Figure of Hate

Chapter Six

Any thought of the usual noonday dinner was abandoned in the confusion that followed. The manor court had been cancelled halfway through and no work was being done in the fields or village, apart from seeing to the livestock. Virtually all one hundred and fifty inhabitants were standing around in groups, gathered at their garden gates, outside the alehouse or in the road to discuss the event which had fallen like a thunderbolt out of the blue. Some were even in the church, praying, not so much for the soul of Hugo but for salvation for the village in yet another time of crisis.

It was not just a topic for wonder and gossip, but a cause of real concern about their future. They had already suffered one upheaval this year, when William Peverel had been killed at the tourney, followed by the dispute about his successor. Now it had happened again, and the villagers were wondering who would lead them into the coming winter. An uncaring or inefficient lord could mean life or death for some, if the economy of the manor was not well run. There was always a thin line between survival and starvation in a bad season such as this one, and though a good steward and bailiff were vital, the real responsibility lay with the manor-lord. Some were muttering quietly under their breath that they were not all that unhappy that the unpopular Hugo was no more, but would his successor be any improvement? Some wished Odo would take over, as he should have done by right of primogeniture, but most assumed that Ralph would now become lord, as Joel was surely too young.

But at midday all this was academic as far as the freemen and bondsmen out in the lanes were concerned. What mattered was what was being said in the hall of the manor house, where the whole family and the senior servants were assembling. The three surviving brothers were sitting on stools and benches around one of the bare tables, and another dozen men were standing around in front of them. The low buzz of conversation was stilled as feet were heard on the stone staircase, and the male Peverels came to their feet as the dowager and the new widow entered the hall, followed by their handmaidens, who were dabbing at their eyes, more from a cautious sense of duty than sorrow. The bereaved ladies themselves showed no sign of grief, but rather a fretful anger at the disruption to their comfortable routine.

Odo came forward and held out his hand to courteously escort the ladies towards the only three chairs that the hall possessed. Brusquely, Ralph pushed in front of him and, with a sweep of his hand, invited them to be seated. The action was not lost on those present, who saw this as the first arrow-shot in the next battle for supremacy.

The Peverel ladies, Avelina and Beatrice, sat down, and their maids fussed around, arranging the skirts of their mistresses' kirtles and adjusting the fur-edged pelisses over their shoulders, for the day was cool and the fire in the hall did little to assuage the draughts coming through the window slits.

'This is an unhappy day for us all — indeed, an unhappy year!' said Odo sonorously. He was attempting to retrieve the initiative as the men sat down again at the table, with the ladies at one end, their handmaidens standing behind them. Odo, at thirty-seven, was the eldest of the late William's sons, and alone among them was not a tournament addict, being more interested in estate management and getting the best from the manor lands. It had therefore been all the more galling — indeed, humiliating — for him to be deprived of the inheritance the previous April. He was a tall, gangling man, less thickset than his father and brothers, but with the same straight Peverel nose and russet hair. The thin lips of a rather weak mouth were always turned down at the ends in permanent disgruntlement.

Not to be outdone by Odo's pronouncement, Ralph imperiously beckoned the senior staff forward.

'Roger Viel — and you, Walter Hog — stand before us there!' He pointed to the other side of the table, then crooked a finger at the others, so that the stable marshal, the master-at-arms, the falconer, the houndmaster, the armourer and the steward's clerk came to stand in a row facing their betters.

Avelina spoke up for the first time.

'Where has my stepson been taken?' she demanded.

Forty-one years old, and handsome rather than beautiful like Beatrice, her dark hair and high cheek-bones gave her a somewhat Latin or Levantine appearance, though she was in fact pure-blooded Norman.

'His body has been taken to the church, my lady.' Roger the steward answered in a suitably sepulchral voice, having arranged the removal himself. 'When the bailiff found the body of our lord, he called me and I thought it the most respectful place, rather than bringing him back to this hall, which of necessity would be in turmoil for some time.'

