The Awful Secret (8 page)

Gwyn shook his shaggy head. ‘Many bodies never turn up. They either sink or get pulled out into the broad ocean. Or, in this channel, they may even end up near Gloucester.’

As if to confound him, at that moment there was a distant cry from above and a man appeared on the skyline, waving his arms.

The group at the wreck stood watching as he came rapidly down the narrow paths with the agility of a mountain goat. He was within a hundred yards before Matthew recognised him. ‘It’s Siward, a shepherd who lives up on the cliffs above here. What the devil does he want? He’s a bit lacking in the head.’

From the speed of his surefooted descent, de Wolfe had expected some active youth, but when he got to them, Siward showed himself to be a gnarled old man, with a bent back and a face like a walnut, wrinkled and brown. He wore a rough woollen tunic, the skirt tucked up between his legs and pushed into an old rope wound around his waist. He was barefoot and his toenails were curled like ram’s horns.

He had sparse grey hair, and although his eyes were as bright as a blackbird’s, the lids were red and inflamed.

‘You took the corpse, sirs?’ Siward asked abruptly, in the manner of one who, isolated with his sheep, rarely conversed with his fellow men.

‘When did you see a corpse, old man?’ demanded de Wolfe.

Matthew opened his mouth to warn again that the octogenarian was more than a little simple, but Siward seemed quite able to speak for himself. ‘When I took the other one away – the live one,’ exclaimed the old Saxon.

The other four stared at him. ‘What other one?’ rumbled Gwyn.

Siward rolled his bloodshot eyes heavenwards. ‘Almighty God spoke to me the other evening, and gave me a task. I looked across the sea from my dwelling and saw this vessel being driven ashore.’

‘He lives in a turf hut on top of the cliffs,’ explained Matthew.

‘I lit my lantern and hurried down here. From the upper path, I saw the ship just before it hit the rocks. Then, there were two bodies on the deck, but only one by the time I had got down here.’

‘What of this living man?’ demanded the coroner.

‘He was on the shingle, more dead than alive. I dragged him up on to the grass, then went up for my pony, which I ride to herd my distant flocks.’

‘You got a horse down here?’ said Gwyn incredulously.

‘He is an Exmoor cob, he can go where any sheep can stray. I draped the man over the pony’s back and took him up to my house. He began shivering, so I knew he was alive.’

‘And where is he now?’ asked the manor reeve.

‘Still in my hut. His mind came back yesterday, but he is very weak.’

Since he had become coroner de Wolfe had ceased to be surprised by anything. ‘Then take us to him at once. Lead the way,’ he said.

Again with a remarkable turn of speed for an old man, Siward scuttled back up the cliff path, with the coroner, his officer and the reeve labouring behind him.

‘Why didn’t you know about this, Matthew?’ panted de Wolfe, as they reached the top.

‘He doesn’t belong to our manor. He works under the reeve in Combe Martin – the sheep are from there. Siward has probably never set foot as far away as Ilfracombe.’

At the top of the cliffs, there was a rough grassy ridge, and tucked in a hollow out of the wind was a crude circular hut, the walls made of stacked turf reinforced with loose stones. The roof was also of turf, the grass growing as strongly on it as on the surrounding pasture. Blue smoke drifted from under the ragged eaves.

Siward pulled aside an unhung door made of driftwood and beckoned them inside. In the dim light, they saw a single room floored with soiled bracken, on which two orphan lambs were bleating. Against the further wall, near a small peat fire confined by large stones, was an indistinct figure huddled under a torn woollen blanket.

‘Can’t understand a word from him,’ complained Siward, whose only language was English, heavy with the local accent.

Gwyn and de Wolfe advanced on the man and bent down over his hunched form. He looked up and they saw he was another young man, probably no more than eighteen, with a deathly pale face and sores on his lips. Before he could speak, he was racked by a bubbling cough and spat copiously into the ferns on the floor. His eye-sockets were hollow, and in spite of the ghastly whiteness of his face, two pink spots burned on either cheek.

Gwyn put a hand on his forehead. ‘He’s got a burning fever, Crowner.’

‘Who are you, boy, what happened to your ship?’ de Wolfe asked. He spoke in English and the youth looked blankly at him, shivering and hugging the rough blanket more closely around his thin shoulders.

