‘By Mary Mother of God! John de Wolfe, be glad you have such a post. I don’t want you skulking around, like some unemployed squire waiting for a new war – or, even worse, sinking to become some merchant or trader. Could I ever hold my head up then?’
The veins on his forehead bulged and the Coroner slapped his hand violently on the stone of the fireplace.
‘It’s always you, you, you!’ he shouted. ‘Damn what I might want as long as you can walk in a new gown in the portreeve’s procession or in the judge’s train, flaunting your airs and graces!’
He kicked at a log violently, sending a shower of sparks dancing up the wide chimney, and ignored her brother’s smirks.
‘You should make up your mind, wife!’ John fumed. ‘One moment you want me to be a county coroner, then you complain that I spend too much time doing the job!’
Matilda’s podgy cheeks coloured under the layer of powder. ‘Don’t you shout at me! Why did you agree to accept the crownership, then, if you’re so set against it?’
‘I didn’t say I was against it … though, by God, it’s a hard task sometimes. I did it to please you – or, at least, to avoid your endless nagging. It keeps me occupied as you’re so set against me going off to fight – where any man with guts would wish to be,’ he added, with a pointed look at his brother-in-law.
Richard’s condescending good humour faded at this. ‘You well know I’ve this old wound in my side, suffered in King Henry’s service – it plagues me continually. But for that I would, of course, be following Coeur de Lion in Normandy.’
John had his own ideas on that, but even the heat of a family dispute was insufficient to bring it out now – he was keeping it for a more rewarding opportunity.
Matilda, however, was still in full spate. She had subsided heavily into her chair, but continued to wag a beringed finger at her glowering husband. ‘I suggested the coronership for your own pride and status in Exeter, John. I had no intention of you taking on most of the county of Devon as an excuse for you to go galloping over hill and dale every hour God made!’
John turned angrily and bent over his wife. ‘You know well enough what happened, Matilda, and you were greatly pleased at the time, for it puffed up your image in the county as well as the city.’
The Article of Eyre had demanded that three knights and a clerk be appointed to form a coroner’s service in each county. John de Wolfe had been summarily elected by the burgesses as their city coroner. His crusading connections with both the King and Hubert Walter had ensured that he was a prime candidate. In truth, the coronership was not much sought after, as it was unpaid. In fact, coroners had to have a private income of at least twenty pounds a year: a rich man would have no need to resort to corruption as the sheriffs had. As the job was so unattractive, only one other coroner had been found, and he, Robert FitzRogo, had fallen from his horse two weeks after his appointment and died from spinal paralysis. John had been left with the jurisdiction of the whole county until someone else could be pressed into service.
Matilda chose to ignore this. ‘The devil with your excuses! The nub of the matter is that you are staying out all day and night, on some pretext about crowner’s duties when I know that you’re sitting in taverns or carousing with your old wartime comrades – and bedding as many dirty wenches as you can throw your leg over!’
John purpled again with righteous indignation, though what she alleged was not far off the mark. Today, however, he had been out in teeming rain since dawn, had ridden thirty hard miles and had barely spoken to a woman.
Richard de Revelle put in, ‘You’re a law officer, John, like myself. I don’t go chasing around the countryside after every petty criminal, I let my sergeants and men-at-arms do that. Why not stay in Exeter, direct matters and come home each day?’
Matilda took up the theme: ‘Yes, send that Cornish savage to do the work – and your misshapen clerk. Have more dignity and less mud on your boots.’
John stared at them scornfully. ‘Do I have a castle full of men-at-arms at my command, Sir Sheriff? And can I send my only servants to hold inquests for me in places thirty and forty miles away? If you find me someone to be coroner in the north and south of Devon, I’ll gladly stay in this city and be home every noon and night!’ His black eyes flashed. ‘And when I get home, what welcome is there for me? If it were not for the maid, I’d go hungry, for I fail to see you bustling about, Matilda, to see that the kitchen finds me a meal when I get back wet, tired and famished. All I get is your nagging and the smirks of your damned brother.’
The others stared at him, surprised by the bitterness in his voice. Though they constantly bickered, this was stronger stuff than usual from John de Wolfe.
He wagged a long finger under his wife’s nose. ‘And if you falsely accuse me, woman, then I’ll justify it by doing what you claim,’ he threatened, thinking attack the best form of defence. Striding away from the hearth, he delivered a parting shaft. ‘I’m going down to the inn, where at least I’ll get a kind word, some ale … and possibly a cheerful wench!’
The heavy door made a satisfying bang as he slammed it behind him.
He sat near a large log fire, leaning on a scrubbed table, screened from the main room of the inn by a wattle partition that formed an alcove near the hearth. The bones of half a chicken, some pork ribs and the crumbs of a small loaf lay scattered on the boards of the table, the remnants of a good meal that his mistress had provided an hour earlier.
The Bush Inn was acknowledged as the best in Exeter, tucked away in Idle Lane, in the lower part of the town, not far from the West Gate and the river. For the moment he sat alone. Nesta was in the outhouse kitchen behind the inn, scolding the cook for being so long with another customer’s supper. Edwin, the potman, an old cripple who had lost an eye and some toes in the battle for Wexford over twenty years before, washed pewter tankards in a bucket of dirty brown water, before filling them with ale from two rough barrels propped at the back of the room. Seven or eight townsmen, all well known to John, sat on benches, drinking and gossiping.
Something approaching contentment, born of the beer and the warmth, began to steal over him. His resentment and fury at his wife and her brother had been brimming over when he had stalked into the Bush, but Nesta’s affection and common sense had soon calmed him down. The good food and drink and his draught-free seat before the crackling sycamore logs had pacified him and he was now slightly sleepy.
He took another long pull at the ale, bittered with oak-galls, and stared at the almost hypnotic leap of the flames. Was that damned woman right, he wondered. Did he really want this coroner’s job hung like a millstone around his neck? Was it just a device he used to avoid his wife and and sit in taverns or visit his women? He had been coroner for only two months but, there in the firelight, John decided he enjoyed it.
‘What’s this deep thought about? Is my beer too strong for your brain?’ She had come back from the kitchen and stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder.
John reached up to cover her fingers with his own. ‘I was thinking that maybe I’m too old to go racing off to the wars, Nesta, my love. My sword arm is getting too slow and I’d be run through at the first skirmish.’
She squeezed his shoulder affectionately and came round the table to sit on the bench by his side. Twelve years his junior, the Welsh woman had dark red hair and, unusual in one of her age, a perfect set of teeth. A round face, a high smooth brow and a snub nose gave her prettiness rather than beauty. Small and shapely, she wore a high-necked plain gown that did nothing to hide her prominent bosom.