Figure of Hate

Chapter One

'Cheer up, Crowner, at least there's plenty to drink, even if the food's lousy!'

The fat priest, who was the garrison chaplain, winked and moved away, stuffing another meat pasty into his mouth. Sir John de Wolfe, the King's Coroner for the county of Devon, looked sourly about him, unimpressed by Brother Rufus's optimism. The bare hall of Rougemont, the name by which Exeter's castle was generally known, was a dour place for a midday party. A high oblong chamber with the entrance door at one end occupied most of the first floor of the keep. Below it, partly subterranean, was the undercroft which housed the prison — and above was a warren of rooms for clerks, servants and stores. There were slit windows along two of the walls, their shutters wide open on this mild October morning. On the other long wall several doors opened into the quarters of the sheriff and the castle constable. Apart from a few battered shields and crossed lances, the grey stone walls were bare, and de Wolfe was not surprised that the previous sheriff had failed to persuade his wife to live here with him, rather than at one of their more comfortable manors.

The thought of his wife's brother, the former sheriff Richard de Revelle, jerked him from his reverie, as the reason for today's gathering was to celebrate official installation of Richard's successor. The sheriff, Henry de Furnellis, had been sworn in seven hours ago by one of the King's Council at a ceremony in the Shire Court, an even more building a few yards away in the inner ward of castle. Before that, there had been a special 'in, the cathedral, from which Bishop Henry had been diplomatically absent, the Mass bein conducted by John de Alençon, the Archdeacon Exeter and a close friend of de Wolfe.

Now the great and good of the county, with many lesser hangers-on, had adjourned to hall for refreshment. The trestle tables and benches which usually served ale and food to a motley collection of men-at-arms, clerks, merchants and su cants seeking justice, were today filled with cross-section of Devon society, from manor-lords parish priests, from burgesses to bailiffs and constables to canons.

There were many wives among them, and experienced a stab of conscience when he looked down at his own wife sitting at a nearby table, listlessly at a capon's leg. Matilda normally rellished any public celebration where she could rub with the county aristocracy, show off her latest and gossip to her snobbish friends. But this was almost a badge of shame to her, and he had to persuade her to come with him, such was her reluctance. Though by no means a sensitive soul, de Wolfe realised that she must feel that people were casting meaningful glances at her and murmuring to other under their breath. For was she not the sister of the man who had been ejected from the office in the county for corruption, theft and suspected treason? Some of them wondered why Richard de Revelle still had a head on his shoulders, let alone being free to live peaceably on his manors near Plymouth and Tiverton.

De Wolfe sighed and turned his attention to the throng in the hall. Though many, especially the ladies, were sitting at the tables, there was a large contingent who preferred to stand or wander around with a pot of ale or cup of wine in their hand, meeting acquaintances and exchanging news and gossip. The new sheriff — though in fact he had already briefly held the same office the previous year — was talking to Ralph Morin, the constable of Rougemont. As John watched, they were joined by Sir Walter Ralegh, the member of the Curia Regis who had that morning administered the oath of fealty to the new incumbent, for as usual Richard the Lionheart was in France and was probably still unaware of the recent crisis in Devon. Then the archdeacon drifted towards the group and de Wolfe moved over to stand with them, as all four were friends of his, not least because they were all staunch supporters of King Richard. In these days of whispered intrigues about a renewal of Prince J€ohn's ambition to unseat his elder brother from the throne of England, loyalty could never be taken for granted.

'Once again, congratulations, Henry,' he said to the new sheriff. 'Let's hope you stay in office much longer this time!'

Henry de Furnellis grunted his bluff thanks. He was not an articulate man and spoke only when he had something to say, unlike some of the babblers here who paraded their tongues along with their stylish new clothes. In fact, Henry was a very dull man, elderly and reluctant to exert himself in his duties as sheriff. He had been Chosen by Hubert Walter, the Chief Justiciar and virtual regent of England during the King's absence, for being a safe, if unenthusiastic, pair of hands, unlikely to indulge in the corruption and treachery that had caused de Revelle's recent downfall.

De Furnellis was a large, lumpy man, with a shaven red face, watery blue eyes and a big nose.

sparse grey hair was cut short and his downturned mouth and the loose folds of skin under his chin him the appearance of a sad hunting hound.

