Fear in the Forest (4 page)

With a final glare around the assembled villagers, he turned away to indicate that the performance was over.

‘Cover him up and put him back in that shed,’ he commanded Gwyn. ‘But keep that arrowhead.’

His officer picked up the missile and looked at it dubiously, as the reeve pushed the cart away. ‘It’s no good as a deodand, surely?’

Any object that caused a death could be seized by the coroner and declared deodand, then sold for the King’s treasury or sometimes for the benefit of the deceased’s family. A good sword, a horse or cart and even a mill-wheel might fetch a decent price, but a broken arrow was worthless.

‘No, but maybe we’ll come across another exactly the same somewhere.’ De Wolfe turned to William de Pagnell. ‘I’ve finished with the corpse – what’s to become of it?’

‘My steward sent a message to Ashburton. Le Bonde’s brother is coming with a cart later today to take it home for burial.’ The manor lord looked genuinely troubled for once. ‘There’ll be sadness in that household, with a widow and little ones to care for. Why slay the fellow, if it was not for robbery?’

De Wolfe shrugged his shoulders, towering above the shorter man.

‘The forest officers have never been popular – he wouldn’t be the first to take an arrow in the back.’

‘Foresters, maybe – even woodwards. But verderers only run the forty-day courts, they’re not involved in the everyday rough and tumble.’

The coroner, anxious to get away, edged around the manor-lord.

‘That’s one of the matters I have to look into. When I get back to Exeter, I’ll call on the Warden of the Forests, to see what he says. But now we must go back towards Ashburton and see if there are any signs of where this attack took place.’

Minutes later they were back in the saddle and, with a feeling of relief, the villagers of Sigford watched them vanish around the same bend from which the trouble had galloped in the day before.

Going back to Ashburton meant riding away from the direction of the city and then retracing their route by a different road, using the main track from Plymouth to Exeter, so it was early evening before they splashed through the ford on the River Exe to reach the West Gate. The detour had been a waste of time, but one which John de Wolfe felt had to be made.

A number of horses and oxen had passed along the way from Sigford to Ashburton in the day since the murder, so there was no chance of finding where the scuff marks from the dragged victim began on the hard, dusty road. With no assault from staff or sword, there would be no bloodstaining or crushing of undergrowth on the verge – just a swift, silent arrow whistling out of the trees at a passing horseman.

It should have been the sheriff’s job to hunt for the killer, as Sir Richard de Revelle was the supposed enforcer of law and order in the county – but from bitter experience John knew that his brother-in-law was more concerned with raising taxes and creaming off as much as possible for himself, through the many devious schemes he had in operation.

Though de Revelle was sneeringly contemptuous of the new office of coroner, which had been established only the previous autumn, he was already content to let de Wolfe do much of the hard work of investigation, as long as he could claim the credit for any successes.

The thought of his brother-in-law led John’s mind to his wife Matilda and his habitual scowl deepened as he rode through the gate and up the slope of Fore Street to the centre of the city. The streets were narrow and crowded, so the coroner’s big horse often had to nudge people aside to make any progress. As they passed Carfoix, the crossing of the four roads from each main gate, he reined up in the congested high street to wait for Gwyn to pull alongside. Their clerk was still far behind, saddle-sick on his long-suffering pony.

‘I’ll have to call in at my house to say I’m back or I’ll get the evil eye,’ de Wolfe growled. ‘But in an hour I want to talk to the Warden, Nicholas de Bosco. You know where he lives?’

‘I thought he had a manor out at Kenn.’

‘He has, but since his wife died and his daughters married away he spends much of his time in his townhouse in St Pancras Lane. So get yourself there, tell him one of his verderers is dead and that I’d like to speak to him at his home in an hour or so.’

The Cornishman pulled his mare around and pushed his way through the crowd into a side street on their left, anxious to get this errand done so that he could visit the Bush Inn to satisfy his insatiable appetite for food and ale.

