Crowner's Quest

by Bernard Knight

  Up in the spartan chamber, Thomas de Peyne was in his usual place at the rough table, scribing away at duplicate rolls for the judges when they came to the January Eyre of Assize. Gwyn was perched on his window-ledge, chewing at the remains of a loaf, with Brutus already sitting at his feet staring up hopefully for a share.

  De Wolfe settled himself behind his table as Thomas put down his quill pen and waited expectantly. Before he could start telling of his archive researches, Gwyn broke in with his own story about his visit to the Saracen the night before. When he had finished, the coroner leaned forward on the table. ‘Did you learn this fellow’s name?’ he demanded.

  The Cornishman nodded. ‘I made it my business to question Willem the Fleming afterwards, miserable devil that he is. He told me that the fair man was named Giles Fulford, squire to a young knight from the Welsh Marches, who is currently living in this county.’

  ‘Do we know his name as well?’

  ‘Yes. The Fleming told me grudgingly that it was Jocelin de Braose. His father is a Marcher lord from somewhere near Monmouth.’

  John de Wolfe chewed his lip as an aid to memory. ‘I heard of that family when we accompanied Archbishop Baldwin around Wales on his recruiting campaign for the Crusade in ’eighty-eight. They had a bad reputation, as far as I recollect – every Welshman spat on the ground when their name was mentioned.’

  Thomas couldn’t resist airing his extensive knowledge of recent history. ‘William de Braose was the one who invited a dozen Welsh chieftains to a banquet at his castle at Abergavenny – and stabbed them all to death!’

  Gwyn grunted, to indicate that he saw this as typical Norman behaviour, but forbore to say so in as many words: although his master was half Welsh, he was still a Norman official.

  De Wolfe pulled his mind back to the present. ‘So what of this Giles fellow? Why should he be gabbing to a cathedral priest in a low tavern with a doxy at his elbow?’

  His officer shrugged. ‘The devil alone knows. Willem said that both he and this Jocelin, whom he serves, are both now mercenaries, hiring their arms for anyone who will pay them.’

  The coroner’s eyebrows hauled up his forehead. ‘Mercenaries? I heard some tales of them only yesterday. It seems that they are frequenting Exeter a great deal lately. Are these men former Crusaders like us?’

  Gwyn grimaced. ‘I very much doubt it. The Fulford fellow was too pale to have been in Outremer. Probably they’ve been in France for their fighting.’ He threw a piece of stone-hard cheese in the air. Brutus caught it effortlessly and swallowed it in one gulp.

  ‘What of this black-haired wench who seems to have caught your fancy? Do you think this vicar has her in his bed?’

  ‘I doubt it. She looked too much of a handful for such a weed as that boy. It was this Giles that had her by the arm. The vicar took some drab of his own up to the loft of the Saracen.’

  ‘Is this Rosamunde just a common harlot, then?’

  ‘Not according to Otelin, the leatherman. I gathered she was a camp-follower to these hired soldiers, a cut above an ordinary whore.’

  John picked up a parchmentroll and absently looked at Thomas’s inscription under the tape that tied it. His new literacy just allowed him to make out the name of the deceased person to whom it referred, a man who had fallen from a roof a week ago. But his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Is any of this at all to do with our dead canon?’ he muttered. ‘Only the presence of the next-door vicar has the slightest possible connection.’

  ‘He is the deputy for Roger de Limesi,’ the astute Thomas reminded him. ‘That might be a slight strengthening of the connection, as there are twenty-one other canons who have nothing to do with the archives.’

  Having got a word in between the two bigger men, he continued by telling of his sole discovery of the fresh cross against Saewulf in Robert de Hane’s parchments. His announcement was met with blank silence by the other two in the chamber. Abashed, he murmured, ‘I know nothing of this Saxon, but I will find out. It may be a pointer to something, as the mark was made in the same colour ink as that on the canon’s desk in the Chapter House.’

  Gwyn snorted, which made Brutus recoil. ‘A mark on a roll of sheepskin! Is that all your night’s labour can turn up, midget?’

  De Wolfe held up his hand to forestall a squabble between his assistants. ‘No matter! The next task is to shake some information from this vicar, but first I’ll see what’s to be learned about Jocelin de Braose and his squire.’

