The Tinner's Corpse (30 page)

‘God’s bones, Robert, we are all one family here! Your own daughter is married to Peter, so what affects his future affects hers too.’

Courteman wagged his head slowly from side to side, his wattles swaying under his chin. ‘One cannot let personal issues sway the sacred trust of our profession, Matthew,’ he uttered sententiously. ‘However, I will venture so far as to tell you that there is indeed a last will and testament to which Walter Knapman appended his mark in front of me as a witness, and that I will be disclosing its contents to the assembled family, principally his lawful wife Joan, in the very near future.’

‘How near?’ demanded Peter Jordan. ‘Does this mean another journey to Chagford?’

‘No, I have had a message that the widow is coming to Exeter very shortly, together with her mother and brother. I will inform you when the testament will be read, so that you can arrange to be present. If the widow wishes it, it may even be tomorrow.’

And with that the impatient pair had to be content.

Friday, the fifteenth of April, dawned grey and cold on Dartmoor, as if the spring was making up for the relatively mild winter by being spitefully unseasonable. Snow covered the moors, and even in the greener valleys around the edges of the huge wasteland the new buds and peeping flowers were powdered with white. The lowering grey clouds threatened more snow to come, and as Gwyn of Polruan rode his mare down from Wibbery’s manor barton to the town, a few flakes fluttered on the wind that moaned softly around him. The big Cornishman pulled up the hood of his tattered leather shoulder cape and plodded on philosophically, inured to the weather of a dozen countries after years of campaigning.

He was not clear as to why the coroner had left him in Chagford, but for some reason John de Wolfe wanted an eye kept on the tinners and the sheriff until they had all dispersed after the coinage. Judging from the amount of metal left for assaying last evening, Gwyn estimated it would finish by the middle of the day and then he could turn for home and hearth, to be with his wife and children in St Sidwell’s.

There was a livery stable at the near end of the high street and there Gwyn left his mare, knowing that the coroner would reimburse him the halfpenny that shelter and forage would cost. He walked on to the square and, for the next hour or so, stood idly watching the coinage process as it worked its way through the diminishing piles of black tin ingots. Although many miners had already left Chagford after their bars had been coined, there were still plenty of men around and the alehouses were full, as Gwyn discovered when his insatiable hunger and thirst drove him to the Crown for relief. As the coroner had ordered, he eavesdropped on as many conversations as possible and gossiped with a number of men, using his boyhood experience in Cornwall with his father to masquerade as another tinner. However, his efforts produced nothing new, only repetition of anger against Richard de Revelle’s clinging to the Wardenship, complaints about the rate of coinage tax, and the widespread conviction that Aethelfrith the Saxon had been behind Henry’s death and the damage to their tin-workings.

When Gwyn came out of the tavern, the snow had increased markedly. A keen east wind was driving it into little drifts against walls and hedges and the ground was already covered to a depth of a couple of inches. As he tramped back over to the square to see the last of the coinage, his riding boots squeaked hollows into the fresh snow and white flakes lodged in his great moustache.

Under the cover of the enclosure, the assay master and the Controller toiled away with the Steward and Receiver to finish the work, so that they and the tinners might leave for home before the moor became impassable. Another hour went by before the sheriff put in an appearance, together with Geoffrey Fitz-Peters from Lydford. They had stayed in the warmth and comfort of de Prouz’s castle at Gidleigh until Richard de Revelle calculated that the coinage was nearing its end and he could put in a final appearance with the least personal discomfort.

As they all stood watching, and listening to the monotonous rhythm of the hammer, chisel and chanting of the clerks as they repeated the weight and quality of each ingot, Gwyn became gradually aware of a different, more distant noise. Above the undulating soft whistle of the wind, he heard a distant growling. As the minutes went by, it strengthened into the shouting of an angry crowd.

Now the heads of those around him began to lift, as they also sensed the approaching tumult. Even the coinage team stopped work to listen. With the hammering quieted, the shouts of a mob became clear and Gwyn saw the sheriff stiffen and motion to Sergeant Gabriel to bring his men-at-arms closer into the coinage shelter. Only half a dozen soldiers remained: Ralph Morin had left at dawn for Exeter with the rest of the men, not wishing to leave Rougemont Castle bereft of its garrison. With many others, Gwyn stepped out into the swirling snowflakes and began to walk up to the top of the square, where he could look down the street to where the yelling rabble was rapidly approaching.

