Thomas paled and turned to stare out of the doorway as Gwyn handed the bolt to his master, oblivious of the blood dripping on to the earthern floor.
'It's a hunting quarrel, Crowner. A nasty piece of work.' John took the short arrow and examined the bloody front end. He stooped to pick up a piece of sacking that lay across a crate and wiped most of the blood away. The tip of the bolt was of iron, shaped like a four-sided pyramid, designed to cause more damage than a flat arrowhead. Now that it was less bloody, Godfrey stared at it with disgust.
'I've known Adam almost all my life. Now the poor man is dead from a mistake.' He took the short arrow from John's hand. 'This was meant for me, I'm sure.'
Thomas wandered back from the doorway, hoping that the more disgusting parts of the examination were over. 'Can you tell anything from it, Sir John?' he asked in his reedy voice.
'It's just an ordinary hunting quarrel,' replied the coroner. 'A deadly weapon at close range. I was hit by a Saracen bolt at Ascalon. Thank God it was a glancing shot which bounced off my chain mail, though I had a bruise there for weeks.'
'Speaking of Saracens, can I have another look?' asked Gwyn. He took the bolt from Godfrey and turned it over in his hands. Then to Thomas's disgust, he held it to his nose and sniffed at the flights, before passing it over to de Wolfe.
'Smell anything, Crowner? And look closely at the fletching.'
John had considerable faith in his officer's intuition and did as Gwyn suggested. His black eyebrows rose and he turned to the elder brother.
'Let's see the other quarrel, the one that injured William,' he commanded, and they made their way back upstairs. The bolt had been picked up by the bailiff when they rushed to William's aid and brought back to the hall, where it lay discarded on one of the tables.
The coroner picked it up, sniffed it and then compared it with the other one.
'Exactly the same — and the smell is identical,' he declared.
Godfrey and several servants gathered near by, staring at him blankly. They were all well used to cross-bow bolts, used in hunting everything from foxes to otters, but they had never seen anyone smell one before.
'What are you saying, Sir John?' asked Godfrey.
'Gwyn spotted it first. On the leather of the flights there are some faint hammerings. And they smell of spices or scent.'
He held out a bolt to le Calve and with a long forefinger pointed to some marks pressed into the leather of the triangular flights.
'That's Moorish writing, though God knows what it means. Together with that smell, it suggests that these bolts came from the Levant. And presumably so do the bastards who fired them!'
John de Wolfe was careful to delay his departure from Shillingford until well past the time when his brother-inlaw and his wife would have left Exeter to ride on to Tiverton. He managed this by accepting the hospitality of Godfrey le Calve and having a good meal in the hall. Then he had another few words with William, to see whether there was anything at all he remembered which might help to identify the assailants. The younger brother was still very pale and thankfully showed no signs of fever from his wound mortifying, though it was early days yet. Lady Isobel sat with him and impressed John with her air of calm efficiency. He wondered what would become of her now that her protector Peter le Calve was dead. She was much younger than he had been and the coroner idly speculated that perhaps the affections of one of his sons might turn her way, though it was probable that they were already married themselves.
William had nothing to tell him, knowing only that his steward had suddenly stumbled against him, probably saving his life by knocking him out of the line of fire of the accurate killer in the trees. The second quarrel had sliced through the outer part of his arm and from then on he lost all interest in anything except his pain and bleeding.
The next activity that the coroner used to delay his departure was a visit to the scene of the crime. With Godfrey and several of the senior manor servants, he went with Gwyn and Thomas past the strip-fields behind the manor-house. These were still partly in stubble from the last harvest, though two ox-teams were slowly ploughing, ready for harrowing and winter planting. Beyond these were meadows where sheep and a few milk cows were competing with pigs and goats for the last of the autumn grass. A few lads were guarding them, with much yelling and waving of sticks.
This good pasture petered out into waste ground, which had been assarted earlier in the year and in which tree stumps and bushes still remained to be grubbed out and burned. The edge of the standing forest ran along like a dark wave at the top of a rising crest of land. Though many of the leaves had fallen, the trees were not yet bare and there was a mass of bracken, bramble and scrubby undergrowth along the edge to give cover to anyone lurking in the woods.
As they approached the spot where the hawk-master said the two men had fallen, they were met by the bailiff, the reeve and several villeins, who were emerging from the forest after searching for several hours.
'Nothing at all, my lord,' reported the bailiff, touching his cap to Godfrey. 'We've been a mile in both directions. Nothing to see anywhere, not even a hoof print.'
A spattering of fresh blood blackened the grass where William had fallen. Standing near it, de Wolfe scanned the edge of the forest, which was about fifty paces distant. Then he loped to the nearest trees and pushed into the undergrowth, the brambles snagging his calf-length grey tunic. With Gwyn at his side and Thomas creeping uncertainly behind, he studied the ground, the trees and the bushes for a few yards each way and back into the darkness of the wood. As the bailiff had said, there was nothing to see — no strands of cloth caught on thorns or discarded arrows on the ground. On the walk back to the hall, he questioned the search party, which comprised most of the senior servants of the le Calve manor, asking whether any strangers had been seen since the previous day. The answer was in the negative once again.
'No mysterious monks this time?' he demanded, thinking of the old man's recollection when Peter le Calve had been done to death so horribly. Once again, there was much reluctant shaking of heads, and all that remained for John to do was to hold a quick inquest on Adam le Bel, to save him returning to Shillingford yet again. With the manor servants as jury and witnesses, he held his inquisition over the body of the old steward in the undercroft. As the circumstances were so straightforward, even if totally obscure, the formality took no more than a few minutes. In fact, the longest time was spent in waiting for Thomas de Peyne to inscribe the proceedings on a roll of parchment, a process that consisted mainly of recording the names of the jurors.
'Yet another bloody inquest with no result!' snarled John as the three rode back towards Exeter later that afternoon. 'The four shipmen, the lord of Shillingford and now its steward — all verdicts of 'murder by persons unknown'! We're losing our touch!'
'What about this notion that we are dealing with Saracens?' grunted Gwyn, pulling the collar of his jerkin closer against the biting east wind.
'It bears thinking about, as the signs are adding up,' replied the coroner. 'We have those curved wounds, which would fit a Moorish blade. Then those silken cords seem strangely oriental, as does the embossing on these leathern arrow flights and their spicy odour.'