Elias Palmer looked confused and guilty at the same time, as the bailiff hurried to join them. 'I thought ... I only meant .. .' he stuttered, until Northcote interrupted gruffly.
'He meant that someone must have found the corpse washed up along the high-tide mark and decided to hide it away to avoid trouble ... such as that from the coroner!' he said rudely. 'We all know that having a corpse on your manor means an inquest and no doubt amercements for some breach of the rules, which you law officers always manage to find!'
Though he did not admit it, John had to agree that often the inhabitants of one village would drag a dead body across the boundary into another manor to relieve themselves of the problems that a corpse always presented. He grunted, his usual means of expressing his disapproval.
'Then someone here must have had prior knowledge of the corpse - and kept it to himself. I'll have him amerced for that when I find out who it was!'
As he uttered this threat, the Keeper stopped ahead of them and gesticulated, jabbing his arm towards the undergrowth that fronted a wood that lay at the foot of the high ground that was a backdrop to the town. On the other side of the track, the ground dropped away to the edge of the estuary.
'In here, Crowner, a hundred paces further.'
He dived into a patch of bushes and small trees, all greening up with the new growth of an early spring. Trampling primroses and violets, the half-score men plunged into the scrub and stopped alongside de Casewold as his clerk pulled down one of the hurdles of woven hazel withies to reveal a shallow pit.
'Here he is, Sir John! Kept quite intact for you,' he said with the air of someone who was offering a valuable gift.
De Wolfe looked down at the hole, where the gritty soil had been thrown aside to reveal a man's body lying face down in the earth. It was clothed in a leather jerkin rather like Gwyn's and a pair of canvas breeches cut off at mid-calf, with no shoes or cap, the typical wear for a ship's crewman.
'Do we know who he is?' was John's first demand. There was much shaking of heads and muttered denials. Everyone from Axmouth was anxious to keep their distance from any knowledge of this cadaver.
'I lifted his head to see his face when I came back with the Keeper,' said the old priest hesitantly. 'But he's not one of my flock, that's for sure.'
John looked across at Gwyn, who from long experience knew the routine they needed to go through now. The big Cornishman stepped down into the excavation and lifted the corpse as easily as if it was a bag of straw, turning it over on to its back. 'He's a young fellow; I doubt he's reached eighteen summers,' he reported, brushing soil from the face with his fingers.
The coroner stepped down to join him and they both bent over the dead youth, while Thomas de Peyne, whose task was to record the findings, fumbled in his large shoulder bag to make sure he had his pens, ink-flask and parchments. Gwyn muttered something to de Wolfe and pointed to the half-open eyes. John nodded and prised open the lids with fingers and thumbs to examine the whites.
'Spotted with blood!' he bellowed. He turned his head to glare at the bailiff and portreeve accusingly 'So much for your damned drowning!' He picked up a hand and wagged it as if shaking hands with the corpse, determining that there was no death stiffness. Staring at the pads of the fingers and the palm, he shouted again. 'Not a sign of washerwoman's skin. He's not been in the water for long, if at all!'
Meanwhile, Gwyn had been industriously brushing away the remaining dirt from the face and neck, finally cleaning it off with a grubby kerchief that he dragged from a pocket.
'Look at this, Crowner,' he muttered as he gave a last wipe with his rag. John shifted his gaze from the hands and saw that around the front of the neck across the prominence of the Adam's apple was a livid line the width of his little finger. It passed back under the angles of the jaw and disappeared behind the ears.
'Turn him back on to his face!' barked the coroner, and when his officer had done so they looked at the back of the neck. When the skin was wiped clean, they saw that the dark lines, which had chafed the skin into brownish grooves, crossed over each other at the nape of the neck.
'Looks like a thin rope, with a spiral pattern,' observed Gwyn.
Anticipating his master, he turned the body over yet again and they both studied the face. It was in good condition as far as decay was concerned, as though the weather was mild it was still typically April and together with being buried in cold earth no decomposition had yet set in. The face was puffy and reddish-blue with congested blood, especially the lips. More of the tiny pinpoint bleeding spots that John had seen in the eyes were clustered around the mouth and temples.
Experts in modes of death from two decades on the battlefield and eighteen months of dealing with the corpses of Devonshire, the coroner and his officer had no doubt how this young man had died. John looked up at the ring of expectant faces looking down into the grave.