The Sanctuary Seeker (7 page)

He wagged a long finger under his wife’s nose. ‘And if you falsely accuse me, woman, then I’ll justify it by doing what you claim,’ he threatened, thinking attack the best form of defence. Striding away from the hearth, he delivered a parting shaft. ‘I’m going down to the inn, where at least I’ll get a kind word, some ale … and possibly a cheerful wench!’

The heavy door made a satisfying bang as he slammed it behind him.

He sat near a large log fire, leaning on a scrubbed table, screened from the main room of the inn by a wattle partition that formed an alcove near the hearth.

The bones of half a chicken, some pork ribs and the crumbs of a small loaf lay scattered on the boards of the table, the remnants of a good meal that his mistress had provided an hour earlier.

The Bush Inn was acknowledged as the best in Exeter, tucked away in Idle Lane, in the lower part of the town, not far from the West Gate and the river. For the moment he sat alone. Nesta was in the outhouse kitchen behind the inn, scolding the cook for being so long with another customer’s supper. Edwin, the potman, an old cripple who had lost an eye and some toes in the battle for Wexford over twenty years before, washed pewter tankards in a bucket of dirty brown water, before filling them with ale from two rough barrels propped at the back of the room.

Seven or eight townsmen, all well known to John, sat on benches, drinking and gossiping.

Something approaching contentment, born of the beer and the warmth, began to steal over him. His resentment and fury at his wife and her brother had been brimming over when he had stalked into the Bush, but Nesta’s affection and common sense had soon calmed him down. The good food and drink and his draught-free seat before the crackling sycamore logs had pacified him and he was now slightly sleepy.

He took another long pull at the ale, bittered with oak-galls, and stared at the almost hypnotic leap of the flames. Was that damned woman right, he wondered.

Did he really want this coroner’s job hung like a millstone around his neck? Was it just a device he used to avoid his wife and and sit in taverns or visit his women? He had been coroner for only two months but, there in the firelight, John decided he enjoyed it.

‘What’s this deep thought about? Is my beer too strong for your brain?’ She had come back from the kitchen and stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder.

John reached up to cover her fingers with his own.

‘I was thinking that maybe I’m too old to go racing off to the wars, Nesta, my love. My sword arm is getting too slow and I’d be run through at the first skirmish.’

She squeezed his shoulder affectionately and came round the table to sit on the bench by his side. Twelve years his junior, the Welsh woman had dark red hair and, unusual in one of her age, a perfect set of teeth. A round face, a high smooth brow and a snub nose gave her prettiness rather than beauty. Small and shapely, she wore a high-necked plain gown that did nothing to hide her prominent bosom.

‘You’re a big handsome man in his prime, John.

You’re as strong as a horse and I can personally vouch that you rut like one! So shake off this “poor old man” nonsense, will you? It’s just your usual gloom after fighting with that old bitch you call wife.’ Nesta reached across and drank from his pot, while he slipped an arm around her and hugged her. ‘I don’t know where I’d be without you, sweet woman.’

Nesta smiled up at him, rather wistfully. ‘You’d be with one of your other sweet women, Sir Crowner. I’ve no illusions about your faithfulness, though I think you like me best - so I’ll settle for that, for it’s all I’m likely to get.’ She finished his ale and yelled at the one-eyed old soldier to bring a refill, then pointedly changed the subject. ‘Was that chicken to your liking, John?

This new cook had some daft idea of stuffing its belly with bread and sage herbs.’ ‘It was good, very good.’ He ran a finger across the table top and licked at the grease appreciatively. The Bush had not taken up the new fad for platters, but served the food on thick bread trenchers, direct onto the scrubbed boards, walling in the gravy with crusts.

Old Edwin limped across and banged a brimming quart pot in front of John. ‘Here ye are, Captain. Good health to you.’

He used the Coroner’s old military name. Although he had never served under him, he had a respectful admiration for John’s record as a soldier.

‘There’s another who doesn’t think you’re past it as a warrior,’ Nesta observed slyly, as Edwin shuffled across to the fire to load on more logs. ‘Come on, John, cheer up. Tell Nesta what’s on your mind.’

After six pints of ale he had to search for the root of his earlier despondency. He pulled Nesta closer to his side, so that his free hand could cup her breast, while he drank.

