After midday dinner, John arranged to met Gwyn and walk down to Bull-mead, just outside the town, where the Horse Fair was still in progress. Like most active men, they were both interested in horses, and this was an opportunity to walk around the field and look at the profusion of animals and gossip about them both with the dealers and many of their local cronies. As the tall, stooping coroner and his massive wild-haired officer paraded along the lines of beasts and watched them being pranced around the display area in the centre, at least one pair of wary eyes followed them. Stephen Cruch, who had a dozen stallions, mares and geldings there for sale, contemplated the former Crusader thoughtfully — and wondered what it was about him that made even the reckless Robert Winter a little uneasy.
It was often mid-morning when new cases were reported to the coroner from outside Exeter. In the summertime, a rider from a town or village in the south or west of the county could leave at dawn and be in Exeter after two or three hours’ riding, before the cathedral bells rang for Prime or Terce.
The Monday after the fair was no exception, and before the eighth hour the manor-reeve from the village of Manaton had clattered up to the gatehouse of Rougemont and slid from his horse to enquire for the coroner. Though Gwyn and Thomas were in the bare chamber above, John de Wolfe had gone across to the castle keep to view the body of the man kicked to death in the Saracen inn. Usually, dead bodies were housed in a ramshackle cart-shed against the wall of the inner ward, but this had recently been knocked down for rebuilding. Now any stray corpses awaiting burial were being taken to an empty cell in the castle prison, the dismal undercroft beneath the keep, ruled over by Stigand, the repulsive gaoler. The cadaver had been carried up to the castle before de Wolfe had visited the tavern — an offence in itself for which someone would be amerced — so he was obliged to view it before the inquest later that morning.
It was here that the gatehouse guard sent Robert Barat, the reeve of Manaton, a village between Moretonhampstead and Ashburton, on the south-western edge of Dartmoor. The reeve, a tall man of thirty-five, had hair and a flowing moustache of an almost yellow colour that pointed to Saxon ancestry, in spite of his Norman name. He was the headman of the village, responsible for organising the rota of work in the fields and acting as the link between the lord’s bailiff and steward and the common folk of the hamlet.
Robert cautiously went down the few steps from ground level into the undercroft, a semi-basement below the keep which acted as gaol and storehouse. When his eyes became accustomed to the gloom after the bright morning sun outside, he saw a low chamber with stone pillars supporting an arched roof, discoloured with patches of lichen and slime. The floor was of damp beaten earth, divided across the centre by a stone wall containing a rusted iron fence, in the centre of which was a metal gate leading into a passageway lined with squalid cells. The only illumination came from a pair of flickering pitch brands stuck into iron rings on the wall and a charcoal brazier in one of the alcoves, where the gaoler slept on a filthy straw mattress. The whole place stank of damp, mould and excrement.
As he went in, ducking his head under the low arch at the entrance, he saw a grossly fat man waddle out of the iron gate, a horn lantern in one hand. He had an almost bald head and rolls of fat hid his neck. Piggy little eyes peered from a pallid, round face, a slack mouth exposing toothless gums.
He wore a shapeless smock of dirty brown wool, which bulged over his globular stomach, covered by a thick leather apron which had many stains that looked ominously like dried blood.
For a moment, Robert Barat feared that this revolting apparition might be the coroner, but thankfully the grotesque figure was followed out of the gate by a tall, dark man dressed entirely in black and grey. The reeve walked towards him and they met halfway from the entrance.
‘Are you the crowner, sir?’
De Wolfe stopped and nodded at the man, who seemed to be a respectable peasant, dressed in plain homespun and a good pair of riding boots.
‘I am indeed — who are you?’
‘Robert Barat, the manor-reeve from Manaton, sir. My lord’s bailiff sent me urgently to find you.’
John sighed. How many times had he had a similar visit in the nine months since he had been coroner?
‘Tell me the worst, Robert. Is it a beaten wife or a tavern brawl — or has another child fallen under the mill-wheel?’
‘None of those things, Crowner. It’s a fire in the tannery.’
John’s black brows came down in a frown. It was true that fires were within a coroner’s remit, but it was rare for him to be told of one in the countryside. In towns or cities it was a different matter, with the ever-present risk of a conflagration sweeping through the closely packed buildings, but out in the villages, fires were less common and certainly less dangerous, so they were rarely reported to him.
‘Just a fire, Reeve? Your bailiff must be a very conscientious fellow.’
The tall, fair man shifted uneasily. ‘It may be more than that, sir. The tanner is missing, too. We don’t know whether he’s still in the ashes or whether he has vanished. There’s something odd about the fire. I’m sure it was set deliberately.’
John sensed that even this extra explanation was not the whole story, but the reeve was not forthcoming with any more details.
‘Who is the lord of Manaton?’ he demanded.
‘Henry le Denneis, Crowner. Though he holds the manor as a tenant of the Abbot of Tavistock.’
‘What makes you think that the place was fired deliberately?’
Robert Barat raised his eyes to look directly at the coroner. ‘We have had trouble in the village these last few weeks, Sir John. You’ll know we are just within the Royal Forest, more’s the pity. Although it has always made things difficult, recently it has got worse.’
John pricked up his ears at this. Almost every day now, it seemed, some problem appeared linked to the forest.
‘What sort of trouble?’ he asked, as they walked back towards the daylight streaming down the steps.
‘I think you had better ask our bailiff or the lord’s steward,’ the reeve replied cautiously. ‘They know more about it, but it all goes back to the new tannery the foresters have set up near Moretonhampstead. They demanded that our small tannery should close down, so that theirs could take its trade.’
Though de Wolfe immediately appreciated this familiar situation, he pressed the other to finish his explanation.
‘So what happened?’
‘Our tanner, Elias Necke, refused to close down. How could he, for he and his three sons depend on it for their living. He was threatened more than once by that bastard William Lupus. Then, on Saturday night, the place burnt down and Elias went missing.’
Out in the inner ward, de Wolfe stopped and turned to the village reeve.
‘I’ll come out to Manaton later this morning, with my officer and clerk. I have to attend to an inquest first, but will set off before noon. If you get yourself some food and drink while your horse rests, you can set off ahead of us.’
Robert Barat respectfully touched his forehead and set off for the gatehouse, where his mare was tethered. De Wolfe called after him.
‘Tell the bailiff to gather as many villagers as he can for a jury, especially those who may know anything about the fire, even if they only watched it burn.’