Crowner's Crusade

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Does anyone in Winchester know that you are back?’ asked William. ‘Surely you should tell someone the true details of our king’s capture?’

  In the short time that John had been home, this had not occurred to him, but now that his brother had suggested it, he began to think that perhaps he had better report to someone. He had heard from Ralph Morin that Hubert Walter had been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar of England, virtually a regent now that the king was in captivity. De Wolfe knew Hubert, who had been the Lionheart’s right-hand man at the Crusade and had conducted most of the negotiations with Saladin. Morin had heard that the new archbishop was also in charge of parleying with Emperor Henry of Germany over the king’s ransom and was the prime mover in raising the vast amount of money.

  ‘Perhaps you are right, brother,’ he said. ‘As soon as my immediate problems are settled in Exeter, perhaps Gwyn and I should ride to London and tell our story.’

  When the excitement had subsided and John was bursting with food and ale, his next desire was to be reunited with his old horse Bran and his dog Brutus. The big destrier, a warhorse he had won by defeating its previous owner in a tournament, was delighted to see him when John went to the stables, snickering his pleasure as John stroked his neck and fed him a few carrots.

  His lanky brown hound was being looked after by the blacksmith, but as John walked towards the forge, just beyond the manor house, a frenzied barking and howling began as, almost by magic, Brutus could tell that his long-lost master was coming for him. The reunion was emotional for both of them and afterwards John pondered on the fact that he had had a far warmer welcome from four-legged beasts than from his own wife.

  John stayed a few days at Stoke, his family and friends refusing to let him leave any sooner. Pleading that he had to return to Matilda and find them somewhere to live, as well as settle more business matters with Hugh de Relaga, they reluctantly let him go on the fifth day, after promises that he would soon return.

  He left early on Bran, with the rounsey following quietly behind on a head rope. Brutus ran delightedly with them, dashing ahead and then returning for some foray into the bushes on either side. At an easy pace, he crossed the Teign again and a few miles further on, decided to call at Holcombe, which was a short distance off the road. Though he came to pay his respects to the reeve and his wife, he had a sneaking hope that Hilda might be there, as he knew that she often visited her parents. He was again disappointed in this, though he enjoyed the welcome they gave him, assuring him that their daughter was well, though still without child.

  When he reached Dawlish some miles further on, he saw that the Mary and Child Jesus, the ship that had brought him from Antwerp, was beached in the mouth of the small river, having repairs carried out on the planking. This told him that Thorgils was definitely at home, so with a sigh he plodded on through the village and took the track across the marshes towards the ferry to Topsham, where he could return the rounsey to its stables.

  Beyond the village of Starcross on the edge of the wide estuary, John stopped to rest and water the horses. He sat on the bank of a small stream that ran in a culvert under the lane to eat the bread and meat that his mother had pressed on him for the journey, while the larger beasts drank and Brutus went off to sniff the new odours of otter, fox and badger that abounded amongst the scrub and rushes that covered this flat plain. The muddy shore was only a few yards away and the hound vanished in that direction. A moment later, he began barking and whining, then dashed back to his master to sit expectantly at his feet, his tongue hanging out in expectation. John knew the signs well enough and climbed to his feet.

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, old fellow?’ he said affectionately, rubbing the dog’s domed head. For reply, Brutus dashed off once again, turning to make sure that John was following. They went along the edge of the stream to where it flowed into the Exe. The tide was ebbing and at once, de Wolfe saw what was arousing the dog’s interest. Caught in a clump of reeds at the mouth of the stream was a man’s body, left there by the retreating water.

  John squelched through a few inches of brown ooze to reach it and saw that the corpse was already starting to putrefy in the warm weather, the face being swollen and discoloured, the tongue and eyes protruding. He grabbed the man’s belt and hauled him out on to firmer ground, then dragged him up on to the bank where he could get a better look at the body. Brutus sat down a few yards away and looked at the process with interest, obviously proud of his part in discovering this novel event.

