The Elixir of Death

CHAPTER TWO

It was past noon before the coroner could begin his inquest, for they had to wait for Osbert the reeve to return from Bigbury, a village farther inland, where he was seeking men to salvage the cog. He was needed for the proceedings, as he had been declared First Finder. This time, John de Wolfe had a double jurisdiction, not only in respect of the dead men, but also concerning the wrecked vessel.

None of this had much impact upon proceedings in the tiny manor of Ringmore that day. De Wolfe was the second-most senior law officer in the county, and his superior, the sheriff Henry de Furnellis, was an elderly, easy-going man who was only too content to let John get on with his job in whatever fashion he chose. In this, he was quite different to his predecessor, Sir Richard de Revelle, who was also John's brother-in-law. He had recently been expelled for malpractice, mainly at John's instigation, a fact that made the coroner's married life even more fraught with problems. As he went down to the churchyard for the inquest, de Wolfe remembered with a twinge of unease that his brother-in-law's main manor, Revelstoke, was only a dozen miles farther down the coast, and in fact could just be seen from where they had stopped to survey the wreck. He shrugged off the thought, as he could conceive of no possible way in which Richard could become involved in this present matter, even though John was always suspicious of any of his activities.

At the gap in the moss-covered stone wall that surrounded the neglected churchyard, John found that the surly village priest was directing everyone across the overgrown area to another opening on the far side, which led to the large tithe barn, standing lower on the sloping terrain.

'I thought it more seemly for your deliberations to take place there, rather than in my consecrated church,' growled Father Walter, who seemed ill disposed to offer any help to the representatives of the Crown. 'I had the bodies laid out there, together with the new one that you sent.' With that, he loped off to indicate that he wanted no more to do with them.

'Useless old bugger!' growled Gwyn, who had little time for clergymen, other than his friend Thomas. 'I'll wager he's off to find a skin of wine, even at this time of day.'

'That's why he's stuck in a God-forsaken place like Ringmore,' replied John. 'The bishop and his archdeacons send the drunks and deadbeats to places like this, where they get even worse.'

After the manor-house, the tithe barn was the best structure in the village. It was a substantial building of massive oak frames, boarded with panels of woven hazel withies plastered with cob, a mixture of clay, dung and bracken. The steep roof was thatched with oat straw, mottled with moss and growing grass. There was a pair of doors tall enough to admit all. ox-cart piled with hay, and now, at the start of winter, the barn was half full of this sweet-smelling fodder. Heaps of turnips and carrots lay on the floor and piles of threshed oats occupied a boxed platform raised up on large stones in an attempt to keep the rats away. Though a tenth of all this was destined for the church, the contents of the barn represented most of the winter stores that the village hoped would keep them alive until late spring.

Floor space was limited, and the four corpses were laid in a row just inside the wide-open doors. The coroner stood in the entrance to conduct the proceedings, which were opened by Gwyn in his role as coroner's officer.

'All ye who have anything to do before the King's Coroner for the County of Devon, draw near and give your attendance!' he roared in his bull-like voice. With his wild red hair and whiskers, he cut a fearsome figure in his coarse woollen tunic, over which his worn leather jerkin fell open to reveal the huge sword hanging from a wide belt, supported by the leather baldric over his shoulder.

His audience consisted of a score of men from the village, rounded up earlier by the bailiff to act as a jury. In theory, all the males over fourteen from the four nearest villages should have attended, in case any of them knew anything about the deaths under investigation. In a hardworking farming and fishing community this was patently impossible. Though the object of a jury was to provide witnesses, as well as adjudicators, finding so many men and boys from such a wide area was quite impracticable in the time available. John knew this very well and was content to carry on with the handful of men who might know something about the matter, which included Osbert, the fishermen and the crabber. Even old Joel, the recluse from the island, was there, a tall, thin man who looked like an animated skeleton dressed in a ragged robe of hessian, with a poorly cured sealskin cape stinking around his bony shoulders. In spite of his scarecrow appearance, he held himself erect and had the remnants of authority about him, which made the ever curious Thomas wonder as to his past history.

De Wolfe knew full well that his inquiry would be futile at this early stage, but being a man who stuck rigidly to his royal mandate, he pressed ahead with the formality of the inquest. The first matter was that of 'Presentment of Englishry', which again was a foregone impossibility, given that a hundred-and-thirty years after the Norman invasion, intermarriage had blurred the distinction between Norman and Saxon. And if proof could not be produced, a murdrum fine was levied, so 'presentment' had become merely a cynical device for extorting money from the population, especially as all deaths other than those from obvious disease were eligible, even if they were due to accidents or the occasional suicide.

John de Wolfe still had to apply the out-dated procedure, however, and he began his inquest by glaring around the bemused villeins and freemen of Ringmore, demanding to know whether anyone could prove the identity of the corpses. As the dead men were strangers washed up on a nearby beach — and presumably came from Dawlish, over thirty miles away — there was little chance of anyone present knowing anything about them, but one fellow spoke up in a rather truculent voice.

'I hear that one of them is called Thorgils, so with a name like that, how can he be anything other than of Saxon blood?'

From the size of his bulging arm muscles and his leather apron scarred with burns, John assumed that he was the village blacksmith. The coroner knew that the smith was doing what he could to avoid the murdrum fine — usually of several marks — being imposed on the village, as they would all suffer from having to scrape together the hundreds of pennies needed. He replied, but tempered his words with a reassurance.

'A good point, but I need much better proof. In the absence of any family, then presentment cannot be made and my clerk will so record the fact.' He jerked his head towards Thomas, who was sitting on a small stool just outside the doors, with his writing materials before him on an empty keg. 'But no murdrum fine will be imposed until the Justices in Eyre consider the matter, which might be a year or two in the future. And if the true culprits of this heinous crime are found before then, you will not be amerced.'

A murmur of relief rippled round the half-circle of jurors, echoed in the background by the group of anxious wives who were clustered around the gateway into the churchyard. Women had no voice in these matters, but they suffered just as much when penalties were imposed on their village.

