Nesta had heard most of this before, but still wanted to know more about treasure trove. Just then, one of her maids arrived at the trestle with a wooden board on which was a thick trencher of yesterday’s bread supporting a slab of boiled bacon, with two fried eggs on top. A wooden bowl contained cooked beans and peas, which John heaped on to slices of the meat which he cut off with his dagger. Between chewing and swallowing ale to wash it down, he explained about finds of treasure.
‘There’s a great deal of valuable metal hidden about the countryside, especially since the Battle of Hastings. Very many Saxons hid their wealth to keep it from us Normans — then they were either killed or died before they could recover it.’
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to remove the bacon fat.
‘I have heard of much older coinage being found, even going back to the Romans. But whatever it is, it has to be either gold or silver to be reckoned as treasure trove. Jewel stones don’t count, unless they are set in precious metal.’
‘But who does it belong to?’ persisted Nesta, her big eyes round as she looked up at her dark and angular lover.
‘That’s why there must be an inquest on the finds, to decide if the finder or the owner of the land or the King gets the value. There are rules, but I rely on Thomas to put me right on the details. You know what a mine of information he is, I’d be lost without him when it comes to fiddling details.’
Some ripe plums and an apple rounded off the meal and as there was no time to climb the ladder for a dalliance in the loft, he had to be satisfied with another quart of ale and a relaxed gossip with his mistress — though she was constantly interrupted by either Edwin or the maids to settle some dispute in the kitchen or a problem among the patrons.
He asked her whether she had heard anything about the strange arrest of Alice Ailward by the cathedral proctors, but Nesta had no more information than himself. ‘It will be a dismal day if any good-wife who gives a potion or a poultice to a neighbour, gets herself locked up for it.’
She sounded worried, and John wondered whether her own activities in that direction were more extensive than she had admitted to him. Nesta was a tender-hearted soul and he knew that she often went out of her way to help those less fortunate than herself. Beggars were often to be found around the back gate, where she unfailingly let them have the old trenchers and scraps of food left over from the kitchen. He suspected that the families in nearby Smythen Street and the upper part of Priest Street were quite familiar with her Welsh folk cures for a wide range of illnesses.
‘You be careful yourself,’ he admonished her. ‘Lay low with your cunning-woman activities, until this stupidity has blown over.’
He left the alehouse before the vesper bell and was helping Andrew the farrier to saddle up his great horse Odin when it finally pealed out from the cathedral tower. The rain was now an intermittent drizzle and there were gaps in the cloud where scraps of blue sky suggested that maybe it would clear up towards evening.
When he reached the North Gate, Gwyn was waiting on his big brown mare and, just outside, Thomas was perched side-saddle on a small cob, all Gwyn’s efforts to get him to ride like a man having failed. Alongside him was Henry Stork, the reeve from Cadbury, a leathery, taciturn man of about fifty, who spoke only when it was absolutely necessary. He had said little about the discovery, other than it was on the land of Robert Hereward and had been found in a mound by one of Robert’s villeins.
The four set off northwards along the road to Crediton, the rain causing little problem to men used to travelling in all weathers. The main problem was the surface of the track, which after a couple of weeks of drought, had now been converted into a sticky red paste by the recent downpour. The mud was not yet deep but was slippery and occasionally one of the horses would slide and lose its footing in the rutted surface. Even at a cautious trot, the eight miles did not take long to cover. They left the Crediton road soon after leaving the city and followed narrow tracks to the village of Thorveton, then on through mixed forest and cultivated land to Cadbury, a small hamlet in deeply undulating country just west of the River Exe.
The rain had stopped by the time they arrived and broken cloud allowed shafts of sunlight to draw steaming wreaths of vapour from the pasture land around the village.
‘It’s but a small place, Crowner,’ grunted Henry Stork, as they walked their horses into the grassy area in the middle of the hamlet, where the track divided into two, the right-hand one going on to Tiverton, a few miles farther on.
‘You say the manor is held by Robert Hereward?’ asked de Wolfe, as he slid from Odin’s high back.
‘Indeed, but he doesn’t own the land. He has Saxon blood on his grandmother’s side, they used to hold it. But they became Norman when William de Pouilly’s son married into the family a century ago.’
‘So who owns the freehold?’ persisted the coroner. This was not just idle curiosity; the resolution of a find of treasure trove needed all the information available. His black eyebrows went up sharply when the reeve told him that the ultimate landlord was Sir Richard de Revelle, sheriff of the county and a substantial landowner around Tiverton. His wife, the glacial Lady Eleanor, lived in his main manor near there, refusing to stay with her husband in the grim and draughty castle of Rougemont.
‘Does the sheriff know of this find?’ he asked curtly.
Henry shook his head. ‘I was charged by Sir Robert’s bailiff to give him a message, but at Rougemont I was told that he had just left Exeter for Revelstoke and will be away for at least four days.’
Revelstoke was one of Richard’s manors near Plympton, on the coast in the far west of Devon.
They had stopped outside a small alehouse, a hut of wattle and daub with a ragged thatched roof, slightly larger than the dozen tofts clustered around the centre of the village. A steep hill rose behind, with some ancient walls hidden in the turf at the top. On each side, strip fields ran up the sloping sides of the valley, the oats and rye beginning to brown up after a week of hot sun, though still not ripened sufficiently for harvesting. Strips of green alternated with the grain, where beans and peas were looking healthier. As John stretched his aching back, his gaze travelled around the horizon, where dark forest began beyond the waste ground that surrounded the cultivated areas. About a quarter of a mile to his left, he saw a hump in the pasture, just before the trees began. It was about the height of a cottage, smooth and covered in grass.
‘Is that the mound?
The reeve bobbed his head. ‘It is, Crowner. Maybe you’d like a drink and a bite to eat while you talk to the man who found the valuables?’
Gwyn was through the door of the tavern before John could answer and with a wry grin, the coroner beckoned to Thomas and followed the Cornishman inside. Already a few curious villeins had gathered around the door and the reeve directed a few of them to take the horses to water. In the single room of the alehouse they sat on benches around the dead fire-pit while a young girl in a ragged smock fetched them pots of indifferent ale from a shed at the back.
Henry Stork came back inside and in the dim light of the windowless room they saw he was followed by a muscular youth of about sixteen, who had a disfiguring purple birthmark covering one side of his face. He seemed a bright, intelligent lad, his eyes flitting from one to the other of these strangers in his village.
‘Simon, this is,’ said the reeve. ‘He found the stuff yesterday, when he was digging out a badger sett.’
John caught Gwyn’s eye and he grinned. It was an unlikely tale, as mound digging was a common but illegal activity, invariably undertaken in the hope of finding treasure. De Wolfe wondered why this village had reported it, rather than keeping quiet, but maybe the surprise of actually finding treasure had unnerved the digger. He decided to bait the young man a little.