Willem pushed through the back door with his load and let it slam behind him, leaving Sir John and Gwyn to clamber up the stairs, which were little more than a stout ladder set against a hole in the floor above.
Unlike the Bush, the upper floor was divided by rush or wattle screens into a series of cubicles. These were set against the walls, all open towards the centre of the large room. The more desirable ones contained a palliasse stuffed with dry ferns, and a few even had a low bed-frame. Most, though, had merely a pile of straw on the floor, at a penny a night.
Only one of the stalls was occupied and the coroner walked over to its entrance. On a pallet on the floor lay the still figure of a man, covered with a rough grey blanket. Sitting on a three-legged stool alongside him was an elderly nun, holding his pale hand and pressing a wet cloth against his brow. She looked up as John came near, her lined old face placid, resigned to a lifetime of dealing with man’s cruelty.
‘Good day, Sir Crowner. I don’t know yet if this man will come to one of your inquests. It will be a near thing if he doesn’t.’
John had great respect for the sisters of the healing orders, whom he had seen care for hundreds of sick and wounded in campaigns both at home and abroad. ‘God be with you, Sister. How did you come to find this fellow so soon?’
‘Your big man Gwyn there, he sent a potboy down to the priory soon after the fight. They called us straightway, but he had lost much blood even before I arrived.’ She added, as an afterthought, ‘He told me earlier that his name was Eadred, that he was a free-holder from Dawlish, here to sell his pigs.’
John went to the other side of the pallet. He bent down to bring his dark head nearer to the victim.
The man’s eyes were closed, the skin of his face stretched over his pallid cheekbones.
‘Is he awake, Sister?’
The man answered, not the nun, in a voice that seemed to whisper from the floorboards rather than from his throat. ‘Who is that? Who are you?’
‘The Crowner, come to see how you are – and if you can tell me anything. Who did this hurt to you, eh?’
The man made no reply, but panted almost silently.
‘Can you show me his wound, Sister?’
Somewhat reluctantly the nun pulled down the blanket and exposed the man’s left shoulder and upper chest. A pad of clean rags lay across the front of the armpit, the centre soaked with blood, which had run down into the pallet.
When the cowled nurse pulled away the dressing, a small, almost circular hole, the size of an acorn, could be seen in the bloodstained skin of the man’s chest, below the fold of muscle across the armpit.
‘It must have gone into the upper part of the lung. He has bled much outside, but I fear that a great deal has drained into the inside of the chest.’
The coroner looked at the wound with professional detachment. ‘Gwyn, an unusual wound from a poniard. A round hole, not a slit.’
The big Cornishman leaned over his shoulder to look. ‘Like a sharpening steel, more than knife. Yet I have seen misericords like that, mostly Italian made.’
A misericord was a sheathed dagger, carried by noble warriors, for jabbing between the joints of plate-armour and also for administering the coup de grâce to vanquished opponents. Their interest was more than academic, as a characteristic wound from an unusual weapon could help to identify the offending knife and its owner.
‘He’s awake again,’ observed the nun, as she covered up the injury.
John turned to speak to the man once more. ‘You may die, fellow, though perhaps this good lady and the God she serves may save you. But in case they don’t, your declaration to me may help bring you revenge and justice to the people … and reparation for your family.’
Weakly, the lips moved to frame words. ‘Robbed, we were … as we left the inn. Two men fell on us.’ Heaving breaths punctuated the story. ‘One was hairy – black frizz of beard and long, ragged hair. Very hairy.’ He gasped into silence. Then, ‘He struck down my friend as we turned the corner. The one who stabbed me was younger and fair – must have been Saxon.’
John motioned to his clerk to write as they spoke. ‘You knew them – or their names?’
‘I have seen the hairy one around the town – but I don’t know his name.’ Again he sucked in air in a spasmodic gulp. ‘The young one was a stranger to me.’
Exhausted, the man’s head fell back and his eyes rolled up. His breathing grew laboured and the coroner could see that he would get nothing more from him. The nun pulled up the covers. With a farewell nod to the old lady, John moved out of the cubicle and waited for Thomas to finish his note. Then he said, ‘Let us see who is downstairs.’
The Flemish landlord opened the back door for them and they passed out into a filthy yard, where chickens and a few ducks competed in the mud with the cook, who made meals for the inn in a lean-to shed with a tattered thatched roof. Opposite this was an open stable, where the hostelry guests tethered their horses, and a pig-sty, from which came a cacophony of grunts and a terrible stench.
Directly opposite the back door was a rickety gateway that opened into the lane behind the inn. Tethered to it were two dejected-looking men, their hands lashed behind their backs with ropes that were tied to the gatepost. At the other side lounged two castle guards, wearing round helmets with nose protectors, but no mailed hauberks in the relaxed military conditions of the town. They hauled themselves languidly upright when they saw the coroner emerge from the inn. They knew the man’s office was held in mild contempt by Sheriff de Revelle, and rumour had spread of the rivalry and competition between the two men. They did not know what respect they should afford him.
John left them in no doubt. ‘Is this how you stand guard?’ he snarled. ‘You are paid to be soldiers, so stand alert, especially when a King’s officer comes among you.’
The pair glowered at him, but straightened their backs and rammed the stocks of their lances onto the ground in some semblance of a salute.
‘You’d have had your throat slit by a Mohammedan on the first day in Palestine if you’d been as slack as this,’ John grumbled, but his interest had already turned to the two wretches bound to the other gatepost.
One was a large, bulky man in middle age, with wild black hair and an untamed beard. His smock was torn almost to the waist and his barrel-like chest was a mat of dark bristle and John was reminded of the apes he had seen chained on the Continent, brought from Africa to be cruelly exhibited by mountebanks at fairs. The other fellow was much younger and, in stark contrast, a typical Saxon blond. They stared at him, like animals awaiting slaughter – which was almost certainly their eventual fate.
‘I am the King’s coroner, charged with investigating your crimes.’
The hairy one spat contemptuously into the mud, just missing Gwyn’s feet. The Cornishman growled ominously, but John put out a restraining hand.
‘The injured man swears you killed his companion. What have you to say to that?’
‘I did not. I know nothing,’ said the hairy one. With nothing else between him and being hanged, flat denial was the only option.
‘Liar! I have six men who will say they saw you strike the victim with a chain mace!’ Gwyn had little time for ruffians who spat at his feet so had no qualms about exaggerating the evidence: only two witnesses of the affray had come forward.
The bearded man looked away sullenly, tugging at his wrist bonds.
The coroner turned to the younger man. ‘And you, what have you to say for yourself?’