Another muted whisper spread around the barn at this hint of a fresh attack of the malady that was known to afflict the eldest brother.
Odo inclined his head and said that he was now in perfect health once again. John led him through,the impoverished tale that he had heard before, about the period after supper when Hugo had last been seen.
The same story, almost in the same words, was wrung from the more reluctant Ralph and Joel. John had the impression that only the brevity and uselessness of their account allowed them to deign to offer it without more strenuous objections.
De Wolfe then turned to the many faces ranged before him around the court, faces of all shapes and ages, from twelve-year-old lads to a few bowed and crippled greybeards.
'Is there any among you who has other information for me that might throw light on this tragedy?' There was a general shuffling of feet on the packed earth of the floor and many scanned the faces of their neighbours to see whether anyone was likely to step forward. But the moment passed without any volunteers, though John felt a tension in the air that suggested that more than one would have voiced some opinion, if their masters had not been sitting before them, glowering around to see whether anyone dared step out of line.
With a sigh, de Wolfe raised a finger to Gwyn, who went into action and marshalled the large jury to shuffle past the bier. The coroner rose and went to the corpse, pulling down the winding-sheet to expose the puffy face. A ripple of concern went around the men, and the women at the door jostled and craned their necks, trying to see what was on show. Though all were country folk, used to perished and wounded animals and the frequent deaths of their generally short-lived population, the sight of their own lord in a state of early mortification was certainly out of the ordinary.
Gwyn then turned the body over and pulled up the tunic to reveal the stab wounds, which were still oozing blood and lay in skin that was purplish owing to the corpse lying for a couple of days on its back.
'See these wounds? They are from a blade with one sharp edge,' snapped John. 'Not a large knife, nor yet a dagger.'
Gwyn herded the jury past the corpse like a sheepdog with a nervous flock, until all had had the chance of a close look at the fatal injuries. Then he placed the body in its proper position and covered it with the shroud.
John went back to his chair and closed the inquest, confirming his earlier fears that no further evidence would be forthcoming.
'You will consider what you have heard and decide on a verdict. You need to be assured of the identity of the deceased and where, when and by what means he came to his death. All those matters will be easy for you to determine - what we do not know is who brought him to that death.'
The foreman of the jury, the village miller, rapidly announced their verdict. John stood for a final word, looking to the side to make sure that Thomas was scribing everything as he sat at the end of one of the benches.
'Sir Hugo Peverel, a Norman and lord of the manor of Sampford Peverel in the county of Devon, died on or about the tenth day of October in the year of our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-five, in the said Sampford Peverel, from grievous knife wounds to the back of his chest. And the manner of death was murder by a person as yet unknown.'
He turned to the brothers sitting brooding behind him. 'That completes the legal formalities. Your kinsman's body may now be returned to the church.' There was a general exodus behind the bier, which was already being carried out through the tall doors.
As he passed de Wolfe, Ralph gave him a look sufficiently sour to curdle milk, which was entirely lost on the coroner.
'I trust you are satisfied, Sir John,' he snarled. 'You have humiliated us, upset our ladies beyond measure and added further indignity to the body of our brother.'
'But I have upheld the laws of England, without which there would be disorder and anarchy,' retorted John, blandly.
Ralph and Joel marched away, noses in the air, but Richard de Revelle also stopped for a harsh word with his sister's husband.
'Your time is coming, John!' he sneered. 'I will be sheriff again, you mark my words. Perhaps not under this king, but under another, more worthy man. Paid when I am in power again, I will not rest until I have seen you humiliated, as you have done to these fine people here today.'
Before de Wolfe could think of an appropriate retort, de Revelle had stalked off, trailing the Peverels as they made their way to the churchyard.
John saw the steward and bailiff rounding up the villagers and soon most of the inhabitants were moving down past the green to the little church of St John the Baptist. A voice at his elbow told him that there was to be another short burial service, before the body was put back into its box in the ground. The voice belonged to the reeve, who had a strange expression on his face, part anxiety, part determination.
'I hope to God that this is the last we see of Hugo Peverel,' he muttered, half to himself, as he walked close beside the coroner. De Wolfe took the chance to sound him out a little further, as they moved with the tail-end of the crowd towards the church.
'I heard that the deceased caused some distress to your family?' he asked quietly.
'That's putting it very lightly, Crowner. My poor wife cried for days, to say nothing of my sweet daughter Maud. It affected not only our family, but that of Nicholas the smith, father of my son-in-law - who almost failed to remain my son-in-law, after what that bastard Hugo did to his bride.'
John looked behind him, to make sure that only Gwyn and Thomas were within earshot.
'It was totally illegal, Reeve, you know that? There is no such thing as droit de seigneur in the eyes of the law.'
Fishacre gave a bitter laugh. 'The eyes of the law are tightly closed in this manor, sir! What could we do? We are not only bondsmen, but cottars, the lowest of the low. These Peverels have the power of life and death over us, either by the gallows or by starvation if we do not bend to their will.'
'But lords have obligations, not least to keep to the traditions of the manor, as voiced in the manor courts,' reasoned John.
