Crowner's Quest (12 page)

‘She is a whore, then?’

The sheriff put on a sanctimonious expression. ‘I have heard that she started as one. She was thrown out of her birthplace of Rye for it and then worked the Kentish ports, until her good looks attracted some of the noble travellers crossing the Channel. Since then she seems to have sold her favours only to those she fancies, usually good-looking fighting men with money at their belt.’

The coroner noticed that Richard seemed as happy to discuss the woman as he was reluctant to talk about Jocelin de Braose. He also wondered how the sheriff was so familiar with the history of a woman of no virtue, when he claimed never to have met her. Now he tried to get the conversation back to the young knight: as the King’s representative for the county, the sheriff should have been the best authority on all the Norman establishment in Devonshire. ‘Jocelin de Braose comes from the Welsh Marches, I hear?’ he said.

De Revelle’s lips tightened in annoyance at the return to an unwelcome subject. ‘So I assume. That family has been trying to subdue the damned Welsh in that area for more than a century.’

‘So why is the son here in the West Country now?’

‘How the devil should I know?’ snapped the Sheriff. ‘I presume he uses his sword in the service of someone. If he’s a junior son of his father, he may have no prospects at home, especially if he has been away at the wars for some years.’

‘So where is he selling this sword at the moment?’ persisted John.

De Revelle scowled at him, but could hardly feign ignorance of what went on in his own county. ‘I believe I heard that he has been in the company of Henry de la Pomeroy or his kinsman Bernard Cheever – but whether he is still there now, I couldn’t say.’

De Wolfe knew that Pomeroy was a baron who held large tracts of land in central and western Devon as well as many manors in Somerset and Dorset. He also knew a lot more about Pomeroy’s father. ‘Doesn’t it worry you, Richard, that these men are attached to a family who are reputed to be traitors?’

The sheriff looked sullenly at John. ‘What concern should it be of mine?’ he growled. ‘Henry’s father is dead, and that’s all behind him.’

‘And we all know how and why he died, Sheriff!’ said de Wolfe sarcastically. It had been the scandal of Devon earlier that year. Pomeroy’s father, also a Henry, had been a leading supporter of Prince John’s revolt. When the Lionheart had returned from captivity last March and crushed the remnants of the rebellion, he had sent a herald to Berry Pomeroy Castle with his felicitations. Once inside, the herald announced that he brought a warrant for Pomeroy’s arrest for treason against the King, whereupon Henry stabbed him to death. Fearing retribution, he abandoned his castle and rode with his troops to St Michael’s Mount, the rocky island in Cornwall, which he had previously seized for Prince John by disguising his soldiers as monks. His constable there had already dropped dead of fright on hearing of the King’s release from Germany, and when Henry de la Pomeroy was besieged by Archbishop Hubert Walter and the sheriff of Cornwall, he committed suicide by slashing his wrists. Sardonically de Wolfe reminded his brother-in-law of this salutary tale of treachery, but it seemed he would gain nothing more from de Revelle so he eased himself from the edge of the table where he had been leaning. ‘I think I’ll have a strong word or two with this vicar. Perhaps the knowledge that he’s been seen in a tavern with women of easy virtue will loosen his tongue.’

De Revelle, though glad that the talk had left Jocelin de Braose, became uneasy in case the Coroner went off now to upset the Bishop by exposing one of the cathedral priests as a rake. De Revelle was close to the head of the Church in Exeter and the last thing he wanted was for his brother-in-law to start a new scandal in the precinct. All things considered, his sister’s husband had become a damned nuisance since being appointed coroner a few months ago, upsetting Richard’s cosy monopoly of the intrigues that went on in the county. ‘I wish you would just let this matter of the canon rest, John,’ he said. ‘He was obviously killed by some opportunist robber – that is, if you were right in claiming that he didn’t do away with himself. Why make such a great mystery of it? If you need a solution, accuse one of the servants. I’ll hang him for you and the whole affair can be forgotten.’

