Crowner’s Quest

Chapter Ten In which Crowner John meets a woman in distress

The forecast of the two soldiers at Berry Pomeroy that there would be no snow was correct – but they had not anticipated the rain that came down the next morning. In the early hours of the first Monday of the year, the frost was washed away by steady rain. The streets of Exeter became a slime of mud and rubbish with slippery cobbles exposed here and there.

As Crowner John made his way up to the castle, a torrent of dirty water ran down the hill towards him from the gateway. It trickled into the outer ward to add to the morass of churned mud that covered the wide space between the high castle walls and the wooden stockade that enclosed the outer bailey. As he looked to his left on the way up to the drawbridge, he saw the residents of the outer zone squelching between the huts and lean-to shanties that housed the men-at-arms and their families. Urchins ran around semi-naked with mud up to the knees, and women muffled in shawls tried to keep their firewood dry as they stoked their cooking stoves in the doorways of the flimsy shelters. Oxen and horses plodded through the mire, some pulling large-wheeled carts, adding to the chaos of what was a military camp combined with an inner-city village. Ignoring the rain that began to trickle down his face and off the end of his big nose, de Wolfe strode the last few yards to the shelter of the tall gatehouse.

As he was about to climb up the narrow stairs to his chamber, Sergeant Gabriel appeared at the guardroom door and saluted.

‘Sir John, the sheriff wants you to attend on him as soon as you arrive.’ He coughed diplomatically. ‘By the way he said it, sir, I reckon it’s urgent.’

De Wolfe grunted and walked out into the rain again. The inner ward was filthy too: all the rubbish frozen into the ground these past two weeks had now floated to the surface. He trudged moistly across to the keep and reached the hall with some relief, although entering feet had made the floor within the entrance almost as muddy as it was outside.

Ignoring the noisy throng milling around, he loped to the sheriff’s door and nodded to the guard as he went in. A clerk and a steward were in the chamber, talking to Richard de Revelle and thrusting parchments under his eyes. For once, instead of making the coroner wait, as soon as the sheriff laid eyes on him, he hustled the other two out and commanded the guard not to admit anyone on pain of death. He slammed the door shut and walked over to the window embrasure, the furthest point from the door and the least likely place to be overheard. Here two wooden seats, like shelves, had been built into the thickness of the rough wall below the window-slit. De Revelle sat down heavily on one and pointed to the other. De Wolfe lowered himself and the two men sat hunched towards each other.

‘John, we have some serious talking to do. We parted at cross purposes last time.’

‘Matters seemed very clear to me, Richard. You confessed to treachery against the King and conspiring with rebels.’

‘I did nothing of the sort! Listen, you are my sister’s husband and for that I feel a considerable obligation towards you. Especially that of trying to keep you alive.’

‘Keep me alive? More likely the other way round.’

‘I think not, John. The danger to you is much more immediate.’

‘Is that a threat, Sheriff?’ asked de Wolfe darkly.

‘Not from me, no. But from now on you are in considerable peril. Probably more so than on your precious Crusades and foreign wars.’ He changed his tone, attempting a reasonable, wheedling persuasiveness. ‘Look, you always proclaim yourself a true servant of the King. I feel exactly the same.’

‘You have a strange way of showing it,’ observed John sarcastically. ‘You came pretty near hanging last year. You almost never became sheriff and now you’re setting off along the same dangerous track again.’

De Revelle scowled, but managed to keep his temper. ‘I said I was a loyal king’s man, like you. But which king? Last year, we all thought Richard was either dead or soon would be. It was doubtful, even after the ransom was paid, whether Henry of Germany would let him go. After his release, they tried to recapture him and only missed his ship out of Antwerp by hours. We were getting ready to put John on the throne, as it was a reasonable expectation that Richard would never get back.’

De Wolfe glowered at his brother-in-law. ‘Well, you were all very much mistaken, weren’t you? What’s this to do with me?’

