He looked up at the rising stern of the vessel and saw a burly man with a bushy red beard standing on the afterdeck. With his hands planted firmly on his hips, his posture suggested that he was the man in charge, as he glared at the procession of seamen and stevedores as if daring them to slow their efforts.
'That must be the shipmaster. I'll get up there and have a word with him,' grunted de Wolfe. He fitted himself into a gap between two men lugging bales up the plank and strode up to the deck, the Keeper following behind the next porter.
The man with the beard scowled at him as he approached.
'What do you want, sir?' he growled, though his habitual bluster was tempered by his recognition that this was a man of substance. The sombre but good-quality clothing and the expensive sword that swung at his hip told of wealth and authority.
'I am Sir John de Wolfe, the king's coroner for this county. Have you heard of the finding of a man's body near the village today?'
Impressed as he was by the rank of this law officer, the shipmaster remained surly. 'I have too much work here to listen to gossip,' he grunted.
'News of a strangled youth is somewhat more than gossip,' snapped de Wolfe. 'And this fellow appeared to be a shipman. We need to know who he is, so have you any of your crew missing?'
Red Beard shook his head. 'Half my men were paid off when I arrived yesterday. God knows where they are now. We only had one young 'un; he had hair the colour of wheat straw, if that's any help.'
As the dead boy's hair was almost black, this ruled him out, if the sullen shipmaster was telling the truth. The coroner climbed back down to the quayside and strode along the river, calling at each vessel and asking similar questions at every one of them. He had little but reluctant answers and surly shakes of the head, which made him suspect that there was a conspiracy of silence amongst these seamen.
'Not a very helpful bunch, are they?' he growled to Luke de Casewold as they finally reached the gateway into the village.
'Sailors are a strange lot; they stick together against the world, just like tinners,' observed the Keeper, who seemed to possess a philosophical streak.
'I got the feeling that they were hiding something from me,' grumbled John.
'They're like that with all law officers,' said Luke reassuringly. 'On principle, they are reluctant to give us even a 'good morning' if they can avoid it. Not that that's confined to shipmen; every damned man and woman in the hundred answers me grudgingly. Everyone has a guilty conscience about something!'
'What have these seafarers got to hide, then?' demanded de Wolfe.
As they entered the village, de Casewold sniggered. 'They are all crooked, Crowner! Smuggling is their main sin, though I'd not put a little piracy past some of them.'
'I thought that tally-man down there was supposed to check all the goods. How does he operate, then?'
There was an alehouse just inside the town gate, on the left side of the track opposite the church. It was known by common usage as the Harbour Inn. Luke waved the coroner to a rough bench outside and yelled through the door for jars of ale. As they sat together in the sun, he explained the system that collected the dues from a busy port such as Axmouth.
'This fellow John Capie does his best to record all taxable goods that go out or come in from the harbour. Christ alone understands how he does it, mainly with knotted strings and notched tally-sticks, for he can neither read nor write.'
A slattern brought out two quart pots of ale, which tasted better than it looked, though John pined for the good stuff brewed by Nesta in the Bush back home. He drank and listened while the Keeper carried on with his explanation. 'Capie then goes twice a day to Elias Palmer, who writes down what Capie calculates has been loaded or discharged from each of the ships.'
'But he can't be at every ship all the time,' objected John.
'That's very true, though he checks the goods in the warehouses as well, trying to get some idea of what is being moved in and out of the port.'
De Wolfe saw Gwyn approaching in the distance and gulped down the rest of his ale, confident that he would need another jug as soon as the Cornishman arrived.
'This system seems wide open to error and abuse, if you ask me!' he growled. 'How does he actually get the money paid?'
'That's Elias Palmer's job. He charges both a manor tax and a county tax, squeezing it from whoever owns the wool or wine or whatever the goods happen to be. The first levy goes to the Priory of Loders, who own the village, then the royal tax goes to the sheriff as part of the county farm.'
Gwyn of Polruan stamped up the last few yards to the Harbour Inn and dropped heavily on to the bench.
