This was too much for Gwyn and, with a roar like a bull, he drove his way forward and tore the club from the hand of the assailant. ‘Stop this!’ he boomed. ‘Every man deserves a fair hearing before he’s condemned.’
‘Who the hell d’you think you are?’ screamed an enraged Blackbeard.
‘The coroner’s officer — King Richard’s coroner!’ Gwyn looked a formidable figure, topping most of the tinners — many of whom were big men — by half a head. But their mood was so inflamed that they took unkindly to any interference.
‘Get out of the way, man, this is not crowner’s business. These are the Stannaries, and we are a law unto ourselves,’ snarled one of the men who was gripping the Saxon.
‘Not where it concerns life or limb. The King’s law runs there and well you know it. Ask the sheriff — he’ll tell you.’ Gwyn turned to wave an arm at where de Revelle skulked at the end of the enclosure.
Reluctantly, de Revelle nodded. ‘He’s right, but I’ve already told you that.’
This was met with more jeers, and the burly man with the jet beard and moustache gave Gwyn a violent buffet in the chest. ‘Clear off, damn you! Stop trying to interfere in what’s none of your bloody business.’
For answer, the Cornishman threw a massive arm around the other’s neck, gave him a punch in the kidneys that should have felled a donkey and threw him to the ground. Amid bellows of rage and clutching hands, Gwyn was pulled back, while the bearded man climbed painfully to his feet.
Suddenly, there was a flash of steel as Gwyn’s adversary reached behind him and pulled a dagger from his belt. With a furious yell, he launched himself at the Cornishman, the knife flashing towards his heart. The thick leather of Gwyn’s jerkin took the point, and though it penetrated enough to slash skin and muscle, it went no further. With his own roar of rage, he tore free from those hanging on to his arms, and grabbed the wrist holding the dagger. With his other hand, he smashed Blackbeard on the side of the head, just behind the ear. The man crumpled to the trampled slush underfoot and lay motionless. Then, huge as he was, Gwyn had no chance against the fury of a hundred tinners and he vanished to the floor under a press of bodies, all trying to beat him to death.
As so often happened, snow on Dartmoor meant rain in Exeter, John de Wolfe went about his business that day in an intermittent cold drizzle that soaked his cape and turned the streets into a sticky morass of mud and filth. The previous night, he had fallen dog-tired on to his bed, too weary even to respond to Matilda’s customary nagging. He told her briefly about Thomas’s dive from the cathedral gallery, but her snubbing response seemed to indicate that she would have been interested only if his attempt had succeeded.
Even before he had finished an early breakfast, one of the town bailiffs arrived to report a fatal accident on the quayside, where the wheel of an ox-cart had collapsed and a load of stone imported from Caen had fallen on a workman. John went to inspect the scene and look at the body but, missing both Gwyn’s help and Thomas’s scribing ability, decided to postpone the inquest until he knew when his clerk would be available.
With this in mind, he went from the quayside up to St John’s Hospital to see how the little man was faring. John de Alençon was there already, and de Wolfe was surprised and gratified to find that de Peyne’s mood had improved markedly, even if his skin and muscles were still crying out in protest.
‘He can go home when he chooses,’ said Brother Saulf encouragingly. ‘There is nothing seriously amiss. The shock has passed and he has no broken bones, only bruises, though he’ll suffer a couple of days’ aches and stiffness. As the Archdeacon has been telling him, the age of miracles is certainly not yet over.’
As the two Johns left the little priory together, the coroner said how glad he was to see such an improvement in his clerk’s melancholy.
De Alençon smiled, his blue eyes twinkling in his lean, ascetic face. ‘Though I truly believe that such escapes are ordained by the Almighty, I must admit to labouring the point somewhat to my nephew. His conviction that his miraculous deliverance is a sign from above has greatly lightened his mind.’
The coroner gave his friend a lopsided grin. ‘Thank God for that — and I mean that literally, John. But is there no real hope of his ever being accepted back into Holy Orders?’
‘Not for some time — and certainly not in Exeter as long as the present chapter contains certain people.’
‘Speaking selfishly, though I am sorry for Thomas, I would be lost without his skills,’ mused de Wolfe aloud, ‘so let’s see what a year or so might bring. Perhaps eventually he could return to Winchester.’
They parted at Martin’s Lane, where the coroner collected Odin and rode out of the city to the gallows beyond Magdalene Street. Here he witnessed two Friday executions, one of an outlaw who had been caught robbing a travelling merchant of his purse holding fourteen pennies, two more than the statutory shilling that meant a felony and the death penalty. It had been a toss-up as to whether to behead him for being a captured outlaw or hanging him for the felony, but the Shire Court, under Richard de Revelle, discovered that the fee for hanging was less. As the man had no property, John had no interest in the matter, other than eventually to record the event on his rolls.
The other execution was of a weaver who had tried to strangle his wife in a fit of anger when he discovered that she had committed adultery with his brother. De Wolfe had tried hard to delay the trial until the King’s justices came for the Eyre of Assize, but as the usual waiting stretched into months with no sign of their arrival, the sheriff and the burgesses had insisted on summary conviction in the Shire Court. As the weaver had a house and a workshop, John would have to assess his property and record it for the judges, who would decide how much to confiscate for the Crown and how much — if any — to leave for the family of the sinful widow. But with Thomas out of commission, there was little he could do for now: his own skills with a quill and ink were still negligible.
On the way back from the gallows, he passed by the South Gate and went through the fields and garden of Southernhay to reach the Water Gate, which had been driven through the angle of the city wall, at the top of the slope leading down to the quay. From there he went to the house of Matthew Knapman and found the tin-merchant in his ground-floor warehouse, with Peter Jordan and a burly Saxon workman. They were stacking and tallying bars, some of black tin, which had just arrived from yesterday’s coinage at Chagford. Others, kept separate, were the cleaner, shinier ingots from the re-smelting, ready for export.
Matthew, stout and red-faced, put down the notched tally-stick and his knife and waved the workman out into the backyard. ‘Is there any news from Chagford or Dunsford?’ he asked anxiously.
The coroner shook his dark head. ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me something. I wondered if your brother’s testament had shed light on who would gain most from his death.’
Peter, dressed in a neat brown tunic with a long leather apron tied around his waist, answered for his master. ‘We went to see Robert Courteman, the lawyer, but he would tell us nothing. We must wait until all the family are present.’