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Wolfe. ‘Thank God I can get back to something approaching my duties.’
    His wife ignored this and dropped heavily on to one of the settles near the hearth. ‘Let’s see that leg of yours, husband. Brother Saulf warned you to make sure it doesn’t swell again by putting too much strain on it.’
    ‘Damn it, woman, there’s nothing to see now! It’s almost as good as new.’
    ‘Do as you’re told, John. I’ve not cared for you all these weeks for my work to be undone now by your neglect.’
    Reluctantly, he sat on the chair opposite her and, with the rabbit-toothed Lucille staring from across the room, he hauled up the skirt of his long tunic and pushed down his grey woollen hose to the ankle. ‘There, I told you. You’d not know anything had been amiss with it.’
    The leg certainly looked well, the last traces of redness on the shin having faded and the slight deformity almost gone. Matilda reached out a ringed finger and prodded it, but could feel no puffiness. There was nothing but a smooth ridge under the skin where the broken ends of the shinbone had knitted together.
    ‘I told you, I’m back to normal again. You don’t have to complain about me riding a horse. God knows, I’ve had worse injuries than this in my campaigning days.’
    He hauled up his stocking again and stood up. ‘Now that I’ve prised a makeshift chamber from your brother, I can get back to business.’
    The mention of Richard de Revelle silenced her, as usual now since he had so narrowly escaped disgrace. After a moment, she abruptly changed the subject. ‘It’s high time the Justiciar, or someone in Winchester or London, filled these vacant coronerships,’ she said. ‘Walter Fitzrogo fell from his horse more than six months ago and has never been replaced. Even before that, the county was one crowner short – and then you go acting the fool and break a leg. Is that any way to run a country?’ She might have added that it would be better for England if the king stayed at home and paid more attention to the affairs of his realm, but she knew that criticism of the Lionheart would stir her husband into a passionate diatribe of loyalty to his sovereign.
    ‘Well, no one wants the job, so I’ve got to make the best of it,’ he growled, tired of the same old complaints from his wife. He sensed that she was leading up to another tirade about his being away from home so much, neglecting her and failing especially to pander to the social life of the county aristocracy, which meant so much to her.
    ‘You’ll be forcing yourself on to that great horse every hour of the day just to defy me! You’ll regret it – that leg is not yet fit for riding. You’ll fall from the saddle like Fitzrogo, or get a purulent fever in the bone. I suppose you’d like to make me a widow, just for spite!’
    Exasperated at the accuracy of his predictions, John moved towards the door. ‘No fear of that, wife! I’ve not been outside the walls of Exeter these past two months. It’s high time I began getting around more. And that’s just what I’m going to do now. I’ve not been through one of the city gates since they carried me home on a cart from Bull Mead.’
    He banged the heavy door behind him, and as he sat on the bench in the vestibule to pull on his riding boots, Mary appeared from the passageway. ‘Did I hear raised voices in there?’ she asked. A dark-eyed, attractive woman, she was the bastard daughter of a Norman man-at-arms whose name neither she nor her Saxon mother had ever known.
    ‘Same old story, that I’m always away and neglecting her – she’s getting back to normal, more’s the pity,’ he muttered. ‘I’m going for a ride around the outside of the walls, if anyone wants me.’
    As she handed him his mottled grey wolfskin cloak from a peg on the wall, Mary virtually repeated Matilda’s caution. ‘Watch that leg of yours, Sir Crowner! You’re not as young as you think, remember.’
    As he threw the cloak around his