Now Morin took de Wolfe’s arm and steered him to a vacant spot on a nearby bench. He yelled at a passing servant to bring them some ale, and when the pots arrived, he raised his in salute to the coroner.
‘This place is a mad-house this week. Thank Christ these Justices don’t come more often than every few years.’
‘Are they staying in Rougement?’
‘No damned fear! They like their comfort too much to be stuck in this draughty hole — no wonder de Revelle’s wife refuses to live here with him.’
‘So where are you putting them — in the New Inn?’ This was the largest hostelry in Exeter, in the high street between Martin’s Lane and the East Gate.
‘It belongs to the cathedral Chapter, so they’ll make a few shillings out of lodging the judges and their acolytes,’ said Ralph sarcastically. ‘Last time, the bishop put them up in his palace, but I hear he found it too expensive to provide free bed and board for them all.’
They talked together for a while, each comfortable in the company of another professional soldier, both familiar with the campaigns in France and Outremer. Morin had some fairly recent news of Coeur de Lion’s exploits against the hated Philip of France and de Wolfe responded with tales he had heard about the endless wrestling between the Marcher Lords and the Welsh princes.
After an hour’s pleasant gossip and another few jars of ale, the coroner reluctantly decided that he had better make tracks for home, to avoid the evil eye from Matilda, if he was late in preparing for the Guild feast that evening.
‘Are you attending this damned performance in the Guildhall tonight?’ he demanded, as he rose to leave the keep.
Morin shook his head. ‘Rough soldiers like me are rarely invited. The burgesses are glad enough of my men-at-arms when something goes wrong, but otherwise they look down their noses at me — thanks be to Christ!’
With a grin and a friendly clap of the shoulder, the two friends parted and John made his way slowly back to Martin’s Lane.
Two banquets in a week was a form of torture to John de Wolfe, akin to the peine forte et dure that was applied to reluctant witnesses or to those who refused to accept trial by battle.
He sat sullenly near the end of the top table in the smoky Guildhall, a new stone building in the centre of High Street, gazing down the other trestles that ran in three rows down the length of the chamber. The gabble of conversation and tipsy laughter drowned out the efforts of three musicians who were trying to entertain the crowd from a small gallery above John’s head. At about three hours before midnight, the meal was well advanced and the first courses lay in disarray on the scrubbed tables all around. Servants were struggling through the narrow gaps between the trestles to pick up the remnants of bread trenchers, soggy with gravy, to give to the beggars who clamoured outside the doors. Wooden and pewter platters held chicken and goose carcasses, while bones and scraps of meat were scattered over the tables. Hunks of bread, dishes of butter, cream and slabs of cheese vied with the ragged skeletons of fish as the most prominent debris of the lavish meal. All this was lubricated with spilt ale, cider and wine from an assortment of cups, goblets and horns that were standing on the boards or grasped in unsteady hands.
In the centre of the top table sat the Master of the Guild of Tanners, a hearty, florid burgess who was already quite drunk. On either side of him were his two Wardens, themselves flanked by lesser officials. On the other side of the table from de Wolfe, the wives sat together, including Matilda, who was happily exchanging gossip and scandal with her cronies. The only consolation for the antisocial coroner was that his friend Hugh de Relaga was next to him, a guest favoured both as a Portreeve of the city and a Guild Master in his own right. On John’s other side, at the extreme end of the table, was another guest, a Warden from the Company of Silversmiths, whose sole object seemed to be to get as much food and drink into himself as humanly possible.
The tipsy Master had just made a speech, welcoming his guests and extolling the virtues of his Guild in only slightly slurred tones, before sitting down heavily to devote the rest of the evening to getting even more drunk.
‘I suppose you have to endure many of these bloody charades?’ growled John to his friend Hugh. There was little fear of anyone taking offence at his sentiments, as the noise of clashing platters, shouting servants and a rising crescendo of babbling voices made any conversation inaudible beyond a foot or two.
‘I’ve got used to them over the years. Quite a lot of business is conducted at these affairs, most of it while pissing in the yard, where at least you can hear yourself think.’ The cheerful Portreeve, resplendent in purple silk and a fur-trimmed mantle of green velvet, tore off the leg of a roast duck lying on the table and began to gnaw it with every appearance of satisfaction at the evening’s fare.
A serving man came around behind them, laying new trenchers of thick bread on the table, one between two diners. John absently reached out with his dagger and pulled a large slice of pink flesh from a salmon carcass lying on a pewter plate nearby and dumped it with the neatness of long practice on their trencher. ‘Try some of this, Hugh. They say that fish strengthens your brain, so maybe you can make even more money for us tomorrow.’
They began to talk about their wool-exporting partnership, which had shown good returns since the last shearing season. ‘We still have a few hundred bales stored down at the quayside, John. Our agent in St Malo has had a firm offer at a good price.’ The rotund burgess frowned as he laid a piece of fish on a fresh crust. ‘That reminds me. Tomorrow I must make some new arrangements about shipping them out.’
‘What’s the problem?’ asked de Wolfe.
‘We usually get Thorgils to move our goods to Brittany but I hear that his vessel was badly damaged in a storm last week. It’ll be a month on the beach at Dawlish for repairs, so he won’t be taking wool anywhere for a while.’
The Portreeve was unaware of John’s liaison with Thorgils’s wife, so had no idea of the frustration that de Wolfe felt at this bad news. The coroner said nothing, but he cursed silently at this second blow to his love-life within the space of a day. With old Thorgils beached at home, there was no way he could enjoy the delicious company of his young wife.
De Relaga had turned now to the guild treasurer on his other side to respond to some chatter about the extortionate increase in journeymen’s wages and John felt no inclination to strike up a conversation with the inarticulate silversmith who was still gorging himself on his other side. He refilled his goblet with wine imported from Rouen and sat drinking moodily, half watching the antics of a troupe of jugglers who were performing as best they could with drunken revellers falling against them and servants thrusting irritably past them with jugs and plates.
He craned his neck to see how Matilda was faring. She seemed to be in her element, filled with good food and drink and engrossed in loud conversation with the other guests, both next to her and at the top end of two of the spur tables. In such company, he saw that she was a different woman from the surly malcontent he knew at home — she was gesturing animatedly and smiling and smirking with the pompous merchants and priests around her.
John drew back with a long sigh, feeling sorry for himself at the prospect of enforced celibacy for the foreseeable future and applied himself with grim determination to serious drinking, even though he knew he would suffer for it in the morning.
While the festivities went on in the Guildhall, the parish priest at the church of St Mary the Less, known to everyone as ‘St Mary Steps’, was preparing for Matins, the first Office of the new day, which began at midnight. The numerous churches scattered all over Exeter did not keep to the strict regime of the nine daily services that were celebrated in the cathedral. The number varied according to the diligence of each incumbent.