De Revelle stood up and looked down at him, his narrow face working with emotion. His pointed beard jerked like a dagger as he spoke rapidly and spitefully. ‘Then it must be done another way, John. If I am to try to save your life, you must give up any notion of riding off to Winchester with your rumours of rebellion and other gossip. Do you understand?’
De Wolfe looked at him in amazement. ‘Go to hell, Richard! I’ll do exactly what I think is right. How do you imagine you can stop me? With your little sword?’
De Revelle flushed and swallowed hard to control himself. His lack of prowess in all things martial was well known and he was excruciatingly sensitive about it. He had always wanted to be a courtier, in the political arena, not a warrior. But de Wolfe’s insult made it easier for him to spit out his ultimatum.
‘Your scandalous private life is well known, especially to my spies. If you do not agree to keep quiet, I’ll see to it that Matilda is told not only about that drab you visit in the tavern, but also about Hilda, wife of Thorgils. And, for good measure, that Welsh woman will also be told about her rival in Dawlish!’
De Wolfe jumped to his feet and looked down at his brother-in-law in amazement. Then he did something that the sheriff had not expected. He began laughing uproariously, and was still laughing as he passed the astonished guard at the door.
That afternoon, de Wolfe attended the funeral of Canon Robert de Hane. Although it was over a week since his death, the cathedral Chapter had waited this unusually long time before burial because of the absence of the Bishop, who was to conduct the mass for the dead. The freezing weather had allowed the body to lie in its coffin without putrefaction.
As he watched it lowered into a deep hole below a paving slab in the apse behind the high altar, the coroner cursed the sheriff for not arresting the two men who had killed de Hane. He had no idea where Jocelin de Braose and his squire were at present, but suspected that they were being sheltered somewhere in the west of the county, probably at Totnes or Berry Pomeroy. As coroner, he had no legal power to seize them, so there was little that he and Gwyn could do except by subterfuge, as at the ambush in Dunsford, which could hardly be repeated.
After the funeral, he met John de Alencon briefly in the nave. The other canons passed them on the way out and most nodded a greeting, except Thomas de Boterellis, who studiously ignored them. In the distance, de Wolfe saw the remote figure of the Bishop making his way back to his palace and he wondered how deeply Henry Marshal was involved in the budding rebellion.
He told the Archdeacon about the sheriff’s attempt to suborn him into the conspiracy and his ludicrous threat of blackmail. De Alencon smiled wryly at these venal matters, which were outwith the experience of a truly celibate priest. ‘I gather that your amorous affairs are an insufficient threat to you, John?’
‘The man is insane to think that they are anything more than a passing irritation!’ snorted de Wolfe. ‘My only concern is how he got to know about the lady in Dawlish. He must pay informers about the country to spy on me, as he claimed.’
The Archdeacon gazed up the nave at the great choir screen of ornately carved wood, as if seeking inspiration from on high. ‘What is to be done, John? Will you ride to Winchester, as you intend?’
‘I’ll have to. This affair cannot continue unchecked. But I’d like some firmer evidence to give Hubert Walter. I’ll wait a few more days to see if anything turns up, though the bloody sheriff is watching my every move.’
John de Alencon laid a hand on the coroner’s arm. ‘I’ve warned you before, John. Be careful. These men are playing for high stakes and will swat you like a fly if they can. Look what happened to Fitzhamon and poor Robert, lying there in his box.’
With yet another caution ringing in his ears, de Wolfe walked back through the rain to his house in Martin’s Lane.
At the midday meal of fried pork, onions, bread and some rather shrivelled stored apples, Matilda was in what her husband called an average mood. She had no spontaneous conversation, but at least answered his questions and comments civilly, even if her voice conveyed a total lack of interest in him and his doings. The only slight spark of curiosity he could strike from her concerned the funeral of Robert de Hane: she wanted to know who was present, if any wives had been there and, if so, what they had been wearing. As he had no answer to her last questions, she subsided into apathy again.
Later, as there were no hangings or mutilations at which he had to be present, he walked with Gwyn to Bull Mead, out of the city beyond the South Gate. On the meadows between Holloway and Magdalen Streets, which led away to the east, jousting lists had been set up and a minor tournament was being held that day. In his prime, de Wolfe had been a keen competitor in the sport that maintained and honed fighting men’s skills between real battles. He had won many a joust – and the prize money and sometimes the favours of a woman, which went with victory.
Both he and Bran were now too long in the tooth for this violent and often fatal sport, but he still enjoyed watching the spectacle. In former years Gwyn had acted as his squire and they both studied the new young men with a critical eye, as they thundered towards each other down each side of the wattle fence, trying to unhorse each other with a clash of lance on shield. Thankfully the rain had stopped, but the tourney field was a quagmire of churned mud under the horses’ hoofs, and when a man was unhorsed, he became a greater figure of derision because of his mud-plastered ignominy.
The two former Crusaders spent an hour or two sitting on the benches of the primitive viewing stand, the sights and sounds of combat rekindling memories of battles gone by.
When the early winter dusk began to close in, the tournament came to an end and the crowd dispersed. Gwyn trudged off to his home in St Sidwell’s, leaving de Wolfe to make his way to the Bush. At that hour it was almost deserted, but as soon as he entered, Nesta bustled across from the kitchen door and seized his arm to pull him to an empty corner, as far away from the few customers as possible. De Wolfe saw that her face was flushed and that her hazel eyes were sparkling with indignation. Hurriedly, he searched his conscience for some recent transgression, but he soon learned that her anger was not directed at him. ‘I’ve never heard such impertinence!’ she hissed. ‘That rheumaticky old fool that is steward to the sheriff had the gall to come here earlier with a message from his master!’
Mystified for a moment, realisation dawned on de Wolfe. ‘Oh, God, I never thought he’d stoop to such pettiness!’
The pretty alehouse keeper glared at him. ‘You know what he said, then?’
‘It was about Hilda, no doubt?’
‘Yes, it was about bloody Hilda! It’s bad enough knowing that you’re unfaithful to me without having it bandied all about Exeter! What’s going on?’
De Wolfe pulled her gently to his table by the hearth and, as they sat down, Nesta signalled to Edwin to bring the coroner his usual quart of ale. The old potman, who had been hovering uneasily in the background, keeping clear of his mistress’s fiery temper, grinned with relief and hurried to his barrels.
John explained Richard de Revelle’s attempt to blackmail him, and Nesta, with the volatility of spirit that went with her red hair, soon saw the ridiculous side of it and began giggling over the jug of ale that they shared.
‘A good job we had this out between us the other day, John. I’d have hated to have learned it first from the sheriff!’ Then she had a more sobering thought. ‘But if he’s been so vindictive as to tell me of your exploits with the ladies, he’ll be even more certain to go sneaking to your wife. She won’t be so forgiving as me, I’ll be bound.’