Any attempt in historical novels to give modern English dialogue an ‘olde worlde’ flavour, is as inaccurate as it is futile. In the time and place of this story, late twelfth-century Devon, most people would have spoken early Middle English, which would be quite unintelligible to us today. Many others spoke western Welsh, later called Cornish, and the ruling classes would have spoken Norman-French. The language of the Church and virtually all official writing was Latin.

Many of the characters actually existed and the contemporary political and religious events alluded to are authentic – piracy was rife around the coasts of England, Prince John was constantly plotting against his brother Richard the Lion-Heart and the Inquisition was getting under way in France.

The author leaves it to readers to put whatever credence they wish on the substance of the Awful Secret, but for those who may have a further interest in the subject, some sources are suggested at the end of the book.

The author would like to thank the following for historical advice, though reserving the blame for any misapprehensions about the complexities of life and law in twelfth century Devon; Mrs Angela Doughty, Exeter Cathedral Archivist; the staff of Devon Record Office and of Exeter Central Library; Mr Stuart Blaylock, Exeter Archaeology; Rev Canon Mawson, Exeter Cathedral; Mr Thomas Watkin, Cardiff Law School, University of Wales; Professor Nicholas Orme, University of Exeter; to copy-editor Hazel Orme and to Gillian Holmes and Clare Ledingham of Simon & Schuster for their continued encouragement and support.

ABJURER

A criminal or accused person who sought sanctuary in a church and then elected to ‘abjure the realm of England for ever’ to avoid being hanged, by confessing to the coroner. He had up to forty days sanctuary, then had to proceed on foot, dressed in sackcloth and carrying a wooden cross, to a port nominated by the coroner and take the first ship available. If there was a delay, he had to wade out up to his knees at every tide, to show his willingness to leave.

March 1195

‘At last, Gwyn! I can do it without that bloody box!’

Later, John de Wolfe thought how strange it was that he should be so exultant at such a little thing, which would never have crossed his mind two months ago. Yet, in Martin’s Lane that morning, he was as pleased as a child with a new toy. The two men who watched him seemed just as delighted, but his servant Mary, who watched from the doorway of his house opposite, clucked under her breath at the infantile antics of three grown men.

The ‘bloody box’ was a set of crude wooden steps knocked together by Gwyn of Polruan. It had done sterling service for the past two weeks, in allowing de Wolfe to climb up on to his new horse, Odin. But this morning he had been able to discard Gwyn’s invention and put his whole weight on his injured left leg to lift the other into the stirrup. Now he sat solidly on the back of the patient stallion, a grin spreading across his normally stern face.

‘You’d better carry this crook for the time being, Crowner,’ advised Gwyn, the shaggy red-headed giant of a Cornishman who had been his henchman for almost twenty years. He handed up a walking stick, which de Wolfe had been using since he threw away his crutch three weeks earlier, and the coroner pranced the stallion up and down the lane for a few yards, turning and weaving in pure pleasure. Although he had been riding for the past ten days, the fact that he could now mount his own horse without climbing steps made him feel independent at last.

Mary shook her dark hair in mock despair and vanished into the nether regions of the house to cook the midday meal. Secretly she was as pleased as the men outside that her master was not only almost back to full physical fitness but that he should have lost his snarling frustration at being housebound for so many weeks.

It was in early January that he had broken his leg on the tourney field at Bull Mead. In his dying moments, de Wolfe’s beloved old horse, Bran, had pitched him to the ground. The coroner’s shin-bone had snapped, but thankfully it was a clean break, and Gwyn’s prompt action in lashing the leg to a plank with leather straps had kept it in a good position. The Cornishman had seen this done by the Knights Hospitaller in Palestine, and with the constant help of Brother Saulf, a monk from the little hospital of St John up near Exeter’s East Gate, the leg had mended rapidly. De Wolfe’s tough physique, hardened by years of soldiering, together with his wife Matilda’s relentless if grim-faced nursing, had had him back on his feet in three weeks.

Now, two months later, he was riding his horse again. ‘I’ll take him up to the castle, Gwyn,’ he called, and walked the black stallion up the narrow lane to the high street. His officer trotted alongside, his shaggy hair bouncing over the collar of his frayed leather cape.

As de Wolfe pushed his way through the crowded main street, thronged with people shopping at the stalls on each side and with carts and barrows jostling for passage, he was assailed by greetings, mostly congratulating him on his return to health. An early spring was in the air and, though it was cold, there was a clear pale blue sky overhead while the lack of rain for a week had allowed the usual slush of garbage underfoot to dry to a crumbly paste.

The houses and shops in the main thoroughfare were of all shapes and sizes, mostly wooden, but a few were now built in stone. Most were tall and narrow, crammed together like peas in a pod. Some had straw thatch, some crude turf, some wooden shingle roofs and others stone tiles. Hazy smoke filtered from under the eaves of most dwellings, only a few having new-fangled chimneys.

Suddenly, as he plodded sedately through the crowded street, he felt a prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck. Though not an imaginative man, de Wolfe knew from the experience of many an ambush that he was being watched. It was a sixth sense, an occult gift that had saved his life a few times in the French and Irish campaigns, as well as in Palestine. He had felt it yesterday when coming home from the tavern and had glimpsed a face peering around a wall, the man vanishing almost instantly as John turned in his direction. The features had seemed vaguely familiar, but despite racking his brains, he failed to recall who it might have been.

Now, again, he looked about him and once more the same face gazed fleetingly at him from the steps of St Lawrence. A split second later, the man, enveloped in a dark mantle, turned and vanished into the church. De Wolfe knew that if the fellow had no wish to be accosted he would have melted away by the time he slowly got himself down off Odin. He cudgelled his memory to recall the identity of that face so briefly seen, but still nothing came to mind. He shrugged and urged the stallion on again. It seemed unlikely that the man was an assassin – though there had been a plot against him a couple of months ago. Hopefully that was all over now.

A hundred yards short of the East Gate, John hauled his steed around to the left and walked him up the slope towards the castle, perched at the top corner of the city. From the ruddy colour of its local sandstone, it was always known as Rougemont, built by the Conqueror in the northern corner of the old Roman walls. Passing through an open gate in a wooden stockade, de Wolfe rode into the large outer ward, where the huts of the soldiers and their families half covered the slope to the inner fortifications. A few yards more and he came to the tall gatehouse where he had a cramped chamber on the top floor.

The solitary guard on the steep drawbridge saluted de Wolfe with a lift of his spear as he passed under the gateway and stopped opposite the low door of the guardroom. Immediately, a man-at-arms with a badge of seniority on his leather jerkin emerged, his craggy face softening into a grin of welcome. ‘Glad to see you, Crowner! How’s the leg today?’

De Wolfe looked down at Gabriel, the sergeant of the castle guard, an old friend and covert sympathiser in his running feud with the sheriff, his brother-in-law, Sir Richard de Revelle. ‘Better and better, Gabriel! For the first time I can mount my horse from the ground.’

To demonstrate his prowess in reverse, John lowered himself carefully from the stallion’s back and, with the stick in his left hand, limped resolutely into the guardroom and across to the foot of the narrow, twisting stairs that led to the upper storey. Gwyn and Gabriel stood behind him, looking anxious as he began the ascent. On the third step he slipped and only Gwyn’s brawny arms saved him from falling backwards out of the stairway entrance.

De Wolfe swore fluently, including a few Saracen oaths in his frustration, but had to admit that he was not yet ready to get up to his chamber. ‘It’s this twice-accursed stick, it gets in the way!’ he fumed. ‘We’ll have to have some other room at ground level.’

Leaving Odin at the guardhouse, he set off across the littered mud of the inner ward towards the keep that sheltered against the far wall. ‘Stay and watch my horse, Gwyn,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’m off to badger the sheriff for a new chamber.’

With his stick prodding the earth at every step, his strengthening leg made good progress across the triangular area inside the high, crenellated walls. On his left was the bare stone box of the Shire Hall, the courthouse where he held most of his city inquests, and on his right, the tiny garrison chapel of St Mary. All around the inside of the walls were huts, sheds and lean-to shanties; some were living quarters for soldiers and a few families, others storehouses, stables and cart-sheds. The keep was a squat, two-storey building over an undercroft, which housed the castle gaol. The two upper floors contained the hall, and chambers for the sheriff, the constable, a number of clerks, servants and a few knights and squires.

Richard de Revelle lived here for much of the time, going home to his manors at Revelstoke near Plympton and another near Tiverton, where his sour-faced wife spent all her time, not deigning to reside in the admittedly Spartan quarters of Rougemont. John suspected – indeed, he had had the proof of his own eyes – that his brother-in-law preferred the cold chambers of the castle to the company of his spouse: there, he could indulge his liking for ladies of the town when she was well out of sight.

De Wolfe clumped up the wooden steps to the door of the keep, the man-at-arms on duty giving him a smiling salute. The coroner was a popular man amongst soldiers, both from his reputation as a seasoned Crusader and for being a staunch supporter and personal friend of their king, Richard the Lionheart.

The guard watched him limp through the arched doorway at the head of the steps, a tall, lean figure, always dressed in black or grey. With raven hair down to his shoulders, thick black eyebrows and habitual dark stubble on his beardless face, the soldier could well believe that he had been known as ‘Black John’ by the troops in the Irish wars and the Crusades. With his slight stoop, head pushed forward and the long, lean face with the great hooked nose, he looked like some predatory bird of prey, a crow or raven.

Most of the middle floor of the keep was taken up by the hall, a jostling, bustling vault where clerks and merchants ambled about with their parchments, servants carried food to tables against the walls and others stood around the great hearth, gossiping and scheming. The coroner ignored them and stumped across to a small door, his stick tapping on the flagstones. Another man-at-arms stood sentinel, though this was mainly from the sheriff’s need to show off his own importance rather than for security. Rougemont had not heard a weapon clashed in battle for over fifty years, since the siege in the time of Stephen and Matilda.

Nodding to the guard, John pushed open the door and walked into the sheriff’s office. De Revelle’s private rooms were behind it, but this was his official chamber, where he conducted the business of being the king’s representative for the county of Devon – which job that he was currently hanging on to by the skin of his teeth, since his recent exposure by de Wolfe as having been involved in the abortive rebellion by Prince John against King Richard.

Richard de Revelle raised his eyes from the parchments on his table and scowled when he saw who had entered. A slight, neat, rather dandified man, he was in no position to antagonize his brother-in-law who, together with the powerful loyalist faction in the county, was keeping a close eye on him. After a muttered greeting, which failed to include any enquiry as to the state of de Wolfe’s leg, the sheriff threw a curled piece of vellum across the trestle towards him. ‘What do you think of that, Crowner?’ he snapped, his small pointed beard jutting forwards pugnaciously.

De Wolfe knew that the other had not the slightest interest in his opinion on the document and that he was merely trying to score a petty advantage: the sheriff could read and write fluently, whilst the soldier-coroner had never been to school. But for the first time, he was able to turn the tables on his unpleasant brother-in-law. He picked up the parchment with studied nonchalance and scanned it. Though half guessing, he was soon able to throw down the sheet and turn his deep-set dark eyes to the other man’s face. ‘Nothing new in that! They’ve tried before to take possession of the island, but were repulsed. No one can get a foothold there without an army, not even the Templars.’

The sheriff scowled again, his narrow face growing rather pink above his thin moustache. ‘Well done, John! I had heard you were having lessons from the cathedral canons,’ he said patronizingly.

De Wolfe grinned. ‘Being housebound for nearly two months gave my clerk the chance he’d been waiting for – daily lessons in reading and writing.’

De Revelle jabbed a ringed finger towards the parchment. ‘You must have known these Knights of the Temple better than most when you were in Outremer. Are they going to let William de Marisco thumb his nose at them for ever? They’ve been granted Lundy for years, but the bastard repels them every time they try to land.’

The coroner sat on the edge of the sheriff’s table, to take the weight off his leg. ‘They’re a mixed bunch, the Templars. Many are obsessional fighters, like the Lionheart himself, which is why he respects them so much. A few are mad, I think. They can be reckless to the point of insanity, just like some of the Muhammadans they admire, even though we’re enemies.’

He shifted his stick on the flags, his mind far away in the dust of the Holy Land. ‘I have seen them act as if they actually sought a glorious death, in suicidal attacks, sometimes unnecessary. Yet more and more of the Templars have become soft, especially those who remain in Europe and never venture to the Levant.’

On safe ground, away from the sensitive topic of Prince John, the sheriff nodded sagely. ‘They’ve moved a long way from their origins as Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. Now they’re the richest Order in Christendom, with huge estates and able to lend money to kings.’

De Wolfe shrugged, a favourite response: he was the most taciturn of men.

His brother-in-law picked up the document and read it again gloomily. ‘I hope they don’t expect me to do anything about this. I don’t fancy sending a few men in small boats to try to winkle de Marisco from his rock.’

‘Let the bloody Templars do their own dirty work,’ advised the coroner gruffly. ‘If the king has granted them Lundy, it’s up to them to install themselves.’ He cleared his throat, another mannerism, which heralded a change of subject. ‘I need another chamber, Richard, for my official business. I can’t get up to the top of that cursed gatehouse until my leg improves even more. You must have space somewhere lower down.’

It took five minutes of arguing and demanding before the reluctant sheriff, pleading shortage of accommodation in the crowded garrison, conceded him a small storeroom in the undercroft, on condition it was strictly a temporary lease. The coroner’s original room in the gatehouse had been as inconvenient as de Revelle could make it, a token of his disapproval of the introduction of de Wolfe’s appointment six months before. Previously, he had had absolute authority over every aspect of the law in Devon, which had given him ample opportunity for dishonesty and corruption. Like most of his fellow sheriffs, he strongly resented having another senior law officer poking his nose into his business and taking away both part of his power and the financial pickings that went with it. But the coroners had been appointed on behalf of the Lionheart by his wily Chief Justiciar, Hubert Walter, for the very purpose of collecting every penny for the royal treasury, impoverished by Richard’s costly wars. Much of this money-gathering was to be achieved by combating the rapacity of the sheriffs and de Revelle had had no choice but to accept the royal command. He had supported the appointment of his sister’s husband, partly because of her nagging but also because he thought that he would be able to keep his relative-by-marriage under his thumb – a hope that proved very much in error.

De Wolfe hauled himself from the table and tapped his way to the door. ‘I’ll go down to inspect this closet you’ve so graciously offered me,’ he grunted sarcastically. ‘Gwyn and Gabriel can move my table and stool down there. It’s all the furniture the King’s coroner possesses for his duties!’

With that parting sally, he limped out of the chamber, leaving the sheriff smarting with annoyance, but impotent to protest, in his present fragile state of probation.

All the next day the coroner’s trio rode steadily across the county, following the main track north-west from Copplestone, about thirteen miles from Exeter, where they had spent the night bedded down around the hearth at the small manor house. The weather remained chill but dry, and the going underfoot was good. The winter mud had hardened, but not yet dried into the dusts of summer. The bushes and trees alongside the narrow road were budding into the first signs of spring, and a few primroses and violets lurked in the undergrowth on this tenth day of March.

Though he would not admit it, by midday de Wolfe’s leg had begun to ache, from jolting incessantly in the stirrup, but he had suffered far worse after two major and countless minor injuries in past campaigns. Even so, he was glad when Gwyn suggested then that the horses needed a rest, some water and half an hour’s grazing. They had been on the road since first light and even at the modest pace set by John’s leg and Thomas’s pathetic riding, they had covered almost twenty miles. Now in the valley of the Taw, they were well over half-way to Barnstaple.

In a clearing just before the forest gave way to strip-fields near the manor of Chulmleigh, they slid thankfully from their saddles and hobbled the horses, letting them crop the short new grass that was now appearing after winter. A stream nearby offered men and beasts the chance to slake their thirst. Thomas, who rode his moorland pony side-saddle like a woman, staggered about, holding his backside and complaining about long journeys, which he detested.

‘Come on, dwarf,’ teased Gwyn, grabbing the clerk by his waist and holding him kicking and yelling in the air. ‘Forget your sore buttocks and get us some bread and cheese from that bag.’

They were soon seated on a tree-stump, eating heartily and drinking from a leather flask filled with coarse cider. Even if the little ex-priest hated travelling, the coroner and his henchman were glad to be out on the road again: they had shared thousands of leagues over the past two decades, in Ireland, France and the Levant.

‘We’ve made better time than I expected,’ growled de Wolfe, between mouthfuls of hard crusts, even flintier cheese. ‘At this rate, we’ll not need to stop on the road tonight. We can be in Barnstaple by dark and claim a bed from Oliver de Tracey.’

‘And ten or twelve miles to Ilfracombe tomorrow,’ added Gwyn, sucking cider from the sides of his luxuriant whiskers. Even keeping down to a brisk walk or occasional trot, they could cover four or five miles in an hour without overly tiring the horses.

All that afternoon the three moved steadily northward, passing slow ox-carts and flocks of sheep, then a number of pilgrims and pedlars, as well as journeymen moving between employment with their tools slung in a bag across their shoulders. De Wolfe forgot the cares of life in Exeter, especially the moody and grim Matilda. He had even forgotten the mysterious face that had been peering at him around street corners.

As it grew dusk, they found themselves at the estuary of the river Taw, with the port and borough of Barnstaple on the eastern side, some five miles inland from the open sea. Thomas, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of history, informed his uninterested companions that the burgesses held a dubious claim to the oldest charter in England, granted by the Saxon king Athelstan, although certainly the first King Henry had given them a new Norman one.

As the light faded, the trio rode thankfully through the gate, just beating the curfew, and made their way to the castle. This had a small tower on top of a motte, which in recent years had been rebuilt in stone, in place of the original timber donjon. Around it was a triangular bailey inside a curtain wall that stood not far from where the small Yeo stream joined the Taw. The hall was a wooden building inside the bailey, the tower being a place for defence, too small for peacetime living quarters.

It was here they found the seneschal, the chief steward to the lord, and learned that Oliver de Tracey was away on a tour of his manors. However, the seneschal, a wizened old man called Odo who had looked after his lord’s affairs for a quarter of a century, made them welcome. De Wolfe had been to the town several times in his capacity as coroner since the premature death of Fitzrogo and had had dealings with Odo before. The old steward seemed impressed with this new legal officer, partly because he admired de Wolfe’s reputation as a Crusader and his close acquaintance with the Lionheart.

Gwyn and Thomas were sent off to the kitchens for a meal, with the promise of a pallet of clean straw in the servants’ quarters, whilst John was offered a chamber in the hall, which had a low bed and mattress, luxury indeed for such a remote place as Barnstaple.

‘As my lord and his family are away, we have no formality in the hall tonight,’ explained Odo. ‘But there are a few knights doing their service here with their squires, as well as the constable, the priest, some travellers and a few clerks, so you are welcome to sup with us in an hour’s time.’

With a dozen men eating and drinking in the flickering lights of wall flares and tallow dips on the table, de Wolfe spent a pleasant evening listening to and telling tales of past battles, skirmishes and ambuscades. As the ale and wine went down, the stories became more adventurous and far-fetched, but this was a life that he loved, the companionship of strong men and witty minds. At intervals, they were entertained by a pair of travelling musicians, who had arrived by ship from Neath across the Severn Sea, on their way to Cornwall. They earned their meal and mattress by some accomplished playing on pipgorn and crwth, Welsh wind and stringed instruments.

John took the opportunity to catch up with events in Wales; seven years earlier he had accompanied Archbishop Baldwin around the country on his recruiting campaign for the Third Crusade – in which the Archbishop himself had perished outside Acre. Speaking in his mother’s native Welsh to the minstrels, he learned that the endless feud between Welsh and Normans was in a quiet phase. He even had news of his friend Gerald, Archdeacon of Brecon, who had been with them on the famous journey around Wales and was now apparently writing a book on the events.

But the business of the day was not forgotten; it had been Odo who had sent the messenger to Exeter the previous day.

‘The manor reeve from Ilfracombe came here the day before yesterday seeking my bailiff, as your new coroner’s law demands,’ Odo said. ‘He had news of this dead man found aboard ship the night before.’

De Wolfe wanted details, but Odo had little more to tell him. ‘It seems a wrecked vessel was driven ashore somewhat to the east of Ilfracombe. On it, lashed to the deck by ropes, was a corpse with undoubted wounds from a sword or knife – certainly not injuries from the shipwreck. That’s about all he could tell us, so I sent word to you. We have been told that now the crowner must deal with all suspicious and violent deaths.’

‘And wrecks of the sea, as well,’ added John.

This was news to Odo, and as de Wolfe explained, the group of men around the table listened with interest. Some had never heard of the new office of coroner and the rest were hazy as to his functions. ‘Last September, at the General Eyre in Kent, the royal justices proclaimed an edict from Hubert Walter, our Chief Justiciar and Archbishop of Canterbury, which had several purposes,’ explained de Wolfe.

‘The main purpose seems to be to screw more taxes from the population!’ growled one of the knights, who was working off some of his annual service to Oliver de Tracey in return for his manorial holding.

De Wolfe shrugged, conscious that this was the general perception of Hubert Walter’s harsh taxation regime. ‘Better an honest coroner than a corrupt sheriff,’ he grunted. ‘I name no names, but it is common knowledge that most of the sheriffs in England are more concerned with lining their own purses than with upholding the King’s peace in their counties. Why else would so many nobles pay large sums to secure appointment to that office?’

