Figure of Hate Page 4

  Gwyn sighed and bent to pick up the three halfpence he had already won.

  'I'll have to come back later to take the rest from you losers!' he said gruffly to the men on the floor.

  'Stay here, Osric, I'll go and get Sir John.'

  The crowd had thinned out since Gwyn had left the hall, but there were still many people left, reluctant to leave while there was still food and drink remaining. He stood inside the door and saw that his master had now moved to stand over his wife and his friend the portreeve, who was still chattering away like a gaudy tomtit.

  Gwyn wondered how often over the past year he had brought his master messages similar to the one he now had to deliver. It had been late the previous September that John de Wolfe had been appointed as the first coroner in Devon on the direct recommendation of the King, through Hubert Walter, his Chief Justiciar and Archbishop of Canterbury. Since then, they had dealt with scores of dead bodies, rapes and assaults, as well as a few fires, wrecks, troves of treasure and even catches of the royal fish, the whale and the sturgeon. During this eventful year, the twenty-year bond between the Cornishman and his master had strengthened, as each had saved the life of the other yet again. This time, the rescues had been within the county boundary, rather than in campaigns across the known world from Ireland to Outremer.

  Gwyn looked across the hall at the man whose life was inextricably bound with his own. He saw a tall, slightly hunched figure, jet-black hair swept back from his forehead, long enough to fall to his collar, unlike the usual severe cropping of the neck and sides effected by most Normans. His face was long and hollow cheeked, with a large hooked nose surmounted by bushy eyebrows. Though de Wolfe shaved once a week, there was usually dark stubble on his face, and this, together with his habit of invariably dressing in black or grey, had long earned him the nickname of 'Black John' among the soldiery with whom they had spent much of their lives until three years ago.

  Gwyn had been his companion, bodyguard and friend for almost two decades, since he had given up being a fisherman in Polruan to become John's servant in one of the early Irish wars. Their final campaign had been as part of the small band that accompanied the Lionheart on his ill-fated journey home from the Crusade, when a shipwreck in the Adriatic drove him overland to be captured in Vienna and held prisoner in Austria and Germany for well over a year. Both Gwyn and de Wolfe still blamed themselves for not being able to prevent the ambush, especially as they had managed to escape.

  Now he stood in the hall and looked across with dogged affection at his master, as he hunched like a great crow over his wife and friend. He knew that de Wolfe's relations with his wife were stressful, there being faults on both sides. The marriage had been arranged by their respective fathers and both were reluctant partners. De Wolfe had solved much of the problem by managing to be away for most of the seventeen years of his married life, finding wars, campaigns and crusades to keep him far from Exeter. In all that time, Gwyn doubted that they had Spent more than a month in any one year at home, It was only when they returned from Austria that they found that they had run out of wars to fight, as well as becoming too old at forty to have the stamina for prolonged campaigning.

  Gwyn shrugged off this rare moment of reverie; he was like his master in that contemplation and emotion were foreign to his nature. Pushing past a couple of kitchen servants who were collecting empty mugs and tankards, he walked between the trestles and benches to within a few yards of the coroner and made a discreet signal to him.

  With an alacrity that showed that he was relieved to get away from Hugh de Relaga's prattling, de Wolfe moved across to his officer, a questioning look on his long face.

  'Well?' he snapped, the severity of his tone being his normal method of address.

  'We've got a corpse from the river, Crowner,' drawled Gwyn easily. 'Osric reckons it's fresh. Naked and beaten up, so he's unrecognisable.' John rubbed his hands together. He was not delighted at the thought of another man's death, but pleased to have an excuse to get away from this gathering, as the effort to be sociable was becoming a strain.

  'I'll arrange to have my, wife taken home, then I'll come. Where's the body?'

  'Still down on the quay-side. They're learning at last that no one is to interfere with corpses until you view them.'

  John turned on his heel and stalked back to the nearby table, where Gwyn saw him making some excuse to Matilda and a request to the corpulent portreeve. Then he was back at his officer's side.

  'I see our brave clerk is still here. Get him to come down with us.'

