Bernard Knight

The Tinner's Corpse

PROLOGUE

April 1195 AD

The early spring evening was well advanced when the men downed tools and set off homewards. They were working on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, so could walk back to their dwellings around Chagford within the hour, rather than camp out in the primitive huts dotted all over the high moor. Only eleven of their gang of a dozen tinners trudged down the little valley towards their wives and a good meal. As usual the overman had stayed behind to scrape the last of the precious shode from the wooden troughs, then add it to the pile of ore. Tomorrow it would be taken down to the blowing-house for the first smelting.

The others marched away down the stony gully, following the stream that gurgled between moss-covered boulders under twisted, stunted trees that crouched down from the winds that whistled across the miles of open moorland. Tough as they were, the tinners were weary after the long day’s work and had little inclination to gossip on the way home. Although their calf-length boots of raw ox-hide were thickly greased, they were not watertight and the men’s feet were cold and wet from working in the stream all day. Most had managed a gruff farewell to the foreman they left behind, but in a few moments they were out of sight around the curve of the small ravine down which the South Teign brook sped on its way to join its northern partner at Leigh Bridge. After a few twists, as the ground dropped away from Thornworthy Down, the valley opened up to give a distant vista of fields and woods, with the little town of Chagford nestling in the centre.

Left alone, Henry of Tunnaford surveyed the stream-working with an air of satisfaction and began unhurriedly to tidy up, ready for the next morning’s digging. He pulled up the short plank that acted as a sluice-gate at the top of the main trough, letting clean water from the leat run through the system overnight. Henry was a wiry man, not tall and not broad, but still tough and rugged, like most of the tinners. He picked up a fallen shovel and a pick, and took them across to a rough shanty built against the high bank at one side of the workings. It was a crude structure, built of large moorstones and roofed with branches and turf. The hut did service as both a store and a shelter for the men, where they could eat their frugal midday meal when the rain or snow was heavier than usual.

Now Henry stood in the open entrance, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the hundred yards of stream-work, which had eaten into the sides of the valley during the year they had been working this stretch of the little river. The weather had been fairly dry these past few days, but at the top end of the workings, plenty of water still cascaded over the breast to fall in a cataract. Some was guided away by the leat, a planked channel leading down to the long trough that ran immediately alongside the burbling stream.

The opposite bank was being remorselessly hacked away by their gang, the bigger stones and rubbish being dumped into herringbone ridges while the finer gravel was thrown into the trough. A continuous flow of water washed away the lighter tailings and left behind the heavy granules of tin ore.

Proud of his trade, and even prouder of his status as overman, Henry fiddled about for a few more minutes, almost reluctant to leave his workings. He felt an almost proprietorial affection for them, although he was only a wage-earner like the other men. This stream-work was just one of many owned by Walter Knapman of Chagford.

Finally, Henry took his ragged leather cloak from a peg in the hut and threw it around his shoulders, ready for the walk back to his croft at Tunnaford, a mile away to the east of the valley. But as he was on the point of leaving, he could not resist a last foray to the top of the workings to straighten a crooked support below the main trough, which had been undermined by the water flow. This was immediately beneath the low cliff of the stream breast, and as he bent to pull the baulk of timber back into place, he heard a crunching scuffle above him. He looked up in surprise, and the expression on his face rapidly turned to abject terror. A moment later, Henry of Tunnaford was dead.

CHAPTER ONE

In which Crowner John is harangued by his wife

The last thing that Sir John de Wolfe needed this morning was another argument with his wife. He arrived back at his home in Martin’s Lane at about the tenth hour, as the nearby cathedral bell was tolling for Terce, Sext and Nones. He left his great stallion Odin with the farrier opposite, then trudged across the narrow road and bent his black head to enter the front door. As he slumped on to the bench in the vestibule to pull off his dusty riding boots, a strident voice called out from the hall to his left: ‘John! Is that you, John?’

Suppressing an urge to reply that it was the Archangel Gabriel come to whisk her up to heaven, de Wolfe yelled back that it was indeed himself and that he was hungry enough to eat a small horse, shoes and all. Before he could summon up the will to go in to meet Matilda, a large hound loped up the covered passage that led from the backyard to the vestibule and laid its slobbering mouth affectionately across his knees. As he fondled old Brutus’s ears, Mary the housemaid appeared and, keeping a wary eye on the inner door to the hall, planted a drier pair of lips quickly on his cheek. ‘She’s in a funny mood today, Sir Crowner,’ she whispered. Mary was a handsome, dark-haired woman of about twenty-five and John felt that he would probably not survive without her: Mary kept him fed and in clean garments, while his wife was seemingly oblivious of his basic needs. She spent most of her time in church.

‘Matilda’s always in a funny mood,’ he growled, as the servant handed him a pair of soft house shoes.

‘Her brother was here earlier this morning,’ she murmured. ‘They seemed to be hatching some plot, but I couldn’t hear what they said.’

She threw his grey wolfskin cloak over her arm and moved towards the covered passage back to her domain in the yard. ‘I’ll beat the dust out of this. Do you need anything to eat now?’

The coroner shook his head. ‘Just a jug of ale. I broke my fast in Crediton soon after dawn.’

He had ridden the day before to Rackenford, a village up towards Exmoor, to hold an inquest on a youth crushed by a collapsed wall. He had left there too late to get back to Exeter before the gates were closed at curfew and had had to spend the night in the hall of a manor near Crediton.

As she was about to vanish down the passage, Mary put her head round the corner for a last word. ‘From what I heard, she’s on again about you being away so much.’

De Wolfe groaned as he rose stiffly to his feet. Matilda was like a dog worrying at a bone, with her never-ending complaints about his frequent absences, even though it was she who, last September, had nagged him to take this damned job as Devon’s county coroner. Now, he lifted the heavy iron latch on the inner door and went between the draught screens into the hall. His house was a tall, narrow building, one of three side by side in Martin’s Lane, which led from Exeter’s main street into the cathedral Close. Opposite was the farrier’s forge and stable, which was between the pine end of an alehouse in the high street and St Martin’s Church.

The gloomy hall into which he now stepped occupied most of the house, rising up to the smoke-darkened roof timbers. Two shuttered windows faced the street, with oiled linen screens across the inside, which let in a little light. Though most of the house was of wood, the back wall was of stone. De Wolfe had had that built a few years back, to allow a large hearth to be constructed, with a new-fangled conical chimney to take the smoke outside. Before, the choking fumes from a hearth-pit in the middle of the floor had had to find their way out through the eaves. The other walls were hung with sombre tapestries to cover the rough planks, and just behind the screens, his chain-mail hauberk and round iron helmet were strung from iron hooks alongside his battered shield with its emblem of a snarling wolf’s head in black on a white ground.

De Wolfe shut the door behind him and walked reluctantly towards the fire, past the heavy oaken table flanked by benches. His feet slapped against the cold flagstones, an innovation demanded by his wife, who considered the usual rushes over beaten earth fit only for peasants. Brutus had slunk in craftily with him and now made for the hearth. He lay down with his face on his paws before a heap of glowing logs. His nose was almost on a pair of embroidered shoes, whose owner was sitting on a settle on the further side of the fireplace.

‘Out all night again, sir! I wonder what trollop suffered your favours this time?’ Matilda’s voice was vibrant, almost harsh, her thin-lipped mouth a slash across her square face. She sat bolt upright, her small eyes glaring at him from above the furrowed half-circles of lax skin that hung below the lower lids. Her sparse fair hair had been tortured into tight ringlets with hot tongs wielded by her French maid Lucille, and was further confined by a cap of silvered mesh squeezed over her head. She wore a long gown of blue wool over her stocky figure, covered by a surcoat of the same colour with a rabbit-fur collar against the draughts of early April.

Her husband ignored the taunt until he had sat down in a cowled monk’s chair set on the opposite side of the hearth. ‘As it happens, Matilda, I spent the night wrapped in my cloak, on the floor of de Warren’s hall in Crediton. And for sleeping companions, I had Gwyn, Thomas and half a dozen of de Warren’s servants. At least there was a good fire there and a decent meal before we left.’

Not put off her stride by his measured response, Matilda continued her attack. ‘You’ve been out of this house and my bed three nights this week, John. And last month, you were away for days on end, carousing about the north of the county, claiming that you were chasing pirates.’

‘Your own brother was with me then, with twenty of his men-at-arms, so I had little chance of carousing.’

She ignored this, and ranted on in full spate. ‘I might as well have stayed a spinster as bother to get married to you. I hardly saw you for the first thirteen years after we were wed.’

His sigh of resignation was interrupted by Mary, who bustled in with a stoneware jug of ale and a pint pot, which she set on the edge of the hearth. While her back was turned to her mistress, she winked at him, bobbed her head and hurried out.

‘I seem to have heard all this before, wife,’ de Wolfe answered mildly, pouring himself some ale.

‘And you’ll hear it again, until you see some sense,’ retorted Matilda. ‘I’ve been talking to Richard and we agree that something must be done.’

He took a deep draught of the sour ale and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You’re the one who wanted me to become coroner — and you’ve complained ever since.’

His wife’s mouth clamped shut like a vice and she glared at him across the width of the great hearth. ‘I wanted you to become a coroner, not the coroner!’ she grated. ‘Your precious friend the Chief Justiciar proclaimed that three knights in every county were to be appointed — not just one!’

De Wolfe shrugged. ‘We couldn’t find three in Devon. You know as well as I do that Robert Fitzrogo was also appointed, but within a fortnight the damned fool had fallen from his horse and been killed. Since then, I’ve been stuck with the whole job, except when I was laid up with my broken leg.’

‘And that showed you weren’t indispensable,’ she flashed triumphantly. ‘For six weeks, the county got on quite well without you. You use all this traipsing about as an excuse for visiting aleshops and bawdy-houses. Well, this drinking and wenching will have to stop. Richard and I have decided upon it.’

It was de Wolfe’s turn to sit bolt upright — in sheer indignation. ‘You and your bloody brother have decided, have you? I presume it’s too much to ask what you and our dear sheriff have arranged for me?’

Matilda leaned forward, her prominent jaw jutting pugnaciously at him. ‘We’ve found another candidate for coroner — not making the full three, but certainly two are better than a solitary one. It will help keep you at home at nights.’

De Wolfe scowled at her over the brim of his pot. ‘You’ve found a new coroner? I thought that was the job of the King’s justices — not a provincial sheriff and his sister!’

His sarcasm was lost on Matilda, who now had the bit firmly between her teeth. ‘Don’t you want to know who we found?’ she demanded.

John grunted, staring suspiciously at her over his ale.

‘Theobald Fitz-Ivo!’ she cried triumphantly.

His eyes widened in scornful astonishment. ‘Ha! Not that drunken old fart from Frithelstock? He couldn’t investigate a penny lost in a privy!’

His wife bridled at his scornful response. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers — you need help and he lives in just the right place, near Torrington. He could cover the north of the county and leave the rest to you. God knows, that’s more than enough for one man, all of Dartmoor and the south and east.’

De Wolfe jumped up and paced back and forth in front of the hearth, waving his ale mug. ‘He must be well over fifty, fat and unfit. The man’s useless, he drinks like a fish. His manor, small though it is, depends entirely on his bailiff.’

‘He must be doing well enough — a coroner has to have at least twenty pounds a year to be eligible and he’s proved more than that to Richard. And Richard should know — he has to collect the taxes.’

If de Wolfe had not been so incensed about Fitz-Ivo, he might have taken the opportunity to suggest that not all the taxes the sheriff collected from the county ever reached the royal treasure chest in Winchester. ‘Theobald is a lazy, incompetent fool, who is almost too fat to get astride a horse, let alone travel the county like I do. And where’s he going to get a clerk who can read and write well enough to keep the coroner’s rolls, eh?’

Matilda shrugged her thick shoulders. ‘You can ask Richard. He’s coming to dinner to talk about it.’

De Wolfe groaned again. After a day away, an uncomfortable night sleeping on a floor and ten miles on horseback since dawn, the last thing he needed was the company of his odious brother-in-law at the midday meal. He sat down again and supped his ale silently, thinking what a disaster it had been for his late father, Simon, to insist on his marrying into the de Revelle family. It may have prodded him up one rung on the ladder of Devon county aristocracy and into a richer family than his own, but at what price?

That had been sixteen years ago, though John had managed to stay away from home for most of that time, in the French and Irish wars and later at the Third Crusade. But since coming home two years ago, soon after King Richard had been captured in Austria, he had found no excuse for chasing off to war. He had settled uneasily to his role as a gentleman of leisure, his income assured by his investment in a wool export business with Hugh de Relaga, one of Exeter’s most prominent burgesses, and by a share in the profit from the manors of his own family in the south of the county.

When the ambitious Matilda had suggested to her brother last autumn that her husband should be nominated as one of the new coroners, de Wolfe had been lukewarm about the idea. But Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar of England, had welcomed him to the post with open arms — as had the Lionheart when he was told of it in Normandy. De Wolfe had been a staunch member of the King’s bodyguard in the Holy Land, where Hubert Walter had been left in military charge after Richard had sailed away on his disastrous voyage home. John had been with the King, and always blamed himself for his failure to prevent the capture of his monarch near Vienna — a débâcle that had plunged England into years of debt after she had raised a hundred and fifty thousand marks for his ransom.

As de Wolfe sat gloomily before the fire, staring into the flames while replaying these events in his mind, his wife regarded him steadily through cold eyes. She, too, regretted her marriage, wishing more strongly every day that she had entered a nunnery. As the disappointments of life mounted with every passing year, she found increasing solace in worshipping God. She had discovered early in her marriage that she disliked almost every aspect of her wifely duties, from going to the market to the expected humiliation in bed. Yet she still had the urge for social advancement, drilled into her by her mother, who had single-mindedly schemed towards the best matches for her three children. She had managed to marry her son Richard off to Lady Eleanor de Clavelle, who was distantly related to the great Mortimer dynasty, and was satisfied, too, with the deal she had struck with Simon de Wolfe for his son to marry Matilda, even though John was six years younger.

The de Wolfes had two manors near the coast, at Stoke-in-Teignhead and Holcombe, and both Matilda and her late mother had hoped that the warrior John might rise high in the service of the King. That ambition peaked with the Lionheart’s capture when John returned home, exhausted and disillusioned. At forty it was not easy to find a war to fight, so he had been persuaded to accept the coroner’s appointment — especially as his beloved king and Hubert Walter were keen for him to take it.

Now Matilda looked at this long dark man, brooding at her fireside — and wondered if she had ever really known him. Unusually tall and spare, he was slightly stooped, and gave most men the impression that he was hovering over them. His long black hair, which curled down on to his neck, framed a somewhat morose, saturnine face with bushy jet eyebrows and a great hooked nose. He had no beard or moustache, but always had a dark stubble between his weekly shaves. He dressed in nothing but black or grey, which, with his great crow’s head, had long earned him the nickname ‘Black John’ in the armies.

Now, he was hunched over the fire, his mind somewhere on the battlefields of Palestine or Ireland, and Matilda found it hard to believe that she had ever loved him. Maybe the transient affection she had felt for him sixteen years ago had been a hysterical self-deception whipped up by her mother’s persuasive tongue. Within a month he had left her for the French campaigns and in the succeeding thirteen years he had been at home for little more than twelve months. Their love-life had been a disaster and thankfully, as far as she was concerned, their infrequent and embarrassing couplings had not resulted in children. Yet he was a passionate man, as his rather full lips suggested, and Matilda was well aware of his healthy sexual appetite, which he satisfied with a succession of mistresses, of whom the latest was that Welsh whore down at the Bush Inn.

Almost as if reading her thoughts, her husband suddenly rose to his feet. ‘I have to go to my chamber at the castle,’ he said gruffly. ‘There may have been deaths reported since I left yesterday.’ He felt an overwhelming desire to get out into the air again, away from her glowering presence.

‘Are you sure that it’s to Rougement you’re going?’ she sneered. ‘Not down to that alehouse in Idle Lane?’

Her accurate deduction so nettled him that he altered his plans just to confound her. ‘I said the castle and that’s where I’ll be. I’ll even call on that scheming brother of yours and bring him back to our table.’

Feeling self-righteous, even though he had deprived himself of a visit to Nesta, his mistress, he stalked out, taking a short mantle and street shoes from the vestibule before he stepped into the street. A moment later, he rapped on the outside of the window shutters as a defiant signal that he was turning left towards the high street, rather than right for the Bush Inn.

There was indeed news of a fresh death to be investigated when de Wolfe reached his office. This miserable chamber was at the top of the tall gatehouse of Exeter’s castle, called Rougemont from the red stone of which William the Bastard had built it soon after the Conquest. The castle was on the high ground at the northern corner of the city, in an angle of the walls originally built by the Romans. John laboured up the steep, twisting stairs of the gatehouse and pushed through the sacking that hung as a feeble draught-excluder over the doorway at the top. He was confronted by a giant of a man waving a slab of cheese in one hand and a jug of rough cider in the other.

‘We’ve got a new corpse to look at, Crowner,’ he announced. ‘An odd one, too.’

John lowered himself on to a bench behind a trestle table, virtually the only furniture in the bare room apart from a couple of three-legged milking stools. He looked up at his henchman, a huge man with wild red hair and a great drooping moustache to match. What could be seen of his face through the gingery foliage was roughened and red, with a glowing bulbous nose and a massive lantern jaw. The hands that held the cheese and pot were the size of hams, yet his forbidding appearance was lightened by a pair of twinkling blue eyes.

‘What’s so odd about it, Gwyn?’ demanded his master.

‘A dead tinner — beheaded in his own stream-working.’

De Wolfe’s black eyebrows rose, almost meeting the fringe that hung over his forehead. ‘A tinner? That’s unusual. That lot usually look after their own affairs.’

‘The bailiff from Chagford, Justin Green, rode in early this morning,’ said Gwyn, banging his cider pot down on the table. ‘He’s over in the keep now, getting some food, if you want to talk to him.’

‘Give me some of that cider first. Arguing with my wife has given me a thirst.’

The big Cornishman lumbered to a small alcove built into the thickness of the wall, took down another pottery mug and wiped the dust from it with a grubby rag. He poured into it a murky stream of rough cider until it slopped over the brim. In the same alcove was a loaf of bread and some more hard cheese, wrapped in a slightly less soiled cloth. Gwyn slid his dagger from his belt, cut two hunks of bread and divided the cheese into three, offering some to his master.

‘Better keep some for that little turd when he arrives,’ he grumbled, referring to their clerk, the third member of the coroner’s team.

‘Where is he? He’s usually here by this time.’

‘Gone down to the cathedral scriptorium, to cadge some ink. He complained that it was too expensive to buy, given all the work he has to do.’

De Wolfe stretched out his long legs under the table, then shivered in the dank air of the spartan chamber as Gwyn settled himself on a window-sill. A pair of unshuttered slits looked down on the city, letting both light and a cold draught into the room. The sheriff had grudgingly provided the worst accommodation he could find for his brother-in-law, to emphasise his opposition to the new post of coroner.

‘Tell me about this Chagford business,’ he ordered, biting into the rough horse-bread.

‘The overman of a gang of stream-workers was found dead yesterday morning when the men arrived. His body was lying under the washing trough, but he had no head.’

‘Was it nearby?’

‘Not a sign of it, not within the workings.’

De Wolfe scowled — he often did so, as an aid to thought. ‘Were they sure it was the overman, if he had no face?’

Gwyn pulled at the ends of his bushy red moustache, which hung down to his collar-bones. ‘No doubt about it. The men recognised his clothes, and he had a finger missing from his left hand, so the bailiff says. He never returned home to his wife the previous night nor has he been seen since.’

The coroner pondered this. ‘Who does the working belong to?’

‘Walter Knapman of Chagford. He has at least a dozen stream-works on the east side of the moor.’

‘Did they leave the body there?’

‘His men hauled it from the trough, it seems. But they had the sense to leave it at the workings in a hut.’

John swallowed his bread and cheese and finished off his cider before rising to his feet. ‘We’ll have to go there today. I’ve got the sheriff coming to eat at the house first, but we’ll leave in the early afternoon.’ He walked to the doorway and bent his head under the lintel. ‘Find that bailiff — and that scrawny clerk of ours — and be at the West Gate well before the Vespers bell. We’ll be away from home again tonight, which’ll give my dear wife something more to whine about.’

At the bottom of the twisting stairs he left the gate-house through the guard-room, saluted respectfully by the two men-at-arms. Sir John de Wolfe was popular with soldiers, who knew of his exploits in many foreign campaigns and his faithful service to the King in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade.

He walked into the inner ward and crossed to the keep, a square two-storeyed building near the northern wall. As he trudged across the refuse-strewn dried mud, the bare stone box of the court-house was on his left, and the tiny garrison chapel of St Mary on his right, but he registered none of these familiar sights as he thought about the prospect of Theobald as a fellow coroner — and the fuss Matilda would make when she knew he was off again today on his travels.

As his gaunt black figure absently navigated the inner ward, people stepped out of his way, either from respect or caution, depending on whether they knew him or not. The yard bustled with activity, with soldiers crossing from their billets in lean-to huts around the walls and the women and children of the garrison filling much of the space that was not occupied by horses, ox-carts or porters pushing trolleys piled with equipment. On the other side of the enclosure, a dozen men in chain-mail hauberks and round helmets were being drilled by Gabriel, the sergeant-at-arms, an activity that produced much shouting, swearing and clattering of shields.

De Wolfe reached the wooden steps that led up to the door of the keep, placed high above the undercroft for purposes of defence. Most of the first floor was occupied by the hall, another hive of activity as clerks, officials, servants, burgesses, merchants and soldiers strode, sauntered, gossiped, conspired, worked, ate and slept in it. Some were there to petition the sheriff but were kept at bay by a man-at-arms outside the door of his chamber, which lay behind the hall. The coroner went straight to the door, nodded curtly at the guard, opened it and marched in.

Sir Richard de Revelle, the King’s representative in the county of Devon, looked up from his parchments in annoyance, which did not lessen when he saw his sister’s husband. ‘I’m very busy, John, very busy indeed.’

De Wolfe leaned on the edge of the document-strewn table and glared down at the sheriff. ‘Too busy to come and eat with us, I hope.’

De Revelle smote his forehead with a beringed hand and had the grace to look slightly apologetic. ‘I’d forgotten Matilda’s invitation, John. Of course, I must come — though I’ll have to finish here first.’

His clerk hovered at his side, with a sheaf of parchments covered in columns of figures. ‘The accounting date is almost due, and I have to be off to Winchester next week with the county farm. As usual, the damned tax collectors are behind with their returns.’

The ‘farm’ was the total amount of tax that the King’s Treasury decided was due from each county. The sheriff was responsible for delivering this in coin every six months. If he could screw more from the inhabitants of Devon than was demanded, he was permitted to keep the excess. It was a goal that de Revelle kept constantly at heart.

‘I’ll go and have a few words with the Chagford bailiff while you finish your business, Richard. Then we’ll walk down to Martin’s Lane, so that you and your dear sister can bend my ear over one of Mary’s good meals.’

De Revelle looked up sourly at his brother-in-law’s sarcastic tone, but made no reply. He was a trim, dandified man, of average height compared to John. He had light brown wavy hair, a pointed beard and a small moustache above a pink, pursed mouth set in a rather weak, narrow face. He dressed in the height of fashion, favouring bright greens and golds for his tunic and mantle, and shoes with ridiculously long pointed toes — the newest mode from Paris.

His eyes followed the coroner across the chamber and he breathed a sigh of relief when the door slammed behind him. Since de Revelle’s secret disgrace over his involvement in the abortive rebellion a few months ago, he had not dared to cross his brother-in-law too openly, but he detested him more than ever. His own indiscretion had given de Wolfe a hold over him.

John muttered to the guard outside the door, who pointed across the crowded hall to a man sitting alone at a table, eating from a bowl of stew and tearing pieces from a small loaf. The coroner walked over to him and sat heavily on the bench alongside him. ‘Are you Justin Green, the bailiff from Chagford?’

The man began to scramble to his feet, but de Wolfe waved him down. ‘Finish your food. You must have left the moor early today?’

‘At first light, sir — though it’s well under three hours to Exeter if you’ve got a decent horse.’ He recognised de Wolfe as someone in authority and hazarded a guess. ‘Are you the King’s coroner, sir, the one I was seeking?’

‘I am indeed, so tell me about this death. We must ride back to your town in a few hours to make full enquiries.’

The bailiff was a small, dark man, his face pitted with old cow-pox scars. He hurriedly spooned the last of his broth before answering. ‘Nasty it was, sir. I’ve known Henry of Tunnaford since we were boys — we’re about of an age. To see him with no head was a shock, I tell you.’ The memory seemed not have spoiled his appetite, as he crammed the last of the bread into his mouth.

‘Was it cut off cleanly? And were there other injuries?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘No, very ragged it was, just a torn stump of neck. But no other wounds — that was enough!’

‘When was he last seen?’

‘The night before. The gangers left him to tidy up, that was the usual thing. A good overman he was, and the men liked him. As long as they did a fair day’s work, he was easy on ’em, not like some bastards.’

John regarded the man: he seemed a sound enough fellow. A bailiff was a person of some standing in a community: he was one of the main servants of a manorial lord, working under the steward, who was the most senior of the lord’s staff. He supervised the reeves, the headmen of each village, and often presided at the manor court if the lord was absent. If anyone knew what was going on in a manor, village or town, the bailiff would.

‘So who did this?’ asked de Wolfe bluntly.

The bailiff shook his head sadly. ‘For once I can’t say. I know most of the feuds and jealousies that go on in Chagford, but there’s nothing I can put a finger on here. Henry lived quietly out of town, in a croft at Tunnaford, a mile or so away. He had a good wife and a grown son, who is a smith in Gidleigh. No reason for anyone to kill the poor devil. The whole town is shocked at his death.’

‘And the man’s head has gone missing altogether?’

‘Vanished like magic. If I wasn’t a sensible, God-fearing fellow, I’d be tempted to think of witchcraft here.’

They talked for a few more minutes, but it was obvious that the bailiff had no idea as to the motive for, or the perpetrator of, this gruesome crime. De Wolfe left him to get some more ale from the castle steward, with orders to be at the West Gate before Vespers tolled that afternoon. It was too late for an excursion down to the Bush Inn, so he went back to his chamber to wait until it was time to collect the sheriff. As he climbed the stairs in the gatehouse, he heard yelling from above, the deep bass voice of Gwyn roaring in counterpoint to a terrified squealing from another. As he pushed through the hessian screen, he saw his Cornish bodyguard holding a small figure upside down by the ankles, shaking him like a rag doll.

‘Holy Mother of God, what’s going on?’ yelled de Wolfe. ‘Put him down!’

Gwyn stopped and grinned sheepishly at the coroner. ‘Little bastard knocked over my drinking jar — spilled the lot!’ he explained.

John motioned abruptly with his hand, and his officer reluctantly lowered his victim to the floor. The little man hauled himself indignantly to his feet and began to brush down his threadbare tunic, a long black garment of vaguely clerical appearance. ‘It was an accident. My writing bag caught the pot. You shouldn’t have left it on the edge of the window-sill!’ he protested, in a tremulous high-pitched squeak.

De Wolfe held up his hands in exasperation. ‘Just forget it and be quiet. You two should be court fools in caps and bells, not responsible servants of the law.’

His two assistants were always squabbling — it was mainly Gwyn’s fault, as the big man could never resist teasing their little clerk, who unfailingly rose to the bait. Thomas de Peyne was an unfrocked priest, employed by de Wolfe after having been ejected from his post at Winchester, accused of molesting one of the girls he was teaching at the cathedral school. He was a small wraith of a man, lame in one leg and with a slight hunchback, due to suffering from phthisis as a child. His thin, almost chinless face was sallow and adorned with a large pointed nose. The lank brown hair still sported a shaved tonsure on the crown, though he had been stripped of Holy Orders more than two years earlier. Thomas desperately craved a return to the priestly life and did all he could to pretend that he was still one of the brethren. Like his master, he wore black or grey clothes and even lodged in a canon’s house in the cathedral Close, where he had managed to scrounge himself a mattress in a corner of the servants’ quarters.

For all his dubious history and his unprepossessing appearance, Thomas was a highly intelligent and well-educated young man, with a gift for reading and writing. As well as his proficiency in recording all the coroner’s business on parchment rolls, he had proved himself invaluable as a spy. His indefatigable curiosity made him an excellent gatherer of gossip, especially among the large ecclesiastical population of Exeter, while Gwyn ferreted out rumours in the city inns and alehouses.

As Gwyn went back to sit on his favourite window-ledge with a refilled jar of cider, Thomas’s ruffled dignity was restored and he groped in the shabby cloth bag that hung from his shoulder. He pulled out three rolls and laid them on the table in front of John de Wolfe. ‘These are the last three inquest transcripts, Crowner. I have two more to do — the ink ran out, but I have more now so I’ll finish them later today.’

De Wolfe reached for them. ‘We’ll be riding out again this afternoon, Thomas, so get your bottom in shape for that winded nag you call a horse.’

The clerk groaned at the prospect. He was no horseman and sat side-saddle like a woman on his old pony, to the constant derision of the Cornishman. ‘How far this time, Crowner? Not the north coast, please.’

The previous month, they had made repeated journeys to the most distant part of the county and Thomas was still aching from the days he had suffered in the saddle.

‘Only a couple of hours, pansy,’ cut in Gwyn caustically. ‘Just to Chagford this time.’

The clerk was a Hampshire man and still unfamiliar with much of Devon. ‘Where’s that?’ he demanded suspiciously.

‘It’s one of the three Stannary towns, on this side of Dartmoor,’ explained de Wolfe. ‘All the tin from that district of the moor goes there for coinage.’

‘But we’re going there to view a headless corpse, Thomas,’ added Gwyn, with ghoulish relish. He knew that, even after six months’ experience, the ex-priest was still upset by macabre sights.

At the distant sound of bells coming from the cathedral, the coroner threw down Thomas’s rolls and made for the stairway. ‘I’ve got to eat with the sheriff, so whatever Mary cooks today will taste like ashes in my mouth,’ he said. ‘Be at the West Gate before Vespers toll. Put a blanket behind your saddles. I doubt we’ll be back tonight.’

The three sat eating at one end of the long table in de Wolfe’s sombre hall. He was at the head, with his wife and her brother on either side. Old Simon, the yard servant, had banked up the fire with logs and Mary bustled in and out with dishes and jugs. Brutus lay under the table at John’s feet, waiting hopefully for any scraps his master might drop down to him.

After some stilted conversation, they got down to the serious business of eating and the champing of jaws and slurping of wine were the only sounds for a quarter of an hour. Matilda, with her usual remarkable appetite, and the two men did justice to Mary’s hare stew and boiled chicken, with onions and cabbage. Instead of the usual trenchers of thick bread, the food was served on platters made of pewter, a snobbish fad of Matilda’s. She never missed a chance to ape the manners of the courtly classes. De Wolfe, who would not have cared if he had to eat his food off his horse’s back, refilled the pottery cups from a stone jar of red Poitou wine. They had a few wine glasses carefully stored in a chest, but he had vetoed their use today, not wishing to risk them merely for a midday meal with his brother-in-law.

After the meat, Mary brought in a mazer of bread, cut into chunks, with a large slab of hard cheese; there was no fruit at this early part of the year, the remains of last season’s apples having withered away. Courteously, Richard de Revelle used his own dagger to cut some slices of cheese for his sister, which she ate directly from the scrubbed oak boards of the table, washing them down liberally with wine.

‘I’ve got to go a-travelling soon,’ growled de Wolfe, ‘so let’s get down to your business here, Richard.’

The sheriff sipped his wine delicately before answering. ‘It’s quite simple, John. I’m two coroners short of the royal instructions.’

De Wolfe interrupted him abruptly. ‘What d’you mean, you’re short of two coroners? It’s nothing to do with you. They were instituted by the King’s Council — partly to keep an eye on you sheriffs! Some of you damn well need watching, too.’

De Revelle reddened, still smarting at the state of probation he had been under since his fall from grace. ‘Well, if you must split hairs, John, so be it — though why we need coroners at all is beyond my understanding. Until last year we had managed without them quite nicely for centuries.’ He never missed an opportunity to needle de Wolfe about his contempt for the new law officers. ‘Since Fitzrogo died, you have had the whole county to deal with — though during the two months you were laid up with that broken leg, Devonshire managed quite well without even one crowner.’

‘Get to the point, Richard,’ snapped John, who had tired of de Revelle’s endless sarcasm about his post. ‘You want that useless sot Theobald Fitz-Ivo to be appointed.’

De Revelle ran his fingers down the point of his little beard, a mannerism he affected just as Thomas incessantly crossed himself or Gwyn scratched vigorously at his crotch. ‘I wish to make him coroner for the northern part of the county.’

De Wolfe bristled again, though he knew his brother-in-law was being deliberately provocative. ‘You can’t make him anything. This is a royal appointment, requiring the King’s approval.’

‘In theory, John, in theory. I doubt if our Richard, busy in France on his jousting and his campaigns, can spare a thought for a triviality such as a coronership. However, I think the Shire Court, through me, will be recommending the appointment to the Chief Justiciar when I am in Winchester next week. No doubt he will ratify my suggestion.’

‘Not if I tell Hubert that I object,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘This Fitz-Ivo is a drunken fool, he’ll be a disaster in the job.’

John’s contempt for Fitz-Ivo, the lord of a small manor just outside Torrington, a village in the north-west of the county, sprang from a short acquaintance with him in the Irish campaign of ’82. In the endless battles and skirmishes between the Norman invaders and the Irish tribes, many knights had tried to carve out land and loot for themselves, including de Wolfe and Fitz-Ivo. The latter, mainly because of his gross eating and drinking, proved a hopeless fighter, sometimes too drunk to stay on his horse, and left for home within a few months of arriving in Wexford. He had inherited the manor of Frithelstock from his father and, with the help of an able steward, managed to survive, if not actually thrive. A widower with no surviving children, his needs were small but, like Matilda, Theobald had an illogical urge to be numbered amongst the county notables. Becoming a coroner was one route to this social elevation and he had been petitioning de Revelle since he had heard of the vacancies. De Wolfe suspected that Fitz-Ivo thought the job was a soft option, as indeed it might be if it was not pursued with the grim dedication that de Wolfe applied to his royal appointment.

The sheriff gazed at his brother-in-law with a patronising, almost pitying expression. ‘Professional jealousy, John? D’you think you are the only one who can trot around the county and mouth a few words over a corpse at an inquest?’

‘There’s far more to it than that, Richard,’ began de Wolfe, ready to lecture the sheriff on the wide duties he had to perform.

But Matilda, silent until now, beat him to it. She glared across the table at him. ‘That’s enough, John,’ she snapped. ‘The bare fact remains that this county, one of the biggest in England, is supposed to have three coroners. It has only one, who can’t possibly cover such a huge area any longer. You know your leg is not as good since you broke it, you’re not getting any younger, and I’m tired of you being away most of the time, then coming back to treat our home as if it was a common lodging-house.’ She threw a piece of cheese rind on to the table with an air of finality and sat back to glower at her husband.

De Wolfe knew he was beaten — and, if the truth were known, he secretly agreed that the huge distances across Devonshire were becoming impossible to cope with. Last month, the trips he had made to the north had taken up days of hard riding, while other cases around Exeter had been neglected.

‘Very well, but when things go wrong, remember what I’ve said. I agree that at least one other crowner is needed — but Fitz-Ivo, for God’s sake! The man is an incompetent fool as well as a drunkard.’

Eventually, while they finished the remaining wine, de Wolfe grudgingly accepted that Fitz-Ivo’s name would be put forward at Winchester. If Hubert Walter had no objections, then he would give the man the benefit of the doubt and let him tackle the cases in the northern part of Devon. ‘But if he makes a mess of it, I’ll ride to Winchester or London myself to see that he’s ejected,’ warned John. Though far from arrogant, de Wolfe hated the thought of a job being done less well than he could do it himself. ‘And where’s he going to get an officer and clerk to summon juries and record on his rolls?’ he barked, as a last rearguard objection, when de Revelle was swinging his elegant green cloak around his shoulders, ready to leave Martin’s Lane.

‘He says that his steward and bailiff will assist him,’ answered the sheriff. ‘The steward can read and write, certainly.’

‘He means that they will have to do all the work, I suppose,’ grunted the coroner. ‘And who will run the manor for him? The folk in Frithelstock will be starving by this time next year, as I doubt that Fitz-Ivo will shift himself to organise anything. Mark my words, this is a big mistake.’

After the door had closed behind the sheriff, de Wolfe returned slowly to the hall and sat by the fire with a quart pot of ale to chase down the wine.

He waited for the inevitable crowing of success from his wife, who had plumped herself down at the other side of the hearth.

‘I’m glad you saw sense, John. We thought it was best for you, especially since your leg hampers your movements.’

‘It does nothing of the sort, woman!’ he snarled, sensitive about his alleged disability. ‘I get a few twinges in the damned thing, but that’s to be expected. It’s no more than a couple of months since the bone was mended. Anyone would think I’m a cripple, the way you go on about it.’

Matilda ignored his protests. She was still preening herself over her success in defeating his resistance to her plans. ‘Now you’ll be able to spend more time here. We can entertain a little, have some influential people in to dine now and again.’ She frowned as she recollected her last attempt at throwing a feast. On the eve of Christ Mass, a few months ago, her husband had been dragged out, not unwillingly, from the middle of her party to examine a cathedral canon, who was hanging by the neck in his own privy.

At the awful prospect of being more frequently incarcerated with Matilda, de Wolfe threw down the rest of his ale and stood up. ‘The southern half of Devonshire is still a big place, wife, so don’t expect too much of me. I’m off now to Chagford on the moor, and I’ll not be back tonight.’

As he marched out to the vestibule, he muttered under his breath, ‘And not tomorrow night either, if I can think of a good excuse.’

CHAPTER TWO

In which Crowner John rides to Chagford

With a dry road and spring in the air it was a pleasant ride out of Exeter towards the moor, which was visible in the distance almost from the time they started from the West Gate. The trees were in leaf and the grass was greening up after the winter as the four horsemen trotted along the winding track westwards from the city. De Wolfe was ahead, sitting like a great black raven on the back of Odin, his grey destrier, a huge war-horse with hairy feet. Gwyn, wearing his usual boiled leather jerkin above worsted breeches, rode his solid brown mare alongside the bailiff’s roan gelding, and Thomas de Peyne bumped along behind on his pony, the peg of the side-saddle jutting somewhat obscenely between his thighs.

The road wound through the deep wooded valleys typical of that part of Devon, broken at intervals by villages where strip-fields and common land had been laboriously hacked out of the forest. Although it was only about fifteen miles to Chagford, John called a halt just over half-way, at the top of a steep slope rising out of the Teign valley. ‘Let them graze the verge for ten minutes and get their wind back,’ he ordered, sliding from Odin’s back and looping the reins over a budding beech sapling. While the beasts chewed at the new grass, the ever-hungry Gwyn produced half a loaf and a leather bottle of cider from his saddle pouch.

The travellers sat themselves in a row on a fallen tree-trunk, and as they tore at the bread and passed the bottle around, John took the opportunity to learn a little more about their destination. ‘I’ve not set foot in Chagford for many years, bailiff. It’s been a peaceful place, I presume?’

Justin Green considered this, then nodded. ‘We get little trouble, true enough. A few drunks at the coinage and ales, but nothing serious. Chagford being one of the three Stannary towns makes a difference, I suppose, as the jurates who represent us at the Great Court are strict in upholding the Stannary law.’

Gwyn wagged his bushy head in agreement. ‘It was the same in Cornwall. The tinners come down heavily on any of their own who step outside the rules. I should know — my own father was a tinner before he turned to fishing at Polruan.’

This intrigued Thomas, who was inquisitive about everything. Though learned in anything that concerned the Church, politics or history, he knew little about the tin-workers of the west. ‘Are you saying they even have their own laws?’ he asked.

The bailiff stared at him incredulously. ‘Of course they have, and even their own prison, a new one over in Lydford. They have their own parliament too, the Great Court that gathers on the high moor, at Crockern Tor. There’s a meeting this week, in fact.’

Gwyn prodded Thomas with a massive elbow, almost knocking him off the log. ‘We have the same in Cornwall, you ignorant wretch, but ours meets in Truro — though in the old days the tinners from both Devon and Cornwall used to meet together on Hingston Down, just across the Tamar.’

‘But surely they must be subject to the laws of the land, like everyone else?’ Thomas persisted.

‘The Stannary laws cover everything except crimes against life, limb and damage to property,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘Where violence is concerned, the King’s law is paramount. The tinners have no immunity from the coroner, so don’t hope for any escape from your scribbling on my Rolls.’

There was a short silence, as they chewed, then Thomas’s curiosity broke through again. ‘So what’s this Great Court you speak of, bailiff?’

‘A few times a year, the tinner representatives gather on Crockern Tor, in the middle of Dartmoor, to discuss all manner of business relating to their trade. The county is divided into three districts for the purpose, with Ashburton, Tavistock and Chagford as the Stannary town for each, where the tin is assayed and stamped for tax. Every district sends twenty-four jurates to the Great Court, where all rules and disputes about staking claims, water diversion, disposal of the waste, coinage and taxation are hammered out. And they deal with offenders too — the gaol at Lydford is never short of customers.’

‘Why should the tinners get this special treatment? Farmers and other traders don’t have it,’ objected the clerk.

‘Because the tin trade brings in a huge revenue to the Crown,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘Along with wool, it’s the main export of England. King Richard has just sent two hundred and fifty thousand-weights from Plymouth to La Rochelle to pay his troops in France.’

‘To adulterate the silver coinage in lieu of the real thing,’ chortled Gwyn.

De Wolfe scowled at him. Even this justified slight against his revered monarch was unwelcome. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can’t sit on our backsides all day. There’s work to be done. Let’s get to Chagford. Then, Thomas, you’ll find out about the tinners.’

There were still a few hours of daylight left when they rode up the last hill into Chagford. It was large enough to be called a town, with a small open market square that was also used for the coinage ceremonies. Tracks led out of the town in four directions, mostly downhill as the centre was on a rise.

As they rode in slowly from the east side, John de Wolfe looked about him, trying to remember the place from his boyhood visit. It seemed smaller now than it had been in his memory, though undoubtedly it must have prospered and expanded in the intervening years. Since returning to Devon he had noticed this phenomenon a number of times and put it down to his acquaintance with great cities such as Paris, Marseilles and London.

Two inns and a number of alehouses sat amongst the shop-houses in the main street, which ran across the top of the square. The rest of the town was the usual random collection of timber buildings of widely varying size, mostly thatched but some roofed with wooden shingles or split stone slabs. There were a few stone-built houses, and the church of St Michael, a few hundred yards from the square, was newly built of moorstone. Within a few yards of the larger buildings, smaller cottages and huts straggled out to the margins of Chagford, some planked, others of wattle and daub within timber frames.

The coroner’s party came to a halt at the edge of the square, where a few old men stood bent-backed in the weak sunlight, staring at the newcomers as if they had arrived from a distant star. A handful of housewives were scanning the trays of a few hawkers, but clutched their children to their skirts at the approach of these forbidding strangers. The sight of their own bailiff reassured them and their apprehension soon turned to curiosity.

‘What do we do first, Crowner?’ rumbled Gwyn.

‘Arrange for somewhere to spend the night, then go to see the corpse.’ He looked questioningly at Justin Green, who turned in his saddle to point down the road leading southward.

‘My lord’s manor house is there above the valley, Crowner. We’ll pass it on the way. He told me before I left that there is food, fire and a clean pallet to sleep on, should you wish it.’

De Wolfe grunted agreement. ‘I’ll give him thanks when we meet. Meanwhile, let’s get to this corpse while the light holds.’

The bailiff kicked his horse into a trot and they rode through the centre of the little town and out on a track that led south-westwards. The land was green and steeply undulating, with tracts of woodland alternating with strip fields all around the town. On their left, the main feature was a prominent rounded knoll, which Justin called Meldon Hill, but further ahead they could see the edge of the escarpment that led up on to the huge plateau of Dartmoor.

‘How much further?’ whined Thomas from the rear, as they bumped along on the narrowing track, which began to rise as they neared the moor.

‘My lord’s manor barton is over there,’ said Justin, pointing to a large farmhouse on their right. ‘And that freeman’s house there is Thorne, so it’s less than two miles now,’ he added, waving at a collection of barns around a timber house ahead. ‘The stream-work we’re seeking is just below Thornworthy Down.’

‘What about this Walter Knapman?’ asked the coroner. ‘Would anyone wish to damage his trade by attacking his workmen?’

The bailiff was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t see why they should. The victim was an overman, it’s true. He was in charge of the work and was a valuable fellow because of his experience. But Knapman has a dozen such teams, working all over the district. Killing one man would make little difference to the output — unless this is the first of a massacre,’ he added pessimistically.

‘But would anyone benefit from Knapman’s business being damaged?’ persisted de Wolfe.

‘All the other tin-masters, I suppose, though there’s little competition between them. They sell all they can dig, both at home and abroad. A lot goes to Germany and Flanders.’

Then he hesitated and de Wolfe sensed that the other man had had a sudden thought. He glared across at the bailiff from under his beetling black brows. ‘Well, is there something else?’

‘There is gossip in the alehouses — only idle chatter, mind you — that another tin-master has long been trying to buy some of Knapman’s sites. But Knapman won’t sell. In fact he wants to acquire even more for himself.’

‘Who is this other man?’

‘Stephen Acland, another Chagford merchant. He’s not as prominent in tin as Walter, but he has four or five stream-works, as well as a big interest in sheep.’

‘But he wouldn’t kill because he can’t buy out Knapman, would he?’

The bailiff made a wry face. ‘These tinners can be a strange lot, Crowner. They live in a world of their own, and some think they’re above the rest of the world. Passions can run high amongst them, as you might see if you come to Crockern Tor next week.’

They fell silent as the track dipped down into a small valley, then rose again over the deeper glen of the South Teign stream. As they crested the rise, the coroner waved a gloved hand down to a small building below them on their right. It was built of rough moorstone, with a roof of thin slabs through which projected a crooked chimney.

‘What’s that place?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve seen a few like it today.’

‘A blowing-house, Crowner,’ explained Justin Green, ‘where the shode from the workings gets its first smelting to make the crude ingots that get stamped back in Chagford.’

They came down to the water, where the path crossed a small clapper bridge made of great slabs of slaty stone resting on boulders in the stream bed.

De Wolfe pulled Odin to a halt and looked down into the rushing water, which splashed its way down through a rocky bed banked with coarse gravel on either side. ‘This water’s very murky. I would have expected it to be crystal clear up here, well away from any habitation,’ he observed.

‘It’s often brown because of the run-off from the peat up on the moor. But that cloudiness is from the tinners’ work further upstream. They constantly disturb the sand and gravel, washing away the tailings from the ore. Folks downstream, all the way to Kingsteignton, complain about the dirty water. They have to drink, cook and wash in the grit thrown in by the tinners.’ He sounded peevish, no doubt because he suffered himself.

Gwyn spat contemplatively into the flowing brook. ‘Maybe yesterday it was running red, not cloudy, if that fellow was leaking into it from the stump of his neck!’ He grinned slyly at Thomas, whose pasty face had gone a shade paler at the thought.

The coroner touched Odin’s flanks with his heels and they walked on, crossing to the other bank and following it along the river, the valley narrowing as they came up the cleft towards the moor. There was no agriculture up here and trees covered most of the ground, though as they rose to the bleaker, more exposed areas, they were twisted and stunted, except where the narrow valley bottoms gave some shelter.

‘We’re almost there, Crowner, just around the next bend,’ said the bailiff reassuringly.

Thomas groaned with relief: the going had become rougher the further they went from civilisation.

A few moments later, the glen straightened out for a couple of hundred yards and de Wolfe could see the length of the tin workings. The tinners had cut a deep gouge along the line of the stream so that the water now tumbled over a ledge at the upper end and ran down towards them between piles of rubble.

Part-way up on the left was a small hut, and on the opposite side of the stream, a long rickety contraption of planks led some of the water from the upper cascade through a system of low troughs. Half a dozen men were hacking away at the upper bank, while others were raking the newly loosened burden and throwing it into the troughs.

‘They’re still working, then, even with their headless overman in that shed?’ De Wolfe was as tough as they come, but even he felt that work might have been suspended until the body had been taken away.

‘If they don’t work, they and their families don’t eat,’ replied Green bluntly. ‘Walter Knapman is known as a fair master, but he won’t pay a daily wage for anyone to sit at home and whittle sticks.’

The track soon vanished under the rubble and they rode the last few yards along the stream bed, until they could dismount alongside the small hut. Nearby, four moorland ponies were waiting patiently, empty wicker panniers hanging across their backs.

Some of the workers turned to watch them, but others, after a cursory glance, went back to their hacking and shovelling. One man, who stood alongside the bottom end of the trough, came across to greet them. The bailiff introduced him to de Wolfe. ‘Robert Yeo, Crowner. He’s taken over this gang from today.’

The new overman was a big blond fellow, partly of Saxon origin. He had a bushy yellow moustache but no beard, and wore a tunic of brown serge, a wide leather belt holding the skirt well above his knees. A short leather cape covered his shoulders, the hood hanging down his back. His greased boots came up to his knees, but de Wolfe could hear the water squelching inside them as he approached.

Yeo made a token tug at his forelock, then stared almost defiantly at the coroner. ‘Walter Knapman told me I was to take over from Henry,’ he said, without preamble.

‘You were here the day before yesterday, the last time Henry of Tunnaford was seen?’

Yeo nodded. ‘Same as usual. Henry stayed behind to clear up — he always did that, though there was no real need. He was a particular type of fellow, felt responsible for everything.’ He paused, as if a sudden thought had struck him. ‘Like I am now, I suppose. Knapman suffers no fools or idlers in his employ.’

De Wolfe looked around at the scene of industry and heard the hacking of picks and the grating of shovels, as the alluvium was remorselessly eroded and thrown into the troughs. ‘Let’s see this corpse, then. In this shed, is it?’

They turned to the hut and Yeo pulled away a few planks that shielded the open doorway. ‘There he is, God rest him.’

The feet of the victim were near the doorway and as de Wolfe bent his head to enter, he saw that the upper part of the corpse was covered by a rough cape similar to the new overman’s. It lay across the dead man’s chest, but the upper part was ominously flat on the stony ground. De Wolfe motioned to Gwyn with a finger and his officer, well-used to this routine, pushed past him and lifted away the cape.

Behind the coroner, Thomas de Peyne let out a horrified squeak and began to cross himself as he retreated to the open air. Even de Wolfe, inured to death in every form from his years of campaigning, admitted that this was not a pretty sight. He moved further into the hut and, with the bailiff and overman watching from the doorway, crouched opposite Gwyn at what should have been the head of the corpse. For there was no head, only a ragged stump of neck, which still had a stubbled growth of grey whiskers around it. Dark blood had congealed over the ripped muscles that surrounded the shattered white core of the spine.

The Cornishman pursed his lips critically under his huge moustache. ‘A rough job, this. What did they do it with? A shovel?’

De Wolfe stretched out and pulled at the curled-in margins of the neck wound with his finger and thumb. ‘Sharper than a spade, Gwyn. See those many small peaks and troughs? Some edged weapon has sawed away here, hacking it irregularly as the skin rolled into creases.’ He wiped his fingers free of blood on the shoulder of the dead man’s hessian tunic. ‘But you’re right. Whatever the weapon, it was far from sharp. The edges of the skin are scraped and bruised, not cut through cleanly, as a decent knife or sword would have done.’

He rose to his feet, his head bent to avoid the rough branches that held up the crude roof. ‘Let’s see if he has other injuries.’

They untied the belt and pulled up the tunic to chest level. The victim wore long woollen hose with as many darns as original material but, as was usual, no underclothing. There was no mark on the torso, back or front, but when they examined the limbs, Gwyn pointed out recent grazes on both knees and the backs of the forearms. ‘That’s from falling to the ground, no doubt,’ he diagnosed, ‘after first being struck a blow on the neck.’

‘Or the head,’ corrected the coroner. ‘For all we know, the top of his skull may have been stove in.’ He backed out of the hut and motioned the overman to go inside. ‘You can tidy him up and get the poor fellow carried away.’

‘Is he to be taken home to his widow at Tunnaford?’ asked Yeo.

‘Where’s that?’

‘A mile away, just off the road back to Chagford. We came within sight of it on the way up here,’ answered the bailiff.

De Wolfe folded his arms and brooded, like some great black heron at the edge of the stream. ‘I’ll have to hold an inquest in the morning. That will have to be in the town — we need more of a jury than just these men here. The corpse will have to go to Chagford.’

Justin Green looked unhappy, but he had no choice in the matter. ‘There’s a small mortuary in the churchyard — just a hut like this, where they leave bodies before burial. He could go there.’

By now the tinners had all stopped working and were leaning on their shovels, watching silently. De Wolfe raised his voice to carry up the glen. ‘There’ll be no labour tomorrow morning, men. You will all be needed at the inquest, as you were all the last to see the deceased.’

This set off a murmur of discontent, as it meant the loss of half a day’s earnings.

‘The funeral can be arranged for soon afterwards, so you can pay your respects to your overman and friend at the same time,’ called out the bailiff, trying to mollify the tinners. He turned to de Wolfe. ‘Where will the inquest be held, Crowner?’

‘If the cadaver is to be housed in the churchyard, that will do us. Then he can be put into the earth straight away, if you arrange it with the priest. You can send word to his family on the way back this evening.’

John turned away and strode up the stream, towards the settling troughs and the rest of the workmen. ‘Who found the body and where exactly was it?’ he demanded, in his deep, sepulchral voice

A young lad, no more than fifteen, stepped forward, grasping a long rake. ‘I did, sir. We all came up together as usual, but we saw the stream running pink and I ran ahead, thinking maybe a deer had fallen down the breast of the workings and lay dead at the upper end.’

‘And what did you find?’

‘Henry was under the top of the trough, where the water comes in from the cascade. Face down, he was. I could only see his legs at first, but when I looked under the trestles, I could see he was bleeding into the ground.’ The boy shuddered. ‘Then I saw he had no head.’

The coroner took him by the elbow, not unkindly, and steered him towards the place. ‘Show me where he was, boy.’

With the others trailing behind, the pair walked alongside the long, flat trough. De Wolfe felt the cold water seeping through his boots as he crunched over the coarse gravel and pebbles, which were covered with a few inches of water where the stream spread itself across the ravaged ground.

The trough was made up of flat boards, about a yard wide and with edges a foot high. It became narrower towards the lower end, where a spout allowed the contained water to fall into a large square wooden box, the overflow of which ran on to the ground and found its way back into the stream.

‘How does this contraption work?’ he demanded.

The overman explained, pointing out the various elements of the crude equipment. ‘The tin shode is in small lumps and grains, mixed up with all the earth and pebbles and broken rock of the ground. They say it was washed down in past ages by the river from the deep veins up on the moor.’

‘In Cornwall some men are directly mining such veins now, as the ore in the streams has been exhausted,’ cut in Gwyn, anxious to show off his family connections with tinning.

‘We dig out the banks of the stream and discard the earth and rocks, throwing them on to those waste piles,’ continued Yeo. ‘Then the small stuff gets tossed into the upper end of the trough, where we lead in a stream of water tapped from the torrent as it falls over the upper breast.’ He indicated a narrow leat, a long U-shaped gutter made of narrow planks, which jetted clear water into the top of the trough. ‘Look in here, Crowner. See those laths fixed to the bottom?’

De Wolfe peered into the swirling muddy water and saw that, at regular intervals, cross-slats nailed to the base of the trough formed a series of low dams that impeded the downward flow of water.

‘The tin shode is much heavier than the gangue — the ordinary sand and gravel. Much of it sinks to the bottom of the trough and gets caught behind those slats. What gets past falls into the buddle.’

‘What’s a buddle?’ asked the ever-curious Thomas.

‘It’s that box at the bottom. Every so often, we stop throwing in new burden and clear out the tin shode from the trough and the buddle. The younger lads then pick out any rubbish that’s still in it, then it’s shovelled into panniers for the ponies to take down to the blowing-house.’

They had reached the top of the workings and the boy pointed to the upper end of the trough, supported a couple of feet from the ground on a series of rough trestles hammered into the stream bed. ‘Henry was lying there, sir. His head was under the trough — or would have been if he’d had one. The water was running red around him,’ he added, with the morbid relish of the young.

De Wolfe raised his head as his eyes followed up the leat. Its upper end was pegged into the side of the small waterfall that gushed over the eight-foot bank which formed the upper end of the workings. ‘Is there anything up there?’ he demanded.

