The Tinner's Corpse

by Bernard Knight

  As the wily old soldier Gabriel motioned to his few men to move into the crowd, Richard de Revelle stood up in front of his granite throne and threw up his arms, fists clenched. ‘Be still, all of you!’ he screamed.

  The sudden shout echoed down the slope and the unruly tinners subsided as quickly as they had become inflamed, turning away from their quarrels to see who had spoken.

  As the sheriff glowered around the assembly, John felt a twinge of admiration for him, a sensation foreign to him as his usual feelings for de Revelle were of dislike, distaste and contempt. But now, the little jutting beard and cold eyes had imposed his will on a hundred and more tough men, who fell silent to listen to him.

  ‘Have a care as to what you say, Knapman!’ the sheriff carried on. ‘I am appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries by order of the King and his Council. To claim that I should be removed from this office comes dangerously near treason.’

  Knapman was not intimidated by this open threat. ‘Sheriff, how do we know what coinage has been fixed by that Council – if any has been fixed at all? You pay a large sum to Winchester as part of the county farm and much of that comes from the tin taxes. But how do we know how much that should be?’

  ‘And how much of it actually reaches Winchester?’ yelled a voice from the crowd, wisely letting his voice come from behind the shelter of another’s back.

  ‘Am I being accused of embezzlement, damn you?’ shouted back an infuriated de Revelle.

  There were several calls of ‘Yes, yes’, but again the owners of the voices could not be identified, and Gabriel certainly made no effort to grab any culprits.

  De Wolfe’s momentary spasm of admiration for the sheriff had faded and his face cracked into a rare grin as the bolder tinners gave vent to their opinion of the sheriff’s honesty.

  Then Acland’s voice rose above the cat-calls and shouts. ‘Treason be damned! We tinners equal the woolmen in bringing wealth to Devon and taxes into the King’s coffers. I agree that we need a Warden who will speak for us, fight for us. But it doesn’t have to mean yet more fawning to Walter Knapman. It must be a free election, the choice of a majority of all tinners, through their jurates.’

  This started another round of yelling and it was again apparent to the coroner that Knapman would easily win any vote, if it ever came to that. Richard de Revelle was also well aware of who was likely to succeed him if he was ousted, and he marked down Knapman as a serious threat to what he creamed off the coinage fees destined for the iron-bound Treasury chest in Winchester Castle. From this point on, the assembly became disordered and confused, with yells, shouts and hotly-contested arguments all over the rocky arena.

  The sheriff’s remonstrations now had little effect and, at a sign from him, Gabriel reluctantly took his men into the throng and half-heartedly began laying about them with their staves. De Revelle watched for a few moments, then, with an angry shrug, got up and walked away. Fitz-Peters and de Wrotham accompanied him to their tethered horses.

  John tapped Gwyn’s shoulder, distracting the big Cornishman from his delighted viewing of the mêlée. ‘Come on, let’s start for home. The fun’s all over here.’

  As they trudged down the slope towards Wistman’s Wood, where they had left Odin and the brown mare, Gwyn began chuckling through his magnificent moustache. ‘Acland hates Knapman, Knapman hates Acland, they both hate the sheriff and the sheriff hates Knapman. Where will it all end, I wonder?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  In which Crowner John suffers pangs of jealousy

  The next day was Sunday and John de Wolfe decided to use it to placate the women in his life. This rare altruism was not due to pious motives because it was the Sabbath, but because he had no urgent business that day.

  Though her reaction was hardly effusive, Matilda was pleased and surprised when he volunteered to accompany her to Mass that morning at St Olave’s. For years past, she had berated him about his lukewarm attitude to religion and only managed to nag him to church about once a month, so his spontaneous offer to escort her was unusual. In fact, the unChristian thought passed through her mind that he was either atoning for some recent sin against her of which she knew nothing – or was contemplating some transgression and salving his conscience in advance.

