John stared at him, suspicion competing with respect for a soldier who had been maimed for fighting for his king. ‘This is not your village? You have a strange accent.’
Nebba shook his dirty locks. ‘I have no village. I wandered here and work for my keep in the fields, sleep in the cow byre, until I move on.’
Like Gwyn, the coroner had suspected that Nebba was an outlaw who had tired of an almost animal life in the forest and who was trying to slip back into conventional life, even at risk of summary beheading.
Nebba was questioned further, but stubbornly maintained that he knew nothing about the corpse in the stream. The coroner persisted for a time, but could think of no reason why a former bowman should have been involved in the death of a young Norman, other than robbery. But if that were the case, reasoned John, why should he hang around the village?
He beckoned to Gwyn and muttered to him, ‘What d’you think of the fellow? He’s patently a runaway, beyond the law.’
Gwyn felt the same grudging sympathy for a former soldier down on his luck. ‘No doubt he’s a man of the forest, not bound to any lord or manor now. We could slice his head off his shoulders if we wished, but what good would that do? The woods of Devon hold a thousand more like him.’
John nodded. As usual, his man was thinking along similar lines to himself. ‘I suspect he’s working his way nearer a borough, probably Exeter, to try to get his twelve months within the walls.’ Serfs and villeins could claim their freedom if they escaped their manor and resided in a borough for at least a year and a day, without being recaptured by their lord. Some outlaws impersonated villeins on the run and some even regained wealth and positions of importance. If Nebba could achieve this, the coroner had no desire to prevent him, so long as there was no proof that he had been involved in this killing.
John dismissed him, and the Saxon archer melted away into the crowd. The coroner shifted on the hard chair, aware that his investigation was getting nowhere.
Gwyn motioned for Ralph the reeve to step forward. As a gesture to the occasion, he had washed his face and tied his long hair back with a piece of twine. ‘The lad Cerdic and that Nebba called me when they found the corpse. I took a couple of men and pulled him out of the stream on to the bank. We carried him up here to the barn, then I sent word to the manor bailiff at North Hall.’
Crowner John nodded, his long black hair bobbing about his neck. ‘What about this Nebba? Where did he come from?’
The reeve looked furtive. ‘Seems a good man, sir. Walked into the village at harvest time, wanted labour in return for food and shelter. We needed extra hands and our lord’s steward said he could stay for the winter.’
It was unusual for a manor to shelter a stranger, other than the itinerant craftsmen that passed through. Probably some looted or stolen silver had changed hands as a bribe, but John felt that although he should drag the fellow to the sheriff for interrogation, he did not wish to interfere in a village matter.
He paused while his clerk caught up with the proceedings on the parchment roll.
‘And you have no idea who the deceased might be, reeve?’
Ralph shook his pigtail. ‘No, sir. But I reckon the corpse didn’t die where we found him – too rotten he was. We’d have seen him long before if he’d been there the week it would have took to get that foul. Next village dumped him there, I’ll swear.’
There was a commotion in the crowd as someone forced his way forward. ‘That’s a damn lie! We never laid eyes on him before.’ A big, red-faced man in a faded blue tunic pushed Ralph aside and stood truculently before John. He had a hare-lip, which added to the malevolent look on his coarse features.
‘I suppose you’re from Dunstone?’ asked the coroner.
The man grunted affirmatively. ‘Simon, their manor reeve. You sent for me, Crowner. But we know nothing of this. Widecombe is just trying to avoid your amercement by putting the blame on us. Might have known this here Ralph would try a trick like that.’
John grinned inwardly. It was typical that villages – even belonging to the same manor – should be at odds with each other when it came to avoiding a fine.
Ralph loudly contested the denial of the neighbouring village’s reeve. ‘It wasn’t there the night before, Simon, so how come a corpse corrupt more than a week suddenly appears in our stream, eh?’
‘I don’t know. That’s your problem. Just don’t go trying to put the blame on us in Dunstone, that’s all.’
‘Maybe you or one of your villagers killed him,’ Ralph sneered.