This only brought forth another sardonic response from Warin Fishacre. 'Tradition and the law count for nothing when there is no one to enforce them, sir.
Matters may be different near Exeter, but here we never see a law officer from one year to the next. And the last sheriff, he was so thick with the Peverels that they could have hanged the lot of us without him turning a hair.'
De Wolfe had no answer to that, but wryly thought that the new sheriff was also unlikely ever to show his face here, as long as he had a coroner to do his work for him.
By the time they reached the church, the body had been taken inside, now wrapped in a new linen shroud.
The men of the manor had all filed into the small building and the women and children congregated outside, either in the churchyard or along the wall that separated it from the roadway. He saw that the armourer, Robert Longus, and another rough-looking man were standing at the door to check that every man, including all youths above the age of twelve, was attending to do respectful homage to their late lord.
As John walked down from the lych-gate, he murmured to the reeve.
'Did they do this yesterday, when the illegal burial took place?'
Warin Fishacre shook his head. 'It was a rushed affair, Crowner. I think the old sheriff, de Revelle, talked them into it in a hurry. Only the brothers and the senior manor officers were present. They are trying to make up for it today, though they had said they would have a big memorial service in the future, when the new church is built - if that ever comes to pass!' As de Wolfe was well aware that he was in bad odour with the Peverel family, he stood unobtrusively at the back of the crowded church, which was crammed full with the men of the manor, most looking sour and resentful. As was customary, none of the women of the family was present, but from his viewpoint he could see that the brothers, Richard de Revelle, the steward, bailiff, falconer, houndmaster and other more senior members of the household were grouped behind the bier
, on the other side of which Father Patrick was again mumbling the words of the burial service.
Gwyn stuck close beside his master at the back, but Thomas, never one to miss the opportunity to attend any devotional event, wormed his way through the packed congregation until he was almost at the front.
As the muttered words of the priest droned on, lightened by the splashing of holy water on the corpse, John studied the atmosphere in the church. Though admittedly a funeral service was not an occasion for high spirits, he sensed a sullen mood among the massed villagers. He felt that they were there only because they had been ordered to attend, rather than from any feeling of respect or obligation to their late master. He decided that the reason that the thuggish armourer and his mate were outside the porch was to ensure that there were no absentees, and he would not have been surprised to learn that Longus had sent men to scour the village for skulking backsliders.
The Irish-accented Latin of the parish priest came Io an end and a general shuffling at the front heralded the end of the proceedings. John beckoned to Gwyn and they left the church ahead of the rest and went to stand against the inside of the churchyard wall, a few yards from the open grave which still held the empty coffin. Behind them, the women and children gaped and whispered over the wall as the procession emerged from the porch. The men had squeezed themselves aside to allow the bier to be brought out first, preceded by Father Patrick, who slowly marched ahead along the grassy path between old grave mounds, holding aloft the cross from the altar as he quavered incomprehensible chants.
The corpse, swathed in its white bindings, was carried on the bier by two of the bailiff's assistants, and behind them came the Peverel men, de Revelle and then the manor officials. John managed to conceal a grin as he saw that immediately after them came Thomas de Peyne, who had insinuated himself into the procession and with his faded black tunic and persistent tonsure looked like an additional priest as he crossed himself and mouthed the Latin texts far more faithfully than the Irishman up ahead.
At the graveside, the sexton and another helper got down into the pit and took the corpse, which was handed down by the pall-bearers, as the family and their retainers stood at the head of the grave. Once the body was back in the planked box, they hammered home the nails of the lid and clambered out again. Now the men of the manor, directed by the armourer and his henchman, filed slowly past the open pit. Obviously acting on prior orders, each stooped to take a handful of soil from the heap alongside to throw down on to the coffin. Again the watching coroner had the firm impression that they did this sullenly and with bad grace, driven to the gesture only under the watchful eyes of the armourer and the family.
Each fistful of earth landed on the coffin with a dull 'thunk'. Some of the impacts seemed much louder than others, as if the thrower were expressing his feelings with unnecessary violence - though John's keen ears noticed that several times the opposite occurred, as if the reluctant mourner were merely miming the action.
When the last of the villagers had paraded past, they began melting away, some making for the lych-gate, others to another gap in the wall behind the church, leaving behind only the Peverels and their attendants.
Suddenly there was a roar of anger from Robert Longus, who had moved up to the grave and was peering in.
'Stop! All of you men, stop and come back here!' he yelled. The brothers, who were talking in low voices with de Revelle and their steward, were a few yards away and immediately hurried over to where the armourer was standing, gesticulating with a forefinger into the pit.
'Who did this? Own up, damn you!' he shouted generally to the rapidly thinning crowd in the churchyard. De Wolfe and his officer, sensing some new drama, also threaded their way between the grassy mounds to the new grave and joined the others as they peered down into the four-foot hole.
Among the scattered red earth on the coffin lid, they saw a large pat of dried ox dung and a dead rat, swollen with putrefaction far more than the body inside the box.
'Get those abominations out of there!' screeched Ralph Peverel, grabbing the nearby sexton by the shoulder and almost pushing him down into the grave-pit.