  Her husband’s attitude to the Church was one of indifference, rather than the hostility professed by Gwyn. De Wolfe believed in God, as did everyone else, apart from a few crazed heretics. It was not something he thought about, it was a part of living, like eating and making love. But he had no interest in contemplating the tenets of Christianity or the complex rituals of the clergy, which he thought pointless mummery. He accepted that after death there was either heaven or hell, for that was what families and priests drummed into one from infancy. But his fate after he expired was a matter of indifference to him. Walking with Matilda down the high street towards her favourite church was no act of faith or worship to de Wolfe but a duty he bore with an inward sigh. The prospect of standing in a draughty hall for an hour while a fat and unctuous parish priest droned away in Latin, was one he bore with fortitude rather than devotion.

  Matilda held his arm possessively as they walked across Carfoix to the top of Fore Street and the last hundred paces to St Olave’s, obscurely named after the first Christian king of Norway. She wore one of her best kirtles, a green brocade garment that covered her stocky form from neck to ankle, girdled with a plaited silk cord around her thickened waist. A good cloak in thick brown wool protected her from the keen breeze of early April, and under its hood, her hair was hidden beneath a stiff linen cover-chief. A white silk gorget was pinned up behind each ear, framing her face and draped down over her neck and bosom.

  As a further sop to her approval, John wore his best grey tunic over long hose, cross-gartered to the knee. His black cloak was a great square of worsted, secured by one top corner being pushed through a large silver ring sewn over his left shoulder. His long hair was partly constrained by a tight-fitting grey linen helmet, over which he wore a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat.

  As they approached the entrance to the little church, Matilda smiled archly at other worshippers clustered near the door, nodding graciously to some and tightening her grip on her husband’s arm, to emphasise her relationship to such an important law officer. As the others acknowledged her, de Wolfe nodded reluctantly to them and made his usual incoherent rumbling that passed for a greeting.

  For the next hour, he stood uncomfortably on the cold flagstones of St Olave’s with his hat in his hand, shifting from foot to foot and getting a hard nudge from Matilda’s elbow when his restlessness became too apparent.

  It was more of a relief than a devotional experience when it was time to join the few dozen other worshippers in shuffling up to the altar step to receive the holy sacrament. The corpulent priest, whom Matilda seemed to revere almost as much as the Pope, finished the service with a gabbled tirade in incomprehensible Latin and at last John escaped thankfully into the chill wind that blew up from the river.

  Outside the door, many of the congregation lurked on the dried mire of the roadway for their Sunday gossip, which de Wolfe suspected was mainly to allow them to show off and compare each other’s Sabbath dress. Some of the men were more brightly attired than their wives and daughters, with tunics, surcoats and breeches in gaudy reds and greens. A few were affecting the bizarre footwear that the sheriff favoured, with pointed toes curling back to their ankles. De Wolfe was the odd one out, in his sombre grey and black, and stood morosely while Matilda chattered to several of the wives. He knew most of them by sight from previous pilgrimages to the church, though one heavily built woman of middle age was a stranger. He noticed her particularly, as she had a palsy of the mouth, with one side drooping and leaking spittle, which she constantly dabbed with a piece of cloth. She seemed quite fit otherwise and her affliction failed to curb her garrulity, as John stood hunched and impatient, waiting to detach his wife from the gossip.

  Eventually the group dispersed and,
anxious for his dinner, he strode away with Matilda almost running alongside him.

  ‘Why don’t you talk more to these people, John?’ she panted crossly. ‘Many have influence in the guilds and even with the canons. You’re no help at all in my efforts to make us a useful part of the county society.’

  ‘County society be damned!’ he growled. ‘I see enough of them in the courts and strutting about their manors.’

  He realised that his wife must be getting over her recent melancholy, when her brother had fallen into disgrace and John himself had shamed her with his other women. Now she was becoming her old self again, nagging and pushing him to play the courtier. He tried to decide which he liked least, the scowling misery of her depression or the constant irritation of her prodding him into unwanted activity.

  After a few more yards, Matilda spoke again. ‘That apothecary should be put in the stocks!’

  De Wolfe looked down at her blankly. She was prone to uttering these obscure statements and he had no idea what she meant. ‘That poor lady with the twisted mouth – it’s getting no better after a month.’

  He waited silently. She would make some sense eventually.

  ‘The new apothecary, that young fellow from Plymouth. He should be run out of the city.’

