‘Not as well, I tell you,’ shouted the deep voice of Garth. ‘It was me on my own, see. Not him. The old man is past ravishing, though his eyes still fancy a pretty woman.’
Richard drew on his soft leather gloves nonchalantly. ‘Perhaps, but I’ll hang both of you next week, just to make sure, I can’t believe any of the lies that you rabble give me.’
This was too much for the coroner, even though he was used to the sheriff’s arbitrary sense of justice. He drew him aside and muttered, close to his face, ‘You have no authority to hang them, Richard. Rape is a Plea of the Crown, you know that well enough. I let you waste time with this charade here to get your confessions, but they must be tested before the King’s court.’
Richard waved a hand dismissively at the coroner. ‘The shire court has been good enough for centuries and it’s the same gallows at the end of it. Why are you so obdurate, John?’
‘Because the King’s law is the law. The families have the right to speak and to choose either compensation or death.’
Ralph Morin came across to interrupt. ‘What are we to do with these men? The older one is surviving though he’ll not get his breath back inside an hour. Are we to press the younger one?’
De Revelle was annoyed at the coroner’s interference, but could hardly torture a confession from a man who had already proclaimed his guilt. He waved a hand at Stigand, who still stood by his fire with the branding iron in his hand, looking vaguely disappointed at the turn of events. ‘Take both of these vermin back to their cells. I’ll decide later what’s to be done with them.’
The guards led the two men away, Alfred still gasping for breath and the doomed Garth stolidly silent. As they passed close to where Gwyn was standing, his bulbous nose wrinkled and he sniffed noisily. He moved to the coroner’s side and murmured into his ear in Cornish-Welsh, to keep it confidential, ‘That smell on them. It’s surely the acrid fumes from that silver furnace hanging about their clothing.’
John looked at his officer blankly. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Remember when Christina Rifford confronted Fitzosbern, she hesitated about some familiar smell in connection with her ravisher. Maybe Fitzosbern had that same stink upon him as those men have, from living near that furnace – but it came from Garth, not Fitzosbern.’
The coroner nodded. ‘You may be right, Gwyn. I’ll ask her when we next meet. It might explain her uncertainty, which worried me at the time. Though, with Garth’s confession, we have all we need – assuming it’s true,’ he added cynically.
Gwyn pulled the end of his luxuriant moustache as an aid to thought. ‘I reckon it’s true enough. No young man would falsely let himself in for the gallows-tree, even to save a friend.’
With the sheriff glaring at them suspiciously for speaking in a tongue incomprehensible to him, the group broke up and made their way into the castle courtyard. Ralph Morin asked John what would happen next about Fitzosbern’s death. ‘An inquest first, in two hour’s time. Though that will not take us very far in discovering who beat him to death,’ replied John. ‘My clerk Thomas is looking into it now,’ he went on, as they strode over the frost-hardened mud towards the gate-house. ‘Fitzosbern’s injuries bled a great deal and we need to look at certain persons and places to see if fresh stains can be found.’
They parted inside the arch of the main gate, and the coroner and his henchman climbed to the cramped chamber high above the guard-room. Here de Wolfe was surprised to find Eric Picot waiting for him, muffled in a long, dark green cloak, the hood thrown back to reveal a rich red lining.
John pulled off his own cloak and sat behind his trestle table, motioning the wine merchant to the only other stool, while Gwyn hauled himself up on to his favourite perch on the window-sill.
John looked expectantly at Picot who, his swarthy face set in a troubled frown, began hesitantly, ‘I wanted to tell you something before the inquest begins on Godfrey Fitzosbern. For me to say it openly at the inquisition may cause an injustice – and might also expose me to anger and perhaps even violence.’
John sat hunched behind his table with arms outstretched to grasp its edges, a puzzled look on his dark face. ‘Why should this be, Eric?’
The other man continued to look uneasy. ‘What I want to say may lead to suspicion of certain persons. That may be quite false, but they will still blame me for it, whether it be true or not.’
The coroner looked past the Breton to catch Gwyn’s eye, but his officer merely raised his bushy eyebrows and lifted his shoulders.
John returned his gaze to Picot. ‘You’d better tell me what you know and then I’ll judge what to do about it,’ he suggested.
Picot hunched forward on his stool, hitched his cloak up on his shoulders, then pulled off the close-fitting felt cap that covered his curly black hair. ‘Last night I decided to call on Fitzosbern, now that he was recovered from his poisoning or whatever it was. About three hours before midnight I went to his house, next to yours.’
‘And why did you do that? You are hardly friend enough to enquire after his health.’
‘I went to plead with him to release his wife.’
John frowned his deep frown, the old crusading scar on his forehead whitening as the skin furrowed. ‘Release her? What do you mean?’
‘Not to oppose us pursuing an annulment that would allow Mabel and me to marry. She had left home for ever and was living at my home in Wonford, but we needed her freedom to become man and wife.’
‘A difficult ambition, Eric. Most marriages offer freedom only when one partner enters the grave,’ said John sonorously.
Gwyn thought that he spoke with too much feeling to make it a casual observation, and Matilda’s face swam briefly into his mind.
‘I know it’s difficult, John. An expensive process, with appeals to the King, to Canterbury and perhaps even to Rome. But it was the only route open to us.’
‘Until today, with Godfrey’s death,’ commented the coroner with no apparent irony.
The wine merchant shrugged resignedly. ‘I didn’t even contemplate that last night when I stood before his house. But, in any event, I got no answer there. I banged on his door endlessly and waited for a long time, but there was no response, no light behind the shutters. So I went away, despondent.’
The coroner waited expectantly until Picot continued. ‘I left Martin’s Lane, walked towards the cathedral and entered the Close. The moon was out and there was more light from those flares outside the farrier’s.’
John interrupted, ‘You were going home, across the West Front of the cathedral, then through the lanes to Southgate Street?’
‘Yes, but as I crossed the Close, I saw two men in the distance, in front of the canons’ houses. By then, I had turned down the path in front of the great doors of the cathedral and they were going back towards Martin’s Lane.’
He paused, then launched himself into the most difficult part of his story. ‘They didn’t see me, I’m sure. I always worry about footpads at night, so I stood still behind a great pile of earth from a newly opened grave until they passed, looking over my shoulder at them.’
‘And who were they?’
‘Undoubtedly one of the men was Reginald de Courcy – and the other the younger Ferrars, the one they call Hugh.’
There was a pregnant silence in the chamber.
‘You are sure of this, Eric?’
The dark head nodded emphatically.
‘As I said, there was a clear moon – and as they passed near your house, the yellow light from the farrier’s torches fell upon them. I have no doubt who they were.’ He rubbed a hand over his face in agitation. ‘As to why they were there, I have no comment. They may well have had legitimate business, but the fact is that they were hurrying at night from the place where the injured man was found next morning.’