She had had enough of talking and now shooed the men out of the room, beckoning the middle-aged neighbour to her as she firmly closed the door on the coroner and his men.
They stood aimlessly outside in the priory yard, imagining what was going on beyond the door.
‘Quite a woman, that!’ said Gwyn admiringly. ‘She should join our crowner’s team.’
Thomas saw his chance to goad his ginger colleague. ‘Sounds as if you fancy your chances with the lady – she’s about your size.’
‘I could do worse, if I were not already happily wedded.’
Thomas grinned evilly, his lazy eye swivelling. ‘You’re twenty years too late – the lady had the sense to take the veil long before she met you!’
Gwyn grabbed the little clerk by the collar of his threadbare surcoat. He lifted him off the ground and shook him. ‘Holy Orders didn’t stop you feeling the bottoms of the novitiates in Winchester, did it?’ he retorted.
John told them impatiently to stop their horseplay – he was too anxious to know what Dame Madge had discovered for he must hold an inquest before the body was taken out of the city to Shillingford, otherwise the jury would have no chance to view it.
After what seemed an age, but was probably only ten minutes, the door opened and the black-gowned figure appeared. She walked to a horse trough standing inside the courtyard gate and washed her hands, both of which were soiled with blood. Wiping them on a linen kerchief she produced from within the folds of her habit, she came over to the coroner. ‘It was just as I thought. She was about five months gone with child, I could just feel the enlarged womb in her lower belly. She has bled to death, not suffered suppuration. The neck of the womb is torn and penetrated. Either the elm sticks were inserted with force in the wrong place, or some other instrument was used, maybe after they had proved unsuccessful.’
John and Gwyn heard her in silence, Thomas murmured some unintelligible Latin and, as usual, made the Sign of the Cross.
‘Would she have died quickly after the damage to the womb?’ asked John.
The nun raised her bony shoulders in a gesture of doubt. ‘If you mean quickly in terms of hours rather than days, then yes. It might have been a rapid issue, exsanguinating her within minutes, but there is no way of telling without seeing the amount of blood lost.’
‘What we saw at St Bartholomew’s must have been merely the last of the flow,’ mused the coroner. ‘There may have been far more blood at the place she came from originally.’
Dame Madge nodded. ‘I can do no more. It is for you to discover who did this thing. I have seen similar cases, but not in a lady such as this, I must admit.’
The prior came up and offered the nun refreshments before she rode her pony back to Polsloe. He invited John to join them, but the coroner decided that he had better get on with his duties. ‘I must discover what is to be done with the body – and then arrange the inquest. May we hold it in the courtyard, Prior?’
With some reluctance, the monk agreed, and John sent Gwyn and his clerk to round up as many local witnesses as he could to act as the jury.
Reginald de Courcy was devastated when the sheriff called upon him at his house in Currestreet, just below the embankment of the outer ward of Rougemont, to bring him the bad news, but an iron will kept him from showing any obvious emotion. He was a thin man, with a grey rim of beard and a matching moustache. Most of his hair was on his face, as he was almost completely bald. He had been a good soldier in his younger days, a faithful supporter of the second King Henry and had fought in France alongside the old monarch. Adele had been a late child of his second marriage; his other family was much older and she had been the apple of his eye.
De Courcy lived most of the time at one of his two manors: his favourite was at Shillingford, and the other at Clyst St George. His wife and three elder daughters rarely came into Exeter, except to visit the markets, for social occasions or sometimes to worship. He kept this modest house for his frequent business visits, as he owned two woollen mills on Exe Island, the reclaimed marshland along the river outside the West Gate. As a burgess, he knew the sheriff well, but this did nothing to lessen the shock of the news.
‘I am afraid that you must come down to see your dear daughter’s body as soon as possible,’ said Richard, with tolerably sincere sympathy for the stricken father.
‘Then I must tell Hugh Ferrars and bring him with me. I cannot imagine how he will take the news of the death of his betrothed. It is almost as bad as losing a daughter.’ De Courcy’s jaw was clenched rigidly between sentences, as if to prevent any sign of emotion escaping him. They strode together the short distance to Goldsmith’s Street, which came off the high street near the new Guildhall.
Hugh Ferrars kept two rooms and a squire in a house belonging to a merchant friend of de Courcy’s. This was mainly to be within riding distance of Adele at Shillingford, as his family home at Tiverton was too far away for convenience, although he went there for part of each week.
He was a soldier, but one who, so far, had missed all the wars. He had gone to the Crusades but arrived just as King Richard was leaving, after the failure to take Jerusalem, so had come home too. Before that, a campaign in France had ended in a truce within a week of his joining the royal forces, so at the moment he was a knight without a cause. He had decided to get married, to fill in the time before another war came along and to get himself an heir in case he was killed on the field of battle. His father had soon found a suitable match and Hugh was well pleased with Adele, though perhaps he was too self-centred to consider himself in love with her. Still, she was elegant and good-looking, if not a radiant beauty like Christina Rifford.
The news of her death, brought by de Courcy and the sheriff, provoked towering anger. He and his squire were in the yard at the back of the house, practising with sword and shield for a coming tournament. Hugh was a stocky, solid young man, with bulging muscles and generally more brawn than brain. He had flaxen hair and a matching moustache, but no beard. When his prospective father-in-law broke the news, Hugh went berserk, slashing at the fencing with his great blade and yelling a mixture of grief-laden cries and bloodcurdling threats against whoever may had killed her.
After they had calmed him down a little, into a mood of simmering recrimination, the sheriff suggested that his squire ride straight back to Tiverton to fetch his father, Lord Guy Ferrars.
‘No need to ride that far, he’s in Exeter, thank God. He came today to stay as a guest of the Bishop at his palace as he is to meet with Hubert Walter this week.’
De Revelle knew that the senior Ferrars would be an important figure at any political meeting with the Chief Justiciar, but had not been told that he would be staying with Bishop Marshall. This was another place at which to call, and the two men strode off with Richard to the cathedral, one grim-faced and tense, the younger muttering imprecations against whomever had brought this trouble upon him. In many ways, he was acting just like Edgar of Topsham, who was still marching around in a high temper, obsessed with the idea that Godfrey Fitzosbern was the villain.
The Bishop’s Palace, the grandest dwelling in Exeter, was built behind the cathedral, between it and the town wall. With a garden around it, free from ordure and rubbish, it was a pleasant spot that was wasted for most of the time, for Bishop Henry, brother of William, Marshall of England, was rarely in residence. The role of prelate was a part-time job for a politician, the most extreme example Hubert Walter’s holding of the See of Canterbury. Today, the Bishop was absent, with Hubert on his way back from Plymouth.
The Archdeacon was in the palace, busy organising the coming week’s events with the Precentor and the Treasurer. John de Alecon received the sheriff and his bereaved companions with sympathy, then took them to a guest room to see Hugh’s father.