De Wolfe plodded slowly up the narrow main street, lined by houses and shops of all shapes and sizes. Many of the original wooden buildings were being replaced in stone, as the city dwellers became more affluent. Exeter was now a rich city, the revenues from wool and tin, as well as the agricultural produce for miles around, filling the coffers of its many burgesses. John himself derived a good income from trade, as he had ploughed his spoils from foreign campaigns into a wool-exporting partnership with one of the city’s two Portreeves, the men elected by the burgesses to administer the city. He had no salary for being the King’s coroner – in fact coroners were forbidden to take any profit at all and must already have a private income of at least twenty pounds a year, the theory being that rich men had no need for graft and embezzlement. Though John stuck rigidly to this rule, he was the exception, as most officials – especially the sheriffs – were notorious for their greed and dishonesty.

As he walked his horse Odin past the new Guildhall, he nodded and grunted at many passers-by who knew him – there were few in the city who did not recognise the tall, grim ex-Crusader. People struggled past handcarts, porters with huge bundles, pedlars, priests, beggars and urchins, all so massed on the rubbish-strewn cobbles that the big stallion had to tread carefully to avoid crushing someone. Most of Exeter’s streets were hard-packed earth, but High Street was roughly paved, with a central gutter that carried the sewage downhill to the river.

Some way farther up, he reached a narrow opening and turned into one of the narrow passageways into the Cathedral Close. This was Martin’s Lane, where he had his own dwelling. Two tall, narrow houses stood together on his right, opposite the pine-end of an inn, behind which was a livery stable. Here John dismounted and left Odin in the care of Andrew the farrier, before crossing the lane and pushing open his heavy front door.

He dropped with a sigh of relief on to a bench along the back wall of the small vestibule, dragging off his riding boots to put on a pair of soft, pointed house shoes. On his left was the planked door to his hall, firmly closed. With a sinking feeling, he opened it and stepped through into the space behind the screens that helped to block the winter draughts. Beyond them, the high, bare main room of his house stretched up to the exposed rafters of the roof. Even in this sultry summer weather, it felt cold and unwelcoming, the timber walls hung with dismal tapestries. The only redeeming feature filled the far wall, a large stone fireplace with its conical chimney, which John had built to replace the usual fire-pit in the centre of the floor. At the same time, Matilda had insisted on covering that floor with flagstones, insisting that the usual rush-covered beaten earth was beneath the dignity of a sheriff’s sister and a coroner’s wife.

He looked towards the empty hearth, expecting to see Matilda filling one of the cowl-backed chairs, but for once the room was empty. He glanced up at the slit window high to one side of the fireplace, which went through into the solar, the only other room in the house, which doubled as his wife’s boudoir and their bedroom. There was no sound or movement, and he turned and went back into the vestibule.

From the covered passage that led around the side of the house to the yard behind came a handsome, dark-haired young woman, a smile of welcome on her face. A large hound ambled after her.

‘I thought I heard the door slam, Crowner! The mistress is at her prayers in St Olave’s.’

‘Thank God for that, Mary! I need food and drink.’

As he followed her back down the alleyway, he placed an affectionate hand on her bottom, but she skipped a pace ahead of him.

‘Now, Crowner! I tend only to the needs of your stomach these days, remember?’ He grinned wryly, remembering nostalgically the times when their cook-maid had been more accommodating – until the suspicions of her mistress, aroused by her nosy French maid Lucille, had decided Mary that her job was more valuable than flirting with the master.

In the yard were the shacks that housed the kitchen, where Mary lived, the woodshed and the privy. Beneath the outside wooden stairs that led up to the solar, Matilda’s maid dwelt in a large box-like cabin, but at the moment she was with her mistress at church.

John sat on the kitchen’s only stool and drank a quart of ale while Mary made him a meal of fried bacon, eggs and onion, with a small loaf and butter. As he ate, she squatted near by and listened while he told her of the day’s events and the strange killing of the verderer. She was an attentive audience – John often felt the better for unwinding his tension by talking to her. Mary frequently had intelligent comments to make and her fund of local gossip gleaned at the market stalls of the city was sometimes very useful to him.

‘I heard from a carter from Moretonhampstead, who comes in with geese for the poulterer, that the foresters up there have lately become even more oppressive than usual,’ she reported. ‘Though what that can have to do with this, I can’t see.’

