The Poisoned Chalice (22 page)

Hugh Ferrars, rocking slightly on his heels, prodded Fitzosbern in the chest with a thick finger. ‘Rapist or not, I want to know what your dealings were with my intended wife. She came to your shop many a time. What was she to you, eh? Come on, damn you, admit how well you knew her!'

His squire had picked up Hugh's fallen sword and handed it to him, and now the baron's son began waving it at Fitzosbern, taking the point perilously near the think bloody line on his neck.

‘Put that away, damn you!' thundered the coroner, clashing his own blade down on Ferrars's weapon. Trying to control four unruly men, two of them tipsy, was proving too much and he wished that he had Gwyn here to bang their heads together.

Mabel came back into the fray, pointing dramatically at her damaged face. ‘Look what you did, swine of a husband! You devil, it's not the first time, either. I've had to stay inside my house for days on end until your handiwork healed up and I could go out and pretend to be the loving wife of a respectable burgess!' Godfrey seemed on the point of apoplexy, so great was his rage, but the coroner had his arm twisted up his back to hold him off the others. However, his mouth was still in working order. ‘I told you to get inside that house, wife! You'll be sorry for this behaviour,' he screamed, almost beside himself with hatred.

‘Not nearly so sorry as you will be, when I've spread your reputation about the town. I've held my peace until now, but enough is enough. I'm leaving you.'

‘Good riddance! Go to hell, woman! And take that raddled wine pedlar with you. D'you think I didn't know about your own petty affairs, you fool?'

Mabel ignored this, secretly relieved that it was out in the open at last. But she had not finished with her husband yet. ‘What's this Hugh was saying about you and his wife-to be, eh? Another rape, was it, you poxy swine?'

Hugh's eyes swivelled to her. ‘Do you know anything of his affairs, madam? Do you know if he had been tumbling my intended wife?'

She looked from one to other. ‘I can't say who he tumbled, they came and went so fast. It was too difficult to keep track of his philandering.'

The gathering crowd murmured with delight. This was an unexpected entertainment for a Saturday night and even the cold wind and occasional snowflake did not discourage them from waiting for the next act.

But John had had enough of this public brawl, especially as he spied Matilda coming out of his front door. The noise must have woken her at last, and he knew she would be incensed at such a vulgar fracas taking place outside her house.

‘Clear off, all of you. This is no place to hold a private dispute. Ferrars, take this drunken squire and get home to your lodging. Your father would be ashamed of your behaviour in a public place.'

Next he turned to Edgar. ‘And you had better mind your tongue, unless you have proof. You cannot go accusing prominent citizens of felony without a shred of evidence. Get back to your lodgings and be glad that I don't have you dragged off to Rougemont for the night.' He looked at the battered face and hunched body. ‘And get Nicholas, that leech-master of yours, to put some poultices on your wounds.'

The centre-stage players began to draw apart, but they all had parting shots to cast.

‘I'll not enter that house again, he'll kill me next time,' grated Mabel. ‘I'll go to my sister's in North Street and beg lodging there.' She glared virulently at her husband. ‘Just as well for you that I'm leaving,' she spat. ‘You'd likely get my cooking knife between your ribs before very long – or poison in your broth!' She marched off tight-lipped, pushing through the straggling ring of sightseers, cloakless but heedless of the cold in the heat of her fury.

‘And if she doesn't slay, you swine, I will!' slurred Hugh Ferrars, giving his sword a last wave in the air before unsteadily finding the lip of his scabbard to slide it home with a jangling scrape. He thrust his face close to Fitzosbern's to utter a final threat. ‘I'll be back to ask those questions, Master Silversmith. And if I'm not satisfied, I'll kill you.'

He swaggered off, stumbling and pushing the spectators roughly aside, his squire close behind. Edgar limped after them, heading for the shop in Fore Street and some healing potions. Fitzosbern pulled himself away from John's slackening hand and attempted to brush himself down. ‘You should have run those louts through – or arrested them! I'll be visiting Richard de Revelle first thing in the morning to demand writs against them all for assault and attempted murder. Just look at my throat!' He lifted his chin to show the line of drying blood across the front of his neck.

