It took de Feugères a full ten minutes to assuage Edwin’s outrage and get down to composing their mischevious note.
As the priests were plotting over their wine, de Wolfe and his companions were only a few hundred paces away in the Bush, telling Nesta Thomas’s tale of woe.
‘Of course you must stay here, Thomas. I’ll give you a corner upstairs — there’s a spare straw pallet hanging across the rafters. No doubt Edwin and the girls can find you some victuals — you eat hardly enough to keep a mouse alive.’
‘I’ve twopence a day from the crowner, lady,’ said the clerk anxiously. ‘Will that do for now?’
John grinned at him. ‘I think I can persuade the landlady here to accept that, so don’t fret, young fellow. Just do your tasks, get your body and your mind sound again and all will turn out well.’
This was a long speech for the taciturn coroner and Nesta beamed at him, her eyes, for some reason, filling with tears. ‘You just go down to the Close and get your belongings. Bring them back here and I’ll tell Sarah to show you where you can sleep.’
Thomas grabbed her hand and, with a quick bob of his head, kissed it. Then he crossed himself jerkily and, his pinched face working with emotion, ran off to collect his meagre possessions from the canon’s house. All he owned was his scribe’s bag, a spare under-shirt and hose and a couple of books.
Gwyn hauled himself from the table where they sat and, with a tact unusual for him, said that he would go with Thomas to his lodging in case he was set upon by spiteful vicars. His real motive was to leave his master alone with Nesta, as he recognised the look in the crowner’s eye.
Gwyn was hardly out of the door before John slid his arm around Nesta’s shoulders and was whispering in her ear, his eyes rolling suggestively towards the floorboards above. ‘Let’s slip upstairs so that you can show me where poor Thomas will be lodged — and then maybe we can rest awhile in your room before we come down again.’
She dug him hard in the ribs with her elbow, but slid off the bench with no sign of reluctance and pulled the white linen coif from her head to let her dark auburn hair cascade over her shoulders. ‘You’d better be quick then, Sir Crowner — it’s but a short walk for him from here to the Close and back!’
As it happened, Gwyn returned before Thomas. He had called at the Crown tavern on the way back to give his master long enough to inspect the upper regions of the inn. He found the coroner sitting decorously in his usual seat, with a jug of best ale and a satisfied expression on his long face. Nesta sat complacently by his side.
‘The little fellow has gone off to reclaim one of his precious books, which he loaned to some secondary, lodging in Goldsmith Street. He says he’ll be back to claim his bed within the hour.’
‘It’s a disgrace the way they treat that poor man.’ Nesta was still indignant at the heartless eviction of Thomas. ‘It wasn’t much they gave him, and then to get him thrown out on some trumped-up excuse like that!’
‘The Precentor sees it as yet another way to goad me, I’m afraid,’ grunted de Wolfe, ‘so poor Thomas suffers on my account. De Boterellis knows of my hold over the sheriff because of the Prince John affair and attacks me out of spite on his behalf.’
Nesta signalled to the old potman to refill their mugs. ‘Are you no nearer discovering the madman responsible for these killings?’ she asked. ‘Until you do, Thomas will be for ever under a cloud.’
John shook his head glumly. ‘Whoever it is is too clever for us so far. I thought that with the drowning of William Fitz-William, we might have a chance, but nothing came of it.’
The Welshwoman’s pretty round face screwed up into a scowl at the mention of the dead merchant. ‘There’s been so much gossip about that evil man and those poor boys that it’s a wonder something like that hasn’t happened before. His treatment of them was no secret in the town, but the lads had no one to speak or act for them. So much for the caring nature of the parish priests — it’s a wonder a few more of them haven’t been murdered like that Arnulf de Mowbray.’
De Wolfe reflected that Nesta was always one to help the afflicted and the neglected.
‘Have you questioned all the priests that your friend the Archdeacon suggested?’ she demanded.
‘We have indeed — and much good it did us,’ he replied glumly. ‘They either told us to go to hell, or played dumb, or looked shocked that we should even think they were not perfect angels.’
Gwyn sucked down some ale and squeezed the dregs from his huge moustache. ‘We’ve not seen Walter le Bai yet. He’s a skivvy to one of the canons, isn’t he?’
‘He assists Hugh de Wilton, according to the Archdeacon, but they are both out of the city until tomorrow. If they have been away for a couple of days, that clears him anyway, as Fitz-William was killed during that time.’
They sat talking for another hour, with Nesta jumping up at intervals to speak to a favoured customer or to sort out some problem with Edwin or the serving girls. As well as being a popular ale-house, the Bush provided the best tavern food in Exeter and offered the cleanest lodging for travellers. Nesta’s hard work and her pride in keeping a decent house had amply repaid de Wolfe’s help in the desperately difficult days after her husband’s death.
The May evening was sinking towards dusk and reluctantly John had to think about leaving the comfortable company of his friends for the frosty atmosphere of Martin’s Lane. ‘Are you heading for the gate before curfew tonight?’ he asked Gwyn, as they hauled themselves to their feet.
A rueful grin spread over the hairy officer’s ruddy face. ‘I’d better go home once in a while, Crowner, though one of the wife’s sisters is staying to have yet another baby and I’ll probably have to sleep with the dog.’
John knew that Gwyn lived in a one-roomed hut at St Sidwell’s, with two young sons and a huge hound — but he also knew that they were as happy a family as could be found anywhere in the county.
There was still no sign of Thomas returning, but Nesta had promised to give him a meal and lay him a mattress in the roof space above, so the coroner gave her a last hug and a peck on the cheek then followed Gwyn out into the twilit city. They walked in companionable silence up through the lanes towards Carfoix, the central crossing of the main streets. Though it was still dry, clouds had rolled in to make the evening seem darker. Suddenly Gwyn noticed a faint glimmer above the roof-tops. ‘Is all that good drink affecting my eyes, or can I see a red glow up ahead?’
De Wolfe, whose mind had been on Nesta’s fair face and body, looked up. Between two steeply pitched roofs on the corner of the high street, he could just make out a pulsating redness, then a few rising sparks. In every city, where most of the buildings were still made of timber, fire was the ever-present fear. Few boroughs had escaped being burned to the ground over the years, many of them repeatedly.
‘It’s towards St Keryan’s, I reckon,’ bellowed Gwyn, and began a lumbering run across Carfoix to reach the street that led to the North Gate. The small church he had named was almost halfway to the gate on the right-hand side, but it was soon clear that the fire was in a side-street that turned off before it. Other townspeople were running in the same direction, partly from curiosity and partly from dread of a widespread conflagration.
‘It’s here in Waterbeer Street!’ called Gwyn, as he skidded round the first corner into the lane that ran parallel with High Street to join Goldsmith Street. About four houses up from the turning, on the opposite side of the alley, smoke and flame were pouring from behind the upper storey of a house. Luckily, it was half-timbered rather than just wood, with stone walls on the ground floor and plastered cob between a timber framework on the upper part. It was roofed with split stone, rather than thatch or wooden shingle, which again delayed the flames taking hold.