The Grim Reaper

CHAPTER FOUR

The rest of the day passed peacefully enough for de Wolfe. While Matilda was praying at St Olave’s, he went up to the castle again and spent a couple of hours on his reading lessons, which had been neglected during the busy past weeks. An older vicar from the cathedral had been coaching him sporadically for months, though Thomas de Peyne had achieved far more with him while de Wolfe had been laid up with a broken leg at the beginning of the year.

Now the coroner was trying to regain lost ground by silently mouthing the simple Latin phrases from the parchments supplied by the priest. Then he moved on to writing, but found that his lack of practice had set him back almost to where he had begun. He could still manage his name slowly with a sliver of chalk on a thin sheet of slate, but his attempts to pen the alphabet and Roman numerals on a piece of scrap vellum ended in a mess of ink scratches and splatter.

Impatiently, he threw down the quill and rammed the stopper back into Thomas’s stone ink bottle. He stumped down the narrow spiral stairs to the guardroom below then went out into the city. He bought a hot pie from a booth at the bottom of Castle Hill and ate it between there and the Golden Hind, an inn on the high street near Martin’s Lane. Since he had virtually abandoned the Bush as his regular drinking place, this had become John’s local tavern and he stopped there for a pot of cider before going home to face Matilda’s frosty face over the supper table. The midday meal was the main one of the day, but Mary always set out some hot gruel, bread, cheese and cold meat in the evening, with a jug of red wine, and this was waiting when he arrived home.

The pie had taken the edge off de Wolfe’s appetite, but he sat down and ate a hunk of bread and a chicken leg to appease his wife, who was steadily working her way through everything on the table.

Depressed by his futile visit to the Bush, he studied his wife covertly from under his black eyebrows. What did the future hold for them, he wondered. Theirs had been a marriage of convenience and they had never been close, but as time had gone by, they had become more like two strangers lodging in the same house. His late father, Simon de Wolfe, who had two manors on Devon’s south coast, had thought it a good move to marry his second son into the de Revelle family, who owned far more land. Matilda was six years older than John, and her father was happy to unload his plain daughter on to a young Norman knight, who was making a name for himself as an enterprising soldier. The deal was struck with little concern for the wishes of bride or groom.

That had been sixteen years ago and de Wolfe had regretted it ever since. Until recently, he had deliberately spent almost all of his time away, at the French and Irish wars and latterly at the Third Crusade, where he had become part of the bodyguard of King Richard himself. Until three years ago his time at home with his wife could be reckoned in months, but the catastrophe of the Lionheart’s capture in Austria and long imprisonment had left John bereft of campaigns to fight.

Coming home, he had tried to settle down but boredom soon overcame him. He was comfortably off, due to his investment in Hugh de Relaga’s wool business and a share in the profits of his late father’s manors at Stoke-in-Teignhead and Holcombe, which were run by his elder brother William, but the tedium of this aimless life soon made him restless. Last year, he had even considered riding away again with Gwyn to find a war somewhere in France, preferably in the service of his king. Last autumn, though, a new opportunity had presented itself.

The huge ransom of a hundred and fifty thousand marks demanded by Henry of Germany for the release of Richard the Lionheart had thrown a massive burden on the Exchequer, added to by the King’s constant demands for money to support his war against Philip of France. The task of raising these sums had fallen on the Chief Justiciar, Hubert Walter, who was now virtually Regent of England. Hubert had been the King’s military deputy in the Holy Land and knew John de Wolfe well. The previous September, in a scheme to raise money, Hubert had re-established in every county the ancient Saxon office of coroner and had warmly supported de Wolfe’s bid for one of the Devonshire vacancies.

In truth, de Wolfe himself had not been all that keen at first, but Matilda — as devoted to social climbing as she was to religion — had been adamant that he should grasp this chance to become a respected figure in the county hierarchy. As one of Hubert’s objects in establishing coroners was for them to restrain the corruption of sheriffs, her brother was opposed to the whole idea, but Matilda had persuaded him that having his brother-in-law as coroner would be preferable to some more interfering stranger. Unfortunately for Richard de Revelle, the opposite turned out to be the case and ever since his appointment nine months earlier, de Wolfe had been a constant thorn in his side. His unswerving loyalty to his king and his refusal to indulge in the graft and embezzlement that was virtually a way of life to most senior officials, kept him endlessly in conflict with de Revelle.

All this marched again through John’s mind as he watched Matilda finish her meal. She was a heavily built woman, with a short neck and a square face. Her small eyes had a slightly oriental look and the heavy pouches under them and the deep lines running down from her mouth gave her a permanently disgruntled expression. Matilda must have sensed his prolonged survey, for suddenly she looked up and glared at him. ‘Are you any further with your latest murder?’ she demanded.

He shook his head, his black hair bouncing on the collar of his grey tunic. ‘The poor fellow’s daughter is being brought in tomorrow morning. I had him buried in the Jew’s plot in Southernhay until it’s decided where he shall rest permanently.’

Matilda had no interest in dead Jews and abruptly changed the subject. ‘I hear the Justices are due in the city very soon. I hope you’ll assert the seniority of your office and not skulk in the background, as usual.’

‘I’ll do what my duties demand — no more, no less,’ he grunted.

‘I wonder where they will be lodged. Richard says there’s no suitable accommodation for them in that miserable castle.’

That was true enough, thought John. Lady Eleanor, the sheriff’s glacial wife, refused to live in that bleak fortress with her husband, preferring one of their manors at Tiverton or Revelstoke, which suited de Revelle well enough, as John knew that he was fond of entertaining loose women in the bedchamber behind his office.

