As Gwyn helped his master into his fighting kit, they could hear the increasing clamour of the crowd outside. Everyone in Exeter and some of the surrounding villages knew of the contest and as many who could get away from their labours were there. Some merchants and craftsmen had even given their workers a couple of hours’ freedom to come to the Magdalen Street arena.
‘Sounds as if half England has turned out to see you kill de Braose,’ observed the Cornishman, as he helped de Wolfe pull his gambeson over his head. This was a long quilted garment, padded with wool, to underly his chain-mail and buffer any impacts.
‘I don’t think they care who gets killed, as long as there’s plenty of blood for a spectacle,’ replied the coroner cynically.
Putting on the heavy hauberk was more difficult, but John’s was an older type with only three-quarter sleeves, making the hundreds of chain-links sewn to the canvas a little lighter than the full version, which had long arms ending in mailed gloves. Neither man mentioned the possibility of defeat, but they had been through this routine many times and each knew the other’s thoughts. De Wolfe wondered what would happen to Matilda if he was killed. He had not seen a sign of her since her outburst in the Shire Hall and then her pleading with him to save her brother’s life and reputation. Presumably, if he survived this, she would eventually return home. He wondered if she would come to see today’s battle – which, with increasing certainty, he had to admit might have been a foolish act of bravado.
‘We’re not wearing the full battledress, are we?’ asked Gwyn, looking at the metal leg greaves that Ralph Morin had included in his cartload of armour.
John shook his head. ‘This isn’t going to be a day-long conflict, Gwyn. A quarter-hour should be more than enough to see one of us vanquished, so I don’t think legs are going to be a target.’
‘That bloody Fulford used them as a target last time – but he hasn’t got a shovel today,’ grunted Gwyn, with an attempt at humour. He hung a sheet-iron oblong over the centre of de Wolfe’s chest on top of the chain-mail and tied the leather laces around his back to hold this heart protector in place. Then de Wolfe pulled on his coif, a thick woollen bonnet, and tied it under his chin, before donning his round helmet, which in recent years had replaced the conical one. It had a larger nasal projection than the earlier models and a chain-mail aventail was suspended from its edge. This hung down like a curtain all around the back and sides of his neck and covered his chin up to his lower lip.
‘What about this?’ asked the Cornishman, holding up a rather creased linen garment. It had once been white, but years of wear and exposure had given it a greyish-yellow tinge.
‘Yes, why not?’ said John. ‘If I’m to win or lose, they may as well see me in my father’s surcoat.’ He slipped it on over his head, and as it fell to cover him from shoulder to knee, a savage wolf’s head was displayed across his chest in black embroidery.
Gwyn stood back to examine his handiwork critically, walking around his master to make sure that all was perfect. Spurred leather boots over long stockings with cross-gartering completed the outfit, apart from thick gauntlets with metal plates sewn on to the backs of the hands and fingers. Satisfied, Gwyn hung a heavy leather baldric over the right shoulder, coming down diagonally to support the great sword hanging from a thick leather belt, which he buckled tightly over the wolfish surcoat. ‘You could shave with that edge now,’ commented Gwyn proudly, pointing at the sword, which had also belonged to John’s father, Simon de Wolfe.
‘What about the lance?’ growled the coroner, hefting the eight-foot shaft of seasoned ash. He looked carefully at the shielded hand-grip about a third of the way along and at the iron tip, which had a small crosspiece behind the spear-head, to prevent it going too deeply into the flesh of the target and becoming difficult to withdraw.
‘I’ve ground the point finely,’ said Gwyn. ‘You could impale a bluebottle on that.’
Everything seemed in order, and without any more delay, de Wolfe went out of the shed where Gabriel was standing anxiously by Bran, who was unconcernedly eating some crushed grain from a bucket. They were out of sight of the crowd, who stood in a double line well back from the tilt, which was about two hundred paces in length. The excited talk and shouts merged into one buzz of noise as de Wolfe was helped up into his stallion’s saddle, Gwyn giving him a foothold with two hands, against the extra weight of his hauberk. The destrier had no armour, apart from a token leather facepiece from his ears down to his muzzle, with some iron plates riveted to its front to protect his forehead. Gwyn handed up the lance and then the shield, made of toughened linden wood covered in a double layer of thick boiled leather, again crudely painted with a wolf’s head.
‘All set, Sir John?’ asked Gabriel anxiously, and when de Wolfe nodded, he vanished around the corner of the hut to the front of the bank of benches, placed opposite the half-way mark of the tilting fence. Here, on the second row of planks, were the upper-class spectators, with Richard de Revelle and Ralph Morin in the centre. The two Portreeves were there, Hugh de Relaga looking unhappy at the prospect of his friend and main business partner in jeopardy of his life. Surprisingly, as the Church officially frowned upon jousting and tournaments, several canons and lesser priests were perched on the benches, swathed in black cloaks over their vestments, trying to look inconspicuous. The Archdeacon and the Treasurer, as well as Jordan de Brent, were there. The rest of the benches were taken by various burgesses and guild-masters, and several women were present, looking forward with no apparent horror to seeing mortal wounds.
As de Wolfe walked his horse round the corner to the front of the benches, he scanned the occupants and his eyebrows went up momentarily when he saw Matilda there, sitting wooden-faced next to her brother. She was dressed in black, an unusual colour for her, and he wondered whether this was preparation for widowhood or for entry into a nunnery – or possibly both. Slowly she turned her head towards him and their eyes met. There was no expression in hers, but gradually she raised her hand to him in a salute, the significance of which eluded him – she might have been wishing him good luck or saying farewell.
At each end of the benches, beyond the two arming chambers, a double line of spectators reached in either direction to the ends of the central fence, and on the further side, a similar crowd was lined up, being importuned by hawkers, beggars and soothsayers, all taking the opportunity of a captive crowd to do business.
In the moment he had before the sheriff began the proceedings, de Wolfe’s eyes searched anxiously for Nesta, but he could not pick her out from all the other women in the crowd.
‘I make one last supplication to you,’ came Richard de Revelle’s voice, and de Wolfe jerked his eyes back to the sheriff. From the other end of the seating, Jocelin de Braose had approached the centre, dressed almost identically to himself and seated on a large black gelding, much younger than old Bran. He wore no surcoat over his chain-mail, but Morin had seen to it that the armour and weapons were identical, so that no allegation of favouritism could be made.
The sheriff was standing up to make his speech and John could see that, in spite of his recent humiliation, he was already regaining his old arrogance and conceit. He decided to cut him down to size at once, to emphasise, at least to de Revelle himself, where his limitations of power lay. ‘What supplication can there be, sheriff?’ he boomed. ‘This man has been Appealed for the murder of Robert Fitzhamon’s father, which is only one of his sins. Either you let this legitimate trial by combat go ahead – or he goes back to gaol to await the King’s Justices, who will surely send him to the gallows and commit his body to rot on the gibbet thereafter.’