Figure of Hate (21 page)

There were Peverels in a number of areas, from the Derbyshire peaks to farther down in Devon. The reeve gave a running commentary on the fertility of the rolling slopes on which the village was sited, local pride evident in his voice as he extolled the abundant crops and beasts that could be grown and tended here in good years. It was his job to organise the tilling of the fields and the ordering of labour that kept the economy of the manor in good shape. He grimly added a caveat - to the prosperity of Sampford, however, as the first dwellings and the church came in sight.

'A pity the goodness of the soil is not matched by the contentment of its people,' he growled obscurely.

Then, perhaps realising that for an unfree villein he had said too much in the presence of another Norman knight, he quickly changed the subject. Pointing at the squat wooden building coming up on the right-hand side of the track, he said, 'Our last master, Sir William, was going to rebuild the church in stone, but the good Lord took him before he could begin.'

A low dry-stone wall surrounded the churchyard, in which a few old yew trees stood among the grassy grave mounds, several of which had rough wooden crosses at their head. The church was a small oblong with a bell arch sticking up at the west end of the thatched roof, tattered from the previous winter's storms. A porch just big enough to hold a coffin and four bearers was stuck on to the south wall, from which loud voices could be heard as they reined in at the churchyard gate.

'What the hell's going on?' grunted Gwyn, as first shouting and cursing from several different voices then a feminine scream could be heard.

'Strange language for the house of God!' agreed the coroner, throwing his leg over Odin's broad back to dismount.

'Disgraceful profanity, that's what it isl' squeaked Thomas de Peyne, crossing himself energetically as the yelling increased from inside the church.

As the four men pushed through the small gate, the reeve hurried ahead, fearful of what he might find in his village church. A new voice erupted from the porch, in broad accents that John and Gwyn easily recognised as Irish, from their time fighting in that island.

'This surely is sacrilege and a grave offence against God and the Holy Church! Be assured that the archdeacon and the bishop will hear of this!' As a blasphemous reply came to the effect that if the speaker wanted to keep his comfortable living he had best keep his mouth shut, a struggling knot of people erupted from the porch, watched by the bemused group from Exeter: A bare-footed young girl in a patched dress was squirming like an eel in the grip of two men, one of whom John recognised as the armourer he wanted to question about the death of the silversmith. The other was dressed in green and the coroner correctly identified him as a hunt-master.

Hanging on to the back of the girl's thin smock was a fat man with a priest's cassock and a shaven tonsure, still bewailing the sacrilege of breaking sanctuary and threatening every penalty from excommunication to being struck by a thunderbolt. The coroner loped forward until his predatory features loomed closely over the two men dragging the girl.

'Let the child be, damn you! What's going on here?' he rasped.

Agnes stopped yelling and looked up in terrified awe at this black-clad apparition from outside the village.

Was she to be executed on the spot by this man, who looked like a gigantic hooded crow? Before she could find her tongue, a chorus of voices burst out from around John.

'These accursed souls are dragging her from God's holy sanctuary!' squawked the fat Irishman, blue eyes watering in his round, red face.

'What the bloody hell are you about, lads?' demanded Warin Fishacre.

'Just doing what Sir Ralph ordered!' shouted the hound-master. 'Or was it Sir Odo? Anyway, we was told to get her out of here and bring her to the hall.'
 

'I didn't do nothing, honest!' screeched the washgirl. 'I was scared when I heard what had happened, knew I'd get the bloody blame and they'd hang me!'
 

De Wolfe held up his hands, his wolfskin cloak falling back like the wings of some huge bat. 'Be quiet, all of you!' he roared, then stabbed a long finger at the priest.

'You, Father - tell me what this is all about.' Before Patrick, the village priest, could open his mouth, there was a deep, authoritative voice from behind them.

'I presume you are Sir John de Wolfe. You are welcome to my manor, sir, though I regret that such a sad event brings you to us.'

John turned to see half a dozen men coming down from the churchyard gate. The speaker, a tall man with a mournful Peverel face, was almost jostled for first place on the narrow path by a younger man whom he recognised as the brother who had been with Hugo Peverel outside the New Inn in Exeter when he had challenged them over the suspect armourer. But what immediately caught his eye was the all-too-familiar figure behind Odo Peverel.

'Oh, Mary, mother of God!' he groaned under his breath, as he saw his brother-in-law, Richard de Revelle.

Chapter Seven
 

In which Crowner John is frustrated beyond measure

The castle brooded at the top of Winchester's High Street like a massive grey hen sitting on a nest of buildings. A circular room in one of the towers was used by the Chief Justiciar as his official chamber when he was in the city, which shared with London the functions of England's capital. Though Hubert Walter was also Archbishop of Canterbury, his episcopal duties played second fiddle to the virtual running of the country, as he was regent of England in all but name. A soldier as much as a priest, he had been left to bring back the English Crusaders from the Holy Land after the King had left on his ill-fated voyage home, but on reaching Sicily he heard that Richard had been imprisoned in Austria and Germany. Hubert hurried to visit him there, then returned to England to help retrieve the situation, mainly by devising schemes to raise money and to keep the peace in a troubled country where Prince John was fomenting rebellion.

As he sat behind his parchment-cluttered table, he took a moment to stare absently through a window slit at a patch of cold blue October sky and wonder why he was so devoted to his king, Richard with the lion's heart. He accepted that the man was selfish, arrogant, greedy and often cruel, but he could also be charming, recklessly generous and ridiculously forgiving, as he been towards his brother John after his failed rebellion. As a monarch, Richard's main concern was with France, and though he had been born in Oxford, England remained nothing more than a colony to him, from which he could extort taxes and men to support his campaigns in Palestine and France. Richard had never bothered to learn to speak English, his queen, Berengaria, had never set foot in the country, and after spending only four months of his reign in England it seemed certain that he would never return, leaving Hubert to administer the realm and raise the vast sums that were needed to pay off his ransom and finance his armies. The justiciar had been thinking a few moments ago of his old fellow campaigner, John de Wolfe, another example of the blind loyalty that the monarch seemed able to engender in the most unromantic of people.

