Crowner's Crusade

TWELVE

It was early evening when John arrived back at the Bush and even after only a few hours, the atmosphere there had changed remarkably. Gwyn was there, heartily organizing a couple of men he had got in to clean up and change the rushes on the floor and throw out any broken benches.

Already, two new staff had arrived. Old Edwin was there, eager to earn twopence a day and all the ale he could drink, together with Molly, the girl from St Sidwell who Agnes had claimed was a good cook.

Nesta looked a different woman, with a linen coif over her red-gold hair, a clean apron and a bright-eyed eagerness in her face. John’s promise to help had rapidly transformed both her and the failing tavern and even some of the regular patrons were helping by killing rats and mice that ran from the dirty rushes as it was raked up.

‘Great to have you back, cap’n,’ quavered Edwin, who had served in Ireland years before and still gave John his rank as leader of their company of pikemen. He had a horrible dead eye from an injury during that campaign, the fish-white eyeball rolling up in the socket when he moved his other eye. In addition, he limped badly, as he had lost all the toes and half the foot in the same conflict.

‘Come and sit down for a while, good lady’ John said to the Welsh woman. ‘We must talk about how we restore your fortunes here.’

As they sat across a table while the bustle went on around them, he proposed his plan of action. ‘I’ll clear all your debts and lend you whatever is needed to get this fine inn back on its feet. For the time being, I’ll pay the wages of the three you have working here. I also think you should have a boy as ostler to look after horses in the yard behind, for it’s been a popular lodging for travellers, bringing in much business for you.’

Nesta laid a hand on his and whispered her thanks, her eyes filling with tears of gratitude. ‘Why are you being so good to me, Sir John? I know Meredydd thought the world of you, but he’s gone, God rest him.’

De Wolfe squirmed a little with embarrassment. Emotion and especially a woman’s tears, struck fear into him as much as a dozen Saracen swords. ‘Your man was a good soldier and a good friend,’ he muttered. ‘That’s more than sufficient for me to salute his memory by caring for his wife.’

Gwyn ambled up at this moment, obviously enjoying this new challenge as a change from trekking across half the known world. ‘The brew-shed is mortally short of materials for making ale,’ he rumbled. ‘And the kitchen is equally bare. Can I go out tomorrow and buy enough to stock us up?’

For answer, John reached into the pouch on his belt and slid a leather bag across the table towards the landlady, part of the earnings he had received from Hugh de Relaga. ‘That’s to be getting on with, Nesta. Give Gwyn what he needs for the market tomorrow. Good food and clean mattresses will soon bring back the customers.’

‘And I’ll find a couple of men to start whiteliming the walls, inside and out — and get the thatch repaired,’ promised the big Cornishman, as he stumped off again to supervise the cleaners.

Nesta laid a hand on the purse of silver, hesitant about accepting it. ‘How can I repay you, Sir John?’ she murmured.

He gave her one of his rare smiles, his dour face lightening and momentarily making him a youth again. ‘Forget the “Sir”, Nesta! I’ve had six months living like a common mercenary, it will take a while for me to feel like a knight again!’

She beamed at him and he suddenly realized what an attractive woman she was. John was a great admirer of the fair sex, but as she was the wife of an old friend, he had genuinely never had any amorous or lascivious thoughts about Nesta. However, he had always enjoyed her vivacious company in the inn, especially as he could speak to her in Welsh. He looked with new appreciation at her heart-shaped face, the pert snub nose and the big hazel eyes. She was a small woman, with a tiny waist but a full, curvaceous bosom. Her auburn hair was her crowning glory, though now half-hidden under her linen cap.

She felt him gazing at her and blushed slightly. ‘I miss my dear Meredydd so much, John — but life must go on. I am so lucky to have you as a good friend.’

He gave her another of his lopsided grins. ‘Then you can also have me as a customer, for I must find somewhere to live for a while, since my wife has barred her door to me!’

Nesta looked at him aghast, until he explained that there was no room for him in her cousin’s house. ‘Until she makes me spend a chestful of gold and silver on buying somewhere in the city, I will have to find lodgings. I hope you can find me a bag of straw up in your loft, dear lady?’

She stared at him wide-eyed. ‘You would stay here, in a common alehouse?’

