Figure of Hate (20 page)

'That damned fellow de Wolfe is an interfering nuisance! It was he who made the most trouble last week, when poor Hugo had that problem at the tournament. Anyone else would have let the matter rest, but de Wolfe had to make such a song and dance about it!' he ranted. 'And then at the feast afterwards, again it was he who interfered in a gentleman's dispute between Hugo and that slimy bastard de Charterai.' At the mention of the Frenchman, Avelina's head came up and she glared at her stepson.

'That's no way to speak of an honourable knight who is a guest in our country! He was the champion at that tournament and was a Crusader, so he deserves some respect.'

There were a few knowing glances exchanged around the table, including a few covert winks between the ladies' maids. It was common knowledge that Avelina, who had attended the tourney in Exeter along with Beatrice, had met de Charterai on the field at Bull Mead - though only her own handmaiden knew that she had given him one of her kerchiefs to tuck into his sleeve as a favour before he took the field with his lance.

Odo took the initiative again, his solemn face set stubbornly as he returned to the practicalities of the day.

'The coroner will come, whether we like it or not. If the bailiff had not sent for him, the news would still have reached him - the murder of one of the county's manor-lords is not something that goes unnoticed.' Ralph banged his ale jar on the table and snapped his fingers at the old bottler to get him to refill it.

'He'll get short shrift as far as I'm concerned. If he comes pestering me or the ladies for gossip, I'll tell him to clear off our land! We managed perfectly well for centuries without this new-fangled nonsense of a coroner.'

Odo was determined to contradict his brother at every opportunity. 'That's not quite true, Ralph. There was a coroner way back in Saxon times. The office just fell into disuse in Ethelred's time and Hubert Walter has revived it.'

'I don't give a fig for your history lessons, Odo!' shouted the younger man crossly. 'You've often heard what our good neighbour has said about coroners they are just another way of screwing more money out of the population. Amercements and fines and deodands and confiscations! The bastards are just bloody tax collectors under another name, according to Richard de Revelle.'

'And he should know, having been dismissed for being caught with his hand in the royal purse!' cut in Joel mischievously, but this merely served to inflame the volatile Ralph.

'Another vile injustice on the part of this Godforsaken John de Wolfe!' he snarled, glaring at his youngest brother, who in looks was a fresher-faced copy of himself. 'He's long had this hatred for de Revelle, even though he's married to his sister. He plotted his downfall out of sheer malice and what's happened? We've lost a good sheriff and had some old dodderer put in his place, who'll dance to de Wolfe's tune!' Avelina looked at Ralph with cold disdain.

'All this ranting is getting us nowhere. If you've nothing more useful to suggest, we may as well leave it to this coroner to investigate.'

Ralph bridled at her rebuke; he had never liked his stepmother and resented her taking his dead mother's place.

'Indeed I do have something useful to suggest, madam!' he snapped. 'We have a good neighbour not four miles away who knows more of the law than this swine of a coroner. I think we should prevail upon him to come over and advise us in our hour of need.'

'You mean Richard de Revelle?' asked Odo, for once not disagreeing with his main rival. 'It's true that as Devon's sheriff he was responsible for enforcing the law in the county, so he must know it backwards.'
 

'Backwards is probably right!' said Joel sarcastically. 'Don't forget that he was dismissed in disgrace for malpractice.'

Again Ralph slammed a fist angrily on the table, making the wine cups rattle. 'Watch your words, young man! He was a victim of a conspiracy, concocted by this de Wolfe, because of his leanings towards Prince John.'

'Which I hope none of us here shares,' observed Odo carefully. 'We are all staunch King's men. Let us not forget what happened in Nottingham and Tickhill last year!'

He was referring to the final rout of John's rebellion when the Lionheart returned home from his captivity in Germany, but again his sarcastic brother Joel felt obliged to cap his words.

'No need to go as far as Nottingham, brothers! Just remember that in our own county, down at Berry Castle, the traitor Henry de la Pomeroy had his surgeon cut open the veins of his wrists, rather than face the wrath of Coeur de Lion! We need to think carefully before climbing on to de Revelle's wagon.'
 

