The Manor of Death (39 page)

'You were one of the first over the rail, waving your sword!' snapped de Wolfe. 'You didn't seem so reluctant then, did you?'

The young man raised his terrified face to the coroner, his hands held up clenched in supplication. 'I'll turn approver, sir; I'll testify against the others!'

'We've got to catch the buggers first,' grunted Gwyn practically.

'And I don't think we need an approver, thank you,' added John. 'We've plenty of eyewitnesses, including myself.'

The sailor burst into tears and sank to the floor, face buried in the filthy 'straw.

'But you can tell me who onshore was involved, as your captain seems to have lost the power of speech in that regard!'

The man looked up with a flicker of hope in his face, and John felt somewhat false, as he knew that whatever he was told this lad would inevitably be pushed off a gallows ladder with a rope around his injured neck.

'What do you want to know, sir?' he gabbled.

'When pillaged goods were taken back to Axmouth, who dealt with them?'

'They were unloaded and put in the warehouses, sir, the same as any other cargo.'

'But did anyone come to check what was there? The bailiff or the portreeve?'

The sailor grimaced with pain as he tried to shake his head. 'Never saw either of them down on the quay. Only Henry, the agent for some noble merchant here in Exeter - and of course John Capie, he was always hanging around.'

It was soon apparent that the seaman knew nothing more of use and they left, with John promising to ask the monk from the hospital to look at his neck when he came to see the dying man. With the lad's plaintive supplications following them down to the gate, de Wolfe and Gwyn left the prison, leaving Thomas behind to write down the confession that the young man had made, especially his oath that Martin Rof had strangled Simon Makerel.

'Where are we going now?' asked Gwyn as they strode out of the castle down into the quieter lanes near St John's Hospital.

'Someone had better tell Robert de Helion that he's lost a ship from his fleet!' said John. 'And see what he has to say about his agent.'

The august, rather supercilious merchant-knight was aghast when John informed him that one of his cogs had been involved in piracy and was now in the hands of criminals, but God knows where!

John was inclined to think that his shock and indignation were genuine, unless he was as good an actor as he was a businessman.

'Are you saying that I may have lost my vessel altogether?' he cried in distress. 'That cog cost me five hundred marks to have built!'

John shrugged; he had more pressing problems than the price of a rich man's property.

'She may turn up, Sir Robert - who knows? The crew may abandon the vessel and leave her on some beach when they flee to become outlaws. Or perhaps they will sail to Brittany or Flanders and try to sell her there,' he added mischievously.

De Helion groaned. 'That idiot Henry Crik, he should have known that something like this might happen. I'll have the miserable fool flayed alive!'

'It seems likely that your agent was party to this evil trade,' said the coroner. 'I presume you had no suspicions of his involvement?'

There was a veiled hint here that de Helion himself might not be lily white, and he rose to the bait in a temper. 'Sir John, I trust you are not suggesting that I have any complicity in this? I assure you that there has not been the slightest breath of corruption coming from Axmouth, which is but a small part of my commercial interests.
The Tiger
's voyages have always turned in a reasonable profit, according to the records that Crik brings to my clerks here.'

He shouted for his chief clerk, and soon a bent elderly man hobbled in, looking too threadbare to have made any money from piracy. His master interrogated him about the accounts and the records relating to Axmouth, but the cowed old fellow could say nothing but that everything had always seemed to be in order.

'Yet if the documents were falsified, would you be any the wiser?' asked John. '
The Tiger
no doubt spent most of her time on legitimate voyages - but if she returned earlier than expected, who was to know in Exeter that she might make an extra short foray out into the Channel to seize a passing ship?'

De Helion huffed and puffed but had to admit that this was a possibility. He even added that
The Tiger
might have come across a victim when returning from a normal voyage, especially if she was coming home light or with only a part-cargo, so that there was still room in her hold for pillaged goods.

'That swine Martin Rof is the man behind all this!' he raved. 'I met him but once, when I took him into my service as a shipmaster, and I took a dislike to him then. But I admit that I have had no complaints about his seamanship - indeed, he seems to have made a very successful pirate!'

Neither the merchant nor his chief clerk seemed to know where Henry Crik was at that moment, so soon the coroner left him still bellowing about the loss of his ship and ordering his old clerk to send messengers out along the southern coast in both directions, to see if she had turned up anywhere.

'Where are we going to seek this fellow Crik?' asked Gwyn as they walked back to Rougemont. 'He must surely be the key to this mystery.'

'The only mystery is who is involved in this scandal and who is not!' replied de Wolfe. 'De Helion was trying to include the Prior of Loders in the conspiracy, but I doubt that is the case.'

'I wouldn't trust any bloody priest,' muttered the Cornishman, half to himself, but aloud he said 'Do you think Axmouth have heard of the loss of their
Tiger
, for she can never go back there, unless de Helion finds her abandoned somewhere.'

'I doubt the news has travelled that fast yet, unless someone guessed why the
St Radegund
came back to harbour the same day that she left,' answered de Wolfe. 'But no doubt someone will take the news to Axmouth within a day or two. The men-at-arms are bound to boast of their success in the alehouses here, so carters and pedlars are sure to spread the news far and wide.'

'What will that bailiff and portreeve do about it when they hear?' mused Gwyn. 'D'you think they'll make a run for it, if they have been involved?'

The coroner pondered this as he stalked alongside his officer across High Street and up the track that led into the outer ward of the castle. 'I doubt it. Those who are guilty will brazen it out for as long as they can. Otherwise, they can only turn outlaw, and I can't see them doing that readily, after the nice comfortable life they've had stealing so much from the king and the merchants.'