'I doubt if I'll be here for much longer this time' he added phlegmatically. 'I'm well aware that Winchester only put me here to tide things over following the sudden departure of de Revelle. I want to get back to my manor as soon as possible, de Wolfe — so I hope you'll not burden me with too many problems in the coming months.'

The mention of the former sheriff made them all uneasy, and the coroner noticed Ralph Morin rather furtively over his Shoulder.

'Has anyone seen him lately?' asked the constable, a tall, muscular man with a forked brown beard and the look of a Viking chieftain.

John de Alençon shook his tonsured head. 'I suspect he's lying low at either Revelstoke or Tiverton. In spite of his misdeeds, I feel some compassion for him, being ejected in disgrace from such a high position.' The archdeacon was thin almost to the point of emaciation, his ascetic mode of life relieved only by a dry sense of humour and a taste for fine French wines. He was dressed in a long black cassock with a plain silver cross hanging around his neck above which a pair of lively blue eyes sparkled in his lined face.

'He was damned lucky to escape a hanging!' snapped Walter Ralegh, who was a Devonshire baron, though much of his time was spent either at the court or touring around the southern counties as an itinerant justice. A large, grizzled man with a bluff, impatient manner, he was an old comrade of de Wolfe's, having campaigned with him both in Ireland and the Holy Land.

This talk of Richard de Revelle's fall from grace again caused John to look across at Matilda, sitting alone and dejected at the table. Though she did not openly accuse him of being the instrument of her brother's downfall, the implication was always there.

Relations between them had been strained for most of the seventeen years of their marriage, and this latest fiasco had done-nothing to heal the wounds.

He was just about to move back to her, to keep her company and try to make some conversation, when thankfully he saw a dandified figure slip on to the bench alongside her. It was Hugh de Relaga, one of Exeter's two portreeves, the provosts chosen by the other burgesses to lead the city council. De Relaga, a prominent merchant, was de Wolfe's business partner and another good friend. The loot that the coroner had brought home from numerous campaigns across Europe and the Levant had been wisely invested with Hugh in a joint wool-exporting business. Second only Io Dartmoor tin in the economy of south-west England, wool provided a steady income for de Wolfe — in fact, it was a prerequisite for appointment as a coroner that the incumbent had an income of at least twenty pounds a year. The reasoning was that those with such riches had no need to embezzle from the lands in their keeping — a rather naive hope in many cases, though John de Wolfe happened to be scrupulously honest.

As he watched his short, portly friend exert himself to be pleasant to Matilda, a voice in his ear jerked him back to the group of men he was neglecting.

'I said, John, d'you think there'll be any trouble at this damned October fair this week?' Walter Ralegh nudged his arm to emphasise his point.

'Fair? There's always trouble at fairs, it's the nature of the beast,' replied John. 'But it's the tournament on Wednesday that's likely to cause the most problems. High-spirited young knights, drunken squires and the usual run of cut-purses and.pickpockets probably even a few horse thieves.'

'But this is not going to be one of those terrible mélées, surely?' objected the archdeacon, who strongly supported the ecclesiastical disapproval of tourneying. 'Men end up dead at those, a sacrilegious waste of human life, to say nothing of the damage they cause to property and the poor people in the vicinity!'

Walter guffawed at the canon's severe view of a true Norman's favourite pastime. They stop a good warrior from going rusty, Archdeacon! You'd be among the first to complain if England was overrun by Philip Of France because our knights were out of practice!'

The coroner hastened to reassure his friend. 'Don't concern yourself, John, this will be a small-scale affair, just a one-day event tagged on to the fair. There will be only individual jousts down on Bull Mead — there's no room for rampaging there.'

'But there'll be even more high-spirited men in the city than if it was just a fair,' grumbled the castle constable, whose men-at-arms would have to patrol Exeter to try to keep the peace. 'These events attract too many thieves, rogues and vagabonds as it is, without adding to the trouble with a tourney!' The four men continued arguing the matter as they stood between the tables. From his position leaning against a nearby wall, an unusually large fellow regarded them with a grin on his face. He was huge, being both tall and broad, but he was even more noticeable for his tangled mop of bright red hair and a huge drooping moustache of the same colour which overhung his lantern jaw. A.large nose and a ruddy face were relieved by a pair of eyes as blue as the archdeacon's.

