Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries)

by Bernard Knight

  There the matter was left, but now John was able to confirm to his two assistants that in a week or so they would be back on the road to Exeter.

  ‘I will be happy enough helping my wife in the Bush,’ boomed Gwyn cheerfully. ‘And playing with my lads and drinking half the profits of the tavern!’

  ‘And the archivist in the cathedral invited me to return there to help him at any time,’ added Thomas. ‘I’m sure I can eventually find a living somewhere, perhaps in some remote parish.’ He sounded a little wistful at that, as at heart he was an academic priest, rather than one who would be content to tend his flock in a rural village.

  ‘But what about you, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn solicitously. ‘You and I are too old to go campaigning abroad, seeking new battles – our sword arms are getting tired. What will you do with yourself?’

  John grinned crookedly. ‘I have this partnership with Hugh de Relaga, so I can take a more active interest in it, as it brings me sufficient to live on. And no doubt I will be taking the road to Dawlish quite often!’

  His smile faded. ‘Though God knows how this matter of my wife will be resolved – I am neither married nor a bachelor these days.’

  After their dinner at the dwelling in Long Ditch Lane, where Aedwulf and Osanna received with equanimity the news that their tenants were leaving, de Wolfe and his officer walked back to the chamber in the palace. They were resigned to another afternoon of boredom, as no palace resident had been murdered, raped or battered.

  As usual, Gwyn stared out of the window at the ever-changing river, the boats plying up and down and the muddy banks being covered and exposed twice a day by the tide. John sat at his table, his Latin exercises lying ignored before him, while he thought dark thoughts about Matilda’s continued obdurateness. When he went back to Exeter, something must be done to resolve the problem, though for the life of him he could not imagine what. His mood lightened when his mind moved on to his house and his dog, with images of himself sitting before his hearth in the coming autumn, with a quart of ale and old Brutus’s head on his lap. And the journeys to Dawlish and the company of the delectable Hilda were the pinnacle of his wandering thoughts.

  They were shattered when Thomas came through the door, out of breath and obviously in a state of great excitement.

  ‘Crowner, you remember that novice I brought to you, Robin Byard, who told us that tale about Basil of Reigate?’

  De Wolfe sat up straight and glared at his clerk. ‘What of him? Has he been slain too?’

  ‘No, it’s not him, but another novitiate that Robin brought to see me after dinner in the abbey refectory just now. He was also a friend of Basil’s.’ Thomas reddened slightly. ‘Another very good friend, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘For the Virgin’s sake, get to the point, Thomas! You’re as bad as Gwyn for spinning out a tale!’

  ‘This young man, Alfred, has been away for some weeks at the chapel in Windsor, for he is a particularly sweet chanter.’ Thomas caught the impatient glint in John’s eye and hurried on.

  ‘So he knew nothing of Basil’s death nor what Basil had told Robin Byard about overhearing some treason. But today he learned from Robin – who is also his very good friend indeed – what Basil told him of his fears.’

  ‘What the hell’s all this about, dwarf?’ grumbled Gwyn, who was getting confused.

  ‘Basil had also told Alfred that he overheard sedition in the guest chambers – but he knows who it was that was speaking, for Basil had told him!’

  The coroner rammed his fists against his table and levered himself up to tower over his clerk. ‘Who was it, Thomas? Don’t tell me that after all, it was that fat lord from Blois?’

  Thomas shook his head emphatically. ‘Not at all, Crowner! It was the archdeacon from the Auvergne, Bernard de Montfort. He was giving a parchment roll to another guest, a chaplain from some priory in Ponthieu. Basil heard him say, in Latin, that he must get it to Paris, as it listed the manor-lords of Kent and Sussex who were favourable to Prince John and also the disposition of garrisons along the coast. The archdeacon said it was the result of a month’s work on his part and not to fail him in its delivery. Then the screen fell down and the two men saw Basil crouching there.’

  That was all Thomas’s news, but it was more than enough. De Wolfe was blazing with anger, as not only had the archdeacon brought about the death of the innocent guest-chamber clerk, but he must have instigated the two attacks upon John, fearful of the truth of John’s boasts about soon unmasking the spy.

  ‘How did he manage it, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn. ‘That fat priest was not fit enough to go stabbing, strangling and shooting crossbows! He must have employed that ratcatching villain who died in the forest in Greenwood.’

