'He's just past that last cog, Crowner,' said Osric, pointing to the most distant of three vessels that were tied up at the stone quay. As the tide was well in, they were floating upright and would stay like that until the ebb dropped them down on the thick mud to lean over against the wharf. The whole place was busy with men jogging up and down gangplanks with sacks and bales on their shoulders. Shipwrights and sailors yelled garbled orders at the tops of their voices and merchants and their clerks were standing around heaps of cargo on the wharf, checking items by means of notched tally-sticks or knotted cords, as well as from a few parchment manifests.
Ignoring the noisy activity, John de Wolfe led his party onward, threading through the merchandise and shoving the odd labourer out of his path until he reached the last cog, which looked like a fat, bluntended Norse-longboat, its single sail now tightly lashed to the yard that crossed its stubby mast. Just beyond it were two figures, standing guard over something covered with a piece of canvas. They were rough-looking men, one dressed in a ragged tunic, the skirt of which was pulled up between his legs and tucked into his belt.
The other had a leather jerkin over breeches of coarse cloth, and both were barefooted, the lower part of their legs being caked in brown river mud.
'These men found the corpse, Crowner,' declared Osric. 'And this is him,' he added unnecessarily, jerking a thumb down at the canvas-covered mound.
The two men mumbled something and shifted uneasily, as any contact with officers of the law was something to be avoided, however innocent a man might be. The coroner's trio stood around the body, Thomas as reluctant as ever, for even a year's familiarity with his job had not inured his sensitive soul to the sights and smells of sudden death.
De Wolfe nodded at Gwyn, who, well used to the routine, bent and whipped off the piece of sailcloth to expose the corpse.
As Osric had promised, the deceased was stark naked, lying on his back, and against the dark muddy ground his pallor was almost obscene, like that of a plucked goose on a butcher's slab. The belly protruded, and Gwyn gave it a firm prod with his forefinger.
'That's fat, not gassy corruption!' he observed with satisfaction.
'I told you he was fresh,' said the constable, indignantly. 'Look at his hands, they're hardly wrinkled, so he's not been in the water long.'
De Wolfe, who considered himself an expert on injury and death, was not going to let a town constable lecture him on the subject, and he dropped to a crouch to examine the body more closely.
'Still stiff in the arms and legs,' he barked, as he cranked the elbows and knees of the dead man. 'And eyes not clouded yet!' He prodded the eyelids with a long finger as he spoke.
'The face is a proper mess, looks as if he's had a kicking,' said Gwyn judicially. From eyebrows down to jawline, the face was a welter of lacerations and bruises, the skin ripped, the lips puffed and torn and the nose smashed out of all recognition.
Thomas plucked up enough courage to venture a comment, similar to the one Gwyn had made earlier to the constable, 'We've had corpses from the water before, where you've said the injuries were due to being knocked around against stones and rocks after death. Could this not be the same?'
The coroner shook his dark head. 'The cuts and wounds are only on his face and neck. The rest of him is intact. When a corpse drags along the bottom, the knees and backs of the hands get ripped as well.'
Gwyn hoisted up one of the stiff arms. 'And look at these, Crowner! Bruises on both his forearms and hands.'
Thomas was uncharacteristically stubborn today.
'Isn't that what the crowner just described?' De Wolfe, content to expound further, prodded the blue marks with his forefinger. 'You can't bruise a corpse, Thomas! These were inflicted during life, though they're very recent, still being blue in colour.' His officer nodded sagely. 'Men get them from holding up their arms to defend themselves against a beating. This poor fellow's had a good old hammering.'
They stood in a silent ring around the body for a moment, looking down at what had been a living person not long before. Thomas crossed himself several times and murmured some verses of a Latin requiem under his breath.
'We know how he died, but who the hell is he?' grunted Gwyn.
De Wolfe questioned the two labourers and the constable, but none of them could offer any suggestions, which was hardly surprising given the state of the man's face. Crouching again alongside the body, John picked up the hands and studied them, turning them over to see both the backs and the palms.
'He's no rough peasant or manual worker. His hands are free from calluses — though he seems to have a number of small scars and old burns on the inside of his fingers. Maybe he was some kind of craftsman.'
After Gwyn had rolled the corpse on to its face to allow them to examine the back, de Wolfe motioned him to pull the makeshift canvas shroud over it again.
'Nothing more we can do herel We'll have to wait for someone to report their husband or father missing — though he may have come up on the flood tide from Topsham. I doubt it would be as far away as Exmouth, the corpse is too fresh.'
'Where shall we lodge him, Crowner?' asked Osric.
'It's a long way to carry him up to Rougemont.' Corpses from the central part of the city were usually housed in a cart shed in the castle, but on standing up and looking around, de Wolfe decided on an easier option.
'We can put him in one of the lower chambers of the Watergate — no one is likely to steal him!' The two wharf workers found a wooden device that porters used for carrying heavy crates or bales from the ships, a stretcher with short legs that looked remarkably like a bier. On this they carried the unknown victim, decorously covered with the sailcloth, to the nearby gate in the city wall. This had a narrow tower on each side, in one of which lived the watchmen who had the strict duty of closing the large gates when curfew was rung at dusk. In the base of the other bastion was a dank chamber half filled with junk and rubbish, but with enough space to leave the corpse on its trestle.
Gwyn pulled some lengths of timber across the small arched entrance to discourage intruders and Osric went across to the gatekeeper to order him to keep an eye on the place until further notice.
'Not much point in holding an inquest until we get some news as to who he might be,' said the coroner, as they started back up the hill towards High Street.
'With the fair starting tomorrow, there'll be hundreds of strangers in Exeter — maybe a thousand or more, given that the tournament is here as well,' growled Gwyn. 'Maybe he's one of those and we'll never get to know who he was.'
John made one of his throat-clearing rumbles, which could mean almost anything. 'I've got a feeling in my water that he's a man of substance, rather than some nonentity. If that's so, then he's more likely to be missed.'
A few minutes later, he somewhat reluctantly turned into Martin's Lane to reach his front door, all too aware that he would get black looks and sullen recriminations from Matilda for leaving her in the lurch so abruptly at Rougemont.
Chapter Two
When John entered his tall, narrow house, one of only two in the narrow lane that joined High Street to the cathedral Close, he found that he had a reprieve from his wife's acidulous tongue, for she had taken herself off to her favourite church, tiny St Olave's at the upper end of Fore Street. Whether she was praying for her own soul or that of her brother, he knew not, but doubted that his own welfare was on her devotional agenda.