'Waste of bloody time! Nobody knows a thing - or so they say!' he reported. 'Wouldn't tell us if they did, by their attitude! Something strange about this village, I reckon. As if they are keeping some big secret.'
Luke de Casewold nodded sagely. 'I've felt the same ever since I started coming down here as Keeper,' he asserted. 'The whole damned place is up to something, I can feel it in my bones!' He drained his ale-jar and stood up. 'I'm going to get to the bottom of it, too, whatever the cost! I was appointed to keep the peace - and that includes anything that's to the detriment of our good King Richard.'
John de Wolfe was as ardent a supporter of the Coeur de Lion as any man in England, but he felt strangely embarrassed at this over-pretentious loyalty. The fellow had been in office only a few months and here he was declaring that he was going to root out the king's enemies in a flea-bitten seaport like Axmouth. He had better watch his step, thought John. Edward Northcote, the Prior of Loders and some of those tough-looking shipmasters would not take kindly to this popinjay interfering in their affairs.
Almost immediately he felt guilty, for was he not himself a king's officer, sworn to uphold the law and justice in all their forms? Maybe he was influenced by his own dealings in wool and other commodities in his partnership in Exeter to be sufficiently condemnatory of any sharp practices elsewhere. As he pondered this potential conflict of interests, there was a distant shout from beyond the town gate. The three of them turned and saw that Hugh Bogge, the clerk to the Keeper, was coming up from the river bank, where there was a landing for the small boat that ferried people across the estuary to Seaton. Behind him waddled the figure of a woman, dressed in black with a dark shawl over her head in spite of the warmth of the day.
'It looks as if he's found someone,' said Luke smugly. The clerk marched up to them, having the same self important air as his master. Bogge was a short, rotund fellow with a moon face and pasty complexion. His mousy hair was shorn into a tonsure, and his stained black cassock was clinched at the waist with a wide leather belt, through which a large sheathed dagger was thrust, somewhat incongruously for a man in minor holy orders. The woman, who looked old but may not have been more than fifty, plodded up behind him, her lined face telling of a hard life and little expectation of it becoming better. She looked warily at these men from Exeter and Axminster, for law officers never heralded anything other than trouble and sadness.
'This is Edith Makerel, a widow of Seaton,' announced Hugh Bogge, displaying the old lady with an almost proprietorial air. De Wolfe rose from his bench and gave her a curt nod, while Gwyn gently took her arm and shepherded her to his seat.
'Edith had already reported the disappearance of her son Simon to the reeve in Seaton,' continued the clerk. 'He was a shipman who returned from his last voyage a week ago. On Saturday he went out of their cottage, which is down near the beach - and that's the last she ever saw of him.'
Widow Makerel sat looking up at the men, her eyes red-rimmed with old tears. She had a piece of rag in her hands, and her fingers continually tore at it as she spoke.
'He was not really a shipman, sirs. The lad wanted to become a clerk, but I could not afford for him to go and learn his letters. He said he would earn enough in a few years to do that and had been apprenticed to a baker in Seaton, but it burnt down a month ago and he had to seek work elsewhere. Since
his father was drowned at the fishing, my two sons are our only support. The other one labours in the quarries in Beer. I did not want my boys to suffer the fate of my husband, but Simon was determined to go.'
'So he went to sea recently, madam?' asked John politely. 'But he returned home safely some days ago?'
She nodded, still shredding the rag between her fingers. 'It was but his second voyage, sir. He hated it, but it earned the few pence we sorely needed. In fact, he came back last Thursday with more than we expected. He flung it down on the table and refused to say where it came from. I knew something was very wrong.' She began to sob, and again it was Gwyn who tried to console her. The big, shambling officer placed an arm around her shoulders as he bent over her. 'We need you to look at a body, Edith. Only you can help us in this. Come with us now, across to the church.'
As they all slowly crossed the village street to the church of St Michael, Luke de Casewold murmured to his clerk: 'How did you find her, Hugh?'
'I went around the few ships on that side of the river, but none could - or would - tell me anything. Then I found the reeve of Seaton and he said that Widow Makerel had been searching for her son Simon. I went to see her and it seemed likely that a dark-haired youth of eighteen might be the one we seek.'