The few witnesses were called one after the other, to haltingly say their piece. Osbert described how he had been called to view one body and then found another two. The fishermen repeated their story about discovering the dying boy and the mysteriously intact curragh. The hermit Joel, who had a surprisingly deep and cultured voice for such a wreck of a man, related how he had heard the word 'Saracens' pass the lips of the dying lad, but he could add nothing more of any use. Then John instructed Gwyn to march the jury past the four pathetic corpses, so that they could see the wounds on three of them.

'It was a large knife, with a wider blade than the usual dagger,' he pointed out in his sonorous voice. 'The younger lad has no wounds, but you have heard how he soon expired from the effects of the sea, being half drowned when they found him on the shore.'

Gwyn marshalled the men back into line outside the barn, so that the coroner could address them again.

'There is much more to be learned about this affair, but I must reach a verdict now, so that the dead men may be given a Christian burial. There is no doubt that three of the seamen have been stabbed to death. It is impossible to be sure what happened to the boy, but common sense would suggest that he managed to jump over the side of the vessel when they were attacked. Thus he escaped injury, but perished in the waves.' He glowered along the line of men, his dark head thrust out like a vulture. 'So make up your own minds and get one of you to tell me what you decide.'

There was a muttered discussion lasting less than a minute, then the blacksmith stepped forward. 'Crowner, we go along with what you said. The three men were slain, but we can't be sure about the lad.'

De Wolfe nodded his agreement. 'It shall be so recorded. Now I have to consider an easier matter, that of the vessel. The Mary and Child Jesus, a trading cog out of Dawlish, was owned by Thorgils, one of the murdered men. It was washed up on the shore at the mouth of the Avon and as no living thing survived aboard, I now declare it a wreck of the sea.'

Ancient law stated that a stranded vessel that was totally abandoned became the property of the Crown. If anyone survived on board, the boat and its cargo remained the property of the owners. There had even been cases where it had been successfully pleaded that even a dog or cat left on the ship had prevented the declaration of a wreck.

'I also take the cargo into the King's custody and I command that it be kept safely.' De Wolfe scowled around the small crowd to impress the point upon them. 'My clerk has a complete inventory of what was in the vessel and I expect every single item to be there when arrangements are made for its collection.'

He knew only too well that the contents of a ship — and even the structure of the vessel itself — were an irresistible attraction to poor coastal communities. In fact, the Curia Regis had placed wrecks within the coroner's jurisdiction in an attempt to reduce the pillaging that went on, often with the local lord's consent or even active participation.

The inquest was soon over, and all that remained for John to decide was the fate of the corpses.

'If we wait until we get back to Exeter before sending a cart down here to fetch them, they'll be stinking by 'the time they reach Dawlish,' said Gwyn, in his typically blunt fashion. It was true that a clumsy ox-cart trundling along the atrocious tracks of South Devon would take many days to make the round trip. William Vado confirmed that there was no carter in Ringmore or any of the nearby villages who would be willing to make the long journey to Dawlish. Eventually, de Wolfe compromised by paying for a local carter to convey the dead men as far as Totnes, where the coroner promised to make arrangements for them to be taken on to Dawlish.

Their work in the village done, the trio saddled up and by noon were on their way eastwards, the coroner grimly promising the bailiff that he would be back as soon as there was any news of what had occurred on that lonely coast.

It was the afternoon of the next day when they reached Dawlish, as John had stopped to visit his mother and the rest of the family at Stoke-in-Teignhead, a village just south of the River Teign, not far from where it emptied into the sea at Teignmouth. He had been born and brought up there and had a great affection for the place, where his sprightly mother Enyd, spinster sister Evelyn and elder brother William still held the manor. Their usual effusive hospitality extended not only to John, but to Gwyn and Thomas as well, who were always welcome there. They were plied with food and drink, which the ever hungry Cornishman attacked with gusto, while John brought the family up to date on recent events. In fact it was difficult to get away, and only John's pleading that he must call at Dawlish on the way home allowed them to get back on the road. His family had been saddened to hear that Hilda was now widowed, for she was the daughter of the reeve at their other manor at Holcombe, farther up the coast. They had all known her since she was a child, but the unbreachable gap between a Saxon villein and the son of a Norman manor-lord made it impossible for John's youthful romance with Hilda to flourish. Privately, Enyd would have preferred her as a daughter-in-law to Matilda de Revelle, but it was not to be.

As the three men rode out of the wooded valley of Stoke, John's mother gazed after them with a twinge of anxiety, as she was well aware of her son's partiality for women and the affection he felt for Hilda. Enyd was also very fond of his Welsh mistress Nesta, especially as she herself had a Welsh father and a Cornish mother. As John vanished beyond the trees, she hoped that Hilda's new availability would not put her son's life in greater emotional turmoil than usual.

The riders reached the ford at the mouth of the Teign, where thankfully the tide was low enough for them to cross, then went northwards up the coast for a few miles. Dawlish was a village that straggled above the beach, where a small river gave shelter for the vessels that were pulled up on to its sandy banks. Most were fishing boats, but there were two trading cogs lying there, smaller than the wrecked Mary.

'I'll leave you to it, Crowner,' said Gwyn tactfully, as they reined in in the centre of the hamlet. 'I'll be in the alehouse when you've finished.'

'And I'll be in the church, praying for the souls of those poor shipmen,' added Thomas rather haughtily, preferring God's house to a tavern.

John led Odin down to the river to drink, then tied the reins of the big grey stallion to the rail outside the inn, giving orders to a runny-nosed lad who acted as ostler to find hay for their three studs. Then he loped up a short side lane from the village street, making for the largest house in Dawlish, which lay behind the usual collection of ramshackle dwellings.

Thorgils had done well from his cross-Channel business, after many years of sailing back and forth with goods in either direction. Some five years before, he had used some of his accumulated wealth to build this fine house, modelled on some he had seen in Brittany. It was all in stone, the only one in this village of wooden dwellings, and had an upper storey, supported in front by two pillars, like a house he had admired in Dol.

