The Elixir of Death

CHAPTER EIGHT

Though the cold persisted, the snow cleared away and bright crisp weather set in over the weekend. The sky remained blue, but dark clouds rolled in over John de Wolfe late on Monday afternoon, for not only did Matilda return, but she was accompanied by her brother Richard and his wife Eleanor, a haughty woman whose nature matched the frosty climate.

They were on their way to Richard's other manor near Tiverton at the eastern end of the county. He fervently thanked God that his house had no space for them to stay that night. Instead, they went to the New Inn in High Street, the best accommodation in the city, even if the cooking was inferior to that of the Bush. However, John did not get off scot-free, for Matilda invited her brother and sister-in-law to dinner on the following day.

'They provided me with bed and board for well over a week, John,' she snapped. 'The least I can do is to give them a good meal before they leave for Tiverton.'

Within minutes of his wife's return, his free-and-easy life had reverted to the familiar old pattern of silences at table, scowls at his every absence from meals and ill-tempered orders barked at Mary or Lucille. To avoid aggravating the situation on the very first evening, he desisted from his usual visit to Idle Lane and sat glumly at supper while Matilda, unusually loquacious, expounded on the luxuries of her brother's manor at Revelstoke, the excellence of his cooks and even the fertility of his fields. Her previous disillusionment with Richard seemed to have evaporated. He was now her idol once again, Matilda having conveniently forgotten his manifold sins and wickedness. By contrast, she was implying that her husband was all the poorer in substance and spirit for having treacherously stabbed her brother in the back when he finally denounced him to the Chief Justiciar. She now seemed to ignore the fact that Richard had committed the common crime of theft and the even worse one of treachery, both of which should have carried the death penalty, but which had been avoided by John's intercession.

Thankfully, Matilda was so full of her visit to the utopia of Revelstoke that she failed to make any enquiry about his own activities while she was away — but John knew that sooner or later she would get around to interrogating him about his journey to Dawlish and his scandalous attendances at the Bush Inn. After supper, she fired instructions at Mary concerning the lavish dinner that was to be prepared for the de Revelles the next day, then stalked off to bed, claiming fatigue after her journey that day from their night stop at Buckfast. Lucille pattered after her to get her undressed and settled for the night, leaving John to sit by his hearth, glowering into his ale-pot and bemoaning the end of his brief week of freedom. Even his hound Brutus looked miserable as he lay at his master's feet and rolled up his eyes so that the whites showed, in an expression of doleful sympathy.

The following day John de Wolfe spent the early part of the morning in glum anticipation of the approach of the noon dinner-time, but thankfully fate stepped in at literally the eleventh hour. It took a murder to avoid the ordeal of sitting down to a meal with three of the de Revelle family, but even Matilda must surely accept the urgency of attending another dastardly assault upon one of her beloved Norman county families. It began with the clatter of iron-shod hoofs on the cobbled floor of Rougemont's gatehouse arch, heralding the arrival of a messenger from Shillingford. This time it was one of the young stable grooms, perhaps chosen for his reckless speed on a horse. He gabbled his news to the soldiers in the guardroom and without delay he was hustled up the stairs to de Wolfe's chamber.

All three of the coroner's team were there. Thomas, having performed his paid Mass at an early hour, was now at his habitual task of making manuscript copies of cases for the next Shire Court. Gwyn was aimlessly whittling a piece of firewood with his dagger and whistling tunelessly through his drooping moustache. John was sitting moodily behind his table, but looked up as the groom came in, touching his shapeless woollen cap in hurried obeisance.

'It's the young master, Crowner,' he gabbled. 'Wounded real bad in the arm and the bloody steward killed stone dead!'

It took a few moments and ajar of Gwyn's rough cider to get a coherent story from the young fellow, but the upshot was that, early that morning, William le Calve had been walking with their steward, Adam le Bel, along the waste beyond the village fields.

'They were looking at the edge of the forest, deciding where the best place was to start felling trees, to assart more land for the livestock, as the strip-fields are now pushing well into the pasture,' explained the young man — in unnecessary detail, as far as the impatient coroner was concerned.

'So what happened, damn it?' he snapped, but the groom was hazy about the more vital parts of the story.

'Don't rightly know, sir, not having been there,' he muttered lamely. 'But they brought the old steward back dead as mutton and Sir William had a big wound in his arm, with a cross-bow bolt lying near by.'

An hour later, de Wolfe was listening to a more detailed account of this sketchy story.

The younger son of the lately deceased Peter le Calve was lying on a couch in one of the side rooms of the hall in Shillingford. It was a moderately comfortable chamber with a good fire in the hearth, clean rushes on the floor and some hanging tapestries to relieve the grimness of the grey stone walls. William was very pale and had obviously lost a lot of blood. His left arm above the elbow was expertly bound with a clean linen bandage and in the background the handsome lady whom John had glimpsed on his earlier visit was standing with an old serving woman, who clutched a pitcher of hot water and a towel. Godfrey le Calve was standing alongside his younger brother, solicitously resting a hand on his other shoulder, his face almost as pale as that of the wounded man.