A crowd of men, perhaps thirty in number, was milling along the manor road, clustered around someone in the centre. As they came nearer, it was clear that they were all tinners, both from their dress and the threatening way they were yelling abuse at whoever was being dragged along among them. Snow plastered their cloaks and hoods, which suggested that they had come down from the high moor, but in their anger and excitement they were oblivious of the weather.

Gabriel appeared alongside him, sent by the sheriff to see what was happening. ‘What in hell is going on, Gwyn?’ he muttered, looking at the approaching mob, who were dragging a man on the end of a rope.

‘I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of it.’

As the mass of men neared the square, the tinners who had just left the coinage were joined by many more flooding out of the alehouses, attracted by the uproar. Some were the worse for drink only half-way through the morning. They shouted questions to the mob, whose answers caused many more to merge into the swirling mass. By the time the crowd turned into the square, there were almost a hundred heads bobbing around, pushing and shoving to see the hapless captive in the centre.

‘You’d better do something about this, Gabriel – and quick!’ growled Gwyn.

‘I’ve only a handful of men – just enough to escort the sheriff over to Lydford,’ said the sergeant, apprehensively.

The rabble now almost filled the small square, jostling its way to the front of the coinage enclosure. Gabriel pushed his way round the edge of the crowd to reach Richard de Revelle, both to guard him and to get some instructions. Gwyn followed him, his huge shoulders barging a way through the agitated mob. A few men rounded on him, but he shoved them aside, his ham-like hands thrusting their chests or even faces out of his path.

The crowd came to a stop at the rope girdling the shelter and rapidly flowed all around it, like flood water encircling an island. When Gwyn got to the rope he could see de Revelle, pallid-faced, pressed alongside the manor lord of Lydford at the end of the shelter. Gabriel and his handful of soldiers clustered around them, their eyes roving around uneasily beneath their basin-like helmets. They wore no chain-mail, except iron plates on the shoulders of their boiled leather cuirasses, and their hands rested nervously on the hilts of their sheathed broadswords.

The assay officers gave up any attempt to continue their work, and as they withdrew to the back of the shelter, there was a sudden movement in the mob and a dishevelled figure was ejected to the front. His hands were lashed behind his back with a rope, the other end grasped by a burly tinner. Two others had dragged him to the front by his arms and now stood alongside him, shaking him roughly by pulls on his wrists. As Gwyn watched, another drunken roughneck left the edge of the crowd, and came to give the prisoner a punch in the face.

‘Here’s the bastard who’s caused all the trouble – and a bloody murderer into the bargain!’ he yelled, and sank back into the crowd.

Now Gwyn could see the victim more clearly, as he stood defiantly facing the shelter, snow spattering his hair and blood running from the corner of his mouth, where the blow had cut his lip.

He was tall and spare to the point of emaciation, with long, tangled grey hair around a gaunt, wild-looking face. Gwyn estimated his age at well over sixty, and in spite of his haggard leanness, he had a leathery hardness that told of his solitary survival on Dartmoor. This could be none other than Aethelfrith, the crazy Saxon – confirmed by the shouts and jeers that came from the mob.

‘Here he is, Sheriff! This is Aethelfrith, God rot him! You’re the Lord Warden, so pronounce his fate to us – or we’ll do it for you!’ yelled the man, a big, black-bearded tinner from near Lydford.

This triggered a fresh outburst of shouting from the crowd, directed as much at de Revelle as at the Saxon, a mixture of jeers and challenge.

The sheriff stood undecided, staring at this unexpected drama. As he seemed tongue-tied, Geoffrey Fitz-Peters, who had his own eye on the Wardenship, stepped forward to confront the tinners. ‘What’s been happening, men? Where did you find this man?’

Aethelfrith was given such a push from behind that he staggered and fell to his knees in the snow. Somehow, though, he kept a stolid dignity, glaring up at Fitz-Peters with silent defiance on his angular face.

