The Manor of Death (18 page)

His words and demeanour were totally unconvincing, and de Casewold leant towards the man and breathed his foul breath into his face as he spoke. 'Come, Capie, you are the man most involved with these ships and their crews! If anyone heard any gossip about certain vessels pillaging others, it would be you!'

The tally-man suddenly backed away, holding up his palms as if warding off the devil himself. 'I know nothing of such matters, Keeper! Don't ask me. I don't want to get involved in any gossip. I'm a simple man who does a job and just wants to live quietly with my family!'

'You sound afraid, John Capie!' exclaimed Luke. 'Has someone been threatening you if you speak out?'

The tally-man stumbled back even further. 'I don't know what goes on out at sea - and I don't want to know! Go and ask someone else, if you must, but leave me out of it, d'you hear!' The last words had risen into a screech as Capie turned and lurched back to his cottage without so much as a backward glance.

'There's a man with something to hide,' observed Hugh Bogge as they watched him hurry into his cottage and quickly shut the door, which screeched as the wood scraped the uneven threshold.

'I'll have him eventually,' crowed de Casewold vindictively. 'But I want to see what's in these storehouses, so we'll tackle the bailiff and Elias next.'

Entering the harbour gate, they passed the church, where a bell was tolling mournfully for some service, a trickle of villagers gravitating to it through the churchyard. Further up the main street they entered the garden of the bailiff's house and through a wideopen shutter saw him and the portreeve bent over a table. The Keeper went to it and called through the window-opening.

'Edward Northcote! I need to talk to you - and to your portreeve.'

The two men inside swung around and groaned when they saw who it was. 'What in God's name do you want, Casewold?' bellowed the bailiff.

'To ask you some questions - and to inspect those warehouses on the wharf.'

'Go to hell, you interfering busybody!' roared Northcote, coming across to the window-opening and thrusting his large, flushed face right into that of the Keeper. 'It's Easter and we have better things to do than waste time with you.'

Behind him, the portreeve nodded nervous agreement but said nothing.

'Have a care, Northcote. I am a king's officer!' threatened Luke. 'I can have you attached to the next county court - or have you dragged off to Axminster gaol.'

'Indeed! And who is going to do that?' sneered the bailiff, his anger rapidly coming to the boil. 'Is that fat clerk of yours going to haul me off by the scruff of the neck? Or are you' going to prod me with your little sword all the way to Axminster?'

'Perhaps not - but a sheriff's posse might!' retorted the indignant Keeper.

'Don't talk such bloody nonsense, man!' was the scathing reply. 'You are a damned nuisance, but what is it you want to ask?'

Slightly mollified by Northcote's grudging agreement, Luke leant his hands on the sill of the window. 'Several matters, bailiff. Do you know when
The Tiger
is due to return?'

'No, I don't. What about you, Elias - you're the harbour master?'

The skinny portreeve shook his grey head. 'Shouldn't be too long; it was supposed to be a quick voyage over to Normandy. But I can't tell when she's due; she may have sunk for all I know!'

'Or been scuttled by pirates!' snapped de Casewold. 'That was the other thing I need to know. I suspect that goods seized with the blood of innocent shipmen have passed through this port. Do you know anything of that, eh?'

Edward Northcote prodded the Keeper in the chest with a large forefinger, hard enough to make him step back a pace. 'Oh yes, I forgot. We had a few bloodstained casks in last week! And the portreeve here saw several bales of Flemish cloth smeared with gore, didn't you, Elias?'

The heavy sarcasm served only to inflame de Casewold's own temper, and he banged his fist angrily on one of the shutters hinged back against the wall.

'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.'

He looked at the dozen or so people gathered around, some staring expectantly at the dead monster. 'Can you deal with it here? Remove the flesh and the grease?'

The bailiff called over an elderly man, still powerful in the limbs. It was the reeve from Dawlish, whom John knew by sight. After greeting him, the man said that he could soon organise a party to flesh the whale and boil the blubber in pans over fires lit on the beach, taking as much of the meat as they could back to the nearby villages. After discussing the details, the coroner came to a rapid decision.

'In that case, I declare that the whale is seized as the king's property, but that the beast is released to the hundred in the sum of three marks. That will have to be confirmed - or even altered - when presented to the judges at the next Eyre.'

The bailiff nodded his agreement, as though three marks was four hundred and eighty silver pennies, the value of a large quantity of whale oil, plus the meat and whalebone, made it a worthwhile bargain, especially as the money did not have to be paid until demanded at the next Eyre in Exeter, which might be many months away - or even a year or two, if the judges were delayed.

The business being rapidly concluded, John and his officer declined the offer to be rowed back upstream and walked along the beach to fetch their horses. Gwyn knew only too well what was coming next.

'As we are so near Dawlish, it seems a pity not to call there and see if our shipmasters have any news.' John almost convinced himself that this was his only motive. Grinning under his luxuriant moustache, Gwyn hoisted himself on to his brown mare and they trotted off across the sandy scrubland towards the port, only two miles distant.

Almost as if fate was conspiring to assist John's conscience, when they arrived at the small town Gwyn saw at once that another of the cogs belonging to de Wolfe's partnership was beached in the inlet. This was the
St Peter
, whose shipmaster was Angerus de Wile. When they hailed a young lad sitting alone on the tilted deck, they learnt that his captain was in the nearest tavern with the ship's mate.

Gwyn was, of course, delighted with the news and almost fell from his horse in his haste to reach the alehouse for some refreshment. Inside the low taproom of the Ship Inn, they found a group of sailors standing around a large upturned barrel, drinking their ale and cider. One was the shipmaster, Angerus, who looked startled to see one of his employers appear unexpectedly but rallied and introduced his crew to Gwyn and the coroner.

'We made port only on the last tide, sir!' he explained. 'So ale was the first necessity after a trip up from Dartmouth.'

He called for drinks for the new arrivals, as de Wolfe explained what had brought them to the neighbourhood. 'I came hoping to see you or Roger Watts again, to see if I could get any more news of what may have been going on in Axmouth.'

Angerus de Wile, a stringy man approaching thirty, had a prominent projecting lower jaw that made him look a little like a pugnacious bulldog. He had not yet had time to speak to his older colleague, Roger Watts, so did not know of John's previous visit to seek information about smuggling and piracy. When the coroner explained, there were murmurs from his shipmates and Angerus put them into words.

'Crowner, it's damned strange that you should be asking about this, for not more than a month ago we picked up a man floating on some wreckage, nearer the French coast than ours. He was half-drowned and had a great slash across his head. Poor fellow died before we could land him in Rouen, but he was the only survivor - if you can call it that - of a pirate attack.'

The ale-jugs arrived and John waited impatiently while thirsts were quenched. 'Did he tell you anything?' he demanded.

'The man could hardly speak - and that not for long until his wits failed completely. A Fleming he was, crewing a Dunkerque ship, carrying cloth and wine out of the Rhine, bound for Southampton.'

He stopped for a swallow and his ship's mate, a rotund older man, took up the tale. 'Hard to understand, he was, what with the foreign language and his weakness - but it seems that a faster cog had appeared in mid-Channel and boarded them, killing the crew, then scuttling the vessel after ransacking her.'

Angerus nodded. 'This fellow was struck with a sword and thrown overboard but managed to cling on to dunnage boards that floated free when the ship went down. The pirates sailed off without noticing that he wasn't yet a corpse.'

'Did he say what vessel attacked them?' asked Gwyn, wiping ale from his moustache with the back of his hand.