The Sanctuary Seeker (25 page)

‘The wanderer returns!’ shouted the coroner, surprised at how glad he was to see the fellow home safe and sound after three days’ solitary travelling in a lonely area that seemed overburdened with slain corpses.

They listened attentively to his story, without interruptions or even Gwyn’s usual quips, and John de Wolfe, coverdy rolling up his reading homework away from Thomas’s inquisitive eyes, sat back for a moment’s thought.

‘So now we know that both de Bonneville and his squire were killed within twelve miles of each other, both en route for Peter Tavy, which neither reached alive.’

Gwyn, ready to split hairs, pointed out that although the bodies were found within that distance, they may not have been murdered there.

‘No one is going to carry corpses far, man,’ snapped John, in irritation at his train of thought being disturbed.

‘But why were they killed so far apart in time? From Thomas’s information, this Aelfgar left Sampford Spiney a few weeks before Hubert was slain.’

Gwyn scratched at the fleas in his red hair. “I was told in Southampton that de Bonneville stayed behind to sell his loot and pay off his men, sending his squire ahead to announce his coming to the family.’

‘Like John the Baptist and the Lord Christ,’ added Thomas devoutly, crossing himself with a lump of cheese. He ventured another observation, echoing Matilda’s views of a few nights earlier. ‘It seems too much of a coincidence that both master and servant were killed in the same area, in much the same fashion but weeks apart. Yet I saw hardly a soul on those evil moors. There’s nothing there except foxes, sheep and crows.’

‘If they were ambushed, the killers must have known when they were coming,’ observed the coroner, contemplatively.

He turned to his clerk. ‘How long did this Aelfgar spend in Sampford Spiney?’

‘Two nights, the priest said. His horse went lame and he rested it for a day before going on.’

‘And the village is only a few miles from Peter Tavy?’

‘You could walk between them in under two hours,’

replied Thomas. ‘That’s why I dressed as a Cistercian, in case someone in Peter Tavy knew I’d already been snooping in Sampford.’

John thought this through. ‘This Aelfgar made no secret of being Hubert’s squire?’

‘No, I expect everyone in Sampford knew it.’

‘So some thatcher or pedlar could have carried the fact to Peter Tavy the next day?’

‘No reason why not.’

John looked across at Gwyn and, almost in unison, they both grunted under their breath.

The sheriff was openly contemptuous of John’s suspicions and would hear nothing in favour of questioning the de Bonnevilles. ‘Are you mad, brother-in-law?’ he fumed, as they sat each side of the table in his chamber in the castle keep. ‘The Bishop is a great friend of the family. He has already chided both of us - especially you - for not finding a culprit for Hubert’s death. And now we have had God’s signal from the Ordeal that this odious man Fitzhai is the villain!’ He banged the table hard with his fist. ‘Can you imagine my going to the Bishop’s palace and telling Henry Marshall that we suspect someone in the household of his sick old friend? You must have taken leave of your senses, John.’

The coroner could see that the sheriff was adamant and would not be swayed an inch by argument, so he stood up and banged the table himself. ‘Very well. You have no power over my inquiries, Richard. I will ride to Peter Tavy and see what I can discover.’ He marched to the stairway door.

De Revelle shouted at his back, ‘The Bishop will crucify you for this, you fool! With Hubert Walter coming here within a week or two, you’ll be lucky to keep your head, let alone your coronership.’

But John had vanished down the stairs, muttering oaths against the whole de Revelle clan, male and female.

Next afternoon, the coroner and his officer arrived at the stockade of Peter Tavy after a hard ride from Exeter, stopping only to feed their horses and themselves.

John

had had no need for his clerk and left him at home to recover from his three-day mule ride. A greater problem had been Matilda: his recent return to favour was likely to be sabotaged by another night away from home so soon after their rapprochement.

He carefully broached the subject at supper-time, emphasising the importance of clearing up this double murder to satisfy the concerns of dear Bishop Marshall who, to the obsessively religious Matilda, was only slightly less revered than the Pope or God Himself.

He carefully omitted any reference to her brother’s antagonism to his plans and prayed that the man would not turn up at the house to see her before he left for Peter Tavy in the early morning.