Matilda clung to the subject of the King’s judges. ‘I trust that Bishop Marshall will give a feast in their honour. Certainly we would be invited — I will have a chance to wear my new brocade kirtle.’

De Wolfe sometimes found it hard to reconcile her religious fervour with her devotion to fine clothing, eating, drinking and her desire to be a county notable. Almost as if she was reading his mind, she added weight to his already considerable burden: ‘Speaking of feasts, there was a message earlier, brought by a guildsman’s servant. We are invited to a banquet at the Guildhall on Thursday night.’ De Wolfe groaned at the thought of another evening jammed at a table with pompous merchants and their snobbish wives, to say nothing of the pious clerics and drunken craftsmen who gravitated to these celebrations.

‘Who is it this time? Must we accept?’ he muttered.

‘Of course we must, John! It’s your duty as the King’s coroner to grace these events. This one is given by the Guild of Tanners, very influential people. A friend of mine at St Olave’s is the wife of one of their Wardens.’

‘Tanners? They stink, it’s the dog turd they use in their fleshing vats.’

‘My friend doesn’t stink, I assure you,’ snarled an outraged Matilda. She hauled herself to her feet and plodded angrily to the door. ‘I’m going to get ready for my devotions. See that Mary has your best tunic washed for you to wear on Thursday night.’

As she slammed the door to the vestibule behind her, her husband sighed and dropped the remains of the chicken under the table for Brutus.

The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was empty, the few worshippers at Vespers long gone. The setting sun shone through the two slatted windows high up on the west wall, its beams almost solid in the dust thrown up by the angry strokes of the bundle of twigs that Ralph de Capra was using as a broom. The little building was paved with irregular stone slabs and though this was cleaner than the usual floor of beaten earth, the priest still muttered under his breath at the dried mud and wisps of straw and rushes that his parishioners had brought in on their shoes. He was a thin, miserable man, looking considerably older than his thirty-eight years. A hare-lip and a crusted skin ailment on his scalp, poorly concealed by his thin brown hair, did little to enhance his appearance.

The priest drove the debris towards the door and, with a few final flourishes, swept it down the two steps on to the narrow street that ran inside the city wall. Then he straightened up and walked down to the centre of the lane, besom still in hand. To his left stretched Little Britayne, with its criss-crossing mesh of hovel-lined alleys running up the hill towards the centre of the town. A night-soil cart pulled by a donkey was coming towards him, pursued by ragged, jeering urchins, who yelled abuse at the scarecrow of a man perched on the crossboard. A few pigs snuffled around the bottom of the high city wall and further up, where the wall turned at the Snail Tower, de Capra could see a small crowd gathered around two drunks who were futilely trying to fight each other, though they could hardly stand.

Directly across from the church, the bottom end of Fore Street climbed up to become High Street at Carfoix, the central crossing of Exeter. Clusters of townsfolk thronged it, some hurrying on errands, some buying and selling at the booths along its edges, others just lounging in the evening sun.

He turned to look at his little church which was now an integral part of the city wall, its other three walls projecting into the roadway. Like most of the many churches in Exeter, it was a simple oblong, like a barn. Some of the others were still timber-built, but many were gradually being replaced with stone — several even had little towers.

De Capra climbed the steps back into his domain, bent his knee briefly in the direction of the simple altar then went to the other end of the church where wooden screens partitioned off a small space against the far wall. Here he kept his simple vestments, an alb of heavy linen, a rather threadbare brocade stole and a maniple. A stone jar held some cheap wine and a small wooden box did duty as a pyx, to store the wafers bought at a cook-stall, which he used to prepare the Host for Mass.

He dropped the broom alongside a leather bucket and battered shovel, then went back down to the other end of the building. The chancel was merely a wooden platform, two steps up from the main floor. The altar was a small table covered with a white cloth, carrying two wooden candlesticks and a tin cross covered in peeling gilt. On the wall above, below the high window slits, was a large, crudely carved crucifix. The only other furniture was a kneeler for his own prayers and a heavy chair for the Bishop or Archdeacon, should they ever deign to take part in a service here. This was a poor church in the poorest part of the city, Britayne being so named because five hundred years ago, the ‘Britons’, the original Celtic inhabitants, had been pushed back by their Saxon conquerors into that least savoury part of Exeter.

De Capra turned his kneeler to face the altar and, after making the Sign of the Cross, lowered himself on to it and leaned forward, his hands clasped on the top bar, polished by years of use. He fixed his eyes on the image of Christ hanging on the wall, and his lips moved in earnest supplication, which gradually rose to an audible monologue. He had a secret that plagued most of his waking hours, and he desperately needed a sign to relieve his troubled conscience. He talked to himself for many minutes, becoming more and more agitated. Then his head fell on to his arms and he subsided into racking sobs.

The next morning, the Wednesday of an eventful week, the manor-reeve of Sidbury, a village some miles east of Exeter, rode in to report a fatal accident. He had left just before dawn and arrived at Rougemont a couple of hours later. The sentry at the castle gate sent him up to the coroner’s garret, where Gwyn and Thomas were waiting for their master to arrive.

De Wolfe appeared when the reeve was halfway through his story, but soon caught up with the tragic tale. One of the boy labourers at the manor mill had been trapped in the machinery and was dead. ‘Our bailiff knew that under this new crowner’s law, we had to report it to you straight away, sir,’ the village headman ended. He was a wiry fellow with a narrow but intelligent face, seemed somewhat in awe of the coroner and stood screwing his pointed woollen cap between his strong fingers as he spoke.

