The Manor of Death

CHAPTER ONE

Spring was in the air, but Sir John de Wolfe was oblivious to the primroses along the verges and the singing of little birds in the bushes. He had a boil coming on his backside, and riding a horse was the last thing he needed today.

'You need to see an apothecary, master,' chided Thomas de Peyne, his diminutive clerk. 'A good clay poultice would draw out the poison.'

'Or I could lance it with the point of my dagger!' offered Gwyn, his unsympathetic henchman, who rode on his other side as the three trotted along the road eastwards from Exeter.

The gaunt coroner scowled at his two assistants, not deigning to answer their helpful advice. He was too concerned about taking the weight off his bottom by pressing his feet down into the stirrups — hardly the best way to cover the twenty miles to Axmouth. Before they had left soon after dawn, his housekeeper Mary had given him a folded pad of soft wool to slip inside his breeches, which helped a little. But now, as they entered the hamlet of Sidford some two hours later, he felt the need for a rest and some refreshment.

Gwyn of Polruan, a giant with unruly ginger hair and a drooping moustache of the same hue, had an insatiable appetite for food and drink, which led him unerringly towards one of the thatched cottages that clustered around the packhorse bridge that spanned the little River Sid. A bedraggled bush hanging over the low doorway indicated it was an alehouse, and soon a snivelling youth had led their horses around the back to be fed and watered, while the coroner's trio went inside to seek some victuals.

The building was old and decrepit, patches of the lime-and-horsehair plaster crumbling from the panels of hazel withies that filled the spaces between the timber frames of the single room. The floor was of beaten earth with a sparse covering of mouldy rushes, the only furniture being two rough tables with benches on each side and a few rickety stools. The coroner carefully lowered himself on to a bench, so that the offending part of his anatomy overhung the back.

The Saxon ale-wife who ran the establishment was civil enough, glad of the custom of a Norman knight and a priest, though she looked askance at the wild-looking redhead in his scuffed leather jerkin. At their request, she filled two clay pots with ale from a five-gallon crock in the corner and poured Thomas a smaller mug of cloudy cider from a large jug.

'I can give you good potage, sirs,' she offered. 'Got some rabbit in it, fresh trapped this morning. And there's new bread and cheese.'

'Must have been a bloody small rabbit!' grunted Gwyn a few moments later as he stirred through his bowl with a wooden spoon, trying to identify some shreds of meat amongst the thin gruel.

'It's been a hard winter. Many of these remote villages have very little left by this time of year,' rumbled de Wolfe. Though one of the toughest of men, he had grown up in a small village and had much sympathy for those who lived in manors whose land was poor or where their lords and bailiffs were incompetent managers. In bad years, many villagers starved to death because of poor husbandry.

Their conversation was muted until they had finished eating, even the fastidious Thomas devouring the plain fare without complaint. He looked as if he needed the food, being a pale, scrawny young man with a slight hump on his back. His appearance was not improved by his peaky face, a long sharp nose emphasising his receding chin. However, his poor looks were more than compensated for by an agile brain and a compendious knowledge of religion and history. Recently restored to the priesthood after being defrocked several years earlier following a false allegation of indecent assault, he now combined religious duties at Exeter Cathedral with invaluable assistance to the coroner as his very literate clerk.

Gwyn, the coroner's officer and bodyguard, sank the rest of his quart of ale in a single swallow and after a thunderous belch brought the conversation around to their present assignment. 'Are we sure that this is a killing, not just some body washed up on the beach?' he demanded. 'That messenger didn't seem all that sure of it.'

John de Wolfe shrugged, though even that gave him a twinge in his buttock. 'He was the clerk to this Keeper of the Peace, so maybe he can recognise a murder when he sees one,' he grunted.

Last evening, just before the city gates closed at curfew, a rider had entered Exeter and sought out the coroner, who was still in his chamber above the gatehouse of Rougemont Castle. He had been sent by his master to report the finding of a body in suspicious Circumstances at the small harbour town of Axmouth, in the east of the county near the boundary with Dorset. Though seemingly vague about the details of the death, he was adamant that his employer, Sir Luke de Casewold, considered that the deceased had been murdered.

Gwyn reached out to tear off a chunk of coarse rye bread from the loaf on the table, the crust burnt black on top by a careless village baker. He used his dagger to hack off a slice of hard cheese from the lump provided by the landlady but paused with the food halfway to his mouth to ask a question. 'This Keeper of the Peace is some new-fangled official, is he?'

Thomas, always the best informed about current affairs, looked scornfully at his big colleague. 'If you ignorant Cornishmen spent less time eating, drinking and gambling, you might know more about what's going on in the world!' His head stuck out of his shabby black cassock like a rabbit peering from its burrow. 'Just as the Chief Justiciar established coroners eighteen months ago, last December he carried out the king's orders to set up knights in every county to keep the peace — or try to, in this disorderly realm where people seem to have conveniently forgotten the Ten Commandments!' He crossed himself piously, as he did a score of times each day in a habit as compulsive as Gwyn scratching his armpits or his crotch.

John de Wolfe added to his clerk's explanation, forgetting his sore bottom for a moment. 'The bailiffs and serjeants of the Hundreds have been such a dismal failure at keeping law and order that the king decided to augment them with men made of sterner stuff. Now that the Crusade has ended, there are plenty of unemployed knights knocking about the countryside who could help the sheriffs to seek out and arrest wrongdoers. '

The Cornishman champed on his food for a moment, then washed it down with a mouthful of sour ale. 'I thought that was our job, Crowner?' he said.

De Wolfe grinned sardonically. 'Only because the last sheriff was a crook and the present one is bone idle! I'm supposed to present the evidence to the courts, not go out and catch the bloody criminals as well!'

Thomas's dark little eyes flicked from one, man to the other. 'Do you know this new Keeper, Sir John? I'd never heard of him until now.'

