The Sanctuary Seeker

by Bernard Knight

  He wheedled a night’s lodging, which entailed having little food but an excess of drink, which loosened the tongue of his host to a satisfactory degree. Before they fell on to their hay-filled pallets in the single-roomed house attached to the wooden church, Thomas had extracted all that was known in Sampford Spiney about the dead man Aelfgar.

  ‘He came here more than a month back,’ said the priest thickly, belching out the gas from three quarts of cider. ‘Came on a good big horse late in the evening, when the days were longer. Said he was making for Peter Tavy, and asked for directions. He decided he wouldn’t get there in daylight, as his horse had gone lame. The hag that brews the beer keeps the nearest thing to a tavern in this place – and she has a pallet for the few travellers that may pass through, so he stayed there.’

  ‘Why didn’t anyone, especially the reeve, tell this to the Crowner when he was here after the corpse was discovered?’ asked Thomas. The priest was too fuddled with drink to wonder how his visitor knew what the coroner had been told. John de Wolfe had come briefly to the village with his clerk to hold a cursory inquest, but the priest had not been around that day to recognise his present visitor as the same clerk.

  ‘What? Get the village amerced for keeping quiet about it? Not on your life! He played dumb about everything.’ He sniggered drunkenly. ‘The fellow left after two nights and rode away quite alive. How were we to know that he got himself killed a few miles up the track?’

  ‘But when your shepherds found the body, didn’t they know whose it was? And what happened to his horse?’

  The fat churchman had taken another great mouthful of turbid cider. ‘God alone knows where his horse went – we certainly never saw it again. And as for finding the body, we knew nothing about this new crowner business, nobody ever told us. Let sleeping dogs lie, I say – and dead men, eh?’

  He had cackled with laughter and swayed dangerously on his stool, the only furniture in the room apart from a rickety table.

  Now, as Thomas lay on his straw in the undercroft, his mind moved on to today, when he had come from Sampford Spiney to Peter Tavy. Although there was little communication between villages, he couldn’t keep using the parish-priest network, so a few miles out of the village, he tethered his mule deep in the trees, on a long rope that would allow him plenty of grazing for a day. From his saddlebag he produced the robe he had acquired a long time ago, after the funeral of a Cistercian in Winchester. Cutting a staff from the forest, he walked into Peter Tavy, hoping that no one would comment on the fresh white wood at the cut end – or his lack of a monk’s tonsure. If asked about his long hair, he was ready to say that it had grown back during the three-month pilgrimage to St David’s and that he had vowed not to restore it until he reached his home monastery near Plymouth. As it turned out, no one had been the slightest bit curious, wanting only to hear about the big wide world beyond their constricted horizons.

  He lay watching the night sky, and recalled the information he had gleaned from the kitchen staff, the grooms and a few old men who sat around the fire in the undercroft, too arthritic to work any longer in the field strips.

  It seemed certain that Aelfgar of Totnes had never arrived at Peter Tavy, even though he had set out from Sampford Spiney with the stated intention of making that his next destination. It was only five miles away, little more than a hour’s journey even on a plodding horse, but he had ended up as a mouldering corpse on Heckwood Tor, about half-way between the two villages. No one in the manor had ever heard of Aelfgar, which tallied with the story of the Totnes priest, who said that the man had had no link with Hubert de Bonneville when he left his own village. Having drawn a blank on the Saxon squire, the clerk had soaked up as much local gossip as possible. It seemed that the dying lord of the manor, Sir Arnulph, had been popular among the freemen and serfs alike. He had been a relatively easy-going master, firm but fair, and the village had prospered for years without fighting or famine. They did not seem so complacent about the rest of the family.

  ‘That Hubert was a painful fellow,’ confided one old man, between the fits of bronchitic coughing that racked his body every few minutes. ‘He thought he was lord long before our master had his seizure, throwing his weight about and altering the way we’d done things for years back.’

  Another rheumy old fellow nodded agreement. ‘A cold fish he was, full of religion and morals. Should have been a priest – begging your own pardon, Brother. That’s what decided him to take the Cross and go off to the Holy Land against his father’s desires.’

