Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries)

by Bernard Knight

  As soon as Roger Watts had left, Gwyn slid away to leave the lovers in peace. Their first task was to arrange the accommodation and it was tacitly assumed by all that John and Hilda would sleep together in the upper room. Although young Alice was there as lady’s maid, her role as chaperone was conveniently ignored and Osanna, rapidly summing up the situation, brought in a hay-filled pallet for the girl and set it in the corner of the main room. With the warm weather, there was no hardship in sleeping in a chamber with a dead firepit.

  ‘I’ll show you Westminster, Hilda – now the hub of government, even if the king is never here!’ offered John gallantly. They set off arm in arm, with Alice trailing behind, her eyes on stalks as she looked at the grand buildings around them. De Wolfe took them into the great abbey and they stared in wonder at the many altars and side chapels and the tomb of Edward the Confessor – as a Saxon, Hilda was visibly moved by the remnants of this last monarch of her race.

  As they were leaving the abbey, John caught sight of Thomas coming from the cloisters and with a great yell attracted his attention. The clerk was surprised and delighted to see someone from Devon and Hilda hugged him to her, much to his delighted embarrassment. Though he had adored Nesta, he knew Hilda from several escapades and was fond of her calm and generous nature. He joined them in their sightseeing and after looking into St Margaret’s Church, the next port of call was the Great Hall of William Rufus. The lady and her maid marvelled at the dimensions of the place, gazing in wonder at the largest roof in Europe. They stood listening for a while to a session of the King’s Bench, who had reclaimed the space at the end of the hall, then John took them up to the coroner’s chamber to show Hilda their spartan place of exile from Devon.

  ‘It’s a miserable damned room, but the view is good,’ he said, throwing open the shutters and displaying the wide panorama of the Thames. He took them to the Lesser Hall, now quiet between meals and then to the outside of the King’s Chambers, which really impressed Alice, who thought of the king as only a short step down from God himself.

  Their tour ended with a walk along the riverbank and back into the little town of Westminster, where Thomas left them with the excuse that he had duties in the abbey scriptorium. They wandered back to Long Ditch, where the percipient Osanna took Alice away to her kitchen in the yard, to feed her warm pastries and tell her tales of her native Essex.

  Alone in his living room, John took Hilda into his arms and kissed her passionately. He had known her lips and her body for more than a score of years, but she still excited him so much that he felt dizzy when he clasped her tightly to him.

  As his hands roved over her back, her buttocks and her breasts, she responded avidly and though it was barely late afternoon, they stumbled together to the ladder. A moment later, they had collapsed on to the thick feather mattress that lay on the floor of his sleeping chamber. All the pent-up frustrations of the past couple of months were released in an explosion of passion that repeated itself over and over until delicious exhaustion overtook them both. Then, satiated, they slept in each other’s arms, just as they had done in a Devon hayloft, long, long ago.

  If de Wolfe had been pining for more work these past weeks, the next day he fervently hoped for the opposite – that there would be no slaying, fires, ravishment or other forms of mayhem to interrupt his time with Hilda. Most of the day was spent sightseeing and both Gwyn and Thomas came with them. The Cornishman had Alice clinging behind him on his mare, as he had become virtually a father figure to the little maid. Thomas was his usual erudite self, surprising even John with his detailed knowledge of London’s sights and history. They jogged slowly up the Royal Way to Charing and then along the Strand, the clerk pointing out the great houses of bishops, magnates and barons.

  ‘That’s the new preceptory of the Knights Templar built for the English master,’ he explained, pointing to the grand church and buildings at the top of the slope leading down to the river’s edge. Inside the city, they marvelled at the great cathedral of St Paul, Thomas explaining that the original church had been established almost six hundred years earlier, when the rest of London was an abandoned Roman ruin, shunned by the Saxons for centuries until the great King Alfred revitalised it.

