The Deadliest Sin (38 page)

‘Let’s see what Crote discovers over in High Street,’ advised Humphrey. ‘Then maybe we can see how best to turn this to our own advantage.’

Erasmus Crote gained very little from his visit to the Giffard household. After barely five minutes there, he was back on High Street again and began walking aimlessly along
the river bank outside the city wall as he considered the situation. He had not seen Robert Giffard, or even his wife, for he was courteously, but firmly barred at the front door by the Stogursey
fellow.

‘I fear, sir, that the master has taken a turn for the worse since dinner-time. The mistress had him taken back to bed, after he had a species of fit.’

Erasmus did his best to gain admittance by energetically offering his services as another doctor, eager to provide help and advice, but the servile apothecary’s assistant was adamant.

‘I regret that Mistress Eleanor gave strict instructions that he was not to be disurbed, sir. She is with him now, though he has drifted into sleep.’

Crote’s argument that the sick man needed urgent medical attention fell on deaf ears.

‘I am sure that you are right, sir – and that is why we have sent for an eminent physician, who will visit us in the morning.’

Erasmus noted the ‘we’, which suggested that the servant was now on an equal footing with the lady of the house. He also jumped on the news that another doctor had been called and
for a moment wondered if he had missed a summons, which in his absence might now have gone to Humphrey de Cockville or William Blundus. But common sense told him that this was highly unlikely in
the mere half-hour since he had left them.

‘And who might that be?’ he demanded of Stogursey.

The servant, obviously eager to shut the door in Crote’s face, informed him that it was Brother Xavier, the new infirmarian at Keynsham Abbey and a man of high repute trained at the
University of Bologna.

Before the door was finally closed on him, he managed to order Stogursey to give his felicitations to his mistress, hoping that her husband would rapidly improve and that if there was any
possible help that he could give, she was to send a message to him at any time of day or night. The man, with a deadpan expression that conveyed a total lack of interest, said that he would do so,
then Erasmus found himself staring at the oaken boards of a firmly closed door.

Now the physician was walking along the waterfront, the many ships that were tied up along the wharfs reminding him of Jordan fitz Hamon, who would probably benefit the most if Robert Giffard
died and left his desirable widow available for remarriage.

As he loped along, he contemplated the city where he lived and earned a meagre living. Bristol was now the third largest city in England after London and York, due to the maritime trade that
made it the busiest port after London. Erasmus looked ahead of him along the muddy river to where it curved northwards through a steep gorge before meandering down to the sea, some seven miles
away. The banks were lined with ships, now tilted against the quays as they lay on the mud at low tide. Twice a day, they were able to descend to the sea at high water, to make money for the city
and especially the fitz Hamons.

Once again, Erasmus felt it so unfair that while he worked so hard to scratch a living amongst the poorer folk of Bristol, the rich merchants lived off the fat of the land, sitting on their
treasure chests of gold and silver, merely from having accumulated wealth. Such wealth begat even more, with no further effort than employing clerks to administer a fleet of ships, manned by
sailors who risked their lives in order to line their masters’ pockets.

Erasmus Crote sighed and began retracing his steps back into the city, his melancholy being increased by the prospect of having to deal with a handful of patients when he got back to his dismal
consulting room. No doubt it would be the usual collection of chronic coughs, scabies and suppurating sores that would bring in a few miserable pence. Just half a dozen of Robert Gifford’s
rich patients would set him on the road to success.

Robert Giffard was in a bad way by the time that the infirmarian from Keynsham Abbey arrived next day. Late in the morning, a placid palfrey arrived at the physician’s
house carrying the monk, a tall cadaverous man, accompanied by a groom on another horse. He was admitted to the house and at once taken by Edward Stogursey to the sickroom, where Eleanor Giffard
was sitting alongside the bed.

She rose to greet the figure dressed in the robes of an Augustinian canon, a black cloak over a white habit.

‘My husband is sinking fast, sir,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I fear he will not see out this day.’

