The Manor of Death (17 page)

'I want to be with all my old friends, for I'm damned sure they'll not be in heaven,' he growled into her ear. 'And at least I'll get away from my wife, for with all the praying and bobbing up and down that she does, she must have assured herself a place alongside St Peter.'

He said this partly to tease Nesta, for he knew she was a devout woman with a strong belief in the faith, even if she was not a fanatical churchgoer. In the villages, attendance at Mass was virtually obligatory, with a parish priest ready to chase up and castigate those who fell by the wayside - but in a city like Exeter, full of churches with no strict parish system, it was virtually impossible to keep track of backsliders.

'But surely you must be a believer and not a heretic, John?' she demanded, rising up on one elbow, deliciously exposing her bosom.

De Wolfe, becoming somewhat philosophical in the afterglow of lovemaking, considered this for a moment. Everyone was brought up from infancy to revere the faith, attend church and never to question the dictats of the priests, who were powerful figures with all the weapons of eternal damnation at their disposal. Apart from a few madmen, no one disputed the teachings of the Church, which pervaded everyone's lives. John accepted that he was no exception; he had never once even thought of denying the creed or wondering what proof there was of God, the devil and all the saints and angels. Yet he was supremely uninterested in the whole business, being at the opposite pole from Matilda, who lived and breathed her religious faith. If there was one area that he occasionally wondered about, it was the ritual of the Church, rather than the underlying concept of God and all His works. If Christ was a lowly carpenter, preaching poverty and humility, why did bishops and archbishops and the Pope need to further His mission by wearing outrageously ornate garments and parade around swinging incense? Even when these faintly sacrilegious thoughts came to him, he afforded them no importance. He was in general an unimaginative man, preferring the concrete evidence of his own eyes and ears. To him, life consisted of eating, sleeping, fighting, doing his duty to his king - and bedding a woman when the opportunity presented.

Nesta's question was still unanswered, but she stayed propped up waiting for it, her hazel eyes fixed worriedly upon his.

'No, I'm no heretic, my love,' he said slowly. 'I just don't care much about it all, to tell the truth. What is to be, will be!'

With this fatalistic rejoinder, he slid his arms around her and drew her down under the covers again.

CHAPTER SIX

In which the Keeper makes himself unpopular

The Saturday of the Easter festival was a neutral sort of day, between the tragic sadness of Good Friday's Crucifixion and the triumphant drama of the Sabbath's Risen Lord. People went about their business to some extent, as food had to be bought from the stalls, bread had to be baked, animals had to be fed and meals prepared.

For one man - and his much less enthusiastic clerk - the day was to prove considerably more active. Sir Luke de Casewold, Keeper of the King's Peace for Axminster and a wide area around it, decided that he would pursue his suspicions about Axmouth by checking on the activities of the officials there and the contents of the barns and storehouses along the estuary.

He rose early and left his house in Axminster to rouse Hugh Bogge from his nearby cottage. They collected their horses from his stable and covered the five miles to Axmouth in less than an hour. There were six vessels moored along the bank below the village and several more were to be seen on the opposite side at Seaton. Where possible, the shipmasters had arranged their voyages so that they would spend Easter in port, but the Keeper soon discovered that
The Tiger
was not one of them.

'We'll call on that rascally tally-man first,' announced Luke, trotting his mare to a cottage halfway between the village gate and the sea. It stood between two large thatched sheds with high doors like hay-barns, though. these were firmly closed with long bars across the front, each secured with a massive iron padlock.

A crude fence around the croft hemmed in two goats, a sow, several chickens and two small children contentedly playing in the mud. De Casewold dismounted and stood at the wicker hurdle that served as a gate and yelled for the Customs official.

'John Capie! I need to talk to you. Get yourself out here!'

