At the moment that de Wolfe was thinking about his clerk, Thomas was in his element in the new church at Buckfast Abbey. Secure in his masquerade as a priest, for no one here knew him, he was standing in the quire of the lofty building. Squeezed on to the end of a row of monks, he was chanting his heart out in the responses that were bringing the office of Compline to a close. He had arrived that afternoon, following a fruitless day jogging from one parish church to another, and went to enrol for the night at the large guest hall across the abbey compound from the imposing church, using his story of being a parish priest on his way to a living in Cornwall. The lay brother who administered the hall looked at this travel-weary little man and took in his worn clerical gown and his ragged tonsure.
‘You are a clerk, sir? Perhaps you would be better lodged in the dorter in the abbey over the way, rather than here among the common travellers.’
Thomas felt a pang of guilt in keeping up the deception that he was still in holy Orders, but a combination of intense longing, together with the knowledge that he was on the business of the King’s coroner, managed to dampen his misgivings. He mumbled something that sounded vaguely confirmatory and the custodian took him by the arm and walked him across to the main abbey buildings. They entered through a small door between the church and the imposing abbot’s lodging and passed through to the cloisters, a pillared arcade around four sides of a grassy square. In his seventh heaven, Thomas lingered behind his guide, basking in the serene peace of the monastic surroundings. Several monks passed, treading softly in their white robes, covered at the front by a brown scapular apron. They nodded at Thomas, but the strict Cistercian vow of silence forbade them from offering any other greeting. The lay brother, uninhibited by any such restraint, urged Thomas along and pointed out some of the main features of interest in the relatively new building, which before the Cistercians had been a Savignac house, and before that a Benedictine abbey founded in Saxon times.
They walked around the cloisters and then up some stairs to reach the long dorter, where the monks slept in spartan conditions, their hard pallets devoid of bedspreads and their clothing and meagre belongings conforming to the harsh edicts of the Rule of St Benedict, which the Cistercians had reintroduced earlier in the century. The lay brother stood with Thomas, looking down the long bare dormitory.
‘You may have been more comfortable in the guest hall, brother,’ he admitted rather sheepishly, but the coroner’s clerk was only too delighted to share the rigours of these men of God. An aged monk appeared from a small anteroom and introduced himself as Brother Howell, the curator of the dorter. He was allowed to talk when business demanded, especially to those not of his order, and soon settled Thomas on a spare mattress in a corner of the long, high-roofed sleeping hall.
‘We have no separate hospitium for accommodating visiting priests, but these pallets are reserved for them.’
‘You can eat in the refectory with the rest of the brethren,’ advised the lay brother as he left. ‘Though if you want anything other than vegetarian fare, you’ll have to come across to the guest house.’
Just as John de Wolfe was enjoying his visit to his old home, Thomas de Peyne was also relishing these two nights and a day in this beloved environment of a religious establishment. He went to every one of the six daily services, took the sacrament twice and was overjoyed on the second occasion to be asked to assist near the altar, attired in a borrowed surplice over his grubby robe.
So elated was he by his good fortune, Thomas almost forgot why he was there, and certainly, during his almost trance-like state during the offices, he had no thoughts to spare for the coroner’s problems. In the refectory, where he shared the extremely simple fare, eaten in silence whilst extracts from the Gospels and from the Rule of St Benedict were intoned by a brother standing at a lectern, there was nothing to be learned about the politics of Buckfast. However, during the brief periods after meals when conversation was allowed, he remembered his role as a spy and did his best to pick up any useful information. In truth, there was very little that the monks themselves could tell him as they led a very introverted existence and knew little of what went on outside the abbey.
What meagre information he did manage to pick up came not from them, but from the lay brothers, who were local men who worked for the abbey for their bed and board plus a small wage. This was the workforce of the Cistercians, labourers who worked the huge estate, herded the sheep and cattle, ploughed the land, harvested the crops and did all the construction and maintenance work on the buildings. In his walks around the abbey compound and short forays out into the gardens, where huge vegetable plots and numerous beehives provided the sustenance for the community, he spoke to many of the workers, the majority of whom were happy to lean on their shovels or brooms for a moment to gossip.
In the stables, where his pony was also enjoying a well-fed respite, Thomas talked to the grooms and the farrier, storing up a picture of the abbey’s lifestyle and governance in his clever little head. Out of all this, Thomas gained very little of use to his master in Exeter, but one item of intelligence intrigued him, though he had no real reason to think that it had any bearing on his mission. On Saturday afternoon, he was exchanging small talk with the loquacious custodian of the guest hall, both of them standing outside the door in the sunshine, as the threatened bad weather had cleared after a mild thunderstorm the previous night. They were idly watching the comings and goings of people in the wide courtyard, which was bounded by a wall joining the abbey buildings, the large guest house opposite and the north and south gateways. A man came striding towards them, his clothes streaked with road grime, a saddlebag slung over his shoulder. A short fellow with a tanned, leathery face, the traveller gave a friendly nod to the lay brother and walked straight through the door with an assurance that indicated his familiarity with the place.
‘One of our regulars,’ commented the custodian, as if sensing Thomas’s thoughts. ‘Stays here every few weeks — more often that that, sometimes.’
‘Does he work for the abbey?’ asked the ever-curious clerk.
‘No, he’s a horse and stock dealer, but he does a lot of trade with us. He’s forever closeted with Father Edmund, bargaining over sales of our sheep, cattle and horses, especially breeding stock, for which Buckfast is famous.’
Thomas’s interest waned a little — he was not interested in the sale of beasts. However, a priest had been mentioned, one that he had never heard of before.
‘So who’s Father Edmund? One of the monks?’
‘Yes, he’s a senior man in the chapter is Father Edmund Treipas. A Cistercian, but also an ordained priest, like you. He came here from Exeter a couple of years ago to be the cellarer, though now he’s far more than that.’
‘How do you mean, more than that?’
‘Well, he’s more like the abbey’s ambassador, always travelling to buy and sell in the world outside. A big place like this is an industry in itself — and the abbot and the brothers don’t like going outside much, with their vows of silence and suchlike, so he does all that business side. We needed a clever mind, after that demand from the King in ’93, when were almost ruined over the wool crop.’
Thomas had the sense not to draw too much attention to himself with more enquiries, but the presence of a much-travelled senior ecclesiastic caused him to make a special foray early on Sunday morning, between services in the church. After taking directions from a porter in the courtyard, he made his way into the cloisters and sought out a small door off the southern arcade. Tapping gently on the heavy panels, he did not wait for a response, but pushed it open and peered around the edge. He saw an untidy room, looking quite unlike any other part of the well-ordered abbey. A wide table was covered with open rolls of parchment and a long rack on a side wall was filled with dozens of rolls sticking out of pigeon-holes. The floor was cluttered with crates and boxes, even a full bale of raw wool, some sticking out of the hessian covering as if having been sampled.