The Poisoned Chalice (14 page)

‘You saw no one follow you from Martin's Lane to the cathedral?'

‘I wasn't looking for anyone. It never occurred to me that anyone would.'

‘And in the cathedral? Where did you go? Did you see anyone you knew?'

‘I went straight to the altar of Mary, Mother of God, and knelt before it to pray for the soul of my own mother Mary. It stands against the front of the quire-screen, on the left-hand side.' Christina's eyes filled with tears again.

John did not know whether they were for the mother who was not there to comfort her in the hour of her need or for the memory that rapine had been soon to follow. ‘Did you see anyone you knew?' persisted the coroner.

‘I was there about a quarter of one hour. Several people came to kneel and pray. I knew one or two by sight, but not by name. When I was leaving, I passed a woman, Martha, wife of a wheelwright who lives near my cousin Mary. I spoke a few words with her, then left by the small door.'

There was nothing else to be learned and John took his leave, as Henry Rifford was now increasingly restive.

His next call was at the castle, set on its rise at the north-eastern corner of the sloping city. The man-at-arms at the gate, just below his own office, called out a challenge as he saw a black figure striding up the drawbridge over the inner ditch, but banged the stock of his spear into the ground as a salute when he recognised the King's coroner.

John passed through the narrow rounded archway into the inner bailey and made for the keep, set near the further curtain wall that ran along the low cliff above Northernhay and formed the corner of the city perimeter.

The inner ward was active with people coming and going between the lean-to huts that lined the bank below the walls. Cooking fires were burning, and soldiers and their families relaxed in the evening after a day's work. Chickens perched in bushes and on carts, geese wandered about, and a solitary goat had somehow got himself on to the roof of a low hut to eat the grassy thatch. Horses neighed and oxen lowed in the stables over on the right-hand side, behind the tiny chapel of St Mary. Underfoot, the ground was a morass of hoof-churned mud, refuse and animal droppings, and as the coroner strode across to the building where the sheriff had his town residence, he thought it no wonder that Richard's wife was rarely there.

De Revelle had several manors, one at Revelstoke, another at Tiverton, where his elegant but aloof wife Lady Eleanor spent most of her time, saying that she could not stand the cramped quarters and military squalor of Rougemont.

John reached the wooden ladder that went up to the first floor entrance of the keep, over the semi-subterranean undercroft that housed the castle gaol. There was another prison, a hellhole used for convicts from the burgage court, in the South Gate, but those awaiting trial or convicted by the sheriffs shire court – or by the Royal Justices on their infrequent visits – ended up in equally foul cells under the keep.

At the foot of the steps, another guard, half asleep, roused himself sufficiently to salute the coroner. The security was slack, especially after the town gates closed at nightfall: Exeter had seen no fighting since the siege almost sixty years before, when Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, had held the castle for Empress Matilda against King Stephen during the civil war. John sometimes thought cynically that Matilda was a name which seemed to suit hard-bitten, aggressive women like the Empress and his own wife.

He climbed to the first floor, most of which was a large hall, deserted at this time of the evening. Another guard drooped by a small door that led to the sheriffs quarters and, with one of his grunts, the coroner stalked past him and entered the inner room. A pair of tallow dips and two candles burned inside, with a moderate fire glowing in the hearth, enough to light up a table where Richard de Revelle was working on some documents.

Unusually for a knight, he was quite literate, which made John secretly jealous. But it was also a measure of Richard's lack of military prowess: he had managed to avoid both the French and Irish wars, as well as the Crusades, being too ambitious in the political arena to risk getting killed or wounded.

The sheriff looked up sharply, his pointed beard jutting aggressively as the coroner pushed open the door and walked in. When he saw who it was, his face changed to the expression that always annoyed John intensely: a faint, pitying smile, as if he was resigned to humouring a slightly backward child.

‘Ah, it's our noble coroner! What brings you out on such a cold night, John? You should be at home with your good wife and ajar of ale.'

‘Don't patronise me, Richard. There's much work to be done over this ravishment. The girl knows nothing that will help us and I fear this evil man may strike again if he feels he has defeated us.'