Black John was not over-endowed with either imagination or much of a sense of humour, but was brave to the point of foolhardiness and almost painfully trustworthy.

It was these qualities which had decided Hubert, with the full approval of the King, to set John up as coroner in Devon, where he could keep an eye on that scheming potential traitor Richard de Revelle and the band of incipient rebels clustered around Bishop Henry Marshal and some of the barons, such as the de la Pomeroys. The threat posed by Prince John seemed to have abated recently, but it was essential to keep a reliable pair of eyes and ears open down in the West to forestall any secret plots. The recent removal of de Revelle as sheriff made things easier, thought the justiciar - but he doubted that the man's political ambitions had evaporated, and he must still be watched.

A chancery clerk came in with a fresh bundle of manuscripts and laid them on a corner of the table.

'These have just come from Shrewsbury and Chester, your Grace,' he said in an oily voice. Sliding the strap of a leather pouch from his shoulder, he laid it before the archbishop with something akin to reverence.

'And this has arrived from Portsmouth, on the latest cog from Harfleur.'

After he had bowed himself out, a habit that always irritated the blunt-natured Hubert, the justiciar opened the pouch and took out a parchment roll from which dangled the heavy royal seal. Cutting the tapes and cords with a dagger that he had personally taken from the body of a slain Saracen, he settled back and read the latest missive from the court at Rouen. Some of it was in the King's own hand, for, unlike some of his royal forebears, Richard could wield a quill almost as well as a sword.

Hubert sat for some time reading the bulky dispatches, his brow furrowing from time to time as some particularly difficult problem was propounded.

He was a lean, wiry man, and dressed in a plain grey tunic he looked quite unlike the usual over-fed, overdressed prelate, the only concession to his religious stares being a small silver cross hanging around his neck. Eventually, he got to the end of the roll and dropped it back on to the table, reaching instead for a jug of wine and a pewter cup.

Sipping the rich red blood of the Loire valley, he stared again through the embrasure, though his thoughts were far from the streak of sky visible through the slit. As he mulled over the contents of the missive from the King, his mind's eye travelled westwards to Wales, and then once again settled on the dark stubble and forbidding features of the ever faithful John de Wolfe.

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The group of newcomers stood blocking the path to the churchyard gate, glowering at the coroner's trio, who had turned to face them.

'There's nothing in this for you, John. You were sent for in error, there was some misunderstanding on the part of the bailiff.'

De Revelle's voice was haughty and condescending, as if he were still the sheriff, dismissing some servant.

'And what misunderstanding can occur over the murder of a manor-lord, Richard? Can you mean that Hugo Peverel is still alive?'

John's tone was deceptively mild as he tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but privately he was livid that this bloody man had turned up to haunt him, after he had thought he had got rid of him for ever.

They were still standing outside the church porch, the girl now having ceased wriggling in the grip of her captors, her eyes round with bemusement as she found herself the centre of attention of all these high-born men. Richard had pushed himself to the fore and stood between Ralph and Odo, as if he were the new lord Of Sampford rather than one of the Peverels. Joel stepped up on to an old grave mound to stand on Odo's left while behind them the bailiff and steward waited anxiously to see the outcome of this confrontation.

Outside the gate, a cluster of villagers were gathering, mouths agape as the events of this dramatic day continued to unfold.

Odo's measured words attempted to reduce the tension that was becoming as tight as a drawn bowstring.

'We did not intend to bother you with this matter, Sir John. It's a long ride from Exeter and this is a matter that our manor can deal with. You will appreciate that the circumstances of my brother's death are not those which we would want broadcast around the county.'

Ralph hurriedly forced his own opinion into the dialogue.

'I want no outside interference, Crowner, this is purely a family issue!'

His words were less gracious than those of his more mature elder brother and he substituted 'I' for 'we' in his relentless pursuit of the inheritance.

De Wolfe scowled at them both, resenting Ralph's rudeness.

'What you may want is of no consequence! It is the King's peace that rules us all, whether you like it or not. Unless any of you are minded to defy the laws of King Richard and his council?'

He turned his glare full on to de Revelle, and no one was in any doubt as to his insinuation about the former sheriff's political leanings.

'What are you doing here, may I ask?' he snapped.

'You no longer have any official authority.' Richard's thick skin allowed him to continue as if he were still in charge and the coroner was the interloper.

'Though it's none of your business, John, I am here as a friend and neighbour at the express invitation of the Peverel family. They naturally thought that my experience of such crises might be of help to them.' John had to bite his tongue to prevent himself from observing that his brother-in-law had not the slightest experience of dealing with sudden deaths, having been content when sheriff to4et others do all the dirty work, while he remained in his chamber thinking up more ways of embezzling from the county taxes. Drowning his irritation with a deep breath, he turned to Odo, .

who, though he had never met him before, he already recognised as the most reasonable of the brothers.

'Sir, will you tell me what exactly has been happening here? I have had only the bare bones of the matter from your reeve.'

Forestalling Ralph, the elder Peverel explained how Hugo had gone missing the previous evening and had eventually been found hidden under the hay in the ox byre, with savage Wounds in his back. With neither of the ladies present, -he felt less inhibited in explaining the circumstances.