The coroner shook his head, his black hair swinging over the back of his collar. Unlike most Norman gentry, he wore it long, instead of shaving his neck right up to leave a thick mop on top of the head.

'He's from this eastern edge of Devon, a foreign land to me!' De Wolfe came from Stoke-in-Teignhead, down towards Torbay. 'He was never in Ireland nor the Holy Land with us, Gwyn, though I think he fought in France.'

Draining his pot, he stood up and slapped a penny on the table in payment for their refreshment. 'Time we went. I'd like to get back to Exeter tonight; I've not seen Nesta for a few days, you know. She gets irritable if I leave her too long.'

Gwyn smirked. He had a great fondness for de Wolfe's mistress but was constantly amused by their bickering.

De Wolfe grunted a farewell to the ale-wife and ducked his head under the low lintel to lead them into the road outside. Both he and Gwyn were six feet tall, though he was as lean and spare as his officer was massively built. A slight stoop and his habit of always dressing in black or grey made him look like some predatory crow. His great hooked nose, black eyebrows and pugnacious chin combined to make most men step hurriedly aside when he bore down upon them.

When their horses were brought around, John climbed gingerly into his saddle, his old warhorse Odin waiting patiently while he arranged his posterior in the position of least discomfort.

'We're well over halfway, I reckon,' advised Gwyn as they set off over the little bridge. 'I came up here many years ago to the harbour in Axmouth, when my father came to buy a new boat.'

Gwyn, who for almost twenty years had been de Wolfe's squire, bodyguard and now coroner's officer, had previously been a fisherman in his native village of Polruan, at the mouth of the Fowey river in Cornwall. He had followed his master to campaigns in Ireland, France and to the Third Crusade in Palestine, but now that they were both over forty, their fighting days seemed over.

It took them almost another two hours to pass through the village of Colyford, on the western side of the wide valley of the Axe. Across the vale, a barrier of green hills ran north and south, dividing Devon from Dorset and ending in an abrupt headland where the estuary opened into the sea. The tide was in and a great expanse of water lay below them, like a fjord reaching almost two miles inland, being up to half a mile wide. They trotted their horses down to the marshy ground, where the track became a crude causeway leading to a small bridge, where at this stage of the tide the water was lapping almost to the edges of the boards. The bank rose on the other side as they reached the lower slope of the ridge where there was a crossroads. When they stopped, the knowledgeable Thomas pointed up the road to their left, where the valley vanished northwards. 'That's a branch of the Fosse Way, built by the Romans,' he announced with the air of a pedagogue. 'Goes all the way to Lincoln!'

The coroner's officer was not impressed by his learning. 'Then we'll take the opposite direction, which with a bit of luck goes all the way to another alehouse!'

They turned down towards the sea and for a mile or so followed the well-beaten track to the large village of Axmouth, the high ridge close above them on their left. It was virtually a small town, straggled along the edge of the estuary. It existed because the river provided one of the safest harbours along that coast, the tide swelling the river twice a day to allow vessels to beach themselves safely along both banks. It was one of the busiest ports in the west of England, as well as having an active fishing fleet, as did the smaller village of Seaton on the opposite bank.

'A bigger place than I remember,' observed Gwyn as they walked their steeds down the last furlong. Though not actually fortified, it had a substantial wall around the centre of the village, above which could be seen the tower of a stone church. There were two solid gates, which, like the wall, were higher than a man. One faced them as they approached, the more distant one leading out on to the quayside on the seaward side. Cottages, shacks and storage huts straggled along the river bank, showing that the place had expanded beyond the confines of the walls. A small side valley cut into the hill on their left, revealing more dwellings and barns.

'Looks as if we're expected, master,' observed Thomas, pointing at a small group who were waiting outside the landward gate, staring at the approaching horsemen.

'That clerk must have told them we were on our way,' said Gwyn. The man had left Exeter even earlier that morning, and his rounsey would have been faster than the plodding Odin or Thomas's pony.

As they came up to the gate, they saw the clerk, Hugh Bogge, standing alongside another one of the group, a man better dressed than the others. As they approached, he left his fellows and came towards them, his hand held up in greeting. John sat on his horse and looked down at the man, who looked about his own age. He was of average height, but an ale-belly was beginning to push out a good-quality yellow tunic and a sure oat of brown wool. His round, plump face carried a prim, pursey mouth, and strands of straw-coloured hair poked out from under his floppy cap of green velvet.

'Sir John de Wolfe, I presume?' he asked in a rather harsh voice. 'I am Sir Luke de Casewold, the Keeper of the Peace for the Hundreds of Axminster, Colyton and Axmouth.'

He said this in such a self-important manner that the coroner immediately began to dislike Luke de Casewold. However, he held his tongue and cautiously eased himself out of his saddle, feeling relief at being able to stand up. After John introduced himself, the Keeper turned and pointed at the silent group standing a little way off, looking uneasy and sheepish.

'These are people concerned, coroner. I know what the law demands and have made sure that the First Finder and anyone who might have any knowledge of this business have come before you.'

Again, he announced this in such a way as to give the impression that he was doing the coroner a great favour.

'And what exactly is this business?' grated de Wolfe. 'Your servant seemed to have little idea of it, apart from the fact that there is a corpse.'

Sir Luke rubbed his hands together almost gleefully, as if this was a special treat he had arranged for the king's coroner. 'Indeed there is, my friend! I will conduct you to it without delay.'

He made no effort to enquire whether de Wolfe and his assistants needed food, drink and rest after their long ride from the city, but at that moment there was a diversion. Through the open gate under its stone arch, two men came striding purposefully towards them. The first was a powerfully built man with coarse features and a rim of black beard around his fleshy face. He had a mouth like a rat-trap and cold deep-set eyes under brows as dark as the coroner's own. He marched straight up to de Wolfe, completely ignoring the Keeper.