The steward never used two words where ten would suffice, thought Walter Hog, waspishly.

'Hugo has not been left alone, I trust?' asked Beatrice, her blue eyes looking larger than ever as she gazed around at the men seated at the table, pausing fleetingly on the fresh face of Joel, the youngest son.

'He is attended by Father Patrick, madam,' said Ralph, rather curtly. 'He has orders not to leave the bier on any account.'

Odo suddenly thumped the table with his fist, making a couple of pewter wine cups rattle.

'We must decide what is to be done! My brother lies foully murdered. His death must be avenged and his killer brought to justice!'

'Our justice, brother!' snapped Ralph, ever anxious to assert his anticipated authority. 'We need no interference from king's officers. This is a manorial matter and we have an obligation to keep it within the manor. There is no need to wash our grubby linen in public.'

The bailiff, growing increasingly uneasy, ventured an opinion. 'Sir Ralph, whatever we might think of the powers in London or Winchester, the Chief Justiciar proclaimed new rules last year. When a body is found, the first finder must knock up the four nearest households to raise the hue and cry to search for the miscreants!'

Ralph Peverel glared back at the bailiff. 'There's no problem then, is there? This mole-catcher's wife was the first finder, virtually in your own presence. And as for raising the hue and cry, the whole bloody village was roused, not just four households!'

There was a murmur of approval around the table, but Walter Hog remained stubborn, though he saw trouble approaching at high speed.

'Indeed, sir. But these new rules, which it is said Hubert Walter issued at the express wish of King Richard, demand that the first finder must immediately notify the bailiff, who must straightway report the death to the coroner. I've even heard that the body should not be moved from where it was found — strictly speaking, moving Sir Hugo to the church was illegal.'

'To hell with that!' rasped Ralph irritably. 'Do you seriously expect us to leave our noble brother face down in an ox byte? If it was some villein or serf slain by outlaws, then this new officialdom could be tolerated. But here we have the lord of the manor done to death — so we can dispense with all that nonsense!'

Bailiff Hog looked even more uncomfortable as he took a deep breath, swallowed and confessed.

'I took it as my duty to inform the coroner, sir. An hour ago I sent the reeve on a good horse to Exeter to summon Sir John de Wolfe.'

A sound-winded palfrey could cover the fifteen miles to the city in less than three hours, and not long after Crowner John had returned from his dinner and a short sleep to the chamber in the gatehouse, Warin Fishacre clattered up the drawbridge and dismounted outside the guardroom. Sergeant Gabriel interrupted his game of dice to take the reeve up the winding stairs and waited while the hunched figure told his story to the coroner. Gwyn and Thomas were in their usual places and listened with interest — since the debacle on Bull Mead the previous week, the name of Hugo Peverel was all too familiar.

'God's guts, this is the first manor-lord we've had slain since I became coroner,' muttered de Wolfe.

'You claim he was last seen in the company of a maid from the village? What has she to say about the matter?'

Fishacre shrugged his stooped shoulders, His thin backside was still sore from the urgent ride.

'We don't even know who she was yet, Crowner! I left Sampford soon after the body was discovered, but probably they've found her by now.' He stopped to cough noisily into his hand before continuing. 'I expect she'll get the blame and be hanged for it, whether she killed him or not!'. There was a bitter sarcasm in his voice that was not lost on John.

'Have you any idea who might have wanted to kill Hugo Peverel?' he demanded. 'It seems unlikely that a willing maid would want to stab him in the back while he was having his way with her!'

'Some of the maids have been far from willing, Crowner. Not that it made any difference to our lord, if he took a fancy to a girl.'

Again John sensed that the reeve had a deeper interest in the seduction of serving wenches than that of a mere observer.

'Other than young women, have you no idea who might be a mortal enemy?' he persisted, knowing that manor reeves often had the best insight into the intrigues of their village. Warin Fishacre's gaunt features twisted into a sardonic smile.

