. These things were expected to be mentioned, after all.

"I think our killer was headed towards the city, Dom, but he is too clever to throw the head anywhere along a road in the direction the finder might think he had gone. He will have taken it back some distance, and thrown it there. I also do not think he will have buried it. It was not a premeditated killing - it was night, he had no tools to dig a hole, and only an idiot would choose an inn in which to murder a man - especially a priest. Anyone else, intending murder, would have killed him on the road."

Dom thought, not for the first time, that Elijah was a very clever man - and he could see, by Vincent's expression, that his brother thought so, too.

Father Anselm had arrived a while later, driving a cart, with Bean riding by his side, just as Elijah heard the dogs barking. He called Will to him, whilst Vincent and Dom prepared the distressed priest.

"Go and meet the hunter. He must have found it - the dogs are getting closer. Go and examine his find thoroughly... ask the innkeeper's wife for a sack and bring it..."

Father Anselm was taken to see the body, and he wept over it, before he blessed it. "Such a talented lad - so full of promise."

"How can you tell who it is without…?" Elijah left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

"His hands - he had beautiful hands. He was as vain as a woman concerning them. I'd know them anywhere! Besides, there is the scar where he cut himself sharpening a pen. I dressed it for him, as he did not like the sight of blood."

They came back out into the fresh air, and Anselm accepted a mug of small beer from Dom, who knew the priest preferred it to ale.

"I had no difficulty leaving the cathedral, for Bishop Boniface returned last night, and was not risen before I left," Anselm began. "No-one saw him return, but he called me just before Lauds, and he was trembling. He was dressed in his nightshirt, and seemed damp, as if he had been sweating copiously."

Or bathing, to rid himself of blood, Elijah thought, morosely.

Anselm paused to drink. "Then he said that Father Alduin, who had accompanied his Grace to the home of the bishop's distant cousin some miles east of here, had run mad, and attacked him, scratching his face and arms, then stolen his scrip and run off into the night. He did not see exactly where this happened, except he said it was somewhere on the road. How does Alduin come to be here, dead? I do not understand it!"

Elijah understood it very well. "Did Bean tell you the circumstances of his death, before you saw the body just now?"

Anselm shuddered. "He did, to save me the shock of it. I asked him to tell me everything..."

"Dom, go along the road and find Will, and the man."

In an undervoice he said to his love, "wash it, if need be, Dom. Try to make it less...gruesome, if that is possible. Send the man off, then - he and his dogs have served their purpose, and he will have work to do."

Anselm said he would pray for the soul of Father Alduin, and retired into the shed with the archbishop, and Bean and his master sat under the shade of a tree, and waited for the others.

In less than half an hour Will and Dom returned, Will carrying a sack, which looked to contain more than the dead priest's head. So it proved - the dogs had found his clothing, also.

Elijah could not examine the severed head. Will said it was in good condition, as far as a severed head could be said to be, and Dom had, indeed washed it, and smoothed out the hair.

Father Anselm choked as he saw it. "Yes, that is Father Alduin. May God keep him safe."

"Amen," everyone said, crossing themselves, and Elijah, mindful of his duties, said, "we will hold the inquest here, and then the Father can be taken home. Bean, fetch the inn-keeper, if you please."


The group was crowded inside the small shed, but Elijah, forgoing ceremony, said, curtly, "we must fulfil the forms of the King's law, for that is my duty - but it will be swiftly done. Master Wimble, I charge you, most straitly, to reveal nothing of this matter to anyone, nor of anything you will now hear, not even to your wife, on pain of an amercement of four marks. Do you understand?"

The man grimaced, and nodded. "I do, Crowner."

Elijah set out his story. "As far as we know, this man - as yet unknown to us - visited this inn twice." He stopped as Wimble crossed himself. A murder in the house, even if the house is an inn, was no light thing. Elijah thought it best that the man not know it was a priest who had been killed there. He had his reasons.

"On the second occasion, he spent the night here, with a person unknown."

Everyone present, except the inn-keeper, and the innocent Father Anselm, knew who his bed companion had been.

"Some time in the night, he was murdered, his head hacked off, and removed some distance away."

"Will, stop writing for a moment, and tell us what the hunter said, and what you saw for yourself"

"He was walking along the path, keeping his eyes peeled, when both dogs went hareing off the road, into the undergrowth," Will reported. "He found the bundle in a hollow near a stream. It was well hidden, he would not have seen it had the dogs not found it."

"The man unwrapped part of the head from the...clothing... thinking it might be something else, but he stopped when he saw the chin and mouth - it was what we were looking for. I looked carefully about the spot, when he showed me it, but I could see nothing, except a bit of flattened grass, and a few snapped twigs. Then I put it all in the sack, and met Dom on the road." Will picked up his pen again.

"I told the man to go home," Dom continued, "and put the fear of another two marks amercement on him, on your behalf, sir, so he will say nothing. I doubt if he'd reveal it to the Archangel Gabriel, so terrified of the possibility of the fine was he."

