The Tinner's corpse

CHAPTER THREE

While the headless cadaver was being carried down from the edge of the moor on a makeshift bier of branches, Walter Knapman was having his evening meal at home in Chagford. He lived in the largest dwelling in the town, second only in size to the manor house just outside, where Hugh of Chagford, one of the Wibbery family, was the local lord.

Knapman’s residence was quite new, built of red sandstone brought from further south, rather than the grey moorstone used for most other masonry. It was on the track into town from Great Weeke, sitting behind a garden, half-way up the hill that led to the church. Instead of a hall, which normally filled most of a house, it had two rooms, one at each side of the front door. A wooden staircase led up to a large room under the thatch, partitioned into a bedroom and a solar. The latter had a window set into the pine end, which — wonder of wonders — had six panes of glass. That was almost unique in Devon: even Exeter cathedral had no glazing. Walter had recently imported these thick slabs of glass from Germany, where much of his tin was sent. Though he claimed it was to make his new wife’s solar more comfortable, everyone in Chagford thought it was to blazon his importance and affluence. Certainly Knapman indulged Joan, a pretty woman fifteen years his junior: she was his second wife, the widow of a tanner from Ashburton, who had died of a fever.

They sat now at meat, side by side at a square oaken table, with Joan’s mother Lucy opposite, next to the parish priest Paul Smithson, who had been invited to eat with them. Lucy, another widow, lived with them — part of the price Walter had reluctantly paid to persuade the delectable Joan to marry him five months earlier.

Naturally the conversation centred on the death of Henry of Tunnaford, and most of the talking was between Knapman and the priest, though the older woman chipped in now and then, after listening avidly to every word. With the possible exception of the coroner’s clerk, Thomas, she was probably the most inquisitive person in Devon.

Joan, whose dark hair peeped from her white linen cover-chief to frame an oval face with a look of the Madonna, said little and concentrated on eating the slivers of boiled fowl that her husband placed on the large trencher of bread that lay between them. As he talked, he leaned over and cut slices with his dagger from the carcass that sat on a wooden platter in the middle of the table. They had already demolished a large fish, and other bowls held fried onions, cabbage and turnips. Pottery mugs of ale and pewter wine cups sat before each of them. The household steward, a Saxon named Harold, fussed over them, replenishing their drink and relentlessly harrying the serving maid, who brought new dishes from the kitchen in the backyard.

‘What does Hugh Wibbery think of all this?’ rasped the priest, through a mouthful of fowl’s leg. He was a fleshy man, with a pallid face, from which two black button eyes peered out over flabby cheeks. Although he was not a monk, he was tonsured, but curiously with the Celtic type: he had shaved a broad band from his forehead over the crown to the nape of his neck.

‘He seems to lack any interest in it,’ answered Walter. ‘Henry was a freeman, and as he lived in Tunnaford his land was owned by de Prouz from Gidleigh, so he had no obligations of tenure to the lordship of Chagford. I paid his wages as a tinner, so Hugh has shrugged off the whole matter, as far as I can see.’

The priest grunted and dug the yellow pegs of his remaining teeth back into his drumstick, while Lucy Tanner took up the conversation. She was about fifty, but looked much older, worn by the bearing of twelve children, seven of whom had died in infancy. Her thin frame was enveloped in a dull tan kirtle that was too big for her, while lifeless, dry hair poked from beneath her tight-fitting helmet of fawn linen. However, her wizened appearance and creaking joints were balanced by a sharp, if waspish intelligence. ‘Our lord can hardly brush murder aside like that,’ she hissed. ‘It’s his manor and he has a responsibility for the safety of the town, whether the man was his tenant or not. If some madman is abroad, we might all be murdered in our beds.’

‘That’s hardly likely, Mother,’ rumbled Knapman. ‘This happened on the edge of the high moor, not in Chagford itself. We have a bailiff, a constable and Hugh’s house-guards to look after us.’

Lucy continued to mutter under her breath as she speared her food with a little knife, held awkwardly in fingers swollen with rheumy joints. The priest courteously kept their trencher loaded with food as, in spite of her infirmity, she had a healthy appetite.

