Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries) (13 page)

‘Good country for an ambush,’ he grunted to Ranulf, as he scanned the thickets and bushes which grew right to the edge of the narrow road. ‘Though I doubt any ragged-arsed outlaws would wish to try anything on a squadron of men-at-arms.’

‘And we’ve nothing to steal, even if they did!’ replied the marshal, cheerfully. ‘Coming back might be a different matter, though no one will know what we’ve got in our cart.’

Privately, de Wolfe doubted that, being well aware of the rapid spread of news by word of mouth, especially in towns as important as Winchester. He wagered that half the city would know what was being hauled out of the castle before they got to the other end of the high street. Still, he had little fear of them being attacked, unless Prince John had suddenly decided to make a play for the Crown and brought the barons sympathetic to his cause with their levies. Even this was highly unlikely, as John, Count of Mortain, had been lying low lately, following the crushing defeat of his rebellion two years earlier.

These thoughts occupied John’s mind as they trotted on towards the old capital of England, though his ruminations wandered once again to the women in his life – or in the case of Nesta,
out
of his life. Once again, he decided to get down to Exeter as soon as he could, to try to discover something of Matilda’s intentions. He suspected that she was deliberately keeping him in the dark, though he had done nothing particularly heinous lately – one of her main grievances had been removed when Nesta had gone off to Chepstow to be married.

In the early evening, as the sun was at last dipping towards the western horizon, they came over a rise and saw the city of Winchester below them, its castle and the cathedral the prominent points within the walls.

Another half-hour saw them clattering through the eastern gate and soon they had dismounted in the outer bailey of the castle, their tired horses being led away by a dozen grooms and ostlers who were harried into activity by the castle marshal. Gwyn decided to go with the sergeant and his men to find a meal, a game of dice and eventually a bed in the barracks. Thomas was eager to seek out old friends in the abbey and said that he would sleep in the dorter there, though John knew that he would be up half the night attending the offices that began with Matins at midnight.

John and the two under-marshals sought out the Constable, who was the custodian of the royal fortress. Rufus de Longby was an elderly knight, who received them courteously and arranged for accommodation on the upper floor of the keep, as well as accompanying them to eat in the main hall.

‘The officials from the Exchequer will not be here until morning,’ he explained. ‘But your chests will be as safe in the undercroft as the royal treasure has been these past few hundred years!’ His weak humour passed over John’s head.

‘The undercroft? Is that a secure place?’ growled the coroner, comparing it with the basement beneath the keep in Exeter’s Rougemont Castle, which was little more than a temporary gaol and storage area.

‘Wait until you see our undercroft,’ boasted de Longby. ‘It’s the cellar beneath one of the gatehouse towers and would take an army to breach it.’

Soon after dawn next morning, de Wolfe was able to confirm the Constable’s claim. After a breakfast of oat gruel, salt bacon and bread and cheese, they assembled in the outer bailey near the gatehouse, where the men-at-arms were already waiting. A covered four-wheel cart was standing by, with a sturdy horse waiting patiently between the shafts. Another stood in front of it, attached by traces, ready to add its strength to hauling the wagon.

Ranulf, who had carried out this task several times before, introduced John to Matthew de la Pole, the resident agent of the Exchequer, a portly manor-lord from Hampshire. De Wolfe thought him a pompous man, full of his own importance. Two cowed-looking clerks stood behind him, clutching some parchments.

‘You have the document of authorisation, I trust?’ snapped de la Pole, holding out a beringed hand to the coroner.

William Aubrey handed over the slim roll given him by the Keeper of Westminster, which had an impressive seal of red wax dangling from it. De la Pole, who was obviously as illiterate as de Wolfe, unrolled it and pretended to read the short instruction, then handed it to one of his clerks. This official read out in a nasal voice the standard words of release of two chests ‘into the care of Sir John de Wolfe, presently Coroner of the Verge’.