  ‘Good riddance, some of us said,’ added the first old man, reckless in his old age. ‘I never wished him dead like this, but we were glad to see him go away. Though he left a brood of brothers and cousins behind him who have prospered since Sir Arnulph suffered his apoplexy.’

  Thomas gathered that Gervaise de Bonneville was more popular than his slain brother, and the younger brother, Martyn, was looked upon as a child by the villagers, overshadowed by Gervaise. But there were three cousins, adult sons of a dead elder brother of Arnulph, who had designs on the two manors. They were manoeuvring with Winchester to be given a share of the land when Arnulph died, as the Crown now held the ultimate overlordship.

  ‘Them cousins would like to see the other two brothers dead, as well as Hubert,’ cackled the second old man. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if Gervaise has a nasty accident in the forest before long.’

  This started a heated argument among the grandfathers around the fire, some slandering the cousins, others defending them, but there was no more hard information for Thomas to mull over. He pulled his disguise more closely about him and composed himself for sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In which Crowner John makes an arrest

  While his clerk was wandering the cold wastes of Dartmoor, Sir John de Wolfe had been consolidating his improved relations with his wife. As the maid had predicted, the solar door had been left open for him the previous night and he regained his place in the connubial bed, even if it was on the edge furthest away from his wife.

  The next evening, he returned home early from a day spent at three hangings and an inquest on a child who had drowned in a well in St Sidwell’s. Matilda was sitting by the fire and gave him a subdued but civil greeting. John carefully launched into a neutral conversation, which developed into a discussion about a donation she wished him to make to her favourite church, St Olave’s. John thought that her excessive show of piety and devotion to the church was more a social charade than true religious belief, but for the sake of peace he would have been willing to offer a gift to Saladin’s revered mosque. By the time Mary arrived with the evening meal, they were talking together in a stilted but formally polite manner.

  As things seemed to be going uncommonly well, John decided to consolidate the truce by asking Matilda’s opinion on his current investigation. He recounted all that had happened in the past week or so, carefully avoiding any criticism of her brother.

  ‘So at least now we know who the two dead men are – the eldest son of a Norman lord and his squire, both recently returned from the Holy Land. But the question is, why were they killed?’

  The square face of his wife looked into the flickering fire as if to gain inspiration. ‘Do you think it was by the same hand, John?’ she asked, with a studied politeness the equal of his own restrained tones.

  He bent forward in his monk’s chair, his hands cupped around a glass of mulled wine. ‘More than one hand, that’s for sure. Both were assaulted by at least a pair of assassins. The wounds were similar in some ways, both stabbed in the back. But that is such a common type of murderous wound that it doesn’t signify a great deal. And one had his throat cut, the other had limb wounds typical of a sword fight.’

  ‘What does that tell you?’

  ‘Not a lot, I’m afraid,’ replied John ruefully.

  Matilda tucked her heavy skirt closer around her legs as a sudden draught sighed across the floor from the east wind gusting outside. ‘If the knight
and his squire had been travelling together, I can see it could have been a casual robbery by outlaws,’ she observed carefully. ‘But the two men were ambushed weeks apart and in different places. That seems too much to be a coincidence.’

  ‘Exactly what I think,’ said John, eager to agree with her. If he had to live with her – and the alternative posed many difficulties – then he may as well try to avoid eternal daily strife.

  ‘Who knew about them travelling westwards from Southampton?’ she asked, detective fever beginning to stir in her voluminous breast.

  ‘Many of those returning from Palestine, I suppose,’ he answered slowly. ‘And that Nebba fellow, who keeps cropping up. And, of course, Alan Fitzhai.’

  His wife steepled her fingers in a judicial gesture. ‘This Fitzhai certainly seems the most likely candidate. He had an admitted feud with de Bonneville and you have only his word as to when he was travelling back from Plymouth, which puts him within striking distance of Widecombe.’

