That evening, John found his wife in a strange mood. They ate their evening meal civilly enough, seated at the long, lonely table in their hall, with empty benches between them that should have been filled with sons and daughters had their marriage not been as barren in body as in spirit. Mary brought in hot broth, followed by boiled beef, which was cheap and plentiful at this time of year: most cattle had to be killed by December, due to lack of winter fodder.
At the end of the meal, they took their mugs of hot wine to the fireside and sat one each side of the great open hearth. Each had a monk’s chair, almost like a sentry box with a cowled hood, to keep out the draughts that blew in through the shuttered window opening, as well as under the doors.
While they were eating, John had related the events of his trip to Torbay, the inquest, the meeting with the Topsham merchant and his brief visit to Stoke-in-Teignhead. The last was received with stony silence by Matilda, as her feelings for his family, especially his mother, were as distant as theirs for her. She had always felt that her father had made her marry beneath her, to a minor knight who no longer had family still in Normandy, like the de Revelles.
Now they sat before their fire and she scowled at the crackling logs. ‘You’re always away, John. What kind of husband neglects his wife so?’
He groaned at the return of the same old topic. ‘You know very well that I had to tell Joseph and his son of the tragedy here – you yourself told me to go, yesterday morning.’
‘You always have some excuse,’ retorted Matilda, illogically. ‘No other wife among the leading people of our city is left alone so often to fend for herself.’
John abandoned any attempt to reason with her. ‘How is Christina today? You said you had been to the house earlier.’
With a sudden change of mood, she became almost amiable, her interest quickened in the Rifford drama. ‘The poor girl is better in herself, in that her pain has subsided and her scratches and bruises are fading already. But her state of mind is delicate. She weeps and laughs by turns, one minute saying that all is well, the next sobbing that she wishes to be dead.’
‘It is to be expected, I suppose,’ said John mildly, hoping to mollify his wife by agreeing with her.
But she glared at him, her heavy-lidded eyes gimlet-like in the square face. ‘How would you know what is to be expected? What dealings have you ever had with a ravishment, except perhaps as a perpetrator in one of your soldier campaigns?’
He ignored her attempt to be deliberately offensive and asked, ‘Did she say any more about the circumstances of the assault?’
With another mercurial shift of temperament, Matilda lowered her spiced wine to her lap and spoke in a low, almost confidential tone. ‘I sat with her this afternoon and for a time she was almost her old self. She related more details of that awful evening.’
John sat forward, hopeful that he would hear something of use to his investigation. ‘She has some memory of who attacked her?’
Matilda pursed her lips. ‘No, she saw nothing of him. But she told me more details of her visits that evening. She had been to our neighbour to collect some bauble, which that weedy English youth Edgar had bought her.’
Matilda considered all Saxons inferior and Celts, such as the Cornish and Welsh, on a par with farm animals. Part of her antipathy to John’s family was that his mother was a Celt. She tried to forget that her husband was only half Norman. ‘Christina told me that the two men who work for Fitzosbern, both Saxons, were ogling her continually in a most lewd fashion.’ She sniffed in disapproval. ‘I can’t imagine why he employs such riffraff. Surely there is a better class of silversmith to be had.’
John sat back in disappointment. ‘Is that all she had to say? Did she see either of them follow her to the cathedral, for instance?’
Matilda shook her head, the coiled braids of hair in their crespines of gold-thread net bouncing above her ears. ‘Is there any need? Obviously one of those foul men was her assailant. She had been in the shop not an hour before and was embarrassed by the suggestive looks and words of these men. One or perhaps even both are surely guilty. How can it be otherwise?’
The crowner sighed: his wife’s sense of justice was as arbitrary as her brother’s. ‘That is pure supposition, without a shred of proof, Matilda. There must be hundreds of men in Exeter who have lusted after Christina – she is an acknowledged beauty. Someone saw her walking alone at night and took the opportunity to satisfy their lust – there is no reason at all to accuse one of those smiths.’
