The Manor of Death (10 page)

This evening, as dusk was drawing in, de Wolfe did not bother to toil up the narrow winding staircase, as both his clerk and his officer would not be there until morning. Instead, he called in at the guardroom inside the arched entrance and spoke to Gabriel, the gnarled sergeant of the men-at-arms who formed the garrison at Rougemont. They were old friends, having shared a battle years before in Ireland, when old King Henry was trying to curb the ambitions of his unruly barons who were carving out their own empire there. Always ready to gossip, Gabriel produced a jug of cider and some mugs. Pushing two young soldiers off a bench, the only furniture in the bleak cell, he waved John to a seat and they spent half an hour discussing old campaigns, the state of the nation and the price of wool, until the sergeant remembered that he had a message for the coroner.

'A fellow came in at around noon from Kenton, sent by the reeve there. It seems their miller has got himself killed in his own pond and they want a coroner to attend.'

Deaths in water mills were common, both from drowning in the millstreams and from being caught up in the ponderous machinery that ground the grain. Children and millers were by far the most frequent victims, and John had dealt with a dozen such accidents since he had become coroner in 1194. He swallowed his cider and stood up. 'It will have to keep until tomorrow. I'll take a ride down there unless my rump prevents me from sitting on a horse.'

It occurred to him that Kenton, a small village a few miles south of Exeter on the west side of the river, was over halfway to Dawlish on the coast. With a little mental gymnastics in respect of his conscience, he decided that it might be useful to speak to one of his own shipmasters there to see if he had any knowledge of the situation in Axmouth and the vessels that sailed from there. The fact that Hilda also lived in Dawlish could be viewed as irrelevant, though it would be churlish of him to visit the port without calling upon her! He went out into the passage of the gatehouse, where a bored sentinel stood under the raised portcullis just above the drawbridge over the ditch.

'Do you know if the sheriff is still here?' he asked the youth. The young man-at-arms stood to attention, greatly in awe of this menacing knight, whose reputation amongst the soldiery bordered on the fabulous. A Crusader and actually part of the Lionheart's escort when he was captured in Austria, de Wolfe was known in the army as 'Black John', both from his appearance and from his temper when displeased.

'He went out about a hour past, Crowner,' answered the guard respectfully. 'I think he went to his house in North Street.'

The sheriff, Henry de Furnellis, had a manor near Crediton but also kept a dwelling in the city, shunning the dreary quarters provided for him in the castle keep, a two-storeyed building on the further side of the inner ward.

De Wolfe had intended to tell de Furnellis about the murder in Axmouth, as nominally the sheriff was responsible for all law and order issues in the county. However, Henry was unenthusiastic about his duties, as he was only a stopgap sheriff, appointed quickly after the sudden removal of de Revelle. He was content to leave the pursuit of crime to the coroner, while he devoted himself to the administration of Devon's finances.

Dusk was falling and John decided to go back home and get Mary to minister to the sore on his bottom. By then, Matilda would be in bed in her solar at the back of the house, and he would be free to give Brutus his cherished walk, undoubtedly in the direction of Idle Lane and the Bush Inn.

Later that evening, as John de Wolfe was sitting in the alehouse with an arm around his Welsh mistress, a ragged man was trudging along the highway in the extreme east of the county. Dusk had long faded into night, but an almost full moon lit his way along the deserted track between the villages of Kilmington and Wilmington. He held a long staff in one hand, the other easing the nagging pressure of one of the shoulder straps that supported a shapeless backpack.

The pedlar, who rejoiced in the name of Setricus Segar, was tired, weary and hungry. He had not a single penny in his pouch, for he had sold nothing in Widworthy that day, the goodwives being unimpressed by his crumpled selection of ribbons or his slightly rusted sewing needles.

Once a moderately successful chapman, going around the countryside selling a whole range of household goods, he had gradually degenerated into little more than a beggar, thanks to his drinking habits. It was true that he had reason for this decline, as his wife and child had died of smallpox five years before and soon afterwards his dwelling in Chard had burnt down, leaving him destitute.

