‘Do you know what it was, dwarf?’ grunted the Cornishman.
Thomas’s lazy eye slewed from the coroner to his officer. ‘It seems that when the Templars were founded, they were really controlled by some obscure religious organisation in Jerusalem called the Order of Sion. It was supposed to have been founded by Godfrey de Bouillon several years before he captured the Holy City from the Saracens. He then installed the Order in the abbey of Notre Dame de Mont Sion, just outside the city walls.’
‘What in Hell has this got to do with Gisors?’ demanded Gwyn irreverently.
‘At that meeting there in ’eighty-eight, at which you were present, the Order of Sion fell out with the Grand Master of the Templars so that they each went their own way after that, the Order changing its name to the Priory of Sion.’
The little clerk paused to give emphasis to his dénouement.
‘The point is that the so-called “Splitting of the Elm” is really a cryptic reference to the final schism between the Order and the Templars and is nothing to to do with that silly squabble of whether the English or French sat in the shade of the tree. And what might matter to your current problem with Gilbert de Ridefort is that the meeting at Gisors was only a matter of months after his uncle, Gerard de Ridefort, lost Jerusalem again to the Muhammadans, in what some called treasonable incompetence!’
This was all beyond Gwyn of Polruan, who went back to his bread and cheese in disgust, but de Wolfe pondered Thomas’s words for a while. ‘So in Exeter now we have a priest from Paris associated with the Inquisition, a senior Templar from the Paris Preceptory and a Templar who was at Gisors – all of whom arrived within days of the nephew of a disgraced Grand Master!’
At the coroner’s words, the clerk lifted his humped shoulders and gave his master a leer to show that he believed that these events were inescapably linked.
‘The sooner we get rid of this errant knight, the better!’ growled the coroner. ‘But he won’t go until this other fellow de Blanchefort joins him.’
Gwyn finished his food and took a giant swig from his cider pot. After a gargantuan belch, he wiped his moustache and spoke. ‘At least it’s not crowner’s business,’ he said, with no notion of how soon he was to be proved wrong.
The cathedral bell was tolling for the terce, sext and nones services when de Wolfe got back to Martin’s Lane to see how the farrier was getting on. At the livery stable he found Odin tethered by a head-rope to a ring in the wall. The large stallion was contentedly munching oats from a leather bucket; his hoofs had been trimmed and a few loose nails fixed back into his shoes.
The coroner began a conversation with Andrew, the young farrier, and they were deep in discussion about rival types of battle-harness when a figure hurried across from de Wolfe’s front door. It was Mary, her fair hair flying loose from under her cap, the strings of which were untied in her haste. ‘Sir John, come quickly! The mistress is in a terrible state – Alsi, the steward from Stoke, is here.’
As he followed her hurriedly across the lane, she explained that she had not known he was at the stables and had already sent Simon up to Rougemont to look for him.
Inside the hall, Matilda was sitting in one of the monk’s chairs, bent forward and sobbing uncontrollably, whilst Alsi was hovering over her helplessly.
‘What in the name of God is the matter?’ said John, going to his wife and laying a hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Has something befallen my mother?’
Instantly, Matilda stopped her keening and jerked up her head to glare at him. ‘It’s all your fault, you heartless man!’ she yelled, getting up on her stocky legs and beating her hands against his chest.
Her husband pushed her down on to her chair and she subsided into sobs again. He turned to the steward, a man he had known since childhood. ‘Alsi, what’s going on? Why are you here?’
The thin, greying Saxon, still in his riding clothes, raised his hands in supplication. ‘I should have found you first, Sir John, and told you before Lady Matilda. I am mortified to have caused her this distress, but I didn’t know it would affect her so profoundly.’
‘What, man? What’s happened?’
‘Your guest at Stoke, Sir Gilbert. He’s dead – murdered!’
Though violent death had been part of de Wolfe’s life for more than two decades, both as a soldier and now a coroner, this news was particularly shocking. De Ridefort’s fears, and the increasing confirmation that they might be well founded, had climaxed in tragedy.
With Matilda still rocking herself whilst she moaned her grief for her lost hero, John dropped heavily into the other chair and stared up at the steward. ‘When did this happen – and how?’
Alsi fiddled agitatedly at the large clasp that held his heavy brown riding cloak in place. ‘He went out for a ride late yesterday afternoon, Sir John. He fretted that he was tired of skulking indoors, so he borrowed a mare from the stables and rode off, saying that he would stay within the manor lands. But towards dusk when he had not returned your mother sent some stablemen out to search for him, in case he was lost in the woods between Stoke and the river.’ He paused and gave a trembling sigh. ‘Just before dark, they found him – or, at least, they first found the mare wandering. Then, within a few hundred paces, just inside the tree-line on the banks of the river, they discovered him lying dead on the ground with blood upon him.’
‘Could he not have fallen from his horse, or struck a low branch?’ As he uttered the words, de Wolfe knew they sounded futile: any Templar knight, especially one who had fought in Outremer, would hardly let himself fall to his death on a gentle afternoon trot.
Alsi soon confirmed this. ‘It was no accident, as you will see when you look at his wounds. He was deliberately slain, sir – and in a most bizarre manner.’
Chapter Nine
In which Crowner John is referred to the Gospels
‘Even though he was your friend and a guest, John, you are still the coroner and I thought we had better observe the rules. We left the body where it lay.’ William de Wolfe spoke sadly, conscious that a man who had been left at his house for safety had ended up dead within two days.
His brother tried to reassure him that he need feel no guilt over the tragedy. ‘He should not have ventured out alone, especially in a place that was strange to him, William. In Exeter he was more than nervous, but he seems to have assumed that the wilds of the countryside held no risk.’
They were trotting their steeds along the track that led from the manor-house towards the river Teign, with Gwyn, Thomas, Alsi, a reeve and two grooms from Stoke following behind. De Wolfe had left Exeter as soon as he had managed to calm Matilda, who blamed him incessantly for not ensuring that de Ridefort was guarded night and day. He suspected that she was using the tragedy partly as a weapon to accuse his family of being negligent in failing to protect de Ridefort.
Simon had brought Gwyn and Thomas down from Rougemont to the house in Martin’s Lane and within an hour they were on the road to Stoke-in-Teignhead, covering the sixteen miles in four hours, having to wait a little for the tide at the ford at Teignmouth. Arriving in the afternoon, they rode straight to the scene of the death, which was guarded by two of the village freemen, set there the previous night by William. ‘I sent our steward as messenger to Exeter, rather than a bailiff as you say the law demands,’ explained his brother, as they rode. ‘He set out a few hours before dawn with one of the ostlers, going by the inland road as we knew the tide would be high then. There seemed no point in raising a hue and cry in the middle of a forest at nightfall.’