The Tinner's corpse

CHAPTER TWO

With a dry road and spring in the air it was a pleasant ride out of Exeter towards the moor, which was visible in the distance almost from the time they started from the West Gate. The trees were in leaf and the grass was greening up after the winter as the four horsemen trotted along the winding track westwards from the city. De Wolfe was ahead, sitting like a great black raven on the back of Odin, his grey destrier, a huge war-horse with hairy feet. Gwyn, wearing his usual boiled leather jerkin above worsted breeches, rode his solid brown mare alongside the bailiff’s roan gelding, and Thomas de Peyne bumped along behind on his pony, the peg of the side-saddle jutting somewhat obscenely between his thighs.

The road wound through the deep wooded valleys typical of that part of Devon, broken at intervals by villages where strip-fields and common land had been laboriously hacked out of the forest. Although it was only about fifteen miles to Chagford, John called a halt just over half-way, at the top of a steep slope rising out of the Teign valley. ‘Let them graze the verge for ten minutes and get their wind back,’ he ordered, sliding from Odin’s back and looping the reins over a budding beech sapling. While the beasts chewed at the new grass, the ever-hungry Gwyn produced half a loaf and a leather bottle of cider from his saddle pouch.

The travellers sat themselves in a row on a fallen tree-trunk, and as they tore at the bread and passed the bottle around, John took the opportunity to learn a little more about their destination. ‘I’ve not set foot in Chagford for many years, bailiff. It’s been a peaceful place, I presume?’

Justin Green considered this, then nodded. ‘We get little trouble, true enough. A few drunks at the coinage and ales, but nothing serious. Chagford being one of the three Stannary towns makes a difference, I suppose, as the jurates who represent us at the Great Court are strict in upholding the Stannary law.’

Gwyn wagged his bushy head in agreement. ‘It was the same in Cornwall. The tinners come down heavily on any of their own who step outside the rules. I should know — my own father was a tinner before he turned to fishing at Polruan.’

This intrigued Thomas, who was inquisitive about everything. Though learned in anything that concerned the Church, politics or history, he knew little about the tin-workers of the west. ‘Are you saying they even have their own laws?’ he asked.

The bailiff stared at him incredulously. ‘Of course they have, and even their own prison, a new one over in Lydford. They have their own parliament too, the Great Court that gathers on the high moor, at Crockern Tor. There’s a meeting this week, in fact.’

Gwyn prodded Thomas with a massive elbow, almost knocking him off the log. ‘We have the same in Cornwall, you ignorant wretch, but ours meets in Truro — though in the old days the tinners from both Devon and Cornwall used to meet together on Hingston Down, just across the Tamar.’

‘But surely they must be subject to the laws of the land, like everyone else?’ Thomas persisted.

‘The Stannary laws cover everything except crimes against life, limb and damage to property,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘Where violence is concerned, the King’s law is paramount. The tinners have no immunity from the coroner, so don’t hope for any escape from your scribbling on my Rolls.’

There was a short silence, as they chewed, then Thomas’s curiosity broke through again. ‘So what’s this Great Court you speak of, bailiff?’

‘A few times a year, the tinner representatives gather on Crockern Tor, in the middle of Dartmoor, to discuss all manner of business relating to their trade. The county is divided into three districts for the purpose, with Ashburton, Tavistock and Chagford as the Stannary town for each, where the tin is assayed and stamped for tax. Every district sends twenty-four jurates to the Great Court, where all rules and disputes about staking claims, water diversion, disposal of the waste, coinage and taxation are hammered out. And they deal with offenders too — the gaol at Lydford is never short of customers.’

‘Why should the tinners get this special treatment? Farmers and other traders don’t have it,’ objected the clerk.

‘Because the tin trade brings in a huge revenue to the Crown,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘Along with wool, it’s the main export of England. King Richard has just sent two hundred and fifty thousand-weights from Plymouth to La Rochelle to pay his troops in France.’

‘To adulterate the silver coinage in lieu of the real thing,’ chortled Gwyn.

De Wolfe scowled at him. Even this justified slight against his revered monarch was unwelcome. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can’t sit on our backsides all day. There’s work to be done. Let’s get to Chagford. Then, Thomas, you’ll find out about the tinners.’

There were still a few hours of daylight left when they rode up the last hill into Chagford. It was large enough to be called a town, with a small open market square that was also used for the coinage ceremonies. Tracks led out of the town in four directions, mostly downhill as the centre was on a rise.