'It's not my place to gossip about my betters, sir. But many would say that it would be hard to find someone who wasn't his enemy!'

With that, de Wolfe had to be content and, rising, he took his cloak from a wooden peg hammered between the stones of the wall and threw it over his shoulders.

'I'll have to go back home and tell my wife that I may be away for the night, which will not please her. Get your horse fed and watered, reeve, and we'll meet at the East Gate in an hour.'

As he left them, Thomas groaned at the thought of a few hours on the back of his pony, but Gwyn looked pleased at the prospect of a ride out of the city, especially as this sounded like something out of the ordinary run of cases. He slapped the solemn looking reeve on the shoulder and guided him towards the doorway.

'Let's get your beast fixed up, then we can get some food and drink in the hall before we set off,' he boomed heartily.

Behind him, the clerk collected up his writing materials and stuffed them into his shapeless shoulder bag, wondering gloomily what violent events he would have to record on them in Sampford Peverel.

Eventually, the pangs of hunger among the occupants of the manor house in Sampford overcame any vestiges of grief and a generally subdued household sat down to a delayed meal of mutton stew with leeks, then boiled pork, beans and onions. Bread, cheese and boiled eggs filled up any remaining spaces in their stomachs, though appetites generally were less robust than usual, not from any overwhelming sorrow, but because of the upset and uncertainty that such an event inevitably brought in its wake.

The two ladies were present at the meal, with their maids dancing attendance, though they both picked fitfully at the food. Joel, the youngest of the Peverel brothers, sat next to the new widow and was noticeably solicitous towards her, gently coaxing her to eat, drawing scowls from Ralph and Odo for his trouble.

For her part, Beatrice was wanly preoccupied, though she gave Joel some encouraging murmurs of thanks and sly glances from under the long lashes of her lowered eyelids. The elder woman, Avelina, sat impassively, her thoughts seemingly far away as she ate delicately from the trencher on the table before her, using a small knife taken from the embroidered pouch on her belt.

When the wooden platters of fruit were brought, few bothered to take an apple or pear, but the bottler was kept busy refilling pewter cups with wine and pottery mugs with ale and cider. This was the time when discussion began again, and Ralph led off, again intending to stake his claim to leadership.

'Damn that busybody of a bailiff!' he snarled. 'Why in God's name did he go rushing to send for the bloody coroner!'

Though in the best circles in these times it was considered indelicate to curse in the presence of ladies, chivalry was not held at a premium in Sampford and neither of the women of the family turned a hair at coarse language. In fact, Avelina had been known to easily outswear the kitchen staff when something annoyed her.

Odo, though privately of the same opinion as his brother, felt obliged to contradict him as a matter of principle, to deny Ralph's bid for primacy.

'Walter was right in law. We could be censured for not complying with the new rules. Not that they are all that new — it's over a year since the Justiciar promulgated them at the Kentish eyre.'

The eldest son of William Peverel had spent a couple of years at the cathedral school in Salisbury, and as well as learning to read and write with moderate skill had harboured a frustrated yearning to become a lawyer until his disability ruled him out, just as it had disbarred him from his inheritance. He now followed the activities of the King's council and the politics of the day more closely than any of his brothers, who were concerned only with hunting and jousting. But Ralph was contemptuous of Odo's respect for the law.

'That damned fellow de Wolfe is an interfering nuisance! It was he who made the most trouble last week, when poor Hugo had that problem at the tournament. Anyone else would have let the matter rest, but de Wolfe had to make such a song and dance about it!' he ranted. 'And then at the feast afterwards, again it was he who interfered in a gentleman's dispute between Hugo and that slimy bastard de Charterai.' At the mention of the Frenchman, Avelina's head came up and she glared at her stepson.

'That's no way to speak of an honourable knight who is a guest in our country! He was the champion at that tournament and was a Crusader, so he deserves some respect.'

