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  PROLOGUE

  December 1194

  The morning was ravaged by the sound of axe on tree and the crackle of flames as branches were hacked off and burned. A dozen men were slowly but surely pushing back the forest edge from the strips of cultivated land that lay on the valley slopes around the village of Afton, a few miles from Totnes. Already this month, in spite of interruptions caused by angry disputes with men from Loventor, the next village beyond the trees, they had advanced the new ground won from the woods by a dozen acres.

  Alward, the Saxon reeve from Afton, was walking around the ash-strewn ground, counting the trees felled that week. He recorded them by notches cut with his dagger on a tally stick to show to the bailiff of his lord, Henry de la Pomeroy, who would inevitably complain about the amount of work done, whatever new area they had managed to add to his manor. Alward was well aware that they were on disputed land and that, with every tree dropped, they were getting deeper into the property claimed by Sir William Fitzhamon, who included the tiny hamlet of Loventor within his honour.

  He disliked having to argue with the men from Loventor. When they had come to shout abuse at his team for trespassing the week before, it had come to blows: he had suffered a cut head and one of his men was knocked out during the scuffle. Following this, the bailiff had sent a couple of men-at-arms to escort the felling team, but after two days of peace, they were sent back to Berry Castle, the Pomeroy stronghold high on a ridge a mile away.

  But that had proved to be the quiet before the storm. Today they had been at work for barely two hours when suddenly, from out of the trees opposite, came a yelling horde of men, waving cudgels and staves. Some of the Afton men immediately dropped their tools and ran downhill towards the village, which was visible in the distance. Others held their ground, encouraged by Alward, who tried to halt the attackers by shouting and waving his arms. The next moment a ragged figure felled him with a blow on the shoulder from a staff and another wild-looking peasant began kicking him. Similar scenes took place all over the despoiled area, with hand-to-hand fights going on amid yelling and curses.

  Before long the rout was over – half the Afton men had fled and the rest were on the ground, nursing sore heads and bruised ribs, though no one was seriously hurt. Alward sat up painfully and saw that the raiders were now ignoring his men and collecting up all their tools. Within minutes, every axe and cleaver had vanished along with the marauders, who melted back into the forest as suddenly as they had appeared.

  The reeve climbed to his feet, realising that, without their tools, there could be no more work that day – and that the bailiff and Lord Henry must be informed without delay. The message he must take to them was plain: this nibbling away at Fitzhamon’s land was no longer going to be easy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  In which Crowner John is disturbed on Christ Mass Eve

  For once, Matilda was happy. Flushed with pleasure and self-importance, she sat at one end of the long table in the high, gloomy hall of their house and urged her guests to take more drink, capons’ legs and sweetmeats from the jugs and platters set in front of them.

  At the other end sat the brooding figure of her husband, Sir John de Wolfe, the King’s coroner for the County of Devon. Tall and slightly hunched, his black hair matched the thick eyebrows that sat above deep-set eyes. Unlike most Normans, he had no beard or moustache beneath his great hooked nose, but his dark stubble had helped earn him the nickname ‘Black John’ in the armies of the Crusades and the Irish wars.

  This evening, though, even his usually grim face was more relaxed, partly due to the amount of French wine he had drunk but also because he had a good friend on each side of him. To his left was Hugh de Relaga, one of the town’s two Portreeves, a fat and cheerful dandy. On the other side was John de Alencon, Archdeacon of Exeter, a thin, ascetic man, with a quiet wit and a twinkling eye.

  Around the rest of the table were a dozen other Exeter worthies and their wives, from the castle, the Church and the Guilds. It was about the eleventh hour on the eve of Christ Mass and they had not long returned from the special service in the great cathedral of St Mary and St Peter, only a few hundred paces away from the coroner’s home in Martin’s Lane.

  Their timber house was high and narrow, being only one room from floor to beamed roof, with a small solar built on the back, reached by an outside staircase. The walls were hung with sombre tapestries to relieve the bare planks and the floor was flagged with stone, as Matilda considered the usual rush-strewn earth too common for people of their quality.

