De Wolfe ate well enough, although his mind was on other things. After eating his fill, he left the table and announced that he was going for a walk along the beach to watch the sunset — an intention that raised the eyebrows of both his henchmen, as he was not noted for his aesthetic sensibilities.
Ignoring their quizzical stares — and rejecting Gwyn’s mischievous offer to walk with him — John grabbed his cloak and went out into the twilight. The sun was a deep red ball vanishing below the distant hills and the sea was a leaden sheet stretching out to a darkening horizon, but de Wolfe had no eyes for this kind of natural beauty, his mind on a different sort of pleasure.
He walked purposefully up the main street for a hundred paces, then turned into a side lane beyond the other tavern. A few yards further on, he stopped at a house with a stone lower storey, the upper part being timber. He knocked firmly on the heavy door and, with a twinge of annoyance at his own vanity, found himself running fingers through his thick black hair to brush it off his face.
The door opened a crack and an old man’s face appeared in the shadows, looking fearful at a knock on the door at dusk. John’s features slumped into a scowl at this sudden pricking of his pleasant expectations. ‘Is not the Goodwife Godfin at home?’ he demanded brusquely.
‘Who seeks her at this time of the evening?’ the old man demanded querulously.
‘A friend — Sir John de Wolfe from Exeter.’
‘She has left here these four months, sir. I rent the dwelling in her place.’ De Wolfe cursed under his breath. His devious plans had obviously gone well astray. ‘Where is she now? Still in the village?’
‘She has married and gone away. To a butcher in Bridport.’
There was nothing more to be said and, with muttered thanks, de Wolfe stalked away, tight-lipped in his disappointment. The damned woman was not only twenty-five miles away but now had a new husband, so that chapter in his life was closed for good. He had chanced to meet Brigit Godfin at a fair two years ago, when he had come here with his partner Hugh de Relaga to buy breeding sheep. She was a dark, attractive woman of thirty-two, recently widowed from a cloth merchant in Sidmouth. He was soon sharing her bed and although his visits from Exeter were difficult to arrange, except at infrequent intervals, he had managed to keep the affair going until he took up the coroner’s appointment. Since then, pressure of work and his increasing involvement with Nesta had caused him to neglect Brigit — he had not seen her for more than six months. Now she had found other fish to fry and he could draw a line under what had been a pleasant, if desultory affair.
He marched back to the Anchor, dropped back on to the bench he had left and glared at Gwyn as if daring him to enquire where he had been.
‘Another couple of quarts, then it’s time to sleep,’ he muttered. ‘We must be on the road to Exeter first thing in the morning.’
CHAPTER FIVE
On the way back to the city next day, Odin cast a shoe and de Wolfe spent the rest of the morning with Andrew the farrier, restoring the big warhorse to working condition, before he reluctantly crossed the lane to his house.
The midday meal was silent as usual, with Matilda sulking over her husband’s absence the previous night. As they sat at each end of the long table in their hall, the two yards between them might as well have been two miles, for all the social intercourse that took place.
His head bent over Mary’s mutton stew and fresh bread, John pondered the events in Sidmouth and was thankful that Matilda was unaware of this amorous fiasco. She had mocked him unmercifully when she learned of his rift with Nesta and had long sneered at his ill-concealed fondness for his youthful sweetheart in Dawlish, so he was greatly relieved to know that the Brigit Godfin episode had been entirely outside her knowledge.
The thought of Dawlish crept into his mind now, as he turned over the diminishing choices in his love-life. With Brigit gone and Nesta apparently resolute in her rejection of him, the beautiful Hilda was his only remaining option. The thought of her warmed him, her glorious blonde hair and her lissom body flooding into his mind as they had with increasing frequency over the past few weeks.
He had been deprived of her company for too long, he decided. His last attempt to call at Dawlish had been frustrated by an unexpected corpse in the River Teign. He determined to pay an early visit to his mother, sister and brother at the family manor at Stoke-in-Teignhead, the road to which passed through Dawlish. It only required Hilda’s elderly husband, Thorgils, to be away on his boat — preferably as far away as St Malo — for John’s plotting to come to delightful fruition in the arms of the fair young wife.
With these devious thoughts in his mind, he stole a covert glance at his wife as she chewed grimly, trying to gauge the depth of her current displeasure.
They had to go to this damned banquet that evening, he thought despondently, which would be even harder to endure if she was in a really caustic mood.
He decided to try to lighten the atmosphere, if only for his own sake. However, his favourable comments about the meal were met with disdain, because Matilda disliked Mary and nothing the maid did ever found favour in her eyes. She suspected that there was something going on between the serving woman and her husband — correctly, as it happened, although it was now in the past, for Mary was more attached to her employment than her employer, fond though she was of him.
His next attempt at conversation was more successful, as the subject was her brother and the imminent arrival of the royal judges. ‘I must go up to Rougemont this afternoon and talk to Richard about the arrangements for the Eyre next week. We have not yet heard who the Justices will be.’
‘I trust they will be men of stature, not just common clerks like those who came as Commissioners of Assize last time,’ she snapped.
‘They will be senior men, as this is a General Eyre, not just an Assize,’ he replied, pandering to her incorrigible snobbishness. The prospect of some noble barons or a bishop coming to the city perked up her interest.
‘I never understood all these different courts,’ she whined. ‘Why are there eminent men of the king’s court at some and only snivelling clerks at others?’
De Wolfe grinned to himself at her derogatory description of some learned Commissioners, though it was true that some were but very able clerks, administrators from the Exchequer or Chancery. To humour her, he launched into an explanation. ‘In the old days, anyone seeking justice from the king, first had to find him. That meant journeying either to Winchester, London or even Normandy in the hope of catching him at his court — or else chasing around the countryside after him, as he paraded around the shires, fighting, hunting or just battening on his barons for lodging.’
He swallowed a piece of fat mutton, before continuing. ‘Then old King Henry, a great one for law-making, decided this wasn’t good enough and demanded that members of his court should go around regularly to each county and hear the Pleas of the Crown, cases that were not dealt with by the local courts.’
Matilda paused in her chewing to glare at him. ‘But that doesn’t explain why sometimes we get barons and bishops here, but more often a pack of London clerks — “men raised from the dust”, as my brother calls them.’
John got up and filled her pewter cup with more wine, thinking that a little gracious behaviour on his part might mellow her in time for the evening. He topped up his own and sat down again, ready to explain a little more. ‘The justices who are coming next week are also holding a General Eyre, so they will be the most senior men. As well as hearing royal pleas in serious cases, they look into the whole administration of the county, which is why your brother is so flustered and uneasy.’