'What's to happen about the Justiciar's decision to right this wrong?' asked the castle constable, twisting his forked beard pugnaciously. 'Are we going to hang those two bastards at long last?'
Henry de Furnellis held up a placatory hand. 'Easy, Ralph! Hubert says that he's sending Walter de Ralegh down to hold a special court to settle the issue. Then you can talk about hanging them.'
The burly constable buried his face in his ale jar.
'Those crafty swine will find some way to wriggle out of it, I'll wager. They've got Prince John and half the bloody clergy on their side.'
After supper that evening, Matilda went off to visit her 'poor relation', a cousin in Fore Street. Although the woman was the contented wife of a thriving merchant, she had been adopted as a charity case by John's overbearing wife, who called upon her at intervals to make sure she was not starving on account of marrying a mere tradesman.
John took the opportunity to 'take the dog for a walk', and although he had already called in at the Bush Inn earlier in the day to make his peace with Nesta, he went down again to Idle Lane as soon as his wife's back was turned.
Sitting at ease at his table near the hearth, he had time to recount all the details of his trip to Winchester and London, places that Nesta had only heard of, as her travels had taken her only between her home in Gwent and the city of Exeter. She was the widow of a Welsh archer who had fought alongside John de Wolfe in several French campaigns. When Meredydd finally hung up his longbow, John suggested that he move to Devon, and with his accumulated loot from fifteen years of fighting he had bought the Bush, then a rundown alehouse. The archer brought his wife from Gwent, and they worked hard to make it successful, but then Meredydd was stricken with a sudden fever and died.
John had helped Nesta financially to keep the tavern going until it finally paid its way again, and in the process, they had become lovers in every sense of the word.
'You are a good man, John,' she said softly, putting a hand affectionately on his arm. 'Going all that way to fight an injustice. And I'm not even jealous, though I'll wager that this Lady Joan is pretty.'
He gave her a crooked grin and squeezed her thigh under the table.
'When was my head ever turned by a pretty face — apart from yours, cariad?' he replied in Welsh. 'My main reason was to do down that damned brother-in-law of mine.'
The inn was fairly quiet that evening, though Nesta was called away several times by either old Edwin or one of the serving maids to attend to some cooking problem or see to a new arrival who wanted a penny mattress in the loft for the night. When she came back to John after dealing with one such customer, he solemnly placed a penny before her on the table.
'Any chance of me also getting a bed tonight, mistress?' he asked with a straight face.
The pert answer she had ready was interrupted by the appearance in front of them of Thomas de Peyne, who had just slunk in through the back door. His natural reluctance to frequent taverns had increased since he had been recently restored to the priesthood, so John knew that he must have something important to tell him. However, this had to wait until Nesta had finished fussing over the clerk, as she was always convinced that he never get enough to eat in his mean lodgings in Priest Street. She went off to order a maid to find him a bowl of stew and a couple of chicken legs, and while she was in the kitchen, Thomas blurted out his news.
'I have been in the Guildhall, as you instructed, Crowner. Their records are in some disorder, but they are all there. I went through the rolls pertaining to the guild of Ironworkers and found that last summer, one of the journeymen was refused advancement because his master-work was deemed insufficient.' The little clerk's pinched face was pink with cold as he wiped a dewdrop from the end of his long nose with the sleeve of his black cassock.
'What was the name of the master who failed him?' asked John tensely, expecting that it might be one of the four dead guildsmen, until he remembered that they were not in the same trade.
'It was John Barlet, the previous warden of the ironmasters,' said Thomas. Deflated, the coroner then recalled that Stephen de Radone had said that his predecessor had died after a fall from a horse — an accident… or was it? It had not been one of John's inquests, but the man might have died outside south Devon, under the jurisdiction of a different coroner.
But Thomas had by no means finished his tale and as Nesta returned with a cup of wine and slipped back alongside John, he continued.
'The most interesting part, Crowner, is that the journeyman appealed against the decision and it was heard by four senior members of the city guilds — and again rejected.'
John was almost afraid to ask his clerk the names of the adjudicators, but when Thomas delivered them in a dramatic whisper, the coroner slammed his fist on the table and let out a shout that turned every head in the taproom.
'Thomas, you're a bloody genius! We've got him, thanks to you.' Then he glowered at his clerk from under his beetling black brows. 'But you've not yet told me the name of this damned journeyman!' Thomas looked furtively over his shoulder, as if he was about to impart some state secret. 'It was Geoffrey Trove, who works on Exe Island.'
De Wolfe stared at his clerk. The name rang some faint bell in the back of his mind and he struggled to retrieve it. 'Trove? Trove? That name is somehow familiar.'
Then the memory of the meeting in the Guildhall with the members of various guilds came back to him.
He recalled the pompous Benedict de Buttelscumbe who was the convenor and then the general discussion afterwards. Yes, that was it, there was a fellow, a journeyman smith, who had some sarcastic remarks to offer about the failure of the law officers to solve the killings.
The coroner half rose from his bench, as if to dash out and arrest the man at that moment, but Nesta pulled at his sleeve.
'John, it is pitch dark outside,' she scolded. 'These murders have been spread over weeks, so I doubt that waiting until morning will make any difference to your investigation.'
De Wolfe saw the sense in what she said and subsided on to his seat.
'You are right, as usual, woman. But at dawn, I shall visit the warden of the ironworkers and discover what I can about this Geoffrey Trove. And especially where he lives and works.'
And that was the first problem, for Geoffrey Trove was nowhere to be found.
Soon after first light, while Thomas was busy at his devotions in the cathedral, John and his officer were at Stephen de Radone's forge in Smythen Street. When they told him of Thomas's discovery, the warden was aghast.
'Could this really be a motive for murder?' he protested. 'I know this man Trove slightly, he has always been difficult and outspoken in matters concerning our trade — but murder?'
'Is obtaining the rank of a master important?' asked de Wolfe.
'Very much so, especially if a man is ambitious and wishes to set up on his own,' replied Stephen. 'And to have your master-piece rejected once, let alone twice, is indeed a slur on a craftsman's proficiency. It means that he would be condemned to working as a journeyman for ever, certainly in Exeter. His only hope would be to move somewhere far away, where his history is unknown, and to try again.'
The warden told them that Trove worked for an iron founder down on the river, just outside the city on the marshes beyond the West Gate. Plentiful supplies of water flowing along the leets that meandered through the flood plain allowed a number of mills to operate there. Most were fulling mills for the wool industry, but there were also a few iron smelters and founders, who used the power of millwheels to drive bellows and hammers for their metalworking.