The Sanctuary Seeker

Chapter Nine In which Alan Fitzhai identifies the dead Crusader

At noon on Friday, the seventh day of November, almost two days after the coroner’s meeting with the sheriff, a sorry procession climbed the drawbridge of Rougemont Castle and halted just inside the inner gate. Three soldiers slid from their horses and one, the sergeant, moved to the fourth to untie a rope from the saddle pommel, the other end of which was wound around the waist of Alan Fitzhai. His hands were free to hold the reins, but he was astride the poorest horse, lashed to the saddle, and had had little chance of escape.

His mood was of disgruntled outrage, rather than a desperate will to escape. A twenty-seven-mile trot from Lyme, most of it in rain, had dampened most of his anger to simmering indignation. They had slept overnight in a stable of the Plough at Honiton, where the sergeant had checked with the landlord that their prisoner was, indeed, the man who had stayed there a few nights earlier.

Fitzhai slid to the ground and looked about him. ‘Three days and I’m back in damned Exeter again,’ he complained ruefully. He had exhausted his extensive vocabulary of curses and blasphemies during the first five miles out of Lyme and had settled into a resigned, cynical acceptance.

The sergeant, a hard-bitten soldier with thirty years’ service, sympathised with Fitzhai, whom he recognised as a fellow warrior. They had talked on the journey, and although Fitzhai was a cut above the sergeant in the social scale, their shared experiences of campaigns in France forged a bond between them. The sergeant learned that Fitzhai had been to Plymouth that week, to find hiring for a local war threatening in Brittany, but he had been too late: the ships had sailed and he had been making his way back to Bridport to visit a woman, before moving on to Southampton, to try his luck there.

‘Let’s get you up to the Crowner’s office. There should be a bite to eat and some ale there, if I know Gwyn of Polruan,’ said his benign captor. ‘And de Wolfe wants you to identify this belt and scabbard from the dead man.’

As they entered the gatehouse, he sent a soldier across the inner ward to notify the sheriff that they had returned, and the other went hot-foot to St Martin’s Lane to fetch John.

Upstairs, Gwyn recognised Fitzhai as the man he had seen at Ascalon. He showed him the Levantine leather-work that they had taken from the corpse in Widecombe. The mercenary seemed positive abouts its close similarity to that worn by the man in Honiton, but they all knew that many men returning from Palestine had acquired such Moorish-looking accoutrements.

As the sergeant had forecast, he also produced beer, bread and cheese and the three military men swapped stories and reminiscences while they waited for the sheriff and the coroner to arrive.

Thomas de Peyne skulked in a corner on his writing stool, ignored by the trio of burly warriors, and watched with his customary fascination as their powerful masculinity brought the bleak chamber alive. Alan Fitzhai was talking animatedly, his rim of brown beard spiky from the rain and his full moustache waggling as he talked and chewed.

After some twenty minutes, a sudden hush fell on the occupants. The sheriff and coroner had met downstairs and John had followed de Revelle up to the room. The sergeant pushed himself away from the wall and held himself erect, furtively brushing the crumbs from his grey beard.

De Revelle walked to the rough bench behind the trestle table and sat down, John standing in his own office. Thomas slid off his stool to allow his master to sit, but the coroner moved to the end of the table and hooked a thigh over its corner.

‘Alan Fitzhai, sir, as you commanded,’ said the sergeant steadily. Although he disliked the sheriff, de Revelle was his master: loyalty and respect were due to his rank.

‘How did you find him, sergeant?’ demanded Crowner John.

The old soldier pulled at his moustache. ‘It was easy, sir. The landlord at the inn in Honiton told us that he had left, saying that he was making for the coast at Bridport. So we rode there and in an hour looking in the taverns we turned up Alan Fitzhai.’

‘And a damned aggrieved Alan Fitzhai, Sir Sheriff!’ said the whiskered warrior loudly. ‘I was half-way to Southampton and got dragged back here, lashed to a lousy nag like some common criminal’.

