The Awful Secret (4 page)

The Bush was not far from St Olave’s and, though it was unlikely that his wife would come out of the church during the service, he was cautious enough to work his way through the cathedral Close and then take the back lanes of the lower town to reach the tavern. As he came out of the Close through the Bear Gate and skirted the Shambles, where sheep, pigs and cattle were being slaughtered amid blood and screams, he again had the feeling of being watched. Perhaps sensitive to the proximity of his wife, he looked down from his stallion’s back at the crowded street and, from the corner of his eye, momentarily saw a man staring at him from the end of a booth that sold hot pies. A second later he had disappeared amongst the crowd, but de Wolfe knew that it had been the face he had seen twice before, once yesterday and again an hour ago, when he went up to Rougemont.

Exasperated both at the antics of the man and also his own inability to remember the name, de Wolfe urged Odin down the slope of Priest Street,
¹
where many of the vicars and secondaries from the cathedral lodged. At the bottom was the lane that ran around the inside of the city wall, with the quayside and the river Exe beyond, but the coroner turned right half-way down the street of irregular wooden houses, into Idle Lane. This took its name from the bare wasteground in which sat the Bush Inn, its steep thatched roof perched on a low stone building pierced by a doorway and four shuttered window openings.

John hitched Odin’s reins to a bar at the side of the inn where several other horses were secured, and went round to the front door, into the large, low room, hazy with smoke from the fire in the wide stone hearth. He went across to his favourite table near the fire and, such was his prestige in the Bush, before he had even lowered himself to a rough bench, a stone quart jar of ale was banged down in front of him by old Edwin, the one-eyed pot man. Seconds later, the smooth form of the landlady slid alongside him and pressed affectionately against his sound leg.

Nesta was a redhead of twenty-eight years, with a high forehead, a snub nose and a body like an hourglass. The widow of a Welsh archer de Wolfe had known in the Waterford campaign years before, she was now his favourite mistress – although, as both she and Matilda well knew, she was not the only object of his considerable passionate appetite. Dressed in a green gown beneath a linen apron, her russet curls peeping from under her white headcloth, Nesta slid her arm through his and prodded his opposite thigh with her finger. ‘And how is your lower member today, John?’ she asked, with mischievous ambiguity.

He gave her one of his rare lopsided grins as he slipped an arm around her shoulders. ‘A little stiff in the mornings, thank you – probably from lack of exercise during the night.’

They spoke in Welsh, as he had learned this at his mother’s knee and had kept fluent over the years by talking to Gwyn in his native Cornish, which was virtually identical. After some affectionate banter, which only a woman like Nesta could have drawn from the normally grim coroner, the talk turned to more general matters. After telling her about his new cubbyhole of an office in the castle, and the rapid improvement in his ‘lower member’ which had allowed him to mount his horse, de Wolfe mentioned the annoyance of the face that kept peering at him from around corners. ‘You hear of every single thing that happens in Exeter, madam! Do you know of any stranger recently arrived who might wish to stalk me?’

Immediately Nesta became serious, worried at anything that might be a potential danger to her man. Her big grey-green eyes widened as she looked at him in concern. ‘Men are coming and going all the time, many of them through this tavern, John. Merchants, sailors, pilgrims, soldiers, thieves – must be scores every day. What does he look like?’

De Wolfe shrugged. ‘I can’t describe his face – he keeps it part shaded by a wide-brimmed hat – but it has nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I could tell from the instant it was on view. About my age, I would suggest.’

‘Oh, you mean an
old
man – was he bent and tottery and used a stick?’ she gibed, getting a hard pinch on her plump thigh for her impudence.

‘I know that I have met the fellow, but I just can’t place him,’ he said testily, banging the table with a hard fist.

Nesta thought it best to change the subject, before his temper rose with frustration.

‘How is your dear wife, these days? Does she still mop your fevered brow?’ Nesta, though a kind and open-hearted woman, sometimes failed to conceal her jealousy of Matilda, who as of right shared house, bed and board with the dark man Nesta loved. The Welsh woman knew that her own station in life was far too distant from that of a Norman knight ever to dream of being more than his paramour, even though she knew that John de Wolfe had a genuine deep affection for her. Though it seemed that he and his wife were always at loggerheads, the rigid conventions of feudal and religious life had forced them into an indissoluble bond. Although Matilda had temporarily left her husband two months ago, his broken leg had driven them together again: Matilda had grimly announced her intention of nursing him back to health, and had done so with the icy determination of a Benedictine nun turned gaoler.

