Crowner Royal

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Almost at the same moment, William Aubrey noticed them standing inside the entrance. He blanched and leaned forward to whisper to Ranulf and Hawise, who were sitting with their backs towards the newcomers. Their heads shot around and in any other circumstances the expressions of surprise on their faces would have been comical. William sat transfixed, but Ranulf recovered his poise almost immediately, rising to his feet and coming across to John and his officer with a smile on his face.

‘Great God, John, how came you here? Do you seek me or the Lady Hawise?’

De Wolfe was not sure if there was some innuendo in his remark, but that was not his main concern. ‘I think you have some explaining to do, Ranulf of Abingdon,’ he said harshly, moving towards the corner table.

The young marshal turned up his hands in a parody of supplication. ‘You have caught me red-handed, sir! What can I say, other than love is blind and will not be denied, even by common sense?’

John hesitated. Was the dashing young knight only involved in a foolish elopement, running away from a jealous husband? Perhaps his other suspicions were unfounded, after all.

‘I can well understand that the fair lady may have captivated your heart, Ranulf,’ he growled. ‘But what of William there?’

He jabbed a finger towards Aubrey, who was stuck half-risen from his bench, apparently paralysed by indecision. ‘Does this lady’s power over men extend to more than one at a time?’

He had not meant to be offensive, but the silent Hawise turned her head to give him a poisonous glare.

‘My good friend William has decided to join me in our new life, Crowner!’ replied Ranulf, almost light-heartedly. ‘We have tired of being superior stable boys at Westminster. There are fortunes to be made in the tourney grounds of Germany.’

He waved a hand at their table, where food was half-consumed. ‘Join us for a meal, you and your good man Gwyn.’

De Wolfe shook his head, still suspicious of the situation.

‘I need some answers from you and Aubrey. Why did you choose this tavern to hide away, presumably to wait for a ship for Flanders?’

Ranulf stared at him. This was a question he had not expected.

‘Because I know it well, it has the best roast beef in London and clean beds upstairs. We need a decent night’s lodging, so where else but the Falcon?’

De Wolfe fixed him with a steely eye, his brooding hawk’s face searching the man’s features for the truth.

‘And not because you know it well from your visits here with Canon Simon Basset?’ he snapped.

Ranulf stared back at him guilelessly. ‘By Christ’s wounds, sir, you speak in riddles! We are merely waiting here until a cog is due to sail for Antwerp on tomorrow’s tide.’

The coroner looked across at William Aubrey, who remained as if turned to stone, only his frightened eyes watching every move. Then John moved to stand over Hawise d’Ayncourt, who looked at him as if he was something scraped from the midden in the inn’s backyard.

‘Your husband will be overjoyed to know that you are safe after your abduction, lady,’ he said sarcastically.

She glared up at him. ‘Abduction be damned! I have left that fat pig, the dullest man in Christendom!’

She was not to know that lifting her head to speak was the trigger for mayhem.

As she raised her chin defiantly, John saw a glint of gold appear above the neck of the pale-cream gown that she wore. Careless of any courtesy to a lady, he plunged his fingers into the space between the linen and her soft skin. Paying no heed to her scream of outrage, he pulled out a heavy necklace of solid gold, embellished with intricate designs typical of Saxon craftsmanship.

‘I think the last time I saw this, it was in the strongroom of the Great Tower!’ he roared at Ranulf. ‘So where’s the rest of it, you thieving bastard?’

Three men on the next table had leapt to their feet when they heard the scream and saw the bosom of a fine lady apparently being violated, but they backed away rapidly when Ranulf whipped out a long dagger from his belt and advanced on the coroner, waving it dangerously close to his face. Simultaneously, William Aubrey unsheathed a short sword and, with his dagger in the other hand, leapt over the table to stand back-to-back with his friend, facing the somewhat astonished Gwyn. The room went into pandemonium, as the other diners fell over themselves in haste, to get out of range of what looked like a fight to the death.

De Wolfe and Gwyn had left their long swords in their saddle-sheaths, as they had entered the tavern expecting only to search for information, so both had to grab for their own daggers, which never left their belts.

