The Awful Secret

Chapter Nine In which Crowner John is referred to the Gospels

‘Even though he was your friend and a guest, John, you are still the coroner and I thought we had better observe the rules. We left the body where it lay.’ William de Wolfe spoke sadly, conscious that a man who had been left at his house for safety had ended up dead within two days.

His brother tried to reassure him that he need feel no guilt over the tragedy. ‘He should not have ventured out alone, especially in a place that was strange to him, William. In Exeter he was more than nervous, but he seems to have assumed that the wilds of the countryside held no risk.’

They were trotting their steeds along the track that led from the manor-house towards the river Teign, with Gwyn, Thomas, Alsi, a reeve and two grooms from Stoke following behind. De Wolfe had left Exeter as soon as he had managed to calm Matilda, who blamed him incessantly for not ensuring that de Ridefort was guarded night and day. He suspected that she was using the tragedy partly as a weapon to accuse his family of being negligent in failing to protect de Ridefort.

Simon had brought Gwyn and Thomas down from Rougemont to the house in Martin’s Lane and within an hour they were on the road to Stoke-in-Teignhead, covering the sixteen miles in four hours, having to wait a little for the tide at the ford at Teignmouth. Arriving in the afternoon, they rode straight to the scene of the death, which was guarded by two of the village freemen, set there the previous night by William. ‘I sent our steward as messenger to Exeter, rather than a bailiff as you say the law demands,’ explained his brother, as they rode. ‘He set out a few hours before dawn with one of the ostlers, going by the inland road as we knew the tide would be high then. There seemed no point in raising a hue and cry in the middle of a forest at nightfall.’

John agreed. ‘Neither do we need to seek presentment at the inquest I’m bound to hold – his identity as a Norman is obvious. My concern is how he came to his death.’

‘I feel responsible in great measure, whatever you say, John. I should have insisted that someone went with him, but I did not even know he was gone. I was selling sheep in Kingsteignton when he left.’

‘At what time was he found, brother?’

‘The light was fading, so it must have been after the sixth hour at this time of year. If the mare had not been seen, I doubt we would have discovered the body until this morning at the earliest, as he is hidden from view.’

When they arrived at the scene de Wolfe saw why this was true. A bridlepath split from the track alongside the Arch brook, which ran through low hills from Stoke to the river. It struck through the woods towards Coombe then turned to the water’s edge. There was dense woodland all along the banks of the river, which was wide and tidal for about two miles upstream from the ford at Teignmouth. After some rank grass and bushes above highwater mark, the trees began abruptly and were thickest at the forest edge where there was plenty of sunlight. Less than fifty paces from the bridlepath, and a similar distance from the edge of the trees, Gilbert’s body lay in a small clearing, where a large beech had fallen in a storm.

‘He is just as we found him, though we covered him with a cloak as a mark of respect,’ said William sombrely, as they all slid from their mounts at the edge of the clearing. The two freemen had been sitting on the fallen trunk and now rose expectantly at the arrival of their lords.

The coroner, his brother and Gwyn walked forward to the spot where a still figure lay under a riding cloak. Thomas hung back with the servants for a moment, then plucked up courage to edge nearer.

One of the socmen lifted the cloak and they saw that de Ridefort lay face down on the weeds between two scrubby elder bushes that had colonised the gap in the tall trees. The undergrowth was beaten down in a circle around the body and two tracks radiated away from it through the new spring grass into the trees. Dark blood was congealed on the leaves immediately to one side of the body and, though the face was hidden in vegetation, more blood was spattered in front of the head.

Before they touched the cadaver, Gwyn and his master stared carefully around the tiny clearing. ‘There’s been no horses in here. Whatever was done was carried out on foot,’ declared Gwyn.

‘There are many hoofmarks in the mud inside the trees, leading from the bridlepath,’ volunteered one of the guardians of the body, pointing away to one side.

‘He’s fully clothed, though he has no mantle in this cold weather,’ observed de Wolfe.

‘That was his own cloak we threw over him, Crowner,’ said the same freeman. ‘It was lying twenty paces away, towards the mess of hoofmarks.’

De Wolfe dropped to one knee alongside the corpse. He realised what a tall man de Ridefort had been, as he lay stretched full length on the ground.

A quick inspection at close quarters soon dispelled any lingering hope that this had been some accident, for the knight’s over-tunic of dark red wool was rent along a four-inch line just above his belt on the left side. The cloth was soaked in blood all around it, though because of the colour of the material, it had not been obvious from a distance.

