They spoke about it for a few more minutes, Gwyn respectfully asking the Justiciar how he found the Lionheart in body and spirit.
‘He is now almost restored to his usual fiery self,’ said Hubert with a smile. ‘At first he was confined in a remote castle on a crag, at Durnstein on the Danube. Then he was dragged off by Count Leopold to Regensburg in Germany to meet the Emperor and your old enemy Count Meinhard of Gorz, but Leopold distrusted King Henry and took him back to Austria after two days. Then a month later, he sells him on to Henry and our king was taken to Wurzburg.’
John leaned forward with a question. ‘There’s been some tale going around that one of the king’s troubadours, Blondel of Nesle, first discovered him by singing a song they composed together and heard the Lionheart respond with another verse from behind his prison bars at this Durnstein place!’
The Justiciar smiled. ‘A picturesque fable, John! There was no mystery about where he was confined, right from the start. Emperor Henry even wrote a letter to Philip Augustus within days of his capture, giving the details. I have a copy in this very room, for they proudly bandied the news all over Europe.’
‘So where is our lord now?’ asked Gwyn.
‘He’s been shuttled about from Ochsenfurt to Speyer, where he was tried in March, though there he turned the tables on Henry and Philip by gaining the sympathy and support of many of the Emperor’s rebellious princes and bishops. After that he was in Trifels Castle, then Hagenau, but is now at the royal court in Mainz. We are still trying to get a definite date for his release, but that bloody man Philip of France keeps trying to bribe Henry to hand him over to him.’ His face darkened. ‘And our Prince John is colluding with the French in that! Between them they offered the Emperor eighty thousand silver marks for our king.’
The mention of the prince gave John an opening for the second reason for his audience with the Chief Justiciar. Once more he pulled out the ring and gave it to Hubert Walter. ‘I came across a murdered man last week, sire. His body was thrown into a river after his throat had been cut. This was the only identification upon him, he had been robbed of everything else including his money.’
With a puzzled expression, Hubert took the ring and turned it in his fingers until he saw the engravings. He looked up quizzically at de Wolfe. ‘Unless he had stolen this from someone, he must have been one of our court couriers. You say his body was found in Devonshire?’
As John confirmed this, Hubert rang a small bell that stood on his desk and immediately, the chaplain came in from the outer room. As he bent over the archbishop, Hubert murmured something in a low voice and the priest nodded and went out again.
‘I’ve started some enquiries – we have a number of men who travel discreetly around the country, taking messages and collecting information. Our present concern is naturally Prince John and his supporters. After his rebellion was defeated earlier this year, he agreed to a truce, but he’s not to be trusted.’
‘Is this dead man one of yours, then?’ asked John.
‘I’ve sent to find out who was down in the West Country – and you say you think he had been as far as Cornwall, so possibly he has been seeking information about St Michael’s Mount, which Henry de la Pomeroy holds on behalf of Prince John.’ He rose from his chair again. ‘It will take some time for my clerks to discover who this might be, so return here tomorrow when I hope to have some news for you. This unfortunate man deserves to have a name on his grave, if nothing else – and I might have a task for you as well.’
After their days in the saddle, John de Wolfe and Gwyn were happy to have some rest and after returning to their inn, had a good meal of fried bacon, eggs and black pudding, washed down with a quart of ale. As they sat looking out of the unshuttered window at the crowded Royal Way outside, Gwyn wondered what ‘task’ the Chief Justiciar might give them.
‘We are fortunate to be on such easy terms with the man who runs England,’ he said. ‘I still find it hard to believe that all this has happened to me in the past year or two, being just a rough soldier from Cornwall.’
John punched him on the arm, which had muscles like iron. ‘Don’t underestimate yourself, man! Hubert can see a trustworthy fellow when he sees one. I’ll warrant he’ll want us to find out why this courier died and who killed him. With no sheriff in the county, who else can do it? And if it was because he was poking about in John’s affairs, then the last thing the prince will want is some investigation.’
