‘Lay yourself down there and we’ll find what’s to be found.’
With even greater reluctance, Nesta sat on the bed and swung her legs up on the end. She was already regretting the impulse that had driven her to Exe Island.
‘Lie back, this won’t take long.’
Lucy hovered over the innkeeper like some huge dishevelled bat, feeling her belly at length through the thin material of her summer kirtle. Then, like the midwife in Priest Street, she examined Nesta internally, a process that the tavern-keeper endured with gritted teeth and screwed-up eyes. In an age when cleanliness and hygiene were usually thought irrelevant, she was unusually fastidious. Nesta washed almost every day and, in the fashion of the Welsh, even cleaned her teeth with the chewed end of a hazel twig dipped in wood ash. It was anathema to have to lie on a flea-infested blanket and have the grimed fingers of an old woman, who had probably not washed since old King Henry was on the throne, pushed into her most private parts.
But she endured it, as she had little choice if she was to learn what she urgently needed to know. Bearded Lucy, still muttering to herself, rummaged about inside her with one hand, the other digging into Nesta’s belly just above her crotch. Like all women, the innkeeper wore no underclothing around her hips, so the hag needed only to reach up under her skirt.
After a few moments Lucy grunted and withdrew her hand, wiping it casually on the sleeve of the rags she wore.
‘You are with child, girl, no doubt of that.’
Nesta pulled down the hem of her kirtle and swung her legs to the floor, rising thankfully from the grubby bed.
‘But for how long?’ she persisted.
The old woman rubbed her fingers over her wispy beard, a gesture that irrelevantly reminded Nesta of Gwyn of Polruan.
‘About three months, that’s as near as I can tell you. These things are never exact.’
A cold hand reached into Nesta’s chest and seized her heart. This was the news she dreaded, though it was half expected.
‘So it could be before early April?’
Lucy wagged her grotesque head. ‘It’s now past mid-June, so they tell me — so certainly you conceived not later than the middle or end of March. You may be able to tell that better than me, if you can remember when you rode the tiger around that time!’ She cackled crudely.
Nesta ignored her and sank down on to the stool, which at least was wooden and free from obvious filth.
‘There can be no mistake?’
‘Yes, within a couple of weeks, either way. But if your crowner friend wasn’t rogering you for a month or two before mid-April, then he’s not the father.’ She had astutely guessed Nesta’s problem.
The younger woman stared blankly at the floor for a few moments.
‘I need to be free of it, God help me,’ she said in a hollow voice.
Bearded Lucy stood over her, hands on hips.
‘God can’t help you, dear — and I’m not sure I can, though so many women think otherwise.’
Nesta raised her head slowly and her eyes roved over the bunches of dried vegetation hanging around the walls. ‘Some of them think rightly. Will you try for me? I have money I can give you.’
‘I can be hanged for that, Welsh woman. Even for trying.’
‘But will you do it? I’m desperate, I cannot have this child. Not for my sake, but for that of a good man.’
The old crone considered for a moment. ‘He came here once, that man of yours. He was not unkind, like some who would see me hanged or worse.’
‘Then you’ll do it?’ Nesta’s voice carried the eagerness of desperation.
Lucy raised her crippled hand.
‘Wait. I’m not doing anything. The days when I could put a sliver of slippery elm into the neck of a womb have long gone. With these poor fingers and my failing sight, I’d as like kill you as cure you.’
Crestfallen, Nesta looked at her pathetically.
‘But you can help me some way? Give me some potion or drug?’
Sighing, the old woman shuffled over to her shelf and took down a small earthenware pot.
‘You can try these, but never say that I am trying to procure a miscarriage for you. I am only trying to bring back your monthly courses, understand?’
Nesta nodded mutely as Lucy shook out from the pot half a dozen irregular brown lumps, the size of beans.
‘What are they?’ she asked in a lacklustre voice.
‘A mixture of my own — just to bring on your flow, mind,’ she warned again. ‘Only herbs — parsley, tansy, pennyroyal, laburnum, rue and hellebore.’ She dropped the crude pills into Nesta’s hand and closed her fingers over them. ‘I make no promise that they will work. You will feel ill after you take them and no doubt spend half the day in the privy. If you begin to bleed, then probably God would have willed it anyway. And if you bleed too much, call an apothecary — but whatever you do, never mention my name. Though my life here is hardly worth living, I prefer not to end it dangling from a gallows!’
In the late afternoon of that day, John de Wolfe was relaxing as best he could before his own cold fireplace. He had not long arrived back from Manaton and, ignoring Matilda’s displeasure, was sprawled in one of the monk’s chairs with a quart of ale in one hand, the other resting on Brutus’s head. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, his feet enjoying their freedom after a day in tight riding boots. His wife’s tut-tutting was due to his lounging in his black woollen hose without shoes, especially as one big toe protruded through a hole in the foot.
‘You still behave like a rough soldier, John!’ she scolded, sitting opposite him in tight-lipped disapproval. ‘Why can’t you comport yourself like a knight and a gentleman? What would anyone think if they came in now?’
He rolled up his eyes in silent exasperation at her eternal snobbishness.
‘I’ll do what I like in my own house, wife,’ he grunted. ‘And who in hell is likely to come calling here on a hot Monday afternoon, eh?’
Promptly, as if the fates were conspiring against him, there was a loud rapping on the front door. Mary was cleaning his boots in the vestibule and answered straight away, then put her head around the screens to announce visitors.
‘It’s Lord Guy Ferrars — and some other nobles,’ she proclaimed in a somewhat awed voice. Matilda jumped to her feet as if struck by lightning, and hurriedly began to straighten the wimple at her throat and pat down her kirtle.
‘Put on your shoes, at once!’ she hissed, as John hauled himself from the chair and groped for his house slippers. A moment later, Mary had stood aside for three men to stride past her into the hall.
‘De Wolfe, forgive us for intruding unannounced,’ boomed the leading man, who sounded as if he was in no way seeking such forgiveness. A powerful, arrogant fellow, some years older than John, Guy Ferrars was one of the major landowners in Devon — and indeed had manors in half a dozen other counties. De Wolfe knew him slightly and disliked him for an overbearing, ruthless baron, whose only saving grace was that he had been a good soldier and a loyal supporter of King Richard.
Behind him was Sir Reginald de Courcy, a lesser light but still an important member of the county elite, with manors at Shillingford and Clyst St George, as well as property outside Devon. The third man was also known to the coroner by sight, being Sir Nicholas de Molis, whose honour included a number of manors along the eastern edge of Dartmoor. Rapidly gathering his wits together after this sudden invasion, John ushered the visitors to the long table, as there were too few chairs at the hearth.
‘Mary, wine and some wafers or whatever you have for our guests,’ he commanded, pulling out the benches on either side of the table. Matilda, her sallow face flushed with mixed pride, excitement and shame at her husband’s dishevelled appearance, stopped bobbing her head and knee and rushed after their cook-maid to accelerate the arrival of refreshments.
John took the chair at the end of the table, with Reginald de Courcy on his left and the other pair to his right. Lord Ferrars began without any preamble, his harsh voice echoing in the bare hall.