Fear in the Forest (27 page)

It was his imminent fatherhood which seemed to have pushed her over the limit of her tolerance. John, in some ways a simple man, failed to see why having a mistress or two was at least grudgingly accepted, yet paternity was beyond the pale, even when it was the natural sequel to adultery. He reasoned that most men of his acquaintance had at least one bastard lurking somewhere – some of them even had a whole brood!

Dimly, he comprehended that a difference might be that Matilda and he had never had children of their own – though the opportunities for conception had been very limited during their married life, as he had been absent for most of it and, since he had returned from the Crusades, their marital relations had rapidly dwindled to nothing. John’s insensitive nature failed to appreciate that even if the most unmotherly Matilda had never desired the burden of maternity herself, she might be flagrantly opposed to her husband providing it to any other woman.

He growled under his breath at this attack of introspection, so foreign to a man of action like himself. Pouring another cup of wine, he tried to divert his mind back to coroner’s business as a welcome relief from the worries forced on him by the machinations of women.

Going over the meagre reports that Gwyn and Thomas had brought back from their expedition to the fringes of Dartmoor, he began arranging the intelligence alongside what they already knew.

There was a concerted plan to cause trouble throughout that part of the Royal Forest, in which the foresters and probably the new verderer was involved. There was a plot to remove the Warden of the Forests, by violence if required, and to replace him with someone else. It seemed likely that this someone was Richard de Revelle, but de Wolfe could not decide whether this was mere opportunism or whether the sheriff was an integral part of the plot. Against the latter, he failed to see what even the avaricious sheriff could hope to gain.

In any event, he thought as he gulped some more of the rather sour wine, the outlaws under Robert Winter were deeply involved. They were acting as mercenaries in assisting the foresters to cause disaffection amongst the forest dwellers, being paid for their efforts through some intermediaries. This horse-dealer was a possible candidate for that, if the man Gwyn had seen in the Ashburton tavern was the same as that seen by Thomas at Buckfast – though both incidents may have been quite innocent, unless there was some proof to the contrary. Against that was the tenuous rumour about the involvement of a ‘priest from the west’. The frequent dalliance of the horse-dealer with this Cistercian from Buckfast was probably sheer coincidence, but it was worth looking into.

Here John’s deliberate diversion from his marital problems dried up, just as the last of the wine drained from his flask. With a sigh, he hauled himself up and went down the alleyway to the back yard to find Mary.

She had softened her attitude since his visit to Polsloe and listened quietly as he brought her up to date with the situation.

‘So the mistress will not be home yet awhile, until she works off her disaffection with me, Mary,’ he concluded. ‘But no doubt when the novelty of pretending to be a nun wears off, she’ll return to make my life even more miserable than before. I’ll never hear the end of this.’

His maid looked doubtful. ‘If you say so, Sir Crowner – but I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve never seen her in such a state before, not in all the other times you’ve fallen out with the mistress.’

He shrugged helplessly. ‘We’ll just have to see, good girl. What about Lucille, has she shown up yet?’

Mary nodded and pointed to the box-like structure beneath the high supports of the solar steps. ‘She came back an hour ago, full of weeping, and shut herself in. I told her what you said about keeping her on and she seemed a little easier then.’

Matilda’s maid was a refugee from the Vexin, the part of France north of the Seine which was fought over continually by Richard the Lionheart and Philip of France. Lucille had no surviving family, though John suspected that Matilda had taken her on at the suggestion of her Normandy relatives, more from the social clout of having a French maid than from any feelings of compassion.

‘Did my wife take all her finery with her?’ he asked, knowing of Matilda’s attachment to her wardrobe. He knew that Mary could not have resisted a quick foray into the solar, once she knew his wife had left.

‘Hardly anything, apart from a couple of shifts and chemises. That’s why I think she’s really serious this time.’

John responded with his habitual growling in his throat, which could mean anything. ‘I think I’ll take a walk into the Close to see the archdeacon,’ he announced. ‘Then I’m to bed. It’s been a hard day!’