Yeo shook his head. ‘Just the virgin stream going up the valley to the moor. We’re gradually working back as we dig. Every few weeks we have to dismantle this lot and shift it further up, as the breast falls in because we’re hacking the sides away.’

The coroner jerked his head at Gwyn, and the big man lumbered away to scramble up the sloping bank in a welter of falling stones and gravel. Using the leat as a handhold, he gained the top and vanished from sight.

All the men were watching now, making no effort to work even though they were losing pay, which partly depended on their output of shode. ‘I sent three of the men up there yesterday to seek the poor fellow’s head,’ grumbled the overman. ‘They found nothing, even though they followed the stream up as far as Fenworthy Circle where the old pagan stones are.’

‘No sign of any weapon that could have done the damage?’

‘Nothing, Crowner.’

‘Could it have been one of your own tools? The blood might have been washed off in the stream.’

The overman grimaced. ‘We got nothing sharp enough for that. Couldn’t have been a pick, and our shovels are wooden with a iron band nailed to the edge.’

John began to walk back down the workings, his feet now cold and wet inside his boots. The prospect of a warm fire and food at Waye Barton manor house was rapidly becoming attractive. ‘Have you any feelings as to who might have done this?’ he snapped at Yeo.

‘That I have not, sir! It’s beyond my understanding — we never had any trouble of this sort before.’

‘No great rivalry between different gangs of tinners?’

The overman turned up his calloused hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Not at all, Crowner. To start with, most of the gangs here on the Upper Teign belong to Walter Knapman. No point in fighting among the same team. There may be rivalry between the owners, such as Knapman and Stephen Acland, but that’s nothing to do with us tinners in the stream-works.’

When they reached the hut again, de Wolfe turned round in time to see Gwyn slide down the slope of the breast, then stride towards them, his great legs splashing through the stream and his ragged cape blowing out behind him in the keen breeze. ‘Nothing to see up there, apart from a few sheep,’ he growled.

De Wolfe sighed. This was going to be another unsolved murder, unless he could make someone talk at the inquest next day.

‘Let’s go, then. There are arrangements to be made back in the town.’ He strode towards the horses, waiting further down, their bridles held by the youngest of the apprentice tinners. ‘Bailiff, you stay and get that body carried down to the church. I’ll find my own way to the manor.’ Under his breath he added, ‘And I trust the lord of Chagford is more hospitable than many others who get saddled with the coroner’s company.’

CHAPTER THREE

In which Crowner John presides in a churchyard

While the headless cadaver was being carried down from the edge of the moor on a makeshift bier of branches, Walter Knapman was having his evening meal at home in Chagford. He lived in the largest dwelling in the town, second only in size to the manor house just outside, where Hugh of Chagford, one of the Wibbery family, was the local lord.

Knapman’s residence was quite new, built of red sandstone brought from further south, rather than the grey moorstone used for most other masonry. It was on the track into town from Great Weeke, sitting behind a garden, half-way up the hill that led to the church. Instead of a hall, which normally filled most of a house, it had two rooms, one at each side of the front door. A wooden staircase led up to a large room under the thatch, partitioned into a bedroom and a solar. The latter had a window set into the pine end, which — wonder of wonders — had six panes of glass. That was almost unique in Devon: even Exeter cathedral had no glazing. Walter had recently imported these thick slabs of glass from Germany, where much of his tin was sent. Though he claimed it was to make his new wife’s solar more comfortable, everyone in Chagford thought it was to blazon his importance and affluence. Certainly Knapman indulged Joan, a pretty woman fifteen years his junior: she was his second wife, the widow of a tanner from Ashburton, who had died of a fever.

They sat now at meat, side by side at a square oaken table, with Joan’s mother Lucy opposite, next to the parish priest Paul Smithson, who had been invited to eat with them. Lucy, another widow, lived with them — part of the price Walter had reluctantly paid to persuade the delectable Joan to marry him five months earlier.

Naturally the conversation centred on the death of Henry of Tunnaford, and most of the talking was between Knapman and the priest, though the older woman chipped in now and then, after listening avidly to every word. With the possible exception of the coroner’s clerk, Thomas, she was probably the most inquisitive person in Devon.

Joan, whose dark hair peeped from her white linen cover-chief to frame an oval face with a look of the Madonna, said little and concentrated on eating the slivers of boiled fowl that her husband placed on the large trencher of bread that lay between them. As he talked, he leaned over and cut slices with his dagger from the carcass that sat on a wooden platter in the middle of the table. They had already demolished a large fish, and other bowls held fried onions, cabbage and turnips. Pottery mugs of ale and pewter wine cups sat before each of them. The household steward, a Saxon named Harold, fussed over them, replenishing their drink and relentlessly harrying the serving maid, who brought new dishes from the kitchen in the backyard.

‘What does Hugh Wibbery think of all this?’ rasped the priest, through a mouthful of fowl’s leg. He was a fleshy man, with a pallid face, from which two black button eyes peered out over flabby cheeks. Although he was not a monk, he was tonsured, but curiously with the Celtic type: he had shaved a broad band from his forehead over the crown to the nape of his neck.

‘He seems to lack any interest in it,’ answered Walter. ‘Henry was a freeman, and as he lived in Tunnaford his land was owned by de Prouz from Gidleigh, so he had no obligations of tenure to the lordship of Chagford. I paid his wages as a tinner, so Hugh has shrugged off the whole matter, as far as I can see.’

The priest grunted and dug the yellow pegs of his remaining teeth back into his drumstick, while Lucy Tanner took up the conversation. She was about fifty, but looked much older, worn by the bearing of twelve children, seven of whom had died in infancy. Her thin frame was enveloped in a dull tan kirtle that was too big for her, while lifeless, dry hair poked from beneath her tight-fitting helmet of fawn linen. However, her wizened appearance and creaking joints were balanced by a sharp, if waspish intelligence. ‘Our lord can hardly brush murder aside like that,’ she hissed. ‘It’s his manor and he has a responsibility for the safety of the town, whether the man was his tenant or not. If some madman is abroad, we might all be murdered in our beds.’

‘That’s hardly likely, Mother,’ rumbled Knapman. ‘This happened on the edge of the high moor, not in Chagford itself. We have a bailiff, a constable and Hugh’s house-guards to look after us.’

Lucy continued to mutter under her breath as she speared her food with a little knife, held awkwardly in fingers swollen with rheumy joints. The priest courteously kept their trencher loaded with food as, in spite of her infirmity, she had a healthy appetite.

So far, Joan had said hardly a word since they began eating. She kept her long-lashed eyes on the table, as if her mind was far away. Her husband had tried several times to coax her into the conversation, but she replied in monosyllables. He turned his attention back to Smithson, the incumbent of St Michael the Archangel, whose new church was largely a gift from Knapman himself. ‘Hugh has done the correct thing in sending for the coroner,’ he said. ‘Justin, his bailiff, went to Exeter at first light and I hear that Sir John de Wolfe has been up to the stream-works this evening. No doubt he will show himself here before long.’

Vicar Paul dropped his now stripped chicken bone under the table for the dogs and dug between his teeth with a dirty fingernail. ‘First time we’ve had a crowner come to Chagford. I’m still not clear what they’re supposed to do. Don’t you stannators settle all matters of law here?’

Walter Knapman was a prominent jurator in the tinners’ Great Court, though the priest had used the old word ‘stannator’. ‘We have no say in crimes against life or limb, Paul,’ he replied. ‘That’s where this new coroner business comes in.’

The priest stared at him. ‘In what way?’ he asked.

‘For years, the County, manor or burgess courts dealt with most offences, but now, especially since old King Henry’s reforms, the royal justices want to try all serious offences. Last September, the Chief Justiciar appointed these coroners, partly to sweep as much business into the King’s courts as possible. It’s all grist to the Treasury and King Richard never misses a chance to screw more money out of the people.’

Smithson ignored his host’s mildly treasonable remarks but continued to look doubtful. ‘So what’s that got to do with this coroner fellow?’ Along with the majority of the population, he was vague as to the function of John de Wolfe and his counterparts in every county.

‘As far as I can make out — and it’s only from gossip in the Great Court — he has to record every legal event and present them to the justices when they come around at the Eyre of Assize. Dead bodies, rapes, serious assaults, fires, burglaries — even wrecks and catches of the royal fish. He has to attend every execution, mutilation, sanctuary, abjuration and trial by ordeal or battle in case there’s any money or chattels to be picked up for the King.’

‘Must be a damned busy man, then, in a county the size of Devon,’ grunted the priest, hacking some more flesh from the fowl to lay on the widow’s side of the trencher.

The sharp eyes of his mother-in-law turned to Knapman. ‘What’s he like, this new crowner? I heard he’s a man of war, an old Crusader.’

After another uneasy sideways look at his silent wife, Knapman took a mouthful of wine before replying. ‘I’ve not met him, but they say he’s fair-minded, not like the bloody sheriff, who I’d trust no further than I could throw my horse. De Wolfe’s a real King’s man, I hear. He was part of Richard’s bodyguard both in the Holy Land and when he was captured in Vienna.’

‘Not a very good bodyguard, then,’ sniggered the fat priest.

Walter frowned. ‘You’d better not say that in his hearing. I’m told he’s not well endowed with either patience or good humour.’

After this mild rebuke they carried on eating in silence, Knapman covertly watching his wife. Of late she had become more withdrawn and these long silences were becoming too common for his liking. He was no fool and knew well enough that when a man of forty-three took on a much younger woman, especially one so attractive, he did so at his peril.

Knapman was rich, and he was handsome enough, in his way, a big, powerful man with a clean-shaven, square face topped by rather springy hair of a dark yellow that as yet showed no sign of grey. Yet there was no denying that the age difference between them was an ever-present threat. The old bull was as virile as ever, but he had to be constantly wary of younger ones trying to displace him.

For this past month, he had seen Joan’s mind receding from him, and though she denied any problem or unhappiness, he sensed that the first flush of their new marriage had rapidly faded. When he first wooed her, then made her his bride, she was warm and passionate enough, though she had always been publicly reserved and undemonstrative. Behind their hands other wives said about her that ‘still waters run deep’. But in the past weeks, though she submitted easily enough to him in the bed upstairs in the glazed solar, she gave a passive performance, with none of her previous enthusiasm — although he suspected that even that might often have been feigned. He sighed as he looked at her now, her eyes resolutely downcast. There was nothing he could do either to improve her mood or to squash the wriggling worm of suspicion that increasingly nibbled away at him.

As the silent meal progressed, the possible causes of her disaffection came unbidden to his mind. He over-indulged her, he knew, like a typical older husband with more money than sense. She lacked for nothing in the way of clothes, trinkets or servants, and he had more than enough insight to know that his affluence and generosity had won her to him, not his dashing good looks or noble blood: he had worked his way up from being a mere tinner. The answer that stared him in the face was another man and, for the hundredth time, he went through the possible candidates.

There could not be many, for although Chagford was a busy town, with hundreds of tinners coming for the coinage and merchants from all over England and even the Continent, it was more likely to be some local resident who would have had the opportunity to steal her heart — and her body. Joan was a keen horsewoman and, with her maid and one of their grooms, spent much of her time riding, with the opportunity to meet and visit other people. Her chaperones could undoubtedly be tricked or bribed, and he determined to interrogate his grooms as to whom she met on her many excursions. Though Chagford was small, Exeter was less than three hours away and sometimes she went to stay there for a few days with his twin brother Matthew, who handled the disposal and export of his finished tin.

Sometimes she went back to her old home town of Ashburton, to stay with her aunt and cousins. Even though these places offered the possibility of assignations for her, an inner voice kept insinuating that the problem was likely to be nearer home, and the name of Stephen Acland kept sliding into his mind unbidden.

‘Have you really no idea who may have killed your man?’

The sudden question from the priest jerked Walter back to the present, but before he could marshal his thoughts, his mother-in-law spoke, her head stuck out on her thin neck like an angry gander. ‘That mad Saxon, that’s who it was! I saw him once, here in the town square, at the last coinage, ranting and raving. He’s not fit to be let loose on decent folk.’

‘He wasn’t loose after that, Mother. We had him locked in Lydford gaol for a couple of months, after he threw over the weighing-scales and tried to kick the assay clerk off his stool.’

‘Is he crazy enough to kill?’ asked the priest.

‘Who knows? A maniac like Aethelfrith is unpredictable. He hates all those with Norman blood in their veins, which is a goodly proportion of us even after a century or more. And he especially hates Norman tinners — but apart from that episode at the coinage, he’s never been violent.’

At that moment Harold came in looking troubled, and went to speak softly in his master’s ear. ‘There’s a stranger come to the kitchen door, a huge wild fellow with ginger hair who looks as if he’s just walked through a haystack. Says he has a message for you from the King’s coroner.’

‘Does he want to speak with me?’

‘He says he’ll not disturb you at your table, sir, but wishes to leave a message that Sir John de Wolfe is holding an inquest on Henry of Tunnaford in the morning. He wishes your attendance, as you were the dead man’s master.’

Knapman nodded. ‘Tell him I know of it already, as the parish priest is with me. He can tell the crowner that I will be there without fail.’

As the steward left the room, Walter thought wryly that at least it would take his mind off his wife for a few hours.

Telling the time in a place without a monastic house was an exercise in reading the sun, moon and stars, and was often hampered by the weather. Livestock seemed to have a better appreciation of the hours: the first cock-crow, the restlessness of cows at milking time and the roosting of fowls towards dusk. Cathedrals and abbeys marked off nine Holy Offices by ringing their bells from midnight until evening, but a parish church gave fewer signals. Often irregular and certainly unreliable, they depended on the conscientiousness or even sobriety of the local priest.

However, Chagford’s Paul Smithson was a dependable man. He would not have held his post if it had been otherwise; both Walter Knapman and Hugh Wibbery, who funded much of the local church’s activities, were too astute to have some deadbeat foisted on them by Bishop Marshal in Exeter. Five years ago, the ancient wooden church, dating from Saxon times, had partly collapsed in a storm. Rather than patch it up yet again, Knapman and the lord of the manor had donated sufficient silver to rebuild it in stone and had persuaded most of the tinners in their district to contribute. The result was a larger but still modest building with a low castellated tower over the junction of nave and choir.

Though he was but a paid vicar, employed by an absentee prebendary to look after the living for him, Smithson was conscientious and saw to it that his sexton tolled the bell in Knapman’s new tower. He rang it before morning Mass soon after dawn and for Vespers in the mid-afternoon. On Sundays, there were more services and more bells, but on workdays the population had to make their best guess as to other hours. The nearest clock was in Germany, and the only other timepieces were the graduated candles and sand-glass in the church.

Early on this Thursday morning, within an hour of the sexton’s heaving on his bell-rope, those who had attended the service emerged to join a crowd of people who were thronging into the churchyard, a large corner site just along the high street from the square. Two alehouses and an inn sat on the opposite side of the street to the church, which was in the angle of a bend in one of the tracks leading down towards Moretonhampstead. A few stalls sat along the edge of the street, their owners blessing the new coroner for an unexpected increase in trade, as the jurors, witnesses and curious spectators flocked past and bought fresh bread, pasties and winter-withered apples to sustain them during the coming entertainment.

Chagford was not a typical town in that its prosperity depended more on the minerals dug from the moor than the ubiquitous agriculture that sustained most other hamlets and vills. The metal was mostly tin, but there was also a little silver and lead. Most of its population were freemen and although there were the usual strip-fields around the town and girdling every nearby village, many families owed no fee-service to the various lords. Instead they were employed and paid by the tin-masters, or worked their own solitary claims.

Thus it was that on this early morning, many men and some of their wives and children were able to attend the inquest more easily than if they had been bondsmen. Jurors were primarily witnesses, rather than a judging panel, so theoretically every male over the age of twelve years from the four nearest villages was supposed to join the jury with the aim of increasing the chances of finding someone who had personal knowledge of the event. This law was soon found to be impracticable: the summons could not be circulated quickly enough, and it would have denuded the fields of workers and left the animals untended. A compromise was soon reached whereby a score was considered an acceptable quorum.

This number, and many more besides, now trooped through the gap in the drystone wall around the churchyard and formed a large circle centred on the old Saxon altar that sat in the grass a few yards north of the church itself. This ancient stone table had been moved out of the church at the rebuilding because a new one with a marble slab had been given by the tinners. The crowd was scattered among the many low grassy mounds that marked grave sites, a few bearing small wooden crosses, usually bereft of any inscription. This was the background to the first inquest ever held in Chagford and the size of the crowd was more an index of curiosity than any burning desire to assist the course of justice.

Some of the older men, who had survived service in the Irish or French wars — and even one or two who had taken the Cross — knew of Sir John de Wolfe by repute; there had been few campaigns over the past twenty years in which he had not been involved. As they shuffled and stamped in the cold morning air, they regaled their neighbours with tales of Black John’s prowess, with the constant theme that he was to be trusted, but not trifled with — and that he was, first and foremost, King Richard’s man, through hell and high water.

Soon, a small procession appeared around the further corner of the church where a lean-to shed acted as the mortuary. First came Gwyn of Polruan, whose huge, untidy figure marched cheerfully ahead of the coroner, who loped along behind, his hawk-like face as impassive as usual. De Wolfe was followed by the sexton and a gravedigger, who between them carried the handles of a wooden bier on which lay an ominously shortened shape covered with a shroud. Behind the corpse walked what at first sight seemed to be a pair of priests: beside the plump Smithson was a smaller figure, dressed in a similar long black tunic of clerical appearance. Thomas de Peyne carried his breviary in his clasped hands and his peaky face wore a suitably doleful expression. To those who did not know him, he was just another priest, which was exactly the impression he strove to give. The main difference between him and Smithson was that Thomas also carried a sagging shoulder pouch containing his writing materials. As soon as the bier had been slid on top of the old altar, he scuttled to sit on a nearby grave mound and pulled out parchment, pens and ink.

De Wolfe’s large henchman now stood alongside the cadaver, with one hand resting on the bier, and opened the proceedings by bellowing the coroner’s summons at the top of his voice: ‘All persons who have anything to do before the King’s coroner for the county of Devon, draw near and give your attendance!’ Gwyn always enjoyed this duty as, a militant Cornishman, he relished being able to command Normans and Saxons to do his bidding, however fleeting the opportunity. Then he stepped forward and jostled about twenty-five men and boys into a ragged line.

‘These here are the jurors, Crowner,’ he growled in his deep bass voice. ‘All the rest are those with an interest or just sightseers,’ he added dismissively.

The persons with an interest, whom Gwyn had indicated with a stab of his finger, were a well-dressed group with the air of burgesses or merchants, and John guessed correctly that they were the tin-masters. The previous evening, after he had arrived at his lodging in the manor house and paid his respects to the lord of Chagford, it had been too late to call on Knapman, the dead man’s employer.

De Wolfe stood at the other end of the old altar to begin the inquisition. ‘As you all know, this is an inquest into the death of Henry of Tunnaford. First, there is the matter of identity. In spite of the loss of his head, which has not been recovered, I am satisfied from clothing and the depositions of his work-fellows that this corpse is indeed that of Henry. Does anyone here dispute that?’ He glared around the jury, as if defying anyone to disagree with him.

The men all nodded hastily, the late Henry’s gang amongst them.

‘Next, we need to settle any presentment of Englishry,’ barked the coroner, the fringe of black hair swinging across his forehead as he raked his gaze along the line of jurors. ‘We all know that Henry was of Norman lineage, so I presume that no one here is going to claim that he was anything else.’ Again he glowered at the crowd, giving the impression that he would personally fell anyone who had the temerity to dispute his opinion.

This time, a more sullen silence indicated that no one was going to object, but the ill-grace of their acceptance was almost palpable in the churchyard. Everyone was afraid that this was going to cost them dear: a failure to ‘present Englishry’ exposed them to the murdrum fine, established by the Norman conquerors over a century ago when the few thousand invaders had to keep several million Saxons under subjugation. Repeated rebellions and many covert assassinations had led to the introduction of a law that any violent death was assumed to be that of a Norman, unless the community could prove that the corpse had been Saxon or Celt. If this failed, the village, town or Hundred was penalised by the ‘murdrum’ fine, levied on the whole community. While it had been a valid deterrent in the early years after the Conquest, it had now become a cynical means of extra taxation, for racial boundaries were blurred by intermarriage.

Although John de Wolfe was still bound by the law to require presentment, he interpreted the application of the murdrum in a reasonable way: ‘I therefore declare the decedent to have been Norman and that the Hundred is amerced in the sum of twenty marks. However, this stands in abeyance until the matter is heard before the Justices in Eyre. If the culprit is found before then, I doubt the fine will be levied.’

A collective sigh of relief whispered around the churchyard and the birds seemed to sing again in the dark branches of the yew trees that encircled them. De Wolfe made a sign with his forefinger to Gwyn, who stepped forward to jerk a young man from the line of jurors.

‘You were the First Finder, boy?’

It was the youth who had shown de Wolfe where the corpse had lain under the trestles of the sluice. Awed by the proceedings, and with one eye on the still shape under the shroud, the young man told again of how he had found the body. After he had stepped back thankfully into the line, Yeo, the acting overman, came to report what little he knew of the matter.

De Wolfe was somewhat at a loss to fit this case into the usual routine of a suspicious death. The law prescribed that when a body was found, the First Finder must raise the hue and cry by rousing the four nearest households and starting a hunt for the killer. Most murders were impulsive acts, arising out of sudden, often drunken fights, where in the closed communities of village or town, they were often witnessed. Here though, the body had been discovered the next day, in a remote spot at least a mile from the nearest habitation. Theoretically, he could amerce the Hundred yet again for failing to carry out the letter of the law, but it would be ridiculous to expect the tinners to have careered around the moor a day later, seeking the slayer.

‘We sent down for the bailiff straight away, Crowner. He came up and had a look, then went off to tell Walter Knapman, our master. Then he rode off to Exeter to report it to the sheriff and yourself.’

This was eminently reasonable, de Wolfe decided, and after hearing from one or two of the other gangers, who confirmed the finding of the body but could add nothing else, he turned to the group of town worthies, who stood a little to one side, with a respectful space between them and the common throng.

As well as several men, including the parish priest, there were two women, one young and beautiful, the other old enough to be her mother. One of the men was Hugh Wibbery, lord of Chagford, with whom he had lodged overnight, but the others were strangers to John.

‘Walter Knapman?’ he hazarded, guessing that the tall, fair man standing next to the doe-eyed siren was Yeo’s master.

Knapman stepped forward and nodded perfunctorily. Alhough he had no knight’s spurs like the coroner, he could probably have bought him out ten times over and felt in no particularawe of de Wolfe’s ennoblement. ‘Yes, this poor fellow was one of my men, Sir John,’ he said, before de Wolfe could open his mouth. ‘He worked faithfully for me over a dozen years. His widow will not go short, I promise you.’

A stifled sob came from behind the jury, where the dead man’s wife was being comforted by her sisters and son. De Wolfe scowled. He had taken an instant, if illogical, dislike to Knapman. ‘Have you any reason to think that someone would wish one of your men dead?’

The big, bland face looked back calmly at him. ‘None at all. The fellow was an old and trusted worker. I find it hard to believe he had any enemies.’

‘Then might this have been an attack on your tinning operation, an attempt to disrupt your business?’

Knapman’s outwardly calm expression darkened a little. ‘It certainly did that — I have lost many marks’ worth of production.’

‘And who might benefit from that?’ persisted de Wolfe.

‘Those who are jealous of my success, perhaps.’ Knapman’s amiability was melting like snow in the sunlight and de Wolfe noticed him throw a malicious glance across the crowd. Following the tin-master’s gaze, he saw a younger man glaring back at him.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Nothing. I spoke out of turn.’

‘I’ll not let you leave it like that. This is a royal enquiry and you must answer my questions, if the answer may have any bearing on the death,’ snapped the coroner.

Suddenly the man on the other side of the jury pushed his way to the front. He was another large fellow, under thirty years of age, handsome in a beefy way. His strong-featured, tanned face bore a narrow rim of beard, which ran round his jaw-line, and his hair was cut short on his muscular neck up to a circular shelf of thick dark brown thatch. He wore a good tunic of green linen over brown serge breeches, with a new-looking short leather cape around his shoulders.

‘I’ll tell you what he means, Crowner,’ he shouted, in a bass voice. ‘The bastard is insinuating that I killed his man to damage his stream-working up there on the Teign. And it’s a damned lie, as he well knows!’

Walter Knapman, his face purpling with anger, took a step forward and the younger fellow squared up to him, like a pair of cockerels in a farmyard challenge. Gwyn stepped forward, placed a huge hand on each chest and pushed them apart.

‘Who are you? And what’s all this about?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘I’ll tell you who he is!’ snarled Knapman. ‘He’s Stephen Acland, the biggest troublemaker on the eastern moor. This young upstart thinks he can displace me as the chief tin-master here.’

Acland, now red in the face, leaned sideways to shout at his rival past Gwyn’s massive bulk. ‘I can do that without slaying your men, Knapman. You’ve had your way for too long, but I’ll unseat you by fair means. Don’t try blaming me for the death of your overman.’

‘And what about the damage to my sluices and troughs up at Scorhill last month?’ yelled Knapman. ‘You had nothing to do with that either, I suppose — two days after I threw you out for having the impudence to want to buy half my holdings.’

De Wolfe had allowed this angry exchange to go on in case something useful came of it. Now he decided that enough was enough. ‘Stop, you two! Has this anything at all to do with my enquiries into this death?’

Stephen Acland swung around to face the coroner. ‘Of course not, sir. This is a business matter, which should be aired at the Great Court this week.’

‘Then I suggest you pursue it there, rather than screaming at each other like fish-wives before half the town!’ De Wolfe glared at both combatants, who rapidly cooled down in his forbidding presence. He noticed that the attractive woman he had taken to be Mistress Knapman was staring fixedly at Acland, her full lips slightly apart, her face pale and her eyes wide. He could not decide whether her expression was one of apprehension or enrapturement, but he also saw that her husband was now watching her intently and following her gaze across to the younger tin-master.

Before de Wolfe had a chance to restart his inquest, Walter Knapman grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her away, almost violently, through the crowd towards the churchyard gate.

Acland stood stock still, his eyes pinned on the woman, and de Wolfe needed no second sight to decide that Knapman’s antipathy to Acland was not wholly concerned with the tin trade. ‘Acland, have you anything to tell me about this matter?’ he called out, to bring the man’s attention back to the proceedings.

Slowly the tinner turned to face him, his chin jutting forward obstinately. ‘Nothing useful, Crowner. I knew Henry of Tunnaford well enough, even though he didn’t work for me. He was a good man. Surely his death must have been the work of a madman.’

‘But which madman? Have you any suggestions?’

A wave of whispering rippled through the front ranks of the crowd, especially the jurors, as if they were willing Acland to say something.

‘If it’s a madman you’re seeking, then Aethelfrith comes first to mind, Crowner. I would easily believe that he damaged Knapman’s equipment the other day, but I doubt he would kill. Though even murderers have to begin sometime.’

‘Tell me about this Aethelfrith — I’ve heard mention of him before.’

Acland rubbed a hand around his beard, as if delaying an answer. ‘There are other people better able to tell you than I, Crowner — the bailiff and the constable for a start. But I can give you the common knowledge, that he is an old Saxon, of at least three score years, who has a crazy hatred of everything Norman.’

Now one of the jurors cut in, a tinner, though not one of Henry’s team: ‘He attacked me once, sir, nearly a year past. I was on my own up past Gidleigh, clearing out a fall of mud above the workings. Suddenly this old madman appeared and set about with his staff, screaming that I was stealing a Saxon’s birthright. I clouted him with my shovel and he ran away.’

There were sniggers from the crowd, which earned them a ferocious glare from de Wolfe. ‘This is no laughing matter. A man is dead.’ He turned back to Stephen Acland. ‘Where can this Aethelfrith be found?’

The brawny tin-master shrugged. ‘He comes and goes like the mist, sir. I hear he lives somewhere on the high moor, but how he finds food and shelter, I cannot tell. Maybe the bailiff can.’

The dark head swung slowly to Justin Green, who stood to one side.

‘He seems to move around a great deal, Crowner,’ supplied Justin. ‘There are plenty of outlaws up on the moor and they shelter him, I’m sure. Sometimes we have found traces of his living in disused tinners’ huts. So far he’s been more of a nuisance than a danger. We had him for a few months in the Stannary gaol, convicted by their court of damaging a blowing-house one night.’

‘Can he be found for questioning?’

‘Aethelfrith is as elusive as the wind. A thousand men could comb the moor and never see a hair of him, if he chose to keep low.’

De Wolfe abandoned the problem and turned to the old altar slab. He motioned to Gwyn to remove the sheet from the body. There was a gasp as the corpse was revealed. Though injury and sudden death were far from unusual, the appearance of this cadaver was particularly gruesome. The crowd gave a hiss of astonishment, and Henry’s widow wailed in anguish as she turned away to sob into her shawl. Her son and her sisters clustered around her to shield her from the sight of her mutilated husband. De Wolfe was neither sadistic nor unfeeling, but public display of the deceased was part of the legal ritual of the inquest and he had had no option but to reveal the horrible circumstances of the death.

‘The jury will draw near,’ boomed Gwyn, well versed in the conduct of the inquest. He shepherded the score of men and boys around the bier so that the coroner could conduct the official viewing of the corpse.

‘Clerk, record that the King’s coroner and the jury have inspected the decedent,’ grated de Wolfe, as he went to the end of the altar stone and began demonstrating as if he was giving a lecture in a School of Physic.

‘You will see that the neck has been severed completely. There is a ragged line of skin all the way around.’ He pointed with his fingers at the gory mess that had dried and blackened in the two days since death. ‘The edges of the wound, though irregular, have been quite sharply cut.’

He picked up the edge of the skin between thumb and forefinger and stretched out the serrations, now stiffened and curled from drying. ‘This means that a sharp weapon was used — but not too sharp as there is roughening and bruising along the edges. See there.’

The jury did not particularly wish to see, but they nodded and gaped to satisfy the King’s crowner.

‘So something with a moderately good edge, but not as good as a well-honed dagger, was used. Yet it was sharper than the edge of a spade. A good sharp axe would suffice, I suspect.’

John de Wolfe prided himself on his expertise concerning violence and assault. After more than two decades on a score of battlefields, he had seen every conceivable variety of maiming and death. He motioned to Gwyn, who deftly flicked the sheet back over the remains. ‘There is no more that can be done at present,’ he said. ‘I will adjourn these proceedings but if further information is obtained then they may resume. At present, my verdict is that the deceased was Henry, a tinner of Tunnaford, and that he was of Norman blood. He died of malignant violence on the fourth day of April in the sixth year of the reign of our blessed King Richard, and the manner of his death was murder by a person or persons as yet unknown.’

He glowered around the ranks of silent onlookers then dropped his gaze to the front row of jurors. ‘If anyone now knows — or comes to know — anything further about this outrage, then they must inform the constable, the bailiff or myself on pain of the most dire penalties if they fail so to do.’

Swirling his grey cloak around his lean body, de Wolfe loped away towards the gate, leaving the mutilated corpse to the grieving family and the vicar of St Michael the Archangel.

CHAPTER FOUR

In which Crowner John is besieged by problems

By noon, the trio that made up the coroner’s team were splashing their way through the ford across the Exe, just outside Exeter’s West Gate. The unfinished stone bridge was on their left and the rickety old wooden footbridge to their right, both straddling the marshy flats of Exe Island, criss-crossed by muddy ditches.

John de Wolfe and Gwyn of Polruan were riding side by side, and as their mounts climbed the sloping bank on the city side of the river, de Wolfe broke a long silence. ‘What’s wrong with Thomas today? He looks as if he’s going to his own hanging, not his dinner.’

Gwyn turned his head to look back at the little clerk, sitting forlornly on his old pony. ‘Walking alongside that fat priest this morning has made him worse,’ grunted the Cornishman, as they jogged up to the city gate.

‘Worse than what?’ asked John, who could hardly claim sensitivity among his virtues.

‘Thomas is missing his vocation more than ever, poor little sod. He’s desperate to become a proper servant of God again — though why anyone should want to waste their life like that is beyond me.’ In all the years that John had spent in his henchman’s company, he had yet to discover why Gwyn had such an antipathy to the Church.

‘The man should be thankful that he’s still alive, after that rape affair in Winchester,’ grated de Wolfe unsympathetically. ‘If the sheriff had got him, instead of the cathedral proctors, he’d have been hanged for sure.’

‘The other day, he told me he wished he had been hanged,’ replied Gwyn. ‘Living in the canon’s house in the cathedral close keeps reminding him of what he’s lost, I suppose.’

‘Well, don’t let him cut his throat, will you? Miserable little drab that he is, he’s too valuable to me as a clerk. And that reminds me,’ he added cryptically.

Gwyn looked at his master enquiringly. ‘Reminds you of what?’

‘A coroner’s clerk. I’ve got to meet that damned fool Theobald Fitz-Ivo at Rougemont this afternoon. The sheriff wants him elected by the Shire Court tomorrow, God help us!’ With that, the coroner became as glumly silent as Thomas. They climbed the slope of Fore Street to the central crossing of the city at Carfoix, and by the time they passed along the high street to where Martin’s Lane turned off on the right, John’s mood had recovered enough for him to remind the departing Gwyn to be back at the castle by the time of the Vespers bell, around the third hour after noon.

Gwyn carried straight on, aiming for his family’s hut in St Sidwell’s, just outside the East Gate, while de Wolfe turned into the lane, followed by his despondent clerk. He dismounted a few yards further on, and Andrew the farrier ran out from his stables to take charge of Odin.

‘See that the inquest is copied on to another roll for the justices,’ de Wolfe ordered Thomas, who was passing by on his pony. The clerk managed a nod in reply — strangely different from his usual eager, almost obsequious acknowledgement of his master’s instructions.

De Wolfe stood in the narrow lane for a moment, looking in puzzlement after the plodding horse, but his distraction was short-lived. An all-too-familiar voice grated in his ear. ‘Have you nothing better to do than stare after that lop-sided pervert, John?’

Matilda had appeared from behind him, enveloped in a dark grey cloak and hood, her white cover-chief and wimple surrounding her face. She looked so much like a nun that he wondered briefly if some special religious fervour was affecting her as well as his clerk. Then he guessed that she had just come from her habitual devotions in the church of St Olave in Fore Street.

‘You passed us on the high street without a word,’ she complained, gesturing to the obnoxious Lucille, who always reminded de Wolfe of a skinny rabbit, with her large ears and protruding teeth.

‘In that press of people, you could hardly expect me to recognise you from the back, wrapped in that great mantle,’ muttered her husband.

Matilda waddled past him to their front door. ‘You’d easily recognise certain other wenches, with or without their clothes,’ she spat out.

To John’s relief, both women disappeared down the side passage to the backyard to take the outside stairs up to Matilda’s solar. He reckoned that he had half an hour to sit in peace by his hearth and drink a quart of ale, while Lucille fussed over his wife’s clothes and primped her hair.

As he fondled Brutus’s smooth head while he waited for Mary to bring him his drink, the thought of ale gave him a sudden stab of guilt over his enforced absences lately from the Bush Inn. He had only seen Nesta once in the past five days, and after his long trips away from Exeter during the past month, he hoped that his mistress was not feeling too neglected. Maybe the installation of Fitz-Ivo might be bearable, he thought, if it gave him more time for dalliance at the Bush. And maybe he would even find time to get down to Stoke-in-Teignhead to see his family. With another twinge of guilt, the thought that Dawlish was on the road to Stoke came into his head — Dawlish, the village where the delectable Hilda lived.

The aspiring new coroner for the north of the county was already in the sheriff’s chamber when de Wolfe arrived. The obese knight was squeezed into a leather-backed folding chair, which looked in imminent danger of collapse as he leaned back dangerously when John entered.

Theobald Fitz-Ivo was obviously slightly drunk after washing down his dinner with too much wine. His circular face, which bore a rim of blond beard that matched his close-cropped hair, was flushed a bright pink and he greeted de Wolfe with unctuous familiarity. ‘Ah, John! I’ve come to your rescue. Richard here has been telling me how hard pressed you’ve been lately.’

Even the sheriff, who had championed Fitz-Ivo, winced at the man’s slurred heartiness.

‘You understand what’s involved, do you?’ growled de Wolfe, propping himself against the stone fireplace where a few logs glowed feebly. ‘This job is no sinecure. You have to get out and about, investigating a whole host of matters.’

Fitz-Ivo waved a hand with unsteady airiness. ‘I’ll soon get into the swing of it, John. My bailiff William is good at reading and writing — never had time for it, myself.’

The coroner sighed. ‘He had better be good, for everything must be recorded on the rolls for presentation to the King’s justices at the Eyre of Assize — and the General Eyre, if it ever arrives in Exeter in our lifetime.’

The podgy knight from Frithelstock looked at him blankly. John hoped that the complexity of a coroner’s functions was dawning on Fitz-Ivo, but he had his doubts. ‘You do understand what your duties will be, I trust?’

‘Oh, it’s mostly looking at corpses and taking presentments, eh?’

De Wolfe groaned inwardly. It would be easier to carry on doing all the work himself than to instruct this dolt — and, no doubt, clear up the mess he was inevitably going to make. He walked across to the sheriff’s heavy table and perched on one corner to stare down at the rubicund Theobald. He decided that the fool should be told a few basic truths. ‘I’d better start at the beginning! The essential duty is the keeping of the pleas of the Crown.’

He was rewarded with a glassy stare from the pale blue eyes that looked back from the red face, which carried an even redder, bulbous nose laced by fine purple veins.

‘What exactly does that mean, eh?’

The scowl on de Wolfe’s dark face deepened. ‘It’s what gives the office its name, for God’s sake!’ he snarled, in exasperation. ‘Why d’you think we’re called coroners? From custos placitorum coronas, keeper of the pleas of the Crown! But we keep them, not hold them. We’re not judges.’

Theobald made an effort to comprehend. ‘So what does keeping entail, John?’

‘It means directing the trial of all serious crimes and legal suits to the royal courts, rather than letting them be dealt with by the burgess court, the sheriff’s Shire Court or the manorial courts.’

‘Damn nonsense!’ cut in the sheriff, who could restrain himself no longer. ‘Our courts have managed well enough for centuries.’

Richard de Revelle was in a difficult position: on the one hand he wanted to put John down by appointing Fitz-Ivo, so limiting his power over the whole county, yet on the other he disagreed fundamentally with the new post of coroner, which curtailed his own freedom to practise autocracy and corruption.

De Wolfe turned slowly to his brother-in-law. ‘Perhaps you would like to express that opinion to the Justiciar when you take the Devon farm to Winchester next week. Hubert Walter will be happy to relay your condemnation to the King when he next visits Normandy — especially as part of the reason for the new system was to increase the royal revenues to pay for the King’s ransom and his campaigns against the French.’

De Revelle ground his teeth in frustration, but he was in no position to defy John too openly, given the cloud of royal disapproval under which he laboured.

De Wolfe turned back to Theobald, who sat uneasily now, wondering if he really wanted the appointment. He was dressed gaudily in an elaborately embroidered tunic of green wool and a surcoat of scarlet brocade, which, although originally of excellent quality, were now slightly threadbare and definitely grubby. A wide leather belt sagged below the bulge of his corpulent belly and red breeches ended in pale tan leather boots with very pointed toes. A greater contrast with the lean, ascetic de Wolfe, clad all in grey and black, was hard to imagine.

John continued to rub salt into Fitz-Ivo’s wounds with an catalogue of coroner’s duties. ‘You must attend every sudden or unnatural death, every rape, every serious assault and burglary that is reported to you by the bailiffs or the constables. Go to every fire of house or barn, whether they cause death or not … attend every hanging, mutilation and trial by battle or ordeal, every catch of royal fish, the sturgeon and the whale, every find of treasure trove. You take confessions from sanctuary seekers and organise abjurations of the realm, hear the pleas of approvers who wish to save their skins by giving evidence against fellow conspirators, and appeals from those who wish to start proceedings in the royal courts. And you must have a jury assess the value of all deodands and decide where that value is to be lodged.’

‘What’s a deodand?’ asked the fuddled Theobald.

Restraining his impatience with difficulty, de Wolfe explained, ‘Anything that causes a death — a knife, a cart, even a mill-wheel.’

By now, Fitz-Ivo’s ruddy complexion had paled considerably, but John was not finished. With almost sadistic enjoyment, he continued, ‘You are an officer of the King’s justices and your main function is keep a record of every legal event within your jurisdiction to present to the judges when they arrive. You must amerce any miscreant or those who fail to carry out the legal procedures, and though you do not collect the money yourself, your assessment of the fines must be presented to the justices, at penalty of your own pocket.’

At the mention of loss of money, Fitz-Ivo’s moist, flabby lips quivered. ‘What about recompense for my labours, then?’

De Wolfe scowled at him fiercely. ‘Surely you’ve been told that you are forbidden to receive any fee. You must have proved already that you have an income of at least twenty pounds a year, in order to be aloof from any temptation to profit personally from your appointment.’ Here he paused to look pointedly at his brother-in-law, whose reputation for embezzlement was unparalleled west of Bristol.

‘But expenses? Surely there is some refund of costs in all this labour?

De Wolfe nodded. ‘You may pay your clerk a reasonable sum for his work, up to a few pence per day, and you may recover the cost of lodging and horse fodder when you are away from home. This may be raised from the sale of deodands, but strict accounts must be presented to the judges or you will find yourself locked in the cells here below our feet.’

He took such a malicious delight in frightening his would-be colleague that the sheriff felt obliged to reassure Fitz-Ivo. ‘John puts the worst face upon it, Theobald. I fear that sometimes he has a strange sense of humour. You will fill the post admirably, I’m sure. Let us agree to a trial period — say six months — to see how you fare.’

In spite of de Wolfe’s glowering disapproval, it was finally arranged that Fitz-Ivo would deal with all cases in the Hundreds of the northern part of the county above a line that ran roughly east-west from Tiverton to Okehampton. In addition, they would cover each other’s territory if one was absent or indisposed, though de Wolfe vowed to himself that he would never let Fitz-Ivo meddle with his part of the county while he still had breath in his body.

Officially, a coroner could only be appointed by the Shire Court, then ratified by the Justiciar or the Chancellor, so Richard de Revelle promised that Fitz-Ivo would be installed at the fortnightly court, which was due to be held in Rougemont next morning.

As the coroner moved towards the door, the sheriff broached a different matter. ‘The day after tomorrow I have to attend the tinners’ Great Court up on Crockern Tor. I have no option because, as sheriff, I am also Lord Warden of the Stannaries.’

De Wolfe looked at him blankly. ‘What of it, Richard? Are you feared for your own head with this killer on the loose around the moor?’

Though he spoke sarcastically, there may have been an element of truth in what he said, but the sheriff dismissed it impatiently. ‘There will be a hundred or more others there. I need not worry about an assault, especially as I will have Sergeant Gabriel and half a dozen men-at-arms with me. No, I wondered if you thought it wise to attend too. All the current problems of the tinners will be aired and perhaps something useful will arise about this killing.’

De Wolfe considered this. ‘It might be advantageous, I suppose. But why are you concerned with coroner’s business?’

De Revelle put on his pompous voice: ‘As Lord Warden and county sheriff, I have a responsibility to seek out the miscreant. Anything that disturbs the production of tin reduces the revenues from the coinage. When I go to Winchester next week, the Chancellor and the Exchequer will be out of sorts with me if they suspect that less tin is being mined because of these disturbances.’

He stopped and looked craftily at his brother-in-law. ‘Especially as the King is sending it to Normandy by the thousand-weight instead of silver to pay his troops,’ he added, with a sneer.

De Wolfe ignored the jibe against his monarch and left the sheriff to repair the damage done to Fitz-Ivo’s confidence with more wine and reassurance about the simplicity of his duties. As he strode out, he wondered grimly how long the fat knight would last — although he knew that Theobald would be well under de Revelle’s thumb: the sheriff would want to ensure that he was of no hindrance to his underhand dealings.

De Wolfe left the keep and strode across the inner ward of the castle, avoiding ox-wagons, ducks and geese, old men and small urchins, to reach the gatehouse, where he clattered up the stone stairs to his office. He was due for a session with Gwyn and the sad little clerk, to make sure that the rolls were up to date.

After an hour, they heard the cathedral bell tolling in the distance. John rose from his bench and took his mantle from the peg on the bare stone wall. ‘Time for Vespers,’ he grunted, with a rare wink at Gwyn, who grinned back, well aware that his master’s devotions were likely to be social rather than sacred.

De Wolfe strode through the back lanes of Exeter to reach the Bush Inn, avoiding High Street in case his wife was on one of her ceaseless perambulations to the church of St Olave. He skirted the noisome outer ward of Rougemont, where most of the castle garrison lived with their families and animals, then crossed Curre Street and Goldsmith Street to reach the inner side of the North Gate.

From here, he dived into the even meaner passages of Bretayne, the poorest area of the city, named after the original Britons who had been squeezed into this district when, centuries earlier, the Saxons had displaced the Celts. Pushing past cripples, beggars, urchins, pigs and goats in the filthy lanes that lay between tumbledown huts of wattle and thatch, he turned into Friernhay. At its end, he crossed Fore Street to a passage leading into Stepcote, the steep hill dropping down to the city wall.

Directly opposite was Idle Lane, named for the plot of wasteground on which the Bush Inn sat. Its stone walls were barely the height of a man, but a steeply pitched thatched roof gave it a spacious loft under the rafters, where Nesta had a small room to herself, letting the rest of the space as lodgings.

A few horses were tethered to a rail at the side as he walked past to reach the central front door. Stooping to pass under the low lintel, he went into the single drinking-room that occupied all the ground floor. The kitchen shed and brewhouse were in the yard behind the main building. It was dim and the smoke from the large hearth-pit against the left-hand wall stung his eyes. Even in mid-afternoon, several patrons were indulging in drink and business, before they went off for the early-evening meal. The buzz of conversation was broken by bursts of raucous laughter, mainly from a trio of harlots who were entertaining some out-of-town wool traders in one corner.

John’s favourite resting place was vacant, a rough table near the fire. Its bench was backed up against a wattle hurdle, which gave some protection from the draughts that blew in through the open eaves and the four small window openings. He scuffed across to the table through the straw on the earthen floor and pulled off his wolfskin mantle. As he dropped it on to the bench, a bent old man limped up and pulled his forelock. ‘How do, Cap’n? Ale or cider today?’ His toothless mouth leered a welcome at de Wolfe. The aged potman had lost part of a foot and one eye in the Irish wars and the white scar of his collapsed blind eyeball roved horribly as the other glinted cunningly at the coroner. ‘The missus is out the back, sir. With the new man.’

John looked at him sharply. He had come to recognise every nuance of the old man’s voice and knew that Edwin was hinting at something. ‘New man? What new man?’

The potman’s leer grew wider. ‘Why, Alan of Lyme, Cap’n. Didn’t you know about the young fellow?’ he asked, with false innocence.

De Wolfe made a gargling noise in his throat, his habitual defence against having to answer. ‘Get me a quart of ale, old man,’ he demanded brusquely.

Edwin stumped off and returned with a stone jar of ale filled from a barrel at the back of the room.

‘What’s this Alan doing here?’ grunted the coroner, his worried curiosity getting the better of him.

‘Why, the missus has employed him, of course. Finding the work a bit much for her, now that trade is getting so brisk.’

De Wolfe gargled again and waved Edwin away. But the decrepit potman hovered as de Wolfe put the mug to his lips. He looked furtively over his shoulder. ‘Perhaps not for me to say, Crowner,’ he hissed, in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘but if I was you, I’d tread careful with the missus. She’s been in a funny mood these past days. I think she may have it in for you a bit.’ His blind eye rolled repulsively as he tapped the side of his nose with a dirty forefinger then moved away, leaving de Wolfe more uneasy than ever.

He sat holding his pot and staring into the leaping flames of the log fire, his ears jarred by more shrieks of laughter from one of the whores in the corner. One of the tipsy woolmen had slid a hand down her bodice.

Though he had seen little of Nesta these past few weeks, he had been in here last Sunday for a short while. However, Matilda’s insistence that he go with her for one of his infrequent visits to church had prevented him having a session with the landlady up in the loft. She had said nothing about employing anyone then, though he recollected now that she had been less talkative than usual.

Edwin’s claim that business had become more onerous was doubtful: the Bush was certainly the most popular inn in the city, but it had been for many months, so he failed to see why Nesta should find the need suddenly for another helper, in addition to the potman, cook and two serving maids. Until a couple of years ago, her husband had run the tavern. He had been a good friend of John’s, a Welsh archer who had shared several campaigns with him. When his fighting days had ended, he had taken on the Bush, but within a year he was dead of a fever and John had helped Nesta finance the inn to keep it going.

Before long their business interests had ripened into mutual attraction, then passion, and though de Wolfe could not resist female temptation elsewhere, Nesta was his favourite, almost to the exclusion of all others. She was certainly in love with him and, flinty-natured though he was, he had grudgingly to admit that he was extraordinarily fond of her in return.

So what was this about a younger man on the premises? He looked covertly over his shoulder to the back of the room where Edwin had his barrels wedged up along a plank over leather drip buckets. Alongside them was the door to the backyard, over which the wide ladder ascended to the loft. As he peered through the smoke haze, he saw Nesta bustle in to be stopped by the crippled potman, who whispered in her ear and waved towards the hearth. The landlady’s head came up and her eyes met John’s across the room. He fancied he saw a slight tightening of her lips instead of her usual welcoming smile, and a tingle of apprehension caught at his throat. When facing a Saracen horde or a lance pointing at him on the tourney-field, John de Wolfe would hardly turn a hair, but the prospect of an angry or vindictive woman made him quail.

Nesta threaded her way across the room between stools and tables, her face devoid of expression. She dropped down on to the bench beside him, but instead of the usual pressure of her shoulder and thigh, a small but significant space remained between them. ‘You’ve come to see me at last, then?’

Unbidden, the cautionary words of some past comrade sprang into his head: ‘When your mistress begins to sound like your wife, it’s time to leave.’

‘God’s bones, woman, I’ve been so overwhelmed by duties these past few weeks, I’ve hardly had time to spit.’ He put an arm affectionately around her shoulders, and softened his tone. ‘Things will be easier now, though. A new coroner has been appointed for the north. He’s a fool, but it should lighten my load.’

Nesta still sat rigidly, but her face mellowed a little, into a doubtful pout. ‘I thought you had forsaken me, damn you! Twice I have seen you in three weeks — and neither occasion saw us abed together.’

‘You know how long I was up in Barnstaple and Lynmouth and Christ knows where else, Nesta. And now I have a killing on Dartmoor that kept me away all last night — and Crediton the night before that.’

She nodded, rather absently. ‘Do you want some food? And you need that pot filled again.’ Rising from the bench, Nesta looked down at him. ‘There’s some good boiled pork. I’ll get some for you and send more ale across while you’re waiting.’

She walked away with the suggestion of a flounce, leaving de Wolfe uneasy and worried. He had never seen her like this before, and though he blamed himself for neglecting her during the past weeks, he felt that her behaviour was unreasonable, given that he had had no choice in being away from Exeter so much during that time.

His morose reverie was broken when a new jar of ale was banged on the table before him, some of the contents slopping over on to the boards. He looked up to snap at old Edwin for his lack of courtesy, but was surprised to see a different face. A shock of blond hair, with a natural curl, sat above a long, handsome face that carried a pair of bright blue eyes. The young fellow had a wispy moustache of the same colour as his pale locks, and seemed to be in his mid-twenties. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and exuded a confident aura of fitness and robust health. ‘Nesta said you needed more ale. The food is on its way.’

The words were innocent and spoken civilly enough, but the casual familiarity from a total stranger made de Wolfe long to throw the contents of the ale-jar in his face. He restrained himself and instead gave one of his strangled grunts, as he glowered up at the man.

‘You’ll be this crowner fellow, I expect,’ continued the newcomer, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was making an implacable enemy.

‘Sir John de Wolfe, the King’s coroner, yes! And who the hell might you be? The new potman?’ grated John.

‘I’m no potman, Crowner!’ said the man indignantly. ‘Alan of Lyme, that’s me — I run the inn with Nesta now. She needs a man in a place like this. It’s too much for a widow.’

He marched away before de Wolfe could unravel his tongue in the face of such blatant effrontery. He was starting to get to his feet to follow the fellow and shake him by his flaxen hair, when Nesta came out of the kitchen door and across the room, bearing a board on which a steaming trencher was covered with pork and onions. He dropped back on to his bench and glared up at her. ‘Sit down, you’ve got some explaining to do,’ he growled, as she slid the trencher in front of him.

Calmly, she leaned on the table and bent towards him. ‘I see you’ve met Alan, then.’

‘Cheeky young bastard! Talked to me as if I was your father,’ he snapped. ‘What’s he doing here? You’ve managed quite well with just the four servants until now. And why choose him? He looks as if he would be better employed running a brothel down in Bretayne,’ he added unfairly.

Nesta shrugged her shapely shoulders. ‘Edwin is getting past it, both in mind and body. I needed someone younger and more active.’

‘Well, make sure this damned fellow doesn’t get too active or I’ll have to kill him!’ muttered de Wolfe.

Relenting a little, Nesta slid on to the bench. ‘Just eat your dinner and stop talking nonsense. When you’ve finished, you can tell me what news there might be.’

With false reluctance, for he was hungry and the food smelt good, de Wolfe began to eat. The Welsh woman watched him with an enigmatic smile, almost like a mother regarding a sulky child. Between mouthfuls, he shot tentative glances at her, trying to gauge whether she was really softening or whether her strange mood was persisting.

He saw a comely woman of twenty-eight, with a high smooth forehead, a snub nose and an oval face. Strands of rich red hair peeped from under her linen coif, whose colour matched the pale green gown girdled tightly to emphasise her small waist below the deliciously full bosom. His affection for her welled up again, and he hated the thought that she had taken some flashy young man into the inn where he could be with her all day — and possibly all night. That generated another jealous question. ‘This Alan, does he live in here? With four other servants, you have no room in the huts in the yard.’

She shook her head carelessly. ‘I’ve given him a corner upstairs — a straw pallet at the end of the stalls.’

The large room under the thatch was divided off into a number of open-fronted cubicles, each with either a mattress or a pile of clean hay for penny and halfpenny guests.

De Wolfe grunted, failing to hide his displeasure. ‘As far as possible from your chamber, I trust.’

‘Are you afraid that he’ll break down my door at night, then?’

‘I’m thinking of him being an audience for us, when we’re together in there,’ he grated. ‘That’s if I am still welcome.’

Again that enigmatic smile. ‘You are welcome this very night, John.’

He flushed with chagrin. ‘Would that I could, but I must go with Matilda this evening to visit her damned cousin. I had long promised her, to save her endless nagging.’

‘Tomorrow, then, John,’ said Nesta, with a long-suffering sigh.

He groaned. ‘It’s the Shire Court in the morning, and then I must go to Ashburton to take confessions from two robbers who have locked themselves in the church there.’

‘What about the evening, when you return?’ she asked tartly, beginning to lose patience with him.

John almost writhed on his bench. ‘I cannot, Nesta! From Ashburton, I must ride at dawn the next day to the high moor, to attend the Great Court of the tinners.’

Nesta’s generous lips tightened. ‘It seems difficult to get an audience with you these days, John.’ She rose again and walked away towards the kitchen door, calling imperiously for Alan as she went.

That evening, while de Wolfe was fidgeting with resentful impatience in the two-roomed dwelling of Maud, his wife’s impoverished cousin, his clerk was sitting on a stool in a hut at the back of a canon’s house in the cathedral Close, talking in low tones to a friend.

Thomas de Peyne had free lodgings in the house — or, at least, a straw-filled palliasse laid out near the hearth of the cook-shed in the backyard. It was warm and it was free — and had the added virtue of being within the ecclesiastical pale of Exeter, which was a city within a city. In the cathedral Close, the writ of the sheriff and burgesses did not run, except on the main pathways. The bishop was the ultimate authority here, and Thomas felt more at home in a coven of priests than in the bustling city itself.

When he had prevailed upon his uncle, John of Alençon, Archdeacon of Exeter, to have mercy on his destitution following his ejection from Holy Orders in Winchester, the good man had persuaded a fellow canon, Gilbert de Basset, to allow the penurious Thomas to sleep in his servants’ quarters. At first Thomas had begged scraps from the cook and raised a few pence by writing letters for illiterate merchants, but when his uncle had persuaded John de Wolfe to take him on as coroner’s clerk, the twopence a day stipend had allowed him to buy food, which he cooked on the kitchen fire — though de Basset’s cook often took pity on him and fed him some of the servants’ rations. Now, although his bodily needs were satisfied, he suffered an increasing hunger of the soul.

