He resisted accompanying this offer with a wink, but John knew that his officer was very happy that Hilda was here to lighten the glum mood that had settled on the coroner. Though the Cornishman had been very fond of Nesta, John’s previous mistress, he had realised that that the liaison was doomed in the long term. Now he trusted that his master’s childhood sweetheart Hilda might be able to fill the void in de Wolfe’s life — only his miserable wife stood in his way. Hilda was the daughter of the Saxon manor reeve in Holcombe, the second of the de Wolfe family’s manors near Teignmouth. Though at forty-one, John was some seven years older, they had grown up together and become lovers by their teens. It would have been impossible for them to marry in those days, as Hilda was merely the daughter of a villein and John the second son of the lord of the manor, but she was now a wealthy widow, there would be no barrier to their marriage — apart from the fact that he already had a wife, albeit one skulking away in a nunnery.
As soon as Roger Watts had left, Gwyn slid away to leave the lovers in peace. Their first task was to arrange the accommodation and it was tacitly assumed by all that John and Hilda would sleep together in the upper room. Although young Alice was there as lady’s maid, her role as chaperone was conveniently ignored and Osanna, rapidly summing up the situation, brought in a hay-filled pallet for the girl and set it in the corner of the main room. With the warm weather, there was no hardship in sleeping in a chamber with a dead firepit.
‘I’ll show you Westminster, Hilda — now the hub of government, even if the king is never here!’ offered John gallantly. They set off arm in arm, with Alice trailing behind, her eyes on stalks as she looked at the grand buildings around them. De Wolfe took them into the great abbey and they stared in wonder at the many altars and side chapels and the tomb of Edward the Confessor — as a Saxon, Hilda was visibly moved by the remnants of this last monarch of her race.
As they were leaving the abbey, John caught sight of Thomas coming from the cloisters and with a great yell attracted his attention. The clerk was surprised and delighted to see someone from Devon and Hilda hugged him to her, much to his delighted embarrassment. Though he had adored Nesta, he knew Hilda from several escapades and was fond of her calm and generous nature. He joined them in their sightseeing and after looking into St Margaret’s Church, the next port of call was the Great Hall of William Rufus. The lady and her maid marvelled at the dimensions of the place, gazing in wonder at the largest roof in Europe. They stood listening for a while to a session of the King’s Bench, who had reclaimed the space at the end of the hall, then John took them up to the coroner’s chamber to show Hilda their spartan place of exile from Devon.
‘It’s a miserable damned room, but the view is good,’ he said, throwing open the shutters and displaying the wide panorama of the Thames. He took them to the Lesser Hall, now quiet between meals and then to the outside of the King’s Chambers, which really impressed Alice, who thought of the king as only a short step down from God himself.
Their tour ended with a walk along the riverbank and back into the little town of Westminster, where Thomas left them with the excuse that he had duties in the abbey scriptorium. They wandered back to Long Ditch, where the percipient Osanna took Alice away to her kitchen in the yard, to feed her warm pastries and tell her tales of her native Essex.
Alone in his living room, John took Hilda into his arms and kissed her passionately. He had known her lips and her body for more than a score of years, but she still excited him so much that he felt dizzy when he clasped her tightly to him.
As his hands roved over her back, her buttocks and her breasts, she responded avidly and though it was barely late afternoon, they stumbled together to the ladder. A moment later, they had collapsed on to the thick feather mattress that lay on the floor of his sleeping chamber. All the pent-up frustrations of the past couple of months were released in an explosion of passion that repeated itself over and over until delicious exhaustion overtook them both. Then, satiated, they slept in each other’s arms, just as they had done in a Devon hayloft, long, long ago.
If de Wolfe had been pining for more work these past weeks, the next day he fervently hoped for the opposite — that there would be no slaying, fires, ravishment or other forms of mayhem to interrupt his time with Hilda. Most of the day was spent sightseeing and both Gwyn and Thomas came with them. The Cornishman had Alice clinging behind him on his mare, as he had become virtually a father figure to the little maid. Thomas was his usual erudite self, surprising even John with his detailed knowledge of London’s sights and history. They jogged slowly up the Royal Way to Charing and then along the Strand, the clerk pointing out the great houses of bishops, magnates and barons.
‘That’s the new preceptory of the Knights Templar built for the English master,’ he explained, pointing to the grand church and buildings at the top of the slope leading down to the river’s edge. Inside the city, they marvelled at the great cathedral of St Paul, Thomas explaining that the original church had been established almost six hundred years earlier, when the rest of London was an abandoned Roman ruin, shunned by the Saxons for centuries until the great King Alfred revitalised it.
The main thoroughfare of Cheapside and the markets at Poultry were like a magnet to Hilda and Alice, who spent over an hour wandering the stalls and booths, de Wolfe walking behind them as an escort, with that bemused look that men assume when forced to parade past endless rolls of linen and silk, or displays of brooches and necklets.
In Southwark, on the other side of the bridge, they stopped for food at a large tavern in the high street, opposite the large church of St Saviour’s.
‘That palace behind it belongs to the Bishop of Winchester,’ said Thomas, with an almost proprietorial air. ‘Southwark is not part of the city and actually belongs to the bishop.’ He omitted to tell her that even the noted Southwark brothels belonged to the bishop, who derived a useful income from them.
They stared at the Conqueror’s Tower and King Richard’s new fortifications around it, then after riding to Smithfield, just outside the city wall, to see the great church of St Bartholomew and its famous hospital, they made their way back to Westminster.
That evening, John decided to take Hilda to the Lesser Hall for supper, partly to show her some of the lifestyle of the palace, but also to meet a few of the people he had been describing to her. He also had a sneaking desire to show her off to them, especially Hawise d’Ayncourt. Though women were not usually present in the hall, he perversely decided that if the raven-haired beauty from Blois could be there, why not his English blonde?
No one was going to challenge the king’s coroner’s right to bring a guest and he was sure that Hilda would more than hold her own with any of the others in the circle that supped there.
When he told her, she delved into the large cloth bundle that she had brought from the ship and arrayed herself in a simple, but elegant, gown of pale-blue silk, under a light surcoat of white linen that matched her cover-chief and wimple. The meal had already begun when they arrived at the palace and their appearance caused a minor sensation at the table where their group habitually sat. With an awestruck Alice trailing behind as a chaperone, the men stumbled to their feet as John handed Hilda on to the end of a bench, then sat alongside her, with Alice opposite, next to Hawise’s maid.
John mischievously introduced Hilda as his ‘business partner from Devon’ just arrived on one of their own vessels, which raised a few disbelieving eyebrows, especially from Mistress d’Ayncourt.
‘Can I also join this business, if the partners are all like this exquisite lady?’ asked Ranulf gallantly, earning himself a poisonous glance from Hawise.