His son Hugh was a rather stupid young man, fond of hunting, gaming and drinking. The previous autumn, the coroner had been involved in investigating the death of Hugh’s fiancée, a tragedy that had led to murder. Since then, the son had added wenching to his list of pastimes, much to his father’s displeasure, and it was rumoured that Lord Ferrars was now actively involved in finding a wife for his son, in an attempt to bring him to heel.
John mulled over these memories as he walked behind the servant the short distance to Goldsmith Street, which was off High Street behind the Guildhall. The house belonged to a friend of Reginald de Courcy, and the Ferrars rented the two rooms on the ground floor, where Hugh lived with a squire when he was in the city. Today, his father was there in his stead, sitting in the small hall adjacent to the street door, with a flask of best Loire wine by his side.
His servant poured one for John, who sat on a bench facing the baron.
‘De Wolfe, since we last spoke I’ve been thinking about this servant of mine who vanished in that ambush. You’re right — if he’s dead, he should be found and the villain who killed him brought to justice.’
John nodded gravely. ‘I agree wholeheartedly, my lord. If he is dead, then it is my duty as a law officer to hold an inquest. But I thought you had failed to find any trace of him?’
The florid-faced baron, a large, beefy man with a permanently pugnacious expression, glowered at his wine cup.
‘So my men told me. But I have had a thought that we could return to the scene and use some hounds to track him. His wife can provide some remnant of his clothing that will have his scent, so surely a good dog could find him?’
John knew that there were three types of dog used in hunting: the big liam hound for starting the quarry from its lair, then the ‘leparii’, the lean greyhounds which hunted by sight, but mainly the ordinary hound, the ‘brachetti’, which hunted by scent. It seemed a good idea of Ferrars’, if the brachetti would accept the human smell from clothing.
‘I’m damned if I’m going to let these forest bastards get away with this,’ snarled Guy. ‘Trying to steal game from my chase is bad enough, but then to kill one of my own men is beyond reason.’
John told him of his visit earlier that day to Buckfast and the abbot’s admission that many favoured Prince John, especially those to whom he had promised favours, such as the monasteries.
‘The King is the King!’ roared Ferrars, spilling some of his wine in his passion. ‘If Richard was to die, which God forbid, then I would be equally loyal to the next monarch — though I view the prospect of John Lackland on the throne with dismay and contempt.’
Though Ferrars was an overbearing bigot and a harsh, unforgiving landlord and master to his subjects, he was totally devoted to Richard the Lionheart, having fought alongside him many times. De Wolfe could forgive him his rough nature because of his loyalty, even though he could never generate any affection for the man.
‘So what’s to be done about the matter?’ he asked, partly to cool the baron’s rising temperature, already fuelled by too much wine.
‘Can you join us tomorrow morning, Crowner, if I get a search party and some hounds? I’d give much to find this corpse, for my own satisfaction, though no doubt his family would like to see him given a Christian burial.’
They arranged to meet at one of his manors near Lustleigh the following morning, John groaning inwardly at the thought of yet another two-hour ride soon after dawn. As he was leaving, Guy Ferrars followed him to the door.
‘I’ll bring that bumpkin of a son of mine, too. He’s not the brightest of men, but he’s big and fit and can wield a sword after a fashion.’
John went from Goldsmith Street to his house, where he collapsed into his fireside chair to rest his aching limbs. Though he was well used to spending much of his time in the saddle, these past few days had put a strain on him, having to ride long distances following his head injury and the still-painful slash across his hip. The thought came to him as Mary bustled about getting him a meal that he was getting old. He was now forty-one, and though he knew of men eighty years of age, relatively few survived past fifty or sixty. True, the upper classes fared better, though being killed in battle was an ever-present hazard. The villeins and serfs had a far lower life expectancy, threatened by pestilence, starvation and accidents, many being fortunate to reach thirty.
As he sat in his gloomy hall, hung with faded tapestries to hide the timber walls, he thought about death and how it would come. He hoped it would be sudden, unexpected and bloody, rather than a slow wasting from a seizure or a long fever or some variety of pox. If it were not for Gwyn and the tavern hound, he could have died this week, slumped bemused in that forest, fading in and out of consciousness and with a bleeding wound.
He shook himself free of these morbid thoughts as Mary brought in his dinner. At the table he found that she had fried him three trout, which rested invitingly on a large trencher of barley bread, with turnips and leeks on a side platter. Wild berries, white bread and cheese followed, with a quart of best ale to wash it down.
‘I went down to the Bush for a gallon, just to cheer you up, Sir Crowner!’ she announced, in her part-mocking, part-affectionate way.
‘I thought you might have forgotten the place, now that your lady friend is no longer in residence.’
Then, becoming serious, she enquired after Nesta’s health. ‘I heard that she is still very weak, poor girl. Maybe I can walk up to Polsloe some time to see her and take her a decent morsel of food. I doubt they get anything very tasty in that place.’
John slipped an arm around her waist as she stood near him at the table.
‘Your heart is in the right place, Mary, apart from being in a very shapely chest!’ he said. ‘Soon I will have to be away for at least a week, travelling to Winchester, so it would be good if you could visit her when I’m gone.’
His meal finished, he crawled to his bed for a few hours’ rest to ease his aching side, but in the evening he borrowed a mare from the farrier and rode gently up to Polsloe. Nesta was much the same, though perhaps even more pale and wan. Her face was so white that her cheeks seemed almost green below the eyes. When she rested her hand in his as he sat at the bedside, he saw that her nail-beds were the colour of milk, without a vestige of pink. She spoke little, as if the effort of talking was too much, but seemed somehow more content, even in her exhausted state.
John attempted to make largely one-sided conversation, no mean feat for such a taciturn man. Nesta lay listening, savouring the thought that she would no longer have to screw up the courage to respond to Thomas’s plea to tell John that the child was not his. Her feelings about losing the babe were strange, and she was almost frightened by her own lack of emotion about the miscarriage. There was a natural element of deep shock and sorrow that was inevitable in any woman, but overlying this was the feeling of relief that she had escaped from an intolerable situation — one that had almost driven her to take the life of both herself and the baby she carried.
As John faltered to the end of his stock of small talk, which mainly concerned his problems in the forest and the day’s excursion to Buckfast, she lay sleepily under the influence of Dame Madge’s infusion of gentian. As he fell silent, she squeezed his hand and remembered something to tell him.
‘Dear Thomas came to visit me this afternoon, while you were snoring in your bed,’ she said softly. ‘He is a good little man — he has been kinder to me than you would ever imagine.’
‘Is he another fellow for me to be jealous of, a rival for your affections, madam?’ he said jocularly. ‘Will I have to fight him with broadswords for your favours?’
‘I can’t see little Thomas fighting anyone. He is a true man of peace — and one who has the greatest devotion and affection for you, too. He has promised to teach me to read and write when I am recovered, so that I can keep accounts in the inn.’