Bernard Knight - The Noble Outlaw

Exeter, December 1195

Even Thomas de Peyne, still squeamish after serving for more than a year as coroner's clerk, found little to upset him in the appearance of this particular corpse.

What little flesh that could be seen reminded him more of the cheap dried cod that hung from the fishmongers' stalls than of a human being. The leathery face and shrivelled hands protruding from the mouldering clothes looked unreal, like some amateur woodcarving.

'Been here some time, Crowner' boomed the broad Cornish accentof Gwyn of Polruan, the coroner's officer and right-hand man. 'Dried up like an old boot, not a trace of corruption about him.'

They stood with their master in the back yard of a house in Exeter's Smythen Street, a lane that ran down to Stepcote Hill and the city wall in the southern part of the city. It got its name from the number of smiths' forges and metal-working shops that lay along its length, though a few of the burgages, like the one they were in now, had recently been turned into places of education.

Behind the main building, which fronted on to the street itself, was a yard with a large outhouse which had been the forge. A square box, it was built of cob plastered on to woven withies held between oak frames. It had a large chamber at ground level, where until recently the furnace and anvils stood. The old forge was roofed with stone tiles, as thatch was too hazardous to use so near the flames and sparks of a smithy. Under this roof lay a loft formerly used for storing iron rods and strips, reached by a crude ladder in the corner. It was there that the corpse had been discovered an hour earlier, before being dragged down to the yard — causing the short-tempered coroner to be incensed even before he had started his investigation.

'For God's sake, does no one ever obey the law?' snapped Sir John de Wolfe, glaring at the discomfited James Anglicus, the magister of this establishment, one of the new schools in Smythen Street. 'When a dead body is found, it must be left exactly where it was until a coroner can view it in its original surroundings!' He scowled around at the gaping onlookers. 'Who was the First Finder?' he rasped irritably.

Magister Anglicus, a mournful, middle-aged man in a long cassock of clerical appearance, pointed at a stringy artisan of about the same age, his fustian tunic tucked up between his bare legs and held in place by a leather belt. 'Roger Short here discovered the cadaver. He's the builder that is turning the old forge into another lecture room for me.'

Roger touched his grubby woollen cap in deference to the coroner. 'Proper shock it was, sir,' he gabbled, displaying a mouthful of rotten black stumps. 'I went to pull up those old boards that floor the loft, to give more headroom. There was a heap of old wood in the angle between the roof rafters and the floor. When I pulled it out, I found him lurking behind.' He jabbed a thumb towards the body lying on the ground. 'My labourer and me hauled him down the ladder straight away, sir. We didn't know we wasn't supposed to, but no one could have got at him up there, tucked tight under the eaves.'

James Anglicus hurried back into the dialogue, anxious to head off any further criticism. 'Straightway I sent my servant Henry up to the castle to inform either you or the sheriff, Crowner. I could see no point in raising the hue and cry, when obviously this poor creature has been dead for months!'

The hue and cry was supposed to be implemented whenever a crime was discovered, the four nearest households being knocked up to pursue any miscreant found red-handed at the scene. John de Wolfe recognised that in this case, Anglicus was entirely right; it would have been a waste of effort. He gave one of his all-purpose throat clearings in response and bent over the sad remains of the man that lay on the dusty ground. Gwyn, the red-haired giant who had been his servant and trusted companion for two decades, came to crouch on the other side of the corpse, prodding the hardened skin of the face with a finger the size of a pork sausage.

'Who the hell is he, I wonder?' he growled.

'Could he be a Musselman, with that dark complexion?' ventured Thomas timidly, keeping his distance but fascinated by the strange appearance of the cadaver.

'He's not dark, he's just dried up,' snorted de Wolfe.

He motioned to his officer, and Gwyn began trying to remove the clothing from the pathetic bundle. The dead man was curved almost into a ball, with his legs drawn up and his head bent down into his arms.

'Rigid as a plank, Crowner!' he complained. 'Not ordinary death stiffness, he's just dried into a bundle of sticks. I'm afraid of breaking him in half if I try too hard.'

John de Wolfe dropped to a crouch himself and started to help Gwyn lever off the brown woollen tunic which was peppered with moth holes and nibbled by mice. It ripped easily, which at least helped them to clear it from the body, revealing blue serge breeches underneath.

'Is it seemly to render the poor fellow naked out in the open?' asked James Anglicus rather pompously.

'We'll not expose his nether regions here, but I need to know if he has injuries that would make this a felony,' snapped the coroner.

'I assume he crawled into the loft and had a stroke or seizure, poor fellow,' persisted the magister, anxious to distance his school from any criminal activity.

The coroner and his henchman ignored him and began looking at the dead man's head, back and chest. Gwyn lifted him over on to his other side, picking him up as if he were a feather. 'Weighs no more than a spring lamb!' he observed. 'All the substance has dried out of him.'

The corpse's face had shrunk down to a mask of skin, tightly stretched across his jaw and cheekbones. The eyes had collapsed into almost empty sockets and the brittle lips had drawn back into a grinning rictus, revealing large, crooked teeth.

'Plenty of hair left, though,' observed Gwyn, ruffling a brown thatch which sat above a neck shaved up to a horizontal line level with the top of the ears, a style introduced by the Normans many years earlier.

'More than you can say for some of the skin,' grunted de Wolfe. 'Look at the back here.'

From the neck down to the waist, more on the left side, the surface of the body had fared much worse than the face and hands. Decomposition had destroyed much of the skin, exposing ribs and spinal bones. The wet rot had dried up eventually and there was no unpleasant foulness left, but the sight made the sensitive Thomas hurriedly avert his gaze.

'No sign of injury, Crowner. No stabs, slashes or a smashed head,' said Gwyn in a somewhat disappointed tone. 'Maybe he did suffer from some sort of seizure.'

De Wolfe climbed to his feet again, uncoiling his long body which, as usual, was dressed all in black and grey.

James Anglicus, who had never met him before, regarded this powerful man warily, as he was second only to the sheriff in the hierarchy of the county law officers. He saw a tall man with a predatory, slightly menacing stoop as he hovered over those around him. His jet black hair, still untouched by grey at the age of forty-one, was swept back unfashionably low to his collar and was matched in colour by the dark stubble on his cheeks; he was days away from his weekly shave. A long face and big, hooked nose were relieved by full, sensual lips and deep-set eyes beneath heavy brows.

'What happens next, sir?' asked the teacher anxiously.

He wanted this thing off his premises as soon as possible, concerned that he would be blamed by his patron for bringing the college into disrepute.

The coroner rasped his fingers over the bristles on his chin, a mannerism that seemed to stimulate his thought processes. 'Cadavers are usually taken up to the castle to await burial, but as we have no idea who this fellow is, I'll hold an inquest here. That old forge is as good a place as any to keep him out of the rain or snow.'