The Manor of Death

by Bernard Knight

  'A priest? How came that to be?' Her voice was rough, as if her throat was sore.

  De Wolfe explained the circumstance, emphasising the religious connections. 'The town is part of a manor owned by the Priory of Loders. It seems the prior keeps a firm grip on the place through his bailiff and portreeve. '

  Matilda nodded, looking almost animated compared with her former torpor. 'Loders is a daughter house of Montebourg Abbey in Normandy,' she announced as if she was preaching a sermon. 'Richard de Redvers, a former sheriff of Devon, gave it to the abbey many years ago.'

  'Well, it looks as if they are reaping a good profit from it, for it's one of the busiest ports along this coast,' grunted John. 'The new Keeper of the Peace, a knight called Luke de Casewold, suspects that some of their business is not strictly honest. But that's none of my concern unless it's connected with the death of this poor lad.'

  Once the mention of priests had passed, Matilda lost interest and went back to clicking her beads and staring into the fire. It was only the arrival of Mary with a large tray bearing their supper that brought her out of her gloomy reverie. She rose to her feet and took her well-padded body over to the long oak table that sat in the centre of the hall, with benches on each side and a chair at each end. Dropping heavily into one of these, she waited until the cook-maid had set a thick trencher of yesterday's bread in front of her, then laid two grilled trout upon it. A wooden bowl of boiled cabbage and another of fried onions appeared alongside, before Mary went to the other end of the table and gave the same to her master. Then she returned with a large jug of ale and filled earthenware cups before vanishing to the back yard to get the next course.

  Matilda took her small eating knife from a pouch on her girdle and attacked the trout, muttering that it was fish again and not even a Friday!

  John tucked in, as he was hungry after a day in the saddle and Mary was a cook to be treasured. Most people ate the main meal of the day at around noon and had very little afterwards, but Matilda, always keen to adopt new fashions that she could brag about to her friends at St Olave's, insisted on eating in the early evening - though this did not stop her healthy appetite from also being exercised at midday.

  They ate in silence, which was the usual state of affairs in their household, as John was usually out of favour for one reason or another. A fresh loaf appeared, with yellow butter and a slab of cheese, and when Mary had cleared away the debris of the fish she brought two platters of dried fruit, imported from France.

  When they had finished and gone back to their chairs near the fire, John sensed that his wife was even more depressed than usual. He tried again to strike up a conversation, and because of the guilt that she was always able to engender in him tried to discover what was troubling her today. Since de Revelle had been exposed as an embezzler and a coward, her former adoration for her elder brother had turned into a disillusion that had soured her life, but today she seemed worse than usual.

  'I hear that Richard has visited you, Matilda?' he began, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible and not to display the dislike and contempt he felt for his brother-in-law.

  'What do you care about that?' she whispered throatily, turning her square face towards him. 'Though I admit that he has gone from bad to worse, it was you who hounded him out of office and even out of the city!'

  As John had saved Richard's life twice - and probably bent the law sufficiently to save him from the hangman's noose - he felt aggrieved that Matilda should unfailingly put the blame on him for the retribution that was inevitably to fall upon the former sheriff. He tried to ignore it once again, though it was difficult, given de Wolfe's irascible nature.

  'Did he have any particular reason for calling today?'

  'Does a man need a reason to visit his sister?' she snapped. Then she turned her head away and John was surprised to glimpse tears forming in her eyes. Matilda was a hard, unforgiving woman, whose only emotion was usually anger. To see her on the verge of weeping over her wayward brother touched a nerve in his generally unsympathetic character, tapping the guilt that she never allowed him to forget. He got up and placed an arm around her shoulder, though she sat as rigid as a plank under his unfamiliar gesture.

  'Give it time, Matilda,' he muttered gruffly. 'It has been only a short while since that affair over the Arundells. If Richard lays low in his manor and keeps his nose out of public affairs, the matter will gradually be forgotten.'

  'But I won't forget, will I?' she snapped with a vehemence that surprised him. 'I will go through the rest of my life with the knowledge of his perfidy - and I will always be pointed out by others as the sister of that man Richard de Revelle!'

