The Manor of Death (28 page)

De Wolfe nodded his understanding. 'So for all we know, some of that stuff we've been handling today might have been pillaged. And there's no way of tracing it back to its alleged owners in time. No way can we go haring around England asking merchants if they had a particular keg of Loire wine through Axmouth last month.'

As the woman brought them their food, Ralph Morin summed up their day's efforts. 'So we've been wasting our damned time, have we?'

'Not entirely, I hope,' replied the coroner, spearing a slice of cold meat with his eating knife. 'We've certainly made it clear to them that the law is breathing down their neck, but we're not going to get them hanged by looking at sheets of parchment and sniffing around their warehouses. They've got to be caught red-handed.'

Thomas watched with trepidation as the gap widened between the ship's side and the edge of the stone quay. Though he had been to sea only once before on a short journey between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, that had been more than sufficient to convince him that he was not cut out to be a sailor. He stood with the coroner and Gwyn on the raised part of the stern deck as the
Mary and Child Jesus
drifted slowly away from the wharf below Exeter's encircling wall. This rampart came across from the West Gate to the relatively new Watergate, punched through the wall in response to Exeter's burgeoning trade, which needed better access to its port. As they moved smoothly out, the city hovered above them, sloping up to Rougemont at the furthest and highest point. They passed a section of wall that climbed steeply up to the South Gate, and in minutes they were abeam of low cliffs that lined the eastern side of the Exe.

The shipmaster, Roger Watts, had waited until the morning flood tide was just at its highest before casting off, so that they could drift down on the ebb to the beginning of the estuary at Topsham and then catch some wind to help them the next few miles to the open sea. Thomas would have a couple of hours' respite on the smooth waters before he began wishing he was dead for the two- or three-day haul across the unforgiving waters between England and Normandy.

While de Wolfe was indifferent to sea voyages, having crossed many times to Ireland, France and various parts of the Mediterranean, Gwyn was in his element. Trading on his past life as a boy helping his fisherman father in Polruan, he set himself up as an authority on everything maritime and now gazed critically as two youths set the single sail to catch enough wind to give them steerage way in the narrow river. He found nothing to complain about, nor in the way that Roger Watts was handling the steering oar behind them, so he turned to John for a chat.

'Still no news of your goodwife, Crowner?' He could not stomach the woman, who treated him like dirt when she deigned to notice his existence, but he thought it politic to ask.

'Not a word!' growled de Wolfe. 'I'm letting her stew until we get back. No doubt she'll be at home by then.' Thomas, who felt greatly relieved that the cog was not yet rolling or pitching, offered some of his unfailing charity. 'No doubt the peace and quiet of Polsloe will calm her disturbed spirits after the upsetting times she has suffered lately, and I pray that she will return refreshed.'

John grunted in appreciation of his clerk's kind thoughts, but privately doubted that Thomas's prayers would improve Matilda's temper.

They stood for a while as they passed the small Priory of St James, with the poles of fish-traps protruding from the water. John remembered being called out the previous year, when a sturgeon was caught there and he had to confiscate its value for the king. The weather was holding well, and Roger Watts called to them from his steering position to forecast a rapid voyage.

'There's a fresh westerly wind which will blow us briskly up-Channel once we get out past Dawlish Warren,' he hollered. 'As long as it doesn't turn into a gale, that is!' he added, to Thomas's horror.

The mention of Dawlish once again set the wheels of John's mind in motion. The memory of that recent kiss and what might have come of it, had not Hilda exercised enough self-control for both of them, was branded into his soul and clashed with his guilt over Nesta, which in turn led paradoxically to his jealous concerns about leaving her for a couple of weeks in the company of the Welsh stonemason. As they glided down the river towards Topsham, his wandering mind was also triggered by the shipmaster's mention of Dawlish to the fact that this very ship under his feet was the scene of Thorgils' violent death and hence the cause of Hilda's widowhood. Though the vessel had been extensively refitted since then, his ready guilt sent his eyes searching the deck planking for non-existent bloodstains.

