At the end of the meal, they took their mugs of hot wine to the fireside and sat one each side of the great open hearth. Each had a monk’s chair, almost like a sentry box with a cowled hood, to keep out the draughts that blew in through the shuttered window opening, as well as under the doors.
While they were eating, John had related the events of his trip to Torbay, the inquest, the meeting with the Topsham merchant and his brief visit to Stoke-in-Teignhead. The last was received with stony silence by Matilda, as her feelings for his family, especially his mother, were as distant as theirs for her. She had always felt that her father had made her marry beneath her, to a minor knight who no longer had family still in Normandy, like the de Revelles.
Now they sat before their fire and she scowled at the crackling logs. ‘You’re always away, John. What kind of husband neglects his wife so?’
He groaned at the return of the same old topic. ‘You know very well that I had to tell Joseph and his son of the tragedy here – you yourself told me to go, yesterday morning.’
‘You always have some excuse,’ retorted Matilda, illogically. ‘No other wife among the leading people of our city is left alone so often to fend for herself.’
John abandoned any attempt to reason with her. ‘How is Christina today? You said you had been to the house earlier.’
With a sudden change of mood, she became almost amiable, her interest quickened in the Rifford drama. ‘The poor girl is better in herself, in that her pain has subsided and her scratches and bruises are fading already. But her state of mind is delicate. She weeps and laughs by turns, one minute saying that all is well, the next sobbing that she wishes to be dead.’
‘It is to be expected, I suppose,’ said John mildly, hoping to mollify his wife by agreeing with her.
But she glared at him, her heavy-lidded eyes gimlet-like in the square face. ‘How would you know what is to be expected? What dealings have you ever had with a ravishment, except perhaps as a perpetrator in one of your soldier campaigns?’
He ignored her attempt to be deliberately offensive and asked, ‘Did she say any more about the circumstances of the assault?’
With another mercurial shift of temperament, Matilda lowered her spiced wine to her lap and spoke in a low, almost confidential tone. ‘I sat with her this afternoon and for a time she was almost her old self. She related more details of that awful evening.’
John sat forward, hopeful that he would hear something of use to his investigation. ‘She has some memory of who attacked her?’
Matilda pursed her lips. ‘No, she saw nothing of him. But she told me more details of her visits that evening. She had been to our neighbour to collect some bauble, which that weedy English youth Edgar had bought her.’
Matilda considered all Saxons inferior and Celts, such as the Cornish and Welsh, on a par with farm animals. Part of her antipathy to John’s family was that his mother was a Celt. She tried to forget that her husband was only half Norman. ‘Christina told me that the two men who work for Fitzosbern, both Saxons, were ogling her continually in a most lewd fashion.’ She sniffed in disapproval. ‘I can’t imagine why he employs such riffraff. Surely there is a better class of silversmith to be had.’
John sat back in disappointment. ‘Is that all she had to say? Did she see either of them follow her to the cathedral, for instance?’
Matilda shook her head, the coiled braids of hair in their crespines of gold-thread net bouncing above her ears. ‘Is there any need? Obviously one of those foul men was her assailant. She had been in the shop not an hour before and was embarrassed by the suggestive looks and words of these men. One or perhaps even both are surely guilty. How can it be otherwise?’
The crowner sighed: his wife’s sense of justice was as arbitrary as her brother’s. ‘That is pure supposition, without a shred of proof, Matilda. There must be hundreds of men in Exeter who have lusted after Christina – she is an acknowledged beauty. Someone saw her walking alone at night and took the opportunity to satisfy their lust – there is no reason at all to accuse one of those smiths.’
‘They are better suspects than any of your anonymous hundreds, John! Can you come up with two better names yet?
He stayed silent, afraid that if he spoke his mind further she would go off into one of her rages or sulks.
‘I wonder that Godfrey allowed his men to be so forward with a customer. He should have punished those lechers for so much as casting a bold glance at the girl,’ she said self-righteously.
John noticed that Matilda referred to their neighbour by his Christian name. He knew that she fawned upon the fellow because he flirted with her and paid her patently insincere compliments when they met in the street or at some civic function. He himself couldn’t stand the fellow, with his dandyish clothing and conceited swagger. ‘Christina said nothing else of use, then?’
‘I considered that of considerable use, John. I made a point of telling Richard when he called to see me this afternoon. A good job my brother is solicitous over my health and feelings, for my husband certainly is not.’
John chafed inwardly at her words. ‘You spun this tittle-tattle to your brother?’
‘Of course – and greatly interested he was, too. He said that he will send men to bring the two smiths to Rougemont tomorrow to interrogate them.’
Her husband lost patience. ‘I wish you would leave enforcing the law to those whose job it is, Matilda. If Christina had wanted the sheriff to know of this, she would have told him herself.’
Like a spark to dry tinder, that started her off. She raved at her husband, accusing him of being uncaring, ungrateful and half the man her brother was. She upbraided him for a dozen real sins and a dozen imaginary ones, half rising from her chair until her wine spilled over unnoticed.
Mary, who came in to clear the remnants of the meal, tiptoed out again, sorry for the master but unwilling to get embroiled in any partisan role that might cost her her job.
John screwed down his rising anger, in the faint hope that her tantrum would subside as quickly as it had arisen, but now she was in full spate. Eventually, unable to get in a word during her vituperative onslaught, he stood up so suddenly that the cowled chair went over backwards with a crash. ‘That’s enough, wife!’ he roared, so violently that Matilda was stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth remaining open as he loomed over her. ‘Rant and shout all you want, woman, but do it alone. I’m going out!’ He marched to the door of the vestibule and yanked it open with a screech of its hinges.
As he vanished into the darkness, his wife found her lungs again. ‘Go then, damn you, you ungrateful wretch! Go to your squalid alehouse and your Welsh whore!’
She gathered breath for another round of abuse, but he closed the oaken door behind him with a satisfying bang.
In spite of Matilda’s words, he did not turn towards the Bush, but decided on a round of investigation concerning Christina’s assault. His feet took him only twenty yards from his own dwelling before he made his first call.
Pushing open the door that Christina had entered two nights before, John entered Fitzosbern’s shop. The same two workers were there, toiling each evening until the seventh hour rang from the cathedral bell. The older one, Alfred, nervously clambered to his feet, the piece of metal he had been working dropping to his bench with a clang.
‘Evening, Sir John. Do you want the master?’ His voice was tense, as if he had been expecting a call from the law for some time.