Chapter Two In which Crowner John opens an inquest


Miraculously the rain held off until noon, when the inquest was held outside the great doors of the tithe barn. They now stood open to reveal the body of the murdered man lying inside on a rough bier. The only decent chair in the village had been brought from the church and placed a few yards in front of the entrance. It was a plain high-backed settle, kept in the small chancel in case the Bishop of Exeter ever visited – a penance he had so far managed to avoid.

Sir John de Wolfe sat augustly in the Bishop’s seat. A motley collection of about thirty men and boys stood in a ragged half-circle before him. They ranged from skinny youths to arthritic grandfathers. The only thing they had in common was a sense of awe and bewilderment as to what this new-fangled ‘Crowner’s quest’ was all about. They looked with interest, tinged with anxiety, at the predatory figure sitting there. To them he was dark and menacing, an almost demoniac messenger from the dimly perceived outer world.

For his part, John felt anything but messianic – he was cold, damp and would have killed for a good fire and a decent meal. He was the least introspective of men, practical and unimaginative. Unlike his brother-in-law, the sheriff, he had no sense of his own importance, other than a simple will to be an agent for the King’s peace. In fact, he was a simple man, uncomplicated, lacking subtlety or romanticism. Devotion to his leader, King Richard, was enough for him; it was at the heart of a code of loyalty by which he had lived since he had become a fighting man, more than twenty years ago. Now forty and getting too old for battlefields, he had welcomed this chance to uphold the Lionheart’s kingdom by doggedly and single-mindedly enforcing the royal laws as best he could. Whereas other more sophisticated minds might see that the King’s feet were at least partly made of clay, John de Wolfe saw him in the same light as others held religion: to be revered and obeyed with blind faith. Now, though, none of this was going through his mind as he sat in the Bishop’s seat and wished himself back in the warmth of the Bush tavern in Exeter with a jar of good ale in his hand, instead of in this miserable hamlet with its boggy soil and sodden inhabitants.

The burly Gwyn opened the proceedings by bawling in a voice that could have been heard far up on the moors ‘All ye who have anything to do before the King’s coroner for the county of Devon, draw near and give your attendance!’

There was some shuffling of feet as the gathering waited expectantly for something to happen. The women of the village, excluded from the menfolk’s participation, loitered in the background, whispering behind their hands at this unexpected entertainment in their drab lives.

‘The first finders – they who discovered the body – step forward,’ commanded the coroner.

With a jostling of neighbours’ elbows, a young man with curly blond hair stepped out reluctantly and made a diffident nod of obeisance before the coroner. He had a bad cold and his nose was running like a tap. A rough hessian smock, with a knotted rope for a belt, left his arms bare, which like his face, had many bramble scratches, some still bleeding.

‘Give your name and age to the clerk.’

Thomas was crouched on a milking stool at John’s right hand, his parchments and inks spread on a small bench before him. His quill moved rapidly.

‘Cerdic, of this village, sir,’ he muttered, between sniffs. ‘English, I am,’ he added, superfluously as, with a name like his, he could be neither Norman nor Celt.

‘Your age, boy?’

‘Seventeen … I think,’ he added uncertainly.

Crowner John ignored the muffled titter that came from the women at the back. ‘And this body – tell us how you found it.’

The lad drew a brawny arm across his nose to wipe away a dribble. ‘On my way to the bottom wood to cut withies, I was. Down the path by the brook, I saw this here body, lying face down in the water, his head on our side.’

The clerk scribbled away furiously, as the coroner sought more detail. ‘What time was this, boy?’

‘Just after dawn, sir. A bite to eat and I was out. First up in the village, I reckon.’

‘What did you do then, boy?’ rasped John.

Cerdic ran a forearm across his nose, then spat noisily onto the ground. ‘I met Nebba when I was running back to the village. I told him, and he came back with me to look at the dead man. Then we both went to find Ralph.’

John pressed him for more facts of how the body lay and what wounds he had seen, but nothing new emerged. The young man was allowed to step back into the village ranks, which he did with obvious relief.

