‘Good land here. They must have a decent living, these de Bonnevilles,’ observed Gwyn, looking at the extensive new clearings in the river-bank woods. Turning off the main valley track that led to Okehampton, they took a well-beaten lane that slanted up the valley side. They passed a cowman with a fat herd, who told them that the manor house was another half-mile further on, and in a few minutes they entered a wide open space on the slope of the hillside. An oval earthen embankment, with a stout timber fence on top, stood inside a deep muddy ditch. It was a hundred and fifty yards in diameter, but the wooden walls were dilapidated, some stakes were missing and one section was cracked and blackened by fire. The drawbridge across the ditch in front of the only gate looked embedded in the earth and could not have been lifted for years.
The eyes of both visitors took it all in at a glance.
‘They seem seem to care little for defence – too many years of easy living,’ Gwyn grunted.
John looked at the few villagers passing by and had to agree: they looked plump and content. ‘I suppose there’s little fear of warfare here – unless you Cornish come rampaging across the Tamar and the Tavy.’
The later years of the reign of Henry II had brought stability and peace to much of England, other than the north and the Welsh Marches, so the fortifications raised in the troubled times of Stephen and the Empress Matilda had often fallen into disrepair. True, the recent intrigues of the scheming Prince John after the capture of King Richard had stimulated many to repair their defences, but such concerns had evidently not reached such a backwater as Peter Tavy.
There was no guard on the gate and they dismounted to lead their horses through to the manorial compound. A well-built fortified stone house occupied the centre, with an undercroft at ground level and wooden stairs leading up to the entrance on the upper floor, pierced by a single arched doorway and a number of narrow slits in the walls.
‘At least the house is defensible, even if they have let their bailey wall decay,’ said John. He looked up approvingly at the castellations surrounding a pitched roof.
‘And they have slated it with stone, not thatch,’ commented Gwyn. ‘No use shooting fire-arrows at that.’
Within the palisade, the bailey contained the usual motley collection of frame and wattle huts and sheds, as well as two barns from which a few labourers gave them curious glances. The arrival of two men of menacing and rather military appearance was never likely to be good news to a placid rural manor like Peter Tavy.
No one challenged or greeted them as they walked across to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The undercroft had open bays for stores and stables and, as they approached, a boy ran out to take their horse’s bridles. The coroner and his henchman slid out of their saddles and the boy led away the beasts to feed and water them.
Simultaneously, a figure appeared in the arched doorway above and strode to the top of the steps to look down on them. He was a powerfully built, short-necked man of about thirty, soberly but well dressed as if he was about to go hunting, with a dark brown surcoat, slit back and front over a heavy woollen tunic. He carried no sword, but a quiver of arrows was slung over his shoulders. John was immediately reminded of Alan Fitzhai in his stocky solidarity but, unlike Fitzhai, the man’s hair and beard were as black as those of the coroner. He came down the steps to greet them at the bottom. ‘Good day to you. Have you come to visit our lord de Bonneville?’
The words implied that he was not one of the family and John guessed that he was a squire to someone – he was too well dressed and self-assured to be a mere bailiff or seneschal.
‘We have indeed, though I understand that Sir Arnulph is gravely ill.’
Blackbeard nodded sadly, and spoke low. ‘He is, and never will recover.’ He glanced up quickly at one of the window embrasures above, as if to make sure that his pessimism had not carried to the bedchamber.
‘I am Sir John de Wolfe of Exeter, the King’s coroner for this county, and Gwyn of Polruan is my officer. May I know who you are?’
The man’s attitude was immediately more deferential yet, at the same time, wary. The arrival of a senior royal law officer was never to be a matter for rejoicing, and these new coroners were said to bring bad news for all and sundry.
‘I am Baldwyn of Beer, squire to Gervaise de Bonneville, the second son, who has had the burden of ruling this honour of Peter Tavy since his father fell so sick. May I learn the reason for your visit, sir?’
John pulled off his heavy gloves and tucked them under his baldric. ‘It is a grave and personal matter, which I must urgently discuss with the family.’