‘They are better suspects than any of your anonymous hundreds, John! Can you come up with two better names yet?
He stayed silent, afraid that if he spoke his mind further she would go off into one of her rages or sulks.
‘I wonder that Godfrey allowed his men to be so forward with a customer. He should have punished those lechers for so much as casting a bold glance at the girl,’ she said self-righteously.
John noticed that Matilda referred to their neighbour by his Christian name. He knew that she fawned upon the fellow because he flirted with her and paid her patently insincere compliments when they met in the street or at some civic function. He himself couldn’t stand the fellow, with his dandyish clothing and conceited swagger. ‘Christina said nothing else of use, then?’
‘I considered that of considerable use, John. I made a point of telling Richard when he called to see me this afternoon. A good job my brother is solicitous over my health and feelings, for my husband certainly is not.’
John chafed inwardly at her words. ‘You spun this tittle-tattle to your brother?’
‘Of course – and greatly interested he was, too. He said that he will send men to bring the two smiths to Rougemont tomorrow to interrogate them.’
Her husband lost patience. ‘I wish you would leave enforcing the law to those whose job it is, Matilda. If Christina had wanted the sheriff to know of this, she would have told him herself.’
Like a spark to dry tinder, that started her off. She raved at her husband, accusing him of being uncaring, ungrateful and half the man her brother was. She upbraided him for a dozen real sins and a dozen imaginary ones, half rising from her chair until her wine spilled over unnoticed.
Mary, who came in to clear the remnants of the meal, tiptoed out again, sorry for the master but unwilling to get embroiled in any partisan role that might cost her her job.
John screwed down his rising anger, in the faint hope that her tantrum would subside as quickly as it had arisen, but now she was in full spate. Eventually, unable to get in a word during her vituperative onslaught, he stood up so suddenly that the cowled chair went over backwards with a crash. ‘That’s enough, wife!’ he roared, so violently that Matilda was stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth remaining open as he loomed over her. ‘Rant and shout all you want, woman, but do it alone. I’m going out!’ He marched to the door of the vestibule and yanked it open with a screech of its hinges.
As he vanished into the darkness, his wife found her lungs again. ‘Go then, damn you, you ungrateful wretch! Go to your squalid alehouse and your Welsh whore!’
She gathered breath for another round of abuse, but he closed the oaken door behind him with a satisfying bang.
In spite of Matilda’s words, he did not turn towards the Bush, but decided on a round of investigation concerning Christina’s assault. His feet took him only twenty yards from his own dwelling before he made his first call.
Pushing open the door that Christina had entered two nights before, John entered Fitzosbern’s shop. The same two workers were there, toiling each evening until the seventh hour rang from the cathedral bell. The older one, Alfred, nervously clambered to his feet, the piece of metal he had been working dropping to his bench with a clang.
‘Evening, Sir John. Do you want the master?’ His voice was tense, as if he had been expecting a call from the law for some time.
John nodded and swung his head round to look at the younger silversmith, Garth. This brawny fellow stared back at him blankly, no trace of anxiety in his dumb-looking face. John, who knew almost everyone in the city of Exeter, had always marked down this fellow – whom he often saw in Martin’s Lane – as a little retarded, even though it was said that he was an able metal-worker. John contemplated him for a long moment.
‘A terrible business, the other night, sir,’ quavered Alfred, as if unable to bear the ominous silence. ‘The young lady was in here that very evening.’
‘Your master, is he in the house?’ rumbled John, ignoring the invitation for dialogue.
Without a word, Garth repeated the action he had made for Mistress Rifford: staring at de Wolfe, he swung a great fist backwards to beat a tattoo on the panel behind him.
Without waiting, the coroner pulled aside the heavy woollen drape and stepped through the inner doorway. The back workshop was again almost dark, lit only by the sleeping furnace and the glow of a lamp that came down the stairway at the back.
Though Fitzosbern’s house was about the same size as John’s, he had given over the whole of the ground floor to his business and lived on the upper floor, made by heavy boards supported on corbels built into the walls, seven feet above the ground.