  ‘A very convenient death, too!’ snapped John. ‘I always thought that falling a bare dozen feet from that deer-trap was unlikely to have broken his neck. Now we know, for it was de Montfort’s servant who chased him and happily found him dead, so that he could not confess as to who had hired him. That Raoul must have deliberately broken his neck before we got there!’

  ‘So who stabbed Basil on the river pier?’ queried Thomas.

  De Wolfe looked at Gwyn. ‘The man you saw running past that window – could it have been this Jordan fellow?’

  Gwyn shrugged. ‘Just a big fellow, no way of telling.’

  He paused, his brows furrowed. ‘So what are you going to do about the archdeacon, Crowner? He went off with the queen’s party and is in Portsmouth by now.’

  John paced up and down the chamber in indecision. ‘I’ll have to tell the Justiciar, obviously. It’s now probably too late to chase them to the Channel, but that’s up to Hubert to decide. Get that fellow Alfred over here, Thomas – and Robin Byard too. Hubert Walter must be informed of this, but he’s so devious in his ways, that for all I know, Bernard de Montfort might be one of his agents as well, giving false information to the French. If the stakes were high enough, that wouldn’t stop them from killing a clerk or even a lowly coroner in order to keep their secrets safe!’

  By the end of that day, John had done all he could by delivering this latest news to the Keeper, Nathaniel de Levelondes, as Hubert had gone off to Lambeth to view his new palace. What they did about it was no longer his concern, he was tired of Westminster and all its intrigues. The sooner he could get home to Devon, the better he would be pleased.

  He trudged home with Gwyn at about the sixth hour, in the warmth of a pleasant summer evening, as the oppressive heat of previous weeks had moderated. Thomas had gone off to the abbey and the two old campaigners walked in companionable silence down Thieving Lane towards the Long Ditch. Both had the feeling that another phase of their life was coming to a close and were wondering what lay before them back in Exeter. For each of them, things would be very different. Gwyn would be living with his wife and running an alehouse, a very different life from being a coroner’s officer.

  John would no longer be that coroner, so would time hang heavily on his hands? How was this new liaison with Hilda going to work out? She had made it clear that she was not willing to give up her fine house and life in Dawlish. He still had the responsibility of his dwelling in Martin’s Lane and of Mary, to say nothing of the embarrassment of a stubborn wife hiding in Polsloe Priory.

  They turned into Long Ditch Lane and ambled up towards their lodging, but as they neared it, the globular figure of Osanna came out of the door and stood waiting for them, hands on her hips.

  ‘What’s she want now?’ growled Gwyn. ‘To tell us it’s eels again for supper?’

  Her news was quite different. ‘There’s a lady arrived to visit you, Sir John. With a mortal lot of possessions.’

  His face lit up, trusting that Hilda had again come on one of their ships to the Thames. Did a great deal of luggage mean that she had decided to come and live with him?

  He hurried inside and stopped as if he had run into a stone wall.

  Sitting on a stool, surrounded by bags and bundles, was
Matilda!

  Arrayed in dusty travelling clothes, she glared at him, her mouth a hard, disapproving line in her square face.

  ‘Matilda!’ he groaned. ‘How came you here?’

  ‘With a party of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury,’ she snapped in her gravelly voice. ‘I have decided that it is not seemly that the coroner to the king’s own court should live without his wife.’

  She meticulously rearranged her skirts across her knees. ‘The prioress and Dame Madge told me of your tales of the grandeur of Westminster and all the eminent nobles and prelates with whom you associate. It is only right that I should be by your side.’

  John threw back his head and gazed at the ceiling, wishing it would fall upon him and put him out of his sudden misery.

  Where all his attempts at coaxing her out of Polsloe had failed, her unbridled snobbery and mania for social advancement had succeeded. All that remained was for him to gather the courage to tell her that they would be returning to Exeter within the week and that he would shortly be neither the Royal Coroner of the Verge – nor any sort of coroner at all!

  1 See The Noble Outlaw.

  2 It was not called ‘The White Tower’ until Henry III had it painted in the thirteenth century.

  3 See The Elixir of Death.

  4 See The Elixir of Death.

  5 See The Noble Outlaw.