The Manor of Death Page 8

  As he plodded over a rise, he could see the roofs and church tower of Wilmington in its hollow below. One faint flickering light was visible - he presumed from either a candle or a horn lantern - but otherwise the place looked dead, as was normal in the countryside, where folk went to bed with the dusk and rose with the dawn. When he got down to the hamlet, he was intrigued to see that the light was coming from the open door of the alehouse and that several figures were moving in front of it, their shapes silhouetted against the flames from a log fire in the middle of the room. Even more interesting was the presence of the covered wagon just outside the tavern.

  After the blows he had suffered, he approached cautiously, keeping out of the moonlight in the shadow of a hedge on the other side of the road. The rags on his feet muffled any sound, and he sidled along until he was opposite the cart. He stopped and watched what was happening outside the inn. The two men who had been on the footboard were carrying small kegs into the low thatched building whose whitewashed walls stood out starkly in the harsh moonlight. At the door, a fat man was watching them, presumably the landlord. The pedlar waited as about half a dozen of the firkins were taken inside. Then about the same number of flat bales were transferred from the back of the wagon, before he saw the driver pulling down the canvas cover and lashing it to cleats on the tailboard. At the alehouse door, the man who had beaten him was in close conversation with the innkeeper, and though

  Setricus could make out none of their muttering he distinctly heard the clinking of coins.

  The two men climbed back on to the cart and the inn door was quietly closed as the oxen jerked into life and the vehicle rumbled away out of the village. The pedlar followed it at a safe distance and for a quarter of an hour he trailed behind, wondering what manner of delivery needed to be made after dark in the depths of the countryside. He guessed that their boast that there were more armed men in the back was a bluff, as there had been no sign of them when they stopped at the tavern.

  Assuming that they were going to Honiton, he stepped out quite boldly a couple of hundred paces behind, there being no chance that his soft footfalls could be heard over the rumble and squeak of the solid cartwheels. Suddenly, however, the wagon began to make a sharp turn off the highway, and Setricus scurried into the shadow of the bushes in case they looked back the way they had come. He saw that they had pulled into a space alongside a small toft, a solitary dwelling of cob-plastered wattle, with a thatched roof that even in the pale moonlight looked ragged and grass-grown. A rickety fence marked off a neglected plot of land, but there was no sign of man or beast.

  The driver and his aggressive companion got down and untied the two oxen from the shafts, releasing them from the yokes across their shoulders. With a smack on their rumps, they drove the animals through a gate into the compound around the cottage, then vanished around the back. There were some noises within for a few minutes, but no light appeared through the roughly shuttered window-opening and soon all was quiet.

  Setricus waited for many more minutes, then surmised that the men had taken to their beds. By the look of the place, these would probably be merely bags of hay or a pile of bracken on the floor - though he would dearly have liked the same comfort himself.

  Setricus was gripped by a fervent desire to know what was left in the back of the wagon, especially if he could steal some of it. He shrugged off his pack into the hedge and quietly sidled up to the back of the cart. Undoing one of the thongs that secured the flap at the rear, he raised himself on tiptoe and peered over the tailboard. In the poor light, all he could see were some more kegs and bales, all of which were too large for him to carry away. There seemed to be some smaller objects on the floor between them and, determined to purloin something for his trouble, he undid the rest of the lashings and pulled out one of the wooden pegs that held the tailboard in place. He had expected the other end to be fixed in a similar fashion, so that he could ease the planks downwards when he removed the second pin - but this happened to be missing, and without warning the heavy tailboard dropped with a crash!

  Frozen with terror, Setricus stood immobile for a moment before he could get his legs in motion - but he was too late. Seconds after, there was a roar from behind the house and the two men appeared just as the pedlar started to run for the roadway, all too visible in the bright moonlight.

  'It's that bloody spy we met on the road!' roared the cart driver. 'He'll not get away to tell tales this time!'