  John bent over the dead man and saw that he was dressed in riding attire, a long tunic slit front and back for sitting a horse. It was of good quality and he wore a stout leather belt with a sheathed dagger at the back. The belt carried a bronze buckle with an unusual design, a dragon within a circle and John removed it in case it could help in identifying the victim. His boots were of good quality, over long woollen hose and there was also a baldric across one shoulder, but no sword or sheath, though if he had been riding, they may have been on his saddle bow. The man’s face was unrecognizable due to the putrefaction, which was also swelling his belly, but what was easily recognizable was the massive wound across his neck, where his throat had been cut.

  De Wolfe was so familiar with violent death after years on a score of battlefields, that the sight affected him not at all, apart from a professional interest in the nature of the wound. This was deep enough to reach the spine and had been made from right to left, as shown by its tailing-off under the left ear.

  ‘So what have we got here, Brutus?’ he asked his dog. ‘He’s a man of substance, by his clothing. Certainly no villein or serf.’

  Brutus offered no comment and John bent to open the leather scrip on the front of the belt. There was no money in it, only a tin medallion of St Anthony.

  ‘That didn’t do him much good, I’m afraid,’ John said to the hound. ‘Maybe he was murdered for his money?’

  He looked at the brown hair, cropped up level with the top of the ears in the usual Norman style, but that was no help in identifying the victim. There was no beard or moustache and the eyes were already flaccid and filmed, making it impossible to tell their original colour.

  Then de Wolfe noticed a signet ring on the middle finger of the right hand. It was thin and made of some base metal, but John pulled it off the swollen finger for safe keeping, rubbing it on the grass to clean off a shred of slimy skin. After looking at it closely, he continued his monologue with his hound.

  ‘Odd, there’s no device engraved on it! What’s the point of having a blank signet ring?’ Then he tipped it in his fingers and looked at the inside surface. There he saw two lions passant gardant impressed into the metal and his thick black eyebrows rose.

  ‘What’s this, Brutus? The arms of our Lord King! I don’t like the look of this, do you?’

  The dog sat on his haunches, his head on one side, regarding his master attentively. John screwed up his eyes and scrutinized the ring even more closely, but there was nothing else to be seen except the two heraldic beasts, each in full face, the right paw raised and the head in profile, the combination that caused the French to name them leopards. It was the royal insignia of England, adopted by the Lionheart from his mother’s arms of Aquitaine, a single golden lion on a red background. Richard had later added a second lion and no one else in England would dare to claim it for his own.

  ‘So surely he has to be a man in the king’s service, as I was myself,’ he mused. ‘And now he’s died a very violent death.’

  Always a man of action rather than word or thought, he went back to the rounsey and brought her to the body. Cutting a length from the long head-rope, he struggled to lift the corpse over the saddle, then roped the hands to the feet under the horse’s belly, like an extra girth. Moments later, he was on his way again, the hired horse following on its shorter lead, carrying the sorry burden across its back.

  On the ferry across to Topsham, he had some curious looks from the couple of other pass
engers, who shrank back as far as they could from the macabre load. No one was brave enough to question the tall, dark man who scowled at them as he defied anyone to ask why he was escorting a corpse. His intention to return the rounsey to the farrier in Topsham was abandoned, as he wanted to take the body back to the royal castle in Exeter, not dump it in an obscure seaport. He carried on up the road to the city, past St James’s Priory and, deciding that parading it through the main streets was unwise, went around through Southernhay to the East Gate and then up the steep slope of Castle Street to the gatehouse.

  When the duty man-at-arms called Gabriel from the guardroom, the sergeant came out with Gwyn, who had been playing dice inside. They both looked askance at the body on the mare, now dripping bloody fluid from the ravaged neck.

  ‘You been a-killing someone, Sir John?’ asked Gabriel.

  John explained how he had come across this unfortunate man. ‘Probably washed down the river – but God knows where he went in,’ he said.

