The Manor of Death

by Bernard Knight

  'De Casewold! A self-important nonentity, running around bleating about justice yet unable to do a thing,' sneered Northcote. 'He has no power, no authority apart from his own rasping voice! '

  The coroner gestured impatiently. 'I'm not here to bandy words with you, bailiff! I want to know about the vessel that the dead youth sailed upon.' He did not bother to ask if Northcote and Elias had heard that the lad's identity had been discovered, as he was well aware that those two would be fully informed within minutes of everything that went on in Axmouth.

  The bailiff scowled at him suspiciously, an attitude that seemed almost permanent with him. 'Simon Makerel was a shipman upon the vessel. What else is there to know?'

  'The cog herself, damn you,' snapped de Wolfe irritably. 'I know her name and that of the shipmaster, Martin Rof. But who owned her, where had she been on the last voyage and where has she gone now?'

  It was the portreeve who answered this. He rolled up his parchment and stood it on end on the table before getting up from his stool.

  'The Tiger belongs to Robert de Helion, a manor-lord who lives in Exeter, though his lands are scattered about this county and that of Dorset.'

  De Wolfe knew of de Helion, but he had no closer acquaintance with him. He knew he was a rich merchant as well as a landowner but had no idea he ran ships as well. 'And what about this cog, when will she be back?'

  He received the same reply as the one he had got on the quayside.

  'She came in here last week from Barfleur with wine and dried fruit - and has taken wool and some tin over to Calais. Who can tell when she will return? It depends on what cargoes the master can find across the Channel.'

  The coroner glowered at the pair before him, which seemed to leave them quite unperturbed. 'Is there anything else I should know about this vessel or her master?'

  The bailiff and portreeve looked at each other, then Northcote shook his head. 'I don't know what you mean, Crowner. What is there to say about a merchant ship? They come in here by the dozen.'

  'Their crewmen don't end up strangled by the dozen!' retorted John.

  Edward Northcote shrugged dismissively. 'This is a seaport; sailors are rough, heavy-drinking men. They get into brawls over women and money all the time and not a few end up dead, one way or the other.'

  The coroner made a rude noise. 'This was a youth on his second voyage, a lad who was mild-mannered, wanting to become a clerk. Is it likely that such as he would end up strangled and buried in a hidden grave?'

  Northcote stared stonily at de Wolfe. 'That's for you to discover, sir. You catch the killer and I'll judge him in the Hundred court.'

  John stuck his head forward aggressively, like a large black vulture. 'You'll do no such thing! When the man who did this is caught, he'll go before the king's justices in Exeter.'

  He swung around to leave, but at the door he threw a parting command over his shoulder. 'You'll both be in the churchyard at the tenth hour - or I'll attach you in the sum of five marks!'

  The inquest was as unrewarding as de Wolfe had expected, but it had to be done, partly to allow the widow to have her son's body returned for reburial across in Seaton. A motley crowd assembled on the green patch around St Michael's, with most of the population of Axmouth who were not otherwise occupied staring over the low wall at these unusual proceedings, the first inquest ever to be held in the village.

  Gwyn had rounded up a score of men from both the village and the ships berthed along the strand, bullying them into a straggling half-circle facing the east end of the church. The corpse was wheeled out on its fishcart and placed in the centre, as Gwyn bellowed out his summons for 'all good men of the county who have anything to do with the king's coroner touching the death of Simon Makerel to stand forth and give their attendance' .

  De Wolfe's menacing black-clad figure hovered alongside the cadaver, while Thomas sat nearby on an empty keg brought from the tavern opposite. He had a board across his knees to support ink and parchment, so that he could record the proceedings, sparse though they were. On his other side, somewhat to John's annoyance, Luke de Casewold stood as if he was also involved in conducting the enquiry. The Keeper of the Peace had insisted on riding the five miles from his home near Axminster especially to attend the inquest.

