‘Am I welcome back again, dear woman?’ He didn’t know whether he meant in her inn, her heart or her bed.
She nodded vigorously and then, with a snort of anger at her weakness, sniffed back her tears and wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron. ‘It was horrible, John. Although she was a whore, she didn’t deserve to die like that. And why in my bailey?’
‘Murder is a hazard of her trade, Nesta.’ But even as he said it, he remembered the sooty writing on the woman’s brow and knew that this was no common killing. However, did not want to talk about the pursuit of justice. ‘I have been foolish these past months, Nesta. I should not have let you keep me at arm’s length.’
‘I’ve missed you more than I can say, John. It has been the most miserable time of my life — certainly since Meredydd died.’
Her husband had been a Welsh archer, a friend of de Wolfe. When Meredydd had given up fighting, he had settled down as landlord of the Bush, but soon a fever had carried him off and John had helped his widow pay his debts and carry on with the tavern. An innocent friendship had blossomed into affection and passion.
‘But nothing has changed, John. I love you dearly, yet the future holds little for us,’ she said, with infinite sadness.
De Wolfe had just regained what he had lost for months and was in no mood to surrender it. ‘We can go on as we did before, Nesta!’ he exclaimed vehemently. ‘Why should we forfeit even a moment of the pleasure we get from each other’s company? And I don’t only mean here.’ He bumped up and down on the mattress to illustrate his point.
‘Everyone knows about us, John, even Matilda.’ But she was fighting a rearguard action and she spoke with no real conviction in her voice.
‘I don’t give a damn what people think. Almost every man I know has a woman or two tucked away — and usually not one he cherishes, as I cherish you.’
She burrowed closer to him. ‘But what if I become with child, John? It’s a wonder it hasn’t happened already.’
‘And what if you did?’ he bellowed recklessly. ‘I would honour and support it and be glad to give it the name Fitz-Wolfe. There’s no shame in becoming a father. Even the bloody sheriff has at least two bastards that I know of, and no one points a finger at him.’
Nesta wanted to be convinced and stifled her protests, though she knew that stormy passages lay ahead. ‘Let us see how it goes, then, cariad,’ she murmured, in the Welsh they always used when together. They held each other tightly for a few minutes, but de Wolfe was aware of noises coming through the thatch from the yard below. Then he heard Gwyn yelling orders at whoever had arrived to move the murdered woman’s body out. There was a crash as the gate was thrown back on its hinges.
The commotion was like a douche of cold water over the pair.
‘I’ve seen dead bodies before, John, but to fall over one in my own yard …’
He gave Nesta’s shoulders squeeze, but felt a restless urge to go down to see what was happening. ‘Was the woman in the inn tonight? I saw her flaunting herself here a few days ago,’ he said.
Nesta nodded, her face rubbing against his tunic.
‘She has been here a few times lately. I don’t encourage whores, but if I had them all thrown out, I’d lose the trade of the men, especially those merchants and travellers who lodge here and want a woman. But I never let them use the loft — not like that fat swine in the Saracen.’ It was a low-class tavern not far away on Stepcote Hill, run by Willem the Fleming, notorious for harbouring cutpurses and harlots.
‘But was this Joanna here tonight?’
‘I saw her earlier on, drinking with a couple of strangers. She was plying her trade with them, and when she vanished, I assumed she had gone off to serve them in some doorway or under a bush.’
‘When would that have been?
‘Oh, God knows, John. I’m too busy to watch the comings and goings of the local whores. I would think it was a couple of hours before midnight.’
‘Edwin says the corpse wasn’t there an hour before that time — and you stumbled across it at about the time of the Matins bell?’
‘Yes — so she must have gone elsewhere from here, not straight out to her death. I’ve no idea who the men she was with might have been. They weren’t regular customers — nor were they staying here the night. I’ve only three or four lodging.’ She jerked a thumb towards the door, from beyond which came a stuttering snore.
‘What do you know about the girl? Where did she stay?’
Nesta frowned a little. ‘John, you’re getting too official already. Am I going to lose you again within minutes of finding you?’
He hugged her close, knowing how carefully he must tread in the future. ‘But I have to protect you, my loved one. If that was some stray madman in your yard, he might have attacked you, rather than the whore.’ He omitted to mention the bizarre matter of the inscribed forehead, which was likely to mean that this had been no random killing.
‘And another thing. You’re the First Finder. I will have to have you at the inquest in the morning.’
She smiled up at him impishly, a welcome return of her old nature. ‘And will you amerce me two marks if you find I failed to raise the hue and cry, Sir Crowner?’
It took the staid de Wolfe a second to realise that she was teasing him. ‘You did raise it, for those men in the inn were on the scene at once. That’s as good a hue and cry as I need.’ He stood up and placed his long fingers on her shoulders. ‘I’ll not sacrifice you for the law again, woman of mine! But I will have to see to this business now, for both our sakes.’
She stood up with him and threw her arms around his waist, her head coming only to the level of his collarbones. ‘I’ll give you but a few hours, Keeper of the Pleas of the Crown!’ she mocked. ‘If you desert me until after breakfast, never darken these doors again.’ She stood on tip-toe and raised her face to be kissed.
John went out in a haze of joy, almost falling down the steep ladder as his feet trod air.
St Nicholas’s Priory was a small establishment of Benedictines, a dependency of Battle Abbey, the mother church that had been set up in Sussex to commemorate the Conqueror’s great victory over Harold and his Saxons. It stood in a lane on the outer edge of the dismal area of Bretayne, not far from St Olave’s on Fore Street, which in turn belonged to St Nicholas’s.
It was a single building set in a small plot of land and housed half a score of monks under a sour-natured prior. They kept a couple of beds for the local sick and a storeroom that not infrequently doubled as a mortuary, for there was a high death rate in that squalid part of the city.
The two town constables, one of them the Saxon Osric, had been called to the Bush from their patrol. As usual, they had been attempting to enforce the curfew and catch those who had failed to damp down their fires. The curfew — the couvre-feu — demanded that all open fires had to be either extinguished or banked down each night, though it was a rule observed more in the breach than in reality. Aided by a couple of the Bush’s patrons they had carried away the cadaver on a hurdle pulled from behind the tower’s pig-pen. By the time John arrived at St Nicholas’s, they had already negotiated with the prior to place the body in his storeroom and it now lay on three planks, supported by trestles, ready for his inspection.
The last time he had seen a woman’s corpse in this room, he had enlisted the services of the formidable Dame Madge from the nunnery at Polsloe, two miles away. But in the early hours of the morning, with all the city gates firmly barred, it was impossible to bring her to help him examine Joanna of London. Without the aid of a chaperone, he decided to tread cautiously and confine his investigations to the upper part of the body, at least until the nun could be called next day.