Figure of Hate (11 page)

'I'll have another word with John de Alençon and John of Exeter,' he said, naming the Archdeacon of Exeter and the Treasurer, who were both King's men.

'But they know the score already, I doubt they can do anything more.'

Gwyn grunted and threw his stick out of the window.

'I know, Crowner, but I just thought I'd tell you. He's a melancholy little bastard at the best of times, and we don't want him chucking himself off the cathedral again.'

Some time before, the clerk had been so depressed over his situation that he had jumped from the roof of the nave, but had miraculously survived without serious injury.

Gwyn clumped away to seek a game of dice in the guardroom below and John reluctantly settled to practise his letters. For a long time he had been trying to learn to read and write, with some tuition from a vicar in the cathedral. Thomas, who would have been a far better teacher, had given up trying to help him, as de Wolfe was very sensitive about the process, which he felt was rather effeminate for an old warrior and former Crusader. His devotion to the task was sporadic, as he had no great incentive, and his progress was painfully slow. In truth, the process bored him and his attention span was poor. After an hour, much of which he spent gazing blankly at the sliver of sky visible through the window, he abruptly pushed back his bench, grabbed his cloak and clattered down the stairs to the open air.

The fair was now in full swing as de Wolfe pushed his way down the central lane between the stalls. It was crowded with people, jostling each other to get a better look at the goods on offer and dodging the handcarts, barrows and porters that were bringing new merchandise to the booths and carting away larger purchases made by customers. There was a constant roar of sound, compounded of the cries of vendors, shouted offers from buyers, the clatter of hawker's rattles and the excited buzz of chatter and gossip. Jugglers and acrobats performed between the stalls, sheets of cloth spread before them to catch stray half-pennies.

Musicians, singly and in groups, performed on the sackbut, shalmes and cornet, in the expectation of a few half-pennies being thrown on to the threadbare cloaks spread hopefully in front of them. Minstrels and ballad singers, some good, some bad, added to the cacophony, and as John neared the makeshift stage at the centre of the fair a new collection of sounds assailed his ears.

On the platform, a miracle play was being performed, and he stopped for a few moments at the edge of the crowd, his height allowing him to see over their heads. This one was being enacted by clerics from the cathedral and appeared to represent the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Several vicars stood around the edges of the backdrop, on which was painted a crude forest. They held flaming torches, smoking with incense wafting out to the awe-struck audience. A garish tree, made from wood and canvas, stood in the centre, and the actors were posturing around this in exaggerated poses. One was Adam, dressed in a tattered leopard skin, and another was dressed as the Devil, his face covered by a snake-like mask. Both were recognisable as secondaries, apprentice priests under the age of twenty-four, which was the minimum age for ordination. On the other side of the apple tree stood a young chorister in female dress, taking the part of Eve, as no women were allowed to appear in dramatic performances.

As John watched, the three actors went through the motions of the Genesis story, with the wicked serpent tempting Adam with a large red-painted wooden apple.

They made no sound, apart from stomping around the hollow stage, but a loud, high-pitched commentary was delivered by a robed vicar, who stood at a lectern to one side, reading from a manuscript book, relating the tale as the players went through the motions. He spoke mainly in French, which many understood, but with some English thrown in, as the idea of these performances was to enlighten the common throng in their own language. De Wolfe thought it ridiculous that all church services, apart from sermons, were delivered in Latin, which was incomprehensible to the bulk of the congregation. The Bible, the Vulgate of St Jerome, was also in Latin, apart from a few fragmentary vernacular copies, so even if the faithful could read, they would not be able to understand a word if they only had English.

During the few minutes that he stood there, some of the audience began to drift away, for they had either seen it many times before or preferred the pageants put on by the guilds, which were usually more spectacular and often dealt with secular topics, rather than the well-worn biblical themes that the priests provided to drive home their messages of piety and morality.

John himself soon tired of the show and walked on down through the lower part of the fairground. The silversmith's stall was deserted, all the stock taken away for safe-keeping by the two assistants. He knew that one had gone back to Totnes to tell Scrope's family of the tragedy and arrange for collection of the body as soon as the inquest was over. The other man was waiting in his lodgings until the coroner told him he was needed.

John again cut across to Magdalen Street and went on to Bull Mead, where there was now more activity than there had been that morning. All the erection work on the stand and the tents was finished and many more coloured pennants were flying bravely around the jousting arena. A number of knights and their squires were riding up and down the field, trying out the feel of the turf and practising the handling of their lances and shields, though today they wore no armour or helmets.

Behind the makeshift platforms for the more privileged spectators, several tilts had been set up in an area reserved for the contestants. These were crude mechanical targets for the combatants to try out their skills, normally used for training young men in the art of jousting.

John watched with a critical eye as several excited, sweating youths galloped their horses towards these devices. One consisted of a long cross-arm pivoted horizontally on a post. From one end hung a shield and on the other a sack full of sand. As the coroner watched with a sardonic grin on his face, he saw a young man charging his heavy horse at the tilt, yelling at the top of his voice, his lance lowered and his shield held before his chest. He rammed the target with his blunted point and ducked, but he miscalculated, and as the beam swung the sack came around violently and struck him on the back of his neck, knocking him clean out of his saddle.

There was raucous laughter from a group of his friends watching the debacle and as the youth picked himself up from the dried mud he screamed abuse at them and stalked across to punch the ringleader in the face. A scuffle began immediately, but broke up as two stewards and a couple of men-at-arms began yelling at them. De Wolfe knew that this was the sort of bad tempered high spirits that could readily develop into a full-scale riot if not nipped in the bud, and he hoped that Ralph Morin would have enough men down here tomorrow to keep the peace.

