The Tinner's Corpse (12 page)

Eight men were sitting or lying inside, and before long, John and Gwyn were deep in conversation with them. They were a companionable lot and reminded de Wolfe of his warrior days when, after marching or fighting, tale-telling and gossip rounded off the day over food and drink. Thomas sat apart, morose and silent, still trying to summon up the courage to broach with his master the subject of his reinstatement. But tonight was not the best time, he decided. The coroner and his henchman were lolling in the remaining hay eating their bread, cheese and meat and drinking raw cider and stale ale from the leather bottles and stone crocks that were passed from hand to hand.

For the first time that day John de Wolfe felt relaxed. Although when the opportunity presented he was an enthusiastic womaniser, he also enjoyed the company of men such as these. They were rugged, strong fellows who said what they thought and had none of the devious conceits of so many noblemen and merchants. These tinners were more like the soldiers with whom he had spent so many years.

Gwyn, an equally seasoned warrior, also revelled in their company, and as darkness deepened in the barn, they swapped tales of adventure and daring, from floods in the stream-works to attacks from outlaws on the high moor, the slaughter outside Acre or the pursuit of Irish tribesmen beyond Wexford. Eventually the only illumination came from the fire, which still flamed outside the doors. No lights could be brought into the barn for fear they might set the hay and thatch ablaze. As they sat in the gloom, the talk turned to the Great Court on Crockern Tor in the morning.

‘How often are these held?’ asked Gwyn, mopping the sour cider from his moustache.

‘Whenever there’s business to settle, but certainly more than twice each year,’ answered a hulk of a man from Tavistock. ‘Tomorrow there are a few grave matters to chew over and we have had several such meetings this past winter.’

‘What’s the main concern, then?’ asked the coroner.

‘The business of the Lord Warden,’ cut in another tinner. ‘We want someone of our own choice, and not to have the sheriff foisted on us. Especially when it’s this bastard we’ve got now.’

This was music to John’s ears and he wanted to know more. ‘What difference would it make, then?’

‘Our own man would understand tinning and tinners, and not be dunning us for extra taxes all the time. We’re sure that de Revelle is creaming off some of the coinage that should go to the King but we can’t prove it.’

The man from Tavistock spat towards the glowing fire. ‘Walter Knapman has been pressing for an elected Warden these past three years, but he’s got nowhere. At the meeting tomorrow we will draw up a plan to force a change. We’ll petition the Chancellor or Chief Justiciar or the King himself, if need be.’

‘Paying these crippling taxes is bad enough, but we wouldn’t mind so much if we knew the money went to the King. Having part of it stolen by the officials is what irks us,’ said a third tinner.

This was all new to John – he had always known that the tinners were a breed apart, but he had not realised that they were taxed so heavily and apparently unjustly. ‘How are the taxes calculated? he asked.

‘We have to take our raw ingots to one of the three Stannary towns to be assayed and stamped – “coinage” we call it. A tax is paid on that first coinage. Then the crude metal must go to Exeter to be resmelted and another tax is taken.’

‘Thirty silver pence a thousand-weight, that’s the first tax,’ muttered the Tavistock man.

‘How much is a thousand-weight?’ asked John.

‘Twelve hundred pounds burden,’ replied the man. ‘After the second smelting in Exeter, there’s the extra tax of a mark per thousand-weight!’

‘More than five times as much?’ queried Gwyn, outraged.

‘Yes, though I admit the metal’s purer then and commands a higher price per bar.’

A cadaverous fellow seen dimly in the background shouted across, ‘It’s the Warden who fixes the rate – and I suspect he fixes some of the registry clerks to falsify the weighing. Who’s to say what the rate should be, except the Warden? And he is the sheriff, with a whip hand to control everything that happens in the county.’

The discussion became more acrimonious as the cider flowed. De Wolfe gathered that most of the tinners felt they were being exploited by a Lord Warden who cared little for their industry but was only concerned with filling his own purse by extorting as much coinage from them as he could. This matched John’s experience of his brother-in-law, but he had not appreciated until now that the sheriff had available to him this extra avenue of corruption. ‘So, in this, Walter Knapman is your champion, is he?’ he asked.