"So, members of the jury, what conclusion have you reached?" Elijah enquired, solemnly.

Vincent, primed before by his brother, appointed himself spokesman, and after a very short discussion, announced that the unknown man had been slain by another person, also unknown.

The inn-keeper, who was glad he had not been asked to look at the head, still secure within the sack, was allowed to leave at this point, and there was no further need to hide the priest's identity.

"Very well," Elijah said, grimly, after Wimble had left. "That will do - for now. Is there Presentment of Englishry?"

"Yes, my lord," replied Anselm. "His father was definitely an English-man. A mill-owner from Stretford."

"No amercement will be made against the hundred, as presentment has been proved, and no deodand exacted, as the murder weapon has not been found."

Elijah clapped his hands. "That is that. Father Anselm, you may take the Father's body home."

*****

Father Anselm had been given strict instructions by Elijah concerning Father Alduin's body. No-one at the cathedral must know it was there.

"Is there a secret entrance, Father, not known by most people?" Dom asked, as they conferred together, under the tree, the inn-keeper safely inside out of earshot.

"There is, Sheriff. Only myself and the bishop know of it. It was fashioned when the cathedral was built so that priests might escape raiders, or the king's wrath. He - the late Henry - was not kindly disposed to some priests, " Anselm said, thinking of Thomas Becket's fate. "It is well hid, and can be approached from the wooded fields without anyone seeing us."

Dom cursed inwardly, now knowing how Rolf had escaped from the cathedral cells. Damn his black soul! Dom thought, savagely.

Not for the first time, he wished that Vincent had allowed Andrew and Will to shoot Rolf, in the greenwood. Rolf had much to worry his conscience, if he had one - murder, rape and Elijah's blindness.

Anselm had been told to place Father Alduin in one of the empty lead-lined caskets kept in the cathedral cellar.

"We can bury him with more ceremony and dignity at a later time, Father. But, for now, no-one must know he is dead. Do you understand? No-one, not even the bishop."

Especially not the bishop, Dom sighed.

Bean and Will were given the task of going with Father Anselm to help him, as it was clear the man was much upset by the young priest's death.

Vincent, Dom and Elijah rode home in silence. Murder was a foul crime at the best of times, but one so young, so much still to accomplish...

Vincent stopped just inside the city gates. "I am off to the cathedral, to distract Boniface, and to put the fear of God into him. I will invite him to dinner. He has no excuse to refuse me this time. Besides, if I command it, he must come. You two may retire upstairs, and eat yours in peace. Of course, you may leave the door open, and listen, whilst I make him wriggle."



Dom and Elijah were sitting in the hall, enjoying some of Vincent's wine, when the archbishop returned.

"Do you always travel with your own wine, your...er, Vincent?" Dom asked, as Vincent threw his gloves onto the table.

Elijah laughed. "His wine, his linen sheets, his favourite chair, his cups, his pillows and blankets..."

"Peace, spratling! I brought nothing with me, but the wine. I knew your house would be well-provided with other comforts."

"Wine, your Grace?" Andrew asked, as Will and Bean had not yet returned from helping Anselm with his sad task.

"Aye, Andrew. A large mazer, if you please," he said as he dragged a heavy chair from its new place against the wall, and joined the two men beside the fireplace. "That man leaves a sour taste in my mouth."

Dom agreed. "How will you be able to show him even the commonest courtesy, when you are forced to dine with the fat slug?" Dom asked, marvelling at Vincent's restraint.

It was Elijah who answered. "Vincent learned, as a mere bishop, that he had to mix with men he despised, and who would as soon slip a knife between his ribs as kiss his hand. He has had much practice at dissimulation, I assure you."

Vincent laughed. "You are right, little brother! I can even, if I force myself, feign a little affection for you, when occasion demands it."

As the archbishops's eyes rested on Elijah, Dom saw a soft look in them that was quite absent when the man was looking at anyone else. Dom had no doubt that the brothers loved one another.

Elijah had replied in kind, and they were all grinning, when Bean and Will came through from the back room.

Bean reported that no-one had seen them, and that they were able to bestow the body in a suitable lead-lined coffin. "Father Anselm said a few prayers over him, then we all raced out again, bought a few sundries to go with the kegs of ale we bought from Master Wimble, to make our journey seem worthwhile, and we left him to drive round to the cathedral through the side door, where he could be seen to return."

Then the men retired to the back room, to refresh themselves and rest awhile, whilst the three others finished their wine.

Dom decided that he would visit the keep to see how all fared there. "I will ask Matty Cobbler how things are progressing, now that Molly is doing well down at the gates," he said, pressing Elijah's hand as he left. "I will return in good time. I do not wish to meet that fat...obscenity... on the doorstep," he grimaced.

"Which fat obscenity do you mean, poor Wuffa Catchpole?" teased Elijah, as his love closed the door, laughing.

Vincent had been thinking. "Lij, do you still have that cross Richard gave me when he foisted Canterbury onto me?"

"Now, is it likely that I should mislay such a valuable object? I believe that my cousin only gave it to you because he felt guilty, Vincent. You so patently did not want the position."