'I am Edward Northcote, bailiff to the Prior of Loders, who holds this manor,' he snapped. 'If you are the coroner, then you have had a wasted journey. You were sent for without my knowledge or consent.'

Within minutes, John now had another person to dislike on sight. He was not disposed to be ordered about by some prior's servant.

'If there is a dead body lying here, then I will be the judge of that,' he growled. 'Unless it died of a sickness, with witnesses to testify to that, then it comes under my jurisdiction, as granted to me by the king and his Council!' He added the last part to give weight to his royal appointment.

The other man who had arrived with the bailiff now spoke up, in a more conciliatory tone. 'We realise that, Crowner, but wished to have saved you a fruitless journey from Exeter. No doubt this is just some poor seafarer washed up from God knows where.'

'Nonsense! The fellow was done to death violently, not drowned,' brayed Luke de Casewold, his podgy features red with anger at being contradicted by Elias Palmer, the portreeve, a rake-thin man with sparse greying hair and a long narrow face. He wore a long tunic down to his calves. It was of a nondescript buff colour and the front was spattered with ink stains. Most manors had a reeve to organise the farming activities, but in Axmouth it was different, as agriculture played a much smaller part in the village economy. Though it was not a chartered borough, it was important enough by virtue of its harbour to have some officials, and Palmer had been appointed as portreeve by the Priory of Loders, which lay some twenty miles away in Dorset, to supervise all trading in the town. The manor itself was in the charge of the prior's bailiff, the aggressive Edward Northcote, so between them they were the effective rulers of Axmouth.

The coroner held up his hand to quell the argument developing between them and the Keeper of the Peace. 'I'm here now, so let's settle matters by letting me see the corpse,' he commanded. 'But tell me first the circumstances of its discovery.'

De Casewold turned and beckoned imperiously to someone in the group of onlookers. 'It's best coming from the First Finder, as is proper!' he brayed, again making John want to kick the man's rump for trying to tell a coroner his business. He was surprised when an elderly man in a long black robe, his grey hair shaved into a clerical tonsure, stepped forward. Completely toothless, his mouth had caved in, his sharp hooked nose pointing down at his chin.

'Here's one of your lot!' muttered Gwyn into Thomas's ear as the old priest came up to them. The clerk scowled at him for his habitual irreverence, then turned and smiled at the priest and murmured a greeting in Latin.

'This is Henry of Cumba, the parish priest of St Michael's there,' said Luke, waving a hand towards the church tower. 'It was he who found the body.'

Father Henry's lined face looked apprehensive as he confronted the forbidding figure of the coroner, and he spoke up in a quavering voice. 'I had an old hound, of which I was very fond, sir,' he began.

At this apparent irrelevance, John wondered if the aged priest's mind was wandering, but the old man soon made it clear.

'The poor beast died yesterday, mainly of old age, as I had had him more than a dozen years. Rather than cast his body on to the village midden, I thought I owed it to him to bury him decently, so took a spade and wrapped him in a sack.'

Gwyn, an ardent dog-lover, nodded his appreciation of the old man's humanity, as Henry carried on with his tale.

'I went outside the walls — through this very gate, in fact — and sought a place to dig a hole, well beyond those cottages.' He pointed back up the sloping track down which the coroner had approached the village. 'Behind a hazel bush, I began to dig, as I saw a patch of soft earth which would be easier to shift, my old backbone not being as strong as it used to be.'

'Get to the point, man!' urged the Keeper irritably.

'Well, not more than a spade's depth down, I unearthed a foot, and a couple more strokes showed me a whole leg. I stopped digging and uttered a prayer or two to shrive the poor fellow, then went back to the village to tell someone.'

'What happened to the dog?' asked Gwyn.

'Oh, I buried him first, twenty paces away,' the priest reassured him.

The bailiff and portreeve were becoming impatient with this long-winded tale from their rather vague old vicar. 'Why did you not come straight to me?' demanded Edward Northcote belligerently. 'We could have settled the matter quickly and you could have given the man a decent burial in your churchyard, without all this unnecessary fuss with the coroner.'

Henry of Cumba smiled weakly at the bailiff. 'I intended to seek you out — but I met the Keeper here as I entered the gate and told him instead.'

'Just as well I happened to be here on my weekly perambulation from Axminster,' said Luke de Casewold breezily. 'From what he told me, it was a clear case for the coroner, not one to be brushed aside for the sake of convenience.'

'Nonsense! You're just an interfering busybody!' shouted Northcote, his hard features twisted in anger.

Incensed by this insult, the Keeper once again went red in the face and rattled his sword in its scabbard. 'Have a care, bailiff! You are just a servant, albeit of a priory — but I am a knight of the realm and deserve respect from such as you! One of the reasons that our blessed King Richard set up Keepers last year was because of the laxity and corruption of sergeants and bailiffs.'

Again, John de Wolfe stepped in to quell the developing fight — if he had had a bucket of water, he would have thrown it over them, as if they were two dogs snarling in the street. 'Enough of this! I wish to see the body, straight away. I trust it has not been moved?'

De Casewold shook himself, like an angry cockerel settling its feathers.

'Of course not, Crowner! I know the law: the cadaver must be left in situ until viewed by the coroner. Though I had the nearest householders to put up hurdles around it to keep off dogs and foxes overnight.'

They set off back up the track, the Keeper of the Peace marching ahead importantly with his clerk trailing behind him. They were followed by the coroner's party, then the locals, headed by the bailiff and portreeve.

As they passed the few small thatched huts that straggled up from the town, heads poked out from each doorway, peering at these strangers from distant Exeter. Everyone knew that the coroner had been called, but no one wished to become involved unless they were forced to, as any contact with the law was likely to prove inconvenient and expensive in terms of attachments and amercements.