Brother Xavier went to the bedside and looked down at the sick doctor, who lay deathly pale as he lay on his pillow. ‘Has he spoken to you today?’ he asked Eleanor. ‘Has he
shown any signs of consciousness?’

She shook her head sadly. ‘Last evening he was fairly well and fell into what I thought was a normal sleep. But he has not responded to anything I say today.’

The infirmarian began examining his patient, lifting his eyelids and peering at the pupils. He gently felt the sides of the neck and probed the armpits, then pulled aside the bedclothes and
placed his ear on the chest. Straightening up, he courteously suggested that Eleanor wait outside the room whilst he examined the more intimate parts of the husband’s body. With the aid of
Stogursey, who stood patiently on the other side of the bed, they pulled down the blankets and Xavier carefully surveyed and palpated the belly and genitals. Then the servant gently pulled the body
of his master towards him so that the monk could study the back, noting some small haemorrhages scattered over the skin.

‘Do you have a sample of his urine?’ he asked the doctor’s assistant. Stogursey produced a glass bottle from under a cloth and the Augustinian held it up to the light from the
window, studying the colour and sniffing the odour. Realising that Stogursey had a considerable knowledge of medicine, he extracted a detailed history of Robert Giffard’s illness from the
man. Eventually, with a resigned shrug, he left the bedchamber and went into the hall of the house, where Eleanor Giffard had ordered the servants to bring food and wine for the visiting
infirmarian.

‘I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance, madam,’ said Xavier in a grave voice. ‘And I fear you are right about your husband’s condition; he is unlikely to
live much longer.’

‘But what is it that is killing him?’ she demanded. ‘Could it be some miasma that he has caught from one of his patients? Some are shipmasters who have returned from far
overseas.’

The monk shook his head. ‘I do not believe so, Mistress Giffard. I think he has been poisoned – but by what, I cannot tell. There are scores, if not hundreds of noxious substances,
most derived from plants and herbs, which could cause such symptoms.’

‘Have you no antagonist to such an evil thing?’ she said tearfully.

Xavier sighed heavily. ‘Without knowing what manner of poison it is, that is impossible. I am afraid that many people are misled into thinking that every poison has an antidote, but that
is not so. Most methods of treatment are purely arbitrary.’

‘Then what can be done? Is he to die without any attempt at saving him?’

‘The problem is to discover how the poison has been adminstered,’ replied the infirmarian. ‘You say that all his food and drink has been tasted these past weeks since you
suspected some evil doing?’

Eleanor once again assured him that either she or Stogursey had strictly supervised everything made in the kitchen and had both sampled it themselves. Xavier spoke gently to her for some
minutes, though he knew that there was little he could do. After prescribing some bland treatment such as trying to get the patient to swallow white of egg and crushed charcoal, he had little else
to offer other than his prayers. Eventually, after taking some refreshment, he mounted his horse and began the journey back to Keynsham. He had promised Mistress Giffard that he would return in
several days, but as he made his way to the bridge, he knew that Robert Giffard would be dead before then.

Bristol Castle was on the eastern edge of the city – or to be more accurate, the city was continuous with the castle whose wide moat was fed from the small River Frome,
which lay to the north. Inside the curtain wall of the castle was a massive keep, but there were numerous other smaller buildings, both in stone and wood. The sheriff, as befitted the King’s
representative, had his quarters in the keep, together with the numerous officers who administered both the city and the county of Somerset.

One chamber on the ground floor of this forbidding mass of grey stone was provided for the coroner, Ralph fitz Urse. Like the sheriff, a coroner was a royal officer, who had multiple functions,
mostly of a legal nature. He was responsible for bringing cases before the Eyre, the perambulating court presided over by the King’s judges. As part of his duties, the coroner had to
investigate all deaths that were obviously not natural.

Most of his day-to-day work was carried out by his serjeant, William Hangfield, who had his own small office, little more than a cubicle, just inside one of the side entrances to the keep. This
was a small arched gate some fifteen feet above the ground, reached by a wooden ramp, which in case of siege could be thrown down to avoid offering a weak point in the defences.

