Figure of Hate (4 page)

'He was damned lucky to escape a hanging!' snapped Walter Ralegh, who was a Devonshire baron, though much of his time was spent either at the court or touring around the southern counties as an itinerant justice. A large, grizzled man with a bluff, impatient manner, he was an old comrade of de Wolfe's, having campaigned with him both in Ireland and the Holy Land.

This talk of Richard de Revelle's fall from grace again caused John to look across at Matilda, sitting alone and dejected at the table. Though she did not openly accuse him of being the instrument of her brother's downfall, the implication was always there.

Relations between them had been strained for most of the seventeen years of their marriage, and this latest fiasco had done-nothing to heal the wounds.

He was just about to move back to her, to keep her company and try to make some conversation, when thankfully he saw a dandified figure slip on to the bench alongside her. It was Hugh de Relaga, one of Exeter's two portreeves, the provosts chosen by the other burgesses to lead the city council. De Relaga, a prominent merchant, was de Wolfe's business partner and another good friend. The loot that the coroner had brought home from numerous campaigns across Europe and the Levant had been wisely invested with Hugh in a joint wool-exporting business. Second only Io Dartmoor tin in the economy of south-west England, wool provided a steady income for de Wolfe - in fact, it was a prerequisite for appointment as a coroner that the incumbent had an income of at least twenty pounds a year. The reasoning was that those with such riches had no need to embezzle from the lands in their keeping - a rather naive hope in many cases, though John de Wolfe happened to be scrupulously honest.

As he watched his short, portly friend exert himself to be pleasant to Matilda, a voice in his ear jerked him back to the group of men he was neglecting.

'I said, John, d'you think there'll be any trouble at this damned October fair this week?' Walter Ralegh nudged his arm to emphasise his point.

'Fair? There's always trouble at fairs, it's the nature of the beast,' replied John. 'But it's the tournament on Wednesday that's likely to cause the most problems. High-spirited young knights, drunken squires and the usual run of cut-purses and.pickpockets probably even a few horse thieves.'

'But this is not going to be one of those terrible mélées, surely?' objected the archdeacon, who strongly supported the ecclesiastical disapproval of tourneying. 'Men end up dead at those, a sacrilegious waste of human life, to say nothing of the damage they cause to property and the poor people in the vicinity!'

Walter guffawed at the canon's severe view of a true Norman's favourite pastime. They stop a good warrior from going rusty, Archdeacon! You'd be among the first to complain if England was overrun by Philip Of France because our knights were out of practice!'

The coroner hastened to reassure his friend. 'Don't concern yourself, John, this will be a small-scale affair, just a one-day event tagged on to the fair. There will be only individual jousts down on Bull Mead - there's no room for rampaging there.'

'But there'll be even more high-spirited men in the city than if it was just a fair,' grumbled the castle constable, whose men-at-arms would have to patrol Exeter to try to keep the peace. 'These events attract too many thieves, rogues and vagabonds as it is, without adding to the trouble with a tourney!' The four men continued arguing the matter as they stood between the tables. From his position leaning against a nearby wall, an unusually large fellow regarded them with a grin on his face. He was huge, being both tall and broad, but he was even more noticeable for his tangled mop of bright red hair and a huge drooping moustache of the same colour which overhung his lantern jaw. A.large nose and a ruddy face were relieved by a pair of eyes as blue as the archdeacon's.

'What are you leering at, you great oaf?' snapped the man standing alongside him, one who was as great a contrast to the ginger giant as it was possible to imagine.

He barely came up to Gwyn of Polruan's shoulder and was as skinny as the Cornishman was muscular. In contrast to the scuffed leather jerkin and serge breeches of the big man, a long, patched tunic of faded black hung from Thomas de Peyne's thin, stooped shoulders, giving him a clerical appearance. This was the impression he always strove for, as he had in fact been a priest at Winchester until unfrocked three years earlier for an alleged indecent act with one of his girl pupils in the cathedral school. Recently his name had been cleared, but the Church had still not got around to publicly restoring his reputation, which partly accounted for the habitually dismal expression on his narrow pinched face. He had a high, intelligent forehead, but a long thin nose and a receding chin added to his unattractiveness, made worse by a slight crook back and a limp, caused by disease in childhood.

