The Elixir of Death

by Bernard Knight

  He said this virtuously, though everyone, including the coroner, knew very well that he would have been more interested in acquiring salvaged goods for the village - or even himself - rather than for either his lord or the King, to whom all such flotsam legally belonged.

  'Anyway, I saw no cask, but when I was on the sands, a crabber came running round from Warren Point and said he had found a dead body!'

  Vado explained that Warren Point was the end of the bluff where they had looked across at Burgh Island.

  The onlookers in the hall drew perceptibly nearer to the table, eager to hear the story again, though Osbert had regaled them with it many times over the past day or so. Drama and excitement were in short supply in such a remote place as Ringmore.

  'Who was this crabber?' demanded de Wolfe. 'He must be accounted as the First Finder.'

  This announcement was met with blank stares from both bailiff and reeve. 'We don't really understand this new crowner business, begging your pardon, sir,' confessed the bailiff. 'All I was told last year by my lord's steward in Totnes was that, unless they died in the bosom of their family, all corpses must be reported to Exeter without delay.'

  De Wolfe sighed and dropped his small eating dagger on to the table. It was over a year since the Chief Justiciar had revived the old Saxon office of coroner, but most of the minor officials in England still seemed ignorant of the procedures.

  'Listen, for Christ's sake! It's simple enough!' he said with his tongue in his cheek, for it wasn't simple at all. 'When someone dies suddenly, whether of violence or poison or anything other than sickness or old age, then whoever comes across the corpse is the "First Finder". He has to raise the hue and cry by knocking up the four nearest households and starting a search for the killer, if one is suspected.'

  'What if it's just a child who falls into the millpond, Crowner?' objected a toothless man standing amongst the listeners. 'Or a lad who gets gored by a bull? We've had both those this past autumn. Are we to go racing round the village, looking for a murderer who doesn't exist?'

  'Then use your common sense, man!' snapped John irritably. 'But they still have to be reported to the coroner. The reeve or bailiff must inform me without delay, either directly or through your lord's steward.'

  There was a disbelieving rumble from the group of village worthies.

  'Tis a mortal long ride to Exeter, just to say that some old fellow has broken his neck falling from a hay-wagon,' complained another man.

  'It's also the will of King Richard's Council,' rasped the coroner. 'I didn't make the laws, but it's my job to see they are kept. Any breach of the rules means an amercement against the offender or his village, so it doesn't pay to flaunt them.'

  At the mention of fines, the small crowd fell silent and watched sullenly as John de Wolfe picked up his knife and began hacking again at his trencher. Gwyn grinned to himself under the shelter of his ale-soaked moustache - he had heard all this before at a dozen places across the county, as the over-taxed population digested news of another means for the Lionheart's ministers to screw more money out of them to pay for his German ransom and his French wars.

  'So tell me again about these corpses,' demanded John, belching and picking up his ale jar to wash down the salty fish and the fatty pork.

  Osbert picked up his tale where he had left off. 'I don't know this crabber's name, but I can find out in the morning. He's from up Bigbury way, I know him by sight. Anyway, he takes me to the high-water mark and shows me this body - and damn me, if there wasn't another one, fifty paces away.' -

  The bailiff, sitting with a jar alongside the coroner, took up the tale.

  'When Osbert came back with the news, I went down with two other cottars and searched all along the shore of the bay, this side of the river. We found another dead 'un, then came across the vessel itself, beached fairly high up between the Warren and Sharpland Point.'

  'Why did you think the ship belonged to Thorgils of Dawlish?' bleated Thomas. 'Could you read the name on its bow?'

  William Vado shook his head sadly. 'I've got no learning, sir. But when we-found these poor dead shipmen, I sent back for our priest to shrive them. He's the only man hereabouts who knows his letters and he said the cog was called the Mary and Child Jesus.'

  Osbert piped up again. 'The crabber, who sells his catch and some other fish in Salcombe, says he's seen the vessel berthed there in the past and knew it came from up Dawlish way.' ,

  De Wolfe nodded, as he knew that Thorgils the Boatman, as he was universally known, called at all the South Devon ports to collect cargo for his endless runs back and forth to Normandy and Brittany.

