‘She’s set her cap at this visitor, Crowner,’ Mary commented, stirring a blackened iron urn hanging on a trivet over the fire. ‘That poxy French girl has been brushing her hair and fiddling with her gowns for half the afternoon. I think she fancies the man, though much good it will do her if he’s a Templar.’
John grinned as he watched Mary scowling into her cooking pot. ‘I think he’s more an ex-Templar, my girl. Not that it will make any difference to the mistress’s chances with him.’
She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘It’s pathetic when a middle-aged married woman gets a passion for some man. Though I must say he’s a good-looking fellow, enough to turn any woman’s head. He was wasted as a warrior monk, or whatever you call those people.’
De Wolfe reached for a honey-cake but the platter was snatched away from his reach by Mary. ‘Those are for the end of the meal so leave them be, sir! The mistress wants a special effort for tonight and I’ve had to go out and buy more pork and onions – not that there’s much choice of food this early in the season. I can hardly give such an important guest the usual salt fish – the mistress would have me maimed, the mood she’s in.’
De Wolfe was just about to ask her if she had seen the affray in the meat market when a long nose appeared around the door, followed by the face and hunched body of his clerk, Thomas de Peyne. ‘Where did you spring from?’ grunted the coroner. ‘I thought you would be home anointing your backside with goose-grease, ready for the long ride to the north tomorrow.’
The little man groaned in anticipation of another full day in the saddle, but the news he brought overshadowed his problems. ‘You asked me to keep a look-out for any important visitors to the city, Crowner,’ he began, in his high-pitched quavering voice.
De Wolfe had impressed on Gwyn and Thomas earlier in the day that they should keep their ears to the ground to discover if anything unusual was going on in town or cloister. They knew nothing of de Ridefort’s fears of pursuit, but the clerk was adept at ferreting out gossip amongst the ecclesiastical brethren and their servants.
‘So what have you discovered, my master spy?’ he chaffed.
‘A foreign priest has arrived and called upon Bishop Marshal today,’ chirped Thomas.
‘What sort of news is that, eh? This city is always awash with priests.’
His clerk smirked. ‘Not with envoys from the Vatican, Crowner!’
De Wolfe stood up suddenly, his head brushing the rough rafters of the hut. ‘From Rome? How do you know?’
‘The rumour is that he is a papal nuncio. So far, that’s all that’s known.’
‘What the devil is a nuncio?’ rasped his master.
‘It’s like a messenger – or a person with a particular task.’
‘Is that the same as a legate?’ De Wolfe was fairly ignorant of the hierarchy of the religious establishment.
Thomas, a fount of knowledge on it, shook his head vigorously, then crossed himself automatically. ‘No, a legate is an ambassador to a royal court – a far superior person, almost always a bishop. There is talk that this man is an abbot.’
‘Who is he, and where did he come from?’
Thomas shrugged, his humped shoulder rising unevenly to the left. ‘No one knows yet. He arrived travel-weary on horseback, with two burly servants as guards.’
‘Where is he staying? At the bishop’s palace?’
The scribe shook his head again. ‘He rode off after paying his respects to Henry Marshal and went out of the city, as far as I know.’
De Wolfe thought for a moment. Gilbert de Ridefort had left his French Commandery only six weeks ago, so it was impossible that Rome could have been notified and had sent this man after him – that would take at least three or four months. But he could have come from Paris or the Temple in London. Or he might be nothing to do with de Ridefort, which was the most likely explanation. ‘Did you hear any description of this priest?’
Thomas tapped his receding chin in thought. ‘The vicar I spoke with saw him. He was short in stature.’
De Wolfe clucked in exasperation. ‘Short! That’s no description. You’re short, damn you, half the population is short.’
Thomas screwed up his face in concentration. ‘He said something else … Oh, yes, he had a strangely shaped nose.’
The coroner groaned. ‘You have a strangely shaped nose too, you fool. It’s like the sheriff’s toe-cap, long and pointed! Is that the best you can do?’
‘I never saw him, Crowner! I had two minutes’ conversation with a passing vicar, that’s all,’ whined Thomas.
Reluctantly John accepted that his clerk had done his best.
‘Well, try all you can to find out this abbot’s name, where he came from, where he’s lodging – and most of all, why he is in Exeter.’
A cunning gleam came into the clerk’s eye. ‘I can’t do that if I’m in Ilfracombe or Appledore, Crowner.’
De Wolfe’s dark face scowled at him. ‘Very well. You only slow us down on that damned broken-winded pony of yours anyway. Stay behind and seek every morsel of information you can on this man. If there’s anything to write on your parchments about our trip tomorrow I’ll dictate it when I return.’
With a glow of satisfaction that his posterior had escaped days of punishment on horseback, the little ex-priest scuttled away to continue his espionage.
In spite of Matilda’s scorn, Mary had made a good meal from what food was still available at the end of a long winter. Herbs added extra flavour to the pork, cabbage and onions, and after this, fresh bread, butter, cheese and honey-cakes were enough to fill any man’s stomach, all washed down with wine and ale or cider.
De Wolfe sat silently through most of the meal, listening to his wife fawning and simpering over their handsome guest, who was as gallant with her as Matilda was foolish. He regaled her with stories of life in France and she responded by exaggerating her own Norman credentials. Though born and bred in Devon, living most of her life at Revelstoke and Tiverton, she had once spent a month or two with distant relatives in Normandy, from where the de Revelle family had come a century ago. On the strength of this, she proclaimed herself to be a first-generation Norman, bolstering this illusion by her contempt of Saxons and especially Celts. To a person of de Ridefort’s perception, the silly deceit must have been patently obvious, but he went along with the charade, which heightened her infatuation. Only when they left the table and sat around the fireplace, with more wine brought in by old Simon, did the conversation turn to more immediate topics.
‘There is no sign yet of your friend from France?’ asked the coroner gruffly.
‘Bernardus de Blanchefort? No, I had thought he would have arrived by now, but the Channel crossings are unpredictable. He may have had to wait for a fair wind.’
There followed a diversion, as Matilda, almost breathless with this mention of yet another French nobleman, prised from him all the details of the expected compatriot. ‘He is a Templar like myself and fought alongside me in the Holy Land. Then he returned to a Preceptory near his ancestral estates at the foot of the Pyrenees for a year or so before being sent to Paris, where he was at the Commandery with me.’
Matilda’s broad face creased into an admiring smile. ‘I’m sure he must be another heroic person like yourself, defending the Faith in the Holy Land.’
De Wolfe, whose own crusading record was second to none, felt it was time to throw cold water over the mutual-admiration duet that was developing. ‘I heard today of another visitor from France. Exeter seems suddenly to have become popular in that respect.’