Figure of Hate (6 page)

'Where shall we lodge him, Crowner?' asked Osric.

'It's a long way to carry him up to Rougemont.' Corpses from the central part of the city were usually housed in a cart shed in the castle, but on standing up and looking around, de Wolfe decided on an easier option.

'We can put him in one of the lower chambers of the Watergate - no one is likely to steal him!' The two wharf workers found a wooden device that porters used for carrying heavy crates or bales from the ships, a stretcher with short legs that looked remarkably like a bier. On this they carried the unknown victim, decorously covered with the sailcloth, to the nearby gate in the city wall. This had a narrow tower on each side, in one of which lived the watchmen who had the strict duty of closing the large gates when curfew was rung at dusk. In the base of the other bastion was a dank chamber half filled with junk and rubbish, but with enough space to leave the corpse on its trestle.

Gwyn pulled some lengths of timber across the small arched entrance to discourage intruders and Osric went across to the gatekeeper to order him to keep an eye on the place until further notice.

'Not much point in holding an inquest until we get some news as to who he might be,' said the coroner, as they started back up the hill towards High Street.

'With the fair starting tomorrow, there'll be hundreds of strangers in Exeter - maybe a thousand or more, given that the tournament is here as well,' growled Gwyn. 'Maybe he's one of those and we'll never get to know who he was.'

John made one of his throat-clearing rumbles, which could mean almost anything. 'I've got a feeling in my water that he's a man of substance, rather than some nonentity. If that's so, then he's more likely to be missed.'

A few minutes later, he somewhat reluctantly turned into Martin's Lane to reach his front door, all too aware that he would get black looks and sullen recriminations from Matilda for leaving her in the lurch so abruptly at Rougemont.

Chapter Two

In which Crowner John goes to the fair

When John entered his tall, narrow house, one of only two in the narrow lane that joined High Street to the cathedral Close, he found that he had a reprieve from his wife's acidulous tongue, for she had taken herself off to her favourite church, tiny St Olave's at the upper end of Fore Street. Whether she was praying for her own soul or that of her brother, he knew not, but doubted that his own welfare was on her devotional agenda.

He put his head around the door which led from the small outer vestibule into the hall, a high, gloomy room that reached right up to the bare rafters of the house. A glance showed him that it was empty, so he went to the other end of the vestibule and walked along the narrow covered passage that ran down the side of the house to the back yard.

The plot of muddy earth that was his demesne contained the kitchen shed, the wash house, the privy and a pigsty, all built of a mixture of wattle panels and 'cob' - a plaster made from clay, straw, dried ferns and horse manure. The house itself was of timber, with a roof of wooden shingles. At the back, a solar projected from the upper part, reached by an outside wooden staircase, under which was a hut that housed Lucille, Matilda's rabbit-toothed French maid. The solar was his wife's retreat, but also served as their bedroom, being the only other room in the house other than the hall and its vestibule.

There was a well in the middle of the yard, and bent over this was the rounded backside of a woman,! hoisting up a leather bucket. John loped across and gave it a slap, grinning as his cook-maid swung around to glare at him in mock outrage. Mary was a handsome wench, her dark hair a legacy from an unknown father, who had probably been a soldier passing through the city some twenty-five years earlier.

'Stop taking advantage of a poor servant; Sir Crowner, else I'll tell your wife - or even worse, your mistress!' she chided, but let him slip an arm around her and give her a smacking kiss on the lips. There had been a time when they did far more than kiss, but since the nosy Lucille had been in residence, Mary had resisted his advances, afraid that she would carry tales to John's wife.

Pushing him away with one hand, she carried her leather pail of water into the kitchen, where she not only cooked for the household but lived and slept as well. John dropped on to a stool and fondled the head of his old hound Brutus, who was dozing by the firepit in the centre, He looked at a ring of griddle cakes cooking on a bakestone over the fire.

'The food at the new sheriff's installation was miserable,' he said pointedly,"and with a sigh Mary lifted off a couple of hot cakes with a wooden spatula and offered them to her master.

