Free The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight Page A

dominated the town from the highest point. A small room had been allotted to John on the first floor of the gatehouse, far removed in distance and importance from his brother-in-law, who lived and officiated in the keep. Unlike many Norman castles, there was no central mound, but a low square tower rose from the middle of the inner ward. It was the first stone keep that William the Bastard had built in England. It was said that in 1068 he had paced out the measurements for the foundations himself. Other fortified buildings were built into the curtain wall, the main ones on the edge of the low cliff that dropped down to Northernhay, the hedged fields below the city wall.
    At the gate, two mailed guards banged the stocks of their spears on the cobbles in salute to him. Like most soldiers, they respected John for his military reputation, as well as for his new royal appointment as the second most important law officer in the county.
    He passed under the outer arch of the gatehouse and turned left through a low door that led to the spiral stairs to his room. Little security was needed other than a couple of men to keep out beggars, children and madmen. The last time the castle had seen fighting was over fifty years ago, when for three months Baldwin de Redvers had held it for the Empress Matilda against the forces of the King, until lack of water had defeated him.
    John’s office was a dark chamber above the guardroom, lit only by a pair of arrow-slits looking down over the city and a narrow window-opening on the adjacent wall. The dawn light penetrated one of these and threw a pallid rectangle on a trestle table covered with parchment rolls scribed by Thomas de Peyne.
    The coroner sat on a hard stool behind the table and picked up the nearest roll, squinting at the penned words on the outside without untying the cord that held it closed. With difficulty, he slowly read the name, mouthing the Latin laboriously with moving lips.
    John knew the alphabet fairly well and was taking secret lessons every week from a junior deacon in the priory. He was too proud - or too arrogant - to ask his own clerk for tuition, though Thomas knew that his master was almost illiterate.
    John identified the name on the document: he had levied an amercement on a cottager in Cheriton for burying the body of his wife, who had hanged herself from an apple tree, without informing the coroner.
    Feet were stumping up the stone stairway and Gwyn’s head came round the open door, bright eyes peering through the forest of red hair and whiskers.
    ‘The dead ‘un lies in the cart shed, if you want to see him.’
    ‘What about the wounded fellow from Dawlish?’
    ‘He’s bleeding into a bed in the Saracen. Too ill to be moved, they reckon. Willem, the innkeeper, is fit to be tied over it, asking who’s going to pay for a new mattress and blanket.’
    John followed his lieutenant down to the inner bailey, the large area within the curtain walls that was parade-ground, horse-corral and main street of the castle. Around the inside walls, there were lean-to huts of all shapes and sizes. Some, kitchens, blacksmiths or forges, had smoke coming from their eaves. Others were barracks for the constable’s troops. Women and children hung about, though the quarters for married soldiers and castle servants were in the lower ward.
    The ground had hardly a blade of grass left on it, being mostly churned mud, horse droppings and rubbish. Even at that early hour, the whole place was a hive of activity, morning meals being eaten outside the huts, horses being saddled or coaxed into cart-shafts and other wagons trundling in and out of the main gate.
    Used to such scenes all his life, John spared it hardly a glance but ploughed through the muck, following Gwyn towards a large, dilapidated shed inside the west wall. The doors had long since fallen off and been used for firewood by the castle residents. It housed the half-dozen big-wheeled carts that carried provisions and