  Soon after dawn next morning, John de Wolfe was again on the road with his officer. He had broken his fast on his usual gruel with honey, then bread, cheese and watered ale in Mary's kitchen-shed in the back yard, where she cooked and slept with Brutus for company. Matilda was still snoring when he left her on the large mattress on the floor of the solar, an extra room built out on stilts at the back of the house. It was reached by a wooden stairway, under which her French maid Lucille lived in what was little more than a large box. Mary had again dressed his boil and padded it inside his breeches with a wad of linen, so that he was able to sit in the saddle without too much discomfort. John had been afraid that he would have to visit Richard Lustcote, the most experienced apothecary in Exeter, to have it lanced, but it seemed to have stayed brawny, without any sign of pus accumulating under the skin.

  He rode down to the West Gate, where he had arranged to meet Gwyn, having left a message at Rougemont the previous evening. Thomas was performing his duties at the cathedral, where he had a stipend to say prayers and Masses each day for a rich merchant who had left money for a priest to intercede in perpetuity to ease the passage of his soul from purgatory to heaven. If needed urgently by the coroner, the little clerk could hand over this task to someone else, but today John felt that he could do without Thomas, who was such a poor horseman that he was a liability when they were in a hurry or needed to travel a long distance.

  With the Cornishman alongside on his big brown mare, they waded the river alongside the flimsy footbridge, as it was low tide. The new stone bridge was still only half-finished after many years, the builders having run out of money again, but unless it was high tide or the Exe was in spate from heavy rain on Exmoor, the crossing could be made with only the horses' bellies getting wet. On the other side they trotted through several villages, then turned off the main highway that led to Buckfast Abbey and distant Plymouth. This side road went down towards the coast, and a few miles further on was their first destination, the hamlet of Kenton, which lay between the flat lands bordering the estuary and the Haldon Hills behind. De Wolfe knew it well, as it was on the road from Exeter to his home manor, Stoke-in-Teignhead, ten miles further on towards Torbay. His mother, sister and elder brother still lived there, and if there was time he resolved to visit them later that day.

  The mill in Kenton was a stone structure with a roof of wooden shingles, built alongside a stream that had been channelled into a narrow leat to increase the speed of the flow. After emerging from below the wheel, the water spread into a large pool, and it was here that the body of the miller had been found the previous day.

  When the coroner and his officer arrived and dismounted outside the upper entrance to the mill, they were met by a small deputation consisting of the manor-reeve and the bailiff, for the place had no local lord, being part of the royal demesne, owned by the Crown. The parish priest, incumbent of All Saints', was also there, as well as several members of the dead man's family, but it was the bailiff, Adam Lida, who did all the talking. He was an earnest fellow of about thirty, with close-cropped blond hair and a mournful expression on his narrow face.

  'The body is lying in the mill here, Crowner,' he explained, leading the way through the low doorway into the grinding room. Here, the two large stones were still and silent, the water having been diverted from the wheel by sluices. Amongst the spilt corn and bags of flour lay the corpse of a fat man, partly covered by a couple of sacks.

  'We couldn't leave him floating in the pool until you came, sir,' said Adam. 'But I thought it best to
keep the cadaver as close by as possible.'

  De Wolfe grunted, but the bailiff could not tell if this was disapproval for moving the body from the scene of death or a commendation for not taking it very far. 'When was he last seen alive?' demanded John.

  'The previous night, sir. It would seem that he was pretty far gone in his cups. The reeve here saw him leave the alehouse at the end of the evening and he was staggering then.'

  De Wolfe nodded impatiently. 'Let's have a look at him, then.'

  It sounded a familiar story, a drunk weaving his way home and falling into deep water while his wits were befuddled. The reeve confirmed the story and Adam Lida added that Alfred Miller was a heavy drinker, worse since the death of his wife several years earlier.

  Gwyn and the coroner went into their well-worn routine, squatting on each side of the corpse, as the Cornishman pulled off the sacks. Outside the door, the family and a dozen villagers crowded together to peer inside as the law officers began their examination.

  'He's been in water a good few hours,' grunted Gwyn as he lifted a stiff arm and peered at the hand. The skin of the fingertips was wrinkled and soft from saturation with water.

