Crowner’s Quest

Chapter Eleven In which Crowner John goes to gaol

At least de Wolfe was spared the ignominy of being marched as a prisoner through the streets of Exeter in daylight. It was approaching midnight as they climbed the slope to Rougemont, and as the rain and wind had returned, there were few to see or care about a tight knot of men hurrying to the castle.

The two surly ruffians had released de Wolfe’s arms after one had lashed together his wrists with a length of rope. Using the free end as a leash, he allowed him to walk closely in front of him, with Fulford, de Braose and the woman going ahead, the other man behind.

Apart from an astounded guard at the gatehouse, who had been earlier told by de Revelle that de Braose was to be admitted, they saw virtually no one on their journey. De Wolfe, although he felt as though he was acting out some awful dream, realised that he had to bide his time: it would be pointless to call for help to any casual citizen they passed. The sheriff was the power in this county and all law enforcement, such as it was, drained back to him, which was why the rebels needed him on their side. Aid for John de Wolfe would have to come from outside Exeter, and tonight was not the time to find it.

They reached the undercroft of the keep and clattered down the steps into the almost pitch black interior. On the further side was a faint light, where Stigand had a small banked-down fire. He had his living space in one of the arched vaults, which he had blocked off with a crude wooden partition. Behind it was a filthy mattress and some cooking pots. Fulford kicked him awake and, when the grotesquely fat gaoler had come to his senses, he grudgingly lit some horn-lanterns and stumbled ahead to the iron gate closing the cell passageway. With a clatter of keys and mumbled curses, the gate squealed open and Stigand led the way to the first cell on the left, the door of which was open. De Wolfe was thrust inside and the rope taken from his wrists before the door was slammed and locked. There was a barred grille in the wooden panel, and de Braose’s face peered in.

‘You won’t be alone for long, Crowner. The sheriff wants a word with you – about arrangements for the hanging!’ Pleased with his wit, he walked off laughing.

De Wolfe knew every cell in this prison: he came here several times a week to record Ordeals and mutilations. He felt his way in the dark to a thick slate shelf built into one wall of the tiny room and sat down, ignoring the protests of the rats he disturbed in the dirty straw on the floor. His belly ached from the blows he had received and his bruised face and torn lip stung, but otherwise he was unbroken and unbowed. He had been imprisoned several times before, in worse places than this, both in France and England, but then he had been a prisoner-of-war rather than an alleged criminal ravisher. He cursed his own lack of suspicion of the woman on his doorstep, but on reflection he could see no way of anticipating such a devious plot. He had thought that someone might try to stick a knife in his back, but not to trap him in this way. It could only work, of course, because of the sheriff’s monopoly of power, and he tried to think of some way in which this could be frustrated – but no inspiration came. A few minutes later, he heard voices, and lights bobbed towards the passageway. He heard the outer gate creak open and close on its rusted hinges. Then his cell door was opened.

Richard de Revelle stood in the entrance and behind him de Wolfe could see the other three conspirators. The two strong-arm men had gone, and Stigand had been sent out of earshot.

‘This is a sorry state of affairs, John,’ said his brother-in-law unctuously. ‘I always knew you were overfond of the lusts of the flesh, but never thought you’d be driven to rapine!’

‘Spare me your nonsense, Richard. I doubt this was your idea, you don’t have the brains for it.’

The sheriff smiled sardonically at him. ‘This hasn’t been your day, has it, John? Your wife leaves you for good, because of your shameless adultery with God knows how many women – and within hours, you indecently assault this poor girl. I suppose her undoubted attractions were too much for you.’

‘It’s not so long since I caught you in bed with a whore, Richard, but I was foolish enough not to arrange for perjured witnesses to be present.’

The sheriff stiffened with annoyance, but no one there cared a whit for his morals. ‘This is your last chance, John. You are still my relative-in-law, more’s the pity, so I regret this situation for the sake of my sister. But, as you are too stubborn to join us, my reputation and my life are at risk if you are allowed to ride off to London with your misplaced loyalties.’ He looked over his shoulder as if seeking support for his final words.

‘You know what my answer will be to that!’ The coroner shouted his reply as loudly as he could, so that anyone nearby could hear it, even if it was only the few other miserable prisoners further along the passage. ‘I denounce you, Richard de Revelle, as a traitor to the King you have sworn to serve and a rebel against the Crown of England! You will be hanged for that – though you may be blinded, castrated and gutted first. That’s my answer!’

