The Noble Outlaw by Bernard Knight Read Free Book Online

the table to have his own meal, the distance between them exemplifying the emotional gulf between them. He was grateful for the silence that the serious business of eating required, a silence which went on through the second course of slices of cold pork with onions, followed by fresh bread and hard yellow cheese.
    Eventually, they finished and Matilda rose, as he knew she would, seeking Lucille, her browbeaten French handmaid, to prepare her for bed.
    'I'll expect you home for dinner tomorrow, John,' she said in a tone that invited no contradiction. 'Richard needs to hear from you about this corpse and I'll not have him disappointed.'
    With that, she sailed out of the hall to go around to the yard, where there were outside stairs to her solar. This was a room built high up on to the back of the hall, supported on stout timbers, under which Lucille lived in a small boxlike chamber.
    Left to himself, John sank with a sigh into his chair by the hearth and waited for Mary to come to clear the debris of the meal. As she entered, his old hound Brutus slunk in and laid at his feet to enjoy the warmth of the fire, knowing full well that his master would soon be taking him out for a stroll - a nightly excuse to visit the Bush Inn and its attractive Welsh landlady.

    As an unfrocked priest only recently restored to grace, Thomas de Peyne was not overly fond of visiting taverns, but the Bush was an exception. Just around the corner from his modest lodging in Priest Street, the building in Idle Lane was the nearest thing to home for him, as the kindly Nesta insisted on mothering the little cleric. Even though he had a few more pennies to spend since his rescue from abject poverty, the landlady fed him gratis whenever he appeared, convinced that his weedy frame, with the slight hunchback and lame leg, needed more sustenance than he bothered to give it.
    Tonight, he was just finishing a bowl of mutton stew, sitting at a table near the hearth with Gwyn, who had just demolished his favourite pork knuckle with a pile of beans and onions. The big Cornishman seemed always hungry and thirsty and justified his appetite by the soldier's adage that one should sleep, eat, drink and make love whenever the opportunity arose, as one never knew when the next chance would come along. On the other side of the trestle sat John de Wolfe, with a quart of Nesta's best ale in front of him, just topped up by old Edwin, the one-eyed potman. Brutus lay under the table, waiting expectantly for Gwyn to drop the stripped bone down to the rush-covered floor. This peaceful tableau was completed a moment later by the appearance of the shapely landlady herself, who slipped down on to the bench alongside the coroner and pushed her arm through his.
    'Tell me all the day's gossip, John,' she demanded.  
    The lean, dark face of her lover broke into a rare smile as he looked down at the pretty redhead. 'Not a great deal today, my girl. Just a mouldy old corpse found around the corner from here, hardly a hundred paces away.' He told her briefly about the finding of the body in the nearby forge.
    'Have you any idea who it might be, given that you are almost neighbours?' he demanded, with mock severity. The question was not completely facetious, as Nesta was a fount of gossip, her inn being one of the most popular in Exeter, especially amongst travellers passing through the city. Like his maid Mary, Nesta had often been the purveyor of titbits of information that were of use to the coroner.
    'No one has gone missing from this part of the town,' she replied seriously. 'How long had the poor man been there?'
    De Wolfe shrugged. 'Hard to say, given that it was dried out like a smoked herring, up above that forge. Some months, I would guess.'
    'When did the metalworkers leave there, I wonder?' asked Gwyn, brushing bits of food from the luxuriant ginger moustaches that hung down each side of his chin.
    The landlady had the answer to this. 'Michaelmas, that was. I heard that their