  Alfred Miller had a belly the size of a woman about to go into childbirth, and John pulled up the short tunic to prod it with a forefinger. 'Must be an ale-belly, for it's not the swelling of corruption. Anyway, he's not been long enough in the water to start rotting.' He looked carefully at the eyes and felt the scalp for injuries, but found nothing suspicious under the shock of blond hair that suggested his Saxon ancestry.

  'When we pulled him out yesterday morning, he had froth coming out of his nose and mouth, like the head on a brew-vat,' said the reeve helpfully.

  De Wolfe glanced at Gwyn and his henchman nodded. Then Gwyn placed one of his massive hands on the middle of the dead man's chest and pressed hard. There was a gurgling hiss as the miller gave his last breath and a plume of pinkish froth issued from his nostrils and some watery fluid leaked out between his clenched teeth.

  The coroner nodded in satisfaction. 'Drowned right enough! Let's make sure he's got no injuries. No reason why a wounded man can't drown as well.'

  Gwyn pulled off the man's belt and then struggled to pull up his tunic to the armpits. Then they pulled down his hose, two separate legs of brown wool held up to his waistband by laces. There were no cuts or bruises anywhere. Satisfied, John motioned to Gwyn to replace the clothing.

  Standing up, he turned to Adam Lida. 'There seems to be no problem here, bailiff. I will hold a short inquest straight away and get it over with.'

  The proceedings took a very few minutes. The man who had found the body was called, then the reeve to say that he had seen Alfred Miller drunk on the night he had died. No one else had anything to add, so de Wolfe caused the jury to parade past the corpse and view the 'washerwoman's skin' on the hands.

  When they lined up again, the coroner addressed them in tones that brooked no dissent. 'You know better than I that this poor fellow was too fond of his ale and that when last seen he was in a drunken state. There are no injuries upon the body, and he has clearly drowned.' He glared around the stoical faces. 'I doubt that you will be able to come to anything but the conclusion that Alfred Miller fell into his own millpond. It seems unlikely that he went into the stream above the wheel, as he has no scratches or bruises from being dragged under the paddles, common though that is in other cases.'

  John jabbed a finger at the reeve, who stood in the middle of the jury, and abruptly appointed him foreman. 'Decide a verdict amongst yourselves now.' He almost added, 'And be quick about it!', but it was not necessary, as after a hurried muttering and nodding of heads the reeve announced that they were satisfied that it was an accidental drowning.

  The family came to claim the body for burial, the priest delivered his scrap of parchment with the few names written upon it, and within minutes John and Gwyn were astride their horses and trotting southwards out of the village.

  Four miles beyond Kenton, they came into Dawlish, where the coast rose from the flat estuary of the Exe into the undulating cliffs that stretched down to the River Teign and onwards to Torbay. Dawlish was a large village that depended mainly on fishing, but a few small merchant vessels were based there, beaching in the mouth of Dawlish Water, a stream that issued from the hills behind. Three of these cogs had belonged to Hilda's husband, Thorgils the Boatman, but he had been savagely murdered with all his crew a few months earlier. Hilda was the daughter of the manor-reeve of Holcombe, a couple of miles further down the coast - and Holcombe was the other manor owned by the de Wolfe family, in addition to Stoke-in-Teignhead. Though Hilda was more than half a decade younger than John's forty-one years, they had known each other since their youth - and by her teens they had been lovers, which had continued intermittently until he went off to the French wars and then the Crusade. Given the social gulf between the son of a manor-lord and the daughter of his Saxon reeve, Hilda had no prospect of becoming his wife, so she had married Thorgils, a widower more than twenty years older. Thorgils had become rich and had built himself a fine new stone house in the village. Though it was hardly a love match, he was amiable and kind to her, and when he died she was genuinely grieved. Until the last year or so, John had sometimes visited Hilda when her husband was away at sea, but his increasing devotion to Nesta had brought that to an end.