‘You stupid cow!’ roared Ranulf at his mistress. ‘I told you not to wear that damned thing until we left the country!’

At the same time, he lunged at John, who stepped back sharply and knocked over a fat dame who was desperately trying to get to the safety of the other side of the room.

‘You cannot escape the city, Ranulf!’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘You may as well surrender and put yourselves at the mercy of the court.’

For reply, Ranulf slashed out again at John, this time slicing into the sleeve of his grey tunic. ‘What mercy will we get?’ he yelled. ‘The choice between hanging or flaying alive?’

Behind him William Aubrey was challenging the big Cornishman and it became obvious that both these younger men, strong, fit and well trained from their frequent practice on the tourney fields, were expert fighters.

But the coroner and his officer, though more than a dozen years older, were crafty and experienced.

As Aubrey advanced on Gwyn, the ginger giant swept up a stool with one hand and swung it like a scythe, knocking the sword from the other man’s hand. As it flew across the room, there were redoubled screams from the unfortunate patrons of the Falcon, who were struggling to get out of the doorway.

Ranulf and John circled each other, knife hands outstretched, each making feints and retreats, knocking over benches and stools as they glared into each other’s eyes, watching to anticipate every new move. Hawise shrunk back on her bench, her face contorted partly by fear and partly by the thrill of having four reckless men fighting over her.

Aubrey, having lost his sword, was now on equal terms with Gwyn but arrogantly thought that he would easily dispatch this lumpish oaf from Cornwall. He made a sudden thrust, but the big man was not where he expected him to be — on the point of his dagger. Gwyn had stepped sideways and in a flash sunk his own knife deep into William’s belly. He dragged it upwards under his ribs and a scream from the younger man was almost instantly staunched as a gout of blood erupted from his mouth.

As he pulled out his dagger, his opponent crashed to the floor, to the accompaniment of more shouts, curses and screams from the remaining bemused and frightened patrons.

‘Settled this sod, Crowner!’ yelled Gwyn. Moving towards the coroner and his adversary, he hesitated, wondering when to intervene and bring this fracas to a speedy end.

‘Don’t kill this bastard as well!’ hollered de Wolfe. ‘Or we’ll never know what happened.’

But Ranulf had other ideas in his desperate situation. Suddenly stepping back from the coroner, he threw an arm around Hawise’s waist and hoisted her to her feet, putting the point of his knife against her throat.

‘Now back off, both of you!’ he screamed, pressing the dagger so that a drop of blood appeared on the woman’s white skin. ‘Let us through and out into the yard, or she’ll die!’

De Wolfe was outraged at his lack of chivalry. ‘Is this what you won your spurs for, damn you? To shelter behind a woman’s skirts?’

His contempt was far outmatched by Hawise. She screamed some obscenities that no high-born lady should have known as she wriggled in his grasp, but the knife bit even deeper and she subsided.

‘I thought you were enamoured of this woman!’ raged John. ‘Now you are prepared to kill her!’

The knight gave a twisted grin. ‘She is a demon in bed, for which I give thanks. But if it is a matter of her life or mine, then mine wins every time!’

Frustrated, but afraid that Ranulf would keep his promise and drive the knife deeper into her neck, John could only stand impotently while the other man began to pull her towards the door.

‘Shall I have him, Crowner?’ shouted Gwyn, waving his dagger hopefully. John shook his head. ‘The swine is mad enough to slay her. Leave it, he can’t get far.’

In fact, he got nowhere at all.

Suddenly, a glazed look came over Ranulf’s face and he slid down Hawise’s body to a crumpled heap on the floor. Astonished, John and his officer looked down at him, and saw that his eyes were open and his arms were flailing weakly, though the dagger had dropped from his fingers. Hawise was still on her feet, also looking down with a hand to her mouth in surprised consternation.

‘She’s stabbed the sod!’ hissed Gwyn. ‘There’s a little knife sticking out of his back.’

An onlooker, in butcher’s tunic and apron, gaped at the victim.

‘He’s been pithed!’ he shouted, with professional expertise. ‘The blade has gone into his backbone, between the chops.’

