The Grim Reaper

CHAPTER FIVE

On the way back to the city next day, Odin cast a shoe and de Wolfe spent the rest of the morning with Andrew the farrier, restoring the big warhorse to working condition, before he reluctantly crossed the lane to his house.

The midday meal was silent as usual, with Matilda sulking over her husband’s absence the previous night. As they sat at each end of the long table in their hall, the two yards between them might as well have been two miles, for all the social intercourse that took place.

His head bent over Mary’s mutton stew and fresh bread, John pondered the events in Sidmouth and was thankful that Matilda was unaware of this amorous fiasco. She had mocked him unmercifully when she learned of his rift with Nesta and had long sneered at his ill-concealed fondness for his youthful sweetheart in Dawlish, so he was greatly relieved to know that the Brigit Godfin episode had been entirely outside her knowledge.

The thought of Dawlish crept into his mind now, as he turned over the diminishing choices in his love-life. With Brigit gone and Nesta apparently resolute in her rejection of him, the beautiful Hilda was his only remaining option. The thought of her warmed him, her glorious blonde hair and her lissom body flooding into his mind as they had with increasing frequency over the past few weeks.

He had been deprived of her company for too long, he decided. His last attempt to call at Dawlish had been frustrated by an unexpected corpse in the River Teign. He determined to pay an early visit to his mother, sister and brother at the family manor at Stoke-in-Teignhead, the road to which passed through Dawlish. It only required Hilda’s elderly husband, Thorgils, to be away on his boat — preferably as far away as St Malo — for John’s plotting to come to delightful fruition in the arms of the fair young wife.

With these devious thoughts in his mind, he stole a covert glance at his wife as she chewed grimly, trying to gauge the depth of her current displeasure.

They had to go to this damned banquet that evening, he thought despondently, which would be even harder to endure if she was in a really caustic mood.

He decided to try to lighten the atmosphere, if only for his own sake. However, his favourable comments about the meal were met with disdain, because Matilda disliked Mary and nothing the maid did ever found favour in her eyes. She suspected that there was something going on between the serving woman and her husband — correctly, as it happened, although it was now in the past, for Mary was more attached to her employment than her employer, fond though she was of him.

His next attempt at conversation was more successful, as the subject was her brother and the imminent arrival of the royal judges. ‘I must go up to Rougemont this afternoon and talk to Richard about the arrangements for the Eyre next week. We have not yet heard who the Justices will be.’

‘I trust they will be men of stature, not just common clerks like those who came as Commissioners of Assize last time,’ she snapped.

‘They will be senior men, as this is a General Eyre, not just an Assize,’ he replied, pandering to her incorrigible snobbishness. The prospect of some noble barons or a bishop coming to the city perked up her interest.

‘I never understood all these different courts,’ she whined. ‘Why are there eminent men of the king’s court at some and only snivelling clerks at others?’

De Wolfe grinned to himself at her derogatory description of some learned Commissioners, though it was true that some were but very able clerks, administrators from the Exchequer or Chancery. To humour her, he launched into an explanation. ‘In the old days, anyone seeking justice from the king, first had to find him. That meant journeying either to Winchester, London or even Normandy in the hope of catching him at his court — or else chasing around the countryside after him, as he paraded around the shires, fighting, hunting or just battening on his barons for lodging.’

He swallowed a piece of fat mutton, before continuing. ‘Then old King Henry, a great one for law-making, decided this wasn’t good enough and demanded that members of his court should go around regularly to each county and hear the Pleas of the Crown, cases that were not dealt with by the local courts.’

Matilda paused in her chewing to glare at him. ‘But that doesn’t explain why sometimes we get barons and bishops here, but more often a pack of London clerks — “men raised from the dust”, as my brother calls them.’

John got up and filled her pewter cup with more wine, thinking that a little gracious behaviour on his part might mellow her in time for the evening. He topped up his own and sat down again, ready to explain a little more. ‘The justices who are coming next week are also holding a General Eyre, so they will be the most senior men. As well as hearing royal pleas in serious cases, they look into the whole administration of the county, which is why your brother is so flustered and uneasy.’