  Gwyn signalled to Thomas, who was talking to a vicar-choral of his acquaintance, and a few moments later the three of them collected Osric from the guardroom. They began striding down Castle Hill towards High Street, which ran from the East Gate to the centre of the city. Thomas de Peyne limped behind on his short legs, as the constable repeated the meagre information to de Wolfe.

  'Close in to the bank he was, according to the fellow who hauled him out. Could well have gone in on the Exeter side of the river, anywhere between here and Topsham.'

  This was the port a few miles downriver, where the Exe widened out into its estuary, six miles from the open sea.

  'And there's nothing at all to show who he might be?' demanded de Wolfe.

  The Saxon shook his head as they hurried through the crowded main street. 'Doesn't look a rough fellow, Crowner. He's shaved and has a decent haircut. Hard to tell how old he is, but he's not a young man. There's a belly on him and his hair has a bit of grey at the temples.'

  The town was already filling up ready for the fair the next day, and the press of people, barrows, handcarts and heavily laden porters slowed their progress until they got past Carfoix, the central crossing of the four main streets. Then they turned into side alleys and began going down the steeper lanes towards the quayside. At the bottom of Priest Street, they turned left to reach the Watergate, driven through the southwest corner of the city walls in recent years to give better access to the busy wharf and warehouses that Exeter's rapidly growing commerce demanded.

  'He's just past that last cog, Crowner,' said Osric, pointing to the most distant of three vessels that were tied up at the stone quay. As the tide was well in, they were floating upright and would stay like that until the ebb dropped them down on the thick mud to lean over against the wharf. The whole place was busy with men jogging up and down gangplanks with sacks and bales on their shoulders. Shipwrights and sailors yelled garbled orders at the tops of their voices and merchants and their clerks were standing around heaps of cargo on the wharf, checking items by means of notched tally-sticks or knotted cords, as well as from a few parchment manifests.

  Ignoring the noisy activity, John de Wolfe led his party onward, threading through the merchandise and shoving the odd labourer out of his path until he reached the last cog, which looked like a fat, bluntended Norse-longboat, its single sail now tightly lashed to the yard that crossed its stubby mast. Just beyond it were two figures, standing guard over something covered with a piece of canvas. They were rough-looking men, one dressed in a ragged tunic, the skirt of which was pulled up between his legs and tucked into his belt.

  The other had a leather jerkin over breeches of coarse cloth, and both were barefooted, the lower part of their legs being caked in brown river mud.

  'These men found the corpse, Crowner,' declared Osric. 'And this is him,' he added unnecessarily, jerking a thumb down at the canvas-covered mound.

  The two men mumbled something and shifted uneasily, as any contact with officers of the law was something to be avoided, however innocent a man might be. The coroner's trio stood around the body, Thomas as reluctant as ever, for even a year's familiarity with his job had not inured his sensitive soul to the sights and smells of sudden death.

  De Wolfe nodded at Gwyn, who, well used to the routine, bent and whipped off the piece of sailcloth to expose the corpse.

  As Osric had promised, the deceased was stark naked, lying on his back, and against
the dark muddy ground his pallor was almost obscene, like that of a plucked goose on a butcher's slab. The belly protruded, and Gwyn gave it a firm prod with his forefinger.

  'That's fat, not gassy corruption!' he observed with satisfaction.

  'I told you he was fresh,' said the constable, indignantly. 'Look at his hands, they're hardly wrinkled, so he's not been in the water long.'

  De Wolfe, who considered himself an expert on injury and death, was not going to let a town constable lecture him on the subject, and he dropped to a crouch to examine the body more closely.

  'Still stiff in the arms and legs,' he barked, as he cranked the elbows and knees of the dead man. 'And eyes not clouded yet!' He prodded the eyelids with a long finger as he spoke.

  'The face is a proper mess, looks as if he's had a kicking,' said Gwyn judicially. From eyebrows down to jawline, the face was a welter of lacerations and bruises, the skin ripped, the lips puffed and torn and the nose smashed out of all recognition.

  Thomas plucked up enough courage to venture a comment, similar to the one Gwyn had made earlier to the constable, 'We've had corpses from the water before, where you've said the injuries were due to being knocked around against stones and rocks after death. Could this not be the same?'

