‘What’s this, man?’ demanded John. ‘You’re usually up in the gate-house at this hour, feeding that great stomach of yours.’
The Cornishman brushed flakes of snow from his wide shoulders. ‘More trouble. We’ve got a body in the city. I don’t like the looks of this one.’
Over many years, John had learned to heed Gwyn’s warnings. Long before they had become involved in his work as coroner, Gwyn’s mixture of common sense and Celtic intuition had so often proved correct, whether it was on the field of battle or lost in some god-forsaken forest or desert.
The coroner hung his cloak back on the peg and motioned Gwyn to come into the hall. He yelled down the passageway for Mary, then led the way to his hearth.
Gwyn, who rarely came to the house, looked about him silently at the large room, the high rafters and the table and chairs. John knew he was comparing this affluence with his own thatched hut of wattle and daub in St Sidwell’s, but he felt that Gwyn was not in the slightest envious, only curious as to how the other half lived.
Mary bustled in and nodded pleasantly at the whiskered giant – they always got on well together, both practical, no-nonsense characters. John asked her to bring bread, cheese and ale to compensate Gwyn for his missed breakfast – he seemed unable to survive a morning without a top-up of food and drink.
His officer declined an invitation to sit in his master’s house, but stood near the fire to melt the last of the snowflakes. John waited expectantly, knowing that Gwyn would take his time. ‘A woman’s body, found less than an hour ago, in St Bartholomew’s churchyard,’ he began. This was one of the many small parish chapels dotted about the city, St Bartholomew’s being in the drab quarter between the North and West Gates.
‘Who found it?’
‘An old crone who sweeps out the chapel. She arrived soon after dawn and saw a pair of feet sticking out from a rubbish pile just inside the gate.’
‘Have you been there yourself?’
‘I had a quick look, but touched nothing. The old woman told the priest and he sent word to the castle. I happened to be there when his servant came to the gate-house guard with the message.’
‘Does the sheriff know about it yet?’
Gwyn delayed answering as Mary arrived with a wooden platter of food and a jug of ale. She looked enquiringly at John, but he shook his head, having not long had his breakfast.
‘I doubt the sheriff knows – he’s too busy with the visit of Hubert Walter to bother about a corpse.’
‘Any idea who the dead woman might be?’
Gwyn shrugged as he gulped down his food – he knew he would have little time to finish it. ‘Most of the body is hidden under old sticks and leaves – the midden is used for ashes from the priest’s house fire, as well as trashings from around the churchyard.’
‘It has been deliberately hidden, you think?’
Gwyn nodded his great head, his massive jaw champing away. ‘Only the feet and lower legs can be seen,’ he said, through a mouthful of bread, ‘but they are a woman’s and the shoes are stylish and of fine leather.’
‘Anything else?’
‘There’s blood under the calves, that I could see.’
John groaned. ‘Holy Christ, let it not be another rape – with murder added this time!’
He made for the vestibule and took down his cloak again. Throwing it over his shoulders, he pulled one corner of the square garment through a large bronze ring sewn over his left collarbone, then tied the end in a knot to hold it in place. ‘Drink that ale down and bring your cheese in your hand.’
He dived out into the cold morning and strode away, oblivious of the increasing snowflakes that drifted on the wind.
‘Did you raise the hue and cry?’ John demanded of the parish priest of St Bartholomew.
The portly man nodded impatiently. ‘Of course! When the old woman told me, I sent my man off directly to find either you or the sheriff at the castle. Then two of my neighbours alongside the churchyard came out to see what was going on. I told them to knock up all the householders around the chapel and rouse the neighbourhood.’
True enough, a small crowd of people were jostling in the narrow lanes around the small plot that contained the chapel, while Gwyn guarded the rickety gate through the wall that ringed the few square yards of rank grass and bare earth.
St Bartholomew’s was built on the edge of the poorest and least savoury part of Exeter. This quarter had long been known as ‘Bretayne’, probably because the Saxons had pushed out the original Celtic-British inhabitants into this ghetto area, when they invaded the West centuries before.
The church was surrounded by lanes of mean hovels, some wattle, others planked, and some with earthen walls plastered with a slime of horse-dung and lime. Smoke filtered from every one, leaking out from under the eaves of thatch, stone or turf. The inhabitants largely matched their homesteads, a poor ragged lot, who worked as porters, slaughterers, or labourers on the nearby quayside and in woollen mills on the river.
The hue and cry was supposed to flush perpetrators out of hiding and to pursue them until caught, like a fox hunt, but John privately thought it a futile process, unless the crime had been witnessed so that the miscreant could be chased.
‘She’s been dead a long while,’ observed Gwyn, stooping down from inside the gate to tug at one of the still legs protruding from the shrivelled leaves and twigs. The foot was stiff on the ankle and the whole body moved slightly because of the rigor in the whole leg.
‘Let’s move this stuff,’ grated John, and began to push aside the rubbish, which shed grey ashes from the twigs and dry foliage.
Gwyn and the priest’s caretaker rapidly shifted the garbage, which included kitchen waste and old floor rushes, revealing the whole length of the pathetic figure. The mantle, a cloak of good-quality brown wool, was thrown right over the body, completely wrapping the head and upper part. Below it, the legs down to the calves were clad in a kirtle of cream linen, and although soiled by the rubbish, it could be seen to be of fine workmanship, with elaborate embroidery around the hem. Woollen stockings ended in delicate shoes of soft leather.
‘This is a woman of quality, Gwyn. The noble ladies of Exeter are having a bad week, I fear.’
Gwyn pushed a few over-curious citizens back through the gate and yelled at others to move away.
The coroner stooped at the side of the corpse. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. Unwrap the cloak from her head, but gently.’
The body was lying close against the side of the stone wall and John moved crabwise to the head end, kicking aside more refuse to clear a wider space. Gwyn knelt and carefully pulled out one end of the mantle from under the woman, then drew it right back to expose her upper half.
She lay on her left side as if asleep, the face close to the wall. The coroner gently pulled on her right shoulder and rolled the stiff cadaver on to its back.
They saw a young woman, probably in her early twenties, with a peaceful expression on the even features. The face, eyes wide open, looked up at the grey sky and a few large flakes of snow fell gently on to her brow and cheeks. The hair was dark brown, parted in the centre of the crown, a plait coiled above each ear. She wore no coif or cover-chief on her head and no gorget or wimple around her throat.
John and Gwyn contemplated her for a moment, the gaping crowd behind the wall silent for once. ‘Her face seems familiar, but I can’t put a name to it,’ observed John thoughtfully.
His officer grunted. ‘She’s out of my league, a real lady by the look of her clothing. What’s she doing, alive or dead, in a low district like Bretayne?’
John knelt on the cold ground to get a closer look. ‘No marks on her face or neck. The clothing is not disarrayed, apart from her kirtle being above her ankles.’