Bernard Knight - Crowner Royal

‘Thomas said he would bring this fellow Robin Byard here when they had finished singing and praying over in the abbey.’

‘D’you think there could be anything in this story?’ grunted Gwyn. ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, a clerk being afraid that he’s overheard something to endanger his life!’

De Wolfe shrugged, running his hand through his over-long hair. ‘Nothing would surprise me in this damned place! I know both France and our own country have a bevy of spies in each other’s camps. But this might just be some petty intrigue about one man bedding someone else’s wife — or even some swindle over an official selling meat from the kitchens.’

For a while there was silence in the bare chamber, as John settled down to try to re-learn some of the Latin that Thomas had written out for him in simple phrases on a roll of parchment. When in Exeter, a vicar in the cathedral had coached him until the patience of both of them had run out. Now his own clerk had taken on the task, but at his age, John’s mind was too set to absorb much learning. He was a physical man, active and energetic, but lacking the concentration and willpower to apply himself to academic pursuits.

He muttered under his breath, his lips forming the unfamiliar words as his finger slowly traced out the perfect script of his clerk, while his officer perched back on the windowsill, gazing out across the Thames. A barge drifted downstream, piled with bales of raw wool, four men keeping it in the centre of the river with long oars. Above, the sky was taking on a leaden hue towards the south, and the weather lore that Gwyn had learned from his fisherman father told him that a storm was brewing.

After about an hour, the silence was broken by Thomas entering the room. He ushered in a pale young man dressed in Benedictine black, his shaven tonsure having removed most of his fair hair. Robin Byard looked nervous and ill-at-ease as he looked from the ginger giant at the window to the menacingly dark figure of the coroner sitting behind the table.

‘My clerk tells me that you have something to tell us about Basil of Reigate,’ began John, trying to sound affable.

To his embarrassment, Byard promptly burst into tears. ‘He was my best friend, Sir John! Perhaps there was something I could have done to save him.’

The ever-sympathetic Thomas placed a reassuring hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘Just tell the coroner what you know,’ he advised.

‘I told your clerk the little I know yesterday,’ he snivelled. ‘Basil was afraid for his life, in case the people he heard plotting decided to silence him.’

‘Yet I’m told you have no idea either who these people were — nor what was said between them to make him so fearful?’ snapped John, already forgetting his attempt at being gentle.

Robin cringed at the coroner’s tone. ‘He said he had no wish to drag me into danger, sir.’

‘And you have no other suspicion as to who these people might be. Were they both men or a couple, for instance?’

The novice shook his head miserably. ‘All he wanted was some advice as to what he should do. He was even talking about running away, back to our village.’

‘And what did you advise him?’

‘He worked in the guest chamber of the palace, so his immediate superior would be the Guest Master, who was one of the Lord Chamberlain’s staff,’ explained Byard. ‘Yet he was concerned only with supplies, so he was directed mainly by the Purveyor. I told him he must confide in either of these — or go to the Keeper of the Palace himself.’

‘And what did he say?’ demanded the coroner. It was obvious that Basil had not spoken to the Purveyor, for that official knew nothing of it when told of the recovery of the body.

‘He said he would think about it, but was reluctant in case he was not believed or thought of as causing false rumours. And that was the last time I saw him!’ added Robin, bursting into tears again.

If there was anything that de Wolfe could not abide, it was weeping, especially if it came from a man. He jerked his head at Thomas to take the boy away and the soft-hearted clerk gently ushered him out of the room.

‘I’ll not call him at the inquest, for his evidence is not worth a bent penny,’ he growled. ‘And if there was any truth in what he said, there’s no point in alerting these mysterious conspirators, if they exist.’

He rose from his bench and stretched his long arms.

‘I’ve asked for an audience with our old friend Hubert Walter this morning. He’s back from his parish in Kent today, so I’m told.’

He was referring to the Chief Justiciar and Gwyn guessed that John’s attempt at levity about a parish concerned the Archbishop’s diocese in Canterbury.

‘He won’t be interested in a stabbed clerk, will he?’ objected Gwyn.

De Wolfe gave one of his rare grins. Hubert was effectively running England in the continued absence of King Richard and undoubtedly had more weighty matters on his mind.

‘No, but I want to bend his ear about these bastards in the city,’ he fretted. ‘If I’m supposed to be Coroner of the Verge, then we can’t have these arrogant sheriffs interfering. And what’s going to happen when the court goes out into the shires? Are the county coroners going to do the same?’

He pondered for a moment. ‘Mind you, if I was still Devon’s coroner, I’d be hopping mad if some outsider turned up and took my cases from me, just because the court is within a dozen miles of Exeter!’

Gwyn nodded sagely, knowing his master well enough to let him blow off steam. ‘When are you going to see him? That’s if you can find him again in this rabbit warren.’

They had ridden up to Westminster the previous year to see the Justiciar, when they needed a special dispensation against an injustice caused to a fellow Crusader. 1Gwyn recalled being led through innumerable passages to get to Hubert’s chamber, but he doubted he could find it again without help.

‘One of the Chancery clerks is coming to fetch me when he’s ready,’ replied John. ‘Until then, we’ll have a drop of the ale you’ve got hidden in that jar.’

It was the same austere chamber that they had sat in the previous year. Though as Chief Justiciar and Archbishop of Canterbury, he was the most powerful man in the country, Hubert Walter did not flaunt his power with rich robes and ostentatious jewels. A lean man with tonsured iron-grey hair, he wore a plain dark-red tunic, belted at the waist, the only sign of his ecclesiastical eminence being a small gold cross hanging by a thin chain around his neck.

In spite of the difference in their stations in life, he was a good friend of John’s. They had first met in the Holy Land, when Hubert, then Bishop of Salisbury, was made chaplain to the Crusaders after Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, had died before the walls of Acre. Like many bishops, Hubert was also a seasoned warrior and became the king’s chief of staff, later being left behind to organise the withdrawal after Richard sailed for home on his ill-fated journey. John had been one of the royal bodyguard that had accompanied him and had suffered the same shipwreck in the Adriatic that led to the Lionheart’s ill-advised attempt to reach England overland, with only a few remaining knights and squires as protection. De Wolfe still felt guilty about being away from the king’s side when Richard was captured near Vienna, though the Lionheart had since airily absolved John from any fault.

‘At least it’s not about Richard de Revelle this time!’ said the Justiciar with a smile. On the two last occasions that they had met in England, it was over problems with John’s brother-in-law, the former sheriff of Devon, who had repeatedly sailed too close to the wind of treason and corruption.