Fear in the Forest

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was early evening before all three of the coroner’s team got together at Rougemont. De Wolfe had arrived back from Stoke-in-Teignhead late in the afternoon, to find no sign of Matilda at home. Thankful for a postponement of her inevitable sniping at his visit to his family, he assumed she had gone either to St Olave’s or to her long-suffering cousin in Fore Street. Neither Mary nor Lucille was at the house in Martin’s Lane, but as it was Sunday they were entitled to a few hours’ freedom.

He promised himself a visit to the Bush as soon as possible, but before that he wanted to make sure that his two assistants had returned safely and to hear what they had learned, if anything. When he climbed the stairs to his chamber above the gatehouse, he was relieved to find that they were both there. Thomas had met Gwyn as arranged at the inn in Ashburton, and together they had travelled back to Exeter. John lowered himself to his stool behind the table and glared at his two henchmen, his habitual fierce expression disguising the fact that he was relieved to see them safe and sound.

‘Why the new baldric strap?’ he asked, looking at the band of new leather running diagonally across Gwyn’s huge chest. His officer’s red moustache lifted as he grinned.

‘A long story, Crowner, but some bastard outlaw sliced through the other one. I must be getting old, it took me several seconds to kill him!’

Their more timorous clerk blanched at this casual talk of slaying, even though he had already heard the story. Now he heard it all again, as Gwyn related his brief penetration of the outlaw gang and then summed up his conclusions.

‘It’s clear that they are being paid by someone to aggravate whatever’s going on in the forest. As well as their usual tricks of thieving and robbery with violence, Robert Winter and his mob are doing dirty work for the foresters — or at least for two of them, William Lupus and Michael Crespin.’

De Wolfe considered this for a moment, brooding over his table like a great black crow. ‘Why are they doing it — and who’s paying them?’ he ruminated, half to himself.

‘It can hardly be for personal gain,’ piped Thomas. ‘To pay men to beat up some cottar just because he refused to give them a bit of fodder and a couple of pigs seems ridiculous. I think it more likely that there’s a campaign to make the forest administration look unmanageable — closing forges and burning tanneries, penalising alehouses. Surely that must be to make the forest dwellers so outraged that they demand change.’

‘Who the hell cares about how the forest is run?’ objected Gwyn, who usually appeared to ridicule anything the clerk said, though in reality, he had a deep regard for the little man’s intelligence.

John rasped his fingers thoughtfully over his black stubble — he had forgotten his Saturday shave the day before, being in Stoke.

‘Yes, who could possibly gain by it?’ he pondered. ‘But what if someone wanted to replace the existing senior forest officers by making it obvious that the present regime had lost its grip?’

Gwyn nodded his shaggy head. ‘We’ve had a verderer murdered and the Warden attacked and half killed. That’s a good start towards getting new officers.’

‘And our sheriff appointed a new verderer almost before the slain one was cold!’ added Thomas.

‘One of the outlaws sniggered when I suggested that their behaviour would have the sheriff down upon them,’ Gwyn recollected.

De Wolfe beat an agitated tattoo on the table with his dirty fingernails.

‘Yes, the bloody sheriff! He hinted to me that he would like to be Warden of the Forest himself. Though God knows why, there can’t be much money in it. There’s no salary and I can’t see the foresters sharing the loot from their extortions with him.’

There was a silence as John worked things over in his mind. Gwyn took the opportunity to lug out his pitcher of cider and get three pottery cups from a niche in the stony wall. Shaking out woodlice and spiders, he filled the mugs and handed them around.

‘Did you learn anything else in your brief sojourn as an outlaw, Gwyn?’ grunted the coroner.

‘Not much — only confirmation that the foresters have stepped up their oppression in the last few months. But we knew that already. The odd thing is that this Robert Winter — who seems quite a smart fellow — is getting paid for helping the foresters create their disturbances. I’ll wager that it was one of their gang who put an arrow in the verderer’s back, probably for money.’

‘So who the hell is paying them?’ mused de Wolfe, sipping his cider.

‘They seem to be quite bold in their dealings with townsfolk. I saw this Martin Angot deep in conversation with someone in the tavern in Ashburton,’ said Gwyn. ‘Someone like that could easily be passing on orders and payment.’

‘Did you recognise him?’

‘No, but I’ve got a feeling I’ve seen him here in Exeter at some time. He was a little, dark-featured fellow with a face like a dried fig.’

At this, Thomas sat up and took notice.

‘I saw a man in Buckfast yesterday who looked like that,’ he squeaked. ‘A lined, leathery face and no taller than me.’

The coroner looked dubious. ‘Plenty of men look like that.’

Thomas was not to be put off. ‘This one was a horse-trader, they told me. I don’t know his name, but he did a lot of business with the abbey, through Father Edmund, the cellarer.’

Now it was Gwyn who looked interested. ‘A horse-trader? One of those outlaws said that a horse-trader came in to see Robert Winter now and then. Could be the same man.’