As they walked, John turned and beckoned to the portreeve to catch him up. 'Why did you say this was only a sailor whose body happened to be washed up here?' he asked. 'He could hardly get himself washed into a grave behind a hazel bush,' he added sarcastically.

Elias Palmer looked confused and guilty at the same time, as the bailiff hurried to join them. 'I thought … I only meant.. ' he stuttered, until Northcote interrupted gruffly.

'He meant that someone must have found the corpse washed up along the high-tide mark and decided to hide it away to avoid trouble … such as that from the coroner!' he said rudely. 'We all know that having a corpse on your manor means an inquest and no doubt amercements for some breach of the rules, which you law officers always manage to find!'

Though he did not admit it, John had to agree that often the inhabitants of one village would drag a dead body across the boundary into another manor to relieve themselves of the problems that a corpse always presented. He grunted, his usual means of expressing his disapproval.

'Then someone here must have had prior knowledge of the corpse — and kept it to himself. I'll have him amerced for that when I find out who it was!'

As he uttered this threat, the Keeper stopped ahead of them and gesticulated, jabbing his arm towards the undergrowth that fronted a wood that lay at the foot of the high ground that was a backdrop to the town. On the other side of the track, the ground dropped away to the edge of the estuary.

'In here, Crowner, a hundred paces further.'

He dived into a patch of bushes and small trees, all greening up with the new growth of an early spring. Trampling primroses and violets, the half-score men plunged into the scrub and stopped alongside de Casewold as his clerk pulled down one of the hurdles of woven hazel withies to reveal a shallow pit.

'Here he is, Sir John! Kept quite intact for you,' he said with the air of someone who was offering a valuable gift.

De Wolfe looked down at the hole, where the gritty soil had been thrown aside to reveal a man's body lying face down in the earth. It was clothed in a leather jerkin rather like Gwyn's and a pair of canvas breeches cut off at mid-calf, with no shoes or cap, the typical wear for a ship's crewman.

'Do we know who he is?' was John's first demand. There was much shaking of heads and muttered denials. Everyone from Axmouth was anxious to keep their distance from any knowledge of this cadaver.

'I lifted his head to see his face when I came back with the Keeper,' said the old priest hesitantly. 'But he's not one of my flock, that's for sure.'

John looked across at Gwyn, who from long experience knew the routine they needed to go through now. The big Cornishman stepped down into the excavation and lifted the corpse as easily as if it was a bag of straw, turning it over on to its back. 'He's a young fellow; I doubt he's reached eighteen summers,' he reported, brushing soil from the face with his fingers.

The coroner stepped down to join him and they both bent over the dead youth, while Thomas de Peyne, whose task was to record the findings, fumbled in his large shoulder bag to make sure he had his pens, ink-flask and parchments. Gwyn muttered something to de Wolfe and pointed to the half-open eyes. John nodded and prised open the lids with fingers and thumbs to examine the whites.

'Spotted with blood!' he bellowed. He turned his head to glare at the bailiff and portreeve accusingly 'So much for your damned drowning!' He picked up a hand and wagged it as if shaking hands with the corpse, determining that there was no death stiffness. Staring at the pads of the fingers and the palm, he shouted again. 'Not a sign of washerwoman's skin. He's not been in the water for long, if at all!'

Meanwhile, Gwyn had been industriously brushing away the remaining dirt from the face and neck, finally cleaning it off with a grubby kerchief that he dragged from a pocket.

'Look at this, Crowner,' he muttered as he gave a last wipe with his rag. John shifted his gaze from the hands and saw that around the front of the neck across the prominence of the Adam's apple was a livid line the width of his little finger. It passed back under the angles of the jaw and disappeared behind the ears.

'Turn him back on to his face!' barked the coroner, and when his officer had done so they looked at the back of the neck. When the skin was wiped clean, they saw that the dark lines, which had chafed the skin into brownish grooves, crossed over each other at the nape of the neck.

'Looks like a thin rope, with a spiral pattern,' observed Gwyn.

Anticipating his master, he turned the body over yet again and they both studied the face. It was in good condition as far as decay was concerned, as though the weather was mild it was still typically April and together with being buried in cold earth no decomposition had yet set in. The face was puffy and reddish-blue with congested blood, especially the lips. More of the tiny pinpoint bleeding spots that John had seen in the eyes were clustered around the mouth and temples.

Experts in modes of death from two decades on the battlefield and eighteen months of dealing with the corpses of Devonshire, the coroner and his officer had no doubt how this young man had died. John looked up at the ring of expectant faces looking down into the grave.

'He was strangled by a rope, held by someone standing behind him!' grated de Wolfe. 'So much for your drowned sailor, portreeve! Keeper, you were right: this is murder!'

Sir Luke de Casewold smiled smugly. 'I knew it from the outset, though the earth prevented me from seeing that strangling mark. But what innocent death ends up in a hole behind a bush, eh?'

De Wolfe rose to his feet, feeling the twinge in his bottom that he had mercifully forgotten for the past few minutes. 'Have you a dead-house or somewhere where we can lay this poor fellow until I hold the inquest?' He directed his question at the whole group of onlookers, but it was the old priest who answered.

'We have a shed in the churchyard where we lay cadavers awaiting burial. Will that suffice, sir?'

Within minutes, a handcart was fetched from the quayside. It stank of fish but was good enough to transport the corpse past the gawping villagers back to St Michael's Church, a sturdy stone edifice that had replaced the earlier wooden chapel of Saxon times. When the body was safely parked in the ramshackle lean-to against the north wall of the building, with a couple of barley sacks thrown over it, John turned to face the men who had trailed behind the cart.

'Now I need to get some sense out of you all!' he rasped, glowering around them, some obviously not disposed to be particularly cooperative.

'What the hell do we know about it?' growled the bailiff. 'He's a stranger here. I've never set eyes upon him before.' Elias Palmer, the lanky portreeve, nodded his agreement, for he seemed to go along with anything Edward Northcote decreed.