De Revelle reached out and grasped the coroner’s forearm. ‘John is going to be the next king – it’s only a matter of how soon. Join us, and use this great loyalty of yours for the right sovereign!’ The sheriff became more animated as he warmed to his theme. ‘Richard has never taken the slightest interest in England. He’s spent only a few months here since he was crowned. All he does is screw taxes from the people to support Normandy and his vendetta against Philip of France – England is nothing but a colony! Prince John would change all that, be a true king of England. And you would have someone better to whom to offer your allegiance.’

De Wolfe pulled away his arm sharply. He was angry, and his anger was the worse because he knew there was a core of truth in what the sheriff said. ‘The King is the King, damn you!’ he shouted. ‘Richard is the man crowned and blessed by God as sovereign lord of England. Both of us swore knights’ oaths to serve him to the death. Until he dies, or willingly hands the Crown to someone else, he is our one and only king. Any deviation from our loyalty is treason!’

De Revelle sighed. ‘You’re a fool and it will be the end of you! Is that your last word?’

‘I’ll see you dead – I’d slay you myself – before I’d let you talk me into treachery, damn you!’ snarled the coroner.

De Revelle stood up and looked down at him, his narrow face working with emotion. His pointed beard jerked like a dagger as he spoke rapidly and spitefully. ‘Then it must be done another way, John. If I am to try to save your life, you must give up any notion of riding off to Winchester with your rumours of rebellion and other gossip. Do you understand?’

De Wolfe looked at him in amazement. ‘Go to hell, Richard! I’ll do exactly what I think is right. How do you imagine you can stop me? With your little sword?’

De Revelle flushed and swallowed hard to control himself. His lack of prowess in all things martial was well known and he was excruciatingly sensitive about it. He had always wanted to be a courtier, in the political arena, not a warrior. But de Wolfe’s insult made it easier for him to spit out his ultimatum.

‘Your scandalous private life is well known, especially to my spies. If you do not agree to keep quiet, I’ll see to it that Matilda is told not only about that drab you visit in the tavern, but also about Hilda, wife of Thorgils. And, for good measure, that Welsh woman will also be told about her rival in Dawlish!’

De Wolfe jumped to his feet and looked down at his brother-in-law in amazement. Then he did something that the sheriff had not expected. He began laughing uproariously, and was still laughing as he passed the astonished guard at the door.

That afternoon, de Wolfe attended the funeral of Canon Robert de Hane. Although it was over a week since his death, the cathedral Chapter had waited this unusually long time before burial because of the absence of the Bishop, who was to conduct the mass for the dead. The freezing weather had allowed the body to lie in its coffin without putrefaction.

As he watched it lowered into a deep hole below a paving slab in the apse behind the high altar, the coroner cursed the sheriff for not arresting the two men who had killed de Hane. He had no idea where Jocelin de Braose and his squire were at present, but suspected that they were being sheltered somewhere in the west of the county, probably at Totnes or Berry Pomeroy. As coroner, he had no legal power to seize them, so there was little that he and Gwyn could do except by subterfuge, as at the ambush in Dunsford, which could hardly be repeated.

After the funeral, he met John de Alencon briefly in the nave. The other canons passed them on the way out and most nodded a greeting, except Thomas de Boterellis, who studiously ignored them. In the distance, de Wolfe saw the remote figure of the Bishop making his way back to his palace and he wondered how deeply Henry Marshal was involved in the budding rebellion.

He told the Archdeacon about the sheriff’s attempt to suborn him into the conspiracy and his ludicrous threat of blackmail. De Alencon smiled wryly at these venal matters, which were outwith the experience of a truly celibate priest. ‘I gather that your amorous affairs are an insufficient threat to you, John?’

‘The man is insane to think that they are anything more than a passing irritation!’ snorted de Wolfe. ‘My only concern is how he got to know about the lady in Dawlish. He must pay informers about the country to spy on me, as he claimed.’

The Archdeacon gazed up the nave at the great choir screen of ornately carved wood, as if seeking inspiration from on high. ‘What is to be done, John? Will you ride to Winchester, as you intend?’

