The Elixir of Death (13 page)

They marched out of the hall ahead of John and his officer. A ragged procession of steward, reeve, falconer and a man who turned out to be the wheelwright trailed after them. In the bailey, Godfrey turned and explained to de Wolfe that it was not worth mounting horses, as the distance was short and the terrain easier to navigate on foot.

More servants joined them as they took a path that passed the fields and then crossed the pasture and waste land to the edge of the trees. The ground was undulating, and a quarter of a mile into the wood there was a small valley with a sizeable stream running at the bottom. They scrambled down through a heavy fall of autumn leaves to a place where the brook ran over flat stones, some of the rocks projecting above the water.

'This is how I found the master, sir,' exclaimed the wheelwright, who had run ahead of them and was pointing upstream, where the rivulet made a sharp bend through the cut-away banks of red soil on either side. When John and his officer got down to the water's edge, they could see around the corner, and even their eyes, hardened by years of fatal injury and maiming in battle, were shocked by the sight.

Across some flat rocks, his feet in the running water, was the body of a man, lying on his back. His arms were outstretched, as they were lashed at the wrists to a fallen branch laid crossways underneath him. His neck ended at a bloody stump and through a tear down the front of his long tunic his entrails protruded on to his ripped belly.

'He's been castrated as well, sir!' volunteered the wheelwright, with a melancholy relish. Either the two sons had very strong characters or they had no great affection for their father, for they splashed up the stream ahead of John and stood over the mutilated corpse while John and Gwyn caught them up.

'Our sire was not the most popular of manor-lords,' admitted Godfrey with surprising frankness. 'But surely no one would wish a death like this upon him!'

The coroner clambered out of the water and stood on the table-like rock, his officer standing ankle deep in the stream on the other side of the body. They looked down at the bloody remains, taking in all that was to be seen. Peter le Calve - for they assumed it was he, in spite of the lack of his head - wore a long woollen tunic of a green colour, though much of the front and sides were now almost black with blood, except where splashes of water had diluted the gore to a pink hue. The garment was ripped from the neck-line down to well below his waist. A coil of his bowels lay amid clotted blood on his belly, and below this a ragged wound indicated where his genitals had been crudely removed.

Gwyn reached down and took hold of his leg below the knee, attempting to lift it. 'Stiff as a board and as cold as ice,' he muttered. 'He's been dead a goodly time.'

John slipped a hand into the dead man's armpit, but could feel no vestige of remaining warmth. He looked up at the elder son. 'Your father went missing at dusk last night and was found soon after dawn?'

Godfrey nodded, his rather equine face now pale as he stood over the ravaged corpse. 'We were all out at first light and he was found within the hour.'

'Then no doubt he was killed last night, so the miscreants could be well away by now,' growled de Wolfe. Even though hardened by past experience, the manner of this death was one of the worst he had seen, especially as it savoured of a crucifixion.

'Can we not move him now, Sir John?' asked William, who was as pale as death himself. 'This is not a fitting way for any man to be left, especially a lord in his own manor.'
 

John rose to his feet and nodded. 'I agree with you! A Crusader deserves better than this. We must get him back to the village.'

Godfrey shouted over his shoulder at some of his servants who were clustered anxiously a few yards away. He ordered them to find a litter to carry the body, and some of them jogged away back towards the manor.

'We'd best get him off these stones and on to the grass, Crowner, ' suggested Gwyn. He drew out his dagger and bent to the nearer wrist of the corpse, intending to slash through the bindings that held the victim to the willow bough, but De Wolfe stopped him.

'Wait a moment! Let's look at the way he's tied, in case there's something useful to learn.' With Gwyn's hairy head close to his, he peered at the lashings and felt them with his fingers.

'Tied with two simple half-hitches,' declared his officer, a former fisherman. 'Nothing special about the knots.'

'No, but what about the cords themselves, Gwyn? How many local outlaws or robbers carry silken cords with them, eh?'

Gwyn grunted his surprise and touched the bindings, rubbing his thick finger along them. 'God's knuckles, so they are! Soaking wet, they looked black, but I think they are red.'

The coroner now told him to release the lashings and as the wet cords had pulled so tight that the knots were almost impossible to untie, the Cornishman cut them through and held them up for inspection. The two sons came nearer and agreed that their father had been tied down with cords of dark crimson plaited silk, somewhat thicker than a goose quill. They were wet and rather dirty, but were certainly not common hemp.

'The ends are frayed - looks as if they've been cut from a longer length,' said the ever practical Gwyn, stowing them carefully in the pouch on his belt. When the corpse was lifted off, the thin branch revealed nothing of interest, being a fallen bough with a broken end.

'Not specially cut down for this purpose,' said Godfrey, who seemed less affected by his father's bizarre death than his younger brother.

'No, there's plenty of such wood within fifty paces,' agreed the coroner,

The falconer and the wheelwright carried their lord's body reverently to the bank and laid it gently on the grass. John checked that there was nothing left on the rock 4 where the corpse had lain, then came across and had another look at it.

'There can be no doubt that this is your father?' he demanded, looking up at Godfrey and William. Both men shook their heads.

'Those are his garments, certainly,' replied William. 'But you're not suggesting that someone placed his clothing on someone else?'

'Stranger things have happened,' grunted de Wolfe. 'Though I admit it's highly unlikely. But is there any other way you can identify him, without his head?'

'He had a scar on the side of his chest,' offered Godfrey. 'It came from a spear wound at the battle of Arsuf, so he told us.'