‘You did right, man. I must come to view the body and hold an inquest — but it will be noon before we can set off.’ The reeve was sent away for a few hours to fill his stomach and feed his horse, while de Wolfe settled his agenda with his officer and clerk.

‘The Jews are coming this morning about the body,’ Thomas reminded him, ‘and you have an approver to hear at the Shire Court.’ The coroner was required to take a confession from an ‘approver’, an accused or convicted person who was attempting to save his neck by turning king’s evidence against his fellow accomplices.

Gwyn scratched his groin vigorously. ‘That Ordeal is on, too,’ he rumbled. ‘The liar who claimed he bought that sword, not stole it.’

De Wolfe swore under his breath — he would be lucky to get away by noon, which meant he would not be back in Exeter before the gates were shut at curfew. Another night away from home would mean more whines and sulks from Matilda. Then a happier thought struck him: Sidbury was near Sidmouth, a coincidence that might prove interesting, especially if he was to be away all night.

But first the day had to be got through and the first chore was his brother-in-law’s Shire Court. Normally it was convened every fortnight, but extra sessions were being hurriedly arranged in preparation for the arrival of the royal judges the following week, as all pending cases had to be presented before them.

An hour later, the trio crossed Rougemont’s bustling inner ward to the Shire Hall, the bare court-house where de Wolfe had held the inquest on Aaron. Several cases had been dealt with already, either by Richard de Revelle or Ralph Morin, the castle constable, who sat on the platform in front of a posse of scribes. Also present was the obligatory priest, who today was the new garrison chaplain, an amiable monk called Brother Rufus.

Gabriel, the sergeant of the castle garrison, led in the next prisoner dragged from the stinking gaol under the keep. With rusty irons on his wrists and ankles, he was brought to stand below the middle of the dais. Lice were crawling on his neck and one ear-lobe had a festering rat-bite, signs of a prolonged stay in the cells.

The sheriff, lounging in the only chair on the platform, waved a hand carelessly at de Wolfe. ‘This one’s yours, John,’ he drawled, managing to sound offensive even when the words were outwardly polite.

De Wolfe came to the edge of the platform to stand over the wretched prisoner. He hovered above him, his arms folded across his chest. ‘Eadric of Alphington, you have been accused of robbing Roger Lamb on the high road near Alphington on the day of St Jude’s fair, taking his purse containing seven shillings’ worth of pennies, making off with his horse and causing a grievous wound to his head that almost killed him.’

The Saxon, a surly-looking man in his late twenties, glared up at the coroner through a mane of dirty blond hair that tangled over his face. ‘I admit I was there, but I had no part in the robbery.’

There was a sigh of impatience from the sheriff, who was tapping his heel restlessly with a short silver-topped staff. ‘Stop this mummery and send the damned fellow to be hanged!’ he muttered audibly.

De Wolfe ignored him and glared back at the prisoner. ‘You claim you wish to turn approver. You cannot do that unless you confess your crime to me.’

‘How can I confess to something I didn’t do?’

De Wolfe shrugged. ‘It’s your choice, fellow. You can go back to your cell and await your trial, if you so wish.’

Faced with the near-certainty of conviction and the gallows, Eadric took but a moment to decide. ‘I can confess to my part in the affair, Crowner, but the others were the real villains.’

With Thomas de Peyne at the table behind them, writing as fast as he could, the coroner intoned the ritual formalities of the confession. Then the bedraggled Saxon grudgingly described how he and two fellow villagers had left the fair considerably the worse for drink. While they were stumbling along the main road between Exeter and Alphington, a merchant overtook them on a bay horse and abused them for getting in his way. According to Eadric’s version, the rider struck one of the others with his whip and a brawl ensued. The merchant was pulled from his horse and hit his head on the road, being rendered unconscious. Eadric claimed that he was a mere spectator of this fracas and protested when his companions, afraid that they had killed the merchant, took his purse and horse and vanished into the trees.

The victim had recovered rapidly and denounced Eadric to a party of riders who appeared around a bend in the road.

‘They seized me and beat me, holding me until the bailiff of the Hundred came. He bound me and I was dragged here to prison. But it was the others who did the evil, leaving me behind to take the blame. And I can name them!’ Eadric declared.

‘A likely tale!’ sneered the sheriff. ‘Send the liar back to his cell, John.’

Although, for once, the coroner was inclined to agree with his brother-in-law, he ignored his interruption and concentrated on the prisoner. ‘An approver is supposed to challenge his accomplices to combat to the death. If you win, you can abjure the realm. But you’ll have to fight two men, one after the other.’

Eadric scowled up at de Wolfe. ‘I’ll take my chances, Crowner.’

‘There is another way for you. Instead of combat, which you are likely to lose against two others, you could choose to be tried by a jury of your fellows in the King’s court before his Justices.’

There was a sudden scrape as Richard de Revelle pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet. ‘Indeed he cannot! He must appear before this court — my court.’

De Wolfe glared down at the sheriff, who was half a head shorter. ‘By my taking his confession, he has placed himself within the coroner’s jurisdiction. And I have a duty, granted by our king through his Justiciar, to offer the justice of the royal courts to anyone accused of a serious crime, such as this.’

De Revelle’s pointed beard quivered and his normally pallid face flushed with rage. ‘Don’t start all this again, damn you,’ he hissed.