The sheriff sighed as he pushed aside his parchments and leaned forward over his table. ‘Christina has spoken of the two smiths in Fitzosbern's shop – your own wife told me of her fears of those scum. I will bounce them around in the morning, to see what falls from their lips.' John began arguing with his brother-in-law about the lack of anything resembling evidence, but Richard responded with the same logic as Matilda: he at least had two suspects, however feeble the connection, whereas the coroner had nothing at all. The discussion led nowhere, so John changed direction to report on his visit to Torbay and the arrest of the reeve and other villagers, both for theft of royal flotsam and for the murder of the three sailors.

The sheriff nodded his agreement with the arrests. ‘I'll try them next week at the County Court and hang them the next day.'

John shook his head. ‘No, Richard, they must await the King's justices, as Hubert Walter has decreed. I have all the details enrolled and will present them at the next assize.'

De Revelle groaned, resting his forehead on his hand in a theatrical gesture of sorrowful resignation. ‘Not again, John. I thought we had enough of this last month.'

‘Then we will thrash it out with the Justiciar next week,' snapped John stubbornly, unwilling to yield an inch of his coronial powers to the sheriff.

Richard rose from his chair, resplendent in a yellow tunic to his calves, covered by his surcoat of buff linen to knee-level. His narrow face was set in a petulant expression, like a patient but exasperated schoolmaster with a stubborn pupil.

‘Hubert Walter arrives after the noon hour on Monday, from Buckfast Abbey. You had better come with Matilda to the Bishop's feast that evening, then we can arrange for a meeting next day to sort out this nonsense of you coroners trying to usurp the sheriff's duties.'

‘We have been invited already to the feast,' retorted John, stung again by the other's patronising manner. ‘The Archdeacon and Treasurer of the cathedral have already notified us that we should be present as of right.'

After a few more sniping remarks on both sides, John left the sheriff to his business of arranging for the secular part of the Chief Justiciar's visit in three days' time. He marched back through the castle, and this time fulfilled Matilda's allegation by striding down the whole length of High Street, past Carfoix, the crossing of the main roads from the four major gates, and into Fore Street. Half-way down, he turned left into a huddle of small streets and crossed into Idle Lane, where the Bush stood isolated on its patch of rough ground.

He pushed open the door and entered the warm, sweat-and-ale smelling main room. Nesta was not to be seen, but old Edwin, the one-eyed potman, gave him a welcoming wave and limped across to where John slumped on a bench near the fire. ‘Evening, Cap'n! We've got a new batch of ale, just racked off today – unless you want cider?'

‘A quart of ale, Edwin. And where's the mistress?'

The one eye managed to leer at the coroner. ‘Upstairs, Sir John, fixing mattresses for two travellers. She'll be down in a minute or two.'

He lurched off to wash empty ale pots in a leather bucket of dirty water and to refill them with new ale drawn from casks wedged up on a low platform at the rear.

John looked about the long, low room and saw a score or more citizens lolling at other tables, a few whores among them. He knew all the men by sight and most by name, the majority local tradesmen. The few strangers were countrymen, in Exeter to buy and sell livestock or other goods. Several men were foreign, probably German merchants from Cologne or shipmasters from Flanders or Brittany, their vessels tied up at the quay a few hundred yards away. With such a motley collection of virile men in the city, how on earth was he – or Richard – to make any progress in seizing a potential rapist?

‘Why so thoughtful, Sir Crowner?'

Nesta dropped down on to the bench alongside him, slipping her arm through his. Her pretty round face, russet hair and shapely body were a tonic to his jaded eyes. She smiled at him, showing white teeth that were a novelty in women of her age, most of whom had yellowed pegs or blackened stumps. John knew that this was due to the Welsh habit of rubbing the teeth twice a day with the chewed end of a hazel twig.

‘Frustration, my dear woman!' he said, dropping his hand to her thigh.

She rolled her eyes in mock ecstasy. ‘Frustration at not rolling me in my bed at this very moment, kind sir?' she mocked.

‘No, my girl. At getting nowhere with this damned rape.'