De Revelle looked up at the coroner, and raised an eyebrow. John understood the signal: certainly Fitzhai could not be pushed around like some villager or town serf. He was a Norman and obviously had aristocratic blood in his veins. He was also a recent Crusader and men who had taken the Cross were popular and deserved respect. He was entitled to be treated as their peer, at least until some skeleton was found in his cupboard.

John began with an apology for the manner in which Fitzhai had been brought to Exeter, rather unfairly giving the impression that the sergeant had exceeded his authority is lashing him to his saddle. ‘But this dead man was a Norman and almost certainly a Crusader like ourselves,’ he continued, in his sonorous voice, ‘so I’m sure that you would wish to do all you can to help us give him a name and a decent grave.’

Fitzhai nodded slowly. ‘No one wants a fellow soldier dead – unless he’s on the other side of our lances.’

‘So who was this man?’ John demanded bluntly.

Fitzhai looked from him to the sheriff and back again, reluctant to commit himself irrevocably to a situation that might bring him nothing but grief.

‘Come on, man!’ snapped de Revelle. ‘What evil are you hiding?’

This stung Fitzhai into a retort. ‘No evil at all, Sheriff – but wagging tongues never did any man good service,’ he added obscurely.

The sheriff glared at him. ‘Your silence might condemn you, Fitzhai. If you persist in obstructing the law, you can expect to be treated with suspicion.’

The mercenary’s cheeks flushed even deeper, but he held his ground. ‘Why should I help dig a hole for myself to fall into, Sir John? I’m not involved in this matter – that’s why I shied off answering the questions of your nosey little clerk. If I’d not saved his miserable skin from those footpads outside the inn, you’d never had heard of me, would you?’

He was pugnacious and aggressive, but John felt an undercurrent of anxiety, even fear, in his voice. He guessed that Fitzhai had seen too many hangings to want to become involved in a murder investigation. He had some sympathy with this, but he knew he must ignore it.

The sheriff was less tolerant. ‘You know more than you’ve admitted, fellow. Either you tell us what you know or you’ll spend the night in the cells under my castle keep. Which is it to be?’

John saw that Fitzhai was weakening, and, sure enough, he said, ‘All right, I’d seen the fellow before somewhere.’

‘A name, for the Virgin’s sake!’ exploded the coroner.

Fitzhai looked from one face to the other. Stony stares met his gaze and he capitulated. ‘It was Hubert de Bonneville, if the description is right.’ The words came out in a defiant rush.

John looked at his brother-in-law, their animosity temporarily forgotten in their mutual interest at this revelation. ‘De Bonneville? Are there not de Bonnevilles near Tavistock?’ he asked.

De Revelle was better versed than John in the Norman occupancy of the county. ‘At Peter Tavy, where old Arnulph de Bonneville holds the manor from the de Redvers. The last I heard of him, he was sick near to death.’

John stared hard at Alan Fitzhai. ‘How well did you know this man? Were you with him in Palestine?’

The mercenary shook his head, but said nothing.

Suddenly Gwyn spoke up, jerked out of his usual gruff silence. ‘Alan Fitzhai! I recollect that name now. You were in trouble at Ascalon, after the retreat from Jerusalem!’ Richard the Lionheart had twice come almost within sight of the Holy City, but had failed to reach it. The coastal city of Ascalon had been refortified before the King sailed for Europe as a base for the remaining English troops.

‘What trouble was that?’ demanded the sheriff.

John answered him without hesitation. ‘There were all kinds of scandals and rackets going on there. Twenty thousand men-at-arms and knights, all with little to do, while the King and Saladin thrashed out their peace treaty. A recipe for trouble, idle hands with nothing to occupy them.’

Gwyn went on, ‘Two hundred Moorish prisoners had their throats cut, after being promised as exchange for our men taken captive. You were accused of being party to that – and of looting and raping local families in Ascalon.’

‘It was all damned lies,’ protested Fitzhai, his present problems suddenly overshadowed by old rumours.

Gwyn supplied more details. ‘There was a trial of the ringleaders by Hubert Walter. Twenty men were hanged on the testimony of other Crusaders.’

‘But maybe this Hubert de Bonneville laid testimony against you, eh?’ asked the sheriff.

