Crowner's Quest (27 page)

‘The man is insane to think that they are anything more than a passing irritation!’ snorted de Wolfe. ‘My only concern is how he got to know about the lady in Dawlish. He must pay informers about the country to spy on me, as he claimed.’

The Archdeacon gazed up the nave at the great choir screen of ornately carved wood, as if seeking inspiration from on high. ‘What is to be done, John? Will you ride to Winchester, as you intend?’

‘I’ll have to. This affair cannot continue unchecked. But I’d like some firmer evidence to give Hubert Walter. I’ll wait a few more days to see if anything turns up, though the bloody sheriff is watching my every move.’

John de Alencon laid a hand on the coroner’s arm. ‘I’ve warned you before, John. Be careful. These men are playing for high stakes and will swat you like a fly if they can. Look what happened to Fitzhamon and poor Robert, lying there in his box.’

With yet another caution ringing in his ears, de Wolfe walked back through the rain to his house in Martin’s Lane.

At the midday meal of fried pork, onions, bread and some rather shrivelled stored apples, Matilda was in what her husband called an average mood. She had no spontaneous conversation, but at least answered his questions and comments civilly, even if her voice conveyed a total lack of interest in him and his doings. The only slight spark of curiosity he could strike from her concerned the funeral of Robert de Hane: she wanted to know who was present, if any wives had been there and, if so, what they had been wearing. As he had no answer to her last questions, she subsided into apathy again.

Later, as there were no hangings or mutilations at which he had to be present, he walked with Gwyn to Bull Mead, out of the city beyond the South Gate. On the meadows between Holloway and Magdalen Streets, which led away to the east, jousting lists had been set up and a minor tournament was being held that day. In his prime, de Wolfe had been a keen competitor in the sport that maintained and honed fighting men’s skills between real battles. He had won many a joust – and the prize money and sometimes the favours of a woman, which went with victory.

Both he and Bran were now too long in the tooth for this violent and often fatal sport, but he still enjoyed watching the spectacle. In former years Gwyn had acted as his squire and they both studied the new young men with a critical eye, as they thundered towards each other down each side of the wattle fence, trying to unhorse each other with a clash of lance on shield. Thankfully the rain had stopped, but the tourney field was a quagmire of churned mud under the horses’ hoofs, and when a man was unhorsed, he became a greater figure of derision because of his mud-plastered ignominy.

The two former Crusaders spent an hour or two sitting on the benches of the primitive viewing stand, the sights and sounds of combat rekindling memories of battles gone by.

When the early winter dusk began to close in, the tournament came to an end and the crowd dispersed. Gwyn trudged off to his home in St Sidwell’s, leaving de Wolfe to make his way to the Bush. At that hour it was almost deserted, but as soon as he entered, Nesta bustled across from the kitchen door and seized his arm to pull him to an empty corner, as far away from the few customers as possible. De Wolfe saw that her face was flushed and that her hazel eyes were sparkling with indignation. Hurriedly, he searched his conscience for some recent transgression, but he soon learned that her anger was not directed at him. ‘I’ve never heard such impertinence!’ she hissed. ‘That rheumaticky old fool that is steward to the sheriff had the gall to come here earlier with a message from his master!’

Mystified for a moment, realisation dawned on de Wolfe. ‘Oh, God, I never thought he’d stoop to such pettiness!’

The pretty alehouse keeper glared at him. ‘You know what he said, then?’

‘It was about Hilda, no doubt?’

‘Yes, it was about bloody Hilda! It’s bad enough knowing that you’re unfaithful to me without having it bandied all about Exeter! What’s going on?’

De Wolfe pulled her gently to his table by the hearth and, as they sat down, Nesta signalled to Edwin to bring the coroner his usual quart of ale. The old potman, who had been hovering uneasily in the background, keeping clear of his mistress’s fiery temper, grinned with relief and hurried to his barrels.

John explained Richard de Revelle’s attempt to blackmail him, and Nesta, with the volatility of spirit that went with her red hair, soon saw the ridiculous side of it and began giggling over the jug of ale that they shared.

‘A good job we had this out between us the other day, John. I’d have hated to have learned it first from the sheriff!’ Then she had a more sobering thought. ‘But if he’s been so vindictive as to tell me of your exploits with the ladies, he’ll be even more certain to go sneaking to your wife. She won’t be so forgiving as me, I’ll be bound.’