As John advanced cautiously in the gloom, heavy footsteps clattered on the steps and the light was broken by Fitzosbern coming down to meet him. He held a tallow lamp in his hand and recognised his visitor. ‘Mother of God, it’s de Wolfe! Come in and welcome. It’s many a long year since you stepped into my house.’
John muttered some noncommittal words and followed the silversmith up the stairs.
The solar occupied the whole upper floor and had been divided into two rooms, one of which was a bedroom. They were better furnished than his own: the wealthy guild-master had expensive hangings to brighten the walls, wool rugs on the boards and several chairs and stools around a large table. There was a small fireplace, which seemed to be joined into the chimney of the furnace below, and the place was almost too warm, even for a winter’s evening.
‘Come in and have some hot spiced wine,’ effused Godfrey. Mulled wine seemed to be his first thought when any visitor arrived.
John was suddenly aware of someone else in the room: a head appeared around the side of a high-backed settle near the fire. ‘Who is it, Godfrey? Oh, Sir John, it’s you!’
It was Fitzosbern’s wife, Mabel, a pretty woman ten years younger than her husband. His first wife had died in childbirth six years earlier, the infant stillborn. Five years ago, he had married Mabel, the daughter of Henry Knapman, a wealthy tin-miner from Chagford on the edge of Dartmoor. Small, slim and very blonde, she was another lady in Exeter who attracted many looks of admiration and an equal number of lecherous stares.
Though John had never liked her husband, what little he knew of Mabel had left a good impression on him. She was always cheerful, amiable, and yet had that something that made men wonder whether they might have a chance with her, if the circumstances were right. Although he was as fond of the ladies as the next man, he had never contemplated making a play for Mabel, partly because she was almost on his doorstep, too near home for comfort.
Godfrey was already pouring wine and pressing an elegant glass into John’s hand, a far cry from the crude mugs he used in his office in the castle.
He settled on a chair near the fire and Mabel resumed her own seat, illuminated by the flames from the logs. He studied her over the rim of his glass, while Godfrey fussed over drinks for his wife and himself. Mabel was dressed stylishly in a pale green silk kirtle, deeply embroidered all around the neck and hem. A green silk cord was wound twice around her waist, and she wore a darker green over-tunic, laced widely open at the front. Her blonde hair was parted in the centre and two long braid hung down over each breast, with green silk tapes plaited into the strands. John could hardly fail to compare her appearance with that of Matilda, who for all Lucille’s efforts and her expensive outfits still managed to look clumsy and frumpish.
Fitzosbern brought his glass and sat between them on a padded stool. ‘I expect we know what brings you on this nonetheless welcome visit, John – I may call you that, I hope?’
The coroner would prefer that he didn’t, but could hardly say so while sitting by the fellow’s fire and drinking his wine.
‘Is your wife well?’ asked Mabel politely.
Her husband broke in effusively, ‘Indeed, I hope so. A charming lady, a pillar of Exeter society. I wish we saw more of you both.’
‘I am always very busy,’ muttered John. ‘Away so much I have little time for socialising.’ He gave one of his loud throat-clearings which, with his grunts, were always a preamble to serious talking. ‘As you suspect, I am looking into the sad episode of Christina Rifford’s assault.’
There was a chorus of ‘Terrible!’ and ‘Awful, the poor girl!’ from the pair opposite.
‘I understand that the last place that she was known to be was your shop on that evening, Fitzosbern.’
‘Call me Godfrey, John, please! Yes, she certainly came here that evening but, from what I hear, it was not her last place of visitation. That was the cathedral, surely.’
John assented reluctantly. He was damned if he was going to call this vain cockerel by his first name, but the investigation must go on. ‘True, but so far we have yet to find anyone who remembers her there.’ That was mainly because no one had got round to asking, but he was not going to tell Fitzosbern that.