  De Wolfe sighed as they turned into Martin’s Lane. ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘Pulled her tooth out, a lower one at the back, and afterwards the side of her face slipped down. Incompetent fool!’

  The previous apothecary in the shop near St Olave’s had been hanged for murder some months back and this new one was his successor. Thankfully, palsies of the face did not come within a coroner’s jurisdiction and he was content to leave the competence of leeches to the city guild-masters. As he pushed open his front door for her to enter, he asked idly, ‘I’ve not seen her before. Who is she?’

  ‘Her name’s Madge – Madge Knapman.’

  After the rumpus on Crockern Tor the previous day, de Wolfe felt a prickle of interest. The name was not uncommon around the moor, but there were only a few in Exeter. As Lucille appeared in the passage to take Matilda’s cloak, he asked casually, ‘What does her husband do, if she has one?’

  ‘Matthew Knapman? He’s a merchant. He deals in tin, I believe. He has a twin brother in an important way of business in that place you’ve been skulking this week – Chagford.’ She pushed open the door of the hall. ‘Matthew must be doing very well, too. That mantle and gown his wife was wearing this morning must have cost a few marks.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Some men don’t mind spending their money on their wives, not like others I could mention.’

  John carefully avoided rising to that bait and, for the time being, forgot about Walter Knapman’s twin brother.

  After their midday meal was over, Matilda retired to her bed in the solar and de Wolfe settled by the hearth with another mug of ale to wait until his wife was sound asleep. Then he whistled for his old hound Brutus and went out to the vestibule for his short cloak. As he was pulling open the iron-bound oak door to the street, Mary appeared from the backyard, her handsome face glowing from attending the fire in her cook-shed. A dead goose hung by its neck from one hand and she held a wicked-looking cleaver in the other.

  De Wolfe grinned crookedly at her. ‘I trust that weapon is to cut off the bird’s head, not mine!’ he chaffed, slipping an arm around her shoulders. The maid pulled away from his embrace, but not too far. Until a few months ago, de Wolfe had had the occasional romp with Mary in her backyard dwelling, but the arrival of Matilda’s nosy maid had forced the maid to deny him her favours. They still remained firm friends, rather than master and servant, and Mary looked after his material wants far better than most wives.

  ‘It’s not your head that needs cutting off, Sir Crowner,’ she replied tartly. ‘If the mistress finds out that you called at Dawlish two weeks ago, you’d best wear your chain-mail over your nether regions.’

  John gave her a firm squeeze and planted a kiss on her lips. ‘If that other lady down in Idle Lane knew it, I’d need my iron-bound shield as well.’ His smile faded and Mary saw that he was worried. ‘Though lately I doubt that Nesta would take much interest in my escapades.’ In low tones, in case Matilda’s poisonous French acolyte came within earshot, de Wolfe told Mary of the presence in the tavern of the new man.

  She sighed and sat on the bench inside the front door, the goose on her lap. ‘I’ve heard the gossip from the Bush, and some weeks ago Nesta told me that she was seeing less of you now, because you were always busy.’ She wagged the cleaver at him, genuine concern on her face. ‘Pay more attention to your inn-keeper, or you’ll surely lose her,’ she advised seriously. ‘It’s up to you, unless you want to do the honourable thing and cleave only to your wife.’

  With that wise counsel in his ear, de Wolfe loped off across the cathedral Close, with Brutus close behind. The hound was constantly diverted by the piles of rubbish, dumped offal and open grave-pits that so sadly diminished the grandeur of the huge building, recently completed after old Bishop Warelwast began it eighty years earlier. With many half-annoyed, half-affectionate curses and whistles, the coroner finally got his dog to Idle Lane, some dozen leg-cockings distant.

  Again there was no sign of the landlady in the big smoky room of the inn, as John settled himself on his bench. Edwin, the old potman, brought him a quart pot of ale and threw a beef bone on to the rushes beneath the table for Brutus. ‘The missus is out the back, Cap’n, seein’ to the cookin’.’ This time, he made no suggestive hints about her mood or the presence of Alan, who was also absent from the ale-room.