  Ostensibly, John was coming to Dawlish today to question the masters of these cogs to see if they had any knowledge of the ships sailing out of Axmouth - but he knew only too well that his main motive was to call upon Hilda. John told himself that his interest was solely to enquire after her health and happiness following her bereavement - but a little devil sitting upon his shoulder kept reminding him of her blonde beauty and passionate nature. He wondered whether it was possible to be in love with two women at the same time. His conscience was robust enough to assure him that even if tempted he was stout enough to resist but that small devilish voice whispered that such temptation would be very welcome.

  Gwyn plodded alongside his master, well aware of the reason for de Wolfe's thoughtful silence. They had been through this routine before, usually when travelling to and from John's home further down the coast. They would look into the little river as they passed through Dawlish to see if Thorgils' cog was there - and if not, Gwyn would tactfully adjourn to an alehouse for an hour or so while John went off on some unspecified errand, which both of them well knew meant a visit to Thorgils' fine house. Now, of course, Hilda was a widow and such subterfuge was not needed, but in fact, since the shipman's death, John had called upon her only twice and had not seduced her for a year or more, much as he was tempted. He had been faithful to Nesta all that time, a record for fidelity where John de Wolfe was concerned.

  When they reached the village, the tide was full in, preventing them from fording the stream that emptied into the sea across the beach. They had to ride up the right bank until it was shallow enough for them to cross, but this gave them an opportunity to see that several merchant vessels were bobbing at their moonngs.

  'That's one of Thorgils' cogs,' said Gwyn, forgetting for a moment that it was now partly his master's. 'I remember the look of her from when they came down to Salcombe to salvage the ship he died on.'

  They trotted back down the other side of the stream and reined in alongside the vessel, which John remembered was called the St Radegund. Several men were working on the rigging of the single square sail, and two others were hammering at deck planks around the gaping hold in the centre.

  'Is your shipmaster aboard?' yelled Gwyn.

  Several of the men looked up, and one recognised the forbidding figure of the coroner astride his old destrier. He rapidly hissed to his companions that their employer was visiting, then walked to the bulwark and called across the narrow strip of water, which was beginning to run out on the ebb tide.

  'Sir John, good day to you! Roger Watts has gone to say farewell to Mistress Hilda, as we sail for Exeter tonight to load y
our wool for Calais.'

  De Wolfe felt a pleasant glow of ownership as he heard this and waved a hand at the shipman, calling a few words of encouragement. Sailing the Channel was always a hazardous occupation, with not only winds, fog and tide to contend with but the ever-present threat of pirates and privateers, who came from as far away as the North African coast and even Turkey.

  'Gwyn, I must talk to Roger Watts to see if he has any knowledge about Axmouth. Get yourself to a tavern and find something to eat and drink. I've no doubt you can manage that!' His attempt at unfamiliar jocularity was born of pleasure at having a legitimate excuse to visit Hilda at her house, sufficient to assuage his conscience in regard to Nesta.

  Gwyn grinned at this transparent subterfuge and ambled away towards the Anchor alehouse a few yards away. Dawlish was little more than one main street along the track that led from Kenton to Teignmouth, with a few houses on a short lane that went at right angles to the stream, behind the high street. Here, Thorgils had built his mansion, a substantial stone dwelling of two storeys, easily the largest building in the village. It had two pillars in front joined by a shallow arch over a front door and the roof was of stone tiles, rather than thatch or wooden shingles. There was even a chimney, the whole house being a copy of one in the main street of Dol, in Brittany.

  John strode boldly up to the door and rapped loudly upon it, so different from the rather furtive visits he used to make when Hilda was a wife rather than a widow. It was opened by her frail little maid Alice, who was always in awe of this great dark man who came to call upon her mistress.

  'I believe one of our shipmasters is here, Alice,' he boomed.

  The girl, who could have been no more than twelve, bobbed her knee. 'Yes, sir. Master Watts has called and is upstairs.' The maid invited him in, leading him along a passage and up an open staircase to Hilda's solar, one of two rooms on the upper floor - a luxury indeed, even in the grander houses of Exeter.