The Elixir of Death (10 page)

The cook-maid ladled some hare stew into a bowl for him and set it on a rickety table that was the only furniture, apart from a stool and a straw-filled mattress in the corner, which was her bed. As he sat to eat it, Mary placed a hunk of barley bread in front of him and poured a quart of ale into an earthenware pot.

'That will keep you from starving for another hour, perhaps?' Her manner was one of affectionate bantering, as she was his ally against the two other women in the household. Without her ministrations, he knew that he would go unfed and unclothed as far as Matilda was concerned. She cared nothing for domestic matters, being obsessed only with religion and maintaining her social status as wife of the county coroner and sister to the former sheriff.

'How has she been?' he asked, as he sucked the meaty stew from a spoon carved from a cow's horn.

'Fretting as usual, as she has been ever since she got back from France a few weeks back. And she's wrathful over the fact that you've been away for two nights, God knows where!'
 

He grunted sardonically, as it was the same old story with Matilda. She had pushed him into this job as coroner the previous year, seeing an opportunity to flaunt herself as the consort of the King's Crowner. Yet when he had to be absent on his duties, she complained endlessly that she was left alone and neglected, heedless of the fact that when he was there, she spent most of the time either scolding or ignoring him.

'Where is my dear wife now?' he asked.

'She'll be on her knees at St Olave's until supper-time, listening to Julian Fulk gabbling his Latin.'
 

John dipped the last of his bread in the dregs of the stew. 'She doesn't understand a bloody word of it, but she keeps going there. God's offal, if I didn't know her better, I'd think she was enamoured of that fat clerk.'
 

The cook had squatted on her bed while de Wolfe finished his food and drank the rest of his ale, an easy companionship settling over them. He began telling her of his trip to the south-west of the county, and she was saddened to hear that Hilda was now a widow. Mary was well aware of her master's various infidelities and had met Hilda several times in the past.

'Who could have done such a thing?' she asked, echoing the widow's words. 'And why, if none of the cargo was taken?'
 

As they discussed the mystery, his old hound Brutus ambled in from where he had been sleeping in the wash house and John fondled his smooth brown head as he spoke.

'This affair will take me down to that area more than once, I'm afraid,' he said. 'So my wife will have no lack of opportunity to nag me about being away from home again.'
 

Mary chuckled. 'That's nothing to what you'll suffer when she finds out that this affair will often require you to visit the Widow Hilda!'
 

Her husband's amorous wanderings were no secret from Matilda - in fact most of Exeter was well aware of his fondness for the ladies and for the landlady of the Bush Inn in particular. It was true that almost every prominent knight, burgess, merchant and even many men of the cloth had a mistress or two tucked away somewhere - and the booming trade in the city's brothels suggested that men of all stations in life were little bothered by the Seventh Commandment.

Mary's remark cast a gloom over John's mood, for until then he had forgotten that resurrecting his contact with Hilda, however innocent it might be, was bound to cause more trouble with Matilda. And a little niggle in his mind also suggested that the news might not be too well received at the Bush tavern in Idle Lane.

Though most people ate their main meal of the day around noon, a modern fashion was creeping upon the upper classes to have a substantial supper in the evening. Matilda de Wolfe, never wishing to be outdone by her cronies, had embraced the trend, and when the light had faded on that autumn evening, she and her husband sat down to eat grilled salt fish, then boiled bacon with cabbage and beans, followed by the last of the season's apples, stewed in honey. Mary was an excellent cook, which was why Matilda tolerated her, though relations between them were frigid and distant, as the lady of the house suspected that something had been going on between the maid and her husband. True, she thought the same of almost every woman with whom John came into contact, but she gave the benefit of the doubt to Mary, as eating good food was close to Matilda's heart. In fact, her brief sojourn in Polsloe Priory, where some months earlier she had decided to become a nun, had ended not so much from a failure of religious faith, but from distaste for the dull food and drab raiment, as she was also addicted to fine clothes.

Now they sat in their gloomy hall at either end of a long table, hardly speaking a word, as John's attempts at relating the saga of the wrecked ship and murdered crew had been received in stony silence, once he had revealed that the vessel belonged to Hilda's husband and that, by inference, the attractive blonde was now a widow.

De Wolfe felt his short temper rising, as she so blatantly snubbed his genuine efforts to be civil to her. He sat chewing on the fatty bacon, ripping the tough rind from his teeth with fingers that he felt would be better employed in squeezing the life out of her thick neck. He glared at her from under his black brows, seeing her as if sizing up an adversary on the battlefield. Thickset and heavy, she was not ugly, but was still totally unattractive to him. A square face carried a down turned mouth that gave the impression that there was a permanent bad smell in the vicinity. Her small eyes were heavy lidded and pouches of loose skin beneath them matched those that drooped beneath her chin. Her mouse-brown hair was rarely visible, as she always wore close-fitting wimples and cover-chiefs that made her look like the nun she had fleetingly been after a particularly severe rift between them had sent her in a fit of outrage to the nearby priory of Polsloe.

When they had finished the food, they retired to the hearth, where they sat before a glowing fire, while Mary brought in a jug of wine decanted from a keg and two pottery cups. As they slumped morosely watching the flames and sipping the red liquor from the Loire, de Wolfe again tried to break the oppressive silence by telling her of his plans to get his partner Hugh de Relaga to take over the three ships that had formerly belonged to Thorgils and use them to transport their goods.

'He could get Eustace, that smart young nephew of his, to look after that side of the business - he wanted to get experience of the coroner's work, but I fear he's not really suited. Or nearer the truth, my clerk is jealous of his position and sees him as a threat.'
 