Baldwyn hesitated a moment, as if he was unused to being bypassed with any business that affected the de Bonnevilles, but the uncompromising attitude of the stern man who stood before him made it clear that the matter was not negotiable. He stood aside and waved a hand towards the steps.
‘Please come into our house and take some refreshment. Gervaise is with his father, as is his younger brother Martyn. I will tell them at once that you have arrived.’
They entered the hall, a well-built chamber that took up more than half of the entire building. It was almost empty, apart from a couple of servants removing the remnants of the morning meal. John and Gwyn were led to a table where meat, bread and ale were placed before them. The swarthy Baldwyn, whose name indicated that he came from the small coastal village of Beer near the Dorset end of the county, vanished through a curtained doorway into an adjacent bedchamber.
Gwyn fell on the meat with appetite but John could only pick at the food for the sake of courtesy: it was only a couple of hours since they had breakfasted at the abbey. ‘Baldwyn seems to hold considerable power for a young man’s squire. Perhaps he is also the lord’s steward.’
The curtain parted and two men emerged, followed by Baldwyn. John was immediately struck by their resemblance to the Widecombe corpse: they were both fair-haired and long-nosed. They were also dressed for horse and hunting, and seemed apprehensive at the sudden arrival of the county coroner. John and the de Bonnevilles made stiff-necked bows, both Baldwyn and Gwyn standing back.
Introductions were made and John guessed that the brothers were within a few years of each other in their twenties. Martyn had an air of innocence, seen in some monks and friars, as if he was only half aware of the world in which he walked. Gervaise seemed more brisk and efficient and, no doubt, would manage the manors well in the absence of their elder brother and the disablement of the father. He had slightly darker hair than Martyn and took the lead in conversation.
‘I am my father’s middle son, Sir John. My elder brother, Hubert, is away at the Crusade.’
The Coroner nodded gravely. ‘It is he whom my visit concerns. First, I would like to speak with your father or does his disability make communication impossible?’
Gervaise’s pleasant face creased into sadness. ‘Since his stroke last midsummer he has been paralysed in his right arm and leg and has lost all sensible speech, as well as control of his bodily functions. But sometimes he seems to understand what we say to him.’
His younger brother cut in, ‘He varies greatly from day to day. It seems unpredictable, but sometimes he nods or shakes his head.’
John looked from one to the other. ‘I feel I must try to speak to him first, as a matter of courtesy to the head of the household.’
Gervaise de Bonneville could rein in his anxiety no longer. ‘Sir John, please tell us what this is about. My father is sick near to death and I would prefer to spare him whatever troubles you bring to us.’
John put a hand on his shoulder in an almost avuncular manner. ‘Your father has the right at least to my attempting to inform him about a grave matter that might concern his eldest son.’
Startled, the de Bonnevilles stared at each other, then at the coroner.
‘What has he done this time? He was always a hot-head!’ exclaimed Martyn.
John stored this in his memory for further digestion, then took both brothers by t
he arm and led them towards the inner doorway.
‘If he is as sick as you say, I’ll not trouble him, but I must set my eyes on him, as a token of my duty to him.’
With a warning glance at Gwyn to stay behind with Baldwyn, the coroner passed into the inner room, which was much darker than the hall, lit only by a single window slit in the outer wall. The chamber smelt of stale urine from the incontinence of the pathetic figure huddled in the bed. An elderly woman hovered in the background with a bowl and some rags. As if reading John’s thoughts, Gervaise murmured, ‘Our mother died five years ago.’
They approached the bed, a large palliasse spread on the floor, covered with a heavy bearskin. Crouched diagonally across it, his head pulled down to his left shoulder, was an emaciated figure with grey hair and a stubbled beard. One corner of his mouth drooped and saliva ran from the lax lips. The left arm was above the bed coverings and the thin fingers twitched and picked constantly at the fur.
