Fear in the Forest (25 page)

‘He’s a senior priest from west of Exeter, which fits with the vague hint I had from your uncle. Though there’s plenty of them about.’

‘But worth looking into, if he has dealings with this horse-dealer, given it’s the same fellow as the one in the alehouse,’ recommended Gwyn.

‘I’ll ask about him, too,’ ruminated the coroner. ‘Ralph Morin is the one to talk to about horses. He has to buy them for the garrison.’

They chewed over the scanty information for a few more minutes, but failed to distil anything further from it. When the cider was finished, for which Thomas’s more fastidious palate was thankful, they went their various ways and John returned to his house in Martin’s Lane.

There was no one in the hall when he put his head around the screens, and when he climbed the stairs to the solar John found that empty as well. When Matilda went to her cousin’s house, she occasionally stayed until late – and sometimes, when she was particularly annoyed with him, she stayed the night without bothering to let him know. He was therefore not much concerned at her absence and decided to go straight down to the Bush to see Nesta and have something to eat.

As he clattered down the steep steps into the yard, Mary came out of her kitchen shed a few yards away and stood waiting with her arms folded in what struck John as a rather belligerent attitude.

‘She’s gone, you know!’ she said challengingly.

John stopped on the last step and stared at his maid.

‘I know that! Is she at church or at her cousin’s?’

‘Neither – I told you, she’s gone. This time for good, she said!’

He took Mary by the arm and led her back into her hut, pushing her gently down on to a stool, while he stood towering over her.

‘What’s all this about? How can she have gone – and where?’

The dark-haired maid, usually on his side against his abrasive wife, looked up accusingly. John had the feeling that she was siding with all the women.

‘You’ve really done it this time, Sir Crowner!’ Mary only used that half-cynical title when she was annoyed with him. ‘Your lady wife has discovered that you’ve got Nesta with child – and she’s up and left you.’

De Wolfe groaned. It had to happen sooner or later, but he had hoped to put off the evil hour a little longer. Nesta was not even showing her pregnancy yet.

‘She’ll be back,’ he said half-heartedly. ‘She’s taken umbrage many times before and gone to her cousin for a few days or so.’

Mary shook her head with disconcerting assurance. ‘Not this time! She’s taken herself to Polsloe and says she’s going to stay there for the rest of her life.’

John’s heart leapt in his chest. ‘The priory? I can’t believe it!’

There was mixed doubt and elation in his voice. This was something he had hoped for and even fantasised about for ages. He had been intending to ask his archdeacon friend whether Matilda taking the veil was equivalent to an annulment of his marriage, as this was the only way he could see himself ever being free of her, short of her death, for which he had never wished.

Mary was still glaring at him, from solidarity with all wronged women, but he pressed on with eager questions.

‘How did she find out? No one knows except a few at the Bush – and you. When did all this happen?’

Rapidly, he drew the story from his cook-maid, and once again it transpired that he had his brother-in-law to thank for stabbing him in the back. Richard de Revelle had turned up at the house the previous morning, and within a minute of being closeted with his sister in the hall there had been an outburst of yelling from Matilda. This was soon followed by a slamming of doors as she swept up to the solar, the sheriff letting himself out of the house with a satisfied smirk on his face.

‘I can’t think how he found out, damn him!’ muttered John, but Mary, familiar with the gossip network that connected every alehouse, shop and doorstep in the city, was in no doubt.

‘The sheriff has informants everywhere – and it was not that much of a secret, anyway. I heard of it from the pastry-shop man who drinks in the Bush, even before you told me.’

She continued her tale of Matilda’s departure. It seemed that his wife had screamed at her maid Lucille to pack some clothes into a bag and then go to the high street to order a two-horse litter. Within an hour, Matilda appeared, still in a towering rage and dressed in her best black kirtle with a white wimple and gorget. With a weeping Lucille trailing behind, lugging a large bag, she proceeded up to the corner of the lane, where a litter was waiting. They vanished, and Mary had heard nothing of them since.

John listened in silence. Once the first surge of hope had passed, he became more realistic and had grave doubts about Matilda really having left for good. After her occasional flounces to stay with her cousin – and once even six weeks away at her distant de Revelle relatives in Normandy – she always came home when her temper cooled. He supposed he had better take himself to Polsloe to see what the true situation was and bring her back, if the worst of her passion had subsided. But first he was going down to see Nesta and talk it over with her.

