Matilda took the bait and slowly turned her face towards him. 'Who was it, then?'
'Robert de Helion, a manor-lord from Barnstaple way, I believe.'
She shook her head reprovingly. 'It's Bridport, not Barnstaple. He keeps a town house near the East Gate.' She sniffed in a superior way. 'I sometimes glimpse his wife in the cathedral, though she usually attends St Lawrence's Church, which is almost next door.' Matilda gave the impression that anyone who did not patronise St Olave's was akin to a pagan.
'Is he a rich man, d'you know?'
'He is reputed to be very rich. By the way his wife dresses, he must be both affluent and generous.' Again she managed to convey a hint that her own husband was both poor and miserly. John ignored this and persisted in tapping his wife's knowledge of Exeter's elite.
'I am told he runs three cogs from Axmouth and some from Dartmouth. It is strange that Hugh de Relaga and myself have not run across him, being in the same line of business.'
He realised too late that he was entering dangerous territory here, as recently his partnership with de Relaga had been enlarged by taking in Hilda of Dawlish, one of John's former mistresses. Her shipmaster husband had been killed and his three ships had been absorbed into their wool-exporting venture. Matilda immediately pounced on the matter.
'No doubt you are too interested in your new partner to notice much about your business!' she growled. However, the temptation to air her knowledge overcame her jealous indignation. 'He has several sources of income, apart from his manor and his ships. I hear he owns both a tannery in Crediton and a fulling mill on Exe Island.' She scowled at John. 'If you would only take more interest in civic affairs and cultivate the burgesses and nobility more, you could be far more prominent in county affairs than just a corpse-prodder!'
De Wolfe felt an angry reply boiling in his breast at this unfairness. He had had King Richard's direct nomination for the post of coroner and was the second most important law officer in the county, after the sheriff. To be called a 'corpse-prodder' by the woman who had cajoled him into the appointment was outrageous, but he managed to hold his tongue long enough to down the rest of his wine, stand up and march to the door.
'I have to go up to Rougemont to see if there are any more reports of corpses for me to prod!' he growled sarcastically. A moment later the street door shut with a bang, leaving Brutus staring after him, disappointed that he was not getting his expected walk down to the Bush Inn.
CHAPTER THREE
In which Crowner John seeks out an old flame
The early-April evening was waning by the time the coroner made his way along High Street and up Castle Hill to Rougemont, the fortress built by William the Bastard following the Saxon revolt two years after the battle at Hastings. It was in the angle of the old Roman walls, at the highest point of the ridge on which the city was built, and the ruddy colour of the local sandstone gave it its name. Two sets of defences arced around the castle: a wide ditch and rampart enclosing the outer ward, where soldiers and their families lived, then an inner castellated wall high on a bank, guarded by a dry moat and a tall gatehouse. It was on the upper floor of this that the coroner had his chamber, the most inhospitable room in Rougemont, grudgingly allotted by his brother-in-law when he was sheriff.
This evening, as dusk was drawing in, de Wolfe did not bother to toil up the narrow winding staircase, as both his clerk and his officer would not be there until morning. Instead, he called in at the guardroom inside the arched entrance and spoke to Gabriel, the gnarled sergeant of the men-at-arms who formed the garrison at Rougemont. They were old friends, having shared a battle years before in Ireland, when old King Henry was trying to curb the ambitions of his unruly barons who were carving out their own empire there. Always ready to gossip, Gabriel produced a jug of cider and some mugs. Pushing two young soldiers off a bench, the only furniture in the bleak cell, he waved John to a seat and they spent half an hour discussing old campaigns, the state of the nation and the price of wool, until the sergeant remembered that he had a message for the coroner.
'A fellow came in at around noon from Kenton, sent by the reeve there. It seems their miller has got himself killed in his own pond and they want a coroner to attend.'
Deaths in water mills were common, both from drowning in the millstreams and from being caught up in the ponderous machinery that ground the grain. Children and millers were by far the most frequent victims, and John had dealt with a dozen such accidents since he had become coroner in 1194. He swallowed his cider and stood up. 'It will have to keep until tomorrow. I'll take a ride down there unless my rump prevents me from sitting on a horse.'
It occurred to him that Kenton, a small village a few miles south of Exeter on the west side of the river, was over halfway to Dawlish on the coast. With a little mental gymnastics in respect of his conscience, he decided that it might be useful to speak to one of his own shipmasters there to see if he had any knowledge of the situation in Axmouth and the vessels that sailed from there. The fact that Hilda also lived in Dawlish could be viewed as irrelevant, though it would be churlish of him to visit the port without calling upon her! He went out into the passage of the gatehouse, where a bored sentinel stood under the raised portcullis just above the drawbridge over the ditch.