‘Indeed I would, it’s a palace compared to what I have endured these past few years. In fact, I would earnestly desire to collapse on to a mattress very shortly, for it’s been a long and strenuous day!’

Nesta sprang to her feet, bustling to take care of her tall, dark benefactor. ‘First you must eat, we’ll see what this new girl can provide for you. Then you’ll have no haybag upstairs, but a goose feather palliasse from my own room!’

Within minutes, a bowl of tasty rabbit stew was set before him, that Molly had been simmering in the cook shed, together with a wheaten loaf, cheese and a bowl of ripe plums. ‘We’ll do better than that tomorrow, when we have more notice,’ promised Nesta, standing with arms akimbo to watch him eat.

When he had finished, though it was still daylight, she led him up the wide ladder in the corner to the loft above. This extended right across the inn, a bare floor under the high roof, which was made of twisted hazel withies that supported the thatch. In one corner was a stout partition with a door, forming a small chamber for Nesta herself. Opposite were a few wattle screens forming open-ended cubicles for the better class of guest, who paid twopence a night for a blanket and a straw-filled sack to sleep on, plus food and drink. The common lodgers slept in the middle of the floor for a penny, with bread and ale.

Nesta fetched a blanket, a pillow and a soft mattress from her room, and settled John in one of the cubicles. ‘There’s no one else staying her tonight, so you’ll not be disturbed,’ she promised, as he sat gratefully on the edge of his bed to pull off his boots. ‘God bless you, John, may he keep you safe this night!’ she said fervently.

After sleeping like a log until dawn, de Wolfe had a breakfast of gruel, fried eggs, ham and coarse bread, before going up to the stables in St Martin’s Lane to fetch his hired horse. He had thought to call at Fore Street to tell Matilda that he would be away for a few days, visiting his family. Then he used the excuse to himself that she was still likely to be snoring at that early hour, as except when attending early church services, she was as fond of her bed as she was of food and drink.

The rounsey was a decent little horse and John felt quite at home on her as he rode down the steep approach to the West Gate. He waved to the porter on duty, who gave him a semi-military salute, another old soldier who recognized John de Wolfe. The news that Sir John was home from the Crusades had spread around Exeter within hours, and many people had acknowledged him as he rode through the streets, already bustling with townsfolk and merchants going about their daily business.

The marshy ground outside the walls, flooded when the river was in spate, looked much the same as he remembered it. The new stone bridge had been started in the year he left for Palestine, but the builder, Nicholas Gervase, had run out of money and only a few arches were completed. The old, shaky footbridge would not take a horse, so de Wolfe used the ford to cross the Exe, as the tide was low.

Once beyond the river, he carried on at a brisk trot, turning off a few miles further down the high road to Plymouth to take the southerly track that led to the coast, eight miles away. It was a pleasant summer morning, white clouds scudding high in a blue sky and he revelled in being back in a green country after years in the arid, dusty Levant. The road was narrow and rutted, but at least it was dry in this fine weather. The track ran down the western side of the Exe valley, past Powderham manor on the marshes of the estuary, with gentle hills to his right. He felt contented, but he missed the company of Gwyn jogging alongside him, as he had done for so many years. After a couple of hours’ riding, he stopped before reaching the sea at Dawlish, to let his mare drink at a stream and crop the grass amongst the bushes at the side of the road. He sat on a fallen tree to eat some of the bread and cheese that Nesta had given him for the journey, as he looked ahead to where he could see the houses of Dawlish in the distance. Also visible were a few tilted masts, belonging to ships that were beached there and these reminded him that Thorgils, the master of the cog that had brought him home, was probably already with his wife in the village.

With a sigh, John knew that this destroyed any hope of his calling on the beautiful Hilda, his earliest love and one who still held a powerful attraction for him. Hilda was the daughter of the manor reeve at the de Wolfe’s second manor at Holcombe and as teenagers, they had both lost their virginity together in a hayloft there. She was half a decade younger than John and it would have been impossible to contemplate a marriage between a Norman knight and the daughter of a servant, even though her father had been freed from his former bondage and made the reeve, responsible for organizing the daily work of the manor.