‘Who’s this Father Edmund you speak of?’ demanded John.

‘He’s a priest-monk, but seems to conduct all the business for Buckfast. Came from Exeter a couple of years ago, but by his accent he’s from up north somewhere. I went to take a look at him, but I’ve never seen him before.’

De Wolfe rasped his chin again as an aid to thought.

‘He’s a senior priest from west of Exeter, which fits with the vague hint I had from your uncle. Though there’s plenty of them about.’

‘But worth looking into, if he has dealings with this horse-dealer, given it’s the same fellow as the one in the alehouse,’ recommended Gwyn.

‘I’ll ask about him, too,’ ruminated the coroner. ‘Ralph Morin is the one to talk to about horses. He has to buy them for the garrison.’

They chewed over the scanty information for a few more minutes, but failed to distil anything further from it. When the cider was finished, for which Thomas’s more fastidious palate was thankful, they went their various ways and John returned to his house in Martin’s Lane.

There was no one in the hall when he put his head around the screens, and when he climbed the stairs to the solar John found that empty as well. When Matilda went to her cousin’s house, she occasionally stayed until late — and sometimes, when she was particularly annoyed with him, she stayed the night without bothering to let him know. He was therefore not much concerned at her absence and decided to go straight down to the Bush to see Nesta and have something to eat.

As he clattered down the steep steps into the yard, Mary came out of her kitchen shed a few yards away and stood waiting with her arms folded in what struck John as a rather belligerent attitude.

‘She’s gone, you know!’ she said challengingly.

John stopped on the last step and stared at his maid.

‘I know that! Is she at church or at her cousin’s?’

‘Neither — I told you, she’s gone. This time for good, she said!’

He took Mary by the arm and led her back into her hut, pushing her gently down on to a stool, while he stood towering over her.

‘What’s all this about? How can she have gone — and where?’

The dark-haired maid, usually on his side against his abrasive wife, looked up accusingly. John had the feeling that she was siding with all the women.

‘You’ve really done it this time, Sir Crowner!’ Mary only used that half-cynical title when she was annoyed with him. ‘Your lady wife has discovered that you’ve got Nesta with child — and she’s up and left you.’

De Wolfe groaned. It had to happen sooner or later, but he had hoped to put off the evil hour a little longer. Nesta was not even showing her pregnancy yet.

‘She’ll be back,’ he said half-heartedly. ‘She’s taken umbrage many times before and gone to her cousin for a few days or so.’

Mary shook her head with disconcerting assurance. ‘Not this time! She’s taken herself to Polsloe and says she’s going to stay there for the rest of her life.’

John’s heart leapt in his chest. ‘The priory? I can’t believe it!’

There was mixed doubt and elation in his voice. This was something he had hoped for and even fantasised about for ages. He had been intending to ask his archdeacon friend whether Matilda taking the veil was equivalent to an annulment of his marriage, as this was the only way he could see himself ever being free of her, short of her death, for which he had never wished.

Mary was still glaring at him, from solidarity with all wronged women, but he pressed on with eager questions.

‘How did she find out? No one knows except a few at the Bush — and you. When did all this happen?’

Rapidly, he drew the story from his cook-maid, and once again it transpired that he had his brother-in-law to thank for stabbing him in the back. Richard de Revelle had turned up at the house the previous morning, and within a minute of being closeted with his sister in the hall there had been an outburst of yelling from Matilda. This was soon followed by a slamming of doors as she swept up to the solar, the sheriff letting himself out of the house with a satisfied smirk on his face.

‘I can’t think how he found out, damn him!’ muttered John, but Mary, familiar with the gossip network that connected every alehouse, shop and doorstep in the city, was in no doubt.

‘The sheriff has informants everywhere — and it was not that much of a secret, anyway. I heard of it from the pastry-shop man who drinks in the Bush, even before you told me.’

She continued her tale of Matilda’s departure. It seemed that his wife had screamed at her maid Lucille to pack some clothes into a bag and then go to the high street to order a two-horse litter. Within an hour, Matilda appeared, still in a towering rage and dressed in her best black kirtle with a white wimple and gorget. With a weeping Lucille trailing behind, lugging a large bag, she proceeded up to the corner of the lane, where a litter was waiting. They vanished, and Mary had heard nothing of them since.

John listened in silence. Once the first surge of hope had passed, he became more realistic and had grave doubts about Matilda really having left for good. After her occasional flounces to stay with her cousin — and once even six weeks away at her distant de Revelle relatives in Normandy — she always came home when her temper cooled. He supposed he had better take himself to Polsloe to see what the true situation was and bring her back, if the worst of her passion had subsided. But first he was going down to see Nesta and talk it over with her.

‘What about me, how do I fare in this?’ demanded Mary, as he started to leave. De Wolfe stared at her, then slid an arm reassuringly around her shoulders.