The guild-master ran a hand through his thick curly hair. ‘The lovely girl came to the shop some time between the sixth and seventh bell. The smiths were still here, so it could not have been seven. She was here but a few moments, though I pressed her to stay and warm herself with some wine, as you are doing now.’
John noticed Mabel turn her blue eyes on her husband, but she said nothing.
‘So she didn’t come upstairs, to meet your wife?’ he asked deliberately.
It was Fitzosbern’s turn to look at his wife now, and he paused momentarily before saying smoothly. ‘Mabel was at our house at Dawlish until yesterday. She prefers the sea air to this rather small solar above the workshop, which can sometimes get smoky when the furnace is running hard.’
‘So you were alone?’
‘Yes, but for those two louts downstairs. They are good smiths, but hardly edifying company.’
John drank down half his wine in one gulp. ‘I have to ask this, but certain insinuations have been made. Are those two men, Alfred and Garth, of good reputation?’
The fleshy face of the master silversmith assumed an expression of sudden enlightenment, which John recognised as false.
‘Are they suspect of this foulness? Well, as I said they are good at their trade, but I have no means of vouching for their characters. When they leave this shop at seven, they cease to exist as far as I am concerned. I have no means of knowing – or caring – what they get up to in their own time.’
In other words, you bastard, you are throwing them to the wolves, thought John bitterly. He would have stood up for his own men, Gwyn and even the dubious Thomas, against any slurs on their characters.
‘Have you any reason to think that they might have had any evil designs on the Rifford girl?’
Godfrey began to leer, then checked himself as he found Mabel watching him intently from her bright blue eyes. He gave a little cough. ‘Well, she is an extraordinarily attractive young woman. I suspect that many men in this town have such designs lurking in their imaginations. Alfred and Garth are probably no different.’
‘But did you see them do or say anything objectionable or suggestive?’
‘No, I did not, John. But I don’t watch my servants, my interest is with my customers, especially with a daughter of one of the portreeves.’
After a few more minutes of fruitless questions, the coroner threw down the rest of his drink and rose to leave. Fitzosbern pressed him to stay and have more wine, but John sensed that he would be glad of his departure. Mabel had said not a word more, but he had the feeling that she would have plenty to say to her husband once the street door had closed behind him.
He left the house and walked around the corner of Martin’s Lane into the high street and on up to the Rifford house on the other side, towards the castle and the East Gate. Several bells from the many churches rang out for their services at the seventh hour, taking their cue from the deeper toll that issued from the cathedral. The bitter wind had blown up again from the east and there were few people about the darkened streets.
He came to the house on the corner of the lane and rapped on the door. It was opened by old Aunt Bernice who, in a confusedly flustered manner, ushered him inside. Near the fireplace, Henry Rifford was standing, feet apart, almost as if he was guarding the hall. Then John saw the feet and skirts of Christina, who was seated in a large chair. As he advanced across the rush-strewn floor, he was surprised to see the gaunt figure of Dame Madge on a bench opposite the girl.
Christina looked pale but composed and greeted him civilly, but with a wary look in her eyes, which he suspected would be bestowed upon every man for a long time to come.
The usual courtesies were exchanged rather stiffly and, though invited to sit, the coroner remained standing. ‘I have no wish to intrude, but I wanted to enquire after you, Mistress Christina, and to hope that you are recovering from your ordeal as well as might be expected,’ he said, rather stilted.
She inclined her beautiful head gracefully. ‘I improve in body every hour, Sir John,’ she said, with the implication that her mind would take a great deal longer to heal.
Dame Madge rose to her feet. ‘I, too, called to see if there was anything more I could do for the poor girl, but her bruises are fading quickly. She has a good spirit and is a devout and noble soul. All I can do is pray for her rapid return to full health and happiness.’ She walked towards the door, in a stately fashion, like a ship under sail, her white head-rail flowing down over her black habit, a wooden cross flopping against her flat bosom. ‘The city gates are long closed, so I will go to St Nicholas’s to pray, and beg a bed in their infirmary.’ This was a small priory lower down the road not far from the apothecary’s shop where Edgar was apprenticed.
