John let his old warhorse Odin pick his way carefully down the slippery rutted track that served as the village street, heading for the larger house that lay inside the palisade of old stakes.
'Does a manor-lord actually live in this God-forsaken place?' grunted Gwyn, looking around at the humble dwellings, most of which were wattle-and-daub huts.
The coroner shook his head, drops of water flicking off his dark, beetling eyebrows. 'The land belongs to Totnes, that's why the steward there could draw us a map. But someone must have ruled here years ago for there to be a manor-house, poor though it looks.'
It turned out that the bailiff now occupied the old place, using it as his base for looking after several villages hereabouts that belonged to the lord of Totnes. This was a legacy from the days of the Conqueror, who gave many parcels of land in this area to his supporter Judhael, who built the castle at Totnes to subdue the local Saxons and Celts.
They rode up to the gate in the stockade and found William Vado hurrying out to meet them in the gathering dusk. He was a stocky fellow of about thirty years, with a square face, a bulbous nose and lank yellow hair that was a legacy from his Saxon mother. He wore a thigh-length tunic of coarse brown serge, clinched with a wide leather belt. Cross-gartered breeches and wooden-soled boots clothed his lower half.
William waved to a couple of skinny lads who emerged from a barn inside the compound and they hurried forward to take the bridles of the visitors' horses.
'You found us, then, Crowner?' he asked in a thick local accent. 'Come inside and get some food and drink inside you. '
It was the more sympathetic Thomas who thought of asking after his wife, as they all dismounted and trudged through the mire of the bailey towards the old manor house.
'She's well, thank you,' answered William Vado. 'A girl again, I'm afraid. Another useless mouth to feed.' He sounded bitter, and they soon learned that his wife had had seven previous children, five of which had died in infancy, leaving two other girls alive.
John looked about him with interest as they crossed the yard and climbed a few steps to the house, for this was one of the original manors that dated back to the early years of the Norman invasion, now well over a century earlier. It was a square, single-storeyed block, built of massive oak timbers on top of a masonry undercroft, with a stone-slabbed roof as a safeguard against fire-arrows. The interior was almost all taken up by the hall, but two rooms had been partitioned off for the family, secure behind a pair of stout iron-banded doors. These remote coastal villages were occasionally ravaged by pirates who came ashore to rape, pillage and replenish their food and fresh water — not only French privateers, but men from as far afield as the Mediterranean.
The hall was lit by unglazed slit windows, through which the fading daylight dimly penetrated. A large firepit occupied the centre of the hall, ringed with whitewashed stones outside a circle of baked clay. The smoke from the heap of burning logs wafted upwards before spreading out to escape through the slits beneath the roof timbers, though some of it circulated back down again to irritate the eyes and throats of the dozen or so people scattered about the hall.
'We can only offer you a place to sleep on the rushes,' said the bailiff apologetically. 'My wife and her womenfolk and the children are swarming about the other chambers like bees in a hive. But there's food and ale aplenty and some wine if you're so inclined.'
'Drying off is our first need,' rumbled Gwyn, shrugging off the frayed leather cape with the pointed hood. He draped it over a stool facing the fire and stamped his cold feet on the floor rushes, disturbing a rat that was foraging for fallen food scraps.
Within a few minutes, they were seated on benches at a nearby trestle table, enjoying the warmth of the flaming beech logs. A pair of serving girls, little more than children, brought platters of spit-baked fish, cold pork and boiled beans and cabbage, with thick trenchers of coarse bread to lay on the table as plates. As usual, the kitchen was in a hut behind the house and the bare-footed maids had to run back and forth through the mud to bring the food to the new arrivals.
'Have some mulled ale to warm you up, sirs,' invited Vado, taking a thick poker from the fire and plunging the red-hot iron into a gallon jug of ale. With a hiss and a sizzle, the turbid liquid almost boiled, and before it could cool he splashed it into a row of crude earthenware pots standing on the table.
Thomas, who disliked ale even more than rough cider, sipped his with ill-concealed distaste, but John and Gwyn gulped the warm fluid gratefully and pushed their pots forward for a refill, while they wolfed down the food. Around them, rough-looking men sitting at other trestles or standing around gazed curiously at these outsiders from the big city.
'Tell us the whole story again, bailiff,' commanded de Wolfe, through a mouthful of gravy-soaked bread. 'Has there been any more news since you returned?'
William Vado, sitting at the end of the table, beckoned to a large, brawny fellow standing nearby, who came and sat with them.
'This is Osbert, the manor-reeve. He can tell you at first hand, as it was he who brought me the news.' The reeve was a villein who was in theory elected by his fellows to represent their interests before the manor court, but in effect was usually the appointee of the lord, who needed someone in every village to organise the day-to-day running of their agricultural labours. Obviously ill at ease in the presence of a knight who was a senior law officer, the village foreman haltingly told his story.
'I was going down to Challaborough beach the evening before last, as someone said they saw a cask washed up. It may have been flotsam full of something, like raisins or wine, so I was prepared to report it.'
He said this virtuously, though everyone, including the coroner, knew very well that he would have been more interested in acquiring salvaged goods for the village — or even himself — rather than for either his lord or the King, to whom all such flotsam legally belonged.
'Anyway, I saw no cask, but when I was on the sands, a crabber came running round from Warren Point and said he had found a dead body!'
Vado explained that Warren Point was the end of the bluff where they had looked across at Burgh Island.
The onlookers in the hall drew perceptibly nearer to the table, eager to hear the story again, though Osbert had regaled them with it many times over the past day or so. Drama and excitement were in short supply in such a remote place as Ringmore.
'Who was this crabber?' demanded de Wolfe. 'He must be accounted as the First Finder.'
This announcement was met with blank stares from both bailiff and reeve. 'We don't really understand this new crowner business, begging your pardon, sir,' confessed the bailiff. 'All I was told last year by my lord's steward in Totnes was that, unless they died in the bosom of their family, all corpses must be reported to Exeter without delay.'
De Wolfe sighed and dropped his small eating dagger on to the table. It was over a year since the Chief Justiciar had revived the old Saxon office of coroner, but most of the minor officials in England still seemed ignorant of the procedures.
'Listen, for Christ's sake! It's simple enough!' he said with his tongue in his cheek, for it wasn't simple at all. 'When someone dies suddenly, whether of violence or poison or anything other than sickness or old age, then whoever comes across the corpse is the "First Finder". He has to raise the hue and cry by knocking up the four nearest households and starting a search for the killer, if one is suspected.'