He spent almost an hour on the field, watching the preparations and viewing the practice bouts with an experienced eye. The older knights were naturally more expert, many of them spending much of their time away from the battlefield going around the tournaments. Some had come from as far afield as France, the Low Countries and even Germany, all in search of winnings in the form of horses and armour. There would be no chance of ransom money in a small tourney like this, as there were no mock battles like those allowed near Salisbury and the other official tournament fields, but the professional jousters filled in between these events by visiting as many of the smaller events as they could manage.

A number of old soldiers were standing around the edge of the field, some of them aged and crippled in past battles. They were content to study these young men going through their paces, and watched with critical but dreamy eyes, seeing themselves long ago, when their joints were still supple and their eyesight keen.

John stood for a while talking to them, realising that he too would soon approach their condition, a spectator with only memories and scars to remind him of his former prowess.

Then he shook his head angrily, telling himself that there was plenty of strength left in his arm and iron in his soul, sufficient to show these callow youths a thing or two! He stalked off and, as if to confirm to himself his own virility, directed his steps purposefully towards the Bush Inn, where a pretty young woman waited to prove that senility and impotence were still well in the future.

Sir John de Wolfe spent a pleasant hour in Nesta's small room, a corner of the loft partitioned off from the rows of penny mattresses that were fully booked every night for the duration of the fair. They made relaxed, languorous love, the grim-faced coroner becoming a different man in the company of his amorous mistress. His lean, dark face softened and his eyes sparkled as he kissed and cuddled her - or 'cwtched' her, as they said in Welsh, for the pair always spoke in the Celtic tongue that was her first language and the one that John had learned at his mother's knee, for she was also of Welsh stock. Her mother had been Cornish, but her father was Welsh, so half of John's blood was Celtic in origin. Even Gwyn spoke this 'language of heaven' with them, much to Thomas de Peyne's annoyance, for the western Welsh of Cornwall was almost identical with that of Wales, and quite similar to that of the Bretons across the Channel.

In the early evening they made their way down the ladder again, as Nesta claimed that such a busy night needed her attendance to make sure that her girls and Edwin were satisfying her customers' wants for food and drink. The taproom was crowded, the regulars being outnumbered by the many strangers who were attending the fair. The renowned food of the Bush was much in demand, and Nesta had hired an extra ale-maid and a kitchen skivvy for these hectic few days.

The one-eyed potman had still managed to keep John's favourite bench and small table free beside the hearth, in which an autumn fire was now glowing from a circle of logs arranged like the spokes of a wheel.

The coroner sat there chatting to various acquaintances, as he contentedly downed a large pot of ale and later ate his way through a thick trencher covered in slices of roast pork and fried onions, with a pewter dish of boiled beans on the side. Life seemed tolerably good at the moment, with both his stomach and his loins satisfied. The only cloud on his horizon was the thought of his brother-in-law sitting at his own table in Martin's Lane, but he could hardly deny his own wife's right to entertain her only brother, as long as John was not forced to be present.

As dusk began to fall, Edwin went around the noisy, smoke-filled taproom and lit the tallow dips that sat in sconces around the walls. Candles were too expensive for most people, so small dishes of mutton fat with a floating wick were used to give a feeble light. Soon afterwards, a small figure entered and approached de Wolfe's table, diffidently sliding on to the stool opposite. Thomas de Peyne was not over-fond of taverns, his priestly upbringing leading him to consider them dens of iniquity. Even after a year in the coroner's service, he rarely entered one except when his duties demanded. This was one such occasion, as he had some news for his master.

'Crowner, I've been to the priory, as you commanded,' he announced in his rather squeaky voice. 'That man Terrus has recovered his senses - in fact, he's almost back to normal!'

John's black brows rose, as he had not been expecting the silversmith's servant to recover this quickly, if at all.

'Has he said anything useful?'

'The infirmarian allowed me into his cell for a few moments. Terrus told me that two men on horseback attacked them, and although he recollects nothing after being struck on the head, he now remembers something about them.'

John felt that Gwyn's long-windedness was rubbing off on his clerk, but held his impatience in check. 'And what was that?'

'He claims that they were not ruffianly outlaws though they would hardly be on horses if they were.

Though not gentlemen, he felt they were a better class of body servants - or maybe some manner of I squires to lesser gentry. They wore plain but good tunics and breeches and their horses had decent harnesses.

'Would he recognise them again, if he saw them?'

Thomas nodded emphatically. 'I asked him that question directly and he seemed in no doubt about one of them.'

De Wolfe glowered into his ale as he drank the last drop. It was a damned nuisance that the fair would finish in two days' time, for the chances were that these men had arrived in the area to attend it and would most likely be gone as soon as the fair ended.

'How soon will this fellow be up and about?' he demanded.

The clerk's peaky face brightened. 'Remarkably, by tomorrow, according to the monks who are caring for him. He has a constitution like an ox, they said, and is already off his pallet arid demanding to be allowed to return home to Totnes. They will be glad to be rid of him, as he's eating too much and upsetting their quiet life in the priory.'

The coroner considered this for a moment. 'Then if I send Gwyn and a hired horse down there tomorrow, would they release him to us? I need him to identify the assailants, if he can.'

Thomas nodded. 'I'm sure they will, Crowner. Apart from his being knocked senseless and dumped in the river, his other injuries are no threat to his life.' Gwyn would have left the city for his hut in St Sidwells by now, to beat the closing of the gates at curfew, but John felt there would be plenty of time for him to give his orders first thing the next morning. Thomas made his escape from the alehouse to return to his free lodgings in one of the canon's houses in the close, where he had the use of a thin mattress in the servants' quarters. John sat on in the Bush for a long while, being content to have Nesta's company intermittently, between her bustling about between the patrons and haranguing her servants over the business of keeping her customers filled with food and ale.