Growling with anger, the stocky Simon stepped nearer to take a swing at Ralph, who hopped out of range.
John nodded at Gwyn, and the Cornishman ended the developing dispute by pushing Simon back into the throng with a hand the size of a small ham.
The coroner thoughtfully stroked the dark stubble on his long chin as he deliberated about what to do next. He had decided that neither of the manor reeves was to be trusted and he put them firmly into his pool of suspects, which also included Nebba.
‘You both claim that neither Widecombe nor Dunstone know anything about this victim, yet even in this wet weather, his body could not have washed any distance down that tiny stream. And the killers would hardly return after ten days to shift the corpse. One of you is concealing the truth.’
An ominous silence followed.
‘I will therefore amerce both villages in the sum of ten marks, unless in due course some other explanation appears.’
There was a murmur among the crowd. A mark was two-thirds of a pound, more than thirteen shillings. Ten marks was a great deal of money for such small hamlets to find – and FitzRalph, their lord, would be unlikely to contribute to the fine. The only consolation was that it would not be payable until the King’s justices confirmed it, which might be a year or more in the future when the General Eyre next came to Exeter.
However, Simon was not one to leave the matter there. ‘Crowner, this foul death is surely nothing to do with our folk, neither Dunstone nor Widecombe. The woods here abound with outlaws.’ He scowled as he looked around for Nebba, who had vanished. ‘They steal our sheep and fowls year in, year out. Around Spitchwick and Buckland the forest is thick with them – escaped felons, abjurers and runaway serfs. Why should we get the blame for the evil they do?’
There was a mumble of agreement from the jury, though no one wanted to be identified as challenger to the coroner.
Ralph was emboldened by his fellow-reeve’s words and added, ‘There are other evil men up on the moors. They live by theft – and murder, if needs be.’
‘Men like that Nebba you’ve just heard from. Where did he come from, if it weren’t outlawry? What about him for a suspect, eh?’ Simon suggested.
At that another row broke out, Ralph defending Nebba, which Gwyn ended by pushing the two men apart and standing between them.
John de Wolfe jabbed a long finger at both reeves. ‘I’m not amercing you for the killing, as there is no proof. The fine is for trying to deceive me and for obstructing my duties by not raising the hue-and-cry much earlier. One of you knew of this body before the lad found it in the stream. Even if outlaws were responsible, they wouldn’t have kept a stinking body for near two weeks, then brought it to your village boundary. One of you is trying to shift the blame for a slain corpse to the other.’
There seemed no answer to that, and as no other witnesses had anything to say, the coroner thankfully eased his backside off the Bishop’s hard chair and walked back through the doors of the barn.
The jury straggled behind him, still muttering under their breath about the amercement money, followed by the women and urchins. Thomas gathered up his writing materials and scurried after them.
When the throng had assembled in a wide circle around the bier, John approached the head, his hands clasped behind his back. His tall, stooped figure was like that of a learned pedagogue about to give a lecture on anatomical dissection.
He intoned his findings for the benefit
of the clerk’s quill. ‘I, John de Wolfe, Knight, King Richard’s coroner for the county of Devon, examined in the village of Widecombe on the third day of November in the year of our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-four, the corpse of an unknown man found yesterday in a brook between this village and Dunstone.’ He bent a little nearer, oblivious of the burgeoning odour of putrefaction. ‘The victim appears about five-and-twenty to thirty years of age, well built of medium height. Fair hair, not recently trimmed. Fair moustache, no beard. Eyes sunken, colour not discernible.’ He motioned to Gwyn, who picked up the limp hands of the cadaver. ‘Not the hands of a bondman or heavy craftsman, nor soft like a courtier,’ he added, with a hint of sarcasm.
Gwyn, aided by Ralph, began to undress the body as the coroner continued his commentary.
‘Wearing a good green tunic over an undershirt and linen shift. Black breeches, woollen hose, cross-gartered. No cloak present in spite of the season.’ Probably stolen by his attackers, John thought. ‘Leather belt, with embossed patterns, Levantine in style. Empty sword scabbard, curved shape – again from the East. Dagger in place in scabbard on back of belt.’