Arnulph de Bonneville, a shadow of his former self, lay dying in his own excretions. John thought that it would be a Christian mercy if one of his retainers were to hold a pillow over his face finally to extinguish the miserable mockery of a life he now endured. ‘Leave the poor man in peace,’ he murmured, and they moved back into the hall.
Gervaise led the way to benches set near a smouldering fire, where hurrying servants brought them cups of heated wine.
‘Our parish priest spends much of his time here, waiting to shrive him in case he suddenly stops breathing.’ Martyn sighed unhappily.
John sipped his wine. ‘I have a sad duty to carry out. Until I saw you both, I thought there might be room for doubt, but the similarity of your features tell me that almost certainly your brother is dead.’
There was a stunned silence.
‘You have heard from Palestine, then?’ asked Gervaise, in a hollow voice. ‘But why didn’t the news come straight to us?’
The coroner shook his head. ‘He died not in Palestine but in Devon, not twenty-five miles from here in Widecombe.’
The younger brother looked bewildered, his fresh, ingenuous face uncomprehending. ‘But Hubert is abroad. We had news of him last Eastertide when a soldier returning to Plymouth from Jaffa called upon us with a message from him.’
‘Yes, he said that he was alive and well,’ added Gervaise, ‘and that he hoped to be home within a year or so.’
‘You’ve heard nothing of him since?’
‘Not a word,’ replied the elder brother, sombrely. ‘But neither did we expect to. None of us has the gift of reading or writing, so any message from such distant lands can only come by word of mouth.’
‘But what has happened to him?’ Martyn persisted. ‘What is all this about Widecombe?’
Crowner John explained the whole story as he knew it, the stricken brothers listening silently and Baldwyn edging closer, as if both to hear better and to offer support to his master and to Martyn.
This sudden news was more of a shock than a reason for overwhelming grief but, even so, John realised that it had hit the family hard. Gervaise moved closer to his younger brother and put an arm around his shoulder and they stared silently into each other’s eyes. The squire Baldwyn came nearer, as if to console them with his powerful presence. After a moment, Gervaise turned back to the coroner. ‘What would you have us do about this, sir? As you saw, it is useless trying to tell our father. Unless he improves, which is unlikely, he is incapable of understanding.’
The coroner spread his bony hands in a gesture of regret. ‘I must have a positive identification of the murdered man. We must be sure that it is your brother before I complete the inquest, though I am afraid that I have little doubt. You must ride back with us to Widecombe to view the body, distressing though that might be.’
The brothers murmured together, Baldwyn also putting his head into the discussion. Then Gervaise turned back to John. ‘I will ride with you, together with my squire. Martyn will remain here as, with our lord so sick, someone must be on hand in case he dies, as well as having to attend to the daily business of running the manor.’
John nodded. ‘I must be back in Exeter by the morning, so we should leave for Widecombe now, to have enough light left for what we have to do there. You are already dressed for the saddle, so nothing need delay us.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In which Crowner John attends an exhumation
In the churchyard at Widecombe, a heap of fresh earth proved that Thomas de Peyne had carried out his master’s instructions. By the time the coroner and his small party arrived in the mid-afternoon, the clerk had ordered Ralph the reeve to complete the digging and two serfs had removed all the soil from the new grave.
Before he took Gervaise de Bonneville and the squire into the churchyard, John adjourned to the large hut on the other side of the village green, which did service as a tavern. Here, the widow of a freeman crushed to death two years before by a bull supported her three children by brewing beer and selling oat-cakes. Her thatched wattle hut stood in the dip of the track that came down from the moor and led on towards Dunstone. The green was humped, as was most of the land around the village: the church was on one side of the slope and the tavern on the other, the green hillside rising steeply behind.
The travellers sat outside the door on a large log that served as a bench, while the toothless young widow brought them bread and ale, to which John added the remains of Mary’s ham and some hard cheese. For a few moments they ate and drank, Gervaise and Baldwyn uneasy as they anticipated the moment of truth at the graveside.