‘Caught red-handed this time!’ yelled one of the men who had held his arms. ‘Smashing up one of the settling-troughs with an axe, up at Scorhill on the North Teign, not three miles from the town here!’

‘We’re going to hang him right now, Warden. You can pass that judgement on him, if you like – but hang he will, within the hour, whether you wish it or not,’ boomed Blackbeard.

There was an even louder babble of cries, all bloodthirsty demands for Aethelfrith’s life.

‘He slew Henry of Tunnaford, right enough!’ yelled one. Others screamed that he must also be the killer of their master, Walter Knapman, and yet more yelled that the damage to their stream-works and blowing-houses must be put down to the mad Saxon.

The mood became uglier as each man provoked his neighbours, until the surging mob threatened to break through the coinage rope. Even the supports of the enclosure were shaking with the press of men against them, snow falling off the edges of the flimsy roof. Geoffrey Fitz-Peters judged that this was no time to play either hero or candidate for the Wardenship and he stepped back to where the sheriff was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, with his sergeant and soldiers clustered around him.

‘You’ll have to say something to them, Richard. They’re in an ugly mood,’ he advised, in a low voice. Grasping his arm, he pulled de Revelle forward a few paces and the sheriff had no option but to confront the crowd.

‘What proof have you, men?’ he shouted, over the din. ‘Was he caught actually wreaking damage?’

There was a cacophony of yells, all confirming the Saxon’s guilt. Aethelfrith was now jerked back to his feet by two men on each side of him. He began to say something, but the tinner on his left gave him another punch in the mouth that silenced any confession or denial.

Nervously, de Revelle tried to assess his safest course of action. Already deeply unpopular, he feared that these unruly tinners might turn on him if he crossed them. With only a handful of men-at-arms, a hundred angry moor-men would swamp any resistance, and though he was the county’s law-enforcer, he had no wish to take any chances with his own life and limb against this enraged mob. However, he decided to make a token gesture towards the proper course of justice. ‘If he has done these things, then he should be brought to the Shire Court – or even before the King’s justices,’ he shouted over their heads, conveniently forgetting his usual antipathy to the royal courts. His words were met with derision, and the hisses, catcalls and yelled abuse became even more virulent. The mob surged forward again, and this time the rope was torn from one of the pillars and the front line of men erupted into the coinage enclosure.

De Revelle stepped back rapidly and turned to Fitz-Peters, shrugging his shoulders in desperation. ‘They’ll not listen to reason now,’ he said.

Gwyn watched and listened with increasing anxiety, wishing that the formidable coroner was here to control the situation. In de Wolfe’s absence he felt obliged to do his best and pushed himself along towards the men who were pinioning Aethelfrith.

Before he reached them, his captors started to pummel the old man about the head and chest, yelling at him to confess. At last, the Saxon started to yell back, in a clear, deep voice that held no trace of fear, though he had to spit blood every few words to clear his lips. ‘Aye, you Norman swine, I’ll confess! Confess to being a descendant of the true race who was here before you French bandits came to steal our land! Confess to loving the very ground that we held for centuries. Confess to having watched you bastards kill my son on the moor twenty years ago for trying to claim his own stake in the tinning!’ He got no further, as someone struck him with a club on the side of the head, a blow that sent Aethelfrith staggering, held up only by his tormentors.

This was too much for Gwyn and, with a roar like a bull, he drove his way forward and tore the club from the hand of the assailant. ‘Stop this!’ he boomed. ‘Every man deserves a fair hearing before he’s condemned.’

‘Who the hell d’you think you are?’ screamed an enraged Blackbeard.

‘The coroner’s officer – King Richard’s coroner!’ Gwyn looked a formidable figure, topping most of the tinners – many of whom were big men – by half a head. But their mood was so inflamed that they took unkindly to any interference.

‘Get out of the way, man, this is not crowner’s business. These are the Stannaries, and we are a law unto ourselves,’ snarled one of the men who was gripping the Saxon.

‘Not where it concerns life or limb. The King’s law runs there and well you know it. Ask the sheriff – he’ll tell you.’ Gwyn turned to wave an arm at where de Revelle skulked at the end of the enclosure.