The Cornishman grunted. ‘That’s probably why Richard de Revelle shows such a lack of interest, though being such a lazy swine, it’s hard to pin any motive on what he does or doesn’t do.’
They spent a couple of hours or so wandering around Westminster and along the river towards the city, then came back for more food, drink and an early bed.
‘If Hubert finishes his business with us in the morning, we can be back on the road again later in the day – and home in Exeter within the week,’ said John. He realized that he missed his lodgings in the Bush, especially the company of Nesta and he looked forward with foreboding to having to settle down in a house with Matilda.
Early next day, they were back at the palace to resume their meeting with the Justiciar. He was at an early Mass in St Stephen’s Chapel, the palace’s place of worship, but eventually arrived and they were ushered into his presence again by Brother Roland.
Hubert Walter was looking more haggard today, weighed down by the strain of both running a country and finding a vast sum of money to pay for the king’s release. A hundred and fifty thousand marks was the equivalent of thirty tons of silver, two or three times the annual income of England. ‘It’s being collected by the special Ransom Exchequer and stored in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral,’ he had explained to them the previous day, but now he wanted to tell them about the corpse in the River Exe.
‘He was Roger Smale, a former soldier working in the Chancery. As I suspected, he was sent down to Cornwall with messages for the constable of Launceston Castle, but also to spy out the situation at St Michael’s Mount, fortified for the prince. Since the truce, he has not been attacked by us, but the Curia wanted to know if the stronghold was being further strengthened in preparation for future conflict.’
De Wolfe recalled the horrific wound to the man’s throat which had half-severed his neck. ‘He must have found out something, for them to dispatch him so brutally,’ he said.
The Justiciar shrugged. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now, but I wonder why he was killed in Devon and not Cornwall.’
‘Perhaps he found out other things as well. John’s cause has sympathizers in Devon, as we know.’ Some trace of family loyalty caused him to refrain from mentioning his brother-in-law, though he suspected that Hubert knew of all the potential adherents in that part of the country, especially as some of Exeter’s twenty-four canons were known to side with Bishop Hugh of Coventry.
‘We have lost one agent who seems have known his way around the West Country,’ went on Hubert. ‘So I am going to ask you to continue the faithful service that you have already given to our Lord King, by keeping your eyes and ears open for any other evidence of the prince’s treachery. He had most of his castles taken from him back in February, when he kept claiming that the king was dead and that he was now on the throne, but he has refused to hand over Nottingham or Tickhill and is covertly provisioning them for a future battle. As I said before, we have a so-called truce, but that is really a waiting game to see what happens over the Lionheart’s release.’
John and Gwyn readily agreed to his request, being happy to have some further way of serving the king, partly to assuage their consciences over their failure to prevent his capture. They arranged to forward any information via Ralph Morin, who had regular messengers going between the royal castle and Westminster. They took their leave of the archbishop, Gwyn still awed by their familiarity, which seemed far stranger here than in the common danger and discomfort of Palestine. Soon they were in the saddle again, riding west, wi
th at least a name to give John de Alencon to read over the new grave in the cathedral precinct.
They arrived at the Bush, wet and weary, over a week later. The weather had turned bad and the roads were thick with mud, slowing them down and adding an extra day to their journey. The horses had been returned to their stables and the two travellers arrived on foot at the door of the inn, where Brutus was waiting to greet his master, having again used the mysterious powers of a dog to anticipate John’s return. Nesta, equally delighted to see them safe and sound, rushed around to get them hot food and to take John’s riding cloak to dry in the wash-shed outside. Gwyn had his usual leather jerkin and hood, which he threw carelessly over a stool to drip into the rushes.
Edwin plied them with ale and then, as they ate grilled trout, beans and leeks, Nesta sat with them at the table. She listened with awe to their tales of exotic places like Winchester and London and about exalted persons like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
‘At least we know who the murdered fellow was,’ said John. ‘And we were right, he was a spy for the king’s government. As we expected, the Prince is still up to his tricks and though there’s supposed to be peace between him and the barons, no one in their right mind would trust him after his past record.’