‘He’s the main figure in the play, Crowner,’ answered the Tavistock man. ‘He’s the one we want for Warden, if we could only get shot of de Revelle.’

Privately, de Wolfe thought this unlikely: where money was concerned, the sheriff would hang on like a dog at a bull-baiting. He also felt that if Walter Knapman persisted in trying to unseat de Revelle, he had better watch his step.

‘What else is to be talked of tomorrow?’ enquired Gwyn.

‘The killing of poor Henry of Tunnaford. We have had several incidents these past months, none fatal until now. But someone is trying to upset our streaming. Sluices have been broken and one blowing-house was deliberately burned down. We have to find out who’s behind it, if we can.’

As this was why de Wolfe was attending the Great Court, he kept the talk going on this theme. ‘This Saxon, old Aethelfrith they speak of. Could he be behind it?’

A sudden flare from the fire showed the tinners looking at each other, each seeking their fellows’ opinion.

‘It could be. He’s a mad old devil,’ said one man. ‘Hates all Normans – in fact, I think he hates everyone on earth, God forgive him. But I didn’t think he would kill for it.’

‘What’s the cause of his anger, then?’ asked Gwyn.

‘The early conquerors killed both his parents, so I hear – must have been some time in Stephen’s reign when Aethelfrith was a child. Then, later, his own son was hanged. He claims England still belongs to the Saxons, especially the minerals on the moor where he was brought up. But he’s been more of a nuisance than a danger, so far.’

The conversation drifted on to other matters and the fire, after a final spurt, dimmed to a dull glow, so that the men could no longer see each other. One by one, they curled themselves in their cloaks and huddled deep into the piles of hay. Snores and coughs replaced the chatter until all was quiet.

Only Thomas sat awake, alone with his morbid thoughts.

In the sullen light of early morning, well over a hundred men gathered on a hill-top of wind-beaten turf, broken by menacing outcrops of grey rock. Crockern Tor was just north of the track leading across the middle of the vast moor, chosen for the tinners’ parliament because it was roughly at the centre of the Stannary districts. Though only two dozen men from each district were officially jurates, many of the tinners they represented had also given up a day’s work and pay to attend the Great Court. The issue of the Lord Warden was becoming increasingly contentious, and feelings were running high.

These tinners now stood in a large half-circle, facing a natural rock wall whose jagged strata projected through the sparse grass and clumps of dead bracken. It ran like the spine of some petrified monster, forming the crest of the ridge, ending in a ten-foot tor of rocks piled on each other like a giant’s plaything. Most of the men were wrapped in woollen or leather cloaks against the keen wind, the less fortunate huddled under empty sacks thrown about their shoulders. They stood stolidly or squatted on the scattered rocks that littered the ground, watching and listening to the proceedings. In the background, further down the slope, were hobbled the horses and donkeys that had brought most of the men to the moor – though the poorer ones had walked, some for more than a day and a half.

In the middle of the outcrop wall, a canopy of large rocks had been built up over a natural slab that served as a throne. On this, almost like a statue in a niche, sat Richard de Revelle. Sergeant Gabriel and the handful of men-at-arms who had escorted the sheriff from Exeter stood conspicuously in front of the outcrop, to emphasise the authority of the Lord Warden of the Stannaries.

In addition to the sheriff, a clerk was keeping a record, crouched shivering over a flat stone with his parchments fluttering in the wind, which now and then brought a few flakes of snow flurrying past. Two other men, in dress that marked them as being of wealth and station, sat a few yards to either side of the Lord Warden, but they were unknown to de Wolfe. Further to the sides, three of the coinage officials, the Steward, the Controller and the Receiver, sat on convenient large stones along the granite wall.

The coroner and his two assistants kept a lower profile, standing together towards one end of the long arc of tinners. The six dozen jurates formed an inner ring between the spectators and the central figures ranged around de Revelle. Prominent in the group of jurates were Walter Knapman and Stephen Acland, but they stood as far apart from each other as possible, and there was an obvious aggregation of other jurates around each man. By far the larger group was clustered near Knapman, and between these and Acland’s dozen the remainder stood as a buffer. John assumed that these were independent tinners, not committed to either of the main players on the moor.