‘I’ll have to. This affair cannot continue unchecked. But I’d like some firmer evidence to give Hubert Walter. I’ll wait a few more days to see if anything turns up, though the bloody sheriff is watching my every move.’

John de Alencon laid a hand on the coroner’s arm. ‘I’ve warned you before, John. Be careful. These men are playing for high stakes and will swat you like a fly if they can. Look what happened to Fitzhamon and poor Robert, lying there in his box.’

With yet another caution ringing in his ears, de Wolfe walked back through the rain to his house in Martin’s Lane.

At the midday meal of fried pork, onions, bread and some rather shrivelled stored apples, Matilda was in what her husband called an average mood. She had no spontaneous conversation, but at least answered his questions and comments civilly, even if her voice conveyed a total lack of interest in him and his doings. The only slight spark of curiosity he could strike from her concerned the funeral of Robert de Hane: she wanted to know who was present, if any wives had been there and, if so, what they had been wearing. As he had no answer to her last questions, she subsided into apathy again.

Later, as there were no hangings or mutilations at which he had to be present, he walked with Gwyn to Bull Mead, out of the city beyond the South Gate. On the meadows between Holloway and Magdalen Streets, which led away to the east, jousting lists had been set up and a minor tournament was being held that day. In his prime, de Wolfe had been a keen competitor in the sport that maintained and honed fighting men’s skills between real battles. He had won many a joust – and the prize money and sometimes the favours of a woman, which went with victory.

Both he and Bran were now too long in the tooth for this violent and often fatal sport, but he still enjoyed watching the spectacle. In former years Gwyn had acted as his squire and they both studied the new young men with a critical eye, as they thundered towards each other down each side of the wattle fence, trying to unhorse each other with a clash of lance on shield. Thankfully the rain had stopped, but the tourney field was a quagmire of churned mud under the horses’ hoofs, and when a man was unhorsed, he became a greater figure of derision because of his mud-plastered ignominy.

The two former Crusaders spent an hour or two sitting on the benches of the primitive viewing stand, the sights and sounds of combat rekindling memories of battles gone by.

When the early winter dusk began to close in, the tournament came to an end and the crowd dispersed. Gwyn trudged off to his home in St Sidwell’s, leaving de Wolfe to make his way to the Bush. At that hour it was almost deserted, but as soon as he entered, Nesta bustled across from the kitchen door and seized his arm to pull him to an empty corner, as far away from the few customers as possible. De Wolfe saw that her face was flushed and that her hazel eyes were sparkling with indignation. Hurriedly, he searched his conscience for some recent transgression, but he soon learned that her anger was not directed at him. ‘I’ve never heard such impertinence!’ she hissed. ‘That rheumaticky old fool that is steward to the sheriff had the gall to come here earlier with a message from his master!’

Mystified for a moment, realisation dawned on de Wolfe. ‘Oh, God, I never thought he’d stoop to such pettiness!’

The pretty alehouse keeper glared at him. ‘You know what he said, then?’

‘It was about Hilda, no doubt?’

‘Yes, it was about bloody Hilda! It’s bad enough knowing that you’re unfaithful to me without having it bandied all about Exeter! What’s going on?’

De Wolfe pulled her gently to his table by the hearth and, as they sat down, Nesta signalled to Edwin to bring the coroner his usual quart of ale. The old potman, who had been hovering uneasily in the background, keeping clear of his mistress’s fiery temper, grinned with relief and hurried to his barrels.

John explained Richard de Revelle’s attempt to blackmail him, and Nesta, with the volatility of spirit that went with her red hair, soon saw the ridiculous side of it and began giggling over the jug of ale that they shared.

‘A good job we had this out between us the other day, John. I’d have hated to have learned it first from the sheriff!’ Then she had a more sobering thought. ‘But if he’s been so vindictive as to tell me of your exploits with the ladies, he’ll be even more certain to go sneaking to your wife. She won’t be so forgiving as me, I’ll be bound.’

‘She’s known about you for years, love.’

