Free The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight Page B

fodder. Right at the back, against the ruddy sandstone of the wall, lay an ominous long shape under an old cart-cover.
    ‘I had the bailiffs bring him up here. No point in leaving him in the street for all to gawp at.’
    ‘Do we know who he is?’ asked the coroner.
    ‘Willem the innkeeper knew him. He’s Osric, a carter from Rock Lane.’
    Gwyn stooped and flicked off the canvas sheet to reveal a body with a bloody mass where the man’s head had been.
    John’s black eyebrows rose. He was impressed by the destruction that had been wrought on the victim’s face, scalp and skull.
    ‘They used a ball on him?’ he suggested.
    Gwyn nodded, quietly proud of his master’s instant and accurate diagnosis. ‘A chain mace, with a ball the size of a turnip. Beat his head to a pulp.’
    He tossed back the cover over the gruesome sight and wiped some blood from his hand on the weeds that grew at the foot of the wall.
    They walked out into the grey light of the bailey.
    ‘What about the other man?’
    ‘He had a dagger thrust into the back of the shoulder. But he’s lost a mortal amount of blood.
    If it turns purulent, then he’s a dead man as well.’
    The coroner jerked a thumb back towards the shed and its cadaver. ‘Get some of the inquest jury up here to view the body. No point in clogging the place up with half the town, ten men will suffice. And have the felons sent down to the Saracen - if the sheriff can find a couple of guards who’ll not let them escape on the way,’ he added ironically.
    While he went back to his office to practise his reading, Gwyn went about his errands, one of which was to chase their clerk away from the food stall in the cathedral close where he was finishing his breakfast and up to the castle.
    John sat for a time with a vellum roll in his hands, but his mind was not on deciphering the Latin script.
    He thought about last night and the calm companionship, as well as the healthy lust, of Nesta, both of which were so different from the petulant frigidity of Matilda.
    From there his mind wandered to the unknown man at Widecombe.
    Virtually all coroner’s cases were straightforward: any difficulties were due to the ignorance or obstinacy of the public, or obstacles raised by the sheriff and his men. During the first two months of his duties mysteries had been almost unknown, so this problem was new and intriguing, especially as the dead man seemed to be a Crusader. John began to assemble a plan of action and, not for the first time, wished that he could write well enough to list things with a quill, rather than have to carry everything in his head.
    His reverie was broken by the shuffle of feet on the stairs and the head of his clerk appearing round the door. With an obsequious bow, the little ex-cleric sidled into the room and slid on to a stool opposite the Coroner.
    ‘I’ve had a busy night, Thomas,’ John snapped, with an ambiguity lost on the other man. ‘A killing and a near-mortal wounding. There’s an inquest at noon, but you’d better start entering details on your roll about the injured man, in case he doesn’t die, so that his aggressor may be hauled up before the justices.’
    Thomas scrabbled in the shapeless cloth bag he always carried for a new piece of parchment and his writing implements. As he arranged these on the table between them, the coroner stared at him steadily, as if seeing him for the first time. Though Thomas was the butt of scorn and often ridicule - not least from John and Gwyn of Polruan - John felt flashes of pity for him, in spite of his personal distaste for the man’s character. He was ugly, too, and must have been the runt of his mother’s litter, small and crook-backed with his chinless face and long nose below small beady eyes, one of which had a slight turn when he looked to the right. His lank dark hair was as lustreless as old rope and his face was pitted with the scars of cow-pox. No wonder, thought John, that he had been driven to rape, for