Bernard Knight - Figure of Hate

When he had abandoned his attempt to squeeze more information from the Peverel family, he had sought out his assistants in the kitchens and walked them in the dusk around the village, to get a feel for the geography of the place. Then he had brought them to the hovel with the bare bush hanging from a bracket outside the door, and they stood in the only room, drinking an indifferent ale, which from the expression on their clerk's face was only slightly preferable to hemlock.

The taproom was but a shadow of the superior accommodation at the Bush at Exeter. A low room with crumbling cob walls between worm-eaten frames, it had damp, dirty rushes on the floor, which rustled ominously as various rodents burrowed through it for scraps of fallen food. Inside the once whitewashed stones that ringed the fire-pit in the centre, some logs smouldered on the ashes. There were a few three-legged stools scattered about but no tables, and the coroner's trio stood together by the only window-opening, where they used the rough sill to support their misshapen pottery mugs. Against the far wall, a slatternly ale-wife ladled her thin brew into the mugs from several tengallon crocks standing on the floor. A dozen men stood about drinking, ignoring the stools and staring suspiciously at the three strangers near the window.

'Did you learn anything from the kitchen maids?' John asked Gwyn, knowing of his roguish ways with servant girls.

His officer finished filtering ale through his luxuriant moustache before replying. 'It's an unhappy manor, that's for sure, but I heard nothing much of use. A little more digging will probably turn up more scandal, though whether it would have any bearing on this slaying is doubtful.'

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'That Hugo was unpopular with everyone, that's for sure, but they wouldn't tell me why.'

John took another mouthful of ale and winced at the taste, comparing it unfavourably with the fruits of Nesta's expertise. 'When I've finished this horse-piss, I'll find a pallet in a corner of the hall, as long as those damned brothers have cleared off. But I want you to stay here for a while, Gwyn. See what you can wheedle out of these villagers. Here's twopence to ply them with ale.'

As he fumbled in his scrip for some coins, he spoke to his clerk.

'And you, Thomas, you can do what you have done to good account several times before. Seek out that fat Irish priest and play your cleric's game with him. It will be more honest now that you must surely soon be on your way to reinstatement.'

Thomas de Peyne felt a glow of pleasure, both at the trust his master placed in him and the reminder that his time as an outcast from his beloved Church was coming to an end. The little clerk had a gift for wheedling information from parish priests, who usually accepted him as one of their own with his threadbare cassock, shaven head and wide command of Latin. They were more free with their confidences, especially when their tongues were loosened by drink, which was a common failing among those disillusioned priests dumped in some obscure parish with no hope of advancement.

As the coroner and Thomas prepared to leave the dismal inn, Gwyn gave a valedictory piece of news.

'There's something going on between Richard de Revelle and the Peverels. I saw them with their heads together as he was leaving and I'll wager they were plotting some mischief- though God knows what!'

After Tuesday morning's hangings, at which John had to be present to record the event and seize any goods and chattels of the felons, he went home to his noontide dinner. Here he received the expected frosty reception from Matilda, which was her usual reaction to him having been away overnight. Once again he reflected on the unfairness of her attitude, when it was she who had so eagerly supported his appointment as coroner a year earlier. Yet now she resented his absences from home carrying out the very duties that she had been so keen for him to accept. He knew she suspected him of taking the opportunity offered by these excursions to drink and womanise, though he thought wryly that, given the quality of the ale at Sampford and his current devotion to Nesta, neither of these allegations could possibly be true.

As he sat silently chewing poached salmon and cabbage, he threw covert looks at his wife, wondering what was going on in her mind. He had noticed lately that in addition to her devotion to religious observance — she went at least twice a day to services at either the cathedral or St Olave's — Matilda was becoming increasingly obsessed with her Norman ancestry, tenuous though it was. The de Revelles had left St-Lô in the early years of the century and those now remaining in Normandy were but distant cousins. Several years before, Matilda had spent a month visiting them and had come home with the firm conviction that she was a scion of a noble house, exiled among English barbarians. The fact that she, together with two previous generations of ancestors, had been born in Devon could not shake her belief in her exalted heredity. Even though John's late father was of pure Norman stock, she had despised him for taking a Cornish-Welsh wife, and she looked on her husband as something of a Celtic mongrel. Of late, when she deigned to hold a conversation with him, the subject reverted increasingly to her noble family across the Channel and how she yearned to see them and the fair orchards of Normandy once again. Secretly, John wished she would take ship for Caen and never return, but so far she seemed to have no plans to repeat her pilgrimage.

After the meal, they sat on either side of the hearth in the monk's chairs whose side-wings kept out some of the draughts. Mary brought them each a pewter cup of red wine poured from a small skin on a side table and left them to their silent vigil.

After a few minutes, John felt that he should make an effort to converse with his wife to bring her out of her latest sulk. Knowing of her snobbish fascination with the local aristocracy, he thought the current drama in Sampford Peverel might catch her attention, and he related the events of the past day. If there was one group of people that Matilda knew almost as well as the ecclesiastical establishment, it was the Devon gentry, among whom she was always prodding her husband to advance himself. Her small eyes lit up with interest as she scented a prime topic for gossip with which to regale her friends at church.

'You know the scandal there was at Sampford earlier in the year?' she demanded. 'After Lord William was killed at Salisbury.'

John shook his head in false innocence, hoping that he might glean something useful from this fount of rumour that was his wife.

'Well, with four sons, the manor should naturally have gone to the eldest, which was Odo. But the second son Hugo disputed the claim and it became a great issue, which had to be settled by the King's justices and even by the chancery in Winchester.'

'So what was the problem?' asked John. He had heard the bones of the story elsewhere, but maybe Matilda had the meat.

'The second son, this Hugo, contested the succession on the grounds that his brother was not a fit person to rule the manor. He claimed that Odo suffered so badly from the "falling disease" that he would be unable to attend properly to the duties of a manor-lord.'

What little de Wolfe had seen of Odo gave no cause for thinking that the man was incapable in any way, but he waited for his wife to add some detail.

'It was claimed, so I've heard from Martha, the goldsmith's wife, that this Peverel had sudden convulsions and strange aberrations of behaviour. Several times, he had fallen from his horse and damaged himself.'

'How would this lady know of that?' demanded John.