John was unperturbed by the sheriff’s fury. ‘This was a grievous assault, maybe even attempted murder. It should not have been dealt with in the Shire Court in the first place, but presented to the Eyre, as I have suggested.’

De Revelle glared around the hall, and saw the clerks’ ears were flapping, and the few spectators waiting hopefully for a first-class row between the two most senior law officers in the county. ‘I’ll not bandy words with you in public, John,’ he snarled. ‘We’ll thrash this out later in my chamber.’ Abruptly, he turned and, with his smart green cloak flying behind him, hurried to the step at the end of the platform and vanished in the direction of the keep.

Sergeant Gabriel, trying to keep the grin off his face, prodded the Saxon towards the archway. ‘I’ll send him back to Stigand’s tender care, Crowner, while he makes up his mind.’ Stigand was the brutish oaf who tended the dreadful castle gaol.

There were no other cases and the participants broke up to go their various ways. De Wolfe found himself walking back towards the gatehouse with Brother Rufus, who held Masses for the castle inhabitants in the tiny chapel of St Mary across the other side of the inner ward. His black Benedictine habit bulged around his tubby body and his shaven head shone in the morning sun as if it had been wax-polished.

‘Why the harsh words between you and the sheriff?’ asked the priest, always ready for some gossip.

‘Come up to my chamber for a jar of ale, Father, and I’ll tell you.’

Thomas was still writing up his rolls in the court and Gwyn had gone down to the town to look for the Jew’s daughter, so John was glad of some company at his morning libation.

After the rotund monk had puffed up the steep stairs in the gatehouse, they sat at the table with a mug each, filled from Gwyn’s pitcher.

‘I came to Exeter from Bristol only a month ago, so I’m not yet familiar with the local politics,’ Rufus confessed. The garrison church of St Mary was given to three prebendaries who had brought him in to administer it after the death of his predecessor.

De Wolfe cleared his throat noisily. He had taken a liking to the new chaplain and felt he might make another ally in the castle, in addition to Ralph Morin, who covertly disliked the sheriff as much as John himself.

‘De Revelle and I have a long-standing disagreement,’ he began, markedly understating the situation. ‘Last autumn I was appointed as county coroner. The sheriff agreed to this — perhaps because my wife is his sister — but he wanted someone he could control, and here I have grievously disappointed him.’

‘I heard tell of this new coroner idea in Bristol. Was it not to raise more money for the Lionheart’s ransom and his costly wars?’

‘Partly that — but the King also wanted to curb the sheriffs, who have become more powerful and more corrupt of late. Some of them — one not far from here — supported Prince John in his treacherous attempt to usurp King Richard when he was imprisoned in Germany.’

‘But what has this to do with you two sparring with each other in the Shire Hall this morning?’

De Wolfe sighed. ‘It’s a long story, Brother. When William the Bastard conquered England, he inherited such a complicated legal system from the Saxons, that all his successors have been trying to reform it ever since, especially the second Henry of glorious memory. Now Richard — or, rather, his Justiciar — is offering everyone royal justice, rather than the confusion of lower courts we have now.’

The fat monk took a pull at his pot and wiped his lips on the sleeve of his habit. ‘That sounds very reasonable, so why are you at loggerheads with your brother-in-law?’

‘That’s an even longer story! The sheriff covets unchallenged power in his county and the chance to scoop as much profit as he can into his own purse. He sees the royal courts as a threat to his interests — and as the coroner is responsible for presenting as many cases as possible to the King’s justices, he sees me as an interfering busybody, intent on thwarting his schemes.’ The priest seemed genuinely interested and listened closely to de Wolfe’s explanation of the varied functions he was expected to carry out.

‘There were supposed to be three of us in Devon,’ de Wolfe concluded, ‘but one fell from his horse and killed himself in the first fortnight and the other was a drunken fool who lasted only a few weeks. I’ve been trying to deal with everything — though, praise be to God, a decent knight from Barnstaple is willing to take on the north before long.’

With the lubrication of another pot of ale each, de Wolfe and the monks chatted for some time, John explaining the multitude of tasks that a coroner was expected to perform, from taking the confessions of those abjuring the realm, to investigating house fires, burglaries and catches of the royal fish — whales and sturgeon — to witnessing Ordeals, viewing corpses, and enquiring into rapes and assaults.

The garrison chaplain proved to be an intelligent and astute fellow, asking sensible questions at intervals during the coroner’s explanation, but eventually they were interrupted by heavy feet clumping up the stone stairs and Gwyn thrust his huge frame through the sacking that hung over the doorway. ‘The Jews are waiting outside, Crowner,’ he growled, looking askance at the fat monk who sat drinking his own ale.

De Wolfe downed the rest of his pot and stood up. ‘Come with me, Brother. Perhaps you can advise me as this is a matter of religion — though a different one from yours.’

Two figures were standing just below the drawbridge of the castle, as the sentry under the gate-arch was unwilling to let them enter the bailey. One was a thin young man with a full black beard, his curly hair capped by a bowl-shaped helmet of embroidered felt. A long black tunic like a cassock enveloped him and a pack strapped to his shoulders gave an impression of a hunchback. He held the hand of a frail woman of about his own age, whose smooth olive face had the look of a sad angel. A Saxon-style coverchief was wrapped around her head, secured by a band across her forehead, the white cloth flowing down her back over a plain brown dress. In the background, a mule and a donkey with a side-saddle were being held by three men, their garb and appearance marking them as Jewish, presumably from Exeter itself.