‘There seems no other body wound than this at first sight,’ reported de Wolfe, ‘But he has had a blow upon the head.’ He could feel a swelling at the back of the cranium, and when he parted the hair, there was a large discoloured graze on the scalp.

‘What about the blood near his face?’ asked William, his face pale with the unaccustomed proximity of violent death. He was a farmer, not a man of action, and these things disturbed him more than most.

‘That almost certainly came from him coughing blood – it is pinker and more frothy than the dark flow from his side. That means the wound in his chest was inflicted while he was still alive and has penetrated his lights.’

‘Though he may have been without his wits from the blow on the head,’ reasoned Gwyn.

The coroner rose and motioned to his officer to turn the dead man over on to his back. The handsome face was red-purple in death, except for pallor of the nose and chin.

William stared in horror. ‘His face is blue! Has he been strangled as well?’

His brother shook his head. ‘That is merely blood settling after death – the white nose and chin are where the face lay hard against the ground.’

The eyes were closed, but from the mouth a trickle of frothy blood emerged. Gilbert’s hands had been outstretched before his head when he was on the ground, but now that his body was turned, they stuck stiffly upwards in a grotesque parody of supplication.

‘Ah, I was wrong about there being no other injuries!’ exclaimed the coroner. He grasped one of the wrists to examine the hand. ‘He’s stiff, yet that is to be expected if he died last night. But look at these!’ He pointed with a long forefinger at the palm of each hand, where there was a ragged wound in the centre that did not penetrate to the back. With Gwyn’s aid, he removed de Ridefort’s belt, which carried a sheathed dagger, and pulled up the over-tunic and tunic to expose the skin beneath. He rubbed away much of the smeared blood on the skin to expose a clean vertical incision slicing across the rib margin in the line of the armpit, just above the waist.

Thomas had been edging forward, forcing himself to look at the body, his left hand over his mouth to contain his revulsion. After staring at the exposed wounds, he crossed himself rapidly and gabbled in Latin.

‘For God’s sake, hold your tongue!’ snapped Gwyn. ‘What are you babbling about?’

‘The Blessed Gospel of St John, chapter nineteen!’ squeaked the clerk.

De Wolfe stared at him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

‘The spear wound in the side – and the marks on the palms!’ he said, in a melodramatic hiss.

William, who was a more ardent churchgoer than his brother, nodded vigorously. ‘The crucifixion – the final spear in the side and the marks of the nails in the hands!’

John’s gaze dropped from William to Thomas with dawning understanding. ‘Are you suggesting that he was crucified?’

Gwyn, for all his antagonism to religion, bent to examine the feet of the corpse. The dead man wore calf-length riding boots, but there was no sign of any damage to the leather. To make sure, he pulled them off, together with the long woollen hose. ‘Nothing on the feet – and the marks on his hands do not come right through,’ he objected.

Thomas glared up at him indignantly. ‘It’s symbolic, you ginger oaf!’ His tremulous excitement made him bold enough to insult his colleague.

The coroner wiped the blood from his fingers on the grass and stood up. ‘We can do nothing more here. Have the body taken back to the church in Stoke where he may lie decently, until I can examine him more closely.’

As they walked away from the body, de Wolfe said that he would have to open an inquest that afternoon and ride back to Exeter at first light in the morning. ‘There are people there I must see urgently. Beginning with a clutch of Templars and an Italian priest.’

It was a melancholy procession that made the journey from Stoke-in-Teignhead to Exeter the next day. De Wolfe had held a perfunctory inquest the previous afternoon, Thomas writing down the details of the men who had found the body and a brief account of its injuries. The blow on the head might have been inflicted by any blunt object, from the flat of a broadsword to a piece of timber. The wound in the side was clean and deep and might have been made either by a sharp-pointed sword or a spear. The ragged, somewhat superficial wounds in each hand had been caused by the point of a knife being turned in the flesh, these being the sum of the injuries. The bleeding from the mouth was attributed by de Wolfe to a deep puncture of the left lung, and there was nothing else to discover.

‘Could not the cuts in the hands be due to the poor man trying to defend himself?’ suggested William afterwards. De Wolfe had discounted this, as they were unlike the usual defence wounds and were identical on right and left palms. They had decided to take the body back to Exeter, rather than have it buried in the church of St Andrew at Stoke. De Wolfe’s stated motive was that a Templar knight should lie at least for a time in a cathedral and preferably be buried there, if there was no Templar church within reach – but he had an ulterior motive, which he kept to himself for the time being. As an ox-cart would have severely delayed their journey back to the city, he decided to have the body wrapped in hessian and slung across the back of a sumpter horse led on a head-rope by Gwyn.

