Thomas rocked back on his heels in the dirt, staring up at her.
‘That is indeed a sin, Nesta. Understandable in your distress, but a sin nevertheless. You call the child a traitor, but he knows nothing of his creation, he can have no fault — at least until he is born, when he will have the same original sin as the rest of us.’
Her hands left the torturing of her apron to rub her filling eyes again.
‘You are right, Thomas, the babe is not the one at fault, he is but the instrument of my own misdeeds. Anyway, these pills and potions failed, so the matter is of no consequence. I have ruined John’s life, his marriage, perhaps his standing as a high official.’
The clerk made twittering denials at this.
‘Come, Nesta, be realistic! Every Norman knight has by-blows, some by many different women. It’s not something that is even worthy of mention in their company. Matilda’s own brother has several, that everyone knows about. And as for the crowner’s marriage, you know as well as any of us that it is an unhappy sham. If only this child were his, then it would have been one of the best things to happen to him.’
‘That’s the very point, can’t you see!’ she wailed. ‘It’s not his and when he discovers that, as he is bound to before long, then I will have destroyed him. He will hate me, reject me and that I cannot bear! There is only one course left.’
He gaped at her, uncomprehending at first.
‘You should know, Thomas, you have been down that same road yourself, not long ago.’
‘No, Nesta, not that! Never that, you must never even think of that.’
The clerk was aghast at what finally he understood her to be contemplating.
‘It is the only way, Thomas. He would be rid of the fruit of my wickedness and rid of me at the same time — me, who stands between him and fulfilment in his life.’
De Peyne jumped to his feet, agitated and desperate. This time it was he who seized her by the shoulders and virtually shook her.
‘No, Nesta, no! You must never even think of it again! Yes, you said I had been down that road — but I turned off that road and now I know that madness had enveloped me at that time. My desperation was different from yours, but none the less awful!’
He stopped for breath and shook her gently again.
‘Yet when I tried, God showed me I was wrong. He stopped me and now I would never, never contemplate that again! In fact, only yesterday I found another answer, if the need arises — to enter the peace of monastic life, like Matilda. There are always answers, Nesta — always!’
He stood now with his arm around her as she sat on the stool, her head sinking against his waist. They were both shivering with emotion, as he crooned further encouragement to her.
‘If you harmed yourself, you would also wound John de Wolfe for life. I know he loves you, in spite of his gruff ways. And what of Gwyn and myself? We cherish you too. Think how we would be devastated if you were no longer with us.’
They talked in low tones for a long time, Thomas gradually winning from her a solemn promise not to harm herself or the child. Though a former priest, he made no threats of eternal hellfire or the damnation of the Church. Rather, he played on the desolation that would fall upon de Wolfe and the sadness and grief that would be inflicted upon her friends.
‘But what’s to be done, Thomas?’ she whispered, when her tears had almost dried and she was rational again. ‘Am I to tell him the babe’s not his?’
This was where the clerk’s exhortations, fluent where mortal sin was concerned, became rather thin when applied to earthly practicalities.
‘Is he bound to find out, if we say nothing?’ he asked.
Nesta turned up her hands helplessly. ‘It’s a great risk, especially if some busybody puts it about — and there are plenty of those in Exeter, God knows! Look how soon his wife was told of my condition.’
Thomas nodded sadly. He was well aware of the gossip machine that operated so efficiently in the city.
‘Then you must tell him yourself. It would be far better coming from you than for him to be shocked by hearing it from some common chatter.’
Nesta considered this, the worried look on her face deepening.
‘How could I screw up enough courage to break that news to him?’
‘Better from your lips than from anyone else,’ advised the clerk.
She sighed and stood up to lean against one of the mash tuns.
‘You must be right, good Thomas. I must pick the right moment and pray to God that he does not spurn me for ever.’
‘Amen to that!’ he replied fervently.
Back in his own house, de Wolfe sat by his hearth, the unlit wood behind the iron fire-dogs emphasising the coldness of the lofty hall. Strangely, he already felt lonely, in the knowledge that the solar above his head was empty. Even the presence of his surly and unpleasant wife made the house more than just a pile of timber and stone, which was what he felt it to be at that moment. Brutus had slunk away to the back yard to seek the company of Mary in the cook-shed, instinctively aware of some sea change in the household that day.
John rarely drank wine except at meals or in the company of others, but today he went to a chest against the wall and took out a pottery flask of his best Loire red. He broke the wax seal and twisted out the wooden bung, pouring a liberal measure into one of the glass cups that he had looted in a distant campaign in Brittany.
Sitting back in one of the hooded chairs, John drank and brooded on the day’s events. There was nothing more he could do about Matilda. He had made his best attempt to see her and persuade her to come home, so his conscience was clear on that score, if not on the cause of her leaving in the first place. She had long known of his affair with Nesta, as she was aware of his occasional fling with Hilda of Dawlish.
It was his imminent fatherhood which seemed to have pushed her over the limit of her tolerance. John, in some ways a simple man, failed to see why having a mistress or two was at least grudgingly accepted, yet paternity was beyond the pale, even when it was the natural sequel to adultery. He reasoned that most men of his acquaintance had at least one bastard lurking somewhere — some of them even had a whole brood!
Dimly, he comprehended that a difference might be that Matilda and he had never had children of their own — though the opportunities for conception had been very limited during their married life, as he had been absent for most of it and, since he had returned from the Crusades, their marital relations had rapidly dwindled to nothing. John’s insensitive nature failed to appreciate that even if the most unmotherly Matilda had never desired the burden of maternity herself, she might be flagrantly opposed to her husband providing it to any other woman.
He growled under his breath at this attack of introspection, so foreign to a man of action like himself. Pouring another cup of wine, he tried to divert his mind back to coroner’s business as a welcome relief from the worries forced on him by the machinations of women.
Going over the meagre reports that Gwyn and Thomas had brought back from their expedition to the fringes of Dartmoor, he began arranging the intelligence alongside what they already knew.
There was a concerted plan to cause trouble throughout that part of the Royal Forest, in which the foresters and probably the new verderer was involved. There was a plot to remove the Warden of the Forests, by violence if required, and to replace him with someone else. It seemed likely that this someone was Richard de Revelle, but de Wolfe could not decide whether this was mere opportunism or whether the sheriff was an integral part of the plot. Against the latter, he failed to see what even the avaricious sheriff could hope to gain.
In any event, he thought as he gulped some more of the rather sour wine, the outlaws under Robert Winter were deeply involved. They were acting as mercenaries in assisting the foresters to cause disaffection amongst the forest dwellers, being paid for their efforts through some intermediaries. This horse-dealer was a possible candidate for that, if the man Gwyn had seen in the Ashburton tavern was the same as that seen by Thomas at Buckfast — though both incidents may have been quite innocent, unless there was some proof to the contrary. Against that was the tenuous rumour about the involvement of a ‘priest from the west’. The frequent dalliance of the horse-dealer with this Cistercian from Buckfast was probably sheer coincidence, but it was worth looking into.