  The coroner shook his dark head. 'The cuts and wounds are only on his face and neck. The rest of him is intact. When a corpse drags along the bottom, the knees and backs of the hands get ripped as well.'

  Gwyn hoisted up one of the stiff arms. 'And look at these, Crowner! Bruises on both his forearms and hands.'

  Thomas was uncharacteristically stubborn today.

  'Isn't that what the crowner just described?' De Wolfe, content to expound further, prodded the blue marks with his forefinger. 'You can't bruise a corpse, Thomas! These were inflicted during life, though they're very recent, still being blue in colour.' His officer nodded sagely. 'Men get them from holding up their arms to defend themselves against a beating. This poor fellow's had a good old hammering.'

  They stood in a silent ring around the body for a moment, looking down at what had been a living person not long before. Thomas crossed himself several times and murmured some verses of a Latin requiem under his breath.

  'We know how he died, but who the hell is he?' grunted Gwyn.

  De Wolfe questioned the two labourers and the constable, but none of them could offer any suggestions, which was hardly surprising given the state of the man's face. Crouching again alongside the body, John picked up the hands and studied them, turning them over to see both the backs and the palms.

  'He's no rough peasant or manual worker. His hands are free from calluses - though he seems to have a number of small scars and old burns on the inside of his fingers. Maybe he was some kind of craftsman.'

  After Gwyn had rolled the corpse on to its face to allow them to examine the back, de Wolfe motioned him to pull the makeshift canvas shroud over it again.

  'Nothing more we can do herel We'll have to wait for someone to report their husband or father missing - though he may have come up on the flood tide from Topsham. I doubt it would be as far away as Exmouth, the corpse is too fresh.'

  'Where shall we lodge him, Crowner?' asked Osric.

  'It's a long way to carry him up to Rougemont.' Corpses from the central part of the city were usually housed in a cart shed in the castle, but on standing up and looking around, de Wolfe decided on an easier option.

  'We can put him in one of the lower chambers of the Watergate - no one is likely to steal him!' The two wharf workers found a wooden device that porters used for carrying heavy crates or bales from the ships, a stretcher with short legs that looked remarkably like a bier. On this they carried the unknown victim, decorously covered with the sailcloth, to the nearby gate in the city wall. This had a narrow tower on each side, in one of which lived the watchmen who had the strict duty of closing the large gates when curfew was rung at dusk. In the base of the other bastion was a dank chamber half filled with junk and rubbish, but with enough space to leave the corpse on its trestle.

  Gwyn pulled some lengths of timber across the small arched entrance to discourage intruders and Osric went across to the gatekeeper to order him to keep an eye on the place until further notice.

  'Not much point in holding an inquest until we get some news as to who he might be,' said the coroner, as they started back up the hill towards High Street.

  'With the fair starting tomorrow, there'll be hundreds of strangers in Exeter - maybe a thousand or more, given that the tournament is here as well,' growled Gwyn. 'Maybe he's one of those and we'll never get to know who he was.'

  John made one of his throat-clearing rumbles, which could mean almost anything. 'I've got a feeling in my water that he's a man of substance, rather than some nonentity. If that's so, then he's more likely to be missed.'

  A few minutes later, he somewhat reluctantly turned into Martin's Lane to reach his front door, all too aware that he would get black looks and sullen recriminations from Matilda for leaving her in the lurch so abruptly at Rougemont.

  Chapter Two

  In which Crowner John goes to the fair

  When John entered his tall, narrow house, one of only two in the narrow lane that joined High Street to the cathedral Close, he found that he had a reprieve from his wife's acidulous tongue, for she had taken herself off to her favourite church, tiny St Olave's at the upper end of Fore Street. Whether she was praying for her own soul or that of her brother, he knew not, but doubted that his own welfare was on her devotional agenda.

  He put his head around the door which led from the small outer vestibule into the hall, a high, gloomy room that reached right up to the bare rafters of the house. A glance showed him that it was empty, so he went to the other end of the vestibule and walked along the narrow covered passage that ran down the side of the house to the back yard.