‘What about me, how do I fare in this?’ demanded Mary, as he started to leave. De Wolfe stared at her, then slid an arm reassuringly around her shoulders.

‘You stay right where you are, good girl! You’re almost a wife to me yourself. You feed me, clothe me, clean my house and tell me when to wash and shave. How could I ever do without you?’

She looked up at him with the suspicion of a tear in her eye. This was the only home she had, with her mother dead and her father an unknown soldier who had only stayed for her conception, not her birth.

‘What will happen to Lucille?’ she sniffed. ‘A nun can hardly keep a personal maid with her in the priory.’

De Wolfe shrugged. ‘This won’t last, mark my words. If Lucille comes back, tell her she can keep her room under the stairs and I’ll still give her twopence a day until the situation gets settled.’

His conscience assuaged, de Wolfe whistled for Brutus, who was lurking in the back of the kitchen, aware that something unusual was going on. Together they set out for the Bush, John’s head spinning with a mixture of hope and guilt, as well as recognition that this situation was too good to last.

In Idle Lane, he pushed through the tavern door impatiently, all his reluctance of past weeks vanished. The taproom was crowded, with a clamour of noise and a fug of the usual spilt ale and sweat. He saw Nesta at the back of the room, haranguing one of her serving wenches. Brutus, used to the ways of the Bush, sloped off to the back door, where he knew he could cadge some old trenchers and other scraps from the outside kitchen, leaving John free to march across and take Nesta by the arm.

‘Upstairs. We can’t talk in this hubbub!’ he growled. Something about his manner stopped her from making her usual protests about how busy she was, and she climbed ahead of him up the wide ladder in the corner.

In her room, he dropped the latch inside the door and sat on the bed, motioning her to come alongside him.

‘Matilda has left me,’ he said without any preamble. ‘She’s gone to be a nun at Polsloe, though whether it will last I fear to hope.’

Nesta stared at him wide eyed, then began to cry, turning John’s insides to water. He slid an arm around her shoulders as she leaned into him.

‘It’s my fault – everything is my fault. I wish I was dead!’ she sobbed.

Desperately, he murmured useless soothing noises.

‘She’s discovered I’m with child, hasn’t she?’ moaned Nesta.

John was unable to deny it. ‘It seems so, my love – though it would have happened sooner or later. It alters nothing. In fact, if she’s gone for good, we are freer than ever!’ He tried to sound cheerful in the face of his mistress’s obvious distress. ‘That bastard brother of hers told her, I don’t know how he found out,’ he concluded.

Nesta sat up, sniffing loudly and wiping her eyes with the hem of her apron.

‘Everyone else seems to know already – either my maid or her mother, the midwife, must have let it out,’ she moaned.

John tugged her towards him. ‘It doesn’t matter how it came out. I’ve told you, I’ll openly acknowledge the babe and cherish him as much as I cherish you. There’s no problem, my love, really.’

This only provoked another flood of tears from Nesta, leaving John even more discomfited and mystified at the ways of women. They sat in mutual misery for a few more minutes, his mistress rubbing her reddened eyes against the shoulder of his tunic, until she pulled herself together a little and sat up straight.

‘What are you going to do about your wife?’ she demanded.

De Wolfe looked down at the upturned face with puzzlement.

‘What am I going to do? I wasn’t going to do anything,’ he said. ‘Matilda’s a free woman, she has money of her own from her family. She’s got this mania for religion, so it’s up to her what she wants to do with her life. Though I suspect that the food and raiment of a nunnery won’t be to her liking for very long. This is just a petulant gesture born of her anger. It won’t last once she gets a taste of monastic life.’

He sighed and hugged her to him again. ‘I’ve dreamt of something like this ever since I met you, Nesta. But it’s just a dream. I’ll never get free of her, will I? But at least it gives us a short time when I don’t have to creep back into her solar and get an earful of abuse every time I’ve been down to see you.’

The Welsh woman was putting herself back into order, sniffing back the last of her tears, while tucking her unruly red curls back under her cap.

‘You must go to see her, John, straight away,’ she said in a voice filled with new determination.

‘And say what?’ he asked in some surprise.

‘Beg her to come home, John. It’s ridiculous that the crowner’s wife should take off to a nunnery. You’ll be the laughing stock of the county. Get her back – and quickly, John.’