  The coroner nodded, though he was reluctant to abandon his own illogical prejudice that Alan Fitzhai was not the man they sought. ‘He could have been there for de Bonneville’s killing, admittedly – but if the slaying of his squire is linked with it, he could not have been on Heckwood Tor weeks before as he was known to have been in Southampton at that time.’

  Matilda was equally unwilling to concede a point against her own theory. ‘He could have used an agent, some footpad he could have paid to follow the squire fellow – God knows, there’s no lack of hired killers about these days. I don’t know what the world’s coming to with all this violence.’

  Her husband grunted, torn between argument and his desire for peace. ‘There’s also this Saxon archer, this Nebba?’ he suggested.

  ‘Does he have an alibi for either killing?’ demanded Matilda, reluctant to give up Fitzhai as her prime suspect.

  John shook his head, his black locks swirling about his neck. ‘The timing is too vague for that. This Welsh archer Gwyn found in Southampton, he had no real idea of when the fellow vanished. Nebba could have been involved in either of the murders. But why, in God’s name, should he be?’

  ‘He’s a mercenary and an outlaw, so you say. Just the type to be hired for a killing. What if this Fitzhai paid him to follow the squire and dispatch him?’

  ‘There must have been more than one. The squire was an experienced fighter, fresh home from the wars.’

  ‘So? There are plenty of ruffians eager to kill for a mark or two.’

  Her tone was becoming more triumphant and was beginning to weaken his hunch about Fitzhai’s innocence – she could destroy every objection he put up.

  ‘I think the answer lies at the Dartmoor end, rather than in Southampton or France,’ John said doggedly.

  ‘It might be both, husband. They were killed out west, surely, but the cause may be elsewhere. If Nebba sold de Bonneville’s horse to the Widecombe reeve, can you really believe that he came upon it innocently, wandering in the forest?’

  She smoothed her skirt in a preening fashion. ‘If I were you, I’d find this eight-fingered bowman and put him to the Ordeal too.’

  As Thomas de Peyne was away for almost three days, the affair of the slain Crusaders fell into abeyance and the coroner relapsed into his usual routine.

  Gwyn reported that, contrary to pessimistic forecasts, Alan Fitzhai was surviving and that his fever was abating, in spite of the adverse ministrations of the ignorant gaol-keeper.

  John had tried to get the man moved to the convent, but the sheriff had resolutely forbidden this. The coroner cynically suspected that his brother-in-law hoped that Fitzhai would die of blood-poisoning and so solve the awkward dilemma of whether to try him in the county court, then hang him, or leave him to the Justices in Eyre and then hang him.

  Gwyn also reported that Eadred of Dawlish, the pig-keeper stabbed outside the Saracen tavern, had died in spite of the frantic ministrations of his young assailant to keep him alive. Another arrest and hanging seemed imminent.

  In the late afternoon of the third day, the coroner and his officer were in the gatehouse chamber when a weary Thomas limped up the stairs, having left his even wearier mule in the castle stables.

  John was sitting at his trestle, silently and laboriously mouthing the Latin exercises given to him that morning by his tutor at the cathedral. Gwyn was idly sharpening the blade of his dagger on the soft red stone of the window-sill, but stopped to make a ribald comment about the bedraggled clerk who appeared in the doorway. However, with actions belying his words, he rose to get the little man a hunk of bread and cheese from their wall-shelf and pushed him onto a stool while he poured him a mug of cider, knowing his dislike of beer.

  ‘The wanderer returns!’ shouted the coroner, surprised at how glad he was to see the fellow home safe and sound after three days’ solitary travelling in a lonely area that seemed overburdened with slain corpses.

  They listened attentively to his story, without interruptions or even Gwyn’s usual quips, and John de Wolfe, covertly rolling up his reading homework away from Thomas’s inquisitive eyes, sat back for a moment’s thought.

  ‘So now we know that both de Bonneville and his squire were killed within twelve miles of each other, both en route for Peter Tavy, which neither reached alive.’

  Gwyn, ready to split hairs, pointed out that although the bodies were found within that distance, they may not have been murdered there.

