Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries) Read online

  By now, John reckoned that Hawise and her husband would be safely lodged in their rooms upstairs, so he could leave without fear of being accosted. He had been hunted by enemies many times during his violent career, but never before by a beautiful woman. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant.

  In spite of being harassed by his numerous clerks over the impending visit of his monarch’s mother, Hubert Walter found time next morning to listen to de Wolfe’s update on the missing treasure. Though there was not a trace of it to be found, the Justiciar agreed that the news of Simon Basset’s murder was very relevant to the crime.

  ‘It can surely be no coincidence that he is slain so soon after this infamous robbery,’ he exclaimed. ‘But what is the significance of it, John?’ He sat behind his table and drummed his fingers on the wood, a sign of the strain that running England for the Lionheart was putting upon him. Over the previous twenty-four months to April that year, he had dispatched well over a million marks of silver to the king in Rouen, squeezed from the country by every means he could devise. Though the loss of nine hundred pounds’ worth of treasure was small in comparison with this, he could ill-afford to lose a single mark, with Richard breathing down his neck for every penny.

  The coroner, hunched on a chair in front of the great man, scowled in concentration as he answered Hubert’s question.

  ‘It seems to mean one of two things, sire. Either the canon came to know or to suspect the identity of the thief and was therefore silenced before he could divulge it … or he was implicated himself and the other conspirators disposed of him in case he was a bad risk.’

  The archbishop nodded. ‘And which of those do you favour, de Wolfe?’

  John shrugged. ‘I have no means of knowing, sire. There is no real evidence that Basset was involved, as there is no sign of the treasure at his house, after thorough searching.’

  ‘He could have hidden it elsewhere,’ objected Hubert. ‘In fact, it would be more sensible than leaving incriminating evidence on his own doorstep, with the risk of the servants finding it – unless they too are guilty!’

  ‘It is possible, though short of burying it in the marshes behind his house, I fail to see where he might have concealed it. I find it hard to contemplate a portly canon going out at dead of night to dig a hole!’

  ‘Yet he was a surprising man, if you say that it was in a whorehouse in the city that he was taken mortally ill. I would not have expected that of him, though God knows many clerics are wont to relieve their celibacy in that way.’

  De Wolfe decided to slant the subject away from the canon’s morals. ‘He was said to have dined with some unknown man shortly before he was poisoned. I wish I knew some way of identifying him, but given our cool relations with the city sheriffs I doubt they would be keen to offer us much help.’

  ‘As you know, at the moment I am in bad odour with the city fathers myself,’ said Hubert ruefully. ‘But if this mysterious man did poison Basset’s food with foxglove, as the monks claim, then we are back to the two motives you mentioned. For one reason or the other, Canon Simon had become a liability.’

  John agreed, but his glum expression betrayed his frustration.

  ‘But it doesn’t help tell us which of the reasons it was. We need to catch this man and press him in the Tower to loosen his tongue.’ He thought almost nostalgically of Stigand, the evil torturer back in Rougemont Castle in Exeter.

  A senior Chancery clerk came to the door and hovered with a sheaf of parchments, doing his best not to glare at de Wolfe for taking up the Justiciar’s valuable time. Hubert took the hint and stood up to end the audience.

  ‘Keep at it, John! Knowing your tenacity, I’m sure you will get there in the end.’

  De Wolfe rose and bowed his head politely, but had one last matter to discuss before he went to the door. He felt in his scrip and took out the scrap of parchment that Robin Byard had found in Basil’s book. He held it out to the Justiciar and explained how it had come into his hands.

  ‘Perhaps what is written upon it may make sense to someone learned in your service. It seems to refer in some way to the counties of Kent and Sussex. Given the present anxiety along that coast about a possible raid by the French, maybe it is an indication that the fears that the murdered palace officer had about his safety might have been justified.’

