They fell silent again. ‘And none of this helps us solve our local problems,’ sighed the Archdeacon. ‘Who killed poor Robert de Hane and William Fitzhamon? Maybe they have no connection whatsoever.’
‘And we still have no clue as to the whereabouts of this treasure, if it still exists,’ said de Wolfe glumly. ‘Thomas de Peyne has found no sign of that second parchment in the archives.’
‘I care little for treasure – the Church in Exeter hardly lacks for money, though it becomes increasing difficult to resist the King’s calls for donations.’
The coroner stood up, ready to leave. ‘With the sheriff unwilling to apply the law, for reasons of his own, I have a good mind to apply my own brand of justice,’ he said, and with this cryptic remark he left the Archdeacon to his reading. Once again, he did not make for Nesta’s tavern but went further down the close to the canon’s house, where Thomas had his meagre lodging. Going down the side lane to the yard, he ordered a surprised servant, cooking in the light of an open fire in the kitchen, to find his clerk and send him out.
A moment later, a dishevelled Thomas appeared, looking as if he had just risen from his mattress. ‘Throw a cloak about you and go up to Rougemont to find Gwyn. He will probably be drinking with Gabriel in the soldiers’ quarters. Then bring him down to the Bush, where I will be waiting.’ He turned on his heel but, as an afterthought, he called over his shoulder, ‘And tell him to buckle on his sword!’
It was an hour to midnight when the coroner’s team arrived outside the Saracen Inn on Stepcote Hill. It was round the corner from the Bush, on a steep slope leading down towards the city’s west wall. A thatched roof came down to head height on the outer walls, pierced by shuttered windows and a low door from which came the grumble of voices and the occasional shout and peal of laughter.
The trio stood to confer under the crude painting of a Moorish head, the inn sign of the Saracen.
‘He doesn’t know you by sight, Thomas, so go in and look around,’ commanded de Wolfe. He was wearing a wide-brimmed black pilgrim’s hat and had his dark cloak pulled up high over his shoulders, but his height and his hunched posture made this token disguise of little value in a city where he was so well known. Gwyn gave the clerk a shove through the half-opened door. ‘Go ahead, and act the hero for once!’
De Peyne vanished, and the other two walked round the corner of the building to be out of the way, but within a minute Thomas was back again. ‘He’s there, laughing and drinking, though he’s got one arm in a cloth tied up to his neck. That black-haired woman is with him.’
De Wolfe was satisfied that his guess had turned out to be right. Giles Fulford was banking on the reluctance of the sheriff to hold him prisoner, and risked appearing in public, until the city gates opened next morning. ‘You know what to say, Thomas,’ he said. ‘We discussed it in the Bush just now.’ Again the timid clerk, torn between fear and glory, slid into the tavern and pushed his way to the middle of the big smoky room where de Braose’s squire, one arm in a cloth sling, was holding forth to a group of men clustered around Rosamunde of Rye. Thomas’s tongue ran furtively around his lips as his eyes fell on her, and he imagined what it might be like to bed her. He had about as much chance of that as becoming the Pope, though, when his poor body was compared with hers. Boldly dressed in blue silk, with her glossy black hair rippling down her back, she stood with Fulford’s sound arm firmly wrapped around her shoulders, another man alongside her doing his best to press himself against her.
Thomas tore his eyes reluctantly from her to get on with his business. Sidling up to the squire, he nudged him, and when Fulford looked down in annoyance, he said, ‘A man outside asked me to give you a message, if you are Giles Fulford.’
Fulford was more interested in cupping Rosamunde’s left breast, and snapped, ‘What man? What message?’
Thomas, almost enjoying his acting role now, shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He looked like a priest, but muffled up. He gave me a ha’penny to tell you he doesn’t want to show himself in here but that you might be interested in a lost parchment.’
Giles pulled away from the woman. ‘If it’s Langton, I’ll kill him, the treacherous bastard, leading me into a trap like that,’ he snarled. ‘Where is he?’
‘Around the corner of the inn, on the right,’ offered Thomas and, as Fulford stalked to the door, he melted away to the back of the room where another exit was frequently used by patrons who wished to relieve themselves in the yard.
He ran round the back of the inn and, from a safe distance, was just in time to see a scuffle in the half-darkness, lit only by the intermittent light of the moon and a glow from the cracks in the shutters. Hesitantly, he came nearer and saw that Gwyn had Fulford pinned against the wall, with the edge of his sword across his throat.
The coroner had the wrist of the man’s uninjured arm in the iron grip of one hand while the other brandished a dagger that he had plucked from the squire’s belt. ‘Come on, my lad, you won’t escape from us as easily as you did from the sheriff,’ grated the coroner. With that, Gwyn spun Fulford round, put his head in an arm-lock and lifted him off the floor as easily as if he had been a sack of turnips.
Fulford was unable to speak or shout as the coroner’s officer half carried, half dragged him up the hill. He began to kick the Cornishman’s legs, but de Wolfe produced a short hempen rope from under his cloak, which he had borrowed from Edwin at the Bush. He quickly lashed this round the prisoner’s shins and tied a knot, then used the free end to carry the bottom half of Fulford clear of the ground.
They hurried him up the hill and turned right into Idle Lane. Beyond the Bush was a patch of wasteland, with winter-dead weeds and, at its edge, a trough, a long stone bath hollowed out for watering horses. Diagonally opposite was a livery stable: now shut for the night, a pitch flare still guttered on its wall, throwing a dim, flickering light over the area. Gwyn dumped his burden flat on the ground and stood over Fulford with the point of his sword resting on the man’s throat. With one arm bound in a hessian sling and his legs tied together, the squire was as helpless as a trussed chicken.
‘Yell as much as you like,’ invited de Wolfe. ‘The folk in the Bush have been told to take no notice.’
‘You’re mad!’ croaked the squire, his blond hair tousled and his tunic crumpled from the struggle. ‘The sheriff will have you hanged – and if he doesn’t, there are a dozen others who will do it for him.’
The coroner stared down at him calmly in the faint light. ‘You are of little account, Fulford. A squire, a mere hand-servant to a minor knight. Who cares about you? The sheriff only wants to get you off his hands, he’s not concerned whether you live or die as long as you don’t do it on his premises.’
‘What do you want from me?’
A half-moon slid out from behind the clouds and its pale light fell on the scene. Thomas shivered, reminded of a miracle play depicting the angels of doom hovering over a sinner.
‘Who killed Canon de Hane? Who killed William Fitzhamon? Who is employing your master Jocelin de Braose? That will do for a start.’
A stream of foul language and abuse was the response so Gwyn kicked Giles in the ribs to end the flow. ‘I thought this was about a search for treasure,’ gasped the squire.
‘The death of an inoffensive old priest is about treasure,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘Now, talk or face the consequences.’
Again there was a tirade of denial, mixed with blasphemies and threats of vengeance. De Wolfe stepped to the horse-trough and looked down at the layer of ice on the water. ‘Thomas, get a stone from the waste and crack this up.’