"Aye, that is true. But after Becket was slain, there were so many schisms in the priesthood, someone had to gather the church together, and I can see why he thought of me. I am more common man than archbishop, as the king well knows. I understand the needs of the poor, and the dispossessed, as some patently do not. Boniface is a prime example of a self-serving priest. I will be glad to rid the church of him, and all his ilk - and I will do so."

"The cross is with Aunt Gertruda at her Abbey. It has been safe, there. Shall I send for it?"

Vincent grinned. "Send Bean for it, he's a good rider, and a peerless fighter. I wish I could persuade you to part with him, for I could use him, but I know he would not come - he is quite devoted to your interests. He can take four of my men with him, too. There is no need for them to leave today. Tomorrow will do."



Dom raced in bare minutes before Boniface and his guard arrived. "God's teeth! that was close! They are rounding the slope by the Baker's Guild-Hall. Up the stairs, Elijah, I pray you, for I will spit in his eye if I am forced to meet with him!"

Boniface knocked on the door as timidly as a man begging admittance at the Pearly Gates on a day that St Peter had fallen foul of God. Will, glancing expressively at the archbishop, let him in, and was pleased that the man knelt, and kissed the archbishop's ring as was proper in him, nor did Vincent excuse him from doing so.

The man struggled to his feet again, his fat, red face wreathed in smiles.

Vincent favoured the man with a smile as false as was the bishop's, and led the man to the loaded table.


The archbishop spoke only pleasantries, and allowed the man to eat his fill before starting upon his interrogation, for so it was going to be.

"I understand Archerus Flagsheet left a substantial donation to the cathedral in his will," Vincent said, in a conversational tone, just as the bishop was biting into a marchpane and raisin fancy. He choked upon it, and it was a few minutes before he could get breath enough to comment.

"It is true," Boniface said, in a strangled tone. "Including a very beautiful cross, and two candles for the Lady Chapel."

"I would like to have seen it," Vincent mused. "But Father Anselm seems to think it has been...er... mislaid."

Boniface had recovered his equilibrium. "Nonsense! I had to send it away for a trifling repair. I forgot to mention it to him. One of the rubies was loose. It will be returned tomorrow - your Grace may see it, then."

Vincent nodded; the man had obviously hidden it away, prior to sneaking it out to be sold. It would be returned - for now. Then Vincent came in at the bishop with an attack at the flank. "I see your face is much scratched, Boniface. How did this happen? Your hands, too? Were you attacked?"

Boniface could in no wise hope that the innocent Father Anselm had not revealed the story to the archbishop. If the archbishop knew about the will, he might know of other things, too.

"A sad story, your Grace. I took a young priest with me on the family visit of which I told you. However, on the way back he went mad, saying he had no desire any longer to maintain a priestly life, that he had been forced to it. Then he attacked me, stole my scrip, and ran off into the night. I was much distressed, I can tell your Grace."

"Ran off, did he? Why did he not take his animal? I understand he was riding a mule or somesuch when he left."

"Who can fathom the workings of a mind run mad? For as the Scriptures tell us, 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.'" intoned Boniface, sententiously. "That he ran off, that is all I know."

"Indeed! Where did this happen, my son?" Vincent asked, patronising the bishop.

"Er, some miles north of the city," Boniface blustered.

"Ah," said Vincent, for this was far from the road on which the inn was situated, where the priest had been murdered; in quite the opposite direction. "Near Wandford, then. There are a few good inns in that village, I hear. Did you stay at one there? Was it from there that he ran?"

Boniface was as white as a sheet. "No, your Grace, we did not stay at an inn. I was determined to make for home, so we were travelling through the night. The road was good, after all."

Then Vincent thought to bring up another subject altogether. "Did Father Anselm inform you of the strange object found in Master Flagsheet's hand? The silver chain?"

Boniface put down his mazer, untouched. "Yes, he did, your Grace. I was there when the young priest reported it. I thought it strange that it was placed there. Did anyone recognise it, I wonder?" he remarked, casting a careful glance at Vincent's calm, neutral expression.

"Indeed they did, Boniface - several persons, in fact. Shall we sit for a while by the fire, for I see Will has lit it, and talk of other, less uncomfortable matters?"

Boniface rose, and bowed. "If your Grace will excuse me, I have promised to officiate at Matins, so I must retire early. I thank your Grace for an excellent meal. I am sorry his Grace, your brother, could not be present."

"It is a great pity, for he would have liked very much to talk to you. He seems to have so many questions these days." Vincent remarked, as he accompanied the bishop to the door. "He was tired, however, after having to ride out to examine a corpse, and it is not long since he was returned, safe, to us, as you know."

If Boniface was wondering how a blind man could examine a corpse, he made no mention of it. He bowed to Vincent, as Will opened the door. "A singular case," Vincent mused. "A headless man."

Boniface clambered onto his horse as if the hordes of Beelzebub were on his heels. Vincent laughed as Will bolted the door.

"We have him worried, Will - we do!"