He decided not to voice abroad their promised role as secret agents for the Chief Justiciar, as this might jeopardize any hope of learning things that they were not supposed to hear. However, John promised himself that he would tell Nesta when they were alone together, as he felt she could be trusted to keep it to herself. Also, with so many travellers passing through the Bush, she might overhear something useful. After eating, Gwyn decided to go home to his wife, who Nesta said had been down several times in the past two weeks to help clean up the inn and make sure that her protégée Molly was cooking satisfactorily. De Wolfe also thought he had better visit his wife, though less eagerly than his squire. The rain had stopped and the August evening was warm, so he left his damp cloak and walked up Smythen Street and across a side lane to come out in Fore Street, opposite the dwelling of Matilda’s cousin.
The expected baby was getting near to appearing in the world and the women of the household were too preoccupied to bother much with a mere man. Even though the childless Matilda had never seemed over-endowed with maternal feelings, she was also caught up in the general enthusiasm and gave John a perfunctory welcome. He kept out of the way for a time, skulking in a room as far away as possible from the birthing stool and lying-in bed.
Eventually Matilda came in and he gave her an abbreviated account of his trip. Predictably, the fact that he had had two meetings with the Head of the English Church and seemed almost on gossiping terms with him, fuelled Matilda’s fascination for anything ecclesiastical and gave her more ammunition to fire at her social rivals in the town.
‘Have you thought any more about seeking a house for us?’ he asked in a tone that would have better suited an enquiry about his own funeral arrangements.
‘I have heard of several in the city,’ she replied. ‘But none would have been good enough for us. You are a knight of the realm and we can’t live in some dreary dwelling more suited to a candle maker or apothecary.’
John decided to grasp the nettle and go along with her ambitions. Much as he liked staying in the Bush, especially with Nesta there, he knew that it could not be a long-term solution. ‘Andrew the farrier, where I stable my horse, told me today that one of the houses in St Martin’s Lane is vacant. The old lawyer who lived there has gone to Plympton to live with his daughter.’
Matilda’s square face showed even more interest than when he was talking about the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘That was the house of Adam of Lyme,’ she replied. ‘It’s in a good position, I could walk to the cathedral from there in two minutes!’ The ease with which she could attend her endless devotions seemed a major criterion for her.
‘The farrier says that it is old and has been neglected by the occupant since his wife died five years ago,’ said John cautiously. ‘It would need a lot of work done on it.’
They agreed to go and inspect it as soon as John could discover who held the lease.
Leaving an unusually placid Matilda behind him, he went wearily back to the Bush and after a pleasant hour talking to Nesta between her attending to her other patrons, climbed the steps and fell gratefully on to his bed and was asleep inside five minutes.
Next day, he walked with Gwyn and the hound up to the Cathedral Close, the large area around the huge church of St Peter and St Paul, whose two great towers dominated the whole of Exeter. Building work was still going on, though it was now nearing completion, as the original Norman cathedral, built on the site of a small Saxon abbey, had been almost totally rebuilt during the past sixty years. The Close, which was an ecclesiastical enclave independent of the city authorities, was also the burial ground for all Exeter and the surrounding area. Only in exceptional circumstances could burials take place anywhere else, as the cathedral jealously guarded the fees that came from disposing of the dead.
One of these graves was that of the courier John had found on the river bank. He enquired of a sexton and was shown a heap of fresh earth near the north tower. The whole Close was more like an excavation site than a peaceful cemetery, with newly dug graves mixed with old ones covered with weeds. The place was ill-kept, piles of rubbish abounding and beggars, drunks and noisy urchins competing for space with a few goats and even a rooting pig.
They stood over the lonely heap of red Devon soil and John took out the signet ring and looked at it. ‘We know the poor fellow’s name now, it’s Roger Smale,’ said John. ‘I’ll ask the archdeacon to come and offer a prayer over the grave and say a Mass for him at one of the cathedral shrines.’