Though the longest day of the year was fast approaching, it was almost dark when de Wolfe called upon John de Alençon at his house in Canon’s Row. There was still an hour to go before the archdeacon had to leave for matins in the cathedral, and John joined him in his bare study for a cup of wine and a talk. The coroner first related the story of Matilda’s departure and the reason for it. De Alençon listened gravely to his friend’s admission of Nesta’s pregnancy, a rather shamefaced account of the fruits of his adultery, in that he was making it to a senior man of God. In fact, the canon was already well aware of the matter, as was most of the city, but he listened with a grave face as if it were news to him.

‘It seems typical of our sheriff that he should delight in distressing his sister with the revelation,’ he commented. ‘But again, it is another manifestation of his desire to do you as much harm as possible.’

John steered the conversation on to the matter of his marital status.

‘If my wife really has left me for good and intends taking her vows as a nun, does this annul our marriage?’

The archdeacon steepled his hands as if praying for guidance.

‘My friend, the honest answer is that I do not know, but I doubt it very much. This situation is outside my experience, for almost invariably, most mature women who take the veil are widows. The majority of nuns are younger girls who enter as virgins, but married women with living husbands must be exceptionally rare candidates.’

De Wolfe’s spirits sank. ‘But surely I have heard that in some of the most strict monastic orders entry is equated with death and all civil rights of that person are extinguished?’

‘That is so for men, John. But we know that in our Norman and Saxon society, there is no equality for women – they are but chattels of men, unlike in the Celtic lands of Ireland and Wales, where women stand on the same level as men in almost all things.’

De Alençon saw the disappointment on the coroner’s face and sought to ease his gloom.

‘In any case, I think you are crossing your bridges before you come to them,’ he said gently. ‘Like me, you must surely doubt that the good Matilda will persist with this intention. You have wounded her more than usual and, in her typical fashion, she has flared up into a passion of outrage. But how long will it last?’

His thin face, under its shock of wiry grey hair, fixed seriously on John’s more saturnine features.

‘You know as well as I, John, that though she is a devout Christian and a constant attendant at her devotions, she is also fond of her earthly pleasures of food and fine clothing. Before you make great plans for the future, I advise you to wait a few days, weeks or even months before counting your unhatched chickens!’

With this wise if discouraging advice, de Wolfe had to be content, so he moved to the other matter that had brought him to the cathedral Close.

‘You mentioned some rumour to me the other day about a senior priest outside the city, maybe somewhere to the west, who may have an involvement with these problems in the forest.’

De Alençon looked warily at the coroner, perhaps now regretting even this most ephemeral of revelations. ‘It was perhaps unwise of me to mention that. I have heard no more about it, John.’

De Wolfe shook his head, his black locks bouncing over the collar of his tunic. ‘I ask for no more confidences, only information on a name which has turned up in my enquiries. Do you know anything of the monks of Buckfast?’

The ascetic face of the archdeacon expressed surprise, his bright blue eyes opening wide.

‘Buckfast? Our diocese has no jurisdiction over them. They look only to their mother house of the Cistercians, at Citeaux in France.’

‘Yes, but I wondered if you had any knowledge of individuals there.’

‘I have met Abbot William several times, a good and holy man.’ De Alençon smiled rather roguishly. ‘That institution is not only a great religious house, it is one of Devon’s biggest traders. They probably produce more wool that anyone else here in the west.’

De Wolfe rasped his fingers over his stubble, now a full week’s growth.

‘That may be connected, in fact. Do you know of the man who seems to conduct the fiscal affairs of the abbey, one Father Edmund?’

John saw a fleeting look of understanding pass over the archdeacon’s face, before it settled into its usual serenity.

‘Ah, Edmund Treipas! Yes, I know of him. He spent a few weeks here several years ago, but in some personal attachment to Our Grace the Bishop.’

‘What can you tell me about him, John?’ asked his namesake.

‘I knew him only slightly, but gossip is as rife in these cloisters as in any marketplace. He came here from Coventry, where I seem to recollect that he was a chaplain to the bishop there. As you know, our Henry Marshal was a close associate of the former Bishop of Coventry.’