John ran a none-too-gentle finger across the mark. ‘It's nothing but a scratch. You'll come to no harm.'

Godfrey thrust away his hand impatiently. ‘Where's that bloody wife of mine?' he snarled.

‘She's gone. I saw her going around the corner into the high street.'

John felt Matilda at his elbow. He knew of her partiality for Godfrey Fitzosbern and her disapproval of Mabel, whom she considered a gold-digging second wife, but the antagonism towards him of the son of Lord Ferrars had made her cautious of offering the silversmith much support.

The small crowd, sensing that the show was over, melted away and the coroner took his wife's arm and steered her towards their own house.

‘I should go inside and bar your door, Fitrzsobern,' he advised. ‘Let's hope everyone will have a cooler head in the morning.'

The following day was Sunday, almost a day of rest for the King's coroner for the county of Devon.

In the forenoon, Matilda dragged him off to church, which she did every few weeks. An enthusiastic worshipper herself, she was ever nagging John to be more devout. Although she went often to the great cathedral a few yards from their house, her favourite haunt was the tiny church of St Olave's in Fore Street, strangely dedicated to the first Christian king of Norway.

Reluctantly, John accompanied her to Mass, thinking it a prudent move in the reconciliation plan with his wife. He had no firm religious instincts. He supposed that he believed in God – it was almost impossible not to in the conditioned atmosphere of the times – but for John, religious belief was just a part of life, like breathing, eating and making love. His life-threatening excursions to the Crusades had had no significant motive for wishing to rid the Holy Land of the infidels – in fact, he rather admired the Saracens. He went because his king wished to fight there, and loyalty to Richard was more than sufficient reason for him to risk his life – as well as giving him an excuse to be away from Matilda. So he went through the motions at St Olave's, using the time when the priest was mouthing the liturgies and acting out the rituals to think of the various problems thrown up by his current cases.

The Torbay wreck plunder and murders were virtually settled now, with the reeve and two villagers locked up in the gaol of Rougemont Castle. In spite of John's threat to levy the cost on Torre, the sheriff was fretting over the expense of feeding them until the next visit of the judges, which might take months. For this reason, prisoners were often allowed to escape, by the gaolers, who either turned a blind eye or were bribed. This happened even more often in the town gaol in South Gate, where those awaiting trial or already condemned by the burgess's court were incarcerated. The townsfolk had to pay for their lodging there, and it was a standing joke that a steady stream of prisoners got out and vanished into the forests to become outlaws, so relieving some of the tax burden on the citizens of Exeter.

As the priest droned on at the altar, de Wolfe slouched among the congregation, who stood on the bare flagstones for no benches were provided for their ease. His thoughts drifted again to the complexities of the rape, the miscarriage death, and he wondered if Fitzosbern had been to petition the sheriff as he had threatened. If John read Richard de Revelle correctly, he would tread very carefully with the Ferrars, de Courcy, the portreeve and, indeed, Fitzosbern himself, as each had different and varying degrees of power among the hierarchy of the Devon community. The sheriff always tried to come down on the winning side, especially since he had burned his fingers so badly when he had supported Prince John against the King.

The coroner wondered whether there was anything in these almost hysterical accusations against Fitzosbern. Though he disliked the man, he recognised that his feelings were irrelevant in the matter of his guilt: so far there was not a shred of evidence against him, although there had been so much gossip and rumour.

His mind drifted on to another less complicated case. A child had been killed on Friday when a wheel came off the axle of a cart carrying building stone and crushed him. The jury had declared the offending wheel to be the instrument of death and so was a ‘deodand', to be confiscated and sold for the benefit of the child's family. The carter now faced starvation, as he had no usable vehicle to earn his living, but John now decided to let him have his wheel back and pay its value to the family in instalments. Deodand money was supposed to go to the royal treasury, but sympathetic and over-taxed jurymen often voted to have the money paid to the family of the victim.

