‘I’ve travelled enough today,’ he responded sourly.
‘I hear that your Welsh whore has thrown you over for a younger man,’ she taunted, picking up an apricot. ‘What will you do now, I wonder. Trawl about the county for some other doxy, I suppose. Or will you be content to slink off to Dawlish? No doubt your dutiful visits to your mother will increase — the road to Stoke is convenient, I remember.’
John stayed sullenly mute: he knew that anything he said would be twisted against him.
Matilda carried on in the same vein for a time, her pug face almost gleeful as she squeezed the last drop of malicious pleasure from baiting him. ‘They say there’s no fool like an old fool! You’re long past acting the romantic lover, John — just as you’re past rushing around playing at soldiers. You’re forty, for goodness’ sake, and it’s time for you to behave sensibly and cease shaming me in the eyes of my respectable friends.’
Patience and forbearance were not prominent among de Wolfe’s virtues, and his bench squealed on the flagstones as he pushed it back abruptly to stand up. ‘Yes, your damned friends! The stuck-up merchant’s wives of Exeter! All you care about is your pride and showing off as the sheriff’s sister and the coroner’s wife! You don’t give a damn about me. I’d starve and go around in rags if it was left to you — thank Christ we’ve got Mary!’ He stamped towards the hall door, beckoning the expectant Brutus to follow him.
As he left, Matilda still wore the smug expression of a satisfied winner. ‘You’d better browse among the hawker’s stalls while you’re out. From what I hear, you’ll soon need to buy a wedding present for your alehouse wench!’ she shouted after him.
Furious at himself for being so easily incensed by his wife’s baiting, de Wolfe stalked blindly out into the lane and then the few yards to the high street, hardly caring where he was going. He stopped and looked up and down the crowded thoroughfare, bemused about what to do next. Matilda’s last remark had been particularly unsettling. He did not know whether it was embroidery to humiliate him or whether she had really heard that Nesta and Alan were betrothed. He could hardly storm into the Bush and demand to be told — and both of his usual sources of gossip were out of action: Gwyn was still in Chagford and Thomas preoccupied with his own misfortunes.
For want of anywhere else to go, he entered the Golden Hind, his dog close at his heels. The walls of the big room were lined with benches and there were a few tables and stools around the central fire-pit, where a heap of logs and peat burned slowly to keep the unseasonable April weather at bay.
De Wolfe sat at a table towards the back of the room, near the row of casks, wanting to be as far from the small street windows as possible, to remain inconspicuous in the dim light of evening. A serving wench brought him a quart jar of ale unasked: that or cider was all that was on offer. He sat for a long time in the shadows — Brutus lying patiently under the table — his mind churning over a series of problems, from Nesta’s infidelity to Fitz-Ivo’s incompetence, from Knapman’s murder to Thomas’s misery.
For a time, de Wolfe wondered whether he should abandon the coroner’s appointment and take off again with Gwyn to find some campaign they could join, well away from Exeter and its problems. He was getting old for fighting, but perhaps he had one more battle left in him. Few barons would hire a middle-aged mercenary, but he was sure that the King would welcome him. Richard was over the Channel, where he was fighting Philip of France, trying to repair the damage caused by Prince John’s incompetence and treachery.
But de Wolfe had to admit grudgingly that he enjoyed the coroner’s work, much against his first expectations. He had come to relish the freedom it gave him to ride the countryside with Gwyn and to uphold his sovereign’s interests against such scoundrels as his brother-in-law. However, this last week had soured his appetite for it, though he had insight enough to know that losing Nesta, Matilda’s venom and the depressing presence of Thomas were the root causes of his present disenchantment.
He sat brooding as the light failed outside, drinking a whole pennyworth of ale over an hour or so until he began to feel sleepy. The landlord, who, like every citizen of Exeter, knew Sir John de Wolfe by sight, began to wonder why his house had been favoured by the coroner after all this time. As his customer dozed over his mug, he wondered if he should offer to help him home, as he often did many of his other patrons who imbibed not wisely but too well.
However, his dilemma was resolved by an unexpected messenger to the Golden Hind. The door opened and a young man appeared in clerical garb, a long black tunic tied with a cord at the waist and a small wooden cross hanging from a leather thong around his neck. He stared around the room, squinting in the uneven dim light from the windows and the fire.
The landlord advanced on him: although many priests were fond of the drink and even more dubious pleasures to be found in alehouses, it was unusual to see one in a hostelry just round the corner from the cathedral precinct, especially without even a cloak to disguise his vestments.
‘What brings you here, vicar?’ he asked, correctly guessing that this was some canon’s vicar-choral.
‘I am urgently seeking the crowner. Someone in the street told me that they saw him come in here not long ago.’
The tavern-keeper indicated the gloomy corner and the young priest hurried over. ‘Crowner John? I come from my master, the Archdeacon. He sent me to find you and to bring you to him urgently.’
De Wolfe raised his head and gazed blearily at the eager young face. Though he had a head almost as hard as Gwyn’s when it came to drink, the fatigue of travelling and the emotion of the evening had left him a little fuddled. But the youthful vicar’s next words rapidly cleared his head.
‘Your clerk, the little man with the humped shoulder, he’s tried to kill himself!’
Brother Saulf bent solicitously over the pallet that lay on the floor of the infirmary cell. He pulled up the coarse woollen blanket and tucked it gently under Thomas’s shoulders against the chill night air of the dank room. It was in the tiny priory of St John, in a side lane just within the East Gate. The five brothers there were dedicated to treating the sick and the few pallets they had were the only hospital in Exeter, the next nearest being the nunnery of St Katherine’s at Polsloe, a mile outside the city, which catered mainly for women.
Thomas de Peyne had been carried there by two of John of Alençon’s servants. They bore him on an unhinged door, with the coroner and the Archdeacon stalking alongside. During the five-minute journey, the little clerk groaned pitifully, which de Wolfe took as a good sign — at least he was not unconscious.
‘He should be fully recovered by tomorrow,’ said Saulf, a tall Saxon who was the most experienced of the healing monks at St John’s. ‘He’ll be black and blue with bruises and have some nasty grazes that will weep and maybe turn purulent but, thank God, he’s no broken bones and his head seems sound.’ He ushered them out of the room into a cramped corridor, dimly lit by a tallow dip on a ledge. ‘How did he come by these injuries, sirs? I was told only that he had a fall.’
The Archdeacon looked at de Wolfe, hoping that he would reply.
‘He certainly fell! About forty feet from the parapet of the cathedral,’ explained the coroner grimly.
The gaunt monk looked amazed. ‘Forty feet? It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed!’
‘It’s not a wonder, it’s a miracle,’ said the senior canon gently. ‘It seems his tunic caught on a projecting waterspout half-way down the wall. A beggar in the Close saw him hanging there for a moment, then the cloth ripped and he fell the rest of the way on to a pile of soft earth dug from a new grave.’