  'But this was no ordinary shipwreck, you claim?'

  Vado shook his blond bullet-head. 'They were knifed, Crowner! No doubt of it, though I make no claim to being either a soldier or an apothecary. That's why I rode straightway to Totnes to ask my lord's steward what was to be done.'

  'And the bodies and the wreck? You have made them secure?' demanded the coroner.

  The bailiff nodded virtuously. 'The cadavers are in the church here. We couldn't leave them on the beach till you came. With tides rising with this moon and the wind freshening, they might have been washed back out to sea. Couldn't do anything with the ship until she's lightened of her cargo, but I've set a man and a boy on guard at the head of the beach to keep off any pillagers.' His face darkened as he contemplated the neighbouring villages. 'Those bloody people from Bigbury and Aveton would strip the wreck down to her last dowel-pins, given half a chance.'

  De Wolfe turned to his officer. 'Gwyn, how many crew does Thorgils usually carry?'

  'Three or four, besides himself, so there's at least one not accounted for. Was he carrying goods for you on his outbound voyage?'

  The coroner nodded. 'He took a cargo of wool bales and some finished cloth from Topsham across to Harfleur. I don't know what he was due to bring back. We had no orders for him, but he's hardly likely to have come back empty.'

  John de Wolfe was in partnership with Hugh de Relaga, one of Exeter's two portreeves, the leaders of the city burgesses. When John had given up campaigning a couple of years earlier, he had invested the loot he had accumulated in two decades of fighting abroad in a wool exporting business with de Relaga. Though he was only a sleeping partner, he derived a steady profit from the enterprise, more than sufficient to fulfill the legal necessity of a coroner having an income of at least twenty pounds a year. This requirement was in theory a safeguard against corruption, as the King's Council naively thought that anyone with such riches would have no need to embezzle from public funds.

  When the visitors had finished the food on the table, they pulled their stools around the edge of the fire-pit and sat with the bailiff and a few of the other villagers. Their pots were refilled by the young servants, and as darkness fell outside rush-lamps were lit and set on sconces around the walls, adding a dim light to the flames that flickered from the fire as more wood was stacked on to it. This was a time of day that John enjoyed, feeling a warm glow from the food and ale inside him and the radiance of the fire outside. Though he was as fond of a woman's company as any man, he felt most at home with plain and sturdy men such as these, telling tales of old battles and country yarns of ghostly hounds and evil spirits roaming the moors.

  There were several former archers among the company tonight, and they could match the tales that Gwyn and John could spin about campaigns in Ireland and France, though unlike the coroner and his officer none had been out to the Holy Land on the last Crusade. The dozen men of Ringmore sat absorbed in the talk, this advent of strangers from Exeter being a welcome novelty in the humdrum life of the village. They sat listening to this pair of big men, for Thomas said almost nothing, the little clerk being half asleep on his stool as he nursed his unwanted ale.

  After a couple of hours swapping yarns, the fatigue of the day and the quarts of ale began to take their toll. The bailiff drifted off to lie with his wife and new baby, while the other men stumbled out int
o the darkness to find their own tofts.

  A couple of older servants carried out palliasses of hessian stuffed with dry ferns and laid them around the fire-pit for the visitors. Wrapped in their freshly dried riding cloaks, the coroner's team gratefully settled down for the night, and soon the hall echoed with Gwyn's snores, which drowned the rustle of rodents in the straw and the dreamy whimpers of the dogs that slept among the men around the fire.

  By dawn, the wind had dropped and the rain had cleared away, so that a watery blue sky streaked with high streamers of cloud greeted the King's officers as they trudged up the muddy track between the manor house and the little church. After quickly breaking their fast on oatmeal gruel and coarse rye bread, with the promise of a better meal later on, they had followed William Vado and his reeve Osbert out into the bailey, where two other men were waiting. One was the sexton, a cottar whose duties included looking after the church, the other the village priest himself, a burly man with cheeks and nose covered with a network of purple veins, which suggested to John that his contacts with the spiritual world came mainly via a wine flask.