John de Wolfe threw his mantle back over his shoulders as he approached the front door, made of heavy oak with metal banding. Suddenly, he felt apprehensive at being the bearer of such bad news. Though he knew that Hilda had never been in love with her husband, who was more than twenty years older, he was well aware that she had felt affection and respect for him and that Thorgils had always treated her courteously and generously. She had married him twelve years earlier, when John was away fighting in the Irish wars. Though a little piqued and slightly jealous, de Wolfe had been glad that she had found security and comfort, as although his brother William was a most benign lord in Holcombe, the life of an unfree peasant in a small village did not equal that of the wife of a wealthy ship-master.

He straightened his habitually stooped shoulders and rapped on the door with the hilt of his dagger. A moment later it opened and Hilda's maid, a pleasant, round-faced girl called Alice, gazed out at him in surprise.

'Is your mistress at home?' he asked gently, for he knew the girl from previous clandestine visits when Thorgils had been on the high seas. The maid stood aside for him to enter, then led him down a short corridor between two rooms. The house did not have the usual cavernous hall with an upper solar attached — instead, an open wooden stairway rose at the end of the passageway. The girl clattered up the steps before him and went into a chamber at the back of the house, one of the pair that occupied the upper floor. He heard her excitedly announce that Sir John had arrived, then he followed her into the room. Hilda was seated on a padded bench next to an open window that looked over roofs towards the shore. The Saxon woman, now in her mid-thirties, was slim and supple and had long blonde hair falling to her waist, unconfined in braids or a cover-chief when she was at home. She rose quickly as he came in and gazed with pleased surprise at her former lover.

'John, what are you doing here? I had no idea that you would call on me today.' Then Hilda noticed his expression and her gaze faltered.

The next few minutes were very uncomfortable for John as he broke the news as gently as he could. Alice stood uncertainly near the door, as her mistress was held close against the breast of this fierce-looking knight. Hilda's eyes filled with tears, but much to John's relief she held back from sobbing, as he would rather face a thousand of Saladin's warriors than one weeping woman.

'He was a good man, always kind to me, like another father,' she murmured into his tunic. 'I'll miss him, though he was away at sea for much of the year.' Hilda turned her beautiful face up to John, causing him to think inconsequentially how different it was from Nesta's. Where the Welsh woman had rounder features with a snub nose, Hilda's face was longer, with higher cheek-bones and a slim, straight nose below her blue eyes.

He led her back to her chair and drew up a stool to be close to her side.

'There are many practical matters to be dealt with, Hilda. But I will do all I can to help you with them.'

She nodded, drying her moist cheeks with the hem of her sleeve, then ordered the maid to fetch some wine and pastries. When the girl had rather reluctantly left the room, Hilda laid her hand on his.

'There has been a very special bond between us for many years, John. I wish with all my heart that I could,have become your wife, instead of Thorgils', but it was not possible.' She leant across and kissed his stubbly cheek. 'But we must not turn this tragedy to our own advantage — I am a new widow and you have your Nesta.'

De Wolfe knew that he was being gently warned off, and it reinforced his determination to be faithful to his Welsh mistress, if not his wife. Yet a trace of disappointment niggled in his mind, though even that was soothed by her next words. 'Time may alter matters, John, so let us have patience.'

The wine and a platter of meat pasties appeared and as Alice seemed determined to play the chaperone by crouching in a corner, John led the discussion on to the practical matters he had raised. He told Hilda of the arrangements to bring back the bodies of Thorgils and the other Dawlish men and promised to send Thomas de Peyne to see the parish priest this very afternoon, to organise the funeral.

When he enquired about money, she assured him that her husband, conscious of his years and his dangerous occupation on the high seas, had made ample provision for an unexpected death. A document had been drawn up by an Exeter lawyer leaving everything to her, as there were no children alive by his previous marriage and they had had none themselves.

'I have the key to his treasure chest, which he always told me to use as my own,' she said sadly. 'The house is valuable and he owned two other smaller ships and a warehouse in Topsham which brings in a rent, so I have no concerns about my survival.'

She asked about the Mary and Child Jesus, expecting to hear that it was a total loss, but John explained that it might well be saved and brought back into service.

'But I have no experience as a ship-owner, John. What am I to do with these three vessels? Shall I sell them?'

He had no wish to burden her with business matters so soon after learning that she was a widow, but he briefly explained that he would talk to Hugh de Relaga and see whether they could work out some new venture.

'But forget that for now, dear woman,' he said gruffly, as he rose and patted her shoulder awkwardly. 'I will attend to all these matters. Have you someone who can come and keep you company at this unhappy time?'

She smiled sadly. 'With Thorgils absent so much, I am so often alone, apart from Alice here. With the winter coming and the ships laid up, I was looking forward to his company. Now I will go home to Holcombe for a while to be with my family.'

John assured her that his brother William, manor-lord of Holcombe, already knew of the tragedy and would do anything necessary to help her.

As he was leaving, with a promise to return for the funeral, Hilda clutched his arm.

'Who can have done such a terrible thing, John?' she asked, in a voice that quavered with emotion. 'The wife of a ship man always accepts the perils of the sea. Every time he left, I wondered if it would be the last I would ever see of him, because of some tempest or shipwreck. But that he should be stabbed to death, along with his crew, is beyond my comprehension!'

John put a long arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him, ignoring the curious stares of the maid.

'I'll not rest until I find the answer to that question, Hilda. This is a very strange crime, but I'll get to the bottom of it, even if takes me years and a journey to Cathay and back!'

