Robert de Pridias’s widow looked at her cousin with admiration. ‘May I remain while you talk to this woman?’ she pleaded.
Her daughter tugged at her arm, her face showing her disapproval. ‘Mother, these are not matters for a lady of your position to be mixed up with! Let the good canon deal with her.’
Cecilia shook Avise off indignantly. ‘How can you say that, daughter? Your own dear father was done to death by one of these creatures. Does not the Bible say, as well as not allowing a witch to live, that revenge is sweet?’
Privately, the quite clever Avise thought that the Lord had proclaimed that ‘vengeance is mine, I will repay’, but she prudently kept her lips together.
Her mother turned back to her cousin. ‘Who is this person that the sheriff is sending to you?’
Gilbert de Bosco shifted uneasily on his chair. De Revelle had impressed on him that his name must be kept out of this matter and Cecilia was known as an inveterate gossip, a family failing. ‘I won’t learn that until I speak to her. This is a delicate and confidential issue, I’m afraid. I must conduct it alone, dear cousin.’
And with that, the disappointed Cecilia had to be content.
Anger and frustration were overlaid with a nagging apprehension in John’s mind as he climbed out of the undercroft, leaving Gwyn incarcerated with the rats and lice in a dirty prison cell. Unlike the time a few months ago, when little Thomas de Peyne had been locked in the same dungeon under imminent sentence of death, John could not believe that his officer was in similar danger, but he couldn’t trust any of the machinations of the wily sheriff, who was as ruthless as he was dishonest. ‘So let’s have it out with the bastard!’ he muttered under his breath, as he ran up the steps to the door of the keep, oblivious to several startled servants and clerks whom he barged aside. He marched straight to the small door to Richard’s chambers, but to his intense annoyance found it locked, an unusual occurrence.
‘He went out just now, Crowner,’ said the nearby sentry. ‘In a devil of a hurry he was too.’
Frustrated, John was at a loss as to what to do next, as Gwyn’s predicament overshadowed all other issues. He brusquely questioned a few people as to where the sheriff had gone, but got no satisfaction. Just then, Ralph Morin appeared through the entrance and for want of anything better to do until de Revelle showed up, they sat at a bench and called for jugs of cider from one of the castle servants. The hall, another bare chamber of reddish-grey sandstone, took up most of that floor of the keep, the quarters of the sheriff and constable occupying the remaining third, apart from a small buttery at the far end, where the drink was kept.
After they had once more gone through a futile catalogue of de Revelle’s misdeeds and how he had managed to get the upper hand over them in this latest episode, they fell silent, wondering how Gwyn was coping with imprisonment below their very feet.
‘At least he’s got Thomas to tease and Gabriel to win money from at dice,’ said Ralph, trying to lighten the mood.
John nodded abstractedly, looking around at the crowd that milled around this busy place, without really seeing them. Idle men-at-arms, anxious stewards clutching lists of stores, merchants hoping to bribe favours from officials, clerks scribbling on parchments and servants carrying pots of ale or trenchers of food from the kitchens in the inner bailey — all the familiar sights of a busy castle failed to displace Gwyn’s anxious face from his mind’s eye. ‘There must be something we can do to defeat this crafty swine!’ he grated angrily, banging his mug on the table.
‘He’s looking for a quid pro quo, a deal that will get him off the hook at Winchester,’ said the constable. ‘How was the situation left there, as far as his guilt was concerned?’
‘I’ve had chance only for a brief word with Thomas. He says that the Treasurer will want me swear to the truth of that inventory from Cadbury before they will indict anyone for the shortfall in the treasure, which it seems amounts to twenty bezants.’
Ralph whistled through his remaining teeth. ‘Twenty of those big gold coins! That’s a lot of money to go missing.’
‘And I’ve got no means of proving that de Revelle took it,’ snarled John bitterly. ‘And if I can’t prove it, then I either drop the accusation or let a sheriff’s word stand against that of a mere servant.’
The constable took a swig from his jar, then fixed John with his steady blue eyes. ‘I suppose there’s no possibility that …’
‘Don’t even think it, Ralph! I’ve known Gwyn for almost twenty years, there’s no way in which he would have taken that money. And anyway, what in hell would he do with twenty bezants — buy a new leather jerkin in place of that one he must have been born in?’
They both grinned in spite of the seriousness of the situation, then buried their faces in their ale-pots.
‘Where in God’s teeth can the bloody sheriff have got to?’ demanded John, when he came up for air.
‘Here’s my steward passing, perhaps he will know,’ said Ralph. He called out to a prematurely bent grey-bearded man, who was mumbling to himself as he short-sightedly scanned a tattered roll of parchment held in his hands. ‘Deaf as a bloody mill-stone!’ growled the constable, jumping up and tugging at the man’s faded brown tunic as he passed the end of the table. ‘Samuel, do you know where the sheriff has gone?’ he shouted at him.
The steward was not as deaf as Ralph made out, but his attention was always buried in his documents about soldier’s pay, garrison stores and duty rosters. He stopped and stared at his master as if he had never seen him before, until he managed to drag his mind away from the crabbed writing on his rolls. ‘The sheriff? Haven’t seen him these past few hours, sir. But I’ve been busy with these accounts. I’ll have to go through them with you tomorrow, just to check everything.’
Ralph Morin groaned. As illiterate as de Wolfe, he found the thought of sitting for an hour while Samuel droned through every item mortifying. ‘When I die and go to hell, it will be this man who Satan will send as my torturer, by reading his accounts to me for eternity!’ he said mockingly. ‘But he’s the world’s best steward, nothing gets past him.’
Samuel’s wrinkled, intelligent face creased into a smile at the compliment. ‘I do my best, Constable, I do my best.’ He cocked his head towards the main door. ‘What was all that commotion down below, may I ask?’ He was not only a meticulous record-keeper but another incorrigible nosy parker and a fount of information on everything that went on in Rougemont.
Ralph was as relaxed with his steward as John was with his officer and he told him about the impasse that had landed Gwyn in Stigand’s cells.
Samuel looked from one to the other with an expression of astonishment. ‘But why didn’t you ask me, master?’
De Wolfe and Ralph Morin suddenly tensed at his words.
‘Ask you what, man?’ snapped the constable.
‘About what was in that box that you kept in your chamber until the sheriff took it away.’
The coroner stared at Samuel, almost afraid to ask him the next question. ‘You mean you know what was in there?’
‘Of course I did — I’m the constable’s steward, it’s my duty to check everything,’ he answered impatiently. ‘I have access to all the keys and I naturally made a full inventory of the contents. What else would you expect?’
De Wolfe leapt to his feet and threw a long arm around the startled clerk’s shoulders, much to the mystification of others in the hall. ‘Samuel, if you weren’t such an ugly old devil, I’d kiss you!’ he boomed. ‘Now tell me, please God, that you’ve still got that list.’