So far, Joan had said hardly a word since they began eating. She kept her long-lashed eyes on the table, as if her mind was far away. Her husband had tried several times to coax her into the conversation, but she replied in monosyllables. He turned his attention back to Smithson, the incumbent of St Michael the Archangel, whose new church was largely a gift from Knapman himself. ‘Hugh has done the correct thing in sending for the coroner,’ he said. ‘Justin, his bailiff, went to Exeter at first light and I hear that Sir John de Wolfe has been up to the stream-works this evening. No doubt he will show himself here before long.’

Vicar Paul dropped his now stripped chicken bone under the table for the dogs and dug between his teeth with a dirty fingernail. ‘First time we’ve had a crowner come to Chagford. I’m still not clear what they’re supposed to do. Don’t you stannators settle all matters of law here?’

Walter Knapman was a prominent jurator in the tinners’ Great Court, though the priest had used the old word ‘stannator’. ‘We have no say in crimes against life or limb, Paul,’ he replied. ‘That’s where this new coroner business comes in.’

The priest stared at him. ‘In what way?’ he asked.

‘For years, the County, manor or burgess courts dealt with most offences, but now, especially since old King Henry’s reforms, the royal justices want to try all serious offences. Last September, the Chief Justiciar appointed these coroners, partly to sweep as much business into the King’s courts as possible. It’s all grist to the Treasury and King Richard never misses a chance to screw more money out of the people.’

Smithson ignored his host’s mildly treasonable remarks but continued to look doubtful. ‘So what’s that got to do with this coroner fellow?’ Along with the majority of the population, he was vague as to the function of John de Wolfe and his counterparts in every county.

‘As far as I can make out — and it’s only from gossip in the Great Court — he has to record every legal event and present them to the justices when they come around at the Eyre of Assize. Dead bodies, rapes, serious assaults, fires, burglaries — even wrecks and catches of the royal fish. He has to attend every execution, mutilation, sanctuary, abjuration and trial by ordeal or battle in case there’s any money or chattels to be picked up for the King.’

‘Must be a damned busy man, then, in a county the size of Devon,’ grunted the priest, hacking some more flesh from the fowl to lay on the widow’s side of the trencher.

The sharp eyes of his mother-in-law turned to Knapman. ‘What’s he like, this new crowner? I heard he’s a man of war, an old Crusader.’

After another uneasy sideways look at his silent wife, Knapman took a mouthful of wine before replying. ‘I’ve not met him, but they say he’s fair-minded, not like the bloody sheriff, who I’d trust no further than I could throw my horse. De Wolfe’s a real King’s man, I hear. He was part of Richard’s bodyguard both in the Holy Land and when he was captured in Vienna.’

‘Not a very good bodyguard, then,’ sniggered the fat priest.

Walter frowned. ‘You’d better not say that in his hearing. I’m told he’s not well endowed with either patience or good humour.’

After this mild rebuke they carried on eating in silence, Knapman covertly watching his wife. Of late she had become more withdrawn and these long silences were becoming too common for his liking. He was no fool and knew well enough that when a man of forty-three took on a much younger woman, especially one so attractive, he did so at his peril.

Knapman was rich, and he was handsome enough, in his way, a big, powerful man with a clean-shaven, square face topped by rather springy hair of a dark yellow that as yet showed no sign of grey. Yet there was no denying that the age difference between them was an ever-present threat. The old bull was as virile as ever, but he had to be constantly wary of younger ones trying to displace him.

For this past month, he had seen Joan’s mind receding from him, and though she denied any problem or unhappiness, he sensed that the first flush of their new marriage had rapidly faded. When he first wooed her, then made her his bride, she was warm and passionate enough, though she had always been publicly reserved and undemonstrative. Behind their hands other wives said about her that ‘still waters run deep’. But in the past weeks, though she submitted easily enough to him in the bed upstairs in the glazed solar, she gave a passive performance, with none of her previous enthusiasm — although he suspected that even that might often have been feigned. He sighed as he looked at her now, her eyes resolutely downcast. There was nothing he could do either to improve her mood or to squash the wriggling worm of suspicion that increasingly nibbled away at him.

As the silent meal progressed, the possible causes of her disaffection came unbidden to his mind. He over-indulged her, he knew, like a typical older husband with more money than sense. She lacked for nothing in the way of clothes, trinkets or servants, and he had more than enough insight to know that his affluence and generosity had won her to him, not his dashing good looks or noble blood: he had worked his way up from being a mere tinner. The answer that stared him in the face was another man and, for the hundredth time, he went through the possible candidates.