'We need to know who he is, as soon as possible,' said de Casewold with an air of authority. 'The coroner here has to enquire into his death without delay.'

Again John was exasperated that the self-important Keeper seemed intent on doing his work for him. 'There are many issues to be settled, apart from his identity, though I admit that is of prior urgency.' He fixed his stony stare on the parish priest. 'Father Henry, you say he is not one of your flock from this village. Have you any other suggestions?'

The cleric rubbed his bald pate as if to stimulate his ancient brain. 'He was buried more than a mile from the river mouth, so is unlikely to have been washed up from the open sea.'

'He showed no signs of being in the water — at least not for more than an hour or two. And he certainly didn't drown!' snapped de Wolfe.

'It suggests that he is from the locality, if he's not a shipwrecked sailor,' mused the priest. 'Yet he wears a seaman's garb'.

Gwyn leant towards his master. 'If he's not from this port, what about those other havens nearby?' he whispered hoarsely.

John nodded at the suggestion. 'What about the village on the other side of the river, almost on the shore?'

The portreeve seemed anxious to keep in favour with all sides of the debate.

'Seaton, you mean, Crowner?' he asked eagerly. 'There are certainly ships and shipmen there, though most are fishermen. He could have come from there, I suppose.'

'And equally from Sidmouth or Budleigh — even from Lyme, in the next county!' countered Northcote, intent on being difficult.

De Wolfe next addressed the Keeper, determined to show him who was in charge here. 'I suggest, Sir Luke, that you send your clerk across the river to enquire if any man has gone missing from there in the past few days. The state of this corpse suggests that he has been dead less than a week, even though cold earth slows down the pace of corruption. '

De Casewold looked slightly affronted at being told what to do by a law officer he considered to be of equal status, but he made no protest and sent Hugh Bogge, with one of the villagers, to find his way across the water to Seaton.

'Meanwhile, I and my officer and clerk need some sustenance after the long ride from Exeter,' declared the coroner. 'Where can we be fed and rested for an hour?'

Normally, a king's officer such as de Wolfe would claim hospitality from the local lord in his castle or manor house — or failing that in an abbey or priory. As Axmouth had none of these, it fell to the bailiff to grudgingly offer his own house for the purpose, rather than suggest one of the many taverns that catered mainly for seafarers. 'I can't offer much. I have no wife to cater for me, only an idle servant,' he warned.

John and his two companions followed him from the church back up the short street that lay within the walls to one of the better buildings in the village. Luke de Casewold attached himself to them without invitation, as did Elias Palmer.

Like most of the other cottages, the bailiff's house was built of cob plastered within stout oak frames, but it was in good condition, with fresh whitewash on the walls and new thatch on the roof. It consisted of one large room, the end partitioned off for his bed, a luxury indicative of his position in the community. In view of the mild weather, only a small fire glowed in the clay-lined pit, ringed with stones, in the centre of the floor. What little smoke there was wafted upwards to find its way out under the eaves, as there was no chimney. No cooking was done here, as there was a separate kitchen-hut behind the house, with a larger fire tended by his servant.

A table with benches and a few stools completed the furniture, except for another long table against the wall which bore tally-sticks and some parchments as well as quill pens and an ink-bottle. These caught Thomas's eye as he entered, as it was unusual to find anyone in a village who was literate, apart from the priest. Edward Northcote noticed the clerk's interest and gruffly explained.

'Elias, my portreeve, uses this room to make his manifests, the lists of cargo going in and out of the port. He's the only man who can read and write, apart from the old priest.'

He waved them to the table, and his servant, a toothless old man with a bad limp, brought in clay cups and a pitcher of ale. While they waited for him to bring some food, John enquired about the port. 'I've not been here before. It seems a busy, thriving place.'

The portreeve hastened to broaden the coroner's knowledge, the pride in his voice being almost proprietorial. 'Axmouth has long been an important harbour, sir. We know that the Romans used it, but doubtless it was known before that.'

As usual, the erudite Thomas could not resist airing his own knowledge. 'Indeed it was! The classical writers tell of Phoenicians sailing here to collect tin, long before the birth of Our Saviour.' He paused to cross himself at the mention of the Holy Name.

The bailiff, his own pride in his little town not to be denied, nodded his agreement. 'It is one of the major ports of England, with its estuary safely tucked under the long headland behind the town. We rarely have fewer than half a score of vessels moored here during the sailing season.'

'What is their main trade, then?' asked John. His interest was not prompted by his role as coroner but as a partner in a wool-exporting business with Hugh de Relaga, one of the portreeves of Exeter. They used the Wharves of that city to send their bales abroad, mainly to Flanders and the Rhine.

The portreeve answered him, a frown on his narrow face. 'On the outward voyages, fine limestone from the quarries of Beer, but mostly wool, Crowner, though this tax that King Richard has imposed has begun to stifle the trade.'

De Wolfe caught a warning glance pass from the bailiff to Elias Palmer and assumed it was a hint that it might be undiplomatic to criticise the monarch in front of two of his law officers.

'And what do they bring in to this place?' asked John. The bailiff shrugged his big shoulders. 'All manner of goods, depending on where they come from. French wine from Barfleur or Bordeaux, dried fruit from France — and of course finished cloth from Flanders or the Rhine.'

John nodded. It was the same with the ships he and his partner employed, though much tin was also exported from Exeter, being one of the smelting and assay towns.

Their talk was interrupted by the old servant bringing in a board bearing a haunch of cold mutton, two loaves, butter and cheese. He set it on the table, and Northcote cut thick slices of meat with his dagger, laying them on the board for the others to take. The portreeve slashed the loaves into quarters, and each man started to eat, picking up the food with their fingers or with small eating knives from the pouches on their belts.

'I live simply,' growled Northcote. 'I have been a widower these past five years and live alone, apart from that old fellow in the kitchen.'

