Crowner's Quest

by Bernard Knight

  Although Gabriel had expected to escort them to the meeting, he was sent back to Exeter after being fed at daybreak – but he went no further than the ford over the river to await events. The river was narrow there, above the tidal reach, and trees came down almost to the banks on either side. An hour before noon, as far as he could judge from the grey, sunless sky, he heard a whistle from the eastern side and, on going into the woods, he found a large force of his own men arriving, together with his constable, the coroner and his officer, and the nobles that had assembled in Exeter the previous afternoon.

  The sergeant confirmed that Pomeroy and his accomplices had taken the bait and immediately Ralph Morin began to set his ambush. A score of mounted men-at-arms were sent over the river to hide on each side of the track, having been ordered to keep well hidden in the trees. Others fanned out along both banks and again melted into the forest edge, together with all those from Exeter except Richard de Revelle and one escorting soldier, who sat on their horses in full view on the eastern edge of the Teign.

  After an hour’s wait, a group of helmeted riders appeared on the opposite bank and stopped in the shadow of the trees. Four were obviously guards; the three others wore richly coloured cloaks over their tunics. They waved to the sheriff, who waved back, and both groups moved down the banks into the water of the ford.

  There was a sudden blast of a horn and the pounding of hoofs as Morin’s soldiers raced down the track behind the new arrivals. A host of other armed riders appeared from between the trees and all converged on the visitors. They pulled their horses round in consternation, but found no way out as yet more troops appeared behind the sheriff, cutting off any escape across the river.

  There was no fighting. The ambush force slowly closed in to a wide circle around the seven men, none of whom had even unsheathed his sword in the patently hopeless situation.

  De Revelle splashed his horse across towards them with de Wolfe, Guy Ferrars and the others coming behind.

  As the sheriff neared the ambushed riders, he stopped suddenly. ‘These are not the ones!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve been tricked!’

  In a moment it became apparent that the men were ordinary soldiers from Pomeroy’s garrison. The helmets with nose-pieces and the chain-mail aventails covering everything but the face allowed recognition only at close range – and the borrowed finery of the cloaks completed the deception.

  ‘We were told to escort the sheriff to Berry Pomeroy, if he proved to be alone,’ grunted the leading man-at-arms, who had played the part of Pomeroy. He seemed unconcerned at being captured as, knowing nothing of what was going on, he had just done as his master had told him.

  Frustrated, the leaders of the Exeter force pulled their horses together for a conference. Immediately the sheriff was on the defensive, claiming stridently that he had played his part as well as he could and it was no fault of his if Pomeroy’s cunning mistrust had thwarted their plans.

  There was nothing to be done except turn tail and go home.

  ‘We’re not going to put Totnes and Berry Pomeroy under siege with the forces we have locally,’ barked Guy Ferrars. ‘Let Hubert Walter or the King decide what’s to be done.’

  There was general agreement on that, as no one wanted to start a private war in Devonshire without royal backing.

  ‘Let these men go back to their master,’ suggested Ralph Morin. ‘Seven men are not going to make much difference to a national uprising – and they will tell Pomeroy and his gang that the secret is well and truly out.’

  De Wolfe cursed, but agreed with the constable’s logic. ‘I suspect that many a sympathiser will have second thoughts now, when it’s realised that, within days, Winchester will be told of what’s going on down here,’ he said resignedly.

  The men from Berry Pomeroy were sent on their way, with a message to their lord that heralds would leave that day to take the news to the Justiciar and the King’s Justices.

  ‘That should give them a few sleepless nights!’ said John. ‘Either they’ll have to buy their pardons with a huge fine to the Exchequer or stock up their castles for a long siege. I suspect the first choice will be cheaper.’

  Frustrated at being deprived of a fight, they wheeled their horses round and began the soggy journey back to the city.