The journey back took five hours, de Wolfe being unsure which was the slowest, the gelding with the corpse or Thomas side-saddle on his pony. When they reached Exeter in the early afternoon, he prevailed upon his friend the archdeacon to accept the body and have it laid before one of the side altars in the base of the cathedral’s north tower. He was careful not to describe or expose the strange injuries on Gilbert’s corpse, in case John de Alençon probed more deeply into the matter and refused to accept a possible religious renegade with blasphemous wounds.

Matilda was not at home and Mary told him that she had spent almost all day praying in St Olave’s for the soul of Gilbert de Ridefort. De Wolfe left his house and, with Gwyn at his side, strode through the streets to the priory of St Nicholas.

‘We’re in luck this time,’ exclaimed Gwyn, as they walked through the archway into the small courtyard. Three superb horses were tethered there, attended by the priory grooms.

De Wolfe looked at the large stallions, which were almost as big as destriers. ‘You can see that the Templars are never short of money!’ he observed cynically.

A porter appeared from the gate lodge and directed them to the guest rooms, a small extension from the little priory at the end of the courtyard. These were just a few cells opening off a narrow corridor, with a larger common room at one end. Knocking on the open door, the coroner found the three knights sitting on benches around an open fire. They looked up questioningly, as he introduced himself. ‘I am John de Wolfe, the king’s coroner for this county. I believe that I have met two of you gentlemen in the past, both in the Holy Land and in France.’

Brian de Falaise rose to his feet, a man of about forty, almost as big as Gwyn with hair cut to a shelf around his skull to fit under a helmet, heavy beard and moustache of a dark brown colour. His face was weathered and ruddy, his nose large and pitted, his whole appearance that of an intolerant, aggressive tyrant. ‘I remember you! They called you Black John at Acre and Ascalon,’ he said gruffly. ‘You were close to King Richard, as I recall.’

The second Templar was a slightly younger man, tall, thin and bony with black hair and moustache and a thick rim of black beard around his chin. Just as de Falaise was pugnacious, Godfrey Capra appeared morose and stern. He also recognised de Wolfe from a previous encounter. ‘I am sure that I have seen you, but I cannot remember where,’ he said, in a voice that was rather too high-pitched for a tall man.

‘It was at Gisors, at the Splitting of the Elm, when we had such trouble with the French,’ replied de Wolfe.

The third knight, the leader of the group, could claim no such memories of the county coroner. He introduced himself as Roland de Ver, in a quiet and somewhat offhand manner. Probably in his mid-thirties, he was also tall and slim with light brown hair, and high cheekbones above the obligatory beard and moustache of the Templars. His blue eyes seemed wary and gave John the impression that he was suspicious of everything and everyone.

With Gwyn waiting back in the courtyard, de Wolfe was invited to sit with them whilst they exchanged some cautious reminiscences of Palestine and France. Then they enquired about his business.

‘I had intended to visit you in any event, as I knew I had been acquainted with at least two of you in the past,’ he began. ‘However, today I bring you sad news concerning one of your fellow knights.’ He watched their faces intently to see if this produced any reaction, but the three soldier-monks stared back without a flicker of emotion.

‘And what might that be?’ asked de Ver, quietly.

‘Gilbert de Ridefort was murdered the night before last, way out in the countryside, some sixteen miles from here.’

There was a silence and de Wolfe felt that it was not from shock or surprise, but was a pause whilst each decided on the best way to react.

‘He was the nephew of our disgraced former Grand Master,’ announced Brian de Falaise eventually. His voice was flat and unemotional and he did not ask what a French Templar was doing in Devon.

‘We are sorry to hear that he has died a violent death. But that has come to many Templars – perhaps the majority, for we are soldiers of Christ,’ observed Roland de Ver, in calm, measured tones.

Presumably feeling that he must also contribute a comment, Godfrey Capra added, with a scowl, ‘Though he was no longer a Templar – he had reneged on his sacred vows.’

The other two shot him a look of angry caution, which was not lost on de Wolfe. ‘You knew he was here, then?’ he said.

‘We had heard that he was in England,’ replied de Ver, cautiously.

There was another silence and, as if they sensed that their lack of curiosity was suspicious, the burly de Falaise and Capra both spoke at the same time.

‘How did he die?’

‘So what happened, Crowner?’

