The Elixir of Death (5 page)

De Wolfe suddenly moved, jerking the bailiff from his contemplation of the coroner. 'Let's see these wounds, Gwyn,' he commanded, bending to the corpse of the ship-master. Between them, they unbuckled Thorgils' wide leather belt and raised his tunic.
 

'Look on his back, Crowner,' muttered the bailiff, starting forward to help. Turning the body over on to its bearded face, they soon saw that there were two stab wounds in the ship-master's back, between the shoulder blades. The tunic had corresponding cuts, though there was little more than pinkish discoloration on the surrounding cloth. When they looked at the two younger men, the findings were much the same, though one of them had three stab wounds.
 

Thomas de Peyne, still sensitive to these sights of fatal violence even after more than a year in the coroner's service, held his hand to his mouth and murmured between his fingers.
 

'Why so little blood, Crowner?'
 

'They've all been in the damned sea!' grated de Wolfe, his temper made even shorter by the sight of a friend so callously slain - even if he had been cuckolding him for years.
 

'Whatever blood escaped has been washed away,' added Gwyn, ever eager to show his expertise in matters of violence. 'That's why the tunic is hardly soiled. He must have been pitched into the water soon after the knifing, so that the blood had no time to congeal in the cloth.'
 

William Vado and the men from the village hovered behind the coroner and his men, staring with interest at their activities. Rough countrymen such as these were no strangers to death, whether of animals, their families or their fellows, for life was hard in these remote areas, where disease, accidents and sometimes winter starvation carried off many people before they reached middle age. Murder was quite uncommon, however, and this was a novelty that they had no intention of missing, their eyes following the coroner's hands as he traced the outline of the wounds.

'These are peculiarly wide stabbings, Gwyn,' growled de Wolfe, pulling the edges of one of the wounds apart with his fingers. 'Surely more than two inches across. What sort of knife made these?'
 

The Cornishman, crouching down alongside his master, scratched his russet hair, which was as disheveled as a hayrick in a storm.
 

'Not the usual dagger, Crowner! Yet they seem too clean cut for a broadsword. And you don't dig someone two or three times in the back with a sword!'
 

John grunted and slid a forefinger into one of the holes. He frowned then pulled it out again and stuck the bloody digit into several more wounds, moving to the other bodies to test them in a similar fashion. His finger penetrated up to the knuckle and when he pulled it out, there was an obscene sucking sound which made the sensitive Thomas shudder.
 

'Very odd! I get the feeling that the tracks curve inside the body, rather than go straight in,' de Wolfe muttered, almost to himself. Wiping his finger on the tunic of the youngest corpse, he stood up and stared down again at the bodies. 'No other injuries ... not that the poor devils needed anything more.'
 

'And no sign of a fight, for their fists are free of any injury,' added Gwyn. 'Stabbed in the back unawares by some cowardly bastard.'
 

De Wolfe glared at his companion. 'I think you mean "bastards",' he corrected. 'One attacker couldn't do this alone without the two other sailors fighting back! The crew must have been jumped by several assailants at the same time.'
 

'Especially if there was another seaman whose body hasn't been found,' cut in Thomas, his sharp mind overcoming his repugnance at the morbid scene.
 

'Cover the poor devils up again!' commanded the coroner, stepping back to allow the village men to spread the sacks over the victims.
 

'There's nothing more we can do for them, but I'll have to hold an inquest later this morning.'
 

'What about the corpses?' asked Thomas. 'Will they be buried here or taken back to their homes in Dawlish?' De Wolfe shrugged. 'It's a hell of long way to carry them, either on a cart or slung across the back of sumpter horses. I'll have to ask the families what they want done.'
 

'You knew these men before this?' asked the bailiff.
 

'I knew Thorgils, the ship-master. He was the main carrier for the goods our merchant enterprise send across to Brittany and Normandy - sometimes even to Flanders.'
 

He saw no point in mentioning that Thorgils' wife Hilda had been his mistress on and off since they were both young. The lissom blonde was the daughter of the reeve of Holcombe, one of the de Wolfe family's two manors on the coast near Teignmouth. Though five years older, John had grown up with Hilda, and by the time she was thirteen they were lovers, albeit clandestinely in the hay-loft or out in the woods. He had gone off to the wars before he was twenty, and though they had reconsummated their romance at intervals over the succeeding years, she had eventually married Thorgils, a much older man, while John had been pushed into his loveless marriage with Matilda de Revelle seventeen years earlier.

As John stood over the slain body of Hilda's husband, he felt a twinge of conscience that he had wronged this old man, even if Thorgils had never known about it. De Wolfe also had to suppress a voice in his head that told him that Hilda was now free, a delectable widow still only in her thirties. His conscience was not troubling him in respect of his own wife, but because of his regular mistress Nesta, the Welsh tavern-keeper with whom he was almost sure he was in love.
 

As he stood pensively staring at the hessian-covered corpses, he felt the eyes of the other men upon him, waiting expectantly for his next move.
 

'Are we going to look at this vessel now, Crowner?' prompted Gwyn.
 

With an almost dog-like shake of his shoulders, John jerked himself back into the present and uttered one of his characteristic throat-clearing noises, which could mean almost anything. Marching towards the door, he beckoned to the others with a sweep of his hand, and a few moments later they were back in the manor bailey, climbing on to their horses, which had been made ready by the youthful grooms.
 