'Why are you staring at our master over there?' he insisted in his reedy voice.

Gwyn, de Wolfe's squire and bodyguard, lifted a quart pot of ale and swallowed almost half the contents before replying to the little man, who was the coroner's clerk.

'I'm watching our crowner trying to be friendly to the new sheriff, though I know full well he thinks he's an old fool,' rumbled Gwyn.

'At least he's said to be honest and not ambitious for his own advancement, as was the last one,' objected Thomas, who almost on principle disagreed with everything the coroner's officer said. Though the two bickered incessantly, they were good friends, and Gwyn displayed an almost paternal attitude to the little man, born of the troubles that had afflicted him for much of his life.

Gwyn sank the rest of his ale and wiped his huge moustache with the back of his hand. 'True enough, but I suspect John de Wolfe will have even more work to do in future, as this new fellow is unlikely to move himself to do more than necessary.'

They watched the shifting patterns of men and women in the hall, as people moved around gossiping, taking more food and drink from the tables and from the trays and jugs held by servants. The costumes were many and varied, especially among the merchants and burgesses of the county, who tended to be more colourful in their garb than the soldiers and officials.

Although most of the men wore belted tunics, some had long ones to their calves, slit at the front for riding a horse, whilst others sported thigh-length robes over breeches, many with cross-gartered hose above shoes or boots. The more dandified had footwear with long
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pointed toes, some curled back almost to their ankles.

There were men like strutting peacocks, whose tunics and surcoats were bright red and blue, unlike some more sober knights and clerks, whose clothing tended to be of brown or dull yellow, with more practical boots designed for riding.

Thomas de Peyne nibbled at a mutton pasty, being poorer than a church mouse, to him any free food was manna from heaven. As he chewed, his sharp tittle eyes flitted around the chamber and settled on Matilda de Wolfe. He was a compassionate young man and felt sorry for her at a time when she must feel shame for her only brother's disgrace. He knew that Richard de Revelle had been almost idolised by his younger sister, which made his fall from grace all the harder for her to bear. For it to be her own husband who had brought about his downfall must be an even more bitter pill for her to swallow. The clerk said as much to his big companion, but Gwyn merely shrugged.

'The swine had it coming. Our crowner was too lenient as it was, I reckon. He should have denounced him long before, as de Revelle had been up to his treacherous tricks for months.'

Unlike the clerk, Gwyn was not a sensitive soul but a bluff soldier who saw everything in black and white, rather than shades of grey.

De Peyne went back to staring at the coroner's wife as she sat at the table, listening to the prattle of Hugh de Relaga. The portreeve was one of those who delighted in gaudy raiment and he wore a long surcoat of plum-coloured velvet over a tunic of bright green silk, girdled over his protruberant belly with a belt of gilded soft leather, the free end dangling to his knees.

His head was covered by a tight helmet of saffron linen, laced under his double chins. As he chattered away to Matilda, obviously trying to divert her and raise her despondent mood, his beringed fingers rested on her sleeve.

Thomas had an insatiable curiosity about almost everything, especially people, and his gaze now returned to his master's wife. He knew that she must now be forty-five, as she was four years older than her husband. Matilda was a solid woman, not obese, but heavily built with a short neck and a square face. Small dark eyes were not enhanced by the folds of loose skin that hung below them, and her features always seemed set in a rather pugnacious, sour expression.

The clerk felt that she had plenty to be sour about, with a husband like John and Richard for a brother!, Even though Matilda despised him for being a failed priest, Thomas admired her for her devotion to the Church, as he knew she spent much of her time either at services in St Olave's in Fore Street or in the cathedral. He also knew that she had a leaning towards taking the veil, and not long ago had entered Polsloe Priory as a novice, after what she considered to be one of her husband's more outrageous lapses of morals. Though the outside attractions of good food and fine clothes had finally dissuaded her from taking her vows, Thomas still gave her great credit for her piety and devotion to God.

