It was hard to tell the colour in that light, but John thought that the cloak was purple and the gown a bright red. ‘Put that light down close to her face,’ commanded the coroner. Even his anxiety about Nesta had been temporarily dampened by his professional interest in the mode of death.
‘No doubt she’s been throttled,’ repeated his officer. ‘Her face is dark and swollen.’
The boldly handsome face of the prostitute was reddish-purple in the light from the lantern. Her tongue protruded slightly from between the carmined lips and a dribble of frothy saliva issued from one corner. De Wolfe placed the back of his hand against her cheek. ‘Still warm, she’s not been dead long.’ He picked up one of her outflung hands and dropped it again. ‘Not a trace of stiffness, either.’
‘She weren’t here an hour before the Matins bell, Crowner,’ offered Edwin. ‘I came out for a new cask then. The mistress found her a few minutes before the bell so it must have been done between them times.’
De Wolfe rocked back on his heels alongside the body. A strangled whore was no great novelty, usually related to a dispute over payment or because the girl had taunted the client for his pathetic performance. In the great scheme of things, this was not a serious crime.
Yet when he looked up at Gwyn, he had a foreboding of greater problems to come. The man was looking at him with a sly grin that John had come to know only too well over the past twenty years.
‘Well, what is it? Out with it, damn you!’ he barked.
His henchman continued to leer at John in his infuriating way. ‘Lift up the cowl, Crowner, and you’ll see.’
Suspiciously, John turned back to the dead girl and pushed back her hood. He stared at her forehead, then beckoned impatiently to Edwin to hold the lantern closer. ‘There’s some marks on her skin — looks like soot or lamp-black across her temples.’
Gwyn nodded. ‘It’s surely writing. I can’t read a bloody word, but I know letters when I see them.’
De Wolfe grabbed the lamp from the potman and held it almost touching the woman’s face, in an effort to make out what the marks were. They were certainly letters of the Latin alphabet, but the edge of the hood had smudged them. Desperately, he tried to recall all his lessons and managed to make out that it was a long word beginning with R, but he could not decipher the rest. He stood up quickly and yelled urgently at the crowd still loitering near the back entrance to the inn. ‘Is there anyone among you who can read? A priest or a merchant’s clerk?’ It was asking a lot to find someone literate among the late-night drinkers in a city tavern, but John was afraid that the writing on the girl’s face would smudge off before it could be read, as it seemed only to be made with a finger soiled with soot from a fire-pit.
‘Shall I go and find our miserable clerk?’ suggested Gwyn.
De Wolfe was about to agree when there was a minor commotion at the inn door and a figure was pushed forward. When he came hesitantly up the yard, John could see it was a youth in the sober garments of a secondary, one of the junior acolytes from the cathedral. These young men assisted their vicars and canons, as a stepping stone to priesthood, which could only be achieved after the age of twenty-five. ‘Sir, they say you need someone who can read,’ he said reluctantly. John nodded brusquely and beckoned him forward. The lad recoiled when he saw a corpse garbed in the well-known uniform of a whore, but he steeled himself to crouch down alongside the coroner.
‘Can you tell me what that says?’ demanded de Wolfe. He held the lantern as close as he could to the woman’s forehead, while the secondary peered at the smudged markings.
‘It reads … a strange word …’ He hesitated, and formed sounds with his lips. ‘It says “revelation”, Crowner. Just that one word, revelation.’
‘You are quite sure?’
‘I am certain what the word is, sir, though what it signifies, I have no idea.’ De Wolfe grunted his thanks and the aspiring priest scurried away, to be treated to a quart of reviving ale by his friends in the tavern.
Gwyn looked down knowingly at his master. ‘Is this another like the Jew?’ he asked, with a hint of morbid satisfaction in his tone.
The coroner shrugged and hauled himself to his feet. ‘It may well be. We must consult Thomas, our oracle, for he is most likely to have the answer.’
The urgency of dealing with Nesta flooded back to him and he pointed at the corpse. ‘Send for the constables or Gabriel to move her to where we can examine her later — anywhere out of sight of our friend the innkeeper.’
‘It’s a long way to haul a body to the castle from here,’ objected the Cornishman. ‘What about carrying her to St Nicholas’s Priory, where we took that dead lady, Adele de Courcy, a while back?’
De Wolfe agreed impatiently — at the moment, he didn’t care if they carried her to Dartmoor, as long as she was removed and he could get to see Nesta. ‘Don’t go there yourself, Gwyn. Seize all these idle drinkers and impound them for a jury tomorrow. Find out if they know anything about this strumpet, if she was in the inn tonight and who was with her. You know what to do. And bring that wine-cup — for all we know, it might have been drugged. Then find that God-forsaken clerk of ours!’ he added as a parting shot.
The coroner strode to the inn door and pushed his way in through the gawking throng, with Edwin limping after him clutching the lantern. ‘She’s up in her garret, Cap’n,’ he wheezed, as they entered the odorous drinking chamber that filled the ground floor. It was almost empty: many patrons had slunk away when they knew that a crime had been committed, anxious to avoid any contact with the law and its possible effect on their person or their purse. The only ones whose curiosity had got the better of their caution were those in the yard behind.
John made straight for the wide ladder that led to the upper floor, and climbed its treads with a feeling of nostalgia for the many times that he had ascended them with Nesta. He reached the loft, its peaked roof lost in the darkness. A few lodgers snored on their pallets, those who were too tired or too drunk to have joined the curious crowd in the yard. The only light came dimly from a corner, where a small room was partitioned off for the landlady’s own use. It had no ceiling and the dim light of a tallow dip reflected off the hazel withies that supported the thatch above. He picked his way through the straw mattresses that lay on the floor to the little room, Edwin and his lantern having diplomatically stayed downstairs. John tapped softly on the door and called her name.
‘Who’s there? What do you want?’ The voice sounded more weary than distressed.
‘It’s John. I came to see if you were in need of anything. I have dealt with … with what was in the yard.’
There was a pause, then the bar across the inside of the door was lifted and the wooden latch raised. A face appeared, a taper held high alongside it to throw light upon his face. ‘It really is you, John!’ Nesta sounded genuinely surprised.
He grinned lopsidedly, in spite of the tenseness of the moment. ‘It really is, Nesta — not some evil spirit.’
She opened the door wider and stood before him, still in her working gown and linen apron. They stared at each other as if meeting for the first time, her eyes wide in her oval face. Even in the gloom, he could see the rich red of her hair and the fullness of her lips. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.
A moment later she was in his arms, sobbing with relief — though he was not sure if the relief was from the shock of falling over a throttled corpse or at being reunited with him. He pulled her gently to the bed and sat her alongside him, his arm around her shoulders in an almost fatherly embrace. ‘I’ve missed you sorely, Nesta. Are you going to send me packing again?’
She shook her head and gulped back tears. After the hard life she had led, Nesta was rarely given to visible emotion, but now many weeks of loneliness and remorse leaked away in muffled sobs. The inarticulate John also felt an unaccustomed lump rise in his throat, which he attempted to clear with his usual grunts and spasmodic squeezes of her shoulders.