‘But that was approaching three years ago and a hundred miles away. I know that the Archdeacon has since died, God rest him. People will have forgotten about your problem by now.’
‘But where would I start?’ Thomas said sadly. ‘Soon enough, someone would bring up the past to defeat me.’
The other topped up the ale in his pot from a jug. ‘Your uncle is the obvious place. John of Alençon is well respected for being an honest, compassionate man. He has already done much for you — and you have proved your worth with the crowner. Both would surely support you if you tried for ordination again.’
The clerk looked doubtful, but a spark of hope glowed in his eyes. ‘Do you really think I should try?’
His companion was a young man, still enthusiastic about his calling and optimistic that the world was filled with honest men. A secondary was the lowest grade of applicant for the priesthood, under the age of twenty-four and usually a choir-boy who wanted to make the Church his career. They stood in for the vicars-choral, older men who had attained the priesthood and who were themselves stand-ins for the canons in the interminable daily services of the cathedrals. Each canon had a hierarchy of assistants, depending upon his affluence and activities; a vicar and a secondary were the minimum and they often lodged in the canons’ houses, which were spread around the cathedral Close. Canons’ Row, along the north-east side of the Close, was the largest concentration of such dwellings, but others were dotted around the precinct. There was insufficient room for all the junior grades, many of whom lodged in Priest Street,1 near the Watergate, not far from the Bush Inn.
Arthur lived in Canon de Basset’s house, in one of the communal cubicles along the passageway that led from the canon’s rooms to the backyard. He had befriended Thomas and felt sorry for the obvious misery that losing his priestly status had caused — especially when he learned that Thomas had been at the centre of ecclesiastical life in Winchester, working in the chancery and teaching in the cathedral school.
They talked on for a time, until Arthur had finished the jug of ale and Thomas had sipped the last of his cider. Then the secondary crept off for a few hours’ sleep on his pallet, before he had to rise at midnight for Matins, the first service of the day. Thomas went to many of the services, lurking in the background of the quire: the cathedral devotions were meant for the continuous glorification of God by the cathedral staff, not the laity, who worshipped at the seventeen parish churches inside the walls of Exeter. Tonight, after the ride from Chagford earlier that day — and the prospect of riding back to Dartmoor tomorrow — Thomas felt like staying quietly on his bag of straw.
When Arthur had gone, he remained at the table, gazing absently at the flickering kitchen fire, which like all fires in the cathedral precinct was exempt from the nightly curfew. The bell tolling from the castle at the eighth hour signalled the couvre-feu, when all fires elsewhere in the city must be covered with turf or extinguished, for fear of conflagration.
Thomas looked for shapes in the glowing logs, as if he might find a sign there as to his future. Should he take Arthur’s advice and seek his uncle’s help to be reinstated in the clergy? Could he stand a rebuff? His state of mind had spiralled downwards lately to a point at which he had ceased to care whether he lived or not without the embrace of the Church that had been his life since his schooldays in Winchester at the age of seven.
He heaved a final mighty sigh, then got up and went to his thin mattress and threadbare blanket in the corner. As he lay down, he resolved to broach the subject with his master on the morrow.
CHAPTER FIVE
The following evening, the coroner’s trio rode wearily into Dartmeet, almost at the centre of Dartmoor. It was no more than a couple of farms and some scattered shepherds’ huts, where the two upper branches of the Dart met to form the river that meandered down to the sea twenty miles away. The rolling moors spread around them, like a fossilised ocean, some crowned by weird tors — flattened, wind-scoured rocks piled up into fantastic shapes.
They plodded down into the valley from Yartor Down to the ancient clapper bridge, at the end of a long, winding, eight-mile track from Ashburton, seeking shelter for the night, which was heralded by the closing dusk. De Wolfe reined in alongside the bridge. ‘This side or the other, Gwyn?’ On this bank there was a longhouse of cob under thatch, with two barns behind it. On the other side of the Dart, he could see a larger dwelling with wattle and daub walls within a timbered frame, but only one barn and a couple of ramshackle sheds adjacent.
The Cornishman settled for the nearer demesne. ‘We’re not likely to get room by the house fire, with all these damned tinners congregating for the morning, so let’s try for a pile of hay in a barn.’
It was true that that day the moorland tracks had been busier than usual, with groups of men drifting towards Crockern Tor, almost four miles further on. No doubt a few men would be sleeping in every nearby hut and byre overnight.
They pulled their horses round and, with Thomas dragging disconsolately behind, made their way to the farmhouse, which hunkered low and forlorn under the loom of the moor, like a beast hibernating for the winter. Gwyn was about to dismount and bang at the weathered door when it opened and a man came out, dressed in a sacking tunic tucked up between his legs like a loincloth, secured by a wide belt. ‘In the smaller barn, men. The other’s full already.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of his outbuildings and vanished back into the house, from where the lowing of cattle and the grunt of pigs competed with the wailing of a child.
As the door slammed shut, de Wolfe chuckled sardonically. ‘The poor devil must get this influx every time the tinners have their Great Court. Probably needs to keep on the right side of them — they’re a powerful force on the moor.’
Six horses were tethered outside the smaller barn, which had wattled walls under a steep thatched roof. A small fire within a ring of stones was being tended outside by three men, who were boiling a pair of hares in a blackened pot. Tall doors, high enough to admit a loaded wagon, gave on to a large, almost empty space. As it was April, little of the winter stores of hay, straw and root crops remained.
Eight men were sitting or lying inside, and before long, John and Gwyn were deep in conversation with them. They were a companionable lot and reminded de Wolfe of his warrior days when, after marching or fighting, tale-telling and gossip rounded off the day over food and drink. Thomas sat apart, morose and silent, still trying to summon up the courage to broach with his master the subject of his reinstatement. But tonight was not the best time, he decided. The coroner and his henchman were lolling in the remaining hay eating their bread, cheese and meat and drinking raw cider and stale ale from the leather bottles and stone crocks that were passed from hand to hand.
For the first time that day John de Wolfe felt relaxed. Although when the opportunity presented he was an enthusiastic womaniser, he also enjoyed the company of men such as these. They were rugged, strong fellows who said what they thought and had none of the devious conceits of so many noblemen and merchants. These tinners were more like the soldiers with whom he had spent so many years.
Gwyn, an equally seasoned warrior, also revelled in their company, and as darkness deepened in the barn, they swapped tales of adventure and daring, from floods in the stream-works to attacks from outlaws on the high moor, the slaughter outside Acre or the pursuit of Irish tribesmen beyond Wexford. Eventually the only illumination came from the fire, which still flamed outside the doors. No lights could be brought into the barn for fear they might set the hay and thatch ablaze. As they sat in the gloom, the talk turned to the Great Court on Crockern Tor in the morning.