The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

tugged off his riding boots.
    Mary was their serving maid, a handsome, if over muscular, girl of twenty-five. Exuding good health, she had a briskness and determination that brushed aside all problems. She never failed to make John feel better when he was low - a frequent condition for the coroner.
    Mary was the by-blow of a Norman squire and a Saxon woman from Exeter. In this divided household, she was firmly, if discreetly, John’s ally against Matilda and Lucille. He had given her her job against his wife’s wishes and, an eminently sensible girl, Mary valued it too highly to risk losing it over household politics but short of open warfare with the mistress, she aided and abetted the coroner whenever she could in his campaign of survival against his strident wife. As she fetched him a pair of soft house shoes, she whispered to him conspiratorially, ‘Her brother is here again, master. They’re in the hall, complaining about you as usual.’
    John groaned. His damned brother-in-law seemed to spend more time in this house than he did himself, and if Matilda were not such an obnoxious woman, he might have suspected Richard de Revelle of incestuous inclinations.
    Reluctantly he rose from the chair and moved to the other door in the vestibule. This opened into the hall, which occupied the front half of the house from floor to roof. Behind it on the upper level was the solar, his and his wife’s private chamber and sleeping place, reached by an outside stairway at the rear. Here Matilda did her needlework and Lucille primped her hair. In the small yard at the back of the house were outhouses where the two servants lived, and where the cooking, brewing and washing were done.
    Mary picked up the boots, thickly coated with mire.
    ‘I’ll get these cleaned and polished - and good luck in there!’ she added impishly.
    John ruffled her fair hair affectionately. In the past they had had a few clandestine sessions in bed, but Mary had refused him in recent months, fearing that the mistress, through the hated Lucille, may have developed suspicions.
    As she vanished outside to the domestic area, John lifted the wrought-iron latch on the hall door and, with a sigh, stepped into his own domain.
    The room was high, gloomy and cold, in spite of a big log fire in the cavernous hearth at the further end. Much of the bare timber of the high walls was covered with tapestries and banners, but even these were sombre and depressing. A long oaken table stood in the centre of the room with a heavy chair at each end and benches down either side.
    Flanking each side of the stone fireplace was a settle, a double wooden seat with a high back and side wings to keep out the draughts, and directly before the hearth, a pair of monk’s chairs, each with a cowled back like a beehive, again to protect the occupant from the cold.
    As John walked across the bare flagstones - Matilda would not suffer the usual scattered rushes on beaten earth as being ‘common’ - a mutter of voices echoed from the high walls. ‘Matilda, I’m back,’ he called.
    A face appeared around the side of one of the cowled chairs. ‘Indeed, so I see! A wonder you bother to come home at all. I’ve not laid eyes on you in daylight all this week.’
    His wife’s square face was set in a perpetual expression of disdain, as if a bad smell was ever under her nostrils.
    Though handsome once, a faint moustache and fleshy pouches under her blue eyes and along the jawline suggested both a lazy lifestyle and an over-enthusiastic appetite. Her elaborately curled hair was partly hidden under a brocade cap, which matched a heavy gown to keep out the November chill.
    John crossed to the hearth and stood with his back to the fire, both to warm the seat of his breeches and to emphasise that he was master of the household.
    Two pairs of eyes stared at him. ‘And how did my new law officer fare today, in the dung-hole they call Widecombe?’
    Sarcasm fell easily from the thin lips of his