This evening he sat in the kitchen, leaning on a rough table, with one of the secondaries opposite, a young man called Arthur. The priest was drinking slowly from a pot of small ale, but Thomas had a cup of cider. He disliked ale — a serious handicap in a world where it was almost the universal drink. Wine was for the affluent, and water was foul-tasting and dangerous, useful only for boiling, cooking and the occasional wash.

‘Have you yet tried to be restored to the priesthood?’ Arthur asked, as they eyed each other across the table.

Thomas shook his head miserably. ‘No. What chance would I have? The Archdeacon in Winchester who defrocked me said I was lucky not to have been hanged or mutilated and that I was a disgrace to the cloth.’

‘But that was approaching three years ago and a hundred miles away. I know that the Archdeacon has since died, God rest him. People will have forgotten about your problem by now.’

‘But where would I start?’ Thomas said sadly. ‘Soon enough, someone would bring up the past to defeat me.’

The other topped up the ale in his pot from a jug. ‘Your uncle is the obvious place. John of Alençon is well respected for being an honest, compassionate man. He has already done much for you — and you have proved your worth with the crowner. Both would surely support you if you tried for ordination again.’

The clerk looked doubtful, but a spark of hope glowed in his eyes. ‘Do you really think I should try?’

His companion was a young man, still enthusiastic about his calling and optimistic that the world was filled with honest men. A secondary was the lowest grade of applicant for the priesthood, under the age of twenty-four and usually a choir-boy who wanted to make the Church his career. They stood in for the vicars-choral, older men who had attained the priesthood and who were themselves stand-ins for the canons in the interminable daily services of the cathedrals. Each canon had a hierarchy of assistants, depending upon his affluence and activities; a vicar and a secondary were the minimum and they often lodged in the canons’ houses, which were spread around the cathedral Close. Canons’ Row, along the north-east side of the Close, was the largest concentration of such dwellings, but others were dotted around the precinct. There was insufficient room for all the junior grades, many of whom lodged in Priest Street,1 near the Watergate, not far from the Bush Inn.

Arthur lived in Canon de Basset’s house, in one of the communal cubicles along the passageway that led from the canon’s rooms to the backyard. He had befriended Thomas and felt sorry for the obvious misery that losing his priestly status had caused — especially when he learned that Thomas had been at the centre of ecclesiastical life in Winchester, working in the chancery and teaching in the cathedral school.

They talked on for a time, until Arthur had finished the jug of ale and Thomas had sipped the last of his cider. Then the secondary crept off for a few hours’ sleep on his pallet, before he had to rise at midnight for Matins, the first service of the day. Thomas went to many of the services, lurking in the background of the quire: the cathedral devotions were meant for the continuous glorification of God by the cathedral staff, not the laity, who worshipped at the seventeen parish churches inside the walls of Exeter. Tonight, after the ride from Chagford earlier that day — and the prospect of riding back to Dartmoor tomorrow — Thomas felt like staying quietly on his bag of straw.

When Arthur had gone, he remained at the table, gazing absently at the flickering kitchen fire, which like all fires in the cathedral precinct was exempt from the nightly curfew. The bell tolling from the castle at the eighth hour signalled the couvre-feu, when all fires elsewhere in the city must be covered with turf or extinguished, for fear of conflagration.

Thomas looked for shapes in the glowing logs, as if he might find a sign there as to his future. Should he take Arthur’s advice and seek his uncle’s help to be reinstated in the clergy? Could he stand a rebuff? His state of mind had spiralled downwards lately to a point at which he had ceased to care whether he lived or not without the embrace of the Church that had been his life since his schooldays in Winchester at the age of seven.

He heaved a final mighty sigh, then got up and went to his thin mattress and threadbare blanket in the corner. As he lay down, he resolved to broach the subject with his master on the morrow.

CHAPTER FIVE

In which Crowner John goes to the Tinners’ Parliament

The following evening, the coroner’s trio rode wearily into Dartmeet, almost at the centre of Dartmoor. It was no more than a couple of farms and some scattered shepherds’ huts, where the two upper branches of the Dart met to form the river that meandered down to the sea twenty miles away. The rolling moors spread around them, like a fossilised ocean, some crowned by weird tors — flattened, wind-scoured rocks piled up into fantastic shapes.

They plodded down into the valley from Yartor Down to the ancient clapper bridge, at the end of a long, winding, eight-mile track from Ashburton, seeking shelter for the night, which was heralded by the closing dusk. De Wolfe reined in alongside the bridge. ‘This side or the other, Gwyn?’ On this bank there was a longhouse of cob under thatch, with two barns behind it. On the other side of the Dart, he could see a larger dwelling with wattle and daub walls within a timbered frame, but only one barn and a couple of ramshackle sheds adjacent.

The Cornishman settled for the nearer demesne. ‘We’re not likely to get room by the house fire, with all these damned tinners congregating for the morning, so let’s try for a pile of hay in a barn.’

It was true that that day the moorland tracks had been busier than usual, with groups of men drifting towards Crockern Tor, almost four miles further on. No doubt a few men would be sleeping in every nearby hut and byre overnight.

They pulled their horses round and, with Thomas dragging disconsolately behind, made their way to the farmhouse, which hunkered low and forlorn under the loom of the moor, like a beast hibernating for the winter. Gwyn was about to dismount and bang at the weathered door when it opened and a man came out, dressed in a sacking tunic tucked up between his legs like a loincloth, secured by a wide belt. ‘In the smaller barn, men. The other’s full already.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of his outbuildings and vanished back into the house, from where the lowing of cattle and the grunt of pigs competed with the wailing of a child.

As the door slammed shut, de Wolfe chuckled sardonically. ‘The poor devil must get this influx every time the tinners have their Great Court. Probably needs to keep on the right side of them — they’re a powerful force on the moor.’

Six horses were tethered outside the smaller barn, which had wattled walls under a steep thatched roof. A small fire within a ring of stones was being tended outside by three men, who were boiling a pair of hares in a blackened pot. Tall doors, high enough to admit a loaded wagon, gave on to a large, almost empty space. As it was April, little of the winter stores of hay, straw and root crops remained.

Eight men were sitting or lying inside, and before long, John and Gwyn were deep in conversation with them. They were a companionable lot and reminded de Wolfe of his warrior days when, after marching or fighting, tale-telling and gossip rounded off the day over food and drink. Thomas sat apart, morose and silent, still trying to summon up the courage to broach with his master the subject of his reinstatement. But tonight was not the best time, he decided. The coroner and his henchman were lolling in the remaining hay eating their bread, cheese and meat and drinking raw cider and stale ale from the leather bottles and stone crocks that were passed from hand to hand.

For the first time that day John de Wolfe felt relaxed. Although when the opportunity presented he was an enthusiastic womaniser, he also enjoyed the company of men such as these. They were rugged, strong fellows who said what they thought and had none of the devious conceits of so many noblemen and merchants. These tinners were more like the soldiers with whom he had spent so many years.

Gwyn, an equally seasoned warrior, also revelled in their company, and as darkness deepened in the barn, they swapped tales of adventure and daring, from floods in the stream-works to attacks from outlaws on the high moor, the slaughter outside Acre or the pursuit of Irish tribesmen beyond Wexford. Eventually the only illumination came from the fire, which still flamed outside the doors. No lights could be brought into the barn for fear they might set the hay and thatch ablaze. As they sat in the gloom, the talk turned to the Great Court on Crockern Tor in the morning.

‘How often are these held?’ asked Gwyn, mopping the sour cider from his moustache.

‘Whenever there’s business to settle, but certainly more than twice each year,’ answered a hulk of a man from Tavistock. ‘Tomorrow there are a few grave matters to chew over and we have had several such meetings this past winter.’

‘What’s the main concern, then?’ asked the coroner.

‘The business of the Lord Warden,’ cut in another tinner. ‘We want someone of our own choice, and not to have the sheriff foisted on us. Especially when it’s this bastard we’ve got now.’

This was music to John’s ears and he wanted to know more. ‘What difference would it make, then?’

‘Our own man would understand tinning and tinners, and not be dunning us for extra taxes all the time. We’re sure that de Revelle is creaming off some of the coinage that should go to the King but we can’t prove it.’

The man from Tavistock spat towards the glowing fire. ‘Walter Knapman has been pressing for an elected Warden these past three years, but he’s got nowhere. At the meeting tomorrow we will draw up a plan to force a change. We’ll petition the Chancellor or Chief Justiciar or the King himself, if need be.’

‘Paying these crippling taxes is bad enough, but we wouldn’t mind so much if we knew the money went to the King. Having part of it stolen by the officials is what irks us,’ said a third tinner.

This was all new to John — he had always known that the tinners were a breed apart, but he had not realised that they were taxed so heavily and apparently unjustly. ‘How are the taxes calculated? he asked.

‘We have to take our raw ingots to one of the three Stannary towns to be assayed and stamped — “coinage” we call it. A tax is paid on that first coinage. Then the crude metal must go to Exeter to be resmelted and another tax is taken.’

‘Thirty silver pence a thousand-weight, that’s the first tax,’ muttered the Tavistock man.

‘How much is a thousand-weight?’ asked John.

‘Twelve hundred pounds burden,’ replied the man. ‘After the second smelting in Exeter, there’s the extra tax of a mark per thousand-weight!’

‘More than five times as much?’ queried Gwyn, outraged.

‘Yes, though I admit the metal’s purer then and commands a higher price per bar.’

A cadaverous fellow seen dimly in the background shouted across, ‘It’s the Warden who fixes the rate — and I suspect he fixes some of the registry clerks to falsify the weighing. Who’s to say what the rate should be, except the Warden? And he is the sheriff, with a whip hand to control everything that happens in the county.’

The discussion became more acrimonious as the cider flowed. De Wolfe gathered that most of the tinners felt they were being exploited by a Lord Warden who cared little for their industry but was only concerned with filling his own purse by extorting as much coinage from them as he could. This matched John’s experience of his brother-in-law, but he had not appreciated until now that the sheriff had available to him this extra avenue of corruption. ‘So, in this, Walter Knapman is your champion, is he?’ he asked.

‘He’s the main figure in the play, Crowner,’ answered the Tavistock man. ‘He’s the one we want for Warden, if we could only get shot of de Revelle.’

Privately, de Wolfe thought this unlikely: where money was concerned, the sheriff would hang on like a dog at a bull-baiting. He also felt that if Walter Knapman persisted in trying to unseat de Revelle, he had better watch his step.

‘What else is to be talked of tomorrow?’ enquired Gwyn.

‘The killing of poor Henry of Tunnaford. We have had several incidents these past months, none fatal until now. But someone is trying to upset our streaming. Sluices have been broken and one blowing-house was deliberately burned down. We have to find out who’s behind it, if we can.’

As this was why de Wolfe was attending the Great Court, he kept the talk going on this theme. ‘This Saxon, old Aethelfrith they speak of. Could he be behind it?’

A sudden flare from the fire showed the tinners looking at each other, each seeking their fellows’ opinion.

‘It could be. He’s a mad old devil,’ said one man. ‘Hates all Normans — in fact, I think he hates everyone on earth, God forgive him. But I didn’t think he would kill for it.’

‘What’s the cause of his anger, then?’ asked Gwyn.

‘The early conquerors killed both his parents, so I hear — must have been some time in Stephen’s reign when Aethelfrith was a child. Then, later, his own son was hanged. He claims England still belongs to the Saxons, especially the minerals on the moor where he was brought up. But he’s been more of a nuisance than a danger, so far.’

The conversation drifted on to other matters and the fire, after a final spurt, dimmed to a dull glow, so that the men could no longer see each other. One by one, they curled themselves in their cloaks and huddled deep into the piles of hay. Snores and coughs replaced the chatter until all was quiet.

Only Thomas sat awake, alone with his morbid thoughts.

In the sullen light of early morning, well over a hundred men gathered on a hill-top of wind-beaten turf, broken by menacing outcrops of grey rock. Crockern Tor was just north of the track leading across the middle of the vast moor, chosen for the tinners’ parliament because it was roughly at the centre of the Stannary districts. Though only two dozen men from each district were officially jurates, many of the tinners they represented had also given up a day’s work and pay to attend the Great Court. The issue of the Lord Warden was becoming increasingly contentious, and feelings were running high.

These tinners now stood in a large half-circle, facing a natural rock wall whose jagged strata projected through the sparse grass and clumps of dead bracken. It ran like the spine of some petrified monster, forming the crest of the ridge, ending in a ten-foot tor of rocks piled on each other like a giant’s plaything. Most of the men were wrapped in woollen or leather cloaks against the keen wind, the less fortunate huddled under empty sacks thrown about their shoulders. They stood stolidly or squatted on the scattered rocks that littered the ground, watching and listening to the proceedings. In the background, further down the slope, were hobbled the horses and donkeys that had brought most of the men to the moor — though the poorer ones had walked, some for more than a day and a half.

In the middle of the outcrop wall, a canopy of large rocks had been built up over a natural slab that served as a throne. On this, almost like a statue in a niche, sat Richard de Revelle. Sergeant Gabriel and the handful of men-at-arms who had escorted the sheriff from Exeter stood conspicuously in front of the outcrop, to emphasise the authority of the Lord Warden of the Stannaries.

In addition to the sheriff, a clerk was keeping a record, crouched shivering over a flat stone with his parchments fluttering in the wind, which now and then brought a few flakes of snow flurrying past. Two other men, in dress that marked them as being of wealth and station, sat a few yards to either side of the Lord Warden, but they were unknown to de Wolfe. Further to the sides, three of the coinage officials, the Steward, the Controller and the Receiver, sat on convenient large stones along the granite wall.

The coroner and his two assistants kept a lower profile, standing together towards one end of the long arc of tinners. The six dozen jurates formed an inner ring between the spectators and the central figures ranged around de Revelle. Prominent in the group of jurates were Walter Knapman and Stephen Acland, but they stood as far apart from each other as possible, and there was an obvious aggregation of other jurates around each man. By far the larger group was clustered near Knapman, and between these and Acland’s dozen the remainder stood as a buffer. John assumed that these were independent tinners, not committed to either of the main players on the moor.

For the first two hours, the proceedings were a dull catalogue of routine tinners’ business and de Wolfe regretted getting up so early to ride from the barn at Dartmeet for the start of the Great Court. As one issue was settled or referred for further investigation, another jurator would stand forward and give the next problem an airing, having brought it from some complainant in the district he served. Occasionally, tempers became frayed, when one side of an argument blamed the other. Richard de Revelle contributed virtually nothing to the debates, and de Wolfe soon realised that he had little knowledge of — or apparent interest in — the tinners’ concerns.

It was Knapman who conducted most of the arbitration and informed discussion, sometimes helped, but more often hindered, by Acland. When the jurates became over-excited and began to yell abuse at each other, it was Knapman who controlled the outburst with a combination of firmness and fairness. The coroner could easily see why the majority of tinners wanted him to administer the system, rather than an indifferent sheriff whose only concern was the amount he could squeeze from them in taxes.

Most arguments arose over the claiming of new sites for exploitation. De Wolfe learned that this was called ‘bounding’, and when a tinner wished to commence operations on a chosen site, he had to mark the limits of his claim by placing a turf at each corner and six stones along the edges. It seemed that sharp practice occurred, with rivals moving or removing these markers, when different claimants were competing for ore-rich locations along the many streams that drained down from Dartmoor.

It also became clear that, in the district of which Chagford was the Stannary town, there was tension between the jurates who worked for Walter Knapman and those who had Stephen Acland as master. Some heated exchanges took place between the two men across the few yards of faded winter grass that separated them.

However, it seemed that jurates, officials and background audience were used to this, and the proceedings rolled on as everyone waited for more urgent matters to surface.

After a couple of hours, the sheriff-cum-Lord Warden declared a break for the morning meal, and everyone sat or squatted on the ground to consume whatever they could produce from capacious scrips and saddle-bags. Afterwards, de Wolfe and Gwyn wandered around for a time, looking curiously at the column of rock at the end of the long outcrop. Sculpted by aeons of wind and rain, it marked the prominence of Crockern Tor, standing sentinel above the track across the moor.

When the Court resumed, the first item was a report on the new Stannary gaol in Lydford, given by Geoffrey Fitz-Peters, the lord of that manor. He was one of those sitting further down the stone wall, alongside William de Wrotham, another manorial lord who, like Fitz-Peters, had tin interests on the western side of the moor. A bystander had identified them to de Wolfe. Fitz-Peters was a gaunt, almost skeletal man with a vaguely sinister aspect, in keeping with the reputation of the Stannary prison. He advanced to the centre of the grassy court and, in clipped, terse words, gave a short account of the new building. ‘It is now finished and occupied since February. A square stone tower now replaces the old wooden keep that was built fifty years ago at the upper end of the bailey of the first castle, which has long been ruined. The new tower has three floors, the lowest of which is the prison, reached only by a trap in the floor above. On that floor, we hold our Stannary court each fortnight.’

He glared around at the throng like an avenging angel. ‘The law of Lydford is just, but strict. Already we have twelve prisoners, convicted for infringements of the tinners’ code. Go back to your districts and let it be widely known that, unlike at many a burgess or shire prison, there is no escape from Lydford. The walls are three yards thick and the gaolers are incorruptible.’

With a quick backward glance at the sheriff, as if to emphasise the difference between his gaol and those in Exeter, Fitz-Peters turned and strode back to his seat.

Then Walter Knapman took a few paces forward and turned to face the jurates and the crowd. ‘Now we must face a serious matter,’ he shouted. ‘We all know that one of my senior overmen, Henry of Tunnaford, was foully slain a few days past. He was killed on one of my own stream-workings in a most brutal fashion. He had no personal enemies, and there can be no doubt that the evil act was committed in connection with our trade.’

A collective growl of concern rolled over the assembly, and Knapman held up both hands for quiet. ‘I am offering a bounty of twenty marks to anyone who can give information that leads to the capture of whatever foul villain committed this atrocity. If anyone knows anything — anything at all — he can tell me or the coroner, who is with us here today.’

‘The first to be told should be me!’ snapped de Revelle, reacting to the snub from Knapman. ‘I am both your Lord Warden and the sheriff of this county.’

Without so much as looking behind him, Knapman ignored the interruption and carried on. ‘I can only think that this slaying of one of my most valued workers was meant to be a direct threat to my tinning interests — and I can only assume that someone is trying to destroy my business. I have had stream-works damaged before and now one of my best men is beheaded!’

He was answered by another growl from the crowd, many of whom had known and respected the dead Henry.

But another reaction came from closer at hand. Stephen Acland, his face red with anger, pushed nearer to Knapman, though the latter’s supporters still formed a barrier. ‘Are you accusing me yet again, damn you?’ he yelled.

Walter looked stonily at the younger man. ‘Did I accuse anyone?’

‘We all know what you’re insinuating! You did at the crowner’s inquest, now you’re repeating it.’

‘If the cap fits, Acland, wear it!’ roared Knapman, his anger getting the better of his tongue.

One of Knapman’s jurates made an obscene sign to the Acland supporter in front of him and received a violent push in the chest for his trouble. Immediately, an affray developed between the rival jurates, with pushing and fists flying. The spectators in the outer ring surged forward ready to join in.

Gabriel leapt down from the stony ledge, waving his men to follow, and set about the fighting tinners with his stave. The men-at-arms had not come to Crockern Tor in battle array, so wore leather jerkins rather than chain-mail hauberks. Though swords hung from their baldrics, they had exchanged their lances for stout sticks, and with these they laid about the dozen jurates who were fighting. Within minutes, the squabble had subsided, and Gabriel and his men had pushed apart the warring factions, who stood nursing their bruises and muttering abuse at their rivals and the soldiers.

All through the skirmish Richard de Revelle had been yelling ineffectually for order and now admonished the jurates for their unseemly behaviour. It seemed to de Wolfe that the tough band of tinners found nothing unusual about a brawl during the Great Court and it had subsided as rapidly as it had arisen — though Knapman and Acland continued to glower at each other over the heads of their supporters. Before the proceedings started again, de Wolfe took advantage of the lull to stride out to the spot from which Knapman had addressed the throng and barked at the assembly in commanding tones. ‘You have heard Walter Knapman offer a reward for information about the death of his man, and that he recommends anyone to bring such information to me — or to the sheriff,’ he added, as a conciliatory afterthought. ‘But I have no reward for you, save that of reminding you that you help to keep the peace of our sovereign King Richard. One suspect is said to be the madman of the moors, this Aethelfrith. He cannot be found, so if anyone knows of his whereabouts, let him speak, now or later.’

Suddenly, as the tall, hunched figure in black was casting his baleful glare over the congregated tinners, a smaller figure advanced towards him from the outer ring of men. ‘Crowner, I have something you may wish to see.’

A wiry man, poorly dressed in a hessian tunic and coarse breeches, skirted the group of jurates and advanced to where the coroner stood. He carried a bundle wrapped in a sack, which he placed at John’s feet.

‘Why should I want to bother with you now, fellow?’ snapped de Wolfe, annoyed at being interrupted in mid-flow. ‘Who are you? Do you know anything of this killing?’

‘I have just arrived, sir. I am Simon, I work at one of Walter Knapman’s blowing-houses near Chagford. As to Henry’s death, Crowner, maybe you should see this.’ Bending, he took the bottom corners of the old sack in each hand and up-ended it.

Out rolled what John took to be a large ball — until he saw the blood-soaked grey hair and pallid face above the ragged stump of a severed neck.

Much against his will, Thomas de Peyne had been dispatched on his pony to Chagford, with the sack containing the head of Henry of Tunnaford bumping against the other side of his saddle. He had orders from the coroner to deliver it to the vicar of the church of St Michael and have the sexton reunite it with the rest of the body in the recently dug grave.

After the shocked uproar caused by the production of Henry’s head had subsided, Richard de Revelle called another interval. Those who had the stomach for it — and there were many among the hardy tinners — began again to eat and drink, with plenty to talk about during their unexpected break.

Meanwhile, the sheriff, the coroner and the two manorial lords gathered around the craggy throne. The soldiers, clerks and the coroner’s officer were in close attendance and the jurates, still divided into their two factions, hovered nearby, just out of earshot.

The man Simon stood before them, Sergeant Gabriel’s horny hand firmly gripping his shoulder. ‘I found it last evening, hidden under a slate slab behind the blowing-house,’ he explained nervously. ‘I was coming to the Great Court anyway, so I thought it best to bring it and give it to someone in authority.’

De Wolfe stared down at the man, a stringy fellow of some thirty years, who looked ill. A hacking cough suggested that his life expectancy was not great, probably from phthisis of the lungs, the coroner decided.

‘You said Walter Knapman was your master, so which of his blowing-houses was this?’ demanded de Revelle, in his best Shire Court manner.

Simon shook his head. ‘It wasn’t ours, sir. I called at another to collect a friend, who was also walking here to Crockern Tor. Before he arrived, I went behind the hut to relieve my bowels. As I crouched, I saw blood on some weeds alongside a flat stone. When I moved it aside, that awful thing was there.’

‘So whose blowing-house was it?’ asked Geoffrey Fitz-Peters harshly.

‘It was one near Shapley, on the way from Chagford to the track over the moor that comes to here. It belongs to Stephen Acland.’

The eyes of all those in authority flicked briefly at each other to test their reactions. The sheriff was first to react. ‘Acland! Come here — and you, Walter Knapman!’

‘Don’t be too hasty, Richard,’ grunted John quietly, as the men advanced. ‘You’re too fond of jumping to convenient conclusions.’

His brother-in-law ignored his advice and glowered at Stephen Acland. ‘What have you to say about this, both of you?’

Knapman looked shaken, as might be expected after the face of an old acquaintance had been produced in such a macabre manner. ‘I have nothing but revulsion for this foul act — and sorrow for my man,’ he said. ‘I have known Henry of Tunnaford for most of my life. He worked for my father years ago, when we only had two stream-works.’

The sheriff turned his haughty face towards the other tin-master. ‘And you? This relict was found on your property, so what do you say?’’

Stephen Acland reddened with anger — an emotion that John observed was easily aroused in the man. ‘What should I say? This fellow says he found it behind one of my blowing-houses, but that means nothing at all. It had to be somewhere! It might as easily have been behind any cowshed or barn.’ He glowered at Knapman, who stared stonily back at him. ‘Again I’m being put in the wrong,’ roared Acland. ‘Walter of Chagford thinks he owns the whole industry. Any challenge he takes as a personal insult.’

The coroner looked from one man to the other. ‘What’s going on between you two? Why are you at loggerheads all the time?’

Acland stayed sullenly silent, but Walter Knapman was only too willing to explain. ‘This upstart is jealous of my position in the Stannaries. Because I have more than twice the number of stream-works and far more tinners labouring for me, his avarice wishes to deny me what my family has built up over these past thirty years.’

Richard de Revelle stroked his pointed beard ruminatively. ‘Why should that make such a violent feud between you?’

‘Because he wants to displace me as the chief tin-master,’ snapped Knapman. ‘He’s bought out a couple of the small independent workings and has tried to persuade me to sell him some of mine. When I refused, he became vicious and abusive.’

Red-faced, Acland denied this hotly and began to push forward towards Knapman, but was restrained by the sergeant. ‘What’s wrong with a fair offer by way of trade?’ he demanded.

‘Nothing — apart from the way you made it,’ snarled Walter, pushing his face aggressively towards the other man’s. ‘And when I refused, no less than three times, maybe you thought to intimidate me, by smashing my sluices and killing one of my best men!’

This started another shouting match between the two tin-masters, and the sheriff motioned the soldiers to pull them apart and lead them back to the main group of jurates, where they stood surrounded by their supporters.

‘This is a waste of time,’ grated de Wolfe. ‘Their petty squabble is none of our concern. I fail to believe that Acland would have a man beheaded just to further his chances of buying another stream-works.’

William de Wrotham, a rather corpulent man in middle age, with a classic Norman haircut — trimmed up to a shelf all round his head — uttered a caution: ‘Don’t underestimate these tinners, Crowner. Passions run high amongst them. They are all jealous of their independence and their status in the Stannary community.’

Geoffrey Fitz-Peters nodded agreement. ‘Competition between them is a matter of honour rather than commerce. If it were not for their belligerence and quick tempers, my new gaol at Lydford would be empty.’

De Wolfe was still unconvinced that a decapitation could be laid at the door of a frustrated business deal. He was quite prepared to include Stephen Acland in any list of suspects, but that applied to most of the population of Devon.

The court clerk was whispering into de Revelle’s ear and pointing up at the sun, seen erratically through gaps in the heavy cloud. ‘It’s long past noon, we must finish our business, as most will want to get on their road home,’ the sheriff announced, and led the way back to their places along the craggy ridge.

De Wolfe and Gwyn went back to the outer line to listen to the final items. After a dispute about labourers’ rates of pay, Walter Knapman again stepped forward and raised the most controversial issue of the day. In an eloquent and increasingly passionate manner, he demanded a halt to the increasing taxes on the tin they produced and, linked to this, repeated their desire for a warden elected by the tinners themselves and not one who was automatically the King’s own representative in the county, the sheriff. With no attempt to defer to Richard de Revelle, who sat as chairman behind him, he pointed out the conflict of interests. ‘How can we press for a stay or even lowering in the crippling coinage we pay to the Crown when the leader of this assembly is the very man who must collect it?’ he demanded in strident tones.

De Revelle glared down at the back of Walter’s head, but the leading tin-master was in full flow, to the accompaniment of shouts of support for him and jeers at the sheriff.

‘Each year, the coinage increases, the cost of wresting tin from the streams increases — but our profit shrinks! We need a strong leader, an advocate to protest to the Royal Council, to the chief ministers, to the King himself. The sheriff cannot continue to have a foot in both camps. He has a divided loyalty. We need someone who knows about tinning, who knows our problems and knows how to solve them.’

The shouting from the back grew louder and the name ‘Knapman, Knapman’ began to be chanted, but then came the first challenge to Walter’s words.

‘And this new leader, the tinner Messiah, no doubt that’s going to be you, Knapman!’

It came from the throat of Stephen Acland, and the half-dozen men around him began yelling for him. This provoked the more numerous Knapman supporters and the yells rose to a crescendo. De Wolfe saw a ground-surge of movement and the tinners thrust reddened faces towards their opponents and began to shove at each other.

As the wily old soldier Gabriel motioned to his few men to move into the crowd, Richard de Revelle stood up in front of his granite throne and threw up his arms, fists clenched. ‘Be still, all of you!’ he screamed.

The sudden shout echoed down the slope and the unruly tinners subsided as quickly as they had become inflamed, turning away from their quarrels to see who had spoken.

As the sheriff glowered around the assembly, John felt a twinge of admiration for him, a sensation foreign to him as his usual feelings for de Revelle were of dislike, distaste and contempt. But now, the little jutting beard and cold eyes had imposed his will on a hundred and more tough men, who fell silent to listen to him.

‘Have a care as to what you say, Knapman!’ the sheriff carried on. ‘I am appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries by order of the King and his Council. To claim that I should be removed from this office comes dangerously near treason.’

Knapman was not intimidated by this open threat. ‘Sheriff, how do we know what coinage has been fixed by that Council — if any has been fixed at all? You pay a large sum to Winchester as part of the county farm and much of that comes from the tin taxes. But how do we know how much that should be?’

‘And how much of it actually reaches Winchester?’ yelled a voice from the crowd, wisely letting his voice come from behind the shelter of another’s back.

‘Am I being accused of embezzlement, damn you?’ shouted back an infuriated de Revelle.

There were several calls of ‘Yes, yes’, but again the owners of the voices could not be identified, and Gabriel certainly made no effort to grab any culprits.

De Wolfe’s momentary spasm of admiration for the sheriff had faded and his face cracked into a rare grin as the bolder tinners gave vent to their opinion of the sheriff’s honesty.

Then Acland’s voice rose above the cat-calls and shouts. ‘Treason be damned! We tinners equal the woolmen in bringing wealth to Devon and taxes into the King’s coffers. I agree that we need a Warden who will speak for us, fight for us. But it doesn’t have to mean yet more fawning to Walter Knapman. It must be a free election, the choice of a majority of all tinners, through their jurates.’

This started another round of yelling and it was again apparent to the coroner that Knapman would easily win any vote, if it ever came to that. Richard de Revelle was also well aware of who was likely to succeed him if he was ousted, and he marked down Knapman as a serious threat to what he creamed off the coinage fees destined for the iron-bound Treasury chest in Winchester Castle. From this point on, the assembly became disordered and confused, with yells, shouts and hotly-contested arguments all over the rocky arena.

The sheriff’s remonstrations now had little effect and, at a sign from him, Gabriel reluctantly took his men into the throng and half-heartedly began laying about them with their staves. De Revelle watched for a few moments, then, with an angry shrug, got up and walked away. Fitz-Peters and de Wrotham accompanied him to their tethered horses.

John tapped Gwyn’s shoulder, distracting the big Cornishman from his delighted viewing of the mêlée. ‘Come on, let’s start for home. The fun’s all over here.’

As they trudged down the slope towards Wistman’s Wood, where they had left Odin and the brown mare, Gwyn began chuckling through his magnificent moustache. ‘Acland hates Knapman, Knapman hates Acland, they both hate the sheriff and the sheriff hates Knapman. Where will it all end, I wonder?’

CHAPTER SIX

In which Crowner John suffers pangs of jealousy

The next day was Sunday and John de Wolfe decided to use it to placate the women in his life. This rare altruism was not due to pious motives because it was the Sabbath, but because he had no urgent business that day.

Though her reaction was hardly effusive, Matilda was pleased and surprised when he volunteered to accompany her to Mass that morning at St Olave’s. For years past, she had berated him about his lukewarm attitude to religion and only managed to nag him to church about once a month, so his spontaneous offer to escort her was unusual. In fact, the unChristian thought passed through her mind that he was either atoning for some recent sin against her of which she knew nothing — or was contemplating some transgression and salving his conscience in advance.

Her husband’s attitude to the Church was one of indifference, rather than the hostility professed by Gwyn. De Wolfe believed in God, as did everyone else, apart from a few crazed heretics. It was not something he thought about, it was a part of living, like eating and making love. But he had no interest in contemplating the tenets of Christianity or the complex rituals of the clergy, which he thought pointless mummery. He accepted that after death there was either heaven or hell, for that was what families and priests drummed into one from infancy. But his fate after he expired was a matter of indifference to him. Walking with Matilda down the high street towards her favourite church was no act of faith or worship to de Wolfe but a duty he bore with an inward sigh. The prospect of standing in a draughty hall for an hour while a fat and unctuous parish priest droned away in Latin, was one he bore with fortitude rather than devotion.

Matilda held his arm possessively as they walked across Carfoix to the top of Fore Street and the last hundred paces to St Olave’s, obscurely named after the first Christian king of Norway. She wore one of her best kirtles, a green brocade garment that covered her stocky form from neck to ankle, girdled with a plaited silk cord around her thickened waist. A good cloak in thick brown wool protected her from the keen breeze of early April, and under its hood, her hair was hidden beneath a stiff linen cover-chief. A white silk gorget was pinned up behind each ear, framing her face and draped down over her neck and bosom.

As a further sop to her approval, John wore his best grey tunic over long hose, cross-gartered to the knee. His black cloak was a great square of worsted, secured by one top corner being pushed through a large silver ring sewn over his left shoulder. His long hair was partly constrained by a tight-fitting grey linen helmet, over which he wore a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat.

As they approached the entrance to the little church, Matilda smiled archly at other worshippers clustered near the door, nodding graciously to some and tightening her grip on her husband’s arm, to emphasise her relationship to such an important law officer. As the others acknowledged her, de Wolfe nodded reluctantly to them and made his usual incoherent rumbling that passed for a greeting.

For the next hour, he stood uncomfortably on the cold flagstones of St Olave’s with his hat in his hand, shifting from foot to foot and getting a hard nudge from Matilda’s elbow when his restlessness became too apparent.

It was more of a relief than a devotional experience when it was time to join the few dozen other worshippers in shuffling up to the altar step to receive the holy sacrament. The corpulent priest, whom Matilda seemed to revere almost as much as the Pope, finished the service with a gabbled tirade in incomprehensible Latin and at last John escaped thankfully into the chill wind that blew up from the river.

Outside the door, many of the congregation lurked on the dried mire of the roadway for their Sunday gossip, which de Wolfe suspected was mainly to allow them to show off and compare each other’s Sabbath dress. Some of the men were more brightly attired than their wives and daughters, with tunics, surcoats and breeches in gaudy reds and greens. A few were affecting the bizarre footwear that the sheriff favoured, with pointed toes curling back to their ankles. De Wolfe was the odd one out, in his sombre grey and black, and stood morosely while Matilda chattered to several of the wives. He knew most of them by sight from previous pilgrimages to the church, though one heavily built woman of middle age was a stranger. He noticed her particularly, as she had a palsy of the mouth, with one side drooping and leaking spittle, which she constantly dabbed with a piece of cloth. She seemed quite fit otherwise and her affliction failed to curb her garrulity, as John stood hunched and impatient, waiting to detach his wife from the gossip.

Eventually the group dispersed and, anxious for his dinner, he strode away with Matilda almost running alongside him.

‘Why don’t you talk more to these people, John?’ she panted crossly. ‘Many have influence in the guilds and even with the canons. You’re no help at all in my efforts to make us a useful part of the county society.’

‘County society be damned!’ he growled. ‘I see enough of them in the courts and strutting about their manors.’

He realised that his wife must be getting over her recent melancholy, when her brother had fallen into disgrace and John himself had shamed her with his other women. Now she was becoming her old self again, nagging and pushing him to play the courtier. He tried to decide which he liked least, the scowling misery of her depression or the constant irritation of her prodding him into unwanted activity.

After a few more yards, Matilda spoke again. ‘That apothecary should be put in the stocks!’

De Wolfe looked down at her blankly. She was prone to uttering these obscure statements and he had no idea what she meant. ‘That poor lady with the twisted mouth — it’s getting no better after a month.’

He waited silently. She would make some sense eventually.

‘The new apothecary, that young fellow from Plymouth. He should be run out of the city.’

De Wolfe sighed as they turned into Martin’s Lane. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Pulled her tooth out, a lower one at the back, and afterwards the side of her face slipped down. Incompetent fool!’

The previous apothecary in the shop near St Olave’s had been hanged for murder some months back and this new one was his successor. Thankfully, palsies of the face did not come within a coroner’s jurisdiction and he was content to leave the competence of leeches to the city guild-masters. As he pushed open his front door for her to enter, he asked idly, ‘I’ve not seen her before. Who is she?’

‘Her name’s Madge — Madge Knapman.’

After the rumpus on Crockern Tor the previous day, de Wolfe felt a prickle of interest. The name was not uncommon around the moor, but there were only a few in Exeter. As Lucille appeared in the passage to take Matilda’s cloak, he asked casually, ‘What does her husband do, if she has one?’

‘Matthew Knapman? He’s a merchant. He deals in tin, I believe. He has a twin brother in an important way of business in that place you’ve been skulking this week — Chagford.’ She pushed open the door of the hall. ‘Matthew must be doing very well, too. That mantle and gown his wife was wearing this morning must have cost a few marks.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Some men don’t mind spending their money on their wives, not like others I could mention.’

John carefully avoided rising to that bait and, for the time being, forgot about Walter Knapman’s twin brother.

After their midday meal was over, Matilda retired to her bed in the solar and de Wolfe settled by the hearth with another mug of ale to wait until his wife was sound asleep. Then he whistled for his old hound Brutus and went out to the vestibule for his short cloak. As he was pulling open the iron-bound oak door to the street, Mary appeared from the backyard, her handsome face glowing from attending the fire in her cook-shed. A dead goose hung by its neck from one hand and she held a wicked-looking cleaver in the other.

De Wolfe grinned crookedly at her. ‘I trust that weapon is to cut off the bird’s head, not mine!’ he chaffed, slipping an arm around her shoulders. The maid pulled away from his embrace, but not too far. Until a few months ago, de Wolfe had had the occasional romp with Mary in her backyard dwelling, but the arrival of Matilda’s nosy maid had forced the maid to deny him her favours. They still remained firm friends, rather than master and servant, and Mary looked after his material wants far better than most wives.

‘It’s not your head that needs cutting off, Sir Crowner,’ she replied tartly. ‘If the mistress finds out that you called at Dawlish two weeks ago, you’d best wear your chain-mail over your nether regions.’

John gave her a firm squeeze and planted a kiss on her lips. ‘If that other lady down in Idle Lane knew it, I’d need my iron-bound shield as well.’ His smile faded and Mary saw that he was worried. ‘Though lately I doubt that Nesta would take much interest in my escapades.’ In low tones, in case Matilda’s poisonous French acolyte came within earshot, de Wolfe told Mary of the presence in the tavern of the new man.

She sighed and sat on the bench inside the front door, the goose on her lap. ‘I’ve heard the gossip from the Bush, and some weeks ago Nesta told me that she was seeing less of you now, because you were always busy.’ She wagged the cleaver at him, genuine concern on her face. ‘Pay more attention to your inn-keeper, or you’ll surely lose her,’ she advised seriously. ‘It’s up to you, unless you want to do the honourable thing and cleave only to your wife.’

With that wise counsel in his ear, de Wolfe loped off across the cathedral Close, with Brutus close behind. The hound was constantly diverted by the piles of rubbish, dumped offal and open grave-pits that so sadly diminished the grandeur of the huge building, recently completed after old Bishop Warelwast began it eighty years earlier. With many half-annoyed, half-affectionate curses and whistles, the coroner finally got his dog to Idle Lane, some dozen leg-cockings distant.

Again there was no sign of the landlady in the big smoky room of the inn, as John settled himself on his bench. Edwin, the old potman, brought him a quart pot of ale and threw a beef bone on to the rushes beneath the table for Brutus. ‘The missus is out the back, Cap’n, seein’ to the cookin’.’ This time, he made no suggestive hints about her mood or the presence of Alan, who was also absent from the ale-room.

The coroner sat moodily sipping his drink, which seemed below the usual high standard of the Bush’s brewing. He stared into the glowing fire, piled high with beech logs, as the weather had turned unseasonally cold after the first promise of spring the previous week. He thought about his relations with his wife, with Nesta, and of his visit to Dawlish not long before, when he called upon Hilda, wife of Thorgils the Boatman. She was a childhood sweetheart from his boyhood in Stoke-in-Teignhead, a blonde Saxon beauty who had married another during his many years’ absence at the wars. Though the Welsh Nesta was the nearest thing to the love of his life, the gaily sensuous Hilda came a close second.

His reverie was interrupted by a movement at his feet and, looking down, he saw that Brutus had abandoned his bone and was standing under the table, staring intently towards the door, his bushy tail waving in excited welcome. De Wolfe had no need to follow the hound’s gaze, as he knew it would be Gwyn, who had a remarkable rapport with most animals, especially dogs. A heavy lurch alongside him and a quaking of the bench announced the arrival of his massive henchman. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come with news of more work for us?’ groaned the coroner.

The Cornishman shook his head, his usually lugubrious face beaming with good nature. ‘Fear not, Crowner, I felt like a jar or two and a bit of peace. Those offspring of mine are like bluebottles in a box.’ Gwyn lived in a hut with his wife, his mother-in-law and two young sons. Edwin brought him ale, and at the first mouthful, Gwyn made a face. ‘What the hell’s this? Tastes like camel piss, not Nesta’s usual brew.’ He sucked the offending liquid from his moustache, and looked around the room. ‘Where is she, anyway?’

‘In the cook-shed, so Edwin says,’ grunted de Wolfe. His tone warned Gwyn to keep off the subject and he fell silent, but in a moment, his master spoke again. ‘I heard from my wife today that Walter Knapman has a twin brother in the city, also in the tin trade.’

His officer’s heavy brow creased in thought, as he fondled the hound’s ears under the table. ‘Knapman? There’s a few Knapmans here, but only one deals in tin that I know of. Though he looks nothing like Walter, if they’re supposed to be twins.’

‘Yet if he is a tin trader, it seems likely they are related. Matthew is his name.’

Gwyn bobbed his head, his ginger hair flailing like a dozen cat’s tails. ‘Matthew, that’s the one! He has a dwelling and a warehouse just inside the Watergate, close by the quayside. I suppose much of his tin goes out by ship.’

They fell into a companionable silence again, though John was anxiously awaiting the appearance of Nesta, to gauge her mood today. There was still no sign of her and soon he felt the need to dispose of some of the ale he had been drinking since dinner-time. He rose from the bench and threaded his way through the other patrons to the door to the backyard, where there was a privy-pit behind a wattle screen, next to the pig-sty, hen-coop and laundry-shed. On the way back down the yard, he looked into the door of the cook-shed to see if Nesta was there, but only two giggling serving maids were inside, one stirring a large iron pot hanging from a trivet over the fire.

Opposite was the brew-house, a thatched shed the size of the kitchen. The door was closed but he heard Nesta’s voice through the ragged planks. Pulling it open, he stuck his head inside, intending to open their dialogue by mischievously complaining about the quality of her ale.

The tavern-keeper was certainly attending to her brew — she was leaning against a large vat with a long ladle in her hand — but her other hand was around Alan of Lyme’s neck, and both his arms were tightly around her waist.

At the creak of the door their heads snapped round and Nesta’s face crimsoned instantly. De Wolfe’s first thought was to stride forward and throw the young man head first into the vat of mash. Then a sudden vision of an old fool being cuckolded by a callow youth came into his head, followed by an image of a beautiful blonde Saxon. He stepped back, slammed the crude door so hard that one leather hinge ripped away, then marched grimly back into the tavern.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In which Crowner John attends a fire

The cold, dry weather broke overnight and John de Wolfe was awakened around dawn by the crash of thunder and the hammering of torrential rain on the stone tiles of the roof above the solar. Gusts of a westerly wind blew drops of water through the gaps around the window shutters and one hit him in the eye as he opened it reluctantly.

Matilda was snoring, apparently oblivious to the tempest, on the other side of the large feather mattress, which was raised from the floor by a timber plinth a few inches high. Last year, de Wolfe had bought Nesta a new-fangled high bed, imported from France. If Matilda had known about that, she would have been more incensed at her own lack of a similar status-symbol than the fact of his lechery with the inn-keeper.

He threw back his side of the woollen blankets and sheepskin coverlet and slid naked into the cold air of the bare room, which was furnished only with a couple of oak chests for their clothes, Matilda’s folding chair and her embroidery frame. He groped for his undershirt and tunic, which were draped over one of the chests, and pulled them on, followed by thigh-length woollen hose. Slipping his feet into a pair of soft house-shoes, he stumped to the window and unlatched one side of the hinged shutters to peer through a narrow crack at the new day. A blast of rain-laden wind made him slam it shut, but not before a rippling flash of lightning showed him the yard awash with muddy water. Mary was dashing to the kitchen with an armful of kindling from the woodshed.

There was a groaning yawn from his wife and she humped herself round to stare blearily at him. ‘Is it light, then? I must get up to get ready for Prime in the cathedral.’

‘God, woman, in this rain you’d drown just crossing the Close! It looks as if Noah’s Flood is returning.’

She struggled to sit up, her back against the drab tapestry that hung on the wooden wall behind the bed. Though most people slept unclothed, Matilda insisted on wearing a linen night-shift, held tightly around her neck with a drawstring. Her hair was sheathed in a cap tied under her chin and the bags under her eyes were more prominent than usual in her sleep-ridden face.

De Wolfe, no elegant sight himself with tangled black hair and unshaven dark stubble, looked at her in despair. Sixteen years ago, she had hardly been a beautiful bride, but at least she had not had her present ambition to make his life a constant misery.

‘Go out of here, John, will you? I need Lucille here to prepare me. Call her as you go down.’

He was just going to proclaim that there was no way he was going out of the door in this cloudburst, when contrarily the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Deprived of an excuse, he warily opened the door, which stood at the top of a steep flight of wooden steps under which her maid lived in what was virtually a large box.

‘Go on, John,’ urged Matilda. ‘And see if that other idle woman has started cooking our breakfast.’

‘Mary will be lucky to get a fire started in this wind and rain,’ he muttered, but he began to climb down the slippery stairs to the passage that ran between the yard and the vestibule at the front of the house. As he went, dark grey clouds swirled overhead and lightning flashed, though the storm seemed to be circling away from the city. In the hall, Simon, who chopped wood and did odd jobs in the yard, was rekindling the fire while Brutus ambled in from his sleeping quarters in the cook-house, attracted by the prospect of a warm hearth.

John slumped into his fireside chair to wait for Mary to bring some food. Matilda would be a long time undergoing the ministrations of Lucille, having her hair arranged and her clothes primped sufficiently well to attend service in the cathedral. He failed to see why she bothered to join a handful of folk clustered on a Monday morning in the empty cavern of the huge nave, whilst an aloof party of priests chanted their private devotions far away beyond the rood screen, ignoring the lay people in the distance. At least in parish churches like St Olave’s the local parsons acknowledged the existence of the congregation.

Again, de Wolfe wondered if Matilda’s religious obsession meant that she was inclining towards taking the veil, and he had a brief surge of hope that he might be free again. He made a mental note to enquire circumspectly of Thomas, or even the Archdeacon, whether the retreat of a wife into a nunnery was legally held to end a marriage.

As he sat in lonely state, there were several more flashes of lightning, the rain began again, but the rumble of thunder came after an increasing interval as the storm rolled around the sky. Mary bustled in with a bowl of hot oatmeal, boiled pork and a new loaf from the bread shop round the corner. Her hair was stringy with rain, but as usual, she was cheerful and energetic. ‘You look terrible, Sir Crowner,’ she said, keeping her voice low, so that it would not be heard through the slit into the solar, high up on one side of the chimney breast. ‘When did you last have a shave?’

De Wolfe ran a long-fingered hand over his chin and heard the rasp of stubble. ‘I missed it on Saturday, when I was away on Crockern Tor,’ he admitted. Once a week he washed in the yard and shaved with a specially honed knife, before making his weekly change of undershirt and tunic.

‘I’ll heat some water over the fire after you’ve eaten. There’s a new block of goat-tallow soap there for you.’ With this maternal threat, she left him to his solitary meal and his rumination about what today might hold. He was supposed to attend a special sitting of the County Court later in the morning, where some declarations of outlawry, an approver and an appealer were to be heard.

After his wash in a wooden bucket in the yard, he scraped painfully at his face, using a square of polished bronze as a mirror. Matilda was tucking into a large breakfast by now, so he went back to the solar and hauled out clean clothing from his chest, kept stocked by the efficient Mary. When he was dressed, he stuck his head round the screens behind the hall door to exchange grunted farewells with his wife, then stepped into the street.

A vivid flash of lightning, forking over the roof of St Martin’s Church opposite, was followed almost immediately by a tremendous crack of thunder. The sky was virtually black and he dodged back inside to take his leather cloak and hood from a peg, as the rain started again. More thunder and lightning exploded overhead, the treacherous storm having circled back over the city.

In the farrier’s stable across the lane he could hear horses whinnying, frightened by the thunder, and he spent a few minutes with Andrew calming Odin and the other stallions, talking to them quietly and rubbing their necks. When they were calmer, he left for Rougemont, stoically ignoring the bad weather, as he had in a dozen countries over the past two decades. For years, he reflected philosophically, he had spent most of the time either too wet or too dry, too cold or too hot — there had been few periods in his life when the climate was merely pleasant.

As he walked along the upper part of the high street towards the turning to the castle, he saw Gwyn coming through the East Gate from St Sidwell’s. His stride still had a nautical roll, born of his early years as a fisherman, as he squelched along through the now sodden surface of the road. The pointed hood of his tattered leather shoulder cape was poking up above his head as a protection against the downpour. Seeing the coroner approach, he waited for him at the foot of Castle Hill, but just as John came up to him, there was a tremendous flash of lightning and a simultaneous crash of thunder. De Wolfe’s back was to the centre of the city, but Gwyn was facing it and he was momentarily blinded by the jagged fork of blue light that struck only a few hundred paces away. ‘Jesus Christ, that was close,’ he muttered, as he rubbed his eye-sockets with his knuckles.

De Wolfe swung round as a sulphurous, scorching smell wafted on the wind. Seconds later, smoke appeared over the nearest roof on the north side of the high street. Around them, stall-holders and pedlars joined with customers in gaping at the fire, then a stampede began down the road to see this new and potentially disastrous phenomenon in Curre Street.1

Gwyn’s sight returned, though he had a bright flare inside his eyeballs for the next five minutes. As he gaped at the smoke, blown down on to the street by the gusting wind, de Wolfe grabbed his arm. ‘Come on, someone’s thatch has been struck. This is coroner’s business.’

They hurried along with the rest of the crowd, down to the junction almost opposite Martin’s Lane, but on the other side of the main thoroughfare. The narrow entrance to Curre Street was blocked with curious townsfolk, but Gwyn pulled them aside unceremoniously, yelling for the King’s coroner to be let through. Fifty yards up on the right, the roof of one of the narrow houses was well alight, belching grey smoke into the sky, flames fanned by the high wind licking around the lightning strike in the centre of the thatch. Although the surface was wet from the rain, the underlying straw, almost two feet thick, was dry from the recent good weather. The ground floor of the house was a shop, its front shutters opening horizontally to form both a protective overhang and a lower counter for the shoes and leather goods the merchant sold. He was capering about in the road, screaming hysterically. There was a strong prospect that his house and business would vanish in the next few minutes.

Johnpushed through the remaining crowd, with Gwyn at his heels. ‘Anyone still inside?’ he demanded, grabbing the shoemaker by the shoulder to keep him still.

The man shook his head, his eyes rolling. ‘No, thank God, they’re all here in the street. But what can we do, sir?’

Recognising authority had steadied him, but de Wolfe could offer little useful advice. ‘Pray for a deluge, that’s all,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘If you have valuables or stock in the downstairs rooms, get them out now, before the fire burns through from the upper storey. But come out as soon as any smoke comes down.’

The merchant yelled at several young men, apprentices or sons, and they dashed into the back of the shop to recover what they could before the fire spread.

‘I’ll give them a hand, poor souls,’ said Gwyn and followed them inside. As he left, another voice spoke at de Wolfe’s shoulder.

‘He’s a member of my guild, the Cordwainers. Pray God he doesn’t suffer too much damage.’

It was Henry Rifford, a wealthy leather merchant and one of Exeter’s two Portreeves, leaders of the city council elected by their fellow burgesses. He was a humourless, pompous individual and de Wolfe was not over-fond of him. They stood and watched as the smoke and flame increased above them, but as yet there was no sign of it leaking through the shutters of the two upstairs window openings.

‘I’ve pressed the burgesses to ban any more thatch inside the city, but we can do nothing about these older buildings with straw or reed roofs,’ complained the portreeve. ‘Many other towns prohibit them — but who is to pay for slating the dwellings instead? The owners or landlords are unwilling or unable to afford it.’

Thunder rumbled overhead again as de Wolfe said, ‘If these fires spread and burn down the city, it will cost a lot more. And the loss of life must be considered, too. Both these issues bring town fires under the coroner’s jurisdiction — though I can hardly bring in an inquest verdict against the Almighty for sending a flash of lightning.’

Someone must have been praying very hard indeed, for at that moment the dark clouds overhead opened up and a tremendous deluge fell from the heavens. The wind dropped as the storm centred itself overhead and an almost vertical wall of water hammered on to the city. Everyone dashed for shelter, de Wolfe and Rifford included. They ran across the narrow street and huddled under the arcade formed by the wooden pillars that supported the projecting upper storey of the shop opposite. The downpour continued without a break, and clouds of steam began to rise from the thatched roof across the road.

‘This will help save Martin,’ cried Rifford, as the flames around the edge of the large hole in the roof subsided into an angry hiss. They watched as the relentless rain washed a sooty waterfall over the edge of the roof, bringing down blackened straw into the street.

‘Whatever’s on the upper floor will be ruined by the water if not the fire,’ growled de Wolfe, ‘but that’s better than losing the whole house — and maybe the whole street.’

The cloudburst had them pinned into their shelter for a time, and as they watched the conflagration extinguished by God’s own hand, their conversation turned to other things. De Wolfe felt obliged to enquire after Rifford’s family and learned that the Portreeve’s daughter Christina had recovered slowly from the rape she had suffered last year and had decided to continue her plans to marry the gangling Edgar of Topsham. Rifford went on to talk of the campaign amongst the burgesses to have a mayor in Exeter, instead of two Portreeves. ‘Just aping the bigger cities, I say. They’ll want a commune next, as well as a mayor — just to be like London.’

He was angry at the thought of losing his position and de Wolfe steered him away from the subject. ‘Talking of communes, I’ve had some dealings with the Chagford tinners lately. I met Walter Knapman — they say he has a brother in the same trade here in Exeter.’

‘Yes, Matthew, he’s his twin, though he looks nothing like him. I don’t know him well, as the tinners reckon they don’t need guilds like the rest of us.’ Rifford shook the rainwater off his expensive otter-skin cape.

‘Is he in business with his brother?’ De Wolfe had learned in the past that the two portreeves were a fount of information about the commercial life of the city.

‘I understand that Matthew arranges the sale of the tin after it has cleared the second smelting. Most of it goes by ship, either direct from the quay or on barges for transhipment at Topsham. He has a few men working for him — one is the stepson of Walter, I believe, a young fellow called Peter Jordan.’

They talked on as the heavy rain continued unabated for another quarter of an hour. The thatch opposite was now a sodden, steaming mass, beginning to disintegrate as the thin rafters smouldered through and collapsed under the weight of saturated straw. The risk of a fire-storm in the city had vanished and when, a few minutes later, the rain eased to a steady drizzle, the shoemaker and his family, with helpful neighbours, began salvaging what they could from the upper floor.

Gwyn came across, from where he had been sheltering and gossiping with a couple of soldiers, to see if his master was ready to go up to Rougemont. When they reached the castle, the perverse weather had changed once more, and though the wind had blown up again, the clouds had cracked apart to show blue patches here and there, though gusty showers still lashed down at intervals.

They trod through the mire of the inner ward to reach the Shire Hall, a bare stone box on the left of the main gate, more like a barn than a court-house. It had a slated roof, as thatch inside a castle was always a target for fire arrows when under siege. There was a single large doorless opening on one side and few bare slits high on the walls to let in more light. Inside, the earthen floor was bare, apart from a low wooden platform along one end wall, on which were two trestle tables, a bench, a wooden armchair and a few stools.