For the sake of avoiding a tantrum, he did not pursue this subject, thinking it wiser to avoid antagonising his wife with hints at Richard’s dishonesty.

‘The General Eyre comes but seldom these days — it has to call at every county in England, but trundles around so slowly that years pass between visitations,’ he added.

‘So what are the other courts? We get visits more often than that,’ she demanded truculently.

‘Those are the ones you complain are held by clerks,’ he replied, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice. ‘Again, they are supposed to take place every quarter, but the Commissioners have never reached Exeter more than twice a year, if that. As the Justices in Eyre come so seldom, these lesser courts are meant to clear up the royal pleas at much more frequent intervals. That’s why they’re called, “Gaol Delivery”, to try those who have been incarcerated, to save expense and reduce the number escaping.’

The lesson over, Matilda reverted to her main interest in the matter. ‘Well, I just hope that we get some notables here next week. Exeter is such a backwater. When you became coroner, I had hopes that your connections with the King and the Chief Justiciar would get you preferment. Then, maybe, we could move to somewhere more civilised, like Winchester.’

God forbid, thought de Wolfe. Devon was his birthplace and his home; the last thing he wanted was to end up near a royal court, with all the intrigue and manoeuvring for social advancement that that would mean.

The meal ended and de Wolfe, satisfied that Matilda was talking to him in a moderately agreeable way, waited for her to go up to the solar for her afternoon slumber. Then he walked up to Rougemont. Gwyn had gone to St Sidwell’s to see his family, after his night spent away from their hut, but Thomas was in the chamber above the gatehouse, making copies of documents of presentment for the Justices next week.

De Wolfe sat at the other end of the trestle from his peculiar but industrious clerk and spent an hour silently mouthing Latin phrases from the parchments left for him by his tutor at the cathedral.

After a while, he became aware that his were not the only lips moving in the silence. Peering up from below his beetling brows, he watched Thomas covertly. The clerk’s pen had stopped and he was staring blindly through the window slit at the sky. He was having some silent conversation with unseen beings and from the scowl on his face and the occasional grimace that showed his yellowed teeth, he seemed to be directing some silent diatribe at an invisible audience.

The coroner was becoming increasingly concerned for his assistant’s sanity. Although Thomas had always been a miserable companion, it was only since he had learned that there was little hope of him being received back into the Church that he had become so morose. De Wolfe threw down his parchment and cleared his throat loudly, the sign that he was about to launch into some possibly embarrassing topic.

‘How goes it with you now, Thomas?’ he asked, rather fiercely. ‘Are you in better spirits these days?’

Startled, the former priest looked up, his beaky face showing surprise at such an unexpectedly personal question from his revered master. ‘I am fairly well, Crowner,’ he stammered, ‘though never can I be happy again while I am excluded from the company of my fellows in Holy Orders. But I have to live from day to day, as the Almighty indicated not long ago.’ When, in a paroxysm of despair, he had tried to kill himself a month or so ago, his uncle, the Archdeacon, had cleverly convinced Thomas that his failure was a miraculous sign that he was meant to live for some greater purpose. He still hoped that, some day, his ejection from Holy Orders for an alleged indecent assault on a girl pupil at the cathedral school in Winchester would be reversed — although his uncle held little hope that this would come about for a very long time, if ever.

‘Are you living well enough — your bed and board, I mean?’ continued the coroner gruffly. He paid his clerk twopence a day and knew that he had a free mattress in a servant’s hut in one of the houses in Canon’s Row.

‘I am well enough provided for in my bodily needs, thanks to you and my uncle, sir. It is rather my soul that needs the nourishment of belonging in the House of God.’ Suddenly he scowled at some inner thought. ‘There are those who persecute me and should be punished. False witnesses ruined my life, yet there seems no sign from God that they will be humbled,’ he added darkly.

‘I can’t help you there, Thomas. I did my best with the Archdeacon, but you know what he said. You must contain yourself in patience, I’m afraid. Meanwhile, you are very valuable to me, both as an excellent clerk and an invaluable fount of knowledge.’