  ‘No one is going to carry corpses far, man,’ snapped John, in irritation at his train of thought being disturbed. ‘But why were they killed so far apart in time? From Thomas’s information, this Aelfgar left Sampford Spiney a few weeks before Hubert was slain.’

  Gwyn scratched at the fleas in his red hair. ‘I was told in Southampton that de Bonneville stayed behind to sell his loot and pay off his men, sending his squire ahead to announce his coming to the family.’

  ‘Like John the Baptist and the Lord Christ,’ added Thomas devoutly, crossing himself with a lump of cheese. He ventured another observation, echoing Matilda’s views of a few nights earlier. ‘It seems too much of a coincidence that both master and servant were killed in the same area, in much the same fashion but weeks apart. Yet I saw hardly a soul on those evil moors. There’s nothing there except foxes, sheep and crows.’

  ‘If they were ambushed, the killers must have known when they were coming,’ observed the coroner, contemplatively. He turned to his clerk. ‘How long did this Aelfgar spend in Sampford Spiney?’

  ‘Two nights, the priest said. His horse went lame and he rested it for a day before going on.’

  ‘And the village is only a few miles from Peter Tavy?’

  ‘You could walk between them in under two hours,’ replied Thomas. ‘That’s why I dressed as a Cistercian, in case someone in Peter Tavy knew I’d already been snooping in Sampford.’

  John thought this through. ‘This Aelfgar made no secret of being Hubert’s squire?’

  ‘No, I expect everyone in Sampford knew it.’

  ‘So some thatcher or pedlar could have carried the fact to Peter Tavy the next day?’

  ‘No reason why not.’

  John looked across at Gwyn and, almost in unison, they both grunted under their breath.

  The sheriff was openly contemptuous of John’s suspicions and would hear nothing in favour of questioning the de Bonnevilles. ‘Are you mad, brother-in-law?’ he fumed, as they sat each side of the table in his chamber in the castle keep. ‘The Bishop is a great friend of the family. He has already chided both of us – especially you – for not finding a culprit for Hubert’s death. And now we have had God’s signal from the Ordeal that this odious man Fitzhai is the villain!’ He banged the table hard with his fist. ‘Can you imagine my going to the Bishop’s palace and telling Henry Marshall that we suspect someone in the household of his sick old friend? You must have taken leave of your senses, John.’

  The coroner could see that the sheriff was adamant and would not be swayed an i
nch by argument, so he stood up and banged the table himself. ‘Very well. You have no power over my inquiries, Richard. I will ride to Peter Tavy and see what I can discover.’ He marched to the stairway door.

  De Revelle shouted at his back, ‘The Bishop will crucify you for this, you fool! With Hubert Walter coming here within a week or two, you’ll be lucky to keep your head, let alone your coronership.’

  But John had vanished down the stairs, muttering oaths against the whole de Revelle clan, male and female.

  Next afternoon, the coroner and his officer arrived at the stockade of Peter Tavy after a hard ride from Exeter, stopping only to feed their horses and themselves.

  John had had no need for his clerk and left him at home to recover from his three-day mule ride. A greater problem had been Matilda: his recent return to favour was likely to be sabotaged by another night away from home so soon after their rapprochement. He carefully broached the subject at supper-time, emphasising the importance of clearing up this double murder to satisfy the concerns of dear Bishop Marshall who, to the obsessively religious Matilda, was only slightly less revered than the Pope or God Himself. He carefully omitted any reference to her brother’s antagonism to his plans and prayed that the man would not turn up at the house to see her before he left for Peter Tavy in the early morning.

  Rather to his surprise, she took the news of his absence with good grace. Still rather distant, her attitude of formal politeness rather than warmth, she murmured with a sniff or two into her kerchief, that she supposed that he had to do what duty demanded.

  Next day, John dismounted at the foot of the stairway leading into Peter Tavy’s hall and looked around him. The place seemed quiet, much less active than on their last visit. Smoke still rose from the kitchen eaves, but hardly anyone was about, just a few figures in the distance. No one came to take their horses and Gwyn had to shout into the undercroft arches to find a snivelling youth to take the bridles.