Crowner Royal (Crowner John Mysteries) (32 page)

It was blessedly cool when he awoke a few hours later. The world seemed fresher and the birds were chirruping again, after having been driven into hiding by the storm. De Wolfe felt better than he had for days in that enervating heat and decided to celebrate by having a shave, two days earlier than his normal weekly scrape. In the backyard, Osanna gave him a few quarts of warm water in a wooden bucket and a lump of grey soap, made from goat fat, soda and wood ash. Stripped to the waist, he managed to get a meagre lather on to his black bristles and scratched at them with a small knife that he kept for the purpose, made of Saracen steel honed to a fine edge.

In his new mood of determined optimism, his thoughts turned to Hawise d’Ayncourt, the siren of Westminster. He was ambivalent about her, knowing full well that he should avoid any involvement with a woman he knew could be dangerous to him. Yet her sultry beauty and obvious availability was both an attraction and a challenge. He decided that if the opportunity was handed to him on a platter, it would be stupid and churlish to turn it down – but he also felt that he should do what he could to avoid such an opportunity arising by staying out of her way and not supping at the Lesser Hall.

This noble thought lasted less than five minutes, for as he wiped the last of the lather from his face with a cloth, he rebelled at such craven behaviour. He enjoyed the company of Ranulf of Abingdon and young William Aubrey, so why should he, a knight, a Crusader and a royal law officer, be frightened off by a woman, attractive though she was.

With a flourish of his towel cloth, he decided to demand a clean tunic from Osanna, who did his washing as part of the bed and board that he paid her for. She was still a little surly, but was coming round and gave him a grey tunic that she had earlier thrown over an elder bush in the yard, where she dried her washing until the rain came. He dressed, then sat with a quart pot in the main room and waited for Gwyn to return. When he arrived, he had some news.

‘The old queen has arrived at Portsmouth. William Aubrey has already rushed off with a troop of men-at-arms to join the escort and help organize the transport. She should be arriving at Westminster in about five days’ time.’

It seemed that Ranulf had remained in the palace, rather than travel to the coast, which reinforced John’s intention to take his supper in the Lesser Hall to hear the latest news. He arrived early enough to stand with a few dozen other patrons and hear a short passage from the Gospels and then a long Latin grace, this night being delivered by Archdeacon Bernard de Montfort. John was somewhat piqued to find that Hawise and her dumpy husband were not present. After having summoned up his bravado to face her after their brief but passionate embrace, he felt rather deflated at being deprived of a challenge.

Ranulf was there, with Sir Martin Stanford, the Deputy Marshal of the palace. When Bernard de Montfort came back from the lectern where he had read the lesson, he slid on to the bench next to John. ‘Have to sing for my supper now and then,’ he said jocularly. ‘Though thank heaven there are enough clerics in this place to make it not too often.’

As they ate their supper and drank their ale and wine, the talk naturally centred around the impending arrival of Eleanor of Aquitaine, as she was still thought of by many of the older folk.

‘Why have you not rushed off to Portsmouth to join her procession?’ asked the archdeacon, addressing the men from the Marshalsea.

‘I’ve just sent almost half of my contingent down there,’ explained Martin Stanford. ‘The rest I need for organising the move to Gloucester, which is a far bigger operation.’

He and Ranulf described the complicated procedure of trundling the whole court across the southern half of England. ‘The Purveyors have already been sent out along the route,’ said Stanford. ‘Unwelcome though they are to the population, they have to arrange accommodation and procure food for the travellers and fodder for the livestock.’

‘It’ll be something to occupy Hugo de Molis – he certainly doesn’t strain himself when we are here in Westminster,’ observed Ranulf cynically.

John turned to the genial priest from the Auvergne. ‘What about you, archdeacon? I take it you won’t be travelling with us, given that you are concerned with researching the abbey’s history here?’

His unfortunate harelip twisted Bernard’s mouth as he smiled.

‘Oh no, I’m going down to Canterbury again. I need to consult some obscure manuscripts said to be held in the scriptorium of the cathedral, so I’ll make a visit there while the queen is engaged with her business at Gloucester.’