  Gwyn, always ready with a contrary opinion, bent to look at the man’s face. ‘But he could have been thrown from a ship and washed up from the sea,’ he suggested. ‘He’s been in the water a few days, in this warm weather.’ Like John, from long experience of fighting, he claimed a special expertise on the signs of death and corruption.

  ‘Why did you trouble to bring him all this way to Exeter, sir,’ asked Gabriel. ‘You are First Finder now, you are supposed to have raised the Hue and Cry down in Starcross.’

  Since Saxon times, anyone discovering a corpse, unless it died of illness in the bosom of its family, was supposed to knock up the four nearest households and raise a search for the killer, before getting the bailiff of the Hundred to notify the sheriff.

  ‘What’s the point?’ objected Gwyn. ‘This fellow may have been killed a dozen miles up river – and certainly at least a few days ago. And we don’t even have a sheriff to report it to!’

  De Wolfe shook his head. ‘Those weren’t the reasons, it was this.’ He fished in the scrip on his belt and took out the ring to show them. ‘That’s the king’s device! He must have been a royal officer of some sort.’

  Gwyn took the ring and peered at closely. ‘The lions are hidden on the inside, as if he didn’t want who he was to be widely known unless he wished it.’ He passed it to the sergeant of the garrison. ‘Gabriel, have you ever seen one of these before?’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘Never, but perhaps Ralph Morin knows, he’s higher up the pecking order where royal matters are concerned.’

  He summoned a couple of soldiers and they took the body to a cart shed against the inner wall of the inner ward. It was near the little chapel of St Mary and was sometimes used as a temporary mortuary. Here the unknown man was placed on a handcart and decently covered with a couple of empty sacks until some means of disposal could be arranged.

  John left the two horses to be fed and watered and the three men went in search of the castle constable. He occupied one of the small chambers off the Great Hall in the keep, cluttered with spare armour, helmets and weapons, leaving enough room for a few stools and a table on which lay his clerk’s lists of stores and duty rosters. Ralph was sitting alone with a pottery mug of cider before him, and brightened up when he saw John de Wolfe entering.

  ‘Welcome back, how did you find your family?’ He motioned them to the stools as Gabriel found some more mugs on a shelf and filled them with murky liquid from the previous year’s vintage. After John had told Ralph of his visit to the manor at Stoke, he got around to the mysterious body on the edge of the Exe, describing how his hound had discovered it and the nature of the lethal wound in the neck.

  ‘And here’s the ring I took from the poor fellow,’ he concluded, laying it on the table. ‘That has a royal device, so who the hell is he?’

  Morin needed only a quick glance inside the ring before handing it back to John. ‘He’s a royal courier, used to convey confidential documents for the Curia Regis and their officers. I think old King Henry set them up, though no doubt similar messengers have been used since time immemorial.’

  ‘I thought they used heralds on relays of fast horses,’ objected Gwyn. ‘Those uniformed fellows with a guard and a trumpet to clear the way on busy high roads.’

  The castellan nodded. ‘Indeed, they carry most of the routine dispatches from London and Winchester, like new laws and messages for the Justices of Eyre4 when they are on circuit. But these others are supposed to be secret, fetching and carrying information that the Chancellor and Justiciars don’t want bandied about the countryside.’

  John picked up the ring and put it carefully back into his scrip. ‘So having one murdered suggests that someone didn’t want a message delivered – or wanted to know what the message was?’

  Ralph tugged at the points of his beard. ‘Quite likely – and it’s a serious matter indeed. And one which I don’t know how to handle. Devon doesn’t even have a proper sheriff now, since the Prince took it all into his own hands.’

  ‘What about de Revelle?’ asked John. ‘If he’s not officially a sheriff, how can he deal with a murder?’

  Morin gave a cynical laugh. ‘Not so much how, as would he want to? His only interest is collecting the taxes for Prince John, though a fair slice of it goes into his own purse, I’ll warrant. And he’s a lazy bastard, as you know, John. He’ll not put himself out to make any enquiries. He’s back now and in his chamber, so you can ask him!’