Ignoring the yells of children racing around with their mangy dogs and kicking balls of tied-up rags, the two men stood there for a moment, one each side of the mound. John, in his long grey tunic clinched around his waist with his sword-belt, stared pensively down, his black hair blowing in the breeze above his dark, hawklike face. His squire looked as immovable as an oak tree, broad-shouldered in his scuffed jerkin, the ginger hair and moustaches framing his big, ruddy features.
‘Are we going to seek his killers, Sir John?’ he rumbled.
‘He served the king as much as we did, in his way, Gwyn. So he deserves avenging, but where do we start looking?’
The Cornishman ran his hand through his tangled locks. ‘We have a name now – and we think he must have come down the river. I can’t really see him being washed up from the sea. So can we not ride up the Exe and the Yeo for a few miles and ask if anyone had seen him?’
They began walking slowly away before de Wolfe answered. ‘No harm done in that. We have little else to occupy us at the moment. We’ll try it tomorrow, though I have no great hope of success.’
John wanted to check on Bran in Andrew’s stables, so they crossed the northern corner of the Close to the little church of St Martin, which stood at the end of the lane bearing the same name.
‘I told my wife last night that this house was vacant – perhaps unwisely, for she seemed quite taken with the idea.’
He stopped outside a tall, narrow building, the first on the left side. Beyond it, set back a little, was a similar house, as there were only two in the alley. At each end were the backs of houses in either the Close or the High Street. Opposite was the farrier’s establishment between the rear of a tavern in the main street and another house in a lane alongside the church.
Gwyn looked at it critically. ‘A big old place for just two of you! Needs a lot of work done on it, too. Just look at that roof.’
Standing back, they looked up and saw that some of the thin wooden shingles of the steeply sloping roof were missing and others warped and cracked.
‘Good front door, though,’ said Gwyn, pointing at the stout boards of blackened oak, with rusty iron hinges and studded nails. Between the door and the farther end of the house, there was one window at chest level
. It was firmly shuttered, and nothing else broke the high frontage of heavy oak frames which supported panels of cob, covered with discoloured whitewash.
‘The price should be lower, given the state it’s in,’ muttered John.
When they crossed to the stables, John asked the farrier if he knew who was offering the house for sale or rent.
‘It’s the old man’s partner, a lawyer in Northgate Street,’ replied Andrew. ‘The place has been empty for more than a year, so maybe he’ll be anxious to get rid of it.’
After reassuring his old stallion that he had not been forgotten, John told the stableman to get him ready for early next morning, when Gwyn and he would ride up the valley of the Exe seeking any clue as to the way in which Roger Smale met his death.
Their next stop was Rougemont, where de Wolfe sought out the constable, while Gwyn went in search of a few soldiers willing to start a game of dice. Gabriel was drilling some young recruits in the inner ward, avoiding the ox-carts that rumbled in with supplies and the chickens and pigs that rooted about in the muddy earth churned up by the incessant activity of a busy castle. Ralph Morin was in his chamber, checking the number and quality of newly delivered arrows from a local fletcher, but gladly took a break when John arrived. Broaching a skin of wine, they sat and drank while John told him of his visit to London and the information that the Justiciar had given him.
‘So they don’t trust Prince John, even after the so-called truce,’ observed Ralph. ‘It’s a wonder that they don’t deprive him of those six counties, but I suppose as the king gave them to him, only he can take them away.’
‘And I’m appointed by Hubert Walter as a kind of unofficial watcher in the West Country, to warn of any signs that a new rebellion is fomenting,’ added de Wolfe. ‘In other words, a royal spy, not that I like the idea. I’d rather come out and confront the bastards, with sword and shield.’
‘It may come to that, John. The barons took away many of his castles earlier in the year, but he still has Windsor, Tickhill and Nottingham. Also, some of his covert supporters have their own castles dotted around, which he could rely on if it came to civil war.’
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