By now, the landlord had returned from market, to find his dining chamber resembling the shambles at Smithfield that he had just left. A corpse lay on the floor, covered in blood and another man had fallen, partly paralysed, against one of his tables. Now that the violent action had ceased, the room was a babble of excited talk, some of which apprised the landlord of what had happened. John went across to him as Gwyn and the butcher knelt by Ranulf’s side.

‘Good man, I am the king’s coroner and that is my officer. We came across these two men who are urgently wanted by the Chief Justiciar for most serious crimes. They resisted and one is dead. The other seems badly wounded and we need to find a physician to attend to him.’

John was afraid that Ranulf would die before he could discover what had happened, and the landlord said that he would get some men to carry him to St Bartholomew’s, this being the only place nearby with reputable medical care.

As he went off to organise this, John went over to the fallen marshal, who was slumped forwards, murmuring indistinctly.

Gwyn had kicked his dagger away for safety, but there seemed little chance of Ranulf becoming a danger ever again. Hawise was sitting weeping on her bench, but when John placed a consoling hand on her shoulder, she looked up defiantly.

‘Have I killed him? He was going to murder me, after all we’ve been to each other these past two weeks.’

John looked down at the small ivory-handled knife, still sticking out from the centre of the man’s back, below the shoulder blades. ‘That was your eating knife?’ he asked gently.

She nodded, wiping her eyes angrily with the hem of her sleeve.

‘He was stabbing my neck, I could feel the blood running.’ She lifted her chin to prove it. ‘I thought he was going to kill me there and then, so I reached behind me to the table and grabbed the knife. I thrust it at the nearest part of him I could reach, to make him stop hurting me!’

She burst into tears again and he patted her shoulder awkwardly. Crying women frightened him more than a horde of Saracens.

‘We’ll get you taken back to Westminster as soon as we can arrange it. But you had better let me have that necklace, it would be better for you not to be seen wearing it.’

As she took it off, he made sure that she was not in possession of any more of the looted treasure. ‘It’s all in his saddlebag in the chamber upstairs,’ she confessed. ‘He said we would be rich when it was sold in Germany and that he’d win even more in the great tournaments.’

Gwyn came up and muttered in his ear. ‘I reckon this fellow’s going to die. If you want to get him to talk, we’d better look sharp about it.’

As if they had heard him, two servants pushed their way into the chamber with a door unhinged from one of the bedrooms.

They laid it alongside the injured man, then looked at John.

‘We can’t lie him down with that knife in his spine. Shall I pull it out?’

De Wolfe looked at Ranulf’s back, where a thin stream of blood was running from around the knife blade staining the green cloth of his tunic. He shook his head.

‘It might kill him, for all I know, stuck in his backbone like that. Put him face down, with his head turned to the side.’

As they jogged off up the road, John had a grim memory of Canon Simon being carted off to the same hospital in much the same fashion.

‘You are going to die, my son, do you understand?’

These solemn words were uttered by Brother Philip, the same Augustinian monk that had attended the poisoned canon.

Ranulf nodded weakly. ‘I need to confess and be shrived, father,’ he said. With the knife now removed, he lay on his back on a mattress on the floor of a cubicle in the hospital.

The monk-physician had earlier told John and Gwyn that there was no hope for the younger knight. ‘The point has not only cut the vital pith that runs inside the backbone, but the amount of bleeding both outside and under the flesh, shows that some major vessel has been punctured. It is only a matter of time before he dies.’

‘How long has he got?’ asked Gwyn.

The monk turned up his palms. ‘Impossible to say. It could be minutes, if the bleeding increases. Or it may be weeks, but he has lost the use of his bladder as well as his legs and that usually means that corruption of the kidneys will come sooner or later.’

He stopped and crossed himself. ‘It would be better that a fit young man like that dies soon, rather than suffer the distress and indignity of his paralysed condition.’

‘I had best speak with him right away,’ said de Wolfe. ‘He has committed heinous crimes against both the king and his fellow men. I suspect he was the one who poisoned the canon you treated some time ago.’