‘You stay right where you are, good girl! You’re almost a wife to me yourself. You feed me, clothe me, clean my house and tell me when to wash and shave. How could I ever do without you?’

She looked up at him with the suspicion of a tear in her eye. This was the only home she had, with her mother dead and her father an unknown soldier who had only stayed for her conception, not her birth.

‘What will happen to Lucille?’ she sniffed. ‘A nun can hardly keep a personal maid with her in the priory.’

De Wolfe shrugged. ‘This won’t last, mark my words. If Lucille comes back, tell her she can keep her room under the stairs and I’ll still give her twopence a day until the situation gets settled.’

His conscience assuaged, de Wolfe whistled for Brutus, who was lurking in the back of the kitchen, aware that something unusual was going on. Together they set out for the Bush, John’s head spinning with a mixture of hope and guilt, as well as recognition that this situation was too good to last.

In Idle Lane, he pushed through the tavern door impatiently, all his reluctance of past weeks vanished. The taproom was crowded, with a clamour of noise and a fug of the usual spilt ale and sweat. He saw Nesta at the back of the room, haranguing one of her serving wenches. Brutus, used to the ways of the Bush, sloped off to the back door, where he knew he could cadge some old trenchers and other scraps from the outside kitchen, leaving John free to march across and take Nesta by the arm.

‘Upstairs. We can’t talk in this hubbub!’ he growled. Something about his manner stopped her from making her usual protests about how busy she was, and she climbed ahead of him up the wide ladder in the corner.

In her room, he dropped the latch inside the door and sat on the bed, motioning her to come alongside him.

‘Matilda has left me,’ he said without any preamble. ‘She’s gone to be a nun at Polsloe, though whether it will last I fear to hope.’

Nesta stared at him wide eyed, then began to cry, turning John’s insides to water. He slid an arm around her shoulders as she leaned into him.

‘It’s my fault — everything is my fault. I wish I was dead!’ she sobbed.

Desperately, he murmured useless soothing noises.

‘She’s discovered I’m with child, hasn’t she?’ moaned Nesta.

John was unable to deny it. ‘It seems so, my love — though it would have happened sooner or later. It alters nothing. In fact, if she’s gone for good, we are freer than ever!’ He tried to sound cheerful in the face of his mistress’s obvious distress. ‘That bastard brother of hers told her, I don’t know how he found out,’ he concluded.

Nesta sat up, sniffing loudly and wiping her eyes with the hem of her apron.

‘Everyone else seems to know already — either my maid or her mother, the midwife, must have let it out,’ she moaned.

John tugged her towards him. ‘It doesn’t matter how it came out. I’ve told you, I’ll openly acknowledge the babe and cherish him as much as I cherish you. There’s no problem, my love, really.’

This only provoked another flood of tears from Nesta, leaving John even more discomfited and mystified at the ways of women. They sat in mutual misery for a few more minutes, his mistress rubbing her reddened eyes against the shoulder of his tunic, until she pulled herself together a little and sat up straight.

‘What are you going to do about your wife?’ she demanded.

De Wolfe looked down at the upturned face with puzzlement.

‘What am I going to do? I wasn’t going to do anything,’ he said. ‘Matilda’s a free woman, she has money of her own from her family. She’s got this mania for religion, so it’s up to her what she wants to do with her life. Though I suspect that the food and raiment of a nunnery won’t be to her liking for very long. This is just a petulant gesture born of her anger. It won’t last once she gets a taste of monastic life.’

He sighed and hugged her to him again. ‘I’ve dreamt of something like this ever since I met you, Nesta. But it’s just a dream. I’ll never get free of her, will I? But at least it gives us a short time when I don’t have to creep back into her solar and get an earful of abuse every time I’ve been down to see you.’

The Welsh woman was putting herself back into order, sniffing back the last of her tears, while tucking her unruly red curls back under her cap.

‘You must go to see her, John, straight away,’ she said in a voice filled with new determination.

‘And say what?’ he asked in some surprise.

‘Beg her to come home, John. It’s ridiculous that the crowner’s wife should take off to a nunnery. You’ll be the laughing stock of the county. Get her back — and quickly, John.’

He shrugged, bemused by her reaction. ‘If you say so, my love. It makes no difference to us, everything I said about the child stands. It would be easier if Matilda was out of the way, but that’s too much to hope for.’ He looked wistfully at her. ‘I was even going down to talk to John de Alencon, to see if her taking vows would be equivalent to a divorce.’

At other times this might have squeezed a smile from Nesta, but she remained blank faced, a kind of miserable determination etched on her features.

‘We’d better go down. I’ve work to do,’ she murmured.

He kissed her tenderly and handed her up from the bed, now totally confused as to her mood. As they left the little room, she spoke again.

‘Promise me that you’ll go to see your wife — this very night.’

He nodded, almost afraid to argue with her, and they went back down to the taproom. The level of noise dropped as they descended the steps and a number of curious faces turned up to watch them, then hurriedly dropped away and pointedly ignored them.

