Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

‘Can he be found for questioning?’

‘Aethelfrith is as elusive as the wind. A thousand men could comb the moor and never see a hair of him, if he chose to keep low.’

De Wolfe abandoned the problem and turned to the old altar slab. He motioned to Gwyn to remove the sheet from the body. There was a gasp as the corpse was revealed. Though injury and sudden death were far from unusual, the appearance of this cadaver was particularly gruesome. The crowd gave a hiss of astonishment, and Henry’s widow wailed in anguish as she turned away to sob into her shawl. Her son and her sisters clustered around her to shield her from the sight of her mutilated husband. De Wolfe was neither sadistic nor unfeeling, but public display of the deceased was part of the legal ritual of the inquest and he had had no option but to reveal the horrible circumstances of the death.

‘The jury will draw near,’ boomed Gwyn, well versed in the conduct of the inquest. He shepherded the score of men and boys around the bier so that the coroner could conduct the official viewing of the corpse.

‘Clerk, record that the King’s coroner and the jury have inspected the decedent,’ grated de Wolfe, as he went to the end of the altar stone and began demonstrating as if he was giving a lecture in a School of Physic.

‘You will see that the neck has been severed completely. There is a ragged line of skin all the way around.’ He pointed with his fingers at the gory mess that had dried and blackened in the two days since death. ‘The edges of the wound, though irregular, have been quite sharply cut.’

He picked up the edge of the skin between thumb and forefinger and stretched out the serrations, now stiffened and curled from drying. ‘This means that a sharp weapon was used — but not too sharp as there is roughening and bruising along the edges. See there.’

The jury did not particularly wish to see, but they nodded and gaped to satisfy the King’s crowner.

‘So something with a moderately good edge, but not as good as a well-honed dagger, was used. Yet it was sharper than the edge of a spade. A good sharp axe would suffice, I suspect.’

John de Wolfe prided himself on his expertise concerning violence and assault. After more than two decades on a score of battlefields, he had seen every conceivable variety of maiming and death. He motioned to Gwyn, who deftly flicked the sheet back over the remains. ‘There is no more that can be done at present,’ he said. ‘I will adjourn these proceedings but if further information is obtained then they may resume. At present, my verdict is that the deceased was Henry, a tinner of Tunnaford, and that he was of Norman blood. He died of malignant violence on the fourth day of April in the sixth year of the reign of our blessed King Richard, and the manner of his death was murder by a person or persons as yet unknown.’

He glowered around the ranks of silent onlookers then dropped his gaze to the front row of jurors. ‘If anyone now knows — or comes to know — anything further about this outrage, then they must inform the constable, the bailiff or myself on pain of the most dire penalties if they fail so to do.’

Swirling his grey cloak around his lean body, de Wolfe loped away towards the gate, leaving the mutilated corpse to the grieving family and the vicar of St Michael the Archangel.

By noon, the trio that made up the coroner’s team were splashing their way through the ford across the Exe, just outside Exeter’s West Gate. The unfinished stone bridge was on their left and the rickety old wooden footbridge to their right, both straddling the marshy flats of Exe Island, criss-crossed by muddy ditches.

John de Wolfe and Gwyn of Polruan were riding side by side, and as their mounts climbed the sloping bank on the city side of the river, de Wolfe broke a long silence. ‘What’s wrong with Thomas today? He looks as if he’s going to his own hanging, not his dinner.’

Gwyn turned his head to look back at the little clerk, sitting forlornly on his old pony. ‘Walking alongside that fat priest this morning has made him worse,’ grunted the Cornishman, as they jogged up to the city gate.

‘Worse than what?’ asked John, who could hardly claim sensitivity among his virtues.

‘Thomas is missing his vocation more than ever, poor little sod. He’s desperate to become a proper servant of God again — though why anyone should want to waste their life like that is beyond me.’ In all the years that John had spent in his henchman’s company, he had yet to discover why Gwyn had such an antipathy to the Church.

‘The man should be thankful that he’s still alive, after that rape affair in Winchester,’ grated de Wolfe unsympathetically. ‘If the sheriff had got him, instead of the cathedral proctors, he’d have been hanged for sure.’

‘The other day, he told me he wished he had been hanged,’ replied Gwyn. ‘Living in the canon’s house in the cathedral close keeps reminding him of what he’s lost, I suppose.’

‘Well, don’t let him cut his throat, will you? Miserable little drab that he is, he’s too valuable to me as a clerk. And that reminds me,’ he added cryptically.

Gwyn looked at his master enquiringly. ‘Reminds you of what?’

‘A coroner’s clerk. I’ve got to meet that damned fool Theobald Fitz-Ivo at Rougemont this afternoon. The sheriff wants him elected by the Shire Court tomorrow, God help us!’ With that, the coroner became as glumly silent as Thomas. They climbed the slope of Fore Street to the central crossing of the city at Carfoix, and by the time they passed along the high street to where Martin’s Lane turned off on the right, John’s mood had recovered enough for him to remind the departing Gwyn to be back at the castle by the time of the Vespers bell, around the third hour after noon.

Gwyn carried straight on, aiming for his family’s hut in St Sidwell’s, just outside the East Gate, while de Wolfe turned into the lane, followed by his despondent clerk. He dismounted a few yards further on, and Andrew the farrier ran out from his stables to take charge of Odin.

‘See that the inquest is copied on to another roll for the justices,’ de Wolfe ordered Thomas, who was passing by on his pony. The clerk managed a nod in reply — strangely different from his usual eager, almost obsequious acknowledgement of his master’s instructions.

De Wolfe stood in the narrow lane for a moment, looking in puzzlement after the plodding horse, but his distraction was short-lived. An all-too-familiar voice grated in his ear. ‘Have you nothing better to do than stare after that lop-sided pervert, John?’

Matilda had appeared from behind him, enveloped in a dark grey cloak and hood, her white cover-chief and wimple surrounding her face. She looked so much like a nun that he wondered briefly if some special religious fervour was affecting her as well as his clerk. Then he guessed that she had just come from her habitual devotions in the church of St Olave in Fore Street.

‘You passed us on the high street without a word,’ she complained, gesturing to the obnoxious Lucille, who always reminded de Wolfe of a skinny rabbit, with her large ears and protruding teeth.

‘In that press of people, you could hardly expect me to recognise you from the back, wrapped in that great mantle,’ muttered her husband.

Matilda waddled past him to their front door. ‘You’d easily recognise certain other wenches, with or without their clothes,’ she spat out.

To John’s relief, both women disappeared down the side passage to the backyard to take the outside stairs up to Matilda’s solar. He reckoned that he had half an hour to sit in peace by his hearth and drink a quart of ale, while Lucille fussed over his wife’s clothes and primped her hair.