The mercenary looked genuinely astonished. ‘Nonsense! I never laid eyes on the bloody man in Palestine. There was trouble, I admit, but I was judged free from all blame. What the hell has all this to do with me now, eh?’

The argument went on for a few moments, but Fitzhai stubbornly denied that he had had any dealings with de Bonneville in Palestine, or even that he had ever set eyes on him there.

‘So how could you recognise him in Honiton if you never knew him in the Holy Land?’ demanded de Revelle.

‘It wasn’t like that, at all!’ yelled Alan Fitzhai.

‘Well, how was it, for God’s sake?’ snapped the coroner.

‘I met him not there but on the journey home,’ said Fitzhai. ‘Three months ago I landed in Marseille by ship and joined a party of English Crusaders making their way back up to the Channel ports. De Bonneville was one of them, though I didn’t know him well – there were more than forty of us in the band.’

The sheriff looked suspiciously at him. ‘You say “not well”, but how well? Were you friends, comrades-in-arms?’

Fitzhai was now evidently uncomfortable, under the gaze of two senior law officers, a stolid sergeant, a coroner’s officer and a curious clerk. There was a heavy silence.

‘Well, were you?’ barked de Revelle, his lean face and pointed beard pushed forward agressively.

Fitzhai shifted from one large foot to the other and folded his arms. ‘If you must know, I heartily disliked the man, God rest his soul. He was too fond of pushing his nose into other people’s business.’

The sheriff, for all his many faults, was a shrewd judge of men and felt vindicated that he had indeed smelt a rat. ‘So! You fell out with de Bonneville, this man you hardly knew. Perhaps you killed him?’

Fitzhai leaned forward and indignantly punched the table with his fist. ‘For God’s sake, of course I didn’t kill him! I hardly knew the man. I kept clear of him in France, and when we arrived at Harfleur, I never saw him again, live or dead.’

‘You left him in Normandy?’ asked John.

‘Yes, I took ship for Southampton within two days, as the wind happened to be favourable. The devil knows what he did. Why should I care? He was nothing to me.’

As the coroner digested this, Richard de Revelle asked, ‘If you knew him so slightly, how can you be sure that he is the dead man, on such a slight description?’

‘I’ve seen the belt and the scabbard, haven’t I?’ retorted Fitzhai.

‘Those may have been stolen from him – and they’re common enough.’

‘Well, he always dressed in green, either his surcoat or his cloak. And he had that hairy mole. How many other fair-headed men have such a distinctive blemish on their neck as your officer described?’

John tried another approach. ‘Do you know anything about de Bonneville? His family, where he came from, where he was going?’

‘I’ve told you, I do not! Neither did I want to know. I’m sorry the poor fellow is slain, but I couldn’t abide him, what little I knew of him.’

De Revelle steepled his fingers together, elbows on the table.

‘Why this dislike of Hubert de Bonneville, eh? There must have been bad blood between you?’

Alan Fitzhai shook his head obstinately. ‘It was a personal matter, Sheriff, with respect, none of your business. He put on superior airs and acted as if he was the soul and conscience of our party as we came up through Burgundy and Aquitaine.’ He wiped a hand across his luxuriant moustache. ‘He was a sanctimonious prig, with an attitude far above his station.’

‘You sound as if you know him better than you admit,’ observed the sheriff, but a few more minutes of questioning showed that Fitzhai either could not or would not tell them anything more.

‘You will not leave Exeter without my consent, Fitzhai,’ commanded the sheriff. ‘Your sword and your horse will be impounded and you will stay within the city walls until I give you leave to go. Is that understood?’

The spiky beard bristled with indignation. ‘Am I arrested, then? And under suspicion?’

John slid off the end of the table and looked down at him. ‘You are the only one who knew and can name the dead man. You confess yourself that you had no love for him, and in due course we will pursue that further – much further. Can you wonder that we wish you to remain within our sight?’

De Revelle added his own warning: ‘If you were not a Norman soldier recently returned from Palestine, you would be thrown into the castle gaol, so be grateful for our clemency.’ He gestured to the sergeant, who stepped forward and touched Fitzhai’s arm to motion him out of the chamber.