'What are you leering at, you great oaf?' snapped the man standing alongside him, one who was as great a contrast to the ginger giant as it was possible to imagine.

He barely came up to Gwyn of Polruan's shoulder and was as skinny as the Cornishman was muscular. In contrast to the scuffed leather jerkin and serge breeches of the big man, a long, patched tunic of faded black hung from Thomas de Peyne's thin, stooped shoulders, giving him a clerical appearance. This was the impression he always strove for, as he had in fact been a priest at Winchester until unfrocked three years earlier for an alleged indecent act with one of his girl pupils in the cathedral school. Recently his name had been cleared, but the Church had still not got around to publicly restoring his reputation, which partly accounted for the habitually dismal expression on his narrow pinched face. He had a high, intelligent forehead, but a long thin nose and a receding chin added to his unattractiveness, made worse by a slight crook back and a limp, caused by disease in childhood.

'Why are you staring at our master over there?' he insisted in his reedy voice.

Gwyn, de Wolfe's squire and bodyguard, lifted a quart pot of ale and swallowed almost half the contents before replying to the little man, who was the coroner's clerk.

'I'm watching our crowner trying to be friendly to the new sheriff, though I know full well he thinks he's an old fool,' rumbled Gwyn.

'At least he's said to be honest and not ambitious for his own advancement, as was the last one,' objected Thomas, who almost on principle disagreed with everything the coroner's officer said. Though the two bickered incessantly, they were good friends, and Gwyn displayed an almost paternal attitude to the little man, born of the troubles that had afflicted him for much of his life.

Gwyn sank the rest of his ale and wiped his huge moustache with the back of his hand. 'True enough, but I suspect John de Wolfe will have even more work to do in future, as this new fellow is unlikely to move himself to do more than necessary.'

They watched the shifting patterns of men and women in the hall, as people moved around gossiping, taking more food and drink from the tables and from the trays and jugs held by servants. The costumes were many and varied, especially among the merchants and burgesses of the county, who tended to be more colourful in their garb than the soldiers and officials.

Although most of the men wore belted tunics, some had long ones to their calves, slit at the front for riding a horse, whilst others sported thigh-length robes over breeches, many with cross-gartered hose above shoes or boots. The more dandified had footwear with long pointed toes, some curled back almost to their ankles.

There were men like strutting peacocks, whose tunics and surcoats were bright red and blue, unlike some more sober knights and clerks, whose clothing tended to be of brown or dull yellow, with more practical boots designed for riding.

Thomas de Peyne nibbled at a mutton pasty, being poorer than a church mouse, to him any free food was manna from heaven. As he chewed, his sharp tittle eyes flitted around the chamber and settled on Matilda de Wolfe. He was a compassionate young man and felt sorry for her at a time when she must feel shame for her only brother's disgrace. He knew that Richard de Revelle had been almost idolised by his younger sister, which made his fall from grace all the harder for her to bear. For it to be her own husband who had brought about his downfall must be an even more bitter pill for her to swallow. The clerk said as much to his big companion, but Gwyn merely shrugged.

'The swine had it coming. Our crowner was too lenient as it was, I reckon. He should have denounced him long before, as de Revelle had been up to his treacherous tricks for months.'

Unlike the clerk, Gwyn was not a sensitive soul but a bluff soldier who saw everything in black and white, rather than shades of grey.

De Peyne went back to staring at the coroner's wife as she sat at the table, listening to the prattle of Hugh de Relaga. The portreeve was one of those who delighted in gaudy raiment and he wore a long surcoat of plum-coloured velvet over a tunic of bright green silk, girdled over his protruberant belly with a belt of gilded soft leather, the free end dangling to his knees.

His head was covered by a tight helmet of saffron linen, laced under his double chins. As he chattered away to Matilda, obviously trying to divert her and raise her despondent mood, his beringed fingers rested on her sleeve.

Thomas had an insatiable curiosity about almost everything, especially people, and his gaze now returned to his master's wife. He knew that she must now be forty-five, as she was four years older than her husband. Matilda was a solid woman, not obese, but heavily built with a short neck and a square face. Small dark eyes were not enhanced by the folds of loose skin that hung below them, and her features always seemed set in a rather pugnacious, sour expression.

