Crowner's Crusade (19 page)

‘My master and I fought alongside Hubert Walter in the Holy Land – and we were part of the king's company on his journey back from there.'

The man behind the table looked suspiciously at them, but sensed trouble for himself if he got this wrong. ‘Can you prove that?' he snapped.

For answer, John dipped his fingers into his scrip and produced the courier's ring. Holding it out, he pointed to the pair of royal lions engraved on the inside. ‘Does this convince you?'

The man's attitude changed immediately. With a mumbled apology, he beckoned to the porter, who was hovering in the doorway. ‘Escort these gentlemen to the Justiciar's chambers and find one of his officers to speak to them.'

With Gwyn grinning behind him at being called ‘a gentleman', the man led de Wolfe into the gloomy passages of the palace and, after several turns then up some stairs, arrived at a busy room where many clerks and servants bustled about. The porter spoke to one of them and soon a fat priest appeared from another room, clutching lists of accounts.

John again explained who he was and why he needed to speak to the archbishop. When Brother Roland heard that this was the John de Wolfe that Hubert Walter had spoken of in connection with the king's capture, his eyes widened and he treated the knight with considerable respect.

‘The Justiciar has heard from the king's own lips the sorry tale of his outrageous abduction in Vienna – and he spoke warmly of your faithful service,' he said obsequiously.

He led them through several more rooms and a passage to another antechamber where a chaplain was seated and after a whispered consultation, the chaplain vanished through an inner door.

A few moments later, he returned and ushered them into a large, but plainly furnished chamber where a lean man with a lined face and greying brown hair rose from his chair to greet them.

Hubert Walter did not assume the trappings that might be expected of such a powerful man. All that suggested that he was an archbishop was the plain red cassock with a small gold cross hanging around his neck.

‘Sir John, old friend!' he said quietly, as he came across the room to grip de Wolfe's arms in greeting. ‘And Gwyn of Polruan, too! It's good to see you safe and sound after all we went through in Palestine – though the king told me that you and he had suffered even more later on!'

Having been with the king's guards for much of the campaign, the two Exeter men had seen a lot of the Bishop of Salisbury, as Hubert had been then. Originally he was made the chaplain to the English crusading contingent after Archbishop Baldwin had died of disease – though Hubert did far more fighting and diplomacy than any priestly duties.

He went back his chair and motioned the others to bring up stools to the table. ‘Now tell me of what happened after you sailed from Acre. I've heard it from Richard, but not in much detail.'

For half an hour John related the story of the eventful voyage and then the disastrous ride across country to Vienna. ‘I feel shame at not being able to have prevented our lord king's capture,' he concluded sorrowfully. ‘If we had not gone out searching for food, perhaps I could have saved him.'

Hubert shook his head. ‘When I spoke to the king in Wurzburg, he was adamant that you did all you could for him. You had to buy provisions for the journey – and you could have done nothing to overcome a whole troop of soldiers, other than lose your own lives.'

John shook his head sadly. ‘I would gladly have given my life for him, sir. This will plague me for the rest of my life.'

They spoke about it for a few more minutes, Gwyn respectfully asking the Justiciar how he found the Lionheart in body and spirit.

‘He is now almost restored to his usual fiery self,' said Hubert with a smile. ‘At first he was confined in a remote castle on a crag, at Durnstein on the Danube. Then he was dragged off by Count Leopold to Regensburg in Germany to meet the Emperor and your old enemy Count Meinhard of Gorz, but Leopold distrusted King Henry and took him back to Austria after two days. Then a month later, he sells him on to Henry and our king was taken to Wurzburg.'

John leaned forward with a question. ‘There's been some tale going around that one of the king's troubadours, Blondel of Nesle, first discovered him by singing a song they composed together and heard the Lionheart respond with another verse from behind his prison bars at this Durnstein place!'

The Justiciar smiled. ‘A picturesque fable, John! There was no mystery about where he was confined, right from the start. Emperor Henry even wrote a letter to Philip Augustus within days of his capture, giving the details. I have a copy in this very room, for they proudly bandied the news all over Europe.'