Rifford and John thanked her for her continued support and she sailed out into the night, one of Henry’s servants accompanying her, to see her safely to the priory.
Henry Rifford, his large face returned to its customary redness, came back to the fire. ‘Was there anything in particular you wanted, Crowner, apart from your kind enquiries about my daughter?’ He said this in a half-challenging way, as if daring John to intrude further upon their private grief. As one of the bishop’s and sheriff’s faction, he had opposed John’s appointment as coroner but for political rather than personal reasons.
‘Much as I dislike disturbing you, I need to discover all I can about this crime, Portreeve. This perpetrator must be caught, not only to avenge your daughter, but to prevent further such evil. If he is not caught, he may well think that he can get away with such an act again. There are many other pretty women at risk in the city, even if none quite so fair as Christina.’
This was quite a speech for the usually taciturn de Wolfe, but it put Rifford in a position where, as a leader of the community, he was unable to resist doing all he could to assist the public good. ‘But how can we help? All that can be said has been said. De Revelle has been here three times himself and now favours one of those smiths that work with Godfrey Fitzosbern as the most likely suspect. If I thought that to be true, I would go down there tonight and hack the bastard’s head off with a sword.’
Matilda’s loose tongue had done its work well, thought John sourly. Once the sheriff got astride a convenient idea, he would ride it into the ground and to hell with justice or common sense. He turned to Christina, who sat apathetically, her hands crossed in her lap, dressed in a dull gown of brown wool, her hair flowing loose and unbraided from under a white linen coif.
‘Christina, you have been asked this many times, but do you still have no recollection of anything – anything at all – that might help to identify this man?’
Tears glistened in her eyes, though she made no sound.
‘You couldn’t sense if he was big and heavy or lean and sinewy?’
‘He was so strong, that’s all I know.’
John tried another tack. ‘You told my wife that in the silversmith’s shop the two workers made you feel uncomfortable?’
She nodded, a little more animated now that he had moved from the scene of her shame. ‘They stared at me a great deal, but nothing more. I have learned, in the last year or so, how men look at me when they – they – think things,’ she faltered.
Her father now indicated that he was nearing the limit of his indulgence and that John should conclude his questioning.
‘You saw no one follow you from Martin’s Lane to the cathedral?’
‘I wasn’t looking for anyone. It never occurred to me that anyone would.’
‘And in the cathedral? Where did you go? Did you see anyone you knew?’
‘I went straight to the altar of Mary, Mother of God, and knelt before it to pray for the soul of my own mother Mary. It stands against the front of the quire-screen, on the left-hand side.’ Christina’s eyes filled with tears again.
John did not know whether they were for the mother who was not there to comfort her in the hour of her need or for the memory that rapine had been soon to follow. ‘Did you see anyone you knew?’ persisted the coroner.
‘I was there about a quarter of one hour. Several people came to kneel and pray. I knew one or two by sight, but not by name. When I was leaving, I passed a woman, Martha, wife of a wheelwright who lives near my cousin Mary. I spoke a few words with her, then left by the small door.’
There was nothing else to be learned and John took his leave, as Henry Rifford was now increasingly restive.
His next call was at the castle, set on its rise at the north-eastern corner of the sloping city. The man-at-arms at the gate, just below his own office, called out a challenge as he saw a black figure striding up the drawbridge over the inner ditch, but banged the stock of his spear into the ground as a salute when he recognised the King’s coroner.
John passed through the narrow rounded archway into the inner bailey and made for the keep, set near the further curtain wall that ran along the low cliff above Northernhay and formed the corner of the city perimeter.
The inner ward was active with people coming and going between the lean-to huts that lined the bank below the walls. Cooking fires were burning, and soldiers and their families relaxed in the evening after a day’s work. Chickens perched in bushes and on carts, geese wandered about, and a solitary goat had somehow got himself on to the roof of a low hut to eat the grassy thatch. Horses neighed and oxen lowed in the stables over on the right-hand side, behind the tiny chapel of St Mary. Underfoot, the ground was a morass of hoof-churned mud, refuse and animal droppings, and as the coroner strode across to the building where the sheriff had his town residence, he thought it no wonder that Richard’s wife was rarely there.