‘She’s known about you for years, love.’

‘The whole of Devon knows about us, John. But what about Hilda? Does Matilda know she’s on your list of conquests?’ Even Nesta couldn’t resist the slightly bitter remark.

De Wolfe tried to shrug this off, but he had a nagging suspicion that he was in for a hard time with his wife.

As the light faded, the tavern began to fill when men came in at the end of the working day. Nesta had to bustle around, chivvying the cook and the serving-maids, so eventually de Wolfe went with leaden feet back to his gloomy house near the cathedral. As he pulled off his cloak and his wet, leaky boots in the vestibule, Mary put her head around the passage to the yard. She pointed at the inner door to the hall and rolled her eyes heavenwards, then vanished. Even Brutus slunk after her, his tail between his legs.

De Wolfe sat before the fire in the cowled chair usually occupied by his wife. His old hound had crept back in and lay now at his feet. Simon, the aged man employed to cut wood and tend the fowl and garden pig, had carried in a pile of logs sufficient to last the night. Mary had brought him a stone flask of Loire wine, the last of those bought from Eric Picot before he had disappeared last month. Thus stocked up, he prepared to pass the long evening alone, as a westerly wind moaned outside and spattered rain against the shutters. He heard the outer door slam as Mary left to visit her mother in Rack Lane, leaving him in peace to contemplate the events of the past few hours.

As Nesta had anticipated, his brother-in-law, having had his attempt at blackmail so scornfully rejected, had vindictively gone ahead and revealed John’s indiscretions. It was not the old steward who had called but de Revelle himself, while de Wolfe had been at the jousting that afternoon, to poison his sister’s ear against her husband.

As John sat moodily before his hearth, sipping warm wine, he recalled the final show-down with Matilda earlier that evening. After his visit to the Bush, he had expected a blazing row, foul words, maybe something thrown at him and then a few weeks’ ostracism and certainly banishment from their cold marital bed, to all of which he was well accustomed.

But this time it had been different. He did not know exactly what de Revelle had said to his sister, but he suspected that he had embroidered the bare truth considerably and probably added some political lies to the issue of infidelity. Whatever it had been, Matilda had stood before him in the hall, grim-faced and flinty-eyed, but not in the expected raging temper. De Wolfe remembered the actual words she had used – they had been so few.

‘My brother has told me of your evil, John de Wolfe. I am ashamed to be burdened with your name and I am leaving you this moment. You no longer have a wife and I never wish to see you again.’ She had stalked past him towards the door, her square, high-cheekboned face white with suppressed emotion. Then he noticed Lucille lurking in the shadows near the door, already dressed for outside. She held a cloak, which she draped over her mistress’s shoulders, then picked up some large bundles tied into cloths and followed Matilda to the vestibule.

‘Where are you going, for God’s sake?’ he asked, tracking them to the front door. Matilda ignored him, but as she stepped outside he saw Sergeant Gabriel and two men-at-arms standing in the lane as an escort. As they walked away, Gabriel risked giving him a shrug of supplication and pointed his finger in the direction of Rougemont. A moment later, they had vanished into the gloom of the lane, lit only by the farrier’s torches opposite.

Hardly knowing whether to be mortified or relieved, de Wolfe came inside and slammed the outer door. Instantly Mary appeared from the passage, where she had been eavesdropping.

‘She’s left me, girl,’ he said, almost incredulously.

‘No such luck, Sir Crowner!’ said the maid cynically. ‘She’ll be back some time. You’re too good a catch for a woman her age to let slip through her fingers.’ She followed him back into the sombre hall, which somehow seemed all the more cheerless now.

‘I presume she’s gone to her brother at the castle,’ he muttered.

‘Yes, I heard her talking to Lucille about it – that ugly witch is delighted you’re in trouble and that she’s now going to live in a manor house’

‘What manor house?’ he demanded.

‘They’re going to stay in the sheriff’s rooms in Rougemont for a day or two, as Lady Eleanor has gone home, then they are travelling down to Revelstoke to live there indefinitely.’

De Wolfe gave a roar of sardonic laughter. ‘By Christ, that makes me feel better already! Matilda and Eleanor living in the same house! There’ll be murder done within a week. And Revelstoke – your friend Lucille will go mad there with boredom. She might as well be on the moon as that lonely place on the cliffs.’