Something told de Wolfe to be circumspect with details as he might need to keep something up his sleeve with these formidable men. ‘He was ambushed when riding in the woods. His killers must have known where he was staying and followed him.’

There was another uneasy silence and Roland de Ver shifted on his bench. ‘We cannot pretend that we are desolated by this news, de Wolfe. He was no longer one of us and his family have stained the name of our Order.’

‘It must have been in the blood, uncle and nephew both,’ snarled Brian de Falaise, his chronic ill-nature revealing itself.

The three looked up at de Wolfe with arrogant defiance.

‘I am the King’s appointed coroner, and though I opened an inquest on the body early this morning, that is by no means the end of the matter. I have to record all investigations for the royal justices when they next come to Exeter – and those investigations are by no means complete.’

Roland de Ver shrugged. ‘Good luck to you, Crowner. It’s none of our concern.’

His insolent dismissal of the matter incensed de Wolfe. ‘He was a Templar – or an ex-Templar, at least. You are three senior members of that Order, who just happened to have arrived in this county just before he was foully murdered. I think it reasonable for me to ask some questions of you, if only to eliminate certain possibilities.’

De Ver jumped to his feet, his face reddened with anger. ‘You will ask nothing, Coroner! Or, at least, you’ll get no answers from us. Our presence in Devon is none of your business. We are above the law. You know our Order well enough to realise that the Holy Father in Rome has granted us immunity from the rule of all kings and princes in Christendom – most of whom are beholden to us for both money and military support.’

De Wolfe fumed at this, but he knew that they had the dispensation they claimed. Even his beloved monarch, Richard, was a staunch ally of the Templars and would hear nothing ill said against them. He said, more pacifically, ‘Surely, sirs, you would be concerned to aid in the unmasking of whatever villain killed one who, at least in the past, had an honourable record in your Order. I know, from my own experience of de Ridefort in Palestine, that he fought long and valiantly in the Crusade.’

Flushed with anger, Brian de Falaise slammed a big hand against his bench. ‘Both I and de Ver also fought in Outremer, as did you. Yet we stayed steadfast in our faith afterwards, not having the perverted blood of the de Rideforts in our veins!’

John stood his ground in the face of this trio of furious men. ‘I am a law officer in this county and I have a slain man to deal with. I must ask you, why are you in Exeter? And where were you all two days ago? I know you were absent from these lodgings.’ He expected a storm of abuse at this, but he was met with silence. Two of the Templars looked at their leader, de Ver.

The thin, almost haggard Knight of Christ addressed the coroner coldly. ‘We will not deign to answer your insulting questions, Crowner. You have no authority to question anything we do – nor even enquire as to our mission. I know that your superior law officer, Sheriff Richard, has more respect for the Templars and we will complain forthwith to him about your behaviour, so that he may forbid you to pester us again.’

Hunched like a great black crow, de Wolfe wagged a finger at the three knights. ‘The sheriff is by no means my superior. He has no authority to govern my investigations. I defer only to the king!’

De Ver waved a hand indifferently. ‘I care not, man. If it pleases you better, I will complain to the king about you when I return to France.’ His voice hardened to a sibilant hiss. ‘But you will no doubt allow that the authority of the Pope is paramount over any petty official such as yourself. Now, get yourself gone, Sir Crowner, and don’t bother us again. You are dabbling in great matters that you cannot conceive of.’

De Wolfe, insulted and exasperated, could not resist one last verbal thrust as he moved to the open door. ‘Perhaps one of these great matters concerned the “awful secret” of which Gilbert de Ridefort spoke to me.’

That brought them all to their feet and the pugnacious de Falaise felt impotently for the hilt of his sword, only to find that he had left it in his cell whilst they were taking their ease in the common room.

‘What do you know of that? What did de Ridefort tell you?’ It was de Ver who snapped out the question.

The coroner stepped out into the grey daylight. ‘Like you, gentlemen, I do not answer questions. I am a law officer and I only ask them.’

‘Have a care, John de Wolfe,’ snarled Godfrey Capra. ‘You are an insignificant servant in a godforsaken part of a remote island. But the long arm of Rome can reach anywhere and squash you like a beetle.’

De Wolfe ignored his threat and left one last message with them as he left. ‘If you have any sympathy or respect for the passing of one of your number, he is to buried in the cathedral Close tomorrow morning.’ Then, fuming internally but keeping a stony outward appearance, he walked back to the archway of the priory to join Gwyn and out into the lane beyond.