The clerk felt that she had plenty to be sour about, with a husband like John and Richard for a brother! Even though Matilda despised him for being a failed priest, Thomas admired her for her devotion to the Church, as he knew she spent much of her time either at services in St Olave's in Fore Street or in the cathedral. He also knew that she had a leaning towards taking the veil, and not long ago had entered Polsloe Priory as a novice, after what she considered to be one of her husband's more outrageous lapses of morals. Though the outside attractions of good food and fine clothes had finally dissuaded her from taking her vows, Thomas still gave her great credit for her piety and devotion to God.

The Cornishman began to get restive, as he had little of the clerk's interest in people. Now that he had eaten and drunk his fill, he was anxious to be off to find a game of dice in the guardroom of the castle gatehouse, below the coroner's bleak office on the upper floor.

With a grunted farewell to Thomas, he lumbered across to the door of the hall and clumped down the wooden staircase outside, a defensive device that could be thrown down in times of Seige so that there was no access to the entrance twelve feet above ground.

Rougemont was built into the north-east corner of the city walls, which had first been erected by the Romans and later strengthened by both Saxons and Normans. The castle was at the highest point of Exeter, the city sloping away westward to the river, half a mile away. The inner ward was formed by a curving rampart of red Devon sandstone, which gave the castle its name. It was built with a gatehouse in the southern part, the first part of the fortress to be built by William the Bastard after he had broken the resistance of the Saxons three years after the battle at Hastings. A drawbridge stretched across a deep dry ditch and a steep slope separated the inner ward from a much larger area outside, which itself was protected by an earthen bank topped by a timber palisade. In this outer ward were huts and sheds where the soldiers and their families lived, as well as stables, stores and workshops. As Rougemont had not been attacked since the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda almost fifty years earlier, security was lax. Washing dried on bushes, wives and strumpets ambled about and urchins played between the jumbled mass of wooden buildings that turned the place into a small village rather than a military camp.

Gwyn ambled across the rubbish-strewn inner ward, where the ground had been beaten into sticky mire by the feet of horses, oxen and people. It had not rained today, but this had been one of the wettest seasons for years, and there were fears of a lean winter ahead for much of the population after such a poor harvest. He reached the gatehouse, a tall, narrow tower straddling an arched tunnel. On the ground floor, next to the raised portcullis that protected the entrance passage, was the small guardroom, with a cramped stone stairway at the back which led up to the coroner's chamber two floors above. Inside, three men Squatted on a horse blanket spread on the earthen floor, intent on a game of 'eighteens', using three dice cut from bone. Though, like most folk, none of them could read or write, they had not the slightest problem in counting the. spots on the dice with lightning rapidity, especially when there was money riding on the game.

Two of them were fairly young men-at-arms, the other their sergeant, a grizzled veteran called Gabriel, who had a face like a dried apricot, but an amiable expression when his toothless mouth broke into a smile.

'Sit you down, Gwyn, we've been waiting patiently to take some pennies off you. Where the hell have you been?'

The coroner's officer grunted as he lowered himself to the blanket and reached for the dice. 'Seizing a mouthful of the new sheriff's free food. But they're all gabbing too much for me over there, the place is full of the high and mighty, not common folk like us.' Gabriel cleared his throat noisily and spat on the floor. 'It'll not be the same somehow, without the old sheriff! How will Crowner John manage, without someone to hate?'

'He'll not have time to hate anyone, from what I gather. Furnellis was a lazy old bugger last time he was sheriff and I doubt he's changed much.' They played on in silence for a while, the chink of quartered and halved pennies the only sound, until Gabriel sent one of the soldiers to a shelf for some chipped pottery mugs and a pitcher of rough cider.

Outside, on the top of the drawbridge, another youthful soldier stood sentinel, grasping his pike and staring glumly down Castle Hill. He was thinking of the plump bottom of the girl he had had last evening behind the White Hart tavern, and the fact that thanks to Gabriel and his dice I had no money to see her again that night. With the three-day October fair starting the next day, being penniless was a miserable prospect for any virile young fellow.

He listened enviously to the chink of the pottery jugs and the rattle of the dice until his attention was drawn to a thin figure hurrying up the. steep slope towards him from the gate in the palisade of the outer ward.

As he came on to the drawbridge, the sentry saw there was no need to challenge him, as it was Osric, one of the city's constables, employed by the council of burgesses to keep order on the streets — an ambitious task for only two men in a town of over four thousand.

