Nesta looked sleepy but was full of smiles, and John’s morbid fears that she might have had second thoughts about their reconciliation were unfounded. ‘I came before breakfast, as you demanded, woman,’ he said, with mock ferocity. She gave a swift kiss and sat him down at his favourite table, behind a wattle screen near the empty fireplace. She hurried away, yelling for her two maidservants, and within minutes a wide pewter platter, heaped with thick slices of bacon, three griddled eggs and leeks fried in mutton fat, was put before him even though it was Friday and a fish day in the eyes of the Church. A wooden bowl filled with boiled oatmeal followed, swimming in milk and honey, and a quart of best ale completed his meal. Nesta sat opposite him, chin in hand, daring him not to eat every morsel.
‘This is fit to break the fast of a Gwyn, not a John!’ he complained happily, tucking in with a will, determined to swallow every scrap to please her, even if it killed him.
Between mouthfuls, he told her of the discoveries at St Nicholas and brought her up to date on the similarity of this case with the death of the Jewish moneylender. He knew that Nesta would keep his confidences — and also that, like Thomas de Peyne, she was an invaluable source of information, for little happened in Exeter, and for miles around, that was not gossiped about in the Bush, which was one of the city’s busiest taverns.
‘So you feel it must be a priest?’ she asked, wide-eyed at the macabre story.
‘With that knowledge of the scriptures and the ability to write, it can hardly be anyone else. Only someone like Thomas would be able to pick such appropriate texts.’
There was a sudden awkward pause, as both realised what he had just suggested. Nesta laughed, a short embarrassed laugh. ‘Of course, that’s nonsense. Anyway, he would have been with you each time.’
There was another short silence.
‘He wasn’t, in fact. But it’s still damn ridiculous — although he has been acting strangely since he tried to kill himself.’
They both made a conscious effort to throw the foolish thought from their minds.
‘What’s the next thing, then?’ she asked. ‘Put every priest in Exeter to the peine forte et dure?’
‘That would please Gwyn, I’m sure. No, I’ll have to seek out those clerics who are known to be a bit strange and put some pressure on them.’
The landlady made a rude noise, indicating her derision. ‘You’ve got little chance of that, Sir Crowner! The Bishop will have you excommunicated if you start pestering his troops — Benefit of Clergy and all that.’
‘He can waive that right if he is so persuaded, just as he has agreed we may have jurisdiction in the cathedral precinct over any crime of violence there.’
Nesta sniffed disdainfully — she was tiring of all this talk of the law, when she just had her lover back again. But it was too early in the day for passion and when John had finished his massive breakfast, he felt more like slumping back against the wattle screen than investigating a murder. As always, his sense of duty triumphed. This was just as well, because the inn door flew open and his officer stormed in. When he saw his master with Nesta, Gwyn’s craggy face broke into a radiant smile, his blue eyes dancing above the ginger foliage on his face. He adored the Welsh woman and his mortification when they had split up was only equalled by his present delight at the healing of the wound.
Nesta, who was familiar with his gargantuan appetite, offered him food, but he had already eaten at a stall on the way down from Rougemont. He would have succumbed to the mildest persuasion to have another meal, but de Wolfe hauled him away. ‘To the Saracen, man! We have a day’s work before us. There are hangings to attend as well. Where’s that bloody clerk of ours? He knows how many swing today.’ He left the Bush with a promise to Nesta that he would return later and trudged off with Gwyn to the tavern where Joanna was said to have had her base. The Saracen was at the top of Stepcote Hill, between Idle Lane and St Mary Steps, a couple of minutes’ walk from the Bush. It was a similar building, though lower in the roof. Its walls were dirty pink, washed with white lime coloured with ox-blood. Over the door was a crude painting of a man with a turban, holding a scimitar, though de Wolfe decided that the artist could never have been nearer the Holy Land than Exmouth.
‘Have you set up the inquest at St Nicholas?’ he asked Gwyn, as they approached the inn.
‘Yes, the jury will be there at the ninth hour — the prior was not pleased, the miserable old sod.’
They stepped aside to let a donkey pass them, heavily laden with bales of wool going to the fulling mills, its hoofs slipping on the cobbles of the steep lane. When it had passed, they were opposite the inn door and John ducked inside. The stench, even at that early hour, was ten times stronger than the Bush, which Nesta kept cleaner than any other ale-house in Exeter. The Saracen was indeed a foul den. The four maids were all prostitutes, paying Willem the Fleming half their fee for the privilege of picking up their customers between serving ale and cider. Many of his patrons were thieves and coiners and much of the business transacted there was the disposal of stolen goods.
When they went in the landlord was at the back of the room, throwing a thin layer of mouldy rushes on top of the filthy ones that were already strewn over the floor. They looked as if they had not been changed since old King Henry died, for they were dotted with scraps of food, dog droppings and assorted rubbish. Here and there they moved, as a rat foraged among them.
When he saw his visitors the Fleming dropped his bundle. The arrival of law officers always meant trouble and his flabby features signalled his suspicion and displeasure. ‘The bloody crowner, no less!’ he grated, his foreign accent still strong even after twenty years in Devon. ‘What in hell do you want this time?’
He was as big as Gwyn, but fat rather than muscular. His jowls hung over the collar of his grimy smock and the long leather apron bulged over his belly.
‘You have been harbouring a girl known as Joanna of London?’ snapped de Wolfe.
‘Harbouring? What d’you mean, harbouring?’ The small eyes glittered over a sneering mouth. ‘An inn is open to anyone who wishes to enter. The law demands it.’
John sighed, he had no inclination to bandy words with this fat bastard.
‘Don’t waste my time, Willem. She was a whore who worked out of your ale-house, we all know that. I’m not interested in the way you run your business, I just want to know about this Joanna.’
The little eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s the crowner that’s asking, then she must be dead, eh?’
‘Yes — and you’ve lost your cut from her earnings. The girl’s been murdered. I want to know where she lived, when you last saw her and who she was with.’
The inn-keeper roared with laughter. ‘Would you like to know her grandmother’s maiden name while you’re at it? She slept here sometimes, yes — when she wasn’t in some man’s bed elsewhere. But where she went and who with — Holy Mary, she was whore! A dozen different men on a good day.’
It was the answer de Wolfe had expected, but he felt he had to go through the motions. ‘She slept here sometimes, though?’
‘Up in the loft. She usually had money and paid for a twopenny pallet. As she was a regular, so to speak, I let her stay in one that has a screen at the side — though I suspect she usually crept out to service the other lodgers at a penny a time.’
‘Did she have any belongings?’
‘She left a bundle alongside her mattress. Clothes, I suppose.’
The coroner demanded to see them and, grumbling under his breath, Willem reluctantly led them up a flight of wooden steps to the floor above. It was similar to that in the Bush, only smaller and dirtier. A row of verminous straw-filled mattresses lay on the floor. At each end was a vertical screen of woven reeds, which gave some slight privacy to the mattress behind it.