The coroner's next journey was not as far as Cathay, but was the ten miles into Exeter, which they reached just before dusk, when the walled city was closed at curfew. Gwyn did not enter through the West Gate with his master, but went around the south side to reach the village of St Sidwell, where he lived in a hut with his wife and two small sons. With his clerk lagging wearily behind, John de Wolfe walked his horse up Fore Street to the central crossing of Carfoix and straight on into High Street, the town plan having been set down a thousand years earlier by the Romans. A thriving, bustling city, Exeter was developing quickly, many of the old wooden houses being rebuilt in stone, so that a confused mixture of styles lined the crowded streets. Not yet paved, these lanes were of beaten earth, dusty in the dry and a morass in the rain. A central gutter sluggishly conveyed all the effluent down to the river, including most of the rubbish and filth that householders and shopkeepers flung out of their doors.

Just past the new Guildhall, a narrow alley opened on the right-hand side. This was Martin's Lane, one of the entrances into the cathedral Close, the large open area around the massive church of St Mary and St Peter, whose twin towers soared above the city. The coroner had his house in the lane, but this evening both he and his clerk carried on up High Street towards the East Gate, then turned up Castle Hill to Rougemont, the fortress perched on the northern tip of the sloping city. John wished to discover whether any more cases had been reported during his absence down in the country. Thankfully, the guardroom had no messages for him and with Thomas close behind, he climbed to his cheerless chamber high in the gatehouse, which stood astride the entrance to the inner ward. He had hardly sat down behind his table when a voice came from the doorway.

'The sheriff sends his compliments, Sir John, and asks if you could attend upon him.'

The voice was that of Sergeant Gabriel, the grizzled old soldier who headed the garrison's men-at-arms at Rougemont, so called on account of the colour of its local sandstone. He had stuck his head around the tattered hessian curtain that hung over the doorway to de Wolfe's chamber. It was a bleak, draughty garret, spitefully provided by the former sheriff, Richard de Revelle, when he was reluctantly obliged to find some accommodation for his brother-in-law, the new coroner. De Revelle had seen the introduction of these upstart coroners as a threat to his own interests, especially his opportunities to extort and embezzle from the inhabitants and taxes of the shire of Devon. The knowledge that one of the King's motives in setting up the coroner system was to keep a check on rapacious sheriffs made it an even more bitter pill to swallow.

De Wolfe received the sergeant's message with a lift of his black eyebrows, as he sat in the lengthening gloom at the rough trestle table that acted as his desk. This, together with a bench and a couple of milking stools, was the only furniture in the room. Thomas de Peyne was on one of the stools on the other side of the table, his tongue projecting from the corner of his thin lips as he began lighting a rush lamp with a flint and tinder to check the parchment roll carrying his account of the Ringmore inquest.

'Did he say what he wanted, Gabriel?' demanded de Wolfe.

The old soldier shook his head. 'Not a word, Crowner! But a herald came with messages from Winchester when you were away. The day 'afore yesterday, it was — so maybe it's to do with that.'

His head vanished, and with a groan at the stiffness in his back and legs after so much riding, John rose and went after him, with an unnecessary admonition to his clerk to get the inquisition finished before the day was out.

The steep spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall led back down to the guardroom. This was just inside the archway that led from a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch separating it from the outer ward. The tall, narrow gatehouse had been built by William the Bastard, one of the first stone structures he put up after the Conquest, mainly to guard against a repetition of the revolt that the citizens of Exeter raised against him. Below it, the large outer ward was defended by a bank topped by a stout wooden palisade and contained most of the garrison and their families, living in a motley collection of huts and sheds.

The inner ward was protected by a castellated wall cutting off the uppermost corner of the old Roman fortifications. John walked across this towards the keep, a two-storeyed building in the far corner, beyond the Shire Hall, which was the courthouse for the city. The only other stone building there was the tiny garrison chapel of St Mary.

De Wolfe tramped through the mud churned by horses, oxen and soldiers' boots into a slippery brown paste, until he reached the wooden steps going up to the entrance to the keep. As a defence measure, this was set high above the undercroft, a gloomy basement partly below ground level which housed the cells of the castle gaol. The upper doorway gave directly on to the hall, a large chamber occupying most of the main floor, the remainder holding a few rooms for the sheriff and castle constable. The floor above was a warren of stores, offices and living accommodation for clerks and more senior servants.

John looked around the crowded hall and its scattering of tables where men were talking, eating and drinking. Although it was late in the day, more were standing in groups or tramping impatiently about waiting for an audience with clerks and officials. A big log fire smouldered in an open hearth against one wall, the smoke wreathing upwards to blacken the old ceiling beams even more. He acknowledged a few waves and greetings, then went to the first door on the left of the hall where a man-at-arms in a leather cuirass and round iron helmet with a nose-guard was leaning against the wall. As soon as he saw the coroner, he sprang to attention, banged the butt of his spear on the ground in salute and opened the door for John to enter.

Inside, he found the sheriff, Henry de Furnellis, beleaguered behind a table covered with rolls and parchments. Candles and rush-lights were lit on the table and in sconces around the walls. A clerk hovered beside him, waving more documents for the sheriff's attention.

'Thank God for an interruption!' boomed de

Furnellis. 'Sit down and give me an excuse for a drink and a respite from these bloody rolls.' As Henry was no more literate than John, his clerks had to read him every word and transcribe any responses from his dictation, as Thomas de Peyne did for the coroner.

John was quite familiar with Henry's chamber and went to a shelf to fetch a large jug of cider and two pewter mugs. He filled these and placed one before the sheriff, before dragging up a stool and sitting down on the opposite side of the table. They both took deep draughts of the cloudy fluid, then Henry gave a sigh of satisfaction and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 'I needed that, John! The county farm has to go to Winchester next week and these accursed clerks are driving me mad with their accounts.'

The 'farm' was the twice-yearly payment of the taxes collected from Devonshire and had to be taken in coin personally by the sheriff, to be accounted for by the clerks of the royal exchequer. The two men talked for a few moments about the state of the local economy and the fears they had that the next farm might be much reduced, if the coming harvest was as bad as could be expected after this foul summer. Though Exeter itself was booming from its trade in tin, wool and cloth exports, most of the population elsewhere in the county lived off the land and were ever vulnerable to the effects of the weather.