There could not be many, for although Chagford was a busy town, with hundreds of tinners coming for the coinage and merchants from all over England and even the Continent, it was more likely to be some local resident who would have had the opportunity to steal her heart — and her body. Joan was a keen horsewoman and, with her maid and one of their grooms, spent much of her time riding, with the opportunity to meet and visit other people. Her chaperones could undoubtedly be tricked or bribed, and he determined to interrogate his grooms as to whom she met on her many excursions. Though Chagford was small, Exeter was less than three hours away and sometimes she went to stay there for a few days with his twin brother Matthew, who handled the disposal and export of his finished tin.

Sometimes she went back to her old home town of Ashburton, to stay with her aunt and cousins. Even though these places offered the possibility of assignations for her, an inner voice kept insinuating that the problem was likely to be nearer home, and the name of Stephen Acland kept sliding into his mind unbidden.

‘Have you really no idea who may have killed your man?’

The sudden question from the priest jerked Walter back to the present, but before he could marshal his thoughts, his mother-in-law spoke, her head stuck out on her thin neck like an angry gander. ‘That mad Saxon, that’s who it was! I saw him once, here in the town square, at the last coinage, ranting and raving. He’s not fit to be let loose on decent folk.’

‘He wasn’t loose after that, Mother. We had him locked in Lydford gaol for a couple of months, after he threw over the weighing-scales and tried to kick the assay clerk off his stool.’

‘Is he crazy enough to kill?’ asked the priest.

‘Who knows? A maniac like Aethelfrith is unpredictable. He hates all those with Norman blood in their veins, which is a goodly proportion of us even after a century or more. And he especially hates Norman tinners — but apart from that episode at the coinage, he’s never been violent.’

At that moment Harold came in looking troubled, and went to speak softly in his master’s ear. ‘There’s a stranger come to the kitchen door, a huge wild fellow with ginger hair who looks as if he’s just walked through a haystack. Says he has a message for you from the King’s coroner.’

‘Does he want to speak with me?’

‘He says he’ll not disturb you at your table, sir, but wishes to leave a message that Sir John de Wolfe is holding an inquest on Henry of Tunnaford in the morning. He wishes your attendance, as you were the dead man’s master.’

Knapman nodded. ‘Tell him I know of it already, as the parish priest is with me. He can tell the crowner that I will be there without fail.’

As the steward left the room, Walter thought wryly that at least it would take his mind off his wife for a few hours.

Telling the time in a place without a monastic house was an exercise in reading the sun, moon and stars, and was often hampered by the weather. Livestock seemed to have a better appreciation of the hours: the first cock-crow, the restlessness of cows at milking time and the roosting of fowls towards dusk. Cathedrals and abbeys marked off nine Holy Offices by ringing their bells from midnight until evening, but a parish church gave fewer signals. Often irregular and certainly unreliable, they depended on the conscientiousness or even sobriety of the local priest.

However, Chagford’s Paul Smithson was a dependable man. He would not have held his post if it had been otherwise; both Walter Knapman and Hugh Wibbery, who funded much of the local church’s activities, were too astute to have some deadbeat foisted on them by Bishop Marshal in Exeter. Five years ago, the ancient wooden church, dating from Saxon times, had partly collapsed in a storm. Rather than patch it up yet again, Knapman and the lord of the manor had donated sufficient silver to rebuild it in stone and had persuaded most of the tinners in their district to contribute. The result was a larger but still modest building with a low castellated tower over the junction of nave and choir.

Though he was but a paid vicar, employed by an absentee prebendary to look after the living for him, Smithson was conscientious and saw to it that his sexton tolled the bell in Knapman’s new tower. He rang it before morning Mass soon after dawn and for Vespers in the mid-afternoon. On Sundays, there were more services and more bells, but on workdays the population had to make their best guess as to other hours. The nearest clock was in Germany, and the only other timepieces were the graduated candles and sand-glass in the church.