  ‘There’s another aspect too,’ said John slowly. ‘If a king’s courier is slain because of the message he carried, who would be the most likely to benefit from that? With all this unrest and rumours of treason, it’s the Prince who is most suspect – and we know that Richard de Revelle is probably one of his creatures.’

  The constable pondered this as he finished his cider and topped them all up once more. ‘We’re in a difficult position here, as though this is a royal castle and I’m a king’s officer, the rest of the county belongs to Prince John. He can do what he likes, he’s a Marcher lord in reality, head of a kingdom-within-a-kingdom. But the Chief Justiciar should surely be told of the death of one of his couriers – the message he carried or the reply to it, might be vital to knowing how far John’s insurrection has advanced.’

  ‘Did you know that a secret courier was in the West Country?’ asked Gwyn. ‘Would you recognize him if you looked at the body, though he’s going off fast.’

  ‘I didn’t know, but then I’m just a soldier, I’m not privy to much of the politics. I’ll have a look at the cadaver, but doubt that will help.’

  De Wolfe had been thinking hard, his forehead corrugated with the effort. He rasped a hand over his stubble as an aid to thought. ‘I feel that I should ride to London and seek an audience with Hubert Walter. I know him well enough and I should show him that Gwyn and myself survived and give him what details we can about that journey, though I suppose he’ll have already had those from the king, as I hear he’s visited him in Germany. Then at the same time, I can return this ring and tell him what’s happened to one of his spies.’

  Ralph readily agreed with this plan and John promised that they would ride for the east within a few days.

  ‘The dead man will have to be buried very soon, before he corrupts even more. Your garrison chaplain can no doubt arrange that with the cathedral. He deserves a decent burial as he doubtless died in the service of the Crown.’ He rose to his feet and made for the door. ‘Now I suppose I’ll have to talk to my dear brother-in-law. No doubt he’ll be as pleased to see me as a visitation of the plague.’

  THIRTEEN

  Sir Richard de Revelle was almost a decade older than John, a neat, slim man of average height, with a narrow, foxy face and a small pointed beard of the same light brown as his cropped hair. An elegant dresser, he sat behind his table dressed in a calf-length green tunic edged with gold embroidery around the collar and hem. He looked up from the scrolls he was studying as de Wolfe marched in, ignoring the efforts of the guard on the do
or to ask him his business.

  ‘I see you have appointed yourself Sheriff of Devon – or at least, installed yourself in his room!’ snapped John, sarcastically.

  Richard looked up in annoyance at the interruption. As he saw who had entered, his face creased into a humourless smile. ‘Ah, so it’s you at last, John. I heard from Matilda that you were home.’

  De Wolfe perched himself on the edge of the table, to add to the other man’s irritation. ‘Yes, after having done my best for three years for my God and my King!’

  Richard sneered. ‘I trust that God appreciated it, for you didn’t serve the king very well, letting him fall into the hands of his enemies!’

  John’s scowl deepened at Richard’s ability to always touch the most sensitive spot. ‘At least I did my best, rather than sitting on my arse at home, making money,’ he retorted.

  ‘Yet I hear that you have made a lot of money even when you were thrashing about the Levant, thanks to our good Portreeve!’ sneered Richard. Though he was no warrior, de Revelle always won in a battle of words with his brother-in-law.

  ‘So why are you sitting in here?’ demanded John.

  ‘The Count of Mortain, who is the lord of Devonshire, graciously asked me to assist him in dealing with the administration,’ said de Revelle, preening himself at the mention of his princely patron. He lifted a roll of parchment and waved it at John, emphasizing the fact that unlike his sister’s husband, he could read and write. Richard had attended the abbey school in Tavistock when young and went on to study law for a few years, as he had a driving ambition to ascend the ladder of politics. He saw attaching himself to the rising star of Prince John the best way of fulfilling his aspirations, especially now that the king was under lock and key in Germany.