A couple of the sheriff’s clerks were setting out their writing materials at one table, at the end of which Thomas de Peyne was already hunched on a stool, glumly cutting a new point on a goose quill with a small knife. In the body of the hall, a few men-at-arms ambled among the few members of the public who had come to see the proceedings. This was a routine session and probably all the spectators were relatives or victims of the main players.

De Wolfe sat on the bench at the central table, and Gwyn took himself off to chat to one of the soldiers while they awaited the opening of the court. A few minutes later, Richard de Revelle came across from the keep, escorted by Sergeant Gabriel and two more men-at-arms. He was his usual dapper self, attired in an expensive tunic in his favourite green, the neck and hem banded with gold embroidery. A darker green mantle of heavy serge was draped over his shoulders and his neat moustache and goatee beard had been freshly trimmed. The clerks hauled themselves to their feet until the sheriff had sat down in the only chair, ready to preside over his court.

There was no sign yet of the subjects of the proceedings and de Revelle condescended to favour his brother-in-law with some conversation. They discussed the house-fire and its fortunate extinction for a few moments, then de Wolfe brought up Saturday’s meeting on Crockern Tor. ‘These tinners seem a fiercely independent lot. I suppose they’ve been favoured by kings for centuries, because of the taxes they bring in to the Treasury,’ he observed provocatively.

The sheriff’s face darkened. ‘Damned arrogance, I call it. Wanting to oust me as Lord Warden, when I’m there by right as the King’s representative.’ He was almost apopleptic with anger at the memory of the Great Court.

De Wolfe wondered which king de Revelle wished to represent, given his partiality to Prince John’s cause.

‘Walter Knapman’s behind this!’ went on the sheriff. ‘He wants to be the emperor of the Devon tinners and he’s been stirring them up for many months, so my spies tell me. Lord Warden indeed! He’s just a tin-shoveller who’s risen above his station in life.’ His hands balled into fists on the table before him, as if he had Knapman’s neck between them. ‘This business of the headless overman — I’d not put it past Knapman to have arranged it himself, just to aggravate the tension amongst the tinners for his own ends.’

This was something the coroner had not considered, but he dismissed it as a fantasy of de Revelle’s fevered imagination. He realised with some surprise the depth of the sheriff’s feelings at the challenge to his authority over the Stannaries. He must have been putting more of the tin coinage into his own coffers than de Wolfe had suspected, to be so incensed about even a remote chance of losing this lucrative position.

Further delving into the Stannary problem was prevented by the appearance of a small procession at the hall entrance. Ralph Morin, the burly castle constable, led in a pair of dejected-looking men, dirty and dishevelled with heavy shackles to their ankles. Two more soldiers prodded them along from the rear, followed by a rather frightened-looking fellow accompanied by someone de Wolfe recognised as a prominent local lawyer. The last two peeled off and stood in the front of the small crowd, while the men-at-arms and the two prisoners came up to the foot of the platform, facing the coroner and the sheriff.

The clerk of the court, plump and pompous with a shiny bald head, stood up at the side table with a roll of parchment in his hands.

After self-importantly calling the assembly to order and declaring the Shire Court to be in session, he gave an obsequious bow to the sheriff, who, still in a bad temper over the tinners, acknowledged him with a curt nod.

‘Sir, the first matter is that of declaring five men outlaw, unless they answer to their names today.’ He read out a list of names, coupled with the charges alleged against them — theft, serious assault and counterfeiting. He paused and looked expectantly around the dismal hall, to be met with silence.

‘Have their names been called at the last three sittings of this court?’ snapped the sheriff.

This time little Thomas de Peyne rose from his place, a parchment in his hand.

‘Yes, this will be the fourth occasion, as recorded in the coroner’s roll.’

Now John de Wolfe rose to his feet, standing hunched over the table like some lean black bird of prey. ‘Then I declare them outlawed and instruct that they be now recorded in my Rolls as exigent, unless there are any two men here who will stand surety for their appearance at the next Shire Court, in the sum of twenty marks each. If they fail to answer to that final call, those pledges are forfeit.’

He looked briefly around the hall, knowing that it was highly unlikely that anyone, even relatives, would wager such a large sum on the faint chance that the errant culprits would show up next time. They were probably living rough either in the forests or on Dartmoor, unless they had taken ship to France or Wales.

A resounding silence followed the invitation to stand surety, and de Wolfe motioned to Thomas to enrol the names, then sat down for the next part of the proceedings.

The self-important court clerk rose again and consulted his documents. ‘Now Edmund of Wonford brings an appeal against William Thatcher, claiming the said William Thatcher did feloniously slay Alfred, the brother of the said Edmund.’

There was a commotion in the body of the court as a rough-bearded man, with hair like a horse’s mane, pushed forward towards the anxious-looking fellow whom de Wolfe had noted earlier. ‘He’s a bloody liar and a trouble-maker!’ he yelled, as Edmund shrank back from him. Sergeant Gabriel motioned to one of his soldiers, who moved quickly across and shoved the aggressor back a few paces.

‘What’s this all about? demanded the sheriff, in a voice that conveyed long-suffering boredom.

The lawyer with Edmund, a thin, sour-faced man in a long black tunic with a thick book under his arm to advertise his learning, moved up to the foot of the platform. ‘Sheriff, as you well know, I am Robert Courteman, an advocate of this city. I speak for this Edmund, who claims he and his family have suffered a grievous wrong, and also the loss of the income of the dead brother Alfred, who was a tanner. He wishes to appeal William Thatcher, demanding either recompense of forty marks or a challenge by combat.’

De Wolfe looked down at the timid Edmund, a small man of about forty, and then at William, who was built along the same lines as Gwyn of Polruan. ‘Trial by combat? Are you serious?’ he grated.

The lawyer hurried to clarify the situation. ‘He would not, of course, take up the challenge himself, being in poor health, but he would employ a champion for the purpose.’

De Wolfe snorted his disgust at such a solution. He had long thought that this method of settling disputes was ridiculous and was glad to hear rumours that the Church in Rome was considering banning it in the near future. It might not be so ridiculous if two men who had a serious issue to settle fought it out personally, but for one or even both to hire a proxy to fight for them made a nonsense of the whole system. He glowered down at Edmund and his lawyer. ‘Why was this matter not heard in the proper court? And what of a coroner’s inquest? I have no recollection of the case.’

The lawyer, who seemed somewhat bored with the whole matter, explained languidly, ‘The death was a year ago, sir, before the office of coroner was instituted. The case was heard in the manor court at Wonford, but the steward dismissed our claim.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘He said there was a lack of evidence as to how my client’s brother came to his death. But we are sure he was slain by Wiiliam Thatcher in a drunken brawl.’

John pondered for a moment. The system of courts was complex and he had a sneaking sympathy for folk such as these for whom the legal process seemed more a hindrance than a help.

‘Have you eyewitnesses or other good evidence, in spite of this being the cause for failure in the manor court?’ he asked, with a brusqueness that concealed his willingness to be helpful.

‘We think we have, Crowner,’ replied the lawyer ponderously, the deep grooves at each side of his mouth suggesting that he suffered from permanent belly-ache. ‘But no doubt the first failure will dog us hereafter, if we pursue it through the courts. That is why we wish to settle the matter by combat.’

The sheriff listened to this dialogue impatiently. ‘If that’s what they desire, let them proceed,’ he snapped. His court would get the fee for enrolling the battle and he wanted to prevent de Wolfe touting for business for the Justices in Eyre, which were the King’s courts.

But the coroner aimed to do just that, not for any partisan need to bolster the royal Treasury but to avoid the futility of two strangers trying to kill each other in the name of justice. ‘If you think you have good evidence and can call witnesses, then the King’s judges will give you a fair hearing. They are due in Devon within the next month or so.’

The lawyer turned to whisper to Edmund. After some agitated conversation, he turned back to de Wolfe. ‘Perhaps we may talk to you later of the procedure in this matter, Crowner. Meanwhile, my client has decided to abandon this appeal for the moment.’

The alleged perpetrator, William Thatcher, gave a loud cackle of derision and let out a few choice oaths, for which he received a buffet from Gabriel, which he took with good humour. As Edmund slunk sheepishly out of the hall with his lawyer, some of the crowd also melted away, denied any drama over the granting of a trial by combat.

Richard de Revelle stared at the two men in fetters, still standing directly below him. ‘Are these the approvers?’ he demanded.

The clerk climbed to his feet again. ‘They are, Sir Richard. James Peel and Robert Brieux are desirous of giving evidence against their fellow-criminals.’

Approvers were accused persons either awaiting trial or already convicted, who attempted to save their necks by giving evidence against fellow-conspirators in the same crimes. There was a laborious procedure for achieving this, part of which consisted of the coroner taking their confessions and details of others whom they claimed had also been involved in the crime.

For the next half-hour, de Wolfe questioned them at length, while Thomas wrote it all down in his rolls for presentation to the Justices in Eyre, when they arrived in Exeter. This had been promised since last year and still the judges had not come. It made a mockery of the system, as the backlog of cases now made it almost impossible to manage the number of prisoners held while awaiting trial. The burden on the constables and city burgesses, who had to pay for the guarding and lodging of the prisoners, was such that many were allowed to escape and become outlaws, to the detriment of the peace and safety of the highways and countryside.

Eventually, all the business of the court was done and the shackled prisoners were marched back to the cramped, filthy prison cells beneath the castle keep. As the court dispersed, the Sheriff and de Wolfe had some rather stilted conversation, in which de Revelle returned to his complaint about his treatment at the Great Court on Crockern Tor. Once more he blamed Walter Knapman for the affront he had suffered, leaving John to reflect that perhaps his brother-in-law was not as thick-skinned as he had supposed. When the sheriff finally stalked off, still smarting at the memory of the insult, John collected Gwyn and his morose little clerk and walked back towards their office in the gatehouse.

At the guardroom, inside the arch of the castle entrance, Gwyn decided they needed bread, cheese and ale to stave off the pangs of hunger and went down to the stalls on the hill to replenish their provisions. As Thomas climbed the stone stairway to the second floor, he timidly asked his master for a moment’s hearing on a personal matter.

When they reached the dismal chamber above, de Wolfe slumped on to the bench behind the rough table and motioned his clerk to a nearby stool. ‘I think I know what’s on your mind, Thomas, but tell me anyway.’

The little man perched nervously on the seat, pulling his threadbare black mantle closer around his narrow shoulders. ‘I have suffered more than two years of torment, Crowner, since they threw me from the bosom of the Church in Winchester. I have often wished to die since then, to get peace from both my poverty and my shame.’

De Wolfe regarded him steadily, wondering how such a poor bodily frame could house so clever a mind — and one that had such a genuine love for his calling. ‘You have recovered well enough, Thomas,’ he chided, as gently as his normally abrasive nature would allow. ‘From near-starvation, according to your uncle the Archdeacon, you now at least have a roof over your head and a bed in the cathedral Close. I give you pennies enough for you to eat, do I not?’

The clerk almost fell off his stool in his eagerness to show his gratitude. ‘Sir, you and my uncle have been kindness itself. Without you, I surely would have died. Yet sometimes I wish that I had been allowed to slip away, for my ejection from the Church, which has been my life since I was seven years old when I first went to school, has been unbearable.’ His dark eyes filled with tears. ‘Especially as the charge brought against me was false. That girl, she teased me and led me on. I did nothing but give her a kiss — and then she screams, “Rape!” I am in despair, Crowner!’

De Wolfe fidgeted in embarrassment. Fearless in battle, indomitable in a fight, he was hopeless when faced with raw emotion, especially from another man. He cleared his throat loudly, and his hands scrabbled aimlessly at some parchments lying on the table. ‘This state of affairs has been with you a long time, Thomas. What now has changed?’

‘I have changed, sir. You are right, the needs of my flesh, food, drink and sleep, are provided for well enough, for I require little. But food for my soul is a different matter. I am starving without my beloved Church.’

He gulped and passed fingers across his face to wipe away the moisture from his eyes. ‘Living in the Close makes it worse. I thought the company of priests and acolytes, with the fabric of the sacred building so near, might make up for some of my loss. But all it does is emphasise it. I am a sham, living within an enclave of God yet no more a true part of it than the mice who share my abode.’

De Wolfe looked down at his servant with mixed feelings. He had never had a son, and God forbid he would ever have one like Thomas, a scrawny elf with a lame leg, a slight squint and a crooked back. But the teasing fingers of paternal instinct touched him as this young man, who was totally dependent on him, sought his help as the only one who could raise him from his despair.

‘What would you have me do, Thomas?’

‘Speak to my uncle, John of Alençon. Ask him if there is any way in which I might seek redemption and, eventually, reinstatement in Holy Orders.’

De Wolfe looked doubtful. ‘The decision in Winchester was very definite, from what the Archdeacon once told me. It seems you were lucky not to be hanged. Only your cloth saved you.’

‘But the evidence was false! They relied upon the word of that evil girl, who denounced me merely for sport,’ sobbed Thomas, in anguish. ‘For the sake of some moments of excitement to spice up her dull life, I am condemned to ruination until I die. Please speak to my uncle, Crowner, I beseech you.’

De Wolfe grunted his assent, as much to end his clerk’s unwelcome exhibition of emotion as desire to help him. ‘I will bring the matter up with the Archdeacon but I place little hope on the outcome, Thomas. Without fresh evidence to clear your name, I fail to see why the Church should wish to reopen the issue. But I will speak to your uncle.’

And there the matter had to lie for the moment. Thomas was effusive in his thanks, and one small bonus for de Wolfe was that his clerk’s face became less doleful than before, even if there was little prospect of a favourable outcome.

At a dinner table some sixteen miles to the west, one stool remained empty, to the puzzlement and concern of the household. It was mid-afternoon, several hours past the usual time for the main meal of the day in the Knapman residence, but Walter had not returned.

‘Where did he go this morning?’ asked his brother Matthew, who had just arrived. He came about once a month to confer with Walter about the disposal of tin, arranging transport to Exeter and reporting on sales both at home and abroad.

Joan Knapman answered, annoyance at the lateness of their meal adding a sharper cadence to her voice. ‘He set off early, saying that he was riding to his mill near Dunsford, but would be home in time for his dinner,’ she said, with more than a touch of petulance.

‘It’s not like Walter to be this late for his food. He’s an able trencherman,’ added her mother, looking expectantly at the door to the yard, where the kitchen-shed lay.

Matthew reached across the table to top up the wine cups of the two ladies, then filled his own. ‘That’s strange. If he went to Dunsford. I came that way little more than an hour ago, but saw no sign of Walter. Are you sure it was Dunsford?’

‘Of course it was,’ replied Joan irritably. ‘How many corn-mills do you think he owns? He’s a tin-master, not a miller. I can’t see why he bothered to buy it last autumn, only it was going cheap when the miller died.’

‘I want my dinner,’ whined the old lady. ‘Are we going to wait for ever for Walter? Matthew has ridden for almost three hours and he needs some food.’

Matthew was certainly hungry, and even this good wine was no substitute for a full stomach. He was so unlike Walter in appearance that they would hardly have been taken for brothers, let alone twins. Matthew was two hands’ breadths shorter and had sparse gingery hair in place of Walter’s springy fair thatch. His face was fatter and there were unhealthy-looking brownish patches on his otherwise pink skin, which bore the scars of old acne scattered across it. He dressed expensively, but not well, with a clash of colours between his bright red tunic and blue surcoat. His manner displayed a shifty type of bonhomie, superficially amiable and courteous but leaving the impression that he would be gossiping about someone the moment his back was turned.

Joan heartily disliked him, though she was beginning to dislike everything to do with the Knapman clan, apart from their money. She signalled to their steward, who lurked anxiously in the background. ‘We will eat, Alfred. God alone knows when the master will come.’

He hurried out, and within minutes returned with one of the maids, bearing trenchers of bread, bowls of onion broth and a fat roast goose.

As they ate, Joan wondered how soon she might risk getting away to meet Stephen Acland. Unfaithfulness was always difficult to pursue in a small community like Chagford. Her mother knew what was going on, and was terrified that her daughter’s marriage to the rich tinner might be in danger, if Walter discovered that he was being cuckolded. However, she covered for Joan when she needed excuses to go out and claimed to chaperone her on walks around the town and into the surrounding countryside, as well as on some fictitious visits to the church.

Joan remained abstracted during the meal and her garrulous mother kept a conversation going with Matthew, who as time went on began to express his increasing concern at Walter’s absence. ‘There’s much business to discuss, especially as the next coinage session is due here within a few days. That means a great deal more tin being ready for shipment down to Exeter — and I need to know how much and its likely quality for pricing.’ He was careful not to add that he needed the same information to calculate how much extra he could skim off the top of the commission he earned for arranging its sale and export.

By the time they had eaten their fill, there was still no sign of Walter and Matthew suggested sending a groom to the mill to see what had befallen him. Alfred, the steward, dispatched a stableman on a good horse, with orders to follow the track through Moretonhampstead, the next large village, and on through Doccombe towards Dunsford. The mill was at Steps Ford, on the Teign, about six miles from home, less than an hour on a good horse.

Some three hours later the man was back, leading another stallion on a long rein behind him as he clattered into the yard. He ran breathlessly to find the steward and gabbled out his ominous story on the back steps of the house. ‘I was within half a mile of the mill when I met the master’s horse wandering home, riderless. I went down to the mill, looking in the road to see if he had fallen somewhere, but there was nothing.’

‘Had the miller seen the master?’ demanded the steward, poised to take the news indoors.

‘Yes, he had been there and done his business long before, then left as usual, well before noon. We called out the men from the mill and searched each side of the track and into the woods a fair way, from the mill to where I saw the stallion, but there was nothing. I left them widening the search — but he’s gone! Vanished!’

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which Nesta makes a declaration

While Chagford was thrown into consternation by the disappearance of one of its most prominent townsmen, the King’s coroner was carrying out his promise to his clerk. In the endless round of devotions that were the life-blood of cathedrals, the quietest period was in the late afternoon when the service of Compline, the last of the canonical hours, had ended, and there were a few hours for eating and sleeping before Matins at midnight. These Offices meant little to de Wolfe, but he chose a time when his friend John of Alençon would most likely be free.

There were four archdeacons for the different areas of the diocese and John of Alençon was responsible for Exeter itself, as Bishop Henry Marshal’s senior assistant for the city. Like most of the twenty-four canons, he lived in the cathedral precinct and had the second house in Canons’ Row, the road that formed the northern boundary of the Close, a continuation of Martin’s Lane.

Some of his fellow prebendaries lived in considerable style, with many servants, good stables and well-furnished accommodation, but John of Alençon was of a spartan nature and lived the ascetic life. Exeter was a secular establishment, not monastic like some other cathedrals, and its priests were not monks. However, though standards had slipped in recent years, allowing many priests to indulge in a life of luxury, some of the canons, especially John, still clung to the old Rule of St Chrodegang, a strict code of conduct laid down by Bishop Leofric more than a century earlier.

When de Wolfe was shown into the Archdeacon’s living chamber by a servant, he found his friend sitting on a hard stool at a bare oak table, reading a leatherbound book before a large wooden crucifix hanging on the wall. There was no other furniture and the coroner knew from past visits that the priest slept on a simple palliasse on the floor of an adjacent room.

‘Am I disturbing you at your devotions, John?’

The thin face, with cheekbones of almost skull-like prominence, broke into a charming smile. Wiry grey hair complemented grey-blue eyes that smiled with the rest of his face, and all who saw him were convinced that here was a good man in every sense of the word.

His spare frame was clothed in a long plain cassock; the chasuble and alb were reserved for saying the Offices in the cathedral across the way. He assured his friend that he was not interrupting any great religious study and, in fact, looked slightly guilty. ‘To tell the truth, I am reading a most secular book, John.’ He laid a hand on the now closed volume on the table. ‘It’s Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. I am still trying to decide if the man was a genius, a charlatan — or just plain mad.’

De Wolfe had heard of the volume — it had created a sensation when it was written half a century earlier — but his illiteracy prevented him from enjoying it. For some months, he had been covertly taking instruction in reading and writing, and could sign his name and stumble slowly through some of the coroner’s rolls that Thomas prepared, but in recent weeks he had been too busy to persevere and already what he had learned was slipping away.

The archdeacon signalled to his servant, who hovered at the door, and ordered some wine. His asceticism did not extend to eschewing the juice of the grape, as long as it was a good vintage. His family came from Alençon in Normandy, and there drinking fine wine was as natural as breathing.

‘Is this a welcome social visit, John? Or have you some special purpose?’

Over two cups of wine, John de Wolfe explained the problem concerning Thomas de Peyne. ‘The man’s becoming more morose with every new day,’ he explained. ‘He was born to be a priest, and he says life outside your cosy community of God is not worth living.’

The archdeacon was well used to his friend’s marginally sacrilegious way of speech and smiled gently at him. ‘I can well understand his anguish, poor lad. If I were to be cast out, I doubt if I would have the will to continue living.’

‘He claims he was innocent of the crime alleged,’ commented de Wolfe, ‘which makes it so much worse. I tend to believe him — he is too devout to be a good liar.’

They discussed the problem for a time, but de Alençon was doubtful of any prospect of successful reinstatement. ‘Any appeal to a Consistory Court would have to be in Winchester, where he was ejected, not here in Exeter. Robust testimonials would have to be produced from senior ecclesiastical figures concerning his behaviour and character during the time since he was unfrocked, and I would certainly provide a good character for him. But there are political factors to be taken into account, John.’

The coroner looked questioningly at the Archdeacon over the rim of his wine cup. ‘Political factors?’

‘It is well known in this precinct — and in the city outside — that you and I are good friends and of like mind, especially in our avowed loyalty to the King. Any glowing testimonial from me about your clerk, especially as he is related to me, would be seen as favouritism, especially by those who have been opposed to us — and, indeed, humiliated by us in the recent past.’

De Wolfe looked glumly at his friend. ‘You mean those inclined to Prince John — men like Thomas de Boterellis?’ He named the precentor, the canon responsible for organising the services and the chanting, who had supported the abortive rebellion a few months back.

The priest nodded. ‘And perhaps, even more importantly, Henry Marshal himself.’

It was well known that the Bishop was also a Prince’s man and had openly declared himself when he was bishop-elect the previous year.

However, after more discussion, de Alençon agreed to sound out some other canons discreetly to see if there was any realistic prospect of launching a petition to Winchester on Thomas’s behalf, but again he sounded pessimistic. With that de Wolfe had to be content, realising that the fate of some obscure clerk would never arouse much interest amongst the ecclesiastical community.

When he left his friend, de Wolfe went slowly across the Close, his feet taking him along the familiar route to the inn in Idle Lane. The morning’s storm had passed, but a leaden sky made the approaching dusk all the gloomier, to suit his own mood. He walked almost reluctantly, although he knew that he must make the journey. Since he had surprised Nesta with the new man in the brew-house, his mood had swung between sad resignation and cold anger. At one moment, he would decide to draw a line under his affair with the delectable Welsh woman and let her go her own way, if that was what she wanted, but at the next, he was all for storming down to the Bush and throwing Alan out into the road, before carrying Nesta up to her room and making violent love to her.

As his feet carried him across Southgate Street, he dithered between the two extremes, but by the time he reached the tavern his determination had settled into a middle path. He would act normally, talk to her rationally and see what she wanted to do about this twist in their relationship.

However, this sober, sensible plan was doomed as soon as he stepped inside the smoky cavern of the ale-house. Nesta was seated at his usual table, tucking into a trencher laden with a knuckle of pork surrounded by boiled turnips. There was quite a crowd of customers and Alan of Lyme was going from table to table and bench to bench, cracking jokes and slapping favoured men on the back, as if he was the jovial landlord.

De Wolfe scowled, but the younger man waved at him airily, then turned away to gossip to another group of regulars. Almost everyone in the inn knew of the coroner’s long-standing affair with Nesta, and some looked slightly embarrassed at his presence, given that they were also aware of the landlady’s partiality to her new barman.

John loped across the rush-strewn floor to the table near the hearth and stood looking down at the pretty woman. Usually, her rich red hair was coiled under a close-fitting linen cap, but today it cascaded over her shoulders, being worn like a young girl’s. Sourly, he wondered if this was for the new man’s benefit.

Sensing his presence, she looked up slowly, a strip of pork poised in her fingers, and spoke to him in the Welsh tongue they normally used. ‘Oh, it’s you — visiting twice in as many days. It must be the attraction of my good ale.’

The unexpected sarcasm stung him into an unwise response. ‘Has it improved since you hired a new brewer? Perhaps the time you spend in the brew-house makes it even better.’

She coloured with anger and dropped the meat back on to the trencher. ‘What I do in my own tavern is my business.’

Even in his anger, he had the wit not to point out that without the money he had lent her she would have no tavern. Instead, he sat down unbidden on the bench beside her and tried not to notice that she pointedly moved away a token inch or two. A few heads were turned towards them, and he had no doubt that some ears were flapping amongst the nearest customers. He decided that the best tactic was to be calm and apologetic and coax her out of the combative mood that seemed to grip her — but she forestalled him as he was opening his mouth. ‘Has she tired you out today that you need to come here to recover?’

He shut his mouth and stared at her in mystification. ‘What d’you mean? She’s either at her damned church or snoring in the solar.’

Nesta, a knucklebone half-way to her lips, gave him a sideways look that as good as called him a liar. ‘I’m not speaking of Matilda. I saw Hilda of Dawlish in North Street this morning — at a distance, for I’d no wish to speak to her.’

De Wolfe gaped at her. ‘Hilda? Here in Exeter?’

The landlady nibbled delicately at the warm flesh, then gave him a look not far removed from contempt. ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, John. If you want to bed your blonde beauty, that’s your concern. At least it explains why you’ve been too busy to visit me lately.’

He protested that he had had no idea that Hilda was in the city, and in his vehemence, he laid a hand on her arm. She shrugged it off impatiently. ‘It’s none of my business, just as my affairs are none of yours. But don’t try playing both at home and abroad, John.’

Again he tried to convince her that he had not seen Hilda recently and that the pressure of his work had kept him away from the Bush these past weeks, but Nesta seemed immune to his pleadings, kept low to avoid the eavesdroppers all around.

‘Can’t we go upstairs, where we can at least talk more privately?’ he suggested, staring at a man who was grinning at him from a nearby bench.

‘I’ve got a tavern to run after I’ve snatched a meal,’ she said tartly. ‘And with your busy life, no doubt you can find better things to occupy your time.’

De Wolfe’s resolution to be calm and rational began to evaporate under the rising of his own temper, but he took a grip on himself and made one last effort. ‘Nesta, for God’s sake, we’ve forged too much between us over the past year to act like this. What’s got into you, that this young lout has turned your head?’

She dropped the bone on to the table boards and turned quickly to him, her lips pressed together in a thin line. As a redhead, her own temper more than matched his when she was roused. ‘Listen, Sir Crowner, what future have I with you? You’re married, however much you regret it. You are a high law officer for your king and county and a knight of some substance, while I am a mere ale-wife, little better than one of the villeins on your two manors. How long am I to keep my heart and my bed reserved for such a man as you with no prospect of preferment? Is it not better for me to look elsewhere for my future, while I still have youth and looks to offer?’

He saw tears in her eyes, which she angrily wiped away with her sleeve, before ostentatiously turning from him to attack her food again.

De Wolfe found he had nothing to say in response to this cry from her heart. He stood up and tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It would be better if I went to the Saracen to sample their ale tonight. But I’ll not leave the matter like this, Nesta. I’ll be back when we can both think more sensibly.’

He walked heavily to the door without a backward glance, ducked under the lintel and went out into the blustery evening.

A couple of hours later Gwyn found his master, after failing to track him down at his usual haunt in Idle Lane. With his remarkable capacity for ale and cider, it had been no great hardship for the Cornishman to seek the coroner in several other taverns before he came to the Saracen on Stepcote Hill. ‘I wonder at your drinking here, Crowner. You always say it’s one of the lowest ale-houses in Exeter.’

The Saracen had a bad reputation as a den for the worst type of cutpurses, whores and criminals. The landlord was Willem the Fleming, an obese hulk of a man who kept some sort of order by the strength of his huge arms. One of the drabs who combined the careers of harlot and barmaid dumped two pottery quarts of indifferent ale before them, and Gwyn immediately filtered half of his through his great moustache while looking keenly at de Wolfe over the rim.

Like most in the city, he knew there was trouble at the Bush between his master and the landlady — and had made an accurate guess at the cause. He was sad and worried, for he was fond of Nesta and concerned about the coroner’s unhappiness. But though he had been de Wolfe’s constant companion for almost twenty years, they were still master and servant and he was not presumptuous enough to raise the subject.

It seemed that de Wolfe wished to keep the issue bottled up, as his first words were about duties for the morrow. ‘Have we anything I must attend in the next two days?’ he demanded. He had drunk well over half a gallon of ale in the last couple of hours but, unlike wine, it never seemed to affect him and his efforts to dull his anxiety over his mistress had come to nothing.

His officer rocked his gingery head from side to side. ‘Tuesday is hanging day, but there’s nothing for the scaffold tomorrow. And the other matter I’ve heard is not coroner’s business — yet.’

De Wolfe raised his head from his ale-jar. ‘What business is that?’

‘I heard gossip in the Anchor — the inn down near the quay-side — before I found you here. It will interest you, I’m sure.’

By now, de Wolfe should have been used to Gwyn’s habit of spinning out news, but it was still infuriating. ‘Tell me, then, for Satan’s sake!’

‘There were men there from Matthew Knapman’s warehouse, which is nearby. It seems their master’s servant had just ridden back from Chagford, with orders to turn out half a dozen men at dawn to ride back with him.’ Gwyn paused for dramatic effect, but the steely look in de Wolfe’s eyes made him hurry on with his tale. ‘Matthew’s brother Walter, the one we saw in Chagford and on Crockern Tor, has gone missing. They found his horse riderless today but not a sign of the man himself.’

The news roused de Wolfe out of his miserable reverie. The tin-master’s disappearance and the recent ghastly murder of one of his overmen seemed more than a coincidence. Yet, as Gwyn had said, the man’s disappearance need not concern a coroner. He might be found disabled after a fall from his horse — or he might have been attacked by outlaws, even rival tinners.

‘Where did he vanish from? Was it on the high moor?’ he asked.

‘Nowhere near there — it was almost half-way back to Exeter, it seems. Knapman owns a mill on the Teign, the other side of Dunsford from here.’

De Wolfe nodded. Dunsford was where they had discovered a Saxon treasure-trove a few months back.

‘Maybe the sheriff has spirited him away, so that Knapman can’t dispossess him as Warden of the Stannaries!’ joked Gwyn.

‘Stranger things have happened,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘But there’s no cause for us to meddle in it.’ He stretched his long arms and legs. ‘If there are no duties tomorrow, I’ll ride down to see my family. I’ve not seen them since that Templar stayed there last month.’

An alarm bell rang in Gwyn’s head. Fond as de Wolfe was of his brother, sister and widowed mother, he often went months without visiting his family home at Stoke-in-Teignhead. And the road from Exeter to Stoke passed through Dawlish.

As soon as the city gates were opened at dawn, Odin and Gwyn’s big brown mare clattered through the cobbled archway of the South Gate, bearing their riders out on to Holloway and the road to Topsham, the little port where the Exe river widened out into its estuary and the open sea beyond.

They passed a stream of people bringing produce into the city, ox-carts laden with cabbages and root vegetables stored over the winter, mules and donkeys labouring under wicker panniers filled with butter, cheese and eggs, and a stream of peasants, some pushing handcarts laden with whatever was available in spring before the new crops had come to fruition. Others drove pigs, sheep and a few spring lambs, all destined for the slaughterers in the Shambles of South Gate Street — a few old women even had a live chicken under each arm, hoping to make a penny out of someone’s Tuesday dinner.

The track dipped into the little valley just beyond Southernhay, where the outflow of the city’s drainage gave the little stream its odious name of Shitebrook, and then up on to the level road that ran along the bank of the Exe, past St James’s Priory.

At a steady clip, the two big horses rapidly covered the three miles to Topsham, where a large flat-bottomed rope-ferry carried them across to the marshy ground on the other side of the river. Soon they were trotting towards the low hills that ran down to meet the sea at Dawlish. An hour later, as they approached the village on the sand, Gwyn privately wondered how his master was going to deal with the situation. As they slowed to a walk to splash through the little creek that sheltered a few boats from the open beach, he won his mental wager with himself. De Wolfe began to inspect the one or two larger sea-going vessels that were beached on the banks of the stream by the ebbing tide.

‘Very few vessels here today, Crowner,’ observed Gwyn, keeping a straight face. He knew very well that de Wolfe was looking for the one owned by Thorgils the Boatman, the husband of the lovely Hilda.

The coroner gave one of his noncommittal throat clearings and reined in his horse at the top of the further bank of the creek. Gwyn knew what to expect next: it was a routine they had played out several times before.

‘We’ll have a short break from our journey, Gwyn,’ he muttered. ‘I have an errand to carry out, so get yourself to that alehouse and refresh yourself. I’ll call for you there when I’m finished.’

Both knew exactly what was going on, but nothing was put into words.

Gwyn was surprised, therefore, when less than a quarter of an hour later his eating and drinking were interrupted by de Wolfe, who stalked into the primitive single room of the alehouse and demanded a quart, a hunk of bread and some cheese. The ginger giant made no comment but waited for some explanation from his master.

‘We’ll carry on to Stoke straight away, Gwyn. We’ll leave there early this evening.’ He hesitated and made another rumble in his throat. ‘It may be that we will have to break our return journey and stop somewhere overnight.’

Gwyn dipped his face into his ale-jar to hide a grin. He could wager confidently that their overnight stay would be in Dawlish on the way back. Hilda, the beautiful blonde, was the daughter of the reeve at Holcombe, just down the coast. When much younger, de Wolfe had had a long love-affair with her, but as she was both a Saxon and the child of a manor servant, there had been no question of a permanent relationship between them, let alone a marriage. When de Wolfe had gone to the wars, Hilda had married an older man, but kept an ember glowing in her heart for the lover of her youth, which was fanned into fire at intervals when Thorgils was away on the high seas.

The two men continued along the coast road, keeping up a good pace on the dry track. The weather was dull but dry, with a persistent cold breeze. The trees and bushes were well into leaf and bud, and primroses brightened the verges. Patches of scrub and woodland alternated with hamlets nestling in their strip-fields, and more ground was constantly brought under cultivation by cutting assarts from the surviving forest.

De Wolfe rode immersed in his own problems, but Gwyn, in his contented, easy-going way, had time to contrast this mellow coastal strip with the bleak harshness of Dartmoor, which they had visited a few days earlier. One such prosperous village was Holcombe, the second of the de Wolfe manors and Hilda’s original home.

John deviated a little from the main track to visit the manor farm, in case his brother was there, but the bailiff told him that William had returned to Stoke-in-Teignhead the previous evening. The elder brother, though also tall and dark, was quite different in nature from the warrior John. He was devoted to managing the two estates and improving the farming. This suited de Wolfe, as he had been left a share of the profits by their father Simon. He was content that the land had been given to William, who cared so much for its welfare. A lesser share of the income had been bequeathed to his spinster sister Evelyn, their sprightly mother Enyd also having a life interest in the estate.

‘The whole family will be at Stoke, Gwyn. I’ll be happy to see them all together — and no doubt you’ll get your usual welcome from the maids in the kitchen, who’ll fill you to bursting point.’

As they rejoined the track to Teignmouth, where they could cross the river, he felt happier at the thought of a pleasant afternoon and a dalliance with Hilda on the return journey that night, after his disappointment earlier. Having made sure that Thorgils’ boat was away from Dawlish, he had called at the fine stone house in the middle of the village. His first setback was being told by a giggling maidservant that Mistress Hilda had been in Exeter for the past two days, shopping for a new gown and cloak to attend her younger sister’s wedding next week. She was expected back that afternoon and de Wolfe left a discreet message that he would call upon her that evening.

But ‘Man proposes and God disposes’, as the devout Matilda could no doubt have told him. De Wolfe’s anticipation of a family reunion followed by an evening of passion was dashed within minutes of their leaving Holcombe. Two riders came towards them, trotting so purposefully that Gwyn instinctively felt for the handle of his mace, which hung from a loop on his saddle. ‘Careful, Crowner, these fellows are coming at too fast a clip to be out for some morning exercise.’

His caution proved unnecessary, for de Wolfe soon recognised one of the horsemen as they came nearer. ‘It’s the reeve from Teignmouth. I’ve known him since we were lads — we fished together in the river there.’ The coroner’s boyhood home of Stoke was within walking distance of the reeve’s village.

The recognition was mutual, and a moment later the village headman from Teignmouth reined up alongside them, astonishment written on his broad face. ‘Have you dropped from the sky, Sir John? We were on our way to Exeter to find you or the sheriff’s men.’

Their story was soon told, the other man being an armed companion for the messenger: lone horsemen were easy targets for trail-bastons.

‘A body was found washed up at the mouth of the river early this morning, though he probably came downstream during the night. Our bailiff says that strange corpses must be notified to the sheriff or the crowner without delay these days.’

‘Or else the village gets stuck with a big fine,’ added the other man wryly.

‘Any knowledge of who it might be?’ asked de Wolfe.

The reeve shook his head. ‘No one local, that’s for sure. And by his clothes he’s no peasant.’

These words caused the first niggle of concern to rise in de Wolfe’s mind. ‘You’d better lead us to this mystery man,’ he grunted. ‘Is he still where he was found?’

‘Indeed he is, Crowner. The bailiff said that, these days, on no account must we interfere with corpses.’

It was less than two miles to the river and the four horsemen spurred their mounts to a canter, covering the remaining distance in a short time. As they jogged down the slope to the Teign, John looked ahead to gauge the state of the tide. It had been ebbing at Dawlish, so should be nearing low water now. The river had a broad estuary about two miles long running straight inland, but at the seaward end a sand bar cut across much of the outflow, leaving a narrow gap that could be forded at low tide.

As they moved on to this grass-grown spit, they could see that a dozen or more people, some leading sumpter horses, were clustered at the edge of the water, slightly inside the tip of the sand spit, where debris washed down by the river had been beached by the falling tide. A tangled mass of broken branches, reeds and even a length of wattle fencing was strewn along the foreshore where the crowd was gathered.

‘A train of pack-horses has arrived, by the look of it,’ said the reeve, sliding off his mare and walking her across to the group. De Wolfe and the other two followed him across the coarse grass. There were some local people with the hauliers, one a sailor by his cloth breeches and short tunic, and a couple of villeins holding mattocks. The inevitable flock of urchins was running around, and Gwyn called to one to hold their horses while they pushed through the small crowd. Then he bellowed at the onlookers to make way for the King’s coroner.

They stood aside and let John through to look down at a bedraggled body, lying under a heap of twisted branches and part of a holly tree.

‘Washed down with all this heavy rain,’ volunteered the reeve. ‘Yesterday, the river was in spate far more than this.’

The corpse was lying face down on the muddy sand, its tunic washed up over its head, exposing breeches and one riding boot; the other foot was bare. The saturated clothing was soiled and badly torn from snagging on obstructions in the river.

‘Get him up from the waterline and turn him over,’ ordered de Wolfe, a grim thought already forming in his mind.

Willing hands disentangled the cadaver from the holly-bush and pulled the thorny twigs off the tunic. Gwyn and the reeve each took one of the outstretched hands and slid the body up the wet sand to the grass, then rolled it over on to its back.

Puffy and sodden, with scratches on cheeks and forehead, the square face stared sightlessly up at the grey clouds. The soaking hair was plastered to the scalp, but the fair ringlets confirmed the identity the features had already proclaimed.

It was Walter Knapman, lately a tin-master of Chagford.

CHAPTER NINE

In which Crowner John misses an assignation

John de Wolfe wrestled only a short time with his conscience. His rigid sense of duty soon convinced him that both his visit to his mother and the dalliance with the delectable Hilda were now out of the question. One dead tinner from Chagford was mystery enough, but to have two within a week was pushing coincidence too far. The news would have to be taken to Knapman’s family without delay, and investigations would have to be made in earnest. He motioned to Gwyn to step back from the chattering crowd, who fluttered around the body like agitated birds. ‘We must get him away from here and examine him properly. Which direction was this pack train going?’

Gwyn shouted across to one of the men and found that they were bound for Exeter, the panniers of the eight sumpters laden with cloth from a mill at Paignton.

‘They can carry the corpse there for us. If one of the horses has its load shared out among the others, we can lash the body across its back. I’ll even buy a length of their cloth to wrap round it, for decency’s sake.’

Gwyn gave his master one of those looks that de Wolfe had come to recognise as an expression of doubt. ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ he asked, with a sigh.

‘These pack trains move awful slow, Crowner. They’ll not be in Exeter until this time tomorrow.’

‘So? Knapman’s in no hurry — he’s dead.’

Gwyn refused to be brushed aside. ‘The body’s been soaking in water a day or so already. By the time he’s bumped along all the way to Exeter tomorrow, he’ll not be that fresh. Shouldn’t we take a look at him now?’

As usual, his henchman was right. But to strip the body here, on a bleak sandbank in full view of the village, was unseemly, even to a hardened character like de Wolfe. Then inspiration came to him. ‘We’ll take him just up the road to Holcombe and use one of my brother’s barns to examine him. Then we can ride on to the city and let these folk take their time bringing him the rest of the way.’

An hour later, they pulled open the tall doors of a wattle and daub farm building at Holcombe, aided by the local manor reeve, who fussed over his master’s brother like a hen with a favourite chick — he had known him from infancy. He was Hilda’s father and was well aware — even secretly approved — of John’s affection for his daughter.

Knapman’s body had been rolled in a length of serge and lashed over the back of a sturdy pony, his head resting on one pannier, his legs on the opposite one. Gwyn untied the corpse and carried it like a baby into the barn, even though the dead Walter was no lightweight. The two hauliers, who rode their own steeds, one at each end of the line of roped pack-horses, waited patiently outside, mollified by the promise of a fee for this funereal transport.

In the barn, which in early spring was virtually empty, the reeve rolled out a small handcart to provide a flat platform for the body. Gwyn laid it down and they stood back to view it carefully.

‘No blood to be seen,’ observed the Cornishman, ‘but he’s been well washed in the river.’

‘Where did your alehouse gossip say he went missing?’

‘Last seen near the mill near Steps Ford on the upper Teign.’

‘The same river, certainly. He must have been washed down twenty miles or more — but it’s been in full spate after that cloudburst.’

De Wolfe looked at the pallid face, the skin soggy and peeling in places. But the expression was calm enough, giving the lie to the nonsense about contortions of fear and agony remaining after death. His experience of hundreds of corpses on the battlefields of Europe and the Levant had long ago disabused him of that fable.

He moved to the side of the cart and pulled up the half-open eyelids to examine the whites of the eyes. The globes were already softened and partly collapsed, but there were no blood spots to suggest throttling. Some fragments of grass floated out of the corners of the eyes as the water drained away and John pulled down the lids to blanket the sightless stare. ‘Nothing around the neck, no marks of a rope or throttling fingers,’ he commented, as Gwyn and the reeve watched him pull aside the neck of the brown tunic.

‘Could he have been thrown from his horse, perhaps?’ asked the reeve who, as an old retainer, was bold enough to ask questions of the man he once knew as a child.

‘Quite possibly, it happens often enough,’ conceded de Wolfe, though he thought that it didn’t happen that often to folk who have just lost an employee through murder. He motioned to Gwyn to go round to the other side of the cart, and together they began to remove Knapman’s clothing.

‘One boot missing, but that’s common enough in drowned men, both in sea or river,’ boomed Gwyn, who, as a former fisherman, considered himself an expert on waterlogged corpses.

They removed Knapman’s broad leather belt and de Wolfe picked up the purse slung from it. There was a chink of coins and when he opened it, a handful of silver pennies and a small gold crucifix tumbled out. ‘Doesn’t look like a robbery. No outlaw or footpad would leave these behind,’ he remarked.

They hauled the long brown tunic over the head, having to fight the stiffness of death to free the arms from the sleeves. Underneath, Knapman wore a shirt of fine linen and a pair of worsted breeches tied around the waist with a drawstring.

‘Nothing on the front of him, apart from these scrapes and scratches,’ grunted the coroner’s officer.

‘That happened after death, I’m sure — no bruises or blood under the edges of the rips. All done against rocks and tree trunks, rolling down the river.’

De Wolfe moved to the head and felt with his long fingers among the thick wet mop of hair. When they reached the back point of the scalp, they stopped abruptly. ‘Ah, here we have it. The head is cracked like an egg.’ The reeve, bending to peer more closely, jerked back when he heard the grating crepitation of bone fragments rubbing together as de Wolfe massaged the rear of the skull.

‘So he might have taken a heavy fall, Sir John?’ The manor servant was keen to promote his theory.

‘He might, indeed. It’s a long way down from a big stallion, especially if you land on a rock.’

John’s presumption of foul play was starting to waver a little, but it was soon revived when Gwyn hauled the body over on to its face.

‘What have we here, Crowner?’ he bellowed, almost gleefully, pointing with a massive forefinger at a red mark running diagonally across the back between the shoulder-blades.

De Wolfe hunched over the corpse, to peer down at the pale, macerated skin. There was no purplish-red livor mortis due to the sinking of blood, because the body had been constantly rolled and twisted by the currents. But a clear double track of red bruising ran from the back of the right shoulder across the spine for a distance of four hand spans, fading away below the lower edge of the left shoulder-blade. The two lines ran parallel, with a clear central zone the width of a thumb between them.

The reeve gave an amateur but accurate description. ‘Looks as if someone has dipped two fingers in blackberry juice and drawn them across his back,’ he said.

The coroner and his henchman looked at each other across the corpse, their eyes meeting in silent agreement.

‘Struck with a staff, no doubt about it,’ observed Gwyn, in a satisfied voice.

‘Maybe he did come off his horse, like the reeve says — but he didn’t fall, he was knocked off,’ concluded John. ‘It takes quite a blow to leave a clear track like that.’

The rest of the examination revealed nothing and the coroner stood back while Gwyn and the reeve rolled the body back into its makeshift shroud. De Wolfe gave instructions to the hauliers to deliver it to the castle at Exeter, then he and his officer mounted their horses and trotted away, retracing the route they had taken only a few hours earlier.

As they passed through Dawlish, de Wolfe reined in and looked longingly up the street alongside the creek, where he could just see the arcaded front of Thorgils’ new stone house.

‘Are you stopping here for a rest, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn, with a false air of innocence.

De Wolfe debated with himself as to whether he should call in, even if only to explain why he couldn’t keep his promised assignation with Hilda that night. But he knew he would be tempted to stay with her, then fail to get back to the city before the gates were closed at curfew. With a grunt, he touched Odin reluctantly with his heels and set off again along the coast road.

The return of a leaden sky made the approach of dusk even earlier as the coroner and his officer rode through the West Gate that evening. De Wolfe sent Gwyn ahead up Fore Street, hoping that he would go home to his wife and children rather than to the nearest alehouse, then turned right to follow inside the city wall to the storehouses and dwellings near the Watergate. The narrow lane was congested even at this late hour with handcarts, hawkers’ stalls, beggars and a multitude of gossiping residents, some poring over the wares of the chapmen who trudged the roads of England, selling trifles from the bundles on their backs.

At the bottom of Priest Street, where the overflow of vicars and secondaries from the cathedral lodged, he asked directions from a porter resting on a huge bale of wool he was lugging from the fulling mills on Exe Island. ‘Matthew Knapman, the tin-merchant? You’re right outside it, Crowner.’

Looking up at the corner house, de Wolfe saw a stone building that contrasted with the timber or cob dwellings on either side. Tin was a valuable and portable commodity, so presumably the Knapmans felt the need for a more thief-proof storehouse than the often ramshackle buildings in the lower part of town. His deduction was strengthened when he saw that there were no window openings on the lower floor, only a stout oak door set in the flattened face of the house where the two streets met. Another larger gate was set in an arch around the corner, big enough to admit carts to the yard when tin was being transported.

John slid down from Odin’s high saddle and tied the reins to a ring set in the wall. He went to the door and beat upon it with the hilt of his dagger, regretting that he had such bad tidings to deliver.

Soon he heard feet clattering downstairs, then a voice shouted a challenge from inside. Bending his head to the door, he called in reply, ‘Sir John de Wolfe, the King’s coroner.’

The heavy oak creaked open a short way and a face appeared. The young man was slim and dark, with a black, down-curving moustache that gave him a somewhat Moorish appearance. The coroner remembered seeing him about the city, but had no idea who he was.

‘Does Matthew Knapman live here?’ he asked.

‘He does, sir. I am Peter Jordan, his … his nephew.’

The slight hesitation told de Wolfe that this was a convenient rather than an accurate description of the relationship. The door opened wider, to reveal Jordan as a slim man in his twenties, well but soberly dressed. He wore a leather apron and gauntlets of the same material, and explained, ‘I help Matthew with his trade. We have been shifting bar tin to the warehouse on the quay, to make room for the new coinage from Chagford, due in the next few days.’

‘It is Chagford that brings me here. I need to speak urgently to Matthew — and if you are his nephew, you must also be present.’

Silently, Peter Jordan stood back to allow de Wolfe inside. Already, the coroner felt a tension he recognised from many previous such encounters: the visit of a senior law officer could never mean anything but trouble or sorrow.

The gloomy ground floor was stacked with hundreds of what looked like irregular grey bricks. As the young man led the way to a flight of wide steps to the upper floor, he waved a hand at the piles of dull metal. ‘These are the crude bars, awaiting the second smelting.’ The unnecessary information seemed like a nervous diversion to cover his anxiety at the coroner’s appearance.

Upstairs was a marked contrast to the commercial lower floor. Doors led from a landing into a large living hall on the left and what seemed to be a pair of bedrooms or solars on the right. Presumably the kitchens, laundry and privy were in the yard behind.

Jordan rapped perfunctorily on a draught screen behind the hall door and led de Wolfe into a well-furnished room with a fire burning in a hearth at the further end. ‘Matthew, the crowner has called upon us. He wishes to speak to you.’

He stood aside and John walked forward to meet the tin-merchant, who rose from a settle near the fire. Opposite was the stout lady with the drooping lip he had seen with Matilda at St Olave’s a few days earlier. They both looked apprehensive at his appearance, though after more than six months in the job he was getting used to this reaction to his presence. Immediately Matthew guessed the reason for his visit. ‘You have news of Walter.’ It was a statement rather than a question. The appearance of a coroner, rather than a bailiff or a sheriff’s man, could have only one interpretation. ‘Where did you find him?’ he added flatly.

De Wolfe explained the circumstances in his sonorous voice, and Matthew’s wife began to sniff and cross herself, reminding John of Thomas and his troubles. Matthew said nothing, but sat John down and busied himself with a wine flask and some cups. Jordan remained standing behind them, almost forgotten until the merchant handed him a pewter cup of red wine.

‘Walter was Peter’s stepfather, you know,’ he said, in a strangled voice. ‘He was married before to the widow of one of his tinners. Peter’s father was killed in stream-works when the lad was only eight. Walter married Bridgid, but she passed away from the phthisis three years ago.’

De Wolfe gave one of his throaty noises, which might have meant anything from deepest sympathy to sheer disbelief. He wanted to get back to the nature of the death. ‘You realise that your brother was murdered?’ he said bluntly. ‘He was struck on the back, probably hurled from his horse. Either he fell to his death or might have been hit on the head deliberately. Whatever it was, it was no accident.’

Mistress Knapman’s snivels became louder, but no one took any notice.

‘I rode back from Chagford this morning,’ quavered Matthew. ‘I stayed until dark last night helping to search the roads between there and Dunsford — and again this morning on my way back. All Walter’s house servants and many of his tinners were beating the verges and woods, but there was nothing. No wonder! The poor fellow was floating down the Teign by then.’ He wrung his hands and paced back and forth before his glowing hearth. ‘Who can have done this awful thing? Was it just trail-bastons or chance outlaws? Yet he was big man, able to defend himself, unless he was outnumbered.’

Peter Jordan spoke for the first time since de Wolfe had broken the news. ‘What of the killing of Henry of Tunnaford? Is this not likely to be connected? There have been many incidents lately, damage to the workings and now two deaths.’

John turned to face the younger man, who had been standing behind him. ‘Did you see your stepfather often, lad?’

Jordan shook his head. ‘Not lately, sir. Three years ago, after my mother died, I came to Exeter to work with Matthew here. It was a convenient arrangement between all of us. I was to learn the trade of selling what my stepfather produced.’

John peered at him from under his black brows. ‘Did you get on well with him?’

‘I did indeed. He was good to me after my real father died. He cared for my mother when she was widowed and much regretted her death, I am sure.’

To the coroner’s suspicious ear, he had left something unsaid. ‘What about his second wife? Did you approve of the marriage?’

Peter Jordan shrugged indifferently. ‘It was none of my business. Walter was not my natural father, so what he did was his affair. I admit I am not fond of her, for I think she is a selfish woman who married him only for his wealth — but as I rarely see her, it is of no consequence.’

He seemed to have a maturity beyond his years, and what he said seemed reasonable enough. De Wolfe turned back to Matthew and his wife, whose sniffing had subsided, although she still stared at him from watery eyes. ‘Your brother’s body should arrive in the city in the morning.’ He thought it kinder not to add that it was being brought on a sumpter train, slung over a pony like a dead sheep. ‘I will have it rested in St Mary’s Chapel in Rougement, but I presume you and your family will require its burial in Chagford, Walter’s home.’

Matthew nodded. His normally ruddy face was pale. He rapidly refilled the wine cups and drained his at a gulp. ‘I will have to talk to Joan, his wife, but no doubt he will be buried at St Michael’s, which he largely built with his own money.’

De Wolfe finished his wine and stood up, hovering over Matthew and Peter like a black crane. ‘There will have to be an inquest, but I will hold that in Chagford when the body gets there, a day or two hence. You will no doubt arrange for some conveyance for it as soon as possible.’

He made for the door, followed by the two men. As he descended the steps, he turned for a last question. ‘Has either of you any notion why someone should have wanted Walter Knapman dead?’

There was a momentary silence, then Matthew spoke. ‘In the tin trade there is intense rivalry. This business of the headless overman and now Walter’s death must surely be connected. There is at least one other tin-master who envied Walter his success. And Walter made some enemies in his campaign to have a Lord Warden elected by the tinners themselves.’

Peter, his face stony, was more forthright. ‘Let us not beat about the bush, Matthew. Everyone knows Stephen Acland had his eyes not only on my stepfather’s trade but also on his new wife. He’s welcome to her, as far as I’m concerned, but maybe he is not too displeased that Walter is dead.’

John de Wolfe went home with a mild sensation of self-righteousness, twisted logic persuading him that his conscience was clear.

First, he had told Matilda that morning that he would be away for yet another night, ostensibly visiting his family in Stoke, yet here he was, back early, yearning for her company. It would be too much to ask that he might surprise her in the arms of another man — even the fat priest of St Olave’s — but now she could hardly scold him for not being away from home.

Second, he almost convinced himself that he had resisted the charms of Hilda, rather than having had his adulterous assignation cancelled by circumstances. It was a pity that he could not let Nesta know about it, though he could hardly gain credit for having to miss a passionate session with her rival.

In Martin’s Lane, he found that his wife was not entertaining a lover — indeed, she greeted him with a sour face and the immediate announcement that she was going out to visit her cousin in Goldsmith Street. As Lucille smirked in the background, holding Matilda’s mantle, de Wolfe managed to grab his wife’s attention with the story of Knapman’s murder and his visit to Matthew’s house.

‘I must go in the morning and comfort his poor wife,’ Matilda announced firmly. For a moment, de Wolfe thought she meant she would travel to Chagford to see Joan, but it was her fellow churchwoman, the wife of Matthew, whom she would visit.

‘It will give me an opportunity to see their house,’ Matilda went on. ‘I hear that Matthew Knapman lavishes his wealth on his furnishings and his wife.’ She bestowed a poisonous look on her parsimonious husband, before she swept out with the French maid in her wake.

It was now almost dark and de Wolfe sat by his fire for a while, with a quart of ale and the adoring Brutus for company, until Mary bustled in with a meal for him. She brought thick slices of lean bacon, called ‘collops’, with four hen’s eggs fried in butter and a small loaf, half of which he ate after the meat, smeared with honey still brittle with the wax of the comb.

Secure in the knowledge that Matilda was away for an hour or two, Mary sat on the bench opposite while he ate, keeping out of range of his searching fingers under the table. However, she was still quite willing to gossip and was always intrigued by John’s latest cases. After he had recounted the dramatic events around Chagford, she added a few snippets of her own concerning some of the participants. Like Nesta — and, indeed, Matilda — she picked up much intelligence about Exeter’s citizens from other house-servants and stallholders in the markets.

