Thoughtfully, de Wolfe washed down his bread and cheese with a swig of the sour cider. ‘It bears keeping in mind, though. Both Bishop Marshal – and his Precentor – were supporters of John’s treachery last year, though I can’t see any connection with our dead priest. But keep your ear to the ground, Thomas.’
When their morning repast was finished, the coroner spent a few laborious minutes at his Latin lesson, silently mouthing the simple phrases from the parchment supplied by his mentor. Thomas watched him covertly, wishing he could use his considerable teaching skills to help his master, but conscious of the coroner’s sensitivity over his inability to read and write. Before long, de Wolfe dropped the vellum roll impatiently and stood up, stooping slightly as his knuckles rested on the table. ‘It’s too early to go down to the cathedral – the priests will still be at their high mass. I’ll walk across to have a word with our sheriff and see if I can get any sense out of him about how we pursue this killing.’
He pushed through the sacking and stumped down the narrow stairs, bending his head to avoid the low roof of rough stone, built by Saxon masons under Norman direction. Rougemont had been erected on William’s direct orders in 1067 after he had captured Exeter following an eighteen-day siege. It was said that the Conqueror had personally paced out the foundations for the keep and it was towards this that John made his way. The castle occupied the high north-eastern part of Exeter, cutting off a corner of the city walls, first built by the Romans. Outside this inner ward, beyond a deep ditch, was the wide zone of the outer bailey, itself protected by an earth bank and a wooden stockade. Here, a jumble of shacks and huts housed soldiers, their families and their animals – a cross between an army camp and a farm.
De Wolfe’s loping strides took him across the inner ward, surrounded by crenellated walls of red sandstone. As he walked through the frozen mud towards the keep, he heard chanting from the tiny chapel of St Mary on his right, where the castle chaplain was celebrating Christ Mass. On his left was the Shire Court, a bare stone box where the sheriff held his county court and the King’s Justices came at intervals to hold the Eyre of Assize. His destination was straight ahead, almost against the further curtain wall, which ran along the edge of a low cliff above Northernhay. The keep was a squat structure of two storeys above an undercroft, a semi-basement that housed the castle gaol. The entrance was up wide wooden steps that led to a door on the first floor. In times of siege, the stairs could be thrown down to prevent attack from ground level, though Rougemont had not been at war for almost sixty years.
As John walked across the inner bailey, familiar sights, sounds and smells assailed him – the neighing of horses in stalls built against the walls where tattered huts also housed kitchens, wash-houses, and the shanty dwellings of senior soldiers and castle servants. Chickens, pigs and goats wandered through the mire, adding their ordure to the rubbish trodden into the mud, where hardly a blade of grass survived. The Yuletide holiday seemed to make little difference to the usual chaotic routine of life. Smoke rose from a score of cooking fires, while men-at-arms, their women and a few ragged children criss-crossed the busy area.
A soldier, wearing a thick leather jerkin and a round helmet with a nose-guard, stood at the foot of the staircase to the keep. Like the man at the gatehouse, he stiffened and saluted the King’s law officer.
In the hall above, there was a scattering of people, fewer than on a normal working day. Most were castle servants, clerks and squires, who were clustered around the great fireplace as the morning was raw and frosty. De Wolfe ignored them and marched across to a small door where yet another man-at-arms stood: Richard de Revelle liked to display his importance with a full contingent of largely unnecessary guards.
Nodding absently to the soldier, de Wolfe pushed open the heavy studded door and walked into the sheriff’s chamber. This was the room de Revelle used for his official duties, and beyond it were his living quarters. He spent most of his time here, going home at intervals to Lady Eleanor at either Tavistock or Revelstoke near Plympton. His wife rarely deigned to stay in Rougemont’s bleak accommodation, but at the moment was reluctantly in residence for the festival of Christ’s birth.
When the coroner entered, the sheriff was seated behind a large table near the fireplace, reading a parchment roll. A clerk was hovering at his shoulder, murmuring and pointing out something on the document. Richard ignored de Wolfe’s arrival, took a quill pen from the table, impatiently scratched out a word and wrote something alongside. John felt a stab of jealousy at the casual literacy of his brother-in-law, who in his youth had attended the cathedral school at Wells. The clerk took the corrected roll, bowed and scurried out, leaving his master to acknowledge the coroner’s presence. ‘No more dead prebendaries this morning, John?’
‘It’s no matter for levity, Richard,’ snapped the coroner. ‘That nest of churchmen down there has a great deal of power.’ He pulled up a stool to the opposite side of the table and sat glowering at his brother-in-law. ‘I’m going down to the Close shortly to hold an inquest, not that it’s going to advance us much.’
De Revelle smoothed his pointed beard with a heavily ringed hand. ‘The deceased seems an unlikely candidate for murder. Are you quite sure it wasn’t a felo de se?’
De Wolfe groaned silently at the sheriff’s persistence in pursuing the suicide theory. ‘And strangled himself first and gripped his own arms enough to bruise them?’ he reminded his brother-in-law.
The sheriff was silent. He would have had little interest in the death except that he was a close friend of Bishop Henry Marshal and Thomas de Boterellis, the Precentor, whose job it was to organise all the services at the cathedral. They would want a full investigation of this sudden demise of one of their canonical brethren.
‘Do you know anything of the man, Richard?’
‘Nothing at all. To my knowledge, I never saw him alive. He sounded a very retiring man of God.’ He looked across at the dark, bony man opposite. ‘Have you any idea why he should have been killed? If, in fact, he didn’t die by his own hand.’
The coroner shrugged. ‘God knows – presumably! Have any of the town watch or your men-at-arms heard of any undesirables in the city at this holiday time?’
De Revelle laughed derisively. ‘Undesirables? Half the bloody population of Exeter is undesirable! Just go around the taverns or take a walk at night into Bretayne, if you doubt me.’ Bretayne was the poorest district, down towards the river, named after the original British who had been pushed there centuries before when the Saxons invaded Exeter. ‘But I’ll ask Ralph Morin if he has any recent intelligence.’ He yelled for his guard.
A few moments later the constable of Rougemont entered the chamber. He was a large, powerful man, with a weatherbeaten face above a forked grey beard and moustache. They discussed the killing for a time with this Viking-like figure, but the constable had nothing to suggest. ‘The usual riff-raff are in the town, but no one who is likely to strangle a respectable priest. Nothing was stolen, as far as you can make out?’
De Wolfe shook his head. ‘He lived a modest life, unlike some of his fellow canons. There seemed nothing worth stealing in his house.’
De Revelle stood up and paced restlessly to one of the narrow slits that did service as a window. He looked down at the inner ward, where two oxen were laboriously hauling a large-wheeled cart through the mire. ‘Personally I don’t give a clipped penny for the life of some idle old cleric, but the Bishop is going to want answers when he gets back from Gloucester in a few days’ time.’