The little clerk had one more titbit of news. ‘The priest said that there was something unspoken going on between the lawyers and Peter Jordan. The young man several times challenged the testament as not being the one he knew about. The old lawyer shouted him down, but Smithson had the impression that Peter was covertly accusing Philip, the younger Courteman, of misleading him.’
De Wolfe gave one of his grunts. ‘I don’t know that that tells us anything. But an expectation of what was in the will might be a motive for killing, I suppose.
‘Walter had been married five months — he was certainly likely to change his will after marrying again. But did he know that Joan was with child when he made this last one?’
‘If she’s three months gone, she herself would know, even though she wasn’t showing yet,’ said Gwyn. ‘But if Acland was the father, she may have kept it from Walter — but not otherwise, surely.’
‘The will was dated earlier this month, which was why Jordan seemed so shocked and upset,’ added Thomas.
‘I can’t make head nor bloody tail of it,’ grumbled Gwyn, finishing the last of the ale that Mary had provided.
‘Maybe Joan had her husband killed before he discovered that she was carrying Acland’s child and cut her out of the will?’ suggested Thomas, half-heartedly.
‘How the hell would Walter know it wasn’t his child, unless he had slept in the stable since his marriage?’ rumbled Gwyn.
‘He would if the infant was born with hair like Acland’s,’ retorted the clerk.
De Wolfe scowled at them both. ‘This is getting us nowhere. As it turns out, neither Walter’s brother nor his stepson have made a great deal from his death, which reduces their motive. And, by the same token, the widow and her hangers-on have increased their share of the fortune and therefore also their incentive to see Knapman dead.’
‘But did they all know that before the testament was disclosed?’
Thomas voiced the obvious objections that were in de Wolfe’s mind.
There was a long silence as they sat around the dulling fire. Then de Wolfe stood up and stretched his long limbs. He was about to announce that he was going down to the Bush for more ale, when the realisation that he was persona non grata there flooded back to him.
‘I’m off to the Golden Hind,’ he grunted, and glared at the other two, defying them to make any comment.
Robert Courteman wasted no time in setting about the verification of Joan’s child-bearing. On the afternoon of the reading of Walter Knapman’s testament, he sent a servant to Polsloe Priory to enquire if Dame Madge would be kind enough to examine the widow. He sweetened this request with a small donation to the priory funds, making a note that this was to be added to his legal fees deducted from the final settlement of the will. The servant returned with the redoubtable nun’s agreement, asking that the lady attend upon her at Polsloe the next morning.
Courteman decided that he needed an independent witness to hear Dame Madge’s verdict from her own mouth and sent his son Philip on Monday morning, with Joan’s mother as chaperone.
The trio left from the East Gate at around the eighth hour, the ladies jogging side-saddle on the palfreys they had brought from Chagford and Philip on a brown gelding. The road passed through St Sidwell’s, then through a mile of mixed farmland and woods to reach the foundation where six nuns dispensed spiritual and bodily help to the locals.
The buildings were small, all in wood apart from a new stone chapel, which Philip Courteman had ample time to study as he waited outside in the compound, adjacent to the West Range of buildings. The two ladies were escorted inside by a young novice, and half an hour later they emerged, Lucy with a broad grin and Joan with a faint smile of satisfaction on her usually inscrutable features. They were followed by a tall, grim-looking nun, who reminded Philip fleetingly of John de Wolfe. She advanced on him, her black robe swirling in the keen wind, her face framed tightly in a snow-white wimple and flowing head-veil.
‘If you are the lawyer, I understand that I am formally to confirm to you that the lady is indeed with child,’ she said, her long face looking as if it had been carved from a boulder of granite moorstone. Before he could answer her, the flinty face suddenly broke into a charming smile, almost as if a different person lived within. ‘And I can certainly do that, young man! God has granted her the gift of motherhood, and in five or six months, Christ’s family will have increased by one new member — unless she has twins!’ She smiled again, and raised her hand to make the Sign of the Cross in farewell to the three visitors.
Philip Courteman gallantly helped the two ladies up on to their saddles, and a moment later they were heading for the wooded track back to Exeter.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The distant cathedral bell had tolled some time ago for the mid-morning offices of Nones, Sext and Terce. De Wolfe and his clerk had just come from the Shire Hall in the inner ward of Rougemont, where a short session of the County Court had sentenced two thieves to mutilation, their right hands to be cut off in the undercroft by Stigand, the gaoler, and another two to be hanged. The sheriff was as uncommunicative with de Wolfe as he had been since the Lydford episode, and had stalked back to his chambers in the keep as soon as the cursing prisoners and their wailing families had been dragged from the court-house by his men-at-arms.
As usual, John was fretting about the chaotic system of law enforcement that had developed and the inability of the government to keep its promises for reform. ‘It’s damned nonsense to have manor courts, burgess courts, county courts and the King’s courts, all competing for the same business,’ he complained to Thomas, who had heard it all before.
‘There’s good money to be made by all of them,’ the clerk answered mildly.
‘And it’s my job as coroner to drive as much of it as possible into the royal courts,’ retorted his master. ‘That’s why Hubert Walter set them up, to trim the wings of sheriffs and barons. But how can he expect me to prevail against them, when his judges don’t come round the counties when they should?’
Thomas hurried to keep up with his master’s loping stride, his left foot dragging slightly from the old phthisis in his hip. ‘I heard from a visiting canon last week that the Eyre was in Wiltshire and should be here at any time now,’ he said breathlessly.
De Wolfe snorted as he headed back towards his chamber in the gatehouse. ‘How often have we heard that, Thomas? The Assize should come several times a year, but we’ve seen no sign of it since last summer, in spite of the Justiciar’s promise when he visited a few months back.’
His grumbling was cut short as they approached the arch of the gatehouse, under which the stairs to his office climbed steeply up from the guardroom. The sentry on duty at the top of the short drawbridge over the dry ditch was holding up his lance and waving his arm to stop a horseman who was cantering up the hill towards them, his steed frothing at the mouth. He clattered to a halt under the raised portcullis and slid from his saddle, almost into the arms of the sentry. Sergeant Gabriel emerged from the guardroom and joined the coroner and his clerk, who were waiting to see what this urgency was all about.
‘I must see the sheriff — or someone in authority!’ panted the messenger, looking almost as exhausted as his mare, even though it later transpired that they had ridden little more than a mile.
Gabriel, his grizzled features frowning under his iron helmet, strode forward and grabbed the man by his shoulder. ‘What’s all the panic, man? Who are you?’
The young fellow, whose rustic dress and odour suggested that he was a stablehand, was making the most of his moment of importance. ‘I’m a groom from Polsloe, sir. Sent to report a grievous happening, not more than an hour since,’ he wheezed.