John looked across the open green space to the low dry-stone wall of the churchyard, from where he could hear the final sounds of the raising of the coffin. The rise of the land prevented him seeing their activities and, as he chewed the rough bread, his eye fell instead on three straw mats, held up vertically on poles stuck into the ground at the further end of the green.
‘They seem keen archers in this place,’ he commented to Gwyn.
The woman, refilling his beer mug, grinned a gummy smile. ‘Good for my business. Shooting at those targets is thirsty work. The lord of our manor, FitzRalph, insists that every man above fourteen practises with the bow at least once a week. He wants plenty of good shots if he has to raise men for an army.’
When the food was finished, the coroner got down to business. ‘Show them the effects of the dead man, Gwyn,’ he commanded.
The cornishman went to his tethered horse and took a hessian-wrapped bundle from a pannier. He unrolled it on the ground before then and displayed the ornate sword belt, the empty scabbard and sheathed dagger.
The two men leaned over to study and then handle the objects. Gervaise sank back on to the log. ‘I’ve not seen these before, but they are undoubtedly foreign so it means little. If they were Hubert’s then he must have obtained them in the East.’ Baldwyn nodded in silent agreement.
‘What about this, then?’ asked John, unrolling a green surcoat from the bundle. It had been washed, but the tear in the back was still obvious.
Gervaise and Baldwyn looked doubtfully at each other. ‘Certainly Hubert had some green clothing – he was fond of the colour. But so are half the men in England,’ Gervaise said.
‘There’s nothing special about this one,’ added Baldwyn. ‘It would be about his size, but there are thousands of men it would fit.’
John motioned to Gwyn to roll up the artefacts again, and they all rose to their feet. ‘Then it remains only to view the body, painful though that might be to you.’
He led the way across the green to the church. It was a poor structure of old wood, with peeling whitewash, dating back to Saxon days, but a new tower had been built in stone during the past decade, presumably a gift from the manorial lord.
Thomas was waiting at the gap in the wall, standing with bowed head, his hands together before him, and turned to lead the procession solemnly to the graveside, as if he was still a priest and conducting a funeral. At the heap of earth – grey here,
not red like Exeter – Thomas turned and crossed himself. ‘The box is ready to open, Crowner,’ he said sonorously.
The two village men, one of whom habitually acted as sexton, stood by the crude coffin, which rested at the end of the hole. The parish priest, a thin soul with a furtive, hunted look, stood well back against the church wall, as if to distance himself from these unwelcome goings-on in his churchyard.
‘Open it, man,’ snapped John, as they stood in a ragged half-circle around the gaping grave.
The sexton took an old rusty sword with a broken blade and rammed it into the joint of the coffin lid. He levered up and, with some cracking and splintering of wood, the two rough planks were torn off. Thomas hopped back like a frightened sparrow, his hand to his mouth, while the others looked on impassively, Gervaise’s face pallid.
An aura of sweet-sour corruption wafted from the box, but soon drifted away on the slight breeze. Within the coffin was a crude cross, made of two sticks lashed with cord. This lay on a length of soiled linen that covered the body, the fabric marred by greenish yellow patches where it lay over the face, chest and belly. Without ceremony or hesitation, Gwyn stepped forward, took out the cross and whipped off the cloth, revealing the victim’s naked body.
In spite of Thomas’s apprehensions, the corpse was not much changed from the day of the inquest. The skin was more tense, moist and slimy, and was beginning to peel in places. Along the flanks were large blisters filled with bloody fluid and the abdomen and genitals were grossly swollen and green. The face, though, was only moderately puffy and blurred.
‘Cover him, for decency’s sake!’ grated Baldwyn tensely. Gwyn spread the linen over the lower half of the cadaver and turned to look inquiringly at Gervaise de Bonneville. The coroner’s eyes also swivelled to the young man. ‘Well, sir, is this your brother or not?’
Gervaise stood transfixed, staring at the putrefying body in the splintered box. For a long moment he was as motionless as the corpse, then he turned slowly to the coroner, his face even paler than it had been before.
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