‘He doesn’t understand a damned word,’ explained Siward. ‘I’ve given him some hot ewe’s milk and a few herbs I have here to try to calm his fever.’

Suddenly, between a spasm of teeth-chattering, the shipwrecked sailor loosed a torrent of words. De Wolfe and his officer looked at each other in satisfaction. ‘He’s a Breton,’ exclaimed the coroner and changed his questioning to his blend of Cornish-Welsh.

With a wan smile, the sick youngster responded in his own language and, within minutes, they had the whole story from him. The vessel was the
Saint Isan
, owned by a syndicate of burgesses from Bristol. It made regular voyages from the Avon to the Cornish ports and then across to Brittany. It had a master and a crew of five, two Somerset men and three Bretons. A few days ago, they had been coming from Roscoff via Penzance, back towards their home port, and were running before a brisk wind between Lundy and the mainland.

‘Our old tub was always slow, even with a following wind. A couple of hours after noon, we were overhauled by a longer vessel that had half a dozen oars each side, though these were shipped as she easily outran us under her sail.’ Alain, for that was his name, stopped for a prolonged bout of coughing. ‘Before we knew what was happening, they were alongside and a dozen men scrambled over the side,’ he continued, gasping for breath. ‘I remember seeing them almost cut our master’s head off with a sword and throw him overboard as they attacked all of us. Then one came at me with a club – I remember nothing more until I woke up on the deck, clinging for my life, with a dead man alongside me. Then the vessel struck and the last I recall was being thrown into the sea. I came to again in this hut, where this kind fellow has been doing his best for me.’

‘You have no idea who these pirates were?’ demanded Gwyn.

‘I recollect very little. It was all confusion for the couple of minutes that I remember. They shouted in English, that’s for sure.’

‘What was their ship like?’ asked John, standing over the man like a great black crow.

Alain shrugged under the blanket. ‘Nothing special, though it was not a trading knarr like the
Saint Isan
. It was slimmer and faster, more like a longship – and it had a big sail, as well as a bank of oars on each side.’

‘No name painted on the bow, nor any device on the sail?’ grunted Gwyn.

‘Nothing. Other than that they used your Saxon tongue, I’ve no idea who they were or where they came from.’

Gwyn pulled down the ends of his moustache, as if that would help him think. ‘You are a shipman in these waters. Have you heard of any other vessels being attacked in this way?’

Alain shook his head wearily. ‘It was never mentioned by the other men, God rest them.’

‘What cargo were you carrying?’

‘It was a mixture – some wine, casks of dried fruit, bales of silk, I don’t know what else.’

‘Valuable stuff, a good haul for pirates,’ observed Gwyn.

After some more questions, it became obvious that Alain had nothing else useful to tell them. Although de Wolfe would have liked him to appear at the inquest to identify the corpse, it was obvious that the young Breton was far too sick to be moved at present. They described the dead man to Alain, who felt sure that it was a Bristol youth called Roger, of mixed Norman and Saxon blood.

De Wolfe felt in his waist pouch and gave Siward three pennies, with instructions to get some good food for the shipman and to tend him until he was fit to travel down to Ilfracombe, hopefully in a few days’ time.

Leaving the old shepherd and his patient, they made their way back the several miles to the port, arriving in mid-afternoon. Their clerk was fussing outside the bailiff’s dwelling, hopping about on his lame leg like a black sparrow, marshalling the reluctant crowd of about thirty men and boys whom he had coerced into a jury.

De Wolfe, conscious that the day was slipping away, led them across to the fish shed where the cadaver lay. ‘Let’s get this over quickly, Gwyn,’ he growled. ‘There’s little we can do today – it will mean at least one other journey back here later.’

At the shed, he instructed Gwyn to pull out the body into the open, and the jury stood in a wide half-circle in the keen wind, the surf rumbling beyond the harbour and the seagulls wheeling and mewing overhead.

The Cornishman cut short his usual formal opening of an inquest and merely yelled at the motley throng, ‘Silence for the king’s crowner!’