At this extraordinarily rare compliment Thomas’s pale features pinked with pleasure. It was all the more precious coming from this stern, gaunt man of whom he was half afraid. Thomas respected him with almost dog-like devotion, being grateful for John having given him a job — and indeed the means to stay alive at a time when he was destitute.

They went back to their work for a while, but de Wolfe’s attention span for Latin texts was very limited and soon he threw down the parchments and took himself off to the castle keep. The hall was a hive of activity, and many of the tables, which were usually in use for eating, drinking or gaming, were occupied by the sheriff’s and burgesses’ clerks, all busily writing or shuffling parchments. Harassed-looking stewards, bailiffs and more clerks were hurrying around with sheaves of documents, all intent on trying to get the county’s affairs in order before the eagle eyes of the Justices in Eyre arrived next week.

When de Wolfe marched into the sheriff’s chamber, the scene was even more frantic. De Revelle was almost submerged under a pile of bound parchments and three clerks were jostling at his shoulder to place more sheets in front of him, jabbering their insistence that their problem was the most urgent. When he saw John come in, he yelled before the coroner could open his mouth, ‘Not now, John, please! I am going mad with these fellows battening on me every hour of the day. God curse these laws that send visitations from London to make our lives a misery! I hope all your affairs are in better order than mine.’

For once, de Wolfe felt almost sorry for his brother-in-law, but the realisation that de Revelle was spending most of his energy in trying to cover up the signs of his corruption hardened his heart. ‘Your dear sister wants to know who the justices will be next week. Tell me, if you know, and I’ll leave you in peace.’

De Revelle’s pointed beard jutted up at him. ‘There are four this time,’ he snapped petulantly. ‘Sir Peter Peverel, that over-rich baron from Middlesex, and Serlo de Vallibus, a senior Chancery clerk.’

‘You said four?’

‘Gervase de Bosco, an archdeacon from Gloucester, and someone with local connections, Sir Walter de Ralegh.’

From the sheriff’s tone, de Wolfe was not sure if the last name was welcome to him or not. A baron with Devon connections might know too much about de Revelle’s scheming for the sheriff’s comfort. ‘I suppose two will hear the civil pleas and the others the criminal,’ he observed.

The sheriff’s narrow face puckered with disgust. ‘And all four of the bloody men will make a nuisance of themselves by poking their noses into our affairs!’

The clerks were shaking parchments at him again and John left his brother-in-law to their urgent ministrations. Outside in the hall, he met Ralph Morin, who had just been giving orders to Sergeant Gabriel about escort arrangements for the king’s judges. The castle constable was a massive man, with the blue eyes and forked beard of his Norse ancestors, only a few generations removed from their Norman descendants. He had been directly appointed by the King, as Exeter Castle had been a Crown possession ever since it was built by William the Bastard.

Now Morin took de Wolfe’s arm and steered him to a vacant spot on a nearby bench. He yelled at a passing servant to bring them some ale, and when the pots arrived, he raised his in salute to the coroner.

‘This place is a mad-house this week. Thank Christ these Justices don’t come more often than every few years.’

‘Are they staying in Rougement?’

‘No damned fear! They like their comfort too much to be stuck in this draughty hole — no wonder de Revelle’s wife refuses to live here with him.’

‘So where are you putting them — in the New Inn?’ This was the largest hostelry in Exeter, in the high street between Martin’s Lane and the East Gate.

‘It belongs to the cathedral Chapter, so they’ll make a few shillings out of lodging the judges and their acolytes,’ said Ralph sarcastically. ‘Last time, the bishop put them up in his palace, but I hear he found it too expensive to provide free bed and board for them all.’

They talked together for a while, each comfortable in the company of another professional soldier, both familiar with the campaigns in France and Outremer. Morin had some fairly recent news of Coeur de Lion’s exploits against the hated Philip of France and de Wolfe responded with tales he had heard about the endless wrestling between the Marcher Lords and the Welsh princes.

After an hour’s pleasant gossip and another few jars of ale, the coroner reluctantly decided that he had better make tracks for home, to avoid the evil eye from Matilda, if he was late in preparing for the Guild feast that evening.

‘Are you attending this damned performance in the Guildhall tonight?’ he demanded, as he rose to leave the keep.