The skinny Saxon paused under the archway to get his breath back, leaning on the long staff that, apart from a dagger, was his only weapon.

'Is the crowner up in his chamber?' he panted. 'We've got a body already and the damned fair hasn't even started yet!'

The man-at-arms shook his head. 'I think he's in the hall celebrating with the new sheriff. But his officer's in there.' He pointed towards the guardroom and Osric scurried inside, bending his head to clear the low lintel.

Gwyn of Polruan looked up from his game and groaned when he saw who it was. 'Here comes trouble! What have you got for us this time?'

Four faces looked up at him expectantly, the dice forgotten for the moment.

'The flood tide has just washed up a corpse near the quay-side. One of the wharf porters saw it and fished it out not half an hour ago.'

The red-haired Cornishman seemed unimpressed.

'God knows how many drownings we've had this year, with all this rain. The river's been continually in spate since midsummer.'

Osric shook his head, a large Adam's apple bobbing in his long neck as he disagreed.

'No drowner this one, Gwyn! He was stark naked and his face beaten in so much his own mother wouldn't recognise him!'

The officer lumbered to his feet, a stubborn look on his face.

'A few days Or even weeks roiling in the river can tear off their garments, man! And their faces get smashed against rocks and dragged along the stony bottom.'

Equally obdurate, the constable shook his head again. 'Not this one! He's fresh, limbs still stiff and not a hint of corruption on his belly. Not been in the water more than a day, I'll wager.'

Gwyn sighed and bent to pick up the three halfpence he had already won.

'I'll have to come back later to take the rest from you losers!' he said gruffly to the men on the floor.

'Stay here, Osric, I'll go and get Sir John.'

The crowd had thinned out since Gwyn had left the hall, but there were still many people left, reluctant to leave while there was still food and drink remaining. He stood inside the door and saw that his master had now moved to stand over his wife and his friend the portreeve, who was still chattering away like a gaudy tomtit.

Gwyn wondered how often over the past year he had brought his master messages similar to the one he now had to deliver. It had been late the previous September that John de Wolfe had been appointed as the first coroner in Devon on the direct recommendation of the King, through Hubert Walter, his Chief Justiciar and Archbishop of Canterbury. Since then, they had dealt with scores of dead bodies, rapes and assaults, as well as a few fires, wrecks, troves of treasure and even catches of the royal fish, the whale and the sturgeon. During this eventful year, the twenty-year bond between the Cornishman and his master had strengthened, as each had saved the life of the other yet again. This time, the rescues had been within the county boundary, rather than in campaigns across the known world from Ireland to Outremer.

Gwyn looked across the hall at the man whose life was inextricably bound with his own. He saw a tall, slightly hunched figure, jet-black hair swept back from his forehead, long enough to fall to his collar, unlike the usual severe cropping of the neck and sides effected by most Normans. His face was long and hollow cheeked, with a large hooked nose surmounted by bushy eyebrows. Though de Wolfe shaved once a week, there was usually dark stubble on his face, and this, together with his habit of invariably dressing in black or grey, had long earned him the nickname of 'Black John' among the soldiery with whom they had spent much of their lives until three years ago.

Gwyn had been his companion, bodyguard and friend for almost two decades, since he had given up being a fisherman in Polruan to become John's servant in one of the early Irish wars. Their final campaign had been as part of the small band that accompanied the Lionheart on his ill-fated journey home from the Crusade, when a shipwreck in the Adriatic drove him overland to be captured in Vienna and held prisoner in Austria and Germany for well over a year. Both Gwyn and de Wolfe still blamed themselves for not being able to prevent the ambush, especially as they had managed to escape.

Now he stood in the hall and looked across with dogged affection at his master, as he hunched like a great crow over his wife and friend. He knew that de Wolfe's relations with his wife were stressful, there being faults on both sides. The marriage had been arranged by their respective fathers and both were reluctant partners. De Wolfe had solved much of the problem by managing to be away for most of the seventeen years of his married life, finding wars, campaigns and crusades to keep him far from Exeter. In all that time, Gwyn doubted that they had Spent more than a month in any one year at home, It was only when they returned from Austria that they found that they had run out of wars to fight, as well as becoming too old at forty to have the stamina for prolonged campaigning.