A woman's head poked out through the open doorway, then was quickly withdrawn after she had screeched at the infants to come inside. As they scuttled to obey, a man appeared, looking dishevelled and obviously not long risen from his bed. He was about thirty, thin and with a long sallow face, with hollow cheeks and an unshaven spread of black stubble around his jaw. His hair, which looked as if a tempest had just blown through it, was of the same dark colour, and he futilely ran a hand through it to try to tame it into submission. He wore the same short dun-coloured tunic and green breeches that Luke had seen on him at his last visit.

Capie peered sleepily at the visitor and groaned as soon as he recognised who it was. 'God's guts, Keeper, don't you know it's Easter?' he complained.

'The king's business must be attended to every day, Capie,' he said pompously. 'I need to talk to you - right now!'

The tally-man looked anxiously over his shoulder at the open door, from where children's cries and his wife's exasperated scolding could be heard.

'Not in there. It's bloody chaos with those brats,' he muttered. Scratching himself under both armpits, he came to the hurdle and lifted it out of the way, then replaced it quickly as the goats tried to escape.

'Come over here, if you must,' he suggested grudgingly and led the way over towards the nearest storehouse. He leant on one of the large doors and scowled at Luke de Casewold and his clerk. 'So what is it you want to know so urgently that brings you here to disturb me on this day?'

The Keeper glared at him for speaking rudely to a royal officer. 'I want to know if you have had a hand in any irregular dealings in this port, Capie. I strongly suspect that much of the cargo that goes both inwards and out of here escapes the tax due to the royal Exchequer! '

The tally-man folded his arms and glowered back obstinately. 'I do my best, but I can't be expected to watch every crate and keg that is landed or loaded! This wharf extends for almost three furlongs, and you can see for yourself how many vessels might be here at any one time.'

He flung up an arm to encompass the line of cogs leaning against the river bank. 'If the king or his damned ministers want to collect every half-penny of Customs dues, then they had better employ a couple more tally-men, for I can't cope with it all!'

His aggrieved tone sounded more than a little false to Luke, as Capie had never complained to him or the sheriff about getting additional help. However, the Keeper was craftily working around to a more sinister problem than Customs evasion and adopted a more conciliatory approach.

'That may well be true, Capie, so tell me how you go about your work. That ship there, for instance: how would you deal with that when she arrives?' He pointed to the nearest cog, which seemed deserted at the moment.

Mollified, John Capie explained that as soon as a new arrival moored herself to the stout tree-trunks buried along the bank, he would question the shipmaster as to the name of the vessel, where she had come from and what the nature of the cargo was. Being unable to read or write, he would remember this and hasten up to the portreeve's house to tell him of the new arrival, while the ship prepared to unload her contents on to the quayside. Capie would then return and, with a selection of knotted strings and hazel rods that he notched with a knife, would keep count of the items that were carried down the gangplank.

'But how do you know which goods belong to which string or tally-stick?' demanded Hugh Bogge.

'The cords are of different colours and the tops of the sticks are marked with my own code,' snapped Capie. 'A notch for cloth bales, half a ring for wine kegs and so on. I go back to Elias Palmer as soon as the hold is empty and he writes it all down on his parchments.'

'What if there are two or more cogs unloading at the same time?' objected Luke. 'You can't keep all that in your head.'

'Mother of God, isn't that what I just complained about?' exclaimed the tally-man. 'I try to keep them separate by forbidding the shipmaster to start unloading until I've dealt with the previous vessel, but half the time they take no notice, as they either want to get to the nearest alehouse or catch the next tide to get back out to sea.'

The clerk pushed himself back into the discussion. 'What about goods that are being taken out of the port?' he asked.

John Capie shrugged. 'Not so important, as far as I'm concerned. Wool is the main problem, since our beloved king put a tax on its export. We don't get much tin through here these days; all the refined metal goes out through Exeter or Topsham, as the second smeltings and the assays are done there.'

The Keeper came back into the dialogue. 'So you tally up the bales of wool and report the number to the portreeve, is that how it works?'

