‘Hugh de Nonant!’ grated de Wolfe. ‘A kinsman of the lord of Totnes, Henri de Nonant – who I suspect is also up to his neck in this. It was during his hunting party that William Fitzhamon was murdered. I’m beginning to think that the whole affair was organised as a cover for his killing. Which brings us back to de Braose and Fulford.’
‘Do you think de Nonant is the prime mover of this treason in Devon?’ asked John de Alencon.
The coroner looked at him mournfully. ‘Who can tell? Henry de la Pomeroy is the biggest landowner, but my guts tell me that they are all in this together.’
‘We have no proof of anything against any of them yet,’ pointed out the Archdeacon. ‘You claim, I’m sure correctly, that both our canon and Fitzhamon were murdered, but you have only a confession made under duress about de Hane, which is nothing to do with any rebellion.’
‘You’ve got de Revelle’s strange partiality towards Fulford, presumably because he is a tool of the rebels,’ objected de Relaga.
‘We could certainly do with better evidence,’ conceded de Wolfe. ‘But I am quite ready to ride to Winchester to talk to Hubert Walter.’
‘Give it a few days to see if more hard fact comes to light,’ advised the Portreeve. ‘In the meantime, don’t walk down too many dark alleys, John. Keep that ginger giant of yours close at hand with his fists and his sword!’
The weather had turned fine, but was bitterly cold as John de Wolfe left the cathedral and walked across the Close towards his house. The piles of earth dug out for new graves had frozen into rock-like heaps that blocked some of the paths and, with the rubbish, old timber and the hawkers’ stalls that were scattered around the cathedral precinct, it was something of an obstacle race to navigate into Martin’s Lane. Though Mary had given him some mulled ale and bread before he left to rouse Hugh de Relaga, de Wolfe couldn’t resist going into his house for a better breakfast. He found Matilda huddled at the table, a heavy cloak thrown around her nightgown and her dishevelled hair wrapped in a cloth like a turban – Lucille had not yet wreaked her witchcraft upon it. She was eating coarse porridge from a wooden bowl, and a large loaf, butter and cheese lay on the boards in front of her.
She muttered a grudging greeting and carried on eating. Whatever turmoil and alarms came along, nothing spoiled her appetite, which accounted for the thickness of her features, the loose skin under her eyes and the solidity of her frame and limbs.
De Wolfe had had no chance in the early hours to tell her of the events of the night and something told him to keep quiet about his suspicions of her brother’s loyalty. Mary came in with his hot porridge, fresh milk and more steaming ale, the only hot drink available on a freezing day like this – mulled wine could hardly be served at breakfast. ‘Thomas came in while you were out, Sir John,’ she reported, careful to be formal and respectful to him in the presence of the mistress. ‘He had a message, but I told him you would almost certainly be going up to the castle when you had eaten, so he went away.’
‘Do you know what he wanted?’
Mary opened her hands to him in a gesture of doubt. ‘He said something about royal fish, whatever they are.’
‘The evil little pervert is out of his mind,’ muttered Matilda, breaking her silence at the chance to malign the clerk. John held his tongue, but he knew what Thomas had meant, even if he was surprised that the matter had arisen. As soon as he had eaten, he left the house and walked up through the streets to Rougemont. It was Sunday, but there seemed to be no lessening of the market activities, with stalls along High Street selling meat, fish, bread, dairy products and vegetables, all tailored to the season of the year. Much less was available in midwinter compared to later on, but anything that could be cooked or preserved was raucously advertised by the yells of the stall-holders and the keepers of the small shops under the covered ways formed by overhanging upper storeys. Between the fixed stalls and the shops, hawkers stood hopefully with trays and boxes of goods, or with live fowl and ducks struggling under their arms, everything offered for sale to a potential buyer, after the inevitable haggling over a price.
Black John strode past them all as if they did not exist, deep in thought about the ominous political situation, the prospect of a revival of Prince John’s abortive rebellion. Although a coroner had no official stake in such matters, de Wolfe’s intense loyalty to the King overrode any confinement of his actions to dead bodies, treasure and sanctuary-seekers. Last March, he had been at the sieges at Tickhill in Yorkshire and at Nottingham, the last castles to hold out for the Prince. He and Gwyn had volunteered, itching for action, to help regain these for Coeur de Lion. The King himself had hurried to Nottingham within days of landing at Sandwich in Kent, after his imprisonment. De Wolfe remembered his sovereign setting up a gallows outside the castle walls and hanging a few captives, which rapidly persuaded the garrison to surrender. As he strode up to Rougemont, he wondered whether the same tactics might be needed soon outside the castles at Totnes and Berry Pomeroy.
At the top of the stairs in the gatehouse, he pushed aside the sacking door and went in to the usual scene of Thomas writing at the trestle table and Gwyn perched on the window-ledge, eating and drinking. The little clerk, his thin nose red with cold, held up a parchment. ‘I recorded all that Fulford said last night, Crowner. It’s written here, as you ordered. I’ve even got that savage over there to make his mark on it where I’ve written his name. You can sign it here, if you want to take it to the Justiciar.’ He offered his quill to de Wolfe, who, with some pride, carefully inscribed his name at the bottom of the document, the only words he was able to write.
He threw down the pen with studied carelessness. ‘What’s this about fish, Thomas?’ he demanded.
‘A sturgeon, Crowner, a big one! Stuck in a pool on the ebb tide near St James’s Priory, where there are salmon traps. The prior sent a message with one of the fish-sellers early this morning.’
De Wolfe was intrigued: this was the first time he had been called upon to carry out one of the oddest tasks of a coroner. As well as looking into treasure trove and fires, he had to investigate catches of the so-called ‘royal fish’, which were sturgeons and whales. If they were found within the realm of England, these became the property of the Crown. Both were prized and valuable, the sturgeon for its flesh and roe and the whale mainly for the oil it provided for lamps, as well as its flesh, if it was fresh enough.
Gwyn looked up from his loaf and cheese. ‘Very strange to have a sturgeon come up-river in winter. They usually arrive from the ocean to spawn in the spring.’ The Cornishman came from Polruan, where his father had been a fisherman, and he considered himself an authority on anything that had sails, rudder or fins.
‘Maybe this fish is an ignoramus like you, who can’t tell January from March,’ suggested Thomas, always quick to insult his partner. De Wolfe held up a hand to quell the inevitable squabble. ‘That’s enough! Let’s get down there and see this beast. The rest of the day may be busier.’
As they went out, he muttered to his henchman, ‘Gwyn, keep your eyes open and your hand on your sword. After our encounter with Fulford last night, there are people who would gladly see us dead.’
Chapter Nine
In which Crowner John deals with a fish and a mill-wheel
The ride was quite short down to the banks of the river Exe where the sturgeon was trapped. Between Exeter and the port of Topsham was the small priory dedicated to St James, founded over fifty years earlier by Earl Baldwin de Redvers, sheriff of Devon, who had held Rougemont against a siege by King Stephen for three months. Though he could never have met him, de Wolfe didn’t like the sound of Baldwin, possibly because he had fought against his king – for the Empress Matilda, the namesake of John’s wife. The coroner’s team trotted down the mile and a half to the priory, following the track to Topsham, parallel to the river. A small place, it housed only a prior and four monks. Near it was the sluice to a mill-stream and a palisade of stakes in the river for catching salmon.