In the churchyard, before the procession reached the mortuary shed, Thomas de Peyne and the parish priest, Henry of Cumba, appeared from the ornately carved arch which was the entrance to the church. Hugh Bogge briefly explained to them what was happening, and now the two priests took over from Gwyn as supporters of Edith Makerel. They guided her under the lean-to roof and the identification was short and dramatic.
With a howl, the poor woman fell upon the body as Thomas uncovered the face and lay sobbing across the odorous fish-cart. Her pathetic cries of 'My son, my poor son!' left no doubt as to the identity of the corpse.
An admitted coward in the face of emotional crises, John backed away and left the two priests with the distraught woman. As he walked back to the gate of the churchyard with the Keeper of the Peace and his clerk, he pondered the possible significance of what they had heard.
'Why strangle some young deckhand?' he muttered. 'He was hardly likely to have a heavy purse upon him that could be stolen.'
'What about this money that his mother said he gave her?' asked Luke. 'She seemed surprised and a little suspicious of where it came from. And why did she say there was something amiss with the lad when he returned from the voyage?'
De Wolfe turned to Hugh Bogge as they reached the village street. 'Do you know what vessel he was sailing on? Is it one of those still along the quayside there?'
'No, I asked the widow. She said this was the second voyage her son had made on a cog called The Tiger. He was due to sail on her again for Calais yesterday, but of course he went missing.'
'Damnation! I needed to have called her crew to my inquest tomorrow.' The coroner was irritated that nothing seemed to be going smoothly with this case. 'Is there no one else who knew the boy?'
'There is his brother - and his mother said he has a girl in Seaton whom he hoped to marry.'
'Get them to the inquest in the morning - I will hold it in the churchyard at the tenth hour. My own officer can roust out the rest to form a jury; the bailiff, the portreeve, the priest and a dozen villagers will suffice.'
De Wolfe looked at the Harbour Inn across the road. 'This looks the best tavern in the place. I need to find us a good meal and a mattress each for the night.'
CHAPTER TWO
In which the coroner holds an inquest
Soon after dawn, John de Wolfe roused himself from his bed, which had been a hessian bag stuffed with straw. The accommodation for guests in Axmouth's premier inn was a barn-like building at the back of the tavern, where the upper floor was reached by a ladder. On the bare boards, a dozen such mattresses were spread out, the management providing a coarse blanket as an added luxury, under which the lodgers slept in their clothes, minus boots and headgear. The coroner stood up and looked around the loft in the pale morning light, which squeezed in through several slits in the walls. He saw four or five other men huddled on their pallets, as well as Thomas and Gwyn, the latter snoring like a grampus.
Pulling on his boots, he prodded his officer and clerk with a toecap and, when he was sure that they were groaning themselves awake, went down to the floor below. Here, several other men, all shipmen by their clothing, sat on benches at a long trestle table, slurping gruel from wooden bowls and eating fresh barley bread cut from several loaves lying on the scrubbed boards.
At the end of the room, a boy was stirring the oatmeal in a large pot hanging from a tripod over a fire.
When de Wolfe dropped heavily on a bench and grunted a vague greeting to the ruffian next to him, the lad brought him a bowl of porridge and a spoon carved from a cow's horn. Then a young girl, no more than eight years old, came around the table with a large jug to top up the crude clay pots with watered ale.
As he finished his gruel, which had the consistency of back-yard mud that had been trampled by pigs in wet weather, he reached for the nearest loaf and cut off an inch-thick slice with his dagger. There was half a cheese next to the loaf, and at the risk of blunting his blade he hacked off a large piece and began chewing while he cleared his mind of sleep.
By now, Thomas and Gwyn had tumbled down the ladder and started on their own frugal breakfast.
'We hold this inquest and then ride for home, Crowner?' asked the Cornishman hopefully.
John grunted. 'Doubt we'll learn much from it, but we have to start somewhere. I need to talk to the bailiff and the portreeve first.'