  Henry of Cumba was called as the First Finder, and John accepted that the parish priest had fulfilled his legal duty by immediately informing the portreeve and bailiff of his discovery of the corpse. Strictly speaking, he should have raised the hue and cry by knocking up the four nearest households to search for the killer, but as the body had obviously been buried for days and the whole village had rapidly turned out to gossip about the event, de Wolfe refrained from imposing a fine.

  Next, the bailiff grudgingly admitted that he had been informed of the death by the priest and had gone with the portreeve to confirm that there was indeed a body behind the hazel bush. Then the Keeper stood forward, even before de Wolfe could ask him, to deliver a self-important and long-winded description of how he had heard of the discovery and had sent his clerk hurrying to Exeter to notify the coroner.

  Edith Makerel, the widow from Seaton, was this morning supported by her remaining son and a young woman who John took to be the girlfriend of the dead Simon. Between them, they gently moved the weeping mother forward, where she haltingly confirmed that the body was indeed that of her son.

  'He was a good lad, kind to me and gentle, as one would expect for one who wanted to take holy orders,' she said between sobs. 'He should never have gone to sea. The life and the men he was with were too rough for his temperament.'

  The coroner, as always uncomfortable with any show of emotion, particularly from women, tried to get her to enlarge on her comment that Simon had been worried or unhappy after returning from his voyage, but she was unable to be more specific. John tried another approach.

  'If your son was of a religious nature, might he not have confided something to a priest?'

  Edith wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. 'He was a diligent attender at Seaton church, sir, and respected the priest there very much. He might have done, I suppose, but he said nothing about it to me.'

  John bent down to Thomas and muttered into his ear: 'We should have got the priest from Seaton over here. Would you be able to get anything out of him if you went over there?'

  Thomas, though always anxious to help, looked dubious. 'If it was said in the confessional, he would not divulge it even to me. It seems an unlikely path to follow, master.'

  De Wolfe grunted his acceptance of his clerk's opinion and carried on with some questions, but they led nowhere. The brother of the dead man, a sallow fellow probably six years older than Simon, had little to offer.

  'As our mother has said, my brother seemed distant in his mind when he returned from his voyage. And he had money, which was unusual.'

  Simon's girlfriend, a plain pudding of a wench about sixteen years of age, was equally unhelpful. De Wolfe gained the impression that she was more a dog-like follower of the sailor than his choice of a future mate - which fitted with his ambition to one day enter holy orders.

  Then John called the portreeve, mainly to justify his insistence that Elias Palmer must attend the inquest, but, apart from confirming his view of the body and the name of the cog and her master that Simon Makerel had sailed upon, it was a futile exercise.

  After scowling around the blank faces of the jurors, he asked if anyone had anything they wished to say that might be relevant, but there was a stony silence. Then Luke de Casewold, to John's smouldering annoyance, spoke up in his harsh, piercing voice.

  'Come, someone must know something! This is a small port. Everyone always knows each other's business.' He smacked his palms together, like a schoolmaster warning his pupils. 'Speak up, or it will go badly with you!'

  His threatening exhortation fell on deaf ears.

  Though there was some muted grumbling and men looked sullenly at each other, no one volunteered a single word. The coroner, though
regretting the lack of any progress, was secretly pleased that this interloper's brashness had failed so abjectly.

  The last act in this fruitless performance was the exhibition of the body to the jury, which was demanded by the law. Gwyn pulled down the sheet that covered the head and neck, and the score of village men and mariners filed past, as de Wolfe pointed out the marks on the neck, which had become more livid and prominent with the passage of time.

  'There seems nothing more to be said, then,' he concluded. 'No verdict can be reached on such thin evidence, so this inquest is adjourned until some later day. That will probably depend upon when the vessel, The Tiger, returns to this harbour.'

  He stopped and cleared his throat as he looked at the grieving mother. 'In the meantime, the body of Simon Makerel may be restored to his family for burial.'

  Gwyn stood and bellowed out that 'all good men may now depart and take their ease', and the crowd melted away, a substantial proportion going in the direction of the Harbour Inn and other alehouses.

