The Awful Secret Read online

  Slowly the man lifted his head enough to turn it to face the coroner. ‘Neither, damn you! I killed a man in fair fight, after he cheated me at dice in a tavern in Lyme. But the bailiffs gave false witness. The man I fought was cousin to a burgess and the court condemned me in five minutes.’

  ‘So you escaped and ran for the woods?’

  ‘My wife and my mother paid a bribe to the gaoler – it left them destitute and they lost their breadwinner, for I was an ironsmith. I’ve not seen them since – nor never will now.’

  The story was too familiar to tug at anyone’s heartstrings. The man was no more than twenty-five, by the looks of him, though he was filthy and dressed in little better than rags.

  ‘What are we to do with him?’ asked Gwyn, still fingering the hilt of his sword. ‘It would be kinder to put him out of his misery, not leave him there in the road, paralysed with a broken back.’

  While he was thinking of an answer, de Wolfe noticed that both their horses were wandering down the road, nibbling at choice clumps of new spring grass that were appearing along the verges. They both walked over to take their bridles and turn them to bring them back to the scene of the fight.

  A sudden movement of the surviving outlaw drew their eyes back to him and they saw that he had solved the problem himself. The dagger that he had tried to stick in the coroner was lying near his outstretched hand. Seizing it in one hand, he used the other with one last despairing effort to lift himself off the road. Holding the knifepoint upwards against his breast, the hilt against the ground, he lurched downwards to force the sharp point into his heart. With a bubbling cry, which sounded almost like joy, he released himself from an intolerable life, dying in the dirt of the king’s highway. Gwyn and his master stood holding their reins, their eyes meeting after they watched the last convulsive spasm of the body.

  ‘That’s settled that, then,’ grunted Gwyn.

  De Wolfe climbed on to Odin, his leg still giving him a twinge of pain. ‘I’ll call out the manor reeve from Ide when we pass through. He’ll have to send someone to bury these corpses in the forest. They can’t be left here to stink.’

  Before riding off, he took one last look at the dead outlaw and again the fleeting thought came into his mind: where had the spirit of the man gone in the last few minutes? Was killing a man any different from sticking a pig? Or was there something extra that made a body, arms and legs into an ironsmith?

  He cursed himself for foolishness – he must be getting old to start this wondering what secrets the grave held for him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In which Crowner John hears much about Templars

  On his return to Exeter in the early evening, John rode straight up to Rougemont to see his brother-in-law. Gwyn came into the city with him, instead of going to his dwelling in St Sidwell’s, just outside the East Gate, as his wife and family were staying with her sister in Milk Street.

  De Wolfe found Richard de Revelle in his official chamber in the keep, in discussion with the castle constable, Ralph Morin. A flask of wine was open on the table and the sheriff motioned John to fill himself a pewter goblet. It was a good red vintage from Aquitaine and the coroner relished taking something expensive from his notoriously mean brother-in-law. ‘Our trip to the north produced nothing useful,’ he began. ‘The village of Appledore could barely raise a couple of rowing boats.’

  De Revelle nodded languidly, as if already bored by the coroner’s presence. ‘I’ve already heard that from Ralph here, whose sergeant reported to him. I tell you, it’s Lundy we should be looking at. They’ve harboured pirates for centuries.’

  De Wolfe looked across at the constable, who stood solidly in the centre of the chamber, his feet apart and his arms crossed as if he had grown out of the floor. His grizzled grey hair and matching forked beard, together with his chain-mail hauberk and massive sword, suggested that he had just stepped off a Norse longboat. ‘Dressed for battle, Ralph?’ he asked.

  Morin grinned, his rough, weather-beaten cheeks wrinkling. ‘No, John, there was no attack on the city today. I’ve been down at Bull Mead putting the garrison through some exercises. All these years of peace are turning them soft. We need a good war to sharpen them up.’

  ‘We nearly had one a few months ago,’ muttered de Wolfe, and there was an awkward silence in the room as the constable and the coroner avoided looking at the sheriff.