The next witness was a small boy, who had been tending the pigs the night before. He was marched forward by his mother, a formidable woman of extreme ugliness, who gripped her reluctant son by the shoulder to propel him before the Bishop’s chair. Wide-eyed and overawed, all he could stammer out was a vow that there had been no body in the stream late the previous evening when he had scoured the area for a roaming pig.

After the child had been dragged away by his mother, John turned to the manor reeve. ‘Who’s this Nebba that the first witness mentioned?’

Ralph looked uneasy and shifted his feet about on the wet earth. ‘He’s a stranger in the village, Crowner. Been here a month or so.’

‘Let’s hear from him, then,’ snapped John.

There was much gabbling and moving among the onlookers, many of whom turned round to look across the village green. A man, whom the coroner had noticed earlier at the back of the crowd, was walking quickly away.

Gwyn yelled at him to come back and, when the fellow took no notice, strode after him. Immediately, the man began to run, but he was no match for Gwyn’s long legs. Although the cornishman was built like a bull, he could move fast over short distances and before the fugitive had gone fifty yards, he had him by the neck and was dragging him back to the inquest, his heels scraping along the ground.

Pushing his way through the ring of villagers, Gwyn shoved the man before the coroner.

John glared at him. ‘What’s going on? Why did you run away, knave?’

Nebba was thin, with tangled blond hair and moustache. He wore a dirty, torn tunic down to his knees, held by a worn leather belt that must once have been of good quality. His face was set in an expression of defiance rather than fear. ‘I don’t want to be mixed up with the law. All I did was go and look at some poxy corpse when that daft lad asked me to see it.’

Gwyn, who still held the man firmly by one shoulder, suddenly grabbed his right hand and pulled it up to show the coroner.

John leaned forward in his chair to see that the index and middle fingers were missing, old healed scars covering the stumps. ‘Ah, Master Bowman, where did you lose those, then?’ he grated. If a captured archer escaped hanging or having his throat cut, the two fingers that drew back the bowstring were chopped off, so that he could no longer practise his deadly profession.

Nebba scowled and remained silent, until Gwyn shook him until his yellow teeth rattled. ‘Answer the coroner, damn you!’

‘In Le Mans in ’eighty-eight,’ he muttered sullenly.

The coroner’s forehead scar crinkled as his brows rose in surprise. ‘You fought with the old King?’ He meant one of the last battles of Henry II, in which his rebellious sons Richard and John had combined with Philip of France both to defeat their father and break his heart.

Nebba nodded. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to get mixed up with you. You’re one of Richard’s men.’

John gave one his rare laughs, a bellow of incredulity. ‘Do you think I’d hold it against a man for being faithful to Henry, you fool?’ he snapped. ‘I’m not proud that Richard turned against his father, even though he was provoked by the old man’s indulgence of John.’

The crowd was silent, mainly because they had no idea what Nebba and the coroner were talking about, but Thomas and Gwyn were well aware that Nebba was no ordinary villager. He was more likely a soldier on the run from justice.

‘I know nothing of this dead one, sir. All I can say is that he lay in that bloody brook with his face in the water.’

‘You had never seen him before?’

‘Never. Neither do I know his name nor anything about him. I just want to be left in peace.’

John stared at him, suspicion competing with respect for a soldier who had been maimed for fighting for his king. ‘This is not your village? You have a strange accent.’

Nebba shook his dirty locks. ‘I have no village. I wandered here and work for my keep in the fields, sleep in the cow byre, until I move on.’

Like Gwyn, the coroner had suspected that Nebba was an outlaw who had tired of an almost animal life in the forest and who was trying to slip back into conventional life, even at risk of summary beheading.

Nebba was questioned further, but stubbornly maintained that he knew nothing about the corpse in the stream. The coroner persisted for a time, but could think of no reason why a former bowman should have been involved in the death of a young Norman, other than robbery. But if that were the case, reasoned John, why should he hang around the village?