‘The whole of Devon knows about us, John. But what about Hilda? Does Matilda know she’s on your list of conquests?’ Even Nesta couldn’t resist the slightly bitter remark.

De Wolfe tried to shrug this off, but he had a nagging suspicion that he was in for a hard time with his wife.

As the light faded, the tavern began to fill when men came in at the end of the working day. Nesta had to bustle around, chivvying the cook and the serving-maids, so eventually de Wolfe went with leaden feet back to his gloomy house near the cathedral. As he pulled off his cloak and his wet, leaky boots in the vestibule, Mary put her head around the passage to the yard. She pointed at the inner door to the hall and rolled her eyes heavenwards, then vanished. Even Brutus slunk after her, his tail between his legs.

De Wolfe sat before the fire in the cowled chair usually occupied by his wife. His old hound had crept back in and lay now at his feet. Simon, the aged man employed to cut wood and tend the fowl and garden pig, had carried in a pile of logs sufficient to last the night. Mary had brought him a stone flask of Loire wine, the last of those bought from Eric Picot before he had disappeared last month. Thus stocked up, he prepared to pass the long evening alone, as a westerly wind moaned outside and spattered rain against the shutters. He heard the outer door slam as Mary left to visit her mother in Rack Lane, leaving him in peace to contemplate the events of the past few hours.

As Nesta had anticipated, his brother-in-law, having had his attempt at blackmail so scornfully rejected, had vindictively gone ahead and revealed John’s indiscretions. It was not the old steward who had called but de Revelle himself, while de Wolfe had been at the jousting that afternoon, to poison his sister’s ear against her husband.

As John sat moodily before his hearth, sipping warm wine, he recalled the final show-down with Matilda earlier that evening. After his visit to the Bush, he had expected a blazing row, foul words, maybe something thrown at him and then a few weeks’ ostracism and certainly banishment from their cold marital bed, to all of which he was well accustomed.

But this time it had been different. He did not know exactly what de Revelle had said to his sister, but he suspected that he had embroidered the bare truth considerably and probably added some political lies to the issue of infidelity. Whatever it had been, Matilda had stood before him in the hall, grim-faced and flinty-eyed, but not in the expected raging temper. De Wolfe remembered the actual words she had used – they had been so few.

‘My brother has told me of your evil, John de Wolfe. I am ashamed to be burdened with your name and I am leaving you this moment. You no longer have a wife and I never wish to see you again.’ She had stalked past him towards the door, her square, high-cheekboned face white with suppressed emotion. Then he noticed Lucille lurking in the shadows near the door, already dressed for outside. She held a cloak, which she draped over her mistress’s shoulders, then picked up some large bundles tied into cloths and followed Matilda to the vestibule.

‘Where are you going, for God’s sake?’ he asked, tracking them to the front door. Matilda ignored him, but as she stepped outside he saw Sergeant Gabriel and two men-at-arms standing in the lane as an escort. As they walked away, Gabriel risked giving him a shrug of supplication and pointed his finger in the direction of Rougemont. A moment later, they had vanished into the gloom of the lane, lit only by the farrier’s torches opposite.

Hardly knowing whether to be mortified or relieved, de Wolfe came inside and slammed the outer door. Instantly Mary appeared from the passage, where she had been eavesdropping.

‘She’s left me, girl,’ he said, almost incredulously.

‘No such luck, Sir Crowner!’ said the maid cynically. ‘She’ll be back some time. You’re too good a catch for a woman her age to let slip through her fingers.’ She followed him back into the sombre hall, which somehow seemed all the more cheerless now.

‘I presume she’s gone to her brother at the castle,’ he muttered.

‘Yes, I heard her talking to Lucille about it – that ugly witch is delighted you’re in trouble and that she’s now going to live in a manor house’

‘What manor house?’ he demanded.

‘They’re going to stay in the sheriff’s rooms in Rougemont for a day or two, as Lady Eleanor has gone home, then they are travelling down to Revelstoke to live there indefinitely.’