John well remembered Arsuf in the Holy Land, for he was there himself. In September three years previously, Richard the Lionheart had marched down from Acre towards Jerusalem and at Arsuf, Saladin tried to stop him with a massive army. Richard, the superb tactician, won the day, though the battlefield was strewn with the corpses of both sides and many more were wounded. John himself had a small scar on his arm from a Moorish arrow, and now he bent to look at a beheaded corpse to seek more severe evidence of that fateful conflict. When he pulled the torn tunic aside, sure enough there was a white puckered scar running for a hand's breadth horizontally across the left lower ribs, which both sons confirmed was identical to the one they had seen on their father. But John's attention was now elsewhere, for pulling the clothing aside had revealed something else. Just above the scar, smeared with blood, was a wide slit, the pouting edges exposing the muscle beneath the skin.

'Mary, Mother of God, he's been stabbed as well, poor bastard!' Gwyn's irreverent voice boomed out as he bent for such a close inspection that his bulbous nose was almost touching the corpse. 'And haven't we seen wounds like that only a few days ago?'

The stricken onlookers watched as the two law officers poked and prodded at the gash in the dead man's side. 'Very wide indeed, Gwyn, as well as deep,' said de Wolfe grimly. 'But surely this must be a coincidence?'

Godfrey and William le Calve stared at each other, bemused at what was going on. 'What importance can this have, Sir John?' asked William. 'Surely in the presence of the other mutilations, this can have little significance? '

De Wolfe explained that recently they had seen similar unusual knife marks on the crew of a wrecked ship.

'But that was thirty miles from here and in very different circumstances, so I fail to see how it can have any connection,' objected Godfrey.

'I would like to agree with you, sir,' said John thoughtfully. 'But I must keep an open mind on the matter for now.'

Together with Gwyn, he explored the rest of le Calve's body, but found no other injuries, and by then several villeins had hurried up with a crude stretcher made of a pair of poles with ropes strung between them.

A short time later, the corpse was laid on a table in one of the side rooms of the manor-house and decently covered with a blanket. The parish priest was called and stayed to mumble Latin prayers over it, though there was no suggestion yet that the body be moved to the church, as was the usual practice.

'Thank God our mother is no longer with us, to have to witness such a devilish act,' muttered Godfrey. 'She died seven years ago, Christ rest her soul.'

John had noticed a handsome, well-dressed woman hovering in the background as they brought the lord back to his hall for the last time, but he was tactful enough not to enquire who she was.

'What happens now, Crowner?' asked the bemused elder son, still grappling with the fact that he was suddenly the new lord of Shillingford.

'I must start my enquiries,' replied de Wolfe. 'Though as it is a Sunday, I cannot open an inquest today, but I must question those people who may have any knowledge, while their memories are still fresh.'

The two sons remembered their obligations to visitors and invited the coroner and his officer to have some meat and drink before they began their investigations. More logs were placed on the fire and when they were all seated at one of the tables, servants brought wine, ale and cold meats with fresh bread and slabs of hard yellow cheese. Godfrey and his brother took some wine, but ate nothing, which was hardly surprising, considering the ghastly sights they had seen that morning. Adam the steward and some of the senior servants, such as the bottler, the falconer and the hunt-master, hovered in the background, with lesser mortals behind them, all wanting to share in any dramatic revelations that might come along.

'I'll need to speak to all those who had any part in both the hunt yesterday and the finding of the body this morning,' announced John, as he finished his impromptu meal and drained the last of his wine. Godfrey, gradually assuming his new role as the head of the household, gave orders to his old steward to round up everyone who was needed and soon a motley, shuffling group of men assembled in the hall.

John sat at the table as soon as the remains of the food had been cleared, with a brother on either side of him, as this was not a formal inquisition. However, to save taxing his memory until he returned to Exeter, de Wolfe asked Godfrey whether Adam le Bel, the only literate man among them, could write a summary of the facts, and the wrinkled old steward sat at the end of the table with quill and parchment. Gwyn stood near by and acted as a master of ceremonies, motioning the wheelwright forward as the First Finder. He had little to say except that he happened to be the first man to come across his lord's body in the stream and had hollered out in panic to bring the rest of the searchers to him.

Then the huntmaster reluctantly stepped forward, turning his pointed woollen cap restlessly in his hands as he stood before this grim-faced officer from Exeter. He was a lean, stringy fellow with a yellowish tinge to his face and a nose blushed with fine veins, suggesting too strong a liking for the ale-cask.

'Tell me what happened last night,' demanded John abruptly.

'Not a lot to tell, sir,' said the fellow hesitantly. 'We had little sport all afternoon, until the light was fading, when one of my beaters raised a deer. I think Sir Peter had been irked by the lack of excitement until then, for he dashed off to the left, waving to Sir William to circle round to the right. I went with the younger master and that was the last we saw of our lord.'

In spite of further probing by the coroner, it seemed he had nothing else to tell, and several other retainers who had been following the chase gave the same story. Peter le Calve had rushed off on his horse through the woods and had not been seen alive again.

'How far was the spot where you separated from that place on the stream?' John asked William, as Godfrey had not been at the hunt.

'Not more than half a mile, Crowner. If darkness had not overtaken us, I suspect we would have found him within the hour.'

As an aid to thought, de Wolfe rubbed his chin, which was relatively free of dark stubble, as it was only the previous day that he had had his weekly wash and shave. Even this mannerism failed to stimulate any profound ideas about advancing his investigation, but to fill the time he asked the steward a question.

'Your bailiff, I was told he was absent due to an illness. Where was he last night?'

Adam le Bel looked up from the parchment that he was laboriously completing. 'On his cot, no doubt, Crowner! He has been laid low these past three days with a bloody flux. I visited him yesterday morning in his toft along the road there and he seemed a little better. His wife said he had taken a little gruel, without it immediately passing through him.'

John grunted and accepted that, even if improving, the sick man was hardly likely to have been in a fit state to be involved in his lord's murder. There seemed no one else to interrogate, and John was driven to ask general questions of the throng that now half filled the hall of the manor.