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Bernard Knight

The Grim Reaper

PROLOGUE

Exeter, May 1195

The cathedral Close was never totally silent, even after midnight. There was the scrabble of a stray dog rooting in a pile of butcher’s offal and the rustle of rats in the garbage that was strewn along the muddy paths that crossed this episcopal heart of the city. The wind moaned between the two great towers that reached to the sky, where thin clouds raced across a haloed moon. Its pale light made the shadows cast by the huge building all the blacker and the flickering light of a flare stuck on a wall near Beargate did little to penetrate the gloom along the cathedral’s west front. From beyond the great doors came faint chanting: Matins, the first Office of the new day, was being celebrated in the distant quire.

A cross the precinct, from the direction of little St Martin’s church, came a new sound, the slap of leather soles on the wet soil, as a figure threaded its way through the tomb mounds and piles of earth from newly opened graves. As the walker came out of the shadows, the moonlight shone on the long black cloak and cowl of a priest. However, the devotions of the early hours were not his target, for he walked purposefully past the west front and the cloisters that lay on his left.

The pitch-soaked brand burning at Beargate threw its yellow light down on him as he strode beneath, but it failed to reveal the grim intent on the face hidden by the deep hood.

CHAPTER ONE

In which Crowner John visits a moneylender

A thunderous knocking on the street door dimly penetrated Sir John de Wolfe’s consciousness and triggered a throbbing headache that told of too much wine the previous evening. He groaned and turned over, pulling the sheepskin coverlet over his ears. Angrily his wife jerked the coverings back over herself.

‘See who’s making that noise, John!’ Though she was half-asleep, Matilda’s voice held its usual belligerent rasp.

De Wolfe sighed and levered himself up against the faded tapestry nailed to the wooden wall behind the bed. The movement jarred his brain, which felt as if it was swinging around loose inside his skull. He rubbed his bleary eyes and saw the dawn light peeping through the cracks in the shutters. The knocking stopped and he heard distant voices through the slit that penetrated the wall of their solar into the main hall of the house.

‘Mary’s answered them,’ he grunted, closing his eyes again and running a hand through the long black hair that covered his aching skull. The previous evening, he had been dragged, at Matilda’s insistence, to the Spring Feast of the Guild of Cordwainers. It was part of her campaign to get him to associate more with the great and good of the city and county. An enthusiastic social climber, it galled Matilda that, as sister of the sheriff and wife of the coroner, she missed out on many of the upper-class events because her husband did all he could to avoid them. Last night, he had sat glumly at the top table in the Guildhall, doing his best to drown the idle chatter of the burgesses, barons and clergy with a considerable excess of ale, cider and Anjou wine. He had managed to totter the short distance to their house in Martin’s Lane, oblivious of the tight-lipped disapproval of his grim-faced wife, but this morning he was paying the price.