Bernard Knight - Crowner's Quest

As always, his tone of patronising criticism made de Wolfe itch to punch him on his sharp nose but, with an effort, he held his temper in check. ‘A senior priest is hardly likely to jeopardise his entry into heaven by taking the life God gave him — especially almost on his Saviour’s birthday! But we don’t need theology to prove that. Just look there.’ He pointed at the still figure on the bed. ‘Does a suicide bruise his own arms, strike himself in the mouth and then, before he hangs, throttle himself from behind?’ he asked sarcastically.

The sheriff sniffed delicately. He had no interest in the state of the body, only in any political implications that might involve him. He needed to avoid trouble, but also to milk the best advantage for himself with influential people like Bishop Henry Marshal, brother to William, Marshal of England. ‘Cover the fellow up, for God’s sake!’ he snapped imperiously at Gwyn, flicking a glove at the folded blanket at the foot of the bed. Then he turned to leave. ‘I’ll send up to the castle to get Ralph Morin to send men-at-arms to search the town.’

Morin was the constable of Rougemont, the castle perched at the highest point of the city in the northeast corner of the walls. It took its name from the colour of the local sandstone from which it was built.

De Wolfe was scornful of this useless gesture. ‘What are they going to do after midnight? Beat every passerby into a confession?’ Knowing de Revelle’s methods, he thought that this was not as fanciful as it might sound.

The sheriff gave John another of his pitying looks, as if humouring a backward child. ‘And how would my new coroner handle it, then?’

John angrily opened his mouth to shout that he was the King’s coroner, not de Revelle’s, but bit back the words: they had been through these arguments time and again. The sheriff resented the establishment of coroners in England four months previously, but he was in no position to defy the edicts of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar to Richard the Lionheart. ‘We need to know why Robert de Hane was killed,’ he said tersely. ‘Then that should tell us who killed him. Rushing aimlessly around the streets will get us nowhere.’

‘Was it robbery? Some of these prebendaries are rich men,’ asked de Revelle, going off at a tangent.

For answer, de Wolfe waved a hand around the bare room. ‘Not this one. He has a reputation for a modest, even Spartan way of life. There’s little worth killing for here.’

The sheriff seemed to lose interest. ‘We’ll leave it until the morning, then. I must get back to my good wife.’

John straightened his back until his head almost touched the ceiling beams. ‘I’ll walk back to my house with you, then.’

De Revelle pulled on his gloves. ‘Lady Eleanor has gone back to Rougemont. I sent her with an escort when I came here. Your guests have dispersed, I’m afraid.’ He said it with a certain spiteful glee, knowing that his sister would blame her husband stridently for the collapse of her cherished social occasion.

The sheriff was right, for when John arrived in Martin’s Lane ten minutes later, he found the hall deserted, the table scattered forlornly with empty cups, tankards and scraps of food. Brutus still lay before the dying fire and gave him a slow wag from his bushy tail, the only welcome he was to get that night.

When he climbed the wooden stairs from the backyard to the solar chamber, he found a grim-faced Matilda sitting in the only chair. The rabbit-toothed Lucille was unpinning her hair and helping her off with her new kirtle of stiff brocade and laying out her bed-shift.

There was an ominous silence until the ugly Frenchwoman left for her cubicle under the stairs. Then the storm broke. ‘You’ve done it again, husband,’ Matilda snarled. ‘You seem to delight in spoiling every effort I make to increase your standing with the better folk in this city.’

‘Increase my standing, be damned!’ he retorted. ‘I’m the King’s coroner, I don’t need to kiss the arses of any burgesses or bishops. If you want more social life, so be it — but don’t pretend it’s to advance my career for I’m quite content as I am.’

Matilda had never been one to duck a fight and she counter-attacked with relish, her solid, fleshy face as pugnacious as that of a mastiff. ‘You’re content, are you? I should think so! You spend most of your time in taverns or in bed with some strumpet. You use this new job as an excuse to avoid me. You’re away from home for days and nights at a time — God knows what you get up to!’

‘A senior canon of this cathedral has been murdered, Matilda. You’re so thick with the clergy of this city, surely you know what a scandal this will be. Did you expect me to tell the Bishop when he returns that I was sorry I couldn’t attend to it but my wife was having a party?’

They had had this particular argument so often that de Wolfe was bored with it. Her accusations were always the same, and none the less objectionable because there was some truth in them. Married for sixteen years, he had spent as much of that time as he could away from her, campaigning in England and abroad. Now forty years old, he had been a soldier since he was seventeen and rued the day his father had insisted that he marry into the rich de Revelle family. ‘If I’m often away, it’s because the responsibilities of being coroner force it upon me, woman,’ he growled. ‘You were the one who was so insistent on me seeking the appointment. You nearly burst a blood vessel canvassing on my behalf among the burgesses, the priests and your damned brother.’

Had she but known it, her efforts had been unnecessary. Both Justiciar Hubert Walter and Richard Coeur de Lion himself had been more than happy to give the post to a Crusader knight whom they both knew well — in fact, John de Wolfe had been part of the King’s escort on that ill-fated journey home when he was captured in Austria. But once the bit was between her teeth, Matilda wanted no excuses from her saturnine husband. Angrily she flounced on to the low bed and struggled to change from her chemise into her nightshift under the sheepskin covers to hide her naked body from him. This was no punishment for John, who had long given up forcing his husbandly duties upon her. Six years older than him, she had never been keen on consummation, which was perhaps why they had remained childless all these years.

‘Being coroner doesn’t mean you have to live in the saddle of that great stallion of yours — when you’re not riding a two-legged mare, that is,’ she added nastily. Pulling out her thin chemise after wrestling on the nightgown, she threw it at the chair and returned to the fray. ‘My brother is the sheriff of all Devon, yet he doesn’t spend his days tramping across the county. He has men and stewards to do his bidding. But you have to pretend to be needed everywhere, just to get away from home.’

De Wolfe’s thick black brows came together in a scowl. ‘I don’t have a constable and men-at-arms and a castle full of servants at my beck and call like your damned brother! All I have is my officer and a clerk.’

She laughed scornfully. ‘That hairy Cornish savage and a poxy little priest! They were your choice. Richard would have given you two better men, if you’d accepted them.’

‘I owe my life to Gwyn, several times over. There’s no more trustworthy man in England. As for Thomas, he writes a better hand than anyone in this city — and you know damned well that I was obliging the Archdeacon when I took him on, for John de Alencon is his uncle.’

Sitting up in bed, the heavy fleeces clutched to her breasts, Matilda glowered at him. With that white linen cloth wound around her hair like a turban, she reminded him of a Moorish warrior he had fought hand-to-hand at the battle of Arsouf.