  ‘Gabriel told me about the ride to the north coast,’ said Morin, to cover the hiatus. ‘He says there were no signs at all of any looted goods or ships that might have been involved in piracy.’

  John nodded in agreement. ‘That’s right, though they might have concealed goods in any of a hundred barns around the countryside. But galleys with a bank of oars, as that young Breton described, can’t easily be hidden out of sight.’

  ‘There are scores of small coves and bays up there where a ship or two could be hidden off the beaten track,’ objected Richard.

  Morin grunted again. ‘I’m no sailor, but that exposed coast gives no shelter except at known harbours.’

  De Wolfe poured himself another brimming goblet of wine, ignoring a scowl from de Revelle. ‘They may be from far away, of course,’ he said, ‘from Ireland, Brittany or Galicia in Spain. There have even been attacks from Turks and Moors in the past. For centuries our Viking ancestors used to come from Scandinavia to terrorise the Severn Sea.’

  ‘What about the Scilly Isles? The whole population down there seem to be robbers,’ suggested Morin.

  De Revelle poured himself some wine, taking the opportunity to move the flask as far as possible from his brother-in-law. ‘Wherever they come from, they must have a base within striking distance – they can’t stay at sea indefinitely. And they need somewhere to store their booty, so I still say Lundy is the place. Since the de Mariscos came there, there’s been nothing but trouble – look at this business with the Templars.’

  De Wolfe pricked up his ears at the mention of the Knights of the Cross. ‘Is anything new happening over that matter?’

  The sheriff shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. But it’s high time that that nest of vipers on the island was wiped out. If the king spent more time looking after his affairs at home, maybe something would be done about it.’

  This time, the coroner suffered no awkward silence, but met the sheriff head on. ‘Richard, forget any ideas about a new king doing a better job. Remember your own position in this – the king we have is the king we keep!’

  Faced with this blunt warning, de Revelle reddened but left the sensitive subject of an absentee monarch and reverted to the problem of Lundy, which was within his jurisdiction of Devon. ‘I will do something about it, never fear! Last year, my predecessor fined William de Marisco three hundred marks for failing to deliver up to the Templars – and I’ll impose the same amercement this year!’

  De Wolfe’s lean face creased into a sardonic smile. ‘For God’s sake, what use is that? He ignored the fine last year and will ignore any you put upon him in the future. The only penalty de Marisco will heed is force of arms.’

  Richard banged his empty goblet petulantly on the table. ‘And that’s damned difficult on an island like Lundy. Half the time, you can’t get near the place because of the weather – and when it’s calm, any invader can be seen coming from ten miles, unless there’s a sea fog.’

  De Wolfe became impatient with his brother-in-law. ‘Make up your mind, Richard! The other day you said Lundy was none of your business. Now you claim you want to deal with de Marisco, so who has changed your mind? Then, in the same breath, you say it’s impossible.’

  The constable’s deep voice asked a question. ‘What’s the story behind this Templar claim to the island? I know nothing of its history.’

  The coroner perched himself on the corner of de Revelle’s table. ‘After the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, King Henry, back in ’fifty-five, declared that all royal lands granted away in Stephen’s reign be handed back to the Crown – or so my know
ledgeable clerk tells me. William de Marisco ignored this. It was rumoured that he was a bastard son of the first King Henry, so maybe he felt he had a better claim than anyone. But five years later the king granted the island to the Knights Templar as part of his contribution to their Order. Not that they needed any more possessions, they were so rich by then, but I suppose he wanted to keep in good favour with the Pope, who was partial to the Templars.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘A party of Templars – knights, sergeants and servants – tried to take possession, but William prevented them from landing. They were lucky not to be drowned.’

  ‘They tried several more times, but the same thing happened,’ added the sheriff morosely. ‘Then, instead, the Templars were given some land in Somerset belonging to the Mariscos, but they had to pay rent for it, so they still want to get their hands on the island.’

