The Awful Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

marriage into the well-known de Revelle family, she had been slimmer and had had a good complexion. Now at forty-six – half a dozen years older than de Wolfe – she had thickened into a podgy, short-necked woman, with coarse skin and thinning fair hair. She had loose flesh under her chin and her puffy lids gave her a narrow-eyed, almost Oriental appearance. John put this down to some internal disorder of her vital humours, though it did not seem to diminish her appetite for either food or wine.
    ‘Now that you can sit a horse again, I suppose you’ll be off about the countryside at all hours,’ she complained to the opposite wall, not turning to address him.
    ‘It’s my duty, for Christ’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘You were the one who was so keen for me to become the king’s coroner here.’
    ‘Must you blaspheme every time you open your mouth?’ she retorted, still staring ahead of her. ‘It would be fitter if you went to church more often, instead of the tavern.’ Since the débâcle two months ago, she also avoided mentioning Nesta’s name, though Matilda, like most of Exeter, was well aware of the attraction the Bush Inn held for Sir John de Wolfe.
    ‘I’ve neglected the coroner’s tasks for too long, though Gwyn and Thomas have done their best these past few weeks. I can’t leave matters to them and the bailiffs much longer. I must get out and about as much as my leg will let me – it’s strengthening fast, better each day.’
    He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, ‘Due in large measure to you, Matilda, for which I’m truly grateful.’ He said this awkwardly, as even a hint of intimacy was foreign to their relationship.
    She swung round on her chair, the heavy skirt of her brocade kirtle swishing on the flagstones. ‘You have your duty as coroner and I have mine as your wife. I wasn’t going to allow some drab of a maid or a doxy from the lower town care for your injury. It was bad enough having that hairy Cornish creature or that pervert of an ex-priest hanging about the house most of the time.’
    De Wolfe sighed, sensing that things were rapidly getting back to normal between them after their relative truce of the past two months. But a developing quarrel was blunted by the appearance of Mary with a tray bearing a large wooden bowl of broth and bread trenchers covered in pork and cabbage. She was followed by the emaciated form of old Simon, their yard servant who chopped wood and tended the fires and the privy. He brought a pitcher of hot wine with two pewter mugs, and the business of eating and drinking diverted the ever-hungry Matilda from her nagging.
    After champing her way through a large meal, including the slab of bread that did service for a plate on the scrubbed boards of the table, and drinking the better part of a pint of mulled wine, Matilda abruptly broke her silence by announcing that she was going to the solar to have her hair brushed by Lucille, though de Wolfe suspected that she was going to sleep off the effects of her full belly.
    She stalked out without another word and, thankfully, he took his mug across to the hearth and sank into one of the monk’s chairs, which had wooden sides and a hood to keep off the draughts that came from the unglazed windows, covered in linen screens. Brutus came to lay his big brown head on his master’s knees, and John stared absently into the fire as he fondled the animal’s ears.
    Mary appeared to clear away the debris of the meal and scour the table. ‘Thomas called earlier. He said he would bring some work at about the second hour.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the nearby cathedral, whose bells for its many services told the city the time. ‘I gave him some food, too. The poor man looks half starved,’ she added, with a hint of accusation that de Wolfe underpaid his clerk. The little ex-priest received a penny a day from the coroner’s own pocket, which – as he enjoyed a free mattress laid in a servant’s hut in