Outside the door, many of the congregation lurked on the dried mire of the roadway for their Sunday gossip, which de Wolfe suspected was mainly to allow them to show off and compare each other’s Sabbath dress. Some of the men were more brightly attired than their wives and daughters, with tunics, surcoats and breeches in gaudy reds and greens. A few were affecting the bizarre footwear that the sheriff favoured, with pointed toes curling back to their ankles. De Wolfe was the odd one out, in his sombre grey and black, and stood morosely while Matilda chattered to several of the wives. He knew most of them by sight from previous pilgrimages to the church, though one heavily built woman of middle age was a stranger. He noticed her particularly, as she had a palsy of the mouth, with one side drooping and leaking spittle, which she constantly dabbed with a piece of cloth. She seemed quite fit otherwise and her affliction failed to curb her garrulity, as John stood hunched and impatient, waiting to detach his wife from the gossip.
Eventually the group dispersed and, anxious for his dinner, he strode away with Matilda almost running alongside him.
‘Why don’t you talk more to these people, John?’ she panted crossly. ‘Many have influence in the guilds and even with the canons. You’re no help at all in my efforts to make us a useful part of the county society.’
‘County society be damned!’ he growled. ‘I see enough of them in the courts and strutting about their manors.’
He realised that his wife must be getting over her recent melancholy, when her brother had fallen into disgrace and John himself had shamed her with his other women. Now she was becoming her old self again, nagging and pushing him to play the courtier. He tried to decide which he liked least, the scowling misery of her depression or the constant irritation of her prodding him into unwanted activity.
After a few more yards, Matilda spoke again. ‘That apothecary should be put in the stocks!’
De Wolfe looked down at her blankly. She was prone to uttering these obscure statements and he had no idea what she meant. ‘That poor lady with the twisted mouth — it’s getting no better after a month.’
He waited silently. She would make some sense eventually.
‘The new apothecary, that young fellow from Plymouth. He should be run out of the city.’
De Wolfe sighed as they turned into Martin’s Lane. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘Pulled her tooth out, a lower one at the back, and afterwards the side of her face slipped down. Incompetent fool!’
The previous apothecary in the shop near St Olave’s had been hanged for murder some months back and this new one was his successor. Thankfully, palsies of the face did not come within a coroner’s jurisdiction and he was content to leave the competence of leeches to the city guild-masters. As he pushed open his front door for her to enter, he asked idly, ‘I’ve not seen her before. Who is she?’
‘Her name’s Madge — Madge Knapman.’
After the rumpus on Crockern Tor the previous day, de Wolfe felt a prickle of interest. The name was not uncommon around the moor, but there were only a few in Exeter. As Lucille appeared in the passage to take Matilda’s cloak, he asked casually, ‘What does her husband do, if she has one?’
‘Matthew Knapman? He’s a merchant. He deals in tin, I believe. He has a twin brother in an important way of business in that place you’ve been skulking this week — Chagford.’ She pushed open the door of the hall. ‘Matthew must be doing very well, too. That mantle and gown his wife was wearing this morning must have cost a few marks.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Some men don’t mind spending their money on their wives, not like others I could mention.’
John carefully avoided rising to that bait and, for the time being, forgot about Walter Knapman’s twin brother.
After their midday meal was over, Matilda retired to her bed in the solar and de Wolfe settled by the hearth with another mug of ale to wait until his wife was sound asleep. Then he whistled for his old hound Brutus and went out to the vestibule for his short cloak. As he was pulling open the iron-bound oak door to the street, Mary appeared from the backyard, her handsome face glowing from attending the fire in her cook-shed. A dead goose hung by its neck from one hand and she held a wicked-looking cleaver in the other.
De Wolfe grinned crookedly at her. ‘I trust that weapon is to cut off the bird’s head, not mine!’ he chaffed, slipping an arm around her shoulders. The maid pulled away from his embrace, but not too far. Until a few months ago, de Wolfe had had the occasional romp with Mary in her backyard dwelling, but the arrival of Matilda’s nosy maid had forced the maid to deny him her favours. They still remained firm friends, rather than master and servant, and Mary looked after his material wants far better than most wives.
‘It’s not your head that needs cutting off, Sir Crowner,’ she replied tartly. ‘If the mistress finds out that you called at Dawlish two weeks ago, you’d best wear your chain-mail over your nether regions.’
John gave her a firm squeeze and planted a kiss on her lips. ‘If that other lady down in Idle Lane knew it, I’d need my iron-bound shield as well.’ His smile faded and Mary saw that he was worried. ‘Though lately I doubt that Nesta would take much interest in my escapades.’ In low tones, in case Matilda’s poisonous French acolyte came within earshot, de Wolfe told Mary of the presence in the tavern of the new man.
She sighed and sat on the bench inside the front door, the goose on her lap. ‘I’ve heard the gossip from the Bush, and some weeks ago Nesta told me that she was seeing less of you now, because you were always busy.’ She wagged the cleaver at him, genuine concern on her face. ‘Pay more attention to your inn-keeper, or you’ll surely lose her,’ she advised seriously. ‘It’s up to you, unless you want to do the honourable thing and cleave only to your wife.’
With that wise counsel in his ear, de Wolfe loped off across the cathedral Close, with Brutus close behind. The hound was constantly diverted by the piles of rubbish, dumped offal and open grave-pits that so sadly diminished the grandeur of the huge building, recently completed after old Bishop Warelwast began it eighty years earlier. With many half-annoyed, half-affectionate curses and whistles, the coroner finally got his dog to Idle Lane, some dozen leg-cockings distant.
Again there was no sign of the landlady in the big smoky room of the inn, as John settled himself on his bench. Edwin, the old potman, brought him a quart pot of ale and threw a beef bone on to the rushes beneath the table for Brutus. ‘The missus is out the back, Cap’n, seein’ to the cookin’.’ This time, he made no suggestive hints about her mood or the presence of Alan, who was also absent from the ale-room.
The coroner sat moodily sipping his drink, which seemed below the usual high standard of the Bush’s brewing. He stared into the glowing fire, piled high with beech logs, as the weather had turned unseasonally cold after the first promise of spring the previous week. He thought about his relations with his wife, with Nesta, and of his visit to Dawlish not long before, when he called upon Hilda, wife of Thorgils the Boatman. She was a childhood sweetheart from his boyhood in Stoke-in-Teignhead, a blonde Saxon beauty who had married another during his many years’ absence at the wars. Though the Welsh Nesta was the nearest thing to the love of his life, the gaily sensuous Hilda came a close second.
His reverie was interrupted by a movement at his feet and, looking down, he saw that Brutus had abandoned his bone and was standing under the table, staring intently towards the door, his bushy tail waving in excited welcome. De Wolfe had no need to follow the hound’s gaze, as he knew it would be Gwyn, who had a remarkable rapport with most animals, especially dogs. A heavy lurch alongside him and a quaking of the bench announced the arrival of his massive henchman. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come with news of more work for us?’ groaned the coroner.