  A few moments later, having left Brutus in the safe hands of his officer, the coroner was in the sheriff’s chamber. This time, the sharp-faced Lady Eleanor was there, dressed for travelling, an elderly handmaiden hovering behind her. A harassed-looking Richard de Revelle was shouting orders at a steward and at Sergeant Gabriel, who was leading a small escort for his wife on her journey back to Revelstoke.

  The coroner greeted the woman civilly. She replied with cold ill-grace, and de Wolfe retired into the shadows of the room until his brother-in-law had ushered the party out and had seen them depart from the keep of Rougemont on their slow four-hour journey to his main country residence near Plympton.

  On his return, Richard was almost affable in his relief at having seen the back of his wife for a week or more. ‘Wives are all very well in their place,’ he said cheerfully, ‘as long as that place is a long way from their husbands.’ He sat behind the heavy oak table that served as his desk. ‘Now, what can I do for you, John?’

  The coroner came straight to the point. ‘What do you know of a man called Jocelin de Braose? And his squire, for that matter.’

  De Revelle looked warily at his brother-in-law. ‘Almost nothing – why?’

  ‘Just tell me, man. Do you know of him at all?’

  The sheriff, dressed in his favourite pale green, pulled rather nervously at his beard. ‘I know his name, of course, and generally of his family. But I’ve never met him, that I can recollect. Again, why do you want to know?’

  De Wolfe had a distinct feeling that the other man was being evasive, if not actually lying, and wondered why this should be. ‘He may be involved in the death of our old prebendary. It’s only the faintest of possibilities as yet, but any glimmer of light is welcome in this obscure affair.’ He related Gwyn’s story of the meeting with Canon de Limesi’s vicar, feeling that it had only the most tenuous connection with Robert de Hane.

  His brother-in-law was obviously of the same mind: he scoffed at the idea. ‘For God’s sake, John, how can you make a conspiracy out of this? The damned priest was probably trying to buy a night’s lechery from this squire’s woman. You know what some of these clerics are like – their celibacy is the biggest joke in the city.’

  De Wolfe had to admit that he was probably right but, like a dog with a bone, he wouldn’t give up worrying the matter yet. ‘This Jocelin fellow, I hear he is one of those who sells his sword to the highest bidder.’

  ‘There are plenty of them about, John. Think of all your Crusader comrades who have returned home to find nothing to occupy them or fill their purses. They can’t all find wars in France.’

  ‘So this man is one of those hired warriors, then,’ persisted the coroner. ‘I have heard that they have even formed some sort of confederation in these western counties.’

  The sheriff became cautious at once. ‘I know nothing of that. Any baron or manorial lord is entitled to employ men in his service, be they cooks or men-at-arms. It has always been so.’

  He refused to be drawn further and John changed the subject slightly. ‘What about this Rosamunde wench? Is anything known of her?’

  Richard de Revelle’s narrow face twisted into a leer. ‘I’ve certainly heard of her – she has a reputation as the most talented doxy between Penzance and Dover. Not that I have any personal knowledge of that,’ he added, with such haste that de Wolfe knew he was lying. It was little more than a month since he had caught his brother-in-law in bed with a harlot in the very next room.

  ‘She is
a whore, then?’

  The sheriff put on a sanctimonious expression. ‘I have heard that she started as one. She was thrown out of her birthplace of Rye for it and then worked the Kentish ports, until her good looks attracted some of the noble travellers crossing the Channel. Since then she seems to have sold her favours only to those she fancies, usually good-looking fighting men with money at their belt.’

  The coroner noticed that Richard seemed as happy to discuss the woman as he was reluctant to talk about Jocelin de Braose. He also wondered how the sheriff was so familiar with the history of a woman of no virtue, when he claimed never to have met her. Now he tried to get the conversation back to the young knight: as the King’s representative for the county, the sheriff should have been the best authority on all the Norman establishment in Devonshire. ‘Jocelin de Braose comes from the Welsh Marches, I hear?’ he said.