He beckoned to Gwyn and muttered to him, ‘What d’you think of the fellow? He’s patently a runaway, beyond the law.’

Gwyn felt the same grudging sympathy for a former soldier down on his luck. ‘No doubt he’s a man of the forest, not bound to any lord or manor now. We could slice his head off his shoulders if we wished, but what good would that do? The woods of Devon hold a thousand more like him.’

John nodded. As usual, his man was thinking along similar lines to himself. ‘I suspect he’s working his way nearer a borough, probably Exeter, to try to get his twelve months within the walls.’ Serfs and villeins could claim their freedom if they escaped their manor and resided in a borough for at least a year and a day, without being recaptured by their lord. Some outlaws impersonated villeins on the run and some even regained wealth and positions of importance. If Nebba could achieve this, the coroner had no desire to prevent him, so long as there was no proof that he had been involved in this killing.

John dismissed him, and the Saxon archer melted away into the crowd. The coroner shifted on the hard chair, aware that his investigation was getting nowhere.

Gwyn motioned for Ralph the reeve to step forward. As a gesture to the occasion, he had washed his face and tied his long hair back with a piece of twine. ‘The lad Cerdic and that Nebba called me when they found the corpse. I took a couple of men and pulled him out of the stream on to the bank. We carried him up here to the barn, then I sent word to the manor bailiff at North Hall.’

Crowner John nodded, his long black hair bobbing about his neck. ‘What about this Nebba? Where did he come from?’

The reeve looked furtive. ‘Seems a good man, sir. Walked into the village at harvest time, wanted labour in return for food and shelter. We needed extra hands and our lord’s steward said he could stay for the winter.’

It was unusual for a manor to shelter a stranger, other than the itinerant craftsmen that passed through. Probably some looted or stolen silver had changed hands as a bribe, but John felt that although he should drag the fellow to the sheriff for interrogation, he did not wish to interfere in a village matter.

He paused while his clerk caught up with the proceedings on the parchment roll.

‘And you have no idea who the deceased might be, reeve?’

Ralph shook his pigtail. ‘No, sir. But I reckon the corpse didn’t die where we found him – too rotten he was. We’d have seen him long before if he’d been there the week it would have took to get that foul. Next village dumped him there, I’ll swear.’

There was a commotion in the crowd as someone forced his way forward. ‘That’s a damn lie! We never laid eyes on him before.’ A big, red-faced man in a faded blue tunic pushed Ralph aside and stood truculently before John. He had a hare-lip, which added to the malevolent look on his coarse features.

‘I suppose you’re from Dunstone?’ asked the coroner.

The man grunted affirmatively. ‘Simon, their manor reeve. You sent for me, Crowner. But we know nothing of this. Widecombe is just trying to avoid your amercement by putting the blame on us. Might have known this here Ralph would try a trick like that.’

John grinned inwardly. It was typical that villages – even belonging to the same manor – should be at odds with each other when it came to avoiding a fine.

Ralph loudly contested the denial of the neighbouring village’s reeve. ‘It wasn’t there the night before, Simon, so how come a corpse corrupt more than a week suddenly appears in our stream, eh?’

‘I don’t know. That’s your problem. Just don’t go trying to put the blame on us in Dunstone, that’s all.’

‘Maybe you or one of your villagers killed him,’ Ralph sneered.

Growling with anger, the stocky Simon stepped nearer to take a swing at Ralph, who hopped out of range.

John nodded at Gwyn, and the Cornishman ended the developing dispute by pushing Simon back into the throng with a hand the size of a small ham.

The coroner thoughtfully stroked the dark stubble on his long chin as he deliberated about what to do next. He had decided that neither of the manor reeves was to be trusted and he put them firmly into his pool of suspects, which also included Nebba.

‘You both claim that neither Widecombe nor Dunstone know anything about this victim, yet even in this wet weather, his body could not have washed any distance down that tiny stream. And the killers would hardly return after ten days to shift the corpse. One of you is concealing the truth.’

An ominous silence followed.

‘I will therefore amerce both villages in the sum of ten marks, unless in due course some other explanation appears.’