'Yes. Elias is the linchpin of the system, being the only one who can write; other than the priests.'

Luke noticed his use of the plural. 'Priests? Is there more than one, then?'

The Customs man stared at him. 'Only old Henry of Cumba actually lives here - but the cellarer's man from the priory is here every week, keeping a very close eye on what's due to Loders.' The priory was just beyond Bridport, some ten miles over the border in Dorset.

'And what is due to them?' demanded de Casewold. John Capie looked at him as if he was a backward child. 'What's due? Jesus, they own the bloody manor, don't they! They claim a fifth of everything that is collected for the king, to go into the coffers of the prior.'

'Are you saying that they rob the royal Exchequer of a fifth of the king's dues?' squawked the Keeper indignantly.

Again Capie gave him a look that he usually reserved for the village idiot. 'Of course not! The king's tax is used as a measure - and then a fifth of that is added on for Loders.'

Hugh Bogge muttered something under his breath, which his master failed to catch. It was just as well, as it was a seditious comment about government and ecclesiastical extortion.

'So how is this money collected?' Luke wished to know.

The tally-man shrugged again. 'Don't know; nothing to do with me! I think Elias sends a list up to the sheriff, who collects it as part of the county farm from all the merchants who import and export.'

The 'farm' was the six-monthly accumulation of taxes from every part of Devon, which the sheriff had to take to Winchester in person, in bags of coin in the panniers of packhorses. Here it was paid into the Exchequer, which got its name from the chequered cloth on the treasury clerks' table that was used to facilitate counting the silver pennies that were the only form of currency. The size of the farm was set annually by the Curia Regis for each county - and if the sheriff could collect more than that, he was entitled to keep the difference, which made the post of sheriff so much sought after by barons and even bishops. Some even held multiple shrievalties in several counties at once. However, after the depredations of his predecessor, Richard de Revelle, old Henry de Furnellis was hard pressed to collect the minimum required.

'So it's all down to Elias Palmer as to how much he enters in his accounts,' said the Keeper, cynicism oozing from his voice. 'You can't read, so you've no idea what he's writing down in his accounts.'

'Not my problem, sir! I'm paid a pittance to record as much as I can manage - what happens after that is none of my business, and I don't want it to be.'

De Casewold changed the subject somewhat, waving a hand at the locked doors behind the tally-man. 'So what exactly is kept in these sheds?' he demanded.

Capie moved away from the doors and looked at the barn-like structures as if he had never noticed them before. 'In here? Why, the goods that have either been unloaded and not yet been delivered to the owners - or the stuff that is waiting for the cog that is to carry them abroad.'

Luke de Casewold looked dubious at the explanation. 'A complicated task, sorting all that. Who is responsible for it?'

'The portreeve, of course. No one else can check the goods against the manifest lists, for only he can read them. Tally-sticks and knotted cords are no good for identifying a pile of kegs or bales.'

The Keeper felt that Elias Palmer was in a position to make or break the administration of Axmouth, as he seemed in a position to control every aspect of the trade there.

'I want to have a look in there, so open them up for me!' he snapped.

Capie shook his head obstinately. 'Can't be done, Keeper. I don't have a key. Only the portreeve and the bailiff can unlock them.'

Luke puffed out his cheeks and blew in annoyance, feeling that he was being deliberately frustrated in his search for the truth.

'Then I'll go up and get them to show me what's in there,' he promised, but turned the subject once again. 'Now then, Capie, I want an honest answer and be sure that if I find you are lying, you'll end up in chains before the courts. Do you know anything about goods coming in here as the spoils of piracy out at sea?' He glared at the tally-man and rattled his sword in its scabbard to emphasise his threat.

John Capie stared sullenly into the middle distance and shuffled his dirty shoes on the ground. 'I know nothing of such things!' he protested. 'How could I know? I just count items of cargo as they get carried off the cogs. Where they came from is not within my knowledge. '