Heads nodded around the table, for they remembered the scandal in the time of old King Henry, when all the sheriffs were dismissed for corruption – though almost all had seemed to claw their way back into favour.

‘But what has that do with dead bodies and wrecks?’ asked one of the Welshmen. Apart from a few franchise coroners in Glamorgan and Pembroke, the Normans’ rule of law did not extend to most of Wales.

‘King Richard’s ransom was a heavy burden on England,’ explained de Wolfe. ‘One hundred and fifty thousand marks were demanded by Henry of Germany to release the Lionheart. This, together with the expense of the Crusades and his present wars against Philip of France, creates a need for every penny that our Justiciar can raise. It is where the coroner comes into the picture, to raise what legitimately belongs to the king’s treasury.’

‘Just another bloody clutch of taxes!’ grumbled another knight.

John took a gulp of his wine and nodded in agreement. ‘Taxes, like death and our wives, are always with us!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yet there are other advantages. The coroners now divert many lawsuits to the king’s courts instead of leaving them to the mercy of the sheriffs’ and burgesses’ courts, whose ideas of justice are primitive. We record all serious crimes and accusations for presentation to the royal judges when they arrive at the Eyre of Assize in each county. Our very title of coroner comes from custos plactitorum coronae – keeper of the pleas of the Crown.’

This was beyond one of the castle clerks, though perhaps the amount of beer he had drunk was slowing his wits. ‘But what has this to do with dead bodies or wrecks?’ he complained.

‘There are many ways of raising revenue for the king. Any fault of the community in failing to report a sudden death, to raise the hue and cry, or the death of any who cannot be proven to be Saxon – as well as rapes, assaults and other felonies – these lead to amercements, all grist to the Treasury. I have to attend every execution and see that the property of the hanged felon is seized for the Crown. If there is a wreck of the sea, then this also belongs to the king, as do catches of royal fish, the whale and sturgeon.’

For another hour, there was endless argument, lubricated by wine, ale and cider, about the morality of taxation, but it was all good-natured and de Wolfe defended his monarch’s right-hand man, Archbishop Hubert Walter, in his need to extract as much money from the population as was bearable. Eventually, the minstrels played another tune and sang another song, and as the rush-lights burned low, the audience staggered off to their various chambers or sought their straw palliasses around the glowing embers of the fire in the Great Hall.

Another long day’s ride meant that it was almost dusk when, on the following evening, they reached Exeter’s North Gate. An early start from Umberleigh, a few miles south of Barnstaple, had enabled them to ride steadily, allowing John’s leg and his clerk’s backside to survive the many hours in the saddle.

When the coroner reached his house in Martin’s Lane, he saw Odin settled in his stable opposite, then went wearily through his front door and took off his riding clothes in the vestibule. In the hall, his wife was sitting in her usual place before the hearth, partly hidden by the hood of her monk’s chair. At the sound of the creaking door, she peered around its edge. When she saw him, she gave a throaty grunt and turned back to the fire. ‘You’ve deigned to come home, I see.’ It was her usual frosty greeting.

De Wolfe sighed. He was in no mood for a fight: he was tired and hungry. ‘It’s a long ride from Ilfracombe, in under a day and a half,’ he muttered.

‘You’re a fool to attempt it, with that leg,’ she retorted illogically. After complaining about the length of his absence, she was now implying that he should have stayed longer on the way back.

John ignored this and, sinking on to a bench at the empty table, gave a great yell for Mary. She had already heard him returning and soon bustled in with a wooden bowl of broth and a small loaf, which she put in front of him with a broad wink.

‘Get that down you, master. I’ll bring some salt fish and turnips afterwards.’

Brutus had ambled in after her and now sat between the coroner’s knees under the table, with his big brown head on John’s lap, waiting for some titbits of bread soaked in ham broth.

Matilda’s brief conversation had dried up and now she studiedly ignored her husband. It suited him to have some peace, at least until he had finished the food that Mary brought in relays, including a jug of hot spiced wine.

Afterwards, he limped to the fireside and dropped into the other cowled chair, but his leg had stiffened up and was crying out for exercise. He decided that he would best get that by walking down to the Bush to see Nesta. However, he felt that he should try to smooth over relations with Matilda before he left her again.

His first efforts, telling her of the events in Ilfracombe, were met with curt derision. ‘All that way to see a dead shipman and a half-drowned Breton! What business is that of a coroner? You should leave such petty matters to the bailiffs.’ Matilda’s ideas of the duties of a county coroner were modelled on those of her brother, who sat comfortably in his chamber and gave orders to minions whilst enjoying the social status of a senior law officer and administrator. Richard de Revelle was not a ‘hands-on’ person like de Wolfe; he was an aspiring politician – or had been until he had burnt his fingers over his support for Prince John’s rebellion.

Tonight de Wolfe could not bring himself to argue the matter – he was tired of the old controversy, which seemed to be building up again after the respite that his accident and her grudging nursing care had provided. For the past two months, Matilda had been single-minded in her determination to bring him back to health and activity. She had held her tongue about his many faults and, though uncommunicative on anything other than his welfare, she had avoided any censure of his affairs with other women. Now, though, there were signs that the truce was over and that Matilda was slipping back to her old self.

He doggedly changed the subject in an effort to coax her out of her sulk, telling her of the curious persistence of the man who peered at him around corners. Thankfully he found that, for some reason, this tale seemed to catch her attention. ‘Surely you can recollect the face?’ she asked. ‘You’ve not so many friends that his is lost in the crowd!’

Ignoring the gibe, he said, ‘It’s been niggling at my mind for a couple of days – and nights, when I can’t sleep. There’s something familiar about his features but for the life of me I can’t put a name to him.’

‘No doubt it’s some old drinking crony – or a bloodthirsty acquaintance from your years of slaughter on the battlefield. But why should he not approach you?’

De Wolfe scowled into the glowing fire, his mind’s eye seeing the mysterious fellow’s face once again. ‘I can’t imagine what he can be up to – but if he appears once more, Gwyn will get him. He’s to keep a special watch for the man. He only appears within the city, so he can’t vanish over the horizon.’

The subject was soon exhausted and, as John had hoped, Matilda shortly left the growing darkness of the hall to go up to her solar, where Lucille would brush her hair and get her dressed for bed. As soon as she had gone, he left the house and, with Brutus sniffing contentedly at his heels, made his way slowly down to his favourite tavern to see his favourite woman.

Mindful of Matilda’s infatuation with the handsome Templar, John was a little concerned that Nesta might suffer the same symptoms, but although her eyebrows rose a little when he walked in with de Ridefort, she showed no signs of falling for him. After de Wolfe had explained the need for bed and board, Nesta sent the newcomer up the ladder with one of her maids, to approve his accommodation and leave his roll of belongings. The large space under the thatch of the Bush’s steep roof was divided into a number of sleeping spaces. Nesta had one corner, with the luxury of a door, while the rest of the boarded space was communal sleeping, with mattresses filled with clean straw, and a few open-ended cubicles, containing similar straw pallets.

While de Ridefort was up there, Nesta asked, ‘Who is he, John? A good-looking man, but he speaks poor English. Is he French?’

De Wolfe explained a little of the situation, but refrained from saying that he was a fugitive. ‘He is an ex-Templar, but whether he is still celibate I don’t know – so watch your step, my girl!’ His attempt at wit was half-hearted and Nesta knew him well enough to sense that there was more to this business than just a passing traveller wanting a bed for a few nights.

‘This is the man who has been stalking you! Come on, Sir Crowner, you can tell me more about him than that.’

‘I know little myself, except that he wants to remain incognito while in Exeter. He is expecting a friend soon, then they are off to Ireland. I knew him slightly in the old fighting days, and he has looked me up as he was passing through.’

Nesta sniffed peevishly. ‘You know more than you let on, John. What’s all the mystery?’

He was spared answering by the descent of de Ridefort down the rickety steps, and soon they were drinking ale and eating a pair of boiled fowls that Nesta had caused to materialise from the cooking shed behind the inn. Some other travellers had just arrived and she was dealing with them, so the two men had time for a low-voiced conversation, to the chagrin of Edwin, an incorrigible eavesdropper.

‘I have been absent from Paris these past six weeks,’ murmured Gilbert. ‘By now, the Master will have sent urgent news about me to London.’

‘How would they know you came to England?’

De Ridefort smiled sadly. ‘John, you should know after all your travels that the Poor Knights of Christ have the best intelligence in the world. There are Templars or their agents in every town and every port of any size. Nothing happens but they know about it – they need information to conduct their huge business transactions. They fund most of the kings of Europe and lend money to anyone who pays a sufficient levy on it. They will know that I took ship from Harfleur to Southampton. Soon, they will be after me, and their efficiency is legendary. I should know – I have been one of them these past fifteen years.’

He looked around the room, searching the faces of the merchants, tradesmen, travellers and harlots who made up the customers of the Bush, as if a Templar might be hidden amongst them already. ‘Sooner or later they will catch up with me, unless Bernardus and I can get abroad before they arrive.’

John was beginning to tire of this repetitive forecast of doom. ‘If you have not revealed this great secret of yours, whatever it might be, then what have you to fear?’

‘The very fact that we have left the Order and broken virtually all the rules laid down by St Bernard. That is enough. It may be a mortal crime, our lives may already be forfeit. Certainly, the best we can hope for if we are recovered by them is endless incarceration and penance.’

He tore at his chicken and as de Wolfe began thinking aloud. ‘There are no Templars in or near Exeter, that I know. There is a small Preceptory beyond Tavistock, almost fifteen miles from here.’

‘I know how they act, John. The main Commandery in London will send men to seek me out. They may well require any local Templars to assist them, but the thrust of the search will be from our New Temple on the banks of the Thames. The gravity of the secret is such that they will not entrust any great responsibility to rural knights or sergeants. It will be senior brothers who come after us.’

De Wolfe snorted with impatience. ‘You keep on about this bloody secret, Gilbert! How does your Order know you have it and that you might broadcast it? And why should you wish to do that, anyway? Don’t you have fifteen years of loyalty to consider?’

De Ridefort dropped the remains of his fowl and pushed the thick trencher of gravy-sodden bread away from him. ‘It torments me all the time. Bernardus and I were too outspoken and argumentative about many things in Paris. We thought we were indulging in academic discussion with our fellows, but as the truth began to dawn upon us, after I learned of certain matters we should not have explored, we were cautioned then reviled. I had already had enough of whispered innuendoes about my uncle, whom the younger Templars now accuse of incompetence at best and treachery at worst in his calamitous behaviour in the Holy Land.’

‘The sins of the uncles visited upon the nephews, eh?’ misquoted John cynically.

‘Not only did the brothers of the Order began to despise and suspect me, but the priests outside started murmuring heresy. There is great trouble brewing in France, John, especially in the south-west, where de Blanchefort comes from. Though generally the Templars have sympathy with the Cathars there, in their dangerously unconventional beliefs, the power of Rome and its army of priests are becoming both anxious and vindictive – and some of that is falling on Bernardus and myself.’

‘So this great secret is a matter of Christian faith?’ asked de Wolfe, trying to pin down this elusive tale more firmly.

‘You could certainly say that,’ agreed Gilbert cautiously. ‘When the time comes, you will know it, along with the rest of the world, unless we are silenced beforehand.’

He would say no more, however much as John probed, and when Nesta came back to join them, the conversation was bent to other subjects. De Ridefort was particularly curious about the other’s duties as coroner, for no such office existed outside England. As they finished their meal, and drank more ale and some wine, de Wolfe explained his functions to an attentive listener who had many searching questions. The red-headed Welsh woman sat and listened to the two men and John noticed that her gaze often strayed to the profile of the handsome Frenchman. Eventually, Nesta was called away to settle some shrieking dispute between her maids in the kitchen.

As soon as they were alone again, de Ridefort returned to his worries. ‘I’ll stay here in the inn for most of the day, John, and not show myself about the town.’

‘No one here knows you, that’s for sure,’ said de Wolfe, to reassure him, ‘but I’ll keep an eye open for you. Both my officer Gwyn and my nosy little clerk know everything that happens in this city. So does Nesta, for that matter – her intelligence is county-wide!’

De Ridefort reached an arm across the table and gripped John’s elbow with a strong hand. ‘Let me know of any strangers who arrive. They need not be in Templar dress – we do not always wear it when necessity demands.’

‘I know you do not wear a chain-mail hauberk, but surely you always have your white mantle with the red cross on the shoulder?’

‘It is so claimed, John, but not always adhered to in travelling away from the Commanderies and Preceptories. And only the knights and chaplains wear the white mantle – the chaplains have it fastened in the front, but we must let ours hang loose. The lower ranks, such as sergeants, wear brown or black, but all with the red cross.’

De Wolfe sighed. ‘White, black or brown, cross or no cross, Gwyn and Thomas will watch out for you these coming days. Now I must get myself home, or my wife will chastise me.’

Somewhat uneasily, he left de Ridefort in the company of his mistress and made his way back to Martin’s Lane. It was now late afternoon and he had nothing to divert him in the way of corpses, rapes or even a serious assault.

As he was passing through the cathedral Close, he saw a familiar figure coming towards him, enveloped in a full black cloak. The crinkled grey hair surmounted a lean, ascetic face from which a pair of blue eyes looked out serenely on the world. It was John de Alençon, Archdeacon of Exeter, one of de Wolfe’s favourite churchmen, who lived in one of the dwellings in Canon’s Row, along the north side of the Close. After they had greeted each other and passed the time of day, de Wolfe thought he might tap the senior cleric’s knowledge of some of the things hinted at by Gilbert de Ridefort.

‘I recently met an old Templar friend I knew at the Crusades,’ he began, adapting the truth slightly. ‘He caused me to become curious about their beliefs and the strange secrecy that seems to surround their order.’

The Archdeacon took his arm and steered him towards the line of prebendaries’ houses. ‘Come and talk with me a while, John. I’ve seen little of you since you let your warhorse fall on to your leg.’

The priest’s asceticism did not extend to a rejection of good wine and soon they were sitting at a rough table in his bare room, the only ornament a plain wooden crucifix on the wall. Between them was a flask of his best wine from Poitou and each man held a heavy glass cup filled with it.

‘Why this sudden interest in theology, Crowner John?’ he mocked gently. ‘I’ve never taken you for a man who has much time for the Almighty, more’s the pity!’

De Wolfe grinned sheepishly. It was true that his devotions were reluctant and perfunctory – he went to Mass occasionally, but only on High Feasts or when Matilda nagged him to accompany her to some dreary service at St Olave’s. ‘It was meeting this old Crusading companion again, who now belongs to the Templar establishment in Paris. Some of the things he mentioned intrigued me, that’s all. The Order is said by some to have a rather different view of Christianity from the rest of us – is that true?’

He was fishing for information without wanting to give anything away, a difficult task with someone as astute as John de Alençon – but the cleric was happy to discourse on anything touching the Faith. ‘I agree with you that their organisation is somewhat peculiar,’ said the archdeacon. ‘Though they are under the direct protection of the Holy Father in Rome, many in the Church have for long been uneasy with the favoured status of the Templars.’

‘Why is this?’ prompted de Wolfe.

‘They are immune from orders by even the highest bishops, only bowing their knee to the Pope. They recruit not only devout men, especially rich ones with wealth or land to donate, but also attract excommunicate knights and persons with unorthodox views of religion,’ he said disapprovingly.

At this the coroner’s heavy eyebrows lifted. ‘I have heard that some accuse the Templars of heresy – but how can that be, in a such a devout body of men so favoured by Rome and patronised by St Bernard?’

The grey-haired priest looked shrewdly over the rim of his glass at his friend. ‘This is a strange conversation for you, John. You are usually full of tales about murdered men and mutilated corpses. Why this sudden interest in the Templars?’

De Wolfe sighed – he seemed to be transparent to his old friend.

‘This man seems to have fallen out with his Order. I can say no more, but I wondered if his dispute with them is real, or whether he has some ailment of the mind that convinces him he is persecuted.’

The archdeacon looked puzzled. ‘To fall out with the Templars would be very unusual – their brothers are bound to them for life. And it would be a very grave situation to fall foul of them as they are not known for their tolerance and forbearance with those who cross them.’

‘Do they have any dark secrets that they would not wish spread abroad?’

‘Rumours abound, John, but most are probably idle tittle-tattle. They have been accused of many things over the years.’

‘Such as?’ persisted the coroner.

‘Idolatry, including worshipping a disembodied head named Baphomet – and even the denial of the crucifixion of Our Lord and spitting on the True Cross.’ He shuddered and crossed himself as he uttered the words, reminding de Wolfe of his own clerk. ‘But I think these must be foul slanders about an Order so favoured by Rome.’

John sensed that he was getting on to ground that might prove harmful to de Ridefort, if the established Church had some antipathy to the Order of the Temple. He let the conversation slide into less dangerous topics, though he knew that the priest was still intrigued by his interest.

He spent an hour with de Alençon and when the wine flask was empty, the archdeacon walked him to the door of his narrow house. As they parted, the cleric’s last remark proved that he had not forgotten their earlier discussion.

‘Advise your friend, John, that he had better keep a good watch over his shoulder, if he has become at cross-purposes with the Poor Knights of Christ. They possess a very long arm indeed!’

In spite of his gloomy apprehensions, John found Matilda surprisingly tractable when he entered the hall. She had changed her garments again and wore a blue kirtle, which he knew was one of her best. He tried to open the conversation by telling her of the skirmish in Southgate Street, but she had no interest in that: her mind was on other things.

‘Did you settle that poor man in a decent lodging? Not that there’s anything decent about that low tavern.’ Her active resentment of Nesta had been held in check since her husband had been disabled after breaking his leg, but she was starting to throw the old barbs at him once again.

‘It’s the best inn in the city – certainly better than sharing a room with sweaty pilgrims in Curre Street,’ he countered gruffly.

‘He should have stayed here. It’s warm, quiet and more suitable for a man of his station in life,’ said Matilda firmly.

‘He said he wanted to move to an inn. It was his choice.’

‘You did nothing to encourage him to take up our invitation, did you?’

He glowered at her as he took his chair on the opposite side of the fire. ‘It may not be a very good idea to get too friendly with that particular man,’ he muttered. ‘If what he says is true, he’s playing a dangerous game, not only with the Templars but with the Church generally and Rome in particular.’

Matilda made a dismissive gesture with a heavily ringed hand. ‘You’re just making excuses, John. I thought he was supposed to be a friend of yours.’

‘Hardly a friend, just an acquaintance from the past. I owe him no more than any other man.’

‘Well, we can’t leave him to rot in that common hostelry, with half the scum of Devon around him.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said suspiciously.

‘At the very least he must come to sup with us tonight. I’ve told Mary to prepare a decent meal, if she’s capable of it for once – and to make it sufficient for an extra guest.’

‘You want him to eat here?’

‘Of course! We must make amends to him as you snubbed my offer to accommodate him under our roof. Send old Simon down to that tavern with a message for Sir Gilbert to come up here at dusk, to dine with us. I hope you still have some decent French wine in that chest of yours in the corner.’ She pointed to a dark recess of the hall, where her husband kept a stock of sealed stone flasks purchased from a wine importer in Topsham.

He sat silently cursing the woman for interfering in his business: after hearing the archdeacon’s views, he had a gut feeling that no good would come of this unexpected appearance of Gilbert de Ridefort. But his inertia was a futile defence, as Matilda continued to glare at him until he rose reluctantly and went out to the yard to summon Simon.

He dallied a while with Mary, sitting on a stool in her kitchen. It was a thatched hut with a cooking fire, a couple of rough tables stacked with pots, and in the corner the mattress on which he had once enjoyed an amorous hour or two.

‘She’s set her cap at this visitor, Crowner,’ Mary commented, stirring a blackened iron urn hanging on a trivet over the fire. ‘That poxy French girl has been brushing her hair and fiddling with her gowns for half the afternoon. I think she fancies the man, though much good it will do her if he’s a Templar.’

John grinned as he watched Mary scowling into her cooking pot. ‘I think he’s more an ex-Templar, my girl. Not that it will make any difference to the mistress’s chances with him.’

She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘It’s pathetic when a middle-aged married woman gets a passion for some man. Though I must say he’s a good-looking fellow, enough to turn any woman’s head. He was wasted as a warrior monk, or whatever you call those people.’

De Wolfe reached for a honey-cake but the platter was snatched away from his reach by Mary. ‘Those are for the end of the meal so leave them be, sir! The mistress wants a special effort for tonight and I’ve had to go out and buy more pork and onions – not that there’s much choice of food this early in the season. I can hardly give such an important guest the usual salt fish – the mistress would have me maimed, the mood she’s in.’

De Wolfe was just about to ask her if she had seen the affray in the meat market when a long nose appeared around the door, followed by the face and hunched body of his clerk, Thomas de Peyne. ‘Where did you spring from?’ grunted the coroner. ‘I thought you would be home anointing your backside with goose-grease, ready for the long ride to the north tomorrow.’

The little man groaned in anticipation of another full day in the saddle, but the news he brought overshadowed his problems. ‘You asked me to keep a look-out for any important visitors to the city, Crowner,’ he began, in his high-pitched quavering voice.