John had been fighting abroad for most of his adult life and, during his absence, Hilda had married Thorgils, a relatively rich mariner and owner of three ships. However, when John was home and her husband away, they had had many passionate reunions and were still very fond of each other — or so John hoped, as this three-year absence in the Holy Land was the longest period they had ever been apart. For all he knew, she might have had a couple of children by now, though Thorgils was getting old, almost twice her age.

He climbed back into the saddle and carried on, passing slowly through the village street in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of Hilda at the market stalls, but there was no sign of her.

John trotted on, the road now following the coast and he soon passed Holcombe, with its pleasant memories. He could have called there had time permitted, as Hilda’s parents, though they guessed at the past relationship between the young people, were still both faithful manor servants to the de Wolfe family.

Soon he came to the River Teign, which flowed down from Dartmoor, the last few miles being a wide tidal channel. Though some hours earlier, it had been low at the Exeter crossing, the tide was now flooding into the sandy entrance to the estuary, so John took the ferry across to the other side. For a halfpenny, the boatman took him and the horse on to the flat-bottomed craft and poled it across, slanting against the strong current. On the other side, it was but a short distance to Stoke-in-Teignhead, a manor hidden away in a small valley amongst the trees beyond the western bank.

As he rode down the lane through the fringe of forest, he saw all the familiar sights of his youth, for he had been born and lived here until his father had sent him at ten years of age to be a page and then a squire to a nobleman in the north of the county. As the valley opened out into strip fields and cottages, the familiarity was almost overwhelming, even to an unimaginative man like John. There were a few people on the road and more working in the fields on either side — the children and younger lads staring curiously at this dark stranger, but older villagers soon began shouting and running towards him as they recognized him as their long-lost lord. His elder brother William was the actual lord of the manor and head of the family, a gentle fellow whose interests were in managing the estate, rather than John’s dependence on the sword. However, John had always been very popular, especially amongst the younger villagers, who admired his reputation as a warrior.

After reunion with his family in the manor house, the next hour was a bewildering confusion of welcome, praise and thanksgiving for his safe return, the sexton ringing the church bell in an endless paroxysm of rejoicing. Many had given up any hope of seeing him again, thinking that like the majority of the men who had sailed from Dartmouth three years before, he would have died of wounds, illness or drowning at sea.

His mother Enyd was one who never contemplated his death, resolutely believing that he would come home. Her conviction supported the others, especially his plump sister Evelyn, who had spent much of the last three years praying for him, as she was as religious as Matilda, having wanted to enter a nunnery in her youth. William had secretly feared that he would never see his brother again, but had kept up a firm pretence for the sake of his mother and sister — and was now heartily pleased to have been proved wrong.

What remained of the day was spent in talking, eating and drinking, as the family, the steward, the bailiff and the reeves all clustered around John in the hall of the manor house to hear his tales of the Holy Land and especially of the journey home. None of them had known that he had been part of the Lionheart’s bodyguard for the return from Acre and were prodigiously proud of him. When they heard that only John and Gwyn had been left with the king after all the others had been whittled away, they were astounded — and John’s sombre confession of his remorse at not being able to prevent the capture was dismissed by them as God’s will. Everyone in England knew that their king was in prison in Germany, but the details were scanty, except to the ministers and high officials.

‘Does anyone in Winchester know that you are back?’ asked William. ‘Surely you should tell someone the true details of our king’s capture?’

In the short time that John had been home, this had not occurred to him, but now that his brother had suggested it, he began to think that perhaps he had better report to someone. He had heard from Ralph Morin that Hubert Walter had been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar of England, virtually a regent now that the king was in captivity. De Wolfe knew Hubert, who had been the Lionheart’s right-hand man at the Crusade and had conducted most of the negotiations with Saladin. Morin had heard that the new archbishop was also in charge of parleying with Emperor Henry of Germany over the king’s ransom and was the prime mover in raising the vast amount of money.

‘Perhaps you are right, brother,’ he said. ‘As soon as my immediate problems are settled in Exeter, perhaps Gwyn and I should ride to London and tell our story.’

When the excitement had subsided and John was bursting with food and ale, his next desire was to be reunited with his old horse Bran and his dog Brutus. The big destrier, a warhorse he had won by defeating its previous owner in a tournament, was delighted to see him when John went to the stables, snickering his pleasure as John stroked his neck and fed him a few carrots.

