'Bloody outlaws! Every bastard one of them should be rounded up and hanged!' swore the man attending to Owain. He was a florid, middle-aged man in good quality clothes, and Thomas marked him down as a merchant, like the other man who had coaxed the mules back into the road.
'We must get you into Exeter and have you treated at St John's Priory,' said Thomas to the younger man with the slashed arm. 'Can you get to your feet now?'
With help from the other two, Owain got up and, with his damaged arm cradled against his chest, was able to walk to the edge of the road, where he sat on a fallen log. By now, the two priests had begun to groan and move, both having suffered blows to the head by the staves of the ruffians who had attacked them. A few minutes later they had crawled to a sitting position, though one vomited copiously into the grass before squatting with his bruised head in his hands.
Gwyn ambled over to look at the outlaw that he had struck with his sword, but the man was stone dead, lying in a great pool of sticky blood that had gushed from a large artery, severed under his collarbone. 'One less for the gallows!' observed Gwyn cheerfully. 'What about the other one, Crowner?'
At the opposite side of the track, de Wolfe found that the scoundrel that Odin had trodden on was equally dead, his chest and head almost flattened by the iron-shod hooves of the old warhorse.
One of the merchants had a wineskin on his saddle and this helped to restore everyone's spirits, as explanations were offered while the two priests recovered their wits. Owain's wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, thanks to a tightly twisted kerchief bound around his upper arm.
The two older men were merchants from Bristol, travelling to Exeter to arrange purchases of wool. 'I thought that riding in a company of five men would be enough to keep us safe from trail-bastons like those,' grunted one under his breath. 'I forgot that two were damned priests who would not have so much as a club to defend themselves with!'
These holy men were canons from Wells, going to Exeter Cathedral on some ecclesiastical errand. Owain was also going to the same great church, but on quite different business.
'I am a stonemason and especially a stone carver,' he explained. 'That's why I am so concerned about my arm — it had to be the right one, too, the one I use most to earn my living.'
Gwyn and John de Wolfe soon realised that he was a Welshman and began speaking to him in their common Celtic language. His full name was Owain ap Gronow and he came from Chepstow on the Welsh border, though his work often took him to Gloucester Cathedral. He had been recommended from there to the Chapter in Exeter, who needed some expert carving done on a new shrine.
'As long as the wound does not suppurate, it should heal well,' advised John, who had seen every possible injury during twenty years on battlefields from Ireland to the Holy Land. 'We'll get you to Brother Saulf at St John's in the city; he's a wonder with such problems. You'll be carving again in a fortnight!'
After half an hour order was restored and their journey was ready to be started again. The two canons, still shaky but anxious to get to the safety of Exeter, were hauled up on to their mules, and Owain was lifted up behind Gwyn on his mare, as his arm was too fragile to control the reins. With his rounsey on a halter behind one of the merchants, they set off on the remaining seven miles to the city, leaving the two slain outlaws to rot away in the bushes at the side of the road.
By early afternoon the party had reached Exeter and the injured stonemason had been delivered into the care of the healing monks at St John's Priory, while the travelling priests were settled in the cathedral Close. The coroner had called on his friend John de Alençon to explain what had happened, and with his nephew Thomas's fussy assistance the archdeacon had personally arranged for the assaulted canons to be accommodated in the guest rooms attached to the bishop's palace on the south side of the great church.
When all this was done, John went wearily back to his house, still aching from the effects of the long ride. Not unsurprisingly, his wife was absent, and as Mary bustled around to get him some food she told him that her mistress had left the previous day and had not returned.
'She said she was going to seek God, so I suppose she's gone as usual to pray at St Olave's.' Her brow furrowed. 'Though she wore her oldest kirtle and cloak, which is odd, as she always dresses up for the priest's benefit. And she must have gone to stay with someone overnight.'
'God must be bloody fed up with listening to her, day after day!' grumbled John irreverently. 'What does she find to say to Him all the time?'
'Praying for forgiveness for you — and for her brother, Sir Coroner!' replied the maid tartly as she put a wooden bowl of steaming potage in front of him.
He sat on the only stool in the small shed that she called home, where the cooking was done as well. Mary called him 'Sir Coroner' only when she was annoyed with his behaviour, though he failed to see what he had done this time to deserve her sarcasm. She held a flat pan containing beef dripping over the fire to fry two eggs and some pieces of salt bacon. As she slid these on to a thick slice of bread in lieu of a platter and laid them on the small table, Mary elaborated on her criticisms.
'You'll lose her one of these days, mark my words. There's only so much a woman can take from the men around her.'
Normally, a servant being this outspoken would receive a buffet from her master, but John had a respect and affection for his maid that were not wholly due to their former intimacy in the back of the washshed. As he ate, he grunted his excuses. 'She's hardly been a good wife to me, Mary. Without you, I'd have starved and gone around in dirty rags. All she cares about is her damned devotions and her snobbish friends at the cathedral and St Olave's.'
Mary shook her head sadly. 'She's changed lately. I can see it in her face and her very movements. You are a trial to her, with your well-known infidelities, but I think it is her brother who has driven her to this state of despair.'
Richard de Revelle's sister had previously worshipped her elder brother, but had been progressively disenchanted as his bad behaviour was exposed — mainly by her own husband, which made matters worse. His expulsion from his post as sheriff, followed by an ignominious episode in which he had been publicly shamed in an ordeal by battle, seemed to have driven Matilda into a descending spiral of depression and despair.
'So where has she gone, d'you think?' he demanded between mouthfuls of food and cider.
Mary shrugged and stood over him with arms crossed over her bosom in a faintly defiant attitude. 'You tell me, sir! I doubt she's gone to her brother's house, though I hear that he is back from his manor and is in his fine town house in Northgate Street.'
'Could she be at her cousin's place in Fore Street?' he hazarded.
'I doubt she would have left all her fine clothes behind, if she went there. The mistress is too fond of showing off to her 'poor relative', as she calls her!' she added sarcastically.
He rubbed the platter clean with a piece of bread, then stopped with it halfway to his mouth as a sudden thought struck him. 'Surely she hasn't gone back to Polsloe?' he exclaimed. 'She did that last year but soon found the food and raiment not at all to her liking.'
Again Mary shrugged. 'That was last year; she's more desperate now.'
John sighed as he finished his food and drink. 'If you say de Revelle is back at his town house, I'd best go around there and see if Matilda is with him — or whether he knows anything of her.'
A few minutes later he was loping through the busy streets of Exeter, shouldering aside porters struggling under huge bales of wool and dodging men wheeling barrows full of firewood. Swineherds drove fat pigs towards the Shambles for street slaughter, and the raucous voices of stallholders rang out from the booths that lined the roads, selling everything from sausages to shovels. On street corners, barbers shouted invitations for shaves and haircutting — and at Carfoix, the central crossing of the main roads, a villainous-looking fellow waved a pair of pincers, offering to pull any painful teeth. The whole motley throng was part of this vibrant city, thriving on its exports of tin, cloth and wool — even the beggars and vagrants seemed more prosperous than in other towns.