'You keep the records and accounts, bailiff?' ventured Thomas, nodding towards the other table with its parchments and writing materials.

'I am the prior's creature in that respect. He is insistent that everything is properly recorded.' Edward Northcote picked up another piece of mutton and held it before his lips before continuing. 'The portreeve here does most of the organising of the town's trade and deals with the shipmasters, and as I am unlettered he also scribes all the records.'

They fell silent as the rest of the food was devoured.

Then the ale-pots were refilled and Sir John returned to the matter in hand.

'My officer and I will finish our examination of the body, then I wish to see that every effort is made to put a name to the victim.'

Luke de Casewold, who had been quiet for the duration of the meal, looked doubtful. 'I doubt my clerk will return this afternoon. By the time he crosses the river, makes his enquiries in Seaton and gets back again, you will not have time to return to Exeter tonight.'

Though the coroner would dearly have liked to get back to the city before the gates closed at the dusk curfew, he accepted that their horses would not relish a forced march after already covering twenty miles that morning. He resigned himself to a mattress in one of the inns, no hardship for such seasoned campaigners as Gwyn and himself, though Thomas would probably whine at the discomfort. He told de Casewold that he would stay over and hold an inquest in the morning, hoping that the corpse's identity would be established by then.

'For now, I will just spend an hour looking at the quayside and questioning some of the shipmen. If this poor lad was a sailor, they may know him.'

The coroner left the bailiff, the parish priest and portreeve together in the house and walked with his assistants and the Keeper of the Peace back to the church. Here Gwyn stripped the clothing from the corpse and, together with John, examined it closely from head to toe. The young man was slim but had plenty of muscle in his arms and legs. His dark hair was plastered to his scalp and forehead by the dampness of his makeshift grave, but there was nothing abnormal to be seen apart from the ligature mark around the neck and the clear signs of strangulation in the face. Gwyn searched the scanty clothing and found nothing useful. 'No belt or pouch, not a coin or badge to help us,' he muttered, as for the sake of decency he pulled the garments back over the corpse.

'How long would you say he's been dead?' ruminated de Wolfe. 'A few days?' He often had a contest with his officer, both reckoning themselves experts in all aspects of death.

'His death stiffness has passed off. It was cool in that grave, but I doubt he was croaked earlier than about Saturday.'

It was now Tuesday, and de Wolfe nodded his agreement. He turned to Thomas, who was hanging about outside the mortuary shed, still queasy about dead bodies even after a year and a half as coroner's clerk.

'There's nothing to write on your roll until we hold the inquest, so I suggest you find Father Henry again and see if he has any useful village gossip. You are usually good at wheedling information from your fellow clerics.' Thomas wandered off, not sure whether the coroner's remark was a compliment or a jibe.

When Gwyn had covered up the corpse again, still lying on the fish-barrow, they began walking towards the quayside. Luke de Casewold still strode alongside them, as John was unable to shake him off. He could hardly order a fellow law officer to go away, especially as this was an obvious murder on the Keeper's own territory. No one seemed quite clear how far the functions and powers of these new officials extended, as far as de Wolfe could make out; only a few knights had been appointed around the country on a somewhat random basis, depending on who could be persuaded to take on the job. Like the coroners, they were unpaid, with expenses doled out from the sheriff's funds, but no salary. The trio walked out through the other town gate, just beyond the church. Here the road turned sharply to the left and carried on along the water's edge, where, on their right, half a dozen ships were settling on to the mud as the tide receded. On the landward side, there was a narrow belt of land under the loom of the large ridge above the estuary. Here were more cottages and taverns, as well as barn-like buildings with thatched or stone-tiled roofs.

'These are storehouses for goods either brought in or waiting to be loaded on to the ships,' said Luke helpfully. 'Though that one is the fish market.'

He pointed to an open-fronted shed where a dozen men and women were gutting fish and dropping them into baskets. The estuary here was wide and open to the sea, and on the other side the villages of Seaton and Fleet also had small ships beached along their banks. Nearer the sea, which shimmered in the distance in the early-afternoon sun, John could see pebble and shingle banks around a tiny island set off the shore at Seaton.

As they walked, John saw that some parts of the water's edge had been strengthened by stone, forming wharves where the cogs could be tied up at high tide and supported when it dropped, so that loading and unloading could be carried on more easily. Elsewhere, at low tide, the vessels leant over a little on their keels, but still the crew and other labourers managed to hurry up and down planks laid to the shore with their sacks, bales and kegs. It was a busy scene, with some of the cargoes being stacked on the ground or loaded into the many ox-carts that trundled back and forth. Still more was being moved in and out of the warehouses on the other side of the track, and John was particularly interested in one that was half filled with bales of wool. Many of these were being carried across the road to a larger ship, to be stacked in the single hold that gaped in the middle of her deck.

The tall, gaunt figure of the king's coroner received many curious stares from both the porters and seamen. His hunched figure, dressed all in black, was an unusual sight on a harbour wharf, especially as he was accompanied by a ginger giant with a large sword. The Keeper of the Peace aroused no interest, as he had been a frequent and usually unwelcome visitor to Axmouth since his appointment.

They walked the length of the quayside and continued for almost half a mile down to where the estuary met the open sea, beneath the cliffs of the headland rising on their left. It was a calm day, and only low waves rippled in across the wide harbour mouth, petering out as they travelled upstream.

'This place would look mightily different in a westerly gale,' observed Gwyn, his maritime past making him a confident expert. 'But these vessels would be safe enough, especially if they moved further upriver if it got really rough.'

De Wolfe grunted. He was not much interested in the ships, but rather in their crews. 'That corpse must have been a seaman, dressed as he was,' he ruminated aloud. 'We should make some enquiries of some of these shipmasters.'

