The Manor of Death (43 page)

John took Odin back to his stable and went thankfully to his own door across the lane. He was weary and anxious, but at least the last traces of the boil on his buttock had disappeared, so the long ride had not been too uncomfortable. As he had not returned the previous night, Mary had no idea when to expect him, but he soon had a cup of wine in his hand and a promise of food within the hour. He sank gratefully into the chair near his hearth, with Brutus at his feet, though given his absence and the mild weather Mary had not lit a fire in the empty grate.

'No message from my wife?' he called at her departing figure as she went back towards the cook-shed.
 

'Nothing at all, Sir Coroner,' she replied. 'She's keeping you dangling, right enough!'

He sat with the pewter cup in his hand and sipped the good red wine of Aquitaine as he pondered the situation. 'Bloody woman!' he muttered to his dog. 'She's doing this on purpose, to make my life difficult. She knows now that I'm leaving for London, but how can I go not knowing what she's intending to do?' Brutus looked up at him, head on one side, but the hound had no suggestions to offer.

John sipped again and thought of Nesta. He had posed the big question to her, but she had given no answer, either. Could he just ride away to Westminster or wherever and leave her behind? She had promised him an answer when he returned, but he was almost afraid to hear it. However, the nettle must be grasped, and as soon as Mary had fed him he would go down to Idle Lane and hear her decision. He felt like someone arraigned at the Eyre of Assize, waiting for the justices to deliver a verdict that could send him to the gallows!

Mary had no chance to go out to buy fresh food at that time of the evening, so she raided her stores and found three smoked herrings hanging from a nail in the rafters of her cook-shed. She grilled these on skewers over her firepit and served them with boiled cabbage and fried onions. After two decades of eating whatever could be found during campaigns in forest, desert and ravaged countryside, John ate anything that was put before him and made no comment about this peculiar combination. Too early in the season for fresh fruit, it was followed by a bowl of nuts and raisins and a small loaf of fine wheaten bread, a change from the usual coarse ones made from barley or rye.

By now, dusk was falling, and when he had finished his solitary meal he plucked up his courage and whistled for Brutus to make the customary walk down to the Bush. As he went, he again thought of the familiarity of the route and the fact that within weeks it would be just a memory.

As he passed through the twilit lanes, men touched fingers to their foreheads and women bobbed their heads respectfully. The tall, slightly hunched figure dressed in black was a familiar sight to most people in the city, loping along with his dog at his side. They knew him for a stern but fair and honest man, which was more than could be said for many in similar positions of power and influence. Those who had already heard that he was leaving for London wondered if his successor would be as well respected as Sir John de Wolfe.

As he approached the door of the Bush, he took a deep breath and marched in, this time without hesitation, resigned to getting this over with as soon as possible. It was gloomy inside, as, like Martin's Lane, the fire was only a heap of dead ash and the sole illumination came from the flickering tallow dips in their niches around the walls. Though the shutters on the few narrow window-holes were open, the final pale light of the western sky did little to dispel the shadows, and at first he had to strain his eyes to seek out the trim figure of his mistress.

Nesta was standing by the barrels of ale, racked on wedges near the back door, dipping a jug into a large crock of cider. As soon as she saw him, she thrust it into Edwin's hand and hurried across towards him as he stood near his table. On the way, she snatched her shawl from a peg on the wall and somewhat to his surprise threw it over her head and shoulders. When she reached him, she slipped her arm through his and pulled him towards the door.

'John, let's walk. I am glad to see you safe. I was worried about you.'

Bemused, he let himself be taken out into Idle Lane, where Nesta guided his steps to Smythen Street, the dog loping along behind them.

'Where are we going,
cariad
?’ he asked.

'Let's walk a while. I have a fancy to see the last of the daylight from the city wall,' she replied firmly.

This was not what he expected, and he didn't know whether it boded good or ill for him. They walked steadily down towards Stepcote Hill, where the steep lane was terraced to give a foothold. As they passed the church of St Mary Steps, he attempted to broach the big question.

'Nesta, have you thought of what I said last time?' he asked anxiously.

'I have thought of little else, John - but wait until we are there.'

She pointed to the jagged top of the town wall, silhouetted against the fading light. Across the road from the church, narrow steps were built into the stonework to reach the walkway fifteen feet above. Holding up the hem of her long kirtle with one hand, she climbed up and, when they reached the parapet, set off slowly towards the Watergate away to their left. After a few hundred paces, they reached the nearest of the twin towers that straddled the gateway below. Turning so that her back was against the stonework, she held out her hands and grasped his own.

'John, I cannot come with you to London,' she said simply.

De Wolfe tried to ignore the sudden void in his chest. 'Why not, my love?' he asked, hoping that she wished to be persuaded.

'Because I am soon to be married,' she murmured, her eyes cast down as she spoke.

He dropped her hands as if they had become red hot. 'Married? How can you become married?'

This was the last thing he expected. After her fling with a servant in the tavern last year, he might have expected another affair with the good-looking Welshman. Yes, that was within his expectations. But married!

She raised her face and they stared at each other. 'Is it so extraordinary, John? I can never become your wife, we both know that. Am I to remain your leman for the rest of my widowed life, seeing you when it suits you? A lonely foreigner in a strange country for ever?'

'This is that Owain, no doubt?' he muttered grimly, already wondering whether he should seek out the stonemason and kill him.

'Of course it is Owain,' she answered. 'A good man, kind, and of my own age and kin. He has asked me to marry him and I have said that I will - and go home to Wales with him.'

'Have you lain with him?' he rasped.