  Hubert took the scrap and read it, his brow furrowing as he scanned the garbled words and figures. ‘I will give this some thought and pass it to other barons on the council. You are nearer the gossip in the palace than I can ever get, so keep your ears open for any other titbits, John. There are persons around who bear considerable ill-will towards England.’

  The coroner pondered this as he walked back towards his dwelling in Long Ditch. There were a number of guests from the continent staying in the palace, apart from those who formed their little supper group. He had met a few of them briefly, as the archdeacon had introduced him to Guy de Bretteville, a nobleman from Anjou, and Peter le Paumer, a knight from Angoulême. Before the situation arose with Hawise, her husband had presented him to a canon from the cathedral in Tours, another minor lord from Artois and an aged physician from Berri. John promptly forgot their names and where they came from.

  The political situation in France was so fragmented and shifting that it was hard to know who was for the Norman confederacy or for the small, but powerful central core of France under Philip Augustus, centred on Paris. Though Richard was Duke of Aquitaine, there was constant trouble down there from rebellious barons. He had managed to wean and bribe the princes of Flanders to his side, but elsewhere, fragile truces, marriages of political convenience and untrustworthy pacts between the many small states and counties were confused even more by the battle lines that ebbed and flowed. Though the king was slowly making inroads into the Vexin, north of the Seine, recovering land that had been lost by the treachery and foolishness of his brother John, there was still a strong French presence in the north-east, which posed a danger to the southern corner of England. It was impossible to know where the sympathies of some of these cross-Channel guests lay – and even some English lords and barons held covert allegiance to John, Count of Mortain.

  He continued to ponder these matters sitting silently with Gwyn, as they ate their dinner in the house. Osanna served them rabbit stew, then salt cod with onions, carrots and cabbage, followed by bread and cheese. She seemed to have a limited range of dishes in her culinary repertoire, but both these seasoned old warriors were not that particular about what they ate, quantity often being of greater importance than quality.

  The exotic dishes favoured by what John considered posturing courtiers, held no attraction for them and they were content to do without braised lark’s tongues or swans stuffed with chestnuts and hard-boiled eggs.

  Gwyn, used to Black John’s dark moods after twenty years’ companionship, made no effort to interrupt his master’s reverie and devoted himself to eating and drinking. Eventually, when Osanna waddled in to remove the bowls and horn spoons, de Wolfe lifted himself from his silent contemplation and reached over the table to refill his officer’s ale jar.

  ‘We should be out of this miserable village soon, Gwyn!’ he said with an almost cheerful change of mood. ‘Not for long, unfortunately, but it’ll be a change of scenery, especially if we manage to slip away to Exeter.’

  The Cornishman’s blue eyes twinkled in his ruddy face as he sucked ale from his red moustache. ‘Maybe you can have a little trip down to Dawlish while we’re there!’ he said mischievously.

  ‘And another up to bloody Polsloe to try to see my wife,’ added John, with a scowl. ‘The house in Martin’s Lane worries me. Poor Mary is marooned there alone and I have no idea what to do about it. It can’t stay empty for ever.’

  Gwyn shifted uncomfortably on his seat. ‘Are you stuck in Westminster with no hope of relief,’ he asked tentatively. ‘The last thing I want is to desert you after all these years, but I can’t bear this place and I miss my wife and sons more th
an I thought.’

  This was the first time that his old friend had even hinted at a possible parting of the ways and it gave John more food for thought. But there was nothing to be done about it for some time to come. The pressing matters were the solution to the theft of the treasure and the coming perambulation of the court to Gloucester.

  ‘I spoke to the Justiciar this morning about the possible involvement of Simon Basset in the robbery,’ he said, as they were leaving the table. ‘I said there was no sign of the treasure in his house, but we spoke about the possibility of it being buried somewhere on the marshes behind his dwelling.’

  ‘Do you want me to have another look around?’ asked Gwyn. ‘After all that rain during the storm, maybe something has been washed clear and exposed by those leats and reens. I’ll have a walk up there now and poke about a bit.’