De Wolfe was scornful of what he considered to be the sheriff’s immoral attitude to justice and, after a few tart words, he left de Revelle’s chamber and marched back to the gatehouse, muttering under his breath at his brother-in-law’s unsuitability to represent the King. The Lionheart was de Wolfe’s idol. If pressed, though, he would have had to admit that, as far as England was concerned, Richard Coeur de Lion left much to be desired: he had spent only a few months of his reign in the country, and showed no sign of ever returning now that he was at war in France. He had not bothered to learn a word of English, and his queen, Berengaria, had never so much as set foot in England, not even for Richard’s second coronation earlier that year – to which she had not been invited! The King looked on Normandy as his true home, and England as a mine from which his ministers, notably Hubert Walter, hewed money and goods to support his armies.

As he strode across the inner ward, the east wind whistling around his legs, John felt nothing for his monarch but loyalty, born of the camaraderie of the arduous campaigns in the Holy Land and the stresses of their escapade between the Adriatic and Vienna. To see his brother-in-law twisting his royal appointment endlessly to suit his own advantage made the coroner even more determined to confound de Revelle by making every investigation as complete and honest as possible.

He stamped into the room at the top of the gate-house and snapped instructions. ‘Gwyn, get back to the tavern on Stepcote Hill and find out all you can about that squire and his master – and the woman from Rye. Threaten Willem the Fleming if you have to, tell him we’ll have him up at Rougemont to sit in the gaol for a few days and maybe suffer
peine et forte dure
unless he comes up with some information.’ This was a bluff on de Wolfe’s part, but the threat might loosen the surly inn-keeper’s tongue. ‘And you, Thomas, come with me to the Close. We need to have words with this young priest who seems to have difficulty in keeping his chastity intact.’

The clerk tipped his head sideways like a sparrow. ‘You have two hangings to attend at midday,’ he reminded his master.

De Wolfe scowled: he had forgotten that, Yuletide or not, the twice-weekly executions still took place at the gallows tree on Magdalen Street outside the city. He had to be present to record the event and to confiscate the property of the dead felons – if they had any. ‘We’ll be finished by then, if we get down to the precinct straight away,’ he snapped.

But Thomas had another objection. ‘The priests will all be at morning services until about the eleventh hour.’

‘Then we’ll pull him out to talk to us. His immortal soul won’t suffer too much for missing an hour’s chanting.’

Equipped with new axes and with their bruises fading, Alward’s men had gone back to their clearing of the woods between Afton and Loventor. For several days they were unmolested. Those in Fitzhamon’s village must have known that the work had resumed, as the smoke from the burning debris reached above the tree-tops and the sound of axes rang out to a great distance in the frosty winter air.

The Afton team had one additional tool this time: a horn slung on Alward’s belt. The sound of this, driven by his powerful lungs, could reach far down the face of the forest along which they were felling their trees. On this morning of the day following Christ Mass, when work began again after the festival, the expected attack resumed. Once more, another dozen roughly clothed men charged from the woods and began to belabour the villeins and freemen from Afton, although this time the workers were even quicker at running away.

The instant the assailants appeared, Alward began to blast away on his cow’s horn, which caused the ruffians to slow up to wonder what was going on. Within seconds of the trumpeting, there was a thunder of hoofs in the middle distance and from the tree-line, two hundred paces away, half a dozen horsemen emerged and bore down on the combatants. Though half the number of the assailants, the mounted men cut through them like a knife through butter, scattering the men on foot in panic.

This time, there was no attempt to avoid serious injury. The riders swung swords with professional skill and two of the men from Loventor fell at once, with lethal wounds gushing blood on to the ground. Pulling their large horses around, the six men began chasing the would-be attackers, felling another with a blow on the back and inflicting lesser wounds on two more. Even one of the Afton workers was mistaken for an aggressor and given a deep cut on the head, which fortunately did not prove fatal.

After the second sally, the men from both villages were hopelessly intermingled in their hapless attempts to escape to the shelter of the trees. The leader of the horsemen, a stocky young man with red hair visible under the rim of his round metal helmet, raised his sword and yelled at his companions to follow him. Expertly wheeling their steeds, the avengers galloped off down the edge of the woods and out of sight, leaving the Loventor men to creep slowly out of the bushes to collect their dead and wounded, watched silently by the peasants they had come to attack.

