Gwyn vigorously wiped the last of the onion gravy from the scrubbed table with the final crust and thrust it between his lips. ‘And as quickly as possible, too,’ he said, through a mouthful. ‘Half the people I’ve seen go through the Ordeal die of shock or burns the same day.’
Nesta, her duties finished, bustled across and tried to push Gwyn from his stool. ‘Go on, you’ve been fed well enough now. Go and sit by the fire with your pot and let me talk to John.’
Gwyn ambled away amiably to talk to a group clustered near the roaring logs, leaving Nesta alone with the coroner.
‘Can you stay tonight?’ she asked, directly.
He looked into her attractive, open face and wished that he could. ‘It isn’t politic, according to my maid,’ he said, with a lopsided grin.
‘The hell with her!’ exploded the red-head, who had a temper to match her colouring. ‘Since when has she decided who you sleep with?’
Patiently, John explained his domestic crisis, and his mistress’s wrath subsided as quickly as it had arisen. She even laughed at the thought of him sleeping in his cloak on his own floor and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
‘Well, unless you’re thinking of leaving home for good and moving in here as a crowner-cum-innkeeper, you’d better toe the line, my lad.’ Her advice was virtually identical to Mary’s. Edwin, the one-eyed potman, limped over with a fresh jug of ale from a new barrel and leered at the pair.
‘Good to see you back, Captain,’ he croaked, with a wink at Nesta.
She kicked his lame leg hard and told him sharply to get about his business. ‘What’s the latest on this dead crusader, John?’ she asked. ‘Like your dear wife, I’ve not seen you these past few days.’ Nesta was anxious to keep abreast of all the county gossip. Usually she was a one-woman intelligence service, thanks to all the comings and goings at the tavern, but she was not up to date on this case.
John told her of all that had transpired and of the torment that Alan Fitzhai would suffer next morning.
‘Do you think he did it?’ she demanded, taking a mouthful of his drink.
‘How can I tell? He’s hiding something, that’s for sure. Something was between Fitzhai and the dead man, but that falls far short of suspecting him of murder.’
Nesta nodded sagely. ‘You need a motive, that’s what you need,’ she said, profoundly. ‘And what about this other corpse up on high Dartmoor? D’you think there’s any connection?’
‘They’ve both been in Palestine, obviously, and though he was corrupt, this last corpse had healed sword wounds not a year old. But that’s not to say he was anything to do with de Bonneville, though he did have a similar stab wound in the back,’ he added, thoughtfully.
John could almost hear Nesta’s astute brain ticking away.
‘Why not enquire in Southampton?’ she said. ‘Maybe to see if any one was with the Widecombe man when they arrived from France. This Fitzhai knew him, so maybe someone else saw something. Did he say he was alone in Honiton?’
John agreed to send Gwyn next day to see what could be discovered at the various ports along the Dorset coast and on to Southampton, the main entry-point from Normandy.
‘There! You need a woman’s touch in this,’ teased Nesta. ‘You men don’t have enough imagination.’
John slipped a hand under the table and squeezed her thigh. He was suddenly beginning to feel that there was more to life than discussing violent crime.
‘Let’s go up the ladder and discuss it in private, my girl,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t stay all night, but I won’t be missed at home for a few hours.’
Next morning, an hour after dawn, they assembled in the sinister chamber below the keep of Rougemont Castle. It was half-subterranean, reached by a flight of steps leading down from the muddy bailey – a gloomy place, made ruddy by a few flaming torches stuck into iron rings set in the walls. Beyond it, on the same level, was the gaol. A passage left the main chamber, with a series of heavy doors leading off each side into cells furnished only with chains and dirty straw. John de Wolfe came down the steps with Thomas behind him. Gwyn had already set off eastwards to tour the ports.
In the dank, shadowy chamber, the sheriff, his bailiff and the constable Ralph Morin were gathered together with Thomas de Boterellis, the cathedral Precentor, sent by his bishop to represent the Church. The guard sergeant and several men-at-arms stood watchfully around the walls.
As John walked in, he saw that they were grouped around a large iron bucket about three feet high, set on four big stones on the earthen floor. A fire of logs and charcoal burned in a clay-pit underneath, tended by Stigand the gaoler, a dirty, grossly obese man, who crouched on the floor feeding firewood under the bucket to keep the water boiling.
Richard de Revelle greeted his brother-in-law with false joviality, as if they were meeting for a pleasant breakfast rather than preparing to inflict a maiming torture on a healthy man. If the sheriff had heard of the quarrel between John and his sister, he avoided any mention of it and went straight to the business of the morning.
‘You’ll agree that this Fitzhai, though he be Norman of sorts, is a damned liar?’ he said.
John agreed unwillingly that the fellow was almost certainly holding something back. ‘But that doesn’t make him a killer. Why should it?’
Richard, elegant as ever in a bright blue tunic, gestured his indifference. ‘Let’s see what he has to tell us when his mind is concentrated by our little ceremony, eh?’
The coroner scowled. ‘Then give him a chance to divulge it all first. He may tell us all that is necessary without maiming the fellow?’
The sheriff tapped his nose, which he did almost as often as Thomas de Peyne crossed himself. ‘We may get a confession as well. Kill two birds with one stone – a very hot stone!’ He laughed at his own joke and the Precentor, an overfed priest with a round, waxy-white face, joined in his amusement.
‘It will fix his guilt or innocence as well, so that’s three birds for us.’ He sniggered.
John was not amused, but any more badinage was ended by the squeal of the gaol’s barred iron gate.
Two soldiers pushed a bedraggled Alan Fitzhai into the big room. His hands were free but his ankles were shackled with rusted metal bands so that he could only shuffle and stumble as he was prodded by the guards. He was in a poor state, compared to the last time John had seen him. His clothes were the same, but they were crumpled and filthy, his hair and beard were tangled, his cheeks were hollow, and he blinked in even that poor light, which was bright compared to the Stygian gloom of the cells. As soon as he saw the sheriff, coroner and constable, Fitzhai began to shout his indignation and innocence, until one of the guards gave him a shove that sent him staggering over his manacled ankles.
De Revelle stepped forward to stand in front of the prisoner. ‘Everything points to you as the man who did this foul killing,’ he lied, ‘but now you have a chance to prove your innocence, before the Church and officers of the King.’
Alan stared at him in amazement. ‘King Richard! If he knew of my condition now, he would vouch for me to the hilt. I fought for him at Acre and Arsuf and Jaffa … and this is the reward I get!’
The sheriff, who had been no nearer to the Holy Land than Aquitaine, dismissed this. ‘That’s not the issue, Fitzhai. A fellow Crusader lies dead, as well as another man back from the Holy Land – and you are the best candidate for the crime.’
Fitzhai was frightened, but still pugnacious. ‘Another Crusader dead? Who is he? I know nothing of this.’
John moved to face the prospective victim. ‘It’s plain there are things you did not tell us the other day when you were brought from Honiton. If you give us all the help you can, it may go better for you.’