He led her back to her chair and drew up a stool to be close to her side.
'There are many practical matters to be dealt with, Hilda. But I will do all I can to help you with them.'
She nodded, drying her moist cheeks with the hem of her sleeve, then ordered the maid to fetch some wine and pastries. When the girl had rather reluctantly left the room, Hilda laid her hand on his.
'There has been a very special bond between us for many years, John. I wish with all my heart that I could,have become your wife, instead of Thorgils', but it was not possible.' She leant across and kissed his stubbly cheek. 'But we must not turn this tragedy to our own advantage — I am a new widow and you have your Nesta.'
De Wolfe knew that he was being gently warned off, and it reinforced his determination to be faithful to his Welsh mistress, if not his wife. Yet a trace of disappointment niggled in his mind, though even that was soothed by her next words. 'Time may alter matters, John, so let us have patience.'
The wine and a platter of meat pasties appeared and as Alice seemed determined to play the chaperone by crouching in a corner, John led the discussion on to the practical matters he had raised. He told Hilda of the arrangements to bring back the bodies of Thorgils and the other Dawlish men and promised to send Thomas de Peyne to see the parish priest this very afternoon, to organise the funeral.
When he enquired about money, she assured him that her husband, conscious of his years and his dangerous occupation on the high seas, had made ample provision for an unexpected death. A document had been drawn up by an Exeter lawyer leaving everything to her, as there were no children alive by his previous marriage and they had had none themselves.
'I have the key to his treasure chest, which he always told me to use as my own,' she said sadly. 'The house is valuable and he owned two other smaller ships and a warehouse in Topsham which brings in a rent, so I have no concerns about my survival.'
She asked about the Mary and Child Jesus, expecting to hear that it was a total loss, but John explained that it might well be saved and brought back into service.
'But I have no experience as a ship-owner, John. What am I to do with these three vessels? Shall I sell them?'
He had no wish to burden her with business matters so soon after learning that she was a widow, but he briefly explained that he would talk to Hugh de Relaga and see whether they could work out some new venture.
'But forget that for now, dear woman,' he said gruffly, as he rose and patted her shoulder awkwardly. 'I will attend to all these matters. Have you someone who can come and keep you company at this unhappy time?'
She smiled sadly. 'With Thorgils absent so much, I am so often alone, apart from Alice here. With the winter coming and the ships laid up, I was looking forward to his company. Now I will go home to Holcombe for a while to be with my family.'
John assured her that his brother William, manor-lord of Holcombe, already knew of the tragedy and would do anything necessary to help her.
As he was leaving, with a promise to return for the funeral, Hilda clutched his arm.
'Who can have done such a terrible thing, John?' she asked, in a voice that quavered with emotion. 'The wife of a ship man always accepts the perils of the sea. Every time he left, I wondered if it would be the last I would ever see of him, because of some tempest or shipwreck. But that he should be stabbed to death, along with his crew, is beyond my comprehension!'
John put a long arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him, ignoring the curious stares of the maid.
'I'll not rest until I find the answer to that question, Hilda. This is a very strange crime, but I'll get to the bottom of it, even if takes me years and a journey to Cathay and back!'
The coroner's next journey was not as far as Cathay, but was the ten miles into Exeter, which they reached just before dusk, when the walled city was closed at curfew. Gwyn did not enter through the West Gate with his master, but went around the south side to reach the village of St Sidwell, where he lived in a hut with his wife and two small sons. With his clerk lagging wearily behind, John de Wolfe walked his horse up Fore Street to the central crossing of Carfoix and straight on into High Street, the town plan having been set down a thousand years earlier by the Romans. A thriving, bustling city, Exeter was developing quickly, many of the old wooden houses being rebuilt in stone, so that a confused mixture of styles lined the crowded streets. Not yet paved, these lanes were of beaten earth, dusty in the dry and a morass in the rain. A central gutter sluggishly conveyed all the effluent down to the river, including most of the rubbish and filth that householders and shopkeepers flung out of their doors.
Just past the new Guildhall, a narrow alley opened on the right-hand side. This was Martin's Lane, one of the entrances into the cathedral Close, the large open area around the massive church of St Mary and St Peter, whose twin towers soared above the city. The coroner had his house in the lane, but this evening both he and his clerk carried on up High Street towards the East Gate, then turned up Castle Hill to Rougemont, the fortress perched on the northern tip of the sloping city. John wished to discover whether any more cases had been reported during his absence down in the country. Thankfully, the guardroom had no messages for him and with Thomas close behind, he climbed to his cheerless chamber high in the gatehouse, which stood astride the entrance to the inner ward. He had hardly sat down behind his table when a voice came from the doorway.
'The sheriff sends his compliments, Sir John, and asks if you could attend upon him.'
The voice was that of Sergeant Gabriel, the grizzled old soldier who headed the garrison's men-at-arms at Rougemont, so called on account of the colour of its local sandstone. He had stuck his head around the tattered hessian curtain that hung over the doorway to de Wolfe's chamber. It was a bleak, draughty garret, spitefully provided by the former sheriff, Richard de Revelle, when he was reluctantly obliged to find some accommodation for his brother-in-law, the new coroner. De Revelle had seen the introduction of these upstart coroners as a threat to his own interests, especially his opportunities to extort and embezzle from the inhabitants and taxes of the shire of Devon. The knowledge that one of the King's motives in setting up the coroner system was to keep a check on rapacious sheriffs made it an even more bitter pill to swallow.
De Wolfe received the sergeant's message with a lift of his black eyebrows, as he sat in the lengthening gloom at the rough trestle table that acted as his desk. This, together with a bench and a couple of milking stools, was the only furniture in the room. Thomas de Peyne was on one of the stools on the other side of the table, his tongue projecting from the corner of his thin lips as he began lighting a rush lamp with a flint and tinder to check the parchment roll carrying his account of the Ringmore inquest.
'Did he say what he wanted, Gabriel?' demanded de Wolfe.
The old soldier shook his head. 'Not a word, Crowner! But a herald came with messages from Winchester when you were away. The day 'afore yesterday, it was — so maybe it's to do with that.'
His head vanished, and with a groan at the stiffness in his back and legs after so much riding, John rose and went after him, with an unnecessary admonition to his clerk to get the inquisition finished before the day was out.
The steep spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall led back down to the guardroom. This was just inside the archway that led from a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch separating it from the outer ward. The tall, narrow gatehouse had been built by William the Bastard, one of the first stone structures he put up after the Conquest, mainly to guard against a repetition of the revolt that the citizens of Exeter raised against him. Below it, the large outer ward was defended by a bank topped by a stout wooden palisade and contained most of the garrison and their families, living in a motley collection of huts and sheds.