'The honey's in that pot by your elbow,' she said, as she ladled some water from her bucket into a small cauldron of stew that was simmering at the edge of the fire. Then she sat on the hay-bag on the floor which served as her bed and looked at him expectantly. They were good friends, the coroner and his house servant, and she looked after him as well as any wife - and much better than the one he actually had. He always regaled her with news of his day's exploits, and she often fed him titbits of gossip picked up at the baker's shop or the butcher's stall, which were sometimes of use in his investigations.

He described the ceremony at the castle, then told her of the discovery of the body in the River Exe. 'I suppose you've heard no titde-tattle in the town about anyone gone missing?' he asked hopefully.

Mary shook her head as she poured him a mug of ale from a pitcher on the earth floor. 'The place is heaving with people for the fair - strangers everywhere, it's hard to get near the stalls to buy our food!'
 

'At least they'll be staying open, not like some places,' he remarked.

In a number of other towns, the local shops had to close down during fairs in order not to compete with the visiting stall-holders, who paid stiff fees for the privilege of trading there for three days. Exeter allowed its own traders to carry on, however, though many of these also took booths on the fairground outside the city walls to make sure that they got their share of the extra business.

The pair chatted for a while until John had eaten his cakes and drunk his ale, by which time the late afternoon bells were ringing from the nearby cathedral to summon the clergy to vespers, the last service of the day.

'There's a duck for supper, with turnips, onions and cabbage,' advised Mary. 'So don't go feeding too much down at the Bush!' she warned, knowing full well that the coroner would take advantage of Matilda's absence to take the dog for a walk, his excuse to slip down to the tavern in Idle Lane to see his mistress.

He gave another of his lopsided grins and planted another quick kiss on her forehead. Whistling to Brutus to follow, he strode away towards the front door of the house, his alibi loping after him. In Martin's Lane, he turned right into the Close, the large open area surrounding the great cathedral church of St Mary and St Peter. Completed only a few years earlier, the great twin towers rose majestically into the sky, but at ground level the appearance of the Close was anything but elegant. It was a confused tangle of muddy paths between open grave pits, old grave mounds, piles of refuse and dumped offal. Populated by beggars, drunks and urchins playing tag and football, it was also infested by cut-purses eager to fleece unwary visitors. At this time of the October fair, there was an even greater number of loafers in the Close, some come to gape at the great church, others adding to the number of passers-by being importuned by pedlars with their trays of sweetmeats, pasties and trinkets.

John de Wolfe strode past, almost unaware of the hubbub, as the scene was so familiar to him. With his lean hound criss-crossing in front of him to seek out each new stink and odour, the coroner made for the Bear Gate, one of the many entrances to the Close, which lay on the opposite side to Martin's Lane. From there he crossed Southgate Street and continued downhill into the small lanes leading to the river, following much the same route as he had used earlier when he went to see the corpse on the quay-side: Halfway down Priest Street, however, where many of the clergy had lodgings, he turned left into a short cut across a patch of waste ground, where a fire had destroyed some houses several years before. They had not been rebuilt and the street had become known as Idle Lane. The only building was the Bush Inn, which itself had just been rebuilt after a recent fire had destroyed its upper floor. It was a square stone structure with a high roof, thatched with new straw which came down almost low enough for a tall man like de Wolfe to touch the eaves. In the middle of the front wall was a low door, with shuttered window openings on each side and a dried bush hanging from a bracket above.

This was the inn's sign, an indicator of a tavern since Roman times. At the back of the alehouse was a large fenced yard, containing a kitchen hut and the usual outbuildings, including a brewing shed from which came the best ale in Exeter.

John ducked under the lintel and went into the taproom, which occupied all the ground floor. The first fire of the autumn was glowing in a clay pit in the centre of the room and its smoke added to the fug, an eye-smarting mixture of cooking, sweat and spilt ale. A number of rough tables, benches and stools were scattered about, and at the back, where a door went out into the yard, a row of casks sat on the rush-strewn floor, holding the supply of ale and cider. Near by was a wide ladder to the loft above, where travellers could rent a straw mattress for a penny a night, which included a meal and drink.