As they rode in slowly from the east side, John de Wolfe looked about him, trying to remember the place from his boyhood visit. It seemed smaller now than it had been in his memory, though undoubtedly it must have prospered and expanded in the intervening years. Since returning to Devon he had noticed this phenomenon a number of times and put it down to his acquaintance with great cities such as Paris, Marseilles and London.

Two inns and a number of alehouses sat amongst the shop-houses in the main street, which ran across the top of the square. The rest of the town was the usual random collection of timber buildings of widely varying size, mostly thatched but some roofed with wooden shingles or split stone slabs. There were a few stone-built houses, and the church of St Michael, a few hundred yards from the square, was newly built of moorstone. Within a few yards of the larger buildings, smaller cottages and huts straggled out to the margins of Chagford, some planked, others of wattle and daub within timber frames.

The coroner’s party came to a halt at the edge of the square, where a few old men stood bent-backed in the weak sunlight, staring at the newcomers as if they had arrived from a distant star. A handful of housewives were scanning the trays of a few hawkers, but clutched their children to their skirts at the approach of these forbidding strangers. The sight of their own bailiff reassured them and their apprehension soon turned to curiosity.

‘What do we do first, Crowner?’ rumbled Gwyn.

‘Arrange for somewhere to spend the night, then go to see the corpse.’ He looked questioningly at Justin Green, who turned in his saddle to point down the road leading southward.

‘My lord’s manor house is there above the valley, Crowner. We’ll pass it on the way. He told me before I left that there is food, fire and a clean pallet to sleep on, should you wish it.’

De Wolfe grunted agreement. ‘I’ll give him thanks when we meet. Meanwhile, let’s get to this corpse while the light holds.’

The bailiff kicked his horse into a trot and they rode through the centre of the little town and out on a track that led south-westwards. The land was green and steeply undulating, with tracts of woodland alternating with strip fields all around the town. On their left, the main feature was a prominent rounded knoll, which Justin called Meldon Hill, but further ahead they could see the edge of the escarpment that led up on to the huge plateau of Dartmoor.

‘How much further?’ whined Thomas from the rear, as they bumped along on the narrowing track, which began to rise as they neared the moor.

‘My lord’s manor barton is over there,’ said Justin, pointing to a large farmhouse on their right. ‘And that freeman’s house there is Thorne, so it’s less than two miles now,’ he added, waving at a collection of barns around a timber house ahead. ‘The stream-work we’re seeking is just below Thornworthy Down.’

‘What about this Walter Knapman?’ asked the coroner. ‘Would anyone wish to damage his trade by attacking his workmen?’

The bailiff was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t see why they should. The victim was an overman, it’s true. He was in charge of the work and was a valuable fellow because of his experience. But Knapman has a dozen such teams, working all over the district. Killing one man would make little difference to the output — unless this is the first of a massacre,’ he added pessimistically.

‘But would anyone benefit from Knapman’s business being damaged?’ persisted de Wolfe.

‘All the other tin-masters, I suppose, though there’s little competition between them. They sell all they can dig, both at home and abroad. A lot goes to Germany and Flanders.’

Then he hesitated and de Wolfe sensed that the other man had had a sudden thought. He glared across at the bailiff from under his beetling black brows. ‘Well, is there something else?’

‘There is gossip in the alehouses — only idle chatter, mind you — that another tin-master has long been trying to buy some of Knapman’s sites. But Knapman won’t sell. In fact he wants to acquire even more for himself.’

‘Who is this other man?’

‘Stephen Acland, another Chagford merchant. He’s not as prominent in tin as Walter, but he has four or five stream-works, as well as a big interest in sheep.’

‘But he wouldn’t kill because he can’t buy out Knapman, would he?’

The bailiff made a wry face. ‘These tinners can be a strange lot, Crowner. They live in a world of their own, and some think they’re above the rest of the world. Passions can run high amongst them, as you might see if you come to Crockern Tor next week.’

They fell silent as the track dipped down into a small valley, then rose again over the deeper glen of the South Teign stream. As they crested the rise, the coroner waved a gloved hand down to a small building below them on their right. It was built of rough moorstone, with a roof of thin slabs through which projected a crooked chimney.

‘What’s that place?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve seen a few like it today.’

‘A blowing-house, Crowner,’ explained Justin Green, ‘where the shode from the workings gets its first smelting to make the crude ingots that get stamped back in Chagford.’

