Brutus slid under the table, peering out hopefully to see whether any of the patrons who were eating had some scraps to throw down to him. As John lowered himself on to his bench, an old man with a lame leg hobbled across with a pottery tankard of best ale.
'Evening, cap'n!' he said, as he had done hundreds of times before. Old Edwin was a former soldier, wounded in the foot and blinded in one eye at the battle of Wexford — the same Irish campaign in which de Wolfe had fought. Edwin had a touching regard for the coroner as a fellow soldier and always used his military title of captain — though privately he always thought of him as 'Black John'.
'Is your mistress about, Edwin?' asked John.
'Out in the cook shed, scolding one of the new girls, sir. Since we opened again after the fire, we've had a couple of useless doxies who couldn't boil water, let alone fry an egg!'
De Wolfe supped his ale and had a few words with several men standing near by, one of whom was the master carpenter who had organised most of the rebuilding of the inn, at John's expense. This was the second time he had ploughed money into the tavern, as several years ago he had come to the rescue of Nesta when her husband had died of a sudden fever and left her to run the debt-ridden inn. John had known Meredydd when they campaigned together, as he was an archer from Gwent in South Wales, the home of experts with the longbow. When he gave up fighting, he followed John back to Exeter and took over the ailing Bush, but died before it became profitable. John had come to the aid of his widow and their friendship developed into intimacy and — even though the taciturn John was loath to admit it — into genuine love. More recently, Nesta had narrowly escaped death when the inn was deliberately set on fire, and, once again, John came to her rescue by financing the rebuilding.
'Here she is now, cap'n,' croaked Edwin, his dead white eye rolling horribly as he passed by again with a handful of empty ale-pots. The coroner looked up expectantly, his usually dour expression softened and a rare smile lit up his face at the sight of his mistress threading her way through her patrons. She gave many of them a cheerful greeting or a playful tap on the arm, as her pleasant manner was almost as much an attraction at the Bush as her good food and ale.
'Sir Crowner, I thought you might have left the country, it's so long since I saw you!'
She stood over him, grinning mischievously as she used the half-mocking title that told him she was teasing — though there was a hint of reproach at his recent absence that reminded him of his maid's similar complaints.
'God's teeth, woman, it's good to see you! My arse is near worn away from sitting on a horse these past few days.' He reached up to pull her on to the bench alongside him and hugged her close. 'I've been halfway to the bloody Scilly Isles to see a shipwreck.'
He gave her cheek a smacking kiss, to the benign amusement of the regular patrons around them. They all knew and approved of the affair between their coroner and the comely ale-wife, not a few of them envying his luck at being able to bed such a pretty dame. Although twenty-nine, some dozen years younger than de Wolfe, she still had a shapely figure, with a small waist and a full bosom under the kirtle of fine green wool that covered her from neck to ankles. The Welsh woman was not small, but she came only to the shoulder of the lanky knight. Her face was round, though she preferred to think of it as 'heart-shaped', with a tip-tilted nose and lips like Cupid's bow. Her grey-green eyes complemented her glossy auburn hair, which now peeped out rebelliously from under a white linen coif, a close-fitting helmet that was tied under the chin.
As she snuggled up to his side, he brought her up to date on his doings since they had last met at the weekend, telling her of the journey to the south-west coast and the wreck of the Mary and Child Jesus. He tried to tread delicately around the fact that Thorgils was dead, as Nesta was well aware of Hilda's existence and of his dalliances with the blonde from Dawlish. In fact, Nesta had met Hilda several times and had got on well with the other woman, even though she knew that John still had feelings for her. Now she expressed her genuine distress that Hilda had been made a widow in such tragic circumstances and pressed him for more details of the death, which he was unable to provide.
'It's a complete mystery, cariad,' he said in the Welsh tongue that they used together, as, thanks to his mother's ancestry, he was fluent in that Celtic language. 'The whole crew knifed, apart from the lad who must have jumped or been thrown overboard. The vessel was left to drift until it beached, but the cargo was untouched. I don't understand it at all!'
Nesta always liked to hear about his cases and he enjoyed telling her about them, as she had a quick and lively mind that often produced useful ideas. In addition, she heard most of the gossip of the county, as the Bush was the most popular inn for travellers passing through the city, and on more than one occasion she had been able to offer him titbits of information that helped him in his investigations.
'Who could have done this, John?' she asked. 'Where did they come from and where did they go?'
He shrugged as he finished his quart and Nesta immediately signalled to Edwin to bring a refill. 'There were signs that someone other than the crew had been living below decks, so presumably Thorgils had brought some passengers across the Channel. It could only have been them that committed the crime.'
Nesta looked dubious. 'Why couldn't it have been an attack from a raiding ship? There have been many reports of Barbary pirates along the coast.'
De Wolfe shook his head. 'Unlikely, because the curragh that the vessel carried was missing and one was found intact and dragged up on the beach not far away. Almost certainly, they abandoned the ship and made their way ashore.'
When John went on to tell her of the message that Hubert Walter had sent down to the sheriff, the landlady's fair eyebrows lifted. 'Maybe the two things are connected! Couldn't these men who went ashore be French spies? They killed the crew to prevent them telling of their illegal landing!'
De Wolfe had half-heartedly toyed with this idea himself, but had dismissed it as being too much of a coincidence, even though there was no better explanation on offer. 'Thorgils would never have agreed to anything underhand, like bringing infiltrators to these shores.'
Nesta shook her head impatiently. She was a woman of quick decisions and firm ideas. 'There need be no question of that, John. They could have bought their passage as genuine travellers, like hundreds of others. If Thorgils was bound for Salcombe or Dartmouth, they could have requested passage to one of those, then, when it suited them, they rose up, slew the crew and rowed themselves ashore.'
John grudgingly admitted that she could be right. 'But why? And why go ashore on such a remote and God-forsaken bit of the coast? There's nothing there.'
'Exactly! And so few people to see them arrive!' she said triumphantly. 'Once ashore, they could go anywhere, as long as they were careful. And your intelligence from the Justiciar specifically mentioned the West Country.'
John suddenly realised that he was pressed against a warm and shapely woman and abruptly lost interest in hypotheses about French spies.