For the first two hours, the proceedings were a dull catalogue of routine tinners’ business and de Wolfe regretted getting up so early to ride from the barn at Dartmeet for the start of the Great Court. As one issue was settled or referred for further investigation, another jurator would stand forward and give the next problem an airing, having brought it from some complainant in the district he served. Occasionally, tempers became frayed, when one side of an argument blamed the other. Richard de Revelle contributed virtually nothing to the debates, and de Wolfe soon realised that he had little knowledge of – or apparent interest in – the tinners’ concerns.

It was Knapman who conducted most of the arbitration and informed discussion, sometimes helped, but more often hindered, by Acland. When the jurates became over-excited and began to yell abuse at each other, it was Knapman who controlled the outburst with a combination of firmness and fairness. The coroner could easily see why the majority of tinners wanted him to administer the system, rather than an indifferent sheriff whose only concern was the amount he could squeeze from them in taxes.

Most arguments arose over the claiming of new sites for exploitation. De Wolfe learned that this was called ‘bounding’, and when a tinner wished to commence operations on a chosen site, he had to mark the limits of his claim by placing a turf at each corner and six stones along the edges. It seemed that sharp practice occurred, with rivals moving or removing these markers, when different claimants were competing for ore-rich locations along the many streams that drained down from Dartmoor.

It also became clear that, in the district of which Chagford was the Stannary town, there was tension between the jurates who worked for Walter Knapman and those who had Stephen Acland as master. Some heated exchanges took place between the two men across the few yards of faded winter grass that separated them.

However, it seemed that jurates, officials and background audience were used to this, and the proceedings rolled on as everyone waited for more urgent matters to surface.

After a couple of hours, the sheriff-cum-Lord Warden declared a break for the morning meal, and everyone sat or squatted on the ground to consume whatever they could produce from capacious scrips and saddle-bags. Afterwards, de Wolfe and Gwyn wandered around for a time, looking curiously at the column of rock at the end of the long outcrop. Sculpted by aeons of wind and rain, it marked the prominence of Crockern Tor, standing sentinel above the track across the moor.

When the Court resumed, the first item was a report on the new Stannary gaol in Lydford, given by Geoffrey Fitz-Peters, the lord of that manor. He was one of those sitting further down the stone wall, alongside William de Wrotham, another manorial lord who, like Fitz-Peters, had tin interests on the western side of the moor. A bystander had identified them to de Wolfe. Fitz-Peters was a gaunt, almost skeletal man with a vaguely sinister aspect, in keeping with the reputation of the Stannary prison. He advanced to the centre of the grassy court and, in clipped, terse words, gave a short account of the new building. ‘It is now finished and occupied since February. A square stone tower now replaces the old wooden keep that was built fifty years ago at the upper end of the bailey of the first castle, which has long been ruined. The new tower has three floors, the lowest of which is the prison, reached only by a trap in the floor above. On that floor, we hold our Stannary court each fortnight.’

He glared around at the throng like an avenging angel. ‘The law of Lydford is just, but strict. Already we have twelve prisoners, convicted for infringements of the tinners’ code. Go back to your districts and let it be widely known that, unlike at many a burgess or shire prison, there is no escape from Lydford. The walls are three yards thick and the gaolers are incorruptible.’

With a quick backward glance at the sheriff, as if to emphasise the difference between his gaol and those in Exeter, Fitz-Peters turned and strode back to his seat.

Then Walter Knapman took a few paces forward and turned to face the jurates and the crowd. ‘Now we must face a serious matter,’ he shouted. ‘We all know that one of my senior overmen, Henry of Tunnaford, was foully slain a few days past. He was killed on one of my own stream-workings in a most brutal fashion. He had no personal enemies, and there can be no doubt that the evil act was committed in connection with our trade.’

A collective growl of concern rolled over the assembly, and Knapman held up both hands for quiet. ‘I am offering a bounty of twenty marks to anyone who can give information that leads to the capture of whatever foul villain committed this atrocity. If anyone knows anything – anything at all – he can tell me or the coroner, who is with us here today.’