Gwyn shrugged off this rare moment of reverie; he was like his master in that contemplation and emotion were foreign to his nature. Pushing past a couple of kitchen servants who were collecting empty mugs and tankards, he walked between the trestles and benches to within a few yards of the coroner and made a discreet signal to him.

With an alacrity that showed that he was relieved to get away from Hugh de Relaga's prattling, de Wolfe moved across to his officer, a questioning look on his long face.

'Well?' he snapped, the severity of his tone being his normal method of address.

'We've got a corpse from the river, Crowner,' drawled Gwyn easily. 'Osric reckons it's fresh. Naked and beaten up, so he's unrecognisable.' John rubbed his hands together. He was not delighted at the thought of another man's death, but pleased to have an excuse to get away from this gathering, as the effort to be sociable was becoming a strain.

'I'll arrange to have my, wife taken home, then I'll come. Where's the body?'

'Still down on the quay-side. They're learning at last that no one is to interfere with corpses until you view them.'

John turned on his heel and stalked back to the nearby table, where Gwyn saw him making some excuse to Matilda and a request to the corpulent portreeve. Then he was back at his officer's side.

'I see our brave clerk is still here. Get him to come down with us.'

Gwyn signalled to Thomas, who was talking to a vicar-choral of his acquaintance, and a few moments later the three of them collected Osric from the guardroom. They began striding down Castle Hill towards High Street, which ran from the East Gate to the centre of the city. Thomas de Peyne limped behind on his short legs, as the constable repeated the meagre information to de Wolfe.

'Close in to the bank he was, according to the fellow who hauled him out. Could well have gone in on the Exeter side of the river, anywhere between here and Topsham.'

This was the port a few miles downriver, where the Exe widened out into its estuary, six miles from the open sea.

'And there's nothing at all to show who he might be?' demanded de Wolfe.

The Saxon shook his head as they hurried through the crowded main street. 'Doesn't look a rough fellow, Crowner. He's shaved and has a decent haircut. Hard to tell how old he is, but he's not a young man. There's a belly on him and his hair has a bit of grey at the temples.'

The town was already filling up ready for the fair the next day, and the press of people, barrows, handcarts and heavily laden porters slowed their progress until they got past Carfoix, the central crossing of the four main streets. Then they turned into side alleys and began going down the steeper lanes towards the quayside. At the bottom of Priest Street, they turned left to reach the Watergate, driven through the southwest corner of the city walls in recent years to give better access to the busy wharf and warehouses that Exeter's rapidly growing commerce demanded.

'He's just past that last cog, Crowner,' said Osric, pointing to the most distant of three vessels that were tied up at the stone quay. As the tide was well in, they were floating upright and would stay like that until the ebb dropped them down on the thick mud to lean over against the wharf. The whole place was busy with men jogging up and down gangplanks with sacks and bales on their shoulders. Shipwrights and sailors yelled garbled orders at the tops of their voices and merchants and their clerks were standing around heaps of cargo on the wharf, checking items by means of notched tally-sticks or knotted cords, as well as from a few parchment manifests.

Ignoring the noisy activity, John de Wolfe led his party onward, threading through the merchandise and shoving the odd labourer out of his path until he reached the last cog, which looked like a fat, bluntended Norse-longboat, its single sail now tightly lashed to the yard that crossed its stubby mast. Just beyond it were two figures, standing guard over something covered with a piece of canvas. They were rough-looking men, one dressed in a ragged tunic, the skirt of which was pulled up between his legs and tucked into his belt.

The other had a leather jerkin over breeches of coarse cloth, and both were barefooted, the lower part of their legs being caked in brown river mud.

'These men found the corpse, Crowner,' declared Osric. 'And this is him,' he added unnecessarily, jerking a thumb down at the canvas-covered mound.

The two men mumbled something and shifted uneasily, as any contact with officers of the law was something to be avoided, however innocent a man might be. The coroner's trio stood around the body, Thomas as reluctant as ever, for even a year's familiarity with his job had not inured his sensitive soul to the sights and smells of sudden death.

De Wolfe nodded at Gwyn, who, well used to the routine, bent and whipped off the piece of sailcloth to expose the corpse.

As Osric had promised, the deceased was stark naked, lying on his back, and against the dark muddy ground his pallor was almost obscene, like that of a plucked goose on a butcher's slab. The belly protruded, and Gwyn gave it a firm prod with his forefinger.