There were a few knowing glances exchanged around the table, including a few covert winks between the ladies' maids. It was common knowledge that Avelina, who had attended the tourney in Exeter along with Beatrice, had met de Charterai on the field at Bull Mead — though only her own handmaiden knew that she had given him one of her kerchiefs to tuck into his sleeve as a favour before he took the field with his lance.

Odo took the initiative again, his solemn face set stubbornly as he returned to the practicalities of the day.

'The coroner will come, whether we like it or not. If the bailiff had not sent for him, the news would still have reached him — the murder of one of the county's manor-lords is not something that goes unnoticed.' Ralph banged his ale jar on the table and snapped his fingers at the old bottler to get him to refill it.

'He'll get short shrift as far as I'm concerned. If he comes pestering me or the ladies for gossip, I'll tell him to clear off our land! We managed perfectly well for centuries without this new-fangled nonsense of a coroner.'

Odo was determined to contradict his brother at every opportunity. 'That's not quite true, Ralph. There was a coroner way back in Saxon times. The office just fell into disuse in Ethelred's time and Hubert Walter has revived it.'

'I don't give a fig for your history lessons, Odo!' shouted the younger man crossly. 'You've often heard what our good neighbour has said about coroners they are just another way of screwing more money out of the population. Amercements and fines and deodands and confiscations! The bastards are just bloody tax collectors under another name, according to Richard de Revelle.'

'And he should know, having been dismissed for being caught with his hand in the royal purse!' cut in Joel mischievously, but this merely served to inflame the volatile Ralph.

'Another vile injustice on the part of this Godforsaken John de Wolfe!' he snarled, glaring at his youngest brother, who in looks was a fresher-faced copy of himself. 'He's long had this hatred for de Revelle, even though he's married to his sister. He plotted his downfall out of sheer malice and what's happened? We've lost a good sheriff and had some old dodderer put in his place, who'll dance to de Wolfe's tune!' Avelina looked at Ralph with cold disdain.

'All this ranting is getting us nowhere. If you've nothing more useful to suggest, we may as well leave it to this coroner to investigate.'

Ralph bridled at her rebuke; he had never liked his stepmother and resented her taking his dead mother's place.

'Indeed I do have something useful to suggest, madam!' he snapped. 'We have a good neighbour not four miles away who knows more of the law than this swine of a coroner. I think we should prevail upon him to come over and advise us in our hour of need.'

'You mean Richard de Revelle?' asked Odo, for once not disagreeing with his main rival. 'It's true that as Devon's sheriff he was responsible for enforcing the law in the county, so he must know it backwards.'

'Backwards is probably right!' said Joel sarcastically. 'Don't forget that he was dismissed in disgrace for malpractice.'

Again Ralph slammed a fist angrily on the table, making the wine cups rattle. 'Watch your words, young man! He was a victim of a conspiracy, concocted by this de Wolfe, because of his leanings towards Prince John.'

'Which I hope none of us here shares,' observed Odo carefully. 'We are all staunch King's men. Let us not forget what happened in Nottingham and Tickhill last year!'

He was referring to the final rout of John's rebellion when the Lionheart returned home from his captivity in Germany, but again his sarcastic brother Joel felt obliged to cap his words.

'No need to go as far as Nottingham, brothers! Just remember that in our own county, down at Berry Castle, the traitor Henry de la Pomeroy had his surgeon cut open the veins of his wrists, rather than face the wrath of Coeur de Lion! We need to think carefully before climbing on to de Revelle's wagon.'

Avelina, whose social excursions obviously gave her more insight into the political scene than her stepsons, nodded her agreement.

'I hear that he still has ambitions which would be fulfilled if Prince John gained the upper hand,' she observed sagely. 'I wouldn't trust our neighbour very far. He was always badgering my William to sell him six carucates of that part of our manor which abutted on to his land — and for a trifling sum.'

Ralph jumped from the table to stride impatiently back and forth, cider slopping from his quart jug as he paced.

