'You old bitch! Tell that evil bastard you call a brother, that the body in his damned college — and the two that followed — shows what happens to people who cross me.' Suddenly, the grip on her throat was released and the weight of her assailant's body lifted as he rose to his feet. Then Matilda felt a violent kick in her ribs, thankfully somewhat blunted by her thick mantle, before the harsh voice spoke again.
'And you can tell him that his own time is coming, as it is for his foul accomplice Henry Pomeroy! I want revenge for Hempston, which ruined my life.' Then she heard footsteps loping away towards Bear Gate and Southgate Street. Gasping, then sobbing with pain and fear, she turned on to her side and lay crumpled into a bail, shivering first with distress and then with cold. Slowly, she dragged herself to her knees and painfully rose to her feet. There was still not a soul in the Close that could come to her aid, and weeping she staggered like a drunken person towards the end of Martin's Lane, only a hundred paces away. As she went, she put her fingers to a newly recognised pain in her forehead and sobbed anew as they came away moist with seeping blood.
The little church on the corner was deserted, as the Mass held by its Saxon priest had finished before the cathedral service, but as she tottered unsteadily into the blackness of the lane, she saw a faint light bobbing towards her. With a moan of mixed hope and fear, she slid back to the ground just as the skinny figure of Osric, one of the city's watchmen, hurried to her solicitously, his horn lantern revealing the coroner's wife, her face bloodied and her garments dishevelled.
Though John had dallied in Nesta's upper chamber until late in the evening, he was home long before the cathedral service had finished, at well after midnight.
Promising his conscience that he would attend the traditional High Mass in the middle of Christmas morning, he went straight to bed and was sound asleep when Osric began pounding on the front door with the end of his staff. It failed to wake him, but moments later Mary clattered up the steps to the solar and burst in to shake him by the shoulder.
'Come quickly, the mistress has been attacked!' she yelled, then dived back down to the yard below. Fuddled but soon fully awake, he clambered up from his pallet and threw on breeches and a tunic to cover his nakedness, thrust his feet into shoes and hurried after the maid.
In the hall, lit by a bundle of kindling thrown urgently on to the smouldering logs, he found a scene of chaos, with an almost hysterical Lucille cradling Matilda's head as she lay slumped in one of the monk's chairs. The more practical Mary was bathing a wound on his wife's head with a cloth and warm water from her kitchen, whilst Osric was dancing from foot to foot, unable to decide whether to run out and start scouring the darkened streets for the assailant or to wait for de Wolfe's orders.
'The mistress was attacked in the Close, on the way home from midnight Mass,' announced Mary, glaring at John as if it was his fault. She knew where he had been that evening and, as sometimes happened when she had a bout of righteousness, she placed some of the blame upon him, even though the poor man had been asleep in his own bed when it happened.
He pushed Lucille out of the way, telling her to get some brandy wine for her mistress, then knelt on the floor alongside Matilda, his head level with hers.
'Tell me what happened, good wife,' he said with surprising gentleness. 'Who did this to you, eh? Snuffles and groans were the only response, then she winced as Mary gave a final wipe to the injury on her temple. It was not a deep cut, rather a deep ragged graze, but it had bled profusely.
'I think she must have fallen to the ground,' murmured Mary. 'But look at her neck and her eyes.' John saw that her eyelids were much more puffy and swollen than usual and in the whites were some bright flecks of blood. When Mary gently eased aside her wimple and collar, several fresh bruises were evident under the angles of her jaw.
'Some bastard has tried to throttle her,' growled John.
He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. 'You are safe now, wife,' he said gently. 'We'll get to the bottom of this, never fear!'
CHAPTER EIGHT
For the first time in his life, John de Wolfe made a grudging apology to his brother-in-law. They were seated on either side of the fire in John's hall, drinking a midmorning cup of wine, for once united in their concern for Matilda and in cold anger at whoever had committed this outrage upon her.
'It seems that I have to agree with you, Richard,' grunted de Wolfe, reaching across to refill his guest's glass goblet with Loire red. 'I admit I disbelieved your accusation about the corpse in your college being the work of outlaws, but now it seems that you may be right.' De Revelle was too worried to crow over John's backing-down, as what he had just learned from the coroner indicated a frightening threat to himself.
'I suppose there's no doubt about what this swine said to my sister?' he asked anxiously. 'Could she have been so overwrought as to imagine it?'
De Wolfe shook his head. 'Matilda is a very strongwilled woman, as you very well know. After she had recovered a little last night, she was lucid and definite about what happened.'
When the immediate panic had subsided following her return home, a few glasses of strong brandy wine restored his wife enough for Mary and Lucille to help her up the stairs to the solar, with John and Osric hovering ineffectively behind. The two maids undressed her and got her into bed, heaping blankets and fleeces on her against the cold and plying her with more hot mulled wine. Lucille, the rabbit-toothed French maid from the Vexin, sat with her for the rest of the night, but John crouched for a time at the edge of the pallet and spoke gently to her as she recovered. As he had told her brother, Matilda was a tough, resilient woman not given to fainting or hysterics, and she soon was able to describe what had happened, though this was a pretty sparse tale, as she had seen nothing of her attacker apart from a hooded shape in black clothing. However, she was in no doubt about what he had threatened, though she could not identify his voice.
Osric had rushed away to seek the other constable and to rouse Gwyn from his bag of straw in the soldiers' quarters in Rougemont. They had searched the streets around the cathedral, but it was a futile gesture in the early hours of the morning, when only a few drunks were still abroad.
Richard de Revelle had hurried after his breakfast to Martin's Lane as soon as he heard the news, which had travelled rapidly around the city's grapevine, sparked off by the enquiries being made by the two constables.
'I'll strangle the bastard with my own hands when I catch him,' grated John. 'Matilda was quite definite that he said he had killed the poor fellow in Smythen Street and then boasted of the 'other two', which must surely mean the bizarre slayings out on the Ashburton Road and in St Bartholomew's churchyard.'
Richard stared at him uneasily. 'But he threatened both Henry de la Pomeroy and myself,' he repeated. 'It must be that bloody outlaw and his gang from Dartmoor.'
John shrugged. 'Unlikely as it seems, I have to agree with you. It was that mention of Hempston that clinches it. Your sins are coming home to roost, Richard, but I wish your sister was not involved in the fruits of whatever crafty schemes you've been up to.'
In his agitation, de Revelle ignored this shaft from John and stayed with the potential dangers to himself.
'I see how they could have slain that glazier out on the high road, but how do they manage to kill and attack within the city itself? This idle sheriff and the portreeves must immediately tighten up the security at the gates.'
De Wolfe gave a scornful laugh. 'How the hell can you stop any man coming into the city, Richard, unless you know his face? Hundreds enter through the five gates every day. Any man pushing a barrowful of hay or a fellow driving a pig could be an outlaw — they don't carry a placard around their neck, you know.'