  The guests sat on benches along each side of the heavy table, the only two chairs being at either end. Light came from candles and tallow dips on the table and from the large fire in the hearth. The guests were sufficiently filled with ale, cider and wine to be in prattling mood, especially at Yuletide, when a strangely contagious mood of bonhomie infected the community.

  ‘Matilda, I thought you usually patronised that little church of St Olave in Fore Street, not the cathedral?’

  The high-pitched voice was that of her sister-in-law, Eleanor, wife to Sheriff Richard de Revelle. De Wolfe was not sure whom he detested more, his brother-in-law or the wife. Eleanor was a thin, sour-faced woman of fifty, an even greater snob than Matilda. Spurning the usual white linen cover-chief over the head, Eleanor wore her hair coiled in gold-net crespines over each ear. Her husband was also elegantly dressed, a man of medium height with wavy brown hair, a thin moustache and a small pointed beard – a complete contrast to his brother-in-law, who dressed in nothing but black or grey.

  ‘Why, in God’s name, is it called St Olave’s?’ drawled de Revelle, leaning back on the bench, the better to display his new green tunic, the neckband and sleeves worked elaborately in yellow embroidery.

  ‘It’s certainly in God’s name, sheriff,’ replied the Archdeacon, with a wry smile. ‘Olave was the first Christian king of Norway, though I admit it quite escapes me why one of our seventeen churches in Exeter is dedicated to him.’

  The conversation chattered on, the noise level rising as the contents of the wine keg lowered. Matilda, her square pug face radiant with pleasure at the success of her party, looked around the hall and calculated her resulting elevation on the social scale, to be gauged when she next met her cronies at the market or in church. For once she had persuaded her taciturn husband, who had been made county coroner only three months earlier, to open up a little socially and invite some people to the house after the Mass on the eve of Christ’s birthday.

  Rather to her surprise, even he appeared amiable tonight. At least the party had kept him at home, she thought, with momentary bitterness, and he was not down at the Bush tavern with his red-headed mistress, that Welsh tart Nesta. Outside the unglazed shutters the night was freezing, but a fire was roaring in the big hearth, which had the modern luxury of a stone chimney. Brutus, John’s old hound, was stretched luxuriously in front of the flames, twitching now and then as a hot spark spat out at him.

  The wine and food were constantly replenished by Mary, their house-servant and cook, while old Simon, the labourer, carried in fresh logs to stoke the fire. Matilda’s own maid Lucille, the poisonous French hag, as de Wolfe thought of her, was too grand to serve at table and was lurking in the solar, eavesdropping through the high slit window, waiting to help Matilda undress for bed when the party was over.

  Between joining in the gossip and scandal, Matilda stole frequent glances at her husband, willing him to do something socially elegant, such as standing to propose a toast – to Jesus Christ, or the prosperity of Exeter, anything to make his mark and reflect some more glory upon her. Several times, she saw him move as if to get up and she waited expectantly for him to raise his glass to the assembled worthies. But each time she was disappointed, as all he did was reach across for a chicken leg or a jug of Loire wine. Then the opportunity was lost, as her brother jumped up and brandished his beaker, tapping imperiously on the table with the handle of his dagger.

  ‘We must
give thanks to our host and his good wife for inviting us to this most convivial gathering,’ he brayed, the long cuff of his tunic dangling as he waved his cup back and forth. ‘To Sir John de Wolfe, lately appointed crowner to this county, and his good wife, my little sister Matilda!’

  As they stood and responded to his toast, John thought that ‘little sister’ was the greatest exaggeration of the twelfth century, as Matilda’s square figure was a good many pounds heavier than de Revelle’s. Then, charitably, he assumed that his brother-in-law had meant little in years, as she was four less than her brother’s fifty. The coroner himself was only forty, though the lined skin stretched over his high cheekbones weathered by more than two decades of campaigning in Ireland, France and the Holy Land, made him look older.

