On the day following Christmas, John went to his chamber in the castle as usual, after making sure that Matilda was settled as well as she could be. The sedative potion had done its work, and she appeared much recovered, her main complaints being an aching side and a sore throat. This last seemed to make little difference to her voice, which had rapidly regained its stern vibrancy — and certainly was not preventing her from eating. As soon as he could, he took all the facts to Henry de Furnellis and in the sheriff's chamber in the keep, they chewed over what could be done, if anything, to follow up this alleged connection with Nick o' the Moor's outlaws.
'Hempston seems the obvious starting point,' growled the sheriff. 'Never been there myself, but if de Arundell and his gang came from there, someone might know something of their whereabouts.'
De Wolfe agreed and said he would get down there as soon as he was satisfied that his wife was fit to be left alone.
'She's a tough old bird,' he said, with almost a note of pride. 'Many ladies would have died of fright or been in a state of shock for a month after such an experience, but not my Matilda! If he hadn't come up on her unexpectedly from behind, I'd not be surprised if she'd have laid him out with a couple of punches!'
The old sheriff grinned at the exaggeration, then returned to practicalities. 'Do you want a posse or some of Ralph Morin's men-at-arms to go with you?' he asked.
John shook his head. 'I'm not going hunting them across Dartmoor, especially in this weather.' He jerked a thumb at the window slit, through which snowflakes could be seen whirling in the wind. 'As soon as I can travel, I'll go down to see what Henry de la Pomeroy has to say for himself, as he's also been threatened now. I'll go across to this nearby Hempston Arundell, to find out what really happened there. Then we can decide if we are going after these outlaws, but God knows how we'll ever find them in that wilderness.'
De Furnellis was only too ready to let John take the initiative, though he was genuinely worried about the killing of prominent craftsmen in the city. When the Eyre eventually arrived in Exeter, the royal justices would want a full account of everything that had been going on in the county, and to have an unsolved series of murders of guildsmen would reflect badly on the man who was responsible for law and order in Devon.
'Do your best then, John,' he said encouragingly. 'What's the next move?'
'We are meeting the guild masters today to see if they have any bright ideas. I arranged that before we had this news about Hempston, but I still don't see why the bloody man's victims have to be from the guilds.' At his noon dinner, John was gratified that Matilda felt strong enough to come down to the hall to eat, though her bruised ribs caused her to wince every time she moved. She wore a heavy silk georgette to hide the bruises on her neck, but John could still see the little bleeding points in the whites of her eyes, the result of being throttled.
After they had eaten and he had settled her in her chair by the fire with a pewter cup of wine, he muffled himself in his cloak and with a felt helmet tied securely under his chin and a wide-brimmed pilgrim's hat on top, he set out into the snow, which was about an inch deep in the lane. John turned left into High Street, dropping a penny into the battered hat of a blind beggar who was crouched shivering on the corner. He walked on to the Guildhall, not long rebuilt in stone to serve the increasing needs of the prospering city. Inside the large hall, under its high beamed ceiling, he found a group of men sitting at one of the tables that he usually saw loaded with food and drink at festive dinners. Now the rest of the trestles were stacked against one wall and more than a score of men stood uneasily in the centre, talking amongst themselves and to the seven behind the table.
When he saw the coroner enter, the man in the middle rose to greet him. It was Benedict de Buttelscttmbe, the warden of the Mercers, to whom John had spoken before.
'Welcome, Sir John, make yourself comfortable over there,' he said in a lordly manner, indicating a stool at one end of the table. 'The sheriff has kindly agreed to attend as well.' A similar seat at the opposite end of the trestle was obviously reserved for Henry de Furnellis.
As de Wolfe eased himself down on to the stool, he saw that Archibald Wasteper, the warden of the Cordwainers was sitting next to him. Beyond him were the two portreeves of Exeter, John's partner Hugh de Relaga and Henry Rifford, a rich leather merchant. They had all heard of Matilda's plight and enquired of her condition, with hopes for a speedy recovery.
John recognised all the other wardens by sight, one being Robert de Helion of the Weavers' Guild and another Ranulph de Cerne of the Fishmongers. Another old acquaintance was Richard Lustcote, who had attended Matilda, being the most senior of the three apothecaries in Exeter.
There were familiar faces too amongst the men standing in the hall, though some were much younger than the wardens, and John assumed that some were masters without their own businesses and the rest were journeymen, skilled men but without the status of a master craftsman.
A moment later, the sheriff ambled into the hall accompanied, as befitted his status, by Sergeant Gabriel and a man-at-arms. Unobtrusively the two soldiers took up their positions just inside the door, and Henry de Furnllis came across to sit at the other end of the table from John. When greetings had been concluded, Benedict rose to his feet and tapped the boards with an intricately carved gavel. The mutter of conversation died away and the self-important warden of the Mercers began a long-winded introduction.
'I have called this emergency meeting of the leaders of the craft and merchant guilds in response to the shocking events that have taken place, the last being only yesterday,' he began. As everyone there knew exactly what had happened and why they were summoned, there was a restless stirring amongst the crowd. After a few more minutes of his platitudes, one man spoke up from the floor.
'Let's get on with it, Warden. We're all losing valuable working time, standing around here with our tongues wagging to little effect.'
The speaker was a burly man of about thirty, wearing a leather jerkin that appeared to have many scorch marks on the front.
John leaned over to murmur to Archibald Wasteper. 'Who's that fellow? He seems very outspoken.'
'A journeyman working for a metal founder on Exe Island. Name of Geoffrey Trove, as I recall.'
If John felt that Trove was outspoken, he discovered in the course of the next hour that a number of other guildsmen were even more frank in expressing their views. In contrast to the more deferential manners of both the knightly class and the clergy, the tradesmen were far more egalitarian and outspoken, the juniors being unafraid to dispute with their more senior colleagues in their craft. As the meeting went on, the speakers at the table were frequently interrupted by voices from the floor, sometimes making scathing or caustic comments about what had been said. One guildsman, a tall blond man who Wasteper said was a fletcher called William Alissandre, even claimed that the killings of the older guild officials might have been plotted by a jealous guild master. There was tutting from the seniors and catcalls from the other journeymen at this preposterous suggestion. The general consensus was that someone or some group was attempting to undermine Exeter's burgeoning trade expansion by a campaign of terror against prominent guild leaders.
'All the men murdered were officials in our organisations,' brayed Buttelscumbe. 'Surely this can only mean that someone intends to intimidate us — perhaps worse is to come.'
There was mixed reaction to this, some jabbering agreement, others ridiculing the idea.
'How can slaying a few men damage our trading prospects, for God's sake?' called a red-haired man with a florid, pugnacious face. 'Our customers here and our agents in France and Flanders are not concerned with a couple of corpses, so long as they get sent the best broadcloth or the finest fleeces.'