  Thomas packed away his writing materials into the capacious shoulder bag that he always carried, and the coroner's trio prepared to ride back to Exeter.

  'We'll take food in the next village,' rumbled John as they collected their horses from the stables of the tavern. 'The sooner I'm out of this place, the better I'll be suited.'

  He grunted a farewell to the bailiff and portreeve, who seemed indifferent to whether he stayed or not. The Keeper was a little more outgoing at their departure and came up to John's side as he settled himself carefully in Odin' s saddle so as to minimise the soreness of his backside. The boil had subsided a little, but it still gave him considerable discomfort.

  'Sir John, it was a pleasure to work with you,' brayed de Casewold. 'I look forward to meeting you again when you return to hold the full inquest. I will keep you informed about the return of that cog and her crew.'

  The coroner scowled at him. 'I have already charged the bailiff with that task,' he snapped ungraciously. 'About time the damned fellow did his duty. I'll be having words with the sheriff about his lack of enthusiasm for his job!'

  Luke gave a wide smile. It was clear that there was animosity between him and Edward Northcote. 'I will keep my ear to the ground, coroner. There is something going on under the surface in this town and I'll not rest until I get to the bottom of it!'

  Though he disliked the Keeper, John felt a little uneasy at the prospect of one lone man meddling too deeply in a place where there seemed to be a tyrant in charge. 'Take care how you proceed. I don't want to visit here again to deal with another corpse!' he advised.

  De Casewold sniggered through his little rosebud of a mouth. He tapped the hilt of his sword. 'I can look after myself, thank you. Keeping the peace was the task our royal master gave me and I'll carry it out regardless of peril!'

  With these brave words, he strutted away with a final wave to the brooding figure on the massive grey stallion.

  They reached Exeter late in the afternoon, and de Wolfe was heartily thankful to see the great twin towers of the cathedral rising above the walls as they approached. His buttock and left leg ached from the long ride, and he resolved to visit an apothecary the next day if the boil did not improve considerably overnight. Gwyn left them outside the East Gate to go to his cottage in St Sidwell's, while Thomas continued to jog behind the coroner into the city. They rode along High Street until they reached Martin's Lane, a narrow alley that was one of the many entrances into the cathedral Close. Here, John bade him a gruff farewell as the little clerk carried on to the lower town, where he shared a room with a vicar-choral at a lodging in Priest Street.

  With a sigh, de Wolfe hauled Odin's head around into the lane and rode the few yards to the livery stable where his lumbering horse had his home. After delivering the animal to Andrew the farrier, John crossed to his house opposite, one of two high, narrow buildings that stood in the short alley. Built of timber, its front was blank apart from a small shuttered window and a heavy front door. He pushed this open and entered a small vestibule, where boots and cloaks were discarded. On the left, a passage ran around the side of the house to the back yard, and on the right was another door that led into the hall, which occupied most of the building.

  As he lowered himself gingerly on to a bench to pull off his riding boots, there was a patter of feet and a large brown dog appeared from the passage to greet him with a wagging tail and a lolling wet tongue. As he fondled the ears of his old hound Brutus, other footsteps approached and his cook-maid Mary came into the vestibule. A handsome dark-haired woman in her late twenties, she now stood with her hands on her hips, regarding her master with an assumed severity that masked her concern.

  'How's your arse now, Sir Coroner?' she demanded bluntly.

  'A kiss would improve it, no doubt,' he replied, standing up and pushing his feet into a pair of soft house shoes. He stepped towards her, obviously intending to put his words into deeds, but the maid moved back and jerked a warning thumb towards the door into the hall.

  'She's in there and in a strange mood, so tread carefully! '

  John groaned. 'My dear wife is always in a strange mood. What's the trouble this time?'

  Mary picked up his riding boots to take them away to clean off the mud. 'Her brother called today, the first time we've seen him since he slunk off in disgrace. There was a lot of shouting and he left in a temper.'

