The de Revelles were a well-known, moderately wealthy clan, and Simon de Wolfe, John’s father, had had the best part of the marriage bargain when he had arranged to join his son to Matilda. True, the de Wolfes had two manors at Stoke-in-Teignhead but they were far from notable county figures. As for getting him sons, she had failed miserably – unless the fault lay with him. Their sporadic and unenthusiastic coupling in the first years of marriage had produced no offspring and had declined from lack of interest to their current celibacy. She was well aware that he satisfied his appetites elsewhere, as did most men, and she herself had had several liaisons when John was away at either the Irish wars or in the Levant, but it had been several years since she had bothered to trail her skirt at anyone.
And here he was now, her tall, dark man, telling her some interminable tale about a rotting corpse in a Dartmoor brook. ‘Matilda, I need de Revelle’s help to find Fitzhai.’
His wife failed to see the problem. ‘Well, just ask Richard to seek the man out.’
With difficulty John concealed his impatience. ‘Only yesterday we had a public shouting match about who was to hang a felon. Richard and his miserable portreeve declared that coroners were a waste of time and money and that the sheriffs should continue to have total jurisdiction, in spite of the royal command.’
Matilda could see that if her brother had his way her husband’s new role would be short-lived. ‘What do you want him to do, then?’ she asked, briskly.
‘Seek out this Alan Fitzhai in or about Honiton. I can’t do it, with only Gwyn and that poxy clerk at my command. Thomas ferreted him out, then lost him. No use sending him back.’
‘So send that lout of a Cornishman instead,’ Matilda snapped.
‘He can’t drag the fellow back alone, if he refuses to come, as the clerk claims he will. A sergeant and two men are needed to flush him out and bring him here. That’s sheriff’s business.’
His wife looked at him with distrust, her pale hair showing stiffly under the white linen coverchief around her head. ‘So what help do you want from me?’
‘Richard will undoubtedly refuse me when I ask so come with me and shame him into doing what the King’s law directs him to perform. Otherwise this crowner’s appointment is worth nothing.’
Matilda’s needle was still for a moment. But she did not doubt that she had to support her husband or lose face over her championship of his appointment.
Suddenly she stood up and laid her work on the table.
‘Right, husband, no time like the present.’
Chapter Nine
In which Alan Fitzhai identifies the dead Crusader
At noon on Friday, the seventh day of November, almost two days after the coroner’s meeting with the sheriff, a sorry procession climbed the drawbridge of Rougemont Castle and halted just inside the inner gate. Three soldiers slid from their horses and one, the sergeant, moved to the fourth to untie a rope from the saddle pommel, the other end of which was wound around the waist of Alan Fitzhai. His hands were free to hold the reins, but he was astride the poorest horse, lashed to the saddle, and had had little chance of escape.
His mood was of disgruntled outrage, rather than a desperate will to escape. A twenty-seven-mile trot from Lyme, most of it in rain, had dampened most of his anger to simmering indignation. They had slept overnight in a stable of the Plough at Honiton, where the sergeant had checked with the landlord that their prisoner was, indeed, the man who had stayed there a few nights earlier.
Fitzhai slid to the ground and looked about him. ‘Three days and I’m back in damned Exeter again,’ he complained ruefully. He had exhausted his extensive vocabulary of curses and blasphemies during the first five miles out of Lyme and had settled into a resigned, cynical acceptance.
The sergeant, a hard-bitten soldier with thirty years’ service, sympathised with Fitzhai, whom he recognised as a fellow warrior. They had talked on the journey, and although Fitzhai was a cut above the sergeant in the social scale, their shared experiences of campaigns in France forged a bond between them. The sergeant learned that Fitzhai had been to Plymouth that week, to find hiring for a local war threatening in Brittany, but he had been too late: the ships had sailed and he had been making his way back to Bridport to visit a woman, before moving on to Southampton, to try his luck there.
‘Let’s get you up to the Crowner’s office. There should be a bite to eat and some ale there, if I know Gwyn of Polruan,’ said his benign captor. ‘And de Wolfe wants you to identify this belt and scabbard from the dead man.’
As they entered the gatehouse, he sent a soldier across the inner ward to notify the sheriff that they had returned, and the other went hot-foot to St Martin’s Lane to fetch John.
Upstairs, Gwyn recognised Fitzhai as the man he had seen at Ascalon. He showed him the Levantine leather-work that they had taken from the corpse in Widecombe. The mercenary seemed positive abouts its close similarity to that worn by the man in Honiton, but they all knew that many men returning from Palestine had acquired such Moorish-looking accoutrements.
As the sergeant had forecast, he also produced beer, bread and cheese and the three military men swapped stories and reminiscences while they waited for the sheriff and the coroner to arrive.
Thomas de Peyne skulked in a corner on his writing stool, ignored by the trio of burly warriors, and watched with his customary fascination as their powerful masculinity brought the bleak chamber alive. Alan Fitzhai was talking animatedly, his rim of brown beard spiky from the rain and his full moustache waggling as he talked and chewed.
After some twenty minutes, a sudden hush fell on the occupants. The sheriff and coroner had met downstairs and John had followed de Revelle up to the room. The sergeant pushed himself away from the wall and held himself erect, furtively brushing the crumbs from his grey beard.
De Revelle walked to the rough bench behind the trestle table and sat down, John standing in his own office. Thomas slid off his stool to allow his master to sit, but the coroner moved to the end of the table and hooked a thigh over its corner.
‘Alan Fitzhai, sir, as you commanded,’ said the sergeant steadily. Although he disliked the sheriff, de Revelle was his master: loyalty and respect were due to his rank.
‘How did you find him, sergeant?’ demanded Crowner John.
The old soldier pulled at his moustache. ‘It was easy, sir. The landlord at the inn in Honiton told us that he had left, saying that he was making for the coast at Bridport. So we rode there and in an hour looking in the taverns we turned up Alan Fitzhai.’
‘And a damned aggrieved Alan Fitzhai, Sir Sheriff!’ said the whiskered warrior loudly. ‘I was half-way to Southampton and got dragged back here, lashed to a lousy nag like some common criminal’.
De Revelle looked up at the coroner, and raised an eyebrow. John understood the signaclass="underline" certainly Fitzhai could not be pushed around like some villager or town serf. He was a Norman and obviously had aristocratic blood in his veins. He was also a recent Crusader and men who had taken the Cross were popular and deserved respect. He was entitled to be treated as their peer, at least until some skeleton was found in his cupboard.
John began with an apology for the manner in which Fitzhai had been brought to Exeter, rather unfairly giving the impression that the sergeant had exceeded his authority is lashing him to his saddle. ‘But this dead man was a Norman and almost certainly a Crusader like ourselves,’ he continued, in his sonorous voice, ‘so I’m sure that you would wish to do all you can to help us give him a name and a decent grave.’