John was certainly lacking in foresight and tact, as this speech put him in double trouble with his surly wife. First, she hated any mention of Thomas de Peyne, that 'fallen and perverted priest', as she called him, despite the fact that he had recently been fully exonerated from his alleged crime in Winchester. So devoted was she to 'men of the cloth' that the notion of a priestly sexual offender was poison to her ears. John's second faux pas was to mention again anything to do with Dawlish, as even an oblique reference to Thorgils' ships reinforced her awareness of Hilda's new availability.

'If all you can think about is that brazen woman down at the coast,' she snapped, 'then you can sit alone to slaver over your fornication!'
 

Hauling herself to her feet, she stomped her way to the door, yelling at the top of her voice for her maid Lucille to attend upon her, leaving John with mixed feelings of annoyance at her rudeness, but relief at being left in peace. He sat by the fire finishing his drink and scratching Brutus under the ear until he was sure that Lucille had finished fussing over Matilda's preparations for bed, setting out her night-shift and primping her hair. There was a small slit in the wall high to one side of the hearth which communicated with the solar, and long experience had trained him to recognise the various sounds that came through it when his wife was up there. She usually berated Lucille for being too rough with her hair or failing to fold her clothes properly. Sometimes the maid would get a slap from her short-tempered mistress and burst into tears. Finally the sounds would subside and John knew that Matilda would be on her knees saying her prolonged prayers before collapsing on to the thick feather mattress on the floor which was their loveless matrimonial bed.

When he was satisfied that all was quiet up above, he threw a couple more oak logs on to the fire and went out to the vestibule for his cloak. Brutus, who knew the routine perfectly, loped after him and when the front door was opened unerringly turned right and set off ahead of his master in the direction of the Bush Inn.

Below Southgate Street, the city of Exeter sloped sharply down towards the river, so much so that one of the lanes was actually terraced, giving it the name of Stepcote Hill. John's destination was Idle Lane, a short track that led from Priest Street, so called from its abundance of clerics' lodgings, across to the top of Stepcote Hill, where the infamous Saracen Inn was situated, a haunt of harlots and thieves. The Bush was the only building in Idle Lane, so named from the waste ground that lay around it after a fire some years earlier. The tavern had recently been rebuilt after its own disastrous fire, which had destroyed everything except the actual masonry walls. It was a square, solid structure, with a high thatched roof that came down almost to head height and gave ample space in the loft for many straw mattresses, rented at a penny a night. There was also a small partitioned bedroom where the attractive landlady slept and often entertained the King's Coroner for the shire of Devon.

This gentleman now ducked his head under the low lintel of the doorway and followed his hound into the large tap room that occupied the whole of the ground floor - a floor of beaten earth covered in fresh rushes, as Nesta was unusually particular about cleanliness, a rarity in the inns of Exeter.

After the chilly evening outside, the fug in the room was both welcome and familiar. A glowing fire in the hearth pit near one wall kept the place warm, and as the logs tonight were dry there was relatively little smoke circulating to smart the eyes and irritate the throat, before it seeped out under the eaves, as there was no chimney. However, the smells of sweat, spilt ale, unwashed bodies and cooking, made up for the lack of fumes, though none of the patrons ever noticed this miasma.

De Wolfe sat at one of the rough tables near the hearth, a wattle screen shielding his back from the draughts from the open door. This was his acknowledged seat, and if someone was already sitting there when he arrived, they hastily found another perch. He looked around and nodded to acquaintances in the crowded taproom, which was filled with men standing with quart pots or sitting at the few other tables scattered around the room. At the back, there was another door leading out into the yard, where the cook shed, the brew-house and the privy were situated, though most patrons lined up against the back fence when ridding themselves of the residue of their ale. Alongside this door was a row of casks and tall crocks, containing the ale and cider brewed by the landlady, which was indisputably the best in the city, as was the food that came from the hut outside.

Brutus slid under the table, peering out hopefully to see whether any of the patrons who were eating had some scraps to throw down to him. As John lowered himself on to his bench, an old man with a lame leg hobbled across with a pottery tankard of best ale.

'Evening, cap'n!' he said, as he had done hundreds of times before. Old Edwin was a former soldier, wounded in the foot and blinded in one eye at the battle of Wexford - the same Irish campaign in which de Wolfe had fought. Edwin had a touching regard for the coroner as a fellow soldier and always used his military title of captain - though privately he always thought of him as 'Black John'.

'Is your mistress about, Edwin?' asked John.

'Out in the cook shed, scolding one of the new girls, sir. Since we opened again after the fire, we've had a couple of useless doxies who couldn't boil water, let alone fry an egg!'
 

De Wolfe supped his ale and had a few words with several men standing near by, one of whom was the master carpenter who had organised most of the rebuilding of the inn, at John's expense. This was the second time he had ploughed money into the tavern, as several years ago he had come to the rescue of Nesta when her husband had died of a sudden fever and left her to run the debt-ridden inn. John had known Meredydd when they campaigned together, as he was an archer from Gwent in South Wales, the home of experts with the longbow. When he gave up fighting, he followed John back to Exeter and took over the ailing Bush, but died before it became profitable. John had come to the aid of his widow and their friendship developed into intimacy and - even though the taciturn John was loath to admit it - into genuine love. More recently, Nesta had narrowly escaped death when the inn was deliberately set on fire, and, once again, John came to her rescue by financing the rebuilding.

'Here she is now, cap'n,' croaked Edwin, his dead white eye rolling horribly as he passed by again with a handful of empty ale-pots. The coroner looked up expectantly, his usually dour expression softened and a rare smile lit up his face at the sight of his mistress threading her way through her patrons. She gave many of them a cheerful greeting or a playful tap on the arm, as her pleasant manner was almost as much an attraction at the Bush as her good food and ale.

'Sir Crowner, I thought you might have left the country, it's so long since I saw you!'