His lanky brown hound was being looked after by the blacksmith, but as John walked towards the forge, just beyond the manor house, a frenzied barking and howling began as, almost by magic, Brutus could tell that his long-lost master was coming for him. The reunion was emotional for both of them and afterwards John pondered on the fact that he had had a far warmer welcome from four-legged beasts than from his own wife.

John stayed a few days at Stoke, his family and friends refusing to let him leave any sooner. Pleading that he had to return to Matilda and find them somewhere to live, as well as settle more business matters with Hugh de Relaga, they reluctantly let him go on the fifth day, after promises that he would soon return.

He left early on Bran, with the rounsey following quietly behind on a head rope. Brutus ran delightedly with them, dashing ahead and then returning for some foray into the bushes on either side. At an easy pace, he crossed the Teign again and a few miles further on, decided to call at Holcombe, which was a short distance off the road. Though he came to pay his respects to the reeve and his wife, he had a sneaking hope that Hilda might be there, as he knew that she often visited her parents. He was again disappointed in this, though he enjoyed the welcome they gave him, assuring him that their daughter was well, though still without child.

When he reached Dawlish some miles further on, he saw that the Mary and Child Jesus, the ship that had brought him from Antwerp, was beached in the mouth of the small river, having repairs carried out on the planking. This told him that Thorgils was definitely at home, so with a sigh he plodded on through the village and took the track across the marshes towards the ferry to Topsham, where he could return the rounsey to its stables.

Beyond the village of Starcross on the edge of the wide estuary, John stopped to rest and water the horses. He sat on the bank of a small stream that ran in a culvert under the lane to eat the bread and meat that his mother had pressed on him for the journey, while the larger beasts drank and Brutus went off to sniff the new odours of otter, fox and badger that abounded amongst the scrub and rushes that covered this flat plain. The muddy shore was only a few yards away and the hound vanished in that direction. A moment later, he began barking and whining, then dashed back to his master to sit expectantly at his feet, his tongue hanging out in expectation. John knew the signs well enough and climbed to his feet.

‘What are you trying to tell me, old fellow?’ he said affectionately, rubbing the dog’s domed head. For reply, Brutus dashed off once again, turning to make sure that John was following. They went along the edge of the stream to where it flowed into the Exe. The tide was ebbing and at once, de Wolfe saw what was arousing the dog’s interest. Caught in a clump of reeds at the mouth of the stream was a man’s body, left there by the retreating water.

John squelched through a few inches of brown ooze to reach it and saw that the corpse was already starting to putrefy in the warm weather, the face being swollen and discoloured, the tongue and eyes protruding. He grabbed the man’s belt and hauled him out on to firmer ground, then dragged him up on to the bank where he could get a better look at the body. Brutus sat down a few yards away and looked at the process with interest, obviously proud of his part in discovering this novel event.

John bent over the dead man and saw that he was dressed in riding attire, a long tunic slit front and back for sitting a horse. It was of good quality and he wore a stout leather belt with a sheathed dagger at the back. The belt carried a bronze buckle with an unusual design, a dragon within a circle and John removed it in case it could help in identifying the victim. His boots were of good quality, over long woollen hose and there was also a baldric across one shoulder, but no sword or sheath, though if he had been riding, they may have been on his saddle bow. The man’s face was unrecognizable due to the putrefaction, which was also swelling his belly, but what was easily recognizable was the massive wound across his neck, where his throat had been cut.

De Wolfe was so familiar with violent death after years on a score of battlefields, that the sight affected him not at all, apart from a professional interest in the nature of the wound. This was deep enough to reach the spine and had been made from right to left, as shown by its tailing-off under the left ear.

‘So what have we got here, Brutus?’ he asked his dog. ‘He’s a man of substance, by his clothing. Certainly no villein or serf.’

Brutus offered no comment and John bent to open the leather scrip on the front of the belt. There was no money in it, only a tin medallion of St Anthony.

‘That didn’t do him much good, I’m afraid,’ John said to the hound. ‘Maybe he was murdered for his money?’

He looked at the brown hair, cropped up level with the top of the ears in the usual Norman style, but that was no help in identifying the victim. There was no beard or moustache and the eyes were already flaccid and filmed, making it impossible to tell their original colour.

