Free A Plague of Heretics by Bernard Knight Page A

castle, they walked down Castle Hill and across to St John’s Priory, tucked away just inside the city wall, which had been built by the Romans, neglected by the Saxons and restored by the Normans.
    It was a small Benedictine house, with just a prior and three brothers, devoted to caring for the sick and in schooling a few local children. The only ward was a large room with a row of straw mattresses on the floor down each side, dominated by a large wooden crucifix on the end wall, confirming Clement of Salisbury’s claim that God was the only real healer of bodies and souls.
    They found Brother Saulf there, a tall, gaunt monk who acted as hospitaller. He had had some medical training in Flanders before entering the cloister and had been very helpful to the coroner on several occasions. Saulf led them around to the back of the tiny priory, where a small shed stood in the shadow of the ancient city wall. Functioning as a store for stretchers and old furniture as well as a mortuary, it now sheltered the corpse of Nicholas Budd, which lay on the ground covered with a sheet. Gwyn pulled it back and they looked down at a face now cleaned of all the blood and clot that had obscured it the previous day. His open eyes stared up glassily and his lips were distorted by the havoc that a knife had wreaked inside his mouth. Grey hair and stubble marked him as being probably in his fifties.
    The monk bent down and picked up something wrapped in a rag from alongside the cadaver. ‘This is his tongue and throat parts,’ he said, unrolling the bloodstained cloth. ‘It should be buried with the body, for decency’s sake.’
    Gwyn poked at it with a finger, while Thomas contrived to look elsewhere. ‘Must have been a damned sharp knife, Crowner,’ he observed. ‘Clean cuts, very little ragged edges.’
    ‘I try to heal bodies, rather than disordered minds,’ said Saulf gravely. ‘But I would have thought that whoever did this was making retribution for something that this poor man had said.’
    De Wolfe stared thoughtfully at the Benedictine. ‘You suggest that cutting out the tongue and voice-box, the organs of speech, might mean that the victim had caused offence?’
    ‘Must have been a bit more serious than just telling him to bugger off!’ offered Gwyn facetiously.
    They examined the body carefully, but apart from the wound on the head there was nothing else of significance. The scrip on his belt contained four pence and a tarnished medallion of St Christopher. The fingers were slightly callused and had some small healing cuts, consistent with his work as a woodcarver. The monk pulled the sheet back over the body when they had finished. ‘What happens now?’ he asked. ‘Did he have any relatives that will attend to his burial?’
    De Wolfe straightened his back and moved away from the corpse. ‘We will have to make enquiries at his home, then I will have to hold an inquest. I will let you know about disposing of the body as soon as I can.’ He offered a dozen pennies to Saulf, which the monk gratefully received as a donation to the funds of the hard-pressed hospital, then left with his two assistants. They made their way down to Curre Street, which was one of the small lanes that led from the High Street towards the North Gate. It was lined with a mixture of houses and tenements, varying in size and shape, some with shopfronts and others being the work premises of various crafts. They found Osric outside a cordwainer’s shop, talking to the owner.
    ‘I was just asking about Nicholas Budd, Crowner,’ the town constable explained. ‘His workshop is next door, and this man says that Nicholas was at home the day before yesterday, but he’s not seen him since.’
    ‘Kept himself to himself, did Budd,’ volunteered the shoemaker. ‘Nice enough fellow, but very quiet. Lived alone, can’t say as if I’ve ever heard of him speak of family. Certainly, he never had no visitors here.’
    There was no more to be learned, and