  De Wolfe agreed and they parted outside the door, the coroner’s officer going up the lane alongside the Long Ditch to follow the track across the marsh, which eventually led to the back of the Royal Way.

  John loped back to the palace, thankful that the torrid heat had moderated to a pleasant summer’s day. He found Thomas at work in his chamber, writing out some text related to his duties in the archives of the abbey, rather than anything to do with coroner’s cases.

  ‘There is nothing outstanding for me to deal with,’ he explained apologetically. ‘We have had so few deaths to record that I have been up to date for some time.’

  ‘You carry on, Thomas,’ said John, reassuringly. ‘Maybe business will improve when we get on the road to Gloucester next week.’

  He sat behind his table and half-heartedly unrolled the parchment which carried his last lesson in Latin comprehension.

  He could read and write his own name now and make some sense of the Lord’s Prayer, but his attention kept wandering. He looked across at his clerk, whose thin face stared down at the document he was writing, his tongue projecting slightly from the corner of his thin lips as he concentrated on scribing perfect letters with the quill in his right hand. His lank brown hair hung down in a fringe all around the shaved circle on top of his scalp, which denoted his clerical status. John almost envied his clerk’s single-minded devotion to his faith and his scholarship, the Church being the very engine of his life.

  This placid scene was eventually broken by an interruption – a tap on the door heralded a young head being poked around it. It was the same cheeky page that had brought the previous message and he now had yet another.

  ‘Sir John, a man wishes to speak to you about a matter of importance, so he says.’

  ‘Come in and tell me properly!’ snapped de Wolfe, who was used to a little more deference from messengers who were little more than children. The page slid through the door and stood before him, his tousled fair hair contrasting with the green tabard that carried the three royal lions across his breast.

  ‘It was a man in the corridor below, sir,’ he gabbled. ‘He gave me a whole half-penny to bring you the message.’

  ‘Which is what?’ demanded the coroner, glaring at the mercenary young lad.

  ‘He said if you wish to know more about a bunch of keys, you must meet him in the crypt of St Stephen’s within the hour. He said you would know what he meant.’

  ‘Is that all he said?’ snapped de Wolfe.

  The boy nodded rapidly. ‘Just that you must come alone. Then he vanished.’

  ‘What do you mean – vanished? Who was he, damn it?’

  ‘It was in a crowded corridor downstairs, sire. He pressed a coin into my hand and whispered his message, then slipped away into the crowd of clerks that were jostling along there.’

  ‘What did he look like? Have you seen him before?’

  The boy shook his head again, his hair bouncing. ‘Never, Sir John! He was a big man in a poor brown tunic, a short one belted over breeches. He was no nobleman, that’s for sure.’

  ‘His face, you say you had never seen it before about the palace?’

  ‘Never, nor about the town. He was rough-featured, no beard and his hair was cropped to brown bristles. He could have been anything, a peasant or a carter.’

  De Wolfe could get nothing more from the boy and he was dismissed, looking disappointed at not getting the other half of his expected penny.

  ‘That sounds very odd, Crowner,’ ventured Thomas. ‘Why should a common man wish to tell you about keys?’

  ‘The obvious reason is that he knows something about the keys to the treasure chest. No doubt he hopes to sell some information.’

  ‘Will you go, master?’ asked Thomas, with a worried look on his sharp face.

  ‘Of course I’ll go! Nothing to be lost and possibly something to be gained. Maybe it’s one of a gang who carried out the theft, hoping to save his neck by turning approver.’ An approver was a miscreant who sought leniency or even a pardon by betraying his fellow conspirators and it was one of a coroner’s many legal duties to take confessions from such persons.

  John rose from his table, pushing aside his Latin lesson with some relief. ‘Don’t look so worried, Thomas, whoever it is can hardly force foxglove down my throat this time.’ He reached for his sword belt and baldric which hung on the wall. He did not normally wear his sword about the palace, but to be on the safe side, decided to buckle it around him this time.

  ‘There, that should satisfy you that I shall remain safe – though it seems unlikely that I might be assassinated within the Palace of Westminster!’