'It was meant for me, you know!' he said shakily. 'The bolt that killed my steward.'

De Wolfe raised his eyebrows questioningly and William answered from his couch, in a voice tight with pain.

'I fear he's right, Sir John. No one would want to slay poor Adam, for the sake of Christ! Surely he was mistaken for Godfrey here.'

John mulled this over and felt inclined to agree. Two men shrouded in winter cloaks walking together, one recognisable as William le Calve — it might easily be assumed that the other was his brother, as Adam le Bel was about the same height as Godfrey.

'How severe is your wound, William?' he asked solicitously. The coroner noticed that the new linen around his arm was already becoming stained with blood. The lady in the dark brown kirtle stepped forward and laid gentle fingers on William's brow. Godfrey hurried to introduce her as Lady Isobel of Narbonne, a 'friend' of his late father.

'The bolt went right through the muscle, Sir John, and tore out sideways, so that there is a big open flap,' she said in a low, rather husky voice. In spite of the circumstances, de Wolfe's interest was aroused. He saw that she was about his own age, slim and good looking, with a dark beauty suggesting that she came from southern France or even Spain. However, with his amorous life already far too complicated, he pushed aside certain thoughts with a conscious effort and concentrated on the wound.

'He has lost much blood, I suspect,' he said. 'Was it much fouled?'

He well knew that the danger with any wound was that even if the victim survived the shock and blood loss, dirt carried in might lead to a fatal purulence. In fact, many archers deliberately stuck their arrows in ground contaminated by animal or human filth to increase the eventual killing power of their weapons.

Gravely, Lady Isobel shook her head. 'One can never tell, but it seemed quite clean and at least the bolt had fallen out. I washed the wound with hot water, then poured some brandy-wine into it, which I have heard can help to neutralise any poison.'

William looked up at her and winced, recalling his screaming agony of an hour ago, when the strong spirit cauterised the naked flesh inside his arm.

'You have been kindness itself, madam,' he whispered. John turned to the anxious elder brother, eager to get on with the story.

'So what happened? Tell me from the beginning.' Godfrey took the coroner's arm and led him across the room, to where Gwyn and Thomas were waiting just inside the door.

'My brother is shocked. I do not want to distress him more than we must. Come and see the other poor fellow first.'

He led the way into the main hall, past muted servants and a few manor officers, some of whom John remembered from his last visit to this tragic place, including the falconer and the houndmaster. They went outside and down into the undercroft, the semi-basement that was used as a storehouse. Here, on a couple of planks laid across some boxes, were the pathetic remains of Adam le Bel, the steward of Shillingford. Covered with his own cloak, the old man still appeared dignified, even in death, when Godfrey uncovered his face.

'William and Adam here went out to decide where the men should start assarting later today. We need more arable land and pasture, so must push back the forest in places.'

'Were they alone?'

'The bailiff and the reeve went after them, but were some distance behind, as they stopped to chase some loose sheep back into a pen. They say they were a few hundred paces away by the time William and Adam reached the edge of the trees.' Godfrey stopped and gulped. He seemed a mild man and this revival of violence on his manor had unnerved him.

'So what did they see then?'

'The reeve says that suddenly our steward here seemed to stagger and fell against my brother. He thought he had had a seizure of some sort, as he was an old man, not in the best of health. Then a moment later, William yelled out and clasped his arm, before sinking to the ground himself.'

'What then? They ran to them, I suppose?' demanded de Wolfe.

'When they got to the pair, William was on his knees, grasping his arm with his other hand, trying to stanch the blood that was pouring out. Old Adam here was lying dead in the grass alongside him.'

'Did anyone see the attackers?'

Godfrey shook his head. 'I made particular enquiries of the bailiff and groom, but they saw nothing apart from the two victims falling. The bow-shots must have come from within the trees, as it was all open waste and pasture in the other direction.'

'Did anyone give chase in the forest?' demanded the coroner.

'Not until later — naturally, my two servants were more concerned with stanching the flow of blood from my brother's arm and then getting help to bring him back here.'

'But later?' persisted de Wolfe.

'All this happened less than a few hours ago — you arrived so quickly, thank God. I sent the reeve, the houndmaster and half a dozen grooms and labourers up there about an hour ago. They are still there, but I have had no report of them finding anything or anybody.'

John turned his attention to the still shape lying on the planks. He nodded to Gwyn and his officer took off the cloak and peered at the dead steward's left side.

'A quarrel sticking out just below his armpit, Crowner.

Buried in about half its length, I'd say.'

