Bernard Knight - The Tinner's corpse

They left their steeds with Andrew the farrier in Martin’s Lane, but instead of crossing the narrow street to his front door, de Wolfe led the clerk into Canons’ Row. Half-way along, under the shadow of the north tower, the coroner turned into the door of one of the narrow-fronted houses, bidding Thomas to wait outside.

A few moments later, he emerged, his face betraying nothing. ‘Your uncle wishes you to attend upon him inside,’ he said flatly. ‘He wishes to talk to you himself. This is your private business, Thomas, so I’ll leave you to it.’

Deathly pale, the clerk scurried into the house and de Wolfe stood for a moment, his brows furrowed in thought. Then, with a deep sigh, he turned and walked home to face Matilda.

A couple of hours later, the coroner sat alone in the Golden Hind, a tavern in the high street, with a pewter tankard on the table in front of him. He had found the Saracen a rough, noisome place, with indifferent ale and a foul-mouthed, surly landlord. Willem the Fleming ran a crude establishment, with too many of his customers on the wrong side of the law, and de Wolfe had been to that inn several times professionally. Apart from its insalubrious atmosphere, he felt that it was not a place for a senior law-officer to patronise.

The Golden Hind had been one of his local watering-places before he had taken up with the landlady of the Bush. His appearance there after such a long absence caused a few eyebrows to be lifted and a few comments were muttered behind hands: his rift with Nesta was now common knowledge throughout the close community of the city. It had certainly reached the ears of his wife, which was one reason why John had left the house so soon after their evening meal.

As soon as he had arrived at home after leaving Thomas, he knew that Matilda had something up her sleeve. She greeted him tersely, and he could tell from her tight-lipped half-smile and her smugness that she was about to come out with something to his disadvantage.

She kept it bottled up until almost the end of the meal, as if savouring the anticipation. Mary had brought in a dish of dried fruit, imported at considerable cost from southern France, and as she left with the remains of the trenchers, Matilda pounced. ‘Not going to your favourite drinking den tonight, John?’ she asked, with acid innocence.

‘I’ve travelled enough today,’ he responded sourly.

‘I hear that your Welsh whore has thrown you over for a younger man,’ she taunted, picking up an apricot. ‘What will you do now, I wonder. Trawl about the county for some other doxy, I suppose. Or will you be content to slink off to Dawlish? No doubt your dutiful visits to your mother will increase — the road to Stoke is convenient, I remember.’

John stayed sullenly mute: he knew that anything he said would be twisted against him.

Matilda carried on in the same vein for a time, her pug face almost gleeful as she squeezed the last drop of malicious pleasure from baiting him. ‘They say there’s no fool like an old fool! You’re long past acting the romantic lover, John — just as you’re past rushing around playing at soldiers. You’re forty, for goodness’ sake, and it’s time for you to behave sensibly and cease shaming me in the eyes of my respectable friends.’

Patience and forbearance were not prominent among de Wolfe’s virtues, and his bench squealed on the flagstones as he pushed it back abruptly to stand up. ‘Yes, your damned friends! The stuck-up merchant’s wives of Exeter! All you care about is your pride and showing off as the sheriff’s sister and the coroner’s wife! You don’t give a damn about me. I’d starve and go around in rags if it was left to you — thank Christ we’ve got Mary!’ He stamped towards the hall door, beckoning the expectant Brutus to follow him.

As he left, Matilda still wore the smug expression of a satisfied winner. ‘You’d better browse among the hawker’s stalls while you’re out. From what I hear, you’ll soon need to buy a wedding present for your alehouse wench!’ she shouted after him.

Furious at himself for being so easily incensed by his wife’s baiting, de Wolfe stalked blindly out into the lane and then the few yards to the high street, hardly caring where he was going. He stopped and looked up and down the crowded thoroughfare, bemused about what to do next. Matilda’s last remark had been particularly unsettling. He did not know whether it was embroidery to humiliate him or whether she had really heard that Nesta and Alan were betrothed. He could hardly storm into the Bush and demand to be told — and both of his usual sources of gossip were out of action: Gwyn was still in Chagford and Thomas preoccupied with his own misfortunes.

For want of anywhere else to go, he entered the Golden Hind, his dog close at his heels. The walls of the big room were lined with benches and there were a few tables and stools around the central fire-pit, where a heap of logs and peat burned slowly to keep the unseasonable April weather at bay.

De Wolfe sat at a table towards the back of the room, near the row of casks, wanting to be as far from the small street windows as possible, to remain inconspicuous in the dim light of evening. A serving wench brought him a quart jar of ale unasked: that or cider was all that was on offer. He sat for a long time in the shadows — Brutus lying patiently under the table — his mind churning over a series of problems, from Nesta’s infidelity to Fitz-Ivo’s incompetence, from Knapman’s murder to Thomas’s misery.

For a time, de Wolfe wondered whether he should abandon the coroner’s appointment and take off again with Gwyn to find some campaign they could join, well away from Exeter and its problems. He was getting old for fighting, but perhaps he had one more battle left in him. Few barons would hire a middle-aged mercenary, but he was sure that the King would welcome him. Richard was over the Channel, where he was fighting Philip of France, trying to repair the damage caused by Prince John’s incompetence and treachery.

But de Wolfe had to admit grudgingly that he enjoyed the coroner’s work, much against his first expectations. He had come to relish the freedom it gave him to ride the countryside with Gwyn and to uphold his sovereign’s interests against such scoundrels as his brother-in-law. However, this last week had soured his appetite for it, though he had insight enough to know that losing Nesta, Matilda’s venom and the depressing presence of Thomas were the root causes of his present disenchantment.

He sat brooding as the light failed outside, drinking a whole pennyworth of ale over an hour or so until he began to feel sleepy. The landlord, who, like every citizen of Exeter, knew Sir John de Wolfe by sight, began to wonder why his house had been favoured by the coroner after all this time. As his customer dozed over his mug, he wondered if he should offer to help him home, as he often did many of his other patrons who imbibed not wisely but too well.

However, his dilemma was resolved by an unexpected messenger to the Golden Hind. The door opened and a young man appeared in clerical garb, a long black tunic tied with a cord at the waist and a small wooden cross hanging from a leather thong around his neck. He stared around the room, squinting in the uneven dim light from the windows and the fire.

The landlord advanced on him: although many priests were fond of the drink and even more dubious pleasures to be found in alehouses, it was unusual to see one in a hostelry just round the corner from the cathedral precinct, especially without even a cloak to disguise his vestments.

‘What brings you here, vicar?’ he asked, correctly guessing that this was some canon’s vicar-choral.

‘I am urgently seeking the crowner. Someone in the street told me that they saw him come in here not long ago.’