De Wolfe wondered whether the villagers, including their priest, would have been so honest if the manor-lord had not happened to be on the scene.
‘Where is Robert now?’ he asked.
‘He said he would come down here as soon as you arrived,’ replied Michael. ‘I sent a boy up there to tell him when I heard your horses coming.’
John turned his attention back to the box. A gap in the clouds must have passed overhead at that moment, as a shaft of sunlight struck through one of the narrow window slits and illuminated it in an eerie fashion.
‘Can you get the top off, Gwyn?’
His officer reached behind to his belt and pulled out a large dagger. Putting the thick blade flat under one of the fragile bands, he levered up and the parchment-thin metal snapped in a shower of rust. He did the same to the other one, then prised up the rotting remains of the top boards. Shreds of a decomposed linen bag failed to hide the closely packed coins that filled the box. Most were tarnished to a deep grey colour, but when the coroner disturbed them with his fingers, those beneath, which had been lying tightly face to face, showed the brighter glint of silver.
‘There’s another bag underneath,’ said Michael, jabbing a finger at the mass of coins. Where John had moved some aside, the top of a more intact pouch could be seen, tied with a thong. When de Wolfe pulled, it ripped, but enough material came up to reveal a leather purse.
Inside were several dozen bigger coins showing the yellow glint of gold.
‘Keep that aside, then tip the rest out of the box,’ he commanded.
Handing the leather bag up to Thomas, the fount of all knowledge as far as he was concerned, he demanded confirmation of their identity. ‘Look like bezants to me. What do you think?
The little clerk, his thin nose almost twitching with excitement, pulled the opening to the full extent of the purse-string and ferreted inside with his fingers. ‘These are indeed, Crowner! All gold solidii from Byzantium. Each is worth about six shillings today!’
Gwyn whistled. He had never seen half as much money in one place before. ‘How many are there, Thomas? And don’t go slipping a few up your sleeve when we’re not looking!’
Thomas flushed indignantly, though he knew Gwyn was teasing him. ‘I’ll lay them out in a row, before your very eyes, you ginger oaf!’ he retorted and proceeded to tip the bag on to the wooden platform.
‘May as well count the silver ones, too,’ ordered John, getting up from his crouch, his back reminding him that he was not getting any younger. ‘The two priests can do that. They can read, write and do their sums.’
He stood back with Gwyn and Henry to watch the other pair put the coins into small piles. Behind them, at a respectful distance, a dozen men and women of the village stood awe-struck at this display of wealth that was far beyond their comprehension. The average wage of a freeman farmer was about two pence a day, so to them one bezant was almost three months’ earnings. The villeins and serfs worked for nothing but the occupancy of their toft and what they could grow and breed on their croft.
‘There are fifty-two gold coins, master,’ declared Thomas, looking up from his little piles of money. The bezant, though minted in Asia Minor, had been a standard gold piece throughout Europe for hundreds of years and this little bagful was a small fortune in itself.
Thomas went to help Michael count the far more numerous silver pennies, the only English coin in circulation, all of these minted by the Saxons before the Conquest. After another fifteen minutes, during which the spectators appeared hypnotised by the chink of coins being put into piles of ten, the local priest announced that there had been four hundred and eighty-six pence in the box. Calculation was beyond de Wolfe, a soldier not having the computing power of a merchant, but his clerk rapidly had the answer.
‘Altogether, that’s about three hundred and twenty-eight shillings. That’s more than seventeen pounds, Crowner!’
‘And this!’ said the parish priest, suddenly. He held up a glinting object. ‘It was at the bottom, under the last of the pennies.’
He handed it up to the coroner, who turned it over admiringly in his fingers. It was a gold brooch, as long as his forefinger, an oval of delicate moulding, with a dragon-like heraldic beast across the open centre. On the back were two small loops with a thick gold pin between them, to fix it to a cloak or tunic. Of obvious Saxon design, it weighed as much as a dozen of the bezants, but was more valuable than its sheer mass, because of the exquisite workmanship.
De Wolfe handed it back to Michael. ‘Find a length of cloth and wrap everything up again and put it back in the box. Thomas, make a careful inventory on one of your rolls, with the names of the witnesses who were here present. I don’t want any accusations that some of this has gone missing later on.’
The reeve sent one of the villagers to find some wrapping while Thomas unpacked his writing materials from the bag that he carried on his shoulder. By the time he had written down all that the coroner had demanded, an old sack had been produced and the pennies, bag of gold and the brooch had been wrapped up and replaced in the old box, which was then secured with some cords to prevent it falling apart.
‘I want to see the place where it was found,’ announced de Wolfe. ‘So for now, can you lock the box back in your aumbry to be safe?’
The priest agreed and when the key had vanished back into the scrip on his belt, they all trooped out into the fitful sunlight. Henry Stork led the way and after the coroner’s trio and the priest came a straggling bunch of locals, all agape at this novel intrusion of the outer world into their monotonous lives.
The procession crossed the track and walked up a muddy lane at the side of a dry-stone wall, built more to accommodate loose stones from the adjacent strip fields than as a partition. It enclosed lines of crops grouped in sections belonging to different villagers, so that everyone had their share of good and bad soil. Oats, rye, peas and beans seemed the main crops, although farther away, the green heads of turnips and cabbage could be seen. In the centre, where the root crops had already been lifted, a pair of patient oxen were dragging a plough, with a bare-footed villein leading them and another leaning on the handles to keep the coulter in the ground.
On the other side of the path, fallow land stretched away for two hundred paces, part of the three-field system that rested the ground for a year, after two of cultivation. At the end of this, the path opened on to a dozen acres of pasture land, where sheep and a few lean cows grazed, along with a small herd of goats, watched over by a small boy.
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 i
nterest 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 t
hat 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.
The Witch Hunter Page 14