De Wolfe had impressed on Gwyn and Thomas earlier in the day that they should keep their ears to the ground to discover if anything unusual was going on in town or cloister. They knew nothing of de Ridefort’s fears of pursuit, but the clerk was adept at ferreting out gossip amongst the ecclesiastical brethren and their servants.

‘So what have you discovered, my master spy?’ he chaffed.

‘A foreign priest has arrived and called upon Bishop Marshal today,’ chirped Thomas.

‘What sort of news is that, eh? This city is always awash with priests.’

His clerk smirked. ‘Not with envoys from the Vatican, Crowner!’

De Wolfe stood up suddenly, his head brushing the rough rafters of the hut. ‘From Rome? How do you know?’

‘The rumour is that he is a papal nuncio. So far, that’s all that’s known.’

‘What the devil is a nuncio?’ rasped his master.

‘It’s like a messenger – or a person with a particular task.’

‘Is that the same as a legate?’ De Wolfe was fairly ignorant of the hierarchy of the religious establishment.

Thomas, a fount of knowledge on it, shook his head vigorously, then crossed himself automatically. ‘No, a legate is an ambassador to a royal court – a far superior person, almost always a bishop. There is talk that this man is an abbot.’

‘Who is he, and where did he come from?’

Thomas shrugged, his humped shoulder rising unevenly to the left. ‘No one knows yet. He arrived travel-weary on horseback, with two burly servants as guards.’

‘Where is he staying? At the bishop’s palace?’

The scribe shook his head again. ‘He rode off after paying his respects to Henry Marshal and went out of the city, as far as I know.’

De Wolfe thought for a moment. Gilbert de Ridefort had left his French Commandery only six weeks ago, so it was impossible that Rome could have been notified and had sent this man after him – that would take at least three or four months. But he could have come from Paris or the Temple in London. Or he might be nothing to do with de Ridefort, which was the most likely explanation. ‘Did you hear any description of this priest?’

Thomas tapped his receding chin in thought. ‘The vicar I spoke with saw him. He was short in stature.’

De Wolfe clucked in exasperation. ‘Short! That’s no description. You’re short, damn you, half the population is short.’

Thomas screwed up his face in concentration. ‘He said something else … Oh, yes, he had a strangely shaped nose.’

The coroner groaned. ‘You have a strangely shaped nose too, you fool. It’s like the sheriff’s toe-cap, long and pointed! Is that the best you can do?’

‘I never saw him, Crowner! I had two minutes’ conversation with a passing vicar, that’s all,’ whined Thomas.

Reluctantly John accepted that his clerk had done his best.

‘Well, try all you can to find out this abbot’s name, where he came from, where he’s lodging – and most of all, why he is in Exeter.’

A cunning gleam came into the clerk’s eye. ‘I can’t do that if I’m in Ilfracombe or Appledore, Crowner.’

De Wolfe’s dark face scowled at him. ‘Very well. You only slow us down on that damned broken-winded pony of yours anyway. Stay behind and seek every morsel of information you can on this man. If there’s anything to write on your parchments about our trip tomorrow I’ll dictate it when I return.’

With a glow of satisfaction that his posterior had escaped days of punishment on horseback, the little ex-priest scuttled away to continue his espionage.

Once again, the horsemen reached Exeter just before the gates closed at the twilight curfew, though this was getting later every evening as March progressed. Gwyn left them outside the walls to go to his home in St Sidwell’s and the men-at-arms clattered away to the castle, leaving de Wolfe to stable Odin at the farrier’s.

He crossed the road to his own house and, whilst wearily taking off his riding clothes in the vestibule, heard voices from inside the hall. Hungry and thirsty, he pushed open the inner door fretfully, far more interested in filling his stomach than dealing with a visitor. As he walked across to the hearth, he saw Gilbert de Ridefort was talking animatedly to Matilda. Clad in a plain brown tunic, a hooded cloak discarded across a nearby stool, he rose courteously as John entered. ‘Your good lady has been entertaining me graciously until your return,’ he said. ‘I was anxious to hear if you had any more news, especially of somewhere where I might hide myself more discreetly.’

Instead of her usual grim welcome, Matilda gave her husband a weak smile and enquired solicitously after his leg following such a long ride. ‘Supper will not be long, John,’ she added uncharacteristically. ‘I’ve told Mary to make a special effort, as I’ve invited Sir Gilbert to dine with us again.’

De Wolfe groaned inwardly at the prospect of having to entertain a guest, when all he wanted was to eat, then go down to the Bush to see Nesta. Even sitting at his own fireside with a pitcher of ale would be preferable to listening to his wife and Gilbert prattling on about the glories of Normandy.

He sank on to the seat just vacated by de Ridefort, who took the one opposite.

‘Is there any news?’ persisted the former Templar.

De Wolfe shook his head wearily. ‘Nothing from the north of the county. It was a wasted trip.’

‘But what about this priest? And is there any sign of strange knights in the city?’

‘I’ve just set foot back in Exeter, so I have no means of knowing,’ he said irritably. ‘I must go up to the castle after the meal so maybe I can learn something then.’

‘I think that tonight my brother is attending a feast at the Guild of Cordwainers,’ said Matilda, with a return of her usual abrasive tone.

De Wolfe, however, was determined to fight for his alibi to visit the Bush. ‘That won’t be until later this evening – and, anyway, I have other business to attend to in my chamber, if you can call such a hole in the ground by that name.’

Mary came in to set places at the table, followed by Simon staggering under a basket of logs for the fire. He returned with more wine and ale, and for the next hour, the three ate and drank. De Wolfe sat mostly in silence, trying to stop his ears to Matilda’s persistent attempts to extract details from de Ridefort of his life in France. He found it difficult to reconcile the stern warrior he had known in Palestine with this urbane and courteous fellow, who so obviously had a way with women when the need arose.

Yet de Wolfe detected an undercurrent of anxiety in de Ridefort, and was conscious of the regular worried glances that the visitor gave him whenever he could disengage himself from Matilda’s importuning. Eventually the coroner took pity on him and disclosed his plans for settling him somewhere outside the city.

‘I’ve decided to lodge you in my home village, where I was born and where my family still hold the manor,’ he offered.

The younger man’s face lit up and his relief was obvious, though Matilda’s scowl gave away her feelings: she despised her in-laws as much as they disliked her.

‘Are you sure they will accept me, John?’ asked de Ridefort. ‘And where is this place of yours?’

‘Stoke-in-Teignhead, about fifteen miles south of Exeter, just inland from the coast. It’s a few hours’ gentle riding, as long as the tide is low enough to cross the river at Teignmouth.’

‘Not much of a place, I can assure you,’ sniffed his wife, ‘but I’ll admit that it’s remote enough, if you really feel you should leave the amenities of the the city.’

‘Apart from your gracious hospitality, I’m not seeing much of Exeter, madam,’ observed Gilbert. ‘I spend all day cooped up in the inn to avoid drawing attention to myself.’

John stood up and stretched his back, stiff after a day in the saddle. His leg seemed to have stood up to the journey remarkably well: it was pain-free and virtually back to normal. ‘I must go about my business for a couple of hours. Are you staying here or going back to your lodgings?’

Matilda turned her eyes on the former Templar, her beseeching expression making her husband cringe. ‘You’ve just said you are imprisoned in that place, so stay awhile and sit at peace before a good fire. I’ll get the servant to fetch more wine.’

De Wolfe was indifferent as to whether the knight might ravish Matilda on the cold flagstones, but he suspected that even the fearless Crusader was not equal to that challenge. As he made for the door, he promised to take de Ridefort to his new hideaway next morning.

‘Be ready with your satchel and horse. I’ll meet you at the Bush just after dawn.’ With that, he vanished into the darkness of Martin’s Lane, turning in the opposite direction from Rougemont and the sheriff.

On his return to Exeter in the early evening, John rode straight up to Rougemont to see his brother-in-law. Gwyn came into the city with him, instead of going to his dwelling in St Sidwell’s, just outside the East Gate, as his wife and family were staying with her sister in Milk Street.

De Wolfe found Richard de Revelle in his official chamber in the keep, in discussion with the castle constable, Ralph Morin. A flask of wine was open on the table and the sheriff motioned John to fill himself a pewter goblet. It was a good red vintage from Aquitaine and the coroner relished taking something expensive from his notoriously mean brother-in-law. ‘Our trip to the north produced nothing useful,’ he began. ‘The village of Appledore could barely raise a couple of rowing boats.’

De Revelle nodded languidly, as if already bored by the coroner’s presence. ‘I’ve already heard that from Ralph here, whose sergeant reported to him. I tell you, it’s Lundy we should be looking at. They’ve harboured pirates for centuries.’

De Wolfe looked across at the constable, who stood solidly in the centre of the chamber, his feet apart and his arms crossed as if he had grown out of the floor. His grizzled grey hair and matching forked beard, together with his chain-mail hauberk and massive sword, suggested that he had just stepped off a Norse longboat. ‘Dressed for battle, Ralph?’ he asked.

Morin grinned, his rough, weather-beaten cheeks wrinkling. ‘No, John, there was no attack on the city today. I’ve been down at Bull Mead putting the garrison through some exercises. All these years of peace are turning them soft. We need a good war to sharpen them up.’

‘We nearly had one a few months ago,’ muttered de Wolfe, and there was an awkward silence in the room as the constable and the coroner avoided looking at the sheriff.

‘Gabriel told me about the ride to the north coast,’ said Morin, to cover the hiatus. ‘He says there were no signs at all of any looted goods or ships that might have been involved in piracy.’

John nodded in agreement. ‘That’s right, though they might have concealed goods in any of a hundred barns around the countryside. But galleys with a bank of oars, as that young Breton described, can’t easily be hidden out of sight.’

‘There are scores of small coves and bays up there where a ship or two could be hidden off the beaten track,’ objected Richard.

Morin grunted again. ‘I’m no sailor, but that exposed coast gives no shelter except at known harbours.’

De Wolfe poured himself another brimming goblet of wine, ignoring a scowl from de Revelle. ‘They may be from far away, of course,’ he said, ‘from Ireland, Brittany or Galicia in Spain. There have even been attacks from Turks and Moors in the past. For centuries our Viking ancestors used to come from Scandinavia to terrorise the Severn Sea.’

‘What about the Scilly Isles? The whole population down there seem to be robbers,’ suggested Morin.

De Revelle poured himself some wine, taking the opportunity to move the flask as far as possible from his brother-in-law. ‘Wherever they come from, they must have a base within striking distance – they can’t stay at sea indefinitely. And they need somewhere to store their booty, so I still say Lundy is the place. Since the de Mariscos came there, there’s been nothing but trouble – look at this business with the Templars.’

De Wolfe pricked up his ears at the mention of the Knights of the Cross. ‘Is anything new happening over that matter?’

The sheriff shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. But it’s high time that that nest of vipers on the island was wiped out. If the king spent more time looking after his affairs at home, maybe something would be done about it.’

This time, the coroner suffered no awkward silence, but met the sheriff head on. ‘Richard, forget any ideas about a new king doing a better job. Remember your own position in this – the king we have is the king we keep!’

Faced with this blunt warning, de Revelle reddened but left the sensitive subject of an absentee monarch and reverted to the problem of Lundy, which was within his jurisdiction of Devon. ‘I will do something about it, never fear! Last year, my predecessor fined William de Marisco three hundred marks for failing to deliver up to the Templars – and I’ll impose the same amercement this year!’

De Wolfe’s lean face creased into a sardonic smile. ‘For God’s sake, what use is that? He ignored the fine last year and will ignore any you put upon him in the future. The only penalty de Marisco will heed is force of arms.’

Richard banged his empty goblet petulantly on the table. ‘And that’s damned difficult on an island like Lundy. Half the time, you can’t get near the place because of the weather – and when it’s calm, any invader can be seen coming from ten miles, unless there’s a sea fog.’

De Wolfe became impatient with his brother-in-law. ‘Make up your mind, Richard! The other day you said Lundy was none of your business. Now you claim you want to deal with de Marisco, so who has changed your mind? Then, in the same breath, you say it’s impossible.’

The constable’s deep voice asked a question. ‘What’s the story behind this Templar claim to the island? I know nothing of its history.’

The coroner perched himself on the corner of de Revelle’s table. ‘After the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, King Henry, back in ’fifty-five, declared that all royal lands granted away in Stephen’s reign be handed back to the Crown – or so my knowledgeable clerk tells me. William de Marisco ignored this. It was rumoured that he was a bastard son of the first King Henry, so maybe he felt he had a better claim than anyone. But five years later the king granted the island to the Knights Templar as part of his contribution to their Order. Not that they needed any more possessions, they were so rich by then, but I suppose he wanted to keep in good favour with the Pope, who was partial to the Templars.’

‘So what happened?’

‘A party of Templars – knights, sergeants and servants – tried to take possession, but William prevented them from landing. They were lucky not to be drowned.’

‘They tried several more times, but the same thing happened,’ added the sheriff morosely. ‘Then, instead, the Templars were given some land in Somerset belonging to the Mariscos, but they had to pay rent for it, so they still want to get their hands on the island.’

De Wolfe finished the last of the wine in his cup and stood up. ‘But that doesn’t solve our problem. Everyone knows that the Mariscos have carried on the old tradition of piracy from Lundy, but there’s no evidence that this Bristol vessel was one of their victims.’

Richard de Revelle snorted. ‘There’s no evidence because we haven’t looked in the right place yet!’

The coroner leaned his hands on the table to look de Revelle in the face. ‘We? Since when have you rubbed your arse raw riding back and forth to Barnstaple and beyond? I’ve done it twice in the last week.’

Stung into a reaction that he later regretted, the sheriff then announced that he would lead a force there the very next week and ordered Ralph Morin to send a couple of men ahead to organise sea transport for two-score men-at-arms. ‘As I declare this to be a foray on behalf of the king, send messages to de Grenville in Bideford and Oliver de Tracey in Barnstaple, that we need half a dozen knights from each to accompany our force.’

John’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead when he heard his brother-in-law invoke the Lionheart as the reason for a somewhat rash expedition to Lundy. Knowing of de Revelle’s crafty mind and his habitual duplicity, he decided the sheriff was trying to strengthen the fragile pardon he had been given by the royalist barons a couple of months ago. ‘This I must see, Richard, so I’ll come with you – there’s sure to be deaths, so it will be fitting to have a coroner on hand!’ he exclaimed, with a grin that was almost a leer.

‘And if you’re sending most of my soldiers, then I’ll be with you as well,’ boomed the constable. ‘Let’s hope that Exeter doesn’t fall under siege while we’re away, for the garrison will be down to a man and a boy!’

By the time they had finished discussing the details of travel and supplies, John could sense that de Revelle was already regretting his impetuous decision: he was no fighting man. A frustrated politician, he was best at delegating tasks, especially when it came to anything physical or dangerous. But it was too late now, the decision had been made, and his proclaimed admiration for the Templars was the main motive for his trying to gain their inheritance on Lundy – as well as some credit for himself in London and Winchester.

The meeting broke up and de Wolfe collected Odin from the inner bailey then jogged through the town to put his horse to rest in the farrier’s stable. A quick look into his house showed that Matilda was out, and Mary appeared with the usual news that she had gone to an evening service at St Olave’s. Declining the maid’s offer to make him supper, the coroner trudged down to the Bush, feeling his leg stronger than ever, though it ached at the end of the day.

Nesta soon organised food for him and before long he was contentedly ploughing through a boiled knuckle of pork lying on a thick trencher of bread, a wooden bowl alongside filled with shredded onions fried in beef lard and a pile of boiled cabbage. It would soon be Lent and this might be one of the last meat meals he would taste for weeks – not even an egg was allowed by the strict adherents to the Faith, though many a fowl or joint disappeared in the solemn period before Easter, not all of it down secular gullets.

Half-way through his second quart of ale, Nesta left chivvying her maids to sit with him for a while. Between mouthfuls, he told her of the day’s excitements, the transfer of Gilbert to his own manor, the outlaw’s ambush and the proposed expedition to Lundy. The pert Welsh woman listened round-eyed as he described the fight with the trail-bastons, as highway robbers were often called. She sat clinging to his arm as he told of the rout that Gwyn and he had inflicted on the men, tendrils of her glossy red hair escaping from under her close-fitting linen helmet.

When he had demolished the meal, Nesta signalled to one of the maids to take away the gravy-soaked trencher – it would join the others from today’s meals for Edwin to take to the beggars who clustered around the cathedral Close and Carfoix, the central junction of the main roads in the city. She brought him another pot of ale and also gave him a beaming smile, which earned her a kick on the ankle from her mistress.

‘Brazen hussy, trying to give you the eye!’ she snapped in mock jealousy, but John knew that she was fond of her girls and looked after them well, for both were orphans. As well as giving them a home, she guarded their morals until they could find husbands – unlike most town taverns, the serving wenches in the Bush were not part-time whores who paid a percentage of their earnings to the landlady.

He was giving an account of the proposition to land on Lundy next week – which caused Nesta anguish at the prospect of her man being either slain or drowned – when a huge figure came to hover over the table near the hearth. ‘Gwyn! My favourite coroner’s officer!’ Nesta patted the bench alongside her and pushed de Wolfe along so that the ginger giant could sit down. With the two large men at either side, she looked like a robin between a raven and a red kite.

Almost before Gwyn could open his mouth, a quart jar of ale was banged in front of him by Edwin, whose leer was worsened by the whitened blind eye that was a legacy of the Irish wars. Nothing loath, he took a long swallow that sank the better part of a pint and wiped the back of his hand across his soaking moustache, before delivering his news to his impatient companions. ‘There are Templars arrived in the city, crowner.’

This was about the last thing that de Wolfe had expected that evening. All along he had had a healthy scepticism about Gilbert de Ridefort’s fears, and although the arrival of Cosimo of Modena lent some credence to his story, there were many other explanations for the abbot’s mission. Was this new twist another coincidence, or was the Templar from Paris really a fugitive in danger of his freedom? He waited for his officer to enlarge on his story. He knew from long experience that it was futile to press him – Gwyn would speak when it suited him.

After some throat-clearing, another drink and a belch, he continued, ‘I was in the aleshop at the corner of Curre Street just now, talking to a tanner I know. He said that he had seen a fine procession coming up from South Gate earlier in the day, three knights on destriers, with three squires behind and two packhorses led by a groom.’

‘What was so fine about them?’ demanded Nesta. ‘There’s nothing unusual about a few knights – they were probably on their way to their term of service at some castle.’

Gwyn picked up a crust of bread that the maid had left behind and stuffed it into his mouth. When he had chewed it sufficiently to speak, he carried on with his story. ‘These men were in full chain-mail with aventails and helmets, as were their squires. They had swords but no lances nor shields, so there were no armorial emblems to identify them.’

‘And no surcoats, presumably?’ snapped the coroner. The long cloth garment worn over the mailed hauberk prevented the glint of metal signalling their approach and also kept off the sun, which might roast someone inside a hauberk padded with a gambeson. It was also a convenient place to display the wearer’s heraldic motif.

‘No surcoats, so no red crosses of the Knights of Christ,’ agreed Gwyn. ‘But it seems they all had full beards and moustaches and cropped hair.’

‘That’s common enough, even though it may be against the present fashion,’ objected Nesta.

The Cornishman grinned at her, though in deference to his master he avoided a playful pinch to her bottom. ‘There was one sure way to find out, lady – ask! Though the knights and their squires ignored the common crowd in the street, one cheeky lad ran alongside the groom and asked him where they were going. He said to the priory of St Nicholas and added that they were Templars, come all the way from London in less than a week.’

Gwyn went back to his ale while de Wolfe digested this news.

‘What in hell do they want here at this time?’ he muttered. ‘Is it just coincidence that Gilbert claims he’s being hunted? And now this business of the Templar claim to Lundy.’

The thought suddenly came to him that perhaps his dear brother-in-law had been keeping something from him. His change of heart in his uncharacteristic willingness to mount a campaign to Lundy might not have been as spontaneous as it appeared. He turned to Gwyn, speaking over Nesta’s head. ‘In the morning, get yourself down to St Nicholas’s and see what you can find out about them. If they are lodged in a priory, they must have a mandate from the Church for some purpose. The closest Templar land is near Tiverton, so whatever their business may be, it has to do with Exeter.’

‘And perhaps to do with their fellow Templar, Gilbert de Ridefort,’ said the officer ominously, putting into words what John already feared.

‘Unless they are going to join our invasion of Lundy next week,’ said the coroner sarcastically. ‘But to know of that, they’d have to be necromancers, to read the thoughts of our noble sheriff a week in advance!’ He paused. ‘Unless that crafty bastard up in Rougemont knew they were coming.’

Next morning, Thursday the seventeenth day of March, was cold and blustery. Yesterday’s promise of spring had been a mockery, typical of the western parts of the Isles of Britain.

Odin was having his hoofs checked in the farrier’s forge, so after an early bowl of hot broth with bread, de Wolfe went up to the castle on foot. A gusting west wind whipped at his worn cloak and threw occasional spots of rain at his face as he loped up to Rougemont. The covers over the street stalls rattled against their frames, the pedlars and tradesmen huddling inside their mantles and capes as they waited for their customers to brave the elements.