  De Revelle’s lips tightened in annoyance at the return to an unwelcome subject. ‘So I assume. That family has been trying to subdue the damned Welsh in that area for more than a century.’

  ‘So why is the son here in the West Country now?’

  ‘How the devil should I know?’ snapped the Sheriff. ‘I presume he uses his sword in the service of someone. If he’s a junior son of his father, he may have no prospects at home, especially if he has been away at the wars for some years.’

  ‘So where is he selling this sword at the moment?’ persisted John.

  De Revelle scowled at him, but could hardly feign ignorance of what went on in his own county. ‘I believe I heard that he has been in the company of Henry de la Pomeroy or his kinsman Bernard Cheever – but whether he is still there now, I couldn’t say.’

  De Wolfe knew that Pomeroy was a baron who held large tracts of land in central and western Devon as well as many manors in Somerset and Dorset. He also knew a lot more about Pomeroy’s father. ‘Doesn’t it worry you, Richard, that these men are attached to a family who are reputed to be traitors?’

  The sheriff looked sullenly at John. ‘What concern should it be of mine?’ he growled. ‘Henry’s father is dead, and that’s all behind him.’

  ‘And we all know how and why he died, Sheriff!’ said de Wolfe sarcastically. It had been the scandal of Devon earlier that year. Pomeroy’s father, also a Henry, had been a leading supporter of Prince John’s revolt. When the Lionheart had returned from captivity last March and crushed the remnants of the rebellion, he had sent a herald to Berry Pomeroy Castle with his felicitations. Once inside, the herald announced that he brought a warrant for Pomeroy’s arrest for treason against the King, whereupon Henry stabbed him to death. Fearing retribution, he abandoned his castle and rode with his troops to St Michael’s Mount, the rocky island in Cornwall, which he had previously seized for Prince John by disguising his soldiers as monks. His constable there had already dropped dead of fright on hearing of the King’s release from Germany, and when Henry de la Pomeroy was besieged by Archbishop Hubert Walter and the sheriff of Cornwall, he committed suicide by slashing his wrists. Sardonically de Wolfe reminded his brother-in-law of this salutary tale of treachery, but it seemed he would gain nothing more from de Revelle so he eased himself from the edge of the table where he had been leaning. ‘I think I’ll have a strong word or two with this vicar. Perhaps the knowledge that he’s been seen in a tavern with women of easy virtue will loosen his tongue.’

  De Revelle, though glad that the talk had left Jocelin de Braose, became uneasy in case the Coroner went off now to upset the Bishop by exposing one of the cathedral priests as a rake. De Revelle was close to the head of the Church in Exeter and the last thing he wanted was for his brother-in-law to start a new scandal in the precinct. All things considered, his sister’s husband had become a damned nuisance since being appointed coroner a few months ago, upsetting Richard’s cosy monopoly of the intrigues that went on in the county. ‘I wish you would just let this matter of the canon rest, John,’ he said. ‘He was obviously killed by some opportunist robber – that is, if you were right in claiming that he didn’t do away with himself. Why make such a great mystery of it? If you need a solution, accuse one of the servants. I’ll hang him for you and the whole affair can be forgotten.’

  De Wolfe was scornful of what he considered to be the sheriff’s immoral attitude to justice and, after a few tart words, he left de Revelle’s chamber and marched back to the gatehouse, muttering under his breath at his brother-in-law’s unsuitability to represent the King. The Lionheart was de Wolfe’s idol. If pressed, though, he would have had to admit that, as far as England was concerned, Richard Coeur de Lion left much to be desired: he had spent only a few months of his reign in the country, and showed no sign of ever returning now that he was at war in France. He had not bothered to learn a word of English, and his queen, Berengaria, had never so much as set foot in England, not even for Richard’s second coronation earlier that year – to which she had not been invited! The King looked on Normandy as his true home, and England as a mine from which his ministers, notably Hubert Walter, hewed money and goods to support his armies.

  As he strode across the inner ward, the east wind whistling around his legs, John felt nothing for his monarch but loyalty, born of the camaraderie of the arduous campaigns in the Holy Land and the stresses of their escapade between the Adriatic and Vienna. To see his brother-in-law twisting his royal appointment endlessly to suit his own advantage made the coroner even more determined to confound de Revelle by making every investigation as complete and honest as possible.

