Bernard Knight - Figure of Hate

'A pity the goodness of the soil is not matched by the contentment of its people,' he growled obscurely.

Then, perhaps realising that for an unfree villein he had said too much in the presence of another Norman knight, he quickly changed the subject. Pointing at the squat wooden building coming up on the right-hand side of the track, he said, 'Our last master, Sir William, was going to rebuild the church in stone, but the good Lord took him before he could begin.'

A low dry-stone wall surrounded the churchyard, in which a few old yew trees stood among the grassy grave mounds, several of which had rough wooden crosses at their head. The church was a small oblong with a bell arch sticking up at the west end of the thatched roof, tattered from the previous winter's storms. A porch just big enough to hold a coffin and four bearers was stuck on to the south wall, from which loud voices could be heard as they reined in at the churchyard gate.

'What the hell's going on?' grunted Gwyn, as first shouting and cursing from several different voices then a feminine scream could be heard.

'Strange language for the house of God!' agreed the coroner, throwing his leg over Odin's broad back to dismount.

'Disgraceful profanity, that's what it isl' squeaked Thomas de Peyne, crossing himself energetically as the yelling increased from inside the church.

As the four men pushed through the small gate, the reeve hurried ahead, fearful of what he might find in his village church. A new voice erupted from the porch, in broad accents that John and Gwyn easily recognised as Irish, from their time fighting in that island.

'This surely is sacrilege and a grave offence against God and the Holy Church! Be assured that the archdeacon and the bishop will hear of this!' As a blasphemous reply came to the effect that if the speaker wanted to keep his comfortable living he had best keep his mouth shut, a struggling knot of people erupted from the porch, watched by the bemused group from Exeter: A bare-footed young girl in a patched dress was squirming like an eel in the grip of two men, one of whom John recognised as the armourer he wanted to question about the death of the silversmith. The other was dressed in green and the coroner correctly identified him as a hunt-master.

Hanging on to the back of the girl's thin smock was a fat man with a priest's cassock and a shaven tonsure, still bewailing the sacrilege of breaking sanctuary and threatening every penalty from excommunication to being struck by a thunderbolt. The coroner loped forward until his predatory features loomed closely over the two men dragging the girl.

'Let the child be, damn you! What's going on here?' he rasped.

Agnes stopped yelling and looked up in terrified awe at this black-clad apparition from outside the village.

Was she to be executed on the spot by this man, who looked like a gigantic hooded crow? Before she could find her tongue, a chorus of voices burst out from around John.

'These accursed souls are dragging her from God's holy sanctuary!' squawked the fat Irishman, blue eyes watering in his round, red face.

'What the bloody hell are you about, lads?' demanded Warin Fishacre.

'Just doing what Sir Ralph ordered!' shouted the hound-master. 'Or was it Sir Odo? Anyway, we was told to get her out of here and bring her to the hall.'

'I didn't do nothing, honest!' screeched the washgirl. 'I was scared when I heard what had happened, knew I'd get the bloody blame and they'd hang me!'

De Wolfe held up his hands, his wolfskin cloak falling back like the wings of some huge bat. 'Be quiet, all of you!' he roared, then stabbed a long finger at the priest.

'You, Father — tell me what this is all about.' Before Patrick, the village priest, could open his mouth, there was a deep, authoritative voice from behind them.

'I presume you are Sir John de Wolfe. You are welcome to my manor, sir, though I regret that such a sad event brings you to us.'

John turned to see half a dozen men coming down from the churchyard gate. The speaker, a tall man with a mournful Peverel face, was almost jostled for first place on the narrow path by a younger man whom he recognised as the brother who had been with Hugo Peverel outside the New Inn in Exeter when he had challenged them over the suspect armourer. But what immediately caught his eye was the all-too-familiar figure behind Odo Peverel.

'Oh, Mary, mother of God!' he groaned under his breath, as he saw his brother-in-law, Richard de Revelle.

The castle brooded at the top of Winchester's High Street like a massive grey hen sitting on a nest of buildings. A circular room in one of the towers was used by the Chief Justiciar as his official chamber when he was in the city, which shared with London the functions of England's capital. Though Hubert Walter was also Archbishop of Canterbury, his episcopal duties played second fiddle to the virtual running of the country, as he was regent of England in all but name. A soldier as much as a priest, he had been left to bring back the English Crusaders from the Holy Land after the King had left on his ill-fated voyage home, but on reaching Sicily he heard that Richard had been imprisoned in Austria and Germany. Hubert hurried to visit him there, then returned to England to help retrieve the situation, mainly by devising schemes to raise money and to keep the peace in a troubled country where Prince John was fomenting rebellion.

As he sat behind his parchment-cluttered table, he took a moment to stare absently through a window slit at a patch of cold blue October sky and wonder why he was so devoted to his king, Richard with the lion's heart. He accepted that the man was selfish, arrogant, greedy and often cruel, but he could also be charming, recklessly generous and ridiculously forgiving, as he been towards his brother John after his failed rebellion. As a monarch, Richard's main concern was with France, and though he had been born in Oxford, England remained nothing more than a colony to him, from which he could extort taxes and men to support his campaigns in Palestine and France. Richard had never bothered to learn to speak English, his queen, Berengaria, had never set foot in the country, and after spending only four months of his reign in England it seemed certain that he would never return, leaving Hubert to administer the realm and raise the vast sums that were needed to pay off his ransom and finance his armies. The justiciar had been thinking a few moments ago of his old fellow campaigner, John de Wolfe, another example of the blind loyalty that the monarch seemed able to engender in the most unromantic of people.

Black John was not over-endowed with either imagination or much of a sense of humour, but was brave to the point of foolhardiness and almost painfully trustworthy.

It was these qualities which had decided Hubert, with the full approval of the King, to set John up as coroner in Devon, where he could keep an eye on that scheming potential traitor Richard de Revelle and the band of incipient rebels clustered around Bishop Henry Marshal and some of the barons, such as the de la Pomeroys. The threat posed by Prince John seemed to have abated recently, but it was essential to keep a reliable pair of eyes and ears open down in the West to forestall any secret plots. The recent removal of de Revelle as sheriff made things easier, thought the justiciar — but he doubted that the man's political ambitions had evaporated, and he must still be watched.

A chancery clerk came in with a fresh bundle of manuscripts and laid them on a corner of the table.

'These have just come from Shrewsbury and Chester, your Grace,' he said in an oily voice. Sliding the strap of a leather pouch from his shoulder, he laid it before the archbishop with something akin to reverence.