Having mentally settled that case, John was jogged back to the present by Matilda's elbow and found that the clergyman had stopped droning and the service was over. He walked his wife back to their house, Matilda preening herself before her acquaintances on the arm of her coroner husband. She stopped several times to pass the time of day and indulge in a little gossip. This morning the fracas in Martin's Lane and the break up of the Fitzosbern menage was easily the favourite topic.

As far as John could make out from the snippets he heard, Fitzosbern was already as good as condemned for multiple rape, procuring miscarriages, and murder. Uncomfortable with this exaggerated nonsense, he urged Matilda on. When they got to their door, he said that he must go up to the castle to see her brother about the events of the previous evening. He promised her that he would be back for the midday meal – and promised himself a visit to the Bush that afternoon – then hurried through the town to Rougemont and climbed the stairs inside the gate-house.

Gwyn and Thomas, Sunday notwithstanding, were up in the cramped coroner's chamber, taking their usual morning bread and cheese. John told them of the fight in his lane the previous evening and the whispering campaign in the town against the silversmith. The clerk nodded his bird-like head. ‘The same story is all about the Close. The canons and their servants are full of the gossip', he confirmed.

Gwyn swallowed a full pint of ale. ‘Do you think there's any truth in it?' he asked.

The coroner shrugged, his favourite form of expression.

Thomas, hunched over his eternal writing, looked up again. ‘I saw Fitzosbern and then Henry Rifford hurrying over to the keep not ten minutes ago. Both are chasing the sheriff. No doubt.'

John rose from his stool. ‘The portreeve as well? I'd better get across there and see what mischief they're up to.'

Under no circumstances could John de Wolfe ever feel sorry for his brother-in-law, but that morning he came near to it, as he saw the harassment that the sheriff was suffering.

Messengers from the Bishop's palace vied with stewards to bring messages and require replies about the arrangements for the Archbishop's visit the next day. Ralph Morin, the castle constable, waited impatiently to discuss matters of protocol with him in regard to the procession of Hubert Walter into the city – and in the midst of this administrative confusion, two angry men were shouting both at each other and at de Revelle. When John walked into the sheriffs chamber, Fitzosbern and Rifford were almost nose to nose in front of Richard's table. Both were big men and both were red in the face with anger.

‘Don't you dare speak to me like that, Rifford! I had enough of such insults last evening, some of them on your family's behalf.'

‘Where there's smoke, Fitzosbern, there's fire! Why should there be all this talk of you in the town of a sudden? I want the truth from you, at the end of a sword if needs be.'

Godfrey's swarthy face sneered back at the Portreeve, his dark hair falling across his forehead. ‘Is that supposed to be a challenge, sir? You'd regret it! Your days of combat are long past, with years of fat pickings on the council of burgesses putting weight on your belly and flab in your muscles.'

The sheriff, trim in his green tunic and fawn linen surcoat, slammed his hands on his parchment-cluttered table and jumped to his feet. ‘Quiet, both of you! Look, I'll give you five minutes to explain what you want with me, then you leave me in peace, understand? Today, of all days, with the Justiciar almost on my doorstep, I can do without this aggravation. Now then, Master Fitzosbern, say your piece.'

The silversmith, in a heavy blue mantle with a fox-fur collar thrown back over his shoulders, leaned on the other side of the trestle, his face jutting towards the sheriff. ‘I've told you already, I want justice! I was assaulted and defamed last night by no less than three men, outside my own street door!'

‘And you half killed young Edgar, son of Joseph, as well as grievously assaulting your own wife, by all accounts,' retorted Henry Rifford, swelling visibly with indignation within his dark red surcoat.

Richard de Revelle held up a warning hand. ‘Wait, Henry, you'll have your say in a moment. Now, Fitzosbern, who are you trying to lay charges against?'

‘This whipper-snapper Edgar for one, of course! He bangs on my door and attacks me verbally at first, accusing me of ravishing the daughter of Rifford here. Of course, I was devastated on hearing of the foul act, and have every sympathy with the portreeve and his family, but that's no excuse for such baseless accusations against a leading member of the community like me.'