As he walked, he welcomed the absence of complaint from his leg, which now seemed virtually back to normal, both in strength and lack of the nagging ache that had been there for so many weeks. He ruminated on the previous evening, when he had spent a dull, but uncontroversial few hours with his wife, in front of their hearth. For once, she had no religious devotions to attend and they ate their supper in relative peace. He had no desire to go down to the Bush as he knew that Nesta was attending some meeting of Exeter inn-keepers at the Guildhall, to discuss the rising cost of barley and its effect on their ale prices. Since the poor harvest of the previous year, and the huge demand for grain made by the king to supply his army in France, the price of many staple foods was increasing. This added to the disgruntlement of the already overtaxed population, which de Wolfe feared might encourage Prince John to start plotting again against his absentee royal brother.

The rising cost of living was one of the topics of a rather stilted conversation between Matilda and himself, as they sat in front of the fire after their meal. He opened a jar of wine and, under its influence, they relaxed a little – lately, Matilda had seemed increasingly partial to a few drinks. The talk inevitably turned to Gilbert de Ridefort and John had told his wife of the discoveries of Thomas about Abbot Cosimo and the arrival of the three Templars the previous day. She appeared genuinely concerned for the knight’s safety and had admitted grudgingly that de Wolfe had been right in hiding him away down in Stoke-in-Teignhead. Not only that, but she added some information of her own, gleaned that day from the inquisitive parishioners of St Olave’s, which was within a few hundred paces of the priory of St Nicholas.

‘You say that one of the knights was Brian de Falaise,’ she said, ‘and I was told that the others are called Godfrey Capra and Roland de Ver.’

John had never heard of this last knight, but he had a slight recollection of Godfrey Capra, who had been at the big meeting in Gisors. This was the so-called ‘Splitting of the Elm’, which seemed to have had some profound effect on the organisation of the Templars and at which Gilbert de Ridefort had also been present, something John could not now believe was a mere coincidence.

Now, as he walked up the last few yards to the gatehouse of Rougemont, de Wolfe sighed as he failed to put all these diverse bits of information into some sort of pattern. It was clear that he would have to make a frontal attack on these Templars, to try to discover what had really brought them to Exeter. He turned into the guardroom, but instead of tempting fate with another assault on the winding staircase, he put his head into the lower entrance and yelled up to attract Gwyn’s attention. There was an answering bellow from above and his officer came clumping down, followed by Thomas de Peyne.

‘We have to attend this week’s mutilations at the eighth hour,’ he told them. ‘Thomas, did the sheriff’s clerk give you a list?’

The bent little clerk scrabbled in his shapeless satchel and pulled out a scrap of parchment, which he consulted. ‘There are three, Crowner, and you have to take a confession from one.’

De Wolfe frowned. ‘A confession? Why?’

‘It seems he also wants to turn approver, to save his neck, if not his right hand.’ An approver was a criminal who wished to save his life by informing on his accomplices, when he might be allowed to avoid the death sentence, perhaps abjure the realm or even be set free altogether.

The coroner grunted and led the way across the inner ward towards the basement of the keep, which was half below ground. This dark, damp undercroft was part-prison, part-storehouse and part-torture-chamber, ruled by Stigand, a grotesquely fat gaoler with the intelligence of a woodlouse. Half the crypt was divided off by a stone wall, in which a rusted iron gate led into a passage lined with filthy cells. The rest was open space, dimly lit by the light from the small doorway and a few rush-lights on the walls. It was floored by wet earth and in one corner, Stigand lived in an alcove, sleeping on a straw mattress. Outside this was a fire-pit, which served both for his primitive cooking and for heating branding irons and other instruments of torture. At the moment, an iron pot of wood-tar, obtained from charcoal-burning, was bubbling ominously on the logs.

As the coroner’s trio came down the few steps from the level of the inner bailey, a dismal procession emerged from the iron gate of the gaol. Led by Gabriel and a man-at-arms, three prisoners, dressed in rags and wearing heavy wrist and ankle fetters, stumbled across the uneven floor, prodded along by two more soldiers. Stigand locked the gate behind them, then waddled across to his fire, where a low bench held a selection of implements. Already in the centre of the cellar stood a small group of observers, including a priest from the garrison chapel of St Mary, in case one of the prisoners should die during the proceedings. The others were Ralph Morin, the castle constable, Henry Rifford, one of Exeter’s two portreeves, and Sheriff Richard de Revelle, with one of his clerks from the County Court, which had convicted the miscreants.

The soldiers pushed and dragged the three men into a line facing the officials, so that the clerk, a portly man with over-inflated ideas of his own importance, could begin reading out the details of the sentences.

‘Firstly, Robert Thebaud, butcher from this city, you are convicted of repeatedly and perversely giving short weight and of having manifestly tampered with your weighing scales to your own advantage.’ He turned over a leaf of parchment and referred to some earlier record. ‘You were fined ten marks by the burgess court of this city on the eighth day of June last year. And you were warned then that a second offence would lead to hanging or mutilation.’

The sheriff, resplendent in a short cloak in his favourite green thrown carelessly over one shoulder, waved a glove at the clerk. ‘Is anything else known about this villain?’

Rifford, a paunchy, middle-aged man with a short neck and prominent eyes, was the portreeve representing the burgesses and guilds. He pointed an accusing finger at the wretched Robert, a burly man with a normally florid face that was now pale with fear. ‘He was warned by the Butchers’ Guild last year that if he transgressed again he would be ejected and no longer able to continue his trade in this city. That will happen now, though in any case, he’ll be in no condition to fell cattle and chop meat with one hand!’

Thebaud fell to his knees and began to blubber for mercy, but no one took any notice of him: they were too familiar with such supplications from the condemned.

The clerk moved on to the second case, a sullen young Saxon with yellow hair hanging down his back. ‘Britric of Totnes, you were apprehended in the Serge Market trying to pass off clipped short-cross pennies. In your lodgings, the city bailiff found a bag of clippings and iron shears for trimming the coins.’

The irregular silver pennies were of many types as some had been in circulation for a century or more from different mints around the country. Clipping the edges and melting down the silver for its value was a common but serious crime. Most coins had a cross on one side, and in later mintings, the arms of the cross were made longer, reaching to the edge in an effort to make clipping more obvious. Counterfeiting money was a hanging offence, but passing clipped coins was almost as heinous.

Britric seemed unmoved by this accusation and the clerk moved on to the last culprit, a shifty-looking youth with crooked, projecting teeth. ‘William Pagnell, you were convicted of associating with known thieves who haunted the fair of St Jude two weeks ago. Three other men made off with goods to at least the value of five marks from various booths, but you were the only one caught. As the stolen goods, a candlestick found on your person, was of the value of only ninepence, you have avoided hanging on that charge.’

The clerk’s droning voice was interrupted by the coroner. ‘Is this the fellow who wants to turn approver?’

‘Yes, Crowner. If the others are caught and confirm that this Pagnell was equally one of them, then they may all hang, whether he has his hand struck off now or not.’

Pagnell joined his fellow prisoner on his knees in the damp earth, his chains rattling as he wagged his clasped hands in supplication to de Wolfe. ‘Sir Crowner, I wish to confess my small guilt and earn your mercy by confessing the names of these other men who led me astray,’ he whined.

The distant bell of the cathedral tolled faintly in the distance and Richard de Revelle slapped his gloves in impatience. ‘Come on, clerk, get on with it. I have more important work to do.’

The pompous official turned to the coroner with a questioning look. ‘Will you accept him as an approver, Crowner?’

‘Yes, if it means that by his confession we can catch the greater thieves,’ he grunted.

Pagnell gabbled his thanks then ventured a little further. ‘And if I confess every syllable I know and make promises in the name of the Holy Mother and every saint never to trangress again, may I keep my limb? Without it, I and my family will starve, for I am a wood-carver. I have had no work for two months and I only took that trinket to buy bread for my children.’

Richard de Revelle gave an exasperated snort. ‘Every evil wretch that comes here spins the same lying excuses and promises to reform, only to steal or slay the moment he is released.’

As much to confound and aggravate his brother-in-law as from any feeling of compassion, de Wolfe gestured at the guards and the gaoler. ‘Take him back to his cell. I’ll hear his confession and then decide on what is to be done with him.’

‘What right have you to interfere with the decision of my County Court, Crowner?’ snapped the sheriff.

‘The duty to take confessions of approvers was laid on me by the Article of Assize last year,’ retorted de Wolfe, glaring across at de Revelle. ‘And maybe you remember that that Article was promulgated by the royal justices – the judges of our lord king!’

With a barely concealed grin at his master’s loss of face, Gabriel gave the order for one of the guards to take the prisoner away and when Stigand had slouched back to stand near his fire, the grisly proceedings went ahead. They were rapid and efficient, with none of the ceremony that attended an execution. Two men-at-arms grabbed the blond Saxon and one unlocked his arm fetters with a crude iron key. The obese gaoler rolled a large log across the floor, stained an ominous ruddy-brown, and set it on end to form a block about two feet high. The victim was forced to his knees, Stigand grabbed his right hand and pulled it across the block. Reaching for a cleaver, he spat upon the blade and sent it whistling down to sever the wrist with one blow.

In spite of his previous impassive mien, Britric gave a high-pitched scream and fainted as the arteries in his arm spurted across the block, the hand falling to the muddy floor. Wheezing with the effort of delivering the blow, the gaoler pulled a rag from the wide pocket of his soiled leather apron and slapped it over the end of the wrist to staunch the haemorrhage temporarily. The Saxon had fallen to the floor, but one of the soldiers held up his arm, whilst Stigand turned to the pot of tar on the fire. He stirred it with a piece of stick, which he then used to lift a large dollop of the sticky brown mess. Pulling away the cloth, he slapped the tar on the raw flesh and bare bone ends, spreading it over the stump, where it rapidly set solid as it cooled. Then he picked up the hand nonchalantly by its thumb and threw it on to his fire where, as it hissed and blackened, the fingers contracted to form one last agonal fist.

The official party watched all this indifferently, with the exception of Thomas de Peyne, who although he had seen it many times since entering the coroner’s service, still felt nauseated at the sight of blood and the severed hand being so casually treated.

Two soldiers dragged Britric back through the iron gate and came back to repeat the performance on the whimpering butcher, Robert Thebaud, who began screaming as his chains were released and did not stop until he was hauled back to his cell.

Anxious to be off to his chamber, Richard de Revelle started for the doorway but, almost as an afterthought, turned to speak to de Wolfe. ‘The expedition to Lundy is arranged for Monday, John. We shall leave at dawn and hope to get to Barnstaple that night.’ With a last flourish of his gloves, he vanished about his business, with his constable following reluctantly behind, leaving the coroner to enter the gaol, where the thief’s confession could hardly be heard above the screams and moans of the two mutilated men.

‘Even though he was your friend and a guest, John, you are still the coroner and I thought we had better observe the rules. We left the body where it lay.’ William de Wolfe spoke sadly, conscious that a man who had been left at his house for safety had ended up dead within two days.

His brother tried to reassure him that he need feel no guilt over the tragedy. ‘He should not have ventured out alone, especially in a place that was strange to him, William. In Exeter he was more than nervous, but he seems to have assumed that the wilds of the countryside held no risk.’

They were trotting their steeds along the track that led from the manor-house towards the river Teign, with Gwyn, Thomas, Alsi, a reeve and two grooms from Stoke following behind. De Wolfe had left Exeter as soon as he had managed to calm Matilda, who blamed him incessantly for not ensuring that de Ridefort was guarded night and day. He suspected that she was using the tragedy partly as a weapon to accuse his family of being negligent in failing to protect de Ridefort.

Simon had brought Gwyn and Thomas down from Rougemont to the house in Martin’s Lane and within an hour they were on the road to Stoke-in-Teignhead, covering the sixteen miles in four hours, having to wait a little for the tide at the ford at Teignmouth. Arriving in the afternoon, they rode straight to the scene of the death, which was guarded by two of the village freemen, set there the previous night by William. ‘I sent our steward as messenger to Exeter, rather than a bailiff as you say the law demands,’ explained his brother, as they rode. ‘He set out a few hours before dawn with one of the ostlers, going by the inland road as we knew the tide would be high then. There seemed no point in raising a hue and cry in the middle of a forest at nightfall.’

John agreed. ‘Neither do we need to seek presentment at the inquest I’m bound to hold – his identity as a Norman is obvious. My concern is how he came to his death.’

‘I feel responsible in great measure, whatever you say, John. I should have insisted that someone went with him, but I did not even know he was gone. I was selling sheep in Kingsteignton when he left.’

‘At what time was he found, brother?’

‘The light was fading, so it must have been after the sixth hour at this time of year. If the mare had not been seen, I doubt we would have discovered the body until this morning at the earliest, as he is hidden from view.’

When they arrived at the scene de Wolfe saw why this was true. A bridlepath split from the track alongside the Arch brook, which ran through low hills from Stoke to the river. It struck through the woods towards Coombe then turned to the water’s edge. There was dense woodland all along the banks of the river, which was wide and tidal for about two miles upstream from the ford at Teignmouth. After some rank grass and bushes above highwater mark, the trees began abruptly and were thickest at the forest edge where there was plenty of sunlight. Less than fifty paces from the bridlepath, and a similar distance from the edge of the trees, Gilbert’s body lay in a small clearing, where a large beech had fallen in a storm.

‘He is just as we found him, though we covered him with a cloak as a mark of respect,’ said William sombrely, as they all slid from their mounts at the edge of the clearing. The two freemen had been sitting on the fallen trunk and now rose expectantly at the arrival of their lords.

The coroner, his brother and Gwyn walked forward to the spot where a still figure lay under a riding cloak. Thomas hung back with the servants for a moment, then plucked up courage to edge nearer.

One of the socmen lifted the cloak and they saw that de Ridefort lay face down on the weeds between two scrubby elder bushes that had colonised the gap in the tall trees. The undergrowth was beaten down in a circle around the body and two tracks radiated away from it through the new spring grass into the trees. Dark blood was congealed on the leaves immediately to one side of the body and, though the face was hidden in vegetation, more blood was spattered in front of the head.

Before they touched the cadaver, Gwyn and his master stared carefully around the tiny clearing. ‘There’s been no horses in here. Whatever was done was carried out on foot,’ declared Gwyn.

‘There are many hoofmarks in the mud inside the trees, leading from the bridlepath,’ volunteered one of the guardians of the body, pointing away to one side.

‘He’s fully clothed, though he has no mantle in this cold weather,’ observed de Wolfe.

‘That was his own cloak we threw over him, Crowner,’ said the same freeman. ‘It was lying twenty paces away, towards the mess of hoofmarks.’

De Wolfe dropped to one knee alongside the corpse. He realised what a tall man de Ridefort had been, as he lay stretched full length on the ground.

A quick inspection at close quarters soon dispelled any lingering hope that this had been some accident, for the knight’s over-tunic of dark red wool was rent along a four-inch line just above his belt on the left side. The cloth was soaked in blood all around it, though because of the colour of the material, it had not been obvious from a distance.

‘There seems no other body wound than this at first sight,’ reported de Wolfe, ‘But he has had a blow upon the head.’ He could feel a swelling at the back of the cranium, and when he parted the hair, there was a large discoloured graze on the scalp.

‘What about the blood near his face?’ asked William, his face pale with the unaccustomed proximity of violent death. He was a farmer, not a man of action, and these things disturbed him more than most.

‘That almost certainly came from him coughing blood – it is pinker and more frothy than the dark flow from his side. That means the wound in his chest was inflicted while he was still alive and has penetrated his lights.’

‘Though he may have been without his wits from the blow on the head,’ reasoned Gwyn.

The coroner rose and motioned to his officer to turn the dead man over on to his back. The handsome face was red-purple in death, except for pallor of the nose and chin.

William stared in horror. ‘His face is blue! Has he been strangled as well?’

His brother shook his head. ‘That is merely blood settling after death – the white nose and chin are where the face lay hard against the ground.’

The eyes were closed, but from the mouth a trickle of frothy blood emerged. Gilbert’s hands had been outstretched before his head when he was on the ground, but now that his body was turned, they stuck stiffly upwards in a grotesque parody of supplication.

‘Ah, I was wrong about there being no other injuries!’ exclaimed the coroner. He grasped one of the wrists to examine the hand. ‘He’s stiff, yet that is to be expected if he died last night. But look at these!’ He pointed with a long forefinger at the palm of each hand, where there was a ragged wound in the centre that did not penetrate to the back. With Gwyn’s aid, he removed de Ridefort’s belt, which carried a sheathed dagger, and pulled up the over-tunic and tunic to expose the skin beneath. He rubbed away much of the smeared blood on the skin to expose a clean vertical incision slicing across the rib margin in the line of the armpit, just above the waist.

Thomas had been edging forward, forcing himself to look at the body, his left hand over his mouth to contain his revulsion. After staring at the exposed wounds, he crossed himself rapidly and gabbled in Latin.

‘For God’s sake, hold your tongue!’ snapped Gwyn. ‘What are you babbling about?’

‘The Blessed Gospel of St John, chapter nineteen!’ squeaked the clerk.

De Wolfe stared at him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

‘The spear wound in the side – and the marks on the palms!’ he said, in a melodramatic hiss.

William, who was a more ardent churchgoer than his brother, nodded vigorously. ‘The crucifixion – the final spear in the side and the marks of the nails in the hands!’

John’s gaze dropped from William to Thomas with dawning understanding. ‘Are you suggesting that he was crucified?’

Gwyn, for all his antagonism to religion, bent to examine the feet of the corpse. The dead man wore calf-length riding boots, but there was no sign of any damage to the leather. To make sure, he pulled them off, together with the long woollen hose. ‘Nothing on the feet – and the marks on his hands do not come right through,’ he objected.

Thomas glared up at him indignantly. ‘It’s symbolic, you ginger oaf!’ His tremulous excitement made him bold enough to insult his colleague.

The coroner wiped the blood from his fingers on the grass and stood up. ‘We can do nothing more here. Have the body taken back to the church in Stoke where he may lie decently, until I can examine him more closely.’

As they walked away from the body, de Wolfe said that he would have to open an inquest that afternoon and ride back to Exeter at first light in the morning. ‘There are people there I must see urgently. Beginning with a clutch of Templars and an Italian priest.’

It was now late afternoon, and on leaving the Priory of St Nicholas, de Wolfe thought it politic to tell the sheriff of the murder of a Norman knight in his territory – and to discover his attitude to these arrogant Templars. At the gatehouse of Rougemont, he sent Gwyn up to their chamber to tell Thomas de Peyne to get himself down to St James’s Priory on the river to see if he could discover anything new about the movements of Abbot Cosimo and his sinister henchmen, especially their whereabouts during the past two days.

Then he went on to the keep and marched in on his brother-in-law, who was deep in discussion with two of his tax-collectors. The sheriff had soon to make his twice-yearly journey to Winchester for his accounting of the taxes raised in Devon during the past six months. This ‘farm’, as it was called, was a sum fixed in advance by the king’s exchequer and if a sheriff could screw more out of the population he could keep the balance for himself. This explained why the office of sheriff was greatly coveted and competed for. In Richard’s reign, a ‘shrievalty’ – the post of sheriff – was sold by the king for a huge sum, most of the purchasers being barons and even bishops. Some even managed to become sheriffs of three counties simultaneously.

De Wolfe waited impatiently while de Revelle harangued the taxmen from Tavistock and Totnes for being late with their collections, threatening them with dire penalties if they did not come up with the loot by the end of the month. Eventually, the chastened men escaped and John left his seat in the window embrasure to hover over his brother-in-law as he sat at his parchment-cluttered table.

‘We have a murdered Norman knight to deal with, Sheriff,’ he began, and was gratified to see that those words ensured the other man’s immediate attention.

As de Revelle presumably knew nothing of Gilbert de Ridefort’s presence in his county, he had to explain the whole story from start to finish, and by the end, the sheriff had become quite agitated. Rising from his chair, he paced up and down before his fireplace. ‘A Templar heretic! What next, by God’s bones? And what was this secret he claimed to possess?’

The coroner shrugged. ‘I don’t know – and I don’t care. It died with him, presumably, so it’s quite safe. But, as the chief law officers in this county, we are keepers of the king’s peace, so our task is to discover the culprit. It was a foul killing, an ambush, a blow on the head and then a ritual stabbing.’

The sheriff was not concerned with the details or the need to make an arrest. He was more worried about his standing with certain parties of great influence. ‘You say there is a papal nuncio in the city, and three senior Templars?’

De Wolfe looked at him with contempt. ‘Come on, Richard, don’t act the innocent with me. You know damned well they are here – you went to a meeting with the bishop a few days ago to meet this Cosimo of Modena. And I don’t believe that the spies you have planted all over the city and county would not have told you of the arrival of three Knights of Christ, even if they had failed to tell you themselves, which now seems unlikely.’

The sheriff stopped his pacing and looked out of the window slit. ‘I had heard something about them, yes,’ he admitted shiftily.

‘So what are they doing here? For I know why Cosimo is here! He has a writ from the Vatican to seek out heretics.’

De Revelle ignored this last, but seized upon the matter of the Templars to upbraid John. ‘Those three important knights are in the county to purchase properties for their Order,’ he snapped. ‘They have the Chancellor’s blessing to treat with any baron – or the bishop – for the purchase of profitable lands from any honour that wishes to sell.’ He marched back to his folding chair and dropped into it. ‘They already have estates at Templeton, near my own manor at Tiverton, but desire something further west, perhaps near Torbay or Plympton. Again, my other manor at Revelstoke lies in that direction and I might be able to help them find land nearby.’