Gwyn stepped forward and, in a strangely gentle voice, announced that the young woman was Ruth, Aaron’s daughter, and the man her husband David.

De Wolfe explained to the silent and impassive pair what had happened. ‘Had he any enemies that you know of?’ he asked the daughter.

Ruth’s brown eyes lifted to meet the coroner’s. ‘Almost everyone is our enemy, sir. Since my mother and brother were slain in York, we live in constant fear. But I know of no particular person who would wish to kill my father.’

‘We saw him but rarely,’ added David. ‘Though Honiton is not far off, travelling is hazardous, especially for such as we Jews. Everyone thinks we carry great sacks of gold with us,’ he added bitterly.

‘Are you in the same way of business?’ asked the monk.

‘There is little else for us now. Since the Crusades began, we have lost our chance to trade in commodities from the East. We are only allowed to be usurers, which is forbidden to Christians — though some seem to manage it. We are but sponges to soak up money from the people, then we are squeezed flat to return it into the royal coffers.’

De Wolfe did not wish the conversation to move into seditious paths so raised the matter of the burial. ‘Your father was buried yesterday with dignity outside the city walls in the plot reserved for Jews. We understood that you prefer there to be as little delay as possible. I understand that several of your faith from the city were there to offer whatever last rites you use. You are free either to leave him there or to remove him elsewhere.’

David looked at his wife then turned back to the coroner. ‘We thank you for your concern, sir. It is seldom that anyone accords us such consideration. We have decided to leave Aaron where he is, as we have nowhere better to take him.’

Brother Rufus laid a fatherly hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘Do you need any further requiem to be said over the grave? Have you anyone who can help you in this matter?’

David nodded sadly. ‘If we could be shown where the body lies, we can say our own few words over it. Then, later, we can bring some of our own elders from Southampton to join with the local Jews to carry out the proper ceremony.’

They thanked de Wolfe gravely once more and took their leave. John and the chaplain stood watching the pathetic little group walk down the hill from the castle gate, the woman perched on her donkey, the man leading his mule behind her as they vanished into the high street. ‘He’s right. Every man’s hand is against them,’ muttered de Wolfe. ‘We use them badly in this country but they are far worse off in others. They are forbidden to engage in trade, and when they lend money, they are reviled by everyone, even though their customers are only too glad to use their services.’

‘Did the wife say her mother died at York?’ asked the priest.

‘Yes, in that madness of ’eighty-nine, when most of England rose up in hysteria against them. Just because some well-meaning Jews in London wished to give presents to the new King at his coronation, a riot started that spread right across England. She must have been one of those hundred and fifty who died besieged in York castle — many by their own hand or by those of their menfolk, rather than be captured.’

The cathedral bell rang dolefully in the distance and reminded de Wolfe that he had another task to perform before he could ride to Sidbury. ‘I have to attend an Ordeal now, Brother. I must collect my clerk to record the result.’

The portly monk turned back with the coroner to cross the drawbridge. ‘I am summoned as priest too, so I’ll walk with you. I hear that Rome is becoming more discontented with our attendance at these ancient rituals, saying they smack of necromancy, not justice. I suspect that before long the Holy Father will ban our participation in them.’^fn1

‘The sooner the better,’ grunted John. ‘They are complete nonsense, sheer black magic! Whenever I can, I try to persuade appealers to go for jury trial in the King’s courts. It makes more sense and it’s better for the Exchequer.’

He called at the Shire Hall on the way to drag the morose Thomas from his scribing on the empty platform and they made their way to the undercroft of the keep, which housed the castle gaol. It was a damp, squalid chamber, partly below ground level, with a wet earth floor beneath the gloomy arches that supported the building above. It was divided into two halves by a line of rusty bars, one of which housed a row of prison cells beyond a creaking gate. The rest was open, part-storehouse, part-torture chamber, ruled by Stigand, a grossly obese Saxon, who lived in squalor in an alcove formed by one of the arches. This morning, his task was to set up the apparatus for the Ordeal, a test of guilt or innocence that de Wolfe and many other intelligent people thought utter nonsese. But it was hallowed by time and still approved by most of the population, who were usually unwilling to exchange this unChristian soothsaying for the more logical process of a jury trial.

John swung round to the trailing Thomas, who trudged dejectedly behind, his writing pouch slung from the shoulder of his threadbare black tunic. ‘Who did you say was the subject today?’ he barked.

‘A man accused of stealing a sword from the shop of Nicholas Trove, a burgess from North Street, who runs an armourer’s business. Nicholas appealed him to the Shire Court last month, when he was attached with sureties of five marks to appear here today.’

‘At least he didn’t vanish into the forest in the meanwhile, so he must think he has a chance of proving his innocence,’ de Wolfe gruntd to Brother Rufus.

They went down the few steps into the dismal chamber and when their eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness, saw a group of people clustered in the centre, below the low ceiling, which dripped turbid water from the slime-covered stones. The gaoler had a charcoal fire burning in a latticed iron brazier, which he was blowing with a pair of bellows. Stigand’s breathing was almost as noisy as his bellows, as he bent over his vast stomach which was covered with a stained leather apron. His piggy features were contorted with the effort of blowing sufficient air into his fire to make the shaped lumps of metal on top glow red-hot.

Watching him with varying degrees of patience were Richard de Revelle, Sergeant Gabriel and two of his men-at-arms, the latter grasping between them the subject of the ghoulish ceremony, a porter from Bretayne by the name of Matthew Bezil. As de Wolfe, Thomas and the monk approached, they were followed by the complainant, Nicholas Trove. He was a red-faced, angry-looking man, short-necked and short-tempered. At that moment, his mood had much in common with the sheriff’s.