  He stamped into the room at the top of the gate-house and snapped instructions. ‘Gwyn, get back to the tavern on Stepcote Hill and find out all you can about that squire and his master – and the woman from Rye. Threaten Willem the Fleming if you have to, tell him we’ll have him up at Rougemont to sit in the gaol for a few days and maybe suffer peine et forte dure unless he comes up with some information.’ This was a bluff on de Wolfe’s part, but the threat might loosen the surly inn-keeper’s tongue. ‘And you, Thomas, come with me to the Close. We need to have words with this young priest who seems to have difficulty in keeping his chastity intact.’

  The clerk tipped his head sideways like a sparrow. ‘You have two hangings to attend at midday,’ he reminded his master.

  De Wolfe scowled: he had forgotten that, Yuletide or not, the twice-weekly executions still took place at the gallows tree on Magdalen Street outside the city. He had to be present to record the event and to confiscate the property of the dead felons – if they had any. ‘We’ll be finished by then, if we get down to the precinct straight away,’ he snapped.

  But Thomas had another objection. ‘The priests will all be at morning services until about the eleventh hour.’

  ‘Then we’ll pull him out to talk to us. His immortal soul won’t suffer too much for missing an hour’s chanting.’

  Equipped with new axes and with their bruises fading, Alward’s men had gone back to their clearing of the woods between Afton and Loventor. For several days they were unmolested. Those in Fitzhamon’s village must have known that the work had resumed, as the smoke from the burning debris reached above the tree-tops and the sound of axes rang out to a great distance in the frosty winter air.

  The Afton team had one additional tool this time: a horn slung on Alward’s belt. The sound of this, driven by his powerful lungs, could reach far down the face of the forest along which they were felling their trees. On this morning of the day following Christ Mass, when work began again after the festival, the expected attack resumed. Once more, another dozen roughly clothed men charged from the woods and began to belabour the villeins and freemen from Afton, although this time the workers were even quicker at running away.

  The instant the assailants appeared, Alward began to blast away on his cow’s horn, which caused the ruffians to slow up to wonder what was going on. Within seconds of the trumpeting, there was a thunder of hoofs in the middle distance and from the tree-line, two hundred paces away, half a dozen horsemen em
erged and bore down on the combatants. Though half the number of the assailants, the mounted men cut through them like a knife through butter, scattering the men on foot in panic.

  This time, there was no attempt to avoid serious injury. The riders swung swords with professional skill and two of the men from Loventor fell at once, with lethal wounds gushing blood on to the ground. Pulling their large horses around, the six men began chasing the would-be attackers, felling another with a blow on the back and inflicting lesser wounds on two more. Even one of the Afton workers was mistaken for an aggressor and given a deep cut on the head, which fortunately did not prove fatal.

  After the second sally, the men from both villages were hopelessly intermingled in their hapless attempts to escape to the shelter of the trees. The leader of the horsemen, a stocky young man with red hair visible under the rim of his round metal helmet, raised his sword and yelled at his companions to follow him. Expertly wheeling their steeds, the avengers galloped off down the edge of the woods and out of sight, leaving the Loventor men to creep slowly out of the bushes to collect their dead and wounded, watched silently by the peasants they had come to attack.

  Thomas de Peyne was sent into the great cathedral to find the vicar, who was called Eric Langton. Thankfully, his task was easier than he had expected – the ex-cleric looked on disturbing a sacred service as a sin worse than blasphemy. In the event, he found that Roger de Limesi was himself present at the devotions so his deputy was dispensable. Thomas was able to sidle along the back of the choir stalls, where the more junior officiants stood, and tug at Langton’s robe without disrupting the proceedings.

  The mystified vicar allowed himself to be drawn into the shadows of the arches between the chancel and the side aisles where the coroner’s clerk hissed in his ear that he was wanted urgently at Robert de Hane’s house in the Close.

  Eric Langton recognised Thomas as someone who lived in Canons’ Row – presumably a priest, as the little clerk had never denied it – and followed him without protest, mildly relieved that he had escaped the next hour of boring worship.