‘Each year, the coinage increases, the cost of wresting tin from the streams increases — but our profit shrinks! We need a strong leader, an advocate to protest to the Royal Council, to the chief ministers, to the King himself. The sheriff cannot continue to have a foot in both camps. He has a divided loyalty. We need someone who knows about tinning, who knows our problems and knows how to solve them.’
The shouting from the back grew louder and the name ‘Knapman, Knapman’ began to be chanted, but then came the first challenge to Walter’s words.
‘And this new leader, the tinner Messiah, no doubt that’s going to be you, Knapman!’
It came from the throat of Stephen Acland, and the half-dozen men around him began yelling for him. This provoked the more numerous Knapman supporters and the yells rose to a crescendo. De Wolfe saw a ground-surge of movement and the tinners thrust reddened faces towards their opponents and began to shove at each other.
As the wily old soldier Gabriel motioned to his few men to move into the crowd, Richard de Revelle stood up in front of his granite throne and threw up his arms, fists clenched. ‘Be still, all of you!’ he screamed.
The sudden shout echoed down the slope and the unruly tinners subsided as quickly as they had become inflamed, turning away from their quarrels to see who had spoken.
As the sheriff glowered around the assembly, John felt a twinge of admiration for him, a sensation foreign to him as his usual feelings for de Revelle were of dislike, distaste and contempt. But now, the little jutting beard and cold eyes had imposed his will on a hundred and more tough men, who fell silent to listen to him.
‘Have a care as to what you say, Knapman!’ the sheriff carried on. ‘I am appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries by order of the King and his Council. To claim that I should be removed from this office comes dangerously near treason.’
Knapman was not intimidated by this open threat. ‘Sheriff, how do we know what coinage has been fixed by that Council — if any has been fixed at all? You pay a large sum to Winchester as part of the county farm and much of that comes from the tin taxes. But how do we know how much that should be?’
‘And how much of it actually reaches Winchester?’ yelled a voice from the crowd, wisely letting his voice come from behind the shelter of another’s back.
‘Am I being accused of embezzlement, damn you?’ shouted back an infuriated de Revelle.
There were several calls of ‘Yes, yes’, but again the owners of the voices could not be identified, and Gabriel certainly made no effort to grab any culprits.
De Wolfe’s momentary spasm of admiration for the sheriff had faded and his face cracked into a rare grin as the bolder tinners gave vent to their opinion of the sheriff’s honesty.
Then Acland’s voice rose above the cat-calls and shouts. ‘Treason be damned! We tinners equal the woolmen in bringing wealth to Devon and taxes into the King’s coffers. I agree that we need a Warden who will speak for us, fight for us. But it doesn’t have to mean yet more fawning to Walter Knapman. It must be a free election, the choice of a majority of all tinners, through their jurates.’
This started another round of yelling and it was again apparent to the coroner that Knapman would easily win any vote, if it ever came to that. Richard de Revelle was also well aware of who was likely to succeed him if he was ousted, and he marked down Knapman as a serious threat to what he creamed off the coinage fees destined for the iron-bound Treasury chest in Winchester Castle. From this point on, the assembly became disordered and confused, with yells, shouts and hotly-contested arguments all over the rocky arena.
The sheriff’s remonstrations now had little effect and, at a sign from him, Gabriel reluctantly took his men into the throng and half-heartedly began laying about them with their staves. De Revelle watched for a few moments, then, with an angry shrug, got up and walked away. Fitz-Peters and de Wrotham accompanied him to their tethered horses.
John tapped Gwyn’s shoulder, distracting the big Cornishman from his delighted viewing of the mêlée. ‘Come on, let’s start for home. The fun’s all over here.’
As they trudged down the slope towards Wistman’s Wood, where they had left Odin and the brown mare, Gwyn began chuckling through his magnificent moustache. ‘Acland hates Knapman, Knapman hates Acland, they both hate the sheriff and the sheriff hates Knapman. Where will it all end, I wonder?’
CHAPTER SIX
The next day was Sunday and John de Wolfe decided to use it to placate the women in his life. This rare altruism was not due to pious motives because it was the Sabbath, but because he had no urgent business that day.
Though her reaction was hardly effusive, Matilda was pleased and surprised when he volunteered to accompany her to Mass that morning at St Olave’s. For years past, she had berated him about his lukewarm attitude to religion and only managed to nag him to church about once a month, so his spontaneous offer to escort her was unusual. In fact, the unChristian thought passed through her mind that he was either atoning for some recent sin against her of which she knew nothing — or was contemplating some transgression and salving his conscience in advance.
Her husband’s attitude to the Church was one of indifference, rather than the hostility professed by Gwyn. De Wolfe believed in God, as did everyone else, apart from a few crazed heretics. It was not something he thought about, it was a part of living, like eating and making love. But he had no interest in contemplating the tenets of Christianity or the complex rituals of the clergy, which he thought pointless mummery. He accepted that after death there was either heaven or hell, for that was what families and priests drummed into one from infancy. But his fate after he expired was a matter of indifference to him. Walking with Matilda down the high street towards her favourite church was no act of faith or worship to de Wolfe but a duty he bore with an inward sigh. The prospect of standing in a draughty hall for an hour while a fat and unctuous parish priest droned away in Latin, was one he bore with fortitude rather than devotion.
Matilda held his arm possessively as they walked across Carfoix to the top of Fore Street and the last hundred paces to St Olave’s, obscurely named after the first Christian king of Norway. She wore one of her best kirtles, a green brocade garment that covered her stocky form from neck to ankle, girdled with a plaited silk cord around her thickened waist. A good cloak in thick brown wool protected her from the keen breeze of early April, and under its hood, her hair was hidden beneath a stiff linen cover-chief. A white silk gorget was pinned up behind each ear, framing her face and draped down over her neck and bosom.
As a further sop to her approval, John wore his best grey tunic over long hose, cross-gartered to the knee. His black cloak was a great square of worsted, secured by one top corner being pushed through a large silver ring sewn over his left shoulder. His long hair was partly constrained by a tight-fitting grey linen helmet, over which he wore a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat.
As they approached the entrance to the little church, Matilda smiled archly at other worshippers clustered near the door, nodding graciously to some and tightening her grip on her husband’s arm, to emphasise her relationship to such an important law officer. As the others acknowledged her, de Wolfe nodded reluctantly to them and made his usual incoherent rumbling that passed for a greeting.
For the next hour, he stood uncomfortably on the cold flagstones of St Olave’s with his hat in his hand, shifting from foot to foot and getting a hard nudge from Matilda’s elbow when his restlessness became too apparent.
It was more of a relief than a devotional experience when it was time to join the few dozen other worshippers in shuffling up to the altar step to receive the holy sacrament. The corpulent priest, whom Matilda seemed to revere almost as much as the Pope, finished the service with a gabbled tirade in incomprehensible Latin and at last John escaped thankfully into the chill wind that blew up from the river.