As Gwyn lifted the corpse by its shoulder to offer a better view, John, Godfrey and Thomas bent to look at the side of Adam's chest. A thick rod of hard wood, about a hand's span in length, was projecting from the bloodstained yellow cloth of his tunic. The last few inches carried three flights of thin leather set symetrically around the shaft.

'The tip must be in his heart,' said Gwyn with grudging admiration.

'I wonder what the range was … it looks an expert shot.'

'We need to get it out. It may give us some clue as to its origin,' muttered de Wolfe to his officer. Gwyn nodded and moved around so that his great body was blocking the view of the less hardened Godfrey.

Thomas, who had been hovering behind, knew what was coming and retreated to the doorway of the undercroft as Gwyn reached behind for his dagger and pulled it from its sheath. With de Wolfe watching closely, he slit the tunic on either side of the arrow and ripped aside the torn undershirt beneath. An experimental pull on the shaft told him that there was considerable resistance inside, so with two bold slashes he enlarged the wound made by the crossbow quarrel and ran his blade down alongside it. With a few hard tugs and some more manipulation of his dagger, there was a squelching sound and the projectile suddenly slid out of the wound.

Thomas paled and turned to stare out of the doorway as Gwyn handed the bolt to his master, oblivious of the blood dripping on to the earthern floor.

'It's a hunting quarrel, Crowner. A nasty piece of work.' John took the short arrow and examined the bloody front end. He stooped to pick up a piece of sacking that lay across a crate and wiped most of the blood away. The tip of the bolt was of iron, shaped like a four-sided pyramid, designed to cause more damage than a flat arrowhead. Now that it was less bloody, Godfrey stared at it with disgust.

'I've known Adam almost all my life. Now the poor man is dead from a mistake.' He took the short arrow from John's hand. 'This was meant for me, I'm sure.'

Thomas wandered back from the doorway, hoping that the more disgusting parts of the examination were over. 'Can you tell anything from it, Sir John?' he asked in his reedy voice.

'It's just an ordinary hunting quarrel,' replied the coroner. 'A deadly weapon at close range. I was hit by a Saracen bolt at Ascalon. Thank God it was a glancing shot which bounced off my chain mail, though I had a bruise there for weeks.'

'Speaking of Saracens, can I have another look?' asked Gwyn. He took the bolt from Godfrey and turned it over in his hands. Then to Thomas's disgust, he held it to his nose and sniffed at the flights, before passing it over to de Wolfe.

'Smell anything, Crowner? And look closely at the fletching.'

John had considerable faith in his officer's intuition and did as Gwyn suggested. His black eyebrows rose and he turned to the elder brother.

'Let's see the other quarrel, the one that injured William,' he commanded, and they made their way back upstairs. The bolt had been picked up by the bailiff when they rushed to William's aid and brought back to the hall, where it lay discarded on one of the tables.

The coroner picked it up, sniffed it and then compared it with the other one.

'Exactly the same — and the smell is identical,' he declared.

Godfrey and several servants gathered near by, staring at him blankly. They were all well used to cross-bow bolts, used in hunting everything from foxes to otters, but they had never seen anyone smell one before.

'What are you saying, Sir John?' asked Godfrey.

'Gwyn spotted it first. On the leather of the flights there are some faint hammerings. And they smell of spices or scent.'

He held out a bolt to le Calve and with a long forefinger pointed to some marks pressed into the leather of the triangular flights.

'That's Moorish writing, though God knows what it means. Together with that smell, it suggests that these bolts came from the Levant. And presumably so do the bastards who fired them!'

John de Wolfe was careful to delay his departure from Shillingford until well past the time when his brother-inlaw and his wife would have left Exeter to ride on to Tiverton. He managed this by accepting the hospitality of Godfrey le Calve and having a good meal in the hall. Then he had another few words with William, to see whether there was anything at all he remembered which might help to identify the assailants. The younger brother was still very pale and thankfully showed no signs of fever from his wound mortifying, though it was early days yet. Lady Isobel sat with him and impressed John with her air of calm efficiency. He wondered what would become of her now that her protector Peter le Calve was dead. She was much younger than he had been and the coroner idly speculated that perhaps the affections of one of his sons might turn her way, though it was probable that they were already married themselves.

William had nothing to tell him, knowing only that his steward had suddenly stumbled against him, probably saving his life by knocking him out of the line of fire of the accurate killer in the trees. The second quarrel had sliced through the outer part of his arm and from then on he lost all interest in anything except his pain and bleeding.

The next activity that the coroner used to delay his departure was a visit to the scene of the crime. With Godfrey and several of the senior manor servants, he went with Gwyn and Thomas past the strip-fields behind the manor-house. These were still partly in stubble from the last harvest, though two ox-teams were slowly ploughing, ready for harrowing and winter planting. Beyond these were meadows where sheep and a few milk cows were competing with pigs and goats for the last of the autumn grass. A few lads were guarding them, with much yelling and waving of sticks.

