John de Alencon exhaled softly. ‘So there must have been another parchment giving directions to the main hoard?’
De Limesi nodded, his face a picture of misery. ‘Undoubtedly! But search as I did, all last week, I could find no trace of it.’
‘Where is this brooch now?’ demanded de Wolfe. ‘And the parchment?’
The canon scrabbled inside his cloak and produced a soft leather pouch. ‘The brooch was kept by Fulford, in spite of my protestations. He never even let me touch it. I had to study it gripped in his fingers. But he gave me the parchment from the pot.’
He opened the pouch and took out a scrap of vellum, faded and discoloured. He unfolded it and held it out to the coroner, who passed it quickly to Thomas.
‘It is covered in grey rings of dried mould,’ observed the clerk with distaste. ‘The writing is faint, but just readable.’ He paused a moment, screwing up his eyes to decipher the words. ‘It is as the canon says, telling that the brooch was buried afterwards, not where the first message described hiding the main treasure.’
‘Are you sure this man had not found the main cache as well and was not just fobbing you off with this story?’ suggested de Wolfe fiercely.
De Limesi turned up his hands in supplication. ‘That message tells the truth – there was only the brooch. And Fulford was in a rage, threatening me for wasting his time. He demanded that I search again for the missing parchment, but there was no sign of it. Meanwhile, he said that he would keep the brooch and sell it to defray his own costs. He gave me two days to find the missing parchment. A few days before Christ Mass, I had to send him a message that I needed more time. I would try to get Robert de Hane to tell me if he had the original map and maybe go half-shares with him.’
‘What’s this about half-shares?’ snapped John de Alencon. ‘I thought you were retrieving this treasure for the glory of God in the cathedral church of Exeter?’
‘Of course, brother – I meant each sharing equally in the honour of presenting it to the Bishop,’ stammered de Limesi unconvincingly.
‘What next?’ ventured de Brent.
‘Three days ago, Robert de Hane went off on his last pony ride, obviously to Dunsford again. He came back early and when I saw him in the library he was most agitated. I tried to talk to him, in the hope that he might tell me the whole story and even reveal if he had the other document. But he refused to say what was wrong and would only ask repeatedly when Bishop Marshal was due back from Gloucester as he had the most urgent news for him.’
‘So what do you think had occurred?’ asked de Alencon.
De Limesi’s small eyes flickered from the senior priest to the coroner and back again. ‘He must have seen the signs of digging among the trees and bushes on the spot described by his parchment. Disturbed earth and broken vegetation would have told him straight away that someone must have discovered his secret.’
John mused on this for a moment. ‘So we still don’t know if de Hane had discovered the directions to the main hoard?’
They all looked back to de Limesi for enlightenment, but he only shrugged. ‘How can I tell what he knew? But I sent a message through Eric to Fulford to let him know that Robert de Hane now knew that his treasure site had been looted. I assumed that he was eager to tell the Bishop, to unburden himself so that an official search could be made, either to recover the newly stolen brooch from Fulford or to excavate for the main hoard, depending on what he already knew.’
‘And that message undoubtedly led to his death!’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘This man and his accomplices would immediately have to silence de Hane before he gave away his secret to the cathedral authorities – and also to kill two birds with one stone, by forcing the poor canon to divulge whether he had the original parchment with the directions to the main hoard.’
‘That explains the bruises on his face and arms,’ exclaimed Thomas.
De Limesi buried his face in his hands. ‘May the Holy Trinity forgive me! I have tried hard to convince myself that his death was either by his own hand for the shame of trying to conceal his discovery from the chapter or that it was a coincidence, a robbery and a murder unconnected with this affair. But now I see that I have been deluding myself.’
‘What is to be done, John?’ asked the Archdeacon. ‘Are we to set the sheriff upon this young brigand right away?’
De Wolfe pondered for a moment. ‘We have no proof to connect Fulford with the corpse in the privy. Indeed, we have only the story from this sorry prebendary’s mouth that there is any substance in the whole affair. However, Richard de Revelle, I know, would be happy to hang Fulford, as he is less concerned with natural justice than most of us. But if Giles Fulford did get the missing parchment from the dead canon, then subterfuge, rather than execution, might be a better way of killing two different birds with one stone.’
It was late afternoon when three riders galloped along the track from Berry Pomeroy village towards the castle, set lonely on its cliff above the fishponds and mill below. There was thick forest between the village and the fortress, but a wide area had been cleared of trees around the bailey to aid defence, and the horsemen emerged from the woods well before they reached the dry ditch around the castle. The drawbridge was always down these days and they cantered across it into the bailey to draw rein before the entrance to the donjon. They did not dismount and the leader, a thin, erect man in late middle age, called imperiously to a servant leaning over the railing at the top of the wooden stairs: ‘Tell your master that William Fitzhamon wants words with him – at once!’
The man scurried inside like a frightened rabbit, leaving the lord of Dartington, whose honour included Loventor and many other manors in Devon and Somerset, sitting immobile on his large stallion. He had a long chin and a high-bridged nose, giving him a haughty appearance that well suited his manner. A shock of crinkled, prematurely white hair was visible under the rim of his thick leather helmet. An equally thick leather jerkin protected his chest, over which flowed a voluminous brown riding cloak. The two horsemen behind him were his son Robert, a thirteen-year-old edition of his father, and a squire, a burly fellow from the Somerset Levels.
In a moment, the servant reappeared with the Pomeroys’ seneschal, a mature man who had served the old lord for many years and was now steward and general factotum to his son. He had been expecting a visit from Fitzhamon since the rout of the Loventor men that morning and had been primed as to what to do. First, he attempted to soothe the irate neighbour with an invitation to enter the hall to take some wine, but Fitzhamon was in no mood for social niceties. ‘Tell Henry de la Pomeroy to come out here and speak to me, face to face!’ he snapped. ‘You know full well what brings me here.’
The old seneschal, who dealt with most of Pomeroy’s business, knew the score exactly, but feigned ignorance. ‘I regret, Sir William, that I have no knowledge of what you mean. My master is not here. He left this morning for Exeter and then he is riding on to Tiverton.’
This was a bare-faced lie, as Henry was upstairs in his bedchamber with one of the serving-girls, his wife having left that morning to visit her sister in Okehampton. But Fitzhamon, whatever he might have suspected, had no way of challenging what the steward said and had to be content with leaving a threatening message. ‘When he returns, tell him that I have had enough of his thieving ways. If so much as another twig is cut from my forests, I shall ride to Winchester – or London, if need be – to seek out the Chief Justiciar and put the matter before him. Is that understood?’
The seneschal blandly played the innocent. ‘I have no notion as to what you mean, sir, but I will certainly carry those words to my lord.’