Mary shook her dark hair in mock despair and vanished into the nether regions of the house to cook the midday meal. Secretly she was as pleased as the men outside that her master was not only almost back to full physical fitness but that he should have lost his snarling frustration at being housebound for so many weeks.
It was in early January that he had broken his leg on the tourney field at Bull Mead. In his dying moments, de Wolfe’s beloved old horse, Bran, had pitched him to the ground. The coroner’s shin-bone had snapped, but thankfully it was a clean break, and Gwyn’s prompt action in lashing the leg to a plank with leather straps had kept it in a good position. The Cornishman had seen this done by the Knights Hospitaller in Palestine, and with the constant help of Brother Saulf, a monk from the little hospital of St John up near Exeter’s East Gate, the leg had mended rapidly. De Wolfe’s tough physique, hardened by years of soldiering, together with his wife Matilda’s relentless if grim-faced nursing, had had him back on his feet in three weeks.
Now, two months later, he was riding his horse again. ‘I’ll take him up to the castle, Gwyn,’ he called, and walked the black stallion up the narrow lane to the high street. His officer trotted alongside, his shaggy hair bouncing over the collar of his frayed leather cape.
As de Wolfe pushed his way through the crowded main street, thronged with people shopping at the stalls on each side and with carts and barrows jostling for passage, he was assailed by greetings, mostly congratulating him on his return to health. An early spring was in the air and, though it was cold, there was a clear pale blue sky overhead while the lack of rain for a week had allowed the usual slush of garbage underfoot to dry to a crumbly paste.
The houses and shops in the main thoroughfare were of all shapes and sizes, mostly wooden, but a few were now built in stone. Most were tall and narrow, crammed together like peas in a pod. Some had straw thatch, some crude turf, some wooden shingle roofs and others stone tiles. Hazy smoke filtered from under the eaves of most dwellings, only a few having new-fangled chimneys.
Suddenly, as he plodded sedately through the crowded street, he felt a prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck. Though not an imaginative man, de Wolfe knew from the experience of many an ambush that he was being watched. It was a sixth sense, an occult gift that had saved his life a few times in the French and Irish campaigns, as well as in Palestine. He had felt it yesterday when coming home from the tavern and had glimpsed a face peering around a wall, the man vanishing almost instantly as John turned in his direction. The features had seemed vaguely familiar, but despite racking his brains, he failed to recall who it might have been.
Now, again, he looked about him and once more the same face gazed fleetingly at him from the steps of St Lawrence. A split second later, the man, enveloped in a dark mantle, turned and vanished into the church. De Wolfe knew that if the fellow had no wish to be accosted he would have melted away by the time he slowly got himself down off Odin. He cudgelled his memory to recall the identity of that face so briefly seen, but still nothing came to mind. He shrugged and urged the stallion on again. It seemed unlikely that the man was an assassin – though there had been a plot against him a couple of months ago. Hopefully that was all over now.
A hundred yards short of the East Gate, John hauled his steed around to the left and walked him up the slope towards the castle, perched at the top corner of the city. From the ruddy colour of its local sandstone, it was always known as Rougemont, built by the Conqueror in the northern corner of the old Roman walls. Passing through an open gate in a wooden stockade, de Wolfe rode into the large outer ward, where the huts of the soldiers and their families half covered the slope to the inner fortifications. A few yards more and he came to the tall gatehouse where he had a cramped chamber on the top floor.
The solitary guard on the steep drawbridge saluted de Wolfe with a lift of his spear as he passed under the gateway and stopped opposite the low door of the guardroom. Immediately, a man-at-arms with a badge of seniority on his leather jerkin emerged, his craggy face softening into a grin of welcome. ‘Glad to see you, Crowner! How’s the leg today?’
De Wolfe looked down at Gabriel, the sergeant of the castle guard, an old friend and covert sympathiser in his running feud with the sheriff, his brother-in-law, Sir Richard de Revelle. ‘Better and better, Gabriel! For the first time I can mount my horse from the ground.’
To demonstrate his prowess in reverse, John lowered himself carefully from the stallion’s back and, with the stick in his left hand, limped resolutely into the guardroom and across to the foot of the narrow, twisting stairs that led to the upper storey. Gwyn and Gabriel stood behind him, looking anxious as he began the ascent. On the third step he slipped and only Gwyn’s brawny arms saved him from falling backwards out of the stairway entrance.
De Wolfe swore fluently, including a few Saracen oaths in his frustration, but had to admit that he was not yet ready to get up to his chamber. ‘It’s this twice-accursed stick, it gets in the way!’ he fumed. ‘We’ll have to have some other room at ground level.’
Leaving Odin at the guardhouse, he set off across the littered mud of the inner ward towards the keep that sheltered against the far wall. ‘Stay and watch my horse, Gwyn,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’m off to badger the sheriff for a new chamber.’
With his stick prodding the earth at every step, his strengthening leg made good progress across the triangular area inside the high, crenellated walls. On his left was the bare stone box of the Shire Hall, the courthouse where he held most of his city inquests, and on his right, the tiny garrison chapel of St Mary. All around the inside of the walls were huts, sheds and lean-to shanties; some were living quarters for soldiers and a few families, others storehouses, stables and cart-sheds. The keep was a squat, two-storey building over an undercroft, which housed the castle gaol. The two upper floors contained the hall, and chambers for the sheriff, the constable, a number of clerks, servants and a few knights and squires.
Richard de Revelle lived here for much of the time, going home to his manors at Revelstoke near Plympton and another near Tiverton, where his sour-faced wife spent all her time, not deigning to reside in the admittedly Spartan quarters of Rougemont. John suspected – indeed, he had had the proof of his own eyes – that his brother-in-law preferred the cold chambers of the castle to the company of his spouse: there, he could indulge his liking for ladies of the town when she was well out of sight.
De Wolfe clumped up the wooden steps to the door of the keep, the man-at-arms on duty giving him a smiling salute. The coroner was a popular man amongst soldiers, both from his reputation as a seasoned Crusader and for being a staunch supporter and personal friend of their king, Richard the Lionheart.
The guard watched him limp through the arched doorway at the head of the steps, a tall, lean figure, always dressed in black or grey. With raven hair down to his shoulders, thick black eyebrows and habitual dark stubble on his beardless face, the soldier could well believe that he had been known as ‘Black John’ by the troops in the Irish wars and the Crusades. With his slight stoop, head pushed forward and the long, lean face with the great hooked nose, he looked like some predatory bird of prey, a crow or raven.
Most of the middle floor of the keep was taken up by the hall, a jostling, bustling vault where clerks and merchants ambled about with their parchments, servants carried food to tables against the walls and others stood around the great hearth, gossiping and scheming. The coroner ignored them and stumped across to a small door, his stick tapping on the flagstones. Another man-at-arms stood sentinel, though this was mainly from the sheriff’s need to show off his own importance rather than for security. Rougemont had not heard a weapon clashed in battle for over fifty years, since the siege in the time of Stephen and Matilda.