Though de Braose, standing just outside the door, guffawed at this, the sheriff did not take it so lightly. De Wolfe could see his Adam’s apple rise and fall beneath his small beard as he swallowed nervously. ‘Nonsense, man, you have no proof – not a single witness to implicate me. Even if you were able to blab to someone, where could you go now with these wild tales? Winchester and London are far away for a man imprisoned for rape.’

‘So what do you intend to do with me, brother-in-law? Get Stigand to poison me tonight – or cut out my tongue tomorrow to silence me? That would be effective, as you know I couldn’t write my denunciation of you!’ He even used his private longing to be literate to goad the sheriff.

De Revelle was becoming more rattled as he realised the enormity of the path he was being forced to take. Getting rid of a king’s coroner was not as easy as getting rid of a common criminal. Coroners did not just vanish from the face of the earth without questions being asked at the highest level. He was now irrevocably launched on this escapade, but the further he went the less he relished it.

John sensed this, and deliberately provoked his brother-in-law with mockery. He raised his long chin and pointed to the black stubble on his neck. ‘When you hang me, before all those good burgesses and churchmen, do you think the knot should be on the left or right, eh?’

Jocelin de Braose could see what was happening and stepped forward angrily. ‘Come on, Sheriff, leave him, he’s trying to make fools of us!’

‘Too late, God did that years ago!’ sneered de Wolfe. De Braose raised his arm to strike the coroner, but then realised that he was not being held or tied. He stepped back hastily and pulled his dagger from its scabbard.

‘That’s it, hack the crowner to death,’ invited de Wolfe. ‘That really would intrigue the Chief Justiciar and the Lord Marshal.’

Richard de Revelle was almost at the end of his tether at this taunting mention of the most powerful members of the royal court. ‘Stop this, de Braose! Remember your place. You are nothing but a hired sword and you have no say in these matters.’ He turned back to the prisoner with a final entreaty. ‘I beg you, John, consider your position through the night. Otherwise this woman will Appeal you for ravishing her at the County Court tomorrow. We have four witnesses to your indecent assault – and have an apothecary who will say that he examined her and found her grievously bruised about the private parts. Within days you will be accused, convicted and hanged. I am powerless to stop this once you set foot in the Shire Hall tomorrow morning.’ Then, as if afraid to hear any more than would unnerve him, the sheriff stepped back, slammed the door, and yelled for Stigand to lock up.

With plenty to occupy his thoughts, de Wolfe lay back on the cold slate slab, wondering if the inside of a tomb was as hard and as dark as this bare stone.

Though Richard de Revelle had enjoyed same malicious delight in telling his sister about her husband’s infidelities, he had not anticipated the consequences. He had thought that she would give de Wolfe hell on a grander scale than usual, but not that she would leave home immediately and saddle herself on him. Matilda had always idolised her elder brother, but in spite of his outward show of affection for her, he had from childhood thought her a plain and sulky girl, whose sourness had grown as she got older. To have her ensconced, bag and baggage, in his already cramped living quarters at Rougemont was too much – especially at a critical time like this. And to have that evil-eyed, buck-toothed French maid there too was intolerable. He had had to evict his steward from his outer chamber to sleep there himself, give his bed to Matilda and have a pallet brought in for the maid. Thank God he could get rid of them in a few days’ time when he took them down to Revelstoke – though his spirit quailed at the prospect of telling his wife, Eleanor, that she was to have permanent lodgers. Perhaps one of them would move out to his other manor near Tavistock, but de Revelle could foresee serious domestic trouble stretching into the infinite future.

But was there going to be an infinite future for him – or even much future at all?

As he lay sleepless on his steward’s lumpy mattress in the early hours of the morning, de Revelle felt increasing apprehension at what the coming day – and weeks – would bring. He felt that he was launched on a slippery slope over which he had no control. The grand idea of rebellion had seemed excitingly attractive in the planning stages, when conspirators had gathered over jugs of wine to change the face of England. But now that he was in danger of being forced to hang his own brother-in-law, who was a king’s officer, a friend of the Justiciar and the monarch himself, that impersonal plotting seemed far removed from less palatable reality.

De Revelle had come near to disaster before, less than a year ago. He had always craved the status of high office, and being sheriff of a far western county so remote from the centre of power had not satisfied his ambition. He had never found favour at the court of either Henry the Second or his son Richard. Every effort he had made to gain a post in Winchester or Westminster had been frustrated. Perhaps he had become paranoid about it, but he sensed personal snubs and rejection from every quarter, especially since the old King had died in ’eighty-nine. Two years ago, when he heard rumours of the Count of Mortaigne’s aspirations to seize the throne in the absence of his brother Richard, he had seen a chance to nail his colours to a different mast and hopefully be repaid for his new allegiance with preferment under a new sovereign.

