The Elixir of Death (4 page)

'I was going down to Challaborough beach the evening before last, as someone said they saw a cask washed up. It may have been flotsam full of something, like raisins or wine, so I was prepared to report it.'
 

He said this virtuously, though everyone, including the coroner, knew very well that he would have been more interested in acquiring salvaged goods for the village - or even himself - rather than for either his lord or the King, to whom all such flotsam legally belonged.
 

'Anyway, I saw no cask, but when I was on the sands, a crabber came running round from Warren Point and said he had found a dead body!'
 

Vado explained that Warren Point was the end of the bluff where they had looked across at Burgh Island.
 

The onlookers in the hall drew perceptibly nearer to the table, eager to hear the story again, though Osbert had regaled them with it many times over the past day or so. Drama and excitement were in short supply in such a remote place as Ringmore.
 

'Who was this crabber?' demanded de Wolfe. 'He must be accounted as the First Finder.'
 

This announcement was met with blank stares from both bailiff and reeve. 'We don't really understand this new crowner business, begging your pardon, sir,' confessed the bailiff. 'All I was told last year by my lord's steward in Totnes was that, unless they died in the bosom of their family, all corpses must be reported to Exeter without delay.'
 

De Wolfe sighed and dropped his small eating dagger on to the table. It was over a year since the Chief Justiciar had revived the old Saxon office of coroner, but most of the minor officials in England still seemed ignorant of the procedures.
 

'Listen, for Christ's sake! It's simple enough!' he said with his tongue in his cheek, for it wasn't simple at all. 'When someone dies suddenly, whether of violence or poison or anything other than sickness or old age, then whoever comes across the corpse is the "First Finder". He has to raise the hue and cry by knocking up the four nearest households and starting a search for the killer, if one is suspected.'
 

'What if it's just a child who falls into the millpond, Crowner?' objected a toothless man standing amongst the listeners. 'Or a lad who gets gored by a bull? We've had both those this past autumn. Are we to go racing round the village, looking for a murderer who doesn't exist?'
 

'Then use your common sense, man!' snapped John irritably. 'But they still have to be reported to the coroner. The reeve or bailiff must inform me without delay, either directly or through your lord's steward.'
 

There was a disbelieving rumble from the group of village worthies.
 

'Tis a mortal long ride to Exeter, just to say that some old fellow has broken his neck falling from a hay-wagon,' complained another man.
 

'It's also the will of King Richard's Council,' rasped the coroner. 'I didn't make the laws, but it's my job to see they are kept. Any breach of the rules means an amercement against the offender or his village, so it doesn't pay to flaunt them.'
 

At the mention of fines, the small crowd fell silent and watched sullenly as John de Wolfe picked up his knife and began hacking again at his trencher. Gwyn grinned to himself under the shelter of his ale-soaked moustache - he had heard all this before at a dozen places across the county, as the over-taxed population digested news of another means for the Lionheart's ministers to screw more money out of them to pay for his German ransom and his French wars.
 

'So tell me again about these corpses,' demanded John, belching and picking up his ale jar to wash down the salty fish and the fatty pork.
 

Osbert picked up his tale where he had left off. 'I don't know this crabber's name, but I can find out in the morning. He's from up Bigbury way, I know him by sight. Anyway, he takes me to the high-water mark and shows me this body - and damn me, if there wasn't another one, fifty paces away.' -
 

The bailiff, sitting with a jar alongside the coroner, took up the tale.
 

'When Osbert came back with the news, I went down with two other cottars and searched all along the shore of the bay, this side of the river. We found another dead 'un, then came across the vessel itself, beached fairly high up between the Warren and Sharpland Point.'
 

'Why did you think the ship belonged to Thorgils of Dawlish?' bleated Thomas. 'Could you read the name on its bow?'
 

William Vado shook his head sadly. 'I've got no learning, sir. But when we-found these poor dead shipmen, I sent back for our priest to shrive them. He's the only man hereabouts who knows his letters and he said the cog was called the
Mary and Child Jesus
.'
 

Osbert piped up again. 'The crabber, who sells his catch and some other fish in Salcombe, says he's seen the vessel berthed there in the past and knew it came from up Dawlish way.' ,
 

De Wolfe nodded, as he knew that Thorgils the Boatman, as he was universally known, called at all the South Devon ports to collect cargo for his endless runs back and forth to Normandy and Brittany.
 

'But this was no ordinary shipwreck, you claim?'
 

Vado shook his blond bullet-head. 'They were knifed, Crowner! No doubt of it, though I make no claim to being either a soldier or an apothecary. That's why I rode straightway to Totnes to ask my lord's steward what was to be done.'
 

'And the bodies and the wreck? You have made them secure?' demanded the coroner.
 

The bailiff nodded virtuously. 'The cadavers are in the church here. We couldn't leave them on the beach till you came. With tides rising with this moon and the wind freshening, they might have been washed back out to sea. Couldn't do anything with the ship until she's lightened of her cargo, but I've set a man and a boy on guard at the head of the beach to keep off any pillagers.' His face darkened as he contemplated the neighbouring villages. 'Those bloody people from Bigbury and Aveton would strip the wreck down to her last dowel-pins, given half a chance.'
 

De Wolfe turned to his officer. 'Gwyn, how many crew does Thorgils usually carry?'
 

'Three or four, besides himself, so there's at least one not accounted for. Was he carrying goods for you on his outbound voyage?'
 

The coroner nodded. 'He took a cargo of wool bales and some finished cloth from Topsham across to Harfleur. I don't know what he was due to bring back. We had no orders for him, but he's hardly likely to have come back empty.'