De Furnellis reached across to refill their tankards. At sixty, he was almost two decades older than John, another old soldier who had been rewarded for his years of faithful service by being appointed as sheriff. In fact, this was the second time he had been sheriff of Devon, as early the previous year John's brother-in-law had been appointed, but owing to suspicions of his favouring Prince John's rebellion, Richard had been suspended and Henry had filled the gap for a few months, until de Revelle was reinstated. Now that the latter had finally been disgraced and ejected, de Furnellis had once more rather reluctantly accepted another term as sheriff. He fervently hoped that it would only be temporary and that he could go back into retirement once again.

After another swallow, the coroner banged his mug on to the table and got down to business.

'I've got some news for you, Henry, from the southwest of your domain. But first, what's this about a royal messenger coming while I was away?'

'That's why I wanted to see you, John. As well as a lot of official nonsense for me from the Chancery and from the justices about their next visitation, there was a message from Hubert Walter which concerns us both — especially as you are so thick with him.'

He said this without sarcasm, as de Wolfe's friendship with the Justiciar was well known. Hubert had been King Richard's second-in-command on the Third Crusade and had been rewarded by being appointed both Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar, the highest office in the King's Council. Now that Richard Coeur-de-Lion had gone back to France, apparently never to return, Hubert Walter was virtually regent in his place, the most powerful man in England. John de Wolfe had fought alongside him in the Holy Land and had been part of Richard's bodyguard on the ill-fated journey home, when the King had been kidnapped in Austria and imprisoned there and in Germany for well over a year, until the Justiciar had negotiated his release on payment of a huge ransom.

'What's this message about? Is Hubert calling us to clean the rust from our swords and go to help the King in France?'

John said this jokingly, but there a wistful undercurrent in his voice, as he still missed the excitement and comradeship of the battlefield, after twenty years of campaigning.

Henry de Furnellis grinned and shook his head. He was a heavily built man, slow of movement and deliberate in speech. His ruddy face carried a large nose, though this bucolic appearance was enlivened by a pair of bright blue eyes. He had cropped grey hair and a drooping moustache of the same colour. A mournful mouth above loose skin on his neck gave him the appearance of an elderly deer-hound. Picking up a curled page of parchment from his cluttered table, he waved it at the coroner, who could see a heavy wax seal dangling from it which he recognised as that of the Justiciar.

'Like you, I can't read a bloody word of it, but Elphin said it was important.'

He beckoned to his chief clerk, who was hovering near the door to the inner chamber. This led to the sheriff's sleeping quarters, but though his predecessor had spent much of his time there — sometimes with a lady of ill repute — Henry had his own town house near the East Gate and rarely used the bedchamber. The tonsured clerk, a spare elderly man, came forward and took the document to read to John.

'It's from Hubert Walter, Crowner, and after the usual greetings, he is, quite emphatic that the contents should also be communicated to you.'

He cleared his throat and went on. 'The Justiciar says that he has had information from his spies in France that King Philip Augustus is once again encouraging Prince John, Count of Mortain, to foment rebellion against his brother, our sovereign lord, Richard. The intelligence is very vague, but there are rumours that agents have been sent to England, mainly to raise funds to recruit and equip another army for the purpose.'

De Wolfe looked across at the sheriff and shrugged. 'Nothing new in sending spies across the Channel — it happens all the time, in both directions.'

'I have not quite finished, sir!' rebuked Elphin, and dropped his eyes back to the parchment. 'Though they gleaned little more than hints and rumours, his spies heard whispers that the far west of England was involved and also that Moors might be implicated in raising money.' Elphin bent to put the message back on the table as he said his final words. 'The Justiciar says he has sent this warning to the sheriffs of all the western shires, from Cornwall to Dorset, with an admonition for every law officer to be vigilant.'

'What do you think of that, John?' asked de Furnellis. 'You have been involved in several brushes with those who adhere to the Prince's cause — mainly involving your dear brother-in-law. '

The coroner was silent for a moment as he chewed over the scanty information, then he cleared his throat with one of his non-committal rasps.

'The Count of Mortain has been quiet lately, as far as I've heard. I had hoped that he had learnt his lesson last year, when the Lionheart came back from captivity and trounced his forces at Tickhill and Nottingham.'

'King Richard was too damn lenient with his young brother!' growled Henry. 'He should have locked him up for a few years, as their father did with their mother, Queen Eleanor. Instead, the soft-hearted fellow has now given back most of John's land that was confiscated.'

'If he's thinking of new treachery against the King, he'll certainly need money to rebuild support,' mused de Wolfe. 'I wonder what sending agents to the west hopes to achieve in that direction?'

'And what's this business about Mohammedans?' demanded de Furnellis.

A few more minutes' discussion brought them no enlightenment, and with a shrug of dismissal de Wolfe went on to tell the sheriff about the wreck of Thorgils' ship and the murder of its crew. The sheriff listened with interest, but had no suggestions as to who might have perpetrated this strange slaying — nor what could be done about it, without further information.

Henry, though nominally responsible for keeping law and order in Devon, was a somewhat reluctant enforcer and was more than content to leave the more energetic de Wolfe to deal with suspicious deaths and other crimes of violence. The coroner's remit, vague though it was, covered a whole host of matters, from sudden deaths to rape, from severe assault to fires and from wrecks to catches of the royal fish. In addition he had a wide-ranging obligation to attend to many legal matters, such as preparing evidence for the King's Justices, who came at long and irregular intervals to the city. He also had to attend executions and Ordeals, take confessions from sanctuary seekers and those who turned King's evidence by wishing to 'approve', as well as holding inquests on deaths and finds of treasure trove. It seemed that Henry de Furnellis also wished him to gallop around the county to seek out and arrest wrongdoers, though at least he had assured John that at any time he could call upon Ralph Morin, the castle constable, to turn out with men-at-arms from the garrison for any policing that was necessary.

When the cider was finished, the overworked de Wolfe left the harassed sheriff to the mercy of his clerks and went back to his chamber, to tell Thomas that he was at last going home to face his wife.