Revelstoke was the sheriff’s ancestral home, in a remote spot on the coast near Plympton in the west of the county, where both he and Matilda had been brought up. Richard had another manor near Tavistock, which his haughty wife preferred.

‘Did you hear anything else between them, Mary?’ he asked.

‘No, I was out buying fish when the sheriff called. All I heard later was that your wife will be sending Lucille back some time to collect all her clothes and belongings.’

Now, as de Wolfe sat alone with his hound and his wine, he mulled over the implications of this unexpected turn of events. He had little doubt that Mary was right, and that in the fullness of time Matilda would return. What else could she do? Divorce was well-nigh impossible and a woman of forty-six had no other prospects, other than buying her way into a nunnery. That was always one possibility, given Matilda’s religious leanings, but John felt this was too good to be true.

Looking on the bright side, he had little to concern him. The house was his, bought with money left him by his father and from the accumulated loot of a dozen wars. He had wisely invested money in Hugh de Relaga’s wool export trade and he had a steady income from his share of the manors at Stoke-in-Teignhead and Holcombe. In fact, he could never have been appointed coroner unless he was financially independent: the Justiciar had laid down that every knight so elected must have an income of at least twenty pounds a year, which was supposed to make the attractions of embezzlement less appealing. With Mary to satisfy his stomach, and Nesta his heart and loins, he felt ready to wait out Matilda’s latest protest – and if she chose to take the veil, good luck to her!

As he drank and dozed by the fire, he thought half-heartedly of going down to the Bush to tell his Welsh mistress the latest news, but sleep overcame him. As the wind moaned outside, he began to snore gently as Brutus edged nearer the dying logs.

De Wolfe must have slept for several hours, though as the nearest clock was in Germany, it was only later that he calculated from the cathedral bell that he must have awakened around the tenth hour. His final dream seemed to contain an insistent knocking, and as he opened his eyes groggily, he realised that someone was hammering on his street door.

He climbed to his feet and sleepily threw some small sticks on to the fire, which had crumbled to glowing ashes. Brutus lazily hauled himself to his haunches as John stumbled across the cold stones of the hall, pulling a grey house-cape more tightly around his shoulders against the damp chill. A tallow dip guttered in its bowl on the long table, and he lit the wick of a new candle in passing to light himself to the front door.

The knocking continued with greater urgency, and he wondered who it could be. Not Mary, for she would spend the night with her mother, as she did once a week, coming back early in the morning to prepare breakfast – and she would have known that the door was never locked, as would Gwyn or Thomas.

He lifted the big iron latch and held up the candle, as the farrier’s flares opposite had burned out. The rain and the wind had died down and his candle flame survived the remaining breeze to show a muffled figure on his doorstep. Mindful of the Archdeacon’s warning of assassins, he held the door only partly open, until he realised that the figure was female.

‘You are Sir John – the Crowner?’ asked a tremulous but still attractive voice.

‘I am indeed. And who are you?’

‘My name is Rosamunde – Rosamunde of Rye, they call me. Can I speak with you, Crowner, please? I am in trouble.’

The fitful candlelight fell on a beautiful face, half hidden in a deep hood – though even this poor view showed something wrong with one eye. Though the chivalrous de Wolfe would have helped any woman in trouble – even an old hag – one with such a voice and the face of a sultry angel was irresistible.

He pulled open the door and beckoned her inside. This was the woman who had been involved with Giles Fulford and probably Jocelin de Braose, but somehow he doubted that she had come to stab him to death. He escorted her into the hall and over to the hearth, where the sticks were now burning briskly, throwing light across the room. Brutus stood to look at the new arrival then, sensing no danger, wagged his tail slowly and lay down again.

The woman, tall and straight, was still shrouded in a heavy cape that fell to her feet. ‘I know you have heard of me, Sir John, in not very favourable circumstances.’

As they stood eyeing each other from either side of the fire, she lifted her hands and threw back the pointed hood of the mantle, revealing a cascade of glossy black hair that gleamed in the firelight. She also revealed, on the smooth features of her full-lipped face, a large bruise that discoloured the eye lids and the upper part of her left cheek. ‘Look at this, Sir John – and these!’ Rosamunde slid the mantle from her shoulders so that it fell to the floor. She wore a bright green silk kirtle with a deep round neckline, unlike the modest tops of the dresses he was used to seeing. The silk strained across her full breasts and was pulled tight at her waist by lacing at the back.