Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

John tapped Gwyn’s shoulder, distracting the big Cornishman from his delighted viewing of the mêlée. ‘Come on, let’s start for home. The fun’s all over here.’

As they trudged down the slope towards Wistman’s Wood, where they had left Odin and the brown mare, Gwyn began chuckling through his magnificent moustache. ‘Acland hates Knapman, Knapman hates Acland, they both hate the sheriff and the sheriff hates Knapman. Where will it all end, I wonder?’

The next day was Sunday and John de Wolfe decided to use it to placate the women in his life. This rare altruism was not due to pious motives because it was the Sabbath, but because he had no urgent business that day.

Though her reaction was hardly effusive, Matilda was pleased and surprised when he volunteered to accompany her to Mass that morning at St Olave’s. For years past, she had berated him about his lukewarm attitude to religion and only managed to nag him to church about once a month, so his spontaneous offer to escort her was unusual. In fact, the unChristian thought passed through her mind that he was either atoning for some recent sin against her of which she knew nothing — or was contemplating some transgression and salving his conscience in advance.

Her husband’s attitude to the Church was one of indifference, rather than the hostility professed by Gwyn. De Wolfe believed in God, as did everyone else, apart from a few crazed heretics. It was not something he thought about, it was a part of living, like eating and making love. But he had no interest in contemplating the tenets of Christianity or the complex rituals of the clergy, which he thought pointless mummery. He accepted that after death there was either heaven or hell, for that was what families and priests drummed into one from infancy. But his fate after he expired was a matter of indifference to him. Walking with Matilda down the high street towards her favourite church was no act of faith or worship to de Wolfe but a duty he bore with an inward sigh. The prospect of standing in a draughty hall for an hour while a fat and unctuous parish priest droned away in Latin, was one he bore with fortitude rather than devotion.

Matilda held his arm possessively as they walked across Carfoix to the top of Fore Street and the last hundred paces to St Olave’s, obscurely named after the first Christian king of Norway. She wore one of her best kirtles, a green brocade garment that covered her stocky form from neck to ankle, girdled with a plaited silk cord around her thickened waist. A good cloak in thick brown wool protected her from the keen breeze of early April, and under its hood, her hair was hidden beneath a stiff linen cover-chief. A white silk gorget was pinned up behind each ear, framing her face and draped down over her neck and bosom.

As a further sop to her approval, John wore his best grey tunic over long hose, cross-gartered to the knee. His black cloak was a great square of worsted, secured by one top corner being pushed through a large silver ring sewn over his left shoulder. His long hair was partly constrained by a tight-fitting grey linen helmet, over which he wore a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat.

As they approached the entrance to the little church, Matilda smiled archly at other worshippers clustered near the door, nodding graciously to some and tightening her grip on her husband’s arm, to emphasise her relationship to such an important law officer. As the others acknowledged her, de Wolfe nodded reluctantly to them and made his usual incoherent rumbling that passed for a greeting.

For the next hour, he stood uncomfortably on the cold flagstones of St Olave’s with his hat in his hand, shifting from foot to foot and getting a hard nudge from Matilda’s elbow when his restlessness became too apparent.

It was more of a relief than a devotional experience when it was time to join the few dozen other worshippers in shuffling up to the altar step to receive the holy sacrament. The corpulent priest, whom Matilda seemed to revere almost as much as the Pope, finished the service with a gabbled tirade in incomprehensible Latin and at last John escaped thankfully into the chill wind that blew up from the river.

Outside the door, many of the congregation lurked on the dried mire of the roadway for their Sunday gossip, which de Wolfe suspected was mainly to allow them to show off and compare each other’s Sabbath dress. Some of the men were more brightly attired than their wives and daughters, with tunics, surcoats and breeches in gaudy reds and greens. A few were affecting the bizarre footwear that the sheriff favoured, with pointed toes curling back to their ankles. De Wolfe was the odd one out, in his sombre grey and black, and stood morosely while Matilda chattered to several of the wives. He knew most of them by sight from previous pilgrimages to the church, though one heavily built woman of middle age was a stranger. He noticed her particularly, as she had a palsy of the mouth, with one side drooping and leaking spittle, which she constantly dabbed with a piece of cloth. She seemed quite fit otherwise and her affliction failed to curb her garrulity, as John stood hunched and impatient, waiting to detach his wife from the gossip.

Eventually the group dispersed and, anxious for his dinner, he strode away with Matilda almost running alongside him.

‘Why don’t you talk more to these people, John?’ she panted crossly. ‘Many have influence in the guilds and even with the canons. You’re no help at all in my efforts to make us a useful part of the county society.’

‘County society be damned!’ he growled. ‘I see enough of them in the courts and strutting about their manors.’

He realised that his wife must be getting over her recent melancholy, when her brother had fallen into disgrace and John himself had shamed her with his other women. Now she was becoming her old self again, nagging and pushing him to play the courtier. He tried to decide which he liked least, the scowling misery of her depression or the constant irritation of her prodding him into unwanted activity.

After a few more yards, Matilda spoke again. ‘That apothecary should be put in the stocks!’

De Wolfe looked down at her blankly. She was prone to uttering these obscure statements and he had no idea what she meant. ‘That poor lady with the twisted mouth — it’s getting no better after a month.’

He waited silently. She would make some sense eventually.

‘The new apothecary, that young fellow from Plymouth. He should be run out of the city.’

De Wolfe sighed as they turned into Martin’s Lane. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Pulled her tooth out, a lower one at the back, and afterwards the side of her face slipped down. Incompetent fool!’

The previous apothecary in the shop near St Olave’s had been hanged for murder some months back and this new one was his successor. Thankfully, palsies of the face did not come within a coroner’s jurisdiction and he was content to leave the competence of leeches to the city guild-masters. As he pushed open his front door for her to enter, he asked idly, ‘I’ve not seen her before. Who is she?’

‘Her name’s Madge — Madge Knapman.’

After the rumpus on Crockern Tor the previous day, de Wolfe felt a prickle of interest. The name was not uncommon around the moor, but there were only a few in Exeter. As Lucille appeared in the passage to take Matilda’s cloak, he asked casually, ‘What does her husband do, if she has one?’

‘Matthew Knapman? He’s a merchant. He deals in tin, I believe. He has a twin brother in an important way of business in that place you’ve been skulking this week — Chagford.’ She pushed open the door of the hall. ‘Matthew must be doing very well, too. That mantle and gown his wife was wearing this morning must have cost a few marks.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Some men don’t mind spending their money on their wives, not like others I could mention.’