With his arms folded across his chest, de Wolfe stood near the head of the corpse and addressed the jury. ‘You men are representing the Hundred in this matter. I have to determine who this man might be and where, when and how he came to his death. The witness who can name him is too ill to attend but was also a member of the crew of that vessel. The name of the dead man was Roger of Bristol, that’s all I know. He was part Saxon, but we cannot prove presentment of Englishry as there are no relatives here nor even the only witness who knew him.’ He glared around the faces of the jury, as if daring them to contradict him. ‘In the circumstances, I am not going to amerce this village as it is plain that he died before reaching your land.’

There was a murmur of relief from the older men and the few wives who stood listening in the background. At least they would avoid the heavy fine for being unable to prove that the dead man was a Saxon: the Norman laws assumed that, in default of proof, he was of the conquering race – even if that event had taken place well over a century ago.

‘This witness I mentioned confirms that the vessel, known as the
Saint Isan
, was attacked by pirates somewhere between here and Lundy Island. We know of this death, and the survivor claims he saw the ship’s master killed, so we assume that the rest of the crew were also killed or drowned.’ He paused to look down at the shrouded figure at his feet. ‘This man, Roger of Bristol, was most certainly murdered.’

He motioned to Gwyn, who pulled off the canvas and displayed the corpse to the jury. As they shuffled nearer for a better view, the coroner pointed out the deep slash in the belly, livid against the whitened skin. ‘A typical pike wound. There is no explanation other than murder.’

Again his dark face came up and his eyes slowly ranged across the villagers, brooding on each face in turn. ‘Have any of you here any knowledge of who may have done this thing?’ he boomed. ‘Have you heard tell of any piracy in these waters?’

There was muttering and whispering and general shaking of heads, and the coroner, not really expecting any useful response, was about to carry on speaking when a quavering voice piped up from the middle of the crowd, ‘I have heard tell, sir, that them Appledore folk are not above a bit of thieving at sea.’

This provoked a further buzz and another man, dressed in the short blue serge tunic of a sailor or fisherman, called out, ‘I do know they’ve pillaged a wreck last year, afore the lord’s steward could get to it. That was down Clovelly way.’

John de Wolfe spent a few minutes trying to get more concrete evidence than these rumours, but he ended with the suspicion that there was bad blood between Ilfracombe and Appledore, a small village on the other side of the river from Barnstaple. After he had ended the inquest, with the curt decision that Roger of Bristol had been killed against the king’s peace by persons as yet unknown, he dismissed the ragged jury and turned to Gwyn and Thomas. ‘What d’you think of these Appledore accusations, eh?’

‘Village gossip, that’s all,’ grunted his ginger henchman. ‘Any hamlet will strip a wreck, given the chance. This one was already pillaged or they would have stolen every last raisin.’

‘But why Appledore? They might just as well have blamed Combe Martin or Bideford – or Lundy itself, which is more likely,’ objected Thomas.

De Wolfe shrugged. ‘Some local spite, no doubt. You have to live in one of these villages to fathom the petty disputes they dredge up.’ He looked thoughtfully at the corpse. ‘Though they may be right, of course.’

Another long day’s ride meant that it was almost dusk when, on the following evening, they reached Exeter’s North Gate. An early start from Umberleigh, a few miles south of Barnstaple, had enabled them to ride steadily, allowing John’s leg and his clerk’s backside to survive the many hours in the saddle.

When the coroner reached his house in Martin’s Lane, he saw Odin settled in his stable opposite, then went wearily through his front door and took off his riding clothes in the vestibule. In the hall, his wife was sitting in her usual place before the hearth, partly hidden by the hood of her monk’s chair. At the sound of the creaking door, she peered around its edge. When she saw him, she gave a throaty grunt and turned back to the fire. ‘You’ve deigned to come home, I see.’ It was her usual frosty greeting.

De Wolfe sighed. He was in no mood for a fight: he was tired and hungry. ‘It’s a long ride from Ilfracombe, in under a day and a half,’ he muttered.

‘You’re a fool to attempt it, with that leg,’ she retorted illogically. After complaining about the length of his absence, she was now implying that he should have stayed longer on the way back.

John ignored this and, sinking on to a bench at the empty table, gave a great yell for Mary. She had already heard him returning and soon bustled in with a wooden bowl of broth and a small loaf, which she put in front of him with a broad wink.

‘Get that down you, master. I’ll bring some salt fish and turnips afterwards.’