The Witch Hunter (18 page)

The meadow rose gently towards the edge of the forest and the reeve marched up this towards the tump in the ground, just before the trees began. They followed him to a spot at the base of the mound, where the soil was disturbed, forming a red scar in the green grass.

‘This is where it was found, Crowner,’ declared Henry, with a flourish of his hand towards a hole in the ground. He beckoned Simon and the youth came sheepishly forward, standing awkwardly before the ring of spectators. ‘Tell them, boy!’ commanded the reeve.

‘Not much to be told, sirs. I was up here looking for a stray heifer two days ago and saw a hole. So yesterday I brought up a shovel and had a poke around – in case it was a badger sett,’ he added hastily, recalling his original lame excuse. He squatted alongside the hole and pointed down. ‘Just in there it was, barely covered in earth, once the top turf was off.’

De Wolfe peered in, then looked up at the mound, which close up, looked larger than it had from a distance. It was twice as high as a man and roughly circular, being about fifty paces around.

‘You know everything, clerk!’ said Gwyn to Thomas with mock sarcasm. ‘So what is this poxy lump?’

The former priest gazed up at the smooth grass-covered cone and crossed himself. ‘No one rightly knows, but they are pagan temples of some kind, built by the ancients, long before the Saxons came. There are many more in Wiltshire, where some have bones hidden in crypts of stone in the centre.’

The coroner had no interest in such antediluvian monuments, but had heard that many had been dug into in the hope of finding ancient treasure, which had sometimes been fulfilled. But this particular treasure was not all that ancient, as the silver coins were Saxon.

There was nothing more to be seen and he was just about to leave when there was a cry from across the pasture and two men could be seen hurrying up to them.

‘Who the hell is this?’ growled Gwyn.

‘It’s our landlord, Robert Hereward,’ said the reeve.

The tenant lord arrived, somewhat out of breath, his stocky bailiff close behind. Robert was younger than de Wolfe had expected, a man of about thirty, with thick fair hair swept back off his face. He had a beard and moustache of the same colour which, with his rather ruddy complexion and blue eyes, betrayed his Saxon blood, even though it had been diluted by four generations of Normans.

‘Sir John, I am glad to see you!’ He sounded genuinely pleased to have the coroner on his land, a somewhat uncommon sentiment, as a visit from officials of the King usually meant trouble or expense – often both. The two men exchanged some civil words of greeting and explanation, then Robert Hereward peered down at Simon’s excavation. ‘I presume you have already examined what this youth discovered?’ he asked.

John described the contents of the box and Robert was keen to see inside it for himself. The whole party went back down the meadow and into the village, the coroner and the manor-lord walking together behind the bailiff and the reeve. John took the opportunity to discover the exact status of Hereward’s tenancy of the land, anticipating problems ahead over the ownership of the find.

‘I rent this village from de Revelle for a fee each year,’ explained Hereward. ‘I have the manor that I inherited from my father over in the next county at Hillfarrance, but it’s too small to provide a comfortable living, so five years ago I took on this manor, which is about ten carucates. The place has a special meaning for me, as it once formed part of my ancestor’s lands.’

They were approaching the church now, as de Wolfe carried on with his questions. ‘Why would our noble sheriff want to part with it?’

Robert shrugged. ‘He has very large estates, some from his family and the rest from his wife, the Lady Eleanor. That’s why he married her. It certainly wasn’t for her looks or her charm!’

His tone was sarcastic and the coroner guessed that he was no great friend of the de Revelle household.

‘With so much land, I think he became impatient with its management, even though his bailiffs did most of the work. Cadbury was run down and poorly productive, so he preferred to get a steady rent, rather than try to bring it back into profit.’

As they marched up the path to the church door, John asked a last question. ‘And has it done better since you took the tenancy?’

‘It’s certainly improving. I have a good bailiff and reeve – but these last two years have been disastrous for the crops. I hope to God the weather lets us have at least some sort of harvest or there’ll be empty bellies and full graves come the winter.’

Robert Hereward seemed a sensible, practical man and de Wolfe took a liking to him. He reminded him of his own brother William, who prudently administered their two manors down near the coast, at Stoke-in-Teignhead and Holcombe.

