'Don't you mock me, damn you! I am charged with keeping the king's peace, and murder, theft and piracy rank high amongst felonies! I want to see what's inside those sheds on the wharf and to check the contents with the lists that I am told the portreeve holds. My clerk is quite capable of verifying that all is in order - or if it is not!'
The bailiff's florid face, with its rim of black beard stretching from ear to ear, again jutted towards the Keeper. 'I open those doors only for the merchants to whom the goods belong - and to the shipmen and porters who have to load and unload them.'
'Or the prior's emissary, the cellarer's man from Loders,' added Elias Palmer. 'He has a legitimate right to check that the priory is getting its full commission in return for the ships and merchants having the use of its port.'
'Well, I have even more of a legitimate right,' shouted Luke. 'The right of a king to send his officers to investigate the activities of his subjects!'
For answer, Edward Northcote leant out of his window and seized a shutter in each of his large hands. As he began pulling them shut, forcing the Keeper to stand back to avoid being crushed, he made a final suggestion.
'Come back next week, when the quayside is working again - and maybe we'll let you have a glimpse inside.' With that, he slammed the hinged boards shut and dropped an iron bar across the inside, leaving a fuming de Casewold isolated outside.
As he moved back to the table with Elias, he muttered to him in angry tones. 'We'll have to keep a close eye on that nosy bastard!'
The Easter period passed, with John de Wolfe making several duty visits to both the cathedral and St Olaves Church, accompanying Matilda in her ceaseless devotional perambulations. The Monday was a holiday, celebrated more in the rural areas than in the city, though apprentices and many servants were given a day's respite from their usual work.
The following day there was an unusual call for the coroner's services, which took him at an early hour down to Topsham, the small port fives miles downstream on the estuary of the Exe. He left Thomas behind to say his Masses in the cathedral and, with Gwyn, followed the bailiff of the Exminster Hundred who had called them out. John knew him quite well, as that hundred included his brother's other manor of Holcombe, where Hilda's father was the reeve, as well as Dawlish itself.
They crossed with their horses on the small rope ferry and landed on the marshy area on the other side of the Exe. Riding down alongside the river, they came to the tiny fishing hamlet of Starcross, where they climbed aboard a small fishing boat that went down with the ebbing tide the last half-mile towards the mouth of the river. Here a long tongue of sand stuck out eastwards from the huge area of dunes and scrubland that was Dawlish Warren.
On the wide beach in the lee of this tongue, they saw a group of men standing around a large grey object, and when they came close enough to jump out and wade ashore they saw it was a small whale.
'It was still alive last night, moving its fins a little,' said the bailiff.
As they reached the scene, Gwyn, a former fisherman from Polruan in Cornwall, shook his head sadly. 'Poor thing's stone dead now. Once they get beached, they've not much chance.'
A whale was one of the two 'royal fish', the other being the sturgeon, which by right belonged to the Crown, and one of the coroner's duties was investigating catches and strandings, so that the fish - or more usually its monetary value - could be seized for the king. Half a dozen men and a couple of women and children were standing around, fascinated by the dead animal. About twenty feet long, it lay motionless on the sand, left high and dry by the receding tide.
'It's been swimming up and down for two days,' volunteered one of the younger fishermen. 'Seemed too stupid to know how to get back out to sea around the sand-spit.'
An older one shook his head. 'I've seen a few strandings in my time. Reckon they are usually sick and come close inshore, then are too weak to find their way out again.'
'What's to be done about it, Crowner?' asked the bailiff, a practical man. A whale, even a small one like this, was worth a considerable sum, as the fat rendered down from the blubber was first-class lamp oil, as well as being used for other purposes. If taken fresh, the meat was palatable enough for hungry villagers, and even parts of the skeleton could be used for various purposes.
'It belongs to King Richard,' said de Wolfe. 'Though I doubt we could get it to him in Normandy before it stinks!' he added with an attempt at levity.
'I heard tell that the head goes to the king and the tail to the queen,' countered the bailiff. 'But it sounds a fairy tale to me.'
De Wolfe shrugged. 'I've never heard that before,' he admitted. 'But true or false, I have to dispose of all this beast as soon as possible, before it starts to become foul.'