John de Wolfe was in partnership with Hugh de Relaga, one of Exeter's two portreeves, the leaders of the city burgesses. When John had given up campaigning a couple of years earlier, he had invested the loot he had accumulated in two decades of fighting abroad in a wool exporting business with de Relaga. Though he was only a sleeping partner, he derived a steady profit from the enterprise, more than sufficient to fulfill the legal necessity of a coroner having an income of at least twenty pounds a year. This requirement was in theory a safeguard against corruption, as the King's Council naively thought that anyone with such riches would have no need to embezzle from public funds.
 

When the visitors had finished the food on the table, they pulled their stools around the edge of the fire-pit and sat with the bailiff and a few of the other villagers. Their pots were refilled by the young servants, and as darkness fell outside rush-lamps were lit and set on sconces around the walls, adding a dim light to the flames that flickered from the fire as more wood was stacked on to it. This was a time of day that John enjoyed, feeling a warm glow from the food and ale inside him and the radiance of the fire outside. Though he was as fond of a woman's company as any man, he felt most at home with plain and sturdy men such as these, telling tales of old battles and country yarns of ghostly hounds and evil spirits roaming the moors.
 

There were several former archers among the company tonight, and they could match the tales that Gwyn and John could spin about campaigns in Ireland and France, though unlike the coroner and his officer none had been out to the Holy Land on the last Crusade. The dozen men of Ringmore sat absorbed in the talk, this advent of strangers from Exeter being a welcome novelty in the humdrum life of the village. They sat listening to this pair of big men, for Thomas said almost nothing, the little clerk being half asleep on his stool as he nursed his unwanted ale.
 

After a couple of hours swapping yarns, the fatigue of the day and the quarts of ale began to take their toll. The bailiff drifted off to lie with his wife and new baby, while the other men stumbled out into the darkness to find their own tofts.
 

A couple of older servants carried out palliasses of hessian stuffed with dry ferns and laid them around the fire-pit for the visitors. Wrapped in their freshly dried riding cloaks, the coroner's team gratefully settled down for the night, and soon the hall echoed with Gwyn's snores, which drowned the rustle of rodents in the straw and the dreamy whimpers of the dogs that slept among the men around the fire.
 

By dawn, the wind had dropped and the rain had cleared away, so that a watery blue sky streaked with high streamers of cloud greeted the King's officers as they trudged up the muddy track between the manor house and the little church. After quickly breaking their fast on oatmeal gruel and coarse rye bread, with the promise of a better meal later on, they had followed William Vado and his reeve Osbert out into the bailey, where two other men were waiting. One was the sexton, a cottar whose duties included looking after the church, the other the village priest himself, a burly man with cheeks and nose covered with a network of purple veins, which suggested to John that his contacts with the spiritual world came mainly via a wine flask.
 

Introduced by the bailiff as Father Walter, the custodian of souls in Ringmore mumbled some curt greeting and set off ahead of them to his church, built in Saxon times. This was a small structure of weathered stone, a bare box barely a dozen paces long. It was roofed with wooden shingles, most of which were thick with moss. There was no bell-arch nor porch - it was just a rectangular room with one door and half a dozen arrow-slits for lighting. It compared poorly in both size and construction with the tithe barn next door, indicating the relative importance which the Archdeacon of Totnes assigned to pastoral duties against the collection of taxes.
 

The parish priest crossed the churchyard inside its ring of old yew trees and hauled open the creaking door to admit them. In the pale morning light, de Wolfe saw a bare chamber with a simple table at the far end serving as the altar, bearing a tin cross and two wooden candlesticks.
 

'There they are, God rest them,' muttered Walter rather grudgingly, and joined Thomas in making the sign of the Cross. In front of the altar, on the floor of beaten earth, lay three still figures, the upper part of each covered by an empty sack to serve as a shroud.
 

John de Wolfe stalked towards them, his characteristic stoop making him appear to the bailiff like some large crow as he hovered over the bodies. Bending, he pulled the sack away from the nearest corpse and Gwyn did the same for the other two.
 

'God blast whoever did this!' snarled the coroner. 'It is Thorgils, just as I feared. '
 

'And I recognise these other two,' boomed Gwyn. 'They're his crew members, though I don't recall their names.'
 

The three cadavers lay pale and waxy on the floor, dressed in the simple attire of shipmen - a short, belted tunic of faded blue and stout breeches, their feet bare.
 

Gwyn bent and picked up one of the hands of the man in the middle.
 

'Still some death stiffness remaining, so they've not been dead more than a couple of days in this cold weather.' He squinted at the skin of the palms and fingerpads, which was wrinkled and sodden. 'Yet they were long enough in the water to get washerwoman's fingers.'
 

John stood silently, looking at the faces of the three victims. Thorgils was a grey-bearded man of about sixty years, the other two were stocky seamen probably in their twenties. As de Wolfe stood in pensive contemplation of a man he had known for much of his life, the bailiff stole a look at the coroner. He saw a tall, sinewy man who gave an overall impression of blackness. At forty-one, De Wolfe still had hair the colour of jet, which he wore longer than most Norman knights, swept back from his forehead and curling down to the nape of his neck. Luxuriant eyebrows of the same colour overhung deep-set dark eyes and his long, gaunt face carried a big hooked nose. Though he had no beard or moustache, his cheeks were usually dark with stubble between his weekly shaves with a sharp knife. The only relieving feature of this forbidding visage was the full lips, which the bailiff suspected were a sign of latent passion and a fondness for the ladies. De Wolfe's garb suited his face, as he wore a long sombre grey tunic under his mottled wolf skin mantle. One of the archers had told Vado that during the campaigns in Ireland the coroner had been known as 'Black John' from his predilection for dark clothing and often equally dark moods.