De Revelle had several manors, one at Revelstoke, another at Tiverton, where his elegant but aloof wife Lady Eleanor spent most of her time, saying that she could not stand the cramped quarters and military squalor of Rougemont.
John reached the wooden ladder that went up to the first floor entrance of the keep, over the semi-subterranean undercroft that housed the castle gaol. There was another prison, a hellhole used for convicts from the burgage court, in the South Gate, but those awaiting trial or convicted by the sheriffs shire court – or by the Royal Justices on their infrequent visits – ended up in equally foul cells under the keep.
At the foot of the steps, another guard, half asleep, roused himself sufficiently to salute the coroner. The security was slack, especially after the town gates closed at nightfall: Exeter had seen no fighting since the siege almost sixty years before, when Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, had held the castle for Empress Matilda against King Stephen during the civil war. John sometimes thought cynically that Matilda was a name which seemed to suit hard-bitten, aggressive women like the Empress and his own wife.
He climbed to the first floor, most of which was a large hall, deserted at this time of the evening. Another guard drooped by a small door that led to the sheriffs quarters and, with one of his grunts, the coroner stalked past him and entered the inner room. A pair of tallow dips and two candles burned inside, with a moderate fire glowing in the hearth, enough to light up a table where Richard de Revelle was working on some documents.
Unusually for a knight, he was quite literate, which made John secretly jealous. But it was also a measure of Richard’s lack of military prowess: he had managed to avoid both the French and Irish wars, as well as the Crusades, being too ambitious in the political arena to risk getting killed or wounded.
The sheriff looked up sharply, his pointed beard jutting aggressively as the coroner pushed open the door and walked in. When he saw who it was, his face changed to the expression that always annoyed John intensely: a faint, pitying smile, as if he was resigned to humouring a slightly backward child.
‘Ah, it’s our noble coroner! What brings you out on such a cold night, John? You should be at home with your good wife and ajar of ale.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Richard. There’s much work to be done over this ravishment. The girl knows nothing that will help us and I fear this evil man may strike again if he feels he has defeated us.’
The sheriff sighed as he pushed aside his parchments and leaned forward over his table. ‘Christina has spoken of the two smiths in Fitzosbern’s shop – your own wife told me of her fears of those scum. I will bounce them around in the morning, to see what falls from their lips.’ John began arguing with his brother-in-law about the lack of anything resembling evidence, but Richard responded with the same logic as Matilda: he at least had two suspects, however feeble the connection, whereas the coroner had nothing at all. The discussion led nowhere, so John changed direction to report on his visit to Torbay and the arrest of the reeve and other villagers, both for theft of royal flotsam and for the murder of the three sailors.
The sheriff nodded his agreement with the arrests. ‘I’ll try them next week at the County Court and hang them the next day.’
John shook his head. ‘No, Richard, they must await the King’s justices, as Hubert Walter has decreed. I have all the details enrolled and will present them at the next assize.’
De Revelle groaned, resting his forehead on his hand in a theatrical gesture of sorrowful resignation. ‘Not again, John. I thought we had enough of this last month.’
‘Then we will thrash it out with the Justiciar next week,’ snapped John stubbornly, unwilling to yield an inch of his coronial powers to the sheriff.
Richard rose from his chair, resplendent in a yellow tunic to his calves, covered by his surcoat of buff linen to knee-level. His narrow face was set in a petulant expression, like a patient but exasperated schoolmaster with a stubborn pupil.
‘Hubert Walter arrives after the noon hour on Monday, from Buckfast Abbey. You had better come with Matilda to the Bishop’s feast that evening, then we can arrange for a meeting next day to sort out this nonsense of you coroners trying to usurp the sheriff’s duties.’