They came down to the water, where the path crossed a small clapper bridge made of great slabs of slaty stone resting on boulders in the stream bed.

De Wolfe pulled Odin to a halt and looked down into the rushing water, which splashed its way down through a rocky bed banked with coarse gravel on either side. ‘This water’s very murky. I would have expected it to be crystal clear up here, well away from any habitation,’ he observed.

‘It’s often brown because of the run-off from the peat up on the moor. But that cloudiness is from the tinners’ work further upstream. They constantly disturb the sand and gravel, washing away the tailings from the ore. Folks downstream, all the way to Kingsteignton, complain about the dirty water. They have to drink, cook and wash in the grit thrown in by the tinners.’ He sounded peevish, no doubt because he suffered himself.

Gwyn spat contemplatively into the flowing brook. ‘Maybe yesterday it was running red, not cloudy, if that fellow was leaking into it from the stump of his neck!’ He grinned slyly at Thomas, whose pasty face had gone a shade paler at the thought.

The coroner touched Odin’s flanks with his heels and they walked on, crossing to the other bank and following it along the river, the valley narrowing as they came up the cleft towards the moor. There was no agriculture up here and trees covered most of the ground, though as they rose to the bleaker, more exposed areas, they were twisted and stunted, except where the narrow valley bottoms gave some shelter.

‘We’re almost there, Crowner, just around the next bend,’ said the bailiff reassuringly.

Thomas groaned with relief: the going had become rougher the further they went from civilisation.

A few moments later, the glen straightened out for a couple of hundred yards and de Wolfe could see the length of the tin workings. The tinners had cut a deep gouge along the line of the stream so that the water now tumbled over a ledge at the upper end and ran down towards them between piles of rubble.

Part-way up on the left was a small hut, and on the opposite side of the stream, a long rickety contraption of planks led some of the water from the upper cascade through a system of low troughs. Half a dozen men were hacking away at the upper bank, while others were raking the newly loosened burden and throwing it into the troughs.

‘They’re still working, then, even with their headless overman in that shed?’ De Wolfe was as tough as they come, but even he felt that work might have been suspended until the body had been taken away.

‘If they don’t work, they and their families don’t eat,’ replied Green bluntly. ‘Walter Knapman is known as a fair master, but he won’t pay a daily wage for anyone to sit at home and whittle sticks.’

The track soon vanished under the rubble and they rode the last few yards along the stream bed, until they could dismount alongside the small hut. Nearby, four moorland ponies were waiting patiently, empty wicker panniers hanging across their backs.

Some of the workers turned to watch them, but others, after a cursory glance, went back to their hacking and shovelling. One man, who stood alongside the bottom end of the trough, came across to greet them. The bailiff introduced him to de Wolfe. ‘Robert Yeo, Crowner. He’s taken over this gang from today.’

The new overman was a big blond fellow, partly of Saxon origin. He had a bushy yellow moustache but no beard, and wore a tunic of brown serge, a wide leather belt holding the skirt well above his knees. A short leather cape covered his shoulders, the hood hanging down his back. His greased boots came up to his knees, but de Wolfe could hear the water squelching inside them as he approached.

Yeo made a token tug at his forelock, then stared almost defiantly at the coroner. ‘Walter Knapman told me I was to take over from Henry,’ he said, without preamble.

‘You were here the day before yesterday, the last time Henry of Tunnaford was seen?’

Yeo nodded. ‘Same as usual. Henry stayed behind to clear up — he always did that, though there was no real need. He was a particular type of fellow, felt responsible for everything.’ He paused, as if a sudden thought had struck him. ‘Like I am now, I suppose. Knapman suffers no fools or idlers in his employ.’

De Wolfe looked around at the scene of industry and heard the hacking of picks and the grating of shovels, as the alluvium was remorselessly eroded and thrown into the troughs. ‘Let’s see this corpse, then. In this shed, is it?’

They turned to the hut and Yeo pulled away a few planks that shielded the open doorway. ‘There he is, God rest him.’

The feet of the victim were near the doorway and as de Wolfe bent his head to enter, he saw that the upper part of the corpse was covered by a rough cape similar to the new overman’s. It lay across the dead man’s chest, but the upper part was ominously flat on the stony ground. De Wolfe motioned to Gwyn with a finger and his officer, well-used to this routine, pushed past him and lifted away the cape.