De Wolfe mused on this as he ate. The complicated structure of forest law had always been a matter of exasperation to both landowner and peasant alike. The cruel and punitive measures for any transgression of the strict rules of the Royal Forests had been a scandal for centuries, but had worsened under old King Henry. Yet, like Mary, he could see no connection with the slaying of Humphrey le Bonde, as the most hated men were the foresters and woodwards, not the higher judicial officers – though even they were hardly popular figures.

‘So what’s to be done about it?’ asked Mary, as she refilled his ale-pot and cleared away the iron pan from which he had eaten.

‘I’m off to see the Warden now – he’s the immediate superior of the dead man, he must be told at once.’

Rising to his feet, he stretched and jerked his head up towards the solar.

‘What sort of mood was she in?’ he asked glumly.

‘As usual – no better, no worse. She seems more settled these past few weeks. You haven’t done anything particularly terrible lately, I suppose.’

John grunted, then gave the maid a quick peck on the cheek.

‘Pray for me that it will continue, Mary. I’ll be back late, I expect.’

Hands on her hips, the cook smiled and shook her head in resignation.

‘No doubt you’ll find the need for a mug of ale at the Bush,’ she murmured under her breath, as the tall figure loped off up the passage.

Nicholas de Bosco lived in a quieter part of Exeter, between the North Gate and Rougemont Castle, the fortress that occupied the highest ground in the north-eastern corner of the city walls. St Pancras Lane took its name from the nearby church, one of twenty-seven in a town of four thousand inhabitants. The Warden lived in a narrow dwelling similar to that of John de Wolfe, with a stone-tiled roof and a blind front, with only one shuttered window and a door facing the street. It was but a few minutes’ walk for the coroner from Martin’s Lane, and his rapping on the front door was answered by a wizened old servant whom he took to be de Bosco’s bottler.

John was shown into the hall, a gloomy chamber hung with swords, shields, spears and other paraphernalia of past campaigns. A woman’s touch was obviously lacking as the room contained only the bare necessities for living, with no gestures to comfort. A pair of oak settles stood either side of an empty fire-pit in centre of the floor, and a long table bore a few pewter cups and a flask of wine. Yet the man who rose to greet the coroner was a minor lord, with three manors in the county. A knight since his youth, like John he had fought in several campaigns in Ireland and France and had been to the Third Crusade, though their paths had never crossed outside Devon. Nicholas de Bosco was almost two decades older than de Wolfe’s forty years and he looked every day of it. He had a thin, gaunt face and his sparse hair was white. He had no beard or moustache – nor a single tooth in his head. However, his grey eyes were bright and sharp and his grip was firm as he grasped John’s forearm in greeting. He used his left hand, for the right was crippled from an old spear wound sustained in battle in Normandy years before. Nicholas motioned the coroner to a seat opposite and beckoned to his servant to serve them wine.

‘We have met briefly several times, Sir John, in some of the burgesses’ functions in the Guildhall. I have long known of your reputation as a fighting man in the service of our King.’

As with de Wolfe’s coronership, Nicholas owed his appointment as Warden of the Royal Forests of Devon to his faithful adherence to Richard the Lionheart – and to his father King Henry before him. They exchanged a few memories of campaigns long past, but after they had drunk each other’s health in good Poitou red, John got down to business.

‘My officer told you that yesterday one of your verderers was murdered?’ he asked bluntly.

De Bosco nodded sadly. ‘I find it hard to believe. Humphrey le Bonde was a good man, solid and dependable. Why should anyone wish to kill him? I understand it was not a common robbery.’

‘It’s unlikely, though we can’t be sure. His purse was not taken, nor was there any sign of a struggle along the highway. I hoped you might be able to shed some light on the mystery.’

Nicholas shook his head in mystification. ‘I was not all that close to him, but I know of nothing that would cause anyone to wish him dead. The relationship of Warden to verderers is a loose one, though we are all officers of the Royal Forest.’

The hovering bottler refilled John’s cup as the other man explained further.

‘As you will know, each of the forests has a Warden, appointed directly by the King – or in reality by the Curia Regis or Chief Justiciar on his behalf. It’s supposed to be an appointment for life and I have been overseeing Devon since Richard put me here in ’91.’