‘He came here more than a month back,’ said the priest thickly, belching out the gas from three quarts of cider. ‘Came on a good big horse late in the evening, when the days were longer. Said he was making for Peter Tavy, and asked for directions. He decided he wouldn’t get there in daylight, as his horse had gone lame. The hag that brews the beer keeps the nearest thing to a tavern in this place – and she has a pallet for the few travellers that may pass through, so he stayed there.’
‘Why didn’t anyone, especially the reeve, tell this to the Crowner when he was here after the corpse was discovered?’ asked Thomas. The priest was too fuddled with drink to wonder how his visitor knew what the coroner had been told. John de Wolfe had come briefly to the village with his clerk to hold a cursory inquest, but the priest had not been around that day to recognise his present visitor as the same clerk.
‘What? Get the village amerced for keeping quiet about it? Not on your life! He played dumb about everything.’ He sniggered drunkenly. ‘The fellow left after two nights and rode away quite alive. How were we to know that he got himself killed a few miles up the track?’
‘But when your shepherds found the body, didn’t they know whose it was? And what happened to his horse?’
The fat churchman had taken another great mouthful of turbid cider. ‘God alone knows where his horse went – we certainly never saw it again. And as for finding the body, we knew nothing about this new crowner business, nobody ever told us. Let sleeping dogs lie, I say – and dead men, eh?’
He had cackled with laughter and swayed dangerously on his stool, the only furniture in the room apart from a rickety table.
Now, as Thomas lay on his straw in the undercroft, his mind moved on to today, when he had come from Sampford Spiney to Peter Tavy. Although there was little communication between villages, he couldn’t keep using the parish-priest network, so a few miles out of the village, he tethered his mule deep in the trees, on a long rope that would allow him plenty of grazing for a day. From his saddlebag he produced the robe he had acquired a long time ago, after the funeral of a Cistercian in Winchester. Cutting a staff from the forest, he walked into Peter Tavy, hoping that no one would comment on the fresh white wood at the cut end – or his lack of a monk’s tonsure. If asked about his long hair, he was ready to say that it had grown back during the three-month pilgrimage to St David’s and that he had vowed not to restore it until he reached his home monastery near Plymouth. As it turned out, no one had been the slightest bit curious, wanting only to hear about the big wide world beyond their constricted horizons.
He lay watching the night sky, and recalled the information he had gleaned from the kitchen staff, the grooms and a few old men who sat around the fire in the undercroft, too arthritic to work any longer in the field strips.
It seemed certain that Aelfgar of Totnes had never arrived at Peter Tavy, even though he had set out from Sampford Spiney with the stated intention of making that his next destination. It was only five miles away, little more than a hour’s journey even on a plodding horse, but he had ended up as a mouldering corpse on Heckwood Tor, about half-way between the two villages. No one in the manor had ever heard of Aelfgar, which tallied with the story of the Totnes priest, who said that the man had had no link with Hubert de Bonneville when he left his own village. Having drawn a blank on the Saxon squire, the clerk had soaked up as much local gossip as possible. It seemed that the dying lord of the manor, Sir Arnulph, had been popular among the freemen and serfs alike. He had been a relatively easy-going master, firm but fair, and the village had prospered for years without fighting or famine. They did not seem so complacent about the rest of the family.
‘That Hubert was a painful fellow,’ confided one old man, between the fits of bronchitic coughing that racked his body every few minutes. ‘He thought he was lord long before our master had his seizure, throwing his weight about and altering the way we’d done things for years back.’
Another rheumy old fellow nodded agreement. ‘A cold fish he was, full of religion and morals. Should have been a priest – begging your own pardon, Brother. That’s what decided him to take the Cross and go off to the Holy Land against his father’s desires.’
‘Good riddance, some of us said,’ added the first old man, reckless in his old age. ‘I never wished him dead like this, but we were glad to see him go away. Though he left a brood of brothers and cousins behind him who have prospered since Sir Arnulph suffered his apoplexy.’
Thomas gathered that Gervaise de Bonneville was more popular than his slain brother, and the younger brother, Martyn, was looked upon as a child by the villagers, overshadowed by Gervaise. But there were three cousins, adult sons of a dead elder brother of Arnulph, who had designs on the two manors. They were manoeuvring with Winchester to be given a share of the land when Arnulph died, as the Crown now held the ultimate overlordship.
‘Them cousins would like to see the other two brothers dead, as well as Hubert,’ cackled the second old man. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if Gervaise has a nasty accident in the forest before long.’
This started a heated argument among the grandfathers around the fire, some slandering the cousins, others defending them, but there was no more hard information for Thomas to mull over. He pulled his disguise more closely about him and composed himself for sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
In which Crowner John makes an arrest
While his clerk was wandering the cold wastes of Dartmoor, Sir John de Wolfe had been consolidating his improved relations with his wife. As the maid had predicted, the solar door had been left open for him the previous night and he regained his place in the connubial bed, even if it was on the edge furthest away from his wife.
The next evening, he returned home early from a day spent at three hangings and an inquest on a child who had drowned in a well in St Sidwell’s. Matilda was sitting by the fire and gave him a subdued but civil greeting. John carefully launched into a neutral conversation, which developed into a discussion about a donation she wished him to make to her favourite church, St Olave’s. John thought that her excessive show of piety and devotion to the church was more a social charade than true religious belief, but for the sake of peace he would have been willing to offer a gift to Saladin’s revered mosque. By the time Mary arrived with the evening meal, they were talking together in a stilted but formally polite manner.
As things seemed to be going uncommonly well, John decided to consolidate the truce by asking Matilda’s opinion on his current investigation. He recounted all that had happened in the past week or so, carefully avoiding any criticism of her brother.
‘So at least now we know who the two dead men are – the eldest son of a Norman lord and his squire, both recently returned from the Holy Land. But the question is, why were they killed?’
The square face of his wife looked into the flickering fire as if to gain inspiration. ‘Do you think it was by the same hand, John?’ she asked, with a studied politeness the equal of his own restrained tones.
He bent forward in his monk’s chair, his hands cupped around a glass of mulled wine. ‘More than one hand, that’s for sure. Both were assaulted by at least a pair of assassins. The wounds were similar in some ways, both stabbed in the back. But that is such a common type of murderous wound that it doesn’t signify a great deal. And one had his throat cut, the other had limb wounds typical of a sword fight.’
‘What does that tell you?’
‘Not a lot, I’m afraid,’ replied John ruefully.