There was a murmur among the crowd. A mark was two-thirds of a pound, more than thirteen shillings. Ten marks was a great deal of money for such small hamlets to find – and FitzRalph, their lord, would be unlikely to contribute to the fine. The only consolation was that it would not be payable until the King’s justices confirmed it, which might be a year or more in the future when the General Eyre next came to Exeter.

However, Simon was not one to leave the matter there. ‘Crowner, this foul death is surely nothing to do with our folk, neither Dunstone nor Widecombe. The woods here abound with outlaws.’ He scowled as he looked around for Nebba, who had vanished. ‘They steal our sheep and fowls year in, year out. Around Spitchwick and Buckland the forest is thick with them – escaped felons, abjurers and runaway serfs. Why should we get the blame for the evil they do?’

There was a mumble of agreement from the jury, though no one wanted to be identified as challenger to the coroner.

Ralph was emboldened by his fellow-reeve’s words and added, ‘There are other evil men up on the moors. They live by theft – and murder, if needs be.’

‘Men like that Nebba you’ve just heard from. Where did he come from, if it weren’t outlawry? What about him for a suspect, eh?’ Simon suggested.

At that another row broke out, Ralph defending Nebba, which Gwyn ended by pushing the two men apart and standing between them.

John de Wolfe jabbed a long finger at both reeves. ‘I’m not amercing you for the killing, as there is no proof. The fine is for trying to deceive me and for obstructing my duties by not raising the hue-and-cry much earlier. One of you knew of this body before the lad found it in the stream. Even if outlaws were responsible, they wouldn’t have kept a stinking body for near two weeks, then brought it to your village boundary. One of you is trying to shift the blame for a slain corpse to the other.’

There seemed no answer to that, and as no other witnesses had anything to say, the coroner thankfully eased his backside off the Bishop’s hard chair and walked back through the doors of the barn.

The jury straggled behind him, still muttering under their breath about the amercement money, followed by the women and urchins. Thomas gathered up his writing materials and scurried after them.

When the throng had assembled in a wide circle around the bier, John approached the head, his hands clasped behind his back. His tall, stooped figure was like that of a learned pedagogue about to give a lecture on anatomical dissection.

He intoned his findings for the benefit of the clerk’s quill. ‘I, John de Wolfe, Knight, King Richard’s coroner for the county of Devon, examined in the village of Widecombe on the third day of November in the year of our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-four, the corpse of an unknown man found yesterday in a brook between this village and Dunstone.’ He bent a little nearer, oblivious of the burgeoning odour of putrefaction. ‘The victim appears about five-and-twenty to thirty years of age, well built of medium height. Fair hair, not recently trimmed. Fair moustache, no beard. Eyes sunken, colour not discernible.’ He motioned to Gwyn, who picked up the limp hands of the cadaver. ‘Not the hands of a bondman or heavy craftsman, nor soft like a courtier,’ he added, with a hint of sarcasm.

Gwyn, aided by Ralph, began to undress the body as the coroner continued his commentary.

‘Wearing a good green tunic over an undershirt and linen shift. Black breeches, woollen hose, cross-gartered. No cloak present in spite of the season.’ Probably stolen by his attackers, John thought. ‘Leather belt, with embossed patterns, Levantine in style. Empty sword scabbard, curved shape – again from the East. Dagger in place in scabbard on back of belt.’

Here, Glyn drew out the dagger, a good but unremarkable weapon. ‘No blood upon it,’ he grunted, pushing it back into the leather sheath.

‘Riding boots, again hammered leather pattern, coming from Jaffa or Acre in my estimation.’ John could never resist airing his knowledge of the Levant. ‘Bandages wound around feet, the sign of an experienced horseman used to long distances. Marks of spurs on boots, but none present now.’ Also stolen, he thought.

Gwyn, well versed already in the coroner’s routine, held up in succession the tunic, the shirt and the shift for inspection. In each was a clean slit about an inch long, under the left shoulder-blade. There were further cuts in the left forearm and in the upper part of the right sleeve.