‘So where is our lord now?' asked Gwyn.

‘He's been shuttled about from Ochsenfurt to Speyer, where he was tried in March, though there he turned the tables on Henry and Philip by gaining the sympathy and support of many of the Emperor's rebellious princes and bishops. After that he was in Trifels Castle, then Hagenau, but is now at the royal court in Mainz. We are still trying to get a definite date for his release, but that bloody man Philip of France keeps trying to bribe Henry to hand him over to him.' His face darkened. ‘And our Prince John is colluding with the French in that! Between them they offered the Emperor eighty thousand silver marks for our king.'

The mention of the prince gave John an opening for the second reason for his audience with the Chief Justiciar. Once more he pulled out the ring and gave it to Hubert Walter. ‘I came across a murdered man last week, sire. His body was thrown into a river after his throat had been cut. This was the only identification upon him, he had been robbed of everything else including his money.'

With a puzzled expression, Hubert took the ring and turned it in his fingers until he saw the engravings. He looked up quizzically at de Wolfe. ‘Unless he had stolen this from someone, he must have been one of our court couriers. You say his body was found in Devonshire?'

As John confirmed this, Hubert rang a small bell that stood on his desk and immediately, the chaplain came in from the outer room. As he bent over the archbishop, Hubert murmured something in a low voice and the priest nodded and went out again.

‘I've started some enquiries – we have a number of men who travel discreetly around the country, taking messages and collecting information. Our present concern is naturally Prince John and his supporters. After his rebellion was defeated earlier this year, he agreed to a truce, but he's not to be trusted.'

‘Is this dead man one of yours, then?' asked John.

‘I've sent to find out who was down in the West Country – and you say you think he had been as far as Cornwall, so possibly he has been seeking information about St Michael's Mount, which Henry de la Pomeroy holds on behalf of Prince John.' He rose from his chair again. ‘It will take some time for my clerks to discover who this might be, so return here tomorrow when I hope to have some news for you. This unfortunate man deserves to have a name on his grave, if nothing else – and I might have a task for you as well.'

After their days in the saddle, John de Wolfe and Gwyn were happy to have some rest and after returning to their inn, had a good meal of fried bacon, eggs and black pudding, washed down with a quart of ale. As they sat looking out of the unshuttered window at the crowded Royal Way outside, Gwyn wondered what ‘task' the Chief Justiciar might give them.

‘We are fortunate to be on such easy terms with the man who runs England,' he said. ‘I still find it hard to believe that all this has happened to me in the past year or two, being just a rough soldier from Cornwall.'

John punched him on the arm, which had muscles like iron. ‘Don't underestimate yourself, man! Hubert can see a trustworthy fellow when he sees one. I'll warrant he'll want us to find out why this courier died and who killed him. With no sheriff in the county, who else can do it? And if it was because he was poking about in John's affairs, then the last thing the prince will want is some investigation.'

The Cornishman grunted. ‘That's probably why Richard de Revelle shows such a lack of interest, though being such a lazy swine, it's hard to pin any motive on what he does or doesn't do.'

They spent a couple of hours or so wandering around Westminster and along the river towards the city, then came back for more food, drink and an early bed.

‘If Hubert finishes his business with us in the morning, we can be back on the road again later in the day – and home in Exeter within the week,' said John. He realized that he missed his lodgings in the Bush, especially the company of Nesta and he looked forward with foreboding to having to settle down in a house with Matilda.

Early next day, they were back at the palace to resume their meeting with the Justiciar. He was at an early Mass in St Stephen's Chapel, the palace's place of worship, but eventually arrived and they were ushered into his presence again by Brother Roland.

Hubert Walter was looking more haggard today, weighed down by the strain of both running a country and finding a vast sum of money to pay for the king's release. A hundred and fifty thousand marks was the equivalent of thirty tons of silver, two or three times the annual income of England. ‘It's being collected by the special Ransom Exchequer and stored in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral,' he had explained to them the previous day, but now he wanted to tell them about the corpse in the River Exe.