‘That’s what they told you, was it? Strange that they should arrive just as one of their renegade members, pursued by an emissary of the Pope, is found slain in the county!’

De Revelle glared at his sister’s husband, regretting for the thousandth time that she had ever married this persistent meddler who was wrecking his comfortable life. ‘They are here to reconnoitre for new Templar lands, I tell you! You are well aware of the great wealth they possess, and they need to invest it in the land, to the benefit of all of us.’

De Wolfe lowered his head towards de Revelle, as he stooped across the table. ‘Why would their leader, this Roland de Ver – until recently a senior member of the main Templar house in Paris – concern himself with buying a few hides of Devon soil?’

The sheriff waved a hand with assumed airy nonchalance. ‘You had better ask him yourself, John.’

‘I have just asked him – and was told to mind my own business. Why should they be so sensitive and secretive if all they are doing is negotiating for the purchase of some land?’

De Revelle’s face flushed above his trim beard and moustache. ‘You mean you’ve been pestering them already? You have no right, John. The Templars have immense power and influence!’

‘Especially with you, no doubt,’ said de Wolfe tartly. ‘Will you receive commission if you help them buy land in your county?’

‘The business transactions I carry out are no business of yours, Coroner.’

John gave one of his rare, lopsided grins. ‘You’ll get little commission out of a dead heretic, Richard. For that’s what I’m certain these knights are here about.’

‘They are attending to Templar interests, I tell you!’ shouted de Revelle furiously.

‘I can believe that, though their present interest is not land! If they are concerned with their investments, you had better invite them to come with us on Monday. Maybe they can at last succeed in winning their allotted land on Lundy!’ With that parting shot he left, convinced that his devious brother-in-law knew a lot more about the visitors than he was admitting.

It was dusk when he left the castle and walked home. Matilda was out, presumably still praying for the soul of Gilbert de Ridefort, so John took the opportunity to visit the Bush and spend an hour with Nesta in her room upstairs. After a satisfying dalliance with her under the sheepskins, he came down and continued his enjoyment with a boiled fowl, onions and cabbage, washed down with her best ale.

As he sat at his favourite bench near the hearth, the comely tavern-keeper kept him company, sitting opposite with her elbows on the table, looking affectionately at the lean, brooding man she loved. They talked of inconsequential things for a while, as de Wolfe had already told her everything about the strange death of the run-away Templar.

Eventually, he pushed aside the pile of chicken bones and the soaked trencher to concentrate on his quart of ale.

‘You are off to Lundy, then?’ asked Nesta, concern on her pretty face. ‘Be careful, John, both of the sea and the men who live there.’ At the hub of gossip related by travellers and mariners passing through the inn, she was on top of every piece of news in Devon and well knew the bad reputation of that lonely island set a dozen miles off the north coast.

As he was reassuring her of his safety, which would be ensured by the large party of knights and soldiers going on the sheriff’s escapade, the old potman Edwin limped across to the table and addressed him by his old military title. ‘Cap’n, someone was seeking you, when you were … well, upstairs earlier on.’ He leered at the coroner, his collapsed whitened eye slewing horribly in its socket.

Nesta scowled at his innuendo. ‘Who was it, you old fool?’ she snapped.

Edwin twitched his thin shoulders under his frayed woollen tunic. ‘Never saw him before. A gentleman, no doubt, dressed in riding clothes, booted and spurred. He asked for the crowner, but he didn’t say who he was or why he wanted him.’

‘What did you tell him? That he was upstairs with the ale-wife?’ she said, threateningly.

The old soldier grinned, showing the blackened stumps in his gums. ‘No, I said the crowner would almost certainly be in here within the hour. He said nothing and walked out.’

‘What did he look like?’ demanded John.

‘Big, tall fellow, no moustache or beard. Couldn’t see his hair, he had a leather cap tied around under his chin. Looked about thirty or more years.’

‘Not another bailiff come to report a sudden death?’

‘Didn’t look like any bailiff. More likely a soldier.’

De Wolfe looked at Nesta. ‘I wonder if this is our long-expected Bernardus de Blanchefort? If it is, he’s got a nasty shock awaiting him.’

Someone else marched up to the table, no rogue Templar but Gwyn of Polruan. ‘A couple of messages, Crowner. First, that little toad Thomas has seen this Italian priest down at the cathedral Close. He turned up before I could send him down to the priory, saying that this Cosimo has come back to the bishop’s palace with his two strong-arm men. Bishop Marshal is still away, but he has met two of the Archdeacons and the Precentor.’

‘Has Thomas any idea of where they have been these last two days?’

‘None at all – but their horses were tired and mud-spattered so they’ve covered some distance lately.’

De Wolfe gave a loud grunt, his usual means of responding when he had nothing constructive to say. ‘And your other news?’

‘Sergeant Gabriel was sent down to the gatehouse by the sheriff to tell me to command you to attend on him as soon as possible.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know – but Gabriel said that two of the Templar’s squires had been up there within the last hour.’

De Wolfe rose wearily to his feet. ‘I’d better be off, I suppose. Maybe the Knights of Christ have thought better of refusing to speak to me.’ And with Gwyn in tow, he began trudging back up to Rougemont.

Putting Gilbert de Ridefort to rest next morning was a quick and almost furtive exercise. Soon after dawn, two grave-diggers carried the shrouded body on a bier from the cathedral to St Bartholomew’s, a church in Bretayne, which had a burial ground against the north-west stretch of the town wall. Just after the ninth-hour bell, a few people straggled through the cold rain to stand briefly around the newly dug grave-pit.

Uncoffined, but wrapped securely in his clothing, with a linen shroud stitched over the top, the former Knight Templar was lowered into the hole by the two labourers, whilst the gaunt parish priest, himself shrouded against the rain by a long leather cape, mumbled some unintelligible version of the Mass for the Dead. The spectators – for, with the exception of Matilda, one could hardly call them mourners – stood well back from the muddy pit, as if to distance themselves from the deceased. Apart from John de Wolfe and his wife, they consisted of the three Templar knights, with their impassive squires standing in the background, Gwyn, Thomas de Peyne – and Abbot Cosimo of Modena, also with his two grim retainers lurking behind him. A couple of heads were visible over the stone wall that divided the churchyard from a narrow lane, curious at such goings-on early on a Saturday morning.

John had the strong impression that all those inside the graveyard had come solely to confirm that this dangerous and heretical renegade actually was buried in the earth and had not resurrected himself in a puff of sulphurous smoke.

There was an almost palpable air of relief when the grave-diggers began shovelling sticky mud down on to the body, and within minutes of the congregation coming into the churchyard, the grave was filled in and they began silently dispersing.

De Wolfe was surprised at the presence of the ‘opposition’, as he thought of them. All were suspects in his eyes, the only problem being that, with nine potential murderers, it was impossible to hazard a guess as to the real culprit or culprits: the way that Gilbert had died meant that either a single assailant or several might have killed him.

The coroner’s original plan had been frustrated by the denial of burial in the cathedral: he had hoped to attempt the ‘ordeal of the bier’ while the body was lying there. He had brought it back from Stoke partly because he had hoped by some subterfuge to get the Templars and the abbot to view the corpse before it was buried to see if de Ridefort’s injuries might bleed again in the proximity of the killer. He was not sure in his own mind whether there was any truth in this mystical procedure, but it was approved by the Church and he had heard tales in the past that when suspects had been made to touch the bier, the corpse had bled. Now the three Templars ignored him, though Roland de Ver managed a moderately courteous nod in the direction of Matilda, before hurrying out of the small graveyard.

De Wolfe was more interested in Abbot Cosimo, on whom he had never laid eyes until now. As Thomas had described, he was a short, slight man of middle age, with a strange facial profile, his forehead coming down in an absolutely straight line with his prominent nose. His hair was black and his complexion sallow, with a marked Mediterranean look about it. His small black eyes and thin lips over projecting teeth, gave him a rodent-like appearance. As the outspoken but perceptive Gwyn said later, he was the sort of creature you wanted to tread on when it crossed your path.

As he passed to go to the gate, the abbot looked right through de Wolfe as if he didn’t exist, making no acknowledgement of him whatsoever. His two sour-faced acolytes closed ranks behind him, and the trio vanished rapidly into the rain, following the Templars. The abbot’s henchmen, who de Wolfe learned later were men-at-arms from the Temple in London, were heavily built men in sombre tunics and mantles, who seemed rarely to speak and certainly never smiled. He never discovered their names and they seemed to view anyone who approached Cosimo with suspicion, fingering their swords or daggers as if they expected an assassination attempt at any moment. As John came through the gate and stared after them, he saw that Cosimo had caught up with the knights and was talking animatedly to them.

Matilda curtly expressed a wish to go to St Olave’s and, in such an unsavoury neighbourhood as Bretayne, demanded her husband’s company as escort, though the church was only a few hundred yards distant. The lanes were lined with hovels of board and cob, mostly roofed with turf or thatch, much of it tattered and disintegrating. Many of the dwellings were little better than ramshackle huts, tilted and leaning against each other. The narrow alleys were barely the span of two arms and the ground ran with sewage, rubbish and mud, amongst which dogs, cats, rats, fowls and a few pigs vied for space with urchins and toddlers, all seemingly oblivious of the filth and the rain.

With Gwyn and Thomas trudging behind, de Wolfe chaperoned his wife to her favourite place of worship and then, with some relief, suggested to the others that they adjourn to the Bush for discussion and refreshment.

As they crossed Fore Street, Gwyn looked several times over his shoulder, before stopping dead and staring back. ‘Who’s this following us?’

De Wolfe swung round and experienced a momentary déjà vu sensation, harking back to de Ridefort’s early antics. A man in a wide-brimmed pilgrim’s felt hat was behind him, enveloped in a soaking cloak of nondescript dun colour. De Wolfe recognised the hat as having been on one of the heads looking over the graveyard wall a few minutes earlier. ‘What is it, fellow? Do you want me?’ he challenged.

The man, tall and powerfully built, came up close to him and Gwyn stepped forward, his hand going to his dagger. The coroner had made a few enemies and, like Cosimo’s men, the Cornishman was ever on his guard. But his caution was unnecessary, if the fellow’s first words were true.

‘Sir John, I am Bernardus de Blanchefort. I think you may have been expecting me.’

John de Wolfe spent a quiet couple of hours in his small, bleak room at the top of the gatehouse. Even the damp cold of the unheated chamber was preferable to the frigid company of his wife. He used the time to practise his reading of Latin, running a finger slowly along the lines of Thomas’s perfect penmanship and forming the words silently with his lips.

The text was on the rolls that his clerk had written for current cases, pale cream parchment stitched together in long lengths, which would be presented to the king’s justices when they eventually came to Exeter for the next Eyre of Assize. They were long overdue, but rumour had it that they were in Dorchester and might perambulate as far as Devon in the next month or two to hear any civil disputes and serious cases of crime that de Wolfe had managed to wrest from the sheriff’s Shire Court.

John’s ability to read the rolls was improving weekly, and now he stumbled through a recent case of rape to refresh his memory. The woman, a young widow, claimed to have been waylaid in the backyard of her own house in Goldsmith Street. She had been allegedly beaten and ravished, and had produced a bloodstained rag, the almost obligatory evidence required to substantiate such a charge. Certainly when examined by de Wolfe, she had had bruised cheeks and arms, a black eye and a couple of loose teeth. There was no doubt about the assailant, a local carter who had been living with her for some months. The bailiff to the burgesses and one of his constables were called by the woman and her sister, who had raised the hue and cry, though in fact the man needed no chasing, as he was sitting in the house drinking ale when the bailiff arrived. On the accusation of the two women, the carter was arrested on the spot and dragged away to the gaol in the tower of the South Gate. If de Wolfe had not been notified by the bailiff, the carter would then have been hauled off to the sheriff’s fortnightly court and would most likely have been hanged, even though he loudly insisted that all he had done was give the widow a thrashing because she had stolen some money from his pouch when he was sleeping. As for the coupling, he claimed that that had been at least a daily event and had been enthusiastically received!

Against the equally loud protestations of Richard de Revelle, John insisted that such a serious charge as rape be referred to the king’s court, so he examined the woman himself, chaperoned by the old hag who did service as the midwife in that part of the town. There seemed little evidence of actual rape, but the coroner knew that in a previously married woman that by no means excluded forceful ravishment, even though the injuries to this one’s face were more in accord with a common assault. He decided to record all the facts and leave it to the king’s judges to decide who was telling the truth. As it was a hanging offence, de Wolfe could not attach the man with a heavy bail payment and he had to stay in prison until the Eyre of Assize, much to the annoyance of the burgesses and sheriff who had to pay a ha’penny a day for his keep. It was common for the prisoner in such cases to escape, usually by bribing the gaolers, but the only future for him then was either to run for the forest and become an outlaw or to seek sanctuary in a church and then abjure the realm.

De Wolfe pushed the roll aside, having strained his eyes and his brain enough for one day. He pulled his mantle more closely around him as he saw the rain sheeting down outside the window slit and thought about this latest complication, Bernardus de Blanchefort. He heartily wished him a thousand leagues away for he was no concern of a coroner as long as he stayed alive. Due to Gilbert de Ridefort’s tenuous claim to friendship, both he and this Bernardus had been thrust upon him and he seemed to be burdened with their safety, which he had spectacularly failed to ensure in the case of de Ridefort. ‘To hell with him! Let him give his damned sermon!’ muttered the coroner to himself, huddled in his bare attic. ‘If he wants to commit suicide, so be it. Those Templars or the Italian rat will put paid to him if he utters more than two words in front of the cathedral tomorrow.’

His dismissal of de Blanchefort was short-lived, however. Just as he was thinking of walking down to the Bush for an early-evening drink, there was a familiar uneven tapping of feet on the stairs and Thomas appeared through the hessian curtain. He looked worried and agitated. ‘Crowner, you must come down to the cathedral at once to see the archdeacon. He has sent me to fetch you.’

‘What’s the urgency, Thomas?’

‘As you told me to, I put word about concerning this sermon tomorrow.’ He crossed himself at the thought of it. ‘I told several vicars, a few secondaries and one canon while I was walking about the Close and later having my dinner at the house where I lodge. Within the hour, there was a buzz of interest in it and several more priests and monks came to ask me about the time and place, some of them already angry. Then, not long ago, two canons appeared and almost blamed me for encouraging heresy, though I told them I was only passing on gossip I had heard.’

‘Get on with it, man! What about the archdeacon?’

‘John of Alençon sent his own vicar-choral to me just now, with a demand that he speak to you urgently about this affair. He wants to see you in the Chapter House straight away.’

‘How did he know that I was connected with this?’

‘Your involvement with the dead Templar led him to assume that you were behind this new man.’

‘I’m not behind anything!’ snapped de Wolfe irascibly. ‘I wish I’d never heard of either of the damned fellows. But I suppose I must come down with you. What about Gwyn?’

‘He has been around the alehouses with the gossip – no hardship for him, I’m sure!’ the little man added wryly. ‘And I saw him just now, talking to some of the men-at-arms downstairs in the guardroom, so he’s probably telling them as well.’

The result of Gwyn’s publicity was even more rapid than that of Thomas’s. By the time John and his clerk had reached the gateway to Rougemont, Sergeant Gabriel was hurrying towards them from the direction of the keep. ‘The sheriff wants to see you, Crowner. Something about a new Templar giving a sermon tomorrow. He seemed in a high temper about it. Wants you to go to his chamber right away.’

De Wolfe sighed a great sigh. ‘Can’t be done, Gabriel. I have to see the archdeacon urgently at the Chapter House. Tell the sheriff that if he wants to talk about it he had better join us at the cathedral without delay.’

Determined not to be at the beck and call of Richard de Revelle, de Wolfe waved the sergeant away and, with Thomas clip-clopping behind, he strode away down towards the high street and the Close.

He found John de Alençon waiting impatiently in the Chapter House. This was a square wooden structure outside the South Tower in which the daily chapter meetings of the canons and lesser clergy were held. It had bare benches around three sides and a lectern on the other, where a chapter of the gospels was read at each session, giving the assembly its name. A wooden ladder in the corner led to the cathedral library above. The archdeacon’s spare frame was pacing up and down, his cassock sweeping the floor in his agitation. Sharp grey eyes looked out worriedly from his thin face, accentuating his ascetic appearance. ‘John, what am I hearing about tomorrow? Is there no end to this?’

De Wolfe sank on to a front bench and turned up his hands in exasperated supplication. ‘It is not of my doing. Another ex-Templar has appeared, this time intent on delivering some religious truth. I have no control over him, so what do you expect me to do?’

De Alençon slumped on to the wooden seat alongside the coroner. ‘I wish the bishop was here. This should be the responsibility of someone with a higher authority. I have been visited by Cosimo and the Templar knights, who told me of their concern that serious heresy is afoot.’

The outer door banged and in marched Richard de Revelle, green cloak flowing in the wind and an expression of outrage on his narrow face. ‘You’re treading on thin ice, John,’ he began, without any preamble. ‘I have heard that some foolishness is to be to be perpetrated here tomorrow and it seems that you are linked to it in some way.’

De Wolfe jumped to his feet. ‘For God’s sake, it’s none of my doing! Some religious fanatic appears in the city and immediately everyone thinks he is my protégé.’

‘This cannot be allowed to continue!’ shouted the sheriff. ‘I’ll have three senior Templars on my back like a ton of quarrystone. When they hear of this, they will demand that he be arrested.’

‘Do you know who we are talking about?’ grated de Wolfe. ‘You want him arrested and yet you don’t even know his name.’

‘So who is he?’ demanded de Revelle.

‘He’s another Templar – or perhaps former Templar would be more accurate. No doubt he has already been ejected from the Order,’ observed de Wolfe.

The archdeacon, who disliked the sheriff as much as de Wolfe did, could not resist putting a brake on his autocratic manner. ‘Forgive me, de Revelle, but I have to point out that not only do you have no jurisdiction in the cathedral precinct, except upon the roads, but that I fail to see how you can arrest anyone for threatening to give a religious address, sacrilegious or otherwise. Both those matters are strictly within the authority of the Church and its Consistory Courts.’

Richard de Revelle tried to bluster his way around this. ‘Possibly true, Archdeacon, but if the outrage at heretical preaching leads to a public disturbance or even a riot, which could spread beyond the Close, then it most certainly is a breach of the king’s peace and falls within my remit.’

The two Johns couldn’t resist exchanging cynical smiles at this, coming from a recognised supporter of the prince’s treason.

‘I am very glad to hear you upholding your sovereign Richard’s peace, Sheriff, and I will bear it in mind,’ said the priest sweetly.

‘Are you going to do nothing to prevent this obscenity, then?’ fumed de Revelle.

‘There is no way that we can allow anyone to preach publicly from our own cathedral steps,’ said the Archdeacon decisively, ‘especially when it is rumoured that he is fostering some heresy, presumably that of the Cathars, as he is said to come from that part of France.’

Once again the Chapter House door creaked open and this time a whole crowd of men jostled inside. The three Knights Templar ushered in Cosimo of Modena and their five retainers came in after them to stand ranged around the back of the room.

‘Gossip travels fast in this city,’ observed John de Alençon mildly, looking at the group of damp souls who stood dripping water on to the flagged floor, for the rain had begun again in earnest outside.

The small Italian priest moved to the centre of the floor, in front of the much taller archdeacon. He began speaking in a high pitched whine. ‘It has come to my notice that we have yet more sacrilege amongst us! It is my duty to know of such dangerous men, especially from France, and I tell you, this Bernardus de Blanchefort may present a serious threat to our Mother Church. He must be taken and sent home to be taught the error of his ways.’

‘What are these errors, Brother Abbot?’ asked the archdeacon gravely.

Cosimo looked evasively from him to the coroner and back again. ‘It is the usual foul nonsense, the perverted beliefs of those in the Albi region of the Languedoc. They are so evilly fanciful that, though they make no impression on educated men such as we, if preached openly to the public some of the weaker-minded may be influenced.’

‘He must not be allowed to open his mouth,’ roared Brian de Falaise, from a few feet away. His bull neck and rugged cheeks were almost purple with anger and de Wolfe suspected that if he hadn’t left his broadsword at home to visit a church the blade would be whistling through the air at this point.

‘Where is this accursed fellow, anyway?’ demanded Richard de Revelle. ‘Has anyone seen him? How did we hear that he was in Exeter and intended on this madness tomorrow?’ He glared at his brother-in-law, as if suspecting that he was behind this new problem.

John decided that part of the truth was better than a complete denial. ‘He accosted me in the street today, after the burial of his fellow Templar.’

‘They are no Templars!’ snarled Brian de Falaise. ‘They would have been ejected from our Order with ignominy had they been found before they fled from us.’

‘So you were searching for these men, then, and not just looking for land to purchase?’ observed de Wolfe, with a hard edge to his voice.

Roland de Ver slid smoothly into the exchange. ‘We are seeking new estates, indeed we are. But on our journeying we were also told to look out for our two wayward brothers, who were thought to be in this part of England.’ He looked reprovingly at de Falaise, who glowered back. De Ver continued, ‘My friend here is not quite correct in his harsh judgement of them. If we had come across them in our travels, we were to persuade them to return with us so that the error of their ways could be explained to them, and every effort made to bring them back into the paths of righteousness.’