He said this with a hint of sarcasm, the gist of which was not lost on de Wolfe. During the abortive rebellion of Prince John a few years back, that bishop had been one of the ringleaders – and Henry Marshal, Bishop of Exeter, supported him, though far back enough in the column to avoid any direct repercussions later.

‘So how did this Edmund end up in Buckfast?’

‘When he was here, he was just an ordained priest, not in any monastic order,’ replied de Alençon. ‘He became a Cistercian only on moving to Buckfast, where I understand he is now the linchpin of their economic success. In fact, I am sure that is why he was sent there, because in his early career, before entering the Church, he was a merchant in Coventry, well used to the ways of the world and its commerce.’

He glanced up at the open shutters over his small window and saw the darkened sky. ‘I must prepare for Matins soon, John. But why are you interested in Edmund Treipas?’

The coroner shrugged as he rose to leave. ‘His name has come up in passing, though I have no real reason to think anything sinister about it. It is is just that he might be in frequent contact with someone involved in this trouble in the forest.’

The archdeacon gave his friend a quizzical look, but held his peace.

The next day began a new week, and it started relatively quietly for the King’s coroner. After he had woken at dawn in an empty bed, Mary brought his solitary breakfast to the gloomy hall. Boiled oatmeal with honey and salt bacon and eggs fortified him enough to go and find Thomas in the nearby Close, where he had a free mattress in the servants’ quarters of a canon’s residence.

Together they walked to the dismal dungeon beneath the keep of Rougemont, which acted as the prison for those awaiting trial either at the Sheriff’s Court or the infrequent King’s Courts. This morning John had to take confessions and depositions from several ‘approvers’, robbers who were attempting to avoid a hanging by incriminating their accomplices. To achieve that, they would later have to fight these others in legal combat to the death, any vanquished survivors being hanged.

After he had finished, he came out of the rusted gate leading to the cells to find Osric, one of the city’s two constables, waiting to lead him down to deal with a rape in the mean lanes of Bretayne. By the time they arrived, the culprit had been beaten almost to death by the girl’s outraged relatives and neighbours. It only remained for the coroner to take statements from those who were capable of giving a coherent story and to examine the girl to confirm the ‘issue of blood’ that was necessary to establish a charge of ravishment. Then Osric arranged for the battered perpetrator to be carried to the fetid town gaol in one of the towers of the South Gate. Here, if he failed to die of his injuries, he would probably succumb to the overcrowding and insanitary conditions long before he could be brought to trial.

Following these diversions, John retreated to his chamber in the gatehouse of Rougemont, to take his usual morning ale, bread and cheese with his assistants. He wanted to know from Thomas how he had found Nesta when he had spoken to her the previous day.

‘She was in low spirits, master,’ Thomas said guardedly. ‘She needs constant reassurance and comfort, else I fear she will slip into a decline.’

Still a priest at heart, Thomas felt that what she had revealed to him about the true father of the child, as well as her thoughts of self-destruction, was as sacrosanct as the confessional, and it was not his place to tell the coroner. However, he wanted to ensure that de Wolfe was aware of her present vulnerable state, as Thomas knew that his master was not the most perceptive of souls when it came to personal relationships.

John rumbled and nodded and huffed his agreement, promising to go down to the Bush as frequently as possible to bring comfort and cheer to his mistress, but Thomas was not convinced that he was aware of the seriousness of the situation. Later in the day, John walked down to Idle Lane to spend the evening with Nesta – with the expectation of extending his stay overnight. He sat at his favourite table behind a wattled hurdle next to the fireplace and had a hearty meal of spit-roasted duck, onions, turnip and beans, served on a thick trencher of two-day-old bread, with extra crusts to dam in the gravy on the scrubbed boards of the table.

Nesta came to sit with him as he ate, bobbing up and down to attend to the various crises that frequently occurred between the potman, her two maids and the customers. Each time she came back to de Wolfe, she screwed up her courage to tell him the dread news about the true paternity of her baby, but each time her tongue cleaved to her palate and she was unable to get the words out. To John she appeared quiet and distant all evening, as he had no inkling of her inability to bring down the heavens upon him with her terrible confession.