John began to realise that this made him totally responsible for the safety and integrity of the treasure and wondered what the penalty would be for any mishap. It would probably cost him his neck.

Matthew de la Pole seemed to relax a little and waved a hand towards the massive tower that formed the left side of the gatehouse. ‘Let’s get rid of these damned boxes, then. They are the last ones and I’ll be glad to see the back of them!’

Leaving Gwyn and Thomas with the soldiers, the coroner and the two marshals followed the baron and the Constable into the guardroom alongside the portcullis and then through a door, unlocked for them by one of the clerks. This led into the base of the tower, which had walls at least ten feet thick. The lower chamber at ground level was empty, but had a planked floor in which there was a central trapdoor.

‘Naturally, the guardroom is manned by at least four men at all times,’ explained de Longby. ‘No one can get in here without authorisation – then there are those to contend with!’ He pointed to a pair of massive padlocks, securing two iron bars hinged across the trapdoor. Matthew snapped his fingers at his other clerk, who came forward with a ring carrying two large keys, with which he opened the locks and threw back the bars with a clang.

Ranulf touched William Aubrey’s arm and motioned him forward to help the clerk raise the heavy trapdoor by means of two iron rings. With an effort, they lifted it to one side, just as the Constable gave a piercing blast on a whistle. Immediately, the sergeant-at-arms came in with four men, two carrying a wooden ladder, the other horn lanterns. Under the direction of their sergeant, the ladder was lowered into the hole and the two lantern men clambered down. John went to the edge of the trap and peered into a bare undercroft, a dank and forbidding pit, with a damp earthen floor, well below ground level.

The other soldiers had ropes, which they lowered through the opening and amid much shouting of orders, first one, then another large chest was hauled up and placed on the wooden floor. They were of similar size, about four feet long, but one was of darker oak and had three iron bands around it, as opposed to the two on the second chest. Each had two massive metal hasps with padlocks on each.

‘The darker box contains the coin, the other one is a mixture of precious objects,’ declared de la Pole. He gestured briskly at one of his clerks, who proffered another roll of parchment, with three different seals of red wax dangling from it by red tape.

‘This is an inventory made yesterday by myself and two other officials of the Exchequer, signed with our marks and our seals.’

He handed the roll to John. ‘Now it’s your problem, sir! When you deliver this roll to the Constable of the Great Tower and the Treasury officials there, they will recheck the contents of the chests with this manifest. I hope for your sake that they agree!’

He said this with a hint of malice, as if he relished the thought of there being some fatal discrepancy.

Ranulf looked puzzled. ‘I assumed that we were taking the chests to Westminster?’ he said to de la Pole. The Exchequer official shook his head. ‘Not this time, the treasure is urgently needed in Rouen, so it will go to the nearest place for shipment from the port of London. So make sure it gets there safely!’

‘What about the keys?’ said John gruffly, anxious to get away from this insolent fellow. For answer, Matthew turned again to his senior clerk and held out his hand. The subdued cleric scrabbled in the scrip on his belt and produced two more pairs of steel keys, each pair on a ring.

‘These are for the locks on both chests,’ he snapped. ‘Normally, they are separated and one is held by myself, the other by another member of the Exchequer. I presume the same will happen in London, but that’s their affair!’

As John took the large and slightly rusty keys, de la Pole offered one last barbed comment.

‘They are now your responsibility, de Wolfe! Let them out of your sight at your peril!’

With that, he sailed from the chamber, his two clerks hurrying after him like a pair of chastened hounds at their master’s heels.

As de Wolfe had forecast, their journey back was painfully slow. Though the two chests were heavy, the pair of horses had no difficulty in pulling the cart, especially as the road was free from the mud that could bog the wheels down in thick mire. But the beasts could do no better than a steady walking pace, and on the first day they covered a bare sixteen miles along the London road. This took them as far as Alton, where the soldiers commandeered a tithe barn to sleep in, while the three knights and Thomas battened upon the local manor-lord for hospitality. He was not all that pleased to see them, but with ill-grace gave them a meal and let them sleep on some straw mattresses in his hall.