At this, Godfrey Capra and Brian de Falaise looked at each other as if this was the first they had heard of it, but they wisely held their peace.

The archdeacon came back into the discussion, privately most concerned – as was his friend the coroner – about Gilbert de Ridefort’s bloody end. ‘Abbot Cosimo, I am not at all clear about your mission in Devon. Did you come because of these two Templars?’

The Italian’s strange profile slowly turned up to the taller priest. ‘I regret that I cannot discuss such matters, Archdeacon. As you know, I am a papal nuncio and as such have complete authority to conduct myself in any way that seems beneficial to the Holy See. But I can tell you that I am charged with the rooting out of heresy, wherever it may be found.’

After being told to mind his own business, John de Alençon stared stonily at de Revelle. ‘What is to be done about this, Sheriff? Though I have pointed out to you that the precinct is outwith your jurisdiction, I take your point about not wanting a riot. Already, several of my priests and some monks have protested to me about the rumours concerning tomorrow.’

Richard threw back his cloak over one shoulder in a dramatic gesture. ‘I will arrest the man the moment he shows his face. I will soon find some suitable charge.’

In spite of an icy glare from Roland de Ver, Brian de Falaise cut across de Revelle in a loud voice. ‘Let us take him! We need no legalistic excuse, he is a renegade member of our Order and as such is subject to our discipline. As our leader says, we need to remove him to the New Temple so that he can be readjusted.’

De Wolfe wondered if ‘readjustment’ included tearing de Blanchefort’s arms from their sockets on the rack, but the priest from Modena was now entering the verbal fray.

‘What matters is that this troublemaker must not be allowed to open his mouth in public,’ he hissed. ‘In five minutes before an audience of dull-witted but impressionable folk, he might begin something that could do incalculable damage to the Holy Church. I don’t care if the sheriff hangs him or the Templars drag him back to London, as long as he is not allowed to remain at liberty where at any time he might begin to spread this heresy.’ With a face that momentarily reminded de Wolfe of a snake, he threw a poisonous look at the coroner. ‘I hold you responsible in part for all this trouble. You seem very bound up with these two men – I trust you yourself have no leanings towards their perverted ideas.’

He looked over his shoulder to where his two glowering retainers stood menacingly near the door. ‘I intend to have a presence in the cathedral Close tomorrow, as a safety measure in case you others fail in your duties.’ With that, he pulled up the pointed hood of his black habit, glided towards his men and vanished with them into the night.

Now the Templars, the archdeacon and the sheriff all turned to the coroner. ‘So where is he, John?’ snapped de Revelle. ‘You seem to know most about him. In fact, we have only your word for it that he actually exists!’

‘De Blanchefort exists all right, as did de Ridefort,’ growled Brian de Falaise. ‘I saw them both in Outremer – they were strange then. De Ridefort had strangeness in the blood, for his damned uncle proved that!’

John de Alençon held his hands as if in prayer. ‘Do you know where he is now, John?’

‘I have no idea where he is,’ said the coroner, almost truthfully. ‘I presume he is still in the city, as the gates are now locked, though he may have left since this afternoon, when I last saw him.’

De Wolfe satisfied his conscience with the evasion that he did not know exactly – to a few hundred paces – where Bernardus was at that moment, for as soon as he had known that he was going to the Chapter House for an inevitable grilling about the fugitive, he had seized Gwyn in the castle guardroom and sent him down to the Saracen to get the Templar out and hide him somewhere until the morning.

One of the brown-cloaked Templar sergeants moved forward and whispered to Roland de Ver. The knight nodded and pulled thoughtfully at his right ear. ‘It is pointless trying to find this de Blanchefort tonight. I have never met him, but both my brothers here know him slightly by sight, and in the morning can patrol the streets around the cathedral to seek some sign of him.’

De Ver pulled his white mantle with the bold red cross more closely around him in preparation for leaving. ‘Whatever happens, this man must not be allowed to climb the cathedral steps, let alone open his mouth to say even as much as “Good morning”,’ he declared. Turning on his heel he stalked from the bleak chamber, followed by the sheriff, then his fellow Knights of Christ and their sergeants.

The two Johns were left alone, apart from the rather overawed Thomas lurking near the lectern. ‘You have a talent for becoming involved in desperate situations, John,’ said the archdeacon, with a twinkle in his eye even at this serious moment. ‘A few months ago it was the murder of that silversmith, then it was the business of Prince John. Now you bring international heretics into our city and cathedral! What will it be next?’

De Wolfe gave his friend one of his rare grins. ‘I’ll think of something, John, never fear!’

The services of Terce, Sext, Nones and High Mass took place in the choir of the cathedral from about the ninth hour of the morning. The first three were short devotions, mainly sung psalms. Once the main mass of the day was over, the clergy, who had already been at Prime and then the Chapter meeting since about the seventh hour, were usually more than ready for their dinner at about the eleventh.

But this Sunday morning, even empty stomachs were not enough to keep many of the canons, vicars, secondaries and choristers away from the West Front, attracted by the rumours that had been circulating since the previous day. The prospect of a break from the tedium of the endless round of services, the same faces and the same surroundings of the episcopal city-within-a-city, drew a considerable crowd into the Close and the number of clerics was swollen by scores of citizens.

The mood was one of curiosity rather than a desire for enlightenment, though a few of the older people, both lay and clergy, were either indignant or incensed that someone might have the effrontery to try to preach heresy from the cathedral steps.

As the black-robed clerics streamed out of the door from the nave into the weak sunshine – for it had stopped raining at last – they slowed down into a sluggish pool of humanity surrounding the broad West Front of the huge building. Some, whose desire for food was greater than for dramatic diversion, walked slowly towards their lodgings, determined that if nothing exciting occurred before they reached the edge of the Close they would go home. But many others milled about the foot of the steps, gossiping and staring around, eager to get a glimpse of the renegade who had promised to reveal some awful secret.

Amongst this fluid throng were a number of solid rocks, in the shape of sentinels determined to prevent any such sabotage of the Faith. The three Templars and their sergeants were spaced out across the width of the building, within easy reach of the steps. In the centre, Abbot Cosimo stood, closely flanked by his silent henchmen who stared around them with suspicious hostility. Further back, in an arc at the edge of the open space before the West Front, stood the sheriff, with Ralph Morin, the castle constable and half a dozen men-at-arms under Sergeant Gabriel.

Near the small wicket-gate set in the closed centre door to the nave, Archdeacon John de Alençon stood with the coroner, though for once neither of de Wolfe’s assistants was with him.

Every moment or two, a ripple of anticipation ran through the crowd, as someone saw, or fancied he saw, a stranger appear in the Close. Several times, this rolling murmur came then faded, and each time there was a tensing of muscles and shifting of feet amongst the guardians of truth.

‘Did you see this man de Blanchefort last night to warn him off?’ asked the archdeacon, as another false alarm died down.

‘I’ve not set eyes on him, apart from that one meeting,’ said de Wolfe, truthfully as he had used Gwyn as an intermediary. ‘If he’s got any sense, he’ll stay well clear of this ambush, unless he wants to risk the same fate as his friend.’

Suddenly there was a stir at the further end of the front of the cathedral, towards the corner facing Canon’s Row. Heads turned, fingers pointed, and a surge in the murmur and chatter sent several of Gabriel’s men pushing forward through the crowd. But they were outpaced by one of the servants of the Italian priest and also the sergeant of Brian de Falaise, closely followed by the Templar knight himself. They converged on someone who had walked around the corner of the building from the north side, keeping close to the wall until he reached the edge of the half-dozen long steps that stretched below the three big doors. Once the movement began, it was almost alive in its self-generation and a wave of people surged forward, the sentinels pushing and thrashing to get to the front.

The archdeacon stretched his thin neck to see better and began to move forward too, but John de Wolfe stayed where he was, a faint smile on his saturnine face. The first to press up to the new arrival was Cosimo’s familiar, who seized him and swung him around. The man wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled well down over his head and a long grey cloak with a hood, which lay in concealing folds around his neck and face. He was a big man, tall and wide within the folds of his mantle.

De Falaise was the next to reach him and, with a cry of triumph, grabbed him by the arm. Simultaneously, the sheriff and Cosimo pressed through to form a tight circle in the midst of the confused throng of clerics and townsfolk.

‘They seem to have got him, so pray God he cannot begin his devilish oratory!’ cried the archdeacon, but the coroner remained impassive, assured that there would be no attempt at any seditious speech. He watched as the man pulled away angrily from the grip of several who were now pawing at him, amid shouts of ‘Heretic!’ and ‘Anti-Christ!’

A second later, his hat was pulled off and his cloak ripped open, which provoked a great roar from the man. ‘Get off me, damn you! Can’t a fellow have a Sunday morning walk without being assaulted?’ The bright red hair, wild as a hayrick in a gale, and the luxuriant moustache revealed the presumed heretic as Gwyn of Polruan, doing his best not to laugh at the chagrin of his would-be capturers.

‘Who the hell are you?’ roared de Falaise, who had never seen the coroner’s officer before. Ralph Morin and Gabriel enlightened him, themselves suppressing grins. Although they had had no foreknowledge of Gwyn’s appearance, they knew instantly who had instigated the jest. The sheriff also knew, but he was by no means amused. ‘You great oaf! What do you think you’re doing?’ he snapped, confronting the Cornishman.

De Wolfe felt it was time he gave his officer some support and pushed his way to his side. ‘Ah, there you are, Gwyn,’ he said loudly. ‘You’re late, as usual.’

Abbot Cosimo and Roland de Ver demanded to know what was going on, as both realised that this was not Bernardus de Blanchefort.

‘This fellow has been making fools of us!’ blustered Richard de Revelle.

The coroner fixed him with a steely eye. ‘Since when is it forbidden for a citizen to walk peacefully in the cathedral Close, Sheriff?’

Richard de Revelle glared at his brother-in-law. ‘Don’t play the innocent with me, John. When did your lout of a man ever wear a pilgrim’s hat and a grey cloak? Tattered leather and a sack around his head is his usual attire.’

‘Then we should be pleased that his tastes are improving, Richard,’ countered John sarcastically.

The crowd sensed that the fun was over and most realised that no heretic was likely to appear now. But Cosimo remained suspicious and looked around in every direction, with jerky movements of his head. ‘Can we be sure that this is not some trick, some diversion to allow de Blanchefort to slip past us?’ he hissed to Roland de Ver. He prodded his two retainers hard in their ribs to send them hurrying to each end of the West Front to stare about for any other stranger, who failed conspicuously to appear.

‘Come on, Gwyn, we have work to do,’ barked de Wolfe, with a wink at Ralph Morin. They walked away, leaving the three Templars glowering suspiciously after them and an exasperated sheriff protesting again to the archdeacon, who now could hardly conceal a smile of relief that no challenge to his beloved Church had been made.

With an almost full moon the previous night, the tide was high along the banks of the river and the knights and men-at-arms filed aboard the two knarrs on gangplanks that were almost level. The long wooden bridge across the river was immediately upstream to the stone quay that had been built to serve Bideford, and all vessels with fixed masts were obliged to moor on its seaward side.

The grey light of dawn was filtering through broken cloud and the wind was slight and south-easterly, ideal for getting out of the Torridge into its confluence with the Taw, which flowed from Barnstaple to the open sea beyond Appledore. The waterways were tortuous and ever-changing, the banks of sand and mud altering with every flood and storm, but with this spring tide the flat-bottomed boats had no fear of running aground within the next couple of hours.

The lord of Bideford was aboard the first knarr with his own men and half the Exeter soldiers, as well as the abbot. The remainder were with the sheriff, Templars and coroner on the second vessel. As soon as the men were aboard, the ship-masters cast off and the sails filled to press them seawards for three miles up the river.

De Wolfe stood with the other knights on the left side of the stern, leaving the opposite deck clear for the seaman grasping the steerboard, a large oar lashed to a post on the bulwark. In the centre was the ship-master, a scruffy individual in half-length breeches and a tattered short tunic. Bare-footed, like the other four of his crew, he kept looking up at the sky and muttering foul language under his breath. Every now and then, he would bark some almost unintelligible instruction to the steersman or the crew holding the sheets secured to each lower corner of the single square sail.

Within half an hour, the lively breeze had taken them to the main channel and as soon as they rounded the promontory of Appledore, they felt the swell coming in through the entrance to the open sea. Soon half of the land-lubber soldiers were ill and many hung over the rough fence of the bulwarks, retching their breakfast into the turbid sea.

‘Bloody fine fighting force we’re going to be!’ rumbled Gwyn contemptuously, standing like a rock, feet apart and hands behind his back. He was as much at home on water as on land and had little sympathy for those who were not.

De Wolfe himself, though not a bad sailor, disliked the rhythmic motion as they ran up to the bar between the final sand dunes. He was glad when the ships were in open sea, where the shorter, sharper pitching was less troublesome to his stomach. The sheriff was almost as green as his favourite tunic, but pride prevented him joining his men puking at the rail. Two of the Templars seemed immune, though Godfrey Capra became pale and noticeably silent.

Once outside the estuary, the two little ships ploughed on westwards, with a little northing to reach Lundy. Above them, the early-morning clouds were breaking up and patches of blue sky appeared and increased as the hours went by, a low pale sun gleaming intermittently in the east. Though de Wolfe considered the weather kind, the ship-master frequently looked to the west and scowled at the open ocean. He muttered now and then to the steersman and pointed to the far distance.

‘What’s bothering him?’ the coroner asked Gwyn.

The former fisherman had also been following the master’s concern. ‘There’s bad weather coming – but not yet. See that cloud on the horizon?’

John squinted to see a bank of solid grey far away, stretched low down in the western sky. To him it looked innocuous and he turned away when the ship-master again began gabbling in his thick local accent.

‘It’s Lundy already. See it ahead there?’ interpreted Gwyn. The air was clear and the dark line of the island rose like a distant whale on the horizon.

‘It’s three mile long, but less than one wide,’ explained the shipmaster. ‘We see it side on now from the east, but as we come to it from the south, it will foreshorten.’

The two knarrs hurried along with the brisk fair wind and the ebb tide, which was emptying the channel. In a couple of hours, Lundy was close enough to see the detail on the cliffs, which rose over four hundred feet at the southern end. Most of the men had now recovered from their mal de mer and were staring at this huge rock that rose out of the entrance to the Severn Sea. As they came even closer, the tip of the island was seen to hook out towards them in a broken promontory.

‘That’s Rat Island. The only good landing place is just around the corner from it – and Marisco’s castle is above it on the cliffs, at the highest point,’ explained the ship-master, pointing at the grey rocks. As the steersman leaned on his great oar and the crew adjusted the square sail, the knarr came round to weather the jagged promontory so that they could see the landing beach, a stretch of pebbles with a steep path winding up behind it. On the top of the cliffs, a low stone fortification was visible, but this sank out of sight as they got nearer.

The sea was fairly calm around the point and they glided towards the beach until the ship-master yelled at his crew once more. The yard rattled down the mast and lay on the untidy folds of the sail, as the knarr lost way. Pointing, the ship-master made it clear why he was keeping well off the shore. A line of men, several dozen in number, was spaced out just above the tide level and more were coming down the steep path from the settlement above. Even at that distance, the knarr’s company could see the glint of the weak sunshine on spear-heads and swords.

‘It looks as if we have a welcoming party already!’ growled Ralph Morin, looking like one of his Norse ancestors with an old conical helmet and his jutting grey beard. De Wolfe, who had been studying the landing site, raised an arm to point high up on the cliff. ‘Don’t worry too much about them yet, Ralph. Look up there instead.’ On a rocky spur above the path, they could just make out a contraption of wooden beams, with a few dot-like figures moving around it. All the fighting men knew what it was and their faces showed that they viewed it seriously.

‘A trebuchet – that could indeed be a problem,’ observed Roland de Ver. He spoke to the shipmaster and soon the other vessel came alongside. Their rails were roped together so that Richard de Grenville could join in the council of war.

‘Are these men on the beach going to oppose us?’ asked Brian de Falaise truculently. ‘If so, we should land in force and give them a thrashing.’

‘Easier said than done,’ retorted de Grenville. ‘We cannot beach the knarrs on a falling tide in case we wish to make a rapid retreat. And using the curraghs to land mailed soldiers is fraught with hazard. If they are tipped out, they’ll sink like stones!’

‘So why the hell did we come?’ demanded de Falaise harshly. He was itching for a fight but his lack of concern for his own safety was not shared so enthusiastically by the others.

Further discussion was interrupted by a loud splash and a fountain of water erupted from the sea ahead of them. It was many yards short, but the message was clear. The ships had been drifting towards the shore in the breeze and now the masters were hurriedly casting off the lashings that held the two knarrs together and setting men to haul at long oars over the sides. Though hopelessly inefficient, this halted the drift towards the cliffs and imperceptibly inched the boats back out to sea.

‘What range does that thing have?’ the sheriff demanded of John.

The coroner shrugged. ‘Impossible to tell, other than finding out the hard way, Richard! It’s high up, so its range will be greater and the fall of missiles more powerful.’

The trebuchet was an engine for hurling projectiles a considerable distance at an enemy. A long beam was pivoted vertically in a massive frame and a heavy weight fixed to the lower end. A large bowl at the upper end carried either one large rock or a collection of smaller stones. Several men hauled on ropes fixed to the top of the beam until it was horizontal, when it was released, the weight fell violently and the beam jerked back to the vertical, hurling the missiles forward over the edge of the cliff to fall on targets far below. Both the range and direction could be adjusted to cover all the approaches to the beach.

Frustrated, the knights stood on the decks of the two vessels, while the crews dropped two large anchor stones to prevent further drifting into danger. ‘We must at least try to parley with these swine to see if they’ll at least let us talk to de Marisco,’ snarled de Falaise. ‘And I’ll go if you wish, de Ver.’

John mischievously suggested an alternative. ‘Lundy is part of the county of Devon, so falls directly under the jurisdiction of our sheriff here. He must have the prerogative, as well as the honour, of going ashore first.’

De Revelle gave his brother-in-law a look that should have dropped him dead him on the spot and limped away from the rail, rubbing his left thigh. ‘Of course I would, but this old wound I suffered in the Irish wars makes it difficult for me to get down into one of those small boats.’

De Falaise, well aware of the coroner’s stratagem, clapped de Revelle heartily on the shoulder. ‘Never fear, sheriff, I’m sure our ship-master here has some rope and tackle that will let us lower you over the side – and I’ll come with you.’

In the event, it was Roland de Ver who accompanied de Revelle, saying that, as leader of the Templars, it was his obligation to try to deal with William de Marisco over the rejected grant of land to his Order.

The crew and soldiers hauled one of the light skin-covered boats from the hold and dumped it over the side. The sheriff had been trapped into playing the hero and, albeit with ill-grace, got himself over the low gunwale into the curragh with no sign of a disabled leg. He held aloft a spare oar with a grubby white tunic, taken from the crew’s shelter, tied to the top as a flag of truce. While de Ver was climbing in after him, there was another shot from the trebuchet, but it fell far short.

One of the crew took the short oars, set in thole pins on the boat’s flimsy frames, and began rowing. Even with the added weight of two passengers wearing chain-link hauberks, the curragh was so light on the water that it sped across the few hundred yards to the shore. Another rock plunged into the sea many yards away, though the ripples from it made the boat dance about on the low swell.

‘They’ve little chance of hitting a moving target so small,’ said Godfrey Capra.

‘Then let’s hope they stick to single missiles,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘If they fire a bucketful of pebbles, it needs only one to punch a hole through the bottom of that cockleshell.’

‘If those men on the beach pissed in it, it would probably sink,’ added Gwyn.

They watched as the little craft neared the shore, when the line of men began to congregate at the point where it would land. They could faintly hear a series of yells and could see swords and spears being waved threateningly. In the curragh, the sheriff was sitting rigidly on his thwart, waving the white flag with increasing desperation.

‘Now they’re throwing stones from the beach!’ yelled Gwyn, who had the best eyesight amongst the anxious watchers.

Suddenly, they saw de Ver grab the flag of truce from de Revelle and bend forward, almost vanishing from view, with only his backside sticking up above the rim of the curragh.

‘Surely he’s not cowering down!’ roared de Falaise in disgust, fearing that his leader was breaking the Templar tradition of reckless bravery in battle. The seaman could now be seen pulling the cockleshell around and rowing back towards the ship as if the devil was after him. Small splashes around the boat showed where a final fusillade of pebbles was landing, but in a minute or two, the craft was out of range and speeding for the ship. Roland de Ver was still hiding below the gunwales and de Wolfe wondered whether he had been hit by a stone or even a spear.

Gwyn’s sharp eye was the first to detect the truth. ‘They’re sinking!’ he yelled, pointing at the curragh, which was now noticeably lower in the water.

The sailor pulled at his oars like a man demented and came alongside the knarr with the little boat half full of water. Willing hands were thrust over the bulwarks to pull aboard de Revelle and the seaman. De Ver, with his face almost under water, stayed bent double until they had clambered out, then hurriedly followed them, still clutching the balled tunic, which he had been jamming into a hole punched through the tarred-leather bottom by a sharp stone. The damaged curragh swirled away and sank, as the damp heroes gained the safety of the deck.

