Thomas worked slowly, but John had to admit that his rolls were a work of art, even to those who could hardly read the words. The regularity of his script, the faultless spacing and straightness of the lines showed that good could come out of even the most unprepossessing people.
By the time they had finished, some weak rays of early sun had struck through the rain-clouds and the narrow wall-slits into the chamber.
The ninth bell had sounded from the cathedral when Gwyn returned. He brought a large loaf from a street baker, and a slab of hard cheese. The three sat round the table and shared it, washed down with beer that John produced from a two-gallon earthenware jar kept in a corner under a cloth. For a time, there was peace, as the three men chewed the fresh bread and odorous cheese, and gulped ale from chipped pottery mugs that were part of the furnishings of the bare room.
Even Gwyn seemed temporarily to have forgotten to bait the scrawny clerk while they enjoyed their simple snack. His huge body required refuelling at frequent intervals – there was too much of a gap for him between a pre-dawn breakfast and the midday meal. A fiercely independent Cornishman, married to a Cornish wife and with a score of relatives still in Polruan, he had become of necessity a mercenary soldier twenty years ago, and with John de Wolfe, who had had no true squire until Gwyn, he had travelled half the known world as far as Palestine. When his knight had run out of wars, Gwyn had stayed with him as his officer.
When the last crumbs had been swallowed and the empty pots returned unwashed to a niche in the wall, John returned to business. ‘Did you tell the town crier to ask for information on our Crusading corpse?’ he demanded of Thomas.
‘Last evening time, Crowner. He will be shouting it about the city this morning. Five times today he’ll cry it in various streets.’
‘If we get nothing by tomorrow, I want you to ride to Cullompton, Crediton, Tiverton and Honiton to get the criers or bailiffs to put about the same message.’
The clerk groaned. ‘Master, that’s more than a day’s ride for me on that poor beast of mine.’
The coroner was unsympathetic. ‘That’s your job, clerk. You get free lodging at the Archdeacon’s expense and fourpence a week from me to live. Would you prefer destitution?’ There was no answer to this and Thomas fell silent, though his backside ached already at the thought of a day and a half on a mule’s back.
‘If nothing comes of that within a few days, we’ll enquire further afield. From Okehampton to Barnstaple, across to Yeovil, and maybe you’ll have to travel to Southampton, Gwyn, where the ships from Palestine berth.’
‘What if he had come by sea to Plymouth?’ asked the clerk, seeing a chance to extend Gwyn’s travels.
‘That may well be – so your nag may have to take you there as well, Thomas,’ countered the coroner. ‘But not yet. Let’s see if the local criers get something for us.’
Gwyn hauled himself to his feet, pulling his frayed leather cape over his shoulders. ‘We should leave for the Saracen to see this wounded man. Maybe you can get a declaration from him before he dies.’
Chapter Five
In which Crowner John attends one wounded man and two hangings
As they shuffled on their outdoor clothes, for the sun had vanished again in favour of cloud and cold wind, Gwyn reminded him of another routine task for that morning. ‘I put the inquest back an hour as you must attend two hangings at noon.’
John had forgotten, but now recalled it was Tuesday, one of the two weekdays on which executions were carried out. Sentences of death could be passed in the sheriff’s county court and the mayor’s burgage court of the city, as well as on the rare occasions when king’s judges were in the city. Baronial and manorial courts, too, had power over life and death.
‘Who is to be turned off today, Gwyn?’ he asked, as they walked down from the castle to the High Street.
‘An old beggar who knocked down a fishmonger and stole his purse, and some lad of thirteen, who made off with a pewter jug.’
John sighed, with no particular revulsion, for hangings were an everyday occurrence, but from irritation that his presence was still needed, even though the felons had no property to be recorded and confiscated for the royal Treasury. ‘A couple of paupers – not worth a strip of Thomas’s vellum to record the event. Still, the law’s the law.’
They turned right into the High Street, the main artery of the city, a busy road thronged with stalls. Most of the buildings were wooden, but a few new stone-built dwellings and shops were beginning to appear, belonging to the wealthier burgesses. The many churches were also being reconstructed in stone as the city became wealthier. All the buildings had steeply pitched roofs to throw off the West Country rain, most of which ended in the street to form sludge with the rubbish from the food stalls and the refuse and sewage thrown out of house and shop doorways.
At least the High Street was cobbled, unlike St Sidwell’s, where Gwyn lived. In the few paved streets, the mire tended to gravitate to the central gully and from there run downhill to the river Exe, but elsewhere the garbage and horse dung stagnated to form a glutinous ooze.
The tavern named after the Crusaders’ enemies was near the West Gate, in a side lane parallel to the High Street. The lower storey was of stone, with an overhanging wooden upper structure, topped by a steep thatched roof. A low central door led from the cobblestones, flanked by two pairs of shuttered windows. A board nailed to the wall above the door had a crudely painted head supposedly representing a Mohammedan warrior, daubed in garish primary colours.
A small group of curious onlookers hung about outside and Gwyn pushed through them to enter the inn, bending almost double to pass under the low lintel. The coroner did the same, but their stunted clerk cleared the doorway with inches to spare.
Inside, the gloom was lightened a little by a roaring fire in the large room that occupied all the ground floor. In the middle stood the landlord, a rough-looking man of Flemish origin. Though he had been in Exeter for twenty years, he was still known as Willem of Bruges. He glared at the new arrivals, hands on hips, his chest and belly covered by a leather apron that protected him when he carried in barrels of ale from the back yard as easily as if they were flagons. Pouches of lax skin hung below his blue eyes, and much of the rest of his face was covered by a stubble of grey beard that matched his matted hair. ‘Come to see my unwelcome guest, have you?’ he grated. ‘Who will pay for the bed he lies on, one that I could let to a traveller for a penny-halfpenny a night?’
John ignored his complaint. ‘Where is the man, Willem? Has the apothecary seen him?’
The burly Fleming jerked a thumb at the wooden steps that led up to the floor above. ‘Up there, bleeding on my palliasse. The leech came two hours ago, put some plaster on his wound, but said there was nothing he could do that God couldn’t do much better.’
‘Will he live?’
Willem shrugged indifferently. ‘Ask me in a week, though I’ll not suffer him here that long without payment. Find me his family, Crowner, for I must dun them for his keep.’
He turned to picking an empty hogshead and carried it to a door at the back. ‘The criminals are out here, if you want them – unless de Revelle’s men have let them run off.’
This was a stock local joke and, indeed, over most of England, for the expense of keeping prisoners fed and guarded in the gaols fell on the local community. Many would have preferred the felons to melt away and become outlaws in the woods rather than pay yet more taxes to house them until they were either hanged or brought before the judges at the General Eyre. Guards, gaolers and men-at-arms were often bribed to turn a blind eye and let prisoners escape.