Morin shook his head. ‘Rough soldiers like me are rarely invited. The burgesses are glad enough of my men-at-arms when something goes wrong, but otherwise they look down their noses at me — thanks be to Christ!’

With a grin and a friendly clap of the shoulder, the two friends parted and John made his way slowly back to Martin’s Lane.

Two banquets in a week was a form of torture to John de Wolfe, akin to the peine forte et dure that was applied to reluctant witnesses or to those who refused to accept trial by battle.

He sat sullenly near the end of the top table in the smoky Guildhall, a new stone building in the centre of High Street, gazing down the other trestles that ran in three rows down the length of the chamber. The gabble of conversation and tipsy laughter drowned out the efforts of three musicians who were trying to entertain the crowd from a small gallery above John’s head. At about three hours before midnight, the meal was well advanced and the first courses lay in disarray on the scrubbed tables all around. Servants were struggling through the narrow gaps between the trestles to pick up the remnants of bread trenchers, soggy with gravy, to give to the beggars who clamoured outside the doors. Wooden and pewter platters held chicken and goose carcasses, while bones and scraps of meat were scattered over the tables. Hunks of bread, dishes of butter, cream and slabs of cheese vied with the ragged skeletons of fish as the most prominent debris of the lavish meal. All this was lubricated with spilt ale, cider and wine from an assortment of cups, goblets and horns that were standing on the boards or grasped in unsteady hands.

In the centre of the top table sat the Master of the Guild of Tanners, a hearty, florid burgess who was already quite drunk. On either side of him were his two Wardens, themselves flanked by lesser officials. On the other side of the table from de Wolfe, the wives sat together, including Matilda, who was happily exchanging gossip and scandal with her cronies. The only consolation for the antisocial coroner was that his friend Hugh de Relaga was next to him, a guest favoured both as a Portreeve of the city and a Guild Master in his own right. On John’s other side, at the extreme end of the table, was another guest, a Warden from the Company of Silversmiths, whose sole object seemed to be to get as much food and drink into himself as humanly possible.

The tipsy Master had just made a speech, welcoming his guests and extolling the virtues of his Guild in only slightly slurred tones, before sitting down heavily to devote the rest of the evening to getting even more drunk.

‘I suppose you have to endure many of these bloody charades?’ growled John to his friend Hugh. There was little fear of anyone taking offence at his sentiments, as the noise of clashing platters, shouting servants and a rising crescendo of babbling voices made any conversation inaudible beyond a foot or two.

‘I’ve got used to them over the years. Quite a lot of business is conducted at these affairs, most of it while pissing in the yard, where at least you can hear yourself think.’ The cheerful Portreeve, resplendent in purple silk and a fur-trimmed mantle of green velvet, tore off the leg of a roast duck lying on the table and began to gnaw it with every appearance of satisfaction at the evening’s fare.

A serving man came around behind them, laying new trenchers of thick bread on the table, one between two diners. John absently reached out with his dagger and pulled a large slice of pink flesh from a salmon carcass lying on a pewter plate nearby and dumped it with the neatness of long practice on their trencher. ‘Try some of this, Hugh. They say that fish strengthens your brain, so maybe you can make even more money for us tomorrow.’

They began to talk about their wool-exporting partnership, which had shown good returns since the last shearing season. ‘We still have a few hundred bales stored down at the quayside, John. Our agent in St Malo has had a firm offer at a good price.’ The rotund burgess frowned as he laid a piece of fish on a fresh crust. ‘That reminds me. Tomorrow I must make some new arrangements about shipping them out.’

‘What’s the problem?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘We usually get Thorgils to move our goods to Brittany but I hear that his vessel was badly damaged in a storm last week. It’ll be a month on the beach at Dawlish for repairs, so he won’t be taking wool anywhere for a while.’

The Portreeve was unaware of John’s liaison with Thorgils’s wife, so had no idea of the frustration that de Wolfe felt at this bad news. The coroner said nothing, but he cursed silently at this second blow to his love-life within the space of a day. With old Thorgils beached at home, there was no way he could enjoy the delicious company of his young wife.