De Wolfe gave a roar of sardonic laughter. ‘By Christ, that makes me feel better already! Matilda and Eleanor living in the same house! There’ll be murder done within a week. And Revelstoke – your friend Lucille will go mad there with boredom. She might as well be on the moon as that lonely place on the cliffs.’

Revelstoke was the sheriff’s ancestral home, in a remote spot on the coast near Plympton in the west of the county, where both he and Matilda had been brought up. Richard had another manor near Tavistock, which his haughty wife preferred.

‘Did you hear anything else between them, Mary?’ he asked.

‘No, I was out buying fish when the sheriff called. All I heard later was that your wife will be sending Lucille back some time to collect all her clothes and belongings.’

Now, as de Wolfe sat alone with his hound and his wine, he mulled over the implications of this unexpected turn of events. He had little doubt that Mary was right, and that in the fullness of time Matilda would return. What else could she do? Divorce was well-nigh impossible and a woman of forty-six had no other prospects, other than buying her way into a nunnery. That was always one possibility, given Matilda’s religious leanings, but John felt this was too good to be true.

Looking on the bright side, he had little to concern him. The house was his, bought with money left him by his father and from the accumulated loot of a dozen wars. He had wisely invested money in Hugh de Relaga’s wool export trade and he had a steady income from his share of the manors at Stoke-in-Teignhead and Holcombe. In fact, he could never have been appointed coroner unless he was financially independent: the Justiciar had laid down that every knight so elected must have an income of at least twenty pounds a year, which was supposed to make the attractions of embezzlement less appealing. With Mary to satisfy his stomach, and Nesta his heart and loins, he felt ready to wait out Matilda’s latest protest – and if she chose to take the veil, good luck to her!

As he drank and dozed by the fire, he thought half-heartedly of going down to the Bush to tell his Welsh mistress the latest news, but sleep overcame him. As the wind moaned outside, he began to snore gently as Brutus edged nearer the dying logs.

De Wolfe must have slept for several hours, though as the nearest clock was in Germany, it was only later that he calculated from the cathedral bell that he must have awakened around the tenth hour. His final dream seemed to contain an insistent knocking, and as he opened his eyes groggily, he realised that someone was hammering on his street door.

He climbed to his feet and sleepily threw some small sticks on to the fire, which had crumbled to glowing ashes. Brutus lazily hauled himself to his haunches as John stumbled across the cold stones of the hall, pulling a grey house-cape more tightly around his shoulders against the damp chill. A tallow dip guttered in its bowl on the long table, and he lit the wick of a new candle in passing to light himself to the front door.

The knocking continued with greater urgency, and he wondered who it could be. Not Mary, for she would spend the night with her mother, as she did once a week, coming back early in the morning to prepare breakfast – and she would have known that the door was never locked, as would Gwyn or Thomas.

He lifted the big iron latch and held up the candle, as the farrier’s flares opposite had burned out. The rain and the wind had died down and his candle flame survived the remaining breeze to show a muffled figure on his doorstep. Mindful of the Archdeacon’s warning of assassins, he held the door only partly open, until he realised that the figure was female.

‘You are Sir John – the Crowner?’ asked a tremulous but still attractive voice.

‘I am indeed. And who are you?’

‘My name is Rosamunde – Rosamunde of Rye, they call me. Can I speak with you, Crowner, please? I am in trouble.’

The fitful candlelight fell on a beautiful face, half hidden in a deep hood – though even this poor view showed something wrong with one eye. Though the chivalrous de Wolfe would have helped any woman in trouble – even an old hag – one with such a voice and the face of a sultry angel was irresistible.

He pulled open the door and beckoned her inside. This was the woman who had been involved with Giles Fulford and probably Jocelin de Braose, but somehow he doubted that she had come to stab him to death. He escorted her into the hall and over to the hearth, where the sticks were now burning briskly, throwing light across the room. Brutus stood to look at the new arrival then, sensing no danger, wagged his tail slowly and lay down again.

The woman, tall and straight, was still shrouded in a heavy cape that fell to her feet. ‘I know you have heard of me, Sir John, in not very favourable circumstances.’