‘That Matthew, the tin-merchant, he keeps the vintners rich, they say. His nose tells you what his staple food must be! A good job he can afford it.’

‘Matilda was goading me about how much he spends on his house and his wife — not that I noticed it when I was in there.’

He tucked into his collops as she answered. ‘Plenty of money there — though some tap their noses when you mention it and say that he’s almost the equal of the sheriff when it comes to embezzlement.’

De Wolfe’s dagger paused midway to his mouth, a boiled onion skewered to its tip. ‘He has a reputation for that, has he? I thought he was in partnership with his brother, the dead Walter.’

Mary shrugged her robust shoulders. ‘It’s just gossip — but usually, where there’s smoke there’s fire. That nephew of his who assists him seems honest enough — a good-looking boy, too,’ she added appreciatively.

‘Peter Jordan — I met him tonight. No doubt you’ve also got some tittle-tattle about him?’

Mary wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Not at all, though I wonder where he got that swarthy complexion if his father was a local tanner. Maybe his mother met a Crusader one dark night.’

De Wolfe made a sarcastic catcall, then recalled that the brunette Mary was herself the offspring of a Saxon serving-woman and an unknown soldier who had remained only for the conception.

She took no offence and went on with her chatter. ‘But I don’t know how a good-looking young man like him came to marry Martha Courteman. She’s like the mistress, only much younger, begging your pardon, Sir John. A stuck-up, miserable snob. Her father is that lawyer, Robert Courteman.’

De Wolfe was not interested in the further ramifications of the Knapman family, though he knew the lawyer, who had been the unenthusiastic advocate in the Appeal that week.

Sensing his lack of interest, Mary changed the subject. ‘I’m worried about Thomas, poor little man,’ she said forcefully. ‘He comes round to my hut now and then for some decent food. He’s half starved on the pittance you pay him.’

‘Is it his diet that concerns you, then?’ he asked facetiously.

‘It’s his mind that worries me. He’s getting more and more miserable, turning in on himself these past weeks. What’s wrong with him?’

John explained the problem and related how he had interceded with the Archdeacon on his clerk’s behalf. Mary smiled as she rose and planted a quick kiss on his rough cheek. ‘You’re a good-hearted man, Sir Crowner. Finish your victuals and get yourself down to the Bush while you’ve got the chance. I hear that you’re in bad odour down there, so make your peace before it’s too late.’

After she had left with the empty platters, he reflected that the gossip grapevine must reach into every house and tavern in the city. He touched his cheek where Mary had kissed him and mused on how the master-servant relationship was altered by a few tumbles in the kitchen-shed.

CHAPTER TEN

In which Crowner John meets a new widow

With Matilda out, the temptation to take Mary’s advice and go down to the Bush became too strong for John. He whistled to Brutus and stepped out into the street with him, thinking that if he happened to meet Matilda, he would tell her he was exercising the hound. A moment later, he cursed himself for a damned fool. Why should a grown man of forty, hardened in a dozen wars, care a clipped penny about an excuse to visit his favourite inn after a hard day’s work? To hell with his wife! She knew well enough that he blessed several women with his favours — she never let him forget it. Matilda knew at least two by name and sight, but he hoped she knew nothing about a certain lady on the coast at Salcombe, though he had not seen her for some time.

The wind had dropped and the rain had held off, but it was cold under a clearing sky as he strode through the darkened Close, cursing as he stumbled over the debris and piles of earth left under the looming mass of the great cathedral. Although the huge house of God was a marvel of the mason’s art, the surroundings were a disgrace. The Close was a cross between a cemetery and a communal refuse dump, where vagrants begged, hooligans romped and urchins played ball-games all day. Along with most of the citizens of Exeter, de Wolfe failed to understand why the cathedral proctors did not impose better control over the area.

At the other side, there were a couple of guttering flares near Bear Gate, which led out of the episcopal precinct into Southgate Street. Though house fires were damped down at dusk, some torches were allowed in safe places, such as these set in iron rings against a stone wall.

There was some faint light in the main street running down to the South Gate, for the curfew was only haphazardly observed within the city, as long as all the gates were barred at nightfall. In the serge-market section of the street, a few cloth stalls were still trading by the light of dim horn lanterns. Higher up at the Shambles, butchers’ boys were still throwing buckets of water on the ground, sluicing the blood from the cobbled area where animals had been slaughtered during the day.

De Wolfe crossed the road and passed the top end of Priest Street, where presumably Matthew, his wife and Peter Jordan were grieving over Knapman’s violent death. Then he strode down the hill to Idle Lane and the Bush, the starlight enough to guide him on this most familiar of routes. Calling Brutus to heel from his erratic sniffing adventures, the coroner reached the door of the tavern and stopped for a moment in the gloom.

What reception would he have tonight, he wondered. How should he behave, if Nesta again gave him the cold shoulder? Should he be soft and loving to her, try to win her back the gentle way? That would be a marathon struggle against his natural inclination.

Annoyed by his indecision, he thrust open the door and ducked into the warm fug of the alehouse, redolent with the smells of woodsmoke, sweat, cooking and spilt ale. The flaming logs on the hearth gave most of the light, weakly supplemented by tallow dips on each table and a few wax candles in sconces around the walls. These were a new feature and, sourly, John wondered if the usurper had persuaded Nesta to foot the expense.

Edwin was nearby, picking up empty ale jars. He raised one in salute and shuffled across to de Wolfe. ‘I’ve kept your table, Cap’n. Threw a couple of youngsters off it in case you came.’ He looked warily towards the back of the big room that occupied all the ground floor of the inn. ‘She’s out in the cook-shed, Crowner. We got fancy new food now — herbs with every bloody thing!’ His disgruntled tone at any kind of change in his settled little world told de Wolfe that he had one ally, ineffectual as the old potman might be.

He sat in his usual seat, staring at the flames, with a pot of ale brought by the one-eyed retainer and Brutus squatting close by his leg. Even the dog seemed to know that all was not well with his master, and he laid his wet chops sympathetically across John’s knee. When de Wolfe heard the loud, cheerful voice of Alan of Lyme chatting to other customers behind him, but he did not give him the satisfaction of turning his head.

After five minutes, there was still no sign of Nesta. Until recently, she had always dropped her tasks to sit with him, if only for a moment, before going back to harass the cook or maids. De Wolfe’s mood swung between annoyance, resignation and black rage as he sat alone by the fire. After the better part of a quarter of an hour, he decided to cut his losses and leave, never to darken the Bush’s door again. But as he drained the last of his quart and banged the pottery jar down on the table, he was aware of someone standing at the end of the table. ‘Good evening, John. Are you well?’ Nesta looked down at him, her heart-shaped face wearing an expression he had not seen before, a mixture of sadness and defiance.

‘The better for seeing you, lady.’ For all his rehearsal of what he was going to say, the words burst out unbidden. Her face did not change, but in the dim light he was not sure whether he glimpsed moisture in her eyes. ‘Sit with me, Nesta,’ he pleaded, in a low voice, but she shook her head, her russet curls this time constrained within a linen coif.

‘I am busy, John. Business is brisk, especially since …’ Her voice trailed away, as she glanced towards the back of the room where the boisterous Alan was changing an empty barrel. She turned back to de Wolfe. ‘But tell me what you have been doing. Out of town again, I expect?’ Her tone hardened slightly as she referred to his frequent absences, but he seized on her words to keep her there.

‘I discovered a murdered man today — killed in Dunsford, yet found in Teignmouth.’ It was something to hold her attention, but she picked up on the last word with a snap in her voice.

‘You rode to Teignmouth today? By the coast road, no doubt!’

Mystified, he nodded.

‘The road that passes through Dawlish! And did you call upon your fair-haired sweetheart?’ Now the voice had the edge of a dagger.

Trapped, he scowled furiously at her. ‘If you think I saw Hilda, you’re mistaken. Not that it’s any of your business,’ he added unwisely.

The redheaded Welshwoman pressed her small fists on the table as she leaned towards him. ‘I know you, Black John. You may not have seen her, but did you go looking for her?’

De Wolfe was a bad liar and, anyway, he rarely deigned to avoid the truth.

Nesta, who could read him better than her own palm, saw him struggling for an evasion and needed no further proof. ‘You lost little time in seeking another bed, damn you,’ she hissed, under her breath. Although they spoke in their usual Welsh, several ears were flapping at nearby tables. ‘I think you’d find the ale more to your liking in other taverns from now on.’

Pink in the face with anger, the landlady flounced away from the discomfited coroner. Brutus gave a little whine and nuzzled his head more closely against his master’s leg.

As soon as the coroner had left Matthew Knapman’s house that afternoon, the tin-merchant had left his wife to sniff away her mild sorrow at their fireside and had taken Peter Jordan with him to the yard of a haulier with whom they did business. They passed through the Watergate in the south-west angle of the city walls and walked in silence along the quayside, where several merchant vessels and barges were aground at low tide. At the yard, Matthew arranged with the carter to move his brother’s body to Chagford after it arrived next day at the castle.

The man normally collected crude tin from the moor and later hauled some of the refined metal to other cities in England, using both ox-carts and his trains of sumpter horses and Poitou mules. ‘I’ll see that it arrives by tomorrow night, with all due reverence,’ he promised, secretly worried that the death of the most prominent tin-master might affect his business.

As they walked back to the house, Matthew gave instructions to his step-nephew. ‘I’ll have to ride to Chagford straight away, to break the news,’ he said, in a hollow voice. ‘You stay until the corpse arrives in the morning and see that everything is done with decorum. Ride with it when it leaves. A light cart should get there before nightfall.’ He looked at the sky, overcast and grey. ‘As I hope to now, if I leave without delay.’

However, Matthew Knapman arrived in Chagford well after dark, although he pushed his horse to the limit over the sixteen miles from Exeter. Leaving the steaming beast to recover in the charge of a stable-boy at the back of the Knapman hall, he walked the few yards to the priest’s house on the edge of the churchyard. Here he recruited Paul Smithson to help him break the news to Walter’s wife, and together they went to the house

The steward, Harold, met them outside the main door, returning from the stable where he had been investigating the arrival of a rider after dark. In the light of a tar flare set in the wall, his face was apprehensive. He immediately guessed the reason for Matthew’s late visit, and wept pitifully when he was told of the violent death of his master, whom he had served for almost twenty years. Then he straightened up, stopped sobbing and led them into the house.

‘The mistress is in there with a visitor — come to offer support at the master’s disappearance, no doubt,’ he added, with a hint of sarcasm. In the main room the old woman, Lucy, sat dozing in a high-backed chair near the fire, while Joan Knapman, her dark hair hanging in two thick plaits over her bosom, sat stiffly at the table, now bare except for a wine flask and two French glasses. On the other side, leaning on the scrubbed boards, was Stephen Acland, his burly figure perched on a stool.

At the sound of footsteps, he turned his head, and when he saw Matthew and Smithson enter, rose to his feet, an almost defiant expression on his face. ‘I came to see if there was any news of Walter,’ he said, before the newcomer could utter a word. ‘We have had our differences, I know, but he’s still a neighbour and a fellow tinner.’

Matthew glanced at him perfunctorily and crossed to stand before Joan, putting a fatherly hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him calmly. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said, in a low voice.

As Matthew nodded slowly, there was a squeal as Acland’s stool abruptly grated across the flagstones. ‘Christ Almighty, no!’ he cried, waking Lucy, who joined in the clamour as Harold starting sobbing again in the background.

‘Be quiet!’ snapped the new widow, dry-eyed and in control of the situation. ‘What’s happened, Matthew?’

He sank to another stool and leaned his arms on the table as he told them the story as far as he knew it from the coroner. Joan’s mother tottered to her daughter and tried to put a comforting arm around her, but the younger woman shrugged herself free. The parish priest also came near her, but experience warned him to leave his platitudes until later.

‘I’ve arranged for him to be brought home tomorrow,’ continued Matthew sadly. ‘The crowner will be coming and there will another inquest, I’m afraid, before he can be laid to rest.’

Joan laid a slim hand on his arm. ‘It’s hard to believe, Matthew. He was so active, so alive. How can he be gone so quickly from our lives?’

The dead man’s twin stared at her and was almost surprised to see that her eyes were moist in the dim candlelight. He had never approved of his brother’s new marriage and thought Joan a hard, calculating woman, concerned only for her own comfort, but now, for the first time, he saw some vestige of affection, too late for his brother’s solace, for Matthew knew that Walter had had doubts about his new wife’s fidelity. ‘And you, Joan? This must be doubly hard for you, to lose two husbands in such a short time,’ he said.

The new widow accepted a scrap of handkerchief from her mother, who fluttered about her like a demented moth. Dabbing at her eyes, she pulled herself up to her usual stiff-backed posture and gave a deep sigh. ‘I have expected this since yesterday. When he failed to come home, I knew something terrible had happened. And when last night and much of today had passed, the only answer was that he was dead. Yet I thought he must have had a fall from his horse or some other accident — not that he had been murdered and found in a river a score of miles away.’

Matthew had never known her so talkative and wondered again if he had misjudged her. Yet this other man was here in the same room, almost suspiciously solicitous for her welfare. He watched Acland pace restlessly to the hearth and back.

‘What in hell is going on around the moor these days?’ demanded the rival tin-master. ‘First that overman, now Walter himself! Is there some evil spirit battening on us tinners? Some of the old workers believe in Crockern, the pagan god of the moors, and I’m beginning to think that way myself.’

Matthew laughed bitterly. ‘If there is, it’s a spirit that can wield a staff pretty well — and a cleaver in the case of poor Henry.’

The priest nodded in the candlelight. ‘I think we can blame a human presence for these outrages, not some moor phantom. But that’s of little comfort to poor Joan. Is there anything I can do for you, dear lady?’

Walter’s widow sat pale and erect, her hands in the lap of her rich red silk gown, the colour of which matched the braid that was woven into the plaits that reached her waist, their ends encased in thin gilt tubes. ‘Thank you, no. I must take some time to get used to the idea of having no husband once again.’

Lucy was snivelling and trying to hold her daughter’s hand, but Joan rose to her feet and walked around to the saddle-weary tin-merchant.

‘We should be thinking more of you, Matthew. You were his twin, closer to him than any of us. And you are exhausted. You must rest — we will need all our strength for the coming days.’

Seemingly the strongest of all, she gave orders to Harold to settle her brother-in-law in a small room on the upper floor and supply him with food and drink. Then she thanked the priest graciously, virtually dismissing him — and less graciously sent her mother to bed.

When she was left alone with Acland, they moved to sit side by side near the glowing fire. Heads close together, they talked earnestly for a long while, her fingers covered by his powerful hands.

That same night, John de Wolfe had left the Bush with a mixture of emotions. They swung from recrimination with himself for mentioning his journey through Dawlish to despondency that the knot that had tied him to Nesta for over a year seemed now to have been undone. Then anger displaced gloom, as he first cursed the fickleness of women, then contemplated beating Alan of Lyme to a thin pulp.

As his hawkish figure loped rapidly back up the streets towards Rougemont, his mood settled into icy resolve. If Nesta had falsely accused him of a dalliance with Hilda that day, he had nothing more to lose by making that liaison a reality. He ignored the fact that had Hilda been at home when he called he would not have been innocent of Nesta’s charge, but such is the ability of men to be selective in their truths that he easily persuaded himself of Nesta’s unfairness.

He marched past Martin’s Lane and went on up to the castle, partly to have a genuine excuse for Matilda as to his whereabouts that evening, but also to apprise Richard de Revelle of Knapman’s death. The hall of the keep was almost deserted, apart from a few servants sleeping near the fire, and for once the sheriff’s door was locked with no guard outside. Thinking that de Revelle must be away at one of his manors, either Tiverton or Revelstoke, he went in search of his steward to enquire when he would return. A servant scurried off to find the man, who hurried back within a few minutes, with the news that Sir Richard was indeed inside his apartments. ‘He returned from two days in the country only a few hours ago, Crowner, very tired and hungry. Before retiring, he gave orders that he was not to be disturbed until morning.’

To hell with that! thought de Wolfe. If I have to work all the hours God made, so shall he. ‘It’s urgent, steward. Knock at his door until he answers.’

Reluctantly, but not daring to defy this bony crow of a man, the servant produced a large key from his belt and opened the door into the outer chamber, which de Revelle used for his official business. Beyond that was another door, leading into his bedchamber. The steward approached this and tapped timidly.

‘Hammer on the thing, blast you!’ said de Wolfe, from the middle of the room. The man knocked more loudly, his ear to the thick panels. There was a long pause and de Wolfe thought he heard scuffling and low voices. Then the sheriff demanded angrily to know who was there.

‘The coroner, sir. He says he has urgent news.’

There was more scuffling and then the key turned from inside and the sheriff slipped out and banged the door shut behind him. He had thrown a long cloak over his shoulders, but de Wolfe sensed he was naked beneath it. ‘I was in bed, damn you! What do you want?’

De Wolfe knew he had not been alone. His brother-in-law’s wife, the icy Lady Eleanor, rarely came to Exeter, preferring the comfort of their manors to the bleak quarters in Rougemont’s keep, which suited Richard very well, and it was not the first time that de Wolfe had caught him in bed with a doxy. ‘I think the recent challenge to you as Lord Warden of the Stannaries can be forgotten for the time being, Richard.’

The sheriff goggled at his brother-in-law. Was this why he had dragged him away from a warm bed and a warm woman at this time of the evening?

‘Walter Knapman is dead. Murdered!’ announced de Wolfe.

The sheriff stood stock still for a second, then pulled the heavy cloak more closely around him and padded on bare feet across the cold stones to sit in his chair behind the parchment-strewn table. He looked up at the coroner, almost fearfully. ‘Well, don’t look at me like that! I didn’t have the damned fellow killed,’ he said.

That possibility had not occurred to de Wolfe until then, but he stored it away in his mind for future consideration. ‘Did I suggest you had?’ he asked evenly.

‘I know the way your mind works, John,’ said Richard bitterly. ‘You’ll leave no stone unturned in seeking sins to lay at my door. Though the fellow irritated me beyond measure with his insolence, I’ve no fear of such as he.’ He glared up at his sister’s husband, his waxed beard as pointed as a lance-head. ‘In any event, I’ve been touring my tax-collectors from Lydford to Crediton to Cullompton, chasing the idle swine before the farm is due.’

De Wolfe filed away the fact that this area was diffuse enough not to be too far from Dunsford, where Knapman vanished — though he did not seriously consider that the sheriff would have carried out any dirty deeds himself when he had so many spies and vassals to act for him. He recounted the facts as far as he knew them, emphasising that it must have been murder, not an accident.

‘Whether he fell on his head or had it smashed with a rock, he was first toppled from his mount by a heavy blow on the back, so the death is still a crime. Then presumably he was dumped in the Teign — the flood waters soon carried him down to the coast.’ He paused, thinking of the corpse tangled in driftwood. ‘Just as well he was seen there. The next tide would have taken him out to sea, and then we would never have known what happened to him.’

Grumpily, with several sidelong glances at his inner door, the sheriff discussed what should be done and de Wolfe told him he was going to Chagford next day to investigate and hold an inquest.

‘The coinage is to be held there in two days’ time. As Warden, I had better attend, given all this trouble that’s blown up,’ muttered de Revelle.

De Wolfe gave a smile that was almost a leer. ‘You’ll be far from popular with the tinners after Crockern Tor. But I suppose you have a duty to be present. Bring a troop of soldiers. You may need them to protect you.’

With that last cheerless remark, de Wolfe left his brother-in-law sitting dolefully behind his trestle, his ardour considerably dampened.

Walter’s corpse was still on its way to Exeter across a pack-horse when John de Wolfe and his two assistants rode out of the city the next morning. Gwyn was his usual boisterous self, but his companions were both subdued. John, never talkative at the best of times, was still torn between sorrow and anger at his rejection by Nesta, while Thomas de Peyne slumped inertly on his pony.

The two men on the bigger horses were hampered by the clerk’s slower speed, and it took them more than two hours to pass through Dunsford and reach the mill on the river beyond the village. Here de Wolfe stopped to inspect the presumed scene of the killing. The Teign swirled down between undulating hills, heavily wooded on both sides. There was a rocky weir diagonally across the river just above the trackway, which forded the water through the shallows below. The mill was downstream from the ford, but took its water through a leat that began above the weir.

‘He couldn’t have been attacked very near here or the millers would have seen or heard something,’ reasoned Gwyn.

De Wolfe agreed and looked up the long slope through the woods, where the track gradually climbed up the side of the valley towards Doccombe, then on to Moretonhampstead and Chagford. ‘But a few hundred paces away, around a bend and into the trees, they’d be out of sight and sound,’ he said. ‘A thwack with a stave and a stone against the head makes little noise.’

Thomas stirred himself out of his doleful silence. ‘What about getting rid of the body, Crowner? He was a big man, as I remember.’

‘There must have been at least two assailants, for sure. One had to distract him somehow, while the other hit him unexpectedly with his staff. Knapman was too strong and alert to let one villain get the better of him.’

‘So two men could easily have carried or dragged him through the woods to the river,’ agreed Gwyn. ‘It would have to have been downstream of the mill or he’d have been caught in the weir.’

‘It’s all wooded down there, no dwellings at all. They’d not be seen or disturbed.’

Leaving Thomas with the horses, the coroner and his officer spent the better part of an hour clambering and squelching through the trees and along the riverbank, but found nothing significant. A tidemark of dead branches and twigs showed where the water level had been a foot higher after the recent storms. ‘A body could be pushed into the water anywhere along here and leave no clue on these muddy banks,’ grumbled the Cornishman.

Frustrated, they returned to their horses and stood in the middle of the track for a few minutes, looking at the river, the forest and the road from Exeter.

‘We may as well have a word with the miller, now that we’re here,’ grunted de Wolfe, with little enthusiasm but unwilling to leave any stone unturned. They remounted and walked their steeds down the path to the mill, which was visible behind a clump of trees near the riverbank. The rumble of the water-wheel grew louder as they approached the yard, where several ox-carts were delivering sacks of grain and loading up with flour for Dunsford and other neighbouring villages. One of the carters yelled for the miller and a dusty man soon clattered down the steps from the wooden building, banging flour from his leather apron as he came.

De Wolfe announced who they were and the miller, a florid, heavy fellow with blackened stumps for teeth, immediately became deferential and almost obsequious. Walter Knapman had been his master since the tin-master had bought the mill from the manor lord and he was eager to help any investigation into his death — not least because his job might depend on who took over from the dead owner. He also had a small item of news for the coroner. ‘Since Knapman’s men from Chagford came to search for him, a lad has said that he saw some men near the track soon after Knapman left here,’ he gabbled, waving an arm vaguely behind him.

De Wolfe’s black brows came together in a fierce expression at the words. ‘Why did we not know of this earlier?’ he demanded.

The miller turned up his whitened hands deprecatingly. ‘The boy is simple, Crowner. It only came out last night, when he was talking to his father. He’s one of my labourers, lives in that hut down on the riverbank.’ He yelled for the fellow, a scrawny, pale man who looked too frail to be lifting full sacks of grain and flour.

Within minutes, he was taking de Wolfe and Gwyn down the footpath behind the mill to a ramshackle cottage made of cob, roofed with turf. A few geese and fowls scratched outside and a thin cow was tied to a post near the hole that served as a doorway. Behind a square of hurdles, half a dozen pigs squealed their way around a mud-patch.

‘My wife keeps a few swine and our youngest son tends them. He was born late in my life and his poor mind is addled — though his three brothers are all well,’ the man said defensively. His Devon accent was so thick that even de Wolfe, a native of the south of the county, had difficulty in following his words.

‘What’s this news he might have about Master Knapman?’ the coroner snapped impatiently.

For answer, the mill-man stuck his head through the doorway and yelled something unintelligible. A moment later, a boy staggered out, helped by a push from a shadowy female figure inside the dwelling. ‘He’s wary of strangers since he was set on for sport by some soldiers passing on the road,’ explained his father, apologetically. He grabbed the lad by the arm and shouted at him, ‘Come now, Arthur, tell these gentlemen what you said to me last night.’

The boy was older than he appeared at first sight, probably thirteen or so, but his round, vacant face suggested that his comprehension was that of a child half his age. The tip of his tongue protruded between loose lips as his small eyes roved fearfully across the strangers’ faces. He muttered something that de Wolfe could not catch. ‘What did he say?’ he snapped.

The father translated and enlarged on his son’s story. ‘On the day the master vanished, Arthur here was herding the pigs in the wood on the other side of the main track, a tidy way up the hill. It must have been some time before noon as he knew he must soon come back here for his dinner.’

John thought testily that the mill-man was as bad as Gwyn for slowness in coming to the point, but with an effort he held his tongue.

‘He says he saw Master Knapman ride up the track from the mill and meet another horseman who came out of the wood. They both stopped then went back into the forest where there is a deer-track.’ He stopped to shake the boy by the shoulder and more indistinct words passed between them. Thomas, a Hampshireman, had not the faintest idea of what they said, so thick was their local accent.

‘Was that all he saw? Who was the other man? Does he know?’ demanded the coroner.

The father shook his head. ‘He knows the master by sight. The other was a stranger.’

‘Was that all he saw?’

‘No. He says another man, on foot with no horse, came out of the trees lower down the road and followed the two riders into the forest. That was the last he saw of them as he wanted his dinner and came home then.’

The lad looked from one man to the other as they spoke, his dull eyes striving to make sense of what was going on.

‘What were the men like, son?’ asked Gwyn, stooping to the boy and speaking kindly.

‘You’ll have to speak up, sir — he’s hard of hearing, too, has been since a babe.’ The father repeated the question in his loud, crude dialect and received some garbled answer from the boy.

‘He say he only knew the master — the others were strangers.’

‘Were they tall or short? What were they wearing? What sort of horse did the first man ride?’ De Wolfe rapped out a string of questions, but the result was disappointing.

‘His eyes are poor too, sir — he was the runt of our litter, as God willed it. He says the man on foot was big, that’s all he knows. The mounted man had a brown horse and wore some brown garment.’

Five more minutes of fruitless questioning brought forth no more information, but reduced the lad to frightened tears.

Gwyn, a lover of dogs and children, wagged his head at de Wolfe. ‘We’ll get nothing more from the poor boy now.’ He led him back to the doorway and placed a halved penny in his hand, before gently pushing him inside to his hovering mother.

‘Can you show us where this deer-track is?’ grunted de Wolfe to the mill-man. A few moments later, the labourer was indicating a narrow path, half hidden by a bramble bush, leading into the sweep of trees that climbed the hill on the southern side of the road.

‘Did the men from Chagford search this path on Tuesday?’ asked Gwyn.

The man shrugged. ‘I wasn’t here — and maybe they did, but there are many such tracks trodden by animals all along these roads.’

Dismounting again and leaving their horses with Thomas, de Wolfe and the other two men pushed their way through the undergrowth into the dimness of the trees. Though the leaf canopy had not yet fully opened, there were enough broken green twigs and plants to show where a passage had recently been forced along the path — and underfoot, the prints of shod horses were visible in muddy patches.

‘It’s not rained much since that storm, not enough to wipe out all these marks,’ observed Gwyn.

A hundred yards into the wood, a rocky outcrop made a small clearing in the beeches and oaks. Around it, a ring of grass and scrub alternated with mud washed down by a small stream from higher up the slope. Here there were more confused hoofmarks and some small bushes had been crushed into the mire. The three men examined the ground carefully, but could make little sense of what might have taken place there.

‘Several horses have done more than just follow the track,’ observed de Wolfe. ‘They must have moved back and forth in this area, but that’s all that can be said.’

‘And there’s nothing special about the hoof-prints — no chance of matching them with any particular beast,’ grumbled Gwyn. He followed the track a little way beyond the clearing, but soon returned to say that there were no signs that horsemen had used it recently. ‘Whoever came here must have returned by the same path,’ he added.

As they returned to the road, de Wolfe considered the significance of what the boy had seen. ‘To leave the road and go to that clearing would be pointless in itself, so it might be it was used only for an ambush.’

Gwyn scratched his crotch vigorously as an aid to thought. ‘If Knapman willingly followed a man into the wood, he must surely have known the fellow. What lone traveller would otherwise risk going into the forest with a stranger, in these days when outlaws and trail-bastons abound?’

De Wolfe agreed with his officer, but neither had any more ideas of what might have happened on that fateful Monday.

They reached the road and dismissed the mill-man with their thanks. As he loped away down the track, de Wolfe cursed the fact that his idiot son had been unable to remember any better details. ‘He couldn’t even tell us whether that last man carried a staff!’

Gwyn tried to placate his master. ‘Yet we have far more information now, thanks to the boy. We had nothing at all before. The time and the place fit, and at least the poor child was definite about Knapman’s identity.’

Frustrated, they abandoned their search and continued their journey, arriving in Chagford in time to hear the noon bell ringing from St Michael’s tower, a reminder of Walter Knapman’s generosity. De Wolfe again battened on the hospitality of the manor lord, Hugh Wibbery, and they went first to his demesne, which was really a large barton rather than a manor house, outside the town on the south-west, where the land rose towards the moor.

Wibbery reminded de Wolfe of his own brother William — not in appearance, for he was a short, thick-set man with a weatherbeaten red face, but for his single-minded interest in his estate. The Wibberys had been in Chagford for half a century, taking over the tenancy from the Bishop of Coutance after Ralph Pagnell’s family had died out. They were sometimes known as the de Chagfords, but Hugh was more concerned with his fields and sheep than with local politics, keeping out of town affairs as much as possible. Indeed, he envied the nearby de Prouz family at Gidleigh Castle, for they owned most of the land around Chagford, though not the town itself. It was true that he reaped much benefit from market dues and the trade brought in by the tinners and their merchants, but he left most of the administration to his bailiff and steward, preferring to walk his fields and pastures, a farmer at heart.

The timber house with a shingled roof had a wide stockade around it but, like John’s own home at Stoke-in-Teignhead, this was more of a stock fence than a defensive fortification. The drawbridge over the encircling ditch had not been raised in years, and as the trio entered, the coroner noticed that its outer end had sunk completely into the turf. Wibbery greeted them civilly enough, considering that manor lords often had cause to groan when official visitors claimed accommodation. However, a knight and two servants posed no problem — unlike a passing baron or bishop with a considerable entourage. Then the disruption and cost in entertainment, food and fodder might be considerable. A visit from an itinerant noble, or even the King, could be ruinous.

The coroner was offered a mattress in a small room off the solar behind the main hall, but graciously declined, saying that he was used to sleeping in far worse places than beside the fire-pit in the hall. Gwyn and Thomas would bed down in the servants’ hut in the bailey outside — but all this was hours hence: de Wolfe had much to do that afternoon and evening.

Risking a worsening of his clerk’s melancholia, he sent Thomas to call upon the parish priest, knowing from experience that the little man had a gift for worming out confidences, especially from the clergy. As an excuse, Thomas was to enquire about the best site for an inquest the next day and to learn what arrangements had been made for burying the murdered tin-master.

Gwyn’s own task might also have been predicted: he was to tour the alehouses and inns of Chagford to see what gossip he could pick up. For a small town, there were many such taverns, at least six — but with the influx of tinners for the coinage ceremonies and the frequent arrival of metal merchants both from England and abroad, food, drink and accommodation were in frequent demand.

As soon as they had eaten at the manor, the three went their separate ways, de Wolfe to Knapman’s house below the church. Harold the steward had already been busy and a large cross of black cloth was nailed to the main door. In the larger room, the shutters were closed and a length of purple velvet was draped over the crucifix hanging on the wall. The maids went on tiptoe and Harold had even ordered the ostlers to muffle the horses’ feet with sacking as they took them across the yard. It seemed to John that this somewhat excessive mourning had been the steward’s idea: none of the family seemed prostrate with grief.

The widow and her brother-in-law received the coroner in the smaller of the two ground-floor rooms. The other was being kept for Walter’s body when it arrived. Joan wore a black kirtle, of obvious expense and modern style. The gold embroidery around the neckline and hem was matched by a gilt cord wound several times around her slim waist. The gold tassels on its ends almost brushed the ground, as did the tippets of her dangling sleeve-cuffs. As another gesture to bereavement, she had hidden her dark hair under a snowy linen cover-chief, secured by a golden band around her forehead. A wimple of white silk concealed her ears and neck. Altogether the effect was alluring rather than poignant, and the impressionable de Wolfe realised again why young widows rarely stayed unmarried for long.

When he entered, Joan was standing near the window opening, staring out into the front garden pensively, but she turned and offered him her hand. De Wolfe, uncomfortably aware that his appreciation of her was out of keeping with the morbid circumstances, took her fingers and gave a stiff bow. He made some stilted expressions of sympathy, amid throat-clearings and grunts, then stepped back to acknowledge her mother, Lucy, who sat near the fire. Matthew had risen from his place at the table, where he had been toying with a cup of wine.

Another man was sitting near Lucy and Joan briefly introduced him. ‘This is my elder brother Roland, a tanner from Ashburton — as was my first husband. He has come to offer our mother and me support in this unhappy time.’ Her voice was low and soft, as her violet eyes looked up at de Wolfe from under long dark lashes. Incongruously he found himself calculating how Chagford compared with Dawlish in the time it would take him to ride from Exeter.

Roland of Ashburton muttered a grudging acknowledgement of his sister’s introduction. He was a stocky man of about thirty, who looked like an artisan, uncomfortably dressed in his Sunday-best tunic and breeches. He glared at everyone except his mother and sister.

‘The carter should be here well before dusk,’ said Matthew, uneasy at the tense atmosphere in the room, which seemed to be due in large part to Roland’s presence. He was unsure how they should start this conversation with the coroner, which he assumed would be some sort of interrogation.

Joan invited de Wolfe to sit and they joined Matthew at the table, leaving the older woman and her grim-looking son near the hearth. The hovering Harold brought more cups and wine with a small basket of fresh wafers, thin sweet discs of pastry straight from the oven.

De Wolfe cleared his throat again. ‘I must hold the formal inquest tomorrow — not that in the circumstances it can achieve much,’ he admitted. He told them of the evidence of the lad from the mill, but emphasised that this was not firm enough proof that the death had occurred there, however suggestive it might be.

‘Strictly speaking, I should be holding this inquest at Teignmouth, where the body was found, but that would be even more pointless.’

Lucy’s mother gave a loud sniff, but de Wolfe felt it was more for appearance’s sake than a true expression of grief. Joan remained impassive, and he felt sure that not a tear had been shed down that calm and lovely face all night.

‘There is no doubt that Walter was deliberately slain?’ she asked, in a low monotone. ‘Could he not have fallen from his horse?’

‘He might have fallen, but he could not have received such a blow across his back. Riding into a low branch would have marked his face or chest but not his back, lady. And the evidence of the boy from the mill strongly suggests that two other men were involved.’

‘Did he suffer at the end?’ she persisted.

John failed to decide whether she was forcing herself to appear concerned or whether she was trying to punish herself from guilt at betraying her late husband. ‘He had a severe injury to the head, madam,’ he answered gruffly, ‘which would have rendered him senseless and unable to feel pain or distress — but I honestly cannot say when that blow was inflicted. It might even have been due to the final fall from his steed on to hard ground.’

Matthew, flushed from the wine he had been supping through most of the day, slapped his palm on the table. ‘Walter was a fine horseman. I do not recollect him coming off his mount since we were children. He must have been attacked — and by more than one person, for he would never have been taken unawares unless he was distracted by someone else.’

De Wolfe thought that this probably excluded Matthew as a suspect. No guilty person would pass up the chance of having his crime mistaken for an accident — unless it was a double bluff.

‘We know roughly how and where he died, for his body had to be taken to the river and his horse was found in the same vicinity. What we have no idea about is why he was killed.’ He stared directly into the beautiful eyes of the dead man’s wife, then swung round to Knapman’s twin brother. ‘He was a rich and active trader, with a forceful manner. No doubt he had rivals and those who envied him — but would that be enough to encourage his murder?’

Matthew’s eyes dropped from de Wolfe’s glare, and for the first time the coroner sensed that the tin-merchant had something to hide.

‘It must be connected with the tinning, Crowner. I heard what happened at the Great Court the other day. There are those who were for Walter, who wanted him to displace the sheriff as Lord Warden, but there were others who coveted his success.’

He paused and his eyes came up to meet de Wolfe’s again. ‘Of course, there were also those who were furious that he wished to lead all the tinners as Warden. Not least Richard de Revelle — but some of the tinners strongly favoured other leaders.’

Lucy cut in from across the room, surprising de Wolfe with her apparent grasp of tinners’ politics: ‘Don’t forget William de Wrotham and Geoffrey Fitz-Peters! They’ve both got their eye on the Wardenship — and William fancies his chances as sheriff, when that rogue de Revelle is dismissed … or hanged, which is more likely.’

At this, de Wolfe warmed a little to the old harridan. He turned again to the brother. ‘Matthew, do you suspect anyone in particular in all this intrigue?’

The man from Exeter glanced warily at Joan. ‘I’d not wish to blacken any man’s character without proof, which seems singularly lacking here. But I’m sure the answer lies among the tinners somewhere, unless this was some stray band of forest outlaws or cutpurses who set upon my brother.’

De Wolfe shook his head abruptly, his thick black hair swinging across his neck. ‘He still had a leather scrip strapped to his belt with ample coin inside. He was not killed for theft.’

Matthew gestured his incomprehension and took a deep draught of his wine.

‘What about this mad old Saxon we heard about at the last inquest, Aethelfrith? Is there any news of him?’ demanded the coroner.

Matthew knew nothing of him and Joan remained silent, but then a voice from the doorway said, ‘I beg your leave, Crowner, but I heard something yesterday.’

It was Harold, who was lurking within earshot, like most veteran servants. ‘A man in the Crown Inn, when I was there, said he had heard that Aethelfrith had been seen up on Scorhill Down a few days ago.’

‘Where’s that?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘On the edge of the high moor, only a couple of miles from here, above the North Teign stream,’ offered Matthew, who had been raised in Chagford and knew it as well as his brother.

‘It seems he was trying to smash the furnace in a small blowing-house, but a couple of tinners arrived and he ran away,’ finished Harold.

‘Was it one of ours?’ demanded Matthew, and de Wolfe noted the possessiveness in his tone.

‘No, it belonged to Acland,’ said the steward, with a trace of satisfaction in his voice. His eyes slid to the mistress of the house.

Joan caught the glance and her smooth cheeks reddened, but she took her revenge on the old servant. ‘You may leave us now, Harold. These are private matters. Go and see that some late supper is set out for our guests.’

The Saxon scowled as he turned to leave, all too conscious that a new regime held sway, now that the master he had served for so long had been replaced by this enigmatic beauty.

De Wolfe spent a few more minutes in fruitlessly seeking more information, trying to discover if Knapman had had any specific enemies, but neither Matthew nor Joan could — or would — offer any suggestion. He changed his approach. ‘Did he own the entire business or were you a partner?’ he asked Matthew.

‘We were not exactly partners but were both wholly involved in the tin trade. When we were young we learned the business the hard way, working as ordinary tinners for our father. Then we became overmen. Eventually Walter and I shared in the profits, rather than getting a wage. When our father died about ten years ago, he left his half-dozen tin workings to Walter, but bequeathed me money to set up in Exeter as the outlet for Walter’s production. I dealt with the buyers, in England and abroad, and arranged transport and shipment, taking a share of the sale price for my efforts. It worked well and we were both happy with the arrangement. I handled some tin for others as well, but all Walter’s output goes through my warehouse.’

‘What will happen now that he’s dead?’ asked the coroner.

Matthew Knapman looked anxiously across at his sister-in-law. ‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to carry on as we were until something is settled. His stepson Peter Jordan will have to come up here for now and do his best to organise the stream-work gangs and the smelting. I must handle the Exeter end. Peter knows enough about tinning to keep the business afloat, while the overmen can handle the streaming teams and keep the tin coming.’

‘So who will inherit the business?

Matthew turned up his hands in a gesture of dismayed resignation. ‘God knows! Walter was in the prime of life and the best of health. We had made no plans for his sudden departure. I think that, long ago, he went to the lawyer to make a will, and if that’s true, it all depends on what’s in it.’

The serene widow, who had been listening silently to this exchange, decided it was time that she put her stamp of authority on the discussion. ‘Nothing can be settled until I visit Walter’s lawyer in Exeter. He told me some time ago that Robert Courteman handled his affairs, but I have no knowledge of what arrangements he made. We never discussed business matters. Now I have no choice but to seek out this man.’

De Wolfe noticed that she emphasised the ‘I’, subtly but effectively separating her own interests from those of the rest of the family.

Matthew must have noticed it too, for he tried to stake his own claim. ‘Indeed, we must clear these matters up as quickly as possible. Many men’s livelihoods depend upon the Knapman tin-workings.’ He shot another worried look at Joan, who was staring impassively once more at the planks of the oaken table.

De Wolfe wondered if anything could stir her emotions but, from his wide experience of women, decided that anyone who could crack that virgin-like veneer would find seething passion beneath. From the way she was behaving, he doubted that Walter Knapman had ever penetrated the shell that seemed to cocoon his lovely wife.

Her brother spoke for the first time. ‘Whatever a will says, it’s obvious that the bulk of his wealth should go to his wife. If the testament says otherwise, we’ll contest it — in the courts if need be!’

This time, John noticed the ‘we’, and again marvelled at how previously unknown relatives appeared out of the woodwork when there was so much as a whisper about inheritance.

Soon de Wolfe had run out of questions, especially since he had heard virtually no answers of any consequence. Taking his leave, he left the family to await the arrival of the corpse and strode out of the house.

Harold pattered after him, and as de Wolfe took Odin’s reins from a stable-boy, the steward came up close and glanced furtively over his shoulder towards the house. ‘Crowner, maybe it’s not my place to speak out of turn, but I fear that old Aethelfrith will get blamed for this as a scapegoat, whether he was involved or not. Crazy as he is, he’s a fellow Saxon and I can’t stand by to see him hanged by default.’

De Wolfe’s bushy brows came together in puzzlement. What was the man trying to say? ‘Well, what about it?’ he prompted brusquely.

With another backward glance at the closed shutters, Harold came so close that John could smell the onions on his breath. ‘The first person to call when it was known that the master was missing was Stephen Acland — he was even here when Matthew brought the news of his death.’ He paused, as if undecided whether to go the final yard. ‘At the last inquest, you saw the hate between Acland and my master over the tin-works. Well, it was not only streaming that Acland wanted to wrest from him but something more personal. I’m sure you’ll know what I mean, Crowner.’

With that, his nerve failed him and he dodged back to the house, bent almost double as if he was afraid of being seen.

De Wolfe put his foot in a stirrup and hoisted himself aboard Odin’s broad back. As he walked the horse away, his long face bore a frown of deep concentration as he digested Harold’s insinuations.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In which Crowner John goes to Chagford

De Wolfe jogged up past Chagford’s church and along the fronts of several taverns to the small square, which was a hive of activity. Apart from the usual stalls and booths around the edge, a large temporary shelter was being erected in the centre, ready for the coinage ceremony, which was due to start the next day. A series of poles was being hammered into the packed earth, to support a flimsy roof of tightly woven reed panels to keep off the rain, should it sweep in from the moor.

The coinage would bring a great increase in trade apart from tin to Chagford: chapmen, hawkers, whores and other opportunists would arrive to take advantage of the hundreds of tinners who swelled the population for a couple of days, usually four times a year. The other Stannary towns of Tavistock and Ashburton experienced a similar periodic boom. Their coinage ceremonies took place at other times so that tinners who missed one occasion could travel further afield for their bars to be stamped and taxed.

However, de Wolfe had other things on his mind than coinage, and walked Odin sedately across the top of the square to reach the road that forked right then went downhill towards the small wooden bridge over the Teign, almost half a mile further on. He had asked directions near the square, and a few minutes later had left the straggle of houses and was passing between strip-fields and some common pasture leading into the river valley. The land all around was a random maze of hills and dells, deeply cut by streams. It was glowing with the pale green of spring, though in the distance the menacing grey-brown of the high moor was always visible.

A few hundred yards before the bridge, the track forked again and in the angle stood a long-house, with a substantial piece of land occupying much of the triangle between the two roads. Two cow byres and a couple of outhouses lay beyond the main building, which was of limewashed cob with a well-thatched roof. Long and low, there was a door and shuttered windows towards one end, indicating the living quarters, while the other half was for animals, with a large barn door in the pine end. A vegetable garden surrounded the house, and beyond a fence there was a paddock with some sheep, new lambs and a pen for swine. Though not on the same grand scale as the Knapman household, this looked a comfortable, prosperous dwelling.

There was a drystone wall around the land, with a loose hurdle acting as a gate across a gap in front of the house. John slid down from Odin and tied the stallion to a nearby sapling. He pulled aside the hurdle, and as he walked towards the door he heard voices at the back. Going round the stable end of the long-house, he saw three men sitting on a rough bench fashioned from a tree-trunk, each with a quart pot in his hand. They rose abruptly at his appearance and stood scowling at him suspiciously, until one recognised him. ‘Surely you’re the crowner, sir.’

De Wolfe walked along the back wall of the house towards them. ‘And you’re Stephen Acland — I saw you at my inquest and again at Crockern Tor last week.’

The powerful-looking man waved him to a place on the bench, and the other two, their suspicions allayed, waited until he was seated, then resumed their own places on the rough-hewn log.

Acland poured cider from a large crock into a spare mug and handed it to de Wolfe. ‘No need to ask why you’re here, Crowner. We were just chewing over the tragedy ourselves. These are are two of my overmen, upon whom I rely as much as I do on breathing and eating.’

The tough-looking pair nodded a greeting to the law officer, but said nothing.

‘You knew of the death very quickly,’ observed de Wolfe.

‘I happened to be in Knapman’s house last night when his brother arrived with the evil tidings. I was there to enquire whether anything had been heard of him since he vanished. By misfortune, I was there to hear the worst possible news.’

De Wolfe stared at Acland with disconcerting frankness. ‘You were very solicitous for his welfare, considering that the antagonism between you was common knowledge.’

Acland smiled thinly. ‘In times of peril and distress, neighbours in a small town like Chagford — especially fellow tinners — forget their rivalries and draw together for support, Crowner.’

‘It was just disputes over the tinning, then, nothing else?’ de Wolfe asked provocatively.

Acland refused to be drawn. ‘Of course! What else could it have been?’ he snapped, in a voice that was part-innocent, part-annoyed.

‘It is rumoured that you have a more than passing friendship with Mistress Knapman,’ de Wolfe said gently, only too conscious of his own problems where women were concerned.

‘This damned town thrives on rumour, Crowner! It’s true I have a great regard for Joan Knapman, more than her husband showed. She was lonely. Walter only married her to possess a beautiful ornament, to show off his wealth. I was sorry for her, stuck in that big house with only her feckless mother for company.’

John made no comment, but stored up the information for future use. ‘So have you any notion of who might have killed Knapman?’ he asked, using his well-tried method of shaking the tree to see what fruit might fall out.

Acland’s large face twisted into a wry smile. ‘Plenty of choice. He made many enemies while climbing to the top of the tinner’s tree.’

‘Any particular ones?’

‘Me for one, otherwise you wouldn’t be calling here, Crowner! The gossip has sent you to me quickly, I know that only too well. Yes, I had cause to detest the man. He was too greedy, he wanted the whole of Dartmoor tin for himself — you must have seen how he acted at the Great Court last week. But I’d not kill him for it.’ He considered his words for a moment. ‘This affair of the Lord Warden, it was Knapman who started the campaign against Richard de Revelle, and not just to get rid of the sheriff — though he should be ejected. It was a means to promote himself as Warden. Maybe you should put de Revelle on your list of suspects. He’s not taking kindly to any challenge to his authority in the Stannaries.’

De Wolfe again took the bull by the horns, ignoring the scowls of the other tinners. ‘Where were you all day on Monday?’

Acland shrugged. ‘Out and about, as always. I’d be riding around my workings at this very moment if it hadn’t been for this news of Knapman’s death.’

‘Where are these workings?’

‘Mostly around Chagford and this area of the moor. I’ve not the great number of streamings that Knapman possessed, just half a dozen. That’s why I offered to buy some of his boundings from him.’

‘Can you be more exact as to where you rode on Monday? And were you alone or can someone vouch for you?’

One of the other men, a rough-faced fellow with a marked bend in his nose, came to his master’s aid. ‘If Stephen killed Knapman, which would have been a kindness, he’s hardly likely to tell you that he was riding near Dunsford, would he? And, anyway, I can swear for him, I was with him from dawn till dusk on that day.’

De Wolfe had the impression that, if required, the man would have sworn that he had been with Acland anywhere between Cathay and Iceland. Seeing that he was getting nowhere with this line of questioning, the coroner turned the conversation into other channels. ‘What will happen now about the Wardenship, with Walter gone?’

‘The sheriff will carry on as before, no doubt, screwing as much profit out of the office as possible,’ sneered Bentnose.

‘He’ll not be challenged this year,’ admitted Acland sourly. ‘I’ve got neither the time nor the inclination to carry on where Knapman left it — but the system must change. We are going to petition the Chief Justiciar for a review of the Stannaries. Both Geoffrey Fitz-Peters and William de Wrotham know that de Revelle is crooked, so they will support a plea for a commission of enquiry.’

De Wolfe nodded approvingly. ‘I know the Justiciar well, so if you need more support I am willing to help. Though, knowing the speed at which the Curia Regis works, don’t expect anything to happen inside a couple of years.’ With the King permanently in France, Hubert Walter, the Chief Justiciar and Archbishop of Canterbury, was virtually the regent of England and had so much to attend to that the Devon tinners would not be high on his list of priorities, unless the supply of the precious metal stopped flowing.

The coroner downed the rest of his cider and stood up. ‘No doubt you’ll be at the inquest in the morning. I will hold it in that shelter erected for the coinage in the square.’

‘You’ll have a large audience, Crowner, with all the tinners and merchants there, ready for the coinage straight afterwards.’

As the tin-master walked with de Wolfe around the house to the gate, the coroner expressed his pessimism as to the outcome of the inquest. ‘Like the one on Henry of Tunnaford, it can achieve little in solving the killing. I cannot even amerce Dunsford for the murdrum fine, though Walter was certainly attacked there, for the body was found twenty miles away. It would lack any sense to blame Teignmouth because it is at the mouth of the same river.’

The other man, who was walking behind them, picked up on this theme. ‘Crowner, at Henry’s inquest, you should have returned a verdict against that whoreson Aethelfrith!’ he grated angrily. ‘Yesterday another of our blowing-houses was damaged up near Throwleigh. A rock was jammed in the bellows, which stripped the teeth from the gears driven by the water-wheel. A shepherd boy saw someone running away who could only have been that damned Saxon maniac.’

As they reached the hurdle, Stephen Acland pulled it aside. ‘He would take some catching, but the tinners could organise a posse to find him, even up on the high moor where he hides out.’

De Wolfe went to his horse and untied the reins from the tree. ‘I’ll consider that, though we’ve no proof that he was Henry’s killer. It will be up to the sheriff to bring him in, although, as Warden, he could take advantage of your offer to supply a hunting party from your men. I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow, as he’ll be at the coinage.’

With the three men staring after him, he wheeled Odin round and trotted back towards Chagford.

Thomas de Peyne sat in the living room of the church house, which, though small, was the best accommodation for a parish priest that he had seen since coming to Devon almost a year ago. It had been built recently, at the same time as the renovation of the church and, like St Michael’s, owed much to Walter Knapman’s donations.

‘He deserves to be in paradise, after his generosity,’ said Paul Smithson devoutly. ‘It is a great tragedy that he has been so brutally taken from us.’

Thomas, sitting with a cup of watered wine by the fire in the centre of the room, crossed himself with his free hand. ‘But God’s will must be done, brother. His death must have been ordained for some reason that is not for us to question,’ he said sententiously.

The priest, worried about his future stipend and share of the tithes, was not so sure about God’s will but held his tongue and turned the conversation in another direction. ‘Tell me, how does a Winchester priest come to be a coroner’s clerk in Exeter?’

De Peyne had had plenty of practice in fending off this question. ‘My health has not been good. You see this stiff leg and this bent shoulder? These were a legacy of the old phthisis, which carried off my poor mother.’ He stuck as near to the truth as he could, finding this to provide the most convincing story. ‘The duties in Winchester became too arduous for me, so it was arranged though my uncle, the Archdeacon of Exeter, that I be granted a year’s leave of absence to regain my strength in the fresh air of Devon. My ability with pen and parchment seemed appropriate to serve the new post of coroner here, as Sir John de Wolfe was a close friend of John de Alençon.’

Smithson nodded understandingly and went on to tell Thomas of the arrangements for the burial, which would take place straight after the inquest. ‘Poor Walter’s twin brother and his stepson will both be here from Exeter, so there is no point in delaying their return.’ He sniffed rather delicately. ‘It seems that the widow has no need of their family support, being a most resolute lady.’

The coroner’s clerk gained the impression that the portly priest was not wholly in favour of Joan Knapman’s fortitude and decided to explore the matter further. ‘She has not been married long, I gather?’

‘Less than six months. She came from Ashburton, you see.’

He said this as if the place was somewhere beyond Arabia, instead of being the coinage town only a few miles away.

‘Would you say the marriage has been happy?’ asked Thomas, delicately.

‘On Walter’s part, certainly. He was besotted with his new wife. I fear he spoiled her, giving her everything she asked for — and much that she did not.’

‘And on her side?’ the little clerk probed.

‘She was so reserved that it was hard to know what went on in her mind. I married them in the church and it would be unChristian of me to cast any aspersions, but I felt that it was no love match on her side. Walter was a wealthy tin-master, likely to increase in stature as time went on, and Joan was attracted by his riches and his prominence.’

Thomas accepted more wine and, suspecting that the priest had already imbibed plenty before he arrived, gambled that the drink would relax his reticence. ‘Tell me, if you think it not too impertinent a question between two men of the cloth,’ he said, with a deprecatory little cough, ‘is it likely that the widow may have been casting her eye elsewhere?’

He need not have trodden so warily, for Paul Smithson, his normally waxy face pink with good wine, gave him a knowing wink from one piggy little eye.

‘It was a poorly kept secret, especially for those with sharp sight. Mistress Joan had a fancy for another tin-master — unfortunately, her husband’s main business rival.’

‘You mean Stephen Acland? Did Walter know of this?’

‘I’m sure he suspected it, though his main quarrel with Acland was over the tin-works. Stephen wanted to expand and Walter kept beating him to obtaining new boundings on the moor, as well as refusing to sell some existing sites.’

‘Was their antagonism ever violent?’

‘Not beyond words, as you saw at the last inquest. Their men may have had a fight or two, I hear. Tinners tend to take sides very strongly when their masters fall out.’

The priest poured another full cup of wine for himself and drank most of it in a gulp. ‘Maybe Walter Knapman would have been glad to see Acland in a coffin, but I doubt the feeling was mutual.’

‘You hinted that Acland and Mistress Joan were … well, very friendly. Do you think it had gone beyond mere friendship?’ The crafty Thomas suddenly appeared to take fright at his own temerity. ‘But, please, I would not wish to probe any secrets of the confessional,’ he gabbled, crossing himself spasmodically.

Paul Smithson, cup in hand, bellowed with laughter. ‘Confessional? Our dear Joan never came near the shriving pew. Anyone with half an eye could see what was going on. She’d shake off her old mother, who slept every afternoon, and dismiss her maid when she went picking flowers or riding in the countryside. By some strange coincidence, she often rode past the long-house near Chagford Bridge.’

The clerk thought he had better change the subject, before the priest became too graphic. He suspected that the vicar had a rather unhealthy interest in the comely Widow Knapman and her love life.

‘This death must have saddened Walter’s brother and stepson,’ he hazarded.

‘I’ve not seen Peter Jordan yet, but Matthew seems upset — though, considering he’s Walter’s twin, he shows little emotion. I sense his main concern is with his future as a tin-merchant until the inheritance is settled.’

‘As twins, were they close?’

‘Not really. They grew up here, I’m told, but Matthew has been in Exeter these many years.’ He paused and wiped wine from his lips with an unsteady finger. ‘From time to time there are whispers that they were not really twins or that they had different fathers — though I doubt that Nature can allow that with twins.’

Thomas sat in the priest’s house for a time, drinking sparingly while Smithson became more inebriated, but although his tongue loosened, nothing more of any real interest emerged from him and eventually the clerk escaped. Drinking gave him no pleasure and usually a splitting headache. It certainly did nothing to raise his sombre mood, and sitting in the comfortable house with the complacent priest had merely emphasised Thomas’s ecclesiastical loss.