‘She’s drifted back to being the same old Matilda,’ he admitted sadly. ‘At first, she never spoke to me, except to tell me to sit or lie down or crawl to the privy pot. Then her old manner slowly returned and she treated me at first like a naughty schoolboy, then like one of Gabriel’s new recruits.’ He stared thoughtfully into the leaping flames in the hearth. ‘But by God’s white beard, she was efficient! She stuffed food down me like a fattening goose to mend my leg, and even suffered Gwyn in the house when it came to him helping me to stumble about to strengthen my limbs. She even put up with poor Thomas, whom she hates like poison, when he came to divert me with his reading lessons.’

Nesta hugged his arm, then reached over to take a drink from his earthenware pot. ‘You sound quite fond of her, Sir Crowner,’ she said, with a tinge of wistfulness.

De Wolfe shook his black locks vigorously. ‘Fond, no! Sorry for her, no doubt. I did her a wrong when I let her be humiliated over you and Hilda – though that was no fault of mine. It was that sleek bastard de Revelle who took a delight in shaming his own sister. But I evened up the score when I interceded on her behalf for him.’

‘It must have cost her pride a great deal, having to plead with you for him, especially at a time like that.’ Nesta felt sorry for her rival, as she often did. Much as she loved him, she was realistic enough to know that being married to John de Wolfe would be no bed of roses.

The coroner swallowed the rest of his ale and waved Edwin away as he threatened a second refill from his big pitcher. ‘I must get home and eat Mary’s boiled pork and cabbage. And Thomas is coming afterwards with his parchments, I must get back to my duties as soon as I can.’

As he rode slowly home, he planned how to deal with the numerous tasks that a coroner had to carry out – tasks that had been largely neglected in the past two months, though for a few weeks now, he had managed to deal with some cases in the city and nearby villages. Further afield, deaths had had to remain uninvestigated, and assaults, a rape and numerous administrative tasks had gone by default. His brother-in-law had taken delight in pointing out that they had managed very well for centuries without a coroner until last September and that they could, no doubt, manage just as well in the future, which had made de Wolfe all the more anxious to get back to work.

He had no assistant or deputy, though the edicts of the Curia Regis had ordered that three knights should be appointed as coroners in each county. The duties were so onerous – as well as unpaid – that only one other had been found willing to officiate in North Devon, and he had fallen from his horse a few weeks later, then died of a broken back. As no replacement could be found, de Wolfe had the whole of the huge county, one of the biggest in England, to look after alone. It was sometimes physically impossible for him to travel the long distances to cover all of his multifarious duties, but until he had broken his leg at the New Year, he had managed to get to almost every suspected homicide and serious assault, as well as to most hangings and sanctuary-seekers.

He reached Martin’s Lane and slowly dismounted, leaving Odin in the farrier’s care. His left leg pained him as he walked across to his house, reminding him that he was not yet back to normal. Pushing open the street door of blackened oak, he went into the vestibule where he hung up his grey cloak and pulled off his riding boots. His old hound Brutus ambled through the covered passage to the back yard, where in one of the servants’ huts Mary had her kitchen and her bed. The maid bustled after the dog, who nuzzled de Wolfe in greeting. Wiping her hands on her apron, she announced that dinner was ready. ‘And she’s back,’ Mary added, with a jerk of her head towards the inner door.

A handsome woman in her twenties, Mary covertly sided with John against the grim Matilda and her acidulous French maid Lucille. In the past, he had shared her mattress on more than one occasion, but lately she had resisted him: Lucille was getting suspicious and Mary valued her job even more than the pleasure provided by the lusty coroner. ‘Go in and make your peace,’ she suggested. ‘She’ll probably have guessed where you’ve been this morning.’