They went back into the small ward and John crouched alongside Ranulf of Abingdon.

‘William Aubrey is dead and I fear that you will be joining him before long. You now have nothing to lose and perhaps by full confession, your soul will have something to gain in purgatory. Do you understand?’

The under-marshal nodded, tears in his eyes as he realised that his legs would never move again, even for the short time he was expected to survive. Brother Philip pressed a crucifix into his hands and murmured a prayer.

‘Tell me all about it, Ranulf,’ urged de Wolfe. ‘Simon Basset was another of your conspirators, eh?’

‘Yes, it was his idea from the start,’ muttered Ranulf, fumbling with the rosary attached to the cross. ‘He was overfond of the good life. You have seen his house, his rich furnishings, his love of the best food and wine — especially his fondness for whoring. Well, he has an even grander house in Lichfield and he was always in need of money to buy more luxuries and to pay his debts for the ones he had.’

‘So he came to you with a plan? But how did you come to conspire with a canon?’

‘As marshals, we have several times brought treasure boxes from Winchester, which were received by Simon as a senior Exchequer official. He also was fond of secret gaming, and we came to know him well from that. He said that if we could get an impression of both keys of one of the money chests, he could manage to steal from the strongroom and we could share the proceeds.’

‘So when the special box of treasure trove was to be moved, you decided to act? But how did you get the keys, I had them all the time?’

The dying man smiled weakly. ‘Not all the time, Sir John. Remember the fire in the barn? We set that deliberately.’

De Wolfe was still mystified. ‘But how could that benefit you?’

‘William Aubrey pretended to go out for a shite at the back of the barn. He took a brand from the remains of the fire and set the thatch alight. When it was going well enough, he raised the alarm, but I pretended to sleep on. You rushed out in your bare feet, but left your belt with your pouch behind, next to where I made sure I was lying.’

‘You bastard!’ said John, forgetting for a moment that he was speaking to a dying man. ‘But I was gone only a moment or two. I suspected it might be a diversion to rob the chests on the cart, so I rushed back again.’

‘It was but the work of a few seconds to take the keys and press them into that box of wax which I held ready under my blanket.’

John shook his head in amazement at the sheer nerve of the thieves and the risk they had taken.

‘But how could you know that we were going to be forced to stop at that village, where there was a convenient barn to set alight?’

‘We didn’t! It was a fortunate chance which we took on the spur of the moment. Originally, we were going to creep up on you at night and strike your head to knock your wits out, then take an impression of the keys as well as stealing the contents of your purse to make it look like a casual robbery.’

De Wolfe was aghast at the casual way the man spoke of an assault which might well have killed him.

‘How did Canon Basset spirit away the gold?’ he demanded.

‘I do not know the details. I did not want to know them!’ whispered Ranulf. ‘I presume he managed to be left alone with the chests in the Tower for long enough to stuff some of the better trophies under his cassock.’

‘Then what happened to them?’

The knight looked towards the Augustinian. ‘Am I really going to die, Father?’

The monk nodded. ‘You cannot survive this, my son. After you have made your legal confession to the coroner, we will take another for the sake of your soul.’

Ranulf sighed and held the crucifix to his lips for a moment.

‘I did not fully trust Simon Basset. He used to cheat at cards, which is a bad sign as to a man’s true character. At first, he did not want to tell William and myself where he had hidden the treasure, but we threatened to expose him and then run away ourselves, so he gave in. He had placed them in a pottery jar concealed behind a loose stone in the abutment of the bridge next to his house — the one where the Royal Way crosses the Clowson Brook.’

Gwyn groaned. ‘We would never have found that hiding place, if we looked until Doomsday!’

Ranulf sank back weakly, the cross falling from his fingers.

The monk looked at him with some concern and reached out a hand to feel his pulse. ‘His breathing is becoming very shallow. I think that perhaps the blood in his spine is rising towards his brain.’

‘What about that ironmaster?’ asked John, urgently. ‘I am sure he was the one who made the copies of the keys?’

‘Yes, we were afraid that he might betray us, as he was asking for a larger reward, so Simon said he had to go.’

