‘It’s my fault — everything is my fault. I wish I was dead!’ she sobbed.
Desperately, he murmured useless soothing noises.
‘She’s discovered I’m with child, hasn’t she?’ moaned Nesta.
John was unable to deny it. ‘It seems so, my love — though it would have happened sooner or later. It alters nothing. In fact, if she’s gone for good, we are freer than ever!’ He tried to sound cheerful in the face of his mistress’s obvious distress. ‘That bastard brother of hers told her, I don’t know how he found out,’ he concluded.
Nesta sat up, sniffing loudly and wiping her eyes with the hem of her apron.
‘Everyone else seems to know already — either my maid or her mother, the midwife, must have let it out,’ she moaned.
John tugged her towards him. ‘It doesn’t matter how it came out. I’ve told you, I’ll openly acknowledge the babe and cherish him as much as I cherish you. There’s no problem, my love, really.’
This only provoked another flood of tears from Nesta, leaving John even more discomfited and mystified at the ways of women. They sat in mutual misery for a few more minutes, his mistress rubbing her reddened eyes against the shoulder of his tunic, until she pulled herself together a little and sat up straight.
‘What are you going to do about your wife?’ she demanded.
De Wolfe looked down at the upturned face with puzzlement.
‘What am I going to do? I wasn’t going to do anything,’ he said. ‘Matilda’s a free woman, she has money of her own from her family. She’s got this mania for religion, so it’s up to her what she wants to do with her life. Though I suspect that the food and raiment of a nunnery won’t be to her liking for very long. This is just a petulant gesture born of her anger. It won’t last once she gets a taste of monastic life.’
He sighed and hugged her to him again. ‘I’ve dreamt of something like this ever since I met you, Nesta. But it’s just a dream. I’ll never get free of her, will I? But at least it gives us a short time when I don’t have to creep back into her solar and get an earful of abuse every time I’ve been down to see you.’
The Welsh woman was putting herself back into order, sniffing back the last of her tears, while tucking her unruly red curls back under her cap.
‘You must go to see her, John, straight away,’ she said in a voice filled with new determination.
‘And say what?’ he asked in some surprise.
‘Beg her to come home, John. It’s ridiculous that the crowner’s wife should take off to a nunnery. You’ll be the laughing stock of the county. Get her back — and quickly, John.’
He shrugged, bemused by her reaction. ‘If you say so, my love. It makes no difference to us, everything I said about the child stands. It would be easier if Matilda was out of the way, but that’s too much to hope for.’ He looked wistfully at her. ‘I was even going down to talk to John de Alencon, to see if her taking vows would be equivalent to a divorce.’
At other times this might have squeezed a smile from Nesta, but she remained blank faced, a kind of miserable determination etched on her features.
‘We’d better go down. I’ve work to do,’ she murmured.
He kissed her tenderly and handed her up from the bed, now totally confused as to her mood. As they left the little room, she spoke again.
‘Promise me that you’ll go to see your wife — this very night.’
He nodded, almost afraid to argue with her, and they went back down to the taproom. The level of noise dropped as they descended the steps and a number of curious faces turned up to watch them, then hurriedly dropped away and pointedly ignored them.
As John squeezed her hand for the last time and turned to the door, he saw two familiar figures standing inside. Gwyn and Thomas had turned up, and their first words told him that they had heard the news about Matilda’s departure.
‘Bloody hell, this city is beyond belief!’ he snapped. ‘You can’t fart here without everyone knowing about it within the space of a dozen heartbeats!’
‘We wondered if you were all right?’ said Gwyn solicitously. ‘And if we could do anything to help you both?’
Gwyn was very fond of Nesta in an avuncular fashion and had been delighted when the recent rift between his master and the innkeeper had been healed. Thomas too, was devoted to Nesta, who treated him like a lost dog, sympathetically feeding and petting him. It was not long ago that she had given him free bed and board, when he had been evicted from his meagre lodgings in the cathedral precinct.
‘That’s kind of you both,’ muttered John, embarrassed by even a hint of solicitude from a rough diamond like his officer. ‘But I must go up to Polsloe now and see what the hell this woman is thinking of!’
Gwyn offered to ride with him and, glad of the company, de Wolfe arranged to meet him at the East Gate after he had got his horse from Andrew’s stable. Gwyn went off to fetch his own mare from the garrison stables in the other ward of Rougemont, leaving John standing with Thomas de Peyne.
‘There are worse things than taking vows, Crowner,’ said the little clerk tentatively.’Since staying in Buckfast, it occurred to me that if I cannot regain my place in holy orders, maybe I will enter some monastery.’
John looked down with half-concealed affection at Thomas, who was trying to console him, unnecessarily as it happened.
‘She’ll not stay there long, Thomas. My wife is too fond of the good things in life to put up with austerity and hardship. She’s tough and will do exactly what she feels is in her best interests. It’s Nesta that concerns me. She seems so unhappy, though there’s no need for it.’
It was unheard of for the coroner to unbend his habitual stern manner enough to say these things to his servant, but today was fraught with unusual emotions.
‘You go off to see your wife, master,’ replied his clerk. ‘I’ll see if I can comfort the lady here. When I was a priest, I had some pastoral skills and maybe some still remain,’ he ended, rather wistfully.
John patted Thomas awkwardly on the shoulder and went to the door, Brutus abandoning a sheep’s bone to lope after him.
It was less than a mile and a half from the East Gate of the city to Polsloe, the track curving through some dense woodland after leaving the village of St Sidwell’s, where Gwyn lived. The two horsemen reached the priory of St Katherine well within half an hour and sat in their saddles for a few moments outside the encircling wall. De Wolfe seemed reluctant to go in to face his wife, and Gwyn asked whether he wanted him to accompany him. The last time they had been to the priory they had been chasing a murderer, and it felt odd to be here now on a more delicate mission.
‘No, you stay out here, unless you want to wheedle a jug of ale from someone. I’m not sure how welcome men are in this nest of women.’
The thought of a drink overcame any concerns the Cornishman may have had about nuns, so they approached the low arched entrance together. An aged porter opened the wooden door when they banged on it and, after lashing their horses to a hitching rail, directed them across the wide compound to the West Range. This was a two-storey building, behind which were the small cloisters, all built of timber. The priory had been endowed over thirty years ago by Sir William de Brewer and, like Bovey Tracey, its church of Thoverton stone was dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr, another building funded by William de Tracy, in penitence for killing Becket. There were fourteen nuns here, and John wondered whether there would soon be fifteen.
Gwyn sloped off to the kitchens attached to the end of the West Range, marked by a basket of vegetable scraps outside the door, in the hope of scrounging something from one of the lay sisters. John climbed a step to an entrance he remembered from his last visit and knocked firmly on an open door to attract attention. In a moment a woman appeared from a side chamber, dressed in the dark habit of a Benedictine. Her hair was hidden under a flowing head-veil, her throat swathed up over the chin in a linen gorget. A wooden crucifix swung from her braided belt, as her moon-like face stared at him suspiciously.