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one of the canon’s houses in the Close – should have been ample to feed him. It was certainly far more than he had had until last September: he had been virtually destitute since he had been thrown out of Winchester, where he had had a teaching post in the cathedral school. One of the girl pupils had accused him of an indecent assault. After failing to scratch a living by writing letters for merchants, he had walked to Exeter and thrown himself on the mercy of his uncle, Archdeacon John de Alençon. A good friend of de Wolfe, the canon prevailed on the new coroner to take Thomas as his clerk, for the little ex-priest was highly proficient with quill and parchment.
    The coroner was almost dozing off, replete with food and warm wine, when the scrape of the door on the stones jerked him into wakefulness. He turned, expecting to see his clerk, but it was Gwyn of Polruan, named after his home village, a fishing hamlet on the Fowey river. The huge man poked his head inside first, wary in case Matilda was at home: she looked on anyone who was not a Norman as some sub-species of mankind, especially Celts. She hated the thought that her husband was half Welsh, from which stemmed much of her virulent dislike of her mother-in-law.
    ‘It’s safe, Gwyn, she’s up in the solar,’ said de Wolfe, guessing the reason for his officer’s hesitation. He kept his voice down as there was a narrow slit high in the hall that communicated with the upper room.
    The Cornishman padded in and stood by the coroner’s chair. De Wolfe was taller than average, but Gwyn more than equalled his height and had a massive body that made the coroner look thin by comparison. He had an unruly mop of wiry hair and a huge bushy moustache that drooped down each side of his mouth almost to his chest. Bright blue eyes shone out above a bulbous nose. ‘I’ve shifted our belongings down to that festering hole in the ground that the sheriff so generously gave us,’ he growled. ‘I hope to God your leg mends even faster so that we can go back up to our proper chamber.’
    ‘Anything new occurred today?’ asked John. ‘Any deaths or woundings?’
    Gwyn shook his shaggy head. ‘Nothing today. There are two hangings at the Magdalen tree tomorrow, which you should attend if you can.’
    One of the duties of the coroner was to seize for the king’s treasury, the chattels of condemned felons and to record the fact of execution and the profit – if any – on his rolls. This would be presented to the royal judges, along with every other legal aspect of life in Devon, when they eventually trundled to the county as the General Eyre. It was different from the Eyre of Assize, which was supposed to come each quarter to try serious cases, but which was often a year late.
    ‘I saw that fellow again today – twice, in fact,’ remarked de Wolfe. ‘I’m sure he’s following me, but with this leg I’ve no chance of catching him.’
    Gwyn frowned. Anything that threatened his master, even remotely, was something to be taken seriously. Although the city was a fairly safe place inside its stout walls, with its gates locked from dusk to dawn, he knew that Sir John had quite a few enemies, most of them antagonistic to his fierce loyalty to the king. ‘I must keep a sharper eye out for him,’ he rumbled. ‘I’ll follow you when you’re riding or walking the streets. If I see anyone, or if you give me the wink that he’s there, I’ll have the bastard, never fear!’
    With this grim promise, he lumbered out, but de Wolfe had no chance to slide into slumber as he heard his henchman’s voice in the vestibule and almost immediately the door opened again to admit Thomas de Peyne, who sidled through the wooden screens put up to reduce the draughts.
    His clerk was a poor specimen of a man, short and scrawny, with a slight hump on his back and a lame left leg, both due to childhood phthisis, which had carried away his mother. Thin, lank brown hair, a slight squint, a long,