This good pasture petered out into waste ground, which had been assarted earlier in the year and in which tree stumps and bushes still remained to be grubbed out and burned. The edge of the standing forest ran along like a dark wave at the top of a rising crest of land. Though many of the leaves had fallen, the trees were not yet bare and there was a mass of bracken, bramble and scrubby undergrowth along the edge to give cover to anyone lurking in the woods.

As they approached the spot where the hawk-master said the two men had fallen, they were met by the bailiff, the reeve and several villeins, who were emerging from the forest after searching for several hours.

'Nothing at all, my lord,' reported the bailiff, touching his cap to Godfrey. 'We've been a mile in both directions. Nothing to see anywhere, not even a hoof print.'

A spattering of fresh blood blackened the grass where William had fallen. Standing near it, de Wolfe scanned the edge of the forest, which was about fifty paces distant. Then he loped to the nearest trees and pushed into the undergrowth, the brambles snagging his calf-length grey tunic. With Gwyn at his side and Thomas creeping uncertainly behind, he studied the ground, the trees and the bushes for a few yards each way and back into the darkness of the wood. As the bailiff had said, there was nothing to see — no strands of cloth caught on thorns or discarded arrows on the ground. On the walk back to the hall, he questioned the search party, which comprised most of the senior servants of the le Calve manor, asking whether any strangers had been seen since the previous day. The answer was in the negative once again.

'No mysterious monks this time?' he demanded, thinking of the old man's recollection when Peter le Calve had been done to death so horribly. Once again, there was much reluctant shaking of heads, and all that remained for John to do was to hold a quick inquest on Adam le Bel, to save him returning to Shillingford yet again. With the manor servants as jury and witnesses, he held his inquisition over the body of the old steward in the undercroft. As the circumstances were so straightforward, even if totally obscure, the formality took no more than a few minutes. In fact, the longest time was spent in waiting for Thomas de Peyne to inscribe the proceedings on a roll of parchment, a process that consisted mainly of recording the names of the jurors.

'Yet another bloody inquest with no result!' snarled John as the three rode back towards Exeter later that afternoon. 'The four shipmen, the lord of Shillingford and now its steward — all verdicts of 'murder by persons unknown'! We're losing our touch!'

'What about this notion that we are dealing with Saracens?' grunted Gwyn, pulling the collar of his jerkin closer against the biting east wind.

'It bears thinking about, as the signs are adding up,' replied the coroner. 'We have those curved wounds, which would fit a Moorish blade. Then those silken cords seem strangely oriental, as does the embossing on these leathern arrow flights and their spicy odour.'

Thomas, who, since he had taken to riding a horse like a man, was more able to keep up with them, spoke from John's other side. 'I also think, Crowner, that the mode of killing Sir Peter is significant.'

John turned his long face to his clerk and waited for him to elaborate. In spite of his often disparaging manner towards the little man, he was well aware of Thomas's intelligence and learning and had come to respect his opinions.

'I sense that his death was a deliberate insult to our Christian faith!' stated the clerk, emphatically.

Gwyn of Polruan groaned. 'To you, little turd, everything turns on your bloody religious fancies!'

'Let him speak, man!' snapped the coroner. 'What do you mean, Thomas?'

'The victim was subjected to a parody of the crucifixion, his outstretched arms lashed to that branch. Then his severed head was impaled not on some pole at a crossroads or on the Exe Bridge, but in the holiest of Christian sites in western England, our Lord's cathedral church of Exeter! Surely no Christian, however depraved, would go to such deliberate lengths to so contemptuously disparage our faith!'

De Wolfe nodded slowly, digesting the priest's earnest argument.

'And if not Christians, then they are likely to be Moors?'

Thomas eagerly agreed. 'Sir Peter had been a Crusader, like his father before him. Maybe this was a gesture of revenge for his taking the Cross against their own faith. There were many awful atrocities committed against them, which also affected innocent civilians.'

Gwyn was still dubious, though he never missed an opportunity to contradict the clerk. 'Both Sir John here and myself were at the Crusades, but no one has tried to cut off our heads! And what of the younger le Calve sons? They have never set foot in Palestine, but someone has loosed off cross-bow bolts at them.'

Thomas looked crestfallen at this logical demolition of his argument, but John came to his rescue.

'What you say has good sense behind it, Thomas. But we must wait and see what develops. God knows how we are to further this quest, as these attackers seem to melt away like the snow that is surely coming soon.'

He looked up at the grey sky and was glad to see the skyline of the city appear around the bend in the trackway. The return to Martin's Lane also meant, however, that he would soon have to meet the wrath of Matilda for absenting himself from lunch with his brother-in-law.

With a sigh, he touched Odin's flank with a spur, wishing he had to face Saladin and a thousand screaming Saracens rather than his wife.