  There was no answer to that, and with a sigh John went to the side table and poured them each a cup of Anjou wine. Matilda accepted it wordlessly, never one to refuse a drink, whatever her mood. He sat down and, with the faithful Brutus dribbling on to his knee, quietly sipped his wine until the silence became too oppressive even for him to endure. Desperate to strike up some sort of dialogue, he searched his mind for some innocuous topic.

  'It seems that the vessel that this strangled youth sailed upon was owned by a rich merchant from this city,' he began, knowing of his wife's fascination with, and compendious knowledge of, all the wealthy and titled families in this part of Devon. 'I've heard his name, but know nothing of him,' he said artfully.

  Matilda took the bait and slowly turned her face towards him. 'Who was it, then?'

  'Robert de Helion, a manor-lord from Barnstaple way, I believe.'

  She shook her head reprovingly. 'It's Bridport, not Barnstaple. He keeps a town house near the East Gate.' She sniffed in a superior way. 'I sometimes glimpse his wife in the cathedral, though she usually attends St Lawrence's Church, which is almost next door.' Matilda gave the impression that anyone who did not patronise St Olave's was akin to a pagan.

  'Is he a rich man, d'you know?'

  'He is reputed to be very rich. By the way his wife dresses, he must be both affluent and generous.' Again she managed to convey a hint that her own husband was both poor and miserly. John ignored this and persisted in tapping his wife's knowledge of Exeter's elite.

  'I am told he runs three cogs from Axmouth and some from Dartmouth. It is strange that Hugh de Relaga and myself have not run across him, being in the same line of business.'

  He realised too late that he was entering dangerous territory here, as recently his partnership with de Relaga had been enlarged by taking in Hilda of Dawlish, one of John's former mistresses. Her shipmaster husband had been killed and his three ships had been absorbed into their wool-exporting venture. Matilda immediately pounced on the matter.

  'No doubt you are too interested in your new partner to notice much about your business!' she growled. However, the temptation to air her knowledge overcame her jealous indignation. 'He has several sources of income, apart from his manor and his ships. I hear he owns both a tannery in Crediton and a fulling mill on Exe Island.' She scowled at John. 'If you would only take more interest in civic affairs and cultivate the burgesses and nobility more, you could be far more prominent in county affairs than just a corpse-prodder!'

  De Wolfe felt an angry reply boiling in his breast at this unfairness. He had had King Richard's direct nomination for the post of coroner and was the second most important law officer in the county, after the sheriff. To be called a 'corpse-prodder' by the woman who had cajoled him into the appointment was outrageous, but he managed to hold his tongue long enough to down the rest of his wine, stand up and march to the door.

  'I have to go up to Rougemont to see if there are any more reports of corpses for me to prod!' he growled sarcastically. A moment later the street door shut with a bang, leaving Brutus staring after him, disappointed that he was not getting his expected walk down to the Bush Inn.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In which Crowner John seeks out an old flame

  The early-April evening was waning by the time the coroner made his way along High
Street and up Castle Hill to Rougemont, the fortress built by William the Bastard following the Saxon revolt two years after the battle at Hastings. It was in the angle of the old Roman walls, at the highest point of the ridge on which the city was built, and the ruddy colour of the local sandstone gave it its name. Two sets of defences arced around the castle: a wide ditch and rampart enclosing the outer ward, where soldiers and their families lived, then an inner castellated wall high on a bank, guarded by a dry moat and a tall gatehouse. It was on the upper floor of this that the coroner had his chamber, the most inhospitable room in Rougemont, grudgingly allotted by his brother-in-law when he was sheriff.