Avelina, whose social excursions obviously gave her more insight into the political scene than her stepsons, nodded her agreement.

'I hear that he still has ambitions which would be fulfilled if Prince John gained the upper hand,' she observed sagely. 'I wouldn't trust our neighbour very far. He was always badgering my William to sell him six carucates of that part of our manor which abutted on to his land - and for a trifling sum.'

Ralph jumped from the table to stride impatiently back and forth, cider slopping from his quart jug as he paced.

'This is foolishness! What in God's name has his politics to do with the former sheriff giving us some help over this tragedy? He knows about hunting miscreants and about the law that can be applied in the manor when they are caught. Let us send for him quickly, before this interfering knight arrives from Exeter.'

He omitted to mention that, being good friends with de Revelle, he also wanted this senior man's support in any contest with Odo over the succession to the manor, in exchange for selling him the land that Avelina had spoken of. Though no one was enthusiastic, there seemed no good reason why Richard's advice should not be sought. More by default, Ralph Peverel got his way and volunteered to go across to de Revelle's demesne immediately to explain the situation.

The sound of his gelding's hoofs had hardly died away when a figure hurried up the steps and, pulling off his woollen cap, advanced into the hall in a state of some excitement. It was the falconer, who, like the rest of the servants, had been out checking on who was missing. He approached the table where the family were gathered, looking apprehensively from one to the other, unsure as to which one was now the master, to whom he should deliver his news. Solving the dilemma by moving his head from side to side and speaking to no one in particular, he blurted out the news that Agnes, the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of the cottars, was missing.

'She was one of the skivvies in the wash house, sirs. A girl no better than she should be, if you get my meaning. Not seen these past few hours, since the poor master was found dead.'

With Ralph absent, there was no one to challenge Odo, and he now rose to his feet and glared fiercely at the falconer.

'Are you saying that she was the girl who was with Sir Hugo last night?' he demanded.

Joel also sprang to his feet and, red faced, confronted his eldest brother.

'Have you no tact, Odo? Think of poor Beatrice having to listen to this!'

Hugo's new widow blushed, but more from the younger brother's chivalrous words than any revulsion or shame at the mention of her late husband's well known carnal pursuits.

'I think it would be best if I retired to my chamber,' she said tactfully, and, with much fussing of maids, both women rose and gracefully vanished up the staircase to the upper floor. Odo resumed his interrogation of the falconer, a grizzled man of forty with skin like the bark of an oak tree.

'Well, was this the doxy that he was covering in the ox byre?'

'So says another maid in the wash hut. Agnes had been with him before, when it seems he had given her a whole penny for her trouble.'

Roger Viel coughed delicately and spoke up.

'I know the girl, she has a face like a pudding, but the rest of her is shapely enough. I fail to see why she should harm our lord, especially when he was so generous to her just for lying on her back for him.'

Odo rasped his fingers over two days' growth of gingery stubble on his cheeks. 'Nevertheless, it is vital that we find her and see what she has to say. If there is no one else forthcoming as a suspect, then maybe she will have to serve as the culprit!'

He waved the falconer out, with orders to search the whole village until she was caught. There was nowhere else she could go, as to leave the manor meant eventual death from exposure or starvation. No other village would take her in, and a girl could not even flee into the nearby forests to become an outlaw.

There was just one place she could go, however, and even though the fugitive was an immature drab of a laundry girl, desperation drove her to take advantage of it.

Sir Richard de Revelle arrived at Sampford something over an hour later, hurrying back with Ralph Peverel to make sure of getting there ahead of his arch-enemy, the coroner.

His keenness to help his neighbours was in part due to the chance of confounding his brother-in-law, but also as a potential lever in securing the desirable parcel of land he wanted. It was a wide tongue of pasture and forest which projected into his manor boundary. If he could acquire it, this land would form a continuous stretch which, when ploughed into strip fields, would form a valuable addition to his estate. Previous offers had been adamantly rejected by both old William and Hugo Peverel, and he had been working on the more amenable Ralph for several months, hoping that he could persuade the family to part with the ground.

