The Tinner's Corpse (31 page)

Reluctantly, de Revelle nodded. ‘He’s right, but I’ve already told you that.’

This was met with more jeers, and the burly man with the jet beard and moustache gave Gwyn a violent buffet in the chest. ‘Clear off, damn you! Stop trying to interfere in what’s none of your bloody business.’

For answer, the Cornishman threw a massive arm around the other’s neck, gave him a punch in the kidneys that should have felled a donkey and threw him to the ground. Amid bellows of rage and clutching hands, Gwyn was pulled back, while the bearded man climbed painfully to his feet.

Suddenly, there was a flash of steel as Gwyn’s adversary reached behind him and pulled a dagger from his belt. With a furious yell, he launched himself at the Cornishman, the knife flashing towards his heart. The thick leather of Gwyn’s jerkin took the point, and though it penetrated enough to slash skin and muscle, it went no further. With his own roar of rage, he tore free from those hanging on to his arms, and grabbed the wrist holding the dagger. With his other hand, he smashed Blackbeard on the side of the head, just behind the ear. The man crumpled to the trampled slush underfoot and lay motionless. Then, huge as he was, Gwyn had no chance against the fury of a hundred tinners and he vanished to the floor under a press of bodies, all trying to beat him to death.

As so often happened, snow on Dartmoor meant rain in Exeter, John de Wolfe went about his business that day in an intermittent cold drizzle that soaked his cape and turned the streets into a sticky morass of mud and filth. The previous night, he had fallen dog-tired on to his bed, too weary even to respond to Matilda’s customary nagging. He told her briefly about Thomas’s dive from the cathedral gallery, but her snubbing response seemed to indicate that she would have been interested only if his attempt had succeeded.

Even before he had finished an early breakfast, one of the town bailiffs arrived to report a fatal accident on the quayside, where the wheel of an ox-cart had collapsed and a load of stone imported from Caen had fallen on a workman. John went to inspect the scene and look at the body but, missing both Gwyn’s help and Thomas’s scribing ability, decided to postpone the inquest until he knew when his clerk would be available.

With this in mind, he went from the quayside up to St John’s Hospital to see how the little man was faring. John de Alençon was there already, and de Wolfe was surprised and gratified to find that de Peyne’s mood had improved markedly, even if his skin and muscles were still crying out in protest.

‘He can go home when he chooses,’ said Brother Saulf encouragingly. ‘There is nothing seriously amiss. The shock has passed and he has no broken bones, only bruises, though he’ll suffer a couple of days’ aches and stiffness. As the Archdeacon has been telling him, the age of miracles is certainly not yet over.’

As the two Johns left the little priory together, the coroner said how glad he was to see such an improvement in his clerk’s melancholy.

De Alençon smiled, his blue eyes twinkling in his lean, ascetic face. ‘Though I truly believe that such escapes are ordained by the Almighty, I must admit to labouring the point somewhat to my nephew. His conviction that his miraculous deliverance is a sign from above has greatly lightened his mind.’

The coroner gave his friend a lopsided grin. ‘Thank God for that – and I mean that literally, John. But is there no real hope of his ever being accepted back into Holy Orders?’

‘Not for some time – and certainly not in Exeter as long as the present chapter contains certain people.’

‘Speaking selfishly, though I am sorry for Thomas, I would be lost without his skills,’ mused de Wolfe aloud, ‘so let’s see what a year or so might bring. Perhaps eventually he could return to Winchester.’

They parted at Martin’s Lane, where the coroner collected Odin and rode out of the city to the gallows beyond Magdalene Street. Here he witnessed two Friday executions, one of an outlaw who had been caught robbing a travelling merchant of his purse holding fourteen pennies, two more than the statutory shilling that meant a felony and the death penalty. It had been a toss-up as to whether to behead him for being a captured outlaw or hanging him for the felony, but the Shire Court, under Richard de Revelle, discovered that the fee for hanging was less. As the man had no property, John had no interest in the matter, other than eventually to record the event on his rolls.