As John squeezed her hand for the last time and turned to the door, he saw two familiar figures standing inside. Gwyn and Thomas had turned up, and their first words told him that they had heard the news about Matilda’s departure.

‘Bloody hell, this city is beyond belief!’ he snapped. ‘You can’t fart here without everyone knowing about it within the space of a dozen heartbeats!’

‘We wondered if you were all right?’ said Gwyn solicitously. ‘And if we could do anything to help you both?’

Gwyn was very fond of Nesta in an avuncular fashion and had been delighted when the recent rift between his master and the innkeeper had been healed. Thomas too, was devoted to Nesta, who treated him like a lost dog, sympathetically feeding and petting him. It was not long ago that she had given him free bed and board, when he had been evicted from his meagre lodgings in the cathedral precinct.

‘That’s kind of you both,’ muttered John, embarrassed by even a hint of solicitude from a rough diamond like his officer. ‘But I must go up to Polsloe now and see what the hell this woman is thinking of!’

Gwyn offered to ride with him and, glad of the company, de Wolfe arranged to meet him at the East Gate after he had got his horse from Andrew’s stable. Gwyn went off to fetch his own mare from the garrison stables in the other ward of Rougemont, leaving John standing with Thomas de Peyne.

‘There are worse things than taking vows, Crowner,’ said the little clerk tentatively.’Since staying in Buckfast, it occurred to me that if I cannot regain my place in holy orders, maybe I will enter some monastery.’

John looked down with half-concealed affection at Thomas, who was trying to console him, unnecessarily as it happened.

‘She’ll not stay there long, Thomas. My wife is too fond of the good things in life to put up with austerity and hardship. She’s tough and will do exactly what she feels is in her best interests. It’s Nesta that concerns me. She seems so unhappy, though there’s no need for it.’

It was unheard of for the coroner to unbend his habitual stern manner enough to say these things to his servant, but today was fraught with unusual emotions.

‘You go off to see your wife, master,’ replied his clerk. ‘I’ll see if I can comfort the lady here. When I was a priest, I had some pastoral skills and maybe some still remain,’ he ended, rather wistfully.

John patted Thomas awkwardly on the shoulder and went to the door, Brutus abandoning a sheep’s bone to lope after him.

It was less than a mile and a half from the East Gate of the city to Polsloe, the track curving through some dense woodland after leaving the village of St Sidwell’s, where Gwyn lived. The two horsemen reached the priory of St Katherine well within half an hour and sat in their saddles for a few moments outside the encircling wall. De Wolfe seemed reluctant to go in to face his wife, and Gwyn asked whether he wanted him to accompany him. The last time they had been to the priory they had been chasing a murderer, and it felt odd to be here now on a more delicate mission.

‘No, you stay out here, unless you want to wheedle a jug of ale from someone. I’m not sure how welcome men are in this nest of women.’

The thought of a drink overcame any concerns the Cornishman may have had about nuns, so they approached the low arched entrance together. An aged porter opened the wooden door when they banged on it and, after lashing their horses to a hitching rail, directed them across the wide compound to the West Range. This was a two-storey building, behind which were the small cloisters, all built of timber. The priory had been endowed over thirty years ago by Sir William de Brewer and, like Bovey Tracey, its church of Thoverton stone was dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr, another building funded by William de Tracy, in penitence for killing Becket. There were fourteen nuns here, and John wondered whether there would soon be fifteen.

Gwyn sloped off to the kitchens attached to the end of the West Range, marked by a basket of vegetable scraps outside the door, in the hope of scrounging something from one of the lay sisters. John climbed a step to an entrance he remembered from his last visit and knocked firmly on an open door to attract attention. In a moment a woman appeared from a side chamber, dressed in the dark habit of a Benedictine. Her hair was hidden under a flowing head-veil, her throat swathed up over the chin in a linen gorget. A wooden crucifix swung from her braided belt, as her moon-like face stared at him suspiciously.

‘I am Sir John de Wolfe, the King’s coroner,’ he began, thinking it as well to pull rank from the start.

The nun did not ask his business, but stood aside and motioned him to enter. She led the way to the room from which she had emerged, a small chamber with nothing inside but a small table, a stool and a large, rather crude cross nailed to the wall.

‘Please wait here in the outer parlour. The prioress will be here in a moment,’ were her first and last words, as she glided out and vanished.

John, somewhat bemused by his reception, stood looking around at the bare cell. If this was what a nunnery had to offer, he thought glumly, Matilda would be back home within hours. A few moments later, another lady appeared, with another nun hovering behind as a chaperone.

De Wolfe recognised the prioress from his previous escapade here and gave her a stiff bow of respect.

‘I believe that my wife may have arrived here yesterday, Dame Margaret. I wondered if I might speak to her,’ he said humbly.

The prioress was usually an amiable-looking woman, but now her expression was forbidding. ‘I am well aware of the situation, Sir John. But Matilda has said — in the strongest possible terms — that she does not wish to see you.’