Richard marched into the hall as if he owned the whole manor, slapping his soft leather gloves against his thigh as he advanced to the far table, where once again the ladies and all the other brothers were seated.

Ralph ushered him to a bench and beckoned imperiously to a servant to bring wine. De Revelle, with hand on heart, inclined his head courteously to the ladies and murmured platitudes of sympathy on the sad loss of Hugo. His foxy face was triangular, narrowing below his moustached mouth to a small-pointed beard, an affectation unusual among the Norman aristocracy, who were usually clean shaven, Similarly, his fair wavy hair was slightly longer than the usual cropped top above shaven sides that most men affected. A dandified man, he wore a long tunic of fine green wool under his yellow riding cloak, with golden embroidery around the square neck and lower hem. A wide leather belt, carrying a dagger and pouch, was of oriental style, designed to give the impression that he had been to the Holy Land, though in fact he had never ventured beyond France.

'I have told Sir Richard the sparse facts surrounding my poor brother's vile death ...' began Ralph, but he was immediately interrupted by Odo.

'Since you left here, there has been more news. The girl has been found - and lost again.'

'Satan's horns, what's that supposed to mean?'
 

'The wench that Hugo took to the ox byte was one of the wash-house drabs. But before she could be taken, she gained sanctuary in the church!'

Ralph, the most short-tempered of the whole family, stared at Odo for a moment, then laughed. 'Sanctuary. Don't be so bloody foolish, brother. Let's get her dragged out and given a good beating - then have her brought here for us to question.'

Beatrice smacked her small hand on the table in front of her.

'You can't do that! It's sacrilege and I expect it's illegal.'

Joel, who wished to support Beatrice in everything, agreed.

'Besides, if you want to thrash senseless every girl that Hugo ever laid, there'll be little laundry or cooking done in the village,' he added cynically, forgetting his previous concern for Beatrice's sensibilities.

Ralph ignored his facetious younger brother and addressed himself to Odo and de Revelle.

'This is nonsense!. The girl is nothing but a cottar's daughter, the lowest of the low,' he snarled. 'Why the daft bitch wants to seek sanctuary is beyond me, unless of course she did kill Hugo! Send someone to get the damned wench out of that church, before I lose my temper!'

Refusing to acknowledge Ralph's assumption of supremacy, Odo turned to the former sheriff for advice.

'What do you think about this, Richard?' He deliberately used his Christian name to emphasise his own equality in rank with another manor-lord. De Revelle stroked his little beard, an affectation he had when giving the impression of deep thought.

'It's an offence, of course, the breaking of sanctuary,' he said in his rather high-pitched voice. 'There is a rigid scale of penalties set down by law. But it is the Church, rather than the Crown, that sets its face so strongly against it, especially after King Henry's blunder in sending those knights after Thomas Becket.'
 

'So what should we do?' persisted Odo. 'You are the legal authority here.'

De Revelle scowled. 'Until I am reinstated after the foul conspiracy that deprived me of my shrievalty, I have no authority - but therefore am free to give advice, man to man.'

'And that advice would be?' questioned Ralph, returning to the fray.

'This is your manor,' brayed Richard. 'The slut is your property, the church is yours and no doubt you pay the priest who serves it. So drag the wretched girl out without further delay!'

The reeve led the coroner's team into the village up the last stretch of track that came from the high road to Taunton along the Culm valley. De Wolfe had never been to Sampford Peverel before; to him it was just a name, one of the scores of manors that dotted the county. Many belonged to the bishop, others to abbeys or the Templars or directly to the King himself, but the remainder were held by knights and barons, either as freehold tenants-in-chief of the King or leased from a greater landowner. He knew that the Peverels had been here since the middle of the century, the family having originally come over soon after the Conquest - some said as bastard relations of William himself.