The other execution was of a weaver who had tried to strangle his wife in a fit of anger when he discovered that she had committed adultery with his brother. De Wolfe had tried hard to delay the trial until the King’s justices came for the Eyre of Assize, but as the usual waiting stretched into months with no sign of their arrival, the sheriff and the burgesses had insisted on summary conviction in the Shire Court. As the weaver had a house and a workshop, John would have to assess his property and record it for the judges, who would decide how much to confiscate for the Crown and how much – if any – to leave for the family of the sinful widow. But with Thomas out of commission, there was little he could do for now: his own skills with a quill and ink were still negligible.

On the way back from the gallows, he passed by the South Gate and went through the fields and garden of Southernhay to reach the Water Gate, which had been driven through the angle of the city wall, at the top of the slope leading down to the quay. From there he went to the house of Matthew Knapman and found the tin-merchant in his ground-floor warehouse, with Peter Jordan and a burly Saxon workman. They were stacking and tallying bars, some of black tin, which had just arrived from yesterday’s coinage at Chagford. Others, kept separate, were the cleaner, shinier ingots from the re-smelting, ready for export.

Matthew, stout and red-faced, put down the notched tally-stick and his knife and waved the workman out into the backyard. ‘Is there any news from Chagford or Dunsford?’ he asked anxiously.

The coroner shook his dark head. ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me something. I wondered if your brother’s testament had shed light on who would gain most from his death.’

Peter, dressed in a neat brown tunic with a long leather apron tied around his waist, answered for his master. ‘We went to see Robert Courteman, the lawyer, but he would tell us nothing. We must wait until all the family are present.’

‘And when might that be?’

‘We hear it should be on Sunday, for the widow is now said to be coming to Exeter for that very purpose. No doubt she will bring her damned brother and her mother,’ he added, with ill-concealed bitterness.

De Wolfe noticed that he called his stepmother ‘the widow’, rather than use her name. This was a family ridden with antagonism, he thought, all vying with each other for the best share of the spoils. To give Matthew credit, he seemed outwardly more concerned with the hunt for Walter’s killer than with the will, but de Wolfe had no news for him on that score. ‘I have left my officer in Chagford to pick up any news that may be dropped during the coinage. He’s due back tonight, so I will let you know if anything more has happened.’

Back in his cramped, draughty chamber at the top of the gatehouse at Rougemont, de Wolfe laboriously wrote a few words on a scrap piece of parchment, putting down the names of the two hanged men and the victim of the ox-cart accident so that he would not forget them by the time Thomas came back and he could dictate a full account. By now it was late morning and rain was still falling from the leaden sky. Going to the niche in the rough stone wall, he took an earthenware mug and filled it from Gwyn’s gallon jar on the floor. Without his two assistants to visit the stalls, there was no bread, meat or cheese, and as he sat alone in the bare cell, drinking sour cider, he realised that he missed their company, much as their bickering often irritated him.

He hoped fervently that Thomas would soon be back on duty; without proper records, the coroner’s business would become chaotic and, indeed, futile, for de Wolfe’s main function was to record all these legal events for the royal courts. He went on to wonder how the new coroner, Theobald Fitz-Ivo, was managing, with no experience and, in de Wolfe’s opinion, a severe shortage of brains and common sense.

His drink finished, de Wolfe sat hunched over his table, fingers drumming idly on the rough boards. There was nothing else he could do without Thomas and the cider had merely reminded him that his stomach was rumbling for want of food. The prospect of sitting opposite Matilda for dinner in his own hall did not appeal and a devil came to sit on his shoulder to whisper ‘The Bush’ in his ear.

Leaving Rougemont, his feet took him almost unbidden down to Idle Lane, but when he came to the edge of the barren plot on which the tavern stood, he hovered uncertainly. For a man of such single-minded determination, used to quick, firm decisions, this wavering was foreign indeed. One part of his mind cursed the affairs of heart and flesh for so undermining his usual strength of will. Standing on the wet road, like a lanky black heron, he stared across at the Bush, willing Nesta to come out alone so that he could talk to her without curious eyes watching them and the bold face of Alan of Lyme grinning in the background. But though a customer or two came and went through the low front door, there was no sign of his former mistress – as was to be expected, he told himself angrily. She always had business inside, in the kitchens or the ale-room or on the upper floor. The thought of the little upstairs room and the thrice-damned Alan occupying the French bed he had bought, made him grind his teeth in jealous rage.