Back in their upper chamber in the gatehouse, they found Thomas at his usual task of neatly scribing the various parchment rolls that the coroner would have to present to the Justices in Eyre, when they eventually came to Exeter. As they sat down to their ritual second breakfast of bread, cheese, ale and Thomas's cider, de Wolfe fretted over what should be done next.

'We cannot delay too long in getting the sheriff's posse down to Axmouth. Even though I suspect they will play the innocent and blame everything on Martin Rof and his crew, one of them will surely break and admit to something.'

'We'll get nothing from that Rof fellow unless we let Stigand loose on, him with a branding iron - or make him submit to the Ordeal,' boomed Gwyn.

Thomas crossed himself, as he scorned such a barbaric attitude. 'The Church is becoming more concerned about the correctness of the Ordeal,' he said primly. 'The Holy Father is likely to forbid it before long, on the grounds that it smacks of unchristian paganism and magic.'

His ginger friend hooted with scorn. 'Not that it's painful, cruel and humiliating, eh? Just that it's unchristian! '

John raised a hand to stop their frequent bickering. 'At least we have the seaman's confession that clears up the death of that poor lad Simon. Now, I can complete the inquest on him, and Martin Rof will hang for the crime in due course. But we have nothing more to point to how the Keeper or that pedlar came to their deaths.'

'It will all come together in the end,' said Thomas hopefully. 'Someone will speak unwisely out of fear or conscience.'

After dictating some more case summaries to Thomas, de Wolfe tried again to study his lessons in reading and writing, which recently he had sadly neglected. Then he ate his dinner in the hall of the keep, and the afternoon was spent discussing the new situation with Henry de Furnellis and Ralph Morin and organising another military expedition to Axmouth the next day. The sheriff felt that action was needed without delay, hopefully before the news of
The Tiger
's rout arrived in the village. Henry was afraid that either the culprits would run or at least destroy any remaining evidence of their activities. 'And they'll have a chance to dream up some excuses, if we leave it too long,' he added.

The constable went off to organise another troop of soldiers, as to call the force a 'posse' was not quite accurate, for a
posse comitatus
was a band of freemen conscripted by the sheriff 'to maintain the peace of the county and to pursue felons'. They agreed to ride out at dawn next day, led by the sheriff and coroner, hoping to catch any malefactors unawares.

De Furnellis pointed out that seizing Henry Crik was a priority and, assuming that he dwelt in Exeter, he sent several of his clerks scurrying into the city to discover where he lived. Within an hour one of them was back, reporting that though Crik, a widower, lived in St Mary Arches Lane with a leman, he was not at home. His woman said that he had left in a hurry early that morning but would not tell her where he was going.

'Blast the fellow!' cursed de Wolfe. 'He must have heard about the return of the
St Radegund
and taken off to Axmouth to warn them.'

When he returned to his house in Martin's Lane, he was struck by the empty feel of the hall, which was not a very welcoming chamber at the best of times. Now, it seemed even more cold and silent and the two vacant monks' chairs that sat near the huge hearth were a pathetic reminder of the state of affairs.

When he went around to the back yard, there was a similar sombre atmosphere, as Lucille's hutch under the solar was deserted and Mary was sitting listlessly in her kitchen-hut, absently stroking Brutus's head. Even the hound seemed melancholy.

The cook-maid raised a doleful face to her master. 'How long is this going to go on, Sir Crowner? , she asked listlessly. 'The mistress has gone, the maid has gone, I have almost nothing to occupy me, as you are away half the time and I have no one to feed except myself and the dog. You don't need a house or a maid.'

He bent to kiss her cheek and to try to reassure her that eventually all would turn out well. 'Someone will have to look after me in London, and I'm sure it won't be my wife, whether she comes with me or not. You may depend that once I get settled there I will send for you, Mary. I will keep this house for at least a year, in case I have to return. If Matilda does decide to leave Polsloe, then she may wish to come back to live here.'

Mary brightened at his assurances and busied herself fetching him some of her own-brewed ale and heating up some mutton stew, as his dinner at Rougemont had been an uninspiring platter of tough pork, cabbage and last season's beans. He squatted on a stool to eat and told her of the events of the past two days, to which she listened with rapt attention.

'But if this monster of a shipmaster won't speak, how can you be sure who is guilty and who is innocent?' she asked.

She had touched on the very matter that concerned de Wolfe, and he hoped that the next day would see some breakthrough in that problem.

'The sheriff is pinning his hopes on this agent, Henry Crik,' he replied. 'If the fellow is found in Axmouth, then he has some explaining to do as to why he ran there as soon as he heard of the failure of
The Tiger
's attack.'

Mary was not so convinced. 'Won't he just say that he was going to the port anyway, in the pursuit of his usual business?'

John finished the last mouthful and washed it down with a draught of ale. 'We'll just have to see what happens tomorrow. For all we know the whole lot may have fled, though I doubt they'll give up so easily.'

'Might they not make a fight of it?' asked Mary, looking worried for John's safety. 'The prosperity of the whole village must depend on the success of the harbour and its trade, so would they not try to protect the men who run it?'

'We're taking a dozen experienced men-at-arms, the same ones who overcame the pirates,' he assured her, but she still looked dubious.

'Even a dozen soldiers would fare badly against a hundred angry villagers armed with scythes and pitchforks!' she said stoutly.

John grinned and hugged her around the shoulders. 'Don't dream up a civil war, Mary! If it eases your concern for me, I'll wear my coat of mail tomorrow - but I draw the line at taking my old shield from the wall!'

Later that evening he walked down towards the Bush, passing through the cathedral Close, where the usual collection of urchins and youths were throwing a ball made of rags bound with cord. A few drunks and beggars slumped between the grave-mounds, but the fine spring evening had also brought out a few families, who were ambling along the main paths, enjoying the fresh air that was a welcome change from the cramped, odorous accommodation that many of the city dwellers had to endure.