As they stood eyeing each other from either side of the fire, she lifted her hands and threw back the pointed hood of the mantle, revealing a cascade of glossy black hair that gleamed in the firelight. She also revealed, on the smooth features of her full-lipped face, a large bruise that discoloured the eye lids and the upper part of her left cheek. ‘Look at this, Sir John – and these!’ Rosamunde slid the mantle from her shoulders so that it fell to the floor. She wore a bright green silk kirtle with a deep round neckline, unlike the modest tops of the dresses he was used to seeing. The silk strained across her full breasts and was pulled tight at her waist by lacing at the back.

He dragged his attention back to what she was showing him. Down both sides of her long white neck were red scratches, obviously from fingernails, and above her collarbone, partly obscured by the edges of her dress, were recent blue bruises.

‘I have been badly used, Crowner, and this is only the half of it! I know I have a reputation but I still deserve the protection of the law.’ She gave him a look of supplication from her large eyes, which glistened from under half-lowered lids. Her lashes were darkened with soot and her lips reddened with rouge.

De Wolfe moved closer to her, partly to study her injuries but also in a spontaneous gesture of sympathy. ‘Who did this to you, girl?’ he demanded.

‘Jocelin de Braose, the swine! You must know that I am the woman of his squire, Giles Fulford. His master decided that he wanted to bed me too, and when Giles was away today he forced himself on me – look here!’

Her hand had been on her right shoulder and now she pulled it away to show that the green silk had been ripped from the back of the neck to the seam of the long bell-shaped sleeve. As she took her fingers down, a large flap of the bodice fell forward to expose most of her right breast. ‘The other is the same, Crowner,’ she said, in her low voice, pointing with a slim finger to the group of penny-sized bruises on her bosom and around the large brown nipple.

Interested though he was in wounds and injuries, the details of these bruises were not foremost in de Wolfe’s mind as he gazed down at her seductive body – especially as her face and lips were within inches of his own. He swallowed and dragged his mind back to this unique situation. ‘Where is de Braose now?’ he rumbled. If the renegade was inside the city, maybe he had a chance to trap him, even though Gwyn was locked outside the walls until morning.

But Rosamunde did not reply and, suddenly, alarm bells began pealing in his head. Before he could step back, she put an arm around his neck and kissed him full on the lips, her bare breast pressed to his chest.

The next moment, she threw herself on the floor at his feet and screamed, ‘Rape, rape!’ at the top of her voice. As she did so, she was busy pulling down the other side of her kirtle top and dragging up her skirt so that she was naked to the waist. For some seconds, which seemed like minutes, de Wolfe was paralysed with surprise. Though in battle his reflexes were instantaneous, this had been so unexpected, so outrageously bizarre, that he stood gaping at her performance in that empty house.

Except that it proved not to be empty: the hall door crashed open, four men burst into the hall and ran across to seize him. He struggled, but he had nothing, not even a dagger, with which to defend himself, his weapons being in their usual resting place in the vestibule. His old hound jumped snarling against the first intruder, but a heavy kick in the ribs sent him yelping into a corner.

Two ruffians grabbed his arms from behind and held him in a vicelike grip, while the other two men came to stand before him. They were Jocelin de Braose and Giles Fulford, who came up close and sneered in his face. De Braose gave him a heavy punch in the stomach, which would have doubled him up, had he not been held by the men behind. ‘That’s part payment for Dunsford, blast you,’ he snarled. He was followed by Fulford, who gave de Wolfe a double slap on either side of his face, which almost knocked his head off. ‘And that’s for near-drowning me, Crowner. I’ll pay you for the rest later!’

For a moment, de Wolfe thought that they were going to kill him there and then, but when his head cleared after the blows, reason told him that if this was a simple assassination, there would have been no need for Rosamunde’s play-acting.