  Matilda’s irritation at her husband’s failure to match Richard’s social graces was slowly subsiding, when another blow fell upon her ambition to become one of Exeter’s premier hostesses. Suddenly she saw Mary, whom she rightly suspected of being another of John’s amorous conquests, come up to him and whisper urgently in his ear. He looked over his shoulder at the door to the small vestibule that fronted on to the street. Following his gaze, Matilda glared in annoyance at a large face that peered around the door. It was fringed with unruly red hair and, below a bulbous nose, a huge moustache nestled, its ends merging with carrotty side-whiskers before hanging down past his lantern jaw almost to his chest. It was Gwyn of Polruan, her husband’s bodyguard and coroner’s officer, a Cornishman for whom her Norman soul had even more contempt than for Saxons.

  With growing apprehension and annoyance, she heard her husband’s chair grate across the flagstones as he rose and walked across to the door. As she watched him whispering with Gwyn, her concern mounted into fury. ‘If he leaves now, I’ll kill him, God help me!’ she muttered to herself.

  Her worst fears were realised when John walked back across the hall, his head slightly forward, looking like some great bird of prey in his grey tunic and long black hose. Bending down to John de Alencon, he murmured something into the Archdeacon’s ear. The emaciated priest stood up immediately.

  The coroner cleared his throat and, in his deep, sonorous voice, excused himself from the festivities for a while. ‘I hope it’ll not be long! I have but a few yards to go and hope to be back soon. So, please, eat, drink and be merry until then.’

  Now furious, Matilda hurried around the table and caught her husband’s arm as he walked with the Archdeacon across to the door, where Gwyn still waited. ‘Where are you going?’ she hissed venomously. ‘You can’t leave me like this now, with all your guests still here!’

  ‘It’ll not be for long, wife,’ he grunted. ‘This won’t wait, I’m afraid, but I’ll try to get back soon.’

  Fuming with rage, she hissed again, into his ear, ‘What can be more important on a Yuletide Eve than entertaining some of the most important citizens in Exeter?’

  ‘What about a dead canon in the cathedral Close, woman?’ he suggested, and slipped out of the door without another word.

  De Wolfe and the Archdeacon strode on either side of the Cornish giant as they left the coroner’s house. Martin’s Lane was a short passage leading from High Street into the cathedral precinct. It took its name from St Martin’s Church on the corner, from which a line of houses stretched along the north side of the Close. Here lived many of the twenty-four canons of the cathedral, along with some of their vicars, lesser priests and servants, all male, for officially, women were forbidden in their dwellings.

  As they hurried through the still, frosty air, the coroner’s henchman told what little he knew of the incident. ‘An hour ago, that miserable clerk of ours came running to me at my sister-in-law’s dwelling in Milk Street. My wife and children are lodging with her tonight, as the city gates are shut until morning.’ Gwyn lived outside the walls, at St Sidwell’s, beyond the East Gate.

  ‘What did Thomas have to tell you?’ demanded de Wolfe. Thomas de Peyne was the third member of his team, a diminutive, crippled ex-priest who had been unfrocked for allegedly interfering with a young female novice in Winchester.

  ‘He said that at about the tenth hour there had been a great uproar in the canon’s house near where he lodges and someone came to fetch him out. Being the nosy little swine that he is, he went to see what was afoot.’

  De Wolfe was used to Gwyn’s leisurely way of telling a tale, but John de Alencon was less patient. ‘So what was afoot, man?’

  ‘The house steward was standing at the front, screaming that the canon was dead. With some others, our clerk ran through to the back of the house and found the prebendary hanging by his neck in the privy.’

  By now the hurrying trio had entered Canons’ Row, with the huge bulk of the cathedral on their right. A full moon shimmered on the great building, which hovered above the disorder of the Close, with its muddy paths, piles of rubbish and open grave-pits.

  ‘He was undoubtedly dead?’ growled the coroner.

  Gwyn pulled up the hood of his shabby leather jacket against the chill air. ‘Dead as mutton, Thomas said. The others felt his heart to make sure, then he ran to fetch me, while a servant went off to take the news to the Bishop’s Palace.’

  The Archdeacon, sweeping along in his long black cloak, clucked his tongue in irritation. ‘And the Bishop is away at Gloucester, leaving me as the most senior cleric at this tragic time.’