Shaking the mood off, he forced himself to watch the passing landscape, and when the busy little port of Topsham had slid by he waited for Exmouth to appear on the port side, just as they entered the open sea. On the opposite bow, he recalled the spot where he had come down to see the beached whale, and beyond it in the distance lie could just make out the village of Dawlish, where the delectable Hilda was no doubt spending her lonely life in her solar in Thorgils' fine house.

Moments later he felt the first lurch as the cog crossed the sand bar at the narrow mouth of the estuary and rose to the first wave of the western ocean as it swept along the coast into Lyme Bay. Immediately, there was a groan from Thomas and a guffaw of merriment from the unsympathetic Gwyn, who stood on the deck with feet planted apart, like a rock glued to the planks. 'Time for some food, little fellow!' he cackled. 'No doubt the ship's boy can fry you some fat pork on that fire he has in the forecastle.'

The poor clerk tottered to the side and, with one hand clutching his floppy broad-brimmed hat and the other clamped to the rail, endlessly began reciting his Hail Marys, with frequent pleas to God Almighty and all His assorted saints to deliver him from the perils of the sea.

Someone in heaven must have paid attention to the clerk's supplications, for Thomas's ordeal was shorter than he feared, due to the unfailingly favourable wind. Also, after the first of the three-day voyage, he discovered that he did not feel so bad as he expected and was even able to keep down some food and drink, though not in the quantities that the five-man crew and the two other passengers seemed to consume with such obscene gusto. The cooking was done on a small woodfire, safely walled in with stones on a large slab of slate in a cubbyhole under the rising bow, where the crew slept in turns when not on watch. The passengers had a low hutch near the stern, large enough for them to squat in or lie down on straw-filled mattresses laid on the deck-boards.

De Wolfe and his officer spent much of the time on the afterdeck with Roger Watts or whoever was manning the steering oar. John wondered many times if they might be attacked by the pirates they sought, but for three days they never glimpsed so much as a distant sail, until they were within a few miles of the coast of Normandy. He was somewhat disappointed, but also recognised that two men and a timid priest would have been of little use in supporting the small crew against a gang of determined pillagers.

Their shipmaster, with twenty years of familiarity with these waters, made landfall within a dozen miles of Honfleur, a port on the southern side of the mouth of the Seine, encircled by low hills. When they sailed into the small harbour at the entrance of a stream, he put them ashore in the curragh, a small boat shaped like an elongated coracle, made from hides stretched over a light wicker framework that was kept lashed upside down over the hatch. Promising to be back at the same spot in seven days' time, unless the weather was against him, Roger Watts left straight away to catch the wind and tide for his onward journey.

As it was now late afternoon, the coroner decided to spend the night in Honfleur and, equipped with a parchment carrying the sheriff's seal which declared the king's coroner to be on official business, claimed a night's lodging for them in the small castle which protected the port. Advice from the commander led them next morning to requisition horses to take them to Rouen, rather than attempt to be ferried up the winding loops of the Seine on a small boat, as beyond the reach of the tides, progress would be slow and subject to the vagaries of the wind and current. The journey was about forty miles and obviously could not be covered within a day, especially given Thomas's poor horsemanship. They set off on an overcast morning and plodded the well-beaten track all day until they reached the village of Bourg-Achard, slightly over halfway. An uncomfortable night was spent in the only tavern, which housed a particularly savage species of bedbug, and they were only too ready to leave at dawn for the second leg of the journey. By afternoon they had reached the Seine opposite the city of Rouen, which was on the northern bank, but as there was no bridge over the wide river they had to wait for a ferry to take them and their horses across.

