Sensing his presence, she looked up slowly, a strip of pork poised in her fingers, and spoke to him in the Welsh tongue they normally used. ‘Oh, it’s you — visiting twice in as many days. It must be the attraction of my good ale.’
The unexpected sarcasm stung him into an unwise response. ‘Has it improved since you hired a new brewer? Perhaps the time you spend in the brew-house makes it even better.’
She coloured with anger and dropped the meat back on to the trencher. ‘What I do in my own tavern is my business.’
Even in his anger, he had the wit not to point out that without the money he had lent her she would have no tavern. Instead, he sat down unbidden on the bench beside her and tried not to notice that she pointedly moved away a token inch or two. A few heads were turned towards them, and he had no doubt that some ears were flapping amongst the nearest customers. He decided that the best tactic was to be calm and apologetic and coax her out of the combative mood that seemed to grip her — but she forestalled him as he was opening his mouth. ‘Has she tired you out today that you need to come here to recover?’
He shut his mouth and stared at her in mystification. ‘What d’you mean? She’s either at her damned church or snoring in the solar.’
Nesta, a knucklebone half-way to her lips, gave him a sideways look that as good as called him a liar. ‘I’m not speaking of Matilda. I saw Hilda of Dawlish in North Street this morning — at a distance, for I’d no wish to speak to her.’
De Wolfe gaped at her. ‘Hilda? Here in Exeter?’
The landlady nibbled delicately at the warm flesh, then gave him a look not far removed from contempt. ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, John. If you want to bed your blonde beauty, that’s your concern. At least it explains why you’ve been too busy to visit me lately.’
He protested that he had had no idea that Hilda was in the city, and in his vehemence, he laid a hand on her arm. She shrugged it off impatiently. ‘It’s none of my business, just as my affairs are none of yours. But don’t try playing both at home and abroad, John.’
Again he tried to convince her that he had not seen Hilda recently and that the pressure of his work had kept him away from the Bush these past weeks, but Nesta seemed immune to his pleadings, kept low to avoid the eavesdroppers all around.
‘Can’t we go upstairs, where we can at least talk more privately?’ he suggested, staring at a man who was grinning at him from a nearby bench.
‘I’ve got a tavern to run after I’ve snatched a meal,’ she said tartly. ‘And with your busy life, no doubt you can find better things to occupy your time.’
De Wolfe’s resolution to be calm and rational began to evaporate under the rising of his own temper, but he took a grip on himself and made one last effort. ‘Nesta, for God’s sake, we’ve forged too much between us over the past year to act like this. What’s got into you, that this young lout has turned your head?’
She dropped the bone on to the table boards and turned quickly to him, her lips pressed together in a thin line. As a redhead, her own temper more than matched his when she was roused. ‘Listen, Sir Crowner, what future have I with you? You’re married, however much you regret it. You are a high law officer for your king and county and a knight of some substance, while I am a mere ale-wife, little better than one of the villeins on your two manors. How long am I to keep my heart and my bed reserved for such a man as you with no prospect of preferment? Is it not better for me to look elsewhere for my future, while I still have youth and looks to offer?’
He saw tears in her eyes, which she angrily wiped away with her sleeve, before ostentatiously turning from him to attack her food again.
De Wolfe found he had nothing to say in response to this cry from her heart. He stood up and tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It would be better if I went to the Saracen to sample their ale tonight. But I’ll not leave the matter like this, Nesta. I’ll be back when we can both think more sensibly.’
He walked heavily to the door without a backward glance, ducked under the lintel and went out into the blustery evening.
A couple of hours later Gwyn found his master, after failing to track him down at his usual haunt in Idle Lane. With his remarkable capacity for ale and cider, it had been no great hardship for the Cornishman to seek the coroner in several other taverns before he came to the Saracen on Stepcote Hill. ‘I wonder at your drinking here, Crowner. You always say it’s one of the lowest ale-houses in Exeter.’
The Saracen had a bad reputation as a den for the worst type of cutpurses, whores and criminals. The landlord was Willem the Fleming, an obese hulk of a man who kept some sort of order by the strength of his huge arms. One of the drabs who combined the careers of harlot and barmaid dumped two pottery quarts of indifferent ale before them, and Gwyn immediately filtered half of his through his great moustache while looking keenly at de Wolfe over the rim.
Like most in the city, he knew there was trouble at the Bush between his master and the landlady — and had made an accurate guess at the cause. He was sad and worried, for he was fond of Nesta and concerned about the coroner’s unhappiness. But though he had been de Wolfe’s constant companion for almost twenty years, they were still master and servant and he was not presumptuous enough to raise the subject.
It seemed that de Wolfe wished to keep the issue bottled up, as his first words were about duties for the morrow. ‘Have we anything I must attend in the next two days?’ he demanded. He had drunk well over half a gallon of ale in the last couple of hours but, unlike wine, it never seemed to affect him and his efforts to dull his anxiety over his mistress had come to nothing.
His officer rocked his gingery head from side to side. ‘Tuesday is hanging day, but there’s nothing for the scaffold tomorrow. And the other matter I’ve heard is not coroner’s business — yet.’
De Wolfe raised his head from his ale-jar. ‘What business is that?’
‘I heard gossip in the Anchor — the inn down near the quay-side — before I found you here. It will interest you, I’m sure.’
By now, de Wolfe should have been used to Gwyn’s habit of spinning out news, but it was still infuriating. ‘Tell me, then, for Satan’s sake!’
‘There were men there from Matthew Knapman’s warehouse, which is nearby. It seems their master’s servant had just ridden back from Chagford, with orders to turn out half a dozen men at dawn to ride back with him.’ Gwyn paused for dramatic effect, but the steely look in de Wolfe’s eyes made him hurry on with his tale. ‘Matthew’s brother Walter, the one we saw in Chagford and on Crockern Tor, has gone missing. They found his horse riderless today but not a sign of the man himself.’
The news roused de Wolfe out of his miserable reverie. The tin-master’s disappearance and the recent ghastly murder of one of his overmen seemed more than a coincidence. Yet, as Gwyn had said, the man’s disappearance need not concern a coroner. He might be found disabled after a fall from his horse — or he might have been attacked by outlaws, even rival tinners.
‘Where did he vanish from? Was it on the high moor?’ he asked.
‘Nowhere near there — it was almost half-way back to Exeter, it seems. Knapman owns a mill on the Teign, the other side of Dunsford from here.’
De Wolfe nodded. Dunsford was where they had discovered a Saxon treasure-trove a few months back.
‘Maybe the sheriff has spirited him away, so that Knapman can’t dispossess him as Warden of the Stannaries!’ joked Gwyn.
‘Stranger things have happened,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘But there’s no cause for us to meddle in it.’ He stretched his long arms and legs. ‘If there are no duties tomorrow, I’ll ride down to see my family. I’ve not seen them since that Templar stayed there last month.’
An alarm bell rang in Gwyn’s head. Fond as de Wolfe was of his brother, sister and widowed mother, he often went months without visiting his family home at Stoke-in-Teignhead. And the road from Exeter to Stoke passed through Dawlish.