Nowadays he usually stole to keep him in a little food and more ale, as well as to buy the meagre stock of haberdashery which was his excuse for wandering the roads between towns and villages. Tonight he expected to sleep under a bush, which was his bedroom more often than not - but if tomorrow he could get as far as Exeter, he could cadge a meal and a mattress in one of the priories.

Though the day had been mild, the clear moonlit sky made the night cold, and he shivered under the threadbare cloak that he wore over his torn fustian tunic. He had rags tied around his feet to secure the detached soles of his worn shoes and a dirty pointed cap sat on his even dirtier hair, the tassel flopping on his shoulder as he tramped wearily along. Though he was not yet forty, he looked a score of years older, his lined face sallow and haggard under a week's worth of stubble.

The countryside was infested with outlaws and cutthroats, but one advantage of being so obviously destitute was that he was unlikely to be robbed. However, when he heard a distant noise behind him, his sense of self-preservation made him stop and cup a hand to his ear. Somewhere a wagon was moving and it was not long before he could hear the squeaking of wheels and the snorting of oxen as they toiled up the long slope of this stretch of the Honiton road. When he glimpsed the canvas hood in the moonlight, Setricus melted into the undergrowth at the side of the rutted track, where rank weeds gave way to bushes before the tall trees of the forest began.

He crouched behind the new leaves of an elder thicket and waited. Soon the two grunting draught animals came in sight, dragging the covered wagon with its pair of solid, creaking wheels. Two men sat on the driving-board, one idly flicking the oxen with a long switch, though they took not the slightest notice of him. As they came level with the pedlar, he made a sudden decision, got up and hurried out into the road.

'Hey, brothers, can I sit on your tailboard? My poor feet are worn down to my ankles!' he whined.

Startled by this apparition, the man on his side roared with alarm and raised a knobbed cudgel that he had lying alongside him.

'Clear off, whoever you are! Come closer and I'll brain you!' he yelled.

Setricus Segar continued to trot alongside the cart but kept out of range of the club that the driver's mate was waving at him.

'I'm but a poor chapman, travelling to Honiton,' he pleaded. 'All I want is a lift on the back of your wagon.'

'He said, bugger off!' shouted the driver, joining the fray. 'If you're some scout for a bunch of outlaws, tell 'em we've got another two armed men inside.'

'Do I look like a trail robber, with this damned pack on my back?' persisted the pedlar. 'Any Christian man would give me aid. It costs you nothing to be charitable. '

For answer, the man with the cudgel hopped down from his seat behind the shafts and began raining blows on Segar, who screamed and sheltered his head with his arms, then blundered back into the brambles and scrub at the side of the track. The guard followed him for a few paces, cursing and blaspheming as he gave him a valedictory few whacks on the shoulders. Then he gave up the chase and ran back to catch up with the wagon, clambering back on to the driving-board.

Setricus cowered in the long grass and nettles until the creaking vehicle had passed out of sight. Then he stood up and stumbled back into the roadway, shaking a fist after his assailants.

'You miserable bastards, may you rot in hell!' he shouted, but not loud enough to provoke the man to return with his club. He began walking again, his shoulders and neck aching from the blows they had suffered. The next village could not be far off now. Wilmington was the last hamlet before the small town of Honiton, not that he would be able to stop at either at this time of night, with not a single coin to buy a pallet in an alehouse loft. As he walked he began to wonder why a covered wagon with an armed guard would be travelling at dead of night along the highway. He wished he knew what was in the back of the cart, for as well as being as curious as a cat, there was always the chance of being able to steal something worthwhile.

Setricus toiled on, stumbling now and then in some deeper rut than usual, though the pale moonlight revealed the road fairly well. If it had been cloudy or if the moon had not risen, it would be impossible to walk at night and he would have had to curl up under a tree unless he could find a barn that was not guarded by dogs.