  Introduced by the bailiff as Father Walter, the custodian of souls in Ringmore mumbled some curt greeting and set off ahead of them to his church, built in Saxon times. This was a small structure of weathered stone, a bare box barely a dozen paces long. It was roofed with wooden shingles, most of which were thick with moss. There was no bell-arch nor porch - it was just a rectangular room with one door and half a dozen arrow-slits for lighting. It compared poorly in both size and construction with the tithe barn next door, indicating the relative importance which the Archdeacon of Totnes assigned to pastoral duties against the collection of taxes.

  The parish priest crossed the churchyard inside its ring of old yew trees and hauled open the creaking door to admit them. In the pale morning light, de Wolfe saw a bare chamber with a simple table at the far end serving as the altar, bearing a tin cross and two wooden candlesticks.

  'There they are, God rest them,' muttered Walter rather grudgingly, and joined Thomas in making the sign of the Cross. In front of the altar, on the floor of beaten earth, lay three still figures, the upper part of each covered by an empty sack to serve as a shroud.

  John de Wolfe stalked towards them, his characteristic stoop making him appear to the bailiff like some large crow as he hovered over the bodies. Bending, he pulled the sack away from the nearest corpse and Gwyn did the same for the other two.

  'God blast whoever did this!' snarled the coroner. 'It is Thorgils, just as I feared. '

  'And I recognise these other two,' boomed Gwyn. 'They're his crew members, though I don't recall their names.'

  The three cadavers lay pale and waxy on the floor, dressed in the simple attire of shipmen - a short, belted tunic of faded blue and stout breeches, their feet bare.

  Gwyn bent and picked up one of the hands of the man in the middle.

  'Still some death stiffness remaining, so they've not been dead more than a couple of days in this cold weather.' He squinted at the skin of the palms and fingerpads, which was wrinkled and sodden. 'Yet they were long enough in the water to get washerwoman's fingers.'

  John stood silently, looking at the faces of the three victims. Thorgils was a grey-bearded man of about sixty years, the other two were stocky seamen probably in their twenties. As de Wolfe stood in pensive contemplation of a man he had known for much of his life, the bailiff stole a look at the coroner. He saw a tall, sinewy man who gave an overall impression of blackness. At forty-one, De Wolfe still had hair the colour of jet, which he wore longer than most Norman knights, swept back from his forehead and curling down to the nape of his neck. Luxuriant eyebrows of the same colour overhung deep-set dark eyes and his long, gaunt face carried a big hooked nose. Though he had no beard or moustache, his cheeks were usually dark with stubble between his weekly shaves with a sharp knife. The only relieving feature of this forbidding visage was the full lips, which the bailiff suspected were a sign of latent passion and a fondness for the ladies. De Wolfe's garb suited his face, as he wore a long sombre grey tunic under his mottled wolf skin mantle. One of the archers had told Vado that during the campaigns in Ireland the coroner had been known as 'Black John' from his predilection for dark clothing and often equally dark moods.

  De Wolfe suddenly moved, jerking the bailiff from his contemplation of the coroner. 'Let's see these wounds, Gwyn,' he commanded, bending to the corpse of the ship-master. Between them, they unbuckled Thorgils' wide leather belt and raised his tunic.

  'Look on his back, Crowner,' muttered the bailiff, starting forward to help. Turning the body over on to its bearded face, they soon saw that there were two stab wounds in the ship-master's back, between the shoulder blades. The tunic had corresponding cuts, though there was little more than pinkish discoloration on the surrounding cloth. When they looked at the two younger men, the findings were much the same, though one of them had three stab wounds.

  Thomas de Peyne, still sensitive to these sights of fatal violence even after more than a year in the coroner's service, held his hand to his mouth and murmured between his fingers.

  'Why so little blood, Crowner?'

  'They've all been in the damned sea!' grated de Wolfe, his temper made even shorter by the sight of a friend so callously slain - even if he had been cuckolding him for years.

  'Whatever blood escaped has been washed away,' added Gwyn, ever eager to show his expertise in matters of violence. 'That's why the tunic is hardly soiled. He must have been pitched into the water soon after the knifing, so that the blood had no time to congeal in the cloth.'