Thankfully, as it turned out, he had not gone too far down this road before it collapsed under him. By the time the old Queen, Eleanor, had mobilised action against the rebels, shortly before Coeur de Lion was released from captivity, de Revelle had been promised the sheriffdom of Devon through the influence of barons sympathetic to the Count. When the revolt crumbled, he had been brushed with the same tar of disgrace as the other rebels, and his elevation to sheriff suspended. This was when Henry de la Pomeroy’s father had been driven to suicide. Only the casual, irresponsible pardon granted by the King to his brother and most of the rebels got Richard de Revelle off the hook and eventually allowed him to take up the sheriff’s post.

Now the whole cycle appeared to be beginning again, and as he lay on his cold bed he wished that he had stayed content with his lot. The worm of ambition still wriggled within him, but the last day or two had made him doubt that the price he paid in anguish was worth the tenuous prize at the end.

At the meeting in Berry Pomeroy, two days before, he had put forward his feeble plan to shame de Wolfe into silence as a desperate attempt to avoid the present situation dreamed up by Bernard Cheevers and de Braose of having the coroner in gaol for alleged rape so that he could be judicially strangled! For the sheriff, the situation had snowballed into a nightmare, out of control and irreversible. He tossed and turned, and cursed – the curses aimed as much at himself for becoming so involved, as at de Wolfe for being such an iron-headed, stubborn fool, yet a fool who commanded respect for his loyalty, as compared with de Revelle’s own repeated treachery.

Before sleep born of exhaustion claimed him, he had a last waking nightmare: he had to face Matilda in the morning and tell her that her husband was now a ravisher as well as an adulterer, and that by the end of the week she was likely to be a felon’s widow.

As always, it was impossible to keep anything quiet in the small city of Exeter. Soon after dawn the rumour went around like wildfire that Sir John de Wolfe, the coroner, was in Rougemont gaol, though as yet no one knew why. When he came off duty, the guard at the gatehouse had told his drinking friends the news, they had told their wives, and as soon as the stall-holders and hawkers flooded through the opened city gates, the gossip flashed through the city like fire through a cornfield.

Gwyn heard it when he was buying a slab of cheese at a stall just inside the East Gate as he came in from St Sidwell’s. Astounded, he hurried towards the castle and overtook Thomas de Peyne, who was limping as fast as he could up the hill, after hearing of his master’s plight from a cook in the close, who had been out to buy butter for breakfast. Anxiously, they both went through the gate, noticing that the guards had been doubled. No one had orders to prevent the coroner’s staff from entering – and, anyway, Gwyn would probably have throttled anyone who tried to stop him. They dived down the steps to the undercroft, Thomas hobbling and hopping to keep up with the Cornishman’s determined strides. The gate to the cells was locked, so Gwyn thundered over to Stigand’s cubicle, where the gross gaoler was boiling something in a pot. ‘Open that bloody gate, you fat toad! I have to see to the coroner at once.’

The bloated Saxon looked up from his cooking with a sneer. ‘No one is to speak to him, I have strict orders.’

Gwyn was in no mood to discuss the matter. He grabbed the shoulders of Stigand’s dirty smock in both hands and jerked him clear off the ground. Shaking him violently, he hissed in his face, ‘Listen, you bag of slime, open that gate or I’ll twist your head off!’

Convinced in an instant, the repulsive guardian of the prison almost ran across the gloomy vault, with Gwyn prodding him all the way, Thomas following behind. When, hands shaking, the gaoler had manipulated his keys to let them in, Gwyn grabbed them from him and ordered the clerk to lock the gate. ‘We don’t want this bladder of lard running to raise the alarm,’ he snapped. Turning to the cell door, he peered in and found de Wolfe’s face within inches of his own on the other side of the grille. ‘We’ll have you out in a moment, Crowner! Thomas, bring those keys here.’

During the night de Wolfe had had plenty of time to think. ‘No, Gwyn, that’s not the way. The guards may have let you in but they certainly won’t let me out. In any case, I’m not going to run from my own city. If you try to force a way out, you’ll be trapped too.’

He explained quickly what had happened and how he had been tricked by Jocelin and the others. Gwyn was all for seeking out de Braose and dissecting him with a blunt knife, but again John restrained his violent inclinations. ‘You must stay free, it’s vital – and you, Thomas. You are my only link with the outside. Gwyn, you must go quietly out and straightaway ride into the county to alert those barons and knights we know are loyal to the King. Lord Ferrars, and Reginald de Courcy – you remember them from that business of Fitzosbern a few weeks ago. They will spread the message to others they know. Tell them that a rebellion is brewing again and that Pomeroy, Cheever and de Nonant are behind it in Devon.’ Something kept him from including the sheriff in his list. ‘Say that I have been falsely accused of a felony to keep me quiet and need assistance straight away. That will be sufficient to bring them post-haste into the city.’