‘And you did it?’ rasped the coroner.

‘Yes, God forgive me. He was too much of a risk.’

His face was very pale now and his lips were taking on a violet hue, so John hurried on. ‘And the canon, what of his death?’

‘He said that as he had taken all the risks in taking the treasure from the Tower, he also should have a greater share. We had agreed to split it three ways, but he wanted a half share. Aubrey and I decided that if there were going to be half shares, we should have one each. I arranged to meet him at the Falcon and I slipped a large dose of foxglove into his food.’

‘Where did you get that?’ demanded Gwyn.

Ranulf managed a slight shrug. ‘William got it somewhere. Any shady apothecary will sell you anything, if the price is right. I think he told the man he wanted to get rid of a sick dog.’

John looked across at Gwyn and they both shook their heads in wonder. The cunning, deviousness and lack of honour shown by two knights of the realm and an ordained canon was beyond belief. All for the love of money and the things it could buy.

‘Have you done with your questions, Sir John?’ asked the monk. ‘I think this man, evil though he has been, has had enough for the moment.’

Ranulf certainly looked as if he was at death’s door; rising, John had one last question.

‘You were prepared to attack me to get the keys — so was it you who tried to strangle me in the chapel crypt and then fell me with an arrow at Greenford?’

Even in his failing condition, Ranulf managed to look astonished. ‘Why should I want to do that? I know nothing of those incidents, Sir John, as God is my judge.’

Though John would not now have believed anything the rogue said, there was ring of sincerity about the denial.

‘God soon will be your judge, Ranulf! You have caused deaths, a great deal of distress and besmirched the name of the knighthood you hold. I hope that you have sufficient remorse to allow God in heaven to show you some compassion.’

He walked out with Gwyn behind him, into the sunlight of the large precinct around the hospital. Then he stopped and looked down sadly at the ground between his feet.

‘I have not come out of this well, Gwyn! I was given charge of those bloody keys and I failed, even though it was but for a few moments. Those cunning bastards outmanoeuvred me and once again I have betrayed my king.’

Gwyn began to demur, but de Wolfe raised a hand to silence him. ‘This makes me all the more determined in what I had planned to do,’ he declared obscurely. ‘I need to see Hubert Walter as soon as possible, tell him how this business has turned out — and then tell him I no longer feel able to keep the post of coroner.’

Three mornings later, the dust had settled on the hectic events that had involved the Coroner of the Verge. The palace was relatively quiet, as Queen Eleanor had ridden off for Portsmouth two days earlier with William Marshal and her retinue.

John sat in his chamber overlooking the Thames, with Gwyn perched on the window-ledge and Thomas at his usual place at the table. A few sheets of parchment now lay completed in front of the clerk, as he had just finished writing the account John had given him of the past few days, to be placed in the Chancery records.

‘So the Lady Hawise is now safely restored to her husband,’ said Thomas reflectively.

‘When we got back to Westminster, I sought out Renaud de Seigneur, who was prowling the palace like a man possessed,’ said John. ‘I think he was more angry at being cuckolded than at the loss of his wife, but when I told him that she was in the city, left in the care of the wife of the landlord of the Falcon, he yelled for his servants and galloped away to fetch her.’

‘I saw them returning some time later,’ reported Gwyn, relishing the memory. ‘She was riding pillion behind him and neither looked very pleased with each other. He almost dragged her away into the guest quarters and she looked far from happy at being reunited with her husband.’

‘They went off with Queen Eleanor’s procession, so by next week they’ll be back in Blois. God knows what will become of them then, they are hardly a pair of lovebirds!’

‘She’ll no doubt find some good-looking knight to amuse herself with,’ prophesied Gwyn, with a guileless look at his master, who was heartily relieved at the departure of the feckless beauty.

John was still smarting at the news that Hubert Walter had given him when he reported the success of his mission to find Ranulf and William Aubrey. His visit to the Justiciar’s chambers was made even sweeter when he was able to dump a saddlebag on the floor and produce all the golden objects that had been stolen from the Tower, including the heavy Saxon necklet that he had retrieved from around Hawise’s neck. But this triumph was somewhat dampened when he told Hubert of his suspicions that the lady and her husband may have been spies for Philip of France and his regret that they had left before he had the chance to expose them.

