Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

The Cornishman settled for the nearer demesne. ‘We’re not likely to get room by the house fire, with all these damned tinners congregating for the morning, so let’s try for a pile of hay in a barn.’

It was true that that day the moorland tracks had been busier than usual, with groups of men drifting towards Crockern Tor, almost four miles further on. No doubt a few men would be sleeping in every nearby hut and byre overnight.

They pulled their horses round and, with Thomas dragging disconsolately behind, made their way to the farmhouse, which hunkered low and forlorn under the loom of the moor, like a beast hibernating for the winter. Gwyn was about to dismount and bang at the weathered door when it opened and a man came out, dressed in a sacking tunic tucked up between his legs like a loincloth, secured by a wide belt. ‘In the smaller barn, men. The other’s full already.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of his outbuildings and vanished back into the house, from where the lowing of cattle and the grunt of pigs competed with the wailing of a child.

As the door slammed shut, de Wolfe chuckled sardonically. ‘The poor devil must get this influx every time the tinners have their Great Court. Probably needs to keep on the right side of them — they’re a powerful force on the moor.’

Six horses were tethered outside the smaller barn, which had wattled walls under a steep thatched roof. A small fire within a ring of stones was being tended outside by three men, who were boiling a pair of hares in a blackened pot. Tall doors, high enough to admit a loaded wagon, gave on to a large, almost empty space. As it was April, little of the winter stores of hay, straw and root crops remained.

Eight men were sitting or lying inside, and before long, John and Gwyn were deep in conversation with them. They were a companionable lot and reminded de Wolfe of his warrior days when, after marching or fighting, tale-telling and gossip rounded off the day over food and drink. Thomas sat apart, morose and silent, still trying to summon up the courage to broach with his master the subject of his reinstatement. But tonight was not the best time, he decided. The coroner and his henchman were lolling in the remaining hay eating their bread, cheese and meat and drinking raw cider and stale ale from the leather bottles and stone crocks that were passed from hand to hand.

For the first time that day John de Wolfe felt relaxed. Although when the opportunity presented he was an enthusiastic womaniser, he also enjoyed the company of men such as these. They were rugged, strong fellows who said what they thought and had none of the devious conceits of so many noblemen and merchants. These tinners were more like the soldiers with whom he had spent so many years.

Gwyn, an equally seasoned warrior, also revelled in their company, and as darkness deepened in the barn, they swapped tales of adventure and daring, from floods in the stream-works to attacks from outlaws on the high moor, the slaughter outside Acre or the pursuit of Irish tribesmen beyond Wexford. Eventually the only illumination came from the fire, which still flamed outside the doors. No lights could be brought into the barn for fear they might set the hay and thatch ablaze. As they sat in the gloom, the talk turned to the Great Court on Crockern Tor in the morning.

‘How often are these held?’ asked Gwyn, mopping the sour cider from his moustache.

‘Whenever there’s business to settle, but certainly more than twice each year,’ answered a hulk of a man from Tavistock. ‘Tomorrow there are a few grave matters to chew over and we have had several such meetings this past winter.’

‘What’s the main concern, then?’ asked the coroner.

‘The business of the Lord Warden,’ cut in another tinner. ‘We want someone of our own choice, and not to have the sheriff foisted on us. Especially when it’s this bastard we’ve got now.’

This was music to John’s ears and he wanted to know more. ‘What difference would it make, then?’

‘Our own man would understand tinning and tinners, and not be dunning us for extra taxes all the time. We’re sure that de Revelle is creaming off some of the coinage that should go to the King but we can’t prove it.’

The man from Tavistock spat towards the glowing fire. ‘Walter Knapman has been pressing for an elected Warden these past three years, but he’s got nowhere. At the meeting tomorrow we will draw up a plan to force a change. We’ll petition the Chancellor or Chief Justiciar or the King himself, if need be.’

‘Paying these crippling taxes is bad enough, but we wouldn’t mind so much if we knew the money went to the King. Having part of it stolen by the officials is what irks us,’ said a third tinner.

This was all new to John — he had always known that the tinners were a breed apart, but he had not realised that they were taxed so heavily and apparently unjustly. ‘How are the taxes calculated? he asked.

‘We have to take our raw ingots to one of the three Stannary towns to be assayed and stamped — “coinage” we call it. A tax is paid on that first coinage. Then the crude metal must go to Exeter to be resmelted and another tax is taken.’

‘Thirty silver pence a thousand-weight, that’s the first tax,’ muttered the Tavistock man.

‘How much is a thousand-weight?’ asked John.

‘Twelve hundred pounds burden,’ replied the man. ‘After the second smelting in Exeter, there’s the extra tax of a mark per thousand-weight!’

‘More than five times as much?’ queried Gwyn, outraged.

‘Yes, though I admit the metal’s purer then and commands a higher price per bar.’

A cadaverous fellow seen dimly in the background shouted across, ‘It’s the Warden who fixes the rate — and I suspect he fixes some of the registry clerks to falsify the weighing. Who’s to say what the rate should be, except the Warden? And he is the sheriff, with a whip hand to control everything that happens in the county.’

The discussion became more acrimonious as the cider flowed. De Wolfe gathered that most of the tinners felt they were being exploited by a Lord Warden who cared little for their industry but was only concerned with filling his own purse by extorting as much coinage from them as he could. This matched John’s experience of his brother-in-law, but he had not appreciated until now that the sheriff had available to him this extra avenue of corruption. ‘So, in this, Walter Knapman is your champion, is he?’ he asked.

‘He’s the main figure in the play, Crowner,’ answered the Tavistock man. ‘He’s the one we want for Warden, if we could only get shot of de Revelle.’

Privately, de Wolfe thought this unlikely: where money was concerned, the sheriff would hang on like a dog at a bull-baiting. He also felt that if Walter Knapman persisted in trying to unseat de Revelle, he had better watch his step.

‘What else is to be talked of tomorrow?’ enquired Gwyn.

‘The killing of poor Henry of Tunnaford. We have had several incidents these past months, none fatal until now. But someone is trying to upset our streaming. Sluices have been broken and one blowing-house was deliberately burned down. We have to find out who’s behind it, if we can.’

As this was why de Wolfe was attending the Great Court, he kept the talk going on this theme. ‘This Saxon, old Aethelfrith they speak of. Could he be behind it?’

A sudden flare from the fire showed the tinners looking at each other, each seeking their fellows’ opinion.

‘It could be. He’s a mad old devil,’ said one man. ‘Hates all Normans — in fact, I think he hates everyone on earth, God forgive him. But I didn’t think he would kill for it.’

‘What’s the cause of his anger, then?’ asked Gwyn.