Crowner's Quest
against him. ‘Give me a few clues and I’ll solve it for you, John. But what else has been happening to you this past day or so?’
    He sighed and slid an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m in disfavour with Matilda, once again.’ He told her what had happened during her party last night.
    He got little sympathy from his mistress. ‘Poor woman! Fancy having such a husband as you! If you’d left my entertainment like that, I’d have blacked your eyes – and then banned you from my bed for a month.’ She was only half joking, for though she had no particular liking for Matilda, she knew there was fault on both sides and that, when he chose, this man could be as awkward and stubborn as a mule.
    He grinned at her as one of the maids arrived with his food. ‘If she banned me from her bed for a month the only penalty would be that I was spared her snoring – for no other activity occurs on our couch, I can tell you.’
    Nesta prodded him in the ribs in mock-outrage. ‘A fine story! You couldn’t keep your nightshirt down even if you were in bed with Bearded Lucy.’ This was a repulsive hag, reputed to be a witch, who lived in a hut alongside the river. All the same, Nesta was secretly pleased to know that he claimed to keep his virility for her. ‘Eat your victuals, Sir Crowner, and stop talking such nonsense.’
    As he tucked into his food, for which the Bush had the best reputation among all the taverns in Exeter, Nesta was called away to settle an argument between the cook out in the yard and one of the maids. Using his dagger and his fingers, de Wolfe tucked into a slab of boiled bacon and fried onions that rested on a thick trencher of bread laid directly on the scrubbed boards of the table in lieu of a platter. The juices soaked into the trencher, which would be collected with all the others and given at the end of the day to the poor in the Bretayne district. As he ate his meat and spread yellow butter on to bread torn from a wheaten loaf, he felt calm and contentment spread though him, though the death of the canon still niggled in the back of his mind.
    At the last mouthful, Nesta came back with a fresh quart of ale for him. ‘Tell me about this poor man in Canons’ Row,’ she demanded. Although she was a prodigious source of information and gossip, he knew that his confidences were safe with her – not that much was ever confidential in this small city, where everyone considered their neighbour’s business common property.
    He told her what little he knew of the death of Robert de Hane and the lack of any apparent motive. He spoke in Welsh, as it was her native language and the one his mother had used with him as a child. Even when Gwyn was with them they talked in Welsh, for his own Cornish was similar, as was the Breton spoken by many visiting traders and shipmen.
    ‘Why kill a harmless old man like that?’ she asked, full of sympathy as always for the defenceless and the underdog. ‘You say he had no wealth or possessions to steal?’
    De Wolfe took a deep draught of his ale. ‘There was some talk of his coming into wealth, which he was giving to the Church, but he had nothing that could be stolen from his house or his person.’
    Her hazel eyes studied the strange man alongside her: he was not handsome, with that long gaunt face and beak of a nose, but he was tall, sinewy and utterly masculine. Though usually gruff and sparing with words, he could be loving and tender and she knew, to her great delight, that when roused he was a lover without compare, his long body a relentless machine for giving them mutual pleasure.
    She had known him for six years, since her late husband Gruffydd had given up soldiering and bought the Bush Inn. John and Gruffydd had been together on several campaigns, the Welshman a master archer from Gwynllwyg 2 in south Wales, the home of the long-bow. Within two years, though, Gruffydd had been dead of a fever and Nesta was left with an inn and substantial debts. De Wolfe

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