Instead of expressing concern, the archbishop let out a loud guffaw and slapped his hand on the table in a gesture of good humour.

‘Don’t fret about that, John! They were indeed spies — but for me, not the French! Renaud de Seigneur came across to report what he had recently picked up in Blois and neighbouring counties about Philip Augustus’s intentions in that area.’

The coroner was mortified. ‘Did his wife know about this?’

Hubert grinned roguishly at his old comrade. ‘John, the old dog used Hawise and her insatiable appetite for younger men, to gather intelligence wherever it might be found — often in some large French bed, no doubt!’

De Wolfe felt sullied by the knowledge, though later he consoled himself with the thought that at least she had wanted him for his body, rather than to worm French secrets from him.

It also deepened the mystery of who had ordered the two attacks upon his life, as several times he had falsely claimed in the presence of the de Seigneurs, that he was on the point of unmasking some foreign spies. But if they were on the side of England, this ruled them out as the instigators of the assaults.

Since his interview with the Justiciar, he had had news of Ranulf’s death in the Hospital of St Bartholomew. Though the man was a murderous rogue, John felt a twinge of sadness for both him and William Aubrey. They had been amiable companions, even though their duplicity was unforgivable.

Gwyn had felt no compunction or guilt about so effectively dispatching the younger marshal, as his philosophy was ‘kill or be killed’ and anyone who drew a sword or knife upon him was fair game for fatal retaliation. Now he hauled himself off the windowsill and stretched his hairy arms above his head in a lazy movement.

‘Are we really going to get out of this miserable place and go home to God’s own land?’ he asked.

De Wolfe nodded, almost afraid to tempt fate by parading his good fortune. ‘I have promised to wait until next week, until other arrangements are made,’ he said. ‘Hubert Walter has committed himself, though I still have concerns about what King Richard might have to say.’

After settling the affair of the treasure with the Chief Justiciar, John had stood squarely before Hubert’s table and, after a few preliminary throat clearances to cover his nervousness, launched into his plea.

‘Your Grace, though this matter has ended satisfactorily, in that the gold has been recovered intact and the miscreants have paid the ultimate penalty, I feel that I have failed you and the king. I was charged with the safe keeping of that treasure and, as I have explained, I was tricked into losing possession of the keys, albeit for a brief few moments.’

He paused for breath, but Hubert sat with his fingers interlaced and did not interrupt.

‘Once before I failed in my duty to my king and I consider that I should no longer hold this position of trust as Coroner of the Verge. I have to say that the problems of jurisdiction and the dearth of work here, also make me feel redundant. I humbly seek your consent to my release, so that I may return to Devon and live out my years quietly.’

He swallowed hard, partly from emotion and partly from the effort of making an unusually long speech, then waited anxiously for the Justiciar’s response.

‘By St Peter’s cods, John, that’s bloody nonsense!’ said Hubert, in most un-ecclesiastical language. ‘The king himself absolved you from any blame over the Vienna capture. If anything, it was his own fault for being so rash! And as for this present escapade, you brought it to a successful conclusion single-handedly, apart from the help of that great ginger fellow and that remarkable little clerk of yours.’

De Wolfe opened his mouth to repeat his confession of failure, but Hubert held up his hand.

‘No, John, you were duped by clever and unscrupulous men, and no blame can be attached to you. The king will be well satisfied that the gold has been recovered and the perpetrators dealt with in a summary fashion, with no jeering tales to be bandied about.’

‘I still feel unable to continue as Coroner of the Verge, sire,’ said John stubbornly. ‘I am sure you can find some knight or baron more suited to the life of the court to take my place — the duties are far from arduous.’

After some more contrary argument by Hubert, he eventually gave in.

‘If you are really set upon this — and I suspect it is as much your wishing to return to your beloved Devon as eschewing the duties here — then so be it. I will have to concoct some tale for the king when I see him in Rouen next month, but I trust that he will agree, as a reward for your recovering his precious gold!’

