The Elixir of Death Read online

  'John, what are you doing here? I had no idea that you would call on me today.' Then Hilda noticed his expression and her gaze faltered.

  The next few minutes were very uncomfortable for John as he broke the news as gently as he could. Alice stood uncertainly near the door, as her mistress was held close against the breast of this fierce-looking knight. Hilda's eyes filled with tears, but much to John's relief she held back from sobbing, as he would rather face a thousand of Saladin's warriors than one weeping woman.

  'He was a good man, always kind to me, like another father,' she murmured into his tunic. 'I'll miss him, though he was away at sea for much of the year.' Hilda turned her beautiful face up to John, causing him to think inconsequentially how different it was from Nesta's. Where the Welsh woman had rounder features with a snub nose, Hilda's face was longer, with higher cheek-bones and a slim, straight nose below her blue eyes.

  He led her back to her chair and drew up a stool to be close to her side.

  'There are many practical matters to be dealt with, Hilda. But I will do all I can to help you with them.'

  She nodded, drying her moist cheeks with the hem of her sleeve, then ordered the maid to fetch some wine and pastries. When the girl had rather reluctantly left the room, Hilda laid her hand on his.

  'There has been a very special bond between us for many years, John. I wish with all my heart that I could ,have become your wife, instead of Thorgils', but it was not possible.' She leant across and kissed his stubbly cheek. 'But we must not turn this tragedy to our own advantage - I am a new widow and you have your Nesta.'

  De Wolfe knew that he was being gently warned off, and it reinforced his determination to be faithful to his Welsh mistress, if not his wife. Yet a trace of disappointment niggled in his mind, though even that was soothed by her next words. 'Time may alter matters, John, so let us have patience.'

  The wine and a platter of meat pasties appeared and as Alice seemed determined to play the chaperone by crouching in a corner, John led the discussion on to the practical matters he had raised. He told Hilda of the arrangements to bring back the bodies of Thorgils and the other Dawlish men and promised to send Thomas de Peyne to see the parish priest this very afternoon, to organise the funeral.

  When he enquired about money, she assured him that her husband, conscious of his years and his dangerous occupation on the high seas, had made ample provision for an unexpected death. A document had been drawn up by an Exeter lawyer leaving everything to her, as there were no children alive by his previous marriage and they had had none themselves.

  'I have the key to his treasure chest, which he always told me to use as my own,' she said sadly. 'The house is valuable and he owned two other smaller ships and a warehouse in Topsham which brings in a rent, so I have no concerns about my survival.'

  She asked about the Mary and Child Jesus, expecting to hear that it was a total loss, but John explained that it might well be saved and brought back into service.

  'But I have no experience as a ship-owner, John. What am I to do with these three vessels? Shall I sell them?'

  He had no wish to burden her with business matters so soon after learning that she was a widow, but he briefly explained that he would talk to Hugh de Relaga and see whether they could work out some new venture.

  'But forget that for now, dear woman,' he said gruffly, as he rose and patted her shoulder awkwardly. 'I will attend to all these matters. Have you someone who can come and keep you company at this unhappy time?'

  She smiled sadly. 'With Thorgils absent so much, I am so often alone, apart from Alice here. With the winter coming and the ships laid up, I was looking forward to his company. Now I will go home to Holcombe for a while to be with my family.'

  John assured her that his brother William, manor-lord of Holcombe, already knew of the tragedy and would do anything necessary to help her.

  As he was leaving, with a promise to return for the funeral, Hilda clutched his arm.

  'Who can have done such a terrible thing, John?' she asked, in a voice that quavered with emotion. 'The wife of a ship man always accepts the perils of the sea. Every time he left, I wondered if it would be the last I would ever see of him, because of some tempest or shipwreck. But that he should be stabbed to death, along with his crew, is beyond my comprehension!'

  John put a long arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him, ignoring the curious stares of the maid.

  'I'll not rest until I find the answer to that question, Hilda. This is a very strange crime, but I'll get to the bottom of it, even if takes me years and a journey to Cathay and back!'

  The coroner's next journey was not as far as Cathay, but was the ten miles into Exeter, which they reached just before dusk, when the walled city was closed at curfew. Gwyn did not enter through the West Gate with his master, but went around the south side to reach the village of St Sidwell, where he lived in a hut with his wife and two small sons. With his clerk lagging wearily behind, John de Wolfe walked his horse up Fore Street to the central crossing of Carfoix and straight on into High Street, the town plan having been set down a thousand years earlier by the Romans. A thriving, bustling city, Exeter was developing quickly, many of the old wooden houses being rebuilt in stone, so that a confused mixture of styles lined the crowded streets. Not yet paved, these lanes were of beaten earth, dusty in the dry and a morass in the rain. A central gutter sluggishly conveyed all the effluent down to the river, including most of the rubbish and filth that householders and shopkeepers flung out of their doors.