  De Wolfe finished the last of the wine in his cup and stood up. ‘But that doesn’t solve our problem. Everyone knows that the Mariscos have carried on the old tradition of piracy from Lundy, but there’s no evidence that this Bristol vessel was one of their victims.’

  Richard de Revelle snorted. ‘There’s no evidence because we haven’t looked in the right place yet!’

  The coroner leaned his hands on the table to look de Revelle in the face. ‘We? Since when have you rubbed your arse raw riding back and forth to Barnstaple and beyond? I’ve done it twice in the last week.’

  Stung into a reaction that he later regretted, the sheriff then announced that he would lead a force there the very next week and ordered Ralph Morin to send a couple of men ahead to organise sea transport for two-score men-at-arms. ‘As I declare this to be a foray on behalf of the king, send messages to de Grenville in Bideford and Oliver de Tracey in Barnstaple, that we need half a dozen knights from each to accompany our force.’

  John’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead when he heard his brother-in-law invoke the Lionheart as the reason for a somewhat rash expedition to Lundy. Knowing of de Revelle’s crafty mind and his habitual duplicity, he decided the sheriff was trying to strengthen the fragile pardon he had been given by the royalist barons a couple of months ago. ‘This I must see, Richard, so I’ll come with you – there’s sure to be deaths, so it will be fitting to have a coroner on hand!’ he exclaimed, with a grin that was almost a leer.

  ‘And if you’re sending most of my soldiers, then I’ll be with you as well,’ boomed the constable. ‘Let’s hope that Exeter doesn’t fall under siege while we’re away, for the garrison will be down to a man and a boy!’

  By the time they had finished discussing the details of travel and supplies, John could sense that de Revelle was already regretting his impetuous decision: he was no fighting man. A frustrated politician, he was best at delegating tasks, especially when it came to anything physical or dangerous. But it was too late now, the decision had been made, and his proclaimed admiration for the Templars was the main motive for his trying to gain their inheritance on Lundy – as well as some credit for himself in London and Winchester.

  The meeting broke up and de Wolfe collected Odin from the inner bailey then jogged through the town to put his horse to rest in the farrier’s stable. A quick look into his house showed that Matilda was out, and Mary appeared with the usual news that she had gone to an evening service at St Olave’s. Declining the maid’s offer to make him supper, the coroner trudged down to the Bush, feeling his leg stronger than ever, though it ached at the end of the day.

  Nesta soon organised food for him and before long he was contentedly ploughing through a boiled knuckle of pork lying on a thick trencher of bread, a wooden bowl alongside filled with shredded onions fried in beef lard and a pile of boiled cabbage. It would soon be Lent and this might be one of the last meat meals he would taste for weeks – not even an egg was allowed by the strict adherents to the Faith, though many a fowl or joint disappeared in the solemn period before Easter, not all of it down secular gullets.

  Half-way through his second quart of ale, Nesta left chivvying her maids to sit with him for a while. Between mouthfuls, he told her of the day’s excitements, the transfer of Gilbert to his own manor, the outlaw’s ambush and the proposed expedition to Lundy. The pert Welsh woman listened round-eyed as he described the fight with the trail-bastons, as highway robbers were often called. She sat clinging to his arm as he told of the rout that Gwyn and he had inflicted on the men, tendrils of her glossy red hair escaping from under her close-fitting linen helmet.

  When he had demolished the meal, Nesta signalled to one of the maids to take away the gravy-soaked trencher – it would join the others from today’s meals for Edwin to take to the beggars who clustered around the cathedral Close and Carfoix, the central junction of the main roads in the city. She brought him another pot of ale and also gave him a beaming smile, which earned her a kick on the ankle from her mistress.

  ‘Brazen hussy, trying to give you the eye!’ she snapped in mock jealousy, but John knew that she was fond of her girls and looked after them well, for both were orphans. As well as giving them a home, she guarded their morals until they could find husbands – unlike most town taverns, the serving wenches in the Bush were not part-time whores who paid a percentage of their earnings to the landlady.