The Cornishman began to get restive, as he had little of the clerk's interest in people. Now that he had eaten and drunk his fill, he was anxious to be off to find a game of dice in the guardroom of the castle gatehouse, below the coroner's bleak office on the upper floor.

With a grunted farewell to Thomas, he lumbered across to the door of the hall and clumped down the wooden staircase outside, a defensive device that could be thrown down in times of Seige so that there was no access to the entrance twelve feet above ground.

Rougemont was built into the north-east corner of the city walls, which had first been erected by the Romans and later strengthened by both Saxons and Normans. The castle was at the highest point of Exeter, the city sloping away westward to the river, half a mile away. The inner ward was formed by a curving rampart of red Devon sandstone, which gave the castle its name. It was built with a gatehouse in the southern part, the first part of the fortress to be built by William the Bastard after he had broken the resistance of the Saxons three years after the battle at Hastings. A drawbridge stretched across a deep dry ditch and a steep slope separated the inner ward from a much larger area outside, which itself was protected by an earthen bank topped by a timber palisade. In this outer ward were huts and sheds where the soldiers and their families lived, as well as stables, stores and workshops. As Rougemont had not been attacked since the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda almost fifty years earlier, security was lax. Washing dried on bushes, wives and strumpets ambled about and urchins played between the jumbled mass of wooden buildings that turned the place into a small village rather than a military camp.

Gwyn ambled across the rubbish-strewn inner ward, where the ground had been beaten into sticky mire by the feet of horses, oxen and people. It had not rained today, but this had been one of the wettest seasons for years, and there were fears of a lean winter ahead for much of the population after such a poor harvest. He reached the gatehouse, a tall, narrow tower straddling an arched tunnel. On the ground floor, next to the raised portcullis that protected the entrance passage, was the small guardroom, with a cramped stone stairway at the back which led up to the coroner's chamber two floors above. Inside, three men Squatted on a horse blanket spread on the earthen floor, intent on a game of 'eighteens', using three dice cut from bone. Though, like most folk, none of them could read or write, they had not the slightest problem in counting the. spots on the dice with lightning rapidity, especially when there was money riding on the game.

Two of them were fairly young men-at-arms, the other their sergeant, a grizzled veteran called Gabriel, who had a face like a dried apricot, but an amiable expression when his toothless mouth broke into a smile.

'Sit you down, Gwyn, we've been waiting patiently to take some pennies off you. Where the hell have you been?'

The coroner's officer grunted as he lowered himself to the blanket and reached for the dice. 'Seizing a mouthful of the new sheriff's free food. But they're all gabbing too much for me over there, the place is full of the high and mighty, not common folk like us.' Gabriel cleared his throat noisily and spat on the floor. 'It'll not be the same somehow, without the old sheriff! How will Crowner John manage, without someone to hate?'

'He'll not have time to hate anyone, from what I gather. Furnellis was a lazy old bugger last time he was sheriff and I doubt he's changed much.' They played on in silence for a while, the chink of quartered and halved pennies the only sound, until Gabriel sent one of the soldiers to a shelf for some chipped pottery mugs and a pitcher of rough cider.

Outside, on the top of the drawbridge, another youthful soldier stood sentinel, grasping his pike and staring glumly down Castle Hill. He was thinking of the plump bottom of the girl he had had last evening behind the White Hart tavern, and the fact that thanks to Gabriel and his dice I had no money to see her again that night. With the three-day October fair starting the next day, being penniless was a miserable prospect for any virile young fellow.

He listened enviously to the chink of the pottery jugs and the rattle of the dice until his attention was drawn to a thin figure hurrying up the. steep slope towards him from the gate in the palisade of the outer ward.