The coroner’s thoughts drifted on to the perennial problem of his snobbish wife Matilda, sister to the sheriff. Married for sixteen years, he had achieved domestic harmony by being absent at the wars for most of that time. But since he had returned from the Holy Land last year, after accompanying Coeur de Lion on his ill-fated journey home, he had been stuck in Exeter with Matilda.
With faults on both sides, their relationship had gone steadily downhilclass="underline" now they hardly spoke to each other except to exchange recriminations. Yet Matilda had energetically campaigned for John’s appointment as coroner, using her family influence with her reluctant brother and his high ecclesiastical friends – although mainly to further her own social ambitions to be the wife of an important royal official.
John had been in two minds about taking the post, even though his strong military links with both the King and his soldier-Justiciar Hubert Walter made him a strong favourite for the job. However, as the coronership was officially elected by the burgesses of Exeter, influenced by the sheriff of Devon, Matilda made sure that her brother overcame his dislike of her husband sufficiently to support his appointment. De Revelle had himself only just been reinstated as sheriff, after being put out of office for months because of his links with Prince John’s rebellion. The crafty young brother of King Richard had taken the opportunity of the Lionheart’s incarceration in Austria, to try to seize the throne, but the attempt had been a dismal failure.
There should have been three coroners established in Devonshire, but in September only two could be found. This was partly due to the arduous nature of the post in such a large and wild area, especially as it was unpaid. In fact, the Justiciar had decreed that only knights with an income of at least twenty pounds a year could be coroners. The assumption was that if they were sufficiently well-off they would not need to milk the system, as did most sheriffs, by embezzling funds intended for the royal treasury.
The other knight was Robert Fitzrogo, who was meant to have jurisdiction over much of the rural area, especially in the north and west of the county while John covered Exeter and the more populous south. But within a fortnight of taking office, Fitzrogo had had a riding accident, and died, leaving John to deal with the whole of Devon.
Though Matilda had succeeded in getting her husband into the upper ranks of county society, she now complained that his duties kept him out of their house and her company on an almost permanent basis. John had soon discovered that he liked the work and, even more, that it kept him away from his wife almost as much as he had been when he was campaigning at the wars. It also gave him ample opportunity to visit his several mistresses, especially Nesta, the vivacious Welsh widow who kept the Bush tavern in Exeter.
His final rumination, before sleep overcame him in this odorous dwelling, was about the forthcoming visitation of the Chief Justiciar to Exeter within the next few days. He knew him well, as Hubert Walter had been Richard the Lionheart’s second-in-command in Palestine and had been left in charge of the English army when the King sailed for home, with John as one of his escorts.
But Hubert’s imminent visit to Exeter was in his capacity as head of the English Church: the King had made him Archbishop of Canterbury as a reward for both his military prowess and his genius as an administrator.
Now the Archbishop was overdue for a tour of his various dioceses so he was coming to visit Henry Marshall, Bishop of Exeter – and brother to William Marshall, the most powerful baron in the land. The occasion would outwardly be ecclesiastical, but politics would be high on the agenda, rather than the cure of souls in that part of the kingdom.
But before John could go over this in his mind for the hundredth time, sleep suddenly overcame him. He began to snore gently, dreaming of the soft arms and plump breasts of Nesta.
At about the time that Sir John was dreaming of his favourite mistress, his stunted clerk was forcing down drink that he did not want, in the hovel that housed the village priest.
In the short time that he had been with the coroner, Thomas had learned that one of the best sources of information about local intrigues was the local priest. These men were often poverty-stricken vicars frequently placed in village churches by absentee prebendaries who held the living and rarely if ever visited their parishes. They preferred to live comfortably in the cathedral cities, paying a pittance to barely literate priests to carry out their duties.
The coroner’s clerk had made his way from the reeve’s cottage to the church, crossing the muddy track that was the village street. The House of God in Torre was the second largest building, the tithe barn next to it being considerably bigger. Thomas could see the thatched church roof, with its plain wooden cross, silhouetted against a moonlit gap in the fast-moving clouds. As he came closer, he could see that against the rear wall was a lean-to hut, made of the same rough boards as the church itself. A dim flicker of light showed through the cracks of the shuttered window opening, which told him that the incumbent of this rude vicarage was at home.
Stumbling over rubbish strewn on the path, de Peyne groped his way to the door and banged on the boards. There was a lengthy silence and he knocked again. This time he heard mumbling inside, and unsteady footsteps brought the priest to his door. He opened it sufficiently to peep suspiciously through a crack: he was not used to visits from his flock after dark – or at any other time, given the scorn in which he was held.
Thomas had developed a routine for such occasions. He rapidly established his religious status by sententiously delivering a greeting-cum-blessing in good Latin and making the Sign of the Cross. The bewildered pastor, already more than slightly drunk, dragged open the door and mumbled some response that the clerk took to be an invitation to enter.
De Peyne pushed his way inside and looked around the room in the minimal light of the guttering candle, apparently the remains of one from the church altar. As with the reeve’s dwelling, there was virtually no furniture, apart from an old milking stool, a slate slab on two stones for a table and a pile of straw covered in rags that served as a bed. The remains of a fire glowed in the central hearth, surrounded by a few dirty pots. The most prominent feature was a large jug near the stool and a mug half filled with red liquid.
Thomas began his patter to dampen any doubts the priest might have, claiming that he was the personal chaplain to the new coroner, who had come to investigate the deaths of the seamen washed up on the beach. The fuddled mind of the local parson was reassured that Thomas had not come to murder him or steal his non-existent possessions. He motioned him hospitably to the stool, pressed another grubby pot into his hand and poured a ruby fluid into it from the jug. Then he subsided with a thump to sit on the floor. ‘Drink, brother and be welcome,’ he said thickly.
Thomas had little need to wonder where the poverty-stricken priest would get a limitless supply of good French wine: the answer seemed obvious and already he felt a glow of achievement in his espionage operation for his master. He made a pretence of enthusiastic drinking, though he was not fond of liquor. When his host was not looking, he tipped most of his drink into the tangled rushes on the floor, to keep his head clear so that he could encourage the man to reveal the source of his supplies. The conversation was less productive. The priest, an emaciated wreck with yellow skin and bloodshot eyes, seemed mentally stunted. Whether this was from years incarcerated in a remote village or due to his chronic alcoholism was not clear. Thomas wondered which condition had led to the other – was he a drunk because he was stuck here, or had he been banished here because he was a drunk? Either way, the man seemed intent on slow suicide by alcohol as a means of escape.