De Wolfe made for his favourite table next to the fire, and a pair of young apprentices hastily moved away, as all the patrons knew that this was the coroner's place, sheltered on one side by a wattle hurdle that kept off some of the draught from the doorway. His bottom had hardly touched the bench when a pottery jar containing a quart of ale was set in front of him.

This time the drink was brought not by the usual potman, the one-eyed old soldier Edwin, but by the landlady herself, the delectable Nesta. She stood over him, her round Welsh face wreathed in a welcoming smile.

'John, you look very comely today, in your best tunic and Moorish belt!"

His usually stern features lit up with a returning smile of pure pleasure, partly at seeing her look so well, the stress she had suffered a month past, when been pulled out of the burning tavern just before the roof collapsed. This was the first time he had noticed that she seemed fully recovered, with a pink bloom on the cheeks that had been so pale for many weeks.

she had left off her usual linen cap and her rich hair was plaited into two ropes that hung over her shapely bosom. De Wolfe had had many women over the years, but none plucked at his heartstrings like Nesta of Gwent. He held up his hand to take her fingers in his own.

'I'm in my best finery today because of the installation of this new sheriff. Come and sit with me, dear Nesta!'

She slid on to the bench and he put an arm around her waist and hugged her to him, ignoring the covert glances of other patrons.

'A couple of minutes only, John. There's cooking to be seen to - we're run off our feet with all these people coming into town.'

Nesta ran the tavern with bustling efficiency, helped by Edwin and two maids. It was now a thriving business, renowned for good food and the city's best ale.

The rushes on the floor and the mattresses upstairs were the cleanest in Exeter, so there was never any lack of custom. Nesta's husband Meredydd, a Gwent archer who had campaigned with John de Wolfe, had bought the inn several years ago, but later died of a fever, leaving his widow deeply in debt. John had come to her rescue for the sake of his friendship with her husband, and gradually, by dint of his money and her hard work, they had turned disaster into success. In the process they had become lovers, and John's miserable marriage had become all the more irksome because of the contentment he felt when he was with Nesta.

'Shall I get the girls to cook something for you, John?' she said, her concern for his appetite coming to the surface as usual. He squeezed her more tightly as he shook his head. 'I had some small stuff at Rougemont - and Mary has threatened me with hideous torment if I fail to eat the duck she's cooking for supper.' They sat for a few moments, she listening contentedly while he gently kneaded her breast with his free hand as he told her of the day's events.

'So you've-no idea who this poor dead man might be?' she asked, after he had recounted the tale of the washed:up body. Nesta was always full of sympathy for the afflicted, be they paupers, lame dogs or the nameless dead.

'No, he's a mystery man as yet. You've heard nothing of any fights or assaults in the last day or two?' Like Mary, the innkeeper often heard gossip about happenings in the city, indeed the whole county, especially as the Bush was a favourite inn for carters and
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travellers. But this time, Nesta had nothing to suggest.

'If no one recognises him, he must surely be one of the many who have come for the fair,' she reasoned.

John didn't press the point that with a face as battered as his, the corpse was totally unrecognisable.

He changed the subject by pointing to the new beams and boards above their head, which formed the floor of the roomy loft.

'They did a good job in such a short time, Nesta.

Apart from the look of such new timber, it's hard to know what ruin there was before.'

In August, the tavern had been deliberately set on fire and the place had been gutted, only the stone walls remaining. But thanks to willing workers and timber from John's manors at the coast, it was now back to its former glory - even Nesta's small room on the floor above had been rebuilt. This was where they had many a pleasant hour together, though the fire destroyed her pride and joy - the large French bed that John had imported from St Malo, probably only one in Exeter. Until he could get a replacement they would have to make do with a mattress .on floor, like most other people. The thought of the little chamber in the corner of the loft caused him to give her another squeeze.