  Before the King’s supporters dispersed, a last meeting was held in the sheriff’s chamber in Rougemont. The main purpose was to make it abundantly clear to Richard de Revelle that they all knew of his recent questionable behaviour and that he was on probation for an indefinite period. Typically, he turned and twisted and made excuses, mostly by attempting to claim that he had had dialogue with the rebels only to spy out their membership and their intentions. No one was convinced by his feeble justification and Guy Ferrars summed up for all of them. ‘If it were not for the pleading of your brother-in-law, who quite naturally wishes to spare his wife such shame, we would denounce you to Hubert Walter and let him take what action he sees fit. As it is, we shall look the other way for now, but any whisper of further impropriety will condemn you. Do you understand?’ Having had this rubbed in in several ways, de Revelle was left in no doubt that he would have to walk strictly in the paths of righteousness from now on, under the eagle eye of John de Wolfe.

  When the meeting dispersed, he was left alone with the coroner in the chamber, as darkness fell outside. Awkwardly, he began to mumble some thanks, mixed with excuses, but de Wolfe cut him short. ‘Forget that for now, but I’ll be watching every move you make, Richard. More to the point, I want to know what we are going to do about those murderous rogues that are in the cells beneath us.’

  The sheriff wanted to do nothing with them, having allowed one of them to go free once before, but he dared not again show such partiality, or even apathy, with the Damocletian sword of the loyalists hanging over him. ‘What do you suggest, John?’ he said diplomatically. ‘Have you really got solid evidence against them?’

  ‘A confession from Fulford, witnessed by three people, written down soon after by my clerk,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘True, it names Jocelin de Braose for both killings, but his squire was with him on both occasions and must be a partner in the crimes. And as for the attemptto steal Saewulf’s treasure, I saw them both with my own eyes – and then they both tried to murder the King’s officers who challenged them. There is enough there to condemn them three times over.’

  After his dramatic downfall, de Revelle’s cunning was returning quickly. He saw a chance to wash his hands of the affair, even if it meant an about-turn from his previous attitude. ‘Then these are Pleas of the Crown, John! You should present them to the Justices in Eyre when they next come. You’ve wanted that privilege so often and now is your chance to employ it.’

  The sheriff was wrong if he thought he had managed to hoist the coroner with his own petard, as John had already fully intended to prevent the sheriff fudging the matter through his own County Court. His concern was to make sure that de Braose got his just deserts, and there were considerable risks in waiting months for the Justices to trundle down to Exeter. Escape from gaol was a stock joke in most parts of England, where a considerable proportion of those committed for trial never appeared in court. The cost of guarding and feeding prisoners fell on the tax-payers of the city and that, together with bribery of guards and the dilapidated gaols, made escape a common event. Many prisoners reached sanctuary and abjured the realm, the rest either vanished into the forest to become outlaws or slipped away to other parts of the country and began a new life. De Wolfe had no intention of letting Jocelin de Braose slide back to his old haunts in the Welsh Marches, after the brutal killings he had perpetrated.

  Looking at the weak, evasive sheriff, he could see that he would get no help there. He sensed that de Revelle still had one eye on the possibility of Prince John eventually coming out on top and wanted to avoid any acts that might put himself on a blacklist with any new government and its supporters in the West Country. The germ of an idea was wriggling in the coroner’s mind. He l
eft Richard to lick the wounds of his injured self-esteem and walked back to the chamber high above the gatehouse.

  Gwyn was there, eating as usual, having given up trying to get home to his family before the curfew. They spent some time going over the momentous events of the past couple of days. De Wolfe suspected that if he had been convicted and sentenced to be hanged, his faithful Cornish giant would have torn down the gallows to prevent it. As they sat talking, they heard the familiar erratic tap of a limping leg coming up the stairs. ‘The midget priest seems in a hurry tonight,’ grunted Gwyn, as the sacking curtain flew aside and Thomas hopped into the room. They could see that he was in a state of great elation, his ferret face alight with excitement.

  ‘I’ve found it, Crowner!’ he squeaked, groping in the scruffy cloth bag he used to carry his pen, inks and parchments. He hurried up to the table, where a couple of tallow dips threw a pool of light, and carefully unrolled a parchment, which protected a loose inner page, stained and mottled with age. ‘After all these days and nights, I found it! The missing directions to Saewulf’s hoard!’ He could hardly speak, such was his agitation.