Early on this Thursday morning, within an hour of the sexton’s heaving on his bell-rope, those who had attended the service emerged to join a crowd of people who were thronging into the churchyard, a large corner site just along the high street from the square. Two alehouses and an inn sat on the opposite side of the street to the church, which was in the angle of a bend in one of the tracks leading down towards Moretonhampstead. A few stalls sat along the edge of the street, their owners blessing the new coroner for an unexpected increase in trade, as the jurors, witnesses and curious spectators flocked past and bought fresh bread, pasties and winter-withered apples to sustain them during the coming entertainment.

Chagford was not a typical town in that its prosperity depended more on the minerals dug from the moor than the ubiquitous agriculture that sustained most other hamlets and vills. The metal was mostly tin, but there was also a little silver and lead. Most of its population were freemen and although there were the usual strip-fields around the town and girdling every nearby village, many families owed no fee-service to the various lords. Instead they were employed and paid by the tin-masters, or worked their own solitary claims.

Thus it was that on this early morning, many men and some of their wives and children were able to attend the inquest more easily than if they had been bondsmen. Jurors were primarily witnesses, rather than a judging panel, so theoretically every male over the age of twelve years from the four nearest villages was supposed to join the jury with the aim of increasing the chances of finding someone who had personal knowledge of the event. This law was soon found to be impracticable: the summons could not be circulated quickly enough, and it would have denuded the fields of workers and left the animals untended. A compromise was soon reached whereby a score was considered an acceptable quorum.

This number, and many more besides, now trooped through the gap in the drystone wall around the churchyard and formed a large circle centred on the old Saxon altar that sat in the grass a few yards north of the church itself. This ancient stone table had been moved out of the church at the rebuilding because a new one with a marble slab had been given by the tinners. The crowd was scattered among the many low grassy mounds that marked grave sites, a few bearing small wooden crosses, usually bereft of any inscription. This was the background to the first inquest ever held in Chagford and the size of the crowd was more an index of curiosity than any burning desire to assist the course of justice.

Some of the older men, who had survived service in the Irish or French wars — and even one or two who had taken the Cross — knew of Sir John de Wolfe by repute; there had been few campaigns over the past twenty years in which he had not been involved. As they shuffled and stamped in the cold morning air, they regaled their neighbours with tales of Black John’s prowess, with the constant theme that he was to be trusted, but not trifled with — and that he was, first and foremost, King Richard’s man, through hell and high water.

Soon, a small procession appeared around the further corner of the church where a lean-to shed acted as the mortuary. First came Gwyn of Polruan, whose huge, untidy figure marched cheerfully ahead of the coroner, who loped along behind, his hawk-like face as impassive as usual. De Wolfe was followed by the sexton and a gravedigger, who between them carried the handles of a wooden bier on which lay an ominously shortened shape covered with a shroud. Behind the corpse walked what at first sight seemed to be a pair of priests: beside the plump Smithson was a smaller figure, dressed in a similar long black tunic of clerical appearance. Thomas de Peyne carried his breviary in his clasped hands and his peaky face wore a suitably doleful expression. To those who did not know him, he was just another priest, which was exactly the impression he strove to give. The main difference between him and Smithson was that Thomas also carried a sagging shoulder pouch containing his writing materials. As soon as the bier had been slid on top of the old altar, he scuttled to sit on a nearby grave mound and pulled out parchment, pens and ink.

De Wolfe’s large henchman now stood alongside the cadaver, with one hand resting on the bier, and opened the proceedings by bellowing the coroner’s summons at the top of his voice: ‘All persons who have anything to do before the King’s coroner for the county of Devon, draw near and give your attendance!’ Gwyn always enjoyed this duty as, a militant Cornishman, he relished being able to command Normans and Saxons to do his bidding, however fleeting the opportunity. Then he stepped forward and jostled about twenty-five men and boys into a ragged line.

‘These here are the jurors, Crowner,’ he growled in his deep bass voice. ‘All the rest are those with an interest or just sightseers,’ he added dismissively.

The persons with an interest, whom Gwyn had indicated with a stab of his finger, were a well-dressed group with the air of burgesses or merchants, and John guessed correctly that they were the tin-masters. The previous evening, after he had arrived at his lodging in the manor house and paid his respects to the lord of Chagford, it had been too late to call on Knapman, the dead man’s employer.