  The plot of muddy earth that was his demesne contained the kitchen shed, the wash house, the privy and a pigsty, all built of a mixture of wattle panels and 'cob' - a plaster made from clay, straw, dried ferns and horse manure. The house itself was of timber, with a roof of wooden shingles. At the back, a solar projected from the upper part, reached by an outside wooden staircase, under which was a hut that housed Lucille, Matilda's rabbit-toothed French maid. The solar was his wife's retreat, but also served as their bedroom, being the only other room in the house other than the hall and its vestibule.

  There was a well in the middle of the yard, and bent over this was the rounded backside of a woman,! hoisting up a leather bucket. John loped across and gave it a slap, grinning as his cook-maid swung around to glare at him in mock outrage. Mary was a handsome wench, her dark hair a legacy from an unknown father, who had probably been a soldier passing through the city some twenty-five years earlier.

  'Stop taking advantage of a poor servant; Sir Crowner, else I'll tell your wife - or even worse, your mistress!' she chided, but let him slip an arm around her and give her a smacking kiss on the lips. There had been a time when they did far more than kiss, but since the nosy Lucille had been in residence, Mary had resisted his advances, afraid that she would carry tales to John's wife.

  Pushing him away with one hand, she carried her leather pail of water into the kitchen, where she not only cooked for the household but lived and slept as well. John dropped on to a stool and fondled the head of his old hound Brutus, who was dozing by the firepit in the centre, He looked at a ring of griddle cakes cooking on a bakestone over the fire.

  'The food at the new sheriff's installation was miserable,' he said pointedly,"and with a sigh Mary lifted off a couple of hot cakes with a wooden spatula and offered them to her master.

  'The honey's in that pot by your elbow,' she said, as she ladled some water from her bucket into a small cauldron of stew that was simmering at the edge of the fire. Then she sat on the hay-bag on the floor which served as her bed and looked at him expectantly. They were good friends, the coroner and his house servant, and she looked afte
r him as well as any wife - and much better than the one he actually had. He always regaled her with news of his day's exploits, and she often fed him titbits of gossip picked up at the baker's shop or the butcher's stall, which were sometimes of use in his investigations.

  He described the ceremony at the castle, then told her of the discovery of the body in the River Exe. 'I suppose you've heard no titde-tattle in the town about anyone gone missing?' he asked hopefully.

  Mary shook her head as she poured him a mug of ale from a pitcher on the earth floor. 'The place is heaving with people for the fair - strangers everywhere, it's hard to get near the stalls to buy our food!'

  'At least they'll be staying open, not like some places,' he remarked.

  In a number of other towns, the local shops had to close down during fairs in order not to compete with the visiting stall-holders, who paid stiff fees for the privilege of trading there for three days. Exeter allowed its own traders to carry on, however, though many of these also took booths on the fairground outside the city walls to make sure that they got their share of the extra business.

  The pair chatted for a while until John had eaten his cakes and drunk his ale, by which time the late afternoon bells were ringing from the nearby cathedral to summon the clergy to vespers, the last service of the day.

  'There's a duck for supper, with turnips, onions and cabbage,' advised Mary. 'So don't go feeding too much down at the Bush!' she warned, knowing full well that the coroner would take advantage of Matilda's absence to take the dog for a walk, his excuse to slip down to the tavern in Idle Lane to see his mistress.

  He gave another of his lopsided grins and planted another quick kiss on her forehead. Whistling to Brutus to follow, he strode away towards the front door of the house, his alibi loping after him. In Martin's Lane, he turned right into the Close, the large open area surrounding the great cathedral church of St Mary and St Peter. Completed only a few years earlier, the great twin towers rose majestically into the sky, but at ground level the appearance of the Close was anything but elegant. It was a confused tangle of muddy paths between open grave pits, old grave mounds, piles of refuse and dumped offal. Populated by beggars, drunks and urchins playing tag and football, it was also infested by cut-purses eager to fleece unwary visitors. At this time of the October fair, there was an even greater number of loafers in the Close, some come to gape at the great church, others adding to the number of passers-by being importuned by pedlars with their trays of sweetmeats, pasties and trinkets.