‘Bastards! We could have been killed!’ snarled the sheriff.

De Wolfe grinned at this stupid remark. ‘That’s the general idea of fighting, Richard – kill or be killed!’

They all stood looking in frustration at the distant beach, where some of the defenders were now capering about and waving their weapons derisively at the two ships. John noticed that two sailing vessels, about the same size as the knarrs, were beached on the pebbles. Beyond them lay two longer, slimmer boats with a row of thole pins along each side for oars. ‘Those are their pirate galleys, by the looks of it – so you can get ships safely on to that beach. If it wasn’t for that damned trebuchet, we could make a run for the shore and jump off into the shallow water.’

The shipmaster grunted. ‘As it is, we’d be sitting targets, giving them plenty of time to get the exact range. And we couldn’t get off until the tide came in again.’

De Wolfe looked thoughtfully across to the other knarr, a hundred paces away, where he could see Richard de Grenville talking to Abbot Cosimo. An idea germinated in his mind and he shared it with the sheriff, de Ver and Ralph Morin.

‘If we could only talk to de Marisco, maybe we could get some idea of his terms for letting us have perhaps even part occupancy of the island,’ said the senior Templar hopefully.

John shook his head. ‘I don’t think anyone wearing the broad red cross has any chance of getting ashore. But if we could use Cosimo as a godly shield, maybe they would let me ashore as well to talk about piracy, as long as I don’t accuse him outright.’

The two boats came together again and further discussion went on across the rails. Eventually, the Italian priest agreed to take part, confident that his papal immunity from every contingency would keep him safe, even from wild island buccaneers.

Another curragh was dropped into the sea and this time Gwyn offered to be the oarsman. With the abbot in the bow and de Wolfe in the stern, they set off again for the beach. ‘None of us is wearing chain-mail, so at least we’ve got a chance of swimming for it,’ observed the coroner cheerfully, as his officer’s brawny arms sent them skimming across the water.

The trebuchet remained silent this time, and as they reached the half-way point, de Wolfe saw that the men on the beach were quietening, perhaps puzzled at this second futile attempt to storm the island with three men. Then Cosimo raised himself somewhat precariously on to his knees on the triangle of wood that braced the bows of the boat-frame and held up the large wooden crucifix that normally dangled from a thong about his neck.

As they got into the shallows and the boat bounced on the breaking waves, the men on the shore moved forward to meet them, some with raised weapons and a few with large pebbles ready to cast at the boat.

‘I am Abbot Cosimo, an emissary from Rome,’ screeched the priest, waving his cross as the sheriff had wagged his white flag.

Gwyn shipped his oars and hopped over the side, rocking the curragh dangerously and almost pitching Cosimo into the surf. He grabbed the bow and dragged it until the keel grated on the stones, then bodily lifted the abbot and set him on his feet on the beach.

A dozen men crowded around him suspiciously, but clearly the small black-robed priest was no threat to anyone. De Wolfe joined Gwyn alongside Cosimo and gazed at the men edging forward on the pebbles. Many were rough-looking peasants, carrying a spear or even a sickle, but about half appeared to be soldiers of a sort, with a varied mixture of mail or leather jerkins, some with helmets and most with a sword or mace.

‘We wish to speak to your lord William at once,’ he shouted, over the babble of voices. ‘Who amongst you is leader on this beach?’

‘Who’s asking?’ grated a tall, thin man with a wispy black beard around his chin. He wore a metal-plated leather tabard and a helmet with a nasal guard.

‘The king’s coroner for this county, Sir John de Wolfe, that’s who.’

‘Then you’re not welcome. We only let this priest land because it’s a mortal sin to drown abbots.’

There was a coarse cackle of amusement at their leader’s wit, but de Wolfe walked up to the man and jabbed a finger into his chest. ‘I said I’m the king’s coroner. Are you telling me that you don’t acknowledge Richard the Lionheart as your rightful sovereign? Maybe you’re one of those Prince John traitors, eh?’

There were a few sniggers from the men standing nearby but the man’s face coloured. ‘I’m no Prince’s man – I fought with Richard in Aquitaine in ’eighty-seven!’

The coroner whacked him on the shoulder. ‘I was there too – and my man Gwyn here. A good year for fighting, that was.’ Suddenly the mood lightened, as old warriors shared common cause.

‘You want to see Sir William? It’s a bloody long climb, begging your pardon, Abbot.’

Leaving most of the men on the beach to discourage any more landings, the black-bearded man, who said his name was Robert of Woolacombe, led them up the beach to the track, which was part earth, part rock and had stretches of crude steps at the steeper sections. It wound up interminably and Cosimo was panting and wheezing long before he reached the top. They passed the trebuchet, and de Wolfe noticed piles of large, rounded missiles and heaps of small stones, ready to devastate anything that came within range.

Four hundred feet above the sea, the path flattened out on top of a grassy plateau. At the southern tip of the island, Marisco’s castle was built on the edge of the cliff, and in the other direction, several farmhouses dotted the bleak fields, the narrow island cut across at intervals by dry-stone walls. The view was tremendous, and the two knarrs looked like toys far below.

The group was led by Robert and three other armed men towards the entrance to a thick stone wall running around the landward side of the castle, creating an outer ward, inside which they could see the upper part of a two-storeyed keep. The outer wall had heavy gates set in an arch, but they never saw the inside, as three men marched out at their approach. From his confident bearing, the one in the lead was William de Marisco, lord of Lundy. He was a burly, red-necked man of about forty, with pale, protuberant eyes and a full beard and moustache. His wispy brown hair looked as if all the winds of the island had blown through it for most of his life. His cloak and tunic were frayed and slightly soiled, as if personal comfort was of little consequence on this remote island.

De Marisco strode up to the newcomers with a scowl on his face. ‘Who the hell are you? Why did you let them land, Robert?’

‘This one’s a priest. I could hardly beat his brains out.’

‘We’ve already got a priest, drunken sot though he may be. And who is this other one?’

De Wolfe returned his scowl, head thrust out. ‘Sir John de Wolfe, the king’s coroner for this county. I’m here to investigate a wreck and a murder.’

De Marisco stared at the coroner, hands on hips displaying a heavy sword hanging from his belt. ‘I’ve heard of you. You were with the king in Outremer,’ he declared, his truculence fading slightly. ‘But what do you want with me? And what are those bloody Templars doing down there?’ He turned to Cosimo. ‘What are you doing here, Father? We already have all the religion we need on this island.’

The Abbot of Modena gave one of his strange smiles. ‘Look on me only as a sightseer, my son. I was required to help these men get ashore, to prevent your servants slaying them.’

De Wolfe felt obliged to distance himself from the Templars, if he was to gain anything from this visit. ‘I have nothing to do with the claim of their Order to Lundy. If you wish to discuss that with them, they are out there.’ He waved a hand towards the sea.

‘To Hell with them! I’ll not waste my breath. But did they seriously think that a handful of men-at-arms could drive me from my rightful honour, granted to my kinsmen back in ’fifty four?’

‘The soldiers are not there to aid the Templar’s claim, de Marisco,’ replied John. ‘The sheriff is down there also and we are seeking pirates who have taken ships along this coast and murdered the crew of one recently. Your name has been mentioned more than once in such activities.’

The lord of Lundy burst out laughing. ‘Pirates! The damned sea is swarming with them. Every third vessel in these waters pillages and kills when they think the pickings are good enough.’ He swept an arm expansively around the horizon. ‘From here I have seen two different pirates competing for the same victim, they are so thick in the water – Turks, Moors, Irish, Welsh and Bretons, to say nothing of our local villains!’

‘Which includes you, I take it?’ suggested de Wolfe, with reluctant admiration for Marisco’s openness.

The island chief leered at him. ‘I’ll say nothing that one day might be used against me, Crowner. But tell me of this particular crime you are investigating. Why come to me as a suspect?’

De Wolfe related the tale of the capture and wrecking of the Saint Isan, and the inquest on the corpse found on board. ‘The survivor says a galley with six oars a side was responsible, similar to those two drawn up on your beach down there.’

‘God’s teeth, de Wolfe, there are hundreds of boats like that, especially amongst folk with a fondness for piracy. They can be rowed against the wind to catch a sluggish merchantman. But we’ve not used those in many weeks – in fact, one is holed, having run against Mouse Rock, which stove in a few planks.’

‘You may say that, but how do I know it’s true?’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘You have two galleys on your beach, the whole of Devon alleges Lundy is a nest of pirates and you have not denied it.’

De Marisco coloured with rising anger. ‘I don’t give a damn what you think, Crowner! Are you going to cart me off to Bideford in chains to await trial, eh? Have a care! You are here only on sufferance because of this priest.’

De Wolfe stepped forward a pace and the two men each side of de Marisco put their hands on their sword hilts in a warning gesture. ‘If we are bandying questions, are you threatening the life of King Richard’s coroner in this county? I have already pointed out to your man Robert that Lundy is no sovereign state. It is part of England and you hold your bleak island from the Crown. Deny that or threaten the king’s representatives and you make yourself a traitor, de Marisco.’

The two big men eyed each other aggressively but de Marisco was not one to back down. ‘Hold my island, you say! Yes, until old King Henry granted my estate to those self-righteous men who carry the red cross on their breasts. What have they to do with an English island? Let them stay in Palestine where they belong. They’ll not throw me from my birthright, just to add to their possessions – I’ll die first!’ he added.

De Wolfe, who secretly had sympathy with his views, shrugged. ‘That’s none of my business, but the time will come when London or Winchester will send an army against you that can’t be repulsed by one trebuchet and a handful of ragged soldiers. In the meantime, are you denying that one of your galleys took the Saint Isan and slew most of its crew?’

De Marisco looked at his thin henchman, Robert, who shook his head emphatically. ‘We made no such attack then, I swear to it.’

De Wolfe noted the word ‘then’, but the man sounded sincere about not having taken that particular ship.

‘You have your answer, Crowner. That’s all I have to say to you, so look elsewhere for your culprits. Any port from Tunis to Dublin may harbour them, so I wish you joy of it!’

With that de Marisco turned and marched back to his rocky stronghold on the cliff. There was nothing else to be gained, so John, Gwyn and the silent Cosimo, who seemed slightly amused by the whole episode, followed their guards back down to the beach. The ragged army of de Marisco watched them with curiosity as they refloated the curragh and Gwyn rowed them back to the knarr, still anchored outside the range of the trebuchet.

On board, de Wolfe reported the futile visit to the sheriff and the other knights. De Grenville laughed cynically when the coroner described de Marisco’s attitude. ‘Typical of the arrogant bastard! He sits on this great rock and defies the world to do anything about him.’

When the three Templars heard de Wolfe describe the lord of Lundy’s contemptuous dismissal of their claim to the island, their determination to do something about it was strengthened, especially in de Falaise, who seemed almost apoplectic with fury at the defiance to their great Order by an insignificant tenant on a remote island.

Roland de Ver turned in exasperation to the shipmaster. ‘Is there no other landing place further along the coast where we can avoid this damned trebuchet?’ he demanded.

‘There are several poor beaches along this east side of the island, but they are more difficult and dangerous – and I don’t like the look of the weather.’

However, after much discussion and persuasion, the two ship-masters hauled up their anchor stones and moved further out to sea, watched intently by the crowd on the shore who again began yelling and waving in triumph at the apparent retreat of authority. When the two knarrs turned north and began to sail up the coast, the defenders tracked them along the shore, but because of the cliffs they had to climb almost to the top to find a path. A mile further on, the ships again came in closer and another stretch of pebbles, just past a small waterfall, was visible under the cliffs. Already a few of de Marisco’s men had arrived, but most were still scrambling along the steep paths towards them.

‘Get in as close as you can, master,’ commanded the leader of the Templars and, reluctantly, the two knarrs came within a hundred paces of the beach before dropping anchor.

The ship-master kept looking up, and though the cliffs obscured the western horizon, the long band of cloud that had been so distant earlier on was now visible across the sky, and the wind had dropped to an ominous calm. It was early afternoon: the tide had turned from its six-hour ebb and was rising again.

‘You could get the bows right against the beach now,’ suggested Gwyn. ‘A pair of sweeps would keep them nose-on to the shore whilst the troops jumped into the shallows.’

Again, the masters of the two vessels protested, mainly because they feared damaging the hulls on the stones, but also because of a sudden change in the weather.

Roland de Ver assuaged their fears with promises of more money, and the first knarr moved towards the shore, its bows crowded with men, the Templar knights crouching against the stem-post, shields up and swords in hand. In the other boat, Richard de Grenville led his own men, together with Ralph Morin and the rest of the Exeter soldiers. On the beach itself, a score of defenders were spread out thinly, looking rather hesitant as these formidable raiders in their impressive armour came towards them.

As the keel of the first ship crunched on to the pebbles, the Templars slid over the bulwarks into thigh-deep water and stumbled up the beach, followed by their sergeants and a dozen men-at-arms. A few spears were thrown at them, but they were deflected harmlessly by the shields of the experienced warriors. De Wolfe and Gwyn were behind the press of men in the bow, waiting to get ashore. Alongside them was the sheriff, looking decidedly unhappy as he spoke to his brother-in-law. ‘Are we going to get ourselves killed for a few acres of barren Templar land?’ he asked.

De Wolfe gave him a twisted grin. ‘Yes, why not? A pity not to use that nice new armour of yours, Richard. Come on!’

He put his legs over the side and dropped into the cold water, a low wave gliding past to soak him up to the waist. Gwyn splashed beside him and, with a roar, waded happily through the surf, waving his sword in the air. Reluctantly, the sheriff followed them and they stumbled up the bank of stones.

Immediately, the line of Lundy men congealed into several groups, as hand-to-hand fighting began. The defenders had the advantage, as they were higher up the bank and the wet attackers were not too steady on their feet until they got out of the water, the pebbles rolling and sliding under their feet.

Yelling and clashing of steel began in earnest, and although the Templars and Gabriel were taking the brunt of the conflict, de Wolfe and Gwyn were soon parrying and thrusting at a couple of de Marisco’s men. The coroner received a heavy blow on his shoulder, which dented one of the steel plates on his cuirass, but he returned it with such violent force to the side of his assailant’s head that the man’s helmet flew off and he dropped, as if poleaxed, on to the beach.

In the second’s respite that this allowed him, de Wolfe saw that many more men were clambering down the cliff paths and that before long the invaders would be well outnumbered. To his left, he saw Gwyn and the sheriff fighting side by side and, grudgingly, he had time to admit that de Revelle’s reluctance to expose himself to danger seemed to have worn off.

Though the islanders were losing ground as the newcomers fought their way out of the surf, the situation suddenly took a turn for the worse. A wave bigger than usual caught the second knarr and washed it broadside to the beach, momentarily heeling it over. The soldiers who were clambering over the bow at that moment were pitched into the surf and several sank under the weight of their chain-mail. Their comrades rescued them and none was drowned, but the errant wave turned out to be the first of many and almost immediately the two ship-masters yelled and pointed up at the darkening sky. A sudden squall whistled across the sea and, even under bare masts, the ships began rocking with the gusts of wind. The previously placid sea was already chopping up, and further out, the waves were crested with white horses.

Gwyn was the first to acknowledge the danger. ‘We must get off at once! Those vessels cannot stay there – they’ll be wrecked!’ he roared at his master. De Wolfe took a swing at a ruffian who was waving a mace at him and cut the fellow’s arm to the bone. Then he turned and knew instantly that they must retreat or be marooned.

He ran to Roland de Ver, then to the sheriff, and with shouts and gesticulations made them realise the situation. The Templars bellowed orders at the men-at-arms and formed a rearguard while everyone retreated to the knarrs, clustering around the bows. Some clambered aboard, while others pushed them off the pebbles, as the succession of waves and the rising tide got them afloat. As de Wolfe backed down the slope behind the fighting Templars, he stumbled over the groaning body of the man he had felled earlier. On a sudden impulse, he motioned to Gwyn and they tipped the inert islander unceremoniously over the ships’ side, before clambering in themselves.

The Templars, in a tight semi-circle around the bow, made a last slashing attack on their adversaries, felling two and driving the rest far enough back to allow them to get aboard. They were helped in by willing hands, as the knarr slid into deeper water, pulled by four men on the long sweep oars. De Wolfe glanced across at the other boat and saw the last of their men being hauled aboard.

As the vessels were backed off the beach, the defenders hurled insults and a few stones, but within minutes the knarrs were well out, their sails hoisted. The wind was now gusting hard and the sky was dark grey, with spots of rain beginning to fall. As they looked back, they saw several bodies lying on the beach and a few men being carried or helped to their feet by comrades.

‘What a pitiful fiasco! We should all be ashamed of ourselves,’ snarled de Falaise, rubbing angrily a deep cut on his cheek where he had been hit with a ball-mace.

‘God obviously did not wish you to conquer this time,’ said Abbot Cosimo, who with his two had remained on board and watched the jousting with apparent amusement.

‘But for this sudden storm we could have won the day,’ snapped Roland de Ver, looking ruefully at a slash across his white surcoat that almost cut the red cross in half.

‘We were fortunate that we left when we did,’ said the sheriff. ‘There was a legion of men coming down that path, who would have eventually outnumbered us two to one.’

‘Templars are supposed to fight on even at three to one,’ snapped Godfrey Capra. ‘It is a disgrace to leave the field at less than those odds.’

De Wolfe looked back at the shore as the knarrs began to roll and pitch as they left the shelter of the cliffs. ‘Have we lost any men, Ralph?’ he asked the castle constable.

‘Two dead and left behind, and three with wounds but none serious. We must have felled a few of theirs, but I didn’t have time to count them.’

Gwyn walked back from the bow, rock-steady on the swaying deck. ‘What about this fellow we threw aboard? I can’t get any sense out of him yet. He’s got a bruise on his head the size of an onion where you hit him.’

The coroner had forgotten him. ‘We’ll throw him into de Grenville’s cells when we get back to Bideford. Maybe he can tell us something useful, if he survives.’

He held on tightly to the rough wooden rail, his stomach telling him that the sooner this trip was over the better.

However else fate had been against them that day, in the matter of wind it was kind. The southerly breeze of the morning turned into a westerly blow when the horizon-wide cloudbank rolled in. The wind, together with the flood tide, gave them a fast if uncomfortable passage back to Bideford Bay, the spray constantly whipping across the decks and the knarrs pitching like unbroken horses as they dug their blunt bows into the whitened waves.

It was almost dark when they reached the entrance to the estuary and it took all the considerable skills of the ship-masters to get them safely into the channel, but the relief of entering calmer water caused a cheer to be raised amongst the cold and sodden warriors. They made passage around Appledore and up the Torridge in the dark, though the diffuse moonlight above the clouds and a few feeble lights from dwellings on either riverbank was enough to allow the shipmen to feel their way back to their berth against Bideford bridge.

At de Grenville’s castle, his steward and servants raced around banking up fires to dry out their men-at-arms and to prepare hot food. Within a couple of hours, everyone had settled back to drink ale and spin ever-improving yarns about the day’s events.

In the hall, afterwards, they all sat around a roaring fire set in a hearth in the middle of the floor, the smoke making eyes stream and lungs cough, but the blessed warmth was more than worth it, after the rigours of the ocean.

De Wolfe sat on a bench next to Richard de Grenville. After a time his mind wandered from the tale-telling and boasting to wonder what he was doing there. He was no further towards spotting either the killer of Gilbert de Ridefort or the origin of the pirates that had killed all but one of the crew of the Saint Isan. He ran through the possible suspects for the Templar’s murder. Of the potential killers, he would have liked to make the abbot the prime suspect, perhaps using one of his acolytes for the deed – he doubted that Cosimo was capable of wielding the necessary weapons. Failing him, he favoured Brian de Falaise, as the most aggressive and short-tempered of the Templars, always looking for real or imagined insults. But then he wondered if the type of injuries inflicted on de Ridefort was not too subtle for the blunt de Falaise, and his musings turned to either the more enigmatic Godfrey Capra – or the leader, Roland de Ver. Perhaps the fatal head injury could have come from someone like de Falaise, but the biblical allusion of the wounds in the side and hands may have been added, perhaps even after death, by either of the other knights. Somehow, he did not consider any of the Templar sergeants as candidates, although logically there was no reason why they should not have taken part in the killing.

He shrugged off the profitless grinding of the problem in his mind and drank the last of his quart of cider. Then he realised that de Grenville was asking him something.

‘That fellow you brought back with us, the one we threw into my gaol in the gatehouse. What are we to do with him? Do you want to take him back to Exeter?’

‘No. Richard de Revelle would hang him the day he arrived there. I have no proof that he has done any wrong, save fight for his lord as he was ordered.’

‘That surely is enough to hang him! He resisted the forces of the law on the soil of Devon – even against the county sheriff and the coroner. He tried to kill you – your shoulder plate still bears the mark.’

John held out his tankard to a passing servant for a refill. ‘I suppose so, though I bear him no ill-will for that. It was in fair fight and I certainly did him more damage when I clouted him across the head than he did me.’

‘So why did you bring him back?’

‘I suppose it was an impulse – I had some vague idea of getting information from him about Lundy.’

The amiable lord of Bideford got up and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I must stay and entertain my guests here, but you are welcome to see if you can get anything from him.’