  Richard de Revelle, his brother-in-law, had been sheriff of Devon until the previous year, when largely at John's instigation he had been ejected by the king's judges for malpractice and suspected treachery. He had been in further trouble since then and had been lying low in one of his distant manors, so John was surprised to hear that he had appeared again in Exeter, though he had recently bought a town house in Northgate Street.

  'I'll bring you a meal within the hour, then afterwards you had better let me attend to that boil of yours,' declared Mary.

  As she left for her kitchen-hut in the yard, John reflected that exposing his nether regions to her would be no embarrassment for either of them, as they had enjoyed many a tumble in the past. Then Matilda had got herself a French maid, Lucille, who was too fond of carrying tales to make it safe for them to continue dallying in the wash-house or kitchen.

  With a heavy heart at the prospect of his wife's sombre mood, he pushed open the hall door and went around the screens inside that helped to reduce the draughts in that gloomy chamber. The hall went right up to the bare beams supporting the shingled roof, the dark aged timber of the walls relieved only by some dusty tapestries portraying scenes from the Scriptures. The only modern feature was the large stone hearth that filled much of the inner wall, which John had copied from some he had seen in Brittany. Most houses still had a firepit in the centre of the floor, the smoke having to find its way out under the eaves, after half-choking and blinding the occupants. The conical chimney that rose above the fireplace to the roof was a recent innovation, like the flagstones beneath his feet. Matilda's elevated ambitions had insisted on these, instead of the usual floor of beaten earth covered in rushes or bracken.

  He loped towards the hearth, where a small fire of beech logs burnt in spite of the pleasant weather. His wife was sitting in a high-backed wooden seat with a cowled top, holding a pewter cup in one hand and a rosary in the other. Her fingers were slowly clicking the beads and her lips were moving silently, but she did not look up as he entered.

  John went to a side table and poured himself a cup of red wine from a pottery flask, then lowered himself gently into a similar chair on the opposite side of the hearth.

  'I am back, wife. This suppuration on my body is giving me no small discomfort.'

  Matilda slowly looked up and the clicking of her rosary stopped. Her heavy features regarded him dully, but she said nothing. He wondered again if her mind was failing, and his pity was mixed with a curiosity as to whether his marriage could be annulled if she lost her wits completely.

  'I have spent the night on a hard
floor in an alehouse in Axmouth - and much of the rest of the time on Odin's back,' he said, trying to strike some spark of reaction from his wife. She often upbraided him for spending so much time away from her, attending to his coroner's duties over half the county - which he resented, as it was she who had made him accept the appointment in the first place, as a stepping stone to her ambitions to climb higher in the hierarchy of Devon society.

  His attempt at conversation failed, for her small dark eyes under their hooded lids swivelled back to regard the burning logs in the grate, and her fingers resumed their relentless manipulation of the holy beads. They sat in silence, and John moodily stared at her stocky body, swathed in its long kirtle of brown wool under a surcoat of dark red velvet. Her head was swathed in a white linen cover-chief that was draped around her face, even her neck being hidden by a wimple of the same material. They had been married for seventeen years, though until the last three he had barely spent a total of six months at home, being away with Gwyn at campaigns in Ireland, France and the Holy Land. They had been thrust together by their respective parents in a union that disposed of the least attractive of the de Revelle daughters and, in the case of John's father, struck a useful bargain between a younger son with no land and a woman from a rich family. De Wolfe did not hate her, in spite of the endless animosity that she generated between them. He just wished that she did not exist - or at least not as his wife.

  Making one last effort, he told her of his exploits at the coast. 'We had a strangled youth at Axmouth. Buried and then unearthed by the parish priest.'

  The mere mention of something religious seemed to trigger a reaction in Matilda, who spent part of every day on her knees, either in the nearby cathedral or at St Olave's Church in Fore Street. Apart from her considerable interest in food and drink, attending places of worship seemed to fill the rest of her life. Her head came up and she seemed to focus on her husband for the first time.