A disappointment awaited them at the castle when they reached the imposing structure at the centre of the bustling city, the capital of Normandy and effectively the seat of the King of England more than London or Winchester. After negotiating his way past several clerks and secretaries by the exhibition of Henry de Furnellis's warrant, de Wolfe reached one senior enough to tell him that the Chief Justiciar was not in the city but had left two days before to be with the king at some outpost about twenty miles up the Seine, at a place called Andeli. Again they were too late to set off that day but enjoyed better hospitality than the previous night, John having a bed in the knights' quarters, while Gwyn was happy to eat, drink and play dice in the garrison barracks. Thomas, ever keen to savour the religious life of new places, went to pray at the ancient church of St-Oeun and was invited by fellow priests to eat and sleep in their dorter, though much of his night was taken up with attendance at Matins and Prime.

The horses they had borrowed at Honfleur had also rested and fed well, and by the eighth hour they were again on the road running along the north bank of the Seine. The whole area showed the intense military activity that was now almost permanent, since King Richard had sailed from Portsmouth with his army and fleet of a hundred ships almost two years earlier.

Obsessed with regaining the territory that he had lost to Philip of France, largely through the treachery and incompetence of his brother John, the Lionheart had ranged up and down the length of France, steadily pushing back Philip's borders.

There had been some reversals, such as the attack on Dieppe, where Philip himself had led three hundred of his knights to ransack the town and burn ships in the harbour, but generally Richard's unceasing efforts were succeeding. As the coroner's trio rode southwards, they passed wagons full of equipment and supplies, much of it paid for by the taxes extorted from England. Troops of soldiers marched in both directions, many of them Welsh mercenaries who were the mainstay of the army, especially the archers. Others were foreigners, including some dreaded 'Brabancons', little better than bandits - and John had heard that the king had even employed some Saracens, so impressed had he been with their wild courage in Palestine.

'Where are we going to find Hubert Walter?' asked Gwyn when they were a dozen miles out of Rouen. 'If I remember him aright from the Holy Land, he may well be huddled in some tent with the common men-at-arms.'

'They said in Rouen that this place Andeli is little more than a village, so someone there will surely direct us to the King of England.'

And so it proved to be, when they reached a picturesque hamlet at the apex of a huge bend in the river, where white chalk cliffs broke through dense trees along the north bank. Men-at-arms were camping out at various spots, sitting around cooking fires or tending to their equipment. Mounted heralds and knights rode past between the village and a high eminence to the south, where a craggy ridge of cliff stood high above the river.

'That's where he'll be,' announced John confidently, and as they climbed a track busy with military traffic his guess was soon confirmed. Along a neck of land three hundred feet. above the water below, they saw a collection of tents and pavilions bedecked with flags and banners and surrounded by the more mundane paraphernalia of an army camp. Sentries were posted at intervals along the approaches, but John's impressive appearance, aided by a display of the heavy red seal dangling from the sheriff's parchment, got them waved through each checkpoint. Several older men even recognised him as 'Black John' from the years he had spent campaigning under the Lionheart and his father, the equally fearsome King Henry. At the centre of the circle of canvas pavilions, the largest flew a red banner with three golden lions, and nearby was another with the episcopal flag of Canterbury.

'Best leave our mounts over there,' suggested Gwyn as they approached, pointing at makeshift stables of hurdles and poles, where a score of tethered horses were being fed and watered. Alongside, two farriers were shoeing other horses, and another pair of armourers were sharpening weapons on grinds tones being turned by young boys. Though a truce with the French had been in force since January, it was a fragile peace, and the activity in the camp was a reminder that the potential front line was only a few miles down the road to the Vexin and Paris.

De Wolfe sought out the camp marshal, who turned out to be a grizzled old knight from Sussex, with whom he had campaigned in Ireland years before. After a few nostalgic reminders, the marshal, who was responsible for the organisation of the camp, arranged for the care of their horses, then took them to a mess tent, where to Gwyn's delight food and ale were in abundance. When they had eaten and John and the old campaigner had indulged in a few more reminiscences, the coroner explained why they had come chasing Hubert Waiter across the Channel. 'I need to speak to him urgently, before he goes rushing off somewhere else. I don't have the time to go chasing him down to Aquitaine or Gascony!'