It was midnight, and though the feast in the Guildhall continued, the participants were thinning out. Some had drunk so much that they were either vomiting in the backyard or had been helped home by their servants or angry wives. A few senior priests, including a couple of cathedral canons, had left to attend Matins, but plenty of revellers remained. Some were singing, some fighting and others lying peacefully asleep across the wreckage of the meal on the trestle boards. The county coroner had consumed a great deal of ale and wine, but his hard head had resisted their effects — although he knew that the morning might tell a different story.
He sat slumped glumly in his black clothing, shoulders hunched, looking melancholy and dejected, waiting for Matilda to finish gossiping amongst the wives at the other end of the table. His friend Hugh de Relaga had tottered out unsteadily some time ago, claiming he was going to empty his bladder, and had not returned. De Wolfe suspected that his servant had waylaid him outside and wisely decided that the best place for the Portreeve was home and bed.
The candles on the tables and in the wall sconces had burned low and the light was dim, but John’s eye was caught by a familiar figure standing inside the draught screens that sheltered the main door at the far end of the hall. It was difficult to miss the shambling giant with a tangle of unruly hair on his head and face. Gwyn was beckoning with a hand the size of a ham, his gestures carrying more than a hint of urgency.
With an almost guilty look towards Matilda, de Wolfe stood up and squeezed behind the now slumbering silversmith, then threaded his way to meet Gwyn at the bottom of the hall. To de Wolfe’s surprise, old Edwin, the one-eyed potman from the Bush, was standing behind his officer. ‘Looks like we’ve got another, Crowner!’ Gwyn raised his voice above the babble in the hall.
‘What’s he doing here?’ demanded John, fearful that something had happened to Nesta.
‘He came and sought me out, just after the bell for Matins,’ explained Gwyn. ‘I was in the Bush earlier and mentioned to Edwin that I was going on to the Ship Inn in Rack Lane, where he found me.’
As usual, Gwyn was spinning out his yarn, but de Wolfe turned impatiently to the tavern servant. ‘What’s all this about? Is your mistress in trouble?’
Edwin, an old sack draped about his thin shoulders, shook his head. ‘Not as such, Cap’n, but she’s mortal upset, so I slipped away and found Gwyn here. I reckon the sight of you might ease her mind a great deal.’
De Wolfe fumed at this pair, who would never come to the point. ‘Hell’s teeth, damn you both, what’s happened?’
Gwyn sensed that his master was about to explode and hurriedly explained. ‘Another corpse, Crowner. Girl this time, strangled in the backyard of the Bush. And your Nesta found her.’
‘She tripped over the body, in fact,’ added Edwin, rolling his one good eye ghoulishly. ‘Outside the brew-shed she was. The mistress come upon her when she went out to stir the mash.’
De Wolfe glared at them, and waited for them to add the most obvious piece of information.
‘A whore, it was,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘That new fancy piece with the red wig — Joanna of London they call her.’
De Wolfe’s mind was fixed on Nesta’s distress, rather than the murder of a harlot. He glanced back up the hall, to see that the knot of gossiping wives was at last breaking up. They were on their feet, still talking, but raising their mantles to their shoulders and arranging their head-rails and wimples. For a moment he stood irresolute. Though the Guildhall was but a few yards from Martin’s Lane, there was no way that he could leave his wife to walk home alone. Hugh de Relaga, who might have chaperoned her if he had been sober, had left, and although John was not much concerned for Matilda’s safety on a hundred-pace journey to their house, she would never let him hear the end of it if he abandoned her — especially when she discovered that it was to rush to the aid of his ex-mistress.
‘You go back to the Bush now and wait for me. Tell Nesta I’ll be there as soon as I’ve escorted my wife to our door — hardly a few minutes, with luck.’ He pushed them towards the screens, then loped towards the other end of the top table, pushing servants, diners and drunks out of his way in his hurry to reach his wife.
As he came up to the four ladies, who were still shrugging their gowns and cloaks into position, he gabbled, ‘I am called out to a killing, lady. I have to go without delay, so I will see you home straight away.’ He grabbed Matilda’s arm and, with a jerky bow towards her friends, hauled her unceremoniously towards the doors.
At first she was too astonished to protest, but soon found her voice and berated him for his rudeness all the way to the corner of Martin’s Lane. He managed to fob off her questions about the reason for urgency, except to claim that it was foul murder ‘somewhere in the lower town’, though he knew full well that by morning the exact location of the corpse would be known to the whole of Exeter, and that he would get the length of Matilda’s tongue when she discovered she had been hustled out so that he could rush off to his ‘Welsh whore’.
However, that was trouble stored for the future and within minutes he had delivered his wife to her maid and hurried off across the cathedral Close, almost running in his haste to get to Idle Lane.
CHAPTER SIX
De Wolfe hurried across the wasteground to the side gate of the tavern, which opened directly into the large backyard.
Gwyn was waiting for him inside the gate, which was the only entrance through a line of rough but sturdy palings that marked off the land belonging to the inn. The light was poor, but the moon and a pitch-brand stuck over the back door, in defiance of the curfew regulations, gave enough light for those who wanted to empty their bladders against the fence. As he arrived, Edwin came out with a horn lantern, which though feeble, threw a pool of light over a small area.
‘Where’s your mistress?’ de Wolfe demanded harshly.
‘Inside. She had a sit-down and cup of brandy-wine to settle her nerves, then went up to her bed. She had a terrible shock, Cap’n.’
‘Want to see the cadaver first?’ asked Gwyn pointedly.
De Wolfe gave one of his ambiguous grunts. He was more concerned with Nesta, but decided that he must salve his official conscience by delaying another minute or two. The potman held up his lantern and limped up the yard. It was almost square, about twenty-five paces each way. The brew-shed was the largest hut, facing the cookhouse and the privy, which were too close together for good health. Against the end fence was an open stable, a fowl-house and a pigsty, all set in a patch of grassless mud that, fortunately, was now fairly dry.
A murmur of voices came from the back door of the tavern and, turning, John dimly saw a cluster of curious onlookers. Gwyn followed his gaze. ‘They were all over the damn place when I came, but I chased them back and threatened them with amercement if they set foot up here again,’ he boomed, as they reached the crudely boarded hut where the ale was brewed.
‘There she is, Cap’n!’ croaked Edwin, almost as if he owned the corpse. He held up his lamp and de Wolfe saw a still form lying on the hard earth. The woman’s head was almost touching the planks of the brew-house door, and she was flat on her back, with her legs crossed at the ankles. Her right arm was outstretched and just beyond her fingers was a pottery wine-cup, tipped on its side. The striped hood of her cloak was still in place, almost concealing her red wig. Its front edge was across her forehead, but the rest of her face and neck were exposed to the pale moon and the flickering lantern.
‘This time it’s a strangling,’ said Gwyn, unnecessarily, for it was obvious that a white band was cutting tightly into her throat, a loose end lying across her chest. The cloak had fallen open and her crumpled silk kirtle was visible all the way down to her ankles.