‘Travelling alone can be a dangerous business, sir,’ warned Martin Stanford. ‘Best go with a party of pilgrims, they leave from Southwark almost every day.’

De Montfort was benignly reassuring. ‘I will have my servant Raoul with me. No doubt you have noticed that he has a frightening look about him, though in fact he is intelligent and can read and write, as well as handle a sword and mace!’

They ate their way through boiled salmon, roast duck and some slices of venison from the royal forest beyond Twickenham, finishing with a suet pudding studded with French raisins.

‘Where is Renaud de Seigneur and his lovely wife tonight?’ asked Ranulf innocently, as he nudged de Wolfe meaningfully beneath the table.

‘I understand that Lady Hawise is suffering from some slight indisposition today, so they are keeping to their chambers upstairs,’ confided Bernard de Mont-fort.

Is the woman lying low in order to avoid meeting him after their frustrated encounter? thought John. On consideration, he felt it was unlikely, given the brazen nature of Hawise. Relieved, but also disappointed at her absence, he turned the conversation back to the main topic.

‘So, Ranulf, when are we setting off on this crusade to the West Country?’

‘The queen is likely to arrive here at the end of this week. Give her a few days to rest, which will include Hubert Walter’s welcoming feast in the Great Hall, then I expect our wagons will start rolling towards the middle of next week.’

Another week of inaction, sighed de Wolfe, but at least he now had a date to look forward to, which might lead to a quick visit to Exeter – and perhaps even to Dawlish.

John left the Lesser Hall after supper and strolled towards the Deacon tavern, where he was confident of finding Gwyn behind a quart pot. He was surprised to see a small figure in a black cassock lurking uneasily outside the alehouse door.

‘What brings you here, Thomas? Have you taken up drink at last?’

His clerk squirmed with embarrassment, but jerked a finger at the door. ‘I guessed that Cornish barbarian would be in there, Crowner. But it’s you I wanted to find and Gwyn said that you would probably call in after your supper.’

The priest’s pinched face was glowing with suppressed excitement at being able to once again bring his master some information. ‘That secondary, Robin Byard, the one who told us about Basil’s fears of overhearing some conspirators, spoke to me again in the abbey refectory tonight.’

John waited impatiently for Thomas to be more specific.

‘He said that when Basil was in fear of his life, he told him that if anything happened to him, he wanted Robin to have the only book he possessed, a small copy of the Gospel of St Luke.’

De Wolfe scowled at his clerk.

‘What’s this got to do with anything, for God’s sake?’

At the mention of the ultimate name, Thomas jerked automatically into crossing himself, but then ploughed on with his explanation. ‘Robin has just found a scrap of parchment tucked behind the back cover of the book, which has worried him so much that he feels it should be shown to someone in authority.’

‘What does this scrap reveal?’

Thomas turned up his hands in a gesture of ignorance. ‘I’ve not seen it, Crowner. Robin, who is quite solicitous about my welfare, says he doesn’t want to put me in any danger by involving me. But I told him he must show it to you, so he’s bringing it over to our chamber in the palace tomorrow morning after Lauds.’

The expected revelation turned out to be a disappointment.

When the aspiring young priest arrived at their office next day, he was clutching a small, tattered book as if it was the Holy Grail. The illiterate coroner motioned to Thomas to have a look at it and whilst he was doing so de Wolfe had a question for Robin Byard.

‘Did Basil say anything to you about this loose page in the book?’

The young fellow shook his head miserably. ‘Not a word! I feel sure that he came across it after he had told me of overhearing this seditious conversation. In fact, I think he found it shortly before he was so cruelly killed.’ He promptly burst into tears, to John’s profound discomfiture, so the coroner turned back to his clerk.

‘Well, what do you make of it?’ he demanded.

‘It’s a well-used copy of a Gospel, one of a cheap version turned out for sale by the hundred in monastery scriptoria.’