He shrugged, bemused by her reaction. ‘If you say so, my love. It makes no difference to us, everything I said about the child stands. It would be easier if Matilda was out of the way, but that’s too much to hope for.’ He looked wistfully at her. ‘I was even going down to talk to John de Alencon, to see if her taking vows would be equivalent to a divorce.’

At other times this might have squeezed a smile from Nesta, but she remained blank faced, a kind of miserable determination etched on her features.

‘We’d better go down. I’ve work to do,’ she murmured.

He kissed her tenderly and handed her up from the bed, now totally confused as to her mood. As they left the little room, she spoke again.

‘Promise me that you’ll go to see your wife – this very night.’

He nodded, almost afraid to argue with her, and they went back down to the taproom. The level of noise dropped as they descended the steps and a number of curious faces turned up to watch them, then hurriedly dropped away and pointedly ignored them.

As John squeezed her hand for the last time and turned to the door, he saw two familiar figures standing inside. Gwyn and Thomas had turned up, and their first words told him that they had heard the news about Matilda’s departure.

‘Bloody hell, this city is beyond belief!’ he snapped. ‘You can’t fart here without everyone knowing about it within the space of a dozen heartbeats!’

‘We wondered if you were all right?’ said Gwyn solicitously. ‘And if we could do anything to help you both?’

Gwyn was very fond of Nesta in an avuncular fashion and had been delighted when the recent rift between his master and the innkeeper had been healed. Thomas too, was devoted to Nesta, who treated him like a lost dog, sympathetically feeding and petting him. It was not long ago that she had given him free bed and board, when he had been evicted from his meagre lodgings in the cathedral precinct.

‘That’s kind of you both,’ muttered John, embarrassed by even a hint of solicitude from a rough diamond like his officer. ‘But I must go up to Polsloe now and see what the hell this woman is thinking of!’

Gwyn offered to ride with him and, glad of the company, de Wolfe arranged to meet him at the East Gate after he had got his horse from Andrew’s stable. Gwyn went off to fetch his own mare from the garrison stables in the other ward of Rougemont, leaving John standing with Thomas de Peyne.

‘There are worse things than taking vows, Crowner,’ said the little clerk tentatively.’Since staying in Buckfast, it occurred to me that if I cannot regain my place in holy orders, maybe I will enter some monastery.’

John looked down with half-concealed affection at Thomas, who was trying to console him, unnecessarily as it happened.

‘She’ll not stay there long, Thomas. My wife is too fond of the good things in life to put up with austerity and hardship. She’s tough and will do exactly what she feels is in her best interests. It’s Nesta that concerns me. She seems so unhappy, though there’s no need for it.’

It was unheard of for the coroner to unbend his habitual stern manner enough to say these things to his servant, but today was fraught with unusual emotions.

‘You go off to see your wife, master,’ replied his clerk. ‘I’ll see if I can comfort the lady here. When I was a priest, I had some pastoral skills and maybe some still remain,’ he ended, rather wistfully.

John patted Thomas awkwardly on the shoulder and went to the door, Brutus abandoning a sheep’s bone to lope after him.

It was less than a mile and a half from the East Gate of the city to Polsloe, the track curving through some dense woodland after leaving the village of St Sidwell’s, where Gwyn lived. The two horsemen reached the priory of St Katherine well within half an hour and sat in their saddles for a few moments outside the encircling wall. De Wolfe seemed reluctant to go in to face his wife, and Gwyn asked whether he wanted him to accompany him. The last time they had been to the priory they had been chasing a murderer, and it felt odd to be here now on a more delicate mission.

‘No, you stay out here, unless you want to wheedle a jug of ale from someone. I’m not sure how welcome men are in this nest of women.’

The thought of a drink overcame any concerns the Cornishman may have had about nuns, so they approached the low arched entrance together. An aged porter opened the wooden door when they banged on it and, after lashing their horses to a hitching rail, directed them across the wide compound to the West Range. This was a two-storey building, behind which were the small cloisters, all built of timber. The priory had been endowed over thirty years ago by Sir William de Brewer and, like Bovey Tracey, its church of Thoverton stone was dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr, another building funded by William de Tracy, in penitence for killing Becket. There were fourteen nuns here, and John wondered whether there would soon be fifteen.