He turned his face to his clerk, his gaunt features dirty and more unshaven than usual, and bent to lower his great height to the aperture. ‘Thomas, go to the Archdeacon with the same story as fast as your little legs will carry you. Also tell him that the men who killed the canon are behind this. Now go, both of you, and don’t get caught or I’m done for!’

He moved back into his cell to forestall any argument from Gwyn, who would have been willing to demolish the gaol stone by stone to free his master. But the big man had recognised the urgency in the coroner’s voice and did as he was told. ‘Get going, dwarf, down to the Close.’ He opened the gate and gave Thomas a push to send him on his way. Stigand tried to follow, but Gwyn grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up to the large cell at the end, where three ragged men waited to be hanged the next day. Unlocking their gate with Stigand’s keys, he thrust the gaoler inside and locked up again. He marched out, oblivious to the yells and screams of the fat sadist as the condemned felons worked off their anger on him.

He caught up with the limping clerk after a few yards, and they walked with exaggerated casualness to the gate, then hurried down to the town to do as they had been bidden.

Meanwhile, the sheriff was steeling himself for the show-down with his sister. Though he normally ate at the top table in the hall, this morning he ordered his steward to serve it in his office chamber. Resentful at being banished from his sleeping place, the man banged mugs and dishes on the table with surly indifference, but de Revelle was in no mood to worry about servants. Lucille had been sent to eat with the other maids in the kitchen, and as soon as the food was laid out, he dismissed the steward.

Then he tapped on the inner door and called Matilda to breakfast. There was no answer and he knocked harder, then harder again. With foreboding building, he put his head around the door and saw that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, staring fixedly at the narrow window-slit. Eventually, after several invitations, which became more terse as his frayed patience became thinner, she rose and walked past him without a look or a word.

‘Bloody women!’ he muttered under his breath, but chivalrously held the only chair for her to sit, while he took a stool opposite. Though Richard had little appetite, incredibly Matilda had none. She broke some bread and made a pretence of eating, but mostly sat with her head lowered. He noticed tears welling from inside her thick eyelids, but no sound came from her as he summoned up courage to tell her about her husband.

Pouring a little heated ale into her already full cup, he cleared his throat. ‘Matilda, I have some disturbing news, I fear.’ She made no response, but the two trickles down each side of her rather flat nose reached her upper lip. De Revelle failed to understand the depth of her apparent grief at her husband’s infidelity. He knew that she had been well aware of his long-standing affair with the woman at the Bush Inn – he had heard her on many occasions taunting de Wolfe with the ‘Welsh whore’, as she was wont to call her. Why she should be so ravaged by the disclosure of his adultery with the Dawlish wife was quite beyond him, as she had often accused John of affairs with women other than Nesta. But thinking of the often irrational behaviour of his own wife, he mentally shrugged it off as a typically female aberration.

The problem still remained of breaking the worse news to her. ‘During the night, a terrible thing has happened, Matilda dear. I see no way of breaking it gently. John is in the castle gaol, beneath us. He has been accused of ravishing a woman of the town. That she is little better than a harlot makes little difference, as there were four witnesses and the girl insists on Appealing him at the County Court this morning.’

Her head came up slowly and she fixed him with a blank stare, the like of which he had never seen on her before, neither in childhood, nor since. For a moment, he feared that she had gone quite mad. He gabbled on, beginning to be gripped by the fear of being in the company of someone mentally ill. ‘I have to hold the court, Matilda, I have no choice. This is none of my doing, this Appeal comes from that woman, supported by her friends who caught John in his lecherous act! I am only carrying out my duty as the King’s sheriff in this county.’

There was a crash as Matilda’s chair went over backwards. She had shot to her feet, glaring at him, her lips quivering, but she said nothing. White-faced and shaking, she went in to the bedroom and closed the door. Unnerved by her behaviour, he approached the door timidly and tapped again. ‘Are you alright, sister? Shall I send for your maid?’

There was a pause, then her voice came, low but steadier than before. ‘I shall be at the the Shire Hall to support my husband.’

With a sigh, de Revelle turned away, wishing for a world made up only of men. Then his other troubles avalanched back into his mind and he wished himself anywhere but Devon, preferably Africa or Cathay.