As she vanished down the passageway, de Wolfe sighed and lifted the latch on the inner door to his hall. The house in Martin’s Lane was a tall, narrow structure of wood, with a shingled roof. It consisted almost entirely of one high room, but with a solar added at the back of the upper part of the hall, reached by an outside stairway from the backyard. The solar was both their bedroom and Matilda’s retreat, where she spent her hours when not at prayer or slumber in some indifferent needlework.

At the back of the hall, most of the wall was taken up by a huge stone fireplace, with the tapering cone of the chimney rising above it to the rafters. Two settles and a couple of cowled chairs stood in a half-circle around the hearth, and down the centre of the gloomy room a long oak refectory table took up much of the space. The heavy boards of the walls were hung with sombre tapestries that helped to keep the draughts at bay. The floor was slabbed in stone, another modern innovation of Matilda, who scorned the usual rushes or straw strewn on beaten earth.

When he entered, his wife was sitting at the far end of the table, waiting for her meal. Though there were benches along each side of the table, at each end was a heavy upright chair, used by de Wolfe and Matilda almost consciously for the purpose of staying as far apart as possible. He closed the door behind him and limped towards her.

Matilda lifted her head to glare at him, her square pug face devoid of any welcome. ‘You’ve been overdoing it again, I suppose! I told you that it’s too soon to be riding that great beast of a horse. God knows where you’ve been on it, but I suppose I can guess.’

The coroner threw his stick on to the table with a clatter and stared down at her. ‘I’ve been up to Rougemont to see your damned brother, if you must know! I need a new chamber that’s not almost on the roof of the cursed gatehouse, and all he would give me was a closet the size of our privy.’

He stamped to the fire and threw on a couple of logs from the stack, as Brutus sidled in behind him and lay down to bask in the warmth. The mention of the sheriff imposed an ominous silence upon them: she had never mentioned her brother’s name since she had had to plead with her husband not to reveal him as a would-be rebel.

De Wolfe stood warming himself by the rising flames and looked across at the back view of his sullen wife. Though never pretty, sixteen years ago when his father had arranged their marriage into the well-known de Revelle family, she had been slimmer and had had a good complexion. Now at forty-six – half a dozen years older than de Wolfe – she had thickened into a podgy, short-necked woman, with coarse skin and thinning fair hair. She had loose flesh under her chin and her puffy lids gave her a narrow-eyed, almost Oriental appearance. John put this down to some internal disorder of her vital humours, though it did not seem to diminish her appetite for either food or wine.

‘Now that you can sit a horse again, I suppose you’ll be off about the countryside at all hours,’ she complained to the opposite wall, not turning to address him.

‘It’s my duty, for Christ’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘You were the one who was so keen for me to become the king’s coroner here.’

‘Must you blaspheme every time you open your mouth?’ she retorted, still staring ahead of her. ‘It would be fitter if you went to church more often, instead of the tavern.’ Since the débâcle two months ago, she also avoided mentioning Nesta’s name, though Matilda, like most of Exeter, was well aware of the attraction the Bush Inn held for Sir John de Wolfe.

‘I’ve neglected the coroner’s tasks for too long, though Gwyn and Thomas have done their best these past few weeks. I can’t leave matters to them and the bailiffs much longer. I must get out and about as much as my leg will let me – it’s strengthening fast, better each day.’

He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, ‘Due in large measure to you, Matilda, for which I’m truly grateful.’ He said this awkwardly, as even a hint of intimacy was foreign to their relationship.

She swung round on her chair, the heavy skirt of her brocade kirtle swishing on the flagstones. ‘You have your duty as coroner and I have mine as your wife. I wasn’t going to allow some drab of a maid or a doxy from the lower town care for your injury. It was bad enough having that hairy Cornish creature or that pervert of an ex-priest hanging about the house most of the time.’

De Wolfe sighed, sensing that things were rapidly getting back to normal between them after their relative truce of the past two months. But a developing quarrel was blunted by the appearance of Mary with a tray bearing a large wooden bowl of broth and bread trenchers covered in pork and cabbage. She was followed by the emaciated form of old Simon, their yard servant who chopped wood and tended the fires and the privy. He brought a pitcher of hot wine with two pewter mugs, and the business of eating and drinking diverted the ever-hungry Matilda from her nagging.