  De Wolfe rose from his stool to look, while even Gwyn forgot to bait the little clerk and came across to the table. Though neither man could read it, they looked with fascination at the frayed piece of treated sheepskin, on which faded brown ink was partly obscured by rings of fungus and scattered yellow foxing.

  ‘Are you quite sure this is the genuine document?’ asked the coroner.

  ‘And where did you find it, dwarf?’ boomed Gwyn, secretly proud of his colleague’s tenacity and success.

  Thomas rubbed his spiky hair ruefully. ‘I fell asleep in the archives this afternoon and slipped off that high stool,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘I hit my head on the leg of the desk and lay there for a moment in pain. Then, as I was looking up from the floor, I saw that on the under-surface of old Roger de Hane’s desk this outer parchment was stuck with blobs of bone glue. I pulled it off and inside was this ancient piece of vellum.’

  They looked at it again, silently. ‘So what does it say?’ asked Gwyn.

  Thomas ran his finger along the faint words, being careful not to touch the fragile membrane. ‘Sixty paces, each of four shoe-lengths, sighted from the west tower wall, in line with the outer corners. Mark the spot, then twenty paces towards the largest yew. A leg’s length deep.’ They digested this for a moment. ‘It doesn’t say where, and there’s no mention of Saewulf or a village priest or even a treasure,’ complained Gwyn.

  ‘The vellum is torn off close above and below the actual writing,’ explained Thomas, indignant that his marvellous discovery was being challenged. ‘Someone has ripped the directions from a longer document – maybe it fitted the original that de Limesi told us about.’

  The coroner was less critical than his officer. ‘Given what we know about the finding of the brooch and the whole story of Saewulf – and that this parchment was deliberately hidden under de Hane’s desk – I’m quite sure that it’s genuine. Well done, Thomas. Your diligence will be rewarded somehow.’

  As the clerk basked in his master’s approval, Gwyn still wanted to know how the message was to be interpreted.

  Exasperated, the quicker mind of the clerk enlightened him. ‘It has to be Dunsford church, surely. The directions are clear enough, as long as we don’t use your huge feet for a measure – they would take us twenty yards beyond the spot!’

  As he dodged a swipe from the redheaded officer, de Wolfe pictured the place where they had ambushed Jocelin and Fulford. ‘The wooden tower is square, so we look along the line of the end wall and go sixty paces. That takes us again into the rough ground over the hedge.’

  ‘What about the tree, Crowner?’ asked the clerk. ‘This was written over a hundred years ago.’

  ‘Those yews live for ever. Probably the big one was there in the time of Jesus Christ,’ said the coroner confidently.

  Gwyn rubbed his huge hands. ‘Shall I go for a shovel?’ he asked gleefully.

  Finding Saewulf’s treasure was so easy as to be almost an anticlimax. On the evening Thomas found the vellum, de Wolfe went to the Archdeacon’s house to give him the good news. De Alencon decided that the Bishop had better be told, as it was one of the rare occasions on which Henry Marshal was actually in his palace at Exeter. The Archdeacon and the Treasurer, John of Exeter, had already made sure that the news of the discovery of rebels in the county had been circulated all around the cathedral precinct. Although no names were mentioned, except those of Pomeroy and de Nonant, there was plenty of nose-tapping and smirking at the knowledge that a few residents of Exeter would be keeping a low profile for some time to come – including some around the cathedral.

  The coroner and the Archdeacon made a brief visit to the palace, the largest house in the city, which nestled behind the south-east end of the cathedral. De Wolfe made it clear to Bishop Henry that even if it was found, the ownership of any treasure would have to be decided by his inquest and it could not be taken for granted that any of it would necessarily belong to the Church.

  A rather distant and abstracted bishop listened politely, then agreed to leave everything in the hands of the coroner and decided to abide by whatever decision he made at his inquisition. When they left the palace, John de Alencon again arranged to provide servants and horses from the Close, as they had at the time of the ambush. They would to go again to Dunsford in the morning, armed with pick, shovel and baskets, in the fervent hope that this time there would be more to find than a single Saxon brooch.