Nesta stiffened a little and stared at him defiantly. 'How is that any of your business, John? You are not my husband,' she said crisply. 'But if you must know, I have not! He is a man of honour and is content to wait until the Church has bound us together.'

De Wolfe, for all his stern, stolid nature, crumpled at this. He pulled her to him, and his hand pressed her head against his chest.

'Nesta, Nesta! Does this have to be? I thought you loved me?'

'Of course I love you, John! But now I also love Owain, and he I can have, unlike you.'

'How can you love us both?'

She looked up at him in reproof. 'You should know that, sir! I have always felt that I have shared you with Hilda of Dawlish.'

It was something of a shock for him to realise that she was right. He had never suspected that she knew of his real feelings for the blonde Saxon.

'Is there nothing that I can say or promise that might change your mind?'

She shook her head, still close to his body. 'You cannot marry me or take me home to Gwent, John.'

There was iron determination in her voice that told him that nothing he could say would alter her decision. At that moment he knew that his life was going to change far more than just a move to London. His mind capitulated and his practical nature straightway began to make plans.

'Sit here, my love. We must make sense of this thing,' he said gently, guiding her to one of the stone blocks that sat behind the crenellations of the wall. Down below, Brutus had run along keeping pace with them and was now sitting looking up, whimpering slightly as he sensed that something disturbing was going on.

'Nothing will divert you from this course?' he began.
 

She shook her head again. 'God knows I have agonised over it long enough, but this is my last chance. I want to go home and I want to be with this good man. Do not hate him for it, John. He truly loves me and will be kind to me.'

'I should break every bone in his body, Nesta - and chastise myself as well, for it was I who was foolish enough to bring him to you!' He said this without bitterness, as a kind of calm had descended upon him. 'But what are we to do about everything?' he asked helplessly.

She reached out and held his hand again, as they sat side by side on the cold stone. 'You have been so good to me, John. When Meredydd died, you saved the Bush and saved me. And again after the fire, you had the inn rebuilt. I can never repay you enough.'

He gave one of his throat clearings to cover his emotion. 'It was nothing, for I loved you, Nesta. But what are we going to do now?'

'You are going to London, I am going to Wales. The Bush is rightly yours, you must do as you think fit. Sell it and recover what you have spent on it.'

He pulled her head towards him. The shawl had slipped off and her auburn hair flowed over his shoulder. 'Nonsense! The Bush belongs to you. That loan I made when your husband died has been repaid, thanks to the skill you showed in running the place so successfully. '

'You paid for the repairs when it was burnt, John!'

'The profit from a few cargoes of wool soon covered that. No, it is yours, for you will need money to start your new life.'

'Owain is a master mason, he has a house in Chepstow and can support a wife with ease.'

John did not miss the tinge of pride in her voice and knew that the situation was irrevocable now. 'Money never comes amiss, but we will see. Maybe I already have the germ of an idea,' he said.

Now that the die was cast, he became the practical man of action that had ensured his survival as a warrior and his success as a law officer. Shocked though he had been, he already felt an unexpected sense of lightening and freedom, like lizards he had seen in the desert, which shrugged off their old skin and started life afresh. Standing up, he held out his hands to the woman he still loved but could not have.

'Come, let's go back to the Bush. I had better meet this Owain again and congratulate him - the swine!'

Next morning de Wolfe carried on with his usual routine, going up to the gatehouse of the castle to decide on the day's tasks with his clerk and officer. When Mary had put his breakfast before him in the cook-shed, he had decided not to tell her about Nesta until he had worked out a plan of action. As he spooned down his oatmeal gruel sweetened with honey, he recalled with some, surprise that he had slept like a log, after fearing that sorrow and recrimination over Nesta would keep him awake all night.

Now, he was sitting behind his table in the bleak chamber at Rougemont, with Thomas scratching away on his rolls with a goose quill and Gwyn perched on his window-ledge, picking his teeth with a splinter of wood.

'When the cathedral bells ring for Prime, we are to meet the sheriff and Ralph Morin in the undercroft to see what we get from those bastards locked up there,' he announced. 'In the meantime I have some grave news to tell you.'

His tone made Gwyn throw down his toothpick and Thomas laid his pen aside, as both men stared expectantly at their master.

'Nesta is to be married to that stonemason and is going back to live with him in Wales,' he announced flatly.

The reaction of the two men was very different.

Thomas adored Nesta, who had been kindness itself to him during his many and various problems. He was devastated and his eyes immediately filled up.

'Nesta leaving us?' he gasped. 'May Christ Jesus make her happy, but, oh, how I will miss her!' He crossed himself repeatedly and sniffed back his tears.

Gwyn, on the other hand, scowled ferociously and offered to go down and strangle Owain ap Gronow. When de Wolfe had explained a little more and made it clear that he had become resigned to the situation, Gwyn asked the obvious question. 'But what about the Bush?' he demanded. 'What will happen to that when we go to London?'

John, who had thought long and hard about it before going to bed the previous night, had a proposition to make.

'Gwyn, you are fonder than most men of good food and good ale. How would you like to be the new owner of the Bush?'

The big Cornishman stared at him, uncomprehending. 'Me? How could I buy the Bush? I've not two pennies to rattle together!'

'I'll buy it for you, Gwyn,' growled John. 'Nesta is going. Though she wants to give me the place, I'll buy it from her, then pass it over to you.'

His officer looked at the coroner as if he had taken leave of his senses - which perhaps he had.

'But I'm coming to London with you!' he protested. 'How can I become an alehouse keeper in Exeter?'

John was unperturbed. 'You live in a hovel in St Sidwell's, renting a shack from some grasping landlord. You have said many times that you wish you could move your goodwife and children into somewhere better, so now's your chance!'