Next day they set out earlier and rode until late so that they could reach Guildford again, where the castle was obliged to accommodate the official procession. The third day was a disappointment, as although Ranulf had hoped to get as far as Kingston, they did not even make it as far as Esher. One of the wheel-hubs cracked and they came to a halt in the middle of a forest. This failure was a well-known problem and they carried a spare wheel lashed to the tailboard, but it meant almost two hours’ delay. The men-at-arms had to cut down a sapling from the adjacent woods and use it to lever up the heavy cart. Then stones and fallen wood had to be collected and used to prop up the wagon, so that the errant wheel could be removed and replaced with the spare.

That part of Surrey was covered by dense forest and villages were few and far between. By late evening, everyone was tired and fractious, so when they reached a small hamlet, John and his companions decided they had travelled far enough.

‘God’s guts! Where can we sleep here?’ demanded Gwyn, looking around at the dozen mean huts that made up the settlement. There was no manor house, but it had a tiny church, a primitive structure of wattle-and-daub with a vestigial bell tower at one end of the tattered thatched roof. Inside the churchyard was a hut that presumably did service as the priest’s dwelling.

‘Go and see what your holy colleague can suggest,’ said de Wolfe to Thomas, as the weary men and wearier horses stopped on the road outside. The little clerk trotted off and soon came back with a wizened man, dressed in a short smock and cross-gartered breeches. Though he looked like a hedger or a ditcher, Thomas presented him as the parish priest, proven by his shaven scalp.

‘Father Aedan says that you are welcome to use his church to shelter in overnight.’

The bent old man, his remaining hair showing enough blond strands to mark him as a Saxon, had a surprisingly sweet smile.

‘There are no palliasses, but it is a warm night and no doubt your soldiers are used to sleeping on the floor,’ he said, exposing toothless gums behind his sunken lips. ‘For you gentlemen, maybe you would prefer the luxury of a pile of hay in the barn on the other side of the church.’

John muttered his thanks, but Ranulf, who had a smoother tongue than the bluff coroner, was more fulsome in his appreciation.

‘That is a very Christian gesture, father! We are tired and hungry, having been on the king’s business these past three days.’

‘I can do little about your hunger, sir, this is a poor and insignificant village. There is an alehouse, but I doubt the widow who runs it could provide for more than a score of men.’

In spite of the priest’s misgivings, after leaving William Aubrey to organise the guarding of the wagon and the settlement of the men-at-arms, de Wolfe and Ranulf walked a little further down the track to seek the alehouse.

‘This really is a dismal village,’ said Ranulf, looking around in the gathering dusk at the few shacks spread along the road. Most were built of cob, a mixture of lime, dung and bracken, spread on wattle panels. One or two were dry-walled stone, but none had more than one room. All were steeply thatched, the state of the straw or reeds varying from fairly new to green disintegration, some with actual grass or weeds growing on their roofs. The alehouse proved to be almost indistinguishable from the other crofts, though a little longer from end to crumbling end. The tattered bush hanging over the door was the universal sign of a tavern and the two knights bent their heads to enter.

A frightened-looking woman appeared from behind a rickety table, apprehensive at the sudden arrival of two tall men of military appearance. Again Ranulf took the lead in reassuring the ale-wife of their good intentions.

‘We are a force of soldiers on our way to London, good woman,’ he said. ‘We are staying in the churchyard for the night, but are seeking any food and drink that might be available.’

On learning of their numbers, the widow shook her head. ‘I might have enough ale in my crocks to give you a pint apiece, sir, but as for food, there is hardly enough bread in the whole village to feed twenty-five men!’

A man sitting on a bench against the wall got up and came over to them, touching his forehead in salute. ‘I killed a pig this morning, sirs, it’s hanging fresh in my croft. I’d sell it for a shilling, if you wanted to roast it.’