De Wolfe stood at the other end of the old altar to begin the inquisition. ‘As you all know, this is an inquest into the death of Henry of Tunnaford. First, there is the matter of identity. In spite of the loss of his head, which has not been recovered, I am satisfied from clothing and the depositions of his work-fellows that this corpse is indeed that of Henry. Does anyone here dispute that?’ He glared around the jury, as if defying anyone to disagree with him.

The men all nodded hastily, the late Henry’s gang amongst them.

‘Next, we need to settle any presentment of Englishry,’ barked the coroner, the fringe of black hair swinging across his forehead as he raked his gaze along the line of jurors. ‘We all know that Henry was of Norman lineage, so I presume that no one here is going to claim that he was anything else.’ Again he glowered at the crowd, giving the impression that he would personally fell anyone who had the temerity to dispute his opinion.

This time, a more sullen silence indicated that no one was going to object, but the ill-grace of their acceptance was almost palpable in the churchyard. Everyone was afraid that this was going to cost them dear: a failure to ‘present Englishry’ exposed them to the murdrum fine, established by the Norman conquerors over a century ago when the few thousand invaders had to keep several million Saxons under subjugation. Repeated rebellions and many covert assassinations had led to the introduction of a law that any violent death was assumed to be that of a Norman, unless the community could prove that the corpse had been Saxon or Celt. If this failed, the village, town or Hundred was penalised by the ‘murdrum’ fine, levied on the whole community. While it had been a valid deterrent in the early years after the Conquest, it had now become a cynical means of extra taxation, for racial boundaries were blurred by intermarriage.

Although John de Wolfe was still bound by the law to require presentment, he interpreted the application of the murdrum in a reasonable way: ‘I therefore declare the decedent to have been Norman and that the Hundred is amerced in the sum of twenty marks. However, this stands in abeyance until the matter is heard before the Justices in Eyre. If the culprit is found before then, I doubt the fine will be levied.’

A collective sigh of relief whispered around the churchyard and the birds seemed to sing again in the dark branches of the yew trees that encircled them. De Wolfe made a sign with his forefinger to Gwyn, who stepped forward to jerk a young man from the line of jurors.

‘You were the First Finder, boy?’

It was the youth who had shown de Wolfe where the corpse had lain under the trestles of the sluice. Awed by the proceedings, and with one eye on the still shape under the shroud, the young man told again of how he had found the body. After he had stepped back thankfully into the line, Yeo, the acting overman, came to report what little he knew of the matter.

De Wolfe was somewhat at a loss to fit this case into the usual routine of a suspicious death. The law prescribed that when a body was found, the First Finder must raise the hue and cry by rousing the four nearest households and starting a hunt for the killer. Most murders were impulsive acts, arising out of sudden, often drunken fights, where in the closed communities of village or town, they were often witnessed. Here though, the body had been discovered the next day, in a remote spot at least a mile from the nearest habitation. Theoretically, he could amerce the Hundred yet again for failing to carry out the letter of the law, but it would be ridiculous to expect the tinners to have careered around the moor a day later, seeking the slayer.

‘We sent down for the bailiff straight away, Crowner. He came up and had a look, then went off to tell Walter Knapman, our master. Then he rode off to Exeter to report it to the sheriff and yourself.’

This was eminently reasonable, de Wolfe decided, and after hearing from one or two of the other gangers, who confirmed the finding of the body but could add nothing else, he turned to the group of town worthies, who stood a little to one side, with a respectful space between them and the common throng.

As well as several men, including the parish priest, there were two women, one young and beautiful, the other old enough to be her mother. One of the men was Hugh Wibbery, lord of Chagford, with whom he had lodged overnight, but the others were strangers to John.

‘Walter Knapman?’ he hazarded, guessing that the tall, fair man standing next to the doe-eyed siren was Yeo’s master.

Knapman stepped forward and nodded perfunctorily. Alhough he had no knight’s spurs like the coroner, he could probably have bought him out ten times over and felt in no particularawe of de Wolfe’s ennoblement. ‘Yes, this poor fellow was one of my men, Sir John,’ he said, before de Wolfe could open his mouth. ‘He worked faithfully for me over a dozen years. His widow will not go short, I promise you.’

A stifled sob came from behind the jury, where the dead man’s wife was being comforted by her sisters and son. De Wolfe scowled. He had taken an instant, if illogical, dislike to Knapman. ‘Have you any reason to think that someone would wish one of your men dead?’

