'What do you think of that, John?' asked de Furnellis. 'You have been involved in several brushes with those who adhere to the Prince's cause — mainly involving your dear brother-in-law. '
The coroner was silent for a moment as he chewed over the scanty information, then he cleared his throat with one of his non-committal rasps.
'The Count of Mortain has been quiet lately, as far as I've heard. I had hoped that he had learnt his lesson last year, when the Lionheart came back from captivity and trounced his forces at Tickhill and Nottingham.'
'King Richard was too damn lenient with his young brother!' growled Henry. 'He should have locked him up for a few years, as their father did with their mother, Queen Eleanor. Instead, the soft-hearted fellow has now given back most of John's land that was confiscated.'
'If he's thinking of new treachery against the King, he'll certainly need money to rebuild support,' mused de Wolfe. 'I wonder what sending agents to the west hopes to achieve in that direction?'
'And what's this business about Mohammedans?' demanded de Furnellis.
A few more minutes' discussion brought them no enlightenment, and with a shrug of dismissal de Wolfe went on to tell the sheriff about the wreck of Thorgils' ship and the murder of its crew. The sheriff listened with interest, but had no suggestions as to who might have perpetrated this strange slaying — nor what could be done about it, without further information.
Henry, though nominally responsible for keeping law and order in Devon, was a somewhat reluctant enforcer and was more than content to leave the more energetic de Wolfe to deal with suspicious deaths and other crimes of violence. The coroner's remit, vague though it was, covered a whole host of matters, from sudden deaths to rape, from severe assault to fires and from wrecks to catches of the royal fish. In addition he had a wide-ranging obligation to attend to many legal matters, such as preparing evidence for the King's Justices, who came at long and irregular intervals to the city. He also had to attend executions and Ordeals, take confessions from sanctuary seekers and those who turned King's evidence by wishing to 'approve', as well as holding inquests on deaths and finds of treasure trove. It seemed that Henry de Furnellis also wished him to gallop around the county to seek out and arrest wrongdoers, though at least he had assured John that at any time he could call upon Ralph Morin, the castle constable, to turn out with men-at-arms from the garrison for any policing that was necessary.
When the cider was finished, the overworked de Wolfe left the harassed sheriff to the mercy of his clerks and went back to his chamber, to tell Thomas that he was at last going home to face his wife.
John rode sedately down to Martin's Lane and delivered Odin to Andrew the farrier, who had stables on the left side of the alley, right opposite the de Wolfe residence, one of several tall, narrow wooden houses. The front was relieved only by a heavy door and a shuttered window at ground level, plain timbers reaching up to the steep roof of wooden shingles.
Pushing the door open, he entered a small vestibule there, with a sigh of relief, he hung up his cloak and slumped on to a bench to exchange his mud-spattered riding boots for a pair of house shoes. To the right was an inner door into his hall, the main room of the house, but he turned left and went around the side of the building. The vestibule was continuous with a narrow covered passageway which led to the back yard. Here the kitchen shed, the wash hut, the well, the privy and a pigsty competed for space in an area of beaten mud, in which a few chickens pecked around. Plaintive bleating came from a small goat, destined for the next day's dinner, which was tethered to a ramshackle fence.
From force of habit, de Wolfe glanced up a flight of steep wooden steps that rose from the yard to the door of a room built out high on the back wall of the house. This was the solar, the only other room in the dwelling, which acted as his wife's retiring room as well as their bedchamber. Beneath the timber supports of the solar was a box-like structure where his wife's body-maid, Lucille, lived. There was no sign of either of them, so John turned into the kitchen hut, where their cook-maid lived and worked.
'Mary, I'm famished!' he growled. 'I can't wait until supper-time. What have you got to eat?'
A dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties was stooping over an iron pot that was simmering on a small fire in a pit in the centre of the shed. She turned and stood up, a smile spreading over her handsome face.
'Welcome home, Sir Crowner!' she said in slightly mocking tone. 'I wondered if you still lived here, we see so little of you.'
John grinned at her familiar manner and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. They had had many a furtive tumble in days gone by, but now Mary thought more of keeping her position in the household than rolling in the hay with the master. Since John's relations with his wife had deteriorated, and especially since the nosy Lucille had arrived, she was afraid of her former indiscretions being discovered.
The cook-maid ladled some hare stew into a bowl for him and set it on a rickety table that was the only furniture, apart from a stool and a straw-filled mattress in the corner, which was her bed. As he sat to eat it, Mary placed a hunk of barley bread in front of him and poured a quart of ale into an earthenware pot.
'That will keep you from starving for another hour, perhaps?' Her manner was one of affectionate bantering, as she was his ally against the two other women in the household. Without her ministrations, he knew that he would go unfed and unclothed as far as Matilda was concerned. She cared nothing for domestic matters, being obsessed only with religion and maintaining her social status as wife of the county coroner and sister to the former sheriff.
'How has she been?' he asked, as he sucked the meaty stew from a spoon carved from a cow's horn.
'Fretting as usual, as she has been ever since she got back from France a few weeks back. And she's wrathful over the fact that you've been away for two nights, God knows where!'
He grunted sardonically, as it was the same old story with Matilda. She had pushed him into this job as coroner the previous year, seeing an opportunity to flaunt herself as the consort of the King's Crowner. Yet when he had to be absent on his duties, she complained endlessly that she was left alone and neglected, heedless of the fact that when he was there, she spent most of the time either scolding or ignoring him.
'Where is my dear wife now?' he asked.
'She'll be on her knees at St Olave's until supper-time, listening to Julian Fulk gabbling his Latin.'
John dipped the last of his bread in the dregs of the stew. 'She doesn't understand a bloody word of it, but she keeps going there. God's offal, if I didn't know her better, I'd think she was enamoured of that fat clerk.'
The cook had squatted on her bed while de Wolfe finished his food and drank the rest of his ale, an easy companionship settling over them. He began telling her of his trip to the south-west of the county, and she was saddened to hear that Hilda was now a widow. Mary was well aware of her master's various infidelities and had met Hilda several times in the past.
'Who could have done such a thing?' she asked, echoing the widow's words. 'And why, if none of the cargo was taken?'
As they discussed the mystery, his old hound Brutus ambled in from where he had been sleeping in the wash house and John fondled his smooth brown head as he spoke.
'This affair will take me down to that area more than once, I'm afraid,' he said. 'So my wife will have no lack of opportunity to nag me about being away from home again.'