Then de Wolfe noticed a signet ring on the middle finger of the right hand. It was thin and made of some base metal, but John pulled it off the swollen finger for safe keeping, rubbing it on the grass to clean off a shred of slimy skin. After looking at it closely, he continued his monologue with his hound.

‘Odd, there’s no device engraved on it! What’s the point of having a blank signet ring?’ Then he tipped it in his fingers and looked at the inside surface. There he saw two lions passant gardant impressed into the metal and his thick black eyebrows rose.

‘What’s this, Brutus? The arms of our Lord King! I don’t like the look of this, do you?’

The dog sat on his haunches, his head on one side, regarding his master attentively. John screwed up his eyes and scrutinized the ring even more closely, but there was nothing else to be seen except the two heraldic beasts, each in full face, the right paw raised and the head in profile, the combination that caused the French to name them leopards. It was the royal insignia of England, adopted by the Lionheart from his mother’s arms of Aquitaine, a single golden lion on a red background. Richard had later added a second lion and no one else in England would dare to claim it for his own.

‘So surely he has to be a man in the king’s service, as I was myself,’ he mused. ‘And now he’s died a very violent death.’

Always a man of action rather than word or thought, he went back to the rounsey and brought her to the body. Cutting a length from the long head-rope, he struggled to lift the corpse over the saddle, then roped the hands to the feet under the horse’s belly, like an extra girth. Moments later, he was on his way again, the hired horse following on its shorter lead, carrying the sorry burden across its back.

On the ferry across to Topsham, he had some curious looks from the couple of other passengers, who shrank back as far as they could from the macabre load. No one was brave enough to question the tall, dark man who scowled at them as he defied anyone to ask why he was escorting a corpse. His intention to return the rounsey to the farrier in Topsham was abandoned, as he wanted to take the body back to the royal castle in Exeter, not dump it in an obscure seaport. He carried on up the road to the city, past St James’s Priory and, deciding that parading it through the main streets was unwise, went around through Southernhay to the East Gate and then up the steep slope of Castle Street to the gatehouse.

When the duty man-at-arms called Gabriel from the guardroom, the sergeant came out with Gwyn, who had been playing dice inside. They both looked askance at the body on the mare, now dripping bloody fluid from the ravaged neck.

‘You been a-killing someone, Sir John?’ asked Gabriel.

John explained how he had come across this unfortunate man. ‘Probably washed down the river — but God knows where he went in,’ he said.

Gwyn, always ready with a contrary opinion, bent to look at the man’s face. ‘But he could have been thrown from a ship and washed up from the sea,’ he suggested. ‘He’s been in the water a few days, in this warm weather.’ Like John, from long experience of fighting, he claimed a special expertise on the signs of death and corruption.

‘Why did you trouble to bring him all this way to Exeter, sir,’ asked Gabriel. ‘You are First Finder now, you are supposed to have raised the Hue and Cry down in Starcross.’

Since Saxon times, anyone discovering a corpse, unless it died of illness in the bosom of its family, was supposed to knock up the four nearest households and raise a search for the killer, before getting the bailiff of the Hundred to notify the sheriff.

‘What’s the point?’ objected Gwyn. ‘This fellow may have been killed a dozen miles up river — and certainly at least a few days ago. And we don’t even have a sheriff to report it to!’

De Wolfe shook his head. ‘Those weren’t the reasons, it was this.’ He fished in the scrip on his belt and took out the ring to show them. ‘That’s the king’s device! He must have been a royal officer of some sort.’

Gwyn took the ring and peered at closely. ‘The lions are hidden on the inside, as if he didn’t want who he was to be widely known unless he wished it.’ He passed it to the sergeant of the garrison. ‘Gabriel, have you ever seen one of these before?’

The sergeant shook his head. ‘Never, but perhaps Ralph Morin knows, he’s higher up the pecking order where royal matters are concerned.’

He summoned a couple of soldiers and they took the body to a cart shed against the inner wall of the inner ward. It was near the little chapel of St Mary and was sometimes used as a temporary mortuary. Here the unknown man was placed on a handcart and decently covered with a couple of empty sacks until some means of disposal could be arranged.