  The main thoroughfare of Cheapside and the markets at Poultry were like a magnet to Hilda and Alice, who spent over an hour wandering the stalls and booths, de Wolfe walking behind them as an escort, with that bemused look that men assume when forced to parade past endless rolls of linen and silk, or displays of brooches and necklets.

  In Southwark, on the other side of the bridge, they stopped for food at a large tavern in the high street, opposite the large church of St Saviour’s.

  ‘That palace behind it belongs to the Bishop of Winchester,’ said Thomas, with an almost proprietorial air. ‘Southwark is not part of the city and actually belongs to the bishop.’ He omitted to tell her that even the noted Southwark brothels belonged to the bishop, who derived a useful income from them.

  They stared at the Conqueror’s Tower and King Richard’s new fortifications around it, then after riding to Smithfield, just outside the city wall, to see the great church of St Bartholomew and its famous hospital, they made their way back to Westminster.

  That evening, John decided to take Hilda to the Lesser Hall for supper, partly to show her some of the lifestyle of the palace, but also to meet a few of the people he had been describing to her. He also had a sneaking desire to show her off to them, especially Hawise d’Ayncourt. Though women were not usually present in the hall, he perversely decided that if the raven-haired beauty from Blois could be there, why not his English blonde?

  No one was going to challenge the king’s coroner’s right to bring a guest and he was sure that Hilda would more than hold her own with any of the others in the circle that supped there.

  When he told her, she delved into the large cloth bundle that she had brought from the ship and arrayed herself in a simple, but elegant, gown of pale-blue silk, under a light surcoat of white linen that matched her cover-chief and wimple. The meal had already begun when they arrived at the palace and their appearance caused a minor sensation at the table where their group habitually sat. With an awestruck Alice trailing behind as a chaperone, the men stumbled to their feet as John handed Hilda on to the end of a bench, then sat alongside her, with Alice opposite, next to Hawise’s maid.

  John mischievously introduced Hilda as his ‘business partner from Devon’ just arrived on one of their own vessels, which raised a few disbelieving eyebrows, especially from Mistress d’Ayncourt.

  ‘Can I also join this business, if the partners are all like this exquisite lady?’ asked Ranulf gallantly, earning himself a poisonous glance from Hawise.

  William Aubrey, Renaud de Seigneur and even the celibate Bernard de Montfort became benign and attentive as they beamed at the delectable woman from the far west. They snapped their fingers at the serving boys to bring more food and wine and though it was John’s prerogative to place the choicest morsels on her trencher, Renaud insisted on filling her wine cup from the special flask of Anjou wine that he habitually brought to the table.

  When conversation began to flow, the others were intrigued by her strong Devonshire dialect.

  Waspishly, though she had spoken English since infancy, Hawise addressed her in French, assuming she was some country bumpkin and she was chagrined to receive a polite reply in the same language. Though coming from a farm on the de Wolfe manor, Hilda had often travelled across the Channel with her seafaring husband and was proficient in both Norman-French and Flemish.

  ‘Have you known our respected coroner for long, madam?’ enquired Hawise haughtily, expecting to learn that the blonde was a recent acquisition of his.

  ‘Only about three-and-thirty years,’ replied Hilda calmly. ‘We grew up together, you see.’

  John noticed a grin spread over Renaud’s face – he seemed to relish someone giving his wife as good as she gave.

  William Aubrey, who seem
ed enthralled by the good-looking newcomer, monopolized the conversation for several minutes and Hilda, sensing that John wanted her to appear in the best light possible, adroitly avoided revealing that she was the daughter of a farm reeve and managed to let it be known that she was a widow, who had a stone-built house flanked by pillars in the Breton style.

  Hawise made a last effort to gain the upper hand. ‘Surely you cannot relish living out your life in a rural backwater like Devon,’ she said sweetly. ‘Now that you have been to the great city of London, would you not like to stay here? No doubt you could find a rich husband here to support you.’

  Hilda gave her a condescending smile in return. ‘I think not, as I have returned only yesterday from Antwerp, which in some ways I feel is as interesting. And as for a rich husband, I have no need of one – but would settle for a man I could love and respect.’