John rode sedately down to Martin's Lane and delivered Odin to Andrew the farrier, who had stables on the left side of the alley, right opposite the de Wolfe residence, one of several tall, narrow wooden houses. The front was relieved only by a heavy door and a shuttered window at ground level, plain timbers reaching up to the steep roof of wooden shingles.

Pushing the door open, he entered a small vestibule there, with a sigh of relief, he hung up his cloak and slumped on to a bench to exchange his mud-spattered riding boots for a pair of house shoes. To the right was an inner door into his hall, the main room of the house, but he turned left and went around the side of the building. The vestibule was continuous with a narrow covered passageway which led to the back yard. Here the kitchen shed, the wash hut, the well, the privy and a pigsty competed for space in an area of beaten mud, in which a few chickens pecked around. Plaintive bleating came from a small goat, destined for the next day's dinner, which was tethered to a ramshackle fence.

From force of habit, de Wolfe glanced up a flight of steep wooden steps that rose from the yard to the door of a room built out high on the back wall of the house. This was the solar, the only other room in the dwelling, which acted as his wife's retiring room as well as their bedchamber. Beneath the timber supports of the solar was a box-like structure where his wife's body-maid, Lucille, lived. There was no sign of either of them, so John turned into the kitchen hut, where their cook-maid lived and worked.

'Mary, I'm famished!' he growled. 'I can't wait until supper-time. What have you got to eat?'

A dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties was stooping over an iron pot that was simmering on a small fire in a pit in the centre of the shed. She turned and stood up, a smile spreading over her handsome face.

'Welcome home, Sir Crowner!' she said in slightly mocking tone. 'I wondered if you still lived here, we see so little of you.'

John grinned at her familiar manner and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. They had had many a furtive tumble in days gone by, but now Mary thought more of keeping her position in the household than rolling in the hay with the master. Since John's relations with his wife had deteriorated, and especially since the nosy Lucille had arrived, she was afraid of her former indiscretions being discovered.

The cook-maid ladled some hare stew into a bowl for him and set it on a rickety table that was the only furniture, apart from a stool and a straw-filled mattress in the corner, which was her bed. As he sat to eat it, Mary placed a hunk of barley bread in front of him and poured a quart of ale into an earthenware pot.

'That will keep you from starving for another hour, perhaps?' Her manner was one of affectionate bantering, as she was his ally against the two other women in the household. Without her ministrations, he knew that he would go unfed and unclothed as far as Matilda was concerned. She cared nothing for domestic matters, being obsessed only with religion and maintaining her social status as wife of the county coroner and sister to the former sheriff.

'How has she been?' he asked, as he sucked the meaty stew from a spoon carved from a cow's horn.

'Fretting as usual, as she has been ever since she got back from France a few weeks back. And she's wrathful over the fact that you've been away for two nights, God knows where!'

He grunted sardonically, as it was the same old story with Matilda. She had pushed him into this job as coroner the previous year, seeing an opportunity to flaunt herself as the consort of the King's Crowner. Yet when he had to be absent on his duties, she complained endlessly that she was left alone and neglected, heedless of the fact that when he was there, she spent most of the time either scolding or ignoring him.

'Where is my dear wife now?' he asked.

'She'll be on her knees at St Olave's until supper-time, listening to Julian Fulk gabbling his Latin.'

John dipped the last of his bread in the dregs of the stew. 'She doesn't understand a bloody word of it, but she keeps going there. God's offal, if I didn't know her better, I'd think she was enamoured of that fat clerk.'

The cook had squatted on her bed while de Wolfe finished his food and drank the rest of his ale, an easy companionship settling over them. He began telling her of his trip to the south-west of the county, and she was saddened to hear that Hilda was now a widow. Mary was well aware of her master's various infidelities and had met Hilda several times in the past.

'Who could have done such a thing?' she asked, echoing the widow's words. 'And why, if none of the cargo was taken?'

As they discussed the mystery, his old hound Brutus ambled in from where he had been sleeping in the wash house and John fondled his smooth brown head as he spoke.

'This affair will take me down to that area more than once, I'm afraid,' he said. 'So my wife will have no lack of opportunity to nag me about being away from home again.'

Mary chuckled. 'That's nothing to what you'll suffer when she finds out that this affair will often require you to visit the Widow Hilda!'

Her husband's amorous wanderings were no secret from Matilda — in fact most of Exeter was well aware of his fondness for the ladies and for the landlady of the Bush Inn in particular. It was true that almost every prominent knight, burgess, merchant and even many men of the cloth had a mistress or two tucked away somewhere — and the booming trade in the city's brothels suggested that men of all stations in life were little bothered by the Seventh Commandment.

Mary's remark cast a gloom over John's mood, for until then he had forgotten that resurrecting his contact with Hilda, however innocent it might be, was bound to cause more trouble with Matilda. And a little niggle in his mind also suggested that the news might not be too well received at the Bush tavern in Idle Lane.

Though most people ate their main meal of the day around noon, a modern fashion was creeping upon the upper classes to have a substantial supper in the evening. Matilda de Wolfe, never wishing to be outdone by her cronies, had embraced the trend, and when the light had faded on that autumn evening, she and her husband sat down to eat grilled salt fish, then boiled bacon with cabbage and beans, followed by the last of the season's apples, stewed in honey. Mary was an excellent cook, which was why Matilda tolerated her, though relations between them were frigid and distant, as the lady of the house suspected that something had been going on between the maid and her husband. True, she thought the same of almost every woman with whom John came into contact, but she gave the benefit of the doubt to Mary, as eating good food was close to Matilda's heart. In fact, her brief sojourn in Polsloe Priory, where some months earlier she had decided to become a nun, had ended not so much from a failure of religious faith, but from distaste for the dull food and drab raiment, as she was also addicted to fine clothes.

Now they sat in their gloomy hall at either end of a long table, hardly speaking a word, as John's attempts at relating the saga of the wrecked ship and murdered crew had been received in stony silence, once he had revealed that the vessel belonged to Hilda's husband and that, by inference, the attractive blonde was now a widow.