John left the two horses to be fed and watered and the three men went in search of the castle constable. He occupied one of the small chambers off the Great Hall in the keep, cluttered with spare armour, helmets and weapons, leaving enough room for a few stools and a table on which lay his clerk’s lists of stores and duty rosters. Ralph was sitting alone with a pottery mug of cider before him, and brightened up when he saw John de Wolfe entering.

‘Welcome back, how did you find your family?’ He motioned them to the stools as Gabriel found some more mugs on a shelf and filled them with murky liquid from the previous year’s vintage. After John had told Ralph of his visit to the manor at Stoke, he got around to the mysterious body on the edge of the Exe, describing how his hound had discovered it and the nature of the lethal wound in the neck.

‘And here’s the ring I took from the poor fellow,’ he concluded, laying it on the table. ‘That has a royal device, so who the hell is he?’

Morin needed only a quick glance inside the ring before handing it back to John. ‘He’s a royal courier, used to convey confidential documents for the Curia Regis and their officers. I think old King Henry set them up, though no doubt similar messengers have been used since time immemorial.’

‘I thought they used heralds on relays of fast horses,’ objected Gwyn. ‘Those uniformed fellows with a guard and a trumpet to clear the way on busy high roads.’

The castellan nodded. ‘Indeed, they carry most of the routine dispatches from London and Winchester, like new laws and messages for the Justices of Eyre⁴ when they are on circuit. But these others are supposed to be secret, fetching and carrying information that the Chancellor and Justiciars don’t want bandied about the countryside.’

John picked up the ring and put it carefully back into his scrip. ‘So having one murdered suggests that someone didn’t want a message delivered — or wanted to know what the message was?’

Ralph tugged at the points of his beard. ‘Quite likely — and it’s a serious matter indeed. And one which I don’t know how to handle. Devon doesn’t even have a proper sheriff now, since the Prince took it all into his own hands.’

‘What about de Revelle?’ asked John. ‘If he’s not officially a sheriff, how can he deal with a murder?’

Morin gave a cynical laugh. ‘Not so much how, as would he want to? His only interest is collecting the taxes for Prince John, though a fair slice of it goes into his own purse, I’ll warrant. And he’s a lazy bastard, as you know, John. He’ll not put himself out to make any enquiries. He’s back now and in his chamber, so you can ask him!’

‘There’s another aspect too,’ said John slowly. ‘If a king’s courier is slain because of the message he carried, who would be the most likely to benefit from that? With all this unrest and rumours of treason, it’s the Prince who is most suspect — and we know that Richard de Revelle is probably one of his creatures.’

The constable pondered this as he finished his cider and topped them all up once more. ‘We’re in a difficult position here, as though this is a royal castle and I’m a king’s officer, the rest of the county belongs to Prince John. He can do what he likes, he’s a Marcher lord in reality, head of a kingdom-within-a-kingdom. But the Chief Justiciar should surely be told of the death of one of his couriers — the message he carried or the reply to it, might be vital to knowing how far John’s insurrection has advanced.’

‘Did you know that a secret courier was in the West Country?’ asked Gwyn. ‘Would you recognize him if you looked at the body, though he’s going off fast.’

‘I didn’t know, but then I’m just a soldier, I’m not privy to much of the politics. I’ll have a look at the cadaver, but doubt that will help.’

De Wolfe had been thinking hard, his forehead corrugated with the effort. He rasped a hand over his stubble as an aid to thought. ‘I feel that I should ride to London and seek an audience with Hubert Walter. I know him well enough and I should show him that Gwyn and myself survived and give him what details we can about that journey, though I suppose he’ll have already had those from the king, as I hear he’s visited him in Germany. Then at the same time, I can return this ring and tell him what’s happened to one of his spies.’

Ralph readily agreed with this plan and John promised that they would ride for the east within a few days.

‘The dead man will have to be buried very soon, before he corrupts even more. Your garrison chaplain can no doubt arrange that with the cathedral. He deserves a decent burial as he doubtless died in the service of the Crown.’ He rose to his feet and made for the door. ‘Now I suppose I’ll have to talk to my dear brother-in-law. No doubt he’ll be as pleased to see me as a visitation of the plague.’