Bernard Knight: Crowner Royal

‘Not half as good as Mary’s, but it will have to do us for now,’ grunted John de Wolfe, looking down into a wooden bowl in which a few lumps of meat floated in a pallid stew. Across the small table, Gwyn of Polruan was already slurping his food from a horn spoon, alternately dipping a hunk of barley bread into the liquid.

‘It’s not too bad, Crowner! At least it’s piping hot, though I don’t know that we need that on a day like this.’

He stopped eating momentarily to take a deep swallow from a quart pot of ale and wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. It was just past noon and the sun was at its highest, pouring down its stifling radiance on the lower valley of the Thames.

‘I wonder what my wife’s doing now?’ he added pensively. ‘Pouring better ale than this for her customers in the Bush, no doubt!’

His comment emphasised the nostalgic mood that both men were in at that moment. Though they were sitting in a relatively decent house in Westminster, their thoughts were a couple of hundred miles away. Sir John was contemplating his old dog in Exeter, his mistress in Dawlish and his former mistress now decamped back to her home in South Wales. Given the food situation, he also had thoughts to spare for his excellent cook Mary, who had once been another of his paramours. The only person for whom he had no nostalgia was his wife Matilda, who was sulking in self-imposed exile in a Devonshire convent.

‘Still, I’m glad we’re out of that bloody palace,’ persisted the big Cornishman. ‘The airs and graces of that lot got right up my nose!’

John grunted, his favourite form of response. ‘Thomas seems to enjoy it, though he always loved being with all those damned clerks and priests. But I agree, it’s easier being in our own dwelling.’ He had rented the cottage to get away from the stifling atmosphere of the palace staff quarters where they had spent the first week.

They finished up their stew and waited for Osanna to waddle in and take away their bowls to the kitchen hut in the backyard. The wife of their obsequious landlord Aedwulf, Osanna was an immensely fat woman who did the cooking, washing and perfunctory cleaning of the house in Long Ditch.

As they sat on their stools in expectation of the next course, John went over yet again in his mind the events of the past two months. He was not all that happy with what had taken place, but he consoled himself with the thought that he had had no choice. As a knight of the Crown, he had little option but to obey orders — especially when they came directly from the mouth of his king! For more than eighteen months, he had been the coroner for Devon, but Richard the Lionheart in his wisdom had recently decided that he needed a coroner dedicated to the English court, similar to the one that existed in his Normandy capital of Rouen. Given the past association of de Wolfe with the king and his chief minister Hubert Walter, John had been the obvious choice, so now here he was in Westminster, like it or not.

The move had coincided with an upheaval in his private life, as his mistress Nesta had despaired of any future for them together and gone home to Wales to get married. His surly wife Matilda, equally exasperated by his infidelities, had once again taken herself to a nunnery and this time seemed determined to stay there. To round off the situation, he had resumed his affair with an old flame, Hilda of Dawlish, though distance now seemed to have frustrated this particular liaison.

Gwyn’s deep voice broke through his reverie.

‘We could do with a couple of good murders or a rape to cheer us up, Crowner!’ he boomed, only half in jest. ‘Too damned quiet in this holy village.’

He was referring to the small town of Westminster, which was a unique enclave ruled by the abbot, William Postard. Though geographically part of the county of Middlesex, it lay outside its jurisdiction on both religious and political grounds, as it contained both the great abbey of Edward the Confessor and the Royal Palace, the residence of the Norman kings since William the Conqueror had moved out of the Great Tower.

De Wolfe grunted his agreement, as the caseload so far had been derisory compared with the number they had dealt with across the large county of Devon. He wondered again why the king had been so insistent on having a ‘Coroner of the Verge’, when there seemed so little business for him.

Osanna came in with a platter containing a boiled salmon, which the two men looked at with resignation. It was Tuesday, not a Friday fish day and they had already had salmon twice in the past week. The fish was so plentiful in the Thames and its tributaries that it appeared on the menu with depressing regularity. However, they were hungry and there were buttered carrots and onions to go with it, as well as more fresh bread.

‘I’ve got eels for tomorrow, you’ll like those!’ she announced cheerfully, ignoring the glowering look from the coroner. Her accented English was strange after the West Country dialect, but he understood her well enough to be depressed by the prospect of yet another meal dredged from the river.

‘A nice leg of mutton or a joint of beef wouldn’t come amiss!’ grumbled Gwyn, as he filtered the last of his stew through the luxuriant ginger moustache that hung down both sides of his mouth, the colour matching the unruly mop of hair on his head. The Cornishman was huge, both in height and width, with a prominent red nose and pair of twinkling blue eyes.

His colouring was in marked contrast to that of his lean master, who though as tall as Gwyn, exuded blackness, from the jet of his long, swept-back hair to the stubble on his gaunt cheeks. Heavy eyebrows of the same hue overhung deep-set eyes, between which was a hooked nose that gave him the menacing appearance of a predatory hawk. To complete this sombre appearance, his long tunics and surcoats were always black or grey. In campaigns in Ireland, France and the Holy Land, the troops had known him as ‘Black John’, though this was partly from the grim moods that could assail him when things went wrong.

When they had finished their meal, the two men buckled on their sword belts and left their rented house, one of several two-storey thatched cottages facing a muddy channel known as the Long Ditch, which drained into a stream called the Clowson Brook. At the southern end, the track joined the ominously named Thieving Lane, which curved around the landward side of the abbey towards the river. Here the main gates to the abbey and the palace stood together, at the point where King Street formed the start of the ‘Royal Way’ which led along the river towards the bustling city of London, almost two miles away.

The great church of Edward the Confessor loomed above them on their right as they walked slowly towards the palace, where government administration was now largely centred, having been gradually transferred from the Saxon capital of Winchester. The heat was intense and dust lifted from the road as they walked. They took care to keep clear of the central stone-edged gully which was filled with a drying slurry of sewage and rubbish, now stinking in the summer sun.

The north side of the lane was lined with small houses and cottages, built either of planks or wattle-and-daub, mostly with roofs of thatch or wooden shingles. One or two better dwellings were stone-built, with tiled roofs which were less hazardous than straw or reeds, which had caused many disastrous town fires.

The heat was keeping some people indoors, but many remained on the streets. The busiest time was the early morning market, when people were out buying their food for the day, but there were still some haggling at the stalls that sold a whole range of goods. Handcarts and barrows trundled up and down and Gwyn and the coroner had to stand aside as a flock of goats were driven past on their way to the water meadows that lay beyond Tothill Street.