Free The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight

with good-humoured persistence until he had come to enjoy it - though often, with a roar of passion, he would roll the pair of them over and hammer her almost through the palliasse to the floorboards beneath. When exhaustion finally overcame them, they lay quietly side by side, his long arms wrapped tenderly around her.
    There was silence for a time. Eventually he asked, ‘Have you heard the Bishop’s bell strike six?’
    With no clock nearer than an inventive monastery in Germany, time was measured by graduated candles or a sand-glass in the cathedral and rung out over the city by tolling one of the bells.
    ‘No, though with you panting in my ear, I’d not have heard the roof fall in! But I think we have time yet, until Edwin starts to throw logs on the fire for cooking.’
    After a few more minutes of companionable silence, Nesta asked again about the man in Widecombe.
    She stroked his belly gently. ‘And you’ve no idea who he is?’
    ‘None at all. Other than he’s Norman of good family.’
    ‘How can you get further, then? The killing of a knight or someone of lordly rank cannot go unpunished.
    If it were a mere serf or villein, well, life is cheap, but not a gentleman.’
    Sometimes John could not be sure whether she was teasing him or serious. Now he suspected the latter, as the Welshwoman had no love of the Normans’
    feudal system. If he had not been half Celtic himself, through his Cornish mother, he suspected she would have never let him into her bed.
    ‘I’ll have to make wider enquiries about the county, maybe even further afield. Gwyn and that poxy clerk can get the criers and heralds in each town to broadcast a description and seek any sighting of the man.
    But this affray on Stripcote Hill will occupy most of the day, God blast it.’
    She bit his shoulder gently. ‘This crowner’s job seems too much for one man.’
    Further conversation was interrupted by a crash below: Edwin had dropped a pile of wood on the floor. Almost immediately, they heard the clear notes of a bronze bell chiming in the distance. When they counted to six, Nesta cruelly threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, leaving John lying with his underwear around his neck. ‘Come, Sir Crowner. By the time we get you fed and watered, it’ll be light.’
     
    With a good meal of ham fried in butter, three fresh eggs and several large slabs of wheaten bread inside him, the coroner marched complacently through the streets of Exeter, from the south-west corner across to where the castle stood on the edge of an escarpment.
    He passed tradesmen putting up their stalls in the dawn light, setting out baskets of fresh vegetables, bread, meat and fish, ready to sell to the early risers among Exeter’s townsfolk. In the Shambles above Bell Hill in South Gate Street, the butchers were felling cattle on bloodstained cobbles and pigs screamed in their death agony - all part of the morning sounds of a city.
    Everywhere he was met with a nod, a greeting or a pulled forelock. Even though Gwyn of Polruan had assured him that they all knew where he had spent the night, he saw not a snigger or a smirk - which was just as well, as he would have had little hesitation in felling any offender with a smack of his brick-sized fist.
    His tall, slightly stooped figure strode up the slope to the castle’s open portcullis. He carried his wide brimmed hat, his shoulder-length black hair lifting as he walked. He wore a short black cloak over the grey linen surcoat that came to his shins, tight black breeches with crossgartering below the knees and pointed shoes. He hoped that Mary had cleaned his riding boots, as he suspected that, come the afternoon, he would be in the saddle again.
    In the city, he felt no need to buckle on his heavy sword, but his dagger was sheathed on his belt, though in truth, these days, he used it far more for cutting his food than any violent purpose.
    The castle, called Rougemont after the red rock upon which it was built,