Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

While the headless cadaver was being carried down from the edge of the moor on a makeshift bier of branches, Walter Knapman was having his evening meal at home in Chagford. He lived in the largest dwelling in the town, second only in size to the manor house just outside, where Hugh of Chagford, one of the Wibbery family, was the local lord.

Knapman’s residence was quite new, built of red sandstone brought from further south, rather than the grey moorstone used for most other masonry. It was on the track into town from Great Weeke, sitting behind a garden, half-way up the hill that led to the church. Instead of a hall, which normally filled most of a house, it had two rooms, one at each side of the front door. A wooden staircase led up to a large room under the thatch, partitioned into a bedroom and a solar. The latter had a window set into the pine end, which — wonder of wonders — had six panes of glass. That was almost unique in Devon: even Exeter cathedral had no glazing. Walter had recently imported these thick slabs of glass from Germany, where much of his tin was sent. Though he claimed it was to make his new wife’s solar more comfortable, everyone in Chagford thought it was to blazon his importance and affluence. Certainly Knapman indulged Joan, a pretty woman fifteen years his junior: she was his second wife, the widow of a tanner from Ashburton, who had died of a fever.

They sat now at meat, side by side at a square oaken table, with Joan’s mother Lucy opposite, next to the parish priest Paul Smithson, who had been invited to eat with them. Lucy, another widow, lived with them — part of the price Walter had reluctantly paid to persuade the delectable Joan to marry him five months earlier.

Naturally the conversation centred on the death of Henry of Tunnaford, and most of the talking was between Knapman and the priest, though the older woman chipped in now and then, after listening avidly to every word. With the possible exception of the coroner’s clerk, Thomas, she was probably the most inquisitive person in Devon.

Joan, whose dark hair peeped from her white linen cover-chief to frame an oval face with a look of the Madonna, said little and concentrated on eating the slivers of boiled fowl that her husband placed on the large trencher of bread that lay between them. As he talked, he leaned over and cut slices with his dagger from the carcass that sat on a wooden platter in the middle of the table. They had already demolished a large fish, and other bowls held fried onions, cabbage and turnips. Pottery mugs of ale and pewter wine cups sat before each of them. The household steward, a Saxon named Harold, fussed over them, replenishing their drink and relentlessly harrying the serving maid, who brought new dishes from the kitchen in the backyard.

‘What does Hugh Wibbery think of all this?’ rasped the priest, through a mouthful of fowl’s leg. He was a fleshy man, with a pallid face, from which two black button eyes peered out over flabby cheeks. Although he was not a monk, he was tonsured, but curiously with the Celtic type: he had shaved a broad band from his forehead over the crown to the nape of his neck.

‘He seems to lack any interest in it,’ answered Walter. ‘Henry was a freeman, and as he lived in Tunnaford his land was owned by de Prouz from Gidleigh, so he had no obligations of tenure to the lordship of Chagford. I paid his wages as a tinner, so Hugh has shrugged off the whole matter, as far as I can see.’

The priest grunted and dug the yellow pegs of his remaining teeth back into his drumstick, while Lucy Tanner took up the conversation. She was about fifty, but looked much older, worn by the bearing of twelve children, seven of whom had died in infancy. Her thin frame was enveloped in a dull tan kirtle that was too big for her, while lifeless, dry hair poked from beneath her tight-fitting helmet of fawn linen. However, her wizened appearance and creaking joints were balanced by a sharp, if waspish intelligence. ‘Our lord can hardly brush murder aside like that,’ she hissed. ‘It’s his manor and he has a responsibility for the safety of the town, whether the man was his tenant or not. If some madman is abroad, we might all be murdered in our beds.’

‘That’s hardly likely, Mother,’ rumbled Knapman. ‘This happened on the edge of the high moor, not in Chagford itself. We have a bailiff, a constable and Hugh’s house-guards to look after us.’

Lucy continued to mutter under her breath as she speared her food with a little knife, held awkwardly in fingers swollen with rheumy joints. The priest courteously kept their trencher loaded with food as, in spite of her infirmity, she had a healthy appetite.

So far, Joan had said hardly a word since they began eating. She kept her long-lashed eyes on the table, as if her mind was far away. Her husband had tried several times to coax her into the conversation, but she replied in monosyllables. He turned his attention back to Smithson, the incumbent of St Michael the Archangel, whose new church was largely a gift from Knapman himself. ‘Hugh has done the correct thing in sending for the coroner,’ he said. ‘Justin, his bailiff, went to Exeter at first light and I hear that Sir John de Wolfe has been up to the stream-works this evening. No doubt he will show himself here before long.’

Vicar Paul dropped his now stripped chicken bone under the table for the dogs and dug between his teeth with a dirty fingernail. ‘First time we’ve had a crowner come to Chagford. I’m still not clear what they’re supposed to do. Don’t you stannators settle all matters of law here?’

Walter Knapman was a prominent jurator in the tinners’ Great Court, though the priest had used the old word ‘stannator’. ‘We have no say in crimes against life or limb, Paul,’ he replied. ‘That’s where this new coroner business comes in.’

The priest stared at him. ‘In what way?’ he asked.

‘For years, the County, manor or burgess courts dealt with most offences, but now, especially since old King Henry’s reforms, the royal justices want to try all serious offences. Last September, the Chief Justiciar appointed these coroners, partly to sweep as much business into the King’s courts as possible. It’s all grist to the Treasury and King Richard never misses a chance to screw more money out of the people.’

Smithson ignored his host’s mildly treasonable remarks but continued to look doubtful. ‘So what’s that got to do with this coroner fellow?’ Along with the majority of the population, he was vague as to the function of John de Wolfe and his counterparts in every county.

‘As far as I can make out — and it’s only from gossip in the Great Court — he has to record every legal event and present them to the justices when they come around at the Eyre of Assize. Dead bodies, rapes, serious assaults, fires, burglaries — even wrecks and catches of the royal fish. He has to attend every execution, mutilation, sanctuary, abjuration and trial by ordeal or battle in case there’s any money or chattels to be picked up for the King.’

‘Must be a damned busy man, then, in a county the size of Devon,’ grunted the priest, hacking some more flesh from the fowl to lay on the widow’s side of the trencher.

The sharp eyes of his mother-in-law turned to Knapman. ‘What’s he like, this new crowner? I heard he’s a man of war, an old Crusader.’

After another uneasy sideways look at his silent wife, Knapman took a mouthful of wine before replying. ‘I’ve not met him, but they say he’s fair-minded, not like the bloody sheriff, who I’d trust no further than I could throw my horse. De Wolfe’s a real King’s man, I hear. He was part of Richard’s bodyguard both in the Holy Land and when he was captured in Vienna.’