At about the eighth hour of the morning, William Hangfield was enjoying a quart of ale and a hunk of bread and cheese in the Great Hall, which during the day acted as a central meeting place of
both the sheriff’s staff and many of the citizens who came to transact business with the officials. Benches and trestle tables lined one wall and those with some influence in the kitchens
could obtain food and drink to fortify themselves for the working day. William lived with his wife and small son in a small house on Wine Street, but as he had to deal with coroner’s cases in
all of the eastern part of the county, he was often out of the city. Today, he had no such tasks, and having just delivered some inquest records to the clerks for copying, ready for the next
visitation of the judges, he had decided on some refreshment. He sat at a table, gossiping with some of his fellow officers, feeling relaxed, looking forward to an easy day in this hot weather. A
rather short and heavily built man, now in his fortieth year, he had a thick neck and a round, rugged face, with black hair cropped to a horizontal line, in the old Norman style, which was long out
of fashion.

He was a sociable man, popular with his friends in the castle and able to get along with his superiors, both the coroner and the sheriff himself. Both of these were not known for their patience
or good nature, but William Hangfield was able to avoid any serious brushes with their authority, whilst still managing to get much of his own way in the methods that he employed to go about his
duties. He sat with his pottery beer mug in a large hand, discussing the latest news about the ongoing antagonism between King Edward and the barons, who were demanding the expulsion of his
favourites, the Despensers.

William’s political conversation was suddenly interrupted by the arrival at his side of one of the door-wards. These were servants who stood guard at the entrance to the Hall, to prevent
any undesirables from entering.

‘William, there’s a lad at the gate who says he must see you urgently about a death,’ he reported. ‘Shall I let him in?’

A few moments later, the door-ward brought a nervous youth to the table, a thin boy about nine years old in the plain but decent clothing of a house servant.

‘If it please you, sir, I have a message for the coroner from my mistress,’ he said quaveringly, awed by his surroundings. He held out a folded piece of parchment, sealed with red
wax.

The coroner’s officer took it and broke the seal, rapidly scanning the brief contents.

‘Good boy, tell your mistress that someone will attend upon her very shortly. Understand?’

The boy nodded and quickly vanished, glad to be out of the castle, which to most of the citizens had an evil reputation for dispensing unwanted justice.

‘More trouble?’ asked his drinking partner, a senior clerk in the taxation office.

‘One of our prominent citizens has gone to meet his Maker,’ replied Hangfield. ‘I had heard that he was ill, but not that he was in danger of death.’

‘And who might that be?’ asked the clerk.

‘Our best-known doctor, Robert Giffard. He was very well-regarded, especially by the more eminent residents of the city.’

The clerk whistled through his teeth to express concern. ‘He was certainly the best physician in Bristol – not that any of them could do much good – and he was certainly the
most expensive!’

William Hangfield finished his ale in one swallow and rose from his seat.

‘I had better tell the coroner straight away, as even in death people like Robert Giffard command priority.’

He walked across the hall to a doorway on the opposite side, where a man-at-arms stood guard with a pike. Nodding at the man, William opened the door and went along a passage from which opened a
number of doors, one of which was the coroner’s chamber. Inside the familiar room, he greeted the old clerk sitting at a writing desk with a quill. This was Samuel of Redcliffe, who had been
compiling the coroner’s records for longer than anyone could remember.

‘Is he in yet?’ asked Hangfield. ‘There was a Mercer’s Guild dinner last night, so I thought he might be a bit under the weather this morning.’

Samuel’s toothless mouth gaped in a grin. ‘He’s in, all right, but in a foul temper.’

The coroner’s officer walked to an inner door and, after a perfunctory knock, went inside. The coroner, Sir Ralph fitz Urse, was slumped in the leather-backed chair behind his table, on
which were scattered various parchments concening current cases. He was a pugnacious man, built like a bull, with a florid face and nose covered in small blue veins, suggesting his fondness for the
wine flask. He had thinning ginger hair and bushy eyebrows of the same colour. Beady eyes sat above drooping pouches of skin and his fleshy lips were down-turned in a permanent expression of bad
temper.