‘How long before and who was it?’
‘The bells were still ringing for the service, so I think it was before the first Mass, and it was a cleric of some sort – I think a lad of twenty or so years. He had a thin sort of face, long and anxious. I saw him quite clearly.’
‘Was he a Vicar?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I think he was one of the Secondaries.’ He hung his head. ‘I think it was the one you mentioned. The lad called Peter.’
‘Peter was out that morning,’ Coppe agreed, and told them about seeing the cleric running smack into Ralph outside the gate. ‘If it wasn’t for the Treasurer, Ralph would have fallen,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think Peter was well that day. Later I saw him leave the Cathedral again, walking as if he was in a daze. He left after Ralph and didn’t return till much later.’
‘You didn’t see him come back here?’ Baldwin asked David.
‘I was working after that. Maybe he returned. There was someone outside with a wagon, I know. While I was out back I heard the wheels stop outside here.’
‘I see,’ said Baldwin. ‘So now we know Stephen was outside the Cathedral that morning as well.’
David jerked his head at the door. ‘I saw Peter go to the front door of the house and walk inside with a small bag in his hand. He didn’t look guilty or furtive. If he was breaking in to commit a crime, he was begging to be caught.’
Baldwin gave a dry smile. ‘I think that is the most observant comment you have given for a long time. Did you see him leave?’
‘It was a short while later. He came out, looked up and down the road, and then hurried off back to the Cathedral grounds. I noticed that he didn’t have anything in his hands then. It was quite some while later that I saw Ralph and his visitor, and then my wife called me and I went back to my own hall.’
‘Well, I think you have cleared up much that was confusing,’ Baldwin said. He was handling the hanging leathers, a small frown puckering his brow.
‘What is it?’ Simon asked.
‘The Coroner told us Ralph paid Vincent le Berwe for basan and cordwain and took it away the same day, but there’s none here.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
They watched while the subdued David locked the doors, then with the beggar directing them, they left him and sought a tavern.
Coppe led them to Will Row’s alehouse down an alley off the High Street, run by a pleasant woman in her fifties, who smiled with toothless gums when she saw their companion. ‘John, where have you been? I was beginning to think you’d got pissed, fallen down a well and drowned.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Joan. Not while you were still around to tempt me back again.’
He grinned, his mouth likewise all but empty of teeth, when she playfully cuffed him over the head, cackling.
‘Come on, wench, there’s gentlemen here to be served.’
A young girl appeared, but Simon was more attracted to the wizened old woman. She shouted at the girl like a harridan, but her face was more composed of smiling wrinkles than frowns. What, he wondered, would he look like when he got to her age? Or his wife, Meg, come to that. This Joan had a calmness about her that was pleasant and motherly, while the beggar, for all his scruffiness, was clearly trusted by her.
As the two women disappeared to fetch drinks, Coppe told the others, ‘She was the wife of my best mate. I was a sailor, see. I used to have a good life going off all over the place – oh, from here to Venice I’ve been. God, some of the seas you’d see there, it was amazing that the ships lasted the trip.’
‘If you get the old sod talking about his sailing days, you’ll never get away from him,’ Joan said, returning with pots for all the men. The girl appeared a moment later with a massive jug from which she poured them spiced wine, hot and sweet.
‘Oh, give me leave to speak a moment with friends,’ John Coppe said aloofly and Joan roared with laughter before dropping into a seat nearer her fire and starting to knit.
‘Joan’s old man Will was a good sailor too. Him and me, we went all over. All along the Breton coast, and the Norman one, all the way down as far as Bordeaux. Often did that run, buying wines mainly. Then one day we were attacked by French pirates and had our cargo taken.’
‘My Will was hit by an arrow,’ Joan said, this time more quietly. She paused and let her knitting fall to her lap, sighing, then continued, her needles flying faster than before as if concentration was itself a cure for her sadness, ‘So since then I’ve made shift as best I can.’
‘And I never had a wife or a house; when I got back, I was forced to start begging to survive. At first I stayed a while with my brother, who lived over near the South Gate, but he died a while ago, and his wife had to sell the place, so since then I’ve not had a place of my own. There was no point when I was young, because I was always looking for the next ship. But if you’re wrecked like me, the masters don’t want you. Anyway, no one would have used me even if I wasn’t ruined like this. I have a bad reputation.’
Baldwin stirred his wine with a finger and sucked it. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Nicholas Karvinel. It was his ship, his cargo, that was taken by the pirates and he was sure that someone warned the French when our ship sailed, and that was how the pirates caught us. He thought a crew member gave away the ship for a bribe.’
‘Is it possible?’ Simon asked.
‘Anything is possible, but is it likely? Pirates don’t wait and ask who is their friend, they attack as soon as they can and kill everyone. Anyway, a ship saw us as we left Topsham that day to go to France, and it almost caught us a couple of times. We reached port and loaded with wine and set off for home, but then the pirate caught us out in the Channel and came at us with the wind behind him. It was quite a chase, sirs, because our master had a good head for the sea, and he could make good use of every little gust, but then our wind died, and the French paddled with oars to approach us. The wind picked up, but they caught it first, and with their ship being lighter, they catched us quick. And then it was all down to the axes and the bows.’
‘Old John here was one of three men who survived. All the others died,’ Joan said matter-of-factly. ‘So of course a lot of the merchants thought that if someone had given away the ship to the French it would have been one of the men who lived afterwards.’
John Coppe snorted in disgust. ‘How any man could have protected himself in a mêlée like that, I don’t know. If there was a spy among us, he was as like to be knocked on the head as any other. And I lost my leg and had my face wrecked like this. It’s just stupid rubbish!’
‘But Karvinel wouldn’t use any of the survivors again?’ Simon asked.
‘Oh, he did better than that,’ Joan was with wry coldness, but Coppe held his hand up with impatience.
‘Karvinel couldn’t use me – look at this,’ he said, tapping his stump. ‘Anyway, he’d lost his ship and with it much of his wealth. Up until then he was a powerful man here in Exeter, but from that moment nothing he’s touched has come good. No, I think he told his friends about his suspicions and now none of them will use me.’
‘What happened to the other two?’
‘They’re dead. This is going back a few years, sir. I’m talking of five or maybe seven years ago. One died two years ago in a brawl in a tavern, the other froze to death in the winter during the famine, God bless them both.’
‘Talking of famines,’ Baldwin murmured, but just then the girl returned. She had run to the Cook’s Row, and her pale features were pleasantly flushed. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking a large pie from her apron and dropping coins onto the table.