‘We have been invited already to the feast,’ retorted John, stung again by the other’s patronising manner. ‘The Archdeacon and Treasurer of the cathedral have already notified us that we should be present as of right.’
After a few more sniping remarks on both sides, John left the sheriff to his business of arranging for the secular part of the Chief Justiciar’s visit in three days’ time. He marched back through the castle, and this time fulfilled Matilda’s allegation by striding down the whole length of High Street, past Carfoix, the crossing of the main roads from the four major gates, and into Fore Street. Half-way down, he turned left into a huddle of small streets and crossed into Idle Lane, where the Bush stood isolated on its patch of rough ground.
He pushed open the door and entered the warm, sweat-and-ale smelling main room. Nesta was not to be seen, but old Edwin, the one-eyed potman, gave him a welcoming wave and limped across to where John slumped on a bench near the fire. ‘Evening, Cap’n! We’ve got a new batch of ale, just racked off today – unless you want cider?’
‘A quart of ale, Edwin. And where’s the mistress?’
The one eye managed to leer at the coroner. ‘Upstairs, Sir John, fixing mattresses for two travellers. She’ll be down in a minute or two.’
He lurched off to wash empty ale pots in a leather bucket of dirty water and to refill them with new ale drawn from casks wedged up on a low platform at the rear.
John looked about the long, low room and saw a score or more citizens lolling at other tables, a few whores among them. He knew all the men by sight and most by name, the majority local tradesmen. The few strangers were countrymen, in Exeter to buy and sell livestock or other goods. Several men were foreign, probably German merchants from Cologne or shipmasters from Flanders or Brittany, their vessels tied up at the quay a few hundred yards away. With such a motley collection of virile men in the city, how on earth was he – or Richard – to make any progress in seizing a potential rapist?
‘Why so thoughtful, Sir Crowner?’
Nesta dropped down on to the bench alongside him, slipping her arm through his. Her pretty round face, russet hair and shapely body were a tonic to his jaded eyes. She smiled at him, showing white teeth that were a novelty in women of her age, most of whom had yellowed pegs or blackened stumps. John knew that this was due to the Welsh habit of rubbing the teeth twice a day with the chewed end of a hazel twig.
‘Frustration, my dear woman!’ he said, dropping his hand to her thigh.
She rolled her eyes in mock ecstasy. ‘Frustration at not rolling me in my bed at this very moment, kind sir?’ she mocked.
‘No, my girl. At getting nowhere with this damned rape.’
She pretended to pout, but could not keep it up for more than a moment. Reaching over for his ale jar, she swallowed a mouthful. ‘The gossip says that Godfrey Fitzosbern’s smiths are under suspicion.’
The coroner marvelled once again at the rapidity with which rumour travelled in Exeter. He explained that there was no foundation for this idea and told Nesta of his latest quarrel with his wife over the matter.
‘Why should the suspicion rest only on Fitzosbern’s men?’ complained the comely innkeeper. ‘I’d far rather suspect Godfrey himself. He’s a lecher and ogler of the first water. He’s tried it on with me once or twice – and with most of the women in the city who don’t have cross-eyes and whiskers.’
John was glad that his mistress’s opinion was the same as his own, as regards the master silversmith.
‘But surely a substantial citizen like Godfrey, a leading burger and guild-master, would hardly risk everything for two minutes’ pleasure with the daughter of a portreeve!’ he objected.
Nesta looked at him sternly. ‘I know of a King’s crowner who regularly beds a common innkeeper! When the sap rises in a man’s loins, he is capable of anything.’
John gave her one of his rare grins, a lop-sided lift of his full lips. His hand squeezed her plump leg again, as he leaned over to whisper, ‘Are you very busy at the moment, madam? Or can we inspect the upper room of this hostelry to see if the pallets are soft?’
As he followed her up the wide ladder steps in the corner, many pairs of eyes looked knowingly in their direction, but John’s thoughts were mainly on the legs of the pert lady ascending in front of him – although a fraction of his mind was mulling over what she had said about Godfrey Fitzosbern.