‘He was Roger Smale, a former soldier working in the Chancery. As I suspected, he was sent down to Cornwall with messages for the constable of Launceston Castle, but also to spy out the situation at St Michael's Mount, fortified for the prince. Since the truce, he has not been attacked by us, but the
Curia
wanted to know if the stronghold was being further strengthened in preparation for future conflict.'

De Wolfe recalled the horrific wound to the man's throat which had half-severed his neck. ‘He must have found out something, for them to dispatch him so brutally,' he said.

The Justiciar shrugged. ‘There's nothing we can do about it now, but I wonder why he was killed in Devon and not Cornwall.'

‘Perhaps he found out other things as well. John's cause has sympathizers in Devon, as we know.' Some trace of family loyalty caused him to refrain from mentioning his brother-in-law, though he suspected that Hubert knew of all the potential adherents in that part of the country, especially as some of Exeter's twenty-four canons were known to side with Bishop Hugh of Coventry.

‘We have lost one agent who seems have known his way around the West Country,' went on Hubert. ‘So I am going to ask you to continue the faithful service that you have already given to our Lord King, by keeping your eyes and ears open for any other evidence of the prince's treachery. He had most of his castles taken from him back in February, when he kept claiming that the king was dead and that he was now on the throne, but he has refused to hand over Nottingham or Tickhill and is covertly provisioning them for a future battle. As I said before, we have a so-called truce, but that is really a waiting game to see what happens over the Lionheart's release.'

John and Gwyn readily agreed to his request, being happy to have some further way of serving the king, partly to assuage their consciences over their failure to prevent his capture. They arranged to forward any information via Ralph Morin, who had regular messengers going between the royal castle and Westminster. They took their leave of the archbishop, Gwyn still awed by their familiarity, which seemed far stranger here than in the common danger and discomfort of Palestine. Soon they were in the saddle again, riding west, with at least a name to give John de Alencon to read over the new grave in the cathedral precinct.

They arrived at the Bush, wet and weary, over a week later. The weather had turned bad and the roads were thick with mud, slowing them down and adding an extra day to their journey. The horses had been returned to their stables and the two travellers arrived on foot at the door of the inn, where Brutus was waiting to greet his master, having again used the mysterious powers of a dog to anticipate John's return. Nesta, equally delighted to see them safe and sound, rushed around to get them hot food and to take John's riding cloak to dry in the wash-shed outside. Gwyn had his usual leather jerkin and hood, which he threw carelessly over a stool to drip into the rushes.

Edwin plied them with ale and then, as they ate grilled trout, beans and leeks, Nesta sat with them at the table. She listened with awe to their tales of exotic places like Winchester and London and about exalted persons like the Archbishop of Canterbury.

‘At least we know who the murdered fellow was,' said John. ‘And we were right, he was a spy for the king's government. As we expected, the Prince is still up to his tricks and though there's supposed to be peace between him and the barons, no one in their right mind would trust him after his past record.'

He decided not to voice abroad their promised role as secret agents for the Chief Justiciar, as this might jeopardize any hope of learning things that they were not supposed to hear. However, John promised himself that he would tell Nesta when they were alone together, as he felt she could be trusted to keep it to herself. Also, with so many travellers passing through the Bush, she might overhear something useful. After eating, Gwyn decided to go home to his wife, who Nesta said had been down several times in the past two weeks to help clean up the inn and make sure that her protégée Molly was cooking satisfactorily. De Wolfe also thought he had better visit his wife, though less eagerly than his squire. The rain had stopped and the August evening was warm, so he left his damp cloak and walked up Smythen Street and across a side lane to come out in Fore Street, opposite the dwelling of Matilda's cousin.

The expected baby was getting near to appearing in the world and the women of the household were too preoccupied to bother much with a mere man. Even though the childless Matilda had never seemed over-endowed with maternal feelings, she was also caught up in the general enthusiasm and gave John a perfunctory welcome. He kept out of the way for a time, skulking in a room as far away as possible from the birthing stool and lying-in bed.