'That's fat, not gassy corruption!' he observed with satisfaction.

'I told you he was fresh,' said the constable, indignantly. 'Look at his hands, they're hardly wrinkled, so he's not been in the water long.'

De Wolfe, who considered himself an expert on injury and death, was not going to let a town constable lecture him on the subject, and he dropped to a crouch to examine the body more closely.

'Still stiff in the arms and legs,' he barked, as he cranked the elbows and knees of the dead man. 'And eyes not clouded yet!' He prodded the eyelids with a long finger as he spoke.

'The face is a proper mess, looks as if he's had a kicking,' said Gwyn judicially. From eyebrows down to jawline, the face was a welter of lacerations and bruises, the skin ripped, the lips puffed and torn and the nose smashed out of all recognition.

Thomas plucked up enough courage to venture a comment, similar to the one Gwyn had made earlier to the constable, 'We've had corpses from the water before, where you've said the injuries were due to being knocked around against stones and rocks after death. Could this not be the same?'

The coroner shook his dark head. 'The cuts and wounds are only on his face and neck. The rest of him is intact. When a corpse drags along the bottom, the knees and backs of the hands get ripped as well.'

Gwyn hoisted up one of the stiff arms. 'And look at these, Crowner! Bruises on both his forearms and hands.'

Thomas was uncharacteristically stubborn today.

'Isn't that what the crowner just described?' De Wolfe, content to expound further, prodded the blue marks with his forefinger. 'You can't bruise a corpse, Thomas! These were inflicted during life, though they're very recent, still being blue in colour.' His officer nodded sagely. 'Men get them from holding up their arms to defend themselves against a beating. This poor fellow's had a good old hammering.'

They stood in a silent ring around the body for a moment, looking down at what had been a living person not long before. Thomas crossed himself several times and murmured some verses of a Latin requiem under his breath.

'We know how he died, but who the hell is he?' grunted Gwyn.

De Wolfe questioned the two labourers and the constable, but none of them could offer any suggestions, which was hardly surprising given the state of the man's face. Crouching again alongside the body, John picked up the hands and studied them, turning them over to see both the backs and the palms.

'He's no rough peasant or manual worker. His hands are free from calluses — though he seems to have a number of small scars and old burns on the inside of his fingers. Maybe he was some kind of craftsman.'

After Gwyn had rolled the corpse on to its face to allow them to examine the back, de Wolfe motioned him to pull the makeshift canvas shroud over it again.

'Nothing more we can do herel We'll have to wait for someone to report their husband or father missing — though he may have come up on the flood tide from Topsham. I doubt it would be as far away as Exmouth, the corpse is too fresh.'

'Where shall we lodge him, Crowner?' asked Osric.

'It's a long way to carry him up to Rougemont.' Corpses from the central part of the city were usually housed in a cart shed in the castle, but on standing up and looking around, de Wolfe decided on an easier option.

'We can put him in one of the lower chambers of the Watergate — no one is likely to steal him!' The two wharf workers found a wooden device that porters used for carrying heavy crates or bales from the ships, a stretcher with short legs that looked remarkably like a bier. On this they carried the unknown victim, decorously covered with the sailcloth, to the nearby gate in the city wall. This had a narrow tower on each side, in one of which lived the watchmen who had the strict duty of closing the large gates when curfew was rung at dusk. In the base of the other bastion was a dank chamber half filled with junk and rubbish, but with enough space to leave the corpse on its trestle.

Gwyn pulled some lengths of timber across the small arched entrance to discourage intruders and Osric went across to the gatekeeper to order him to keep an eye on the place until further notice.

'Not much point in holding an inquest until we get some news as to who he might be,' said the coroner, as they started back up the hill towards High Street.

'With the fair starting tomorrow, there'll be hundreds of strangers in Exeter — maybe a thousand or more, given that the tournament is here as well,' growled Gwyn. 'Maybe he's one of those and we'll never get to know who he was.'

John made one of his throat-clearing rumbles, which could mean almost anything. 'I've got a feeling in my water that he's a man of substance, rather than some nonentity. If that's so, then he's more likely to be missed.'

A few minutes later, he somewhat reluctantly turned into Martin's Lane to reach his front door, all too aware that he would get black looks and sullen recriminations from Matilda for leaving her in the lurch so abruptly at Rougemont.