As he went to the narrow arch at the head of the stairs, the man turned for a last indignant complaint. ‘And what am I supposed to live on in Exeter, while you decide what to do? I need bed, bread and beer.’

John grinned at him cynically. ‘If I know anything about returning Crusaders, they’ll have a few gold coins sewn into the hem of their clothing. You’ll not starve!’

The sergeant urged Fitzhai out, and left John and his brother-in-law to take stock of the new situation.

‘Well, John, I have to say that our joint venture certainly turned up something, though I could have done just as well without your new-fangled coroner’s business.’

John bridled. ‘Without my inquiries in the first place, you’d never have heard of Alan Fitzhai. It was my initiative in sending my clerk to Honiton that flushed him out for us!’

The sheriff chose to ignore this obvious truth. He rose from behind the trestle table. ‘Is this our man, I wonder? I wouldn’t trust him beyond a sword’s length.’

This gave Thomas the courage to enter the discussion. ‘Until I told him that the man in green was dead, Fitzhai was quite happy to talk about him. Surely if he had been involved in his killing, he would never have mentioned him?’

John nodded at this. ‘I’ll not prejudge him, Richard. The first thing is to confirm that our dead man is, indeed, Hubert de Bonneville. For all we know, Fitzhai is spinning us a pack of lies.’

‘I doubt that, Crowner. Why should he involve himself in this affair if the corpse is not de Bonneville? Fitzhai was reluctant, but he admitted that he knew him. A pound to a penny that he’s responsible for his death, too.’

John scowled. ‘I’ll not presume in any inquest that the dead man is this Hubert until some relative confirms it. That will be the next step.’

Richard de Revelle pulled on an elegant pair of broad-cuffed gloves, ready to leave the chamber. ‘I care nothing for your inquests, John. All I need is a culprit, a trial and a hanging.’

John grunted, a habit he was catching from Gwyn. His opinion of the sheriff’s sense of justice was low, even in an age not renowned for the concept of fair play.

De Revelle had decided that he had given enough of his valuable time to humouring the coroner and marched out, followed by his sergeant, leaving John and his retainers to their own devices.

The taciturn giant from Cornwall stirred himself to pour them what was left of the pitcher of ale, and settled back on the window ledge with his mug.

John slid on to his stool, still warm from the sheriff’s backside. ‘We must go out to Peter Tavy to see these de Bonnevilles. They’ll have to come to Widecombe to view the corpse.’

Thomas shuddered into his ale and crossed himself. ‘But he’s buried and he’ll be putrid by now,’ he squeaked, with an expression of disgust. ‘How can a brother, or anyone else, be asked to look at a loved one in that state? And, anyway, could they tell who it was after he has become so corrupt?’

‘He’ll not be too bad after being in the ground for only a few days – keeps them cool, does moist earth.’ Gwyn seemed unmoved by the prospect of other folk’s revulsion.

The coroner agreed with him. ‘It’s been cool wet weather and a grave is the best place to slow putrefaction. Even if they can’t recognise his face, his build, his hair and, above all, this birthmark on the neck should satisfy them once they’ve seen his clothes and weapon.’

The clerk looked unconvinced, but no one cared much what he thought.

Gwyn sank the last of the beer in his jar and wiped the back of his hand across his luxuriant moustache. ‘There’s a lot more truth to be squeezed out of that Alan Fitzhai. He was telling us only half a story.’

Thomas nodded, like a bird pecking grain. ‘He’s keeping back something that’s to his disadvantage.’

John shrugged and rose again from his seat. ‘You may both be right, but we must move one step at a time. First thing in the morning, we ride across Dartmoor. You can stop off at Widecombe, Thomas, and organise the digging out of the cadaver. Gwyn and I will ride on to the Tavy valley, break the bad news to the family and bring someone back to identify the body.’

As the coroner left the chamber, the clerk was uncertain whether to feel relief at being spared the extra mule-ride across the moor or having qualms at seeing the rotting corpse hauled back to the surface at Widecombe.