As the man scrabbled to retrieve the offending objects, John realised why several of the farewell offerings had made so little noise, but he could not recall who was passing the grave at that moment - and he hoped that the others would also fail to identify the culprits.
The brothers fumed and ranted for a while and the bailiff, the steward and others tried to assist the armourer in chasing after the villagers, who were melting away like frost on a sunny morning. Naturally no one would admit to having thrown down these contemptuous offerings, and as the sexton and another villein shovelled the earth back into the hole the outrage gradually subsided.
The Peverels and Richard de Revelle also left, pointedly ignoring the coroner and offering him no refreshment in the manor hall before he departed for Exeter.
John de Wolfe had one last task to perform, however, before he shook the mud of Sampford from his boots.
Beckoning the bailiff away from the family group, he look him aside just within the lych-gate.
'Walter, I spoke to you on Monday about this armourer fellow, Longus. He deliberately refused to appear before my inquest in Exeter, so I am going to attach him in the sum of two marks to attend when I resume the inquiry into the death of a silversmith just before the fair.'
Walter Hog nodded; he was an intelligent man and knew that de Wolfe had the power to make trouble when necessary.
'I do not have a date for that inquest, but I shall send a message well beforehand. I trust that you will see to it that he understands the gravity of his situation and will give him leave to travel to the city. If he repeatedly fails to obey, then he may well be outlawed and nothing your manor-lord can do will prevent that, understand?'
'I will do my best, Crowner.' The bailiff looked around to make sure that the Peverels were well out of earshot. 'There may well be resistance from my masters, sir. Robert Longus is a favourite with Sir Ralph, because of their interests in the tourney, so he may try to protect him. But I will tell him the penalties if he fails - I can do no more than that.'
John clapped Walter on the shoulder. 'You do that, and I'll impress the same upon him before I leave. But tell me, is there any other fellow who is thick with this Longus? The matter I am investigating involved two men.'
Again the bailiff looked around uneasily. John had the impression that Walter, an outsider from Somerset who had not been long in this manor, was not all that happy with his position here and would be glad to move on when the opportunity arose. 'There is his assistant in the armoury, the man who was on the church door with him. By virtue of their common tasks with the weaponry, both in the forge and in the armoury, they spend much time together.'
John looked across to the corner of the churchyard, where Longus and the big, coarse-faced fellow were still haranguing a cottager about the offensive objects in the grave.
'His name is Alexander Crues - a man of little brains, but much muscle, commented the bailiff disparagingly. 'They accompanied Lord William to every tournament and now do the same for Ralph.'
'What about Hugo Peverel?' asked de Wolfe, which caused Walter Hog to shrug before answering.
'Longus was Hugo's armourer and he depended on him greatly. They were more like master and squire, though of late they seemed to have become more distant with each other. I suspect that some animosity grew between them, and Longus seemed to cleave more to Ralph.'
John pondered this as he strode across towards the armourer, with Gwyn close behind. Thomas de Peyne had emerged from the church with Father Patrick and was looking uncertainly at his master, not wishing to get mixed up in any brawl, which seemed a possibility from the grim expression on the coroner's face as he advanced on Robert Longus.
'I want a word with you, fellow!' he snapped, looking from the man's truculent face to the rather piggish features of his clumsy-looking assistant. The armourer glared back at
de Wolfe.
'If it's about my not coming to your damned inquest, then you can blame him!' he snarled, indicating the almost completed mound of earth which the sexton was hammering down with the flat of his shovel.
'What d'you mean?'
'Sir Hugo forbade me to stay behind in Exeter that day. He said he needed me at home here, to prepare for a tourney in Bristol the next week.'
Robert was a big man, but the coroner topped him by half a head and now he glared down at him. 'That's no excuse. It was you I summoned, not your master.'
'Then you try telling him that, Crowner! Though I'm a freeman, my bread and meat depend on the manor lord, so I'm not going to cross him.'
'Very convenient, especially when the man is dead and can't confirm what you say,' retorted de Wolfe, but the armourer seemed determined to argue to the bitter end.
'You heard what he said that day! He said I was with him all that Sunday and Monday and couldn't have been.., been wherever you said I was, on the word of some half-crazed craftsman who was still out of his wits from a knock on the head. Sir Hugo said that as there could be no truth in the matter, there was no point my wasting his time by absenting myself at some useless inquest!'
'That's for me to judge, damn you!' snapped the irate coroner. 'So you'll appear at my court in Exeter when I send for you, within the next week or so. Understand?'
'I'll have to ask the new lord, Sir Ralph,' growled Longus reluctantly. 'If he says it's all right, then maybe I'll come, though he'll vouch for it being a wicked waste of time and travelling. And if it falls near a tourney day, then you can be sure he'll not let me go!' It was all John could do not to grab the man and shake him till his few remaining teeth rattled. Gwyn was obviously of the same opinion.
'Shall I give him a few clouts to mend his manners?' he offered.
'You will attend or it will cost you two marks on the first failure, Longus! And then I'll attach you to the county court in the sum of five marks ... and if you persist in absenting yourself, you'll find yourself an outlaw, not an armourer. It's not your job you'll have lost then, but maybe your head!'
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