The coroner slipped off his wolfskin cloak and hung it behind his table across a screen, a wattle hurdle hammered into the earth floor to keep off the draughts. Within half a minute, Edwin was stumping back to slap a quart pot of ale in front of him. ‘She’s coming directly, Cap’n. Do you want some food?’
‘Yes, and plenty of it, Sergeant. I could eat that old foot of yours, if you’d still got it!’
The ancient cackled with glee, rolling the white, collapsed eyeball horribly, then stumbled away to the kitchen.
As he drank the warm ale gratefully, John looked around at the throng. He nodded and spoke to a few nearby, all of whom were well aware of his intimacy with the landlady of the Bush. Many were tradesmen – of all types, from tanners to wool fullers, from butchers to tinsmiths. There were some off-duty men-at-arms from the castle and a few burgesses, the upper echelon of the merchants and traders in Exeter. The women were either the mistresses of some of the men – never their wives – or whores: their business never stopped for festive days.
He heard Nesta’s high voice shouting at her serving-maid and cook somewhere at the back of the big room, where Edwin was now busy drawing ale and cider from casks wedged up against the wall. As trade was brisk, the pottery mugs received only a token swill in a crock of dirty water before he refilled them under the spigots.
This was life as John liked it, even though he appeared a morose, solitary man. He was happiest in the company of men, despite his appetite for women’s charms. After a few mugs of ale his tongue would loosen and he enjoyed telling tales of past campaigns, of travel in foreign parts and hearing the latest scandals from Winchester or London. To sit by a warm fire in a busy tavern and listen to the bustle of life around him, to exchange greetings with men he had known for years, was a comforting change from the sterile hours of silence or stilted conversation he suffered in the house in Martin’s Lane. As he reflected on these things, he was suddenly and pleasantly interrupted. A warm body slipped on to the bench and pressed against him, a soft arm sliding through his. ‘How is my favourite law officer today? I hear you had a busy night in the cathedral Close.’ The owner of the Bush was a one-woman intelligence service: everything that took place in Exeter seemed to be common knowledge in the tavern within minutes of its happening.
John de Wolfe looked down at her with a rare smile of pleasure and affection. He saw a pretty auburn-haired Welsh woman of twenty-eight, with a heart-shaped face, a high forehead and a snub nose. Slightly under average height, Nesta was curvaceous, with a small waist and a bosom that was the object of many a man’s dreams in the city. ‘You are the best thing I’ve seen so far today, sweet woman,’ he said, with mock-gallantry.
The redhead pretended to pout. ‘As you’ve spent your time with the corpse of a strangled prebendary, that’s no great compliment, sir!’
He squeezed her thigh with a big hand. ‘If you know so much about my business, madam, maybe you’d like to tell me who are the culprits.’
She leaned across to take a drink from his mug, using the opportunity to press her breast against him. ‘Give me a few clues and I’ll solve it for you, John. But what else has been happening to you this past day or so?’
He sighed and slid an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m in disfavour with Matilda, once again.’ He told her what had happened during her party last night.
He got little sympathy from his mistress. ‘Poor woman! Fancy having such a husband as you! If you’d left my entertainment like that, I’d have blacked your eyes – and then banned you from my bed for a month.’ She was only half joking, for though she had no particular liking for Matilda, she knew there was fault on both sides and that, when he chose, this man could be as awkward and stubborn as a mule.
He grinned at her as one of the maids arrived with his food. ‘If she banned me from her bed for a month the only penalty would be that I was spared her snoring – for no other activity occurs on our couch, I can tell you.’
Nesta prodded him in the ribs in mock-outrage. ‘A fine story! You couldn’t keep your nightshirt down even if you were in bed with Bearded Lucy.’ This was a repulsive hag, reputed to be a witch, who lived in a hut alongside the river. All the same, Nesta was secretly pleased to know that he claimed to keep his virility for her. ‘Eat your victuals, Sir Crowner, and stop talking such nonsense.’
As he tucked into his food, for which the Bush had the best reputation among all the taverns in Exeter, Nesta was called away to settle an argument between the cook out in the yard and one of the maids. Using his dagger and his fingers, de Wolfe tucked into a slab of boiled bacon and fried onions that rested on a thick trencher of bread laid directly on the scrubbed boards of the table in lieu of a platter. The juices soaked into the trencher, which would be collected with all the others and given at the end of the day to the poor in the Bretayne district. As he ate his meat and spread yellow butter on to bread torn from a wheaten loaf, he felt calm and contentment spread though him, though the death of the canon still niggled in the back of his mind.
At the last mouthful, Nesta came back with a fresh quart of ale for him. ‘Tell me about this poor man in Canons’ Row,’ she demanded. Although she was a prodigious source of information and gossip, he knew that his confidences were safe with her – not that much was ever confidential in this small city, where everyone considered their neighbour’s business common property.
He told her what little he knew of the death of Robert de Hane and the lack of any apparent motive. He spoke in Welsh, as it was her native language and the one his mother had used with him as a child. Even when Gwyn was with them they talked in Welsh, for his own Cornish was similar, as was the Breton spoken by many visiting traders and shipmen.
‘Why kill a harmless old man like that?’ she asked, full of sympathy as always for the defenceless and the underdog. ‘You say he had no wealth or possessions to steal?’
De Wolfe took a deep draught of his ale. ‘There was some talk of his coming into wealth, which he was giving to the Church, but he had nothing that could be stolen from his house or his person.’
Her hazel eyes studied the strange man alongside her: he was not handsome, with that long gaunt face and beak of a nose, but he was tall, sinewy and utterly masculine. Though usually gruff and sparing with words, he could be loving and tender and she knew, to her great delight, that when roused he was a lover without compare, his long body a relentless machine for giving them mutual pleasure.
She had known him for six years, since her late husband Gruffydd had given up soldiering and bought the Bush Inn. John and Gruffydd had been together on several campaigns, the Welshman a master archer from Gwynllwyg[2] in south Wales, the home of the long-bow. Within two years, though, Gruffydd had been dead of a fever and Nesta was left with an inn and substantial debts. De Wolfe had loaned her money and paid for help in the tavern, until her own hard work had turned it into a successful business. It was only then that friendship had become passion, but she was well aware that it would never go beyond that: it was unthinkable that a Norman knight would leave his wife – especially a de Revelle – for a mere alehouse-keeper. Nesta also knew that he had other women tucked away around the county, but once again she settled philosophically, if reluctantly, for what she could get and was content to believe that she was his favourite.
She was silent long enough to make him look down at her and give one of his smiles, which was all the warmer for its rarity. ‘Sweet woman, you know most of the gossip in this city. Are there any new whispers?’
She pretended to pout at his lack of romance. ‘Crowner John, do you only want me for a spy? Am I of no use any longer to warm your bed – though it always seems to be my bed that you try to wreck in your frenzy?’