The Elixir of Death

Here was another snippet of information that de Wolfe stored away in his head, but now Gwyn was interrogating the reeve. 'Where does this track go beyond Bigbury?'

'Nowhere, really. It ends up back at the headland opposite Burgh Island, unless you want to turn off and go down to the river's edge. From there you can go right up to Aveton, when the tide is out.'

The Cornishman looked across at his master. 'So why did four monks come down here, into the back of beyond?'

John shared his puzzlement, but had no suggestions as to an answer. By now they were riding through more heavily wooded country and eventually came downhill into the hamlet of Bigbury, which as Osbert had said, was little more than a small cluster of dwellings around a small church and an alehouse. They stopped to slake their thirst with some surprisingly good cider and seek out more information. There was plenty of the former, but none of the latter. Though they questioned the garrulous ale-wife and half a dozen villagers, no one owned to having seen any monks at all, at any time.

'Damned strange, that!' grunted Gwyn. 'The old fellow sees them coming down the road from that chapel, but they never arrive here. There's no way that four black monks could walk through here unseen!'

De Wolfe asked whether there was anywhere they could have gone in between, given the heavily-wooded country thereabouts.

'Nothing there, Crowner,' said the landlady emphatically. 'Only a ruin in the forest that used to be a priory in my great-grandfather's time. Just ghosts and outlaws there these days — not a place to go unless you have to!'

'If it was a priory, maybe these men were on some kind of pilgrimage?' suggested Osbert.

It was as good an answer as any other, and with a grunt the coroner upended his pot of cider and motioned to the other two for them to prepare to carry on with the journey. Half an hour later they were standing on the firm sand of the Avon estuary, well over a mile up from the sea, looking at the hull of Thorgils' boat. It was sitting upright in a shallow pool of water in a little bay at the side of the sinuous upper reaches of the river, lashed firmly by ropes to the trunks of two trees growing right on the edge of the bank.

John left Gwyn to study the vessel, and he soon reported that there was no damage to the stout wooden hull and all that seemed necessary was a new mast, rigging and sail, as well as a steering oar.

'The men bailed her out with leather buckets and now when the tide's in, she floats as tidy as she ever did,' reported Osbert proudly. 'Come the spring, you'll be able to sail her out of here to wherever you wish.'

With nothing more he could think of investigating, the coroner and his officer said farewell to the reeve, who turned for home, while they headed up the track that followed the river bank up to Aveton at the head of the estuary. From here they made for Totnes and a night's rest, before the last lap the next day home to Exeter, where John glumly expected the usual black looks from his wife for yet again being absent for several days.

CHAPTER SIX

In which Crowner John visits his brother-in-law

Having arrived home on Sunday, the following week began quietly once again — especially in Martin's Lane, where there was almost dead silence in the de Wolfe household, as Matilda did her best to ignore her husband. Even Tuesday's hangings were a poorly attended occasion, and it was late that afternoon, an hour before curfew closed the city gates at dusk, that the returning sheriff's party trotted up to Rougemont Castle.

Amid shouts of welcome, cries of relief from the soldiers' families and a general tumult in the inner bailey, the dusty cavalcade dismounted and went their various ways. John and his officer clattered down their stairway and emerged just in time to meet the archdeacon and his nephew as they came across to the gatehouse. Thomas looked much the same, though there was a smug expression on his pinched face as he punched Gwyn on his brawny arm and pointed back at his borrowed horse.

'The fellow is almost as proud of that as he is of regaining his priesthood!' said John de Alençon, with a smile. Gwyn almost gaped as he looked across the courtyard and saw that Thomas now had a regular saddle instead of the female abomination that had so irked the Cornishman.

'You're a man at last!' he boomed, picking the clerk up from the ground and whirling him around in affectionate clowning.

De Wolfe saw the sheriff beckoning to him and suggested that they all adjourn to the keep for refreshment and to hear the news. In the crowded hall, Henry de Furnellis was welcomed back by his clerks, who began waving parchments at him. Ignoring them, the sheriff ambled to a table near the hearth and yelled for food and drink. As the travellers stretched and shrugged off their riding cloaks, the story of their week-long trip to Winchester unfolded. The archdeacon began by describing Thomas's restoration to his beloved Church, the little man almost wriggling with mixed delight and embarrassment.

'I have to admit that the bishop was magnanimous in his sermon,' said John de Alençon. 'He virtually apologised on behalf of the cathedral, its Chapter and the Consistory Court and welcomed Thomas back into the fold without reservation.'

Gwyn, standing behind the clerk as befitted his lower station in the presence of the sheriff and coroner, slapped his friend on the back, spilling the glass of wine he was clutching. 'It made a man of him, sirs! He even rides a horse like one now!'

The merriment and gossip went on for an hour, as the travellers unwound after almost three days on the road. Then one by one, they drifted away, the archdeacon going back to Canon's Row with Thomas, after the radiant clerk promised to meet them at the Bush later to give them a more detailed account of his visit to Winchester. The sheriff motioned to de Wolfe to come with him to his chamber and, over a flask of good wine, they sat at his table and discussed more official matters.

'I saw Hubert Waiter at the castle after I delivered the farm to those exchequer vultures,' said Henry. 'He offered his felicitations to you and a little more information for both of us.'

'About this Prince John business?' queried the coroner. De Furnellis nodded his grey head. 'It seems that some more intelligence has come from the King's spies in France. Not much, but enough to confirm that dirty work is afoot to bolster the Count of Mortain's ambitions once again.'

He stopped for a long draught of red wine. 'There's no doubt that some scheme is being hatched in England and the whisper is that it is both related to money and that it is at least in part centred in a western county.'

'That could mean Gloucestershire,' said John. 'Since our king was unwise enough to restore some of the Prince's possessions, Gloucester has been his favoured abode when he is in England.'

Henry shrugged his tired shoulders. 'It could be, but it could also be down this way. Gloucestershire is not what most men think of when 'the west' is mentioned.'

'Did the Justiciar have anything else to tell us?'

'An odd thing, John — very odd. He said that these agents on the Seine also had wind of some Levantine involvement in this plot.'

'Levantine? Did he mean Turkish or Saracen or what?' demanded de Wolfe.

'The word Saracen was not used, it seems. He said that Mussulmen were involved — but that could mean anyone east of Constantinople.'

The two men debated these obscure warnings for a while, but no enlightenment came. John told the sheriff of the sacrilegious exhibition of Peter le Calve's head in the cathedral and his lack of any leads about the perpetrators. Henry shook his head sadly at this further news about le Calve's hideous death.