Behind the coroner, Thomas de Peyne let out a horrified squeak and began to cross himself as he retreated to the open air. Even de Wolfe, inured to death in every form from his years of campaigning, admitted that this was not a pretty sight. He moved further into the hut and, with the bailiff and overman watching from the doorway, crouched opposite Gwyn at what should have been the head of the corpse. For there was no head, only a ragged stump of neck, which still had a stubbled growth of grey whiskers around it. Dark blood had congealed over the ripped muscles that surrounded the shattered white core of the spine.

The Cornishman pursed his lips critically under his huge moustache. ‘A rough job, this. What did they do it with? A shovel?’

De Wolfe stretched out and pulled at the curled-in margins of the neck wound with his finger and thumb. ‘Sharper than a spade, Gwyn. See those many small peaks and troughs? Some edged weapon has sawed away here, hacking it irregularly as the skin rolled into creases.’ He wiped his fingers free of blood on the shoulder of the dead man’s hessian tunic. ‘But you’re right. Whatever the weapon, it was far from sharp. The edges of the skin are scraped and bruised, not cut through cleanly, as a decent knife or sword would have done.’

He rose to his feet, his head bent to avoid the rough branches that held up the crude roof. ‘Let’s see if he has other injuries.’

They untied the belt and pulled up the tunic to chest level. The victim wore long woollen hose with as many darns as original material but, as was usual, no underclothing. There was no mark on the torso, back or front, but when they examined the limbs, Gwyn pointed out recent grazes on both knees and the backs of the forearms. ‘That’s from falling to the ground, no doubt,’ he diagnosed, ‘after first being struck a blow on the neck.’

‘Or the head,’ corrected the coroner. ‘For all we know, the top of his skull may have been stove in.’ He backed out of the hut and motioned the overman to go inside. ‘You can tidy him up and get the poor fellow carried away.’

‘Is he to be taken home to his widow at Tunnaford?’ asked Yeo.

‘Where’s that?’

‘A mile away, just off the road back to Chagford. We came within sight of it on the way up here,’ answered the bailiff.

De Wolfe folded his arms and brooded, like some great black heron at the edge of the stream. ‘I’ll have to hold an inquest in the morning. That will have to be in the town — we need more of a jury than just these men here. The corpse will have to go to Chagford.’

Justin Green looked unhappy, but he had no choice in the matter. ‘There’s a small mortuary in the churchyard — just a hut like this, where they leave bodies before burial. He could go there.’

By now the tinners had all stopped working and were leaning on their shovels, watching silently. De Wolfe raised his voice to carry up the glen. ‘There’ll be no labour tomorrow morning, men. You will all be needed at the inquest, as you were all the last to see the deceased.’

This set off a murmur of discontent, as it meant the loss of half a day’s earnings.

‘The funeral can be arranged for soon afterwards, so you can pay your respects to your overman and friend at the same time,’ called out the bailiff, trying to mollify the tinners. He turned to de Wolfe. ‘Where will the inquest be held, Crowner?’

‘If the cadaver is to be housed in the churchyard, that will do us. Then he can be put into the earth straight away, if you arrange it with the priest. You can send word to his family on the way back this evening.’

John turned away and strode up the stream, towards the settling troughs and the rest of the workmen. ‘Who found the body and where exactly was it?’ he demanded, in his deep, sepulchral voice

A young lad, no more than fifteen, stepped forward, grasping a long rake. ‘I did, sir. We all came up together as usual, but we saw the stream running pink and I ran ahead, thinking maybe a deer had fallen down the breast of the workings and lay dead at the upper end.’

‘And what did you find?’

‘Henry was under the top of the trough, where the water comes in from the cascade. Face down, he was. I could only see his legs at first, but when I looked under the trestles, I could see he was bleeding into the ground.’ The boy shuddered. ‘Then I saw he had no head.’

The coroner took him by the elbow, not unkindly, and steered him towards the place. ‘Show me where he was, boy.’

With the others trailing behind, the pair walked alongside the long, flat trough. De Wolfe felt the cold water seeping through his boots as he crunched over the coarse gravel and pebbles, which were covered with a few inches of water where the stream spread itself across the ravaged ground.

The trough was made up of flat boards, about a yard wide and with edges a foot high. It became narrower towards the lower end, where a spout allowed the contained water to fall into a large square wooden box, the overflow of which ran on to the ground and found its way back into the stream.

‘How does this contraption work?’ he demanded.

