John de Wolfe, entitled – indeed, obliged – to be present at every non-ecclesiastical court, stood grimly at the back of the dais, as Thomas de Peyne lurked in the shadows with his pen and parchment.
Gwyn, a wide rag bound with unnecessary prominence around the slight wound on his upper arm, stood on the edge of the crowd near the stage.
The drama began when Baldwyn of Beer marched in from the keep, behind a single helmeted sergeant. Significantly, he had no chains and was not dragged in by a pair of guards, the usual mode of entry for criminals. He stood in front of the sheriff’s judicial seat and folded his arms, looking both defiant and confident.
The court clerk, an older, grey-haired man with the air of a schoolmaster, walked out to the open space in front of the dais to read out the charge from a parchment, itself couched in ambiguous terms. ‘Baldwyn of Beer, squire to Sir Gervaise de Bonneville of the honour of Peter Tavy, you have been accused of being involved in the death of one Aelfgar of Totnes. Do you confess to your guilt?’
Baldwyn stared at the clerk. ‘Of course not. I am not guilty. In fact, I had never heard of the man.’
‘What is the evidence?’ asked the sheriff, in an affectedly bored voice.
Gwyn stepped forward and, in a stentorian voice, related the facts about the dagger missing from the corpse, the knife in Baldwyn’s sheath that did not fit and the identical tear in each scabbard from the damaged blade.
Gervaise stood up and interrupted. ‘What nonsense this is!’ he said, in a tremulous but aggressive voice. ‘Every man in the land has a dagger. Half of them do not fit their sheaths and the other half have a damaged blade. This is but a fairy-tale!’
John pushed through to the front of the platform. ‘This Baldwyn also named the dead man as being from Totnes – yet that name had passed no one’s lips. How could he know that of a man about whose very existence he denied any knowledge?’
Baldwyn looked up, his gaze passing from his master to the Bishop, then back to the sheriff. ‘It must have been said by someone, or how else could I have heard it? I tell you, I know nothing of this man. Why should I? I live in Peter Tavy and rarely leave it, except to accompany my lord Gervaise. Someone dropped the name in my hearing.’
There was a buzz of discussion among the crowd until the Sheriff’s sergeant, prompted by Ralph Morin, banged the stock of his spear on the dais and yelled for quiet.
Gwyn, unperturbed by the denials, finished off his tale. ‘When this Baldwyn was confronted by the evidence, he attempted flight. He assaulted the King’s coroner by pushing him over, then stabbed me in the arm with the dagger he carried.’ He raised his arm and pointed to the thick bandage, which he had rewound that morning so that the bloodstains were visible on the outside.
‘That is the evidence in this case,’ John bellowed, above the renewed murmurings in the hall. ‘Innocent men do not flee, nor stab their accusers as they attempt to escape.’
The sheriff looked disdainfully at the coroner. ‘Are you joining anyone else in your accusations?’
John shook his head. ‘Not at present – not until we have further evidence,’ he added.
Richard de Revelle rose from his chair and went over to the Bishop, who had sat immobile through the proceedings. His austere face, narrow and long-jawed, revealed no emotion as he listened to the sheriff. Then he spoke a few words in a low voice.
The sheriff beckoned to the two brothers from Peter Tavy and all four conferred, with the Precentor and the Treasurer trying to get within earshot. Then the group resumed their seats. When Richard de Revelle was back lolling in his large chair, he addressed the court. ‘We already have a culprit in custody, one Alan Fitzhai, whom the ritual of the Ordeal has already proven guilty of the killing of Hubert de Bonneville. He will be convicted and hanged in due course, when certain procedural difficulties’ – he shot a poisonous glance at the coroner – ‘have been settled. As the deceased in this case seems to have proved to be the squire of Hubert, then it seems logical to assume that the same miscreant killed them both. Thus Fitzhai must be a double murderer, in which case no other culprit need be sought.’
He stared down at Baldwyn of Beer. ‘Even if that explanation was not available, the evidence of this knife scabbard, and the triviality of whether or not the word Totnes was mentioned, is unacceptable for a conviction. As to the charge of assault, it seems only natural that a man so falsely accused should take the only course open to him and try to escape. If he was then assaulted himself by the coroner’s officer, who can blame him for defending himself?’
After this breathtaking distortion of the evidence, the sheriff turned to smirk at his brother-in-law. ‘It is therefore the verdict of this court that no crime has been committed by the defendant and he is therefore discharged. I would also remind certain persons that, by the established legal principle of autrefois aquit, he can never again be arraigned on this same charge.’ He stood to indicate that the proceedings were over, then went over to the Bishop to fuss over his departure from the dais. Gervaise and Martyn jumped down and slapped their squire on the back in congratulation and joined the jostling throng that was making its way out into the rain and mud of the inner bailey.
As John, Gwyn and Thomas were trailing out, they saw the trio from Peter Tavy making their way to the castle keep, where de Revelle was entertaining them to a meal before they went to an inn for the night, it being too late to set out on the long ride back to their manor. ‘Some justice!’ muttered Gwyn. ‘Depends on who you’ve got for friends.’
John’s lips had been clamped as tight as a rat-trap. He had not been surprised by the farce that he had just witnessed, but the way in which all the evidence had been disregarded almost instantly, with no pretence at considering even the possibility that Baldwyn was guilty, had been even more brazen than he had expected. But with the tenacity of a bull-baiting dog, he refused to contemplate defeat. ‘It’s not over yet, Gwyn. There must be a way of settling this.’
John failed to understand his wife’s attitude to the events surrounding the de Bonneville case. From her virulent antagonism of a week ago, she had subsided into being a reasonable, if distant, house-partner. The intemperate descent of the sheriff and his cronies upon their home the previous evening had upset her far less than John had feared. He thought that she, too, might have turned on him and joined forces with her brother. But Matilda said nothing about it, neither castigating him nor supporting him. After the fiasco of Baldwyn’s trial, he expected that she would wade into him as a trouble-making fool, and went home after the trial in some trepidation. To his surprise and gratification, she merely asked him, in measured tones, what the real truth of the matter might be.
As he explained to her the evidence against the squire Baldwyn, he gained the impression that she was torn between family loyalty to her brother and her loyalty to the King’s coroner, her wedded husband, to whom her personal status was inevitably linked. If he fell, she fell, so he assumed that Matilda was carefully exploring the relative merits of each side in the dispute, perhaps with a view to joining the potential winner. He had been treading carefully since she had allowed him back into her bedchamber, afraid of another rupture in their relationship. Yet sharing her bed meant just that: a comfortable pallet and a good sleep, no marital privileges.
Feeling that he was treading on eggshells, John excused himself from the house after their evening meal, on the grounds that he must talk to Thomas de Peyne about next day’s hangings.