After five minutes of lurking in the street like a lovesick youth, de Wolfe shook himself back to his senses and walked slowly past the inn, hoping that Nesta would appear and fall into his arms as he passed the door. Nothing of the kind happened and, feeling foolish, he walked on to the other end of the lane, then turned and slowly repeated the process. By the time he got back to his original spot, he was in a cold rage, mostly with himself for his foolish, adolescent behaviour. A knight of the realm, a senior law officer and a veteran of countless wars, skulking in a back-street to stalk a lover who had rejected him!

‘To hell with it,’ he muttered aloud, to a startled rat snuffling in the garbage at his feet, ‘I’m going to eat at the Golden Hind.’

A large meat pie and two quarts of ale later, he felt slightly better and in the mood to write off the Welsh redhead as water under the bridge. His thoughts were already straying to Dawlish and the fair Hilda – he even wondered if he might engineer a visit soon to Salcombe, where another pleasant widow had not had his attentions for six months and more.

By mid-afternoon, after another jug of ale, John decided to walk back to the castle to practise his lessons, much neglected of late. He had been attending a vicar-choral in the cathedral precinct for tuition in reading and writing, and Thomas de Peyne had also been coaching him. Starting education so late in life, John found it hard to retain such learning and his progress had been slow, but he resolved once more to make a greater effort to become literate.

Outside the tavern, the drizzle had ceased and he made his way up the high street, ploughing through the crowds like a ship parting the waves. As a flock of sheep on their way to slaughter flowed around his legs, he caught sight of a familiar figure coming behind them. Surprised, he stopped and let Thomas come up to him, clinging for support to a solicitous young secondary. ‘Thomas, what are you doing out and about? When I saw you this morning, you were flat on your back in St John’s.’

Haggard, but grimly determined, the little clerk clung tightly to his companion’s elbow. ‘I am bruised but unbowed, Crowner. Brother Saulf said I could go home if I spent the rest of the day on my pallet there. I can get back to my duties tomorrow, I’m sure.’

De Wolfe grinned, for the small man had raised his own spirits too with his dogged determination. ‘You’re like Lazarus rising from the tomb – or sick-bed, in your case. But take your time in returning, Thomas – though I’ll admit I’ve already sorely missed your skills.’

Thomas’s peaky face lit up with pleasure at even this mild praise from his master, to whom he was devoted. ‘The hand that holds the quill is undamaged, Crowner. As my uncle the Archdeacon has shown me, I have experienced a small miracle – a sign from God that my cause is not hopeless.’ He winced as his free arm made the Sign of the Cross.

As he limped away towards the cathedral Close, leaning heavily on his friend, de Wolfe set off back to Rougemont with a spring in his step, cheered by the marked improvement in his clerk’s mood. In the chamber above the portcullis, he settled down for an hour or two’s study of the parchment leaves that bore his Latin lessons. Slowly and silently, his lips formed the sounds of the grammar and vocabulary that the vicar and Thomas had written for him. Then he laboriously practised writing simple phrases, using one of his clerk’s spare pens and jet black ink.

Eventually the effects of half a gallon of ale and the boredom of learning overcame him and he sprawled across his table, leaning his black head on his arms, and was soon sound asleep.

He was awakened by a timid rapping on the boards in front of his nose and blearily opened his eyes to see a young man-at-arms from the guard-room below, standing before him. Another older man was waiting just inside the sacking that screened the doorway.

‘This man says he must see you urgently, Crowner,’ stuttered the soldier, and stepped back to let the bailiff come forward, for John had recognised him as Justin Green from Chagford. Suddenly fully awake, with a premonition of trouble, de Wolfe motioned the man to the empty stool opposite. ‘What is it? Where’s my man Gwyn?’ he demanded.

The bailiff, his upper half damp with rain and his legs muddied from hard riding, looked anxiously at the coroner, in the manner of all harbingers of bad tidings. Haltingly, he told his tale, watching de Wolfe as his consternation grew.

The substance of his news was that there had been a near riot at the coinage in Chagford that morning when the Saxon Aethelfrith had been captured red-handed damaging some tin-works on the edge of the moor. A mob of tinners had dragged him to the town square, also accusing him of killing Henry of Tunnaford and Walter Knapman. He had boasted proudly of his vandalism and the enraged crowd had beaten him up. Gwyn had tried to intervene and had been knocked senseless for his trouble.