‘I don’t care about the damned Gospel,’ snapped John blasphemously. ‘What about this message?’

Thomas held up a ragged square of parchment, the size of his palm. ‘Not very exciting,’ he said with a crestfallen expression.

‘It has some names and numbers and a date at the top, that’s about all.’

The coroner snatched it from his fingers and though he could not read the words, he could decipher the numerals written on the cured sheepskin. Even to his inexpert eyes, the inked letters seemed fresh and crisp. It was obviously not a letter or a message, the words being scattered about the page almost at random. He handed it back to Thomas.

‘So what do you make of it?’

Thomas peered again at the parchment, moving it up and down until his long nose almost touched the surface.

‘It was recently written, as it starts with a date. The eighteenth day of June in the seventh year of the reign of King Richard.’

John frowned. ‘That suggests that whoever wrote it was not a subject of our Crown. It is usual for words such as “our Sovereign Lord King Richard” to be used.’

Thomas nodded his agreement, though privately he felt that this was not a very safe assumption in informal documents.

‘It then has various words dotted around the page, as if they were written hurriedly or in difficult circumstances. They make little sense to me, but some are placenames. There is Sandwich, Dover, Rye and Saltwood. Some have numbers after them, including one-hundred, two-hundred, and one of five hundred. But after Dover there is only the word “twelve”.’

‘What are the other words?’

‘They seem to be personal names – Arundel, de Montfort, Mowbray, fitz Gilbert.’

There was silence as they all digested these obscure facts.

‘Robin, are those words written in your friend’s hand?’ asked de Wolfe.

The secondary immediately shook his head. Sniffing back his tears, he said, ‘Nothing like it, sir. He had immaculate script, of which he was proud. These are just scribbles compared to his.’

Gwyn, with his maritime knowledge from his time as a fisherman, pointed out the obvious. ‘All those places are on the coast, most of them actual ports.’

‘And on the coast of Kent or Sussex,’ added Thomas, not to be outdone by a Cornish barbarian. ‘And the names sound as if they could be manor-lords.’

De Wolfe rubbed his chin, missing the stubble that he had recently removed. ‘It’s suggestive of some interest in the coast facing France,’ he admitted. ‘But what do the numbers mean?’

‘Could they be ships of war?’ said Gwyn. ‘There are twelve at Dover.’

‘There would hardly be five hundred ships at Rye!’ objected Thomas.

‘Then ships or men-at-arms,’ suggested Gwyn, determined not to be bested by the priest.

The coroner ignored their banter, but agreed that this could be some form of intelligence about coastal defences. ‘But where did this Basil fellow get it? And more importantly, who wrote it?’

‘Given what he said to me about overhearing suspicious conversation, and the fact that he spent almost all his time in the palace guest chambers, that seems the most likely place for him to have found it,’ offered Robin Byard.

As Thomas handed him back the precious Gospel, John carefully folded the piece of parchment into his scrip. ‘I’ll have to show this to Hubert Walter, though I’m sure he has other things on his mind at the moment.’ As he did up the buckle to his pouch, another possibility occurred to him.

‘And maybe I’ll use it as a bluff to flush out the culprits!’

De Wolfe was unable to consult the Chief Justiciar that day, as Hubert had gone early into the city and according to one of his secretaries, would spend the night at the Tower. John thought facetiously that he might be putting Herbert de Mandeville to the torture, to get him to confess to the theft of the treasure, but in reality he knew that Herbert was an unlikely culprit.

Late in the afternoon, as John was crossing New Palace Yard, he stopped to contemplate the small landing stage and to wonder whether he would ever discover who killed Basil of Reigate there. A moment later, he realized that a wherry was landing two familiar figures, Renaud de Seigneur and his beautiful wife.

His instinct was to walk quickly away, but he was too late as Hawise waved gaily to him and John had to stand his ground until they came up to him. In the cooler weather since the storm, she was wearing a light mantle over her gown of cream linen. Her dark hair was confined by a silver net into tight coils over each ear, over which was thrown a diaphanous veil of white samite.