  The cavalcade that arrived next day at the little village contained three canons, attired in plain travelling clothes. Apart from the Archdeacon, the Treasurer felt obliged to be there too and Jordan de Brent also accompanied them, the archivist agog with enthusiasm for this bit of diocesan history come to life. De Wolfe, Gwyn and Thomas were naturally the leaders of the expedition, which might well end in an inquest, and the remaining three were servants from the Close.

  The village priest was overawed by the arrival of such senior colleagues from the cathedral and watched, along with half the village, as the servants unstrapped the tools from the packhorse. Within minutes, the measuring began and the rotund Canon de Brent was flattered to be used as having an average stride – de Wolfe and Gwyn were judged too tall for accuracy. The jovial prebendary marched across the rank grass of the neglected churchyard along a line sighted by the coroner, who stood with one eye closed at the rear of the old tower, shouting directions at de Brent to veer left or right.

  The priest came up against the rough hedge at forty paces and had to wait until a hole was hacked through the dead brambles, hazel branches and weeds for him to proceed into the rough copse beyond. At the sixtieth pace, a stake was hammered into the ground, then Gwyn took a sight-line from it to the prominent yew tree a hundred yards away. Off went the canon again for twenty paces and stopped. With a ragged cheer from a few throats, a second stake was knocked in and the digging began, Gwyn joining the cathedral servants in throwing up red earth, thankfully a few feet clear of the roots of several small trees.

  To allow for errors in pace-lengths and direction, they cut a six-foot circle through the soil and, within a few minutes, the four men’s efforts took them thigh deep. It was David, the groom who had been with them at the ambush, who made the first contact. He was working at the edge of the two-yard excavation when his wooden shovel, a copper band riveted to the edge, gave out a clanging noise as it hit something. ‘A pot, sirs! A big one,’ he shouted, after he had bent to scrape away soil with his hands. A few minutes later, two large earthenware pots, rather like amphorae, were dragged from the earth. They had broken ring-handles near their necks and the wide mouths were stoppered with wooden plugs covered in thick red wax.

  As they were hoisted up to the coroner and the canons, the other diggers made sure that there were no others in the wall of the pit. ‘They’re damned heavy, Crowner!’ said the groom happily. ‘I reckon there’s more than a
brooch in them this time.’

  Though de Wolfe had intended taking them back intact to Exeter before opening them, the beseeching looks on all the faces, from that of the Archdeacon to the village idiot, were such that his resolve was weakened.

  Right opposite the church, across the track that lay at the bottom of the steep path from the church door, was an alehouse, the one they had used during the ambush. The woman who brewed and sold the ale was only too happy to let them use her single room to open the jars, and most of the population of Dunsford either crowded in behind them or peered from the doorway.

  Gwyn cracked off the hard but brittle wax of the first jar and used his dagger to lever out the wooden stopper, which had softened with age and dry-rot.

  ‘Tip it gently on to the floor,’ commanded John and the audience watched with amazement as a cascade of coins poured out. The majority were silver, pennies from a dozen different Saxon mints, even a few Roman coins – but a number were gold, dulled by time and damp, but which shined up on being rubbed with a finger. While Gwyn watched the heap with an eagle eye and kept off any villager tempted to stretch out a hand, de Wolfe examined some of the golden coins. ‘This says ‘Offa Rex’ – that’s an old one,’ he said.

  The know-all Thomas peered over his shoulder and pointed out the crude Arabic lettering. ‘Made for the Eastern trade, copied from the Kaliphate of Al Mansur,’ he said importantly, which earned him a poke in the ribs from Gwyn.

  That first jar contained only coins, and the coroner made a rough guess that they amounted to probably seven or eight hundred. When Gwyn up-ended the other amphora, half the contents were similar coins, but an assortment of brooches, rings and pins also slid out on to the earthen floor. Most were gold or silver, but a few had red and green gems embedded in the intricate metalwork. No one there had seen such wealth, not even the cathedral Treasurer had seen as much at any one time.

  ‘This Saewulf must have been a very rich man, John,’ murmured the Archdeacon, whose ascetic other-worldliness was still impressed by such a display of precious metal.