He had left his pony in the manor barton and started to trudge back the half-mile to report to John de Wolfe. Just as he was passing the churchyard, opposite the Crown tavern, he saw a dismal procession coming towards him from the square, at the bottom of which another road came in from the direction of Exeter.

First came a black horse ridden by a young man with a dark moustache, then a light cart pulled by a pair of sturdy ponies, driven by a lad perched on the front rail. As a rearguard, four sumpter horses with empty panniers were led by a middle-aged man, the carter Matthew had employed in Exeter.

In the cart, partly hidden from view by the wooden sides, was the body of Walter Knapman, shrouded in canvas. A black flag drooped from a staff lashed to the tailboard and a wreath of ivy leaves was hung on the tip of the draught-pole between the two horses.

The carter stopped his pack-train outside the alehouse to let the cart carry on alone. As the cortège passed slowly along the street, the street vendors and passers-by stopped and bowed their heads or doffed their caps in respect for one of their most prominent townsmen, as he made his last journey to his fine house.

Thomas waited until the cart turned down past a huge oak known locally as the Cross Tree, just outside the church. When it had vanished, he turned and plodded on to find his master.

There were still a few hours of daylight left when the coroner’s team met up in the hall of Wibbery’s manor to eat and talk about the day’s events. Gwyn had spent a few hours in Chagford’s taverns, now crowded to capacity by the arrival of tinners for the coinage ceremony the next day. The timber hall was rather small and old-fashioned, with a floor of beaten earth covered in rushes and a central fire-pit inside a raised rim of stones and hardened clay. A few trestle tables had been set up with benches and stools, and more trestles rested flat against the walls. The main door, sheltered by fixed screens, gave out on to the steps down to the bailey, and another smaller door led into the solar and the guest-room, where Wibbery and his wife lived.

The three from Exeter sat at the table nearest the fire, where logs and moor peat glowed cheerfully. A matronly servant from the outside kitchen brought food that made up in quantity for what it lacked in imagination, given the limited range of meat and vegetables remaining after the long winter. It suited Gwyn well, as his capacity for food and drink was phenomenal. Mutton stew by the quart and trenchers covered with boiled bacon were supplemented by cabbage and turnips in a wooden bowl the size of a small shield.

The bottler, a wizened old man with a cleft palate, brought a large earthenware pitcher of good ale, and a smaller one of rough farm cider, which had swirls of green filaments in the bottom that reminded the more fastidious Thomas of seaweed.

De Wolfe and the Cornishman ate heartily, while the clerk picked moodily at his food. As they ate, the coroner interrogated the others between mouthfuls, learning first from Thomas what he had extracted from the plump priest of St Michael the Archangel. Then Gwyn, whose afternoon in half a dozen alehouses had not diminished his appetite for Wibbery’s brew, reported what his spying had yielded. ‘There’s big trouble fermenting among the tinners. I thought Cornish fishermen were a rough lot, but some of these lads from the moor are tougher still.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘They are resentful that Richard de Revelle remains Warden. Now that they’ve heard their best candidate to replace him is slain, they’re suspicious that it was done to put a stop to his campaign to take over the Wardenship. Some accuse the sheriff himself, others say that de Wrotham and Fitz-Peters are behind the killing.’

He stopped to stoke his mouth with bacon and cabbage, then sluice it down with a noisy gulp of ale.

‘Is that their main complaint?’

When he had swallowed sufficiently to speak, Gwyn continued. ‘No, they are mad at this Saxon fellow, the one they blame for damaging their workings. Many say that it must have been him who killed Henry of Tunnaford and others claim that he must also have slain Knapman. Some want to organise search parties to seek him out and lynch him.’

This fitted with what de Wolfe had heard, but he had always abhorred mob justice and decided to tackle de Revelle about keeping order in the county. ‘Did you hear anything about Walter Knapman? How do the tinners feel about his death?’

‘There’s a big split in their ranks. He employed over a hundred himself and they bemoan his passing, not least because they are unsure what will happen to their livelihood. Another lot work for Acland and are at daggers drawn with the Knapman crowd, especially as he was preventing Acland from expanding his business and giving them more work.’

Thomas roused himself to intervene. ‘Did anyone confirm what the priest suggested, that Acland was dallying with Walter’s new wife?’

The Cornishman wiped broth from his pendulous moustache with the back of a hand. ‘There were some winks and nudges when I asked if there was bad blood between the two tin-masters. One man in the Crown hinted that Knapman knew of his wife’s affair and was planning to set some of his men on Acland one dark night — but maybe that’s just alehouse romancing.’

‘Did you learn anything else of use?’

‘I heard some hints about brother Matthew. Some of the tinners — especially the loners who worked neither for Walter nor Stephen Acland — say that Matthew is crooked. He overcharges on his dues for selling their bars and fiddles the prices. I’m not sure how it works, but a couple of tinmen, after a few quarts, were grumbling about him. One suggested that he was even cheating his own brother.’

John pushed away his gravy-soaked trencher, unable to eat any more. ‘You seem to have wheedled a lot of gossip out of them in only a few hours.’

‘Didn’t need much wheedling — they drink like fish and their tongues are easily loosened. They seemed to take to me, especially when I let it be known that my own father was a tinner before he turned to fishing.’

‘They took to you because you’re even uglier and rougher than most of them,’ sneered Thomas, with a brief return to his old baiting of the coroner’s henchman.

For once, Gwyn looked pleased at the little clerk’s insult, hoping it heralded a rise in Thomas’s spirits. In spite of all the teasing and mock contempt Gwyn usually showered on him, he was quite fond of him, and since his recent depression had been concerned for his welfare.

The coroner hunched over his final pot of ale and, half to himself, mulled over the situation in and around Chagford. ‘We’ve got one apparently senseless slaying of an inoffensive tinner, old Henry, and, within days, a more subtle killing of his master. So are they connected and did the same hand kill both men?’

All he got by way of an answer from Gwyn was a grunt, and Thomas had subsided once more into silence.

‘There seems to be a possibility that this Aethelfrith could have killed the overman, as it’s in his territory, so to speak, and he’s been seen damaging other tin-workings. But killing Knapman seems unlikely — Dunsford is well away from his usual haunts and, anyway, it looks as if at least two men attacked Walter.’

‘Maybe there’s more than one mad Saxon on the moor?’ contributed Gwyn, using his dagger to slice a shrivelled apple from last autumn’s crop.

‘No one’s suggested it yet,’ said de Wolfe, with a shrug. ‘Now then, we’ve got Acland, who had a grudge over tin-works with Walter Knapman and who strongly objected to him campaigning to be the next Warden of the Stannaries. And he fancies Knapman’s wife, who is now an attractive and probably wealthy widow ready to snap up.’ He rasped his fingernails thoughtfully down the black stubble on his face. ‘And Gwyn says he heard murmuring about brother Matthew’s possible dishonesty, even towards his brother. It may be only a rumour, but if it is true, if Walter was beginning to suspect such treachery, would Matthew want him silenced?’

‘A bit far-fetched, Crowner,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘I only repeated what I heard from two tinners, and it may have no damned truth in it at all.’

De Wolfe pondered this, then finished the last of his ale and stood up. ‘I’ll go down to the town and see the grieving family again. I’d better tell them of the arrangements for the inquest and the return to them of the corpse for burial.’

Thomas roused himself enough to tell his master that he had seen the carter arrive with Knapman’s body some time ago.

‘A young fellow on a good horse was escorting it along the high street.’

‘That will have been Peter Jordan, the stepson. I need a word with him, too.’

Leaving Gwyn still eating and his clerk perched despondently on his bench like a bedraggled sparrow, de Wolfe went down to the bailey and fetched Odin from the stable. He walked him slowly down the lane to Chagford, pulling his cloak around him as a chill wind began to blow from the east. Though signs of spring were everywhere, a great band of grey cloud was moving across the sky, with a pinkish tinge that suggested snow to come.

The town was full of men as he passed the square, some already drunk and quarrelsome even though it was only early evening. The booth for the coinage was finished and an overflow from the alehouses around it were using it for drinking, arguing and fighting. Gwyn had been right when he observed that tinners were a tough bunch — it was a night for local folk to stay behind their own front doors.

When he reached the Knapman demesne below the church, Harold came out of the back door as de Wolfe handed his stallion to an ostler’s lad. The Saxon looked even more tragic than before and was wringing his bony hands as he came across the yard. ‘The master has come home, Crowner. He’s in the main living room now.’ He spoke as if Walter was alive and waiting to receive guests. ‘Peter is here, as well as Matthew,’ added Harold, in a sepulchral voice.

He led the way indoors, and as John passed through the central passage he looked into the larger room and saw a shrouded body lying on the table, a lighted candle at head and foot. The parish priest and two old dames were with it, the one to shrive and the others to wash the tinner’s corpse.

The steward showed him into the other room, where a silent group sat around the large stone hearth that occupied most of one wall. Matthew Knapman and Peter Jordan rose as he entered and Harold pulled an oaken stool across for him to join the half-circle around the fire. The delectable Joan and her mother Lucy acknowledged him with nods and faint smiles, but Joan’s surly brother Roland merely scowled at him.

The coroner perched on his stool like a black raven among some pigeons and a woodpecker — Joan had discarded her mourning dress and was wearing a kirtle of iridescent green silk. John hoped that she would revert to her black for the inquest and burial tomorrow, or local tongues would wag more than ever.

He broke the silence by explaining that an inquest was necessary because of the violent death, and repeated his view that it was unlikely any light would be cast on the identity of the perpetrator.

‘The jury, in a death that happened miles away, will have no personal knowledge of the circumstances, and can only reach a verdict of murder by persons unknown,’ he said baldly.

‘What about this presentment business?’ asked the stepson. De Wolfe marked him down as a sharp, intelligent young man, even if the black moustache overpowered the narrow, pale face.

‘Your stepfather was certainly not a Saxon, though these days the distinction between Norman and English is becoming so blurred as to be often impossible to determine.’

‘It’s just another way to squeeze money from us. It should be abolished,’ complained Matthew. ‘The King uses every device to raise more cash for his wars in France. We still haven’t paid all the ransom money to the bloody Germans.’

De Wolfe ignored this valid but mildly treasonable remark and answered Jordan’s question. ‘I will have my clerk record that no presentment of Englishry was made, but in my discretion I will ignore the matter of the murdrum fine, as the inquest is not being held at Teignmouth.’ He hunched his shoulders and stuck his head out towards Matthew Knapman. ‘What is the situation about Walter’s tin-workings? My officer tells me that there is concern among his tinners for the security of their employment.’

‘I can look after the stream-workings, until things are settled,’ said Roland, harshly and unexpectedly. ‘I did some tinning once, as a prospector, before I became a tanner.’

There was a silence, but everyone ignored his offer. Matthew returned to the coroner’s question. ‘It depends on what’s contained in his will, if there is one. We have to consult the lawyer in Exeter to see if Walter made such provision.’

Lucy piped up from her corner by the fire. ‘If there’s any justice, his widow should inherit. That’s surely the law.’ Her son nodded vigorously, glaring around at the others.

Peter Jordan, his face suddenly flushed, shook his head. ‘It certainly is not, and if a will has been made, that decides the matter. If there is no will, the laws of intestacy hold.’

John had picked up a smattering of the law since he had been obliged to attend most of the court sittings in Exeter in all manner of issues. ‘It will be complicated, then,’ he ruminated. ‘Walter had no natural children, but had a brother, a stepson and a wife?’

‘And I am the nearest to being his child, by custom if not by blood,’ cut in Peter Jordan, to the accompaniment of a sneer from Roland.

De Wolfe shrugged, but before he could speak, Matthew thrust into the conversation. ‘I am his only blood relation and a closer one would be impossible to find — not only a brother but a twin, sharing the same womb.’

The coroner noted once again how the prospect of wealth made the silent garrulous and argumentative, rapidly thrusting mourning into the background. Perhaps Joan Knapman had the same impression, for she spoke for the first time. In spite of the softness of her voice, it held something that gripped the attention of the others.

‘Let us not soil the moment with concern about money. The men will work as they work every other day, until we know whether there is a will and what it contains. Let us put Walter in the earth before we begin fighting over his possessions.’

This sensible advice silenced the other claimants and the conversation was diverted by the arrival of the priest from the other room. He wore a long black tunic, carried a leatherbound missal and wore a narrow brocade stole around his neck as a concession to the occasion. For a few moments he discussed with them the nature of the service in St Michael’s. Then de Wolfe confirmed that the body must be moved from the house to the square, as the jury had to inspect it; immediately afterwards it could return to the church. ‘I shall hold the inquest two hours after dawn. It will last but a few minutes so we can clear from the square before the coinage begins.’

Matthew sighed. ‘It seems appropriate that Walter’s last appearance should coincide with a ceremony that he attended scores of times, central to the whole business of being a tinner. There will be many there to mark and regret his passing.’

De Wolfe hoped privately that the faction who were not so well disposed to the Knapman empire would behave themselves on the morrow.

CHAPTER TWELVE

In which Crowner John observes the coinage

Rolled in his cloak and lying on a hessian bag filled with straw, de Wolfe spent a comfortable night by the fire-pit in Hugh Wibbery’s hall.

He awoke as dawn was breaking, disturbed by a servant who brought sycamore logs to liven the peat fire that had smouldered all night.

Sitting up, he saw that all around the central hearth men were lying like the spokes of a wheel. Many were stirring, and gradually all clambered to their feet and made their way either outside to their tasks or to the trestles set against the walls, where bread, oatmeal porridge, cold meat, boiled salt fish and ale were provided to break their fast. There was no chapel in the manor house and John saw no sign of morning devotions, although Thomas was mumbling and crossing himself in a corner. When he had finished, he came to the table to pick listlessly at some bread and cheese.

Gwyn was his usual genial self, looking even more crumpled and dishevelled in his frayed leather jerkin and serge breeches, his wild auburn hair tangled from a night on the floor. ‘Are we going straight home after the inquest, Crowner?’ he enquired between mouthfuls of porridge, which he ladled from a wooden bowl with a spoon carved from a cow’s horn.

‘I want to stay awhile to see this coinage and to cast an eye over some of the tinners,’ replied de Wolfe. He omitted to say that he was interested to see how the sheriff fared with such ill-feeling against him. His abiding contempt for his brother-in-law made him always hopeful for the sheriff’s downfall.

Gwyn might have read his thoughts, for he asked why de Revelle was not staying overnight with Hugh Wibbery.

‘It’s not grand enough for him here,’ replied de Wolfe sarcastically. ‘I heard that he was going to lodge with de Prouz at Gidleigh Castle. They are bigger landowners than Wibbery and their place is more to Richard’s elevated tastes than this glorified farmhouse.’

‘Safer for him in a castle, too, if the tinners turn nasty against him,’ added the Cornishman perceptively.

‘Well, he’ll have to run the gauntlet of them in Chagford today. No doubt he’ll have brought plenty of his garrison to protect himself.’

And so it proved, for when they rode down to the town a little later, the square reminded the former Crusader of the plain before Acre. Not only had the sheriff brought troops under their sergeant, but someone told Gwyn that he also had the constable of Rougemont with him, the statuesque Ralph Morin, who was in charge of all military activity in the King’s castle of Exeter.

The small square was packed with people, and men-at-arms were strategically placed at intervals all around the margins, close to the stalls and booths, whose owners were hoping for a roaring trade all day. Carts and pack-horses pushed their way through the milling throng, and although it had been daylight for only a little over an hour, buying and selling was going on apace. De Wolfe and his officer left their horses with the morose Thomas in a side lane, and when they emerged, the coroner noticed that one thing was different from a usual market-day or fair in a country town: crude tin stood everywhere, each stack closely guarded by a couple of men. Some was piled into ox-carts or in panniers on sumpter horses, more was in hand-barrows, pushed by independent tinners, and yet more had already been off-loaded on to the edges of the square, where the dirty grey lumps of poorly smelted metal were stacked like misshapen bricks.

John stopped by one small heap, protected by a rough-looking old man who sat on the ground alongside his bars, chewing gummily at pieces of bread that he had torn off a loaf. As the old tinner stared up suspiciously at the coroner, de Wolfe picked up one of the lumps and inspected it with some curiosity. ‘This is the stuff that gives rise to all this trouble? It looks a pretty dull product to me.’ He weighed it experimentally in his hand. ‘But very heavy for its size. And dark grey and dirty.’

As the son of a tinner, Gwyn was able to explain, ‘They often call this crude metal “black tin”, for it’s full of impurities. It’s smelted in those blowing-houses by stacking tin shode in layers with charcoal and blasting it white-hot with bellows. Some of the charcoal and slag stays in each bar. That’s why it looks so dull and grimy.’

As they walked away, de Wolfe asked his oracle a further question: ‘I expected the ingots to be neat and regular, not those rough lumps.’

‘The moulds they’re made in are crude, that’s why. The furnaces in the blowing-houses are tapped off into cavities hacked into slabs of rock with a chisel, so the bar can only be as regular as the hole it’s poured into.’

Having exhausted the technicalities of tin production, de Wolfe led the way across to the temporary shelter that had been put up in the middle of the square. There were more stacks of tin piled around the edges, but the centre was kept clear by ropes stretched at knee height between the dozen supporting poles. Two of the sheriff’s soldiers patrolled the barrier, to prevent both tinkers and urchins from sneaking inside.

As they reached the rope, they were joined by a harassed-looking Sergeant Gabriel, who raised his hand in a stiff salute. ‘God’s breath, Crowner, this place is a cross between the May Fair and the battle of Arsuf!’ He was an old Crusader, too, and a strong bond of mutual respect had formed between the three men. De Wolfe gave the flustered soldier one of his rare grins. ‘What’s the problem, sergeant?’

‘The traders and hawkers want to sell anything to anybody. You — begging your pardon, sir — want to hold an inquest. Half the tinners want their bars coined and the other half want to attack the sheriff.’

Gwyn gave his friend a playful punch on the shoulder, which sent him staggering. ‘You should be happy, then, lad! Especially with the last part.’

Gabriel, a devoted royalist like de Wolfe, had no time for Richard de Revelle, but as the sheriff was his master, he had to keep his feelings well hidden.

‘Then the sooner we get this inquest out of the way the better,’ said the coroner.

Gabriel nodded. ‘The bailiff has rounded up a score of men for the jury — you said it was pointless fetching any from outside Chagford so they’re all locals, a few tinners among them.’

Gwyn went off to shepherd the jurymen into the enclosure, as John spotted a wedge of men-at-arms pushing through the crowd at the top of the square, making a way for two figures on horseback. They were Richard de Revelle and his constable, Ralph Morin, who alighted alongside him, leaving their steeds to be taken away by a soldier. Already the noise in the marketplace had changed in quality, with a growling tone and frank catcalls as the many tinners noticed the sheriff’s arrival.

‘Good day, brother-in-law,’ greeted the coroner. ‘I see you’ve not worn your chain-mail … Let’s hope that was not a mistake!’

The sheriff glowered at him and looked apprehensively around at the crowd. Many were staring at him aggressively and a few shook their fists at him, before melting away behind their fellows.

‘Damned rabble!’ muttered de Revelle, under his breath. ‘I trust you’ll not be holding up the start of my coinage too long, with this inquest of yours.’

‘Here’s the corpse now,’ reported Gabriel, as again his men forced a path through the throng, this time for a procession coming from the church. Four of Knapman’s overmen were carrying a bier, a device of dark oak that resembled a short wide ladder. Normally, it hung from the rafters at the back of the church, to remind folk of their mortality, but today it bore the shrouded body of Walter. Walking behind were the widow Joan, her mother and brother, Paul Smithson, Matthew Knapman and Peter Jordan, followed by Harold the steward and most of Knapman’s other servants.

At the enclosure, the bier was set down on a pair of trestles and the jury filed behind it, stepping over the surrounding ropes. Thomas de Peyne, who had handed over the horses to one of Gabriel’s men, came in with his writing bag and set up his pen and parchment on an empty cask, though there was little enough to be recorded in this particular case. As the crowd pressed in all around the temporary shelter, some sad, many angry and yet more indifferently curious, Gwyn yelled out his customary summons to attend the King’s coroner.

The sheriff and Ralph Morin stood to one side as de Wolfe went through a routine similar to that he had conducted over the headless body of Henry of Tunnaford. He dispensed with presentment of Englishry and again relieved the townsfolk by disregarding the murdrum fine. This time, the duty of the jury to examine the fatal wounds was less gory than before: they had only to file past the bier and look at the head wound and the back. Gwyn hauled the body on to its side, displaying the double-tracked bruise, which was now more prominent after death, though somewhat blurred by the staining where the blood in the body had sunk to the lowest level of the back. The two women were standing at one end of the bier and were spared this, as well as the sight of a tinge of green in the flanks.

There was little else to be said, and ten minutes later de Wolfe stood in front of the now covered corpse to give his views to the jurymen.

‘The purpose of this inquisition is to determine who the deceased was, and where, when and by what means he came to his death. His brother Matthew has identified the cadaver to spare his widow, and we all know it is that of Walter Knapman, tin-master of this town. Where he met his death is unknown, but from the presence of his horse near Stepford Mill, it must have taken place somewhere near there. However, I think it futile to bring the nearest vill, Dunsford, into the enquiry. Neither is it sensible to involve Teignmouth, where my officer, Gwyn of Polruan, has sworn it was found, in the presence of myself.’

He paused to sweep his eyes sternly over the jury. ‘The means of death is clear, in that the severe wound on the head, which you have all seen, either killed him directly or rendered him insensible, so that when he was cast into the river, he drowned. Either way it led to his death. You may then ask, was it caused by an accident, a fall from his horse on to stony ground?’

De Wolfe again glared around at his jury, as was his habit, defying them to contradict him.

‘If that was so, it cannot explain how he came to be in the river, instead of on the earth. The chance of falling from a horse directly into deep water and hitting his head seems remote.’

He scowled again along the line of faces. ‘Such a chance is abolished when you look at his back, where undoubtedly he has been smitten heavily by a staff or pike handle — the reason for his fall from his horse.’

Folding his arms under his wolfskin cloak, he walked along the line of jurors, his great beak of a nose thrust out towards them, shoulders hunched and lank black hair twisting over his collar in the cold breeze. ‘We have no club, no knife, no axe. Nothing as an instrument of death for me to declare deodand. But it is obvious that this was murder. Now deliver me your verdict, so that the facts, sparse though they are, may be recorded for the King’s justices — for that is why I am here, the custos placitorum coronae, keeper of the pleas of the Crown. If we discover the perpetrator of this evil deed, he will face the royal judges and be dealt with accordingly.’

As de Wolfe said this, he cast a sidelong glance at the sheriff, who scowled back, well aware that the coroner was taunting him with their endless dispute about jurisdiction over serious crimes.

At Gwyn’s prompting, the jury had a hurried consultation among themselves, and within a minute or two, the one Gwyn had ‘volunteered’ as foreman stepped forward. ‘We agree that he was murdered, Crowner,’ he said shortly.

De Wolfe nodded — he would have accepted no other response. ‘My verdict is that Walter Knapman was slain unlawfully and against the King’s peace by persons unknown, on the eleventh day of April in the sixth year of the reign of our sovereign lord King Richard.’

There was a sudden sense of anticlimax as the jury slunk away and the body was marched off on its bier to the church. The crowd around the enclosure, who had been muted while the inquest was in progress, returned to full volume, though the shouted abuse and jeers at the sheriff had subsided, mainly due to a number of men-at-arms sent into the crowd by Sergeant Gabriel to threaten any malcontents.

Richard de Revelle moved across to John as the covered space emptied. ‘That achieved little,’ he sneered. ‘I still fail to see why the Chief Justiciar bothered to revive this old ritual.’

‘It achieved little because there was little to achieve. It’s your task as keeper of the King’s peace, Richard, to seek out wrongdoers in the county of Devon. You discover the killers of old Henry and Walter Knapman and I’ll see that they come, fully recorded, before the King’s justices.’ They had been over this ground so often that de Wolfe could not be bothered to pursue it.

Failing to provoke his brother-in-law on that score, the sheriff tried another subject. ‘I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that Theobald Fitz-Ivo is doing sterling work in his new role as coroner. I have had good reports of him already. He has attended several hangings in Barnstaple and a mutilation in Lydford, all satisfactorily recorded by his bailiff.’

De Wolfe grunted, reluctant to acknowledge that the fat knight had any merit whatsoever. ‘But has he held a difficult inquest yet? Has he taken confessions from sanctuary-seekers or approvers?’

De Revelle gave the coroner one his patronising smiles. ‘Give the man time, John, he’s been in office only for the blinking of an eyelid. You were too ready with your criticisms and you should be more than happy that he has lightened your load. Matilda will be pleased, no doubt — you will be able to stay at your fireside and keep her company more often,’ he added, with a snigger: he knew only too well the true relationship between his sister and her husband.

Again, de Wolfe refused to rise to de Revelle’s mischievous bait. ‘I’ll leave you here to play at being Lord Warden, Richard,’ he replied evenly. ‘I need to go to the church now, to attend the disposal of Walter Knapman. One never knows what intelligence may be picked up on such occasions — and one of us has to try to find his killer.’

He collected Gwyn and Thomas, leaving the horses with Gabriel’s minion, and they walked to St Michael’s to stand at the back of the church, which was filled with mourners come to see off their well-known townsman. The corpse was now in a coffin at the foot of the chancel steps, and through the rood screen Paul Smithson could dimly be seen preparing the Host for the requiem mass.

When the parish priest came to the opening in the screen to commune with the congregation, de Wolfe became conscious of a stream of Latin being whispered just behind him and turned to see Thomas, with tears dribbling from his eyes, reciting the Office word for word with the priest. Once again, the coroner wondered at the intense emotion the ecclesiastical life engendered in his little clerk and he worried again for the man’s mental stability. He only hoped that John de Alençon would be able to do something to alleviate Thomas’s abject misery.

As the service droned on, Gwyn became restive and soon slipped away — de Wolfe suspected to the Crown alehouse across the road. Eventually, when the mass was over, the congregation trooped out to follow the coffin to a newly dug grave where, with due solemnity, the tin-master of Chagford was laid to his final rest.

Joan had reverted to a black gown and cloak, which contrasted sharply with the snow-white cover-chief and wimple around her head and face. As silent as ever, she acted the part of the bereaved widow admirably, though Thomas outdid her in tears. De Wolfe noticed that Stephen Acland was absent, either from discretion or because he wanted to be at the coinage, which would have started by now.

At the churchyard gate, the elegant widow courteously invited de Wolfe to the house for refreshments, but he declined, pleading that he had to return to the square to talk to the sheriff, though in fact he wanted to observe the coinage procedure. ‘And then I will be off to Exeter. God knows what problems may have accumulated there by now.’

At this, Matthew asked if he and Peter Jordan could ride back to the city with the coroner, both for company and to allay their uneasiness when going through the Dunsford area where Walter had been attacked: Matthew now claimed to favour outlaws as the culprits, rather than tinners. De Wolfe readily agreed, thinking that he might learn something useful during the few hours’ journey.

After promising to call back at the house in an hour or two, he walked with Thomas back to the square, where the rough enclosure was the centre of even more activity than before. Gwyn was already there, after a quick quart in the nearest tavern, so they pushed their way through to the shelter and stepped over the rope for a closer view of the proceedings.

Richard de Revelle was standing with Gabriel, Ralph Morin and two guards close by. For the moment, the tinners had given up their sneers and abuse, concerned with the coinage ritual, which meant the prospect of a cash return on weeks or months of hard work on the moor.

A line of men had formed along the length of the shelter, each standing or squatting alongside their pile of black tin, which they had carried across from carts, barrows or panniers. As each man was dealt with by the coinage officials, he vacated his place and someone else brought in his load of bars. Over half the total came from the workings of Knapman or Acland, but the procedure was the same: their employees did the fetching and carrying on a shuttle system from the large stocks standing at the side of the square.

Gwyn, who had seen the system operating in Cornwall, explained what was going on. ‘That’s the assay master, who is in charge of the whole proceedings,’ he muttered, pointing at a grey-bearded man dressed in a brown tunic and grey hose with cross-gartering down to his stout shoes. He wore a close-fitting black cap, tied under his chin with tapes, and round his neck hung a chain of refined tin with a large medallion denoting his official status. ‘The others are the Steward, who is responsible for the register, the Receiver and the Controller, with their pair of clerks. They all have to read and write, for the weight of each bar has to be agreed by them all and written down against the name of the owner and the quality of the metal.’

De Wolfe noticed that the Controller, a stocky man in a long leather apron, was fiddling with a large steel-yard suspended from one of the roof beams. It was a weighing scales, with one short arm carryinga flat pan and a longer arm from which hung a smaller weight-pan that could be slid back and forth on the yard. ‘His main concern is that King’s beam,’ explained Gwyn. ‘He brings it here with a sealed box of weights that has been checked by the mint in Winchester.’

The assay team worked with brisk efficiency, born of years of practice. John watched as the Steward went to a fresh applicant at the rope and dictated his name to the clerk, who allotted simple code letters to the tinner, usually based on his initials. The Receiver, another grizzled veteran in a leather apron, took the bars over the rope and rapidly impressed the code on to the soft metal with a hammer and set of dies. Then he handed them up in quick succession to the Controller, who weighed them on the beam, had it checked by the Steward and called out the result to the clerk, who entered it on his roll. The bar was passed quickly to the assay master, who squatted on a small milking stool before a large log of hard oak, which acted as an anvil. With a hammer and small chisel, he dextrously knocked off a small corner of the bar, exposing the shinier grey tin underneath. Immediately, he exchanged the chisel for dies and struck two other impressions on the bar, one the King’s mark of a couchant lion, and another a set of dots, the purpose of which was incomprehensible to de Wolfe.

‘What’s that one for?’ he grunted to Gwyn.

‘The quality mark, Crowner, what he considers to be the purity of the metal, which will affect the price it gets from merchants like Matthew Knapman.’

‘How does he know that?’ demanded de Wolfe.

Gwyn chuckled. ‘Black magic, some say. But he’s been doing it for years. A good assay master is worth his weight in gold, let alone tin. He can tell by the way the chisel cuts the metal, its hardness, even the sound it makes when it’s sliced, as well as the colour and the amount of impurities on the surface.’ Gwyn sounded almost wistful, as his mind went back to the days of his youth, before his father left tinning for the dangers of the sea.

De Wolfe was almost as impressed by the speed of the operation as by the ability of the assay master to value the quality of the bars. With many hundreds if not thousands of ingots to deal with in two days, the rapidity of the process was remarkable. The calling out of the weights, the clang of the bar into the weighing pan and the steady pounding of the hammers as they embossed the tin were almost hypnotic.

Outside the ropes there was now equally frantic activity, as tinners and porters hurried back and forth across the square with piles of bars, fetching them for assay and returning them to the stacks at the edge of the roadway. Mugs of ale and cider were ferried across to the coining team, as were loaves and pasties, so that the labouring officials could grab a bite or swig from a drink between their incessant handling of the black metal.

After a few minutes, de Wolfe noticed that the sheriff, who had so far ignored him, seemed restive, and soon afterwards he left the enclosure with Morin and two men-at-arms and vanished up the high street, no doubt to seek refreshment in one of the taverns. The novelty of watching the coinage soon palled on John, too, and he turned to Gwyn to give him his orders. ‘I must go back to Exeter this morning. I’ll take Thomas with me, but you must stay until the coinage has finished tomorrow. I’m told the sheriff is going to stay until the end, to emphasise his role as Lord Warden, so maybe you can ride back with Gabriel and his men behind de Revelle and the constable.’

‘What do you want me to do here?’ asked Gwyn, quite happy to spend a day and a night in a town with six ale-houses.

‘Just keep your eyes and ears open, especially in the taverns. Drink loosens tongues and I want to know what the tinners are saying about these killings. The answer must surely be up here in Chagford, not in the city. But I can’t spend all my time here — there’s other work at home, to say nothing of my wife’s tongue.’

Turning his back on the banging, shouting and clanging, de Wolfe took Thomas to retrieve their horses from the side-street, then to collect Matthew and Peter Jordan from the Knapman house ready for the ride to Exeter. He left his officer without a thought for his well-being: after all, Gwyn was more than capable of looking after himself in most situations.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In which Thomas de Peyne hears some news

On the journey back to Exeter, de Wolfe learned little that was new, but was intrigued by the vehemence with which Matthew aired his suspicions about his brother’s likely killers. Away from Joan and her mother, his tongue seemed more ready to wag, though Peter Jordan remained relatively silent. As the pair rode at each side of the coroner, with Thomas plodding forlornly behind, the tin merchant seemed eager to voice his theories about the murder. He appeared to have changed his mind about the likely culprits. ‘I now think more strongly than ever that trail-bastons are to blame,’ he said, as they trotteda long the track towards Moretonhampstead. ‘The countryside is plagued by outlaws, especially since there are so many unemployed soldiers about, and many men destitute after that bad harvest eighteen months back.’ He paused and added, ‘These crippling taxes to pay for the King’s damned wars have also driven many men into poverty and outlawry.’

De Wolfe grunted, unsure whether to censure Matthew for another slur on the monarch, but decided to correct him instead. ‘It would be a strange footpad who carried out robbery with violence, then left the victim’s purse on his belt,’ he said. ‘I think you must look elsewhere for your killers.’

Matthew produced his other ideas with equal conviction. ‘Then the sheriff is involved, to defeat poor Walter’s ambition to run the Stannaries properly. You saw how feelings run high against him — but he’s a crafty one, is de Revelle, and ruthless into the bargain. He’d have little compunction in arranging a convenient murder.’

At this, Matthew’s step-nephew spoke: ‘I find it hard to believe the sheriff would need to take such drastic action. Walter had little chance of unseating him as Lord Warden, unless this threatened commission from London or Winchester was to recommend it. The tinners themselves couldn’t do it, however much noise and trouble they caused.’

Matthew shook his head doubtfully.

‘They could stop producing tin! The royal court — and the King himself — would take notice if the coinage taxes stopped coming in!’

‘But the tinners wouldn’t go on strike! They’d starve in a month, without pay coming in or metal to trade,’ protested Peter.

‘Then I wouldn’t put it past Joan’s brother, damn him. That Roland’s an evil fellow, you can see it in his face, coveting the good things Walter had in his house. He hopes to benefit from Joan’s inheritance and has his eye on the tin-works. That’s why he was so keen to take over their running as a temporary measure. Once he was in, we’d never get rid of him.’

De Wolfe wanted to keep the debate going to see what else came out. ‘So do you rate him as a serious possibility for the slaying?’ he asked.

‘He’s as ruthless as the sheriff. He saw a good chance for himself when his sister married Walter. I’d be loath to say that she was in collusion with him, but it’s not impossible. And certainly that old dame Lucy is single-minded about getting every penny for her children. She’d cut anyone’s throat for a prize like Walter’s property and business.’

‘What about the inheritance, then? When will that be settled?’ asked John.

‘We must find out what Walter’s testament says — everything depends on that. Joan says that she and her damned brother are coming to Exeter tomorrow to see the lawyer.’

‘Who happens to be my wife’s father,’ added Peter drily. ‘Not that it’s of any advantage to us.’

De Wolfe had his doubts about that, but kept them to himself.

The talk during the rest of the journey was only elaboration and repetition of the same themes, and de Wolfe was glad when they reached the city, where they parted company inside the West Gate.

As they walked their tired horses up the slope to Cairfax, Thomas moved alongside his master, plucking up courage to ask a favour.

‘You were good enough to speak to my uncle John of Alençon, Crowner. I wondered if you had any answer yet.’

De Wolfe looked down at the diminutive clerk slumped awkwardly on his pony. ‘As you know, Thomas, I’ve hardly been in Exeter lately, with all these problems.’ He said this kindly, but with a bitter undertone as he recalled the difficulties his absences had caused him, especially in his love-life.

‘Do you think you could ask the Archdeacon fairly soon, Crowner? I am consumed with longing and worry, sir.’

The quaver of suppressed emotion in Thomas’s voice reached even de Wolfe’s tough heart. ‘Then no time like the present. We’ll call upon him on the way home — he should be there at this time. Compline must be over by now.’

They left their steeds with Andrew the farrier in Martin’s Lane, but instead of crossing the narrow street to his front door, de Wolfe led the clerk into Canons’ Row. Half-way along, under the shadow of the north tower, the coroner turned into the door of one of the narrow-fronted houses, bidding Thomas to wait outside.

A few moments later, he emerged, his face betraying nothing. ‘Your uncle wishes you to attend upon him inside,’ he said flatly. ‘He wishes to talk to you himself. This is your private business, Thomas, so I’ll leave you to it.’

Deathly pale, the clerk scurried into the house and de Wolfe stood for a moment, his brows furrowed in thought. Then, with a deep sigh, he turned and walked home to face Matilda.

A couple of hours later, the coroner sat alone in the Golden Hind, a tavern in the high street, with a pewter tankard on the table in front of him. He had found the Saracen a rough, noisome place, with indifferent ale and a foul-mouthed, surly landlord. Willem the Fleming ran a crude establishment, with too many of his customers on the wrong side of the law, and de Wolfe had been to that inn several times professionally. Apart from its insalubrious atmosphere, he felt that it was not a place for a senior law-officer to patronise.

The Golden Hind had been one of his local watering-places before he had taken up with the landlady of the Bush. His appearance there after such a long absence caused a few eyebrows to be lifted and a few comments were muttered behind hands: his rift with Nesta was now common knowledge throughout the close community of the city. It had certainly reached the ears of his wife, which was one reason why John had left the house so soon after their evening meal.

As soon as he had arrived at home after leaving Thomas, he knew that Matilda had something up her sleeve. She greeted him tersely, and he could tell from her tight-lipped half-smile and her smugness that she was about to come out with something to his disadvantage.

She kept it bottled up until almost the end of the meal, as if savouring the anticipation. Mary had brought in a dish of dried fruit, imported at considerable cost from southern France, and as she left with the remains of the trenchers, Matilda pounced. ‘Not going to your favourite drinking den tonight, John?’ she asked, with acid innocence.

‘I’ve travelled enough today,’ he responded sourly.

‘I hear that your Welsh whore has thrown you over for a younger man,’ she taunted, picking up an apricot. ‘What will you do now, I wonder. Trawl about the county for some other doxy, I suppose. Or will you be content to slink off to Dawlish? No doubt your dutiful visits to your mother will increase — the road to Stoke is convenient, I remember.’

John stayed sullenly mute: he knew that anything he said would be twisted against him.

Matilda carried on in the same vein for a time, her pug face almost gleeful as she squeezed the last drop of malicious pleasure from baiting him. ‘They say there’s no fool like an old fool! You’re long past acting the romantic lover, John — just as you’re past rushing around playing at soldiers. You’re forty, for goodness’ sake, and it’s time for you to behave sensibly and cease shaming me in the eyes of my respectable friends.’

Patience and forbearance were not prominent among de Wolfe’s virtues, and his bench squealed on the flagstones as he pushed it back abruptly to stand up. ‘Yes, your damned friends! The stuck-up merchant’s wives of Exeter! All you care about is your pride and showing off as the sheriff’s sister and the coroner’s wife! You don’t give a damn about me. I’d starve and go around in rags if it was left to you — thank Christ we’ve got Mary!’ He stamped towards the hall door, beckoning the expectant Brutus to follow him.

As he left, Matilda still wore the smug expression of a satisfied winner. ‘You’d better browse among the hawker’s stalls while you’re out. From what I hear, you’ll soon need to buy a wedding present for your alehouse wench!’ she shouted after him.

Furious at himself for being so easily incensed by his wife’s baiting, de Wolfe stalked blindly out into the lane and then the few yards to the high street, hardly caring where he was going. He stopped and looked up and down the crowded thoroughfare, bemused about what to do next. Matilda’s last remark had been particularly unsettling. He did not know whether it was embroidery to humiliate him or whether she had really heard that Nesta and Alan were betrothed. He could hardly storm into the Bush and demand to be told — and both of his usual sources of gossip were out of action: Gwyn was still in Chagford and Thomas preoccupied with his own misfortunes.

For want of anywhere else to go, he entered the Golden Hind, his dog close at his heels. The walls of the big room were lined with benches and there were a few tables and stools around the central fire-pit, where a heap of logs and peat burned slowly to keep the unseasonable April weather at bay.

De Wolfe sat at a table towards the back of the room, near the row of casks, wanting to be as far from the small street windows as possible, to remain inconspicuous in the dim light of evening. A serving wench brought him a quart jar of ale unasked: that or cider was all that was on offer. He sat for a long time in the shadows — Brutus lying patiently under the table — his mind churning over a series of problems, from Nesta’s infidelity to Fitz-Ivo’s incompetence, from Knapman’s murder to Thomas’s misery.

For a time, de Wolfe wondered whether he should abandon the coroner’s appointment and take off again with Gwyn to find some campaign they could join, well away from Exeter and its problems. He was getting old for fighting, but perhaps he had one more battle left in him. Few barons would hire a middle-aged mercenary, but he was sure that the King would welcome him. Richard was over the Channel, where he was fighting Philip of France, trying to repair the damage caused by Prince John’s incompetence and treachery.

But de Wolfe had to admit grudgingly that he enjoyed the coroner’s work, much against his first expectations. He had come to relish the freedom it gave him to ride the countryside with Gwyn and to uphold his sovereign’s interests against such scoundrels as his brother-in-law. However, this last week had soured his appetite for it, though he had insight enough to know that losing Nesta, Matilda’s venom and the depressing presence of Thomas were the root causes of his present disenchantment.

He sat brooding as the light failed outside, drinking a whole pennyworth of ale over an hour or so until he began to feel sleepy. The landlord, who, like every citizen of Exeter, knew Sir John de Wolfe by sight, began to wonder why his house had been favoured by the coroner after all this time. As his customer dozed over his mug, he wondered if he should offer to help him home, as he often did many of his other patrons who imbibed not wisely but too well.

However, his dilemma was resolved by an unexpected messenger to the Golden Hind. The door opened and a young man appeared in clerical garb, a long black tunic tied with a cord at the waist and a small wooden cross hanging from a leather thong around his neck. He stared around the room, squinting in the uneven dim light from the windows and the fire.

The landlord advanced on him: although many priests were fond of the drink and even more dubious pleasures to be found in alehouses, it was unusual to see one in a hostelry just round the corner from the cathedral precinct, especially without even a cloak to disguise his vestments.

‘What brings you here, vicar?’ he asked, correctly guessing that this was some canon’s vicar-choral.

‘I am urgently seeking the crowner. Someone in the street told me that they saw him come in here not long ago.’

The tavern-keeper indicated the gloomy corner and the young priest hurried over. ‘Crowner John? I come from my master, the Archdeacon. He sent me to find you and to bring you to him urgently.’

De Wolfe raised his head and gazed blearily at the eager young face. Though he had a head almost as hard as Gwyn’s when it came to drink, the fatigue of travelling and the emotion of the evening had left him a little fuddled. But the youthful vicar’s next words rapidly cleared his head.

‘Your clerk, the little man with the humped shoulder, he’s tried to kill himself!’

Brother Saulf bent solicitously over the pallet that lay on the floor of the infirmary cell. He pulled up the coarse woollen blanket and tucked it gently under Thomas’s shoulders against the chill night air of the dank room. It was in the tiny priory of St John, in a side lane just within the East Gate. The five brothers there were dedicated to treating the sick and the few pallets they had were the only hospital in Exeter, the next nearest being the nunnery of St Katherine’s at Polsloe, a mile outside the city, which catered mainly for women.

Thomas de Peyne had been carried there by two of John of Alençon’s servants. They bore him on an unhinged door, with the coroner and the Archdeacon stalking alongside. During the five-minute journey, the little clerk groaned pitifully, which de Wolfe took as a good sign — at least he was not unconscious.

‘He should be fully recovered by tomorrow,’ said Saulf, a tall Saxon who was the most experienced of the healing monks at St John’s. ‘He’ll be black and blue with bruises and have some nasty grazes that will weep and maybe turn purulent but, thank God, he’s no broken bones and his head seems sound.’ He ushered them out of the room into a cramped corridor, dimly lit by a tallow dip on a ledge. ‘How did he come by these injuries, sirs? I was told only that he had a fall.’

The Archdeacon looked at de Wolfe, hoping that he would reply.

‘He certainly fell! About forty feet from the parapet of the cathedral,’ explained the coroner grimly.

The gaunt monk looked amazed. ‘Forty feet? It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed!’

‘It’s not a wonder, it’s a miracle,’ said the senior canon gently. ‘It seems his tunic caught on a projecting waterspout half-way down the wall. A beggar in the Close saw him hanging there for a moment, then the cloth ripped and he fell the rest of the way on to a pile of soft earth dug from a new grave.’

Saulf crossed himself, which reminded de Wolfe of Thomas. Suddenly a lump came to his throat, as he realised that he would have sorely missed the little man if he had died, in spite of the scorn that he and Gwyn habitually heaped on him.

‘How came he to fall from the cathedral? Is he a priest? He always looked like one when I saw him in your company, Crowner — and he had a flair for pen and ink.’

Again the other two men exchanged glances — they did not want to spread this abroad more than they could avoid, even though Saulf had the double obligation to secrecy of a priest and a healer.

‘He was once,’ said de Wolfe evasively. ‘When will he be in a fit state to tell us what happened?’

The monk shrugged. ‘He’s not too bad now. I’ve other patients to attend, but you can go back in and see if he’s ready to talk, if you wish.’

The two friends entered the cell again, and by the light of a candle burning below a wooden cross on the wall, squatted one on each side of the straw mattress.

‘Thomas, can you hear me?’ asked the coroner.

The clerk opened one eye. His cheek and forehead were grazed. ‘Yes, Crowner, miserable sinner that I am.’

John de Alençon laid a hand gently on his other shoulder and Thomas winced with pain. ‘Thomas, tell us what happened,’ he said. ‘This is not the confessional, just your uncle and a good friend wanting to help you.’

De Peyne opened his other eye and swivelled both towards the Archdeacon. ‘I have committed a mortal sin, Father. I tried to end my life — but I am so useless that I could not even make a success of that.’

Tears welled up in the bloodshot eyes, and the kindly Archdeacon was moved to pity for his unhappy nephew. ‘I have just told Brother Saulf that your deliverance was a sign from the Almighty that he needs your life on this earth now and not yet in the next.’

A glimmer of hope appeared on Thomas’s battered features. For such a senior member of the Church to believe that even a minor miracle had been wrought was a life-raft for him in the sea of despair in which he floundered.

‘How came this to happen, Thomas?’ asked the coroner, gruffly enough to cover his own emotion.

The clerk moved slightly in the bed and grimaced as his bruised body screamed in protest. ‘After the Archdeacon called me in and told me that there seemed no hope of my being received back into Holy Orders, I went out thinking that my life was now meaningless and without purpose. I should have let myself perish from starvation when I left Winchester two winters ago.’

John de Alençon’s ascetic face moved closer to Thomas’s. ‘I had no choice but to tell you the truth as its stands now here in Exeter. That does not mean that elsewhere, in the future, matters might change. Take your deliverance as a sign, Thomas.’

De Wolfe was more keen to discover what had occurred that evening. ‘Where did you go when you left the canon’s house?’

‘I wandered along, then went into St Martin’s to pray.’ This was the tiny church almost opposite the coroner’s house. ‘But I felt nothing, as if my prayers were hitting a stone wall. I felt that God himself had rejected me as a useless, misshapen creature.’ Tears sprang up again and trickled down his damaged cheeks. ‘I ran from there and went into the cathedral. I intended prostrating myself on the chancel steps, to try to seek some sign from our Saviour, but as I neared the quire screen, I saw another sign — an open door in the gloom.’

‘A door?’ queried the canon.

‘I thought it led into the north tower and I felt the desire to fling myself into oblivion. I ran up the stairs in the thickness of the wall, but after a few turns I came to a locked door, which must have gone further up the tower. An arch to the side of it led on to an outside gallery along the nave.’

‘That’s one the builders use,’ confirmed Alençon.

‘I looked down, and though the tower rose far above me, it still seemed a long way to the ground, surely sufficient for my purpose. Without further thought, except a plea to God to save my soul, I threw myself off the edge.’

He made a move as if to cross himself, but the tight blanket and the pain in his arms made him give up the attempt.

‘I fell, then there was a great jerk and I slammed against the wall. I thought that was death, but then there was a rending sound and I fell again, into a heap of mud.’ He sobbed and struggled to hide his face in the hard pillow.

The Archdeacon patted his shoulder, and as Thomas’s eyes turned back to him, the priest made the Sign of the Cross over him and murmured the Latin words of a blessing.

The clerk seemed to calm himself and closed his eyes, as the canon motioned to de Wolfe to come out of the room.

‘We’ll see you in the morning, Thomas,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘Get some sleep to help mend your body and your mind.’

As they walked together back to the cathedral Close, de Wolfe asked his friend what had transpired from their efforts to have the clerk taken back into the Church.

‘I fear it was hopeless — and I also grieve to think that maybe it would have been better for him if neither of us was involved.’

John was puzzled by his companion’s words. ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘As I told you before, this is not a matter for our diocese of Devon and Cornwall, but for the Winchester Consistory Court — although a good recommendation from senior members of the Chapter here would undoubtedly carry weight in Hampshire.’ He paused, choosing his words. ‘Unfortunately, the reverse is also true, in that a denial of his merits from here would ruin any hope of reinstatement. And that is all I got from my dear brothers — a round condemnation of Thomas’s conduct, even though they know little or nothing of the real facts.’

‘Why should they blacken some poor fellow who means little to them?’ demanded the coroner.

‘Because he is your clerk and my nephew! Neither of us is popular in the Chapter House or the Bishop’s palace. Since that affair a few months ago, when the sheriff was disgraced over his affection for Prince John, mud stuck to a number of ecclesiastics — especially the precentor and, of course, to Bishop Henry Marshal. They have no love for people like me or you, or for our friend the treasurer, as we are all avowed King’s men.’

De Wolfe, at heart a bluff and perhaps rather naïve soldier, found it hard to believe that educated, professional men of God would be so vindictive. ‘You mean they would block a minor clerk’s career — indeed his happiness and even his life — just to get back at us spitefully for some political difference?’

The Archdeacon shook his head in wonder at his friend’s apparent trust in human nature. ‘Without blinking an eye, John. When I put the matter to them, their vehemence told me straight away that they relished the chance to confound us.’

By now they had reached Martin’s Lane and the priest left de Wolfe at his door, with a promise to call at St John’s in the morning to see how his nephew was progressing.

De Wolfe watched him go, his hand on the latch. For a moment, he contemplated going to the Bush, to see whether there was any truth in Matilda’s jibe about Nesta and Alan, but a stubborn streak of pride won the day and, with a deep sigh, he opened the door and went in.

While the drama was being played out at the cathedral, Matthew Knapman and his assistant Peter Jordan were seeking legal advice. They were visiting Peter’s father-in-law, Robert Courteman, at his house in Goldsmith Street, which was off the high street near the Guildhall.

Courteman was the lawyer who handled the affairs of the Knapman tin business, including Matthew’s sale and transport operations. He was a gloomy-looking man of fifty, with a pate as bald as any monk’s tonsure on top, but rimmed with bushy iron-grey hair. His narrow face was lined and two deep furrows on each side of his mouth and folds of lax skin under his chin gave him the appearance of a hound with permanent indigestion.

Courteman received his visitors in his office chamber, a cubicle partitioned from the living hall of his narrow house, appropriately as gloomy as his humourless self. A table was scattered with rolls of parchment and vellum, tied with tapes of plaited wool or leather. Shelves were loaded with dusty documents and a few books. The lawyer sat on a stool behind his table and the other two men perched on a short bench opposite. At Robert’s side stood his son and junior partner, Philip Courteman, a younger version of his father, with the same sombre look on his pallid face.

The lawyers had already heard of the death of their client Walter Knapman, and the lengthy commiseration had been completed, though Matthew suspected that the sorrow they expressed was for the potential loss of his business.

‘As you might guess,’ said Matthew, ‘the suddenness of his demise has greatly disturbed our business activities. Tin is being produced as usual, but we need to know who it belongs to, for purposes of sale and disposal. We are like a ship without a rudder at present.’

‘And we want to be reassured that the workings will remain together, not be broken up,’ cut in Peter Jordan. ‘There are people waiting like wolves around a sheepfold to seize any opportunity to ravage us — Stephen Acland for one, though others would like to bid piecemeal for the dozen or so stream-works and blowing-houses.’

The older lawyer steepled his fingers against his lips and managed to look more miserable than usual. ‘What do you want from me? There’s little enough I can do at this early stage.’ He looked up at his pasty-faced son, as if to seek his agreement to their legal impotency.

‘There may be difficult problems in this situation,’ said the younger man obscurely.

Matthew sounded impatient: ‘Every day’s uncertainty makes trading more difficult,’ he complained. ‘There has just been a new coinage in Chagford, and I have a large quantity of metal ready for the second smelting and sale. I need to know for whom I am selling.’

Robert Courteman spread his hands as if in benediction. ‘I can appreciate the problems, Matthew, but it is too soon for answers.’

‘But we need to know what is in his will as soon as possible,’ said Peter, impatient at the lawyer’s torpid attitude.

‘And even if there is a will,’ snapped Matthew in frustration.

Courteman shook his head slowly. ‘I cannot divulge the contents of a last testament, not until the proper circumstances arrive.’

‘And what might they be, for God’s sake?’ asked the dead man’s twin.

‘All the family together, everyone who might benefit. They are entitled to hear it from the lawyer’s own lips, not second-hand after it has been divulged piecemeal to all and sundry.’

Matthew grunted in disgust. ‘We’re not all and sundry, Robert. I’m his twin brother, and Peter is the nearest thing to a son that Walter had. At least you can confirm that there is a will — and when it was last altered, if it has been?’

The elder Courteman pursed his lips. ‘I’m not sure I can even do that, Matthew. The relations between a lawyer and his client are as sacred as those between a priest and sinner, you know.’

‘God’s bones, Robert, we are all one family here! Your own daughter is married to Peter, so what affects his future affects hers too.’

Courteman wagged his head slowly from side to side, his wattles swaying under his chin. ‘One cannot let personal issues sway the sacred trust of our profession, Matthew,’ he uttered sententiously. ‘However, I will venture so far as to tell you that there is indeed a last will and testament to which Walter Knapman appended his mark in front of me as a witness, and that I will be disclosing its contents to the assembled family, principally his lawful wife Joan, in the very near future.’

‘How near?’ demanded Peter Jordan. ‘Does this mean another journey to Chagford?’

‘No, I have had a message that the widow is coming to Exeter very shortly, together with her mother and brother. I will inform you when the testament will be read, so that you can arrange to be present. If the widow wishes it, it may even be tomorrow.’

And with that the impatient pair had to be content.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In which Gwyn of Polruan gets into deep trouble

Friday, the fifteenth of April, dawned grey and cold on Dartmoor, as if the spring was making up for the relatively mild winter by being spitefully unseasonable. Snow covered the moors, and even in the greener valleys around the edges of the huge wasteland the new buds and peeping flowers were powdered with white. The lowering grey clouds threatened more snow to come, and as Gwyn of Polruan rode his mare down from Wibbery’s manor barton to the town, a few flakes fluttered on the wind that moaned softly around him. The big Cornishman pulled up the hood of his tattered leather shoulder cape and plodded on philosophically, inured to the weather of a dozen countries after years of campaigning.

He was not clear as to why the coroner had left him in Chagford, but for some reason John de Wolfe wanted an eye kept on the tinners and the sheriff until they had all dispersed after the coinage. Judging from the amount of metal left for assaying last evening, Gwyn estimated it would finish by the middle of the day and then he could turn for home and hearth, to be with his wife and children in St Sidwell’s.

There was a livery stable at the near end of the high street and there Gwyn left his mare, knowing that the coroner would reimburse him the halfpenny that shelter and forage would cost. He walked on to the square and, for the next hour or so, stood idly watching the coinage process as it worked its way through the diminishing piles of black tin ingots. Although many miners had already left Chagford after their bars had been coined, there were still plenty of men around and the alehouses were full, as Gwyn discovered when his insatiable hunger and thirst drove him to the Crown for relief. As the coroner had ordered, he eavesdropped on as many conversations as possible and gossiped with a number of men, using his boyhood experience in Cornwall with his father to masquerade as another tinner. However, his efforts produced nothing new, only repetition of anger against Richard de Revelle’s clinging to the Wardenship, complaints about the rate of coinage tax, and the widespread conviction that Aethelfrith the Saxon had been behind Henry’s death and the damage to their tin-workings.