The big, bland face looked back calmly at him. ‘None at all. The fellow was an old and trusted worker. I find it hard to believe he had any enemies.’

‘Then might this have been an attack on your tinning operation, an attempt to disrupt your business?’

Knapman’s outwardly calm expression darkened a little. ‘It certainly did that — I have lost many marks’ worth of production.’

‘And who might benefit from that?’ persisted de Wolfe.

‘Those who are jealous of my success, perhaps.’ Knapman’s amiability was melting like snow in the sunlight and de Wolfe noticed him throw a malicious glance across the crowd. Following the tin-master’s gaze, he saw a younger man glaring back at him.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Nothing. I spoke out of turn.’

‘I’ll not let you leave it like that. This is a royal enquiry and you must answer my questions, if the answer may have any bearing on the death,’ snapped the coroner.

Suddenly the man on the other side of the jury pushed his way to the front. He was another large fellow, under thirty years of age, handsome in a beefy way. His strong-featured, tanned face bore a narrow rim of beard, which ran round his jaw-line, and his hair was cut short on his muscular neck up to a circular shelf of thick dark brown thatch. He wore a good tunic of green linen over brown serge breeches, with a new-looking short leather cape around his shoulders.

‘I’ll tell you what he means, Crowner,’ he shouted, in a bass voice. ‘The bastard is insinuating that I killed his man to damage his stream-working up there on the Teign. And it’s a damned lie, as he well knows!’

Walter Knapman, his face purpling with anger, took a step forward and the younger fellow squared up to him, like a pair of cockerels in a farmyard challenge. Gwyn stepped forward, placed a huge hand on each chest and pushed them apart.

‘Who are you? And what’s all this about?’ demanded de Wolfe.

‘I’ll tell you who he is!’ snarled Knapman. ‘He’s Stephen Acland, the biggest troublemaker on the eastern moor. This young upstart thinks he can displace me as the chief tin-master here.’

Acland, now red in the face, leaned sideways to shout at his rival past Gwyn’s massive bulk. ‘I can do that without slaying your men, Knapman. You’ve had your way for too long, but I’ll unseat you by fair means. Don’t try blaming me for the death of your overman.’

‘And what about the damage to my sluices and troughs up at Scorhill last month?’ yelled Knapman. ‘You had nothing to do with that either, I suppose — two days after I threw you out for having the impudence to want to buy half my holdings.’

De Wolfe had allowed this angry exchange to go on in case something useful came of it. Now he decided that enough was enough. ‘Stop, you two! Has this anything at all to do with my enquiries into this death?’

Stephen Acland swung around to face the coroner. ‘Of course not, sir. This is a business matter, which should be aired at the Great Court this week.’

‘Then I suggest you pursue it there, rather than screaming at each other like fish-wives before half the town!’ De Wolfe glared at both combatants, who rapidly cooled down in his forbidding presence. He noticed that the attractive woman he had taken to be Mistress Knapman was staring fixedly at Acland, her full lips slightly apart, her face pale and her eyes wide. He could not decide whether her expression was one of apprehension or enrapturement, but he also saw that her husband was now watching her intently and following her gaze across to the younger tin-master.

Before de Wolfe had a chance to restart his inquest, Walter Knapman grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her away, almost violently, through the crowd towards the churchyard gate.

Acland stood stock still, his eyes pinned on the woman, and de Wolfe needed no second sight to decide that Knapman’s antipathy to Acland was not wholly concerned with the tin trade. ‘Acland, have you anything to tell me about this matter?’ he called out, to bring the man’s attention back to the proceedings.

Slowly the tinner turned to face him, his chin jutting forward obstinately. ‘Nothing useful, Crowner. I knew Henry of Tunnaford well enough, even though he didn’t work for me. He was a good man. Surely his death must have been the work of a madman.’

‘But which madman? Have you any suggestions?’

A wave of whispering rippled through the front ranks of the crowd, especially the jurors, as if they were willing Acland to say something.

‘If it’s a madman you’re seeking, then Aethelfrith comes first to mind, Crowner. I would easily believe that he damaged Knapman’s equipment the other day, but I doubt he would kill. Though even murderers have to begin sometime.’

‘Tell me about this Aethelfrith — I’ve heard mention of him before.’

