‘What about trying to get the sheriff’s help, now that we have direct orders from the king himself?’
They were within a short distance of the Guildhall and John felt that there was no time like the present. They left Cheapside and turned into a side street to reach the building that housed the city’s administration, an impressive stone edifice that had been built only two years after St Bartholomew’s Hospital, which also figured in the dead canon’s epic.
Leaving Gwyn holding the horses, he went inside and demanded to see one of the two sheriffs. After a cool reception from a clerk sitting in an anteroom, he produced his warrant, which he now carried rolled in an inner pocket of his short riding mantle. The sight of the three royal lions and the dangling red seal, which was large enough to cover the bottom of a pint ale-pot, immediately changed the surly attitude of the official, who led him to an upstairs chamber where Godard of Antioch was sitting at a table on a low platform, directing the activities of a trio of clerks busy scribing at desks below him.
The fleshy sheriff was no more pleased to see him than the Constable of the Tower had been, but again the sight of John’s warrant made him listen to what the coroner had to say.
‘I have now had direct and urgent orders from the king himself, to pursue this matter of the theft of royal revenue,’ said de Wolfe, in a decisive tone that made it clear that he was in no mood for prevarication.
‘What do you expect me to do about it?’ growled Godard, who like everyone in London knew of the theft from the Tower.
John explained the canon’s involvement in the crime.
‘But it is clear that there must have been at least one other involved, possibly more. One of these must have been responsible for his poisoning and I need to know who it was who ate with him shortly before he was taken mortally ill.’
‘And how by St Peter’s cods, do you think I can help you with that?’ grumbled the sheriff.
John patiently explained the need to find the tavern where they had eaten and to try to trace the other man. Godard was scathing in his response, but John’s persistence and his tapping of the Lionheart’s warrant, eventually persuaded the sheriff to give his grudging agreement.
‘You are wasting my time, de Wolfe, you must know that!’ he sneered. ‘How in hell’s name do you expect me to find a fellow, description unknown, several weeks after eating at an unknown tavern in an unknown part of England’s greatest city? Hey?’
Privately, John found it hard to disagree with him, but he was getting desperate.
‘Your constables know the city like the backs of their hands — the eating place cannot be far from Stinking Lane, as the canon walked there, according to the girl in the brothel. A fat canon may well be remembered by a skivvy or a potboy, especially if a reward is offered. I am sure the Exchequer would gladly pay a few shillings for useful information.’
After more grumbling and a grudging acceptance, the sheriff agreed to set some of his men on to the task, as long as it did not interfere with their other duties. Unconvinced that Godard would put himself to much trouble over this, John rolled up his royal parchment and put it away inside his cloak, then thanked the sheriff and went out of the building to his patient officer waiting in the street.
With no other leads to follow up, they made their way back to Westminster where, somewhat to John’s surprise, a case was waiting for him. The sergeant of the guard accosted him as soon as they entered and told him his services were needed at the back of the palace.
‘One of the laundry girls claims she has been ravished, sir,’ he announced. ‘We have a man already chained in a cell, but I’m told that this now comes under your jurisdiction.’
John sent Gwyn to collect Thomas from their chamber upstairs and the three of them followed the sergeant around to the large open area at the back of the palace, where the stables and servants’ lodgings were situated. The place was quiet, as the majority of the people and horses were far away in Gloucestershire. The laundry was a large wooden hut, steam billowing out from iron cauldrons set in stone fireplaces. Behind were several lean-to rooms where the women lived and in one cubicle a girl of about sixteen was lying moaning on a mattress laid on the floor. Two older women were tending her solicitously and raised outraged faces to the coroner as he walked in.
‘The poor wretch has been shamefully abused, sir,’ said one forcefully. Middle-aged and shabby, she held a cup of weak ale to the girl’s lips. ‘The bastard should be flayed alive, the dirty swine!’
John’s task was to confirm that the victim had indeed been raped and to record the facts for submission to the justices, which in this case would be the barons sitting on the King’s Bench in the Great Hall. However, he was no physician and needed some advice on the state of the girl, so a midwife was sent for, one of those who practised in the village. While they waited for her, he extracted the story from those who appeared to know what had happened. The girl herself was too shaken to speak coherently, her teeth chattering as she lay hunched beneath a tattered blanket, the younger woman holding her hand and making soothing noises to her.
The older woman was more than forthcoming with her evidence.
‘That evil bastard Edward Mody did it, Crowner,’ she snapped. ‘I more or less saw it happen — heard it, at any rate. He took her in this very room while I was dollying sheets in the main hut!’
‘Mody’s an ostler from the stables,’ explained the sergeant. ‘He’s the man we’ve got locked up.’
‘Always sniffing around young Maud here, he was. Wanted to walk out with her, but she turned him down and quite right too. He’s a pig of a fellow, smells like one and acts it, too.’
The midwife came, a wheezy old woman who walked with the aid of two sticks. How she managed to deliver babies in her state of health, John failed to imagine, but he left her to her task whilst he went to see the suspected man, locked in one of the cells that acted as the palace gaol, yet another shed attached to the back of the stable block. The sergeant opened the door and John went in to find Edward Mody, a coarse-looking man of about thirty, chained by an ankle fetter to a massive iron ring set in the wall. He was crouched on the floor, which was covered in dirty straw that looked as if it had already been used in the stables.
‘I didn’t do anything wrong, sir. She was quite willing, I swear!’ he yelled as soon as de Wolfe entered. The rest of the interview was a loud declamation that she was his girlfriend and that she had changed her mind about allowing their sexual congress after the deed was done.
John had heard similar stories many times before and he suspected that probably some of them were true. However, it was not his duty to judge the matter, only to record all that was said and present it on his rolls to the judges. He came out within a few minutes and told Thomas that he would dictate his statement when they got back to their chamber. Going back to the laundry, he saw the old crone with the walking sticks, who gave him a piece of rag stained with blood.
‘You’ll need that to show the justices as proof, Crowner,’ she cackled. ‘The poor girl’s been ravished right enough and her a virgin, too! Bruised and battered, she is, around her vital parts. Still bleeding a little, as that cloth testifies.’
He gave her a penny and she stumbled off, quite satisfied with her fee. As she left, the gaunt figure of the Keeper appeared, having heard that there had been trouble in his palace, breaking the welcome quiet that the exodus with Queen Eleanor had brought him. Anything untoward that happened in the precinct came within his notice and Nathaniel de Levelondes was still concerned that one of his guest-chamber clerks had been murdered and no one had yet been arrested for it, as well as the coroner himself being half-strangled in St Stephen’s crypt.