De Wolfe fidgeted in embarrassment. Fearless in battle, indomitable in a fight, he was hopeless when faced with raw emotion, especially from another man. He cleared his throat loudly, and his hands scrabbled aimlessly at some parchments lying on the table. ‘This state of affairs has been with you a long time, Thomas. What now has changed?’
‘I have changed, sir. You are right, the needs of my flesh, food, drink and sleep, are provided for well enough, for I require little. But food for my soul is a different matter. I am starving without my beloved Church.’
He gulped and passed fingers across his face to wipe away the moisture from his eyes. ‘Living in the Close makes it worse. I thought the company of priests and acolytes, with the fabric of the sacred building so near, might make up for some of my loss. But all it does is emphasise it. I am a sham, living within an enclave of God yet no more a true part of it than the mice who share my abode.’
De Wolfe looked down at his servant with mixed feelings. He had never had a son, and God forbid he would ever have one like Thomas, a scrawny elf with a lame leg, a slight squint and a crooked back. But the teasing fingers of paternal instinct touched him as this young man, who was totally dependent on him, sought his help as the only one who could raise him from his despair.
‘What would you have me do, Thomas?’
‘Speak to my uncle, John of Alençon. Ask him if there is any way in which I might seek redemption and, eventually, reinstatement in Holy Orders.’
De Wolfe looked doubtful. ‘The decision in Winchester was very definite, from what the Archdeacon once told me. It seems you were lucky not to be hanged. Only your cloth saved you.’
‘But the evidence was false! They relied upon the word of that evil girl, who denounced me merely for sport,’ sobbed Thomas, in anguish. ‘For the sake of some moments of excitement to spice up her dull life, I am condemned to ruination until I die. Please speak to my uncle, Crowner, I beseech you.’
De Wolfe grunted his assent, as much to end his clerk’s unwelcome exhibition of emotion as desire to help him. ‘I will bring the matter up with the Archdeacon but I place little hope on the outcome, Thomas. Without fresh evidence to clear your name, I fail to see why the Church should wish to reopen the issue. But I will speak to your uncle.’
And there the matter had to lie for the moment. Thomas was effusive in his thanks, and one small bonus for de Wolfe was that his clerk’s face became less doleful than before, even if there was little prospect of a favourable outcome.
At a dinner table some sixteen miles to the west, one stool remained empty, to the puzzlement and concern of the household. It was mid-afternoon, several hours past the usual time for the main meal of the day in the Knapman residence, but Walter had not returned.
‘Where did he go this morning?’ asked his brother Matthew, who had just arrived. He came about once a month to confer with Walter about the disposal of tin, arranging transport to Exeter and reporting on sales both at home and abroad.
Joan Knapman answered, annoyance at the lateness of their meal adding a sharper cadence to her voice. ‘He set off early, saying that he was riding to his mill near Dunsford, but would be home in time for his dinner,’ she said, with more than a touch of petulance.
‘It’s not like Walter to be this late for his food. He’s an able trencherman,’ added her mother, looking expectantly at the door to the yard, where the kitchen-shed lay.
Matthew reached across the table to top up the wine cups of the two ladies, then filled his own. ‘That’s strange. If he went to Dunsford. I came that way little more than an hour ago, but saw no sign of Walter. Are you sure it was Dunsford?’
‘Of course it was,’ replied Joan irritably. ‘How many corn-mills do you think he owns? He’s a tin-master, not a miller. I can’t see why he bothered to buy it last autumn, only it was going cheap when the miller died.’
‘I want my dinner,’ whined the old lady. ‘Are we going to wait for ever for Walter? Matthew has ridden for almost three hours and he needs some food.’
Matthew was certainly hungry, and even this good wine was no substitute for a full stomach. He was so unlike Walter in appearance that they would hardly have been taken for brothers, let alone twins. Matthew was two hands’ breadths shorter and had sparse gingery hair in place of Walter’s springy fair thatch. His face was fatter and there were unhealthy-looking brownish patches on his otherwise pink skin, which bore the scars of old acne scattered across it. He dressed expensively, but not well, with a clash of colours between his bright red tunic and blue surcoat. His manner displayed a shifty type of bonhomie, superficially amiable and courteous but leaving the impression that he would be gossiping about someone the moment his back was turned.
Joan heartily disliked him, though she was beginning to dislike everything to do with the Knapman clan, apart from their money. She signalled to their steward, who lurked anxiously in the background. ‘We will eat, Alfred. God alone knows when the master will come.’
He hurried out, and within minutes returned with one of the maids, bearing trenchers of bread, bowls of onion broth and a fat roast goose.
As they ate, Joan wondered how soon she might risk getting away to meet Stephen Acland. Unfaithfulness was always difficult to pursue in a small community like Chagford. Her mother knew what was going on, and was terrified that her daughter’s marriage to the rich tinner might be in danger, if Walter discovered that he was being cuckolded. However, she covered for Joan when she needed excuses to go out and claimed to chaperone her on walks around the town and into the surrounding countryside, as well as on some fictitious visits to the church.
Joan remained abstracted during the meal and her garrulous mother kept a conversation going with Matthew, who as time went on began to express his increasing concern at Walter’s absence. ‘There’s much business to discuss, especially as the next coinage session is due here within a few days. That means a great deal more tin being ready for shipment down to Exeter — and I need to know how much and its likely quality for pricing.’ He was careful not to add that he needed the same information to calculate how much extra he could skim off the top of the commission he earned for arranging its sale and export.
By the time they had eaten their fill, there was still no sign of Walter and Matthew suggested sending a groom to the mill to see what had befallen him. Alfred, the steward, dispatched a stableman on a good horse, with orders to follow the track through Moretonhampstead, the next large village, and on through Doccombe towards Dunsford. The mill was at Steps Ford, on the Teign, about six miles from home, less than an hour on a good horse.
Some three hours later the man was back, leading another stallion on a long rein behind him as he clattered into the yard. He ran breathlessly to find the steward and gabbled out his ominous story on the back steps of the house. ‘I was within half a mile of the mill when I met the master’s horse wandering home, riderless. I went down to the mill, looking in the road to see if he had fallen somewhere, but there was nothing.’
‘Had the miller seen the master?’ demanded the steward, poised to take the news indoors.
‘Yes, he had been there and done his business long before, then left as usual, well before noon. We called out the men from the mill and searched each side of the track and into the woods a fair way, from the mill to where I saw the stallion, but there was nothing. I left them widening the search — but he’s gone! Vanished!’
CHAPTER EIGHT