De Wolfe felt his short temper rising, as she so blatantly snubbed his genuine efforts to be civil to her. He sat chewing on the fatty bacon, ripping the tough rind from his teeth with fingers that he felt would be better employed in squeezing the life out of her thick neck. He glared at her from under his black brows, seeing her as if sizing up an adversary on the battlefield. Thickset and heavy, she was not ugly, but was still totally unattractive to him. A square face carried a down turned mouth that gave the impression that there was a permanent bad smell in the vicinity. Her small eyes were heavy lidded and pouches of loose skin beneath them matched those that drooped beneath her chin. Her mouse-brown hair was rarely visible, as she always wore close-fitting wimples and cover-chiefs that made her look like the nun she had fleetingly been after a particularly severe rift between them had sent her in a fit of outrage to the nearby priory of Polsloe.

When they had finished the food, they retired to the hearth, where they sat before a glowing fire, while Mary brought in a jug of wine decanted from a keg and two pottery cups. As they slumped morosely watching the flames and sipping the red liquor from the Loire, de Wolfe again tried to break the oppressive silence by telling her of his plans to get his partner Hugh de Relaga to take over the three ships that had formerly belonged to Thorgils and use them to transport their goods.

'He could get Eustace, that smart young nephew of his, to look after that side of the business — he wanted to get experience of the coroner's work, but I fear he's not really suited. Or nearer the truth, my clerk is jealous of his position and sees him as a threat.'

John was certainly lacking in foresight and tact, as this speech put him in double trouble with his surly wife. First, she hated any mention of Thomas de Peyne, that 'fallen and perverted priest', as she called him, despite the fact that he had recently been fully exonerated from his alleged crime in Winchester. So devoted was she to 'men of the cloth' that the notion of a priestly sexual offender was poison to her ears. John's second faux pas was to mention again anything to do with Dawlish, as even an oblique reference to Thorgils' ships reinforced her awareness of Hilda's new availability.

'If all you can think about is that brazen woman down at the coast,' she snapped, 'then you can sit alone to slaver over your fornication!'

Hauling herself to her feet, she stomped her way to the door, yelling at the top of her voice for her maid Lucille to attend upon her, leaving John with mixed feelings of annoyance at her rudeness, but relief at being left in peace. He sat by the fire finishing his drink and scratching Brutus under the ear until he was sure that Lucille had finished fussing over Matilda's preparations for bed, setting out her night-shift and primping her hair. There was a small slit in the wall high to one side of the hearth which communicated with the solar, and long experience had trained him to recognise the various sounds that came through it when his wife was up there. She usually berated Lucille for being too rough with her hair or failing to fold her clothes properly. Sometimes the maid would get a slap from her short-tempered mistress and burst into tears. Finally the sounds would subside and John knew that Matilda would be on her knees saying her prolonged prayers before collapsing on to the thick feather mattress on the floor which was their loveless matrimonial bed.

When he was satisfied that all was quiet up above, he threw a couple more oak logs on to the fire and went out to the vestibule for his cloak. Brutus, who knew the routine perfectly, loped after him and when the front door was opened unerringly turned right and set off ahead of his master in the direction of the Bush Inn.

Below Southgate Street, the city of Exeter sloped sharply down towards the river, so much so that one of the lanes was actually terraced, giving it the name of Stepcote Hill. John's destination was Idle Lane, a short track that led from Priest Street, so called from its abundance of clerics' lodgings, across to the top of Stepcote Hill, where the infamous Saracen Inn was situated, a haunt of harlots and thieves. The Bush was the only building in Idle Lane, so named from the waste ground that lay around it after a fire some years earlier. The tavern had recently been rebuilt after its own disastrous fire, which had destroyed everything except the actual masonry walls. It was a square, solid structure, with a high thatched roof that came down almost to head height and gave ample space in the loft for many straw mattresses, rented at a penny a night. There was also a small partitioned bedroom where the attractive landlady slept and often entertained the King's Coroner for the shire of Devon.

This gentleman now ducked his head under the low lintel of the doorway and followed his hound into the large tap room that occupied the whole of the ground floor — a floor of beaten earth covered in fresh rushes, as Nesta was unusually particular about cleanliness, a rarity in the inns of Exeter.

After the chilly evening outside, the fug in the room was both welcome and familiar. A glowing fire in the hearth pit near one wall kept the place warm, and as the logs tonight were dry there was relatively little smoke circulating to smart the eyes and irritate the throat, before it seeped out under the eaves, as there was no chimney. However, the smells of sweat, spilt ale, unwashed bodies and cooking, made up for the lack of fumes, though none of the patrons ever noticed this miasma.

De Wolfe sat at one of the rough tables near the hearth, a wattle screen shielding his back from the draughts from the open door. This was his acknowledged seat, and if someone was already sitting there when he arrived, they hastily found another perch. He looked around and nodded to acquaintances in the crowded taproom, which was filled with men standing with quart pots or sitting at the few other tables scattered around the room. At the back, there was another door leading out into the yard, where the cook shed, the brew-house and the privy were situated, though most patrons lined up against the back fence when ridding themselves of the residue of their ale. Alongside this door was a row of casks and tall crocks, containing the ale and cider brewed by the landlady, which was indisputably the best in the city, as was the food that came from the hut outside.

Brutus slid under the table, peering out hopefully to see whether any of the patrons who were eating had some scraps to throw down to him. As John lowered himself on to his bench, an old man with a lame leg hobbled across with a pottery tankard of best ale.

'Evening, cap'n!' he said, as he had done hundreds of times before. Old Edwin was a former soldier, wounded in the foot and blinded in one eye at the battle of Wexford — the same Irish campaign in which de Wolfe had fought. Edwin had a touching regard for the coroner as a fellow soldier and always used his military title of captain — though privately he always thought of him as 'Black John'.

'Is your mistress about, Edwin?' asked John.

'Out in the cook shed, scolding one of the new girls, sir. Since we opened again after the fire, we've had a couple of useless doxies who couldn't boil water, let alone fry an egg!'