  Glowering, Hawise retired from the debate and concentrated on her food and drink, ignoring the smirks of the archdeacon and her damned husband. As soon as she had finished eating, she hauled her maid and husband away from the table and with a last grimace at John, flounced away.

  Eventually, de Wolfe prised Hilda away from the attentions of the other men on the table and they strolled back to Long Ditch in the evening sun, with Alice pattering along happily behind.

  When she was safely tucked up on her bag of hay in the downstairs chamber, John and Hilda spent another night of lovemaking and slumber, tinged with sadness at the realisation that it would be the last for some time. Naked under a linen sheet in the warm summer night, they talked of many things, but never about the possibility of being wedded. In the early hours, when the blonde’s regular breathing against his shoulder told him she was sound asleep, John pondered long and hard about what could be done. He was here in London, but that was not an insoluble problem. He could give up being a coroner and return home to Exeter, as, financially, it would make no difference. Coroners were obliged to remain unpaid, on pain of dismissal – and he had more than an adequate income from the wool business, as well as a share of the profits of his family’s two manors at Stoke-in-Teignhead and Holcombe which his elder brother managed so efficiently. The other option would be for Hilda to come to live with him in Westminster, but he knew this would be difficult, as she was devoted to her home village, and though she might well manage the short transition to Exeter if circumstances allowed, she would never emigrate to London.

  Dawn was creeping through the shutters before he fell asleep again, though a bare hour remained before they had to rise. Even this was delayed for a while by frantic valedictory passion, but soon it was time for a breakfast of oat gruel, eggs fried in butter and barley bread, before Roger Watts arrived to take Hilda back to the ship.

  John, Gwyn and Thomas decided to squeeze the last drops of Hilda’s company by riding back with them to the city to where the St Radegund was berthed just downstream from the bridge.

  The forty-five-foot cog was riding high on the tide when they reached it and soon Hilda and Alice, with their belongings tied in a bundle, were climbing the plank to the deck. John saw them settled in the small cabin on the afterdeck, little more than a tiny hutch with a couple of mattresses inside.

  ‘There’s a north-easterly breeze,’ declared the shipmaster. ‘So once we get around Kent, we should make good time to the Exe – maybe back there in four days.’

  John crawled into the deckhouse to stow Hilda’s bundle and took the opportunity to embrace her and kiss her lips in semi-privacy.

  ‘I’ll be back in Devon before long, by hook or by crook,’ he promised. ‘If we can get away during this progress of the court to Gloucester, I’ll see you soon, my love. Otherwise, I’ll just ride back to Devon and to hell with them.’

  As soon as the tide began to ebb, the mooring ropes were cast off and the single square sail was hoisted. With Roger Watts leaning on the steering oar, the little cog drifted out into the river and began tacking downstream. John, with his officer and clerk, stood on the wharf and watched their link with Devon gradually shrink in size as it went towards the distant sea. The woman and the girl fluttered kerchiefs for a time and John waved back, but soon he turned abruptly on his heel and strode to where they had left their horses.

  ‘Let’s go, this place stinks of fish,’ he growled, for the quay where the vessel had been moored was near Billingsgate. In pensive silence, he rode back through the city streets, ignoring the press of people and the raucous cries of stallholders and hawkers. In spite of the crowds, London suddenly seemed empty without Hilda of Dawlish.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In which Crowner John comes across a corpse

  The good fate which kept John’s time with Hilda free from duties, conveniently expired as soon as she sailed away.

  After they reached the palace and handed over their horses to the ostlers, de Wolfe and Gwyn strolled back to their dwelling to wait for their noon dinner, whilst Thomas slid away to attend to his tasks in the abbey library. Walking up the lane at Long Ditch, they saw Aedwulf and his fat wife at the door, talking to a man who John recognised as one of the proctor’s men from the abbey. There were two senior proctors in Westminster’s chapter, clergy who were responsible for legal matters, discipline and order, and they were physically assisted by several lay constables, of which this was one.

