‘No, I did not, John. But I don’t watch my servants, my interest is with my customers, especially with a daughter of one of the portreeves.’
After a few more minutes of fruitless questions, the coroner threw down the rest of his drink and rose to leave. Fitzosbern pressed him to stay and have more wine, but John sensed that he would be glad of his departure. Mabel had said not a word more, but he had the feeling that she would have plenty to say to her husband once the street door had closed behind him.
He left the house and walked around the corner of Martin’s Lane into the high street and on up to the Rifford house on the other side, towards the castle and the East Gate. Several bells from the many churches rang out for their services at the seventh hour, taking their cue from the deeper toll that issued from the cathedral. The bitter wind had blown up again from the east and there were few people about the darkened streets.
He came to the house on the corner of the lane and rapped on the door. It was opened by old Aunt Bernice who, in a confusedly flustered manner, ushered him inside. Near the fireplace, Henry Rifford was standing, feet apart, almost as if he was guarding the hall. Then John saw the feet and skirts of Christina, who was seated in a large chair. As he advanced across the rush-strewn floor, he was surprised to see the gaunt figure of Dame Madge on a bench opposite the girl.
Christina looked pale but composed and greeted him civilly, but with a wary look in her eyes, which he suspected would be bestowed upon every man for a long time to come.
The usual courtesies were exchanged rather stiffly and, though invited to sit, the coroner remained standing. ‘I have no wish to intrude, but I wanted to enquire after you, Mistress Christina, and to hope that you are recovering from your ordeal as well as might be expected,’ he said, rather stilted.
She inclined her beautiful head gracefully. ‘I improve in body every hour, Sir John,’ she said, with the implication that her mind would take a great deal longer to heal.
Dame Madge rose to her feet. ‘I, too, called to see if there was anything more I could do for the poor girl, but her bruises are fading quickly. She has a good spirit and is a devout and noble soul. All I can do is pray for her rapid return to full health and happiness.’ She walked towards the door, in a stately fashion, like a ship under sail, her white head-rail flowing down over her black habit, a wooden cross flopping against her flat bosom. ‘The city gates are long closed, so I will go to St Nicholas’s to pray, and beg a bed in their infirmary.’ This was a small priory lower down the road not far from the apothecary’s shop where Edgar was apprenticed.
Rifford and John thanked her for her continued support and she sailed out into the night, one of Henry’s servants accompanying her, to see her safely to the priory.
Henry Rifford, his large face returned to its customary redness, came back to the fire. ‘Was there anything in particular you wanted, Crowner, apart from your kind enquiries about my daughter?’ He said this in a half-challenging way, as if daring John to intrude further upon their private grief. As one of the bishop’s and sheriff’s faction, he had opposed John’s appointment as coroner but for political rather than personal reasons.
‘Much as I dislike disturbing you, I need to discover all I can about this crime, Portreeve. This perpetrator must be caught, not only to avenge your daughter, but to prevent further such evil. If he is not caught, he may well think that he can get away with such an act again. There are many other pretty women at risk in the city, even if none quite so fair as Christina.’
This was quite a speech for the usually taciturn de Wolfe, but it put Rifford in a position where, as a leader of the community, he was unable to resist doing all he could to assist the public good. ‘But how can we help? All that can be said has been said. De Revelle has been here three times himself and now favours one of those smiths that work with Godfrey Fitzosbern as the most likely suspect. If I thought that to be true, I would go down there tonight and hack the bastard’s head off with a sword.’
Matilda’s loose tongue had done its work well, thought John sourly. Once the sheriff got astride a convenient idea, he would ride it into the ground and to hell with justice or common sense. He turned to Christina, who sat apathetically, her hands crossed in her lap, dressed in a dull gown of brown wool, her hair flowing loose and unbraided from under a white linen coif.
‘Christina, you have been asked this many times, but do you still have no recollection of anything – anything at all – that might help to identify this man?’
Tears glistened in her eyes, though she made no sound.
‘You couldn’t sense if he was big and heavy or lean and sinewy?’
‘He was so strong, that’s all I know.’
John tried another tack. ‘You told my wife that in the silversmith’s shop the two workers made you feel uncomfortable?’
She nodded, a little more animated now that he had moved from the scene of her shame. ‘They stared at me a great deal, but nothing more. I have learned, in the last year or so, how men look at me when they – they – think things,’ she faltered.
Her father now indicated that he was nearing the limit of his indulgence and that John should conclude his questioning.
‘You saw no one follow you from Martin’s Lane to the cathedral?’
‘I wasn’t looking for anyone. It never occurred to me that anyone would.’
‘And in the cathedral? Where did you go? Did you see anyone you knew?’
‘I went straight to the altar of Mary, Mother of God, and knelt before it to pray for the soul of my own mother Mary. It stands against the front of the quire-screen, on the left-hand side.’ Christina’s eyes filled with tears again.
John did not know whether they were for the mother who was not there to comfort her in the hour of her need or for the memory that rapine had been soon to follow. ‘Did you see anyone you knew?’ persisted the coroner.
‘I was there about a quarter of one hour. Several people came to kneel and pray. I knew one or two by sight, but not by name. When I was leaving, I passed a woman, Martha, wife of a wheelwright who lives near my cousin Mary. I spoke a few words with her, then left by the small door.’
There was nothing else to be learned and John took his leave, as Henry Rifford was now increasingly restive.
His next call was at the castle, set on its rise at the north-eastern corner of the sloping city. The man-at-arms at the gate, just below his own office, called out a challenge as he saw a black figure striding up the drawbridge over the inner ditch, but banged the stock of his spear into the ground as a salute when he recognised the King’s coroner.
John passed through the narrow rounded archway into the inner bailey and made for the keep, set near the further curtain wall that ran along the low cliff above Northernhay and formed the corner of the city perimeter.
The inner ward was active with people coming and going between the lean-to huts that lined the bank below the walls. Cooking fires were burning, and soldiers and their families relaxed in the evening after a day’s work. Chickens perched in bushes and on carts, geese wandered about, and a solitary goat had somehow got himself on to the roof of a low hut to eat the grassy thatch. Horses neighed and oxen lowed in the stables over on the right-hand side, behind the tiny chapel of St Mary. Underfoot, the ground was a morass of hoof-churned mud, refuse and animal droppings, and as the coroner strode across to the building where the sheriff had his town residence, he thought it no wonder that Richard’s wife was rarely there.
De Revelle had several manors, one at Revelstoke, another at Tiverton, where his elegant but aloof wife Lady Eleanor spent most of her time, saying that she could not stand the cramped quarters and military squalor of Rougemont.