‘Coroner! Who the devil takes any notice of a coroner?’ said Pomeroy derisively. ‘Just a glorified tax-collector recording the pennies of dead felons for the Exchequer.’
Henri de Nonant was not so easily convinced. ‘There is talk that this crowner has the ear of both Hubert Walter and even the King.’
‘They’ve got a bloody long ears, then,’ cackled Cheever. ‘I wager that Richard will never set foot in England again.’
The more cautious Nonant shrugged. ‘So be it, then. But be careful – for the sake of a few acres of land, we can’t risk drawing attention to ourselves, until everything is in place.’
Pomeroy swallowed the rest of his wine and moved towards the door. ‘Let’s go and eat and drink our fill. And, Bernard, I trust I will hear tomorrow that these fellows have done their job. I want that felling completed and the stumps pulled out before the end of January.’
While Thomas de Peyne was indulging in his lonely labours in the cathedral, Gwyn of Polruan was mixing business with pleasure in another hostelry in the city. Not far from the Bush was a less reputable tavern on Stepcote Hill, called the Saracen. It was run by a fat, surly landlord known as Willem the Fleming and attracted a rougher class of customer, many from the Bretayne district just across Westgate Street, as well as dubious strangers entering the city through that gate.
However, Willem brewed good ale and it was also the place to pick up criminal gossip, as well the pox from the many harlots who used it as a business address.
This Christ Mass evening, the burly Cornishman was sitting in the Saracen with a quart pot of best ale, talking to some acquaintances and listening to the buzz of conversation around him. He had already eaten heartily with his wife and two children at her widowed sister’s house in Milk Street. They had left their own small dwelling in St Sidwell’s to spend the festive day there. Gwyn, tiring of women’s gossip in the tiny room, where the children slept on a straw mattress in the corner, had wandered out for a drink and some male company. He knew every tavern in the city, both as a customer and as coroner’s officer, for many of the inns were the scene of fights, assaults and even killings. Only last month the Saracen had been the scene of a fatal robbery for which two men had been hanged – and Willem was still bemoaning the ruination of one of his mattresses from the blood of one of the victims. Gwyn sat on a bench against one wall, sucking the ale from his bushy moustache and listening to one of his companions complain about the cost of living since the King had restarted his campaign against Philip of France. ‘With a pair of working shoes now almost threepence, how can we live?’ he whined, but Gwyn’s attention was suddenly elsewhere.
He noticed a face across the room that he could not quite place, though he had seen it recently. Then he realised that the young man’s clothing was different from what he had worn that afternoon: his priest’s garb was shrouded in a dun cloak that enveloped him from neck to ankle. He was one of the vicars from Canons’ Row in the close, who had been at the inquest and had been hovering around on the previous evening when the body was discovered. Gwyn did not know his name or to whom he was a vicar, but certainly he was not Robert de Hane’s: his had been a pasty-faced man with a pug nose; this was a dark fellow with acne scars on his cheeks. He was talking animatedly to a tall young man with very blond hair and beard, and a large sword at his belt. Between them was a very attractive, if bold-looking, woman of about twenty-five, her long dark hair rippling unbound over her shoulders.
Though some priests were dissolute, both in drink and womanising, they were usually discreet in the cathedral city and did not publicly flaunt their lifestyle: normally they kept their mistresses indoors and did their drinking in relative privacy. It was strange to see a vicar, even in plain clothing, in a seedy tavern like the Saracen, especially in the company of a woman who looked as if she might be ‘of a certain character’.
Gwyn watched them for a few moments, heedless of the continuing complaints of the man sitting next to him. He saw the vicar talking quickly to the fair man, his head close to the other’s in an attitude of confidentiality. His hands waved in nervous gestures and he darted frequent glances about the large room as if suspicious of an eavesdropper. The coroner’s officer dropped his head and looked across the inn from under his bushy red brows, not wanting to be recognised. The low, smoky chamber was full of people, drinking and talking loudly, so there was not too much chance of the vicar spotting him – even though Gwyn was a giant of a man, he was sitting behind a shifting throng.
The blond fellow was listening attentively to the priest, nodding every now and then but saying little. The woman’s handsome face looked from one to the other, her full red lips pursed in a somewhat anxious expression. Gwyn recalled having seen her about the town before – he had a healthy appreciation for an attractive woman – but he did not know her name. She was not a common whore, as far as he knew, but there something about her manner that spoke of easy sensuality.
He interrupted his companion, a leather-worker from Curre Street, who was still prattling on about the cost of living. ‘Who’s that good-looking dame there, Otelin?’ he asked.
The man lowered his jar from his lips and craned his head around a bystander to see across the smoky room. ‘The woman with the big dugs? That’s Rosamunde of Rye, who’s no better than she should be – but, like most of the men in Exeter, I’d not kick her out of my bed.’ Otelin licked his lips with futile desire.
‘Is she from the city? And who is the man with her?’ demanded the coroner’s lieutenant.
‘She follows the younger knights and squires about the country, so I hear,’ Otelin answered. ‘The likes of you and me wouldn’t get a hand into her bodice – she fancies the bright young fighting men, and some of the older ones, too. No doubt that yellow-haired fellow is one of them, by the way he flaunts his broadsword.’ Otelin peered across the inn again. The tall young man was now taking over the discussion, the priest and raven-haired woman listening intently. ‘I don’t know his name,’ he said, ‘but I’ve seen him with others of the same type. I think he is squire to one of those mercenaries, from down Totnes way.’
A group of drinkers moved across their field of view, and when they had a sight across the room again the priest had moved away in the company of another girl, with a pallid face but a gaudy kirtle. They went across to the ladder in the corner, which, like the Bush and most other inns, led up to the primitive sleeping accommodation on the floor above.
As they pushed their way through the throng, the blond squire and Rosamunde of Rye went hand in hand towards the street door and vanished. Gwyn of Polruan spent the next hour sitting in the Saracen, drinking his ale and pondering on whether what he had seen had any significance in the case of the murdered canon.
Chapter Four
In which Crowner John learns some history
By the next morning, Matilda had thawed sufficiently to appear in the cold light of dawn to join her husband at the breakfast Mary set before them in the bare hall of their house. Over hot bread, cold pork and mulled ale, they sat each side of the long table, silently avoiding the sharing of each other’s thoughts. His wife could sulk for days on end, which de Wolfe found worse than an outright fight – the latter gave a better excuse to flare up and clear off to the Bush, where he could enjoy the pleasant company of his mistress. But when Matilda was merely sullen, he felt that he had to try to wean her back at least to a state of neutrality, for the sake of his own relative peace of mind. Although John did not enjoy her company, even at the best of times in this loveless marriage, he found outright warfare, niggling bickering and silent antipathy about as welcome as a festering open wound.