Adam glowered at the faces before him. ‘I carried out the tasks that the Almighty charged me to perform.’
‘And how did he call upon you?’ cut in Canon Jordan, in his deceptively mild voice.
‘His voice came to me in the night, clearer than you are speaking to me now. Many a time, God answered my prayers for guidance, telling me how to outwit Satan.’ His voice rose. ‘He told me how to make up for the weakness of our Church, for I was his appointed disciple.’
‘Cease this arrogant blasphemy!’ snapped the Bishop. ‘You have been indulging in these abominable practices for your own depraved pleasure.’
De Alençon decided to join the inquisition. ‘These killings you admit to now, they began recently. What caused this escalation in your misdeeds?’
‘As I told you, it was the voice of God. I could see signs of wickedness going unchecked all around me in this city. I was called to bring retribution and convince those in power of the peril of neglecting their duty. I assumed that God was calling others to do the same in other places, as part of a great crusade against Lucifer, who was clearly winning the fight.’
The Archdeacon marvelled at the way in which a madman could rationalise what he was doing, to justify his indulgence in the very same sins against which he alleged that he was campaigning.
‘Did you intend to slay every whore, every moneylender, every sodomite in the city?’ enquired the Precentor in his acid tones.
Adam, who seemed to have a logical answer to every slur on his fantasies, shook his bull-like head. ‘Of course not! It was but a sign, a token of warning to those who committed similar sins. And you have interrupted my work, damn you all! God will be unforgiving when you go to judgement, though you be bishops and archdeacons all!’
Henry Marshal sighed. It was impossible to penetrate this disordered mind. He turned to John de Alençon. ‘Archdeacon, I gather you have some further information?’
De Alençon leaned forward and unrolled a parchment that he had been holding. ‘In the last few days, we have learnt that the parish priest of Topsham, one Richard Vassallus, was a secondary and a vicar at the cathedral of Wells at the same time as Adam of Dol. This was now many years ago, but Vassallus was sent for yesterday and was able to give me some pertinent facts about his old colleague.’
The others turned to him with expectant interest, but the prisoner barked his derision. ‘Vassallus was a weak-kneed fool, as well as a liar. He has hated me ever since I broke his jaw after he derided my theories about countering Satan’s wiles!’
The Archdeacon ignored the interruption. ‘This priest said that Adam had a reputation for outbursts of ungovernable violence when at Wells. He was known to consort with loose women — though we must accept that was not a unique crime, even among young clerics — and he was suspected of having been involved in the fatal mutilation of a whore in Bristol. The sheriff’s men came to make enquiries, but nothing could be proved.’
‘Liars, all of them! God had not then called me to do his bidding,’ ranted Adam, until a proctor rapped him across the neck with his rod.
‘Was there anything else?’ asked the Bishop.
‘There were two mysterious fires when he was at Wells. Part of the dormitory was burnt down and later, there was a fire in the Chapter House that damaged the scriptorium. Again, suspicion fell on Adam, but no proof was forthcoming. However, the canons had him transferred to their superior house of Bath Abbey, where it seems his dubious history was not known.’
De Alençon unrolled his scroll a little more and continued, ‘By chance, I was discussing the matter with one of the Justices now in the city, Gervase de Bosco, who, as you all know, is an archdeacon in Gloucester. He told me that almost a year ago, he was one of those holding the Eyre of Assize in Wiltshire. Two deaths were presented by the coroner there, one from Salisbury, the other from Devizes, which were never solved, no perpetrator ever being found.’
The others waited with interest upon the rest of the Archdeacon’s explanation.
‘The victims were both harlots, mutilated in an obscene way. One had also been damaged after death by fire. Other whores who frequented the same ale-houses as the dead girls told a vague story suggesting that a man with a priest’s tonsure had been the last man seen with the victims, but in the absence of any other evidence, nothing could come of the matter.’
There was a pregnant silence.
‘Murdered whores, mutilation and fires seem to recur often in this sad story,’ said the Bishop. ‘Have you anything to say on the matter, Adam of Dol?’
The priest’s pugnacious face jerked up defiantly. ‘Sin is sin, whether it be in Exeter, Salisbury or Devizes! It needs to be rooted out wherever it occurs.’
‘Which offers you your perverted pleasures at the same time, no doubt,’ said Henry Marshal dryly. ‘If that is the last of your sad catalogue, Archdeacon, then I have something to add, which I learnt only today.’
The company turned expectantly to their superior.
‘Since it became public knowledge that this deranged fellow had been apprehended, his own confessor came to me in great concern. Father William Angot, of the church of Holy Trinity, has been on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and only returned yesterday, so he knew nothing of the spate of killings during these past few weeks. Mindful of the sanctity of confession, he has been disconsolate about what to do but came to me for guidance. Though we accept that confessions are never disclosed, even to fellow priests, in the circumstances I gave a dispensation to Father William to divulge what he felt was relevant to this vile situation.’
‘You had no such right!’ howled Adam, his eyes bulging in a face almost puce with rage.
Ignoring his outburst, Henry Marshal continued in cold, even tones: ‘Though this evil man had not deigned to make confession for almost half a year, according to William Angot, in the past he has admitted to such strange behaviour and actions that his confessor urged him repeatedly both to desist and to seek counselling from higher authorities. He had suggested pilgrimages to Canterbury and even to Rome, but Adam rejected these notions with scorn.’
All eyes and ears were now on the Bishop, waiting to hear what came next,
‘From such confessions over several years, William gathered that the roots of this man’s madness are rooted in his childhood. His father treated him with contempt and his mother and a sister were confined by force in a nunnery, due to distressing afflictions of the mind. In his rejection, he began to torture small animals and developed a passion for fire, causing a number of conflagrations on their estate in Totnes. Eventually, his father disposed of him to the cathedral school in Wells, mainly, it seems, as a means of getting rid of a troublesome embarrassment.’
Adam began again to shout denials and curses and tried to move towards the dais on which his accusers sat, but the proctors and their henchmen restrained his struggles.
‘His so-called confessions became progressively more like the abuse and cant we are hearing from him today — which is another reason why I have sanctioned the limited revelation of his dealings with Father William. He admitted his fornication with harlots, thankfully well away from Exeter, and he gave broad hints about the revival of his fascination with fire and torture, which seem to have been manifest in a perverse degree in his preaching and those abominable paintings that desecrate the walls of St Mary the Less. I have been myself to see them today and have given orders that they be whitewashed over without delay.’
This provoked another howl of protest from Adam, who viewed the obliteration of his artwork as an even greater tragedy than his own arrest, but the Bishop was unmoved as he brought the interview dispassionately to an end.
‘Adam of Dol, it is the Consistory Court that will finally judge you, though I will appoint its chancellor and its members. At this stage, all I will do is to wonder whether you are totally deranged or totally evil. Whichever it is, there is no doubt that the Satan you claim to fight, has invaded your mind. Indeed, he seems to have been residing there since your childhood and it is a great pity that those who had the care and teaching of you in the early days of your church career did not cut out this perversity, root and branch.’ With the words, ‘Take this creature out of my sight’, he rose and, to the bows of his colleagues, turned to leave through the door behind his chair.