  The coroner sat moodily sipping his drink, which seemed below the usual high standard of the Bush’s brewing. He stared into the glowing fire, piled high with beech logs, as the weather had turned unseasonally cold after the first promise of spring the previous week. He thought about his relations with his wife, with Nesta, and of his visit to Dawlish not long before, when he called upon Hilda, wife of Thorgils the Boatman. She was a childhood sweetheart from his boyhood in Stoke-in-Teignhead, a blonde Saxon beauty who had married another during his many years’ absence at the wars. Though the Welsh Nesta was the nearest thing to the love of his life, the gaily sensuous Hilda came a close second.

  His reverie was interrupted by a movement at his feet and, looking down, he saw that Brutus had abandoned his bone and was standing under the table, staring intently towards the door, his bushy tail waving in excited welcome. De Wolfe had no need to follow the hound’s gaze, as he knew it would be Gwyn, who had a remarkable rapport with most animals, especially dogs. A heavy lurch alongside him and a quaking of the bench announced the arrival of his massive henchman. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come with news of more work for us?’ groaned the coroner.

  The Cornishman shook his head, his usually lugubrious face beaming with good nature. ‘Fear not, Crowner, I felt like a jar or two and a bit of peace. Those offspring of mine are like bluebottles in a box.’ Gwyn lived in a hut with his wife, his mother-in-law and two young sons. Edwin brought him ale, and at the first mouthful, Gwyn made a face. ‘What the hell’s this? Tastes like camel piss, not Nesta’s usual brew.’ He sucked the offending liquid from his moustache, and looked around the room. ‘Where is she, anyway?’

  ‘In the cook-shed, so Edwin says,’ grunted de Wolfe. His tone warned Gwyn to keep off the subject and he fell silent, but in a moment, his master spoke again. ‘I heard from my wife today that Walter Knapman has a twin brother in the city, also in the tin trade.’

  His officer’s heavy brow creased in thought, as he fondled the hound’s ears under the table. ‘Knapman? There’s a few Knapmans here, but only one deals in tin that I know of. Though he looks nothing like Walter, if they’re supposed to be twins.’

  ‘Yet if he is a tin trader, it seems likely they are related. Matthew is his name.’

  Gwyn bobbed his head, his ginger hair flailing like a dozen cat’s tails. ‘Matthew, that’s the one! He has a dwelling and a warehouse just
inside the Watergate, close by the quayside. I suppose much of his tin goes out by ship.’

  They fell into a companionable silence again, though John was anxiously awaiting the appearance of Nesta, to gauge her mood today. There was still no sign of her and soon he felt the need to dispose of some of the ale he had been drinking since dinner-time. He rose from the bench and threaded his way through the other patrons to the door to the backyard, where there was a privy-pit behind a wattle screen, next to the pig-sty, hen-coop and laundry-shed. On the way back down the yard, he looked into the door of the cook-shed to see if Nesta was there, but only two giggling serving maids were inside, one stirring a large iron pot hanging from a trivet over the fire.

  Opposite was the brew-house, a thatched shed the size of the kitchen. The door was closed but he heard Nesta’s voice through the ragged planks. Pulling it open, he stuck his head inside, intending to open their dialogue by mischievously complaining about the quality of her ale.

  The tavern-keeper was certainly attending to her brew – she was leaning against a large vat with a long ladle in her hand – but her other hand was around Alan of Lyme’s neck, and both his arms were tightly around her waist.

  At the creak of the door their heads snapped round and Nesta’s face crimsoned instantly. De Wolfe’s first thought was to stride forward and throw the young man head first into the vat of mash. Then a sudden vision of an old fool being cuckolded by a callow youth came into his head, followed by an image of a beautiful blonde Saxon. He stepped back, slammed the crude door so hard that one leather hinge ripped away, then marched grimly back into the tavern.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In which Crowner John attends a fire

  The cold, dry weather broke overnight and John de Wolfe was awakened around dawn by the crash of thunder and the hammering of torrential rain on the stone tiles of the roof above the solar. Gusts of a westerly wind blew drops of water through the gaps around the window shutters and one hit him in the eye as he opened it reluctantly.