Crowner John bristled at this. ‘You miserable hog, don’t try to excuse yourself! It was you who gave the money for your man to hire another killer. All you can plead is cowardice, not innocence.’
Gervaise’s head dropped in shame, but he still attempted to excuse himself. ‘This was merely getting rid of some paltry bodyguard, something to delay the news of my brother’s return until we thought of another plan. We had no intention to kill Hubert. I thought perhaps I could arrange for him to be kidnapped and dumped in Ireland or Brittany, where some accident might still befall him.’
John gave him a push with the flat of his boot that sent him tumbling into the ordure on the ground. ‘You’re as big a liar as you are a villain! You meant Hubert’s death from the outset. No other way would grant you your father’s heritage. But then what happened?’
Gervaise used his crude cross to push himself up to a squatting position. He looked so abject in his misery that Nesta almost felt sorry for him, until she reminded herself of his mortal sin of fratricide.
‘That fool Baldwyn couldn’t resist stealing the man’s dagger. Then they took the Saxon’s horse into the wilds of the moor, stripped it of its harness and let it run wild to get rid of it,’ he mumbled.
‘What happened to this outlaw and his Judas pieces of silver – or is that some other figment of your evil mind?’ snapped the coroner.
De Bonneville shook his head violently. ‘He was real enough – until Baldwyn killed him!’
John raised his arms in despair. Framed in his black cloak, he looked like a huge bat hovering over the culprit.
‘Mother of God, another corpse! Where will we find this one?’
Gervaise was anxious to shift the blame from himself. ‘It shows what manner of evil rogue Baldwyn was!’ he said, in a complete reversal of his former concern for his squire. ‘I knew nothing of it, but he told me later that he felt it wise to get rid of any witnesses.’
‘Where and when?’ demanded the coroner grimly.
The aspiring lord of Peter Tavy shrugged. ‘He never told me other than that he had caught the man unawares and run him through with his sword in some remote spot. He did say that there was no fear of the body being found, as he threw it down the shaft of an old tin mine.’
Gwyn of Polruan was outraged at this endless story of treacherous killings. ‘And I’ll gamble that your fine squire took back his blood money from the corpse’s purse before he dropped it down the hole, the swine!’
‘So how did you later find your brother, wretch?’ demanded John, who was getting angrier as the story unfolded.
The jurymen and those in the crowd who could hear what was being said, or had the proceedings relayed to them by those in front, were also growing restive. Hisses and jeers were frequent, in spite of the men-at-arms’ efforts to keep order. John felt that if he had thrown Gervaise to the mob, they would have torn him limb from limb or hanged him from the nearest tree.
De Bonneville, who now cowered on his knees close to the protection of the coroner, explained what had happened.
‘It was not I who killed my brother!’ he pleaded. ‘I never laid eyes on him. It was Baldwyn who went to Southampton just before the time that Aelfgar had claimed that Hubert would leave that port. He was the one who slew him, on the promise that I would give him advancement and wealth when I achieved my inheritance.’
John was disgusted with him. Violence was commonplace, but Gervaise’s cold-blooded plan to assassinate his own’s brother was outrageous. ‘You might as well have held the knife yourself, you evil worm!’ shouted John.
Gwyn came up to whisper something in his ear. The coroner turned back to look down scathingly at the craven figure in sackcloth. ‘The wounds on the body of your brother strongly suggested that he had two attackers … and you claim you were not there?’
Gervaise shook his head at the earth beneath his face. ‘Baldwyn again hired some outlaw to help him. First he went to Southampton and found such a fellow. The hired man had to seek out Hubert, as Baldwyn was well known to my brother. It was no problem tracing him, but then Baldwyn and his man waited until he left Southampton and covertly followed him.’
There was a sudden commotion at the back of the crowd. ‘Here’s someone who can vouch for that – the felon himself!’
Gervaise’s tale was interrupted by a shout from beyond the circle of onlookers. They parted to allow a man-at-arms push a way through for the constable of Rougemont.
Behind him came another soldier, shoving a bedraggled figure with chains on his wrists and ankles – a man with two fingers missing from his right hand.
After the hubbub had died down, Ralph Morin joined the inner group and stood alongside the coroner, his hands on his hips.
Nebba, for certainly it was he, was forced down alongside Gervaise to kneel in the mud, completing de Bonneville’s ignominy: the Norman aristocrat now had to share the same filthy ground as a base outlaw.
‘We found this creature by sheer chance, Crowner,’ related Morin conversationally. ‘Early this morning, he robbed a merchant of his purse just outside the North Gate and made a run for it. Unfortunately for him the trader’s own son saw him, raised the hue-and-cry among the other stall-holders and overtook him before he reached the woods beyond St David’s.’
The coroner reached down and grabbed the hair of the outlaw, jerking his head back so that he could look more closely at his defiant face. ‘You keep turning up in this matter, Nebba!’ he said. ‘Widecombe, Southampton … but I suspect that this will be your final appearance.’
Morin gave the former archer a kick in the ribs. ‘He was recognised as an outlaw by those who seized him this morning – some were for lopping off his wolf’s head on the spot and collecting the bounty money. But then he spun some tale about bargaining for his life with some information about Gervaise de Bonneville here so, from curiosity, I listened to his tale.’
The Saxon bowman, ever an optimist, cried out in his own defence, ‘This is hallowed ground, I claim sanctuary, just as I hear Sir Gervaise has done!’
Morin gave him another blow with his boot. ‘Sanctuary, be damned! My soldiers brought you here and my soldiers will take you out again. Now, tell the Crowner the same tale you spun to me, to see if he believes you.’
Nebba seemed fatalistically calm, compared to the nobleman alongside him in the dirt. He knew that he would hang soon, but a violent death was almost the inevitable end for a mercenary and an outlaw. The only doubt about it was when – rather than if – it would happen. His time had run out and that was that. Everyone has to die sometime.
The castle constable prodded him again with his toe. ‘You told me that you were the ruffian that Baldwyn of Beer hired in Southampton, eh?’
Nebba nodded, his matted hair bobbing over his dirty forehead. ‘He seemed to have an eye for a man who would do any task for a few marks. Found me in an inn, bought me some ale and offered me a job.’
‘I knew nothing of this!’ whimpered Gervaise. ‘I was many leagues away in my own manor.’
John and Morin ignored him. ‘What then? Did Baldwyn say, “Kill me a man for two marks”?’ asked John sarcastically.
‘I knew nothing of that to start with, I just had to wander around Southampton and find this Sir Hubert. The Welsh agent, Gruffydd, eventually pointed me in the right direction.’
Gwyn grunted in surprise. ‘He never told me that when I was talking to him!’
Nebba continued his story resignedly. ‘Baldwyn said we needed to follow him without being seen. He said nothing of slitting his gizzard at that stage, but I soon got the drift of his intentions.’ He grinned at a sudden recollection, in spite of the certain knowledge that within days he would be hanging by the neck. ‘I had to run for it even then, as I’d relieved a fat merchant of his purse to get some drinking money – the damned fool resisted, so I had to stick him between the ribs to get away. But I arranged to meet up with Baldwyn again next day in the forest near Lyndhurst.’