The Noble Outlaw

CHAPTER FOUR

Soon after first light the next morning, the coroner's trio was back at the school in Smythen Street, where they found Waiter Pole already waiting for them outside the yard of the old forge. When Gwyn banged on the weathered boards of the gate that stood at the side of the plot, they were eventually pulled aside by Henry Wotri, the servant they had met when the body was found. As they trooped into the yard, the sounds of chanting could be heard from the main building, which used to be not only the residence of the forge master and his family, but also a shop on the ground floor where he sold his wrought-iron products. Now Magister Anglicus lived on the upper floor along with two other teachers, the lectures being given in the big chamber down below, which had been formed by knocking the old shop and the metal store into one large space.

'What are they doing?' demanded de Wolfe, as they walked across the empty yard. 'Singing their lessons or what?'

Henry gave a lopsided grin. 'No, sir, that's their morning prayers. The master starts the day with a service, them being all clerics of one sort or another.' Henry led them towards the old forge, where work had ceased on pulling the floor down until such time as the cadaver would be removed. 'Magister James has been in a proper state, having the builders sent away because of this body,' the servant said with ill-concealed delight 'He's got eight more students arriving next week and nowhere to put them until this place is finished.' It looked as if de Revelle's venture into education might pay off after all, thought John. More scholars meant more fees, which would be music to his mercenary brother-in-law's soul.

'The deceased is just where you said he was to be left, Crowner,' said Henry. 'I'll not come in with you, if you don't mind. He's not a pretty sight.'

This was hardly encouraging to Walter Pole, who already looked anxious, but at that early hour de Wolfe was in no mood to pander to sensibilities.

'Come on, this will take but a moment. Just one look at him — and especially at his clothing.'

He stamped on ahead into the forge and Gwyn urged the harness maker to follow him. A moment later, Gwyn pulled off the old canvas that had been thrown over the body.

Walter peered at it, nervously at first, then curiosity got the better of his revulsion and he bent to get a closer look. 'Looks more like the cheapest leather I have to deal with, rather than a man,' he observed.

'But do you recognise him?' growled the coroner.

Walter scratched his head and thought for a moment.

'He's about the right height for Matthew and a thin fellow with it, which tallies. But that face — more like a dried monkey, I can't swear to it being him.'

'What about the clothing?' prompted Gwyn.

The leatherworker stared again, then bent down and tugged at the edge of the tunic. 'It's very much like what he used to wear. But so many other folk favour the same sort of garments. I couldn't be sure.' John ground his teeth in frustration. 'Is there nothing else you might recognise?'

Walter looked abashed at being unable to please this intimidating man. He rubbed his forehead in a desperate attempt to think of something useful. 'What about his arm?' he ventured.

De Wolfe glared at him. 'Well, what about his damned arm? He's got two of them, hasn't he?'

'He broke one a few years ago, falling off his pony. It never healed properly, there was always a lump under the skin.'

Gwyn seized upon this at once, as he had used a similar ploy once before. 'Which arm was it, left or right?' he demanded, already bending down to the corpse.

Walter Pole thought for a moment, muttering under his breath and looking at his own arms as he twisted them at the wrists to help him remember.

'The left… yes, it was the left, as he said it wouldn't stop him having full use of his right when he was pushing his needle through the leather.'

John stooped to look as Gwyn pushed up the left sleeve of the tunic almost to the shoulder. 'Where was the damage, Walter?' he boomed.

'Just below the elbow. He would rub it sometimes, as he said it. ached.'

Gwyn lifted up the hand, the brown, wrinkled skin of the arm looking like old parchment against the almost black claws of the fingernails. He felt all along the forearm from wrist to elbow and then gave a loud exclamation.

'Ha! There's a hard lump here. Would this be it?' Hesitantly, the harness maker stretched out his own hand and tentatively felt the area that Gwyn indicated.

He nodded vigorously. 'That's it. This must be poor Matthew. No one else would have a lump like that in that very spot.' He looked sadly at the withered corpse.

'His staggering sickness must have got the better of him in the end.'

John de Wolfe shook his head. 'Not so, Walter. He was murdered!'

* * *

An hour later, the coroner strode across Rougemont's inner ward to the keep and shared a pot of ale with the sheriff. Henry de Furnellis was fond of men's company and, unlike his haughty predecessor, the old soldier was happy to forsake the sheriff's chamber for the noisy, bustling halt outside.

They sat at a table near the firepit and ignoring the attempts of clerks, merchants and others to seek an audience with him, Henry listened to the latest news about the mummified corpse.

'God's teeth, how did a master craftsman like that get himself slain in such a bizarre fashion?' he asked, his grizzled old face displaying his surprise.

'There's some meaning to it, I'm sure,' replied John grimly. 'But what it signifies is beyond me at present.

As far as we can make out, the fellow had been an ordinary tradesman with nothing to mark him out as a victim.'

The sheriff nodded over his mug. 'A saddler seems an unlikely target for an assassination. Too old to have ravished the wife of some ill-tempered husband. And if he owed money, this was no way to set about repayment.' De Wolfe stared for a moment into the fire, watching the flames flicker around the pile of oak logs. 'This body was found on de Revelle's property and he has some fanciful tale about it being dumped there to discredit him.'

Henry groaned and rolled up his eyes. 'Bloody de Revelle! I might have guessed that he would turn up again before long. I thought his experiences last month might have encouraged him to lay low for a while.'

'He claims that this corpse was planted in his school by some outlaw bent on revenge,' said de Wolfe. 'What do you know of this Nicholas de Arundell, the one they call 'Nick o' the Moor'? All I've learned about him was from the one-eyed potman at the Bush.'

De Furnellis cradled his chin in a hand as he dug intohis memory. 'Nicholas de Arundell? There was a scandal concerning him about three years back, before I was made sheriff for the first time. The county was in the hands of that bastard John Lackland then, so although theoretically he was sheriff, the prince left all the work to the serjeants and bailiffs of the hundreds.' This obscure complaint told de Wolfe nothing and he waited for further explanation.

'De Arundell went off to the Crusade as soon as our king called for recruits, and I seem to recall that on the way he stayed to fight for the Lionheart in the Sicilian war. Anyway, when more than two years had gone by without word from him, it was claimed that he was dead and the Count of Mortain, who had been given Devon and Cornwall by the king at his coronation, declared his estates to be escheated.'

'And who put that claim about?' growled de Wolfe, 'The de la Pomeroys of Berry Castle, which stands next to Hempston, said that a monk returning from Palestine had told them this, as he was passing through.

Of course, no one could ever produce this monk to confirm it, but as you know only too well, Henry de la Pomeroy was one of Prince bloody John's most ardent supporters in these parts.'

'And then this Nicholas causes a big problem when he turns up very much alive?' suggested the coroner.

'Indeed he did! It seems he arrived with a couple of his men and finds his wife gone back to Cornwall and a strange bailiff running his manor. Unfortunately, in his anger, he went about fighting the situation in the wrong way.'

'So what happened to get him outlawed?' asked John.

'This Nicholas is a man of very short temper and he and his retainers, together with some villagers who were loyal to him, tried to throw out the bailiff and Pomeroy's men. 'There was a fight and in the melee, one of the local men got a crack on the head which killed him.

Someone got a warning to Berry Castle and a large force rushed over to arrest Nicholas, but he and his men escaped.'

By now, a few people had gathered behind the sheriff and were listening to his tale with interest. Any tales of conflict and violence were a welcome diversion in these peaceful times in Devon. One of the older men was Gabriel, the sergeant of the garrison's men-at-arms and a close friend of Gwyn. He broke in with his own memories of the affair.

'I don't know the details, but I heard that somehow he and some of his men vanished into the moor, where they've been ever since. He knew it was no use seeking justice from the sheriff, for there wasn't one worth speaking of, as it was the Count of Mortain who nominally held the shrievalty.'

'But why could he not get justice from someone?' demanded John. There were some derisory noises from the men gathered around. It was clear where their sympathies lay, and one man, a clerk to Ralph Morin, the castle constable, put them into words.

'Who could he appeal to, Crowner? He was declared outlaw in the county court a few weeks later, so he ceased to exist as far as the law was concerned. He couldn't bring any legal action for restitution of his estate — he couldn't even show his face anywhere for fear of being beheaded or hanged on sight.'

De Wolfe nodded his understanding at the fearful significance of being declared an outlaw, and the sheriff's next words confirmed de Arundell's plight.

'He was a relatively insignificant knight with no powerful friends, even though he had been on Crusade. Then he made matters worse by starting a vendetta against de Revelle and the Pomeroys, father and son. He and his men hid themselves on Dartmoor and struck at various farms belonging to their adversaries.' Henry grinned at the memory of de Revelle's anger at the time. 'They burned a few barns, stole sheep and cattle and poached deer from their lands. They even kidnapped a few of de Revelle's servants and tried to hold them to ransom, but he wouldn't pay so much as a bent penny, so they had to let them free.'

Eventually, the sheriff had to succumb to the pleas of his chief clerk and reluctantly go back to his chamber to give audience to the many people who were waiting impatiently to see him. John strode back to the gatehouse and sat behind his table, watching Thomas carefully scribing away at his manuscripts. The little clerk's tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth as he hunched over his quill pen, concentrating on forming the excellent script that would be put before, the royal justices when they next came to hold the Eyre of Assize.

One of the main functions of the coroner system was to record all legal events in each county for presentation either to the judges on their infrequent visits or to the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery, lesser officials who came more often to clear the endless backlog of cases, whose alleged perpetrators languished in the prisons.

Though juries of men from every hundred had to present their local cases to the courts, anything in which the coroner was involved had to be documented on his rolls for examination by the justices. It was Thomas's pride that ensured that his yards of parchment were the neatest and most legible of all the documents presented.

De Wolfe had been trying to learn to read and write, taught both by a vicar from the cathedral and by Thomas, but his lack of patience made him a poor student and he had hardly progressed beyond being able to read a few simple sentences and sign his name. Now he looked with wonder, rather than envy, at his clerk's dextrous fingers forming the regular lines of Latin script on the creamy parchment before him.

After a few minutes, boredom began to overtake him.

He missed Gwyn's boisterous company, as the officer was still down in Smythen Street organising the inquest which John would hold just before noon. At this time of morning, the three of them would usually have a second breakfast, but with Gwyn away, there was no bread and cheese and the large jug of cider on the floor was empty.

De Wolfe drummed his fingers on the table and shivered as a cold blast of air whistled through the slit-shaped windows. The snow had held off, but it was frosty and the wind was rising from the east.

Thomas looked up, his pointed nose bright red with cold, the beginnings of a dewdrop forming at its tip.

He sensed that his impatient master wanted some diversion.

'How will you pursue this killing, sir?' he asked.

'Start by discovering more about this saddler,' replied John. 'Search his dwelling for a start, then question those who knew him in life, I suppose.'

'He seems to have been a stalwart guild member,' offered Thomas. 'I heard Walter Pole mention that this Matthew had once been the treasurer of the Cordwainers, which includes all kinds of leatherworkers.' The coroner had learned over the sixteen months since he had taken office that his clerk was both intelligent and perceptive, so that anything he suggested was usually worth considering.

'The guilds! We must follow that aspect. I'll speak to Hugh de Relaga about it, he has his finger in every scheme the merchants devise in Exeter.' De Relaga was the garishly dressed portreeve, one of the two leaders of the city council, as well as being John's business associate in their wool-exporting business. When de Wolfe returned home from Palestine, he had invested his booty wisely and had become a sleeping partner in this enterprise with Hugh. They bought fleeces from all over the Southwest and shipped them across to Normandy, Flanders and even as far as Cologne. Recently, they had invested in three ships so that henceforth, instead of the partners paying freight, their own crews would sail the Channel when the new season began in the Spring and come back with finished cloth as well as wine and fruit, to make a steady profit on the transaction.

'The present warden of that guild might be worth questioning, Crowner,' suggested Thomas. 'I took the liberty this morning of finding out who it was. He's Archibald Wasteper, a master cordwainer. He sells his footwear from a shop in North Gate Street.' John nodded. 'I know of the place, my wife has bought shoes there — and damned expensive they were,' he added, with feeling.

The clerk sensed that the coroner still wanted some distraction until Gwyn returned, so he kept the dialogue going.

'Sir, do you think that there is anything in this claim of Sir Richard, that this outlaw has some part in the death?'

John scratched his head; a flea was irritating him. 'I don't rule out anything, but it's a pretty unlikely story.' Thomas nodded his agreement. 'And there is the problem of a Dartmoor outlaw getting into the city.'

Here de Wolfe declined to agree with his clerk. 'Not as difficult as you might think, Thomas. With the many hundreds of folk in and out of the gates each day, it's impossible to check everyone, even if those idle porters on the gates made an effort to do so — which they don't.' He gave a lop-sided grin. 'Outlaws not uncommonly squirm their way back into society. I've heard of several who rose to become respected pillars of society again, under new names and in a different city.' The sounds of heavy feet on the stairway heralded Gwyn's return and a moment later his large figure pushed its way through the doorway curtain. He was clutching a gallon jar of cider and three hot mutton pasties, bought from a stall outside the castle gate.

As they ate and drank, Gwyn reported that the inquest was set up and a jury had been impounded from all the neighbours in Smythen Street, as well as the occupants of the school.

'Properly put out, was that magister fellow,' he chortled. 'Said it would disturb his lecture on Homer, whatever the hell that is!'

Thomas pursed his lips in academic disapproval. 'You ignorant Cornish savage. Homer was probably the most famous writer in history.'

Gwyn leered at the little priest. 'Well, he wasn't too well-known down in Polruan, I can tell you!'

John raised a hand imperiously. 'That's enough, you two. After dinner, we'll talk to some people about this Morcok fellow. Surely someone should know what he did to get himself killed.'

The inquest was a low-key event, with few people present apart from the jury whose members had been reluctantly dragged in from the surrounding area. Though in the countryside, all males over twelve from the four nearest villages were supposed to attend an inquest in case anyone had any information about the death, this was impossible in the more populous towns and cities.

Here, it was only practicable to round up a score or so of those from the immediate neighbourhood to act as jurors. Their duty was not only to consider a verdict, but also to act as witnesses, as local people were most likely to have knowledge of what went on in their street.

Gwyn had been around all the nearby houses and workshops to order their attendance, on pain of fines if they failed to turn up, and now a couple of dozen men and older boys had shuffled into the yard of the smithy. They stood in a ragged half-circle outside the open doors of the outbuilding, looking sheepish and uncertain of their role in this legal ritual. The coroner's system was little more than a year old and few people understood it — though anything connected with the law was always to be avoided wherever possible, as fines and even imprisonment were an inevitable result of falling to abide by the tortuous rules.

At the end of the line of men stood Magister James Anglicus and his pompous acolyte Henry Wotri. Behind them lurked a dozen students, ranging from fresh-faced boys of fifteen to some serious young men of twenty, all dressed in black clerical habits similar to that of Thomas de Peyne, who was seated on a box just inside the doors.

He had an empty cask in front of him to support his parchments and ink bottle, which he always carried in a leather pouch slung over his shoulder.

A few curious spectators clustered inside, the gate, mostly old men with nothing else to occupy their time, plus a sprinkling of goodwives and some cheeky urchins.

John spotted old Edwin from the Bush, who obviously could not resist nosing into anything that took place within a few hundred paces of the tavern.

Gwyn bellowed out the official summoning of the inquest, exhorting 'all who have anything to do before the king's coroner for the county of Devon' to 'come forth and give their attendance'. Then he walked to stand behind John, who glowered around at the jurors, looking like a big crow in his wolfskin cloak of mottled grey over a long black tunic. The cold breeze swirled his swept-back hair over his collar as he harshly instructed the men as to their functions.

'This is an inquest held to investigate a breach of the peace of our sovereign lord, King Richard,' he began.

'You must consider who, where, when and by what means the man who lies here came to his death.' He glared around the ring of jurors, as if defying them to contradict him. 'First, let me hear from the First Finder, who discovered the corpse.'

Reluctantly, the builder stepped forward and stood before John de Wolfe. In response to some impatient prompting, he said that he was Roger Short, a carpenter, who was adapting the building for use as an additional lecture room. Describing how he had unearthed the cadaver from the angle between the upper floor and the rafters, he went on to emphasise that he had rushed to report it to the magister. Roger wanted to avoid any amercement for delay and promptly passed the buck to James Anglicus.

After determining that the carpenter had no idea who the body was nor how it had got there, de Wolfe asked him a last question. 'How long would you say it had been up in that loft?'

The scruffy little builder hitched up his sagging breeches and shrugged. 'Hard to tell, sir. There was a thick layer of dust all over the rubbish that covered him, so that hadn't been moved in a long time. Months, I'd say.'

Roger had nothing else to contribute and thankfully stepped back, allowing Walter Pole to take his place. De Wolfe got him to repeat the reasons why he thought the corpse was that of Matthew Morcok.

'This deformity of the arm bone will be shown to you all in a moment,' the coroner promised the jury. 'Meanwhile, I will presume that you agree that the body is that of the cordwainer.'

Then he moved on to the contentious matter of Presentment of Englishry, which he had to explain to them, well aware that they resented the financial implications.

'After King William first took possession of this country, many Saxons took it upon themselves to slay what they considered to be Norman invaders,' he began, not shirking his words even though there were men of obvious Saxon blood in his audience.

'To discourage this, a heavy murdrum fine is levied on any community amongst whom a man is found murdered, unless his family can prove he is English or Welsh or Scottish.' Again he scowled around the ring of jurors, well aware that over a century after the Battle of Hastings, intermarriage had blurred the distinction between Saxon and Norman. The murdrum fine was now just a cynical means of extracting more taxes from the population, but to the loyal John, the king's law was absolute and he had no option but to carry it out.

'Is there any man here related to Matthew Morcok who can present him as English?'

There was a silence, as de Wolfe had known there would be, as the only kin was a daughter many miles away — and women were not allowed to make presentment, which was normally carried out by two male relatives.

'Then this will be recorded by my clerk in his rolls and it will be up to the justices, when they arrive, to decide upon the amount of the fine.'

There were no other witnesses to call, so Gwyn rounded up the jurors and drove them nearer the doors of the forge. Going inside, he dragged out an old door on which lay the pathetic remains of Matthew Morcok, covered with a dirty piece of canvas from the loft.

'You will all look upon the cadaver before you advise me of your verdict,' said the coroner. 'But first, I will show you this.'

He held up the rusty nail and passed it to Walter Pole, who was the spokesman for the jury. They all passed it from hand to hand and examined it with obvious curiosity.

'This was found driven into the bones of his neck.

You will see the hole it made when you view the remains.' They filed past as Gwyn lifted off the canvas and their reactions varied from the stolid to the revolted. The sight of the twisted, leathery mummy caused some to gasp, but most of the older men, especially those used to the carnage of battle and the cruelties of farming and slaughtering, merely nodded or grunted. When the viewing of the body was complete, de Wolfe again faced the assembled citizens.

'It is clear that this man, who surely must be Matthew Morcok, a master saddler of Priest Street, was foully done to death by a spike being hammered into his spine. When this happened, we cannot tell, but I will assume that it was during the past year, the sixth in the reign of our sovereign lord King Richard.' He paused and his piercing gaze swept along the row of faces before him.

'Who killed Matthew, we do not know, but it is my duty and that of the sheriff to discover that. Until then, the only verdict of this inquest can surely be that he was murdered by some unknown person or persons.' The men shuffled their icy feet on the frozen mud of the yard and looked at each other uncertainly.

'To allow this poor fellow a decent burial at last, I must complete these proceedings — though the inquest can be resumed at any time when further information comes to light. So now confer amongst yourselves and let me know your decision.'

This was said with a final glare that betokened dire consequences for anyone who challenged his decision — and within a moment, Walter Pole had muttered to the men next to him and come back with total agreement.

'We say the man is Matthew Morcok, sir — and he was foully killed against the king's peace.'

That was good enough for de Wolfe, and with a nod at Thomas to get everything down on his parchment, he waved away the crowd, who began drifting towards the street. He beckoned to Walter Pole, the harness maker.

'What about burying this poor fellow?' he asked. 'Are you going to send for his daughter?'

'Our guild will see that everything is done right, Crowner. But I don't think we can wait for the daughter, even if we knew exactly where she lived! It would take two or three weeks to get a message to Oxford, and then for her to get back here.'

John knew that part of the function of the various guilds was to ensure that the widows and families of dead members were looked after and this extended to seeing that deceased guildsmen had a decent funeral if there was no one else to provide for them. But his own duty to the corpse was now fulfilled, apart from finding the murderer, so with a yearning look across the road towards the Bush, he made his way back home for dinner.

John found Matilda to be in a less frosty mood than he had expected and she even listened to his account of the inquest with less than her usual indifference. He always studiously avoided any topics that could trigger her scorn and anger, which severely limited the range of acceptable subjects for conversation. Naturally mention of the Bush alehouse was forbidden, and even talk about the shipping venture with Hugh de Relaga was banned, for the simple reason that their three vessels were owned in partnership with Hilda of Dawlish, one of his former lovers before Nesta came on the scene.

But today, his wife seemed moderately civil, if not actually affable. Sensitive to her moods after years of suffering, John wondered what was making her so mellow. It was only after finishing their meal that he found out. When Mary's boiled bacon and a pease pudding had been consumed, followed by dried apricots stewed in honeyed cider, Matilda took her cup of small ale to the fireside and divulged not one, but two reasons for her relatively benign mood.

'We are invited to a feast, John,' she announced. 'A messenger from the Guildhall came this morning, requesting our attendance there tomorrow evening.

The Guild of Mercers are holding a banquet to celebrate something or other. It will be a chance for me to wear my new blue velvet, the one I bought at the October Fair.' She preened herself at the thought of outshining some of the merchants' wives who were her cronies from the congregation of St Olave's Church in Fore Street.

Her husband grunted as he settled down on the opposite side of the hearth. Not much given to social occasions, he was indifferent to such gatherings, but then the thought of a free meal and fine wine made him accept the prospect with moderately good grace. It also occurred to him that it gave him an opportunity to ask amongst the many guildsmen present, to see if they could throw any light on the death of one of their former treasurers.

Matilda's second reason for being in a good mood was even less exciting, as she was enthusing about a new friend she had acquired amongst the small congregation at St Olave's, a church obscurely named after the first Christian king of Norway. Along with the nearby cathedral, this was her favourite place of worship, where as the wife of a knight she could flaunt her rank amongst the wives of merchants and craftsmen, even though many of them were far richer than her husband.

'There is a new lady recently arrived in Exeter,' she announced. 'Joan de Whiteford, the young widow of a manor lord from Somerset, though I suspect she has fallen on hard times since his death, as she is living off her relatives, poor thing. Still it is pleasant to have someone of equal status to converse with, a person of breeding instead of the clodhopping goodwives that usually attend the services.'

John was sleepily staring into the fire, about as interested in his wife's social life as he was in the number of stars in the sky, but she continued to drone on about Lady Joan.

'She is lodging with her cousin Gillian le Bret, who I've known as a devout churchgoer for some years. I had no idea that Gillian had noble relatives, for her late husband was only a merchant — though a very rich one,' she added, as if his affluence was partly her doing.

When John responded with a snore, Matilda gave a rut of irritation and flounced out to find her maid to settle her in the solar for her afternoon nap.