Within a few minutes, he was in the saddle and leading Gwyn and Thomas homeward, breathing a sigh of relief as he left the boundaries of that unhappy manor behind him and set off along the high road towards Exeter.
Chapter Nine
When he arrived back at Martin's Lane in the late afternoon, John found Mary waiting for him in the vestibule, just inside the street door. She appeared worried, unlike her usual placid self.
'You'd better get yourself into the hall, Sir Crowner,' she advised, using the mildly sarcastic title that she employed when she was either annoyed or troubled.
The coroner shrugged off his cloak and slumped on the bench to pull off his dusty riding boots. He looked up wearily at his cook-maid.
'What is it now? Is she in a temper because I've again been away all day?'
The dark-haired woman shook her head. 'Better see for yourself!'
She jerked a finger towards the inner door to the main chamber of the house.
Pushing his feet into a pair of house shoes, he rather apprehensively lifted the iron latch and peered between the screens that stood just inside to keep out some of the draughts. He had a view of part of the large stone hearth and chimney-piece, in front of which were the pair of cowled wooden chairs. At first he saw nothing amiss, then he noticed that a hand hung over one armrest, holding a pottery wine cup, tilted at a dangerous angle. Below it he saw that the flagstones were stained red and, as he watched, the cup fell from the fingers and smashed on the floor.
He jerked his head back and glared at Mary. 'What the hell's been going on?' he demanded, as if it were his servant's fault.
'She's drunk, that's what!' retorted Mary sharply. 'Ever since I gave her dinner, she's been at the best wine. I doubt you've got much left.'
John pushed the door open wide and strode into the high, gloomy chamber, its timber walls hung with faded tapestries. As he crossed to the hearth, Matilda staggered to her feet, looking stupidly down at the mess on the flagstones. She seemed oblivious to his presence and clumsily tried to stoop down and pick up the fragments of the broken cup.
'Let that be!' he commanded. 'Mary will clean it up. You just sit down again before you fall.'
His voice was gruff, attempting to conceal the compassion he suddenly felt for this woman who was in such a bad way. He knew instinctively that the burden of her brother's shame and his own infidelity had finally broken down the stony façade of her grim personality.
Though she had always been fond of eating to the point of gluttony, and was very partial to her wine, he had never before seen her so obviously drunk.
He took her arm and gently pushed her back down into her chair. She-mumbled something incomprehensible, but did not resist him. The linen veil that covered her head was crumpled and in disarray, strands of mousy hair hanging from beneath it. Her face was red and puffy and her eyes watered as she stared up at him as if he were a complete stranger.
"John? Is it you, John?' she muttered.
'Yes, it's me, Matilda, the same old John! Are you unwell? Can I get anything for you? A cup of water?'
He felt the usual male helplessness in the face of female emotion or illness.
His wife shook her head slowly. 'What am I to do, John?'
Her speech was thick, as if her tongue had doubled in size. 'What am I to do? The shame and the misery.'
These words were followed by a longer, rambling monologue which he could not follow, but it gave him time to desperately think of some response to what was becoming an unmanageable situation.
'Shall I call Lucille and get you to your bed? Maybe you will feel better lying down? Or shall I send for your cousin from Fore Street?'
Mary appeared behind him with a leather bucket and a rag to clean up the spilt wine, but he waved her away impatiently.
'Get Lucille,' he hissed, then turned back to Matilda, stooping over her chair like a big black heron.
'Tell me what ails you, Matilda. Is there anything I can do to comfort you?' He had not uttered words like this for more than a dozen years. Her hand grasped his wrist with surprising strength.
'I have no friends, John. No friends at all, not even you.'
' Of course you have, wife! There are all your companions at St Olave's and the cathedral. And you have three cousins and a brother.'
He could have bitten off his tongue as Richard de Revelle's name slipped out and she began sobbing — a strange sucking noise as her chest heaved and her eyes filled with moisture.
'Richard! Why do you hate each other so? Thank Jesus that our mother and father no longer live to see our shame!'
She fell to muttering again, then her head dropped to her chest and John wondered whether she had fallen into a drunken sleep. He looked around desperately, as he would rather face a thousand armed Saracens than a weeping woman, and was relieved to see Mary at the door, with Lucille close behind her. They advanced on Matilda and with difficulty raised the stocky woman from her chair. As they stumbled towards the vestibule with her, his wife seemed to awaken, mumbling again as her head lolled from side to side.
'Has she been like this before, when I have not been here?' John demanded of Mary's retreating back, as Lucille and he rarely spoke to each other.
'Not as bad as this, but recently she has been taking wine more than usual, both in the afternoon and the evening,' said the maid over her shoulder.
De Wolfe followed them through the side passageway to the yard like an anxious sheepdog following a flock. The steep open staircase up to the solar was a serious obstacle, as it was too narrow for the two maids to support Matilda on either side. John solved the problem by lifting her bodily into his arms and staggering up the steps with her, which said something for his physique, as his wife, though short, was solidly built. She snorted and muttered as they went, and at the top he left her with Mary and Lucille for them to get her undressed and on to the wide straw-filled palliasse that was their bed. Back down in the hall, John found his old hound Brutus looking puzzled at these unusual happenings, and stroked his grizzled head in reassurance.
'What's to become of us all, old fellow?' he muttered, picking up the shards of the broken cup and laying them in the hearth for Mary to deal with later. He went to the side table where the wine was kept and with some regret saw that all his good Poitou red had gone, the two pottery crocks being empty. Groping under the table, he found a small wineskin of an inferior vintage and, pulling out the wooden stopper, poured himself a liberal cupful. Brutus came and laid a dribbling mouth on his knee as John sank into the chair that Matilda had been using.
He slumped there for some time, turning over in his mind the events of that day and of those that had preceded it. A procession of scenes marched through his mind as the level in the wineskin dropped — the bizarre funeral at Sampford, with cow turds and a dead rat on the coffin, the arrogant indifference of the armourer, the strange Peverel family — and now the apparent breakdown of Matilda's normally iron resolve.
Eventually, Mary came in to report that his wife was now in a deep sleep, snoring fit to rattle the shutters, and that Lucille had gone off to Fore Street to fetch Matilda's cousin to sit with her. She was one of the poor relations of the family — not poor in the sense of lacking money, as her husband had a successful glove-making business, but as one who had married 'into trade', out of the de Revelles' social class. Matilda treated her in a patronising fashion, but seemed moderately fond of her.
'Shall I make a meal for you this evening?' demanded Mary. John could tell that, though she was one of his staunchest allies, the cook-maid was laying some of the blame for his wife's condition on him.