Matilda held her tongue about the fact that it was Walter who had officially ejected her brother from the office of sheriff and had sworn in his successor, Henry de Furnellis. Although she was now firmly against Richard over his part in the seizure of de Arundell's manor, there was a limit to how much she was willing to acknowledge publicly concerning his treachery.
'We can only wait and pray until next week, when the king's judges will hear the matter,' said Joan practically. 'I am sure they will uphold justice and undo the wrong that has been visited upon us. My only wish is to get back to our home in Hempston and live quietly, to pick up the broken threads of my life!'
Matilda laid a comforting hand on the younger woman's shoulder.
'Amen to that,' she said piously. 'I'll add my prayers to yours, twice each day until Walter de Ralegh arrives.'
'We know now that it was definitely this Geoffrey Trove who is the culprit, but where the hell is he?' De Wolfe sounded more aggrieved than angry as he took the stripped bone of a sheep's shank from his platter and dropped it on to the rushes for the expectant Brutus.
'Perhaps he's already in hell, if he was as sick as that ironmaster suggested,' grunted Gwyn from the other side of the table.
'He might have left the city altogether,' said Nesta 'The fact that he's vanished surely means that he knows he's been marked down as the killer. Wouldn't he want to get as far as possible away from Exeter?'
It was evening, and John was supplementing his supper at home with some extra sustenance at the Bush, with Gwyn enthusiastically following his example. That afternoon, the big Cornishman had returned to Exe Island with Osric, and between them they had kicked down the door of Geoffrey's hut. Amongst the sparse furnishings was a workbench, on which was an iron frame about the size of a quart pot, containing a powerful spring device. It was obviously the machine that had discharged the bolt that had injured the guild master in Rock Lane. Gwyn had brought the strange weapon down to the tavern, where they studied it with interest.
'Evil as he must be, he is a clever fellow and a very good craftsman,' said John, peering appreciatively at the fine workmanship of the mechanism.
'Is that blood on one corner?' observed Nesta, whose younger eyes were the keenest. She pointed to a sharp edge where the end of the strong laminated spring projected beyond the square casing. Gwyn spat on his forefinger and rubbed it on the brown stain. It came away reddened and he nodded in satisfaction.
'Can't be the victim's blood, he was yards away when this thing was fired. So it must have come from the bastard who made it.'
'But where is he?' repeated de Wolfe once more.
Having tracked down the identity of the killer, he was now mortified not to be able to lay hands on him. If he had seized him, he could have dragged him before Walter de Ralegh when he held his special court in a few days' time. Geoffrey Trove could have been tried and sentenced without further delay, so that the evil fellow could have been hanged straightaway, relieving the minds of all the other guild officers who had been in fear of their own lives these past few weeks.
Nesta signalled to old Edwin to refill their ale pots, then slipped her arm through John's, as they sat side by side on the bench near the hearth.
'What's the connection between this Trove bastard and Hempston Arundell?' asked Gwyn. 'It must have been him who so foully attacked your wife, Crowner. But what did he mean about it being justice for Hempston or whatever he said?'
De Wolfe frowned as he did when in deep thought.
'He must have been one of those men that left the manor when de Arundell was evicted, then left the outlaw band some time ago. They said one was a freeman blacksmith, which is a bit unusual, but I can't recall what they said his name was. He must have combined getting even with the men who ejected his master-piece with wanting to scare de Revelle and Pomeroy.'
Nesta clutched at his arm. 'Do you think he's still plotting to do some harm to your brother-in-law and that pig of a man down in Berry?'
'He's hardly in a position to do much, is he? He's on the run, he must guess by now that we know who he is. I reckon he'll make tracks for some distant part of England, or even try to take ship across the channel.'
Gwyn shook his head, his wild locks bouncing. 'He could still slip a blade between Richard's ribs one dark night — with a bit of luck,' he added impishly.
Usually, when the royal justices or the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery arrived in the city, there was a considerable amount of pomp and ceremony. They were invariably met on the high road outside Exeter by the sheriff, coroner and portreeves, who escorted them into the city with a score of mounted men-at-arms led by the castle constable.
However, about noon on the following Monday, a small group of horsemen trotted in without the usual pageant.
These were two noblemen with a couple of clerks and a few armed servants, who made their way to the New Inn, the city's largest hostelry, which lay in High Street towards the East Gate. This was the usual lodging for judges, and as soon as the sheriff and coroner heard that Sir Walter de Ralegh had arrived, they hurried down to greet them.
Walter was a tall, grizzled man in his sixties, still with a strong Devon accent that betrayed his origins, having been born near East Budleigh, a village near the coast less than a dozen miles from Exeter. De Ralegh had risen high in the service of the king, both the old Henry and now the Lionheart. He was a senior justice and a man respected both for his forthright views and for his honesty, a rare quality in the corridors of power. Being a local man, he was often chosen by the Chief Justiciar to deal with problems in the West Country, and he had several times been involved with John de Wolfe in such matters.
The sheriff, coroner and judges now sat in a private parlour of the New Inn, Walter with his riding boots off to ease his feet after the ride from Honiton, where they had stayed the previous night on their journey down from Winchester. He introduced his companion judge, who was a former Commissioner who had recently been elevated to the Eyre circuit. This was Reginald de Bohun, a baron from the Welsh Marches who owned manors between Hereford and Shrewsbury, as well as estates in the north. He was a great-nephew of the great Humphrey de Bohun, Steward of England. Younger than Walter, de Bohun was about de Wolfe's age, of average height, with dark brown hair cut in the typical Norman manner, a dense cap left above a closely shaven neck. He spoke only when he had something useful to say, but John felt he was a man who decided matters on the facts, rather than on emotions or the convenience of the situation.
Walter de Ralegh, a blunter and more outspoken character than de Bohun stretched out his legs with a groan as he reached for a jug of cider on the table. 'I'm getting too old for all this hacking around the countryside,' he complained. 'This is the second time this year Hubert has sent me down here to deal with Richard bloody Revelle. Unless we can hang him out of the way, I might as well come back to Devon to live. It would save my arse from wearing out in the saddle.'
Hubert Walter, who had sent the pair of justices down to Exeter, had outlined the problem to them, but now John and the sheriff repeated it and filled in the details of the seizure of Hempston Arundell by the two miscreants.
'And this occurred while Nicholas de Arundell was away at the Crusades?' asked de Bohun.
'It did indeed, which makes it such a despicable trick,' growled de Wolfe. 'De la Pomeroy convinced his poor wife that some mythical man returning from the Holy Land had reported that her husband had perished.'
'And then he and de Revelle claimed that on the death of the freeholder, the manor reverted to the Crown,' added de Furneilis. 'But as Prince John had been granted all of Devon and Cornwall by the king, it actually escheated to him.'