  They had arrived at the fifth house in the terrace, marked by a cluster of people around the narrow passageway that led through to the backyard. One short figure detached itself from the throng and limped towards them. Thomas de Peyne was blessed with a good brain and cursed with a twisted body. Old phthisis had bent his spine into a slight hump and damaged a hip to shorten one leg. As if this was not enough, the Almighty had given him a slight squint in his left eye. ‘Thank God you’re here, Crowner,’ he squeaked, crossing himself nervously. ‘These people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off!’

  ‘Where’s the corpse?’ demanded John gruffly. He never wasted breath on niceties of speech.

  Thomas pushed through to the passageway and the little crowd opened up deferentially for the other men, the servants and secondaries bobbing their knees as the Archdeacon passed. The alley was dark and narrow, running alongside the tall timber house roofed with wooden shingles. It was similar, though not identical, to the other buildings in the row, some of stone, some slated and some thatched.

  At the back, the passage opened into a yard with several rickety outbuildings. One was the kitchen, another a wash-house and one a pig-sty. Furthest away, against the back fence, was a small shed that acted as the latrine for the whole house. It was built up on several stone steps, a deep privy-pit dug beneath it.

  ‘He’s in there, Crowner,’ said Thomas, his thin, pointed nose wrinkling in anticipation. De Wolfe loped across to the shed, lit by the moon and the horn-lanterns of several residents who had followed them into the yard. He pulled open the crude door, whose bottom edge grated across the rough flagstones.

  ‘Bring more lights here,’ he commanded, as he stepped inside. The stench was strong after the cold night air outside, but as everyone had a stinking privy the coroner took no notice.

  Gwyn, the Archdeacon and the clerk pushed in alongside him, holding tallow tapers taken from the servants. Along the back wall was a wooden bench with two large holes cut in it, in case more than one resident was taken short at the same time. Beneath it was a four-foot drop into an odorous pit, which was cleared from the rear by the night-soil man, who came around with his donkey and cart once a week.

  But their gaze was fixed on a figure hanging in front of the seat, toes all but touching the floor. It was rotating slowly in the draught coming up from the faecal pit. Eerily, the face revolved close to de Wolfe’s, the eyes just level with his, due to the coroner’s greater height. Staring sightlessly ahead, tongue protruding, the corpse slowed down and stopped, then reversed its mindless study of the privy walls as the cord untw
isted again.

  For a moment there was shocked immobility, broken only by the clerk spasmodically crossing himself.

  ‘For God’s sake, cut the poor man down!’ muttered the Archdeacon.

  Gwyn started forward, pulling a dagger from his belt, but the coroner laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Wait, until I look at his neck.’

  Leaving the other three jammed in the doorway, de Wolfe stepped to the side of the dead man and held up his thin tallow candle. He saw that the corpse was a rather slight, elderly man with a rim of white hair around a bald crown. He was dressed in a long robe of thick black wool, similar to a monk’s habit. The thin face was congested and purple, prominent blue eyes glimmering in the flicker of the candle-flame. Even in that poor light, pinpoint bleeding spots could be seen in the whites of the eyes. John grasped a drooping arm as the body turned slowly and stopped the rotation so that he could look at the side of the neck.

  ‘What type of cord is this, John?’ he asked his priestly namesake.

  De Alencon, visibly distressed but keeping a firm grip on his emotions, was glad of the chance to divert his thoughts from the death of a colleague. He looked at the ligature, which was around the neck and vanished into the darkness above. It was a twisted rope of brown and black flax, the thickness of a man’s little finger. ‘It looks like a monk’s waist cord, probably from the habit that covers him.’

  ‘But a canon isn’t a monk,’ objected de Wolfe. He had little interest in the hierarchy of the Church, but knew that canons, or prebendaries as they were often called, were ordained priests and that Exeter was a secular cathedral, not a monastic house.

  ‘Many people have a monk’s habit,’ piped up the all-knowing Thomas from behind. ‘I’ve got one myself. They make fine wrappings to get out of bed or go to the privy on a cold morning.’

  The Archdeacon shook his head. ‘Poor Robert de Hane had a better claim to one than just the need for a warm robe. In his younger years he was an Augustinian from the house of Holy Trinity in London’s Aldgate. This is probably his habit from his days as a Black Canon.’