A little later, the coroner sought out Gwyn, who was sitting around a similar fire in the bailey, drinking and telling tales with Gabriel and his men-at-arms. They went to the cells, two small, foul-smelling rooms opposite the guardroom. The night guard brought a tallow dip and unlocked a door in its flickering light. On the dirty straw inside, the man from Lundy was slumped against the wall, conscious but holding his head and groaning. A filthy bucket was the only furniture, but half a loaf and a jar of water stood untouched just inside the door. He lifted his head as they entered, screwing up his eyes at the poor light they carried. He was in about his thirtieth year, his weatherbeaten face suggesting he spent much of his time at sea. ‘Have you come to hang me?’ he muttered thickly, in a tone that suggested he cared little if they had. His bloodshot eyes focused on the coroner, and he recognised him as the man he had struck with his sword just before his memory failed.

‘You may surely hang, fellow,’ said de Wolfe, ‘but I have no great desire to see you on the gallows, so it depends on whether you have anything useful to tell us.’

‘What can I tell you? I am nothing but a serf to my lord William.’

‘Doing what, man? I am the county coroner and have some power to save your neck, if you can be useful to me.’

‘I labour on the manor farm on Lundy for much of the time, but am also a ship-man when required. We run back and forth to Clovelly or the ports here.’

‘And a little piracy when needed?’ grunted Gwyn.

The man gave a cynical laugh. ‘It would certainly put my head into the noose if I said yes to that, eh?’

‘I am not much concerned about piracy in general, but about one matter in particular.’ De Wolfe explained about the vessel Saint Isan and the evidence of the Breton lad. ‘Your lord William denies that he was involved and bids me look elsewhere – but as he claims that half the boats between Cardiff and Constantinople are pirate vessels, that’s not much help to me.’

The man’s eyes took on a little more life as he saw a hope of saving his neck. ‘If I can help you in this, will you speak for me?’

‘If you are very helpful, I may just forget to have that door locked in the morning. Maybe then you could even find your way back to that godforsaken island.’

‘I never wish to see it again, sir. I have no family there. If I could lie low in one of these boroughs, I could even gain my freedom.’

A villein who managed to escape from his hamlet to a town and survive for a year and a day was entitled to become a freeman. From the prospect of the gibbet a few moments ago, the islander now saw a better future, if only he could satisfy this black hawk of a man who hovered over him.

‘What can I tell you? I know something of the sea and ships along this coast.’

‘Which ports have a reputation for piracy? Are some more active than others?’

The fellow nodded vigorously, ignoring the pain it provoked in his neck. ‘Some are free of it, like Ilfracombe and these towns up-river here. It is the smaller places that harbour them, where most of the village is involved in the enterprise and where everyone stays silent about it.’

‘Such as where?’

He considered for a moment. ‘Watchet and Minehead in Somerset, then Lynmouth and Combe Martin in the east of this county. Down west there are plenty – Clovelly, Hartland Quay and Bude are the nearer ones. But other marauding ships come from far and wide to prey on merchant vessels using the Severn Sea.’

‘Had you heard anything of the seizing of this particular ship, making for Bristol? What about the cargo? Would that end up somewhere to be sold?’

De Wolfe and Gwyn stood over the man as he thought again. ‘When did this occur?’ he asked.

‘Towards the end of the first week of this month.’

‘Then it certainly wasn’t from Lundy. We had no ships afloat then.’ He thought again. ‘Something comes into my mind … gossip from seamen that came over to Lundy from Combe Martin about then. It wasn’t them, though they’re not averse to taking a small boat or two occasionally. Something in my head, even through the hurt you gave me, Crowner, tells me that Lynmouth may be involved.’

‘Lynmouth? It’s a tiny place. Could they put a big enough vessel to sea?’ asked de Wolfe.

Gwyn wagged his hairy head confidently. ‘A few cottages are enough to raise a crew – ten or twelve men to row and wield swords or pikes. Nowhere is too small for that.’

The coroner looked down again at the prisoner. ‘Tell me more.’

‘I know Lynmouth, I have sailed into there many times.’ He looked sheepishly at his hands. ‘De Marisco has more than once sent certain goods he acquired from other ships into there so that they could be carted to Taunton and Bridgwater for sale, with no questions asked.’

De Wolfe felt that at last he was getting somewhere. ‘So in Lynmouth, can you say who might be responsible for running a galley out of there?’

‘I’m no traitor to my mates, Crowner.’

‘It’s your neck that will be stretched, if that door stays shut.’

This persuasive argument removed any vestiges of loyalty between thieves. ‘I know some names, but not who is the leader – it might be their lord himself, for all I know. But there is Eddida Curt-arm, a strange fellow with short limbs, who is supposed to be a fisherman. Another who works with him is Crannog, a Cornishman, with an accent like your man here.’

Gwyn grunted, unsure whether this was a compliment or an insult.

‘And Adret Picknose, that’s another name I know. Other faces would be familiar, but I cannot put names to them. They certainly have at least one vessel with six pairs of oars in Lynmouth. It is masted, but narrow in the beam. They keep it on the beach around the west side of the river mouth, out of sight as much as is possible.’

A few moments more proved that the man from Lundy had nothing else useful to tell them. True to his promise, de Wolfe told him that he would be quietly released in the morning, as the castle gates were now firmly shut until dawn. In any case, after the buffet on the head he had received, he needed a few more hours to fully recover his senses.

‘The sheriff won’t be happy about you letting him free,’ said Gwyn happily, as they walked back across the bailey. ‘He would have liked someone to string up as a token of his successful exploits.’

‘We won’t tell him, then. Let him think the man remains incarcerated. And if this information about Lynmouth turns out to be true, maybe he will soon have some better villains to hang!’

Richard de Revelle was far from pleased when de Wolfe informed him that some of the pirates had sought sanctuary in Lynton church. He was in the process of setting up his Shire Court in the alehouse when the coroner rode back to the lower village. The sight of Thomas behind him seemed to arouse suspicious interest in the three Templars, and John noticed them in deep conversation with Abbot Cosimo. Soon afterwards, Godfrey Capra rode away and de Wolfe was sure that he had gone up to Lynton to check on the village and look in the church to confirm the identity of the five sanctuary seekers.

The prisoners had been marched to another barn-like shed just behind the tavern and locked in, with guards at the door. Outside, the womenfolk were gathered, crying and keening, or shouting through the flimsy walls to their doomed men inside.

The sheriff had taken over the single large room of the alehouse, bringing in a trestle table and a few rough benches. A quantity of fresh fish, from this morning’s catch, had been commandeered and some of Gabriel’s men were cooking it over a fire at the back. Bread had been taken from the nearest houses, over the protests of the owners, and soon a scratch meal was being put before the leaders in the tavern, while the soldiers ate around their fire.

The prospect of a mass execution had no effect on anyone’s appetite, but as they ate Richard de Revelle went back to complaining about the men in the church. ‘Why should they escape a hanging, just because they were craven enough to leave their friends to fight, and because they could run faster than our men?’

De Wolfe pulled the meat off a grilled herring with his knife and waited for it to cool. ‘Don’t ask me. I didn’t make the law.’

Abbot Cosimo, his fish on a slice of bread in his hand, looked up with a frown. ‘Sanctuary is one of the sacred traditions of Christianity. In fact, it existed long before Our Saviour – the Hebrews had six Levitical cities of refuge and the Greeks and Romans also recognised the concept.’

The sheriff voiced his disapproval of anyone being able to escape the noose and cost the community money for his keep while doing so. ‘I’ve a mind to go into that church and haul the bastards out!’ he muttered, but the alert Cosimo heard him and was shocked.

‘I forbid you, Sheriff! You would bring damnation upon yourself for such sacrilege – and I could excommunicate you.’ As with many others, de Revelle’s religious beliefs were a matter of habit rather than conviction, and the prospect of exclusion from the Church did not weigh too heavily upon him.

De Wolfe knew this, so added a more practical discouragement. ‘The laws of the first Henry stipulate penalties for laying violent hands on fugitives in sanctuary – a hundred shillings for a cathedral or abbey and twenty for a parish church.’ Still muttering, de Revelle abandoned the subject, but for once, de Wolfe was thankful for Cosimo’s presence as any violation of sanctuary would upset his plans.

When the meal was finished, the room was rapidly converted to the Shire Court, though still smelling strongly of grilled fish. The sheriff sat in the middle behind the crude table, with de Wolfe on one side and Ralph Morin on the other. The Templars and the abbot formed an interested audience on a pair of benches at the side.

In the absence of a court clerk, Thomas was sat at one end of the table, with his bag of parchments, quills and ink to make a brief record of the proceedings, a copy of which de Wolfe intended to place before the king’s justices when they eventually came to Devon.

The twelve captives were marched in two at a time by Gabriel and two soldiers, their wrists roped together behind their backs. De Revelle demanded their names and a statement as to whether they were Saxon, Norman or indeterminate. So much intermarriage had taken place in the century since the Conquest that mixed blood was common, especially when stray Celts arrived from Cornwall or even from Wales, just across the water.

Then he accused them of piracy and murder, which they all denied. He yelled ‘Liar!’ at the top of his voice, and pointed out that each man had run away and seized arms to fight the king’s law officers. Furthermore, they had two galleys and a shed full of goods that could only have been acquired by either piracy or smuggling, both of which crimes were a felony and a capital offence.

The reactions of the men varied: some defiantly admitted it, some denied it, others said nothing, and a few collapsed to their knees in sobbing heaps, pleading for mercy. Whatever their demeanour, de Revelle’s decision was the same for each: he declared them guilty of piracy and murder, and sentenced them to be hanged later that day. The whole proceedings lasted barely half an hour and soon the condemned were back in their hut under guard.

De Wolfe was uneasy about the summary justice, and if it had been in or near Exeter he would have fought the sheriff tooth and nail to commit them to the next Eyre. But in this case, he saw the practical difficulties – and also had to admit that there could be no realistic alternative to a guilty sentence, given the circumstances. His only contribution to the proceedings was to ask each pair of captives if they recalled attacking the vessel Saint Isan a couple of weeks before and if they admitted to slaying most of the crew. Two of the most brazen rogues admitted that this was the last ship they had attacked and also confessed to dispatching the seamen. But they had no idea who killed whom, reasonably pleading that in the heat of a fight no one recalled details of their victims. However, this was good enough for de Wolfe, as he could now get Thomas to tidy up the inquest record on the corpse from Ilfracombe and eventually deliver a firm verdict to the Eyre.

The afternoon wore on, and as the fitful sun showed itself just before it slid behind the high western rim of the glen, the condemned men were led out to death. The parish priest was conspicuous by his absence, even with fugitives in his church. When de Wolfe enquired where he was, he was met with evasion from some older men of the village, but eventually one said that they had had no parson for the last three months, though no one had yet told the archdeacon of Barnstaple that the parish was bereft of pastoral care. Discovering what had happened to the priest was even more difficult, but it seemed that he had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff.

Gwyn’s explanation was as likely as any: ‘He was either drunk and fell off or they threw him off for threatening to inform on their crimes.’

John thought that perhaps the parson had fallen out with the villagers over his share of the loot, but speculation seemed futile. In any event, he was not here to shrive the condemned men in the hour of their death, but Abbot Cosimo agreed to say the appropriate Latin words over them. Thomas would gladly have volunteered, even though long unfrocked, and was greatly disappointed that the Italian denied him even such a dismal task.

As the sun set, the men were dragged out of their shed by the soldiers, who in truth were not unsympathetic to these poor people who made life a little less frugal by stealing from passing ships. But duty was duty and, one by one, they were pushed up a ladder propped against the branch of a tree at the bottom of the cliff. A noose secured to the branch was dropped over each head, and as the abbot muttered and made the sign of the Cross in the air, they were shoved sideways off the ladder.

The drop was the height of a man and some died instantly, their neck broken or its arteries hammerblowed, though they still jerked and twitched for a few minutes in full view of those still waiting their turn. Others went blue in the face, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, and danced obscenely for long minutes, until a soldier dragged on their legs to end the agony.

As the grotesque ceremony went on, the wives and families of the victims stood sobbing and screaming in the background, some fainting and many yelling obscenities at the sheriff and his men. A line of men-at-arms kept them away from the hanging tree, using staves to whack them back when emotion drove them to desperation.

But the executions went on with grim efficiency and, as with the trial, were all over in half an hour. The bodies were laid in a row on the riverbank with those killed in the fight, and the families were allowed to take their dead for burial.

In the twilight, de Wolfe sought out his brother-in-law to talk to him again about the men in sanctuary. They had taken over the tavern for the night and were eating more bread and fish, though some enterprising soldier had also ‘acquired’ a few scrawny fowls for roasting.

The Templars and the abbot were there as usual, still regarding the coroner with some suspicion, though John knew they could have no inkling that de Blanchefort lurked less than a mile away.

De Revelle again began a tirade against allowing the men in the church to escape, but John held up a hand peremptorily. ‘It’s no good going on about it, Richard. They are entitled to abjure the realm and the sooner the better. I have no intention of staying in this godforsaken village for any longer than I need to see them depart.’

He explained that he had spoken to the shipmaster of the Brendan, who was leaving – without his casks of wine – on the morning tide. Though bound for Falmouth, he was willing for a fee to add a day to his voyage and cross to Swansea to drop off the abjurers.

‘Where’s the money coming from?’ snapped the sheriff.

‘The fugitives say they can scrape together a few marks, with the help of their families, if it will save their lives,’ lied de Wolfe, as he intended de Blanchefort to pay for the passage – he seemed to have ample funds to sustain his travelling.

The sheriff rapidly lost interest in the matter, though the abbot seemed to approve this most Christian of acts and the Templars, devout monks that they were, nodded assent.

‘As soon as I’ve eaten, I must go up there and take their confessions, getting my clerk to record such details as are needed,’ said de Wolfe. He saw Roland de Ver exchange glances with Godfrey Capra and Brian de Falaise.

‘An interesting process, sanctuary,’ said de Ver easily. ‘We would like to see it at first hand, never having encountered the coroner’s role in this.’

De Wolfe cursed them under his breath – they were intent on making matters more difficult for him. This was compounded when Cosimo too invited himself to attend, allegedly ‘to see the compassion of the Holy Church being applied in practice’.

Before they left, the coroner managed a covert word with Gwyn, ordering him to find Bernardus in the wood beyond the village and bring him to the church at midnight.

In the last of the twilight, they walked their horses up the glen to Lynton. Earlier, when he had examined the pirated contraband in the shed on the beach, de Wolfe had noticed a roll of hessian and commandeered it. Now he carried it on his saddle to the church and threw it down on the altar step. The five anxious fugitives had lit the stumps of the altar candles to produce a dim light and looked down at the roll of sacking with puzzlement. ‘You can tear that into five lengths and make yourselves long tabards. Rip a hole in the centre and put them over your heads. Did you make those crosses?’

They mutely produced sticks broken from the churchyard trees, crudely lashed together.

John pulled Thomas forward and pushed aside one of the altar candles. ‘Here’s your writing table – you even have light near at hand.’

The clerk seemed reluctant to put the sanctified board to such a mundane purpose, but he had little choice. Tentatively, with much genuflecting and crossing himself, he spread out his parchment and prepared his pen.

De Wolfe was conscious of the Templars and the Italian watching the process keenly, scanning the five men for any sign of recognition. The dwarf seemed to fascinate Cosimo, who licked his lips as he stared at the strange figure with the peculiar limbs. At least there was no way that Eddida Curt-arm could be de Blanchefort, but the coroner could see that the other men were subjected to close scrutiny.

‘You can act as a jury of witnesses, sirs, as the law demands, when I take the oath and confession of these men.’

De Wolfe made the abjurers kneel on the chancel step and each one in turn repeated his words. Each gave his name and village, then confessed to having been a pirate and murderer against the king’s peace. The oath of abjuration was a problem, as it should have been sworn on the Gospels, which neither de Wolfe nor the priestless church appeared to possess. However, Cosimo came to the rescue by pulling a small breviary from the folds of his cassock. Holding this each man had to say, ‘I swear on the Holy Book that I will leave the realm of England and never return without the king’s permission. I will hasten by the direct road to the port allotted me and not leave the King’s highway under pain of arrest or execution. I will not stay at one place more than one night and will seek diligently for a passage across the sea as soon as I arrive, delaying only one tide if possible. If I cannot secure such passage, I will walk into the sea up to my knees every day as a token of my desire to cross. And if I fail in all this, then peril shall be my lot.’

After they had all sworn, John instructed them formally about the procedure next morning, extemporising as he went. ‘You should have cast off your own clothing, which would be sold, but because time is short you cannot make proper garments of this sackcloth so drape it over your clothes. You will go bareheaded and you will have your hair and beard shorn off. You will carry a cross in front of you and not leave the pathway, and you must never set foot in England again, or you will be outlawed and may be treated as the wolf’s head, to be beheaded by any man who can lift a sword. Do you understand?’

There was a mumbled chorus of agreement.

‘Then before dawn I will come again and take you down to a vessel below, which will sail on the high tide for Wales, as I told you earlier.’

He made sure that Thomas had written down a summary of the facts then that the men had a sharp enough knife to hack off their hair and beards and attempt to shave their chins.

Their business done for the night, the party left, leaving two soldiers on guard, and went back to the alehouse. On the way Cosimo queried part of the ceremony he had just witnessed. ‘Sanctuary is common to all Christendom and I am more familiar with Italy and France. But I never heard of the hair and beard being shorn as a requirement.’

As de Wolfe had just invented it, this was not surprising, but he felt that the priest’s question came of curiosity rather than suspicion. ‘This is part of the abjuration process, not sanctuary,’ he said gravely. ‘England is different from your continental countries in that we are an island and therefore abjuration has to be by sea. Our formalities vary from other lands and this shaving of hair is to further mark out the abjurer as outside the pale of ordinary men.’

The explanation meant nothing, but Cosimo seemed to accept it as yet more evidence of the peculiarity of the people of this damp island.

Later, everyone settled down in their cloaks on the floor of the tavern, the soldiers having brought in hay and dry ferns from a barn up the glen. John was hopeful that, at last, the Templars and the abbot were satisfied that Bernardus was nowhere near, as their inspection of the five sanctuary seekers confirmed that they were genuine locals.

The most delicate part of his plot was now to be put into motion. When his sense of time suggested that midnight was not far off, he got up quietly and went outside to relieve himself against the wall. He waited for ten minutes to make sure that no one had missed him from the crowded room, then walked along the riverbank and up the track to Lynton. The moon came and went through the broken clouds and in its light, before he reached the church, he saw two shadowy figures standing under a tree. After some murmured instructions to de Blanchefort, they went boldly to the covered lych-gate and found both guards sound asleep. Gwyn poked one with his foot and the man leaped guiltily to his feet.

‘Shall I report to you to the constable and sheriff?’ said de Wolfe with mock severity. ‘They may have you hanged for failing in your duty.’

The man was both abashed and relieved that the coroner was not going to make trouble ‘All quiet here, sir. They’ve been cutting their hair and beards earlier – and losing more blood than on a battlefield!’

Leaving the guards at the gate, they entered the church. This was the most sensitive part of the stratagem for de Wolfe, but he put the options baldly to the men. ‘You can co-operate with me or not – but if not, I promise that you will hang, for I’ll withdraw your sanctuary. The sheriff would be only too willing to string you all up, I assure you.’

They all muttered their assent and the coroner went on, ‘I suspect that all of you will come back again from Wales before long. I am well aware that abjuration is but a temporary state for many people. Once the sheriff and his men have left, they are unlikely to return for years. Your reeve and your bailiff are your own problem but, again, I suspect they are not unaware of your activities and keep a tight mouth if they are bribed well enough.’ De Wolfe saw a few sheepish grins in the dim, flickering light of the altar candles. ‘As your exile is almost certainly temporary – and I want to know nothing of that – I wish to exchange my friend here for one of you, so that he may take passage on that vessel, disguised as an abjurer.’

There was another mutter, but of astonishment not objection.

‘He is a large man, so I propose that you,’ the coroner indicated the middle-aged villager, who was of a size with Bernardus, ‘vanish into the woods for a day or two until the coast is clear and let this man take your place.’ He held up his hand to stifle queries. ‘The reasons for this are none of your business, but I say that one of you can go free now – and, no doubt, the rest of you will find a way to slide back home before long. The alternative is a rope around your neck tomorrow!’ he added harshly.

There was no argument and the older man, beaming with relief, got out of his clothes and changed with de Blanchefort, who seemed not desperately pleased with the arrangement, but forced by necessity to go along with the coroner’s plan. Though he had only stubble and no beard or moustache, the crude removal of his head hair with a dagger blade did not increase his enthusiasm for de Wolfe’s machinations but, again, he submitted with ill grace.

As soon as this had been done, the fisherman muffled himself in Bernardus’s dark cloak and hat and walked out between Gwyn and the coroner. With the moon hidden behind a cloud, the sleepy sentinels at the lych-gate took little notice of the three men who emerged, except to heed the coroner’s terse warning to try to keep awake for the rest of the night.

Once out of sight at the head of the glen, the local man vanished into the undergrowth, gratefully taking a good cloak and hat with him as a bonus on top of his freedom.

Those readers who wish to learn more about the nature of the Awful Secret, are recommended to read the following paperbacks: