The Elixir of Death

'There's something strapped across its back,' observed Gwyn, shading his eyes from the glare of the weak sun on the sea. 'It looks like another body.'

Minutes later, this was confirmed, as when the group arrived they saw a limp shape draped over the sumpter horse's bare back, held on by a rope tied around the beast's belly. William Vado came up and repeated what he had just heard from the other men.

'Crowner, these are fishermen from Bantham, just across the river. On Monday, they found this young man washed up on the beach, still alive, but near to death.' Gwyn gently lifted up the head of the corpse, which had been drooping face down against the rough hide of the pony.

'Little more than a lad, by the looks of him. Dressed like a seaman, the same as the others.'

'Must be the missing one from the crew,' suggested Osbert the reeve. The compassionate Thomas began shriving the dead boy in murmured Latin, repeatedly making the sign of the Cross on himself as if he were in a cathedral quire, not shivering on a wintry beach.

'He was still alive when you found him?' demanded de Wolfe. 'Did he say what had happened?'

One of the fishermen, the one leading the pony, shook his head.

'The poor lad died on us within a couple of hours. He was half drowned when we found him on the beach, then he began retching and gasping.'

'We took him to our hut on the Ham, where we had a fire and warmed him up, intending to take him back to the village,' said the other man, a gaunt figure with a hacking cough that suggested advanced phthisis. 'But he never made it. We were going to bury him above the high-water mark, as is done with the corpses of most washed-up shipmen, but then yesterday we heard that there had been others found over here, so we thought we'd better bring him across.'

'Did he get his wits back at all before he died?' asked Gwyn.

The haggard fisherman looked at his mate first, then shrugged.

'Nothing that made sense. He came round a bit and mumbled, but old Joel said the only word he could make out sounded like "Saracens".'

John sighed at the obtuse way of speaking of these rural folk.

'Who's Joel, for God's sake?' he demanded.

The man pointed up to the top of Burgh Island. 'He's a hermit who lives up there in the stone cell of St Michael. A bit crazy, but useful, as he acts as our huer, spotting shoals of pilchard and herring for us.'

'If the boy said it was Saracens, perhaps the vessel was attacked by Barbary pirates?' suggested Thomas. 'Remember what happened at Lynmouth last year, when that galley appeared? They were Turks or some brigands from beyond Gibraltar.'

It was true, conceded de Wolfe, that both the Channel coast and the Severn Sea were visited by these swift rowing vessels filled with bloodthirsty villains, not only from Moorish Spain but from as far away as North Africa or the Levant. Though the distances were great, they seemed to have no difficulty in reaching these islands, where abundant trading ships and coastal villages offered rich pickings. Some even set up camps on islands such as Lundy or along the coast of southern Wales.

'Has this young fellow been injured in any way, like the others?' he demanded, waving a hand at the lifeless form slumped across the packhorse.

'Not that we could see, sir,' said the first fisherman. 'He died of having his tubes and lights filled with sea water and sand.'

His emaciated companion gave him an uneasy glance once again.

'There was one other thing, my lord,' he muttered, playing safe with John's rank. 'The same day, when we went to attend to our fishing lines at Aymer Cove, a mile or so up the coast, we found a curragh.'

A curragh was a kind of elongated coracle, a light boat large enough to hold six men. It was made of canvas daubed with pitch, stretched over a frame of hazel withies.

'Every cog carries a curragh, lashed upside down on its deck,' said Gwyn. 'It's used for getting ashore when the vessel can't come against a wharf — or even as a life-saver if she sinks.'

'No doubt it was washed off the Mary when she lost her crew and was capsized,' said John.

Both fishermen shook their heads emphatically. 'Not so, sir! The boat was undamaged and had been dragged up above the tide-line,' said the thin man.

'There was a keel mark in the sand where it had been pulled up,' confirmed the other fellow. 'And there were two paddles left inside. Someone had landed there, no doubt of that.'

'It may be nothing to do with the Mary,' objected Thomas stubbornly. 'If this poor lad mentioned "Saracens", surely that means it was attacked by pirates.'

'Was the curragh one you recognised?' asked Gwyn. The sick-looking local shook his head. 'We know every boat for ten miles along this coast. This was a different style from the few we fishermen build, it was the sort that trading vessels carry.'

De Wolfe rubbed his bristly face, now black with four days' stubble since his last shave. 'So it seems that someone came ashore — and there's nowhere they could have come from other than a ship, unless it was St Brendan himself!'

His allusion to the Irish monk who centuries before had allegedly explored the deep ocean in a curragh was lost on these untutored folk.

'And the only ship around here is stranded on this very beach — and its boat is missing!' said Gwyn with morbid satisfaction. 'Too much of a coincidence not to think that the killers used the curragh to get ashore.'

'But why, for God's sake?' demanded de Wolfe. 'Why slay a few poor shipmen and let the vessel become wrecked. It wasn't even for the cargo, for that didn't amount to much — and anyway, it's still in the vessel.'

No one had an answer for him, and after he had made a quick check of the young sailor's body, the fishermen set off with the packhorse to deliver the corpse to the church, where it could lay with the other victims. John then discussed with the bailiff and reeve how best to manage the removal of the cargo and get the stranded cog towed to shelter. After the promise of a small reward, the fishermen and the crabber agreed to help and Osbert the reeve was dispatched upriver to negotiate for a couple of pulling-boats and the men to handle them, so that the Mary could be hauled off on the following day's tide, while the weather still held calm.

Then they set off after the pony with its unhappy burden, and before mid-morning were back in Ringmore, where they thankfully warmed themselves again in the hall of the manor-house and ate a more substantial breakfast of bread, sea-fish, eggs and fat bacon, before the next stage in their legal proceedings.

CHAPTER TWO

In which Crowner John calls upon a new widow

It was past noon before the coroner could begin his inquest, for they had to wait for Osbert the reeve to return from Bigbury, a village farther inland, where he was seeking men to salvage the cog. He was needed for the proceedings, as he had been declared First Finder. This time, John de Wolfe had a double jurisdiction, not only in respect of the dead men, but also concerning the wrecked vessel.

None of this had much impact upon proceedings in the tiny manor of Ringmore that day. De Wolfe was the second-most senior law officer in the county, and his superior, the sheriff Henry de Furnellis, was an elderly, easy-going man who was only too content to let John get on with his job in whatever fashion he chose. In this, he was quite different to his predecessor, Sir Richard de Revelle, who was also John's brother-in-law. He had recently been expelled for malpractice, mainly at John's instigation, a fact that made the coroner's married life even more fraught with problems. As he went down to the churchyard for the inquest, de Wolfe remembered with a twinge of unease that his brother-in-law's main manor, Revelstoke, was only a dozen miles farther down the coast, and in fact could just be seen from where they had stopped to survey the wreck. He shrugged off the thought, as he could conceive of no possible way in which Richard could become involved in this present matter, even though John was always suspicious of any of his activities.