Rather to his surprise, she took the news of his absence with good grace. Still rather distant, her attitude of formal politeness rather than warmth, she murmured with a sniff or two into her kerchief, that she supposed that he had to do what duty demanded.

Next day, John dismounted at the foot of the stairway leading into Peter Tavy’s hall and looked around him. The place seemed quiet, much less active than on their last visit. Smoke still rose from the kitchen eaves, but hardly anyone was about, just a few figures in the distance. No one came to take their horses and Gwyn had to shout into the undercroft arches to find a snivelling youth to take the bridles.

‘What’s going on?’ he demanded of the boy.

‘The master’s passed on, sir. Lord Arnulph died this morning.’ Armed with this news, Sir John climbed the steps to the door of the hall and found silent groups of people within, talking quietly among themselves.

There were several clergymen, one in an abbot’s regalia, who he assumed to be from the rich abbey of St Mary and St Rumon in Tavistock. He recognised another as Prior Wulfstan, the fat monk who had entertained him when he had stayed at the abbey on his first visit. He went over to him now and made the platitudes appropriate for a recent bereavement. It seemed that Arnulf de Bonneville had declined steadily over the past few days and eventually had had another massive stroke that had carried him off within hours.

‘And what of the sons?’ asked the coroner, guardedly.

‘Gervaise

has already assumed the lordship, as was to be expected. He had been running the two manors in all but name for months.’

‘He will have to get the King’s confirmation to succeed his father,’ observedjohn. ‘Especially as these are Crown lands since Prince John lost his six counties!’

‘A mere formality,’ said Wulfstan, with a benign smile. ‘As our primate is visiting the West very soon, he can confirm him. The King is hardly likely to come back to this country, and I can’t see Gervaise trailing all over France trying to catch Richard without a battleaxe in his hand.’

John looked around at the subdued knots of people.

‘Where is Gervaise? I don’t see him.’

‘Praying at the side of his father’s body, with his brother Martyn and their cousins - who still have ambitions to said part of the estate.’

“I need to see him urgently. This death has complicated my plans.’

Wulfstan’s overfed face creased into a sad smile.

‘Death has a way of upsetting plans, especially those of the deceased.’

The coroner had no time for facile comments and looked around the hall again. The curtain to the bedchamber swung aside and the solid figure of Baldwyn of Beer came out. He wore a dark red linen tabard reaching to his knees, laced each side at the waist, with a boar’s head embroidered on the front. A black woollen tunic and black hose with crossgartering above heavy shoes gave him a dark, powerful appearance. He was buckling on his sword belt as he came.

John went across to him and put a hand on his shoulder. The coroner was slightly taller than the man from Beer, but not so heavily built. “I need a few words with you, Baldwyn - and with your master.’

Baldwyn frowned, a worried and abstracted look on his face. ‘It’s a difficult time, Crowner, especially for Sir Gervaise. He has to arrange with the abbot and Prior Wulfstan to get his father’s body down to Tavistock to lie at the altar until the burial.’

John eased him by the shoulder towards the doorway.

‘We can’t speak in here with all these people about. Come outside. This concerns the death of your master’s brother - and his squire.’

‘Squire? What squire?’ Baldwyn cast him a puzzled look.

At the door, they stood on the platform above the stairs, where Gwyn of Polruan waited. John squinted at the man in the red tabard. ‘Doesn’t any news reach you from your neighbouring village, Sampford Spiney?

They’re in trouble with me, amerced for concealing a dead body for weeks on end. Not just any dead body, another murdered body.’

Baldwyn looked blankly at the coroner. ‘I know nothing of this. You said one was squire to Hubert?’

‘Yes, a man called Aelfgar, Had you not seen Hubert’s fighting companion?’

Baldwyn shook his big head, his spade-shaped beard rubbing across his chest. ‘He left here for Outremer with two men-at-arms but he had no squire.’ He looked anxiously over his shoulder into the hall. ‘Sir John, I have much work to do, with the death of our lord. My master needs my services.’

‘And I need your master!’ snapped John. “I have no wish to interrupt your mourning, but the passing was hardly unexpected. The keeping of the King’s peace has to go on, death or no death. So, please, will you fetch Sir Gervaise to me? I have to speak to him urgently.’

