He stood aside as the coroner pushed past into the deserted house.
Almost an hour later, they were assembled in the Bush, just around the corner.
‘He’s gone for good, that’s for certain.’ Gwyn was stating the obvious, but there was nothing else to be done or said for the moment. Thomas had been dispatched to Rougemont to inform the sheriff of the recent developments and to raise men-at-arms to form a search party.
They waited in the warmth of the tavern, sitting before a glowing fire and sustaining themselves with pots of Nesta’s best ale. She sat on a bench between John and Gwyn, with old Edwin hovering nearby to eavesdrop under the pretext of refilling their jugs.
‘So what did you find in his house?’ asked the Welsh woman.
‘Very little, except the damned furniture!’ growled the coroner. ‘It was obvious that he had been preparing to leave for good. All his clothes had gone, his treasure chest was wide open and empty, not so much as a penny piece left anywhere.’
‘There was some wine downstairs, but not much,’ added Gwyn. ‘He lost a lot in the wreck of the Mary of the Sea so he had little stock to abandon.’
De Wolfe rummaged in a pocket inside his mantle, which was thrown over the end of the bench. ‘He did leave this on his midden behind the house though, which proves his guilt beyond doubt.’ He held up a small stone winebottle, pulled out the wooden stopper and up-ended the neck on to his finger-tip.
He held it out to Nesta, who saw thick red blood on his skin. ‘Probably from a fowl or a pig. Maybe from his back yard or the Shambles but, wherever it came from, no one can tell it from human.’
She took it from him gingerly and looked into the open end, which was rimmed with dried blood. ‘So he threw the blood from this in through the open door over the clothing, to make it look as if Hugh Ferrars became soiled when he attacked Fitzosbern?’
John nodded as he took back the bottle and stowed it away again in his cloak. ‘If our crafty little clerk hadn’t spotted the blood splashes on the door and wall, we might well have been taken in by it.’ He felt a hot flush rise in his neck. ‘God forbid that I should even imagine the uproar if I had arrested Hugh. His father and half the court in Winchester would have fallen on me like a ton of quarry stone!’
The red-headed innkeeper pressed closer against him, enjoying the solid warmth of his firm body. ‘What’s to be done next, then?’ she asked.
‘Find the fellow, wherever he is. Long gone from the city, that’s for sure,’ growled John. ‘When Ralph Morin comes down from Rougemont with his search party, we’ll ride out to Wonford to see if he’s there.’
Gwyn gulped the last of his ale and looked around hopefully for Edwin to give him a refill. ‘He’ll be leagues away by the time we get there but God knows where. He could be half-way to Salisbury by now – or to Plymouth or Bristol.’
Nesta got up to throw a couple more logs on the fire. The hearth was set out from the wall on a platform of flat stones. There was no chimney, but the bone-dry wood burnt with almost no smoke and what there was found its way through the shutters of the windows and the cracks between the planks of the floor above. As she sat down again alongside John, she added a woman’s comment. ‘Eric will not leave without Mabel Fitzosbern, after all the trouble he’s gone to, to get her. If she’s to travel with him, that will slow him down. She’s no horsewoman, for sure.’
This made the coroner jump up, impatient to give chase to the fugitive. ‘Where the hell is Thomas? He’s had time to get to the castle and back on his hands and knees.’
Gwyn settled back calmly to enjoy his new mug of ale. ‘He’ll have got there fast enough, no doubt. But perhaps he’s run foul of the sheriff. Gabriel couldn’t raise a band of soldiers on his own account – he’ll at least have to get Ralph Morin’s approval.’
As if to prove his words, there was a clatter of hoofs and shouts from outside. The door flew open and John groaned as he saw the crowd that burst in, all in riding gear. First came Richard de Revelle, then his castle constable, but behind them streamed in Reginald de Courcy, Guy Ferrars and his son Hugh.
‘A fine situation this!’ shouted John’s brother-in-law. ‘You defame these honourable men for the third time, then find that some other rogue is the culprit!’
‘And let the swine slip through your fingers at the last moment,’ snapped Lord Ferrars.
John stood four-square before them, his hands on his hips in an attitude of defiance. He learned later that the Ferrars and de Courcy had been with the sheriff when Thomas’s message had arrived. They were at the castle to complain about John’s allegations and to demand that the Justiciar dismiss him from the coronership. Now he was in no mood to defer to them or anyone else.
‘Listen, Hugh Ferrars, if it hadn’t been for my clerk, the King’s Justices would soon be measuring your neck for a rope collar. Let’s not start throwing blame about – none of us has come out of this affair very well.’
Ralph Morin, the only one wearing a chain mail hauberk, made known his own disapproval of any recriminations. ‘If we don’t get to our horses soon, we’ll never catch the man. I’ve had your steed brought down from the stables, John, and your man’s mare. They’re outside.’
They jostled out into Idle Lane, where they saw Gabriel and four soldiers alongside their horses, holding the reins of the other seven. Lurking at the rear was Thomas, sitting side-saddle on his little pony. The sky was a pale, cold blue, but a wind from the north-west had suddenly started to moan through the city lanes.
Within minutes, they were all mounted and streamed away from the inn. Nesta, Edwin and a knot of curious customers watched them turn up Priest Street, with the Nordic figure of the castle constable leading the squad, the clerk trotting in the rear.
John rode alongside his brother-in-law, as they clattered towards the South Gate. ‘Picot told me that he had established his ladylove in his house in Wonford,’ he shouted, above the thud of hoofs. ‘We must try there first.’
De Revelle looked his usual elegant self as he sat erect on his gleaming bay horse, his wolf-skin cloak flowing down across its rump. ‘He’ll not be there, John, you can depend on it. But someone may know which road he took.’
They passed under the looming arch of the gate, the side of which housed the town prison, then went out to where the track split into Holloway and Magdalen Street. They took the latter and put on speed, changing from a trot to a canter as they went past the gallows, now deserted apart from a couple of rotting corpses hanging in their rusting gibbets, which creaked eerily in the rising wind. Thomas was left behind as the big horses charged away up the frost-hardened road, but his tough Exmoor pony always got there in the end.
The hamlet of Wonford was just over a mile outside the city walls and within a few minutes the pursuers had reached it, turning left off the main track, the old Roman road to Honiton and the east. One of the men-at-arms was from the village and knew the place that the wine merchant owned. It was a small but solid house of stone, with a newly thatched roof, nestling behind a wooden palisade. Although Wonford was part of a manor holding, Picot’s dwelling had been built on a small plot of land he had purchased from the manorial lord and took no part in the feudal economy of the village.
The gate in the stockade was closed but unbarred. Gabriel dismounted to open it then led the horsemen through.
Inside, the compound was deserted and the two wooden outbuildings were silent, no smoke filtering from their eaves. A few moments’ reconnaissance by the sergeant and several of his men proved that no one was there, not even a cook or stable-boy. The stalls in the horse-shed were empty and the saddles were gone. The door was locked, and the house seemed devoid of any life.