She picked herself up from the floor, the two men making no attempt to help her. Calmly, she dropped the hem of her skirt and pulled up the top of her kirtle to cover her bosom, pinning it back in place with a small brooch she produced from a pocket in her cloak, which she picked up and threw around her shoulders. De Wolfe found his tongue at last, though his lips were swelling from the blows he had taken. After a stream of oaths, which aroused the admiration of the two thugs holding him, he muttered thickly, ‘What do you bastards want of me? You’ve already committed two murders, which will bring you a hanging – and you tried to steal the King’s treasure! Are you asking to be hanged three times?’

De Braose thrust his round face with its rim of red whiskers close to him. ‘What’s the penalty for ravishing this poor girl, Crowner? One hanging will be enough to stretch your neck.’ He gave de Wolfe another prod in the belly as he spoke.

The coroner shouted back, with a voice like a bull, ‘And who is going to try me on this laughable load of perjury that two criminals and a painted whore will trot out?’

‘Painted whore? Yes, Crowner, that’s paint from her lips that’s on your own, you dirty old bastard!’ sneered Fulford, his thin, fair face contorted with hate.

‘You ask who will try you?’ replied de Braose. ‘The sheriff in his court, of course. This was partly his idea, as his stupid first idea to shame you with your mistresses had no chance of success. Everyone knows what a randy old goat you are, even your pig-faced wife.’

‘Don’t speak of my wife like that! She’s worth a thousand like you, you putrid bucket of shite!’ roared de Wolfe, adamantly determined that he was the only one entitled to insult Matilda.

De Braose lifted his hand to strike John again, but thought better of it and turned to the woman. ‘You’ve got your story straight, have you?’ he demanded. ‘We’re all going up to the castle now to throw this stubborn fool into the cells, unless de Revelle can talk some sense into him.’

Rosamunde, her mantle now wrapped around her, said nonchalantly, ‘Don’t worry about me. My acting’s better than yours. And if we ever do this again, don’t be so enthusiastic with your fists and your nails, you sadistic bastard! You nearly pulled my dugs off, making those bruises!’

Ignoring her complaints, the squat de Braose turned back to the coroner. ‘I’m to give you a last chance, de Wolfe, though I truly hope you won’t take it as I want to see you hang.’

The Coroner glared at him, wishing he could get his hands around that thick neck. ‘And exactly who says you’re to offer me this last chance, whatever that is?’

‘Henry de la Pomeroy, though surely you know that already. I am to tell you that if you agree not to cause any more problems for the rightful campaign to put a better king on the throne of England, we’ll not even take you from this house to Rougemont. You can remain as coroner and continue that post under the new King.’

He stopped to see if De Wolfe had anything to say, but the coroner waited in silence and de Braose finished his ultimatum. ‘But the complaint of this woman will remain hanging over you, backed up by four men’s sworn testimony, in case you get any ideas about backing out of the bargain in the next month or so. After that it won’t matter – John will be on the throne anyway.’ He waited for an answer and got it straight away.

‘Of course I’ll not keep quiet, you fools,’ de Wolfe shouted. ‘Why are you going through this ridiculous charade of a ravishment? Why not kill me now and then run away, as you did with the old canon and William Fitzhamon? That would stop me taking the news to the Justiciar, without all this mummery.’

De Braose shrugged indifferently. ‘I agree – but Pomeroy and de Revelle think that a murdered coroner might raise some eyebrows in Winchester or London. The next thing we know, some of the King’s Justices might be sent down here to snoop around. But the quick trial and disposal of a lecherous ravisher would attract little attention.’

Fulford motioned to the two roughly dressed mercenaries, who had been recruited probably from outlaws. ‘Come on, he’s said no, let’s take him to the sheriff.’

Jocelin made one last appeal to de Wolfe. ‘You realise that, once outside that door, you are accused and damned in the eyes of the city and county as a rapist? There’s no going back!’

For answer, de Wolfe spat accurately into his face and received another crippling blow in the belly, followed by a punch to his face that split his upper lip. Then he was dragged, struggling, towards the door and into the lane, followed by the soulful eyes of his hound, who still hid in the furthest corner.