‘The face and arms are deeply sun-browned, though fading. Corruption is present, of a degree that in this season and weather might token death at least a sennight, maybe almost a fortnight, since.’
Once more Gwyn held up the hands and arms, and John continued, ‘A deep slash through skin and flesh on the left arm between wrist and elbow and a three-inch wound below the right shoulder. Sustained during a sword fight, the left arm raised in protection, the right struck to disable the sword arm.’ Gwyn pointed a thick finger at the left hand to remind him. ‘And defending cuts on the fingers, thumb and palm of the left hand, where the victim gripped a sharp blade.’
John waited for his clerk to catch up, then told Gwyn to roll the body over on to its face. When it rested with its limp arms dangling over the edge of the bier, they saw that the settled blood under the skin on the back now had a lacework of darker putrefying veins that contrasted with the greenish pallor of the upper skin.
The coroner proclaimed the significance of the slit in the clothing, pointing out the stab wound under the shoulder-blade, now dribbling fluid blood that had already collected in a large pool on the oak of the crude bier.
Gwyn leaned over to look again more closely at it, the ends of his moustache almost brushing the corpse.
A voice spoke from alongside him. ‘A dagger, that was, not a sword. Double-edged, by the sharpness of the ends of the cut. Pulled downwards as it was withdrawn for there’s a shallow cut tailing away from the lower end.’
It was Nebba. He had unobtrusively rejoined the throng, and Gwyn turned to scowl at him, annoyed at his challenge to the monopoly of knowledge of wounds that he and the coroner professed. A murmur went up from the onlookers near enough to hear him.
‘Stabbed in the back. A wicked thing,’ said Simon of Dunstone solemnly. Ralph looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing to provoke another squabble.
The coroner made his own close inspection. His lips thinned in distaste. ‘Not killed in fair combat, for sure. He was fighting to the front and got two sword cuts for his efforts when someone else stabbed him between the shoulders. Then he turned and grasped the blade, getting his hand cut for his trouble.’ There was nothing more to be seen, so after telling Thomas to note down the dead man’s hairy mole, John walked back to his episcopal chair, the crowd shambling back to face him.
‘The inquest can go no further than to declare the victim murdered and to state that his identity is unknown. It is obvious that no one can present Englishry to me, so the village of Widecombe is also amerced in the sum of ten marks as a murdrum fine.’ There was another collective groan from the crowd at this additional burden for the future.
‘Neither have I any way of telling where he died or whether you villagers are telling me the whole truth. I have the gravest suspicions of some of you, but further enquiry is necessary on my part.’ He glared down accusingly at the two reeves. ‘However, Widecombe guarded the cadaver and sent for the King’s crowner without undue delay, as is the law now. That law requires me, if I can, to name the deceased, if he be a stranger and to tell where he spent the night before his death. Neither of these can I do, and so this inquest is laid aside for now.’
He turned to his clerk. ‘Make sure everything is recorded on your rolls for the sheriff and the next visit of the justices.’ He raised a hand to signal that the performance was over. ‘If further information arises in the meanwhile, I will reconvene this inquest on this same spot.’ Looking round the squalid village, he added, in an undertone, ‘Which, God forbid.’
Rising from his chair, he gave instructions to Ralph, the bailiff and the parish priest to have the body buried in the churchyard with proper dignity and to erect a wooden cross at the head of the grave. ‘Whatever else he was, he was a gentleman soldier and almost certainly a Crusader and thus deserves our respect.’
Striding away through the villagers, John de Wolfe’s tall figure led Gwyn and Thomas back to where their horses were tethered. Within a few minutes, the trio were winding their way back up the track towards the county town of Exeter, some sixteen miles distant.
Chapter Three
In which Crowner John falls out with his wife
The shortening days and the leaden sky made it almost dark when John arrived home. The trio had spent an hour in a tavern at Fulford on the road back from Widecombe where they ate better food and drank better beer than the reeve’s wife had provided.
At the walls of Exeter they separated, the clerk going off to his room in the cathedral precinct – which he had obtained in spite of his expulsion from holy orders. Gwyn went back to his wife and children in their thatched hut outside the East Gate, while the Coroner, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, went slowly home to his burgage in St Martin’s Lane, a passage between the High Street and the cathedral.
He stabled his horse at a nearby farrier’s and, after seeing the stallion fed and watered, plodded up the muddy cart-tracks to the timber town-house that leaned over the tiny street. It was too large for him – he had no children with whom to share it – but his wife would hear nothing of moving to a smaller dwelling. ‘You are a knight, and the King’s coroner for the country, and I am the sister of the sheriff!’ she would declaim in her grating, high-pitched voice. ‘How could we hold up our heads among our peers if we moved to some miserable little tenement?’
At forty-six, Matilda was six years older than John. Though she had once been a handsome woman, now she looked every month of her age, in spite of the constant ministrations of her French maid, Lucille, who with powder and curling tongs attempted to keep back the ravages of time.
The coroner had been pushed into this lacklustre marriage sixteen years ago by the ambitions of his late father, Simon de Wolfe, who saw in a match with the de Revelle family the best road for the advancement of his eldest son. After less than eighteen months with his shrewish bride, John escaped from her with repeated absences at the Irish wars and then with King Richard in Palestine. In fact, his enthusiasm for warfare was founded less on patriotism and the removal of the Saracen from the Holy Land, than on his desire to stay away from Matilda.
The street door was ajar when he reached it and he pushed it open to find Brutus, his house dog, sitting in the vestibule beyond. The old hound’s ears were held back and his feathery tail slowly swished the floor in a rhythmic welcome.
‘At least someone’s glad to see me home,’ he murmured, as he bent to fondle the dog’s head.
As he shrugged off his damp cloak and unbuckled his sword-belt, another figure appeared from a door at the rear, who also seemed pleased to see him. ‘Master, you’re back! Let’s have those filthy boots off you.’
He sat on the inner step, watching strands of Mary’s long blonde hair slip from beneath the linen kerchief that she wore on her head, as she tugged off his riding boots.
Mary was their serving maid, a handsome, if over-muscular, girl of twenty-five. Exuding good health, she had a briskness and determination that brushed aside all problems. She never failed to make John feel better when he was low – a frequent condition for the coroner.
Mary was the by-blow of a Norman squire and a Saxon woman from Exeter. In this divided household, she was firmly, if discreetly, John’s ally against Matilda and Lucille. He had given her her job against his wife’s wishes and, an eminently sensible girl, Mary valued it too highly to risk losing it over household politics – but short of open warfare with the mistress, she aided and abetted the coroner whenever she could in his campaign of survival against his strident wife. As she fetched him a pair of soft house shoes, she whispered to him conspiratorially, ‘Her brother is here again, master. They’re in the hall, complaining about you as usual.’