'This is foolishness! What in God's name has his politics to do with the former sheriff giving us some help over this tragedy? He knows about hunting miscreants and about the law that can be applied in the manor when they are caught. Let us send for him quickly, before this interfering knight arrives from Exeter.'

He omitted to mention that, being good friends with de Revelle, he also wanted this senior man's support in any contest with Odo over the succession to the manor, in exchange for selling him the land that Avelina had spoken of. Though no one was enthusiastic, there seemed no good reason why Richard's advice should not be sought. More by default, Ralph Peverel got his way and volunteered to go across to de Revelle's demesne immediately to explain the situation.

The sound of his gelding's hoofs had hardly died away when a figure hurried up the steps and, pulling off his woollen cap, advanced into the hall in a state of some excitement. It was the falconer, who, like the rest of the servants, had been out checking on who was missing. He approached the table where the family were gathered, looking apprehensively from one to the other, unsure as to which one was now the master, to whom he should deliver his news. Solving the dilemma by moving his head from side to side and speaking to no one in particular, he blurted out the news that Agnes, the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of the cottars, was missing.

'She was one of the skivvies in the wash house, sirs. A girl no better than she should be, if you get my meaning. Not seen these past few hours, since the poor master was found dead.'

With Ralph absent, there was no one to challenge Odo, and he now rose to his feet and glared fiercely at the falconer.

'Are you saying that she was the girl who was with Sir Hugo last night?' he demanded.

Joel also sprang to his feet and, red faced, confronted his eldest brother.

'Have you no tact, Odo? Think of poor Beatrice having to listen to this!'

Hugo's new widow blushed, but more from the younger brother's chivalrous words than any revulsion or shame at the mention of her late husband's well known carnal pursuits.

'I think it would be best if I retired to my chamber,' she said tactfully, and, with much fussing of maids, both women rose and gracefully vanished up the staircase to the upper floor. Odo resumed his interrogation of the falconer, a grizzled man of forty with skin like the bark of an oak tree.

'Well, was this the doxy that he was covering in the ox byre?'

'So says another maid in the wash hut. Agnes had been with him before, when it seems he had given her a whole penny for her trouble.'

Roger Viel coughed delicately and spoke up.

'I know the girl, she has a face like a pudding, but the rest of her is shapely enough. I fail to see why she should harm our lord, especially when he was so generous to her just for lying on her back for him.'

Odo rasped his fingers over two days' growth of gingery stubble on his cheeks. 'Nevertheless, it is vital that we find her and see what she has to say. If there is no one else forthcoming as a suspect, then maybe she will have to serve as the culprit!'

He waved the falconer out, with orders to search the whole village until she was caught. There was nowhere else she could go, as to leave the manor meant eventual death from exposure or starvation. No other village would take her in, and a girl could not even flee into the nearby forests to become an outlaw.

There was just one place she could go, however, and even though the fugitive was an immature drab of a laundry girl, desperation drove her to take advantage of it.

Sir Richard de Revelle arrived at Sampford something over an hour later, hurrying back with Ralph Peverel to make sure of getting there ahead of his arch-enemy, the coroner.

His keenness to help his neighbours was in part due to the chance of confounding his brother-in-law, but also as a potential lever in securing the desirable parcel of land he wanted. It was a wide tongue of pasture and forest which projected into his manor boundary. If he could acquire it, this land would form a continuous stretch which, when ploughed into strip fields, would form a valuable addition to his estate. Previous offers had been adamantly rejected by both old William and Hugo Peverel, and he had been working on the more amenable Ralph for several months, hoping that he could persuade the family to part with the ground.

Richard marched into the hall as if he owned the whole manor, slapping his soft leather gloves against his thigh as he advanced to the far table, where once again the ladies and all the other brothers were seated.

Ralph ushered him to a bench and beckoned imperiously to a servant to bring wine. De Revelle, with hand on heart, inclined his head courteously to the ladies and murmured platitudes of sympathy on the sad loss of Hugo. His foxy face was triangular, narrowing below his moustached mouth to a small-pointed beard, an affectation unusual among the Norman aristocracy, who were usually clean shaven, Similarly, his fair wavy hair was slightly longer than the usual cropped top above shaven sides that most men affected. A dandified man, he wore a long tunic of fine green wool under his yellow riding cloak, with golden embroidery around the square neck and lower hem. A wide leather belt, carrying a dagger and pouch, was of oriental style, designed to give the impression that he had been to the Holy Land, though in fact he had never ventured beyond France.

'I have told Sir Richard the sparse facts surrounding my poor brother's vile death …' began Ralph, but he was immediately interrupted by Odo.

'Since you left here, there has been more news. The girl has been found — and lost again.'

'Satan's horns, what's that supposed to mean?'

'The wench that Hugo took to the ox byte was one of the wash-house drabs. But before she could be taken, she gained sanctuary in the church!'

Ralph, the most short-tempered of the whole family, stared at Odo for a moment, then laughed. 'Sanctuary. Don't be so bloody foolish, brother. Let's get her dragged out and given a good beating — then have her brought here for us to question.'

Beatrice smacked her small hand on the table in front of her.

'You can't do that! It's sacrilege and I expect it's illegal.'

Joel, who wished to support Beatrice in everything, agreed.

'Besides, if you want to thrash senseless every girl that Hugo ever laid, there'll be little laundry or cooking done in the village,' he added cynically, forgetting his previous concern for Beatrice's sensibilities.

Ralph ignored his facetious younger brother and addressed himself to Odo and de Revelle.

'This is nonsense!. The girl is nothing but a cottar's daughter, the lowest of the low,' he snarled. 'Why the daft bitch wants to seek sanctuary is beyond me, unless of course she did kill Hugo! Send someone to get the damned wench out of that church, before I lose my temper!'

Refusing to acknowledge Ralph's assumption of supremacy, Odo turned to the former sheriff for advice.

'What do you think about this, Richard?' He deliberately used his Christian name to emphasise his own equality in rank with another manor-lord. De Revelle stroked his little beard, an affectation he had when giving the impression of deep thought.

'It's an offence, of course, the breaking of sanctuary,' he said in his rather high-pitched voice. 'There is a rigid scale of penalties set down by law. But it is the Church, rather than the Crown, that sets its face so strongly against it, especially after King Henry's blunder in sending those knights after Thomas Becket.'

'So what should we do?' persisted Odo. 'You are the legal authority here.'

De Revelle scowled. 'Until I am reinstated after the foul conspiracy that deprived me of my shrievalty, I have no authority — but therefore am free to give advice, man to man.'

'And that advice would be?' questioned Ralph, returning to the fray.

'This is your manor,' brayed Richard. 'The slut is your property, the church is yours and no doubt you pay the priest who serves it. So drag the wretched girl out without further delay!'

The reeve led the coroner's team into the village up the last stretch of track that came from the high road to Taunton along the Culm valley. De Wolfe had never been to Sampford Peverel before; to him it was just a name, one of the scores of manors that dotted the county. Many belonged to the bishop, others to abbeys or the Templars or directly to the King himself, but the remainder were held by knights and barons, either as freehold tenants-in-chief of the King or leased from a greater landowner. He knew that the Peverels had been here since the middle of the century, the family having originally come over soon after the Conquest — some said as bastard relations of William himself.

There were Peverels in a number of areas, from the Derbyshire peaks to farther down in Devon. The reeve gave a running commentary on the fertility of the rolling slopes on which the village was sited, local pride evident in his voice as he extolled the abundant crops and beasts that could be grown and tended here in good years. It was his job to organise the tilling of the fields and the ordering of labour that kept the economy of the manor in good shape. He grimly added a caveat — to the prosperity of Sampford, however, as the first dwellings and the church came in sight.