She pretended to pout, but could not keep it up for more than a moment. Reaching over for his ale jar, she swallowed a mouthful. ‘The gossip says that Godfrey Fitzosbern's smiths are under suspicion.'

The coroner marvelled once again at the rapidity with which rumour travelled in Exeter. He explained that there was no foundation for this idea and told Nesta of his latest quarrel with his wife over the matter.

‘Why should the suspicion rest only on Fitzosbern's men?' complained the comely innkeeper. ‘I'd far rather suspect Godfrey himself. He's a lecher and ogler of the first water. He's tried it on with me once or twice – and with most of the women in the city who don't have cross-eyes and whiskers.'

John was glad that his mistress's opinion was the same as his own, as regards the master silversmith.

‘But surely a substantial citizen like Godfrey, a leading burger and guild-master, would hardly risk everything for two minutes' pleasure with the daughter of a portreeve!' he objected.

Nesta looked at him sternly. ‘I know of a King's crowner who regularly beds a common innkeeper! When the sap rises in a man's loins, he is capable of anything.'

John gave her one of his rare grins, a lop-sided lift of his full lips. His hand squeezed her plump leg again, as he leaned over to whisper, ‘Are you very busy at the moment, madam? Or can we inspect the upper room of this hostelry to see if the pallets are soft?'

As he followed her up the wide ladder steps in the corner, many pairs of eyes looked knowingly in their direction, but John's thoughts were mainly on the legs of the pert lady ascending in front of him – although a fraction of his mind was mulling over what she had said about Godfrey Fitzosbern.

At the same time, not far away, others were discussing the silversmith, in a room over Eric Picot's wine store in Priest Street.
¹

Joseph of Topsham, his son Edgar and the wine merchant sat earnestly considering the situation. The rumours about Christina's visit to Fitzosbern had spread within minutes, and it was already well known that the sheriff was going to interrogate the two smiths next morning.

Picot was scornful of the gossip. ‘I fail to see why we should suspect those two nonentities,' he exclaimed, standing to pour more good wine into the glass cups of his guests. ‘I would a thousand times better suspect their master.'

He was echoing the words of Nesta, but probably a good proportion of Exeter men felt the same, jealous of Godfrey's winning ways with the ladies, which included some of their own wives.

‘But there is no shred of evidence – nor can I see how such can be obtained,' objected Joseph, cupping the wine in his hands as he stared moodily into the fire.

‘I would kill him with my bare hands if I thought he was the one!' snarled Edgar, who since yesterday had turned from an ineffectual youth into a wrathful man, obsessed with hurting whoever had injured him so badly. Though he had not yet admitted it to himself, much of his anger arose from his indecision as to whether he now wanted to marry Christina, who could never come to his bed with her maidenhead intact. He was ashamed at the thought that slid into his mind and used righteous anger to try to block it out.

He and his father had been to see her earlier that evening. The visit had not been a success, as a shutter like a great portcullis seemed to have come down between Christina and Edgar. Though they exchanged courteous words and Edgar made all the right expressions of horror and condolence, they could not embrace or even touch hands. Edgar, sensitive to mood and atmosphere, felt the girl stiffen and tremble when he came near. ‘It was almost as if she suspected me of being the ravisher!' he blurted out to his father, after they left the Rifford house.

They made their way to Eric Picot's dwelling, Joseph wanting to unburden himself to a good friend, before going back to sleep in a corner of Edgar's room, in the store of the apothecary's shop. Picot kept his stock of wine in the house in Priest Street, as it was near the quayside, where ships either brought the imported casks direct or lighters rowed them up the river from Topsham. He lived above, in rather Spartan circumstances, as his wife had died five years before and he had reverted to a bachelor existence. However, he also had a new house built on a plot purchased from the manorial lord at Wonford, just outside the city, where he spent some days each week.

‘What can we do about this, Father?' demanded Edgar. ‘I've a mind to challenge Fitzosbern to deny that he knows anything about this foul assault. Christina was last seen in his shop, getting that damned bracelet. God above, I wish I had never thought to give it to her if this is the ruin it brought upon us!'