  This evening, as dusk was drawing in, de Wolfe did not bother to toil up the narrow winding staircase, as both his clerk and his officer would not be there until morning. Instead, he called in at the guardroom inside the arched entrance and spoke to Gabriel, the gnarled sergeant of the men-at-arms who formed the garrison at Rougemont. They were old friends, having shared a battle years before in Ireland, when old King Henry was trying to curb the ambitions of his unruly barons who were carving out their own empire there. Always ready to gossip, Gabriel produced a jug of cider and some mugs. Pushing two young soldiers off a bench, the only furniture in the bleak cell, he waved John to a seat and they spent half an hour discussing old campaigns, the state of the nation and the price of wool, until the sergeant remembered that he had a message for the coroner.

  'A fellow came in at around noon from Kenton, sent by the reeve there. It seems their miller has got himself killed in his own pond and they want a coroner to attend.'

  Deaths in water mills were common, both from drowning in the millstreams and from being caught up in the ponderous machinery that ground the grain. Children and millers were by far the most frequent victims, and John had dealt with a dozen such accidents since he had become coroner in 1194. He swallowed his cider and stood up. 'It will have to keep until tomorrow. I'll take a ride down there unless my rump prevents me from sitting on a horse.'

  It occurred to him that Kenton, a small village a few miles south of Exeter on the west side of the river, was over halfway to Dawlish on the coast. With a little mental gymnastics in respect of his conscience, he decided that it might be useful to speak to one of his own shipmasters there to see if he had any knowledge of the situation in Axmouth and the vessels that sailed from there. The fact that Hilda also lived in Dawlish could be viewed as irrelevant, though it would be churlish of him to visit the port without calling upon her! He went out into the passage of the gatehouse, where a bored sentinel stood under the raised portcullis just above the drawbridge over the ditch.

  'Do you know if the sheriff is still here?' he asked the youth. The young man-at-arms stood to attention, greatly in awe of this menacing knight, whose reputation amongst the soldiery bordered on the fabulous. A Crusader and actually part of the Lionheart's escort when he was captured in Austria, de Wolfe was known in the army as 'Black John', both from his appearance and from his temper when displeased.

  'He went out about a hour past, Crowner,' answered the guard respectfully. 'I think he went to his house in North Street.'

  The sheriff, Henry de Furnellis, had a manor near Crediton but also kept a dwelling in the city, shunning the dreary quarters provided for him in the castle keep, a two-storeyed building on the further side of the inner ward.

  De Wolfe had intended to tell de Furnellis about the murder in Axmouth, as nominally the sheriff was responsible for all law and order issues in the county. However, Henry was unenthusiastic about his duties, as he was only a stopgap sheriff, appointed quickly after the sudden removal of de Revelle. He was content to leave the pursuit of crime to the coroner, while he devoted himself to the administration of Devon's finances.

  Dusk was falling and John decided to go back home and get Mary to minister to the sore on his bottom. By then, Matilda would be in bed in her solar at the back of the house, and he would be free to give Brutus his cherished walk, undoubtedly in the direction of Idle Lane and the Bush Inn.

  Later that evening, as John de Wolfe was sitting in the alehouse with an arm around his Welsh mistress, a ragged man was trudging along the highway in the extreme east of the county. Dusk had long faded into night, but an almost full moon lit his way along the deserted track between the villages of Kilmington and Wilmington. He held a long staff in one hand, the other easing the nagging pressure of one of the shoulder straps that supported a shapeless backpack.

  The pedlar, who rejoiced in the name of Setricus Segar, was tired, weary and hungry. He had not a single penny in his pouch, for he had sold nothing in Widworthy that day, the goodwives being unimpressed by his crumpled selection of ribbons or his slightly rusted sewing needles.

  Once a moderately successful chapman, going around the countryside selling a whole range of household goods, he had gradually degenerated into little more than a beggar, thanks to his drinking habits. It was true that he had reason for this decline, as his wife and child had died of smallpox five years before and soon afterwards his dwelling in Chard had burnt down, leaving him destitute.

  Nowadays he usually stole to keep him in a little food and more ale, as well as to buy the meagre stock of haberdashery which was his excuse for wandering the roads between towns and villages. Tonight he expected to sleep under a bush, which was his bedroom more often than not - but if tomorrow he could get as far as Exeter, he could cadge a meal and a mattress in one of the priories.