Acland rubbed a hand around his beard, as if delaying an answer. ‘There are other people better able to tell you than I, Crowner — the bailiff and the constable for a start. But I can give you the common knowledge, that he is an old Saxon, of at least three score years, who has a crazy hatred of everything Norman.’

Now one of the jurors cut in, a tinner, though not one of Henry’s team: ‘He attacked me once, sir, nearly a year past. I was on my own up past Gidleigh, clearing out a fall of mud above the workings. Suddenly this old madman appeared and set about with his staff, screaming that I was stealing a Saxon’s birthright. I clouted him with my shovel and he ran away.’

There were sniggers from the crowd, which earned them a ferocious glare from de Wolfe. ‘This is no laughing matter. A man is dead.’ He turned back to Stephen Acland. ‘Where can this Aethelfrith be found?’

The brawny tin-master shrugged. ‘He comes and goes like the mist, sir. I hear he lives somewhere on the high moor, but how he finds food and shelter, I cannot tell. Maybe the bailiff can.’

The dark head swung slowly to Justin Green, who stood to one side.

‘He seems to move around a great deal, Crowner,’ supplied Justin. ‘There are plenty of outlaws up on the moor and they shelter him, I’m sure. Sometimes we have found traces of his living in disused tinners’ huts. So far he’s been more of a nuisance than a danger. We had him for a few months in the Stannary gaol, convicted by their court of damaging a blowing-house one night.’

‘Can he be found for questioning?’

‘Aethelfrith is as elusive as the wind. A thousand men could comb the moor and never see a hair of him, if he chose to keep low.’

De Wolfe abandoned the problem and turned to the old altar slab. He motioned to Gwyn to remove the sheet from the body. There was a gasp as the corpse was revealed. Though injury and sudden death were far from unusual, the appearance of this cadaver was particularly gruesome. The crowd gave a hiss of astonishment, and Henry’s widow wailed in anguish as she turned away to sob into her shawl. Her son and her sisters clustered around her to shield her from the sight of her mutilated husband. De Wolfe was neither sadistic nor unfeeling, but public display of the deceased was part of the legal ritual of the inquest and he had had no option but to reveal the horrible circumstances of the death.

‘The jury will draw near,’ boomed Gwyn, well versed in the conduct of the inquest. He shepherded the score of men and boys around the bier so that the coroner could conduct the official viewing of the corpse.

‘Clerk, record that the King’s coroner and the jury have inspected the decedent,’ grated de Wolfe, as he went to the end of the altar stone and began demonstrating as if he was giving a lecture in a School of Physic.

‘You will see that the neck has been severed completely. There is a ragged line of skin all the way around.’ He pointed with his fingers at the gory mess that had dried and blackened in the two days since death. ‘The edges of the wound, though irregular, have been quite sharply cut.’

He picked up the edge of the skin between thumb and forefinger and stretched out the serrations, now stiffened and curled from drying. ‘This means that a sharp weapon was used — but not too sharp as there is roughening and bruising along the edges. See there.’

The jury did not particularly wish to see, but they nodded and gaped to satisfy the King’s crowner.

‘So something with a moderately good edge, but not as good as a well-honed dagger, was used. Yet it was sharper than the edge of a spade. A good sharp axe would suffice, I suspect.’

John de Wolfe prided himself on his expertise concerning violence and assault. After more than two decades on a score of battlefields, he had seen every conceivable variety of maiming and death. He motioned to Gwyn, who deftly flicked the sheet back over the remains. ‘There is no more that can be done at present,’ he said. ‘I will adjourn these proceedings but if further information is obtained then they may resume. At present, my verdict is that the deceased was Henry, a tinner of Tunnaford, and that he was of Norman blood. He died of malignant violence on the fourth day of April in the sixth year of the reign of our blessed King Richard, and the manner of his death was murder by a person or persons as yet unknown.’

He glowered around the ranks of silent onlookers then dropped his gaze to the front row of jurors. ‘If anyone now knows — or comes to know — anything further about this outrage, then they must inform the constable, the bailiff or myself on pain of the most dire penalties if they fail so to do.’

Swirling his grey cloak around his lean body, de Wolfe loped away towards the gate, leaving the mutilated corpse to the grieving family and the vicar of St Michael the Archangel.