The overman explained, pointing out the various elements of the crude equipment. ‘The tin shode is in small lumps and grains, mixed up with all the earth and pebbles and broken rock of the ground. They say it was washed down in past ages by the river from the deep veins up on the moor.’

‘In Cornwall some men are directly mining such veins now, as the ore in the streams has been exhausted,’ cut in Gwyn, anxious to show off his family connections with tinning.

‘We dig out the banks of the stream and discard the earth and rocks, throwing them on to those waste piles,’ continued Yeo. ‘Then the small stuff gets tossed into the upper end of the trough, where we lead in a stream of water tapped from the torrent as it falls over the upper breast.’ He indicated a narrow leat, a long U-shaped gutter made of narrow planks, which jetted clear water into the top of the trough. ‘Look in here, Crowner. See those laths fixed to the bottom?’

De Wolfe peered into the swirling muddy water and saw that, at regular intervals, cross-slats nailed to the base of the trough formed a series of low dams that impeded the downward flow of water.

‘The tin shode is much heavier than the gangue — the ordinary sand and gravel. Much of it sinks to the bottom of the trough and gets caught behind those slats. What gets past falls into the buddle.’

‘What’s a buddle?’ asked the ever-curious Thomas.

‘It’s that box at the bottom. Every so often, we stop throwing in new burden and clear out the tin shode from the trough and the buddle. The younger lads then pick out any rubbish that’s still in it, then it’s shovelled into panniers for the ponies to take down to the blowing-house.’

They had reached the top of the workings and the boy pointed to the upper end of the trough, supported a couple of feet from the ground on a series of rough trestles hammered into the stream bed. ‘Henry was lying there, sir. His head was under the trough — or would have been if he’d had one. The water was running red around him,’ he added, with the morbid relish of the young.

De Wolfe raised his head as his eyes followed up the leat. Its upper end was pegged into the side of the small waterfall that gushed over the eight-foot bank which formed the upper end of the workings. ‘Is there anything up there?’ he demanded.

Yeo shook his head. ‘Just the virgin stream going up the valley to the moor. We’re gradually working back as we dig. Every few weeks we have to dismantle this lot and shift it further up, as the breast falls in because we’re hacking the sides away.’

The coroner jerked his head at Gwyn, and the big man lumbered away to scramble up the sloping bank in a welter of falling stones and gravel. Using the leat as a handhold, he gained the top and vanished from sight.

All the men were watching now, making no effort to work even though they were losing pay, which partly depended on their output of shode. ‘I sent three of the men up there yesterday to seek the poor fellow’s head,’ grumbled the overman. ‘They found nothing, even though they followed the stream up as far as Fenworthy Circle where the old pagan stones are.’

‘No sign of any weapon that could have done the damage?’

‘Nothing, Crowner.’

‘Could it have been one of your own tools? The blood might have been washed off in the stream.’

The overman grimaced. ‘We got nothing sharp enough for that. Couldn’t have been a pick, and our shovels are wooden with a iron band nailed to the edge.’

John began to walk back down the workings, his feet now cold and wet inside his boots. The prospect of a warm fire and food at Waye Barton manor house was rapidly becoming attractive. ‘Have you any feelings as to who might have done this?’ he snapped at Yeo.

‘That I have not, sir! It’s beyond my understanding — we never had any trouble of this sort before.’

‘No great rivalry between different gangs of tinners?’

The overman turned up his calloused hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Not at all, Crowner. To start with, most of the gangs here on the Upper Teign belong to Walter Knapman. No point in fighting among the same team. There may be rivalry between the owners, such as Knapman and Stephen Acland, but that’s nothing to do with us tinners in the stream-works.’

When they reached the hut again, de Wolfe turned round in time to see Gwyn slide down the slope of the breast, then stride towards them, his great legs splashing through the stream and his ragged cape blowing out behind him in the keen breeze. ‘Nothing to see up there, apart from a few sheep,’ he growled.

De Wolfe sighed. This was going to be another unsolved murder, unless he could make someone talk at the inquest next day.

‘Let’s go, then. There are arrangements to be made back in the town.’ He strode towards the horses, waiting further down, their bridles held by the youngest of the apprentice tinners. ‘Bailiff, you stay and get that body carried down to the church. I’ll find my own way to the manor.’ Under his breath he added, ‘And I trust the lord of Chagford is more hospitable than many others who get saddled with the coroner’s company.’