‘Those who are jealous of my success, perhaps.’ Knapman’s amiability was melting like snow in the sunlight and de Wolfe noticed him throw a malicious glance across the crowd. Following the tin-master’s gaze, he saw a younger man glaring back at him.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing. I spoke out of turn.’
‘I’ll not let you leave it like that. This is a royal enquiry and you must answer my questions, if the answer may have any bearing on the death,’ snapped the coroner.
Suddenly the man on the other side of the jury pushed his way to the front. He was another large fellow, under thirty years of age, handsome in a beefy way. His strong-featured, tanned face bore a narrow rim of beard, which ran round his jaw-line, and his hair was cut short on his muscular neck up to a circular shelf of thick dark brown thatch. He wore a good tunic of green linen over brown serge breeches, with a new-looking short leather cape around his shoulders.
‘I’ll tell you what he means, Crowner,’ he shouted, in a bass voice. ‘The bastard is insinuating that I killed his man to damage his stream-working up there on the Teign. And it’s a damned lie, as he well knows!’
Walter Knapman, his face purpling with anger, took a step forward and the younger fellow squared up to him, like a pair of cockerels in a farmyard challenge. Gwyn stepped forward, placed a huge hand on each chest and pushed them apart.
‘Who are you? And what’s all this about?’ demanded de Wolfe.
‘I’ll tell you who he is!’ snarled Knapman. ‘He’s Stephen Acland, the biggest troublemaker on the eastern moor. This young upstart thinks he can displace me as the chief tin-master here.’
Acland, now red in the face, leaned sideways to shout at his rival past Gwyn’s massive bulk. ‘I can do that without slaying your men, Knapman. You’ve had your way for too long, but I’ll unseat you by fair means. Don’t try blaming me for the death of your overman.’
‘And what about the damage to my sluices and troughs up at Scorhill last month?’ yelled Knapman. ‘You had nothing to do with that either, I suppose — two days after I threw you out for having the impudence to want to buy half my holdings.’
De Wolfe had allowed this angry exchange to go on in case something useful came of it. Now he decided that enough was enough. ‘Stop, you two! Has this anything at all to do with my enquiries into this death?’
Stephen Acland swung around to face the coroner. ‘Of course not, sir. This is a business matter, which should be aired at the Great Court this week.’
‘Then I suggest you pursue it there, rather than screaming at each other like fish-wives before half the town!’ De Wolfe glared at both combatants, who rapidly cooled down in his forbidding presence. He noticed that the attractive woman he had taken to be Mistress Knapman was staring fixedly at Acland, her full lips slightly apart, her face pale and her eyes wide. He could not decide whether her expression was one of apprehension or enrapturement, but he also saw that her husband was now watching her intently and following her gaze across to the younger tin-master.
Before de Wolfe had a chance to restart his inquest, Walter Knapman grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her away, almost violently, through the crowd towards the churchyard gate.
Acland stood stock still, his eyes pinned on the woman, and de Wolfe needed no second sight to decide that Knapman’s antipathy to Acland was not wholly concerned with the tin trade. ‘Acland, have you anything to tell me about this matter?’ he called out, to bring the man’s attention back to the proceedings.
Slowly the tinner turned to face him, his chin jutting forward obstinately. ‘Nothing useful, Crowner. I knew Henry of Tunnaford well enough, even though he didn’t work for me. He was a good man. Surely his death must have been the work of a madman.’
‘But which madman? Have you any suggestions?’
A wave of whispering rippled through the front ranks of the crowd, especially the jurors, as if they were willing Acland to say something.
‘If it’s a madman you’re seeking, then Aethelfrith comes first to mind, Crowner. I would easily believe that he damaged Knapman’s equipment the other day, but I doubt he would kill. Though even murderers have to begin sometime.’
‘Tell me about this Aethelfrith — I’ve heard mention of him before.’
Acland rubbed a hand around his beard, as if delaying an answer. ‘There are other people better able to tell you than I, Crowner — the bailiff and the constable for a start. But I can give you the common knowledge, that he is an old Saxon, of at least three score years, who has a crazy hatred of everything Norman.’
Now one of the jurors cut in, a tinner, though not one of Henry’s team: ‘He attacked me once, sir, nearly a year past. I was on my own up past Gidleigh, clearing out a fall of mud above the workings. Suddenly this old madman appeared and set about with his staff, screaming that I was stealing a Saxon’s birthright. I clouted him with my shovel and he ran away.’
There were sniggers from the crowd, which earned them a ferocious glare from de Wolfe. ‘This is no laughing matter. A man is dead.’ He turned back to Stephen Acland. ‘Where can this Aethelfrith be found?’
The brawny tin-master shrugged. ‘He comes and goes like the mist, sir. I hear he lives somewhere on the high moor, but how he finds food and shelter, I cannot tell. Maybe the bailiff can.’
The dark head swung slowly to Justin Green, who stood to one side.
‘He seems to move around a great deal, Crowner,’ supplied Justin. ‘There are plenty of outlaws up on the moor and they shelter him, I’m sure. Sometimes we have found traces of his living in disused tinners’ huts. So far he’s been more of a nuisance than a danger. We had him for a few months in the Stannary gaol, convicted by their court of damaging a blowing-house one night.’
‘Can he be found for questioning?’
‘Aethelfrith is as elusive as the wind. A thousand men could comb the moor and never see a hair of him, if he chose to keep low.’
De Wolfe abandoned the problem and turned to the old altar slab. He motioned to Gwyn to remove the sheet from the body. There was a gasp as the corpse was revealed. Though injury and sudden death were far from unusual, the appearance of this cadaver was particularly gruesome. The crowd gave a hiss of astonishment, and Henry’s widow wailed in anguish as she turned away to sob into her shawl. Her son and her sisters clustered around her to shield her from the sight of her mutilated husband. De Wolfe was neither sadistic nor unfeeling, but public display of the deceased was part of the legal ritual of the inquest and he had had no option but to reveal the horrible circumstances of the death.
‘The jury will draw near,’ boomed Gwyn, well versed in the conduct of the inquest. He shepherded the score of men and boys around the bier so that the coroner could conduct the official viewing of the corpse.
‘Clerk, record that the King’s coroner and the jury have inspected the decedent,’ grated de Wolfe, as he went to the end of the altar stone and began demonstrating as if he was giving a lecture in a School of Physic.
‘You will see that the neck has been severed completely. There is a ragged line of skin all the way around.’ He pointed with his fingers at the gory mess that had dried and blackened in the two days since death. ‘The edges of the wound, though irregular, have been quite sharply cut.’
He picked up the edge of the skin between thumb and forefinger and stretched out the serrations, now stiffened and curled from drying. ‘This means that a sharp weapon was used — but not too sharp as there is roughening and bruising along the edges. See there.’
The jury did not particularly wish to see, but they nodded and gaped to satisfy the King’s crowner.
‘So something with a moderately good edge, but not as good as a well-honed dagger, was used. Yet it was sharper than the edge of a spade. A good sharp axe would suffice, I suspect.’
John de Wolfe prided himself on his expertise concerning violence and assault. After more than two decades on a score of battlefields, he had seen every conceivable variety of maiming and death. He motioned to Gwyn, who deftly flicked the sheet back over the remains. ‘There is no more that can be done at present,’ he said. ‘I will adjourn these proceedings but if further information is obtained then they may resume. At present, my verdict is that the deceased was Henry, a tinner of Tunnaford, and that he was of Norman blood. He died of malignant violence on the fourth day of April in the sixth year of the reign of our blessed King Richard, and the manner of his death was murder by a person or persons as yet unknown.’