When Gwyn came out of the tavern, the snow had increased markedly. A keen east wind was driving it into little drifts against walls and hedges and the ground was already covered to a depth of a couple of inches. As he tramped back over to the square to see the last of the coinage, his riding boots squeaked hollows into the fresh snow and white flakes lodged in his great moustache.

Under the cover of the enclosure, the assay master and the Controller toiled away with the Steward and Receiver to finish the work, so that they and the tinners might leave for home before the moor became impassable. Another hour went by before the sheriff put in an appearance, together with Geoffrey Fitz-Peters from Lydford. They had stayed in the warmth and comfort of de Prouz’s castle at Gidleigh until Richard de Revelle calculated that the coinage was nearing its end and he could put in a final appearance with the least personal discomfort.

As they all stood watching, and listening to the monotonous rhythm of the hammer, chisel and chanting of the clerks as they repeated the weight and quality of each ingot, Gwyn became gradually aware of a different, more distant noise. Above the undulating soft whistle of the wind, he heard a distant growling. As the minutes went by, it strengthened into the shouting of an angry crowd.

Now the heads of those around him began to lift, as they also sensed the approaching tumult. Even the coinage team stopped work to listen. With the hammering quieted, the shouts of a mob became clear and Gwyn saw the sheriff stiffen and motion to Sergeant Gabriel to bring his men-at-arms closer into the coinage shelter. Only half a dozen soldiers remained: Ralph Morin had left at dawn for Exeter with the rest of the men, not wishing to leave Rougemont Castle bereft of its garrison. With many others, Gwyn stepped out into the swirling snowflakes and began to walk up to the top of the square, where he could look down the street to where the yelling rabble was rapidly approaching.

A crowd of men, perhaps thirty in number, was milling along the manor road, clustered around someone in the centre. As they came nearer, it was clear that they were all tinners, both from their dress and the threatening way they were yelling abuse at whoever was being dragged along among them. Snow plastered their cloaks and hoods, which suggested that they had come down from the high moor, but in their anger and excitement they were oblivious of the weather.

Gabriel appeared alongside him, sent by the sheriff to see what was happening. ‘What in hell is going on, Gwyn?’ he muttered, looking at the approaching mob, who were dragging a man on the end of a rope.

‘I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of it.’

As the mass of men neared the square, the tinners who had just left the coinage were joined by many more flooding out of the alehouses, attracted by the uproar. Some were the worse for drink only half-way through the morning. They shouted questions to the mob, whose answers caused many more to merge into the swirling mass. By the time the crowd turned into the square, there were almost a hundred heads bobbing around, pushing and shoving to see the hapless captive in the centre.

‘You’d better do something about this, Gabriel — and quick!’ growled Gwyn.

‘I’ve only a handful of men — just enough to escort the sheriff over to Lydford,’ said the sergeant, apprehensively.

The rabble now almost filled the small square, jostling its way to the front of the coinage enclosure. Gabriel pushed his way round the edge of the crowd to reach Richard de Revelle, both to guard him and to get some instructions. Gwyn followed him, his huge shoulders barging a way through the agitated mob. A few men rounded on him, but he shoved them aside, his ham-like hands thrusting their chests or even faces out of his path.

The crowd came to a stop at the rope girdling the shelter and rapidly flowed all around it, like flood water encircling an island. When Gwyn got to the rope he could see de Revelle, pallid-faced, pressed alongside the manor lord of Lydford at the end of the shelter. Gabriel and his handful of soldiers clustered around them, their eyes roving around uneasily beneath their basin-like helmets. They wore no chain-mail, except iron plates on the shoulders of their boiled leather cuirasses, and their hands rested nervously on the hilts of their sheathed broadswords.

The assay officers gave up any attempt to continue their work, and as they withdrew to the back of the shelter, there was a sudden movement in the mob and a dishevelled figure was ejected to the front. His hands were lashed behind his back with a rope, the other end grasped by a burly tinner. Two others had dragged him to the front by his arms and now stood alongside him, shaking him roughly by pulls on his wrists. As Gwyn watched, another drunken roughneck left the edge of the crowd, and came to give the prisoner a punch in the face.

‘Here’s the bastard who’s caused all the trouble — and a bloody murderer into the bargain!’ he yelled, and sank back into the crowd.

Now Gwyn could see the victim more clearly, as he stood defiantly facing the shelter, snow spattering his hair and blood running from the corner of his mouth, where the blow had cut his lip.

He was tall and spare to the point of emaciation, with long, tangled grey hair around a gaunt, wild-looking face. Gwyn estimated his age at well over sixty, and in spite of his haggard leanness, he had a leathery hardness that told of his solitary survival on Dartmoor. This could be none other than Aethelfrith, the crazy Saxon — confirmed by the shouts and jeers that came from the mob.

‘Here he is, Sheriff! This is Aethelfrith, God rot him! You’re the Lord Warden, so pronounce his fate to us — or we’ll do it for you!’ yelled the man, a big, black-bearded tinner from near Lydford.

This triggered a fresh outburst of shouting from the crowd, directed as much at de Revelle as at the Saxon, a mixture of jeers and challenge.

The sheriff stood undecided, staring at this unexpected drama. As he seemed tongue-tied, Geoffrey Fitz-Peters, who had his own eye on the Wardenship, stepped forward to confront the tinners. ‘What’s been happening, men? Where did you find this man?’

Aethelfrith was given such a push from behind that he staggered and fell to his knees in the snow. Somehow, though, he kept a stolid dignity, glaring up at Fitz-Peters with silent defiance on his angular face.

‘Caught red-handed this time!’ yelled one of the men who had held his arms. ‘Smashing up one of the settling-troughs with an axe, up at Scorhill on the North Teign, not three miles from the town here!’

‘We’re going to hang him right now, Warden. You can pass that judgement on him, if you like — but hang he will, within the hour, whether you wish it or not,’ boomed Blackbeard.

There was an even louder babble of cries, all bloodthirsty demands for Aethelfrith’s life.

‘He slew Henry of Tunnaford, right enough!’ yelled one. Others screamed that he must also be the killer of their master, Walter Knapman, and yet more yelled that the damage to their stream-works and blowing-houses must be put down to the mad Saxon.

The mood became uglier as each man provoked his neighbours, until the surging mob threatened to break through the coinage rope. Even the supports of the enclosure were shaking with the press of men against them, snow falling off the edges of the flimsy roof. Geoffrey Fitz-Peters judged that this was no time to play either hero or candidate for the Wardenship and he stepped back to where the sheriff was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, with his sergeant and soldiers clustered around him.

‘You’ll have to say something to them, Richard. They’re in an ugly mood,’ he advised, in a low voice. Grasping his arm, he pulled de Revelle forward a few paces and the sheriff had no option but to confront the crowd.

‘What proof have you, men?’ he shouted, over the din. ‘Was he caught actually wreaking damage?’

There was a cacophony of yells, all confirming the Saxon’s guilt. Aethelfrith was now jerked back to his feet by two men on each side of him. He began to say something, but the tinner on his left gave him another punch in the mouth that silenced any confession or denial.

Nervously, de Revelle tried to assess his safest course of action. Already deeply unpopular, he feared that these unruly tinners might turn on him if he crossed them. With only a handful of men-at-arms, a hundred angry moor-men would swamp any resistance, and though he was the county’s law-enforcer, he had no wish to take any chances with his own life and limb against this enraged mob. However, he decided to make a token gesture towards the proper course of justice. ‘If he has done these things, then he should be brought to the Shire Court — or even before the King’s justices,’ he shouted over their heads, conveniently forgetting his usual antipathy to the royal courts. His words were met with derision, and the hisses, catcalls and yelled abuse became even more virulent. The mob surged forward again, and this time the rope was torn from one of the pillars and the front line of men erupted into the coinage enclosure.

De Revelle stepped back rapidly and turned to Fitz-Peters, shrugging his shoulders in desperation. ‘They’ll not listen to reason now,’ he said.

Gwyn watched and listened with increasing anxiety, wishing that the formidable coroner was here to control the situation. In de Wolfe’s absence he felt obliged to do his best and pushed himself along towards the men who were pinioning Aethelfrith.

Before he reached them, his captors started to pummel the old man about the head and chest, yelling at him to confess. At last, the Saxon started to yell back, in a clear, deep voice that held no trace of fear, though he had to spit blood every few words to clear his lips. ‘Aye, you Norman swine, I’ll confess! Confess to being a descendant of the true race who was here before you French bandits came to steal our land! Confess to loving the very ground that we held for centuries. Confess to having watched you bastards kill my son on the moor twenty years ago for trying to claim his own stake in the tinning!’ He got no further, as someone struck him with a club on the side of the head, a blow that sent Aethelfrith staggering, held up only by his tormentors.

This was too much for Gwyn and, with a roar like a bull, he drove his way forward and tore the club from the hand of the assailant. ‘Stop this!’ he boomed. ‘Every man deserves a fair hearing before he’s condemned.’

‘Who the hell d’you think you are?’ screamed an enraged Blackbeard.

‘The coroner’s officer — King Richard’s coroner!’ Gwyn looked a formidable figure, topping most of the tinners — many of whom were big men — by half a head. But their mood was so inflamed that they took unkindly to any interference.

‘Get out of the way, man, this is not crowner’s business. These are the Stannaries, and we are a law unto ourselves,’ snarled one of the men who was gripping the Saxon.

‘Not where it concerns life or limb. The King’s law runs there and well you know it. Ask the sheriff — he’ll tell you.’ Gwyn turned to wave an arm at where de Revelle skulked at the end of the enclosure.

Reluctantly, de Revelle nodded. ‘He’s right, but I’ve already told you that.’

This was met with more jeers, and the burly man with the jet beard and moustache gave Gwyn a violent buffet in the chest. ‘Clear off, damn you! Stop trying to interfere in what’s none of your bloody business.’

For answer, the Cornishman threw a massive arm around the other’s neck, gave him a punch in the kidneys that should have felled a donkey and threw him to the ground. Amid bellows of rage and clutching hands, Gwyn was pulled back, while the bearded man climbed painfully to his feet.

Suddenly, there was a flash of steel as Gwyn’s adversary reached behind him and pulled a dagger from his belt. With a furious yell, he launched himself at the Cornishman, the knife flashing towards his heart. The thick leather of Gwyn’s jerkin took the point, and though it penetrated enough to slash skin and muscle, it went no further. With his own roar of rage, he tore free from those hanging on to his arms, and grabbed the wrist holding the dagger. With his other hand, he smashed Blackbeard on the side of the head, just behind the ear. The man crumpled to the trampled slush underfoot and lay motionless. Then, huge as he was, Gwyn had no chance against the fury of a hundred tinners and he vanished to the floor under a press of bodies, all trying to beat him to death.

As so often happened, snow on Dartmoor meant rain in Exeter, John de Wolfe went about his business that day in an intermittent cold drizzle that soaked his cape and turned the streets into a sticky morass of mud and filth. The previous night, he had fallen dog-tired on to his bed, too weary even to respond to Matilda’s customary nagging. He told her briefly about Thomas’s dive from the cathedral gallery, but her snubbing response seemed to indicate that she would have been interested only if his attempt had succeeded.

Even before he had finished an early breakfast, one of the town bailiffs arrived to report a fatal accident on the quayside, where the wheel of an ox-cart had collapsed and a load of stone imported from Caen had fallen on a workman. John went to inspect the scene and look at the body but, missing both Gwyn’s help and Thomas’s scribing ability, decided to postpone the inquest until he knew when his clerk would be available.

With this in mind, he went from the quayside up to St John’s Hospital to see how the little man was faring. John de Alençon was there already, and de Wolfe was surprised and gratified to find that de Peyne’s mood had improved markedly, even if his skin and muscles were still crying out in protest.

‘He can go home when he chooses,’ said Brother Saulf encouragingly. ‘There is nothing seriously amiss. The shock has passed and he has no broken bones, only bruises, though he’ll suffer a couple of days’ aches and stiffness. As the Archdeacon has been telling him, the age of miracles is certainly not yet over.’

As the two Johns left the little priory together, the coroner said how glad he was to see such an improvement in his clerk’s melancholy.

De Alençon smiled, his blue eyes twinkling in his lean, ascetic face. ‘Though I truly believe that such escapes are ordained by the Almighty, I must admit to labouring the point somewhat to my nephew. His conviction that his miraculous deliverance is a sign from above has greatly lightened his mind.’

The coroner gave his friend a lopsided grin. ‘Thank God for that — and I mean that literally, John. But is there no real hope of his ever being accepted back into Holy Orders?’

‘Not for some time — and certainly not in Exeter as long as the present chapter contains certain people.’

‘Speaking selfishly, though I am sorry for Thomas, I would be lost without his skills,’ mused de Wolfe aloud, ‘so let’s see what a year or so might bring. Perhaps eventually he could return to Winchester.’

They parted at Martin’s Lane, where the coroner collected Odin and rode out of the city to the gallows beyond Magdalene Street. Here he witnessed two Friday executions, one of an outlaw who had been caught robbing a travelling merchant of his purse holding fourteen pennies, two more than the statutory shilling that meant a felony and the death penalty. It had been a toss-up as to whether to behead him for being a captured outlaw or hanging him for the felony, but the Shire Court, under Richard de Revelle, discovered that the fee for hanging was less. As the man had no property, John had no interest in the matter, other than eventually to record the event on his rolls.

The other execution was of a weaver who had tried to strangle his wife in a fit of anger when he discovered that she had committed adultery with his brother. De Wolfe had tried hard to delay the trial until the King’s justices came for the Eyre of Assize, but as the usual waiting stretched into months with no sign of their arrival, the sheriff and the burgesses had insisted on summary conviction in the Shire Court. As the weaver had a house and a workshop, John would have to assess his property and record it for the judges, who would decide how much to confiscate for the Crown and how much — if any — to leave for the family of the sinful widow. But with Thomas out of commission, there was little he could do for now: his own skills with a quill and ink were still negligible.

On the way back from the gallows, he passed by the South Gate and went through the fields and garden of Southernhay to reach the Water Gate, which had been driven through the angle of the city wall, at the top of the slope leading down to the quay. From there he went to the house of Matthew Knapman and found the tin-merchant in his ground-floor warehouse, with Peter Jordan and a burly Saxon workman. They were stacking and tallying bars, some of black tin, which had just arrived from yesterday’s coinage at Chagford. Others, kept separate, were the cleaner, shinier ingots from the re-smelting, ready for export.

Matthew, stout and red-faced, put down the notched tally-stick and his knife and waved the workman out into the backyard. ‘Is there any news from Chagford or Dunsford?’ he asked anxiously.

The coroner shook his dark head. ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me something. I wondered if your brother’s testament had shed light on who would gain most from his death.’

Peter, dressed in a neat brown tunic with a long leather apron tied around his waist, answered for his master. ‘We went to see Robert Courteman, the lawyer, but he would tell us nothing. We must wait until all the family are present.’

‘And when might that be?’

‘We hear it should be on Sunday, for the widow is now said to be coming to Exeter for that very purpose. No doubt she will bring her damned brother and her mother,’ he added, with ill-concealed bitterness.

De Wolfe noticed that he called his stepmother ‘the widow’, rather than use her name. This was a family ridden with antagonism, he thought, all vying with each other for the best share of the spoils. To give Matthew credit, he seemed outwardly more concerned with the hunt for Walter’s killer than with the will, but de Wolfe had no news for him on that score. ‘I have left my officer in Chagford to pick up any news that may be dropped during the coinage. He’s due back tonight, so I will let you know if anything more has happened.’

Back in his cramped, draughty chamber at the top of the gatehouse at Rougemont, de Wolfe laboriously wrote a few words on a scrap piece of parchment, putting down the names of the two hanged men and the victim of the ox-cart accident so that he would not forget them by the time Thomas came back and he could dictate a full account. By now it was late morning and rain was still falling from the leaden sky. Going to the niche in the rough stone wall, he took an earthenware mug and filled it from Gwyn’s gallon jar on the floor. Without his two assistants to visit the stalls, there was no bread, meat or cheese, and as he sat alone in the bare cell, drinking sour cider, he realised that he missed their company, much as their bickering often irritated him.

He hoped fervently that Thomas would soon be back on duty; without proper records, the coroner’s business would become chaotic and, indeed, futile, for de Wolfe’s main function was to record all these legal events for the royal courts. He went on to wonder how the new coroner, Theobald Fitz-Ivo, was managing, with no experience and, in de Wolfe’s opinion, a severe shortage of brains and common sense.

His drink finished, de Wolfe sat hunched over his table, fingers drumming idly on the rough boards. There was nothing else he could do without Thomas and the cider had merely reminded him that his stomach was rumbling for want of food. The prospect of sitting opposite Matilda for dinner in his own hall did not appeal and a devil came to sit on his shoulder to whisper ‘The Bush’ in his ear.

Leaving Rougemont, his feet took him almost unbidden down to Idle Lane, but when he came to the edge of the barren plot on which the tavern stood, he hovered uncertainly. For a man of such single-minded determination, used to quick, firm decisions, this wavering was foreign indeed. One part of his mind cursed the affairs of heart and flesh for so undermining his usual strength of will. Standing on the wet road, like a lanky black heron, he stared across at the Bush, willing Nesta to come out alone so that he could talk to her without curious eyes watching them and the bold face of Alan of Lyme grinning in the background. But though a customer or two came and went through the low front door, there was no sign of his former mistress — as was to be expected, he told himself angrily. She always had business inside, in the kitchens or the ale-room or on the upper floor. The thought of the little upstairs room and the thrice-damned Alan occupying the French bed he had bought, made him grind his teeth in jealous rage.

After five minutes of lurking in the street like a lovesick youth, de Wolfe shook himself back to his senses and walked slowly past the inn, hoping that Nesta would appear and fall into his arms as he passed the door. Nothing of the kind happened and, feeling foolish, he walked on to the other end of the lane, then turned and slowly repeated the process. By the time he got back to his original spot, he was in a cold rage, mostly with himself for his foolish, adolescent behaviour. A knight of the realm, a senior law officer and a veteran of countless wars, skulking in a back-street to stalk a lover who had rejected him!

‘To hell with it,’ he muttered aloud, to a startled rat snuffling in the garbage at his feet, ‘I’m going to eat at the Golden Hind.’

A large meat pie and two quarts of ale later, he felt slightly better and in the mood to write off the Welsh redhead as water under the bridge. His thoughts were already straying to Dawlish and the fair Hilda — he even wondered if he might engineer a visit soon to Salcombe, where another pleasant widow had not had his attentions for six months and more.

By mid-afternoon, after another jug of ale, John decided to walk back to the castle to practise his lessons, much neglected of late. He had been attending a vicar-choral in the cathedral precinct for tuition in reading and writing, and Thomas de Peyne had also been coaching him. Starting education so late in life, John found it hard to retain such learning and his progress had been slow, but he resolved once more to make a greater effort to become literate.

Outside the tavern, the drizzle had ceased and he made his way up the high street, ploughing through the crowds like a ship parting the waves. As a flock of sheep on their way to slaughter flowed around his legs, he caught sight of a familiar figure coming behind them. Surprised, he stopped and let Thomas come up to him, clinging for support to a solicitous young secondary. ‘Thomas, what are you doing out and about? When I saw you this morning, you were flat on your back in St John’s.’

Haggard, but grimly determined, the little clerk clung tightly to his companion’s elbow. ‘I am bruised but unbowed, Crowner. Brother Saulf said I could go home if I spent the rest of the day on my pallet there. I can get back to my duties tomorrow, I’m sure.’

De Wolfe grinned, for the small man had raised his own spirits too with his dogged determination. ‘You’re like Lazarus rising from the tomb — or sick-bed, in your case. But take your time in returning, Thomas — though I’ll admit I’ve already sorely missed your skills.’

Thomas’s peaky face lit up with pleasure at even this mild praise from his master, to whom he was devoted. ‘The hand that holds the quill is undamaged, Crowner. As my uncle the Archdeacon has shown me, I have experienced a small miracle — a sign from God that my cause is not hopeless.’ He winced as his free arm made the Sign of the Cross.

As he limped away towards the cathedral Close, leaning heavily on his friend, de Wolfe set off back to Rougemont with a spring in his step, cheered by the marked improvement in his clerk’s mood. In the chamber above the portcullis, he settled down for an hour or two’s study of the parchment leaves that bore his Latin lessons. Slowly and silently, his lips formed the sounds of the grammar and vocabulary that the vicar and Thomas had written for him. Then he laboriously practised writing simple phrases, using one of his clerk’s spare pens and jet black ink.

Eventually the effects of half a gallon of ale and the boredom of learning overcame him and he sprawled across his table, leaning his black head on his arms, and was soon sound asleep.

He was awakened by a timid rapping on the boards in front of his nose and blearily opened his eyes to see a young man-at-arms from the guard-room below, standing before him. Another older man was waiting just inside the sacking that screened the doorway.

‘This man says he must see you urgently, Crowner,’ stuttered the soldier, and stepped back to let the bailiff come forward, for John had recognised him as Justin Green from Chagford. Suddenly fully awake, with a premonition of trouble, de Wolfe motioned the man to the empty stool opposite. ‘What is it? Where’s my man Gwyn?’ he demanded.

The bailiff, his upper half damp with rain and his legs muddied from hard riding, looked anxiously at the coroner, in the manner of all harbingers of bad tidings. Haltingly, he told his tale, watching de Wolfe as his consternation grew.

The substance of his news was that there had been a near riot at the coinage in Chagford that morning when the Saxon Aethelfrith had been captured red-handed damaging some tin-works on the edge of the moor. A mob of tinners had dragged him to the town square, also accusing him of killing Henry of Tunnaford and Walter Knapman. He had boasted proudly of his vandalism and the enraged crowd had beaten him up. Gwyn had tried to intervene and had been knocked senseless for his trouble.

‘Is he badly hurt?’ interrupted de Wolfe, lurching to his feet.

The bailiff shook his head. ‘He was knocked out, but soon recovered, though with many scrapes and bruises. But the man he struck was still senseless when I left and I fear he may die. The tinners have bound your man and have taken him prisoner.’

Justin Green explained that Gwyn had been slightly wounded by a dagger and then went on to say that the crowd had hanged the old Saxon forthwith, stringing him up from a rafter of the coinage shelter, amid yells and jeers from the inflamed tinners.

‘And where was the sheriff when this outrage was taking place?’ roared the coroner.

‘The tinners demanded that he should convict and condemn Aethelfrith, as their Warden of the Stannaries — but he would not. Neither did he try to stop the execution, having but half a dozen soldiers with him against that ugly mob.’

‘The rest of the men returned with the constable a few hours ago,’ volunteered the young man-at-arms from behind.

De Wolfe kicked over his bench in rage and stormed into the middle of the chamber. ‘Damn the sheriff, the God-forsaken coward! He should have tried to stop them. The Stannaries have no jurisdiction over violent crime.’

‘That’s what your Cornishman yelled at them — and got stabbed for his pains.’

‘Where is he now, the rash fool?’

‘On his way to Lydford, lashed to the rail of a horse cart, with the man he felled lying at his feet. The sheriff and his men, with Sir Geoffrey Fitz-Peters and a score of tinners from around Lydford, are riding with them.’

‘Why in the name of the Holy Virgin are they all going to Lydford?’ demanded de Wolfe, becoming progressively more agitated as the story unfolded.

‘The tinners insisted on taking him to the new prison at Lydford and the sheriff made no protest. They say that if the other man dies they will hang Gwyn for murder.’

John groaned — it was already early evening and Lydford was well over thirty miles from Exeter, around the northern bulge of Dartmoor.

He could set out this evening, but would not get far before darkness fell. ‘How came you to ride here with the news?’ He thought that surely the sheriff would not have wanted to advertise his sorry part in this affair.

‘Sergeant Gabriel managed to speak to me secretly in the confusion when they were hanging the Saxon. He wanted me to urge on you the gravity of the matter, especially where your officer is concerned.’

‘I need no convincing of that — but many thanks for your speedy summons. When are these hot-heads likely to get to Lydford with their cart?’

‘They left soon after noon and it’s about eighteen miles from Chagford. That wagon is less cumbersome than an ox-cart, but they’ll still take at least until dark to get there.’

De Wolfe stared blankly through one of the window slits as he worked out the best plan of action. ‘I’ll ride tonight and get as far as I can, then continue at dawn,’ he growled. ‘You get a bed in a tavern here, then go home, with my thanks.’ He was already collecting his cape and broadsword from pegs on the wall. ‘I’ll get a palfrey or post-horse from the garrison stables. It will be swifter than my heavier destrier.’

De Wolfe strode to the doorway, slipping the baldric over his shoulder and buckling up his sword-belt. ‘And God help them if they’ve harmed my officer.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In which Crowner John rides to Lydford

In spite of de Wolfe’s urgent need to reach Lydford quickly, fate conspired against him. The palfrey he had hired cast a shoe near Tedburn St Mary, a hamlet no more than a quarter of the way to Lydford. By the time he managed to rouse a farrier in the village it was pitch dark and he could go no further. He spent the night wrapped in his cloak on the floor of the forge next to the banked-down furnace, and continued on his way at the first glimpse of dawn. Riding was slower than he had anticipated, for the track was muddy with rain and the remnants of melted snow, some of which still lay along the verges.

The road ran in a wide semicircle north of Dartmoor, which loomed high on his left hand. It was almost noon when he rode at last into Lydford, which lay half-way between Okehampton and Tavistock at the western margin of Devon. An ancient Saxon burgh, the little town had two castles: one was a ruined timber structure, dating back to the Conquest, which sat on the edge of the deep gorge that protected one side of Lydford; the other was a brand new square stone tower at the opposite end of the old castle bailey. It had been finished only a month earlier, to serve mainly as the Stannary gaol, though the lord of Lydford had quarters on the top floor. The main hall below this was used as a court and guardroom, the gaol being underneath. It was lacking door or window, reached only through a trap-door from the hall. Already, in the short time the prison had been in use, it had gained an evil reputation for its awful conditions.

John de Wolfe rode wearily up to the rebuilt wooden gatehouse that sat in a stockade that ran along the bank and ditch of the earlier fortifications. A crowd of men was clustered outside, with a fringe of curious women and children. As John walked the palfrey through the archway, a guard stepped forward to challenge him, but a snapped, ‘King’s coroner!’ left him standing with his mouth open.

There were more rough-looking men milling around the courtyard who, de Wolfe guessed rightly, were tinners. A thatched stable block was against the inside of the stockade on his left, with many horses and ponies tethered to rails. He left the palfrey with a dim-witted stable-boy, then strode towards the wooden steps that led up to the main floor of the tower.

At the top, there was such a press of people trying to get into the hall that he had to pull shoulders aside to get through. Inside the doorway a solid plug of bodies brought him to a halt. ‘What’s going on in here?’ he growled in the ear of a grey-bearded fellow jammed against his left side.

‘A crowner’s inquest — a local tinner who died here last night, after that affair in Chagford.’

For a moment, de Wolfe was mystified, as well as anxious. Then he realised that the territory given to Theobald Fitz-Ivo included Lydford. Even though the tinner had been injured in Chagford, which was de Wolfe’s responsibility, he had died in Lydford, so Fitz-Ivo rightly had jurisdiction. He forced his way inside, ignoring protests and threats until he had a clear view of the large chamber.

A low dais to one side carried a few benches and chairs, as in the Shire Court at Exeter. On these sat the obese Fitz-Ivo and the dapper sheriff, together with a couple of clerks and Geoffrey Fitz-Peters. Behind them stood a couple of men-at-arms, a priest and a few tinners. Immediately below the dais, a low bier rested on the floor, carrying the body of the black-bearded tinner, covered with a sheet up to his neck.

But de Wolfe’s attention was riveted elsewhere. Directly in front of the platform the huge figure of Gwyn of Polruan was pinioned by two soldiers. His officer looked even more dishevelled than usual, his hair tangled and ominously matted with dried blood. The part of his face that was not covered in whiskers was red and bruised and his left eye was half closed, the lid swollen and dark. As if they feared the giant would break free from his captors, heavy metal fetters were clamped around his wrists and ankles, joined together with a rusty chain.

Appalled and angry, de Wolfe shoved further forward until he stood in a free space at one end of the dais, the rest of the small hall being packed with a few score tinners, presumably both jury and spectators. Fitz-Ivo was leaning forward to speak, hunched over his paunch. The inquest must have been well advanced, for he was haranguing the jury by way of a summing-up.

‘So here we have a law-abiding man, a tinner helping to guard the self-confessed murderer of another tinner, Henry of Tunnaford, as well as being the destroyer of God knows how many stream-works and blowing-houses.’ He leered around the audience, deliberately emphasising the tinning aspects to a jury who were virtually all tinners.

‘This poor man was then grossly assaulted by this Cornishman, who beat him senseless and left him to die. The motive need not concern us, for a coroner’s inquest is to determine what happened and who was responsible, not why it occurred. Suffice it to say that this Gwyn of Polruan was not acting under his master’s orders, for the Exeter coroner was far away by then.’

De Wolfe fumed at this distortion of the truth, but worse was yet to come.

‘Consider your verdict, then, you men of the jury. This honest tinner, who leaves a widow and five children, was done to death by a brute twice his size, who tried to disrupt and prevent a summary trial and execution of a killer, confessed out of his own mouth — crimes solely against Stannary interests and swift justice straight from Stannary men.’ Fitz-Ivo leaned back and gave a self-satisfied smile at Richard de Revelle, as if to canvass his approval.

The sheriff was looking uncomfortable at the way Fitz-Ivo was drumming up feelings in the heart of tinners’ country, but made no effort to intervene, his popularity in this area being so fragile.

With sweat on his podgy face from excitement at his own eloquence, the fledgling coroner turned back to his audience to reach the climax of his exhortation. ‘The verdict is yours, but consider it among yourselves now. This can only be murder, a violent death from grievous bodily harm, and a hundred witnesses can show it was Gwyn of Polruan.’ He took a deep breath then delivered his coup de grâce. ‘If that is your verdict, then the culprit must hang forthwith!’ he shouted.

There was a scatter of yells of approval from the hall, though quite a number of tinners looked uneasy at this premature turn of events.

De Wolfe’s patience snapped, worn to breaking point by rising incredulity and anger. He thrust his way across the floor below the dais to stand in front of Gwyn and glare at the new coroner. The platform was only knee-high and as Fitz-Ivo was sitting down, de Wolfe’s face was on a level with his.

‘Have you gone mad, you fool? Or are you just drunk?’ he yelled, in a voice so strident that a hush fell upon the hall, even among the more raucous elements who had just been applauding his officer’s death sentence.

Fitz-Ivo flinched, his protuberant watery eyes gazing at de Wolfe as if he was the devil just arrived from hell. He opened his mouth to protest, but John overrode his words. ‘Have you learned nothing about your duties and powers, man?’ he ranted. ‘A coroner cannot pass any sentence, let alone that of death. If your jury names a person as being responsible, then he must be committed to the King’s justices for trial.’

Fitz-Ivo lurched to his feet, trying to work up righteous indignation. ‘You have no right to disrupt my court, de Wolfe. A coroner you may be, but now you have no jurisdiction here.’ He looked around for support from the sheriff, but de Revelle sat stonily silent. He was well aware that his protégé was incompetent to the point of absurdity, but locked in a room with a few score ill-disposed tinners he was desperate to remain neutral for as long as possible.

De Wolfe glared directly into Fitz-Ivo’s protuberant eyes as he said, ‘Your appointment has not yet been confirmed by the King’s Justiciar or his judges — and after this fiasco, I intend to make sure it never will be!’ His voice rose in a crescendo of wrath.

Turning his back abruptly on the fat knight, he walked the few steps past the corpse to where Gwyn stood, and laid a hand solicitously on his arm. ‘How goes it with you, man? Are you sorely hurt?’

His officer managed a crooked grin. ‘I’m well enough, Crowner. It takes more than a few loose-fisted tinners to see me off — even when one of them uses a knife.’ He lifted a chained arm enough to show his master where the blade had sliced though his leather cuirass.

De Wolfe confronted one of the hulking men holding his officer, prodding him hard in the chest with a bony finger. ‘Get these irons struck from this man immediately!’

The tinner looked warily across at his companion, who gripped Gwyn’s other arm, then shook his head. ‘The crowner up there told me to fetter him,’ he growled uncertainly.

‘And the crowner here is telling you to unfetter him!’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘That fellow up there is no longer a coroner.’

Fitz-Ivo let out a howl of protest, and a few yells of dissent and abuse from the hall encouraged Richard de Revelle to rise and half-heartedly contradict his brother-in-law. ‘You have no cause to interfere in this, John!’

De Wolfe swung around to face him. ‘Indeed I have!’ he roared, in a voice that quelled the rising murmur in the court. ‘I am the only coroner in Devon appointed by King Richard and his justices. I had grave reservations, expressed to you, Sheriff, about even provisionally appointing this man to office, and I’ll prove to you that my misgivings were indeed well founded.’ His voice crackled with authority, and although Fitz-Ivo opened and closed his mouth a few times, he could find no words to utter.

‘First, my officer here was in Chagford expressly at my orders, to safeguard the coroner’s interest in the investigation of two murders. Thus he was acting on my behalf in all he did.

‘Second, the action of that unruly mob in hanging the Saxon was unlawful. They were well within their rights in seizing him if he was caught causing damage, but they had a duty to deliver him into custody until a proper trial could be held.’ He scowled at de Revelle and added, ‘I am surprised and concerned, Sheriff, that you, being present with men-at-arms, did not insist on — and enforce — this proper course.’ He turned to his now silent audience. ‘To hang that man without trial was a crime against the King’s peace equivalent to murder. I shall hold an inquest in Chagford on this Aethelfrith and will report those responsible to the King’s judges when the Eyre of Assize comes to Exeter in the near future.’

This provoked an angry response from certain parts of the gloomy chamber. ‘We live by Stannary law here, not yours, Crowner,’ yelled a voice from the back.

‘No, you do not!’ retorted de Wolfe, with a voice like a bull. ‘The King gave you tinners those special dispensations because of the value of the metal to the Crown. But you know well enough — and your Lord Warden here can confirm it — that Stannary law strictly excludes any jurisdiction over crimes of violence, those against life, limb or property.’

De Wolfe now fixed his eyes on Fitz-Ivo, who was as deflated as a pricked bladder. ‘Finally, you claimed in your fine speech just now that my officer cruelly beat this man to death!’ He pointed a quivering finger at the corpse lying on its bier. ‘Yet you did not invite your jury to inspect the body, as you should have done, and if they had, they would have noticed a strange lack of evidence about this cruel and fatal beating.’

De Wolfe bent down and grasped the shoulder of the stiff cadaver, turning it on its side to face Theobald Fitz-Ivo. ‘The face is unmarked, is it not?’ He pulled down the grubby sheet and pointed to the neck and chest, then hoisted the body half off the bier to display its back. ‘So where are the signs of this merciless beating, eh? A single bruise behind the ear!’ He let the body fall back and dragged the sheet over it.

‘The truth of the matter is that the deceased man struck my officer a sudden cowardly thrust with a dagger, as the bailiff of Chagford can testify, as well as Gwyn of Polruan himself — and, no doubt, a dozen witnesses, if they were honest enough to come forward.’ He turned to the Cornishman. ‘Show them your wound, Gwyn.’ Awkwardly, the officer lifted his chained arms to show the fresh slash in his thick jerkin. ‘Under that, Crowner.’

De Wolfe pulled aside his outer garment and displayed a large circle of dried blood on Gwyn’s duncoloured tunic, just over the edge of his ribs on the left side. ‘We are lucky not to be holding another inquest — this time on a murdered law officer!’ he shouted, with real anger in his voice. ‘He struck the coward a single blow in self-defence, which must have caused an apoplexy in the brain. He fell unconscious and died some hours later.’

He bent again towards the sweating Fitz-Ivo and snarled, ‘A royal law officer trying to uphold the King’s peace against an unlawful lynch mob is attacked with a knife and has to defend himself with a single blow from his fist. Where now are your grounds for murder, Fitz-Ivo?’

He drew back and turned his thunderous features upon the sheriff. ‘I shall report all of these matters to the Justiciar, Sheriff. Not only about Fitz-Ivo’s irresponsible incompetence, but also your own failure to uphold the rule of law and the King’s peace by not even attempting to prevent the unlawful killing of the old Saxon — and your lamentable inaction in not curbing the present folly of this so-called coroner!’

As de Revelle began to huff and puff in his own defence, de Wolfe’s stentorian voice overrode him. ‘As the only official coroner in this county, I declare this travesty of an inquest null and void. I will take it over myself to reach a proper and legal verdict.’

He hoisted himself up on to the platform and stood menacingly over the crestfallen Fitz-Ivo, then signalled peremptorily to the pair still holding Gwyn. ‘I told you to take my officer out to the smithy and get those bonds struck off — at once.’

As the Cornishman, grinning with relief, shuffled towards the door, de Wolfe beckoned to the front row of the sullen but subdued audience. ‘Those of you who were named as the jury, come forward and look closely at the corpse.’

A couple of hours later, the coroner and his officer were riding almost knee to knee along the road back towards Exeter.

‘That was a near thing, Crowner. If you hadn’t arrived when you did, they’d have strung me up for sure, just like that old Saxon.’

No formal word of thanks had passed between Gwyn and his master, but the bond that twenty years of companionship had forged was sufficient to leave many things unspoken.

John gave one of his gargling grunts, which obscured a whole range of emotions from displeasure to contentment. ‘That swine was the cause of most of the trouble,’ he muttered, jerking a gloved hand at the sheriff who rode twenty yards ahead, behind Sergeant Gabriel and two of his men, the others forming a rearguard.

‘Fitz-Ivo was no help, either!’ growled Gwyn cynically.

John spat accurately into the ditch as they trotted along. Their discussion lapsed for a while as they reached a rutted part of the track, where wagons had cut deep grooves in the mud, formed where a stream had overflowed recently. The horses picked their way delicately through the morass until a rise in the ground hardened off the surface once more.

De Wolfe picked up the talk where it had ended, speaking in a Welsh-Cornish patois, as he and Gwyn always did when alone together. ‘Fitz-Ivo’s just an ignorant fool — but de Revelle is a malignant, scheming bastard! He’s also a spineless bastard, when it comes to a challenge, God be praised. If he’d not been so weak back there, my task would have been the harder.’

Gwyn was thankful that both the sheriff and Fitz-Ivo had caved in so readily under the coroner’s verbal onslaught in Lydford Castle. The neutral attitude of Geoffrey Fitz-Peters had helped, too, as although the manor lord wished to stay on the side of the powerful community of tinners, he had been uneasy about the flagrant breaches of law, both concerning Aethelfrith’s lynching and the illegal inquest that aimed to sentence Gwyn to death. Geoffrey also hoped to succeed Richard de Revelle as Lord Warden, and de Wolfe’s threat to report the sheriff’s failings to the Chief Justiciar and demand a Commission of Enquiry into the running of the Stannaries had been music to ears that wanted de Revelle dispossessed of the Wardenship.

‘Will you really speak of him to the Justiciar?’ enquired Gwyn, tenderly touching his swollen eye and bruised face.

‘I’m certainly going to tell Hubert to watch who becomes coroner when vacancies arise in the counties. And a close look is needed at the Stannary organisation.1 These tinners are getting above themselves! They seem to think that they live above the King’s laws, and they’ve grown more arrogant since the King needed all the metal they can produce. If we had a decent Warden, instead of a scheming rogue who only wants to line his own purse, they’d be much better served.’

The group of horsemen made steady progress, hour after hour, stopping a few times to rest and water their horses at inns in Okehampton and Whiddon Down. Here they drank some ale and ate sparingly at a tavern, the soldiers eating from the hard rations they carried in their saddle-pouches. The sheriff pointedly ignored de Wolfe, and as he was above socialising with Gabriel he ate and drank in aloof solitude.

On the last leg of the journey in the late afternoon of that Saturday, the conversation between the coroner and his henchman turned back to the unresolved affair at Chagford.

‘Before they strung him up, it seems that Aethelfrith confessed readily to the slaying of Henry, the overman,’ observed Gwyn. ‘He seemed quite proud of it, saying how he had done it with an old Danish battleaxe that had belonged to an ancestor, who was in Harold’s army and survived the battle at Hastings.’

‘Why should he have suddenly turned to murder?’ asked de Wolfe, intrigued by the story.

‘He said that Henry of Tunnaford was the spokesman of the jury that condemned his only son to be hanged twenty years before. It seems he was accused of stealing a sheep on the moor — falsely, according to Aethelfrith, as they really wanted to stop him trying to stake a claim on a small tin-stream way out on the moor.’

De Wolfe rode on in silence for a while. ‘So it seems that the tinner’s death is unconnected with that of Walter Knapman. The Saxon didn’t admit to that, did he?’

‘He was scornful of the notion when the tinners accused him of it.’

‘It’s what I felt in my bones all along — Dunsford was well out of Aethelfrith’s territory, anyway. So we still have that problem on our hands. It has to have been someone who would profit by Knapman’s death. It was no stray outlaw killing, I’m sure.’

Gwyn winced as the mare stumbled, jarringhis bruised ribs. ‘There’s a damned wide field of suspects to choose from, Crowner. That brother of the widow seems the most likely to me, a villain if I ever saw one. All he wants is to get a piece of Knapman’s empire through his sister.’

De Wolfe grunted, keeping his eye on the sheriff’s back to make sure he was far enough ahead not to hear their conversation. ‘That applies to others in the family, too. Matthew and the stepson have been worrying themselves stupid over the will, ever since Walter died.’

‘What about Stephen Acland? He’s after the widow — and not only for her beautiful body, I reckon.’

John had still failed to size up Acland. ‘But would he kill for it, I wonder? Where was he when you had your bit of trouble in Chagford yesterday?’

‘Not a sign of him — not even at the coinage, where a goodly part of the metal belonged to him.’ Gwyn’s blue eyes twinkled — or, at least, the one that was still visible did. ‘I suspect he was away holding the fair Joan’s hand — or some other part of her, perhaps.’

‘At least you can’t accuse him of wanting you hanged,’ said de Wolfe, with a wry smile at his henchman. ‘But he still has to stay as a possible candidate for Walter’s killing. He’s got a double motive.’

‘I suppose we can exclude the fat priest, Smithson — he’s hardly likely to slay Walter, as part of his living came from Knapman’s purse, so he wouldn’t want to risk that drying up.’

There was a comfortable silence between them as another few miles of track passed beneath their horses’ legs. The weather had improved, and as they neared Exeter and the coast, the snow vanished from the countryside, and fitful patches of blue sky appeared between the clouds as the east wind dropped.

De Wolfe had earlier told Gwyn of their clerk’s dramatic but futile attempt to end his life, and the big man had been noticeably upset, vowing never to tease the little fellow again — a promise that de Wolfe doubted he would be able to keep. ‘He seems much more contented, now that John de Alençon has convinced him that his deliverance was miraculous,’ said John, when the subject came up again.

Soon the tops of the great twin towers of the cathedral came into view, as Exeter’s northern crag appeared on the horizon. De Wolfe rehearsed his excuses to Matilda for his intention to report her brother’s further misconduct, as well as his unseating of Theobald Fitz-Ivo from the coronership, after she and Richard had connived at his appointment. ‘She’ll have the same old stick back to beat me with,’ he grumbled to Gwyn. ‘The one that says that being the only coroner means I’m always away from home, neglecting her.’

He realised again, sadly, that he no longer had the Bush Inn as a bolt-hole.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In which Dame Madge appears again

The lawyer’s musty office was hardly big enough to hold those who crowded in to hear Walter Knapman’s last testament read early on that Sunday afternoon. Robert Courteman was squeezed behind his table, with his son standing at his shoulder, pressed up against the shelves of parchment rolls lining the wall behind him. In front, a motley collection of stools and benches brought from the nether regions of the house was occupied by the Knapman family and their hangers-on.

The widow Joan sat directly in front of the lawyers, immaculate in a deep blue silk kirtle, its dark colour a gesture to her gradual, if rapid, shedding of funereal black. Instead of a white cover-chief and wimple, her black hair was neatly braided into two spiral rolls, held in place over each ear by fine gilded nets. Her hands rested demurely on a fur-lined woollen cloak, which lay across her lap. The new widow kept her eyes on her fingers for most of the time, but now and then she stole glances around the room from under her long dark lashes, trying to interpret the mood of the others at this crucial time.

On her left, her brother Roland sat in an almost aggressive pose, his big hands on his knees and his heavy features jutting pugnaciously towards Courteman, as if ready to challenge anything he said. As with all tanners, a faint but perceptiple aura of something rank hung about him, no doubt derived from the vats of dog droppings that were used to cure the leather. Fidgeting on Joan’s other side was her mother Lucy, skinny and bird-like in a grey gown, her hair hidden under a linen coif tied tightly under her chin. Behind them, Matthew Knapman perched uncomfortably on a rickety bench, his florid face bearing a worried expression. He picked nervously at loose skin around his fingernails, until his wife jabbed him in the side with her elbow.

Next to her Peter Jordan and his wife shared another short bench. The young man seemed calm enough, but Mistress Jordan glared indignantly at the backs of the trio in front of her, as if challenging their right to be there solely by virtue of Walter’s recent marriage.

The last person squashed into the small chamber was Paul Smithson, present seemingly as spiritual supporter of the widow, but interested, too, in anything that Knapman might have bequeathed to his church.

The only person not there who might well have been concerned at the outcome was Stephen Acland — but he could hardly have used his role as the widow’s paramour to justify his presence.

‘Are you well accommodated in Exeter, Mistress Knapman?’ began Robert Courteman, in his high-pitched voice, after he had shuffled enough parchments on his table to establish his legal credentials.

‘My mother and I are well housed with Matthew, thank you, through the kindness of his good wife. My brother is lodged in the Bush Inn, and Vicar Smithson has a bed in the cathedral precinct.’ Her quiet tones were firm, but devoid of expression. They seemed to imply that the lawyer should leave the niceties and get down to business. Perhaps Courteman took the hint, for he untied a leather thong from around a small parchment and unrolled it between his bony hands.

After clearing his throat a few times, he stared bleakly around the expectant group and began to speak. ‘This is the final testament of Walter Knapman, tin-master of Chagford in the County of Devon,’ he intoned unnecessarily. ‘It is dated the second day of April in the year of Christ eleven hundred and ninety-five.’

There was a sudden grating noise as the foot of Peter Jordan skidded on the stone floor. ‘What date did you say, sir?’

The dried-up features of the elder lawyer stared testily at the young man who had interrupted him. ‘The second of April, this year.’

‘But that can’t be right,’ began Peter, but he stopped short as his wife jabbed him in the ribs and hissed something fiercely into his ear.

After another disapproving glare at his son-in-law, Robert Courteman continued, staring at the parchment, though not reading it verbatim. ‘The roll has been sealed by myself as certifying that Walter Knapman assented to the contents on that day and his own seal has been appended in wax.’ He held up the curled skin briefly, to display two embossed blobs hanging from tape tags at the bottom of the roll, in lieu of signatures; less than one in three hundred people was literate. ‘The sealing was witnessed by two of my clerks, their signatures being here.’ Courteman jabbed at the document with a long forefinger and laid the roll down again.

‘The substance of the testament is this. The beneficence of Walter Knapman to the Holy Church leads him to donate twenty-five pounds to St Michael the Archangel, Chagford, to be used as the incumbent sees fit, as long as the use is approved by the Prebendary and Bishop.’

Smithson smiled broadly — twenty-five pounds was a large sum of money, and although it was not specifically earmarked for his stipend, it ensured the security of parish finances for a long time to come.

‘After this pious bequest is paid, the residue of his property and possessions is to be distributed thus, assuming his wife Joan survives him — as she thankfully does.’ The lawyer gave a humourless grin, exposing his yellowed teeth in the direction of the widow. His attempt at levity was met with stony silence.

‘The freehold demesne in Chagford is granted absolutely, without let or hindrance, to her, with all its goods and chattels.’ Courteman peered again at Joan and clarified his legal jargon. ‘In other words, the house, its contents and the land on which it stands are yours, Mistress Knapman.’

Joan gave a slight nod, as if to convey that she had expected nothing less.

He returned to his parchment. ‘All the residue, which includes his dozen tin-workings, including all stream-works, blowing-houses and boundings registered under Stannary Law but not yet worked, three freehold farms and mills and all other possessions such as horses, cattle and any other livestock, together with the contents of his treasure chest and all debts due to him yet unpaid, are to be divided into three equal parts between his widow Joan, his brother Matthew and his stepson Peter Jordan.’

There was an outbreak of whispering and muttering and heads closing together, as the audience tried to work out if they were pleased, satisfied or disgruntled, but the lawyer’s voice cut harshly across the murmuring. ‘There are two conditions upon this dispensation. First, the apportionment of his estate is dependent upon the agreement of all beneficiaries not to allow the break-up of the tin-workings by selling any part of them for at least five years.’ He stopped again to gaze around the room, as if seeking any opposition to this clause. ‘The testament provides that any beneficiary wishing to sell their share within those five years will forfeit it and it will then be shared between the other legatees.’

This provoked a babble of protest from Matthew, Peter Jordan and Joan’s brother. Peter sprang to his feet, almost upsetting his wife seated on the other end of the bench. ‘How, then, can we benefit for at least five years, if we are unable to sell our holdings?’ he demanded.

The lawyer sighed, a veteran of many other testaments and family squabbles. ‘You should be rejoicing at your good fortune, not complaining, Peter. You have a third share in whatever is in his personal treasure chest, coin, jewellery or whatever, which is yet to be accounted. And you will have a third of the income from his extensive business, which wisely — and on my own advice to Walter — will be kept intact for five years, and far longer if you heed my counsel.’

Peter remained on his feet, pale but determined. ‘This is not the will that my stepfather told me about, sir.’

Robert Courteman scowled at the young man. His face conveyed annoyance and suspicion. ‘And how would you know that, boy? Walter demanded that I kept his affairs absolutely secret, especially from his family.’

At the back of the room, the priest noticed that Philip Courteman’s face had reddened, and that Peter Jordan had shifted his angry glare from his father-in-law to his brother-in-law.

Robert Courteman might also have recognised Peter’s switch of hostility, had not Matthew, with a perturbed expression on his fleshy face, interrupted, ‘You said there were two conditions attached to the bequests and you’ve given us only one. What’s the other?’

The elder lawyer aimed his gaze at the tinner’s agent. ‘Whereas, apart from the house, Mistress Joan shares equally with you and Peter in the present circumstances, Walter had made provision for future circumstances, when her share would increase from one-third to eight-tenths of the substantial fortune, leaving you and his stepson one-tenth each.’

Matthew’s jaw dropped, and Peter went white above his dark moustache. ‘What possibility could that be?’ said Matthew, in a strangled voice.

‘If Mistress Knapman had had a child before Walter’s death.’

There was an audible sigh of relief from the other two beneficiaries and a snarl of disapproval from Lucy and her aggressive-looking son.

Matthew murmured to his spouse that he thanked God that his brother had remarried only five months before his death.

But the lawyer had not yet finished. ‘Or if she was found to be with child at the time of Walter’s death.’

There was a sense of anticlimax at this and both Matthew’s and Peter’s heartbeat had begun to subside to normal.

Until Joan spoke up from her seat in front of the table. ‘But I am with child — and have been these past three months!’

That evening, the coroner and his two assistants met together for the first time in several days. When Thomas de Peyne and Gwyn called at the narrow house in Martin’s Lane, they timed their arrival to avoid meeting Matilda, who detested them. She considered one a Celtic savage and the other an irreligious pervert. They knew she always attended the Sunday evening service at St Olave’s, which took place after the rigid series of Offices at the cathedral had finished. The two men, today sharing a common bond of aches and pains from their recent injuries, made doubly sure of her departure by skulking behind the corner of St Martin’s Church until they saw her leave the house.

Inside, John was contemplating leaving his hearth for a lonely drink in his new haunt, the Golden Hind, when Mary put her head around the door screens. ‘I’ve got two battered knaves in my kitchen, saying they want to talk to you.’

The coroner followed her into the vestibule, then down the covered passage to his backyard, where he found his clerk and his officer sitting by Mary’s cooking fire, eating hot wafers. Brutus was crouched adoringly at Gwyn’s feet, having his ears scratched by the dog-loving giant. They jumped to their feet, but de Wolfe waved them down as he joined them on a stool and took a pot of new ale from Mary, who wandered off across the yard to another shed where she did the washing, ignoring conventions about working on the Sabbath.

After enquiring about their various cuts and bruises, John was reassured that both men were recovering well. He was particularly glad to see that Thomas remained cheerful — he even had an air of expectant optimism, as if his recent ‘miracle’ was soon going to blossom into good news. But now he had other news to report, and proudly disclosed the results of today’s spying in the cathedral precinct.

‘After Compline, there was a short mass to celebrate St Botolph, and afterwards some of the vicars and secondaries adjourned to the refectory for sweetmeats and a glass of wine. I managed to get myself invited to both functions,’ he added evasively, leaving the others to wonder how he continually managed to insinuate himself into the ecclesiastical life of Exeter, especially within a day of attempting suicide.

‘Get to the point, midget,’ rumbled Gwyn placidly.

‘Well, one of the visiting guests was the Chagford priest — that fat fellow we saw at the inquest. After a few cups of Anjou red wine, he began telling us of a meeting he attended this morning at a lawyer’s office in Goldsmith Street.’

Thomas then related, fairly accurately as it later turned out, the provisions of Walter Knapman’s will and the reactions of those assembled to hear it. ‘The priest was delighted with the bequest to his church, which will see him secure for a long time — but he described with ungodly glee the reactions of some of the other beneficiaries.’

De Wolfe was intrigued by the account, and Thomas became almost euphoric at the curt praise his master bestowed on him for bringing such useful intelligence.

‘So the inscrutable Widow Joan is not as virginal as she looks, eh,’ chortled Gwyn.

‘That’s what the rest of the family want proven,’ replied Thomas waspishly. ‘According to Smithson, there was the devil of an outburst from Matthew and Peter when she claimed to be with child — and an equally loud condemnation of their doubts from Joan’s brother and mother!’

‘So what happened then?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘Matthew, with Peter, who are both set to lose about two-thirds of what they would have had if she had failed to produce an heir for Walter, voiced their doubts as to who might be the father. They insinuated that Stephen Acland was more likely to have sired the pup. That provoked much shouting and abuse from the widow’s relatives, but the priest said that Joan herself just sat with that faint smile of hers on her pretty face.’

De Wolfe rubbed his itching cheeks — he had missed his Saturday shave the day before and had had to scrape off a budding beard that very morning. ‘Then what happened?’ he persisted.

‘It seems the old lawyer, Robert Courteman, stuck his own finger in the pie. Obviously he has an interest in the matter beyond his legal obligations, as his own daughter’s fortune would be affected by how much Peter gets from his stepfather’s estate. He claimed that the terms of the testament can only be fulfilled when it is proven that Walter’s wife is indeed with child.’

Gwyn cackled coarsely. ‘Does he intend proving it personally?’

Thomas gave him a prim look of disapproval. ‘He said he could not approve the bequests until the pregnancy had been confirmed by someone of repute.’

‘He only has to wait a month or two for it to be obvious to everyone,’ grunted the Cornishman, but Thomas ignored him.

‘The lawyer insisted that the widow be examined by a woman wise in these matters — and the obvious choice is our Dame Madge from St Katherine’s in Polsloe.’

John recalled the formidable nun from the small priory a mile or so north of the city. She was skilled in all matters relating to women’s ailments and the problems of childbirth. He had had reason to be grateful for her services before, when she had helped him investigate a fatal miscarriage and a rape. ‘So the fair Joan is to be put to the test,’ he mused. ‘But does this help us to put a finger on who is the most likely candidate for Walter’s murder?’

The little clerk had one more titbit of news. ‘The priest said that there was something unspoken going on between the lawyers and Peter Jordan. The young man several times challenged the testament as not being the one he knew about. The old lawyer shouted him down, but Smithson had the impression that Peter was covertly accusing Philip, the younger Courteman, of misleading him.’

De Wolfe gave one of his grunts. ‘I don’t know that that tells us anything. But an expectation of what was in the will might be a motive for killing, I suppose.

‘Walter had been married five months — he was certainly likely to change his will after marrying again. But did he know that Joan was with child when he made this last one?’

‘If she’s three months gone, she herself would know, even though she wasn’t showing yet,’ said Gwyn. ‘But if Acland was the father, she may have kept it from Walter — but not otherwise, surely.’

‘The will was dated earlier this month, which was why Jordan seemed so shocked and upset,’ added Thomas.

‘I can’t make head nor bloody tail of it,’ grumbled Gwyn, finishing the last of the ale that Mary had provided.