There the matter was left, but now John was able to confirm to his two assistants that in a week or so they would be back on the road to Exeter.

‘I will be happy enough helping my wife in the Bush,’ boomed Gwyn cheerfully. ‘And playing with my lads and drinking half the profits of the tavern!’

‘And the archivist in the cathedral invited me to return there to help him at any time,’ added Thomas. ‘I’m sure I can eventually find a living somewhere, perhaps in some remote parish.’ He sounded a little wistful at that, as at heart he was an academic priest, rather than one who would be content to tend his flock in a rural village.

‘But what about you, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn solicitously. ‘You and I are too old to go campaigning abroad, seeking new battles — our sword arms are getting tired. What will you do with yourself?’

John grinned crookedly. ‘I have this partnership with Hugh de Relaga, so I can take a more active interest in it, as it brings me sufficient to live on. And no doubt I will be taking the road to Dawlish quite often!’

His smile faded. ‘Though God knows how this matter of my wife will be resolved — I am neither married nor a bachelor these days.’

After their dinner at the dwelling in Long Ditch Lane, where Aedwulf and Osanna received with equanimity the news that their tenants were leaving, de Wolfe and his officer walked back to the chamber in the palace. They were resigned to another afternoon of boredom, as no palace resident had been murdered, raped or battered.

As usual, Gwyn stared out of the window at the ever-changing river, the boats plying up and down and the muddy banks being covered and exposed twice a day by the tide. John sat at his table, his Latin exercises lying ignored before him, while he thought dark thoughts about Matilda’s continued obdurateness. When he went back to Exeter, something must be done to resolve the problem, though for the life of him he could not imagine what. His mood lightened when his mind moved on to his house and his dog, with images of himself sitting before his hearth in the coming autumn, with a quart of ale and old Brutus’s head on his lap. And the journeys to Dawlish and the company of the delectable Hilda were the pinnacle of his wandering thoughts.

They were shattered when Thomas came through the door, out of breath and obviously in a state of great excitement.

‘Crowner, you remember that novice I brought to you, Robin Byard, who told us that tale about Basil of Reigate?’

De Wolfe sat up straight and glared at his clerk. ‘What of him? Has he been slain too?’

‘No, it’s not him, but another novitiate that Robin brought to see me after dinner in the abbey refectory just now. He was also a friend of Basil’s.’ Thomas reddened slightly. ‘Another very good friend, if you know what I mean.’

‘For the Virgin’s sake, get to the point, Thomas! You’re as bad as Gwyn for spinning out a tale!’

‘This young man, Alfred, has been away for some weeks at the chapel in Windsor, for he is a particularly sweet chanter.’ Thomas caught the impatient glint in John’s eye and hurried on.

‘So he knew nothing of Basil’s death nor what Basil had told Robin Byard about overhearing some treason. But today he learned from Robin — who is also his very good friend indeed — what Basil told him of his fears.’

‘What the hell’s all this about, dwarf?’ grumbled Gwyn, who was getting confused.

‘Basil had also told Alfred that he overheard sedition in the guest chambers — but he knows who it was that was speaking, for Basil had told him!’

The coroner rammed his fists against his table and levered himself up to tower over his clerk. ‘Who was it, Thomas? Don’t tell me that after all, it was that fat lord from Blois?’

Thomas shook his head emphatically. ‘Not at all, Crowner! It was the archdeacon from the Auvergne, Bernard de Montfort. He was giving a parchment roll to another guest, a chaplain from some priory in Ponthieu. Basil heard him say, in Latin, that he must get it to Paris, as it listed the manor-lords of Kent and Sussex who were favourable to Prince John and also the disposition of garrisons along the coast. The archdeacon said it was the result of a month’s work on his part and not to fail him in its delivery. Then the screen fell down and the two men saw Basil crouching there.’

That was all Thomas’s news, but it was more than enough. De Wolfe was blazing with anger, as not only had the archdeacon brought about the death of the innocent guest-chamber clerk, but he must have instigated the two attacks upon John, fearful of the truth of John’s boasts about soon unmasking the spy.