The clothing, which smelt of the corpse’s peeling skin and weeping body fluids, was bundled up and given into the care of the village, with instructions to wash and guard it safely until it was claimed by the victim’s family.

The crowd shuffled nearer as the now naked body, belly swelling with gas, was displayed on the bier.

‘The face and arms are deeply sun-browned, though fading. Corruption is present, of a degree that in this season and weather might token death at least a sennight, maybe almost a fortnight, since.’

Once more Gwyn held up the hands and arms, and John continued, ‘A deep slash through skin and flesh on the left arm between wrist and elbow and a three-inch wound below the right shoulder. Sustained during a sword fight, the left arm raised in protection, the right struck to disable the sword arm.’ Gwyn pointed a thick finger at the left hand to remind him. ‘And defending cuts on the fingers, thumb and palm of the left hand, where the victim gripped a sharp blade.’

John waited for his clerk to catch up, then told Gwyn to roll the body over on to its face. When it rested with its limp arms dangling over the edge of the bier, they saw that the settled blood under the skin on the back now had a lacework of darker putrefying veins that contrasted with the greenish pallor of the upper skin.

The coroner proclaimed the significance of the slit in the clothing, pointing out the stab wound under the shoulder-blade, now dribbling fluid blood that had already collected in a large pool on the oak of the crude bier.

Gwyn leaned over to look again more closely at it, the ends of his moustache almost brushing the corpse.

A voice spoke from alongside him. ‘A dagger, that was, not a sword. Double-edged, by the sharpness of the ends of the cut. Pulled downwards as it was withdrawn for there’s a shallow cut tailing away from the lower end.’

It was Nebba. He had unobtrusively rejoined the throng, and Gwyn turned to scowl at him, annoyed at his challenge to the monopoly of knowledge of wounds that he and the coroner professed. A murmur went up from the onlookers near enough to hear him.

‘Stabbed in the back. A wicked thing,’ said Simon of Dunstone solemnly. Ralph looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing to provoke another squabble.

The coroner made his own close inspection. His lips thinned in distaste. ‘Not killed in fair combat, for sure. He was fighting to the front and got two sword cuts for his efforts when someone else stabbed him between the shoulders. Then he turned and grasped the blade, getting his hand cut for his trouble.’ There was nothing more to be seen, so after telling Thomas to note down the dead man’s hairy mole, John walked back to his episcopal chair, the crowd shambling back to face him.

‘The inquest can go no further than to declare the victim murdered and to state that his identity is unknown. It is obvious that no one can present Englishry to me, so the village of Widecombe is also amerced in the sum of ten marks as a murdrum fine.’ There was another collective groan from the crowd at this additional burden for the future.

‘Neither have I any way of telling where he died or whether you villagers are telling me the whole truth. I have the gravest suspicions of some of you, but further enquiry is necessary on my part.’ He glared down accusingly at the two reeves. ‘However, Widecombe guarded the cadaver and sent for the King’s crowner without undue delay, as is the law now. That law requires me, if I can, to name the deceased, if he be a stranger and to tell where he spent the night before his death. Neither of these can I do, and so this inquest is laid aside for now.’

He turned to his clerk. ‘Make sure everything is recorded on your rolls for the sheriff and the next visit of the justices.’ He raised a hand to signal that the performance was over. ‘If further information arises in the meanwhile, I will reconvene this inquest on this same spot.’ Looking round the squalid village, he added, in an undertone, ‘Which, God forbid.’

Rising from his chair, he gave instructions to Ralph, the bailiff and the parish priest to have the body buried in the churchyard with proper dignity and to erect a wooden cross at the head of the grave. ‘Whatever else he was, he was a gentleman soldier and almost certainly a Crusader and thus deserves our respect.’

Striding away through the villagers, John de Wolfe’s tall figure led Gwyn and Thomas back to where their horses were tethered. Within a few minutes, the trio were winding their way back up the track towards the county town of Exeter, some sixteen miles distant.

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