'But the mate didn't kill the boy,' said Henry.
'No, he went straight to Martin Rof with the news, and the shipmaster waylaid Makerel in the village that same night and strangled him like a chicken, in front of some of the crew as a warning. He got the mate to bury him behind that bush, but unfortunately for them he was found quite quickly, thanks to the priest's dead dog.'
'Have you got that confession in writing?' asked the constable.
'I'll get Thomas to take it in the morning. I don't think the man will die for a day or two. I suppose I'd better ask Brother Saulf to have a look at their wounds tomorrow, just for the sake of Christian charity, but it seems a waste of time as they are going to hang anyway.'
As John tipped his wooden bowl to his lips to drain the last of the mutton stew, de Furnellis turned to Ralph. 'What are we going to do about Axmouth now? Unless this man Rof confesses, we really have no proof that the people onshore are involved.'
'But they must be, if we now know that The Tiger and her crew — which all belong to Axmouth — were taking stolen goods back there,' protested de Wolfe.
De Furnellis still looked worried. 'I'll wager they'll say they thought the stuff was legitimate cargo from abroad. We need to get these three men to confess as much as possible, especially the shipmaster.'
'The young one would turn approver, given half a chance,' replied John. 'But I'm not sure he knows much; he's little more than a ship's boy.'
Ralph Morin was more blunt in his approach. 'Turn Stigand loose on them, that'll loosen their tongues,' he growled.
Stigand was the grossly obese moron who acted as gaoler and occasional torturer down in the undercroft. He carried out the various 'ordeals', such as walking barefoot over nine red-hot ploughshares or picking a stone from the bottom of a barrel of boiling water, to distinguish innocence from guilt. In addition, he always relished the chance of applying a little torture to extract confessions. The previous sheriff, John's brother-in-law Richard de Revelle, was quite willing to give Stigand his head if it meant solving a case more quickly, but Henry de Furnellis was usually loath to use him unless all else had failed.
'Let's see how much we can get out of them tomorrow,' he advised. 'Then we have to decide what to do about Axmouth. You think that cog won't have sailed back there?'
John and Morin shook their heads. 'There's nothing there for them now, except their families. And I'll wager that the bailiff and the portreeve would give them short shrift, wanting to distance themselves as much as possible from Martin Rof and his pirates, now that they have been exposed.'
Gwyn had been silent while his superiors were speaking, but now he raised a matter that had so far not been mentioned.
'What about the owner of The Tiger?' he asked. 'How could he not know that the cog was being used illegally? If she was out at sea robbing other ships, she couldn't be doing her normal trading work. And with a hold full of stolen cargo, there would be no room for her own legitimate goods.'
There was a pause while the other three considered this new angle.
'You've certainly got a point there, Gwyn,' muttered Ralph. 'It depends, I think, on how closely this Exeter merchant, whatever his name is, keeps an eye on the comings and goings of his ship.'
'Robert de Helion is his name,' supplied de Wolfe. 'It seems this agent of his, Henry Crik, handles all the details. I know de Helion owns a number of ships, so maybe he doesn't keep a close watch on them all, as long as his money keeps coming in.'
The sheriff nodded. 'That would be easy enough, topping up any loss of charter fees from the proceeds of piracy. So maybe we need a stern word or two with this Henry Crik, as well as with his master in the city.'
It was getting late and soon the coroner decided to go home, weary with the excitements of the long day and the sea air. Gwyn insisted on walking back with him to Martin's Lane, mindful of the arrow that had just missed his master and the darkness of the city streets, lit only by occasional pitch flares around the castle and the cathedral Close.
They arrived at his door without mishap and Gwyn turned to go back to Rougemont, where he would bed down with his soldier friends.
'Let's hope those pirates don't die before the morning,' he said cheerfully. 'Stigand would be so disappointed. '
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When John went to the castle gaol next morning, he found the new prisoners alive, but only just, as far as one was concerned. The man with the chest wound was gasping for breath, and the hole between his ribs where a sword had entered was bubbling a mixture of blood and air at every laboured movement of his chest. Though he was inevitably going to be hanged, John could not see him suffer this much, especially lying in a filthy cell.
The prison was in the undercroft, partly below ground so that the main floor of the keep was raised above it for purposes of defence. It was a dank, dark cavern, the arches vaulting the roof green with mould. Half the place was for rough storage, divided from the other part by a rusted iron grille, in which was a gate that led to a dozen foul cells. They held only a stone slab for a bed and a dirty bucket on the rat-infested straw that covered the earthen floor.
When Gwyn and Thomas accompanied the coroner to the gaol, Stigand opened up the gate for them and waddled ahead to unlock the cell. He wore a filthy tunic, covered by a long leather apron spattered with stains, some of which appeared to be dried blood.
'He'll be dead by morning, Crowner,' he advised confidently as he threw open the blackened door to reveal the prisoner lying on the slab. He was panting for breath and his. lips were almost violet in colour. 'A punctured lung, no doubt about it,' he added with the confidence of a physician.
John tried to speak to the dying man, but he was unresponsive.
'You'll get nothing from him in this world, sir,' grunted the gaoler. 'But the other two should last until they swing.'
John, who like everyone else loathed Stigand, scowled at him. 'Nevertheless, I'll get Brother Saulf up here to look at him and if he so recommends we'll have him carried down to St John's. Now, let's have a look at the others.'
He left the cell and went next door where Martin Rof was sitting on his slab, contemplating the insect life that crawled in the dirty straw. He had rags wrapped around his arm but seemed alert and truculent.
'It's the bloody Crowner, by Christ! I need you visiting me like a dose of the pox!'
Gwyn gave him a clout across the ear which knocked him sideways on to his bed. 'Keep a civil tongue in your head when talking to a king's officer, damn you!' he growled.
The shipmaster pulled himself up and glowered at the men in his cell. 'My tongue has nothing more to say to him,' he sneered.
De Wolfe towered over him, though Gwyn stood ready to intervene if the man became violent. 'You're going to hang, so you may as well tell me. Who else is involved in your pirate venture? Is the owner of the vessel in on this?'
'Sod off! I'll not betray my friends,' answered Rof defiantly.
'We'll find out soon enough, whether you tell us or not. I'm just curious as to whether your master, Robert de Helion, was party to the misuse of his cog?'
This seemed to touch a sensitive chord. 'He had nothing to do with it. He's a good man, so don't go persecuting him.'
John was satisfied with the reply, in that if he could confirm that the ship owner was ignorant of the situation, then this agent Henry Crik must be implicated. He put this to Martin Rof, but got only a mouthful of abuse in response. The same happened when he tried to discover if the bailiff and the portreeve were part of the criminal conspiracy in Axmouth.