'Checking on gossip in the alehouses might be the quickest way,' suggested his officer, ever keen to find some excuse to enter a tavern. The only tavern John was keen to enter was the Bush in Exeter to see his mistress, but that was twenty miles away.

'You go, then, Gwyn; see what you can discover. I'll have words with a few of these shipmen and we'll meet in the village in an hour.'

With the Keeper still in tow, he loped back to the cog that was loading wool, as Gwyn vanished across the road to a shack that had a wilting bush hanging over the doorway. The blunt vessel was leaning a little towards him, but men were padding across from the storehouse over the road, each with a large bale of wool on his back, securely trussed with coarse twine.

As they clambered up the gangplank to the deck, a man in a russet tunic and green breeches stood at its foot, staring at each load and muttering to himself.

'Who's this fellow?' grunted de Wolfe.

'That's John Capie,' answered Luke de Casewold. 'He's the tally-man who reckons up the Customs dues though I suspect that far more gets past him than he records!' he added cynically.

John looked more closely and saw that the sallow-faced Capie had a long cord in his hands, which had a multitude of knots tied along its length. As each man hurried past with his burden, his fingers moved on another knot, his lips moving as he counted.

The coroner nodded in understanding. Now he knew how his own export taxes were calculated on the quaysides of Exeter and Topsham. The lucrative wool business he shared with Hugh de Relaga would be even more lucrative if they could avoid the Customs dues that the king's Council had imposed upon England in order to pay for the Lionheart's adventures overseas. Like de Casewold, he had his suspicions that not all the tax due on the bales that sailed out of the River Exe was actually declared, but this was something he did not wish to know about.

He looked up at the rising stern of the vessel and saw a burly man with a bushy red beard standing on the afterdeck. With his hands planted firmly on his hips, his posture suggested that he was the man in charge, as he glared at the procession of seamen and stevedores as if daring them to slow their efforts.

'That must be the shipmaster. I'll get up there and have a word with him,' grunted de Wolfe. He fitted himself into a gap between two men lugging bales up the plank and strode up to the deck, the Keeper following behind the next porter.

The man with the beard scowled at him as he approached.

'What do you want, sir?' he growled, though his habitual bluster was tempered by his recognition that this was a man of substance. The sombre but good-quality clothing and the expensive sword that swung at his hip told of wealth and authority.

'I am Sir John de Wolfe, the king's coroner for this county. Have you heard of the finding of a man's body near the village today?'

Impressed as he was by the rank of this law officer, the shipmaster remained surly. 'I have too much work here to listen to gossip,' he grunted.

'News of a strangled youth is somewhat more than gossip,' snapped de Wolfe. 'And this fellow appeared to be a shipman. We need to know who he is, so have you any of your crew missing?'

Red Beard shook his head. 'Half my men were paid off when I arrived yesterday. God knows where they are now. We only had one young 'un; he had hair the colour of wheat straw, if that's any help.'

As the dead boy's hair was almost black, this ruled him out, if the sullen shipmaster was telling the truth. The coroner climbed back down to the quayside and strode along the river, calling at each vessel and asking similar questions at every one of them. He had little but reluctant answers and surly shakes of the head, which made him suspect that there was a conspiracy of silence amongst these seamen.

'Not a very helpful bunch, are they?' he growled to Luke de Casewold as they finally reached the gateway into the village.

'Sailors are a strange lot; they stick together against the world, just like tinners,' observed the Keeper, who seemed to possess a philosophical streak.

'I got the feeling that they were hiding something from me,' grumbled John.

'They're like that with all law officers,' said Luke reassuringly. 'On principle, they are reluctant to give us even a 'good morning' if they can avoid it. Not that that's confined to shipmen; every damned man and woman in the hundred answers me grudgingly. Everyone has a guilty conscience about something!'

'What have these seafarers got to hide, then?' demanded de Wolfe.

As they entered the village, de Casewold sniggered. 'They are all crooked, Crowner! Smuggling is their main sin, though I'd not put a little piracy past some of them.'

'I thought that tally-man down there was supposed to check all the goods. How does he operate, then?'

There was an alehouse just inside the town gate, on the left side of the track opposite the church. It was known by common usage as the Harbour Inn. Luke waved the coroner to a rough bench outside and yelled through the door for jars of ale. As they sat together in the sun, he explained the system that collected the dues from a busy port such as Axmouth.

'This fellow John Capie does his best to record all taxable goods that go out or come in from the harbour. Christ alone understands how he does it, mainly with knotted strings and notched tally-sticks, for he can neither read nor write.'

A slattern brought out two quart pots of ale, which tasted better than it looked, though John pined for the good stuff brewed by Nesta in the Bush back home. He drank and listened while the Keeper carried on with his explanation. 'Capie then goes twice a day to Elias Palmer, who writes down what Capie calculates has been loaded or discharged from each of the ships.'

'But he can't be at every ship all the time,' objected John.

'That's very true, though he checks the goods in the warehouses as well, trying to get some idea of what is being moved in and out of the port.'

De Wolfe saw Gwyn approaching in the distance and gulped down the rest of his ale, confident that he would need another jug as soon as the Cornishman arrived.

'This system seems wide open to error and abuse, if you ask me!' he growled. 'How does he actually get the money paid?'

'That's Elias Palmer's job. He charges both a manor tax and a county tax, squeezing it from whoever owns the wool or wine or whatever the goods happen to be. The first levy goes to the Priory of Loders, who own the village, then the royal tax goes to the sheriff as part of the county farm.'

Gwyn of Polruan stamped up the last few yards to the Harbour Inn and dropped heavily on to the bench.

'Waste of bloody time! Nobody knows a thing — or so they say!' he reported. 'Wouldn't tell us if they did, by their attitude! Something strange about this village, I reckon. As if they are keeping some big secret.'