Michael the priest was still in the church and took the box from his aumbry to show to his manor-lord, upon whom he was dependent for his tithes. Robert looked at the coins with interest, but it was the brooch which really captured his attention.

‘For all I know, this may have belonged to one of my Saxon forebears!’ he said forlornly. ‘They were ejected from the land when William de Poilly was granted it by William the Bastard.’

He put it back rather reluctantly into the box, but before the treasure was put away, the coroner took the precaution of getting Thomas to recount all the coins in the presence of Robert Hereward and then adding his name to the parchment that certified the exact amount discovered. Only then would he allow the box to be tied up again and placed in the priest’s chest.

‘What happens now?’ asked Robert.

‘There has to be an inquest, but in this case I can see no way in which I can declare who is the owner, other than to formally seize it for King Richard. But I can decide whether or not it is treasure trove.’

Robert Hereward looked puzzled and decided to seek enlightenment in more comfortable circumstances. He invited the coroner’s team to the manor house for refreshment and with the bailiff and Thomas in attendance they began walking up the track from the village green. The coroner sent Gwyn with Henry the reeve to assemble a jury for the inquest in an hour’s time, confident that his officer would pass most of that time drinking ale in the tavern opposite the church.

The manor house, a few hundred paces along the Tiverton road, was a small and rather dismal dwelling, for which Robert apologised. ‘I only wanted the land here, as I live at my other place in Somerset,’ he explained. ‘Certainly my wife refuses to stay here and I only sleep here about once a fortnight when I visit.’

The house was a wooden structure with a thatched roof, sitting in a circular compound within a fence of stakes built on a low earthen bank. There were several rooms off the draughty hall and inside the palisade there was a barn and outhouses for animals, cooking and storage. It was more a barton than a manor house and Robert explained that his bailiff lived there with his family. They sat at a table in the hall, where the bailiff’s rosy-cheeked wife brought them fresh bread, cheese, slices of cold meat and some passable wine, as well as good ale.

‘Crowner, explain this treasure trove business to me,’ pleaded Hereward. ‘Who does the stuff actually belong to?’

De Wolfe was not all that clear on the law himself, although he had held a couple of inquests on discovered valuables in the ten months in which he had been coroner.

‘This case is more complicated, because you are not the freeholder of the land. Knowing Richard de Revelle as I do, he’s going to fight tooth and nail to get his hands on it.’

As they ate and drank, John did his best to explain the rules as he understood them. ‘Putting aside that complication for the moment, everything hinges on whether the valuables were deliberately hidden with the intention of recovering them later – or had just been lost accidentally.’

He saw the puzzlement on Robert’s face and tried to explain more fully.

‘Look, if a man walks across a field and a gold coin drops unnoticed from a hole in his purse, that would be an accident. He had no intention of either hiding it or recovering it later.’ De Wolfe took a large swallow of ale while Robert digested this situation. ‘But if a man was in fear of being robbed – or probably, in this case, if he anticipated a troop of Normans riding up to his door to dispossess him – then he might gather up all his treasure and hide it in the ground, with the intention of reclaiming it secretly at some later time.’

Hereward nodded. ‘That’s obvious, but what difference does it make to ownership?’

‘Firstly, the treasure must be deliberately concealed to be treasure trove. If it just falls on the ground, then it is the property of any finder. It’s only hidden gold and silver that is considered to be treasure trove – and the purpose of my inquest is to decide that first.’

‘Pretty simple in this case, buried in a box underground!’

‘Yes, but it has to be done officially,’ replied John. ‘Once I’ve decided, it becomes a felony to retain the treasure, under pain of hanging.’

‘That still doesn’t settle to whom it belongs.’

Thomas, who had been sitting farther along the table, opposite the bailiff, had been listening intently and now couldn’t resist airing his undoubtedly large store of knowledge.

‘It goes back to Roman times. They called treasure
thesaurus inventus
and divided it equally between the finder and the owner of the land.’

