The Precentor carried on with his news. ‘Hugh de Nonant thinks it politic to stay in Normandy for the time being, so we lack a strong leader at present.’
‘What about another bishop?’ asked Cheever. ‘Henry Marshal of Exeter, for example.’
Boterellis shook his big head. ‘He’s too timid. If it falls flat again, he doesn’t want to follow the Bishop of Coventry. And he’s in an awkward position as brother to William Marshal, who has always been a King’s man – whichever king it is.’
Pomeroy glared around at the others. ‘So where are we now? Are we having a rebellion or not?’
‘A number of barons about England are once more sympathetic to the Prince’s cause,’ replied the lard-faced priest. ‘We have probably the strongest group here in the south-west. But it is so soon after the fiasco of last winter that many are treading softly. I’m sure that enough will rally eventually to the Count of Mortaigne, but it is too soon to declare openly yet.’
De Nonant brought them back to the current problem. ‘All the more reason not to let this wayward crowner let the badger out of the bag! What’s to be done?’
The lord of Berry Pomeroy took the initiative. ‘He must be silenced, either by threats or violence. Why are we so concerned about some piddling pensioned-off ex-Crusader?’
Richard de Revelle was less sanguine about the county coroner. ‘Much as I dislike the bloody man, I have to admit that he is able enough – tenacious, stubborn and cunning! And with that hairy Cornish savage watching his back, he can outfight any two men that I know.’
‘Then we’ll send five against him,’ snapped Pomeroy. ‘If he’s a danger to us, get rid of him.’
‘Can’t we blackmail him somehow?’ suggested the less bloodthirsty Bernard Cheever. ‘Murdering a coroner, especially one who’s a personal friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of the King, is a sure way of calling attention to ourselves.’
The sheriff responded quickly, anxious to avoid being involved in the assassination of Matilda’s husband. ‘I agree – and there may be a way of keeping his mouth shut. His Achilles’ heel is his fondness for women. I’ve a plan which might just work! I’ll put it into action as soon as I get back to Exeter tonight.’
Henry de Nonant was scornful of de Revelle’s confidence. ‘This de Wolfe sounds too hard a nut to crack that easily. We must have an absolutely foolproof strategem to keep him silent. What about those two adventurers we hired to recruit and train our mercenaries? De Braose did a good job on Fitzhamon, even if his squire let us down.’
Pomeroy went round with a flask to refill their wine cups. ‘They’re too fond of private enterprise for my liking. Their foolery with buried treasure led to the killing of that canon of yours, Boterellis, and hence to the crowner dousing Fulford in a trough last night to make him talk. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have this trouble now.’
Cheever, a smaller version of Hugh de Relaga in that he was dressed in bright-coloured tunic and mantle, acted as middle man once again. ‘If it was their fault that we have a problem, let’s see if they have any suggestions to put it right.’
A servant was dispatched to fetch the pair from the hall, and soon they appeared. Jocelin de Braose’s curly russet hair contrasted with the dark green cape he wore over his brown woollen tunic. Thomas de Boterellis, who knew the whole story of the treasure hunt, noticed that his cape was secured at his shoulder with a fine gold brooch of Saxon design.
Behind him stood Giles Fulford, slimmer and fairer than his master, dressed in a uniform-like leather jerkin and serge breeches. He looked flushed and constantly had to suppress an irritable cough that came from deep in his chest.
Henry de la Pomeroy had recruited de Braose to find and train a small army of mercenaries for the anticipated revolt, but had not seen him lately. Pomeroy had instigated the murder of Fitzhamon to prevent him telling tales to the Justiciar but had naturally kept well away from the hunting party at Totnes. He was curious as to how it had been achieved. De Braose was quite ready to enlighten him. ‘First we had to get Fitzhamon’s bowman out of the way. Giles here damaged a hamstring on his horse before they left Totnes, so the reeve had to walk it back and leave his master to hunt alone. We tracked him and got ahead of him.’
‘How did you get him from his horse?’ demanded Pomeroy.
‘Giles lay face down on the ground with an arrow held up in his armpit as if he’d been shot. When Fitzhamon came along the track, he dismounted to see what was wrong. As he bent over the supposed body, I came up behind him and cracked him over the head with a branch. Then we broke his neck while he was unconscious – he didn’t feel a thing,’ he added, with an unpleasant smirk.
In a hoarse voice, between coughs, Giles Fulford finished the unsavoury story. ‘We carried him back near a tree with a low branch and left him on the ground. I reached up from my saddle, broke off a strip of bark to make it look as if he had struck the branch, then smeared some blood from the wound on his head on to the branch.’
De Revelle sneered at their pride in their ingenuity. ‘And then you fools ruined it all by choosing an oak tree after hitting him with a beech club! And leaving bruises all over his neck!’
De Braose’s face reddened to match his hair. ‘Would you ever have thought that this damned crowner would notice that? I never heard of such a thing and I’m sure you haven’t!’
The sheriff looked around at the other faces, almost as if to seek admiration of his brother-in-law’s abilities. ‘I told you what a cunning bastard he was!’ he complained.
De Nonant brought them back to the present. ‘We need to prevent de Wolfe from running to tell tales to Winchester or London. The sheriff is averse for some reason to slitting his throat, so we need to try a less fatal means. Have either of you young bucks any ideas?’
The conversation went to and fro for some time, with heads together and the wine flask circulating freely. Eventually, they pulled apart and de Braose and his squire left, the latter still coughing and wheezing like a broken-winded horse.
Soon, the precentor and the sheriff prepared to go, to reach Exeter before dark. As he left, Richard de Revelle said uneasily, ‘I don’t like it, but it may have to be done. But only if my suggestion fails to work.’
As soon as he was out of the door, Henry de la Pomeroy muttered to his cousin Bernard Cheever, ‘And if they both fail, then three feet of steel in a dark alley will have to be the answer.’
That Sabbath day was a busy one for the coroner. After spending the morning down on the river at St James, he was called again in the afternoon to Exe Island, just outside the walls, where a body had been recovered from beneath the wheel of a mill. The coroner and Gwyn went to the edge of the leat, a narrow canal dug from the river upstream that brought water down to the mill via a crude wooden sluice-gate. The wheel was of the undershot type, where the water pushed against the lower edges of the large vanes, rather than dropped upon it from a chute above. During the morning, the wheel that drove a fulling mill inside the wooden building had ground to a halt, which often happened when debris, usually branches or the occasional dead sheep washed down from Exmoor, became jammed in it. This time, the miller’s men had found a human obstruction and dragged it out on to the bank.
When the coroner arrived, the corpse had already been identified as a middle-aged man living in a hovel in Frog Lane on the island. He had been seen last on the previous afternoon, leaving a tavern in Fore Street, already drunk, but clutching a gallon jar of cider.
‘A real tippler, he was,’ said the miller to John de Wolfe. ‘He used to work here, but he was never sober so he was thrown out. God knows how he lived – begging and stealing, I suspect.’