‘My wife suggests that I took this crowner’s appointment only as an excuse to escape her. But, damnation, it was she who encouraged it, to get a rung or two up the ladder of nobility.’

Nesta wriggled as his fingers played with her nipple.

‘Forget her for a moment, John. Tell me what you’ve been doing today to make you look as if you could drop off to sleep, even in the company of the prettiest woman in Devon.’

He bent his head down to the crown of her curls, his black locks mingling with the red. ‘We’ve been riding since dawn, out to Widecombe and back …’ He told her about the body in the brook and the probability that it was that of a Crusader.

Nesta took a drink from his pot. ‘Not bad ale, though I say it myself … Well, what about this Crusader? Was he young and handsome?’

John grinned, an uncommon lightening of his normally stern expression. ‘That’s all you flighty wenches think of, thank God!’ he chaffed her. ‘He might have been handsome once, but ten days or so dead takes the beauty out of any face.’

Nesta grimaced and pressed closer to his big body.

‘And who do you think killed him, Sir Crowner?’

John emptied his pot before answering, and Nesta signalled to old Edwin to bring another from the best barrel.

‘I don’t know. The cause of most deaths in a village - or town, for that matter - is plain. Drunken quarrels, violent robberies, strangled rapes, beaten wives …

Everyone knows the culprit and the hue-and-cry is hardly needed to catch the felon. But this one He fell silent as the old potman put a new jar in front of him.

Story-telling had taken John’s mind off fondling her, and Nesta pulled back his hand to her bosom in mock annoyance. ‘You think he’s a nobleman, you said?’

she asked.

‘He was certainly no common soldier. Good clothes, fine boots, belt and scabbard - mostly Levantine made.

No doubt he’s come recently from Outremer.’ She looked up at his profile, his long jaw pink in the flames from the fire.

‘How did he reach the edge of Dartmoor? I’ve heard that Widecombe’s an outlandish place.’

Like most town-dwellers, to Nesta the countryside was a remote, alien place. She had hardly set foot outside Exeter in the five years since she had come from South Wales. Her late husband, a Welsh archer named Meredydd, had returned from fighting in Touraine with an unexpected bounty and some loot.

He landed at Exmouth, took a fancy to the area and bought the Bush Inn, sending home to Gwent for his wife. Within a year, he was dead of the jaundice and Nesta had carried on alone - with unusual success for a widow.

John pondered her question. ‘He had marks of spurs on his boots, but even those had been stolen from him, along with everything else he possessed except his dagger. It was undoubtedly a robbery, probably by at least two attackers from the wounds he suffered.’

‘So, a simple robbery - but why would a Crusader be riding alone along the edge of Dartmoor?’ she persisted, partly to emphasise her interest in his doings and partly to keep his mind away from the spat with his wife.

‘Depends where he was headed - some people take the moor track to Tavistock and Plymouth instead of the longer road through the lowlands. Or he might have been going to some manor near Okehampton, or even further into North Cornwall. And we don’t know that he was alone. He may have had a companion or servant - also lying dead now in the forest.’

Nesta was becoming restive, but she sensed that her man needed to talk himself out of his mood.

‘You think it was outlaws that killed him?’

‘It seems most likely. The forest and moor abounds in fugitives. The two manor reeves each blamed the other, but I feel their sin is in trying to move the body from their land, rather than murder.’ He thought for a moment, his beetling brows coming down in thought.

‘A man called Nebba was there, too. Not a villager, he had been a soldier, I’ll swear. Two fingers missing.’

This struck a chord with the shapely innkeeper. ‘An archer, like my poor Meredydd! A barbaric custom, to cut off a man’s fingers with a knife.’

‘Not so bad as lopping off other parts, my girl,’ he grunted, giving her thigh a suggestive squeeze.

After a short silence, his chin dropped on to his chest and he raised his head with a jerk, startling the auburn head next to him.

‘Come, Sir Crowner, time you were in bed before you fall asleep across the table.’ Nesta pulled herself away from him and stood up. ‘You’ll stay here this night, John, in my bed - though by the look of you, there’ll be little action other than snoring. Come.’

She pulled him towards the wooden stair at the back, past the amused glances of the patrons and a chorus of ‘Good night, Sir John.’