Luke de Casewold nodded sagely. 'I've felt the same ever since I started coming down here as Keeper,' he asserted. 'The whole damned place is up to something, I can feel it in my bones!' He drained his ale-jar and stood up. 'I'm going to get to the bottom of it, too, whatever the cost! I was appointed to keep the peace — and that includes anything that's to the detriment of our good King Richard.'

John de Wolfe was as ardent a supporter of the Coeur de Lion as any man in England, but he felt strangely embarrassed at this over-pretentious loyalty. The fellow had been in office only a few months and here he was declaring that he was going to root out the king's enemies in a flea-bitten seaport like Axmouth. He had better watch his step, thought John. Edward Northcote, the Prior of Loders and some of those tough-looking shipmasters would not take kindly to this popinjay interfering in their affairs.

Almost immediately he felt guilty, for was he not himself a king's officer, sworn to uphold the law and justice in all their forms? Maybe he was influenced by his own dealings in wool and other commodities in his partnership in Exeter to be sufficiently condemnatory of any sharp practices elsewhere. As he pondered this potential conflict of interests, there was a distant shout from beyond the town gate. The three of them turned and saw that Hugh Bogge, the clerk to the Keeper, was coming up from the river bank, where there was a landing for the small boat that ferried people across the estuary to Seaton. Behind him waddled the figure of a woman, dressed in black with a dark shawl over her head in spite of the warmth of the day.

'It looks as if he's found someone,' said Luke smugly. The clerk marched up to them, having the same self important air as his master. Bogge was a short, rotund fellow with a moon face and pasty complexion. His mousy hair was shorn into a tonsure, and his stained black cassock was clinched at the waist with a wide leather belt, through which a large sheathed dagger was thrust, somewhat incongruously for a man in minor holy orders. The woman, who looked old but may not have been more than fifty, plodded up behind him, her lined face telling of a hard life and little expectation of it becoming better. She looked warily at these men from Exeter and Axminster, for law officers never heralded anything other than trouble and sadness.

'This is Edith Makerel, a widow of Seaton,' announced Hugh Bogge, displaying the old lady with an almost proprietorial air. De Wolfe rose from his bench and gave her a curt nod, while Gwyn gently took her arm and shepherded her to his seat.

'Edith had already reported the disappearance of her son Simon to the reeve in Seaton,' continued the clerk. 'He was a shipman who returned from his last voyage a week ago. On Saturday he went out of their cottage, which is down near the beach — and that's the last she ever saw of him.'

Widow Makerel sat looking up at the men, her eyes red-rimmed with old tears. She had a piece of rag in her hands, and her fingers continually tore at it as she spoke.

'He was not really a shipman, sirs. The lad wanted to become a clerk, but I could not afford for him to go and learn his letters. He said he would earn enough in a few years to do that and had been apprenticed to a baker in Seaton, but it burnt down a month ago and he had to seek work elsewhere. Since his father was drowned at the fishing, my two sons are our only support. The other one labours in the quarries in Beer. I did not want my boys to suffer the fate of my husband, but Simon was determined to go.'

'So he went to sea recently, madam?' asked John politely. 'But he returned home safely some days ago?'

She nodded, still shredding the rag between her fingers. 'It was but his second voyage, sir. He hated it, but it earned the few pence we sorely needed. In fact, he came back last Thursday with more than we expected. He flung it down on the table and refused to say where it came from. I knew something was very wrong.' She began to sob, and again it was Gwyn who tried to console her. The big, shambling officer placed an arm around her shoulders as he bent over her. 'We need you to look at a body, Edith. Only you can help us in this. Come with us now, across to the church.'

As they all slowly crossed the village street to the church of St Michael, Luke de Casewold murmured to his clerk: 'How did you find her, Hugh?'

'I went around the few ships on that side of the river, but none could — or would — tell me anything. Then I found the reeve of Seaton and he said that Widow Makerel had been searching for her son Simon. I went to see her and it seemed likely that a dark-haired youth of eighteen might be the one we seek.'

In the churchyard, before the procession reached the mortuary shed, Thomas de Peyne and the parish priest, Henry of Cumba, appeared from the ornately carved arch which was the entrance to the church. Hugh Bogge briefly explained to them what was happening, and now the two priests took over from Gwyn as supporters of Edith Makerel. They guided her under the lean-to roof and the identification was short and dramatic.

With a howl, the poor woman fell upon the body as Thomas uncovered the face and lay sobbing across the odorous fish-cart. Her pathetic cries of 'My son, my poor son!' left no doubt as to the identity of the corpse.

An admitted coward in the face of emotional crises, John backed away and left the two priests with the distraught woman. As he walked back to the gate of the churchyard with the Keeper of the Peace and his clerk, he pondered the possible significance of what they had heard.

'Why strangle some young deckhand?' he muttered. 'He was hardly likely to have a heavy purse upon him that could be stolen.'

'What about this money that his mother said he gave her?' asked Luke. 'She seemed surprised and a little suspicious of where it came from. And why did she say there was something amiss with the lad when he returned from the voyage?'

De Wolfe turned to Hugh Bogge as they reached the village street. 'Do you know what vessel he was sailing on? Is it one of those still along the quayside there?'

'No, I asked the widow. She said this was the second voyage her son had made on a cog called The Tiger. He was due to sail on her again for Calais yesterday, but of course he went missing.'

'Damnation! I needed to have called her crew to my inquest tomorrow.' The coroner was irritated that nothing seemed to be going smoothly with this case. 'Is there no one else who knew the boy?'

'There is his brother — and his mother said he has a girl in Seaton whom he hoped to marry.'

'Get them to the inquest in the morning — I will hold it in the churchyard at the tenth hour. My own officer can roust out the rest to form a jury; the bailiff, the portreeve, the priest and a dozen villagers will suffice.'

De Wolfe looked at the Harbour Inn across the road. 'This looks the best tavern in the place. I need to find us a good meal and a mattress each for the night.'