  Just past the new Guildhall, a narrow alley opened on the right-hand side. This was Martin's Lane, one of the entrances into the cathedral Close, the large open area around the massive church of St Mary and St Peter, whose twin towers soared above the city. The coroner had his house in the lane, but this evening both he and his clerk carried on up High Street towards the East Gate, then turned up Castle Hill to Rougemont, the fortress perched on the northern tip of the sloping city. John wished to discover whether any more cases had been reported during his absence down in the country. Thankfully, the guardroom had no messages for him and with Thomas close behind, he climbed to his cheerless chamber high in the gatehouse, which stood astride the entrance to the inner ward. He had hardly sat down behind his table when a voice came from the doorway.

  'The sheriff sends his compliments, Sir John, and asks if you could attend upon him.'

  The voice was that of Sergeant Gabriel, the grizzled old soldier who headed the garrison's men-at-arms at Rougemont, so called on account of the colour of its local sandstone. He had stuck his head around the tattered hessian curtain that hung over the doorway to de Wolfe's chamber. It was a bleak, draughty garret, spitefully provided by the former sheriff, Richard de Revelle, when he was reluctantly obliged to find some accommodation for his brother-in-law, the new coroner. De Revelle had seen the introduction of these upstart coroners as a threat to his own interests, especially his opportunities to extort and embezzle from the inhabitants and taxes of the shire of Devon. The knowledge that one of the King's motives in setting up the coroner system was to keep a check on rapacious sheriffs made it an even more bitter pill to swallow.

  De Wolfe received the sergeant's message with a lift of his black eyebrows, as he sat in the lengthening gloom at the rough trestle table that acted as his desk. This, together with a bench and a couple of milking stools, was the only furniture in the room. Thomas de Peyne was on one of the stools on the other side of the table, his tongue projecting from the corner of his thin lips as he began lighting a rush lamp with a flint and tinder to check the parchment roll carrying his account of the Ringmore inquest.

  'Did he say what he wanted, Gabriel?' demanded de Wolfe.

  The old soldier shook his head. 'Not a word, Crowner! But a herald came with messages from Winchester when you were away. The day 'afore yesterday, it was - so maybe it's to do with that.'

  His head vanished, and with a groan at the stiffness in his back and legs after so m
uch riding, John rose and went after him, with an unnecessary admonition to his clerk to get the inquisition finished before the day was out.

  The steep spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall led back down to the guardroom. This was just inside the archway that led from a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch separating it from the outer ward. The tall, narrow gatehouse had been built by William the Bastard, one of the first stone structures he put up after the Conquest, mainly to guard against a repetition of the revolt that the citizens of Exeter raised against him. Below it, the large outer ward was defended by a bank topped by a stout wooden palisade and contained most of the garrison and their families, living in a motley collection of huts and sheds.

  The inner ward was protected by a castellated wall cutting off the uppermost corner of the old Roman fortifications. John walked across this towards the keep, a two-storeyed building in the far corner, beyond the Shire Hall, which was the courthouse for the city. The only other stone building there was the tiny garrison chapel of St Mary.

  De Wolfe tramped through the mud churned by horses, oxen and soldiers' boots into a slippery brown paste, until he reached the wooden steps going up to the entrance to the keep. As a defence measure, this was set high above the undercroft, a gloomy basement partly below ground level which housed the cells of the castle gaol. The upper doorway gave directly on to the hall, a large chamber occupying most of the main floor, the remainder holding a few rooms for the sheriff and castle constable. The floor above was a warren of stores, offices and living accommodation for clerks and more senior servants.

  John looked around the crowded hall and its scattering of tables where men were talking, eating and drinking. Although it was late in the day, more were standing in groups or tramping impatiently about waiting for an audience with clerks and officials. A big log fire smouldered in an open hearth against one wall, the smoke wreathing upwards to blacken the old ceiling beams even more. He acknowledged a few waves and greetings, then went to the first door on the left of the hall where a man-at-arms in a leather cuirass and round iron helmet with a nose-guard was leaning against the wall. As soon as he saw the coroner, he sprang to attention, banged the butt of his spear on the ground in salute and opened the door for John to enter.

  Inside, he found the sheriff, Henry de Furnellis, beleaguered behind a table covered with rolls and parchments. Candles and rush-lights were lit on the table and in sconces around the walls. A clerk hovered beside him, waving more documents for the sheriff's attention.

  'Thank God for an interruption!' boomed de

  Furnellis. 'Sit down and give me an excuse for a drink and a respite from these bloody rolls.' As Henry was no more literate than John, his clerks had to read him every word and transcribe any responses from his dictation, as Thomas de Peyne did for the coroner.

  John was quite familiar with Henry's chamber and went to a shelf to fetch a large jug of cider and two pewter mugs. He filled these and placed one before the sheriff, before dragging up a stool and sitting down on the opposite side of the table. They both took deep draughts of the cloudy fluid, then Henry gave a sigh of satisfaction and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 'I needed that, John! The county farm has to go to Winchester next week and these accursed clerks are driving me mad with their accounts.'