‘Stigand, for God’s sake, hurry up!’ snapped de Revelle. ‘I’ve got better things to do than stand here while you puff away at the damned fire. Surely they’re hot enough now?’ He pointed impatiently at the iron ploughshares glowing on top of the brazier.

The gaoler hoisted himself upright with an effort, his bloated face almost purple. ‘They’ll do, Sheriff. I’ll set them out now.’

With a long tongs, he took a glowing ploughshare from the fire and set it over a flat stone embedded in the mud of the floor. A line of nine carefully spaced stones, each a pace apart, ran across the undercroft and as quickly as his shambling gait allowed, Stigand set a series of the triangular lumps of hot iron on each one.

‘Now, before they cool too much, damn you, get moving,’ snarled the sheriff. Everyone present, except the accused, was yawningly familiar with the procedure and wanted the charade over as quickly as possible.

The guards jerked Matthew across to stand immediately before the first ploughshare and released his arms. Brother Rufus made the Sign of Cross in the air and murmured something in Latin as Matthew gritted his teeth and with a yell of defiance, ran as if the devil was behind him, jumping from iron to iron in a gliding, springing movement he had obviously been practising for weeks to make the least possible contact with the smoking metal. His banshee wail lasted the whole nine steps and at the end he stumbled and fell in a heap on the fouled earth.

Stigand had moved to that end, where he had previously left a leather bucket of dirty water, which he promptly threw over Matthew Bezil’s feet — the fellow had paid him twopence in advance for the privilege.

The groups of observers moved towards him, carefully avoiding the sizzling ploughshares. Standing in a circle, they looked down at the man as if they were an audience after a cockfight, critically examining the result of the contest.

Bezil rolled over on to his back and Gabriel hoisted up both legs so that the soles of his feet could be seen. Stigand lit a bundle of rushes soaked in pitch at the brazier and held it near to give a better light.

There was silence while the experts critically regarded the calloused skin of Matthew’s flat feet.

‘They look clear to me,’ muttered Brother Rufus at length.

‘The man’s been hardening them off for weeks, by the looks of it,’ objected the sheriff.

‘There’s no law against that,’ retorted de Wolfe, always ready to contradict his brother-in-law.

In fact, since electing to undergo the Ordeal, rather than a trial by jury, Bezil had spent a month in running the streets barefoot, had passed hours chafing his soles against a rough flagstone and rubbing in a concoction of oak-galls and tannin. As a result, the skin was twice as thick as normal and of the consistency of old leather.

‘That’s not legal, having feet like that,’ howled Nicholas Trove. ‘He should have undergone a different Ordeal — like that of water or molten lead.’

‘He was given the Nine Ploughshares at the court, so that’s what he got,’ growled de Wolfe.’ You can’t change the rules now, if they don’t suit you.’

It was obvious, even to the sceptical sheriff and the outraged complainant, that Matthew’s feet bore not a trace of burns — though perhaps Stigand’s bucket of water had delayed the appearance of redness that was usually inevitable, even if scorching and blistering failed to appear.

De Wolfe called out to his clerk, who had squatted in readiness before an empty cask, on which he had spread his writing materials. Thomas had a ferocious scowl on his pinched face and his lips were moving in some soundless litany, unrelated to the events around him.

‘Record that Matthew Bezil underwent the Ordeal of ploughshares and his innocence caused his feet to reject the hot iron,’ he said, trying to conceal his cynicism.

Thomas scratched away with his quill, still muttering under his breath.

For a moment, John’s mind wandered from the Ordeal to wonder why his clerk was acting so oddly these days, but then he recovered himself. ‘Record also that Nicholas Trove falsely appealed the said Matthew Bezil in accusing him of the theft of a sword and is therefore amerced in the sum of two marks.’

The armourer howled in protest that he had not only lost his sword but now had to pay its value as a fine. Though the coroner felt some sympathy for him, he used the fiasco to promote his cause of encouraging the use of the king’s courts — and to further irritate his brother.

‘If the matter had been heard before the judges next week, you might have had a different result,’ he snapped at the ironmonger.

Still protesting, Nicholas was pushed towards the doorway by Gabriel and stumbled out, shaking his fist at Matthew, who cheerfully made an obscene gesture at him. He had put on his shoes and was trying not to show that his feet were smarting with a growing pain that would be far worse by the time he had hobbled into the nearest ale-house to celebrate his escape — if burns had appeared on his soles for the witnesses to see, he would have been hanged that week for the theft of something that was worth more than twelve pence, which constituted a felony.

An hour later, John went to the stable opposite his house and climbed on to the back of Odin, his destrier. He had called at home to tell Matilda that he would be away for the night and was relieved to find that she was at St Olave’s for noon service. Mary had fed him a meat pie, cheese and half a loaf, while Andrew the farrier saddled Odin, ready for the journey.

De Wolfe walked the stallion through the crowded high street to the Carfoix crossing, where he had arranged to meet the others, and the quartet, which included the manor reeve from Sidbury, made their way down South Gate Street, past the bloody mayhem of the Shambles, then the Serge Market to the gate. Beyond the city walls, the crowds vanished and they kept up a brisk trot along Magdalen Street, past the gallows, which today was deserted although a rotting corpse hung in an iron frame from a nearby post. They continued on the main highway eastwards, which was the road to Lyme and eventually Southampton and Winchester.