De Relaga had turned now to the guild treasurer on his other side to respond to some chatter about the extortionate increase in journeymen’s wages and John felt no inclination to strike up a conversation with the inarticulate silversmith who was still gorging himself on his other side. He refilled his goblet with wine imported from Rouen and sat drinking moodily, half watching the antics of a troupe of jugglers who were performing as best they could with drunken revellers falling against them and servants thrusting irritably past them with jugs and plates.

He craned his neck to see how Matilda was faring. She seemed to be in her element, filled with good food and drink and engrossed in loud conversation with the other guests, both next to her and at the top end of two of the spur tables. In such company, he saw that she was a different woman from the surly malcontent he knew at home — she was gesturing animatedly and smiling and smirking with the pompous merchants and priests around her.

John drew back with a long sigh, feeling sorry for himself at the prospect of enforced celibacy for the foreseeable future and applied himself with grim determination to serious drinking, even though he knew he would suffer for it in the morning.

While the festivities went on in the Guildhall, the parish priest at the church of St Mary the Less, known to everyone as ‘St Mary Steps’, was preparing for Matins, the first Office of the new day, which began at midnight. The numerous churches scattered all over Exeter did not keep to the strict regime of the nine daily services that were celebrated in the cathedral. The number varied according to the diligence of each incumbent.

At St Mary Steps, at the bottom of Stepcote Hill near the West Gate, the attendance at a Thursday midnight service was likely to be sparse. Although many of those who lived within the few hundred paces served by the church would come on a Sunday, Adam of Dol knew that only a handful of the most devout would appear in the middle of a week-night. No one would come to Prime at dawn, so Adam had given up any pretence at public devotions then, reserving his efforts for High Mass in mid-morning and Vespers in the afternoon.

He was a stocky man of medium height, thick-necked and red-faced, his high colour tending to deepen rapidly when his short temper was aroused. This evening, as the May light was fading, he moved about his church with short, jerky steps, as if he was always in a hurry, though the tempo of life at St Mary’s was hardly demanding.

The building was slightly larger than All-Hallows-on-the-Wall, its near neighbour just along the road. The rectangular nave was quite high and the end facing the road had a new stumpy tower with two bells. Originally wood, it had been rebuilt in stone about fifty years previously, with a bequest from the wealthy owner of a fulling mill on Exe Island, just the other side of the city wall; the man had wished to ensure the welfare of his immortal soul with such generosity.

Dedicated to St Mary, as were three other Exeter churches, it took its nickname from the cross-steps that traversed Stepcote Hill alongside the church, which was so steep as to need shallow terracing to prevent man and beast from falling flat on their faces. Though better endowed than All-Hallows, it was not a wealthy establishment and Father Adam remained disappointed that this was all that had been allotted to a priest of his talents.

At forty-two, his ambition to become a canon had stagnated, but he had insufficient insight to realise that his own abrasive nature was the main stumbling-block to his advancement. As he strutted around his domain, adjusting the embroidered altar-cloth and pointlessly moving the brass candlesticks half an inch, he irritated himself — as he did several times a day — by rehearsing his life history and bemoaning the cruelties of fate that had held him back.

Born in Brittany, under the shadow of St Samson’s great church, he was the second son of a second son of a noble of Dol. When Adam was a child his father had crossed the water to Devon and with family help, had become a substantial land-owner near Totnes. With an elder brother, Adam had had little inheritance to look forward to, so he had been packed off at an early age to the abbey school in Bath and followed the expected route into Holy Orders. At sixteen, he moved to Wells and although it had long lost its bishop in favour of Bath, there were still canons there and eventually he became a secondary, then a vicar. He had hoped to stay in Wells and eventually obtain a prebend, which would elevate him to the rank of canon, but his short temper and argumentative nature caused him to fall out with both members of the Chapter and many of his fellows. At twenty-seven, he cast the dust of Wells from his feet and moved to Exeter as a vicar-choral, with the same ambition to obtain a prebend.

Once again, the pattern was repeated, and although he stayed in the cathedral precinct for half a decade, his imperious manner won him few friends and he was repeatedly disappointed in his hopes to become a canon-elect. Finally, the Archdeacon of Exeter, a predecessor of John de Alençon, took him aside and whispered a few home truths, but offered him the solace of a living at St Mary Steps where he would at least be his own man.

