Hugh’s squire attempted to push John aside, but the coroner gave him a punch in the belly that doubled him up in pain. ‘For the love of Mary, what do you all think you’re doing?’ he roared. ‘This is a civilised country, and there is a shire court tomorrow morning. If you have accusations or appeals, take them there.’
Hugh Ferrars moved forward to stand right against the coroner. He had been drinking, but did not appear out of control. ‘We have heard what the leech said, Sir John,’ he shouted thickly. ‘This bastard in here was the one who seduced my woman. He’s cuckolded me to make me the laughing stock of the county.’ Even in the turmoil of the moment, John noticed that his only concern seemed to be the loss of his own pride, not the death of his fiancée.
Now de Courcy elbowed his way to the coroner. ‘I want to hear this Fitzosbern admit or deny his guilt, Crowner. If he admits it, I will kill him. If he denies it, he can fight me any way he wishes – and if he wins, he was innocent.’
John glowered at the angry group, whose mood was getting nastier by the minute. ‘You cannot settle matters like this. Go to the sheriff. It is his responsibility to mete out justice in Devon, not yours.’
‘He favours Fitzosbern too much – he has shown that all week.’
This new voice, deep and authoritative, came from Guy Ferrars, standing behind the others.
John, standing higher than the others from his position on the doorstep, as well as from his own stature, lifted his long sword in the air. ‘Lord Ferrars, you, above all others here, must know this is sheer foolishness. Tell your son and your friends to go home – or at least go up to Rougemont to petition Richard de Revelle.’
Ferrars shook his head. ‘We want to see this villain and hear what he has to say from his own lips. It’s a wonder that Henry Rifford is not here with us. He must have similar scores to settle with the evil bastard.’
Exasperated beyond measure, John yelled at the top of his voice, ‘I tell you again, you cannot profit by this. For God’s sake come to your senses and go away! If he is in there, he will not come out. And this door is too stout for you to break down.’
‘Then we’ll fire his house!’ yelled another young man, who seemed to be a more drunken companion of Hugh Ferrars’s. He waved his flaming rush torch, as if to throw it at the closed shutters of the shop.
‘I’ll smash the bloody door for you,’ yelled the squire John had punched. He rushed at the coroner, his sword pointing at John’s heart. The coroner parried it with a clash of metal on metal, the man’s blade sliding harmlessly down to strike the hilt-guard. Simultaneously, John lifted a foot and kicked him as hard as he could in the groin. Though he had only a house shoe on his foot, the squire screamed as the blow crushed his testicle and he fell back doubled up in pain.
‘Stop this, I command you!’ John bellowed. ‘You’ll hang for attacking the King’s officer.’
He swung around just in time. The man who had been standing with de Courcy, a hulking fellow wearing a shoulder cape with a hood, lunged forward with a long dagger and struck at him. John twisted to avoid the thrust, but heard the blade rip through the cloth of his tabard and felt the prick as it nicked his side just above the waist.
With a roar, all the fighting reflexes learned in twenty years of battle sprang into action. This was no time for parleying or mediation, his life was now in danger.
As the man stumbled past him with the momentum of the dagger blow, John whirled round and, using the massive broadsword with two hands, whistled it in an arc through the air to land squarely on the back of his assailant’s neck.
Gwyn’s honing of his blade on the window-ledge of the gate-house must have been very effective, as the spine was cut clean through and only the windpipe and skin on the front prevented the head from parting company from his body. The man fell to the floor jerking spasmodically, a torrent of blood from the big neck arteries jetting on to the mud below the doorstep.
There was a sudden silence in the lane. Nothing could have been more effective in quelling the small mob than the sight of a man spilling his life blood into the mire.
De Courcy, presumably the victim’s master, bent down and rolled the body on to its back. ‘You are bleeding, Crowner,’ said Guy Ferrars, in a subdued tone.
John, who had stood immobile since striking the mortal blow, looked down at his left side and saw a growing stain of blood spread across his tabard. He pulled it aside and put a finger into a small hole in his tunic, ripping the linen widely apart. ‘It’s nothing but a scratch,’ he grated, looking at a one-inch slash in his skin, just above belt level. A few inches nearer the mid-line, and the dagger would have killed him. He stepped down from the doorstep, walked a few paces towards his house, then turned to face the silent throng. ‘There’ll be no inquest on this one, I assure you, for there’s no other coroner but me. But I doubt anyone will contest that it was a justifiable homicide.’ He held his side to reduce the bleeding until Mary could tie some rags around it. ‘I advise you all to disperse quietly. Go home – or if you still feel strongly about Fitzosbern, then go to the castle and have it out with de Revelle. There’s nothing here for you.’
He turned and walked away, leaving the group of protesters to pick up their dead and decide what to do next.
Unusually for her, the sheriff’s wife was in residence at Rougemont that night.
Eleanor de Revelle detested the bare, draughty quarters used by Richard in the keep, merely a pair of rooms joined to the chamber where he carried on all his business. They had manors elsewhere in Devon and the aloof lady far preferred country comfort there to the Spartan facilities of the castle at Exeter. But this weekend the visit of Hubert Walter had demanded that she be at her husband’s side, so she had grudgingly suffered several nights of discomfort in a bed that, she strongly suspected, was often occupied in her absence by other women.
This night, she was huddled under three woollen blankets and a bearskin, only her thin nose poking out into the cold, damp air of the lofty circular bedchamber. Richard was lying on his back beside her, snoring gently, after having lain on her and performed his husbandly duty some time before. To her, it was a sexual assault more than making love, but she had the impression that he did it more from a sense of duty than to satisfy his lust. He lived in Exeter most of the time, coming back to Tiverton never more than once a week, an arrangement which suited her well. It seemed to suit Richard also, as being the best way to manage a marriage that had certainly been one of political and financial convenience.
They had gone to bed early, as after a good meal, there had been little left to occupy them. Conversation was even scarcer in this household than in the coroner’s. It was still a couple of hours before midnight and a shaft of light struck through a crack between the shutters from a moon now high in the icy heavens.
Almost asleep at last, Lady Eleanor heard, with annoyance, a tentative tapping on the door. She tried to ignore it, but it came again, this time more insistent. Her husband’s snores never broke their rhythms, so with some satisfaction – and far more force than was needed – she nudged him in the ribs with a bony elbow. It took a couple more jabs to wake him, but eventually she got him sufficiently out of his stupor to call a testy ‘What is it?’ to whoever was knocking.
His manservant, a dried-up old Fleming who had been with him for years, put his head tentatively around the door, a flickering candle in his hand. He had more than once interrupted de Revelle in amorous acrobatics in that bed, and was always cautious of entering, even though he knew it was m’lady who was there tonight.
‘There are men who say they must see you on a matter of greatest urgency,’ he announced.