There was little to see on the body, except a few scratches where the skin had rubbed against the rough wood of the wheel. Gwyn tried his drowning test, which he had used successfully a few weeks earlier at a shipwreck at Torbay. As the body lay on the frozen grass alongside the leat, he pressed hard with two large hands on the chest and was gratified to see a gout of fine foam exude from the nostrils and mouth.
Satisfied that it had been a simple drowning, de Wolfe held an inquest there and then. The man had been a widower, but a twenty-year-old son was discovered to make presentment of Englishry by swearing that his father had been a Saxon, so there was no question of a murdrum fine. The miller and his two assistants, who had recovered the body, half a dozen workmen and a few locals from the mean shacks on Exe Island were rounded up by Gwyn for a jury, and within half an hour the inquest had been convened and concluded. The verdict was accidental death, it being assumed quite reasonably that the drunken man had fallen into the river further upstream and drowned, his body being washed later into the leat when the sluice was opened.
‘There is no question of the wheel being deodand,’ declared the coroner to the mystified jury. ‘The wheel was not the object that caused death, it was merely the obstruction that trapped the dead body.’
One member of the jury – the miller – understood the significance of this and breathed a sigh of relief. Anything that caused death, such as a dagger or even a runaway horse, could be declared deodand by the coroner and confiscated for the Crown. Carts, or even a single wheel from a cart, might be confiscated, leaving the owner without a means to earn a living. The miller had heard of instances where a mill wheel had been confiscated and sold, if a live person had been crushed or drowned by it.
Having handed over the body to the son for burial, John and Gwyn walked back to the Bush for a drink and a gossip. Though tempted to stay with Nesta for the evening, the coroner decided that he had better go home and make an effort to keep Matilda in a moderately tolerable state of mind.
Chapter Ten
In which Crowner John meets a woman in distress
The forecast of the two soldiers at Berry Pomeroy that there would be no snow was correct – but they had not anticipated the rain that came down the next morning. In the early hours of the first Monday of the year, the frost was washed away by steady rain. The streets of Exeter became a slime of mud and rubbish with slippery cobbles exposed here and there.
As Crowner John made his way up to the castle, a torrent of dirty water ran down the hill towards him from the gateway. It trickled into the outer ward to add to the morass of churned mud that covered the wide space between the high castle walls and the wooden stockade that enclosed the outer bailey. As he looked to his left on the way up to the drawbridge, he saw the residents of the outer zone squelching between the huts and lean-to shanties that housed the men-at-arms and their families. Urchins ran around semi-naked with mud up to the knees, and women muffled in shawls tried to keep their firewood dry as they stoked their cooking stoves in the doorways of the flimsy shelters. Oxen and horses plodded through the mire, some pulling large-wheeled carts, adding to the chaos of what was a military camp combined with an inner-city village. Ignoring the rain that began to trickle down his face and off the end of his big nose, de Wolfe strode the last few yards to the shelter of the tall gatehouse.
As he was about to climb up the narrow stairs to his chamber, Sergeant Gabriel appeared at the guardroom door and saluted.
‘Sir John, the sheriff wants you to attend on him as soon as you arrive.’ He coughed diplomatically. ‘By the way he said it, sir, I reckon it’s urgent.’
De Wolfe grunted and walked out into the rain again. The inner ward was filthy too: all the rubbish frozen into the ground these past two weeks had now floated to the surface. He trudged moistly across to the keep and reached the hall with some relief, although entering feet had made the floor within the entrance almost as muddy as it was outside.
Ignoring the noisy throng milling around, he loped to the sheriff’s door and nodded to the guard as he went in. A clerk and a steward were in the chamber, talking to Richard de Revelle and thrusting parchments under his eyes. For once, instead of making the coroner wait, as soon as the sheriff laid eyes on him, he hustled the other two out and commanded the guard not to admit anyone on pain of death. He slammed the door shut and walked over to the window embrasure, the furthest point from the door and the least likely place to be overheard. Here two wooden seats, like shelves, had been built into the thickness of the rough wall below the window-slit. De Revelle sat down heavily on one and pointed to the other. De Wolfe lowered himself and the two men sat hunched towards each other.
‘John, we have some serious talking to do. We parted at cross purposes last time.’
‘Matters seemed very clear to me, Richard. You confessed to treachery against the King and conspiring with rebels.’
‘I did nothing of the sort! Listen, you are my sister’s husband and for that I feel a considerable obligation towards you. Especially that of trying to keep you alive.’
‘Keep me alive? More likely the other way round.’
‘I think not, John. The danger to you is much more immediate.’
‘Is that a threat, Sheriff?’ asked de Wolfe darkly.
‘Not from me, no. But from now on you are in considerable peril. Probably more so than on your precious Crusades and foreign wars.’ He changed his tone, attempting a reasonable, wheedling persuasiveness. ‘Look, you always proclaim yourself a true servant of the King. I feel exactly the same.’
‘You have a strange way of showing it,’ observed John sarcastically. ‘You came pretty near hanging last year. You almost never became sheriff and now you’re setting off along the same dangerous track again.’
De Revelle scowled, but managed to keep his temper. ‘I said I was a loyal king’s man, like you. But which king? Last year, we all thought Richard was either dead or soon would be. It was doubtful, even after the ransom was paid, whether Henry of Germany would let him go. After his release, they tried to recapture him and only missed his ship out of Antwerp by hours. We were getting ready to put John on the throne, as it was a reasonable expectation that Richard would never get back.’
De Wolfe glowered at his brother-in-law. ‘Well, you were all very much mistaken, weren’t you? What’s this to do with me?’
De Revelle reached out and grasped the coroner’s forearm. ‘John is going to be the next king – it’s only a matter of how soon. Join us, and use this great loyalty of yours for the right sovereign!’ The sheriff became more animated as he warmed to his theme. ‘Richard has never taken the slightest interest in England. He’s spent only a few months here since he was crowned. All he does is screw taxes from the people to support Normandy and his vendetta against Philip of France – England is nothing but a colony! Prince John would change all that, be a true king of England. And you would have someone better to whom to offer your allegiance.’
De Wolfe pulled away his arm sharply. He was angry, and his anger was the worse because he knew there was a core of truth in what the sheriff said. ‘The King is the King, damn you!’ he shouted. ‘Richard is the man crowned and blessed by God as sovereign lord of England. Both of us swore knights’ oaths to serve him to the death. Until he dies, or willingly hands the Crown to someone else, he is our one and only king. Any deviation from our loyalty is treason!’
De Revelle sighed. ‘You’re a fool and it will be the end of you! Is that your last word?’
‘I’ll see you dead – I’d slay you myself – before I’d let you talk me into treachery, damn you!’ snarled the coroner.