‘I never wished to cause her such discontent and sadness,’ he admitted. ‘But I of necessity was away from her for most of our married life.’
‘I do not think that you are the sole cause of her disillusionment,’ said the prioress thoughtfully. ‘It is her brother’s misbehaviour and fall from grace that is a major factor — but, of course, she blames you for being the instrument of his downfall.’
Dame Madge returned with the not unexpected news that Matilda had flatly refused to see her husband.
‘She is adamant and would not even discuss the reasons with me,’ said the nun. ‘I fear it is hopeless trying to pursue the matter, Sir John.’
He sighed. ‘What am I to do? I have a house in the city and cannot either use it or sell it, in case she decides to return. I have a maid living there, discontented and worried. It is no secret that I have a liaison with another lady, but I cannot do anything about that. Archdeacon John de Alençon has advised me that even if Matilda takes her full vows, that will not dissolve the marriage and leave me free to take another wife.’
He turned up his hands in despair. ‘She has found the most exquisite method of punishing me, worse than the thumbscrews or the torments of the Ordeal!’
The two women were sympathetic, but impotent to help. The prioress pressed more cordial upon him and they began talking about his new life in London. For celibate ladies who had chosen largely to cut themselves off from the outside world, they were intensely curious about Westminster, the court and the personalities that John knew. He regaled them with a description of the palace and the abbey and of the huge city that lay a couple of miles down the Thames. He told them of Queen Eleanor and the pomp of her arrival from Portsmouth with the Archbishop and the Marshal, then the procession of the court across England to meet Prince John. They listened avidly and he guessed that they would have plenty of material to gossip about with the other sisters at the supper table that night.
When he had exhausted his fund of stories about his life as Coroner of the Verge, he took his leave, despondent but not surprised at the complete failure of his mission. As Dame Madge saw him off at the porch, she left him with a sliver of hope for some resolution to his problem.
‘It will be many months yet before she has to decide whether or not to finally take her vows and make her position here irrevocable,’ she said. ‘Perhaps before then, she may again change her mind, as she did before when she came to Polsloe.’
With this tiny crumb of comfort, he rode back to Exeter and went up the familiar hill to the castle, known universally as ‘Rougemont’, from the colour of the local red sandstone from which it had been built by William the Bastard in the northern angle of the old Roman walls. In the keep, built inside the inner bailey, he found his old friend the sheriff, Henry de Furnellis, sitting in his chamber off the main hall, struggling as usual with the documents and accounts that his chief clerk incessantly placed before him. Glad of an excuse to escape the bureaucracy, he called for ale and they sat chatting for an hour. John learned that the new coroner was competent and efficient, but that his heart was not in the job.
‘He’s not like you, John, you were like a terrier, worrying away at a case until you got the answer,’ said Henry, an even older Crusader than John, having been persuaded into taking the shrievalty of Devon when Richard de Revelle fell from grace.
They were joined by Ralph Morin, the castle constable, another old friend and John had to repeat his description of life at Westminster for their benefit. The sheriff’s bushy grey eyebrows rose at some parts of the tale.
‘You lost part of the king’s treasure from the Tower itself!’ he boomed incredulously. ‘And have suffered an attempt on your own life? Trust you, John, you always seem to attract disaster!’
When he left the keep, he called on a few more old friends, including Sergeant Gabriel, who headed the garrison’s men-at-arms, and Brother Roger, the amiable chaplain of Rougemont.
The coroner was away at his manor, so he could not enquire of him how he was coping with his new appointment, but as he left the castle, he felt sad that he had to leave the next day and be deprived of all the comradeship that he had built up here over the past years.
‘But I’ll not be deprived of the company of one particular person today!’ he averred, as he trotted Odin down to the West Gate, where he forded the river and set off at a canter for the ten miles to Dawlish.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
John spent an idyllic afternoon, evening and night in Hilda’s house in Dawlish, a small fishing port built around a tidal creek. He arrived in time for dinner and left at dawn next day, spending much of the time in Hilda’s bed, a high French one that her late husband had brought back from St Malo.
Surprised and delighted to see him, the slender blonde woman firmly relegated her maid Alice to the small room she occupied downstairs and kept John almost prisoner in the two spacious chambers on the first floor of the fine stone house.
Though it was not many weeks since Hilda had made her adventurous voyage up to London to visit him, their affection and passion was undimmed. John managed to convince himself that the brief interlude with Madame d’Ayncourt was an aberration forced on him by Hawise and was able to put it out of his mind as he revelled in Hilda’s company. For her part, though she was a devout woman who regularly attended Mass and did much charitable work in the parish, she accepted his adultery as a technical problem due to Matilda’s intransigence in entering a nunnery and leaving the poor man in matrimonial limbo.
During one of the brief periods when they were dressed and in her living chamber, they talked at length about his visit to Polsloe that morning. Hilda had been down to her kitchen shed to order some food, which the part-time cook, a sailor’s widow from the village, prepared and sent upstairs with Alice.
As they sat eating at her table, de Wolfe related Matilda’s continued obdurateness about revealing her intentions.
‘After all these months, John, surely she is now intending to take her final vows and stay on at Polsloe for the rest of her life?’
‘And where does that leave us, my dearest lady?’ he asked despondently. ‘We have been lovers since I first grew stubble on my chin.’
‘It leaves you far away in Westminster, John,’ she reminded him gently. ‘If you were here, then we could be together as often as you would wish.’
‘Can you not come to London, Hilda? There we could live together far more discreetly than in a tongue-wagging place like Exeter — or far worse, your own village of Dawlish.’
She shook her head sadly. ‘Do not ask me to do that, John. I would be like a fish out of water. I am a country girl, I have my fine house and my share of your business. I still have my family a few miles away in Holford, I love the Devon countryside and have so many widows and children dependent upon me since their men died at sea serving Thorgils, God bless his soul.’
John nodded sadly; he had anticipated that this would be her answer. ‘Then let’s make the most of today, my love!’ he said, reviving and seizing her once again in his arms.
The coroner’s trio rode into Gloucester on the last day of July, weary after their long ride from Exeter. Knowing that the court cavalcade would have long left Bristol, they bypassed the city and went up the edge of the Severn to Gloucester. The castle, near the river in the south-western part of the city, was not large and the descent of Queen Eleanor with her large entourage stretched it to its limits. Prince John was staying there, though it did not belong to him, as the king had wisely retained it as a royal possession when he returned his treacherous brother’s lands to him after he foolishly forgave him for his abortive rebellion two years earlier.