  ‘Can’t be Hilda this time,’ said Gwyn, recalling their similar arrival two days earlier. ‘And what’s going on up there?’

  Much further away, beyond where the lane petered out into a path across the marshes, were several more men, tramping about in the reeds and coarse grass as if they were searching for something.

  When they reached the house, the proctor’s man, a tall ginger fellow with a long staff that was his badge of office, gravely saluted de Wolfe with a hand to his forehead.

  ‘Sir John, the prior told me to seek you out to tell you that a body has been found. Likely a murder, by the looks of it.’

  De Wolfe frowned, instantly suspecting that this might throw up some problems about jurisdiction.

  ‘Is he connected with the court? I have no power to deal with anyone else.’

  The abbey constable shrugged. ‘That’s it, coroner. We don’t yet know who he is, but the corpse is no more than a few hundred paces from here. The prior and the proctors thought it might be best if you had a look, given it’s so near.’ He added an incentive. ‘Of course, it might turn out that he is from the palace, after all.’

  John pointed towards the distant men trampling the boggy ground. ‘Is that where he is? When was he found?’

  ‘Not more than two hours since, sir. A shepherd came across him, face down in a reen.’ This was a local word for one of the ditches that drained the marshland.

  ‘I’ll keep your dinner hot, never fear,’ called Osanna from the doorway, as if she had already decided that he must go about his business. They followed the constable, who said his name was Roland, along the fast-diminishing lane by the Long Ditch and on to a track that went into a wide area of flat, soggy ground lying between the houses on King Street and distant trees that marked the Oxford Road, at least a mile away. It was poor pasture, fit only for sheep and goats – and that only in dry weather, for the many branches of the Tyburn and the Clowson Brook often overflowed and turned the land into a swamp. The path had been made over a crude causeway of brushwood to keep it above the mud, but this ended after a while and John cursed as his shoes squelched into what looked like black porridge.

  ‘Only the men herding animals come this way, usually,’ said Roland apologetically, ‘but we’ve not far to go now.’

  He shouted and waved at the four men who were scattered over the area ahead of them and they began moving back to one spot, towards which they all converged.

  ‘Here he is, Crowner, just as he was found.’ The constable used his staff to prod the back of a body lying head down in a ditch filled with brackish water. The searchers came to stand in a half-circle before them, looking with ghoulish interest at the c
orpse in the reen.

  ‘Who are these people?’ demanded de Wolfe.

  ‘Two are servants I called from the abbey gardens – the others are local men who volunteered to help look for the weapon,’ answered Roland. ‘That one is the fellow who found the body.’ He pointed to a toothless grey-haired man dressed in a tattered hessian smock and serge breeches.

  De Wolfe beckoned him closer. ‘Was the cadaver just like this when you found him?’

  The old shepherd nodded vigorously. ‘The water was bloody when I saw it, Crowner, but the flow in the reen must have washed it away. All I did was lift his head for a moment, to make sure he was dead, sir. Wish now I hadn’t, the state he’s in!’ he added in a quavering voice.

  John nodded to Gwyn who, well used to the routine, dragged the dead man’s feet back until the head came up out of the water.

  It was all too clearly apparent what had upset the shepherd, for across the forehead, just below a fringe of iron-grey hair, was a deep cut the width of a hand, gaping open to expose the shine of the skull, which had several radiating cracks in the depths of the wound. In addition, the face had been battered so badly that his own mother would not have recognised him. He appeared to be of middle age and wore a short belted tunic, over which was a leather apron, both now blackened by peaty water. There was some dried blood on his temples and back of the neck, but as the shepherd had pointed out, the rest had been washed away.

  ‘That’s a hell of blow, Crowner,’ observed Gwyn, with professional detachment. ‘What caused it, I wonder?’

  De Wolfe glared around at the men standing nearby. ‘You found no weapon when you searched, I take it?’