Figure of Hate

'Did any other scandal drip from this fat Irishman's lips?' asked Gwyn sarcastically.

'Only about Hugo's wife — or rather widow now.'

'Beatrice? She was certainly making cow's eyes at young Joel,' grunted John.

Nesta's interest was raised another notch, as any romance intrigued her greatly. 'Was she unfaithful to her husband with his brother?' she asked eagerly.

Again the clerk twitched his shoulders.

'Father Patrick didn't say so in as many words, but he was the confessor to the whole family and must have known the truth, which he conveyed with nudges and winks. She had no love for her husband, that was obvious.'

'It must have been shaming for her, to see him so brazenly seducing the village girls,' pouted Nesta, championing a woman she had never seen.

'Enough to stick a knife between his ribs seven times?' queried Gwyn.

'A woman scorned is as dangerous as a squadron of mounted knights!' exclaimed John, feelingly though he did not explain how he came to know such a thing.

'She couldn't have done it,' objected Thomas. 'She went to bed while Hugo was still alive and her maid slept outside her door all night.'

'Pah! A maid is ever loyal to her mistress, especially if some silver changes hands,' said de Wolfe. 'That means nothing, but I don't see how she could pass back through the hall to get outside.'

'No need for that, Crowner,' said Gwyn. 'Yesterday I had a good scout around the buildings and found a little postern door at the back that the servants use to bring food in from the kitchens. It not only opens into the hall behind those screens, but also leads to a passage where there is another stairway in the thickness of the wall, leading up to the chambers above.'

'So any of the family could have gone outside without those left in the hall seeing them,' muttered John, half to himself. He turned back to his clerk. 'Did you gather if this affair between Joel and Beatrice is at all serious, or just a young stallion wanting to ride a pretty mare?'

'I just don't know that, master. There was a limit to what I could squeeze out of the priest, half drunk though he was.'

The coroner finished his ale and Nesta waved at one of the maids to fetch a large jug across. When their pots were refilled, he turned to Gwyn.

'What about you? Did you get any tongues to wag in that dismal tavern?'

The big Cornishman pulled at the ends of his moustache before replying.

'A surly lot, but eventually we got talking, with the help of those pennies you gave me to lubricate their tongues. Seems the whole damned village hated the Peverels, especially Hugo. Not many tears shed at his passing, that's for sure.'

'What's the problem, then? They can't all have daughters for him to seduce.'

'He was a harsh man in every way, so it seems. His father was a tough fellow, but they preferred him to his son.' Gwyn dipped his face back into his ale-jar to gain strength for his narrative. 'He drove the bondsmen too hard and was unreasonable when there was any problem. Hugo imposed crushing penalties at his manor court and he was over-fond of hanging people, which caused much discontent.'

'There are many manors where that applies,' observed John. 'Were there any who had a special grudge against him, enough to want him dead?' Gwyn nodded, his tangled red curls bobbing around his large head.

'The reeve for one, according to the village harnessmaker. It seems that his daughter was married a month ago and Hugo insisted on spending the first part of the wedding night with her, claiming droit de seigneur!'

An outraged Nesta clucked her tongue and Thomas almost hopped up and down on his stool in indignation.

'Droit de seigneur!' he squeaked. 'There's no such thing in law, it's just an immoral folk tale cynically conjured up by unscrupulous barons and manor-lords!' John knew that, although the feudal system allowed a lord to impose the 'merchet', a monetary charge, on any of his subjects for allowing a daughter to be wedded, the alleged right to sleep with the bride on the first night had no legal justification. Yet there was no doubt that some lords indulged in it, because there was no one to challenge them in the tyrannical system of closed manorial communities.

'Not only did the reeve, this Warin Fishacre, swear that he would avenge his daughter's degradation,' continued Gwyn, 'but the bridegroom, who almost abandoned the marriage after Hugo stole his bride's virginity, put it about the village that he would also get even with his master.'

Thomas was still outraged at the idea that droit de seigneur continued to be thought of by some as a legitimate perquisite of the gentry.

'It is a total fiction, invented by some whose purpose it suits,' he squawked indignantly. 'They claim it to be an ancient tradition, under its other name, the jus prima noctis, the "right of the first night".'

Gwyn reached out and ruffled the lank hair of the little clerk.

'Calm down, dwarf! It just means that Sampfbrd is conveniently living in the past.'

'So we have at least another two candidates for wishing the death of this figure of hate,' ruminated the coroner. 'Did you dig up any other scandal in that miserable alehouse, Gwyn?'

'It was hard to find anyone who didn't hate the bastard,' growled the Gornishman. 'This gossipy harness-maker told me that another bondsman who was rubbing his hands in delight that day was the village thatcher. It seems that soon after Hugo came into the lordship, he had the thatcher's youngest son hanged for poaching an injured stag that he came across in the forest when he was cutting thatching pegs. The father and his two other sons were said to be waiting for a chance to settle that score with Hugo Peverel, though it may have been all bluster.'

Nesta leaned across and took a mouthful of ale from John's mug.

'You seem to have a wide choice of suspects for your murder, Sir Crowner. Is there anyone in Sampford Peverel who didn't wish to see this hateful fellow dead?' John gave her a squeeze. 'There's another, not resident in that unhappy manor, who declared in my presence that he would kill Hugo when he next met him!'

Nesta's big eyes widened at this. 'And who is that?'

'Reginald de Charterai, the knight who defeated Hugo fairly at the tournament on Bull Mead last week.

I told you all about that, remember?'

'Yes, but you didn't say the Frenchman threatened to slay him.'

'Well, he did, after that drunken confrontation in the Guildhall, though at the time I thought it was empty words spoken in anger. But what's even more interesting, he's been staying in Tiverton these past few days, within a few miles of Sampford Peverel.' The other three stared at him in surprise — this was the first they had heard of this twist.

'What the hell's he doing there?' demanded Gwyn.

'It seems he's paying court to Avelina, the handsome widow — the elder of the two handsome Peverel widows now,' he added whimsically. 'The brothers almost had apoplexy when she told them that she had invited Reginald to visit her at the manor today.'

'I don't see that she could ever be a suspect in this,' said Nesta. 'Whatever happens to her stepsons, she can never retrieve her dead husband's estate for herself.'

'But if she suspected Hugo had a hand in her husband's demise,' squeaked Thomas, 'and her new lover de Charterai had reasons for hating him sufficient to threaten "to kill him, then either one or the other — or both — might have encompassed his death for revenge.'

De Wolfe gave one of his throaty rumbles, like an old lion. It could mean anything but often was a signal that he doubted some assertion.

'I can't see an honourable knight like de Charterai repeatedly stabbing a former jousting opponent in the back — though even chivalrous men will do terrible things when goaded by a fair lady!' He gave Nesta a pinch on her bottom that made her jump.

'So what's to be done next, Crowner?' asked the practical Gwyn.