‘How did he manage it, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn. ‘That fat priest was not fit enough to go stabbing, strangling and shooting crossbows! He must have employed that ratcatching villain who died in the forest in Greenwood.’

‘A very convenient death, too!’ snapped John. ‘I always thought that falling a bare dozen feet from that deer-trap was unlikely to have broken his neck. Now we know, for it was de Montfort’s servant who chased him and happily found him dead, so that he could not confess as to who had hired him. That Raoul must have deliberately broken his neck before we got there!’

‘So who stabbed Basil on the river pier?’ queried Thomas.

De Wolfe looked at Gwyn. ‘The man you saw running past that window — could it have been this Jordan fellow?’

Gwyn shrugged. ‘Just a big fellow, no way of telling.’

He paused, his brows furrowed. ‘So what are you going to do about the archdeacon, Crowner? He went off with the queen’s party and is in Portsmouth by now.’

John paced up and down the chamber in indecision. ‘I’ll have to tell the Justiciar, obviously. It’s now probably too late to chase them to the Channel, but that’s up to Hubert to decide. Get that fellow Alfred over here, Thomas — and Robin Byard too. Hubert Walter must be informed of this, but he’s so devious in his ways, that for all I know, Bernard de Montfort might be one of his agents as well, giving false information to the French. If the stakes were high enough, that wouldn’t stop them from killing a clerk or even a lowly coroner in order to keep their secrets safe!’

By the end of that day, John had done all he could by delivering this latest news to the Keeper, Nathaniel de Levelondes, as Hubert had gone off to Lambeth to view his new palace. What they did about it was no longer his concern, he was tired of Westminster and all its intrigues. The sooner he could get home to Devon, the better he would be pleased.

He trudged home with Gwyn at about the sixth hour, in the warmth of a pleasant summer evening, as the oppressive heat of previous weeks had moderated. Thomas had gone off to the abbey and the two old campaigners walked in companionable silence down Thieving Lane towards the Long Ditch. Both had the feeling that another phase of their life was coming to a close and were wondering what lay before them back in Exeter. For each of them, things would be very different. Gwyn would be living with his wife and running an alehouse, a very different life from being a coroner’s officer.

John would no longer be that coroner, so would time hang heavily on his hands? How was this new liaison with Hilda going to work out? She had made it clear that she was not willing to give up her fine house and life in Dawlish. He still had the responsibility of his dwelling in Martin’s Lane and of Mary, to say nothing of the embarrassment of a stubborn wife hiding in Polsloe Priory.

They turned into Long Ditch Lane and ambled up towards their lodging, but as they neared it, the globular figure of Osanna came out of the door and stood waiting for them, hands on her hips.

‘What’s she want now?’ growled Gwyn. ‘To tell us it’s eels again for supper?’

Her news was quite different. ‘There’s a lady arrived to visit you, Sir John. With a mortal lot of possessions.’

His face lit up, trusting that Hilda had again come on one of their ships to the Thames. Did a great deal of luggage mean that she had decided to come and live with him?

He hurried inside and stopped as if he had run into a stone wall.

Sitting on a stool, surrounded by bags and bundles, was Matilda!

Arrayed in dusty travelling clothes, she glared at him, her mouth a hard, disapproving line in her square face.

‘Matilda!’ he groaned. ‘How came you here?’

‘With a party of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury,’ she snapped in her gravelly voice. ‘I have decided that it is not seemly that the coroner to the king’s own court should live without his wife.’

She meticulously rearranged her skirts across her knees. ‘The prioress and Dame Madge told me of your tales of the grandeur of Westminster and all the eminent nobles and prelates with whom you associate. It is only right that I should be by your side.’

John threw back his head and gazed at the ceiling, wishing it would fall upon him and put him out of his sudden misery.

Where all his attempts at coaxing her out of Polsloe had failed, her unbridled snobbery and mania for social advancement had succeeded. All that remained was for him to gather the courage to tell her that they would be returning to Exeter within the week and that he would shortly be neither the Royal Coroner of the Verge — nor any sort of coroner at all!