The Cornishman shook his head, his usually lugubrious face beaming with good nature. ‘Fear not, Crowner, I felt like a jar or two and a bit of peace. Those offspring of mine are like bluebottles in a box.’ Gwyn lived in a hut with his wife, his mother-in-law and two young sons. Edwin brought him ale, and at the first mouthful, Gwyn made a face. ‘What the hell’s this? Tastes like camel piss, not Nesta’s usual brew.’ He sucked the offending liquid from his moustache, and looked around the room. ‘Where is she, anyway?’
‘In the cook-shed, so Edwin says,’ grunted de Wolfe. His tone warned Gwyn to keep off the subject and he fell silent, but in a moment, his master spoke again. ‘I heard from my wife today that Walter Knapman has a twin brother in the city, also in the tin trade.’
His officer’s heavy brow creased in thought, as he fondled the hound’s ears under the table. ‘Knapman? There’s a few Knapmans here, but only one deals in tin that I know of. Though he looks nothing like Walter, if they’re supposed to be twins.’
‘Yet if he is a tin trader, it seems likely they are related. Matthew is his name.’
Gwyn bobbed his head, his ginger hair flailing like a dozen cat’s tails. ‘Matthew, that’s the one! He has a dwelling and a warehouse just inside the Watergate, close by the quayside. I suppose much of his tin goes out by ship.’
They fell into a companionable silence again, though John was anxiously awaiting the appearance of Nesta, to gauge her mood today. There was still no sign of her and soon he felt the need to dispose of some of the ale he had been drinking since dinner-time. He rose from the bench and threaded his way through the other patrons to the door to the backyard, where there was a privy-pit behind a wattle screen, next to the pig-sty, hen-coop and laundry-shed. On the way back down the yard, he looked into the door of the cook-shed to see if Nesta was there, but only two giggling serving maids were inside, one stirring a large iron pot hanging from a trivet over the fire.
Opposite was the brew-house, a thatched shed the size of the kitchen. The door was closed but he heard Nesta’s voice through the ragged planks. Pulling it open, he stuck his head inside, intending to open their dialogue by mischievously complaining about the quality of her ale.
The tavern-keeper was certainly attending to her brew — she was leaning against a large vat with a long ladle in her hand — but her other hand was around Alan of Lyme’s neck, and both his arms were tightly around her waist.
At the creak of the door their heads snapped round and Nesta’s face crimsoned instantly. De Wolfe’s first thought was to stride forward and throw the young man head first into the vat of mash. Then a sudden vision of an old fool being cuckolded by a callow youth came into his head, followed by an image of a beautiful blonde Saxon. He stepped back, slammed the crude door so hard that one leather hinge ripped away, then marched grimly back into the tavern.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The cold, dry weather broke overnight and John de Wolfe was awakened around dawn by the crash of thunder and the hammering of torrential rain on the stone tiles of the roof above the solar. Gusts of a westerly wind blew drops of water through the gaps around the window shutters and one hit him in the eye as he opened it reluctantly.
Matilda was snoring, apparently oblivious to the tempest, on the other side of the large feather mattress, which was raised from the floor by a timber plinth a few inches high. Last year, de Wolfe had bought Nesta a new-fangled high bed, imported from France. If Matilda had known about that, she would have been more incensed at her own lack of a similar status-symbol than the fact of his lechery with the inn-keeper.
He threw back his side of the woollen blankets and sheepskin coverlet and slid naked into the cold air of the bare room, which was furnished only with a couple of oak chests for their clothes, Matilda’s folding chair and her embroidery frame. He groped for his undershirt and tunic, which were draped over one of the chests, and pulled them on, followed by thigh-length woollen hose. Slipping his feet into a pair of soft house-shoes, he stumped to the window and unlatched one side of the hinged shutters to peer through a narrow crack at the new day. A blast of rain-laden wind made him slam it shut, but not before a rippling flash of lightning showed him the yard awash with muddy water. Mary was dashing to the kitchen with an armful of kindling from the woodshed.
There was a groaning yawn from his wife and she humped herself round to stare blearily at him. ‘Is it light, then? I must get up to get ready for Prime in the cathedral.’
‘God, woman, in this rain you’d drown just crossing the Close! It looks as if Noah’s Flood is returning.’
She struggled to sit up, her back against the drab tapestry that hung on the wooden wall behind the bed. Though most people slept unclothed, Matilda insisted on wearing a linen night-shift, held tightly around her neck with a drawstring. Her hair was sheathed in a cap tied under her chin and the bags under her eyes were more prominent than usual in her sleep-ridden face.
De Wolfe, no elegant sight himself with tangled black hair and unshaven dark stubble, looked at her in despair. Sixteen years ago, she had hardly been a beautiful bride, but at least she had not had her present ambition to make his life a constant misery.
‘Go out of here, John, will you? I need Lucille here to prepare me. Call her as you go down.’
He was just going to proclaim that there was no way he was going out of the door in this cloudburst, when contrarily the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Deprived of an excuse, he warily opened the door, which stood at the top of a steep flight of wooden steps under which her maid lived in what was virtually a large box.
‘Go on, John,’ urged Matilda. ‘And see if that other idle woman has started cooking our breakfast.’
‘Mary will be lucky to get a fire started in this wind and rain,’ he muttered, but he began to climb down the slippery stairs to the passage that ran between the yard and the vestibule at the front of the house. As he went, dark grey clouds swirled overhead and lightning flashed, though the storm seemed to be circling away from the city. In the hall, Simon, who chopped wood and did odd jobs in the yard, was rekindling the fire while Brutus ambled in from his sleeping quarters in the cook-house, attracted by the prospect of a warm hearth.
John slumped into his fireside chair to wait for Mary to bring some food. Matilda would be a long time undergoing the ministrations of Lucille, having her hair arranged and her clothes primped sufficiently well to attend service in the cathedral. He failed to see why she bothered to join a handful of folk clustered on a Monday morning in the empty cavern of the huge nave, whilst an aloof party of priests chanted their private devotions far away beyond the rood screen, ignoring the lay people in the distance. At least in parish churches like St Olave’s the local parsons acknowledged the existence of the congregation.
Again, de Wolfe wondered if Matilda’s religious obsession meant that she was inclining towards taking the veil, and he had a brief surge of hope that he might be free again. He made a mental note to enquire circumspectly of Thomas, or even the Archdeacon, whether the retreat of a wife into a nunnery was legally held to end a marriage.
As he sat in lonely state, there were several more flashes of lightning, the rain began again, but the rumble of thunder came after an increasing interval as the storm rolled around the sky. Mary bustled in with a bowl of hot oatmeal, boiled pork and a new loaf from the bread shop round the corner. Her hair was stringy with rain, but as usual, she was cheerful and energetic. ‘You look terrible, Sir Crowner,’ she said, keeping her voice low, so that it would not be heard through the slit into the solar, high up on one side of the chimney breast. ‘When did you last have a shave?’