  The 'farm' was the twice-yearly payment of the taxes collected from Devonshire and had to be taken in coin personally by the sheriff, to be accounted for by the clerks of the royal exchequer. The two men talked for a few moments about the state of the local economy and the fears they had that the next farm might be much reduced, if the coming harvest was as bad as could be expected after this foul summer. Though Exeter itself was booming from its trade in tin, wool and cloth exports, most of the population elsewhere in the county lived off the land and were ever vulnerable to the effects of the weather.

  De Furnellis reached across to refill their tankards. At sixty, he was almost two decades older than John, another old soldier who had been rewarded for his years of faithful service by being appointed as sheriff. In fact, this was the second time he had been sheriff of Devon, as early the previous year John's brother-in-law had been appointed, but owing to suspicions of his favouring Prince John's rebellion, Richard had been suspended and Henry had filled the gap for a few months, until de Revelle was reinstated. Now that the latter had finally been disgraced and ejected, de Furnellis had once more rather reluctantly accepted another term as sheriff. He fervently hoped that it would only be temporary and that he could go back into retirement once again.

  After another swallow, the coroner banged his mug on to the table and got down to business.

  'I've got some news for you, Henry, from the southwest of your domain. But first, what's this about a royal messenger coming while I was away?'

  'That's why I wanted to see you, John. As well as a lot of official nonsense for me from the Chancery and from the justices about their next visitation, there was a message from Hubert Walter which concerns us both - especially as you are so thick with him.'

  He said this without sarcasm, as de Wolfe's friendship with the Justiciar was well known. Hubert had been King Richard's second-in-command on the Third Crusade and had been rewarded by being appointed both Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar, the highest office in the King's Council. Now that Richard Coeur-de-Lion had gone back to France, apparently never to return, Hubert Walter was virtually regent in his place, the most powerful man in England. John de Wolfe had fought alongside him in the Holy Land and had been part of Richard's bodyguard on the ill-fated journey home, when the King had been kidnapped in Austria and imprisoned there and in Germany for well over a year, until the Justiciar had negotiated his release on payment of a huge ransom.

  'What's this message about? Is Hubert calling us to clean the rust from our swords and go to help the King in France?'

  John said this jokingly, but there a wistful undercurrent in his voice, as he still missed the excitement and comradeship of the battlefield, after twenty years of campaigning.

  Henry de Furnellis grinned and shook his head. He was a heavily built man, slow of movement and deliberate in speech. His ruddy face carried a large nose, though this bucolic appearance was enlivened by a pair of bright blue eyes. He had cropped grey hair and a drooping moustache of the same colour. A mournful mouth above loose skin on his neck gave him the appearance of an elderly deer-hound. Picking up a curled page of parchment from his cluttered table, he waved it at the coroner, who could see a heavy wax seal dangling from it which he recognised as that of the Justiciar.

  'Like you, I can't read a bloody word of it, but Elphin said it was important.'

  He beckoned to his chief clerk, who was hovering near the door to the inner chamber. This led to the sheriff's sleeping quarters, but though his predecessor had spent much of his time there - sometimes with a lady of ill repute - Henry had his own town house near the East Gate and rarely used the bedchamber. The tonsured clerk, a spare elderly man, came forward and took the document to read to John.

  'It's from Hubert Walter, Crowner, and after the usual greetings, he is, quite emphatic that the contents should also be communicated to you.'

  He cleared his throat and went on. 'The Justiciar says that he has had information from his spies in France that King Philip Augustus is once again encouraging Prince John, Count of Mortain, to foment rebellion against his brother, our sovereign lord, Richard. The intelligence is very vague, but there are rumours that agents have been sent to England, mainly to raise funds to recruit and equip another army for the purpose.'

  De Wolfe looked across at the sheriff and shrugged. 'Nothing new in sending spies across the Channel - it happens all the time, in both directions.'

  'I have not quite finished, sir!' rebuked Elphin, and dropped his eyes back to the parchment. 'Though they gleaned little more than hints and rumours, his spies heard whispers that the far west of England was involved and also that Moors might be implicated in raising money.' Elphin bent to
put the message back on the table as he said his final words. 'The Justiciar says he has sent this warning to the sheriffs of all the western shires, from Cornwall to Dorset, with an admonition for every law officer to be vigilant.'

  'What do you think of that, John?' asked de Furnellis. 'You have been involved in several brushes with those who adhere to the Prince's cause - mainly involving your dear brother-in-law. '

  The coroner was silent for a moment as he chewed over the scanty information, then he cleared his throat with one of his non-committal rasps.

  'The Count of Mortain has been quiet lately, as far as I've heard. I had hoped that he had learnt his lesson last year, when the Lionheart came back from captivity and trounced his forces at Tickhill and Nottingham.'

  'King Richard was too damn lenient with his young brother!' growled Henry. 'He should have locked him up for a few years, as their father did with their mother, Queen Eleanor. Instead, the soft-hearted fellow has now given back most of John's land that was confiscated.'

  'If he's thinking of new treachery against the King, he'll certainly need money to rebuild support,' mused de Wolfe. 'I wonder what sending agents to the west hopes to achieve in that direction?'

  'And what's this business about Mohammedans?' demanded de Furnellis.