  William Vado and the men from the village hovered behind the coroner and his men, staring with interest at their activities. Rough countrymen such as these were no strangers to death, whether of animals, their families or their fellows, for life was hard in these remote areas, where disease, accidents and sometimes winter starvation carried off many people before they reached middle age. Murder was quite uncommon, however, and this was a novelty that they had no intention of missing, their eyes following the coroner's hands as he traced the outline of the wounds.

  'These are peculiarly wide stabbings, Gwyn,' growled de Wolfe, pulling the edges of one of the wounds apart with his fingers. 'Surely more than two inches across. What sort of knife made these?'

  The Cornishman, crouching down alongside his master, scratched his russet hair, which was as disheveled as a hayrick in a storm.

  'Not the usual dagger, Crowner! Yet they seem too clean cut for a broadsword. And you don't dig someone two or three times in the back with a sword!'

  John grunted and slid a forefinger into one of the holes. He frowned then pulled it out again and stuck the bloody digit into several more wounds, moving to the other bodies to test them in a similar fashion. His finger penetrated up to the knuckle and when he pulled it out, there was an obscene sucking sound which made the sensitive Thomas shudder.

  'Very odd! I get the feeling that the tracks curve inside the body, rather than go straight in,' de Wolfe muttered, almost to himself. Wiping his finger on the tunic of the youngest corpse, he stood up and stared down again at the bodies. 'No other injuries ... not that the poor devils needed anything more.'

  'And no sign of a fight, for their fists are free of any injury,' added Gwyn. 'Stabbed in the back unawares by some cowardly bastard.'

  De Wolfe glared at his companion. 'I think you mean "bastards",' he corrected. 'One attacker couldn't do this alone without the two other sailors fighting back! The crew must have been jumped by several assailants at the same time.'

  'Especially if there was another seaman whose body hasn't been found,' cut in Thomas, his sharp mind overcoming his repugnance at the morbid scene.

  'Cover the poor devils up again!' commanded the coroner, stepping back to allow the village men to spread the sacks over the victims.

  'There's nothing more we can do for them, but I'll have to hold an inquest later this morning.'

  'What abou
t the corpses?' asked Thomas. 'Will they be buried here or taken back to their homes in Dawlish?' De Wolfe shrugged. 'It's a hell of long way to carry them, either on a cart or slung across the back of sumpter horses. I'll have to ask the families what they want done.'

  'You knew these men before this?' asked the bailiff.

  'I knew Thorgils, the ship-master. He was the main carrier for the goods our merchant enterprise send across to Brittany and Normandy - sometimes even to Flanders.'

  He saw no point in mentioning that Thorgils' wife Hilda had been his mistress on and off since they were both young. The lissom blonde was the daughter of the reeve of Holcombe, one of the de Wolfe family's two manors on the coast near Teignmouth. Though five years older, John had grown up with Hilda, and by the time she was thirteen they were lovers, albeit clandestinely in the hay-loft or out in the woods. He had gone off to the wars before he was twenty, and though they had reconsummated their romance at intervals over the succeeding years, she had eventually married Thorgils, a much older man, while John had been pushed into his loveless marriage with Matilda de Revelle seventeen years earlier.

  As John stood over the slain body of Hilda's husband, he felt a twinge of conscience that he had wronged this old man, even if Thorgils had never known about it. De Wolfe also had to suppress a voice in his head that told him that Hilda was now free, a delectable widow still only in her thirties. His conscience was not troubling him in respect of his own wife, but because of his regular mistress Nesta, the Welsh tavern-keeper with whom he was almost sure he was in love.

  As he stood pensively staring at the hessian-covered corpses, he felt the eyes of the other men upon him, waiting expectantly for his next move.

  'Are we going to look at this vessel now, Crowner?' prompted Gwyn.

  With an almost dog-like shake of his shoulders, John jerked himself back into the present and uttered one of his characteristic throat-clearing noises, which could mean almost anything. Marching towards the door, he beckoned to the others with a sweep of his hand, and a few moments later they were back in the manor bailey, climbing on to their horses, which had been made ready by the youthful grooms.