John stared at her. He was not used to being thwarted, especially by a woman. ‘But she is my wife!’ he snapped. ‘I have the right to speak to her — and to take her home, if it pleases me.’

He immediately wondered why he had said that, as the last thing he wanted was to have Matilda back in his house, where she would give him hell, then continue to ruin his life. But his father’s legacy of Norman blood had broken through to assert his dominance as a husband — and an arrogant dismissal of anyone who denied it.

However, he seemed to have met his match in Polsloe. The prioress looked at him calmly and explained as if she were talking to a child.

‘Once inside the walls of a monastery, sir, the laws of the outside world no longer apply. Indeed, in some orders, entrance equates with death. The person no longer exists in the secular sense.’

‘My wife is not a member of your order, lady! She is presently not in a rational state of mind and unable to make reasoned decisions about her future.’

Dame Margaret smiled sadly. ‘That is for her to decide, Crowner. She needs some time to reflect on her position. Until then, she wishes to stay here — and we are happy to shelter her.’

John’s instinct was to argue, but he managed to stifle his annoyance, deciding that it was against his own interests to demand her ‘release’.

‘What’s to be done, then? Do you need my support for her sustenance here? I am willing to pay.’

The prioress shook her head. ‘She came well provided, Sir John. There will be time to deliberate about any endowment if and when Matilda decides to enter upon her vows. At the moment she is but a candidate, not even a novice.’

John silently hoped that the process would last indefinitely, but said nothing. It seemed obvious that Matilda had brought a dowry with her — he knew that she kept some treasure in a locked trunk in her solar, money that was hers alone, derived from an annuity from the de Revelle estates. He had never queried nor coveted anything of hers — he was comfortably provided from the income from his wool partnership with Hugh de Relaga and his share of the manorial profits from Stoke-in-Teignhead.

There seemed little more to be said, as the prioress stood placidly but still quite adamant that he was not going to be allowed to speak to his wife. He cut short the impasse by nodding respectfully to her again and turning to the door.

‘Please tell Matilda that I was here and was concerned for her. If there is anything she requires, please let me know.’

The prioress bowed her head graciously.

‘If there is any change in the situation, I will make sure that you are informed. I am still indebted to you for the help you provided when we had that unpleasantness some months ago, so I am distressed at this problem in your personal affairs.’

With that, she swept away, her chaperone hurrying after her, leaving John to find his way to the outer door. He collected Gwyn from the kitchen, where he had charmed a buxom lay sister into giving him a pasty and a quart of ale, then they made their way back to their horses and began plodding back to Exeter, the coroner in a silent, pensive mood.

Thomas found Nesta in the brew-shed, one of the outhouses of the tavern which shared the backyard with the kitchen, privy and pigsty.

After the coroner and his officer had left for Polsloe, Nesta had gone about her usual business in the inn, but listlessly, with none of her normal bustling efficiency. When she disappeared through the back door, Thomas followed her, glad to get out of the taproom. He disliked alehouses, he drank reluctantly and sparingly, and usually only entered inns when he had to accompany either Gwyn or John de Wolfe.

Padding up the yard in the approaching dusk, he stopped outside the brew-house door and heard the sound of soft sobbing from inside. Tapping gently, he put his head around the door and saw Nesta sitting on a milking stool, a long paddle, used for stirring the ale mash which was stewing in several large wooden tubs, in her hands.

Her head jerked up at the intrusion, but her face softened when she saw it was the little clerk.

‘Thomas, what is it?’ she asked.

‘I’m the one who is supposed to say that!’ he replied with a wry smile. ‘Is there anything I can do for you — or anything you want to talk about, dear Nesta?’

She shook her head mutely, her eyes again moist with tears. He went over to her and knelt on the dusty earth floor at her feet.

‘Even if I am no longer a priest, able to take confession, I am still your good friend, Nesta. Can’t you tell me what’s wrong? I have seen both you and my master becoming more unhappy as the days go by. It grieves me sorely and I know Gwyn feels the same.’

Nesta put a hand on his thin shoulder and shook her head silently.

‘Everyone knows the babe is at the root of this matter,’ he said softly. ‘Yet John de Wolfe has acknowledged it and even seems glad about being its father. This nonsense concerning his wife will pass, I know. As little as I know about family affairs, it is common for a man to have children outside marriage — and he has none of his own.’

Through her tears, she smiled sadly at his innocence.

‘Dear Thomas, it is far more complicated than you imagine. I have sinned, I have attempted greater sins, and now contemplate an even greater sin.’

The clerk looked up at her, his brown eyes wide with apprehension.

‘What are you saying, woman? You are goodness itself. What’s this talk of sin?’

She gave a great sigh, then put both her hands on his shoulders, feeling the bones through his threadbare tunic. Face to face now, she told him of her despair.

‘Thomas, you just said that John is glad to be a father — but he is not a father, though he doesn’t yet know it.’