He had accepted reluctantly, and there he had stayed, a disgruntled priest convinced he was cut out for higher office, an attitude he shared with Matilda’s hero, the priest of St Olave’s. Adam still had a modest income from a share in his father’s estate at Totnes and, with some money saved from that, he had purchased a richly embroidered alb and chasuble, which he kept locked in a chest in his lodgings behind the church, ready for the time when he would become an archdeacon or even a bishop.

Since his days in Wells, he had acquired a reputation as an impassioned preacher, and his fiery sermons were one reason for the respectable attendance at his church on Sundays: many of his flock enjoyed being thrilled and temporarily frightened by his graphic description of the horrors of hell that awaited them unless they trod in the paths of righteousness. He was under no illusions about the ephemeral nature of his threats and knew that most of his parishioners had forgotten them by the time they reached home for dinner or the tavern for their ale. But his outbursts were a welcome safety valve for his own frustrations and he enjoyed the reactions of his audience to the lurid pictures he drew of tortures in Hades — the groans, the blanched faces and even a dead faint from the more susceptible matrons.

Now as he replaced the stumps of candle on the altar with new ones, he was already working on the horrors for his sermon on the coming Sabbath. This week he rather fancied tearing out tongues with barbed hooks and seizing nipples in red-hot pincers. These ideas gave him a sexual frisson, and he knew that before long he would have to make another journey to Bristol or Salisbury, ostensibly a pilgrimage but really to visit a brothel. Some of his priestly colleagues in Exeter were quite open about their mistresses or their whoring, but something had always inhibited Adam from fouling his own nest.

As the years went by, his mind divided increasingly between his crusade to warn his flock of the perils of hell-fire that awaited them if they sinned — and the sins he himself enjoyed, both with harlots and the vicarious thrills of increasingly perverted imaginings of the reward Satan had in store for those who failed to heed their priest’s warnings.

He stood back from the altar and crossed himself, checking that the new candles were straight in their holders. Wax candles were expensive and the rest of the church was lit by cheap tallow dips, pieces of cord floating in a dish of ox-fat. He took the remnants of the altar candles home to use in his small room where he read his religious books until the small hours.

He turned from the altar to the body of the church, and surveyed the empty nave in the dim flickering light. This was where his flock would stand on Sunday for him to harangue them about their horrific sojourn in eternity. There were no seats, apart from stone benches around the walls for the old and infirm.

Below the window slits some old tapestries depicted saints and scenes from the scriptures, but his pride and joy were the new wall-paintings alongside the chancelarch and on the west wall. He had paid to have parts of the rough masonry plastered and then had begun to paint lurid scenes from the Fiery Pit. Horned devils with tridents, cloven-hoofed goblins, loathsome serpents and misshapen ogres inflicted every imaginable torment on screaming wretches — among whom naked females seemed to predominate. He had recently discovered in himself a hitherto unsuspected artistic talent. Within the last couple of months, he had filled the plastered areas with these diabolical murals and had only one space left to fill, on the right of the chancel arch, which he had already started upon. Space was becoming so short that he had begun to add smaller figures and faces to the existing murals, so that some were a writhing mass of miniature agonised sinners and their tormenting imps.

For a few moments he contemplated his dimly visible masterpieces, seeming to draw a little consolation from their threatening message, then picked up his mantle from the floor and went out into the street. Father Adam slammed the door behind him, then toiled in the dark up the terraces of Stepcote Hill to his dwelling and his frugal supper.

It was midnight, and though the feast in the Guildhall continued, the participants were thinning out. Some had drunk so much that they were either vomiting in the backyard or had been helped home by their servants or angry wives. A few senior priests, including a couple of cathedral canons, had left to attend Matins, but plenty of revellers remained. Some were singing, some fighting and others lying peacefully asleep across the wreckage of the meal on the trestle boards. The county coroner had consumed a great deal of ale and wine, but his hard head had resisted their effects — although he knew that the morning might tell a different story.