'A pity that vessel, The Tiger, sailed on Sunday,' observed Thomas, his narrow face twisted in distaste at the sour porridge. 'I feel someone aboard her might be the miscreant. After all, the lad lived across in Seaton, but his body was hidden on this side of the river, so he was almost certainly slain here.'
'Well, they bloody have gone, so there's no use regretting it.'
A man sitting opposite joined in. 'They'll be back as that cog belongs here, she's not just a visitor to the Axe.' He was a beefy mariner, with a short tunic which looked as if it had been made from a spare sail.
'When is she likely to return?' demanded de Wolfe. The sailor shrugged. 'They've gone to Calais, but it doesn't mean they'll sail straight back. They might find a cargo for the Rhine or back down to St-Malo. Could be ten days, could be a month.'
The man next to him sniggered. 'Depends on who they meet out in the Channel!' He was a foxy little fellow with a bad squint. The first shipman glared at him, and John had the impression that he had kicked Foxy hard on the leg under the table, as the smaller man jerked and winced.
'Who's the shipmaster - and who owns the vessel?' asked Gwyn.
'The master is Martin Rof, who lives in this vill. As to the owner, I've no knowledge; you'll have to ask Northcote or Elias Palmer.'
He rose rather abruptly, leaving half his bread on the table, as if he was unwilling to answer any more questions. As he left, he gestured sharply at the squinting man, who followed him sheepishly out of the door.
'What was all that about?' growled Gwyn. 'I say again, there's something odd about this place.'
The coroner turned to his clerk. 'Thomas, did you learn anything from your ecclesiastical friend yesterday?'
His clerk confessed that Henry of Cumba had nothing solid to tell him, though Thomas had sensed that all was not well in the town of Axmouth.
'It was clear that the Prior of Loders had a strong grip on the place and dictated much of what was done there,' mused the clerk. 'The parish priest is but a vicar employed by the priory for parish duties. This bailiff Edward Northcote seems an iron-handed master and acts more like a manor-lord than a servant of the priory.'
'What about the portreeve?' askedJohn.
De Peyne's humped shoulder shrugged under his thin cassock. 'It's clear that he is under the thumb of Northcote, though the pair of them seem to rule everything t
hat goes on in Axmouth. Yet I had the notion that Father Henry suspects that Elias Palmer has his own intrigues, even though he appears to defer to the bailiff in everything.'
Thomas had coaxed little else out of the parish priest, and when they had finished eating John paid the ale-wife a few pennies and they went into the main street.
'Get as much of a jury as you can scrape together, Gwyn,' ordered the coroner. 'With that damned ship gone, we must make do with the widow, the lad's doxy, the First Finder and a few villagers and shipmen. If they are reluctant, wave your sword at them and threaten them with the name of the Lionheart!'
Gwyn ambled off towards the quayside and John led Thomas back up through the village to the bailiff's dwelling. It was a bright morning, spring being now well advanced. Birds were stealing straw from the thatched roofs of the cottages to build their nests, and the sun was drying the mud that rutted the road through the town. Inside Northcote's house, they found him leaning over the portreeve, as the latter inscribed a parchment on a table against the inner wall. Suddenly conscious that Thomas de Peyne was able to read, Elias blew rapidly on his wet ink and took a large pebble off the foot of the document, so that the parchment rolled itself up, out of sight of prying eyes.
'Just recording the tally of a cargo of wine unloaded yesterday,' he piped unconvincingly. 'There'll be dues to pay on that, by merchants in Taunton and Bristol. '
De Wolfe had no interest in Customs tax; he had a corpse to investigate. 'I will need you both at my inquest this morning. I will hold it across the cadaver in the churchyard, around the tenth hour. I want to get home to Exeter as soon as possible.'
Edward Northcote scowled at him. 'I have no time to waste on such matters. What has the slaying of some youth from Seaton to do with me?'
John's black eyebrows rose up his forehead. 'Are you not the bailiff of this vill?' he demanded. 'It is you who should be helping me in this tragedy. You are responsible for law and order here, on behalf of the sheriff! No wonder the Chief Justiciar has appointed Keepers such as de Casewold, if the bailiffs will not shift themselves to do their duty!'
The Manor of Death Page 5