At the same time, not far away, others were discussing the silversmith, in a room over Eric Picot’s wine store in Priest Street.1
Joseph of Topsham, his son Edgar and the wine merchant sat earnestly considering the situation. The rumours about Christina’s visit to Fitzosbern had spread within minutes, and it was already well known that the sheriff was going to interrogate the two smiths next morning.
Picot was scornful of the gossip. ‘I fail to see why we should suspect those two nonentities,’ he exclaimed, standing to pour more good wine into the glass cups of his guests. ‘I would a thousand times better suspect their master.’
He was echoing the words of Nesta, but probably a good proportion of Exeter men felt the same, jealous of Godfrey’s winning ways with the ladies, which included some of their own wives.
‘But there is no shred of evidence – nor can I see how such can be obtained,’ objected Joseph, cupping the wine in his hands as he stared moodily into the fire.
‘I would kill him with my bare hands if I thought he was the one!’ snarled Edgar, who since yesterday had turned from an ineffectual youth into a wrathful man, obsessed with hurting whoever had injured him so badly. Though he had not yet admitted it to himself, much of his anger arose from his indecision as to whether he now wanted to marry Christina, who could never come to his bed with her maidenhead intact. He was ashamed at the thought that slid into his mind and used righteous anger to try to block it out.
He and his father had been to see her earlier that evening. The visit had not been a success, as a shutter like a great portcullis seemed to have come down between Christina and Edgar. Though they exchanged courteous words and Edgar made all the right expressions of horror and condolence, they could not embrace or even touch hands. Edgar, sensitive to mood and atmosphere, felt the girl stiffen and tremble when he came near. ‘It was almost as if she suspected me of being the ravisher!’ he blurted out to his father, after they left the Rifford house.
They made their way to Eric Picot’s dwelling, Joseph wanting to unburden himself to a good friend, before going back to sleep in a corner of Edgar’s room, in the store of the apothecary’s shop. Picot kept his stock of wine in the house in Priest Street, as it was near the quayside, where ships either brought the imported casks direct or lighters rowed them up the river from Topsham. He lived above, in rather Spartan circumstances, as his wife had died five years before and he had reverted to a bachelor existence. However, he also had a new house built on a plot purchased from the manorial lord at Wonford, just outside the city, where he spent some days each week.
‘What can we do about this, Father?’ demanded Edgar. ‘I’ve a mind to challenge Fitzosbern to deny that he knows anything about this foul assault. Christina was last seen in his shop, getting that damned bracelet. God above, I wish I had never thought to give it to her if this is the ruin it brought upon us!’
‘Steady, boy! What earthly good could that do, except to get you into trouble? We have no proof at all that Godfrey knows anything about this.’
Edgar subsided into muttering under his breath, but Picot took up the theme. ‘He is an evil man. I know that from the way he treats his wife – he is unfaithful to her at every opportunity. The poor woman made a bad bargain when she married him. He harried his first wife into an early grave.’
Joseph smiled wanly at his friend, because he knew his secret – as did half the city. The attractive wife of the silversmith had been Picot’s lover for at least half a year and it was also no secret that she heartily disliked her husband. Edgar, who was as perceptive as his father when he forgot his own self-interest, looked from one to the other. ‘It’s all right, Father, I know about Eric’s affair with Mabel Fitzosbern, you don’t have to keep things from me as if I was a child.’ Joseph rolled his eyes at Picot. ‘It seems common knowledge, Eric, like the crowner and his Welsh doxy. Let’s hope that Godfrey isn’t aware of it.’
‘I don’t give a damn if he is. I mean to take her away from him one day,’ said the wine merchant stoutly. ‘And maybe we can turn this to our advantage, for I can ask Mabel to keep her ears and eyes open for any hint Godfrey might drop about this terrible happening.’
‘He’s hardly likely to confess to it, least of all to his wife!’ objected Joseph.
‘But if he does, I’ll kill him,’ hissed the apothecary’s apprentice.