As the clerk gaped at her, she went on, the words spilling out now that she had taken the plunge. ‘The father is Alan of Lyme, that viper I took to my bosom some months ago, when your master and I had fallen out. I had hoped against hope that it was not so, but when I visited Bearded Lucy down on Exe Island, she found that the time I have been with child makes it impossible for it to have been John’s.’

Thomas’s head sagged so that his forehead rested on her knees for a moment. Then he looked up, his face filled with compassion.

‘That was your first sin — so what are these others?’

Nesta’s hands left his shoulders to drop into her lap and screw up the folds of her thin leather brewing apron into a creased bundle.

‘I have tried to rid myself of this traitor in my womb. I have taken every herb and potion I could obtain. All they have done is make me sick, but not shifted this legacy of my infidelity!’

Thomas rocked back on his heels in the dirt, staring up at her.

‘That is indeed a sin, Nesta. Understandable in your distress, but a sin nevertheless. You call the child a traitor, but he knows nothing of his creation, he can have no fault — at least until he is born, when he will have the same original sin as the rest of us.’

Her hands left the torturing of her apron to rub her filling eyes again.

‘You are right, Thomas, the babe is not the one at fault, he is but the instrument of my own misdeeds. Anyway, these pills and potions failed, so the matter is of no consequence. I have ruined John’s life, his marriage, perhaps his standing as a high official.’

The clerk made twittering denials at this.

‘Come, Nesta, be realistic! Every Norman knight has by-blows, some by many different women. It’s not something that is even worthy of mention in their company. Matilda’s own brother has several, that everyone knows about. And as for the crowner’s marriage, you know as well as any of us that it is an unhappy sham. If only this child were his, then it would have been one of the best things to happen to him.’

‘That’s the very point, can’t you see!’ she wailed. ‘It’s not his and when he discovers that, as he is bound to before long, then I will have destroyed him. He will hate me, reject me and that I cannot bear! There is only one course left.’

He gaped at her, uncomprehending at first.

‘You should know, Thomas, you have been down that same road yourself, not long ago.’

‘No, Nesta, not that! Never that, you must never even think of that.’

The clerk was aghast at what finally he understood her to be contemplating.

‘It is the only way, Thomas. He would be rid of the fruit of my wickedness and rid of me at the same time — me, who stands between him and fulfilment in his life.’

De Peyne jumped to his feet, agitated and desperate. This time it was he who seized her by the shoulders and virtually shook her.

‘No, Nesta, no! You must never even think of it again! Yes, you said I had been down that road — but I turned off that road and now I know that madness had enveloped me at that time. My desperation was different from yours, but none the less awful!’

He stopped for breath and shook her gently again.

‘Yet when I tried, God showed me I was wrong. He stopped me and now I would never, never contemplate that again! In fact, only yesterday I found another answer, if the need arises — to enter the peace of monastic life, like Matilda. There are always answers, Nesta — always!’

He stood now with his arm around her as she sat on the stool, her head sinking against his waist. They were both shivering with emotion, as he crooned further encouragement to her.

‘If you harmed yourself, you would also wound John de Wolfe for life. I know he loves you, in spite of his gruff ways. And what of Gwyn and myself? We cherish you too. Think how we would be devastated if you were no longer with us.’

They talked in low tones for a long time, Thomas gradually winning from her a solemn promise not to harm herself or the child. Though a former priest, he made no threats of eternal hellfire or the damnation of the Church. Rather, he played on the desolation that would fall upon de Wolfe and the sadness and grief that would be inflicted upon her friends.

‘But what’s to be done, Thomas?’ she whispered, when her tears had almost dried and she was rational again. ‘Am I to tell him the babe’s not his?’

This was where the clerk’s exhortations, fluent where mortal sin was concerned, became rather thin when applied to earthly practicalities.

‘Is he bound to find out, if we say nothing?’ he asked.

Nesta turned up her hands helplessly. ‘It’s a great risk, especially if some busybody puts it about — and there are plenty of those in Exeter, God knows! Look how soon his wife was told of my condition.’

Thomas nodded sadly. He was well aware of the gossip machine that operated so efficiently in the city.

‘Then you must tell him yourself. It would be far better coming from you than for him to be shocked by hearing it from some common chatter.’

Nesta considered this, the worried look on her face deepening.

‘How could I screw up enough courage to break that news to him?’

‘Better from your lips than from anyone else,’ advised the clerk.

She sighed and stood up to lean against one of the mash tuns.

‘You must be right, good Thomas. I must pick the right moment and pray to God that he does not spurn me for ever.’

‘Amen to that!’ he replied fervently.

Back in his own house, de Wolfe sat by his hearth, the unlit wood behind the iron fire-dogs emphasising the coldness of the lofty hall. Strangely, he already felt lonely, in the knowledge that the solar above his head was empty. Even the presence of his surly and unpleasant wife made the house more than just a pile of timber and stone, which was what he felt it to be at that moment. Brutus had slunk away to the back yard to seek the company of Mary in the cook-shed, instinctively aware of some sea change in the household that day.

