De Revelle, though glad that the talk had left Jocelin de Braose, became uneasy in case the Coroner went off now to upset the Bishop by exposing one of the cathedral priests as a rake. De Revelle was close to the head of the Church in Exeter and the last thing he wanted was for his brother-in-law to start a new scandal in the precinct. All things considered, his sister’s husband had become a damned nuisance since being appointed coroner a few months ago, upsetting Richard’s cosy monopoly of the intrigues that went on in the county. ‘I wish you would just let this matter of the canon rest, John,’ he said. ‘He was obviously killed by some opportunist robber – that is, if you were right in claiming that he didn’t do away with himself. Why make such a great mystery of it? If you need a solution, accuse one of the servants. I’ll hang him for you and the whole affair can be forgotten.’
De Wolfe was scornful of what he considered to be the sheriff’s immoral attitude to justice and, after a few tart words, he left de Revelle’s chamber and marched back to the gatehouse, muttering under his breath at his brother-in-law’s unsuitability to represent the King. The Lionheart was de Wolfe’s idol. If pressed, though, he would have had to admit that, as far as England was concerned, Richard Coeur de Lion left much to be desired: he had spent only a few months of his reign in the country, and showed no sign of ever returning now that he was at war in France. He had not bothered to learn a word of English, and his queen, Berengaria, had never so much as set foot in England, not even for Richard’s second coronation earlier that year – to which she had not been invited! The King looked on Normandy as his true home, and England as a mine from which his ministers, notably Hubert Walter, hewed money and goods to support his armies.
As he strode across the inner ward, the east wind whistling around his legs, John felt nothing for his monarch but loyalty, born of the camaraderie of the arduous campaigns in the Holy Land and the stresses of their escapade between the Adriatic and Vienna. To see his brother-in-law twisting his royal appointment endlessly to suit his own advantage made the coroner even more determined to confound de Revelle by making every investigation as complete and honest as possible.
He stamped into the room at the top of the gate-house and snapped instructions. ‘Gwyn, get back to the tavern on Stepcote Hill and find out all you can about that squire and his master – and the woman from Rye. Threaten Willem the Fleming if you have to, tell him we’ll have him up at Rougemont to sit in the gaol for a few days and maybe suffer peine et forte dure unless he comes up with some information.’ This was a bluff on de Wolfe’s part, but the threat might loosen the surly inn-keeper’s tongue. ‘And you, Thomas, come with me to the Close. We need to have words with this young priest who seems to have difficulty in keeping his chastity intact.’
The clerk tipped his head sideways like a sparrow. ‘You have two hangings to attend at midday,’ he reminded his master.
De Wolfe scowled: he had forgotten that, Yuletide or not, the twice-weekly executions still took place at the gallows tree on Magdalen Street outside the city. He had to be present to record the event and to confiscate the property of the dead felons – if they had any. ‘We’ll be finished by then, if we get down to the precinct straight away,’ he snapped.
But Thomas had another objection. ‘The priests will all be at morning services until about the eleventh hour.’
‘Then we’ll pull him out to talk to us. His immortal soul won’t suffer too much for missing an hour’s chanting.’
Equipped with new axes and with their bruises fading, Alward’s men had gone back to their clearing of the woods between Afton and Loventor. For several days they were unmolested. Those in Fitzhamon’s village must have known that the work had resumed, as the smoke from the burning debris reached above the tree-tops and the sound of axes rang out to a great distance in the frosty winter air.
The Afton team had one additional tool this time: a horn slung on Alward’s belt. The sound of this, driven by his powerful lungs, could reach far down the face of the forest along which they were felling their trees. On this morning of the day following Christ Mass, when work began again after the festival, the expected attack resumed. Once more, another dozen roughly clothed men charged from the woods and began to belabour the villeins and freemen from Afton, although this time the workers were even quicker at running away.
The instant the assailants appeared, Alward began to blast away on his cow’s horn, which caused the ruffians to slow up to wonder what was going on. Within seconds of the trumpeting, there was a thunder of hoofs in the middle distance and from the tree-line, two hundred paces away, half a dozen horsemen emerged and bore down on the combatants. Though half the number of the assailants, the mounted men cut through them like a knife through butter, scattering the men on foot in panic.
This time, there was no attempt to avoid serious injury. The riders swung swords with professional skill and two of the men from Loventor fell at once, with lethal wounds gushing blood on to the ground. Pulling their large horses around, the six men began chasing the would-be attackers, felling another with a blow on the back and inflicting lesser wounds on two more. Even one of the Afton workers was mistaken for an aggressor and given a deep cut on the head, which fortunately did not prove fatal.
After the second sally, the men from both villages were hopelessly intermingled in their hapless attempts to escape to the shelter of the trees. The leader of the horsemen, a stocky young man with red hair visible under the rim of his round metal helmet, raised his sword and yelled at his companions to follow him. Expertly wheeling their steeds, the avengers galloped off down the edge of the woods and out of sight, leaving the Loventor men to creep slowly out of the bushes to collect their dead and wounded, watched silently by the peasants they had come to attack.
Thomas de Peyne was sent into the great cathedral to find the vicar, who was called Eric Langton. Thankfully, his task was easier than he had expected – the ex-cleric looked on disturbing a sacred service as a sin worse than blasphemy. In the event, he found that Roger de Limesi was himself present at the devotions so his deputy was dispensable. Thomas was able to sidle along the back of the choir stalls, where the more junior officiants stood, and tug at Langton’s robe without disrupting the proceedings.
The mystified vicar allowed himself to be drawn into the shadows of the arches between the chancel and the side aisles where the coroner’s clerk hissed in his ear that he was wanted urgently at Robert de Hane’s house in the Close.
Eric Langton recognised Thomas as someone who lived in Canons’ Row – presumably a priest, as the little clerk had never denied it – and followed him without protest, mildly relieved that he had escaped the next hour of boring worship.