De Wolfe shook his head. ‘Not so now in England, though I think some countries abroad still adhere to that. The theory here is that the King owns the whole country and that though he doles out parcels of it to his barons, he still retains the basic ownership. That’s why they are called “tenants-in-chief” and “free-holders” – they only hold it at the King’s pleasure. So anything found hidden belongs to him, unless he waives the right.’

Thomas nodded eagerly. ‘It says in the Holy Gospel of St Matthew that a man who knew there was treasure in a field, sold all his worldly goods to raise the money to buy the field, so that he could claim the treasure.’

He crossed himself devoutly as he mentioned the gospels, but John scowled at him. ‘What’s that got to do with it? We’re in Devon, not Palestine.’ He turned back to Robert Hereward. ‘I’m going to leave the knotty problem of who owns the treasure to the King’s justices when they next come to hold the Assize of Gaol Delivery in a couple of months.’

An hour later, de Wolfe held the inquest at the gate of the churchyard, with a jury of about twenty men and boys gathered from the fields by Gwyn and the reeve. Behind them, along the hedge that surrounded the churchyard, a score of wives, old men and widows, together with a gaggle of children, watched the proceedings with slack-jawed fascination, as an inquest was something none of them had ever heard of before.

John once more had the box taken from the church and placed at his feet, before he stood in front of the half-circle of jurors as Gwyn bellowed the inquest summons at the top of his voice, something he always enjoyed doing. ‘
All you who have anything to do before the King’s coroner for the county of Devon, touching the finding of this treasure, draw near and give your attendance!
’

With Robert Hereward, his bailiff and Michael the priest at one side and Thomas squatting with his pen, ink and parchment on a stool on the other, the coroner called for the finder to step forward. Gwyn helpfully pushed the young Simon, who stood sheepishly before de Wolfe for his brief moment of fame. He repeated what he had said about the discovery and thankfully melted back into the jury line. Henry Stork, the manor-reeve, then confirmed that Simon had reported the matter to him without delay and that he had consulted the bailiff, who stepped forward to say that he had sent to Exeter to notify the coroner, as he had heard was the proper thing to do since last year.

John then got Gwyn to untie the bonds around the box and fold back the cloth so that the contents could be seen. The jury then filed past, gaping at the sight of more money than they would see in a score of lifetimes. Standing back in their ragged line, they listened bemused as de Wolfe concluded the proceedings.

‘I have to pronounce on three matters, when such wealth is discovered. Firstly, is it gold or silver? In this case, both are present and I have no hesitation in declaring that this is treasure.’ He scowled around the throng before continuing. ‘Secondly, where was it found and who was the finder? Obviously, it was this Simon, who unearthed it in a mound in the vill of Cadbury.’

For the finale, he stood with his thumbs hooked into his either side of his wide sword-belt, his tall, spare body slightly stooped. With his long dark grey tunic, his black hair and his predatory nose, he looked like a great crow standing guard over the box of precious metal.

‘Next, was this treasure deliberately hidden or merely lost? There is no doubt that it was secreted by intent – no one can just lose a box of this size and weight. And was it abandoned or was there the intention to recover it at some later date?’ He glared around again, as if challenging anyone to disagree with him. ‘Of course it was not abandoned. No one in their right mind would discard gold and silver! And if it was hidden, then there must have been the desire to reclaim it one day, else there would be no point in hiding it.’

There was no demur from the jury, who were not going to bandy words with this forbidding official from far-away Exeter.

‘Lastly, who did it belong to and who hid it? We will never know, though the fact that none of the coins was minted after the arrival of King William in this land, suggests that the owner was a Saxon.’ John shot a quick glance towards Robert Hereward, but there was no sign that he wished to claim his ancestors as the original owners. ‘As we can never be sure that there are legitimate heirs or successors to the unknown owner, the matter ends there and all that remains is for me to declare that the find is treasure trove and it will be so recorded in my rolls.’ He jabbed a finger towards Thomas, who was busy scratching away on his stool. ‘The amount has been accurately recorded and witnessed by several persons. I therefore seize this treasure in the name of King Richard and will cause it to be held in safe-keeping in Exeter until the royal justices confirm that it should be sent to the King’s treasury in Winchester.’