Here, Glyn drew out the dagger, a good but unremarkable weapon. ‘No blood upon it,’ he grunted, pushing it back into the leather sheath.
‘Riding boots, again hammered leather pattern, coming from Jaffa or Acre in my estimation.’ John could never resist airing his knowledge of the Levant. ‘Bandages wound around feet, the sign of an experienced horseman used to long distances. Marks of spurs on boots, but none present now.’ Also stolen, he thought.
Gwyn, well versed already in the coroner’s routine, held up in succession the tunic, the shirt and the shift for inspection. In each was a clean slit about an inch long, under the left shoulder-blade. There were further cuts in the left forearm and in the upper part of the right sleeve.
The clothing, which smelt of the corpse’s peeling skin and weeping body fluids, was bundled up and given into the care of the village, with instructions to wash and guard it safely until it was claimed by the victim’s family.
The crowd shuffled nearer as the now naked body, belly swelling with gas, was displayed on the bier.
‘The face and arms are deeply sun-browned, though fading. Corruption is present, of a degree that in this season and weather might token death at least a sennight, maybe almost a fortnight, since.’
Once more Gwyn held up the hands and arms, and John continued, ‘A deep slash through skin and flesh on the left arm between wrist and elbow and a three-inch wound below the right shoulder. Sustained during a sword fight, the left arm raised in protection, the right struck to disable the sword arm.’ Gwyn pointed a thick finger at the left hand to remind him. ‘And defending cuts on the fingers, thumb and palm of the left hand, where the victim gripped a sharp blade.’
John waited for his clerk to catch up, then told Gwyn to roll the body over on to its face. When it rested with its limp arms dangling over the edge of the bier, they saw that the settled blood under the skin on the back now had a lacework of darker putrefying veins that contrasted with the greenish pallor of the upper skin.
The coroner proclaimed the significance of the slit in the clothing, pointing out the stab wound under the shoulder-blade, now dribbling fluid blood that had already collected in a large pool on the oak of the crude bier.
Gwyn leaned over to look again more closely at it, the ends of his moustache almost brushing the corpse.
A voice spoke from alongside him. ‘A dagger, that was, not a sword. Double-edged, by the sharpness of the ends of the cut. Pulled downwards as it was withdrawn for there’s a shallow cut tailing away from the lower end.’
It was Nebba. He had unobtrusively rejoined the throng, and Gwyn turned to scowl at him, annoyed at his challenge to the monopoly of knowledge of wounds that he and the coroner professed. A murmur went up from the onlookers near enough to hear him.
‘Stabbed in the back. A wicked thing,’ said Simon of Dunstone solemnly. Ralph looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing to provoke another squabble.
The coroner made his own close inspection. His lips thinned in distaste. ‘Not killed in fair combat, for sure. He was fighting to the front and got two sword cuts for his efforts when someone else stabbed him between the shoulders. Then he turned and grasped the blade, getting his hand cut for his trouble.’ There was nothing more to be seen, so after telling Thomas to note down the dead man’s hairy mole, John walked back to his episcopal chair, the crowd shambling back to face him.
‘The inquest can go no further than to declare the victim murdered and to state that his identity is unknown. It is obvious that no one can present Englishry to me, so the village of Widecombe is also amerced in the sum of ten marks as a murdrum fine.’ There was another collective groan from the crowd at this additional burden for the future.
‘Neither have I any way of telling where he died or whether you villagers are telling me the whole truth. I have the gravest suspicions of some of you, but further enquiry is necessary on my part.’ He glared down accusingly at the two reeves. ‘However, Widecombe guarded the cadaver and sent for the King’s crowner without undue delay, as is the law now. That law requires me, if I can, to name the deceased, if he be a stranger and to tell where he spent the night before his death. Neither of these can I do, and so this inquest is laid aside for now.’
He turned to his clerk. ‘Make sure everything is recorded on your rolls for the sheriff and the next visit of the justices.’ He raised a hand to signal that the performance was over. ‘If further information arises in the meanwhile, I will reconvene this inquest on this same spot.’ Looking round the squalid village, he added, in an undertone, ‘Which, God forbid.’