With a barely concealed scowl, Baldwyn turned and went back into the gloom of the hall, leaving the stone landing to John and his officer. Gwyn, whose eyes were as sharp as his brain, edged up to the coroner and said in a low voice, ‘Did you notice his dagger?’

John stared at the Cornishman and shook his head.

What was he on about now?

‘It doesn’t fit the scabbard, it’s too long. And it looks Levantine.’

‘So? Plenty of soldiers have Eastern weapons. I’ve got one myself. So did the dead Hubert.’

Gwyn nodded. ‘But that Aelfgar didn’t. He had an empty scabbard. A long one. I’ve got it in my saddlebag there.’

The coroner folded his arms, his black cloak flying in the persistent cold wind. ‘You can’t hang a man on the length of his dagger.’

‘No, but maybe the sheriff could!’ retorted the red haired giant. ‘And it’s worth looking at, I reckon.’

John sighed. One problem at a time was enough for him today.

‘All right, go and get the sheath from your horse - and stay down there,’ he commanded, as he saw Baldwyn and Gervaise approaching the door.

Again he made the appropriate commiserations over the death of the new lord’s father, then launched straight into the strange coincidence of both Hubert and his squire being murdered en route to Peter Tavy.

Gervaise was shaken by the news. ‘His squire also?

I never knew he had one.’

‘No Norman of good birth would be campaigning in the Holy Land without one,’ observed john drily.

‘Well, we knew nothing of him. What was his name?’

‘Aelfgar, a Saxon,’ said John shortly.

Gervaise turned to the impassive man from Beer.

‘Did you know anything of this, Baldwyn?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve heard nothing more of Sir Hubert since that messenger from Palestine came last year. Never knew of any squire, certainly.’

John had been squinting covertly at the sheath on the squire’s belt, which sat half-way around his waist on the right side. An ornamental knife-hilt sat high above the sheath, with more than an inch of bare blade exposed. On the edge of the dark brown hide, a small white scar of recently torn leather shone like a little star. ‘Will you come down to the undercroft?’

asked the coroner, with deceptive mildness.

Puzzled, the two men followed him to where the visitors’ horses were tethered to a wooden rail. Gwyn was standing alongside his mare, holding something wrapped in a piece of sacking. As the other three gathered around, he flipped away the hessian and showed them some clothing and an empty dagger sheath. They still smelt of corruption from body-fluids soaked from the Dartmoor corpse, but this was not what intrigued the coroner. He saw another small rip in the top edge of the scabbard, not white, but old and dirty.

‘What’s all this about?’ asked Gervaise irritably. ‘I have much to attend to on this very unhappy day, Sir John.’

‘It may turn out to be unhappier than you think,’

retorted the coroner gruffly. ‘Would you ask your squire to hand me his dagger for a moment?’

The two local men looked uneasily at each other and made no movement.

‘Come on, if you please,’John barked. ‘Your knife, Baldwyn!’

Slowly, the black-bearded man withdrew his dagger and handed it, hilt first, to John, who took it and, with the other hand, raised the sheath from Gwyn’s sacking, sliding the blade smoothly into the leather.

The hilt-guard sat perfectly against the top edge of the sheath. The coroner held it out towards Gervaise and his squire.

‘It seems to fit this much better than it does your sheath.’

De Bonneville, flexing his new superiority as lord of the manor, began to turn away.

‘I’ve no time for charades, Crowner. Why are you playing such games?’

‘This sheath came from the man slain not five miles from here. The man you’ve never heard of.’

Baldwyn blustered, ‘So my dagger doesn’t fit my scabbard so well. Little wonder. I bought it from a man who had returned from the East after I broke my own blade.’

John was ready for this explanation. ‘Indeed? Then look more closely.’ He drew out the dagger again and pointed with a finger at the torn top edge of the sheath, in line with the edge of the blade. On the blade itself, two inches below the hilt, was a deep nick in the metal, where it had been damaged by being struck against something hard. A small tang of steel hooked out from it and when he slid the blade in and out of the scabbard, it was patently obvious that this was the cause of the torn leather.

‘Now show me your scabbard, sir,’ he demanded of Baldwyn.

With three pairs of eyes boring into him, the squire had little option but to slide the now-empty sheath around his belt to the front. John slid the dagger back in and, drawing it up and down, showed that the new tear in the leather was identical with that in the other sheath and caused by the same nick in the blade.