The wine and food were constantly replenished by Mary, their house-servant and cook, while old Simon, the labourer, carried in fresh logs to stoke the fire. Matilda’s own maid Lucille, the poisonous French hag, as de Wolfe thought of her, was too grand to serve at table and was lurking in the solar, eavesdropping through the high slit window, waiting to help Matilda undress for bed when the party was over.
Between joining in the gossip and scandal, Matilda stole frequent glances at her husband, willing him to do something socially elegant, such as standing to propose a toast – to Jesus Christ, or the prosperity of Exeter, anything to make his mark and reflect some more glory upon her. Several times, she saw him move as if to get up and she waited expectantly for him to raise his glass to the assembled worthies. But each time she was disappointed, as all he did was reach across for a chicken leg or a jug of Loire wine. Then the opportunity was lost, as her brother jumped up and brandished his beaker, tapping imperiously on the table with the handle of his dagger.
‘We must give thanks to our host and his good wife for inviting us to this most convivial gathering,’ he brayed, the long cuff of his tunic dangling as he waved his cup back and forth. ‘To Sir John de Wolfe, lately appointed crowner to this county, and his good wife, my little sister Matilda!’
As they stood and responded to his toast, John thought that ‘little sister’ was the greatest exaggeration of the twelfth century, as Matilda’s square figure was a good many pounds heavier than de Revelle’s. Then, charitably, he assumed that his brother-in-law had meant little in years, as she was four less than her brother’s fifty. The coroner himself was only forty, though the lined skin stretched over his high cheekbones weathered by more than two decades of campaigning in Ireland, France and the Holy Land, made him look older.
Matilda’s irritation at her husband’s failure to match Richard’s social graces was slowly subsiding, when another blow fell upon her ambition to become one of Exeter’s premier hostesses. Suddenly she saw Mary, whom she rightly suspected of being another of John’s amorous conquests, come up to him and whisper urgently in his ear. He looked over his shoulder at the door to the small vestibule that fronted on to the street. Following his gaze, Matilda glared in annoyance at a large face that peered around the door. It was fringed with unruly red hair and, below a bulbous nose, a huge moustache nestled, its ends merging with carrotty side-whiskers before hanging down past his lantern jaw almost to his chest. It was Gwyn of Polruan, her husband’s bodyguard and coroner’s officer, a Cornishman for whom her Norman soul had even more contempt than for Saxons.
With growing apprehension and annoyance, she heard her husband’s chair grate across the flagstones as he rose and walked across to the door. As she watched him whispering with Gwyn, her concern mounted into fury. ‘If he leaves now, I’ll kill him, God help me!’ she muttered to herself.
Her worst fears were realised when John walked back across the hall, his head slightly forward, looking like some great bird of prey in his grey tunic and long black hose. Bending down to John de Alencon, he murmured something into the Archdeacon’s ear. The emaciated priest stood up immediately.
The coroner cleared his throat and, in his deep, sonorous voice, excused himself from the festivities for a while. ‘I hope it’ll not be long! I have but a few yards to go and hope to be back soon. So, please, eat, drink and be merry until then.’
Now furious, Matilda hurried around the table and caught her husband’s arm as he walked with the Archdeacon across to the door, where Gwyn still waited. ‘Where are you going?’ she hissed venomously. ‘You can’t leave me like this now, with all your guests still here!’
‘It’ll not be for long, wife,’ he grunted. ‘This won’t wait, I’m afraid, but I’ll try to get back soon.’
Fuming with rage, she hissed again, into his ear, ‘What can be more important on a Yuletide Eve than entertaining some of the most important citizens in Exeter?’
‘What about a dead canon in the cathedral Close, woman?’ he suggested, and slipped out of the door without another word.
De Wolfe and the Archdeacon strode on either side of the Cornish giant as they left the coroner’s house. Martin’s Lane was a short passage leading from High Street into the cathedral precinct. It took its name from St Martin’s Church on the corner, from which a line of houses stretched along the north side of the Close. Here lived many of the twenty-four canons of the cathedral, along with some of their vicars, lesser priests and servants, all male, for officially, women were forbidden in their dwellings.
As they hurried through the still, frosty air, the coroner’s henchman told what little he knew of the incident. ‘An hour ago, that miserable clerk of ours came running to me at my sister-in-law’s dwelling in Milk Street. My wife and children are lodging with her tonight, as the city gates are shut until morning.’ Gwyn lived outside the walls, at St Sidwell’s, beyond the East Gate.
‘What did Thomas have to tell you?’ demanded de Wolfe. Thomas de Peyne was the third member of his team, a diminutive, crippled ex-priest who had been unfrocked for allegedly interfering with a young female novice in Winchester.
‘He said that at about the tenth hour there had been a great uproar in the canon’s house near where he lodges and someone came to fetch him out. Being the nosy little swine that he is, he went to see what was afoot.’
De Wolfe was used to Gwyn’s leisurely way of telling a tale, but John de Alencon was less patient. ‘So what was afoot, man?’
‘The house steward was standing at the front, screaming that the canon was dead. With some others, our clerk ran through to the back of the house and found the prebendary hanging by his neck in the privy.’
By now the hurrying trio had entered Canons’ Row, with the huge bulk of the cathedral on their right. A full moon shimmered on the great building, which hovered above the disorder of the Close, with its muddy paths, piles of rubbish and open grave-pits.
‘He was undoubtedly dead?’ growled the coroner.
Gwyn pulled up the hood of his shabby leather jacket against the chill air. ‘Dead as mutton, Thomas said. The others felt his heart to make sure, then he ran to fetch me, while a servant went off to take the news to the Bishop’s Palace.’
The Archdeacon, sweeping along in his long black cloak, clucked his tongue in irritation. ‘And the Bishop is away at Gloucester, leaving me as the most senior cleric at this tragic time.’
They had arrived at the fifth house in the terrace, marked by a cluster of people around the narrow passageway that led through to the backyard. One short figure detached itself from the throng and limped towards them. Thomas de Peyne was blessed with a good brain and cursed with a twisted body. Old phthisis had bent his spine into a slight hump and damaged a hip to shorten one leg. As if this was not enough, the Almighty had given him a slight squint in his left eye. ‘Thank God you’re here, Crowner,’ he squeaked, crossing himself nervously. ‘These people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off!’
‘Where’s the corpse?’ demanded John gruffly. He never wasted breath on niceties of speech.
Thomas pushed through to the passageway and the little crowd opened up deferentially for the other men, the servants and secondaries bobbing their knees as the Archdeacon passed. The alley was dark and narrow, running alongside the tall timber house roofed with wooden shingles. It was similar, though not identical, to the other buildings in the row, some of stone, some slated and some thatched.