John rarely drank wine except at meals or in the company of others, but today he went to a chest against the wall and took out a pottery flask of his best Loire red. He broke the wax seal and twisted out the wooden bung, pouring a liberal measure into one of the glass cups that he had looted in a distant campaign in Brittany.

Sitting back in one of the hooded chairs, John drank and brooded on the day’s events. There was nothing more he could do about Matilda. He had made his best attempt to see her and persuade her to come home, so his conscience was clear on that score, if not on the cause of her leaving in the first place. She had long known of his affair with Nesta, as she was aware of his occasional fling with Hilda of Dawlish.

It was his imminent fatherhood which seemed to have pushed her over the limit of her tolerance. John, in some ways a simple man, failed to see why having a mistress or two was at least grudgingly accepted, yet paternity was beyond the pale, even when it was the natural sequel to adultery. He reasoned that most men of his acquaintance had at least one bastard lurking somewhere — some of them even had a whole brood!

Dimly, he comprehended that a difference might be that Matilda and he had never had children of their own — though the opportunities for conception had been very limited during their married life, as he had been absent for most of it and, since he had returned from the Crusades, their marital relations had rapidly dwindled to nothing. John’s insensitive nature failed to appreciate that even if the most unmotherly Matilda had never desired the burden of maternity herself, she might be flagrantly opposed to her husband providing it to any other woman.

He growled under his breath at this attack of introspection, so foreign to a man of action like himself. Pouring another cup of wine, he tried to divert his mind back to coroner’s business as a welcome relief from the worries forced on him by the machinations of women.

Going over the meagre reports that Gwyn and Thomas had brought back from their expedition to the fringes of Dartmoor, he began arranging the intelligence alongside what they already knew.

There was a concerted plan to cause trouble throughout that part of the Royal Forest, in which the foresters and probably the new verderer was involved. There was a plot to remove the Warden of the Forests, by violence if required, and to replace him with someone else. It seemed likely that this someone was Richard de Revelle, but de Wolfe could not decide whether this was mere opportunism or whether the sheriff was an integral part of the plot. Against the latter, he failed to see what even the avaricious sheriff could hope to gain.

In any event, he thought as he gulped some more of the rather sour wine, the outlaws under Robert Winter were deeply involved. They were acting as mercenaries in assisting the foresters to cause disaffection amongst the forest dwellers, being paid for their efforts through some intermediaries. This horse-dealer was a possible candidate for that, if the man Gwyn had seen in the Ashburton tavern was the same as that seen by Thomas at Buckfast — though both incidents may have been quite innocent, unless there was some proof to the contrary. Against that was the tenuous rumour about the involvement of a ‘priest from the west’. The frequent dalliance of the horse-dealer with this Cistercian from Buckfast was probably sheer coincidence, but it was worth looking into.

Here John’s deliberate diversion from his marital problems dried up, just as the last of the wine drained from his flask. With a sigh, he hauled himself up and went down the alleyway to the back yard to find Mary.

She had softened her attitude since his visit to Polsloe and listened quietly as he brought her up to date with the situation.

‘So the mistress will not be home yet awhile, until she works off her disaffection with me, Mary,’ he concluded. ‘But no doubt when the novelty of pretending to be a nun wears off, she’ll return to make my life even more miserable than before. I’ll never hear the end of this.’

His maid looked doubtful. ‘If you say so, Sir Crowner — but I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve never seen her in such a state before, not in all the other times you’ve fallen out with the mistress.’

He shrugged helplessly. ‘We’ll just have to see, good girl. What about Lucille, has she shown up yet?’

Mary nodded and pointed to the box-like structure beneath the high supports of the solar steps. ‘She came back an hour ago, full of weeping, and shut herself in. I told her what you said about keeping her on and she seemed a little easier then.’

Matilda’s maid was a refugee from the Vexin, the part of France north of the Seine which was fought over continually by Richard the Lionheart and Philip of France. Lucille had no surviving family, though John suspected that Matilda had taken her on at the suggestion of her Normandy relatives, more from the social clout of having a French maid than from any feelings of compassion.

‘Did my wife take all her finery with her?’ he asked, knowing of Matilda’s attachment to her wardrobe. He knew that Mary could not have resisted a quick foray into the solar, once she knew his wife had left.

‘Hardly anything, apart from a couple of shifts and chemises. That’s why I think she’s really serious this time.’

John responded with his habitual growling in his throat, which could mean anything. ‘I think I’ll take a walk into the Close to see the archdeacon,’ he announced. ‘Then I’m to bed. It’s been a hard day!’

