And now de Wolfe was off to see another corpse, though Gwyn had not said what kind of death it was — he had an exasperating habit of spinning out any story to keep the listener in suspense. Now he was striding towards the coroner, his cape blowing in the brisk breeze. ‘I hauled Thomas off his pallet, Crowner. The little turd will follow us down when he gets some clothes on.’
The coroner’s clerk was Thomas de Peyne, a disgraced priest from Winchester, who had been given the job by de Wolfe as a favour to his friend the Archdeacon, who happened to be Thomas’s uncle.
The coroner and his officer set off across the Close, the patch of ground around the cathedral which was an ecclesiastical enclave independent of the city, and outside the jurisdiction of the sheriff and burgesses. Although it was supposed to be policed by the cathedral proctors, it was an eyesore, not only because of the squalor and rubbish but because hawkers, beggars and loutish youths made a nuisance of themselves there in front of the more respectable users of this busy space in the middle of the city.
However, at this early hour, only a couple of optimistic hawkers rattled their trays at the pair as they strode purposefully from the end of Martin’s Lane towards one of the several exits from the Close, a beggar sitting on the cathedral steps opened his mouth to whine for alms, but shut it again as a waste of breath when he saw who the two men were. Though Gwyn of Polruan was a huge fellow, his master was barely an inch shorter, but where the Cornishman was massive John de Wolfe was lean and spare. His posture was a little hunched and his head stuck out like that of some predatory bird; his long black hair, jet eyebrows and great hooked nose enhanced his resemblance to a raven. He had no beard or moustache, but the dark stubble on his long face and the fact that he invariably dressed in black or grey had earned him the nickname ‘Black John’ in campaigns across Europe and the Levant.
‘It’s just past Beargate,’ rumbled Gwyn, beginning grudgingly to leak information, ‘in a dwelling around the corner in Southgate Street.’
‘Not in the cathedral precinct, is it?’ snapped the coroner, mindful of the Church’s jealous hold on its property and all that happened in it.
‘Well, the back wall comes to the Close, but this is a room rented out by one of the cloth merchants in the Serge Market.’
Beyond Beargate, the Close funnelled into a narrow lane, which opened into Southgate Street. This was one of the four main thoroughfares in Exeter, built over the original Roman plan, in which a quartet of roads radiated from the central crossing at Carfoix to each of the gates in the town walls.
‘Down this way, Crowner.’ Gwyn turned left and thrust his way through the early-morning traders, who were putting up their booths along the street and lowering the shutters of the shops to act as counters. This was the Serge Market, where the cloth dealers held sway. The road dipped down steeply towards the South Gate, and through the big arch they could see a slow procession of cattle, sheep and pigs being driven up to the Shambles near St George’s church, where the upper part of the street acted as a slaughteryard to supply the butcher’s stalls. Soon the morning would be rent by the wailing of cows and the scream of pigs, as poleaxes and knives left the cobbles awash with blood.
John followed his officer for a few yards down the street until they came to a knot of people squeezed between two cloth stalls, the traders still struggling to fix up the gaudy striped awnings in the fresh breeze. The small crowd was huddled around a tall, fair-haired man holding a pike, who blocked a doorway into the building behind. He banged the heel of his weapon on the ground in a salute to the King’s coroner. ‘These here are the people who found the body, Crowner,’ he said, in a thick country accent. ‘I reckoned I had better keep them here until you came.’ The lanky fellow, his cheeks ridden with old cowpox scars, was one of the town constables, a Saxon named Osric, and was employed by the burgesses to try to safeguard the properties of the merchants. As there were only two constables in a city of more than four thousand inhabitants, they were somewhat ineffective, but had some use in keeping order among the scuffles and fights that broke out hourly in the streets. De Wolfe turned to Gwyn. His patience had run thin. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what happened?’ he snapped.
Gwyn smiled amiably and laid a huge hand on the shoulder of a small man trying to look inconspicuous among the witnesses. ‘This fellow here is the First Finder. He came as it was getting light to call upon the man who lived here, but found him dead. He called the constable and Osric sent someone up to the castle.’
‘How did you get to know about it so quickly?’ demanded de Wolfe. Gwyn lived in St Sidwell’s, a village outside the city walls.
Gwyn grinned sheepishly. ‘While you were enjoying your feast in the Guildhall last night, I did some gaming and drinking with Sergeant Gabriel and some of his men. I slept in the gatehouse overnight and was there when the constable sent the message up.’
‘So who’s dead, damn you?’ snarled his master.
‘Best come inside and look for yourself, Crowner.’ Gwyn was determined to spin out the suspense as long as he could.
The skinny constable stood aside and John followed his officer through a doorway into a dark passage with a damp earthen floor. Ahead, it went off somewhere into the gloomy nether regions, but in the left-hand wall of limed wattle there was another doorway, hung with a large sheet of thick leather to keep out draughts, its bottom green and mottled with damp. Gwyn held it aside for the coroner to pass through. There was a strong smell of mould and stale urine, but it was so dark that de Wolfe could see almost nothing. ‘Open those damned shutters, man,’ he barked.
The pale daylight flooded in and a row of heads appeared over the front sill, until the constable prodded them away with the end of his pike and stood guard there himself. John turned slowly to take in the whole room.
‘Who is he, do we know?’
In the centre of the uneven floor, a man was lying flat on his back, deathly still. His head was enveloped in a brown leather bag, the drawstrings pulled tightly around his neck.
‘No doubt about it — he’s well known in the markets here. It’s Aaron of Salisbury, a Jewish moneylender,’ said Gwyn.
From outside the window, Osric added some detaiclass="underline" ‘He’s lived here about half a year, Crowner. Rents this room for his business, and eats and sleeps in the one behind. Keeps to himself and causes no trouble. I did hear his wife and son died in that terrible trouble in York in ’eighty-nine, after which he moved to Salisbury, then came here. I think he has a married daughter somewhere, maybe in Honiton.’
De Wolfe stood and looked slowly around the room. The only furniture was a rickety table, a folding chair with a leather back and a couple of milking stools. The table had been against the back wall, but was now on its side, one of its legs broken. On the floor was a small balance for weighing coins, a scattered heap of silver pennies and a tattered book, consisting of a wad of ragged parchment sheets sewn between two thin wooden boards. In a niche in the timber wall was a seven-branched candlestick, green with verdigris. In the corner was another doorway, with no door or screen in its mouldering frame.
De Wolfe and his henchman crouched on each side of the body, postures in which they had plenty of practice in the last eight months since John had become coroner.
‘Call that First Finder in here,’ de Wolfe growled at the constable. A moment later the small man came in from the street and stood apprehensively inside the doorway. He was a furtive figure, with a pug nose, dressed in a mouse-coloured tunic and a pointed woollen cap, its tassel flopping over one ear.
‘Was he like this when you found him? Did you move him at all?’