The road ran from Axminster to Honiton, where it joined the high road from Exeter eastwards to Ilminster, Salisbury and eventually London. Setricus had never been further than Yeovil on that road and now had no ambition other than to get near Honiton tonight, find some niche to sleep in until the morning and make an early start on an empty stomach towards Exeter. He optimistically hoped to make some sales in the city, if he could sneak in through the gates past the porters and then avoid the constables seeking unlicensed hawkers.

As he plodded over a rise, he could see the roofs and church tower of Wilmington in its hollow below. One faint flickering light was visible - he presumed from either a candle or a horn lantern - but otherwise the place looked dead, as was normal in the countryside, where folk went to bed with the dusk and rose with the dawn. When he got down to the hamlet, he was intrigued to see that the light was coming from the open door of the alehouse and that several figures were moving in front of it, their shapes silhouetted against the flames from a log fire in the middle of the room. Even more interesting was the presence of the covered wagon just outside the tavern.

After the blows he had suffered, he approached cautiously, keeping out of the moonlight in the shadow of a hedge on the other side of the road. The rags on his feet muffled any sound, and he sidled along until he was opposite the cart. He stopped and watched what was happening outside the inn. The two men who had been on the footboard were carrying small kegs into the low thatched building whose whitewashed walls stood out starkly in the harsh moonlight. At the door, a fat man was watching them, presumably the landlord. The pedlar waited as about half a dozen of the firkins were taken inside. Then about the same number of flat bales were transferred from the back of the wagon, before he saw the driver pulling down the canvas cover and lashing it to cleats on the tailboard. At the alehouse door, the man who had beaten him was in close conversation with the innkeeper, and though

Setricus could make out none of their muttering he distinctly heard the clinking of coins.

The two men climbed back on to the cart and the inn door was quietly closed as the oxen jerked into life and the vehicle rumbled away out of the village. The pedlar followed it at a safe distance and for a quarter of an hour he trailed behind, wondering what manner of delivery needed to be made after dark in the depths of the countryside. He guessed that their boast that there were more armed men in the back was a bluff, as there had been no sign of them when they stopped at the tavern.

Assuming that they were going to Honiton, he stepped out quite boldly a couple of hundred paces behind, there being no chance that his soft footfalls could be heard over the rumble and squeak of the solid cartwheels. Suddenly, however, the wagon began to make a sharp turn off the highway, and Setricus scurried into the shadow of the bushes in case they looked back the way they had come. He saw that they had pulled into a space alongside a small toft, a solitary dwelling of cob-plastered wattle, with a thatched roof that even in the pale moonlight looked ragged and grass-grown. A rickety fence marked off a neglected plot of land, but there was no sign of man or beast.

The driver and his aggressive companion got down and untied the two oxen from the shafts, releasing them from the yokes across their shoulders. With a smack on their rumps, they drove the animals through a gate into the compound around the cottage, then vanished around the back. There were some noises within for a few minutes, but no light appeared through the roughly shuttered window-opening and soon all was quiet.

Setricus waited for many more minutes, then surmised that the men had taken to their beds. By the look of the place, these would probably be merely bags of hay or a pile of bracken on the floor - though he would dearly have liked the same comfort himself.

Setricus was gripped by a fervent desire to know what was left in the back of the wagon, especially if he could steal some of it. He shrugged off his pack into the hedge and quietly sidled up to the back of the cart. Undoing one of the thongs that secured the flap at the rear, he raised himself on tiptoe and peered over the tailboard. In the poor light, all he could see were some more kegs and bales, all of which were too large for him to carry away. There seemed to be some smaller objects on the floor between them and, determined to purloin something for his trouble, he undid the rest of the lashings and pulled out one of the wooden pegs that held the tailboard in place. He had expected the other end to be fixed in a similar fashion, so that he could ease the planks downwards when he removed the second pin - but this happened to be missing, and without warning the heavy tailboard dropped with a crash!