As usual, Thomas lagged behind, jerking awkwardly on the side-saddle of his reluctant pony, his features looking as if he expected to hear the Last Trump at any moment. The reeve, Thomas Tirel by name, pulled alongside the coroner to offer more details of what had happened in his village.

‘This was a lad of thirteen, Crowner, the fifth son of one of our villeins. His father offered him to work in the mill as part of the family’s manor service, and he had been there almost a year, carrying sacks and cleaning the floor.’

‘This is the lord’s mill, I presume?’

‘Indeed it is. Everyone is obliged to have their flour ground there and the fee goes to the bishop.’

De Wolfe was aware that the small village of Sidbury was one of the many manors that belonged to Henry Marshal, Bishop of Exeter.

‘So what happened to the boy?’

‘He fell through the floor, which was rotten, and was caught in the pinion of the mill-wheel shaft. His head was crushed, poor lad.’

John failed to visualise exactly what the reeve meant. ‘I’ll have to see the place for myself,’ he growled. ‘But what about this rotten floor?’

‘Many a time the miller complained to the Bishop’s bailiff that it was unsafe, but he was unwilling to stop the mill while new joists and boards were laid — he said the expense was unnecessary.’

The aggrieved tone of the man’s voice suggested to de Wolfe that this was a source of discontent in the village.

Sidbury was about fifteen miles from Exeter and they reached it in less than three hours’ easy riding. Thomas Tirel took them straight to the mill, a wooden structure astride a brook that ran underneath it. Upstream there was a deep pool formed by an earthen dam, and a crude sluice-gate controlled the flow to the wheel.

A rumbling noise came from the mill and John saw a cloud of dust drifting from an open door at the side. ‘They are still grinding corn?’ he demanded.

‘The bailiff insisted. The gear was not broken, so he had the blood washed away and told the miller to carry on.’

‘So where’s the body?’

‘Taken to the church, poor boy. We couldn’t give it back to the mother in the state it was in.’

With Gwyn at his side and Thomas de Peyne trailing behind, de Wolfe followed the reeve into the mill, coughing at the cloud of dust and chaff that filled the atmosphere. In the single room, a large circular stone, four feet across and a hand’s breadth thick, was slowly revolving below a similar but stationary wheel resting on top. A large wooden hopper fed grain into a hole in the centre of the upper stone and a circular tray around the moving lower quern collected the flour that dribbled from the joint between the stones.

The miller, a large, perspiring man dressed in a thin smock and a hessian apron, was adjusting the flow of grain from the hopper. Because of the noise, he was unaware of their presence until the reeve tapped his shoulder. Almost guiltily, the man turned around and, on seeing the coroner, tugged at his ginger forelock, which was almost white with dust.

‘Turn it off!’ yelled Gwyn, pointing at the stones.

The miller nodded and gestured at a young boy, who was up on a platform tipping a sack of grain into the hopper. Without a word, he ran out like a frightened rabbit and Gwyn, peering around the door, saw him racing up the bank of the stream.

‘He has to close the sluice to stop the wheel. That’s why we took so long to free the lad yesterday,’ explained the miller, looking uneasily from the reeve to the coroner.

A few moments later, the rumbling beneath slowed, then stopped. The silence was almost as oppressive as the grinding judder had been.

‘There’s where the floor gave way, Crowner,’ explained Tirel, pointing down at a series of loose boards laid across half of the floor on one side of the millstones. De Wolfe stamped experimentally with his heel on the planks where he was standing. The edge of his riding boot made indentations in the soft surface of the timber.

‘This whole place is decaying, for Christ’s sake!’ he exclaimed. ‘How old is it?’

‘My father was the miller here — and his father before him. It was here in their day, that’s all I know,’ said the ginger man defensively.

At the reeve’s demand, the miller took them outside and down the grassy bank towards where the stream gushed out from under the building. He opened a low, rickety door and led them into a cramped chamber below the millstones. Looking up, de Wolfe could see a splintered hole a few feet across, with a length of rotten joist hanging loose. To his left was the now silent water-wheel, eight feet high, with a shaft like a small tree-trunk lying horizontally at his feet. This ended in a stout wooden wheel with projecting pegs which interlocked with similar pegs studded around a larger wheel at the base of the vertical shaft, which went up to drive the millstone.

‘The poor little devil was caught in those gears, Crowner,’ explained Tirel. ‘Tore his throat open, it did. Blood everywhere by the time we got down here.’

‘It stopped the wheel for a moment, the gears being jammed,’ added the miller, with morbid relish. ‘But then the pressure of water built up behind the wheel and it broke two of the pegs off, throwing his head aside — but by then he must have been dead. Had to make two new pegs this morning to get the mill going again.’

John peered more closely at the crude gearing. In spite of vigorous washing, part of the flat gearwheel and some of the pegs were ominously ruddy-brown. Straightening up, he made for the door, leaving Gwyn to squint inquisitively at the machinery.

‘How much does the Bishop get for milling?’ de Wolfe demanded.

‘A ha’penny for five bushels, sir. Everyone in the manor must have their corn ground here, they’ve no choice. Anyone found using a hand quern is amerced at the manor court.’

This was usual: the lord had the monopoly of milling and guarded it jealously as a steady source of income. De Wolfe thought angrily of the mother mourning her youngest son, and determined to have some strong words with the bailiff — or even Henry Marshal himself. ‘Then the Bishop can spend a little of his profit on a new floor — though he needs a whole new mill, before it collapses into the brook,’ he said acidly.

A few hours later de Wolfe held an inquest, after Gwyn had rounded up enough men and boys from Sidbury and the neighbouring village of Harcombe, to form a jury. The proceedings were held in the graveyard of the old Saxon church, after John and the jurymen had solemnly inspected the mangled remains of the miller’s boy. Although he had seen countless corpses on a score of battlefields and had been present at a legion of hangings, beheadings, castrations and mutilations, de Wolfe was affected by the sight of the weeping mother and distraught father standing at the edge of the small crowd in the churchyard. There was little he could do for them other than offer some gruff words of sympathy after he had passed the inevitable verdict of accidental death.

He could have declared the gears of the mill ‘deodand’, as many coroners would have done in those circumstances. This meant confiscation of the object that had caused the death, either for the King’s treasury or sometimes as recompense to a widow for the loss of her breadwinner. In this case, it was physically impossible to remove the gears to sell them, as could have been done with a lethal dagger or even a runaway horse. As the boy was a fifth son and of tender years, his monetary value to the family was very small — he shrewdly guessed that the offer of a mark or two for the boy’s life would be more of an insult than a gain to the family.

Instead, he took the opportunity to berate the bailiff publicly for allowing the mill to fall into such a dangerous state of dilapidation. The man, a pompous, self-important fellow, blustered that he was not responsible for spending the Bishop’s money, but was soon deflated by the coroner’s tongue-lashing and threats to consider attaching him to the forthcoming Eyre on a charge of manslaughter by negligence.

When the inquest was over, with the sun dropping over the trees, Gwyn raised the matter of a night’s lodging. ‘After the mouthful you gave the bailiff, he’ll not be too co-operative in finding somewhere for us to stay,’ he said. ‘If we left now and put on a good pace all the way we might just get back to Exeter before the curfew.’

But de Wolfe had other plans. ‘We’ll keep clear of that puffed-up braggart, and clear out of this damned village. Sidmouth’s only a couple of miles away at the coast. We’ll find an inn there and go back to Exeter in the morning.’ He was happy to pay for a penny meal and a mattress for his officer and clerk in the small fishing port down the road, but with luck, he hoped to find a softer, warmer bed for himself.

The sun was low in the sky when they reached Sidmouth. A single street went down to the strand, where a line of fishing boats was drawn up across the pebble bank. A score of huts built of cob and turf spread out from a nucleus of larger wooden houses and a few stone ones around the church. There were three mean ale-houses, full of fishermen, and two better inns that offered a sleeping place in their lofts.

After seeing to their horses in the yard of the bigger tavern, which had an old anchor hanging over the door, the trio settled in the smoky, sweaty tap-room to eat and drink. The food was more notable for its quantity than quality, which suited Gwyn’s vast appetite, but even Thomas, after a day on a bouncing pony, managed to do justice to his grilled herrings, onions and cabbage.

De Wolfe ate well enough, although his mind was on other things. After eating his fill, he left the table and announced that he was going for a walk along the beach to watch the sunset — an intention that raised the eyebrows of both his henchmen, as he was not noted for his aesthetic sensibilities.

Ignoring their quizzical stares — and rejecting Gwyn’s mischievous offer to walk with him — John grabbed his cloak and went out into the twilight. The sun was a deep red ball vanishing below the distant hills and the sea was a leaden sheet stretching out to a darkening horizon, but de Wolfe had no eyes for this kind of natural beauty, his mind on a different sort of pleasure.

He walked purposefully up the main street for a hundred paces, then turned into a side lane beyond the other tavern. A few yards further on, he stopped at a house with a stone lower storey, the upper part being timber. He knocked firmly on the heavy door and, with a twinge of annoyance at his own vanity, found himself running fingers through his thick black hair to brush it off his face.

The door opened a crack and an old man’s face appeared in the shadows, looking fearful at a knock on the door at dusk. John’s features slumped into a scowl at this sudden pricking of his pleasant expectations. ‘Is not the Goodwife Godfin at home?’ he demanded brusquely.

‘Who seeks her at this time of the evening?’ the old man demanded querulously.

‘A friend — Sir John de Wolfe from Exeter.’

‘She has left here these four months, sir. I rent the dwelling in her place.’ De Wolfe cursed under his breath. His devious plans had obviously gone well astray. ‘Where is she now? Still in the village?’

‘She has married and gone away. To a butcher in Bridport.’

There was nothing more to be said and, with muttered thanks, de Wolfe stalked away, tight-lipped in his disappointment. The damned woman was not only twenty-five miles away but now had a new husband, so that chapter in his life was closed for good. He had chanced to meet Brigit Godfin at a fair two years ago, when he had come here with his partner Hugh de Relaga to buy breeding sheep. She was a dark, attractive woman of thirty-two, recently widowed from a cloth merchant in Sidmouth. He was soon sharing her bed and although his visits from Exeter were difficult to arrange, except at infrequent intervals, he had managed to keep the affair going until he took up the coroner’s appointment. Since then, pressure of work and his increasing involvement with Nesta had caused him to neglect Brigit — he had not seen her for more than six months. Now she had found other fish to fry and he could draw a line under what had been a pleasant, if desultory affair.

He marched back to the Anchor, dropped back on to the bench he had left and glared at Gwyn as if daring him to enquire where he had been.

‘Another couple of quarts, then it’s time to sleep,’ he muttered. ‘We must be on the road to Exeter first thing in the morning.’