  As he left the chamber, Thomas murmured worriedly to himself. ‘That may well have been what Basil of Reigate thought!’

  There were two chapels in the palace, one in the Royal Apartments for the use of the king and his family, and another one for the use of the courtiers and their officers. This had been built by King Stephen during his disastrous reign some half-century earlier, and his small chapel was placed at right angles to the main axis of the palace, jutting out towards the Thames immediately behind the Great Hall. It had a plain nave with no separate chancel and beneath it was a pillared crypt, kept quite shallow to avoid the water table of the nearby river.

  John de Wolfe knew how to reach the chapel, as he had been taken there soon after coming to Westminster, Thomas eagerly wishing to show him the religious sights of the palace. John had even attended Mass on one occasion, as although he was an unenthu-siastic communicant, habits ingrained from childhood gave him a desultory desire to avoid purgatory and the fires of hell.

  The entrance to the chapel was in a covered way that joined the rear of the Great Hall to the end of the Lesser Hall, but there was also a door on each side of the chapel which led out on to the strip of land alongside the river. Within the vestibule at the entrance to the chapel, another door led down a short flight of stone steps into the crypt, which was dimly lit by small slits just above the outside ground level, as the crypt was more of an undercroft, only partly below the surface. His hand on his sword-hilt, John descended the steps into the dank space, where two lines of thick, stumpy pillars stretched ahead, supporting the chapel above. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he searched ahead and to each side, where alcoves contained musty boxes and abandoned furniture, as well as devotional objects. There were some tarnished altar candlesticks, a broken plaster statue of the Virgin and a large processional cross with a bent arm. He advanced further, but saw no one waiting for him.

  ‘Show yourself, if anyone is there!’ he commanded in a loud voice, beginning to feel as if he was the victim of a hoax and that whoever had given the page a halfpenny had wasted his money.

  The next second, he felt a violent blow on the back of his head and he pitched forward to the damp earthen floor. De Wolfe had a thick skull and had suffered blows upon it a number of times during his violent career. He did not lose consciousness, but was rendered so groggy that he was unable to utter the stream of blasphemies and obscenities that swirled around his stunned mind. He began to recover and pushed against the ground with his hands, trying to get to h
is knees to wreak vengeance with his sword. However, a thin noose was whipped over his head and dragged tightly against his throat. This was new to John and was an experience he would gladly have done without, as his breath was cut off, his vision became blurred and his head felt as if it was about to burst.

  He began spiralling down into unconsciousness, with a gripping fear of impending death, unable to fight back since there was a knee in the small of his back.

  As his hands gave way and he fell face down on to the earth, his last thoughts were, of all things, of his old dog Brutus.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In which Crowner John goes to a feast

  An hour later, de Wolfe was lying on a low bed in the abbey infirmarium, surrounded by a circle of anxious faces. He had a vague memory of being manhandled on to some kind of stretcher and of severe discomfort as he was bumped along at jogging pace across the few hundred yards of Palace Yard to the monks’ hospital behind the cloisters.

  His wits only fully returned when he was on this palliasse, but his return to full consciousness brought with it a burning soreness in his neck and throat. His first attempts at speech sounded like a combination of a duck and a rusty file, which prompted Gwyn to lean over him solicitously.

  ‘Don’t try to talk, Crowner! That throat of yours will need a bit of rest after the squeezing it suffered!’

  Gwyn’s hairy face was replaced in his field of vision by Thomas’s anxious features. ‘The infirmarian has sent for poultices and warmed wine with honey, which will help ease the soreness.’

  John struggled to a half-sitting position and saw that in addition to his two faithful retainers, his audience consisted of a grey-haired monk, a younger novitiate, a sergeant from the palace guard, another priest who looked familiar, and Ranulf of Abingdon.

  He tried to speak again, but rapidly changed it to a whisper, which seemed to come out more clearly. ‘What the hell happened, for Christ’s sake? Who did this to me?’