  He was giving an account of the proposition to land on Lundy next week – which caused Nesta anguish at the prospect of her man being either slain or drowned – when a huge figure came to hover over the table near the hearth. ‘Gwyn! My favourite coroner’s officer!’ Nesta patted the bench alongside her and pushed de Wolfe along so that the ginger giant could sit down. With the two large men at either side, she looked like a robin between a raven and a red kite.

  Almost before Gwyn could open his mouth, a quart jar of ale was banged in front of him by Edwin, whose leer was worsened by the whitened blind eye that was a legacy of the Irish wars. Nothing loath, he took a long swallow that sank the better part of a pint and wiped the back of his hand across his soaking moustache, before delivering his news to his impatient companions. ‘There are Templars arrived in the city, crowner.’

  This was about the last thing that de Wolfe had expected that evening. All along he had had a healthy scepticism about Gilbert de Ridefort’s fears, and although the arrival of Cosimo of Modena lent some credence to his story, there were many other explanations for the abbot’s mission. Was this new twist another coincidence, or was the Templar from Paris really a fugitive in danger of his freedom? He waited for his officer to enlarge on his story. He knew from long experience that it was futile to press him – Gwyn would speak when it suited him.

  After some throat-clearing, another drink and a belch, he continued, ‘I was in the aleshop at the corner of Curre Street just now, talking to a tanner I know. He said that he had seen a fine procession coming up from South Gate earlier in the day, three knights on destriers, with three squires behind and two packhorses led by a groom.’

  ‘What was so fine about them?’ demanded Nesta. ‘There’s nothing unusual about a few knights – they were probably on their way to their term of service at some castle.’

  Gwyn picked up a crust of bread that the maid had left behind and stuffed it into his mouth. When he had chewed it sufficiently to speak, he carried on with his story. ‘These men were in full chain-mail with aventails and helmets, as were their squires. They had swords but no lances nor shields, so there were no armorial emblems to identify them.’

  ‘And no surcoats, presumably?’ snapped the coroner. The long cloth garment worn over the mailed hauberk prevented the glint of metal signalling their approach and also kept off the sun, which might roast someone inside a hauberk padded with a gambeson. It was also a convenient place to display the wearer’s heraldic motif.

  ‘No surcoats, so no red crosses of the Knights of Christ,’ agreed Gwyn. ‘But it seems they all had full beards and moustaches and cropped hair.’

  ‘That’s common enough, even though it may be against the present fa
shion,’ objected Nesta.

  The Cornishman grinned at her, though in deference to his master he avoided a playful pinch to her bottom. ‘There was one sure way to find out, lady – ask! Though the knights and their squires ignored the common crowd in the street, one cheeky lad ran alongside the groom and asked him where they were going. He said to the priory of St Nicholas and added that they were Templars, come all the way from London in less than a week.’

  Gwyn went back to his ale while de Wolfe digested this news.

  ‘What in hell do they want here at this time?’ he muttered. ‘Is it just coincidence that Gilbert claims he’s being hunted? And now this business of the Templar claim to Lundy.’

  The thought suddenly came to him that perhaps his dear brother-in-law had been keeping something from him. His change of heart in his uncharacteristic willingness to mount a campaign to Lundy might not have been as spontaneous as it appeared. He turned to Gwyn, speaking over Nesta’s head. ‘In the morning, get yourself down to St Nicholas’s and see what you can find out about them. If they are lodged in a priory, they must have a mandate from the Church for some purpose. The closest Templar land is near Tiverton, so whatever their business may be, it has to do with Exeter.’

  ‘And perhaps to do with their fellow Templar, Gilbert de Ridefort,’said the officer ominously, putting into words what John already feared.

  ‘Unless they are going to join our invasion of Lundy next week,’ said the coroner sarcastically. ‘But to know of that, they’d have to be necromancers, to read the thoughts of our noble sheriff a week in advance!’ He paused. ‘Unless that crafty bastard up in Rougemont knew they were coming.’