William Vado rode ahead of them and Osbert the reeve and two other men loped easily behind them, as the horses went at a mere walking pace along the rough track out of the village. They retraced their route of the previous evening towards the bare downs behind the cliffs, but then descended the little wooded valley that led to the fishing huts that John had seen on the small beach. Although the rain and wind had died down, it was much colder, and the first chills of approaching winter were in the air. John wore leather riding gauntlets, but most of the other men had rags wrapped around their hands to keep some feeling in their fingers. The two village men, who seemed to be some sort of assistants to the reeve, were bare-footed, but their horny soles seemed impervious to both sharp stones and the cold. When they reached Challaborough beach, the bailiff turned left along a track that followed the edge of the low cliffs that formed Warren Point, the promontory opposite Burgh Island. Sheep scampered out of the way as they turned the corner above the estuary, where William Vado led them down a gully out on to the beach.
 

The firm sand stretched for many hundreds of yards, both over to the island and far across the river to sand dunes on the other side of the estuary, towards Thurlestone, named after the huge perforated rock pillar on the shore. The tide was coming in, but the surf was still far off, a long way short of the wreck, which lay away to their left. As they crossed the wide beach, de Wolfe noticed the imprints of bare feet running ahead of them, and soon they were met by a ragged old man, swathed in an uncured cow-hide, and a boy of about twelve, shivering in a threadbare tunic.
 

'This is the pair I left on guard,' explained the bailiff, though what such a frail-looking couple could do against a determined band of pillagers was beyond John's understanding.
 

'Haven't seen a soul, William,' said the old man in a quavering voice. 'Naught but a couple of tide fishermen going across to Bantham strand.'

They walked up to the beached vessel and circled it as it lay on its side on the sand. There was a line of seaweed on the beach just above it, showing the limit of the high tide. A typical trading cog, it was about forty feet long and had the general shape of a Norse long boat, but broader, with a high free board and almost vertical stem- and sternposts. It was half decked, there being no planking over the central section of the hull, which was used for carrying cargo. Thomas, the only literate one among them, read out the name chiseled into the upper strake next to the stem-post.
 

'
Mary and Child Jesus
,' he intoned reverently, crossing himself again. 'It's Thorgils' boat right enough.'
 

As they had just seen the ship-master's body lying in Ringmore church, this confirmation seemed superfluous, but John let it pass. He turned to Gwyn, as the authority on seafaring matters.
 

'What's to be done about this? Is it a total wreck?'
 

The Cornishman pulled at the long, drooping ends of his ginger moustache as an aid to thought. 'She's sound enough at the moment, until the rising tides throw her on to those rocks.' He indicated the jagged reefs at the foot of the low cliff, fifty paces away. Advancing right up to the deck of the ship, he inspected the damage before continuing. 'The hull is not breached, so she should float if she was upright.'
 

'So why is it lying on its side?' snapped Thomas, ever ready to contradict the coroner's officer.
 

Gwyn pointed to the canvas cover that had been stretched over the single opening that occupied half the deck area abaft the broken mast. It was ripped across the top and the lower part was bulging outward, as objects pressed against the inner side.
 

'The cargo has shifted, that's why. Whatever they have in the hold has tumbled to one side and capsized her.'
 

'At least it hasn't been stolen yet!' said de Wolfe, with a touch of sarcasm. He clambered on to the bulwark, which was half buried in wet sand. The deck rose vertically in front of him and, with Gwyn's help, he tore down the tattered canvas. There was a rumble and they both stepped aside hastily as several kegs and boxes rolled out of the hold, having lost the support of the hatch cover.
 

The bailiff joined the two larger men as they peered into the gloomy cave that formed the entire inside of the hull. Thomas, sniffing miserably at a dew-drop that dangled from the end of his long, pointed nose, cautiously held back with the other men from the village. A few dozen barrels and a collection of crates lay on the lower ribs of the hull. Several kegs had cracked and a smell of wine permeated the air inside.
 

Gwyn hauled at one of the casks to gauge its weight, then did the same to a crate. 'These are damned heavy. No wonder she keeled over when they shifted!'
 

'Why should that have happened?' demanded John. 'Thorgils was one of the best ship-masters along the coast.'
 

'Not if he was dead, he wasn't!' retorted his officer. 'With the crew stabbed or thrown over the side, the vessel would have broached to in the strong winds and waves we've had these past few days, especially this close to the shore.'
 

He pointed a hand the size of a small ham towards the stern.
 

'With no one at the steering oar nor men to attend to the sail, she would have been thrown on her beam ends and this cargo would have tumbled to one side, preventing her from righting herself.'
 

'So what happened to whoever murdered them? Did they drown as well?' asked Thomas, but no one answered him. The coroner had stepped over the coaming of the hatchway, and as his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom he walked along the planking between the low horizontal ribs.
 

'This isn't only cargo - someone has been living down here,' he rasped.
 

Gwyn and William Vado followed his pointing finger and saw four sodden mattresses floating in the few inches of water between the ribs. They were no more than sacks filled with straw, some of which was spouting from the torn end of one bag.
 

'There's some pots and a broken jug there, too,' observed the bailiff. 'Maybe the crew lived down here?'
 

'No, they would take turns to be on watch and to eat and sleep in that shelter near the stern,' said Gwyn. He indicated the remains of a low structure abaft the hatch, which had been smashed but was still recognisable as a wood-and-canvas hut, little larger than a privy. '
 

'So Thorgils must have been bringing some passengers back from wherever he had been,' mused de Wolfe. 'I know he took our goods to Harfleur at the mouth of the Seine, but God knows where he went after that.'
 

There seemed nothing else to be learned from the vessel. There were no bloodstains on the planking, but given the battering the cog had received from tide, wind and rain, this was to be expected, even if at least three men had been slain there.