Thomas de Peyne was sent into the great cathedral to find the vicar, who was called Eric Langton. Thankfully, his task was easier than he had expected – the ex-cleric looked on disturbing a sacred service as a sin worse than blasphemy. In the event, he found that Roger de Limesi was himself present at the devotions so his deputy was dispensable. Thomas was able to sidle along the back of the choir stalls, where the more junior officiants stood, and tug at Langton’s robe without disrupting the proceedings.

The mystified vicar allowed himself to be drawn into the shadows of the arches between the chancel and the side aisles where the coroner’s clerk hissed in his ear that he was wanted urgently at Robert de Hane’s house in the Close.

Eric Langton recognised Thomas as someone who lived in Canons’ Row – presumably a priest, as the little clerk had never denied it – and followed him without protest, mildly relieved that he had escaped the next hour of boring worship.

In the bare hall of the dead prebendary’s dwelling, the coroner was waiting, sitting on a bench at one side of the oak refectory table. He motioned Langton to stand opposite him and launched straight into his interrogation, his long dark face glowering at the young vicar. ‘What were you doing in the Saracen tavern last night, associating with a hired adventurer and a painted whore?’ he demanded. Both descriptions of Eric’s companions were a little exaggerated, but the coroner believed in the power of over-statement when confronting a witness.

Langton was normally pallid, but now the remaining blood drained from his scarred cheeks. Between his dark hair and the black cloak he had thrown over his church robes, his pinched face was ashen and his lips quivered, but no words emerged. Eventually, though, after de Wolfe had harshly repeated his questions, the story came out, reluctantly and hesitantly.

‘Canon Roger sent me with a message to Giles Fulford,’ he said, in a low voice, his eyes avoiding John’s. ‘It was urgent, so I had to seek him out in one of the taverns he often frequented.’

‘One that you also often frequented,’ snapped the coroner. ‘You went upstairs with a drab, so you must be well acquainted with the Saracen.’

The vicar’s white face suddenly flushed scarlet. ‘I have a – a friend I see there sometimes, yes.’

De Wolfe gestured impatiently, his black brows lowered scornfully. ‘I don’t give a damn about your morals, priest, though your archdeacon and bishop might have a word or two to say to you after this. I want to know what was going on between your master and this man Fulford.’

The wretched cleric, staring ruin in the face, twisted in anguish. ‘I know little of the reasons, Crowner, I swear. Some weeks ago, the canon took me aside and asked me if I knew any bold man who might help him in a private venture that would need strength and determination. I took it that he meant someone who would act for him in some enterprise unfit for a man of the church.’ He looked down at his pointed shoes. ‘Canon Roger knows that I have some weaknesses – he is a tolerant man and has overlooked my lapses in the past.’

The coroner could not be bothered to explore Langton’s ‘weaknesses’; he was not concerned with this erring priest, but with what lay behind his story. ‘So what followed?’ he demanded.

‘I had this friend in the town – a woman I knew. I asked her if she knew any persons who could aid Canon Roger. She took me one night to meet Rosamunde of Rye.’

‘A harlot’s coven!’ observed John sarcastically.

‘In turn, she brought Giles Fulford, and I arranged for him to meet my master.’

De Wolfe grunted at this sanitised version of a vicar’s nocturnal activities in the less savoury streets of Exeter. ‘Where did they have this meeting and what was discussed?’

‘Giles came to the cathedral one day, after the morning services. They talked in the nave after everyone had left. It seemed a safe and private place. I have no knowledge of what they discussed. I was told to keep well clear of the meeting.’

‘Did your canon meet him on other occasions? And was anyone else involved?’ grated the coroner.

Langton shook his head energetically. ‘I cannot tell – I heard nothing more of the matter at that time.’

‘What about your doxy in the town? Surely, between your bouts of carnal lust, you discussed this unusual happening,’ asked John cynically.

‘Yes, I asked her about it – naturally I was curious. But the girl said that Rosamunde had told her to mind her own business or it would be the worse for her.’

There was a ring of truth about this that de Wolfe accepted. ‘So what about this latest meeting last night?’

The vicar looked even more furtive and downcast than before. ‘The canon took me aside yesterday, after the inquest you held. He told me to seek out Fulford at once, to tell him that everything was over between them, whatever that meant. He said that he did not want to see him or hear from him again as all their plans had been confounded by the death of Canon de Hane.’