Rising from his chair, he gave instructions to Ralph, the bailiff and the parish priest to have the body buried in the churchyard with proper dignity and to erect a wooden cross at the head of the grave. ‘Whatever else he was, he was a gentleman soldier and almost certainly a Crusader and thus deserves our respect.’
Striding away through the villagers, John de Wolfe’s tall figure led Gwyn and Thomas back to where their horses were tethered. Within a few minutes, the trio were winding their way back up the track towards the county town of Exeter, some sixteen miles distant.
CHAPTER THREE
In which Crowner John falls out with his wife
The shortening days and the leaden sky made it almost dark when John arrived home. The trio had spent an hour in a tavern at Fulford on the road back from Widecombe where they ate better food and drank better beer than the reeve’s wife had provided.
At the walls of Exeter they separated, the clerk going off to his room in the cathedral precinct – which he had obtained in spite of his expulsion from holy orders. Gwyn went back to his wife and children in their thatched hut outside the East Gate, while the Coroner, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, went slowly home to his burgage in St Martin’s Lane, a passage between the High Street and the cathedral.
He stabled his horse at a nearby farrier’s and, after seeing the stallion fed and watered, plodded up the muddy cart-tracks to the timber town-house that leaned over the tiny street. It was too large for him – he had no children with whom to share it – but his wife would hear nothing of moving to a smaller dwelling. ‘You are a knight, and the King’s coroner for the country, and I am the sister of the sheriff!’ she would declaim in her grating, high-pitched voice. ‘How could we hold up our heads among our peers if we moved to some miserable little tenement?’
At forty-six, Matilda was six years older than John. Though she had once been a handsome woman, now she looked every month of her age, in spite of the constant ministrations of her French maid, Lucille, who with powder and curling tongs attempted to keep back the ravages of time.
The coroner had been pushed into this lacklustre marriage sixteen years ago by the ambitions of his late father, Simon de Wolfe, who saw in a match with the de Revelle family the best road for the advancement of his eldest son
. After less than eighteen months with his shrewish bride, John escaped from her with repeated absences at the Irish wars and then with King Richard in Palestine. In fact, his enthusiasm for warfare was founded less on patriotism and the removal of the Saracen from the Holy Land, than on his desire to stay away from Matilda.
The street door was ajar when he reached it and he pushed it open to find Brutus, his house dog, sitting in the vestibule beyond. The old hound’s ears were held back and his feathery tail slowly swished the floor in a rhythmic welcome.
‘At least someone’s glad to see me home,’ he murmured, as he bent to fondle the dog’s head.
As he shrugged off his damp cloak and unbuckled his sword-belt, another figure appeared from a door at the rear, who also seemed pleased to see him. ‘Master, you’re back! Let’s have those filthy boots off you.’
He sat on the inner step, watching strands of Mary’s long blonde hair slip from beneath the linen kerchief that she wore on her head, as she tugged off his riding boots.
Mary was their serving maid, a handsome, if over-muscular, girl of twenty-five. Exuding good health, she had a briskness and determination that brushed aside all problems. She never failed to make John feel better when he was low – a frequent condition for the coroner.
Mary was the by-blow of a Norman squire and a Saxon woman from Exeter. In this divided household, she was firmly, if discreetly, John’s ally against Matilda and Lucille. He had given her her job against his wife’s wishes and, an eminently sensible girl, Mary valued it too highly to risk losing it over household politics – but short of open warfare with the mistress, she aided and abetted the coroner whenever she could in his campaign of survival against his strident wife. As she fetched him a pair of soft house shoes, she whispered to him conspiratorially, ‘Her brother is here again, master. They’re in the hall, complaining about you as usual.’
John groaned. His damned brother-in-law seemed to spend more time in this house than he did himself, and if Matilda were not such an obnoxious woman, he might have suspected Richard de Revelle of incestuous inclinations.
The Sanctuary Seeker Page 4