'A pity the goodness of the soil is not matched by the contentment of its people,' he growled obscurely.

Then, perhaps realising that for an unfree villein he had said too much in the presence of another Norman knight, he quickly changed the subject. Pointing at the squat wooden building coming up on the right-hand side of the track, he said, 'Our last master, Sir William, was going to rebuild the church in stone, but the good Lord took him before he could begin.'

A low dry-stone wall surrounded the churchyard, in which a few old yew trees stood among the grassy grave mounds, several of which had rough wooden crosses at their head. The church was a small oblong with a bell arch sticking up at the west end of the thatched roof, tattered from the previous winter's storms. A porch just big enough to hold a coffin and four bearers was stuck on to the south wall, from which loud voices could be heard as they reined in at the churchyard gate.

'What the hell's going on?' grunted Gwyn, as first shouting and cursing from several different voices then a feminine scream could be heard.

'Strange language for the house of God!' agreed the coroner, throwing his leg over Odin's broad back to dismount.

'Disgraceful profanity, that's what it isl' squeaked Thomas de Peyne, crossing himself energetically as the yelling increased from inside the church.

As the four men pushed through the small gate, the reeve hurried ahead, fearful of what he might find in his village church. A new voice erupted from the porch, in broad accents that John and Gwyn easily recognised as Irish, from their time fighting in that island.

'This surely is sacrilege and a grave offence against God and the Holy Church! Be assured that the archdeacon and the bishop will hear of this!' As a blasphemous reply came to the effect that if the speaker wanted to keep his comfortable living he had best keep his mouth shut, a struggling knot of people erupted from the porch, watched by the bemused group from Exeter: A bare-footed young girl in a patched dress was squirming like an eel in the grip of two men, one of whom John recognised as the armourer he wanted to question about the death of the silversmith. The other was dressed in green and the coroner correctly identified him as a hunt-master.

Hanging on to the back of the girl's thin smock was a fat man with a priest's cassock and a shaven tonsure, still bewailing the sacrilege of breaking sanctuary and threatening every penalty from excommunication to being struck by a thunderbolt. The coroner loped forward until his predatory features loomed closely over the two men dragging the girl.

'Let the child be, damn you! What's going on here?' he rasped.

Agnes stopped yelling and looked up in terrified awe at this black-clad apparition from outside the village.

Was she to be executed on the spot by this man, who looked like a gigantic hooded crow? Before she could find her tongue, a chorus of voices burst out from around John.

'These accursed souls are dragging her from God's holy sanctuary!' squawked the fat Irishman, blue eyes watering in his round, red face.

'What the bloody hell are you about, lads?' demanded Warin Fishacre.

'Just doing what Sir Ralph ordered!' shouted the hound-master. 'Or was it Sir Odo? Anyway, we was told to get her out of here and bring her to the hall.'

'I didn't do nothing, honest!' screeched the washgirl. 'I was scared when I heard what had happened, knew I'd get the bloody blame and they'd hang me!'

De Wolfe held up his hands, his wolfskin cloak falling back like the wings of some huge bat. 'Be quiet, all of you!' he roared, then stabbed a long finger at the priest.

'You, Father — tell me what this is all about.' Before Patrick, the village priest, could open his mouth, there was a deep, authoritative voice from behind them.

'I presume you are Sir John de Wolfe. You are welcome to my manor, sir, though I regret that such a sad event brings you to us.'

John turned to see half a dozen men coming down from the churchyard gate. The speaker, a tall man with a mournful Peverel face, was almost jostled for first place on the narrow path by a younger man whom he recognised as the brother who had been with Hugo Peverel outside the New Inn in Exeter when he had challenged them over the suspect armourer. But what immediately caught his eye was the all-too-familiar figure behind Odo Peverel.

'Oh, Mary, mother of God!' he groaned under his breath, as he saw his brother-in-law, Richard de Revelle.