‘Maybe Joan had her husband killed before he discovered that she was carrying Acland’s child and cut her out of the will?’ suggested Thomas, half-heartedly.

‘How the hell would Walter know it wasn’t his child, unless he had slept in the stable since his marriage?’ rumbled Gwyn.

‘He would if the infant was born with hair like Acland’s,’ retorted the clerk.

De Wolfe scowled at them both. ‘This is getting us nowhere. As it turns out, neither Walter’s brother nor his stepson have made a great deal from his death, which reduces their motive. And, by the same token, the widow and her hangers-on have increased their share of the fortune and therefore also their incentive to see Knapman dead.’

‘But did they all know that before the testament was disclosed?’

Thomas voiced the obvious objections that were in de Wolfe’s mind.

There was a long silence as they sat around the dulling fire. Then de Wolfe stood up and stretched his long limbs. He was about to announce that he was going down to the Bush for more ale, when the realisation that he was persona non grata there flooded back to him.

‘I’m off to the Golden Hind,’ he grunted, and glared at the other two, defying them to make any comment.

Robert Courteman wasted no time in setting about the verification of Joan’s child-bearing. On the afternoon of the reading of Walter Knapman’s testament, he sent a servant to Polsloe Priory to enquire if Dame Madge would be kind enough to examine the widow. He sweetened this request with a small donation to the priory funds, making a note that this was to be added to his legal fees deducted from the final settlement of the will. The servant returned with the redoubtable nun’s agreement, asking that the lady attend upon her at Polsloe the next morning.

Courteman decided that he needed an independent witness to hear Dame Madge’s verdict from her own mouth and sent his son Philip on Monday morning, with Joan’s mother as chaperone.

The trio left from the East Gate at around the eighth hour, the ladies jogging side-saddle on the palfreys they had brought from Chagford and Philip on a brown gelding. The road passed through St Sidwell’s, then through a mile of mixed farmland and woods to reach the foundation where six nuns dispensed spiritual and bodily help to the locals.

The buildings were small, all in wood apart from a new stone chapel, which Philip Courteman had ample time to study as he waited outside in the compound, adjacent to the West Range of buildings. The two ladies were escorted inside by a young novice, and half an hour later they emerged, Lucy with a broad grin and Joan with a faint smile of satisfaction on her usually inscrutable features. They were followed by a tall, grim-looking nun, who reminded Philip fleetingly of John de Wolfe. She advanced on him, her black robe swirling in the keen wind, her face framed tightly in a snow-white wimple and flowing head-veil.

‘If you are the lawyer, I understand that I am formally to confirm to you that the lady is indeed with child,’ she said, her long face looking as if it had been carved from a boulder of granite moorstone. Before he could answer her, the flinty face suddenly broke into a charming smile, almost as if a different person lived within. ‘And I can certainly do that, young man! God has granted her the gift of motherhood, and in five or six months, Christ’s family will have increased by one new member — unless she has twins!’ She smiled again, and raised her hand to make the Sign of the Cross in farewell to the three visitors.

Philip Courteman gallantly helped the two ladies up on to their saddles, and a moment later they were heading for the wooded track back to Exeter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In which Crowner John makes several discoveries

The distant cathedral bell had tolled some time ago for the mid-morning offices of Nones, Sext and Terce. De Wolfe and his clerk had just come from the Shire Hall in the inner ward of Rougemont, where a short session of the County Court had sentenced two thieves to mutilation, their right hands to be cut off in the undercroft by Stigand, the gaoler, and another two to be hanged. The sheriff was as uncommunicative with de Wolfe as he had been since the Lydford episode, and had stalked back to his chambers in the keep as soon as the cursing prisoners and their wailing families had been dragged from the court-house by his men-at-arms.

As usual, John was fretting about the chaotic system of law enforcement that had developed and the inability of the government to keep its promises for reform. ‘It’s damned nonsense to have manor courts, burgess courts, county courts and the King’s courts, all competing for the same business,’ he complained to Thomas, who had heard it all before.

‘There’s good money to be made by all of them,’ the clerk answered mildly.

‘And it’s my job as coroner to drive as much of it as possible into the royal courts,’ retorted his master. ‘That’s why Hubert Walter set them up, to trim the wings of sheriffs and barons. But how can he expect me to prevail against them, when his judges don’t come round the counties when they should?’

Thomas hurried to keep up with his master’s loping stride, his left foot dragging slightly from the old phthisis in his hip. ‘I heard from a visiting canon last week that the Eyre was in Wiltshire and should be here at any time now,’ he said breathlessly.

De Wolfe snorted as he headed back towards his chamber in the gatehouse. ‘How often have we heard that, Thomas? The Assize should come several times a year, but we’ve seen no sign of it since last summer, in spite of the Justiciar’s promise when he visited a few months back.’

His grumbling was cut short as they approached the arch of the gatehouse, under which the stairs to his office climbed steeply up from the guardroom. The sentry on duty at the top of the short drawbridge over the dry ditch was holding up his lance and waving his arm to stop a horseman who was cantering up the hill towards them, his steed frothing at the mouth. He clattered to a halt under the raised portcullis and slid from his saddle, almost into the arms of the sentry. Sergeant Gabriel emerged from the guardroom and joined the coroner and his clerk, who were waiting to see what this urgency was all about.

‘I must see the sheriff — or someone in authority!’ panted the messenger, looking almost as exhausted as his mare, even though it later transpired that they had ridden little more than a mile.

Gabriel, his grizzled features frowning under his iron helmet, strode forward and grabbed the man by his shoulder. ‘What’s all the panic, man? Who are you?’

The young fellow, whose rustic dress and odour suggested that he was a stablehand, was making the most of his moment of importance. ‘I’m a groom from Polsloe, sir. Sent to report a grievous happening, not more than an hour since,’ he wheezed.

The sergeant grabbed the reins of the mare and pushed them at the sentry, then half dragged the priory servant across to a rough bench set against the guardroom wall. ‘Sit there, get your breath and tell us what’s wrong,’ he commanded.

At the mention of Dame Madge’s abode, the coroner and his clerk hurriedly joined Gabriel in standing over the youth to hear what he had to say.

‘Two ladies and a lawyer fellow came to visit our sisters this morning — I don’t know their names or business. They left after a short while to return to the city, but not more than fifteen minutes or so later, the elder lady comes flying back on her pony, all dishevelled and screaming blue murder.’

The groom was determined to squeeze the last drop of drama out of his account, but de Wolfe was impatient. ‘Get on with it, lad!’

‘Several sisters came running out at the noise, then Dame Madge spoke to the lady and sent a couple of us from the stableyard helter-skelter back along the Exeter road, the women following on foot.’

He stopped for breath, then went on with his saga. ‘The forest, what’s left of it there, starts not two hundred paces along the track from the priory. Around the bend, within the wood, we came across two loose palfreys and a younger lady lying groaning at the side of the road. A few paces away, the lawyer fellow I saw earlier was stretched out across a bush, out of his senses and with blood coming from his head.’

He stopped and Gabriel shook his arm impatiently. ‘Then what?’ he shouted.

The stablelad shrugged, having almost run out of information. ‘We went to succour the pair, but a moment later, Dame Madge came running up — she’s a mortal strong woman,’ he added ruefully. ‘She told me straight away to ride fast to the castle here and tell either the sheriff or the crowner that there had been attempted murder and to send a posse right away. It seems the elder lady had told her that some footpad had burst out of the trees and attacked them. That’s all I know,’ he finished, rather lamely.

De Wolfe looked at the sergeant. ‘Get a couple of mounted men, Gabriel. This is no common highway robbery, so near the city. And I know the people involved. Something odd is going on.’ He swung round to Thomas. ‘Get up the stairs and rouse Gwyn from his second breakfast. Tell him to come over to the stables with us to get horses.’

Half an hour later, the posse from Rougemont had reached the scene of the outrage. At a bend in the track, almost within sight of the priory, the trees crowded close to the verge. A small area of flattened grass and scrub was being guarded by two servants from Polsloe. They pointed out blood splashes on the vegetation and where a line of beaten grass and weeds led off into the trees. De Wolfe suggested to Gabriel that he take his men to follow this trail, while he himself carried on to the priory. With Gwyn and the young stable-boy — for the feeble Thomas had stayed in Exeter — John rode the last quarter-mile at a full gallop.

In the three-roomed infirmary of the priory, he found Dame Madge and another Sister of Mercy attending to Philip Courteman, who was slumped on a bench against the whitewashed wall, having a long, but shallow cut on his scalp bathed and bandaged.

‘He has suffered no great harm, thanks be to God,’ announced the brawny Dame Madge, the sleeves of her black gown rolled up and a bloodstained apron wrapped around her waist.

Philip groaned at her ministrations, but he was fully alert, though very sorry for himself.

‘What of the lady?’ asked the coroner anxiously.

‘She, too, is quite well — she has bruises on her throat, but is recovering on a bed next door with her mother beside her,’ said the nun. ‘No harm has befallen the child she carries, as far as I can tell. The good Lord has certainly looked after his own today, though the older lady Lucy gave him stout assistance,’ she added, with one of her rare smiles.

While the other sister wound a long strip of linen around his head, Philip haltingly told de Wolfe his part of the story.

‘We were hardly out of sight of this place, trotting around a bend, when what I took to be a monk in a habit and cowl, carrying a staff, waved us down at the side of the track. I was in front of the ladies and I stopped. I assumed he was in some distress.’ He looked rather sheepish as he added, ‘The distress was to be mine, for that’s the last I recall, until I found myself being carried back here across the back of a groom’s nag. He must have struck me senseless with that staff.’

Frustrated by Philip’s loss of memory, de Wolfe turned away, to be faced by Joan’s mother, who had come from the next room at the sound of voices. Her wrinkled face was relieved by her bright blue eyes and even the hardened Dame Madge seemed impressed by her. ‘The lad was knocked out of his senses,’ she declared, ‘but I can tell you what took place. This fellow, disguised as a Benedictine in his black robe, struck the young fellow here a swinging blow with his staff that felled him from his horse. Then he rushed at my poor daughter, her being with child, and dragged her from her pony.’ Lucy clenched her fists at the memory. ‘Thankfully, she fell into a bush which broke her fall, but then the bastard — begging your pardon, Sister — bent over her and started to throttle her. And I couldn’t be putting up with that, could I?’ she added, in an almost matter-of-fact tone.

Dame Madge put an arm affectionately around Lucy’s shoulders. ‘A real heroine, this woman,’ she said proudly. ‘She attacked the villain herself and drove him off.’

The mother, though still tremulous, beamed. ‘I’m a tanner’s wife, and I’ve seen plenty of rough men and fights in my time. I drove my horse at him and reared her up so that her front hoofs struck him. I was afraid for my daughter, but she was underneath and it was that or let her be strangled.’

John had to admire Lucy’s enterprise and courage — though the thought passed through his mind that she would probably be worse to live with than Matilda and that perhaps the tanner from Ashburton was happier in his grave. ‘So he made a run for it, this man?’ he asked.

‘I think I hurt him grievously,’ said Lucy. ‘I felt a hoof crunch into the side of his chest, for he let out a terrible scream. He dropped Joan and staggered away, then limped off into the forest. I was too concerned with my daughter to bother with him, as long as he fled.’

‘Have you any notion as to who he was?’ asked Gwyn, silent until now.

‘No, he kept this monk’s habit girded tightly around himself and I think he must have tied the cowl under his chin somehow, for his face stayed well hidden.’

‘Was he a big man or small?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘Not small, certainly,’ said the old woman, ‘but not a great lump like this ginger man of yours here.’

‘Was your daughter able to recognise him?’

‘She has said nothing, her throat is so sore she can hardly speak.’

Dame Madge interrupted, ‘She is not yet well enough to be questioned, if that is in your mind, Crowner.’

De Wolfe motioned to his officer. ‘We must get back there and see if Gabriel has found anything.’

Minutes later, they returned to the edge of the forest and were met by one of the soldiers who had been left by Gabriel to guard the scene. The man held out something. ‘The sergeant told me to show you this, Crowner. He picked it up where the bushes were flattened.’

John took a shiny grey object into the palm of his hand. It was a charm or amulet hanging on a leather thong, which had snapped. Gwyn looked over his shoulder, curious to see what it was. ‘Made of pure tin, that is,’ he said. ‘Three rabbits with their heads in a circle, sharing only three ears.’

‘The symbol of the tinners,’ agreed de Wolfe. ‘Must have been pulled off the attacker when that harridan Lucy stamped him with her pony.’

‘These bloody tinners get everywhere,’ muttered Gwyn, but a shout from the trees diverted him.

Another soldier appeared, pushing his way through the long damp grass to the edge of the road. ‘We’ve got him, Crowner, though he’ll not last long. The sergeant says for you to come quickly.’

They hurried back into the wood, where the lush undergrowth faded beneath the trees into wild garlic and early bluebells. Footprints in the wet earth and an occasional splash of blood marked the trail for several hundred paces to a small clearing where some fallen trees had allowed the bushes and weeds to flourish again. Here Gabriel, two of his men and the pair of servants from the priory were gathered in a circle. At their feet lay a figure almost hidden under a voluminous habit of coarse black wool. The cowl had been pulled back.

De Wolfe bent over a face that was almost blue. Its owner was gasping for breath, his lips were really black and spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. At first the coroner did not recognise the man, but then he realised he had seen him somewhere before.

‘He seems mortally wounded in the chest,’ murmured Gabriel, pulling aside the robe to show a large tear in the rough blue smock, which suggested a labourer of some kind.

Under the rip, a shiny patch of new blood-clot shimmered in the light coming through the trees and de Wolfe noticed the pink-white end of a broken rib sticking through the underlying skin. ‘What’s your name, fellow?’ he rasped.

Gasping was the only reply and, although the man was conscious, the coroner knew from experience that he had little time left to live. ‘You are dying, fellow, so make your peace with God by confessing your sins,’ said John loudly.

‘His chest is punctured — he has little air left in his lungs,’ diagnosed Gwyn who, like his master, considered himself an expert on injuries after two decades of warfare.

A dying declaration, attested by witnesses, was valid evidence in law, so de Wolfe needed to get what he could before the man expired. He had not forgotten that another death had been caused by a blow from a staff that had unhorsed the victim, and wanted to discover if the same hands had inflicted both strokes. ‘If you can’t speak, nod or shake your head! Did you also attack a man a week ago near Dunsford, a man named Walter Knapman?’

The crumpled figure tried to suck in air, his damaged chest heaving ineffectually. His eyes rolled up, exposing the whites, and de Wolfe thought he had died. But then the bloodshot lids flickered and the eyes refocused, but the man made no sign with his head. ‘You are dying. This is your last chance for redemption,’ he snapped, wishing he had Thomas here to coax the man with some religious cant. ‘Once again, did you attack a man near Dunsford Mill in a similar fashion?’

Foam appeared alongside the spittle on his lips but, slowly, the dying man nodded.

‘And who did you wish to slay today? The young man you struck?’

This time the head moved almost imperceptibly from side to side.

‘So it was the young woman?’

There was a pause and again John feared that death had forestalled him. But then there was a slow nod, before the eyes rolled up again.

‘He’s going, I reckon,’ observed Gwyn impassively.

‘Who set you to these crimes, fellow?’ shouted de Wolfe, desperately, though all too conscious that the man had no ability left to tell him. With a bubbling rattle, pink-stained froth welled from the false monk’s mouth and his head fell back, the face now almost black for want of air.

‘Dead as mutton. You’ll get no more answers from him,’ rumbled Gwyn, satisfied that his forecast of impending death had been correct.

De Wolfe straightened up and looked down at the now inert assailant. ‘At least we know who killed Knapman — though I’ll wager he was only some hired assassin. But where the hell have I seen him before?’

One of the men-at-arms from Rougemont stepped forward and peered again at the corpse. ‘I think I know him, Crowner. With his face blue and swollen like that it’s difficult, but I’m sure he was a porter who worked in Matthew Knapman’s tin-yard near the quayside. He’s part Saxon, by the name of Oswin.’

De Wolfe’s memory clicked, as he recalled the fellow humping tin bars in the warehouse when he called to tell Matthew of his brother’s death.

‘Come, Gwyn, back to the horses. We’ve urgent business to attend in Priest Street.’

However, once on the back of his borrowed mare, de Wolfe decided to call back at the priory to see if Widow Knapman had recovered sufficiently to say whether her assailant had given any clue as to who had sent him on his murderous mission. They found Philip Courteman still sitting on his bench, holding his aching head in his hands, and Lucy in the guest hall with the sisters, who seemed to have been highly taken by her aggressive courage.

The new knowledge he brought, that she had killed their assailant, seemed only to increase her satisfaction, and de Wolfe arranged for the new corpse to be brought to the tiny mortuary outside the infirmary wall until he could hold his inquest.

His hope of talking to Joan was quashed by Dame Madge, who opened the door of the infirmary cell to show her sleeping peacefully beneath an open window. ‘I gave her a sleeping draught to ease the discomfort of her bruised throat,’ explained the nun. ‘She’ll not be ready to talk until later today.’ With that de Wolfe had to be content, and after a few fruitless words with the lawyer’s son, he and his officer rode away towards the city.

Before he went to Matthew’s house and yard, John felt that a brief appearance at home might insure him later against Matilda’s disapproval. He called at Martin’s Lane and partially thawed her icy indifference with the latest news on the Knapman saga. Anything that involved family feuding, pregnancy and disputed wills was welcome nourishment to her curiosity, especially if she could later retail it to her circle of friends at the cathedral and St Olave’s.

His duty done, de Wolfe rejoined Gwyn, who had been skulking in the farrier’s opposite, and they rode down to Priest Street. Here they found that the sheriff had forestalled them: Gabriel had felt obliged to send a soldier post-haste to tell him of the events in Polsloe Wood. Another had been despatched to Matthew’s yard and then to the lawyer’s office, conveying to Robert Courteman the news about his son.

When de Wolfe arrived, two men-at-arms were holding Richard de Revelle’s horse outside the gate to the yard, from where furious shouting could be heard.

‘How, in God’s name, should I know where Oswin has gone?’ yelled Matthew, as they walked through the back gate. ‘He should be here helping to load these bars. I’m having to do it myself, as you can see.’

‘Perhaps he has gone on a murderous errand for you,’ retorted the sheriff. ‘Just as he did last week in Dunsford.’

Matthew looked blankly at de Revelle, whom he thought had gone insane. ‘Mary, Mother of God, what are you saying? Ask the bloody man yourself when he comes back — just before I tell him he’s lost his job here, leaving me in the lurch on such a busy day.’

John stepped forward, and the pair noticed his arrival for the first time. ‘Oswin won’t be coming back today — or any other day. He’s dead, Matthew,’ he said.

‘Where the devil did you spring from, John?’ exclaimed de Revelle, annoyed at the intrusion of the coroner into what he had hoped was to be a surprise arrest of his own.

Guessing that Gabriel had informed the sheriff of recent events, de Wolfe ignored his brother-in-law and spoke to Matthew, who was red-faced with outrage and confusion at de Revelle’s obscure accusations. ‘Your man Oswin attacked Joan Knapman and Philip Courteman today — and admitted killing your brother last week. Have you anything to say about that?’

Matthew’s colour changed from pink to greenish-white and he sank back weakly for support against a pile of ingots. ‘Oswin? Why should he do that? The man’s a moron! He’s only good for using his muscles to lift tin.’

‘Well, he used them to kill Walter and to try to strangle your sister-in-law today. But who put him up to it, eh? We know that two men were implicated in the killing. The lad at the mill was quite definite, simple as he is.’

The sheriff, strutting impatiently in his bright green cloak, thrust himself back into the fray. ‘This Oswin’s your servant, Knapman. He does what you bid him do. Admit it now, you used him to rid you of those who kept you from an inheritance.’

The tin-merchant goggled at de Revelle. ‘Me? Kill Walter? You’re mad! How could I slay my own twin, with whom I shared my mother’s womb?’

De Revelle smiled nastily at Matthew. ‘No doubt we’ll discover that at the Ordeal or during peine forte et dure,’ he threatened. He yelled for his men-at-arms to come into the yard. ‘Seize this man and deliver him to the gaoler in the castle keep.’

Exasperated by yet another act of dangerous foolishness on the part of the sheriff, John stepped forward and grabbed de Revelle’s arm. ‘Don’t be so hasty, Richard. You have no evidence that Matthew is involved in this.’

The sheriff sneered at his brother-in-law. ‘Motive and opportunity — isn’t that sufficient? He stood to gain a goodly part of a fortune by disposing of his brother — and of keeping far more of it by disposing of his widow. As for opportunity, whose servant is the confessed killer, eh?’

‘I have been here in this yard all day, with many witnesses to prove it. How could I have been involved?’ quavered Matthew desperately.

‘I don’t give a tinker’s curse for your alibi today. It was the man you paid to do your evil deeds who matters,’ brayed de Revelle triumphantly.

De Wolfe cast about desperately for something to prevent the sheriff persisting with his rash and impetuous prejudice. ‘Where were you on the morning your brother was murdered?’ he snapped.

Matthew drooped pathetically. ‘What’s the point? You’ll only say it doesn’t matter, as Oswin did my bidding, anyway!’

‘Answer me! Can others testify to your presence somewhere?’

‘Of course! That morning, before I rode to Chagford for my regular meeting with my brother, I was negotiating the sale of tin for Germany, with two merchants from Cologne.’

‘Who, no doubt, have now conveniently left England,’ sneered the sheriff.

‘No! As far as I’m aware their vessel still lies in the river, having sprung leaks that need recaulking,’ averred Matthew, with a return of his defiance.

De Revelle shrugged indifferently. ‘As you said yourself, it matters not. This Oswin did your dirty work for you.’

De Wolfe had his opportunity. ‘Not so, Richard! We well know that another person, apart from the self-confessed Oswin, was involved. Walter was struck from behind. He would never have suffered that had not another person been engaging his attention from the front, the one who led him off the road into the trees. It was almost certainly someone he knew, who would arouse no suspicion of attack. And it could not have been Matthew, who can prove that he was in Exeter until it was too late for him to be in Dunsford at the time Walter was attacked.’

But nothing would dissuade the stubborn de Revelle from his first conclusion and he beckoned again to the two bemused men-at-arms to advance on Matthew. The tin-merchant backed away behind de Wolfe, whom he saw as the more even-handed of the law officers. ‘Wait, I tell you!’ he shouted. ‘What about that damned brother of Joan’s, who can’t wait to get his hands on her money? He declined to go with his sister to Polsloe today, claiming he had urgent business in Ashburton — which I doubt.’ Emboldened by his theory, Matthew’s voice became more confident. ‘If he could get rid of her, after ensuring that Walter’s death and her pregnancy made her the heir, then as her nearest relative he could claim all the eight-tenths for himself. So why not discover where he was today — and on the day my brother met his death?’

This novel idea stopped both the sheriff and the coroner in their tracks. De Wolfe admitted to himself that since Joan had been attacked, the possibility of her brother’s involvement had not occurred to him.

As usual, Gwyn had remained silent while his superiors argued around him, but his ponderous body hid an astute brain. ‘No one has asked where Peter Jordan is today,’ he pointed out.

John stared at the hairy Cornishman, then at Matthew. ‘So where is he?’

The tin-merchant looked mystified. ‘He’s been here all morning, helping me since that damned Oswin failed to appear.’

‘Then where is he now?’ demanded de Revelle, shifting the target of his suspicion.

‘When that messenger came with news of the attack at Polsloe, he said he’d better go home to tell his wife that her brother had been injured. That was a few minutes before you arrived.’

De Revelle gave a shrug of indifference, but John felt a sudden frisson of worry.

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Rack Lane, not two minutes from here.’

Without a word of explanation to the sheriff or Matthew, de Wolfe hurried out with his officer. Minutes later they were rapping on the door that a water-seller had pointed out to them.

A serving-girl ushered them into a small but well-furnished hall and a puzzled-looking Martha Courteman came in from the yard at the back of the house. She was a plain woman, several years older than her husband. A downturned mouth above a receding chin suggested a sour disposition, and John found it easy to accept that she was the daughter of the dour lawyer. ‘We need to speak urgently to your husband, Mistress Jordan,’ he began, hovering over her like a thin black eagle.

Martha looked bewildered. ‘But Peter is at his work down at the warehouse.’

‘Matthew told us that he had hurried home to tell you of the injury to your brother.’

The young wife threw a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream, her eyes as large as eggs. ‘Philip injured? I know nothing of it!’ she howled.

It took a few minutes to explain and calm her down, the maid fussing over her with a reviving glass of mead. De Wolfe was impatient to discover where her husband might have gone, but Martha had no idea. She began to cry, rocking back and forth on a stool.

‘I told him not to meddle in that testament. Nothing but ill could come of it!’ she wailed. De Wolfe seized on this, and prised the story from her. When Walter had remarried, Peter had been concerned naturally that his expectations from the inheritance were in danger, especially if Joan bore a child. His stepfather had refused to give him any hint of his intentions, either before or after the marriage, and Peter eventually persuaded Martha to approach her father, Walter’s lawyer. Robert Courteman refused outright, indignant at her attempt to undermine his professional ethics, so Martha went to work on the weaker party, her brother.

Reluctantly, he eventually agreed to ferret out what he could and secretly searched among his father’s rolls. He reported that the testament he discovered still gave Peter and Matthew virtually half-shares in the estate, but another parchment indicated that Walter had demanded a new will be drafted, giving Joan a similar share. There was no mention of the eight-tenths, should she conceive a child, but she was to share equally with Peter and Matthew.

‘Philip told me only two weeks ago that the revised testament had not been signed,’ whimpered Martha tearfully, ‘but he knew that it soon would be, after Walter had made some further amendments. But now it seems clear that he knew much less about his father’s business than he thought, for another version of the will must already have been signed.’

De Wolfe looked down gravely at her. ‘Is there anything else you should tell me?’

Now that the dam had been breached, she seemed resigned to letting slip other matters. ‘There has been ill-feeling between Matthew and Peter these past weeks, as my husband has long suspected that Matthew has been indulgingin sharp practices with Walter’s business. Peter has been checking secretly on the commissions that Matthew has been taking on the finished tin — especially that sent abroad, to Flanders and the Rhine. It became clear that, for years now, Matthew has been persistently robbing his brother.’

John wondered if this had much to do with the main problem, but felt he should probe further. ‘What was your man going to do about it?’

‘He confronted Matthew a couple of weeks ago, telling him he knew of the embezzlement. Matthew tried to deny it, but Peter said that unless it stopped straight away he would have to tell Walter. For one thing, the loss of income reflected on Peter, who might be accused of being party to the deception — and also we were losing money ourselves, as Peter lives on a small proportion of the remaining profits after Matthew had squeezed out his extra commission.’

‘Did he tell Walter?

She shook her head, tears slowly dribbling down her cheeks. ‘Walter died before Peter’s ultimatum to Matthew ran out. Then, of course, we began to worry in case Matthew was behind Walter’s death, in order to prevent the scandal from being revealed.’

De Wolfe digested this and saw there was a faint possibility of a yet unsuspected motive for Knapman’s murder. But he returned to the matter of the testament. ‘Did your husband say that he intended taking action over this situation?’

She looked up fearfully and shook her head, but John felt that she was refusing to admit, even to herself, what she feared deep down. ‘And you have no idea where he is now?’

She shook her head again, wordlessly, and de Wolfe tapped Gwyn on the arm, jerking his head towards the door.

Outside, as they swung themselves into their saddles, de Wolfe was grim-faced as he spoke. ‘I’ve a bad feeling about this. Let’s get ourselves back to Polsloe as quickly as we can.’

When they returned to the priory, everything seemed as they had left it. Philip Courteman was still slumped on his bench in the infirmary, holding his sore, bandaged head in his hands, half asleep from a potion they had given him to ease the pain.

Dame Madge, somewhat puzzled by the coroner’s speedy reappearance, assured him that Mistress Knapman was still sleeping peacefully. Hermotherhad been sitting with her, but had just gone to the refectory to eat, the excitements of the day being insufficient to affect her appetite.

De Wolfe stood indecisively in the infirmary, having sent Gwyn to scout around the grounds to see if there was any sign of Peter Jordan, who was now a suspect. While he waited for his officer to return, he conversed with the gaunt nun, for whom he had considerable regard. They reminisced about the previous case in which she had been so helpful, and in turn, the nun enquired after the state of body and mind of Christina Rifford, the portreeve’s daughter who had been so sorely ravished a few months earlier.

Suddenly their amiable conversation was rent by a scream from beyond the door of the adjacent cell where Joan was resting, followed by a crash, roars and yelling from a distance. The coroner rushed to the door, Dame Madge at his shoulder, and burst into the small, bare room.

Joan was sitting up on the low bed, clutching a blanket across her bosom. Muzzy from the sleeping potion, she croaked through her bruised throat. ‘A man was there!’ She pointed shakily with her free hand to the unshuttered window. Below it, a table that had carried a wooden crucifix and a jug of water lay overturned on the floor. The window opening was empty, and when de Wolfe peered out he could see nothing but the open garden around the priory buildings — but fading shouts and thudding feet told of something amiss out there. He ran out of the room and through the outer door, turning right to follow the sounds of pursuit. Among the indistinct shouts, the only word he caught was ‘Sanctuary!’

The stone chapel lay across the garden and he ran as fast as his long legs would carry him, outstripping the nun, whose long skirts hampered her muscular legs. Once round the corner of the chapel, he skidded to a halt at a remarkable sight. Gwyn was in the process of hurling a writhing body over the drystone wall that formed the boundary of the priory on to some wasteground lying between it and the surrounding trees. His officer then vaulted the wall in a single leap, with one hand on the top, and dropped from sight, though his roars and another’s yells rose from behind the stone barrier. As de Wolfe ran across, he heard Gwyn snarl, ‘This is the only sanctuary you’ll get, you evil little bastard!’

Peering over the wall, he saw the tousle-haired Cornishman sitting astride a smaller figure, his massive hands pinning the wrists to the ground. Near the trapped fingers of the right hand, a naked dagger lay in the coarse grass. Gwyn’s body obscured the captive’s face, but on moving along the wall, de Wolfe saw, without surprise, that it was Peter Jordan. His face was twisted into a mask of hate as he struggled ineffectually to free himself, spitting oaths and invective.

Hearing a rustle alongside him, John turned to find Dame Madge also peering over the wall. He took her arm gently and pulled her away. ‘I fear his language is hardly suitable for your ears, Sister.’

She smiled at him, and her stern face lit with an almost mischievous radiance. ‘I am no recluse, Crowner, but a working sister who goes among the people every day. I doubt there is a single new oath you could teach me.’ Her smile faded as she pointed towards the wall, where Gwyn could be heard hauling the prisoner to his feet amid a barrage of curses. ‘I have no idea what this is about, Sir John, but was that man trying to harm the young lady?’

De Wolfe nodded, as several other sisters, Lucy and a couple of priory menservants came running towards them.

‘I think he had climbed half through that window when Gwyn caught him just in time. He had a knife in his hand and was trying to finish what his paid assassin had failed to do in the forest this morning.’

Dame Madge grimaced in despair at the vileness of men, then became her usual efficient self, sending the others about their business and telling Lucy to attend to her frightened daughter. De Wolfe walked back to a gate in the wall and hurried after Gwyn, who was frog-marching Peter Jordan around the perimeter to the front of the priory. ‘Best keep this young swine clear of the chapel, Crowner. He might make another break for sanctuary.’

De Wolfe knew that, strictly speaking, sanctuary could have been claimed anywhere within the priory grounds: it was not necessary to enter a church — and certainly not to be at the altar, as some mistakenly believed. But he held his tongue, trusting that Jordan was unaware of this. Also, he did not want to deflate Gwyn’s pride in having cornered the villain.

The villain in question had fallen silent, perhaps thinking that the less he said, the less could be held against him. His face was ghastly white against his drooping black moustache and his eyes held a hint of madness, which de Wolfe felt must be genuine, as no one in their right mind would hope to get away with openly knifing the only person who stood between him and Knapman’s fortune.

‘Now, what do we do with this creature?’ asked Gwyn, as they reached the road at the front of the priory.

‘You take him back to Rougemont and give him into Stigand’s tender care.’

De Wolfe helped Gwyn to tie the wrists of the now silent captive with a length of rope, the other end being lashed to the saddle of his officer’s horse. He watched as they set off for Exeter at a walking pace, Jordan half dragged, half stumbling behind the mare on the mile-long journey, which John expected to be his last sight of the outside world until he was taken to the gallows beyond Magdalen Street.

He saw them vanish through the trees, then went back into the infirmary to check on Mistress Knapman’s condition after her fright, and to offer a final apology to Dame Madge for the disturbance of the normally placid life of Polsloe Priory. At the same time, he craved the permission of the amiable prioress to hold an inquest in the yard next day, as the body of Oswin still lay in the shed that was their tiny mortuary.

Late that afternoon, John de Wolfe marched across the drying mud of Rougemont’s inner ward towards the undercroft of the keep. Gwyn and Thomas were at his heels, the clerk carrying his shapeless bag containing parchments, ink and quill.

They went down the few steps and under the forbidding archway that led into the gloomy cavern, half below ground, that extended under the whole keep. One part was open, with a filthy floor of packed earth that acted as store-room, torture chamber and lodging for the gaoler. The other half was partitioned by a wall, in which a gate of rusty iron bars gave access to half a dozen cells of indescribable squalor.

Gwyn went across to an archway screened by a wattle hurdle and woke the gaoler with a none-too-gentle prod of his boot. Muttering and swearing, Stigand staggered to his feet and waddled over to the gate, jangling some keys on a ring at his belt. Inside, the cells led off a short passage and the surly custodian unlocked the first door on the left, then stood aside to let them enter.

In the semi-darkness, it took de Wolfe a moment to make out the occupant, sitting dejectedly on the slate slab that served as a bed. A cracked earthenware jug and a stinking leather bucket stood on the soiled straw of the floor, through which a rat rustled its way to a corner.

Although Peter Jordan had been incarcerated for only a few hours, he was already filthy from his surroundings: every surface in the cell was coated with a mixture of oozing damp, mould and the excretions of previous tenants.

He looked up, and in the gloom de Wolfe could see that his dejection had turned to defiance. ‘You’ll regret this mistake, Crowner!’ he hissed, his voice trembling with emotion.

‘Not nearly as much as you will, lad, when you’re standing on a ladder with a rope around your neck,’ replied John evenly.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong — and you can’t prove that I have.’

Gwyn prodded Jordan’s shoulder with a finger, jerking him backwards. ‘What about climbing in at your stepmother’s window with a knife in your hand?’

‘I had no knife in my hand — I drew that after you assaulted me, to defend myself, you great brute!’

Gwyn burst out laughing, his guffaws echoing through the vault, but de Wolfe’s black brows came together in anxiety. This was no ignorant villager they had to deal with but an intelligent merchant, with two lawyers in his wife’s family. ‘I’m here to take your confession, Jordan,’ he said. ‘You can add anything in your defence, and my clerk will record it all for the King’s justices, when they come to try you at the Assize.’

The captive spat contemptuously into the straw. ‘Confession be damned! I’ve nothing to confess — nor anything else to say to you, unless my father-in-law is here to protect me.’

The coroner sighed. This was going to be more difficult that he had expected. ‘How did you get Oswin to kill for you? Was it just a matter of money?’

Jordan looked straight ahead when he answered. ‘I know nothing of Oswin’s acts. He is Matthew’s man, and you are talking to the wrong person.’

‘It wasn’t Matthew who climbed through the priory window,’ said Gwyn.

‘I was only trying to see how Joan was faring, after her ordeal.’

Both de Wolfe and Gwyn barked in amusement at this remark.

‘Did her room have no door, that you needed to clamber through the window?’ chortled the Cornishman.

‘That damned brother-in-law of mine was sitting outside. I wanted to avoid him.’

De Wolfe nodded. ‘Because he misled you over the testament?’

Peter’s head jerked up. ‘That’s no crime, to want to learn what your rightful inheritance might be.’

‘But killing your stepfather was a crime — and for nothing, as it turned out. Philip’s information about the will was out of date.’

‘I did not kill Walter — I have not killed anyone!’ He dropped his eyes to the floor again. ‘I have nothing more to say to you.’

De Wolfe folded his arms under his cloak and stood hunched over the figure drooping on the slab. ‘You would do better to talk to me, Peter. There are others who do the sheriff’s bidding who favour more violent methods of extracting confessions.’

The young man remained silent, and from then on refused to say another word. Gwyn offered to ‘persuade’ him, and waved a huge fist under his nose, but de Wolfe pulled him out of the cell and motioned to the wheezing gaoler to lock up again.

On the way out of the undercroft, with Thomas trailing behind, his parchments unsullied, John was philosophical about their wasted visit. ‘There’s nothing I can use at the inquest tomorrow, if he refuses to confess. All we can do is record all that’s known and let Hubert Walter’s judges sort it out when they come.’

‘If they come,’ muttered Gwyn under his breath.

That evening over supper, de Wolfe dutifully told his wife of the day’s events. She seemed moderately interested because a rich widow and the nuns of Polsloe were involved, as well as the city’s most prominent lawyer and his family. As her husband had slept at home the past couple of nights, she had little to nag him about, though he knew that he would pay dearly for a long time over his part in the downfall of Theobald Fitz-Ivo, which reflected badly on Matilda’s brother. She had also lost another weapon from her armoury of abuse now that he had ceased his visits to the Bush Inn, though she could still throw some cynical barbs at him over his rejection by his mistress. ‘And where are we going tonight, husband?’ she asked, with mock sweetness, when he announced that he was taking Brutus for a walk. ‘To the Golden Hind or the Plough? Though I hear the whores are more numerous at the Saracen.’

Without deigning to answer, he whistled to the hound and went out through the screens, slamming the door resoundingly behind him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In which Crowner John becomes exasperated

As only men were eligible to be members of a jury, Gwyn had trawled around the several small hamlets strung out along the Cullompton road out of Polsloe. To get every man from the four nearest villages, as the law demanded, was patently impossible, so he rounded up twenty-five reluctant men and boys of over twelve years old. These he had shepherded down to the large compound around the priory by noon, when witnesses arrived from Exeter.

The day was fine but breezy, and when Oswin’s bulky corpse was carried out on the chapel bier by two priory servants, a couple of stones had to be laid on the shroud to prevent it blowing away. The morning services were over and the Prioress and Dame Madge, with three of the six nuns, joined the wide circle of jurors and witnesses around the chair placed ready for John de Wolfe.

One other person was sitting: Joan Knapman, a scarf wound around her throat, was considered fragile after her two shocking experiences. Privately, de Wolfe thought she was as tough as her mother, who was fussing ostentatiously over her like a hen with a single chick. He went over to pay his respects before the inquest began and to ask how she fared after the attack. He admitted wryly to himself that he enjoyed being near to such a lovely young woman, and the huskiness of her voice after her ordeal made her sound even more seductive than usual.

‘I am as well as might be expected, thank you, Sir John,’ she said, looking up at him languorously, the close proximity of her glistening violet eyes and full lips causing him to experience fleeting thoughts that had nothing to do with the King’s coronership.

‘Dame Madge informs me that there has been no danger to your unborn child, Madam.’ He let his glance drop to her waist, but the only fullness was delightfully higher.

‘There is no problem, thank God. All I have is this soreness in my throat.’ She held back her head and briefly touched her neck with her slim fingers.

He dragged his mind back to more professional matters and asked her one more question. ‘When you were disturbed in the priory cell, what did you see of the intruder? Was there a knife in his hand? Peter Jordan denies it.’

She moved her head slowly from side to side, keeping her eyes fixed on his face. ‘I cannot help you at all, Crowner, for I was fast asleep, and when I was rudely woken by the crash of that fallen table, the window space was empty. I cannot even say that any intruder was there — apart from the table being tipped — let alone who it was or whether he carried a knife.’

Her voice became weaker and rougher after so many words and de Wolfe abandoned his questions, but patted her shoulder as he thanked her for her help. He walked back to his solitary chair, and nodded to his officer to begin.

As Gwyn got the proceedings under way with his stentorian bellowing for ‘all persons who have anything to do before the King’s coroner, to draw near and give their attendance’, John scanned the people present and cursed under his breath when he saw that Richard de Revelle had just ridden up and had pushed his way to the front to stand alongside Robert Courteman. The lawyer’s son Philip stood sheepishly alongside his father, his head still swathed in a linen bandage, reminding de Wolfe of one of Saladin’s warriors. He rattled through the formalities, knowing that an inquest would never get to the bottom of this tangled conspiracy.

First, there was a successful ‘presentment of Englishry’, which was a relief to the locals as it quashed any fear of a murdrum fine. Gwyn had learned from Matthew that his labourer had a brother in Exeter and he was called forward to swear that Oswin was mainly Saxon, as his name indicated. Then Matthew certified that Oswin had been a labourerin his tin yard for the past five years, with a good record of work. He had been inexplicably absent since yesterday morning, and occasionally lost half a day, mainly through being dead drunk the previous night.

Next, de Wolfe asked the jurymen to file past the body, as Gwyn pulled off the sheet and pointed out the crushed, lacerated chest, now livid with black and red bruises. ‘Stamped by the hoofs of a palfrey,’ he explained, in a loud voice, as the jury gaped open-mouthed at the bloody corpse. ‘The ribs are smashed and the lights could not draw in air.’

When the body had been covered again, he called Lucy to tell of how she had gone to the rescue of her daughter. In her moment of glory, she described graphically how she had dropped her horse on to the assailant — she sounded inordinately proud of her achievement and would have gone into a long story of how great a horsewoman she was, had not the coroner stopped her in mid-flow.

‘Though, legally, this bold woman was the sole cause of Oswin’s death,’ he commented, ‘it was an entirely justifiable killing. She had to save her own daughter from being strangled. Indeed, it is obvious that she had formed no intention of killing the man, only to take some action to make him desist from his murderous act.’

Sergeant Gabriel and one of the soldiers told of how they had found the dying man in the wood and confirmed that he had made a dying declaration and confessed by head signs to the killing of Walter Knapman.

‘Did he say anything about having an accomplice?’ demanded de Wolfe, who knew full well that Oswin had done no such thing, but wanted to ensure that the possibility reached Thomas’s records. ‘Or did he say who had persuaded or bribed him to commit murder?’

Immediately, Robert Courteman stepped forward and objected. ‘Crowner, that is not relevant to this inquest. You have only the right to determine how this man Oswin died, which is patently obvious.’

John cursed all lawyers under his breath — especially this one. The trouble was that Courteman was right — Oswin was dead, Lucy had killed him, and that was the end of the matter.

Then he saw the sheriff and the lawyer whispering together and began to suspect that underhand business was going on. He decided to fight back. ‘That may well be so, but the King’s court has given coroners jurisdiction over any serious crime, be it assault or rape, as well as homicide. I have reason to believe that an attempted murder, in this very place yesterday, was connected with the activities of whoever commissioned this deceased villain to slay Walter Knapman.’

It was a weak argument, and he knew it as soon as the words left his mouth, for Courteman pounced again. ‘You have no evidence of that whatsoever. You are constructing a scheme out of circumstances, sir.’

De Wolfe, exasperated but powerless to proceed, saw that there was no point in prolonging the argument. ‘Those matters will be decided, no doubt, by a higher court than this. I shall provide the judges at the next Eyre of Assize with all relevant records to assist them in dispensing justice.’ He rapidly wound up the inquest by telling the jury that their verdict was inevitably one of justifiable homicide to prevent a felonious act. The men mumbled among themselves, nodded their assent, and the assembly dispersed, the body being given to the brother, who had brought a handcart to trundle it back to Exeter for burial.

De Wolfe walked over to where the lawyer and sheriff were deep in conversation. ‘What was all that about?’ he demanded of Courteman, whom he respected as a knowledgeable advocate.

‘You were trying to incriminate my daughter’s husband in this matter,’ snapped the lawyer.

‘How could I? The dead man made no statement about who put him up to these killings.’

‘No matter. Just by asking the question you insinuated that there was a link between the death of Oswin and Knapman — and the misunderstanding here yesterday.’

De Wolfe looked at him scornfully. ‘Misunderstanding? My officer dragged him from an heiress’s window with a dagger in his hand.’

‘It was not in his hand. Peter Jordan drew it to defend himself against the assault by your boorish servant.’

‘Who, only days ago, was in danger of being hanged for fatally assaulting another man in Chagford!’ cut in Richard de Revelle, finding his tongue in de Wolfe’s presence at last.

‘There is no evidence at all that young Jordan is implicated in this matter,’ said Courteman haughtily.

‘Where was he on the day that Walter Knapman was killed?’ demanded de Wolfe, immediately conscious that he did not know the answer himself.

‘That is not relevant to this inquest today.’

‘But it may well be when I reopen the one on Walter,’ retorted de Wolfe. ‘Until then, Peter Jordan stays in Rougemont gaol.’

There was an almost palpable silence from the other two men. De Wolfe looked from one to the other, and settled his gaze on the smug face of his brother-in-law. He realised suddenly what must have happened behind his back. ‘You haven’t, have you? Damn you!’

The sheriff stroked his little beard and smiled sardonically. ‘There was no reason to hold him, John. What proof have you of any wrongdoing?’

‘Only catching him red-handed trying to murder his stepmother, who stood between him and a fortune,’ he said bitterly.

‘That could be construed as a wicked slander,’ advised the lawyer gravely. ‘Did you see a knife in his hand at the window?’

‘No, but my officer did — he saved Mistress Knapman’s life.’

De Revelle slapped his gloves against his hand angrily. ‘Who takes the word of that great clod seriously? After what happened in Chagford and Lydford, the less he says, the better it will be for him.’

De Wolfe was livid at this slur on his henchman — especially from someone as politically vulnerable as de Revelle. ‘The pot must be careful of calling the kettle black!’ he shouted. ‘The King’s judges will be getting several other reports on the conduct of the law in the shire of Devon when they come next month.’

The sheriff flushed, but twisted away from his own exposed position. ‘If you must seek a culprit, why not suspect him?’ he sneered, flicking his gloves in the direction of Matthew Knapman, who was just mounting his horse in the road outside. ‘He employed that Saxon and had total influence over him for five years.’

The lawyer’s lined face became almost animated as he backed up the sheriff’s insinuations. ‘And my son-in-law tells me that he was minded to expose Matthew Knapman for cheating his brother by way of trade. He stood to gain exactly as much as Peter Jordan under the testament, so he might have needed to prevent his dishonesty being disclosed to his brother — and he cannot prove where he was on the day that Walter Knapman died.’

De Wolfe made an impatient gesture. ‘But he wasn’t caught climbing through Joan’s window, was he?’

Robert Courteman grew red in the face. ‘I’ve told you, you’re deliberately misconstruing an innocent act, de Wolfe. He has explained that he wished to avoid any meeting with my son, who sat outside her door in the infirmary there.’

‘That must be the most feeble excuse for murder that has ever been offered in England, Master Courteman,’ replied the coroner, impatiently. ‘Why in God’s name, should he want to do that?’

The lawyer’s face flushed even darker in his embarrassment. ‘This is a family matter, Crowner, but now I suppose it must be said, though in strict confidence. My foolish daughter, on behalf of her husband Peter, prevailed upon my even more foolish son to spy among my rolls and tell him the contents of what he thought was the extant testament of Walter Knapman. He got it wrong, so Peter and Philip are now at loggerheads. That is why he wished to avoid him.’

‘A likely story!’ said de Wolfe contemptuously, but again a small worm in his mind began to erode his confidence in what might be true and what false.

Richard de Revelle pulled on the gloves he had been playing with and turned to leave the priory garden. ‘Matthew’s your man, John — take my word for it,’ he said airily, and strode off to find his horse.

The lawyer stared bleakly at de Wolfe before following the sheriff. ‘Be careful how you handle this, Crowner. You’re not dealing with tavern brawlers or a bunch of peasants here.’

De Wolfe’s face darkened in anger and he was determined to have the last word. ‘Peter Jordan will have to answer before the King’s justices at the next Assize — I will attach him to appear, never fear.’

Robert Courteman smiled enigmatically at the coroner as he left, knowing that before the day was out his daughter and her husband would be aboard ship at Exmouth, en route for an extended stay with relatives in Normandy.

The next afternoon, the Devon county coroner was in a foul mood as he sat in his chamber above the gatehouse. Thomas sat quietly at his corner of the table, trying to look inconspicuous as he penned copies of this morning’s execution records. Gwyn, after failing to get a civil response from his surly master, had wisely gone in search of a hot pie and a quart of ale, leaving de Wolfe to mutter under his breath as he scratched around among the parchments before him, most of which he could not read.

The day had started badly at the gallows field outside the city, where John had had to attend four hangings. Two of the felons had had sufficient property to make it worthwhile recording what was to be seized for the Treasury. One of the others, a sheep-stealer from Alphington, was so fat that he could hardly climb the ladder set against the gallows-frame. The assembled crowd, mainly old men, wives and children, who always came out of the city to enjoy the twice-weekly hangings, tittered at the sorry spectacle. When the weakened rope snapped as the unfortunate man was pushed off the ladder by the hangman, their mirth knew no bounds and they hissed and jeered at the executioner, until he went mad with rage and flew at the crowd, flailing with his fists.

Gwyn and the only man-at-arms on duty had had to restrain him and calm him down. The fact that the victim had died instantly of a broken neck did little to soothe the hangman’s injured pride.

But what had really exasperated de Wolfe had taken place an hour or two later, when he sent his officer to serve an attachment on Peter Jordan. This was a warrant to appear before the Justices at the next Eyre of Assize and to find sureties in the sum of twenty marks to ensure his appearance.

Gwyn came back and announced grumpily that neither Jordan nor his wife were to be found, either at home, at Matthew’s yard or in the lawyer’s office. At first, no one had admitted to knowing where they were, reported Gwyn. ‘But then that son of Courteman, who had the whack on the head and who now seems to hate Jordan, whispered to me on the doorstep that they had already taken ship for France, so they’re out of our reach, even to serve this writ upon.’

As the sheriff had been legally entitled to open the prison door for Jordan — and he had not been arraigned for any serious crime — there was nothing de Wolfe could do about it, at least until he returned to England. Even then, with such tenuous evidence and a wily lawyer and sheriff working against him, the coroner was realistic enough to know that he had little chance of bringing Jordan to trial. However, this knowledge did nothing to sweeten his mood and it worsened when Gwyn returned from the next errand upon which de Wolfe sent him.

‘Get down to the lower quayside and find that ship that is being repaired for its return to the Rhine,’ he had ordered.

In his endless campaign to defeat his brother-in-law’s efforts to discredit him, de Wolfe decided to counter Richard’s claim that Matthew, not Peter Jordan, was the villain. His alibi for the day that his twin brother had been killed was his presence in Exeter at a meeting in the morning with tin-importers from Cologne, whose ship was said to be still in the river.

When Gwyn returned at noon with the news that the vessel had sailed three days before, de Wolfe kicked over his stool in a fit of frustrated temper. ‘Only the day before yesterday, Matthew said it was still there, being caulked!’ he shouted, as his clerk cowered.

‘Well, it’s gone now,’ said Gwyn stoically. ‘The point is, did Matthew know it had sailed when he claimed the Germans could have confirmed he was with them that day? We’ll probably never know.’ Now Gwyn had gone out, leaving de Wolfe to fret about who had really employed Oswin as an assassin, and to fume at being outwitted by Robert Courteman and the sheriff.

He felt sure that money had changed hands to secure Peter Jordan’s rapid release from Stigand’s prison cell. Not only had the older lawyer wished to save his son-in-law’s neck, but the part of the legacy from the Knapman tin empire due to Peter would greatly improve the security of Courteman’s daughter. It would be well worth passing a heavy purse to de Revelle for the lad’s release: a hanged felon’s family could never benefit under the will of his victim. The more he thought about it, the more the coroner came to believe that de Revelle was up to his corrupt tricks again — but the realisation that he could prove nothing made de Wolfe’s sullen anger all the more intense.

He sat glowering in the dank chamber with Thomas, who hardly dared to breathe and tried to make his quill scratch less loudly as he wrote. After a time, they heard Gwyn’s heavy feet tramping up the stairs towards them, and de Wolfe prepared to vent his bad temper on the Cornishman for his prolonged absence.

When Gwyn pushed through the sacking curtain over the doorway, his beefy face wore a wide smile. ‘What are you grinning at?’ snapped de Wolfe peevishly.

Undaunted by the cool reception, Gwyn continued to beam and the clerk slid down further on his stool in anticipation of a grand row between the pair. ‘I’ve just come from the Black Cock,’ announced the officer.

‘So? I can find some work for you, if all you’ve to do is drink ale.’

‘From the gossip I heard there, I think you should stop supping at the Plough or the Golden Hind and go back to drinking at the Bush.’

The coroner looked up suspiciously at his henchman from under his beetling brows.

‘If I was you, Crowner, I’d take a stroll down to Idle Lane — you may find things have changed a bit there.’

Before the Compline bell had tolled, de Wolfe was in the Bush Inn, hunched at his favourite table with Nesta sitting opposite. An empty ale pot stood in front him, but old Edwin stayed well out of earshot, thanks to a glare from the landlady that would have soured milk.

‘Did the bastard take much?’ John asked fiercely.

‘About five marks’ worth of silver pennies — and Molly, the second cook-maid,’ said Nesta grimly.

De Wolfe resisted his need to discover if Alan of Lyme had also stolen the landlady’s honour. Cautiously, he looked across at Nesta, unsure of her mood. He had hurried down to the inn after Gwyn had relayed the tavern gossip, eager for Nesta to fall across his breast and sob out her repentance. But he realised now, knowing her as he did, that he should have had different expectations. Instead, he found her dry-eyed and sad-faced, with a grim determination about her that made her remaining staff wary of what they said in her presence.

‘Am I welcome to return here for my ale and victuals?’ he asked gently.

Nesta stared back at him, her crossed arms gripping her shoulders, as if protecting her bosom from the evils of the world, which came mainly in the shape of men.

‘You are a Norman knight, sir. You can do what you wish in this city,’ she replied — rather incongruously, as they were speaking Welsh, the language of the Normans’, major adversaries in these islands.

De Wolfe’s temper, never far below the surface, twitched at this. ‘Lady, what answer is that? You are my best friend, to say the least.’

Nesta sighed, and her shoulders sagged. ‘John, there’s no future for us, is there? This dalliance with Alan, swine that he was, came from frustration — or desperation.’

He stared blankly at her, uncomprehending in his masculine simplicity. ‘But we’ve been content, Nesta, you and I together this past year and more.’

She smiled bleakly at him. ‘Content? You may have been content, John, having a warm welcome and a warm body to visit whenever you felt so inclined, a haven for a few hours from a nagging wife. Then you could return to your grand house and your life as a Norman knight and a great law officer.’

His long, brooding face regarded her with astonishment. Astute as a coroner, courageous in a fight, he was still a simpleton when it came to matters of the heart. ‘But surely we can put what happened behind us, woman — forget that scheming bastard ever existed and take up where we were before.’ Some kindly spirit prevented him from adding, ‘I forgive you,’ which had been on the tip of his tongue.

Nesta reached out across the table and patted the back of his hand, more like a mother with a son than a mistress with a recent lover. ‘I can put Alan behind me well enough, John — but what am I to do with you? I have twenty-eight years to look back on, and how many to look forward to? And with whom?’

‘If I was free, I would marry you tomorrow,’ blurted John, with a gallantry safely guarded by an indissoluble marriage.

‘I’m sure you truly think you would, good man,’ she replied sadly.

De Wolfe shook his head desperately, like a tethered bull tormented by dogs.

‘What’s the problem, then? What am I to do for you?’ he asked.

‘Do? There’s nothing to do, John. You are ever welcome here, for the best food and ale in Exeter.’ Her eyes flicked to the wide steps that led to the upper floor as if to say, ‘But not up there.’

They talked a little longer, in lower tones as the inn began to fill with customers, many of whom grew flapping ears when they saw Nesta and de Wolfe together again. But their conversation seemed to grow more stilted, as if a barrier was slowly descending between them, like a portcullis over a gate.

When one of the maids called her away to attend to some urgent problem in the kitchen hut, John rose slowly and, with dragging feet, walked to the door. As he left he, too, looked at the ladder up to Nesta’s room and his French bed, wondering what had gone on up there during the past few weeks.

Sadly, he decided it was one of the things he was never destined to know, along with the true identity of Walter Knapman’s killer.

Footnotes

Chapter Four

1 now Preston Street.

Chapter Seven

1 now Gandy Lane.

Chapter Fifteen

1 This Commission materialised in 1198, when William de Wrotham became Sheriff and Lord Warden

Content

Bernard Knight
The Tinner's Corpse

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN