The Sanctuary Seeker

Chapter Fourteen In which Crowner John receives news from Southampton

The long palisade of turreted wall brooded over the busy quayside. Ships of all sizes, their yards carrying furled sails tilted up against the masts, berthed end to end against the wharf. Barrels, bales and boxes were being hurried up and down a host of gangplanks that levelled off gradually as the tide went down in the Solent.

Gwyn of Polruan ambled from tavern to inn, from inn to lodging house along the half-mile of rambling dockside. Huts, shanties and storehouses were built against the landward bank, amid the more solid houses of ship-owners and wool-traders. He had arrived the night before, after coming along the coast through the smaller ports of Lyme, Bridport, Weymouth and Poole. None had turned up any sightings of Hubert de Bonneville and Southampton was now his main hope. It seemed unlikely that the returning Crusader would have crossed the Channel further east, if the group that contained Fitzhai had intended to make for the Normandy coast at Harfleur.

By mid-morning the massive Cornishman had visited a dozen drinking places on the quayside and even his iron constitution was beginning to feel the effects of a jar of ale in almost all of them. He sat for a moment’s respite on a bollard, a tree-stump set in the stone wharf, grooved by the hawsers of a thousand ships that had been tied to it. One such vessel was straining at it now, the ropes creaking as the hull moved slightly on the swell that flowed in from the sea beyond the Isle of Wight.

It was a Flemish boat and was being loaded with bale after bale of English wool, squeezed into hessian bags and tied tightly with cords. A succession of labourers trotted up the gangway in pairs, each holding one end of a large sack.

After a few moments, Gwyn’s head cleared and he suddenly discovered that he was hungry, needing something solid to soak up the lake of beer swilling around in his stomach. He left the tree-stump and went diagonally across the crowded quayside, dodged by handcarts, jogging porters, sailors and merchants. Wagons drawn by bullocks and dray-horses creaked slowly along the wharf, heaped with bales of wool, or barrels and jars of wine, kegs of dried fruit from southern France and dried meat and fish to victual the King’s army in Normandy. The air was redolent with a hundred smells, from the spices of valuable cargoes to the ubiquitous stench of dung that dotted the ground from the draught animals.

Gwyn picked his way through the odorous puddles and stepped over ropes, heading for the next tavern, a large wood-framed hut with plastered wall-panels and a roof of bark shingles. Over the single door swung a crude gilded metal crown. Inside, the smoky, noisy interior was bustling with as much activity as the docks outside. Gwyn used his bulk to shoulder a way to a vacant space on a plank bench under a window, which was merely a hole in the wall with wooden bars set vertically.

Eventually a slatternly girl with a strange accent that Gwyn thought might be from the distant North, understood his Cornish patois well enough to bring him horse-bread, cheese, mutton and more beer. As he filled himself, he looked into his purse to see how his funds were lasting. He had been two nights on the road and would need another two to get back to Exeter. The whole trip would cost at least eightpence and he wondered again where Master John found the money.

He knew the knight had a fair income from his wool partnership, but Gwyn assumed that he also kept back some of the deodand and felony confiscations for working expenses.

As he was chewing and meditating on his master’s finances, the man next to him drank up and left. Almost immediately the space was claimed by a bigger fellow, who dropped heavily on to the bench and bumped against Gwyn, jolting the arm that was just pushing a piece of cheese beneath his red moustache.

‘Sorry, mate – crowded in here, by God.’

As he had had the grace to apologise, Gwyn mumbled something neutral, then noticed that the man, who had cropped hair and a bull-like neck, had the appearance of a soldier. He wore the same type of thick leather jerkin as Gwyn and a heavy belt carrying a curved dagger of distinctly Eastern pattern. As the newcomer waved hopefully at the serving girl, he displayed a wide gold ring with a crescent-moon motif carved into it.

Using the camaraderie of the militia to start up a conversation, Gwyn struck a rich vein of information. The fellow was Gruffydd, a Welshman of Gwent, so he could converse with him well enough in his own Cornish. Gruffydd had been in Palestine for almost two years and his service as a mercenary archer overlapped the period that Gwyn had spent there with John de Wolfe. They had places, people and battles in common.

‘I came back only two months ago and am now hired to recruit more men for the King’s present campaign against Philip of France.’

Gwyn asked if he knew any other returning Crusaders, especially Hubert de Bonneville or Alan Fitzhai. Gruffydd let out a bellow of affirmation and slapped Gwyn’s shoulder. ‘How the devil do you know those two?’ he demanded cheerfully. ‘They were both through here at different times. I offered Fitzhai a new contract to fight in France, but he said he had to visit his woman first and if he could find no fighting work down West, he would come back here to me – but I never saw him again.’

Gwyn shook his head over his beer. ‘Nor will you, unless you have use for a one-handed swordsman.’ He told the story, ending with Fitzhai’s appointment with the ordeal.

The Welshman was concerned; he had a soft spot for the extrovert Fitzhai. ‘And all this was over de Bonneville? And he’s slain?’

‘Fitzhai is in gaol as the prime suspect – on very little evidence.’

Gruffydd shook his big head. ‘I can’t see him as a murderer – a killer, yes, but only when he’s paid to do it in battle.’

Gwyn finished up his food and washed it down with beer. ‘That’s not what the sheriff thinks, though he’s keen for a culprit at any price. But tell me more about de Bonneville.’

The story came out readily enough from the Welshman. He told Gwyn of the gossip about the fight the two men had had in France, which was news to the Cornishman as he had left Exeter before Fitzhai had blurted out the story. However, Gruffydd took little account of this, like the coroner considering it a commonplace rough-house between rowdy soldiers. But he also told Gwyn that Hubert de Bonneville had had a squire, a Saxon called Aelfgar of Totnes. The two had met in Palestine and had travelled home through France together, in the same party as Alan Fitzhai. Gwyn tried to get a description of Aelfgar from Gruffydd, but apart from saying that he was a burly thickset fellow with fair hair – which applied to half the Saxons in England – the other was not very helpful.

‘Did they leave this port together to travel to Devon?’ asked Gwyn, with little hope of more information.

Surprisingly, the other man shook his head. ‘No, they didn’t. I tried to sign Aelfgar on for the French wars – I get a penny for every recruit,’ he explained. ‘But he wanted to go home to Totnes first. And, anyway, his master sent him on ahead to his own manor, some place far out beyond Dartmoor, as I remember.’

‘Why didn’t they travel together?’

‘De Bonneville had six of his own soldiers with him. They had all travelled back from Marseille and he wanted to pay them off in Southampton. Aelfgar told me, when he was making excuses for not joining my mercenaries, that his master wanted to sell some gold loot he had acquired in Outremer. He needed the money to pay his men and wanted silver coin himself, so he was going to spend some time touring the goldsmiths and bargaining for the best price.’ Gruffydd grinned and prodded Gwyn with his elbow. ‘I think he wanted a week in the Southampton brothels.’

Gwyn considered this in the light of the mouldered corpse up on Heckwood Tor. ‘So the squire goes off ahead of de Bonneville. And when did his master follow – any idea?’

But Gruffydd had exhausted his information. ‘No, sorry, I don’t know that. I saw him in the distance in the town more than two weeks after I spoke with Aelfgar, who was leaving that day. But de Bonneville could have stayed here longer than that, for all I know.’

Gwyn bought them both another pot of ale and they sat drinking companionably. Then Gwyn tried another question as a long shot. ‘I suppose you haven’t come across another Saxon soldier recently, a fellow with two of his fingers missing?’

The Welshman roared with laughter and slapped Gwyn on his broad back. ‘Two fingers missing! I know twenty or thirty men who’ve run foul of either Philip’s army in France or the wrong barons in England. And quite a few bowmen, most of them from Gwent, lost theirs picking the wrong side when Prince John tried his tricks last year.’

‘This one’s called Nebba.’

Gruffydd’s mirth increased. ‘Nebba! That son of a bitch! I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw a donkey!’

Gwyn’s ginger eyebrows rose up his forehead in surprise. This fellow seemed to know every soldier in Christendom. ‘Tell me about him, for God’s sake! He’s not another of this bunch that landed from Harfleur, is he?’

The mercenary shook his head. ‘No, not Nebba. Crusading’s not his style, though he’d sell himself to any army that paid the best. He came back from the Vexin a few months ago – he’d been fighting for Richard, but some Frenchmen caught him and deprived him of his fingers. He was lucky to lose them and not his private parts or his head.’

‘So what happened to him?’

Gruffydd chuckled. ‘I’d signed him up to go back to Normandy as a spearman since he could no longer pull a long-bow. While he was waiting for the ship, he ran short of money so he robbed a merchant’s house, here in Southampton. The merchant caught him at it, there was a fight and Nebba stabbed him dead.’

Gwyn ran a hand through his tangled beard. ‘Stabbed, eh?’

‘That’s the usual way of killing people in peacetime,’ guffawed the Welshman. ‘Anyway, he ran like hell ahead of the hue-and-cry and got to St Michael’s Church and claimed sanctuary.’ He stopped for a vast swallow of beer.

Gwyn looked at him expectantly. ‘What happened then?’

‘Oh, he broke out a couple of days later and legged it for the New Forest. The townsfolk guarding the church were pretty half-hearted. They had better things to do than a day-and-night vigil over a thief. So he turned outlaw and vanished into the woods. I lost my penny commission because he missed the boat for France. God alone knows where he is now.’

Gwyn grunted into his ale. ‘I can tell you where is. He’s hiding out in a village near Dartmoor.’ He pondered in silence for a moment. Could this Nebba have been mixed up in the death of de Bonneville? He had been stabbed and Nebba was a stabber – but Gruffydd was quite right that stabbings were as common as Thomas de Peyne’s habit of crossing himself. Yet it was strange that the archer had turned up in two places associated with Hubert. He gave a mental shrug and took a dismissive swig of beer. ‘The Crowner will be interested to hear about him, but I’m not convinced he could have had anything to do with our present problem.’

Gwyn could get nothing further from Gruffydd and, after buying the Welshman a last quart of beer and indulging in some more talk of Crusading, he decided to start for home. At least he now knew that de Bonneville had had a henchman, what his name was and that he seemed to have vanished at least a couple of weeks earlier than Bonneville’s death. And Nebba’s name kept cropping up.

He went back to his lodging to fetch his horse and begin the long trek back to Exeter.

The Cornishman returned to tell the story to Crowner John two days later, at the end of the afternoon, up in the gatehouse chamber. Wearily, he climbed the narrow stairway to the sounds of chanting drifting up from the little chapel of St Mary just inside the main gate.

Ralph Morin was already with the coroner and Gwyn listened to what he was saying. ‘I fear for his life – he may not last long enough to be hanged,’ he said. ‘His whole arm is suppurating from shoulder to fingertips. I think that binding it with hay makes it worse – I’m sure there some poison in mouldy grass that produces pus.’

‘Is he still in that foul cell?’ asked John.

‘He is indeed – and that gross imbecile Stigand has not the faintest notion of how to treat a sick man. Fitzhai is delirious with fever from that septic arm. He’ll be dead in a day or two, barring a miracle. And, of course, de Revelle and the Precentor take it for the judgement of God in proving his guilt – though I think the sheriff would prefer to hang him, rather than lose him to suppuration.’

The constable turned to leave and John called after him that he would try to get the sick prisoner moved to the care of the nuns, who had at least some idea of hygiene.

‘So what news have you found for me, Gwyn? Tell me, while the little fellow is exercising his Latin.’

Thomas was sitting at the table finishing details of that morning’s hangings on his roll. Unusually, one of the executed criminals had been a fairly rich grain merchant, with land both outside the walls in Southernhay and a manor at Teignmouth. He had been caught out in an established fraud involving short weight in both buying and selling corn. It was rumoured that several prominent burgesses had covered up for him, for a cut of the proceeds, but political power had kept their names out of the scandal, the merchant himself being used as the scapegoat. John had suspicions about Godfrey Fitzosbern, his odious next-door neighbour in St Martin’s Lane, but nothing could be proved. In any event, the county court, spurred by howls of indignation from the Guilds, had sent the man to the gallows, when undoubtedly a number of eminent citizens had breathed a sigh of relief that his mouth was now finally closed. The coroner was keen to see that the value of his goods and land, forefeit to the Crown, reached the Treasury and were not spirited away by others. He therefore had Thomas making a detailed inventory of the merchant’s estate and a full record was being inscribed on the rolls.

While the clerk was busy with his quill and ink, John heard Gwyn’s account of his fortunate encounter with the Welshman in Southampton. ‘At least we know there was a squire and that he was sent on ahead of de Bonneville to announce his master’s coming,’ concluded the coroner’s officer. ‘And this man Nebba seems to flit in and out of our sight, but how he could be involved I can’t tell.’

John pondered the news, the lines running down from the corners of his mouth deepening as he concentrated. At length, he said, ‘One question leads to even more problems. First, is this stabbed and cut-throated corpse really Aelfgar? And why did no one from Peter Tavy enquire about Hubert’s squire?’

Squatting in his favourite place on the sill of the window-slit, the Cornishman ran his fingers through his red moustache. ‘The last question is easy to answer. As far as I know, they knew nothing of Aelfgar’s existence. When he left for the Crusades, he joined a few men from the Tavistock area who had taken the cross and journeyed in a group to take ship across the Channel. Hubert could have met Aelfgar anywhere between here and Acre.’

John accepted the explanation. ‘But that means that they would have no means of identifying the body, even if it was in good enough a condition still to show his features. So how the devil are we going to know if it’s this man or not?’

‘He’s from Totnes,’ said Gwyn reasonably. ‘Enquiries there will no doubt confirm it. The problem is that, unlike Hubert, he’s beyond recognition from putrefaction by now. Even his own mother wouldn’t know him.’

‘And his clothing and effects are useless, if he’s been a year or two in the Levant … But wait a moment – what about that strange crucifix?’

Gwyn got up and went to the rough wooden chest in the corner where oddments were kept. He rummaged inside and took out the crude ornament that had hung around the dead man’s neck, together with the empty dagger scabbard. ‘But this may have come from Palestine too,’ he objected.

John took the little cross from him and looked at it, turning it over in his powerful fingers. ‘No, it’s almost pure tin. Most of the tin in the world comes from Devon and Cornwall, so maybe he took it to Outremer to remind him of home. Someone might recognise it – I’ve not seen anything like it before.’

He snapped his fingers at the clerk. ‘Up at dawn in the morning, Thomas. You can goad that mangy mule of yours across to Totnes, then on up to Dartmoor, to see what you can discover about this Aelfgar.’

Thomas groaned and Gwyn, hugely amused by his dejection, snatched the feathered quill from his fingers and stuck it behind Thomas’s ear.

‘Cheer up, priest. Totnes is famed for its pretty girls. You’ll be a real hit with them – better than goosing novice nuns, eh?’

If the clerk’s crooked eye could have killed, Gwyn of Polruan would have dropped dead on the spot.