He sat slumped glumly in his black clothing, shoulders hunched, looking melancholy and dejected, waiting for Matilda to finish gossiping amongst the wives at the other end of the table. His friend Hugh de Relaga had tottered out unsteadily some time ago, claiming he was going to empty his bladder, and had not returned. De Wolfe suspected that his servant had waylaid him outside and wisely decided that the best place for the Portreeve was home and bed.

The candles on the tables and in the wall sconces had burned low and the light was dim, but John’s eye was caught by a familiar figure standing inside the draught screens that sheltered the main door at the far end of the hall. It was difficult to miss the shambling giant with a tangle of unruly hair on his head and face. Gwyn was beckoning with a hand the size of a ham, his gestures carrying more than a hint of urgency.

With an almost guilty look towards Matilda, de Wolfe stood up and squeezed behind the now slumbering silversmith, then threaded his way to meet Gwyn at the bottom of the hall. To de Wolfe’s surprise, old Edwin, the one-eyed potman from the Bush, was standing behind his officer. ‘Looks like we’ve got another, Crowner!’ Gwyn raised his voice above the babble in the hall.

‘What’s he doing here?’ demanded John, fearful that something had happened to Nesta.

‘He came and sought me out, just after the bell for Matins,’ explained Gwyn. ‘I was in the Bush earlier and mentioned to Edwin that I was going on to the Ship Inn in Rack Lane, where he found me.’

As usual, Gwyn was spinning out his yarn, but de Wolfe turned impatiently to the tavern servant. ‘What’s all this about? Is your mistress in trouble?’

Edwin, an old sack draped about his thin shoulders, shook his head. ‘Not as such, Cap’n, but she’s mortal upset, so I slipped away and found Gwyn here. I reckon the sight of you might ease her mind a great deal.’

De Wolfe fumed at this pair, who would never come to the point. ‘Hell’s teeth, damn you both, what’s happened?’

Gwyn sensed that his master was about to explode and hurriedly explained. ‘Another corpse, Crowner. Girl this time, strangled in the backyard of the Bush. And your Nesta found her.’

‘She tripped over the body, in fact,’ added Edwin, rolling his one good eye ghoulishly. ‘Outside the brew-shed she was. The mistress come upon her when she went out to stir the mash.’

De Wolfe glared at them, and waited for them to add the most obvious piece of information.

‘A whore, it was,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘That new fancy piece with the red wig — Joanna of London they call her.’

De Wolfe’s mind was fixed on Nesta’s distress, rather than the murder of a harlot. He glanced back up the hall, to see that the knot of gossiping wives was at last breaking up. They were on their feet, still talking, but raising their mantles to their shoulders and arranging their head-rails and wimples. For a moment he stood irresolute. Though the Guildhall was but a few yards from Martin’s Lane, there was no way that he could leave his wife to walk home alone. Hugh de Relaga, who might have chaperoned her if he had been sober, had left, and although John was not much concerned for Matilda’s safety on a hundred-pace journey to their house, she would never let him hear the end of it if he abandoned her — especially when she discovered that it was to rush to the aid of his ex-mistress.

‘You go back to the Bush now and wait for me. Tell Nesta I’ll be there as soon as I’ve escorted my wife to our door — hardly a few minutes, with luck.’ He pushed them towards the screens, then loped towards the other end of the top table, pushing servants, diners and drunks out of his way in his hurry to reach his wife.

As he came up to the four ladies, who were still shrugging their gowns and cloaks into position, he gabbled, ‘I am called out to a killing, lady. I have to go without delay, so I will see you home straight away.’ He grabbed Matilda’s arm and, with a jerky bow towards her friends, hauled her unceremoniously towards the doors.

At first she was too astonished to protest, but soon found her voice and berated him for his rudeness all the way to the corner of Martin’s Lane. He managed to fob off her questions about the reason for urgency, except to claim that it was foul murder ‘somewhere in the lower town’, though he knew full well that by morning the exact location of the corpse would be known to the whole of Exeter, and that he would get the length of Matilda’s tongue when she discovered she had been hustled out so that he could rush off to his ‘Welsh whore’.

However, that was trouble stored for the future and within minutes he had delivered his wife to her maid and hurried off across the cathedral Close, almost running in his haste to get to Idle Lane.