De Wolfe supped his ale and had a few words with several men standing near by, one of whom was the master carpenter who had organised most of the rebuilding of the inn, at John's expense. This was the second time he had ploughed money into the tavern, as several years ago he had come to the rescue of Nesta when her husband had died of a sudden fever and left her to run the debt-ridden inn. John had known Meredydd when they campaigned together, as he was an archer from Gwent in South Wales, the home of experts with the longbow. When he gave up fighting, he followed John back to Exeter and took over the ailing Bush, but died before it became profitable. John had come to the aid of his widow and their friendship developed into intimacy and — even though the taciturn John was loath to admit it — into genuine love. More recently, Nesta had narrowly escaped death when the inn was deliberately set on fire, and, once again, John came to her rescue by financing the rebuilding.

'Here she is now, cap'n,' croaked Edwin, his dead white eye rolling horribly as he passed by again with a handful of empty ale-pots. The coroner looked up expectantly, his usually dour expression softened and a rare smile lit up his face at the sight of his mistress threading her way through her patrons. She gave many of them a cheerful greeting or a playful tap on the arm, as her pleasant manner was almost as much an attraction at the Bush as her good food and ale.

'Sir Crowner, I thought you might have left the country, it's so long since I saw you!'

She stood over him, grinning mischievously as she used the half-mocking title that told him she was teasing — though there was a hint of reproach at his recent absence that reminded him of his maid's similar complaints.

'God's teeth, woman, it's good to see you! My arse is near worn away from sitting on a horse these past few days.' He reached up to pull her on to the bench alongside him and hugged her close. 'I've been halfway to the bloody Scilly Isles to see a shipwreck.'

He gave her cheek a smacking kiss, to the benign amusement of the regular patrons around them. They all knew and approved of the affair between their coroner and the comely ale-wife, not a few of them envying his luck at being able to bed such a pretty dame. Although twenty-nine, some dozen years younger than de Wolfe, she still had a shapely figure, with a small waist and a full bosom under the kirtle of fine green wool that covered her from neck to ankles. The Welsh woman was not small, but she came only to the shoulder of the lanky knight. Her face was round, though she preferred to think of it as 'heart-shaped', with a tip-tilted nose and lips like Cupid's bow. Her grey-green eyes complemented her glossy auburn hair, which now peeped out rebelliously from under a white linen coif, a close-fitting helmet that was tied under the chin.

As she snuggled up to his side, he brought her up to date on his doings since they had last met at the weekend, telling her of the journey to the south-west coast and the wreck of the Mary and Child Jesus. He tried to tread delicately around the fact that Thorgils was dead, as Nesta was well aware of Hilda's existence and of his dalliances with the blonde from Dawlish. In fact, Nesta had met Hilda several times and had got on well with the other woman, even though she knew that John still had feelings for her. Now she expressed her genuine distress that Hilda had been made a widow in such tragic circumstances and pressed him for more details of the death, which he was unable to provide.

'It's a complete mystery, cariad,' he said in the Welsh tongue that they used together, as, thanks to his mother's ancestry, he was fluent in that Celtic language. 'The whole crew knifed, apart from the lad who must have jumped or been thrown overboard. The vessel was left to drift until it beached, but the cargo was untouched. I don't understand it at all!'

Nesta always liked to hear about his cases and he enjoyed telling her about them, as she had a quick and lively mind that often produced useful ideas. In addition, she heard most of the gossip of the county, as the Bush was the most popular inn for travellers passing through the city, and on more than one occasion she had been able to offer him titbits of information that helped him in his investigations.

'Who could have done this, John?' she asked. 'Where did they come from and where did they go?'

He shrugged as he finished his quart and Nesta immediately signalled to Edwin to bring a refill. 'There were signs that someone other than the crew had been living below decks, so presumably Thorgils had brought some passengers across the Channel. It could only have been them that committed the crime.'

Nesta looked dubious. 'Why couldn't it have been an attack from a raiding ship? There have been many reports of Barbary pirates along the coast.'

De Wolfe shook his head. 'Unlikely, because the curragh that the vessel carried was missing and one was found intact and dragged up on the beach not far away. Almost certainly, they abandoned the ship and made their way ashore.'

When John went on to tell her of the message that Hubert Walter had sent down to the sheriff, the landlady's fair eyebrows lifted. 'Maybe the two things are connected! Couldn't these men who went ashore be French spies? They killed the crew to prevent them telling of their illegal landing!'

De Wolfe had half-heartedly toyed with this idea himself, but had dismissed it as being too much of a coincidence, even though there was no better explanation on offer. 'Thorgils would never have agreed to anything underhand, like bringing infiltrators to these shores.'

Nesta shook her head impatiently. She was a woman of quick decisions and firm ideas. 'There need be no question of that, John. They could have bought their passage as genuine travellers, like hundreds of others. If Thorgils was bound for Salcombe or Dartmouth, they could have requested passage to one of those, then, when it suited them, they rose up, slew the crew and rowed themselves ashore.'

John grudgingly admitted that she could be right. 'But why? And why go ashore on such a remote and God-forsaken bit of the coast? There's nothing there.'

'Exactly! And so few people to see them arrive!' she said triumphantly. 'Once ashore, they could go anywhere, as long as they were careful. And your intelligence from the Justiciar specifically mentioned the West Country.'

John suddenly realised that he was pressed against a warm and shapely woman and abruptly lost interest in hypotheses about French spies.

'I have other intelligence that tells me that the ladder I see at the back of the room leads up to the loft!'

He squeezed her thigh under the table and she rolled her eyes at him wickedly. 'I thought you might have forgotten that you most urgently instructed the master carpenter over there to rebuild my little chamber in the loft. I was beginning to think that it was a waste of good timber!'

He stood up and stooped over her. 'I very much regret the loss of our fine French bed in that fire, sweet woman! I have ordered a new one from St-Malo, but until it arrives I think we can make do with a palliasse on the floor!'