As he lumbered up the steps behind her, John was vaguely uneasy. ‘I’ve not stayed a whole night with you before, Nesta.’

Holding a tallow candle high, she turned and grinned at him. ‘Afraid I’ll turn into a witch at midnight?

You’ve spent many an afternoon and evening enjoying my hospitality, John.’

‘They’ll all know where I am,’ he muttered.

But Nesta scoffed, ‘It’s no secret in Exeter, not even from your wife. So don’t concern yourself, let her stew until the morning. She’ll not petition the Pope for an annulment and lose being Madam Coroner for the county of Devon!’

In which the Crowner visits a lady,

then a corpse

In spite of his lethargy, Crowner John roused himself sufficiently to give a creditable performance in the arms of his agile mistress before he rolled over and fell sound asleep for the rest of the night.

Some hours before dawn Nesta was awakened by an urgent tapping on the rough boards of the bedroom door. The upper part of the timber hostelry was built out over the yard, under which were the kitchen and a shanty for the two servants. It was divided by a partition into one small chamber, where Nesta lived, and a larger room in which four crude beds and some palliasses on the floor provided accommodation for guests at the inn. This night, no one was staying at the Bush, so Nesta knew that the tapping could not be one of the guests wanting to creep into her bed, as sometimes happened.

She climbed out reluctantly from beneath the woollen blanket and sheepskins. Pulling her nightrobe tightly about her against the raw November morning, she stumbled in the gloom to the door and put her mouth to a crack in the planks.

‘Who is it?’

‘Edwin, missus. There’s a man here for the Crowner.’

‘Man? What man?’

Edwin shuffled outside the door and Nesta heard him mutter, ‘Gwyn, his officer, he says. Wants a word with Sir John.’

‘Wait there, will you?’

Sighing, Nesta groped her way back to the bed and shook John. The soldier in him rapidly threw off sleep and he stumbled to the door. Lifting the crude wooden bar that served as a latch, he stuck out his head and saw the figure of his man behind a flickering candle, old Edwin hovering nearby.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ grunted Gwyn, without the trace of a smirk or even a glance into the room where Nesta was again submerged under the bedclothes.

‘There’s been a killing and a wounding during the night. Two fellows have been seized by the sheriff’s men outside the Saracen.’

The Saracen was a rougher tavern than the Bush.

Though not far away on Stripcote Hill, it catered mostly for sailors from the quayside and drovers up from the country.

‘How did you know where I was?’ demanded John.

Gwyn shrugged. ‘Everyone knows where you are.

It’s no secret, nor anyone else’s business.’

John shivered, the chill seeping through the undershirt he wore in bed. ‘How long to first light?’

‘About two hours, by the cathedral bell.’

‘I’ll come to the castle at dawn. Is that where the corpse lies?’

‘It is - but the injured man is still at the tavern.

Eadred of Dawlish he is, in Exeter to sell his pigs at yesterday’s market. He may die, he may not,’ the Cornishman added philosophically.

‘I’ll be at the Saracen later. Gather enough men for a jury, anyone who was witness to the fight.’

Gwyn nodded and turned away.

‘And get that damned clerk out of bed. No reason for him to rest, if we’ve been roused.’

He slammed the door and dropped the bar into its slot. Slipping thankfully back under the bed-fleeces, he was immediately seized by a warm naked body: Nesta had peeled off her nightrobe while he had been talking to Gwyn. She pressed her lips against his and slid a sinuous hand up his thigh. ‘One good thing about being woken so early, John, we’ve time for another tumble before the day begins!’

Nesta climbed on top of him and rode him as energetically as he cantered his grey stallion. When they had first become lovers, her fondness for straddling him had rather offended his masculine need to be dominant. However, she had broken him of the habits of a lifetime with good-humoured persistence until he had come to enjoy it - though often, with a roar of passion, he would roll the pair of them over and hammer her almost through the palliasse to the floorboards beneath. When exhaustion finally overcame them, they lay quietly side by side, his long arms wrapped tenderly around her.

There was silence for a time. Eventually he asked, ‘Have you heard the Bishop’s bell strike six?’

With no clock nearer than an inventive monastery in Germany, time was measured by graduated candles or a sand-glass in the cathedral and rung out over the city by tolling one of the bells.