'He's been castrated as well, sir!' volunteered the wheelwright, with a melancholy relish. Either the two sons had very strong characters or they had no great affection for their father, for they splashed up the stream ahead of John and stood over the mutilated corpse while John and Gwyn caught them up.
'Our sire was not the most popular of manor-lords,' admitted Godfrey with surprising frankness. 'But surely no one would wish a death like this upon him!'
The coroner clambered out of the water and stood on the table-like rock, his officer standing ankle deep in the stream on the other side of the body. They looked down at the bloody remains, taking in all that was to be seen. Peter le Calve — for they assumed it was he, in spite of the lack of his head — wore a long woollen tunic of a green colour, though much of the front and sides were now almost black with blood, except where splashes of water had diluted the gore to a pink hue. The garment was ripped from the neck-line down to well below his waist. A coil of his bowels lay amid clotted blood on his belly, and below this a ragged wound indicated where his genitals had been crudely removed.
Gwyn reached down and took hold of his leg below the knee, attempting to lift it. 'Stiff as a board and as cold as ice,' he muttered. 'He's been dead a goodly time.'
John slipped a hand into the dead man's armpit, but could feel no vestige of remaining warmth. He looked up at the elder son. 'Your father went missing at dusk last night and was found soon after dawn?'
Godfrey nodded, his rather equine face now pale as he stood over the ravaged corpse. 'We were all out at first light and he was found within the hour.'
'Then no doubt he was killed last night, so the miscreants could be well away by now,' growled de Wolfe. Even though hardened by past experience, the manner of this death was one of the worst he had seen, especially as it savoured of a crucifixion.
'Can we not move him now, Sir John?' asked William, who was as pale as death himself. 'This is not a fitting way for any man to be left, especially a lord in his own manor.'
John rose to his feet and nodded. 'I agree with you! A Crusader deserves better than this. We must get him back to the village.'
Godfrey shouted over his shoulder at some of his servants who were clustered anxiously a few yards away. He ordered them to find a litter to carry the body, and some of them jogged away back towards the manor.
'We'd best get him off these stones and on to the grass, Crowner, ' suggested Gwyn. He drew out his dagger and bent to the nearer wrist of the corpse, intending to slash through the bindings that held the victim to the willow bough, but De Wolfe stopped him.
'Wait a moment! Let's look at the way he's tied, in case there's something useful to learn.' With Gwyn's hairy head close to his, he peered at the lashings and felt them with his fingers.
'Tied with two simple half-hitches,' declared his officer, a former fisherman. 'Nothing special about the knots.'
'No, but what about the cords themselves, Gwyn? How many local outlaws or robbers carry silken cords with them, eh?'
Gwyn grunted his surprise and touched the bindings, rubbing his thick finger along them. 'God's knuckles, so they are! Soaking wet, they looked black, but I think they are red.'
The coroner now told him to release the lashings and as the wet cords had pulled so tight that the knots were almost impossible to untie, the Cornishman cut them through and held them up for inspection. The two sons came nearer and agreed that their father had been tied down with cords of dark crimson plaited silk, somewhat thicker than a goose quill. They were wet and rather dirty, but were certainly not common hemp.
'The ends are frayed — looks as if they've been cut from a longer length,' said the ever practical Gwyn, stowing them carefully in the pouch on his belt. When the corpse was lifted off, the thin branch revealed nothing of interest, being a fallen bough with a broken end.
'Not specially cut down for this purpose,' said Godfrey, who seemed less affected by his father's bizarre death than his younger brother.
'No, there's plenty of such wood within fifty paces,' agreed the coroner,
The falconer and the wheelwright carried their lord's body reverently to the bank and laid it gently on the grass. John checked that there was nothing left on the rock 4 where the corpse had lain, then came across and had another look at it.
'There can be no doubt that this is your father?' he demanded, looking up at Godfrey and William. Both men shook their heads.
'Those are his garments, certainly,' replied William. 'But you're not suggesting that someone placed his clothing on someone else?'
'Stranger things have happened,' grunted de Wolfe. 'Though I admit it's highly unlikely. But is there any other way you can identify him, without his head?'
'He had a scar on the side of his chest,' offered Godfrey. 'It came from a spear wound at the battle of Arsuf, so he told us.'
John well remembered Arsuf in the Holy Land, for he was there himself. In September three years previously, Richard the Lionheart had marched down from Acre towards Jerusalem and at Arsuf, Saladin tried to stop him with a massive army. Richard, the superb tactician, won the day, though the battlefield was strewn with the corpses of both sides and many more were wounded. John himself had a small scar on his arm from a Moorish arrow, and now he bent to look at a beheaded corpse to seek more severe evidence of that fateful conflict. When he pulled the torn tunic aside, sure enough there was a white puckered scar running for a hand's breadth horizontally across the left lower ribs, which both sons confirmed was identical to the one they had seen on their father. But John's attention was now elsewhere, for pulling the clothing aside had revealed something else. Just above the scar, smeared with blood, was a wide slit, the pouting edges exposing the muscle beneath the skin.
'Mary, Mother of God, he's been stabbed as well, poor bastard!' Gwyn's irreverent voice boomed out as he bent for such a close inspection that his bulbous nose was almost touching the corpse. 'And haven't we seen wounds like that only a few days ago?'
The stricken onlookers watched as the two law officers poked and prodded at the gash in the dead man's side. 'Very wide indeed, Gwyn, as well as deep,' said de Wolfe grimly. 'But surely this must be a coincidence?'
Godfrey and William le Calve stared at each other, bemused at what was going on. 'What importance can this have, Sir John?' asked William. 'Surely in the presence of the other mutilations, this can have little significance? '
De Wolfe explained that recently they had seen similar unusual knife marks on the crew of a wrecked ship.
'But that was thirty miles from here and in very different circumstances, so I fail to see how it can have any connection,' objected Godfrey.
'I would like to agree with you, sir,' said John thoughtfully. 'But I must keep an open mind on the matter for now.'
Together with Gwyn, he explored the rest of le Calve's body, but found no other injuries, and by then several villeins had hurried up with a crude stretcher made of a pair of poles with ropes strung between them.
A short time later, the corpse was laid on a table in one of the side rooms of the manor-house and decently covered with a blanket. The parish priest was called and stayed to mumble Latin prayers over it, though there was no suggestion yet that the body be moved to the church, as was the usual practice.
'Thank God our mother is no longer with us, to have to witness such a devilish act,' muttered Godfrey. 'She died seven years ago, Christ rest her soul.'
John had noticed a handsome, well-dressed woman hovering in the background as they brought the lord back to his hall for the last time, but he was tactful enough not to enquire who she was.
'What happens now, Crowner?' asked the bemused elder son, still grappling with the fact that he was suddenly the new lord of Shillingford.