Though the longest day of the year was fast approaching, it was almost dark when de Wolfe called upon John de Alençon at his house in Canon’s Row. There was still an hour to go before the archdeacon had to leave for matins in the cathedral, and John joined him in his bare study for a cup of wine and a talk. The coroner first related the story of Matilda’s departure and the reason for it. De Alençon listened gravely to his friend’s admission of Nesta’s pregnancy, a rather shamefaced account of the fruits of his adultery, in that he was making it to a senior man of God. In fact, the canon was already well aware of the matter, as was most of the city, but he listened with a grave face as if it were news to him.

‘It seems typical of our sheriff that he should delight in distressing his sister with the revelation,’ he commented. ‘But again, it is another manifestation of his desire to do you as much harm as possible.’

John steered the conversation on to the matter of his marital status.

‘If my wife really has left me for good and intends taking her vows as a nun, does this annul our marriage?’

The archdeacon steepled his hands as if praying for guidance.

‘My friend, the honest answer is that I do not know, but I doubt it very much. This situation is outside my experience, for almost invariably, most mature women who take the veil are widows. The majority of nuns are younger girls who enter as virgins, but married women with living husbands must be exceptionally rare candidates.’

De Wolfe’s spirits sank. ‘But surely I have heard that in some of the most strict monastic orders entry is equated with death and all civil rights of that person are extinguished?’

‘That is so for men, John. But we know that in our Norman and Saxon society, there is no equality for women — they are but chattels of men, unlike in the Celtic lands of Ireland and Wales, where women stand on the same level as men in almost all things.’

De Alençon saw the disappointment on the coroner’s face and sought to ease his gloom.

‘In any case, I think you are crossing your bridges before you come to them,’ he said gently. ‘Like me, you must surely doubt that the good Matilda will persist with this intention. You have wounded her more than usual and, in her typical fashion, she has flared up into a passion of outrage. But how long will it last?’

His thin face, under its shock of wiry grey hair, fixed seriously on John’s more saturnine features.

‘You know as well as I, John, that though she is a devout Christian and a constant attendant at her devotions, she is also fond of her earthly pleasures of food and fine clothing. Before you make great plans for the future, I advise you to wait a few days, weeks or even months before counting your unhatched chickens!’

With this wise if discouraging advice, de Wolfe had to be content, so he moved to the other matter that had brought him to the cathedral Close.

‘You mentioned some rumour to me the other day about a senior priest outside the city, maybe somewhere to the west, who may have an involvement with these problems in the forest.’

De Alençon looked warily at the coroner, perhaps now regretting even this most ephemeral of revelations. ‘It was perhaps unwise of me to mention that. I have heard no more about it, John.’

De Wolfe shook his head, his black locks bouncing over the collar of his tunic. ‘I ask for no more confidences, only information on a name which has turned up in my enquiries. Do you know anything of the monks of Buckfast?’

The ascetic face of the archdeacon expressed surprise, his bright blue eyes opening wide.

‘Buckfast? Our diocese has no jurisdiction over them. They look only to their mother house of the Cistercians, at Citeaux in France.’

‘Yes, but I wondered if you had any knowledge of individuals there.’

‘I have met Abbot William several times, a good and holy man.’ De Alençon smiled rather roguishly. ‘That institution is not only a great religious house, it is one of Devon’s biggest traders. They probably produce more wool that anyone else here in the west.’

De Wolfe rasped his fingers over his stubble, now a full week’s growth.

‘That may be connected, in fact. Do you know of the man who seems to conduct the fiscal affairs of the abbey, one Father Edmund?’

John saw a fleeting look of understanding pass over the archdeacon’s face, before it settled into its usual serenity.

‘Ah, Edmund Treipas! Yes, I know of him. He spent a few weeks here several years ago, but in some personal attachment to Our Grace the Bishop.’

‘What can you tell me about him, John?’ asked his namesake.

‘I knew him only slightly, but gossip is as rife in these cloisters as in any marketplace. He came here from Coventry, where I seem to recollect that he was a chaplain to the bishop there. As you know, our Henry Marshal was a close associate of the former Bishop of Coventry.’

He said this with a hint of sarcasm, the gist of which was not lost on de Wolfe. During the abortive rebellion of Prince John a few years back, that bishop had been one of the ringleaders — and Henry Marshal, Bishop of Exeter, supported him, though far back enough in the column to avoid any direct repercussions later.

‘So how did this Edmund end up in Buckfast?’

‘When he was here, he was just an ordained priest, not in any monastic order,’ replied de Alençon. ‘He became a Cistercian only on moving to Buckfast, where I understand he is now the linchpin of their economic success. In fact, I am sure that is why he was sent there, because in his early career, before entering the Church, he was a merchant in Coventry, well used to the ways of the world and its commerce.’

He glanced up at the open shutters over his small window and saw the darkened sky. ‘I must prepare for Matins soon, John. But why are you interested in Edmund Treipas?’

The coroner shrugged as he rose to leave. ‘His name has come up in passing, though I have no real reason to think anything sinister about it. It is is just that he might be in frequent contact with someone involved in this trouble in the forest.’

The archdeacon gave his friend a quizzical look, but held his peace.