  Though the day had been mild, the clear moonlit sky made the night cold, and he shivered under the threadbare cloak that he wore over his torn fustian tunic. He had rags tied around his feet to secure the detached soles of his worn shoes and a dirty pointed cap sat on his even dirtier hair, the tassel flopping on his shoulder as he tramped wearily along. Though he was not yet forty, he looked a score of years older, his lined face sallow and haggard under a week's worth of stubble.

  The countryside was infested with outlaws and cutthroats, but one advantage of being so obviously destitute was that he was unlikely to be robbed. However, when he heard a distant noise behind him, his sense of self-preservation made him stop and cup a hand to his ear. Somewhere a wagon was moving and it was not long before he could hear the squeaking of wheels and the snorting of oxen as they toiled up the long slope of this stretch of the Honiton road. When he glimpsed the canvas hood in the moonlight, Setricus melted into the undergrowth at the side of the rutted track, where rank weeds gave way to bushes before the tall trees of the forest began.

  He crouched behind the new leaves of an elder thicket and waited. Soon the two grunting draught animals came in sight, dragging the covered wagon with its pair of solid, creaking wheels. Two men sat on the driving-board, one idly flicking the oxen with a long switch, though they took not the slightest notice of him. As they came level with the pedlar, he made a sudden decision, got up and hurried out into the road.

  'Hey, brothers, can I sit on your tailboard? My poor feet are worn down to my ankles!' he whined.

  Startled by this apparition, the man on his side roared with alarm and raised a knobbed cudgel that he had lying alongside him.

  'Clear off, whoever you are! Come closer and I'll brain you!' he yelled.

  Setricus Segar continued to trot alongside the cart but kept out of range of the club that the driver's mate was waving at him.

  'I'm but a poor chapman, travelling to Honiton,' he pleaded. 'All I want is a lift on the back of your wagon.'

  'He said, bugger off!' shouted the driver, joining the fray. 'If you're some scout for a bunch of outlaws, tell 'em we've got another two armed men inside.'

  'Do I look like a trail robber, with this damned pack on my back?' persisted the pedlar. 'Any Christian man would give me aid. It costs you nothing to be charitable. '

  For answer, the man with the cudgel hopped down from his seat behind the shafts and began raining blows on Segar, who screamed and sheltered his head with his arms, then blundered back into the brambles and scrub at the
side of the track. The guard followed him for a few paces, cursing and blaspheming as he gave him a valedictory few whacks on the shoulders. Then he gave up the chase and ran back to catch up with the wagon, clambering back on to the driving-board.

  Setricus cowered in the long grass and nettles until the creaking vehicle had passed out of sight. Then he stood up and stumbled back into the roadway, shaking a fist after his assailants.

  'You miserable bastards, may you rot in hell!' he shouted, but not loud enough to provoke the man to return with his club. He began walking again, his shoulders and neck aching from the blows they had suffered. The next village could not be far off now. Wilmington was the last hamlet before the small town of Honiton, not that he would be able to stop at either at this time of night, with not a single coin to buy a pallet in an alehouse loft. As he walked he began to wonder why a covered wagon with an armed guard would be travelling at dead of night along the highway. He wished he knew what was in the back of the cart, for as well as being as curious as a cat, there was always the chance of being able to steal something worthwhile.

  Setricus toiled on, stumbling now and then in some deeper rut than usual, though the pale moonlight revealed the road fairly well. If it had been cloudy or if the moon had not risen, it would be impossible to walk at night and he would have had to curl up under a tree unless he could find a barn that was not guarded by dogs.

  The road ran from Axminster to Honiton, where it joined the high road from Exeter eastwards to Ilminster, Salisbury and eventually London. Setricus had never been further than Yeovil on that road and now had no ambition other than to get near Honiton tonight, find some niche to sleep in until the morning and make an early start on an empty stomach towards Exeter. He optimistically hoped to make some sales in the city, if he could sneak in through the gates past the porters and then avoid the constables seeking unlicensed hawkers.