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hierarchy of Devon’s important people. He knew that his description of today’s hangings would be of no interest to her, but he thought he might divert her with the news of another find of treasure. Matilda’s main concerns were food, drink, fine clothes and, above all, the worship of the Almighty, but money was also acceptable as a topic of interest. Like the others, she remarked on the frequency of the discoveries in recent months.
    ‘These are all part of the ill-gotten gains of those Saxons, I suppose,’ she said loftily.
    Although she had been born in Devon and had only once visited distant relatives across the Channel, she considered herself a full-blooded Norman lady and looked down on the conquered natives with disdain. One of her major regrets was being married to a man who, although a Norman knight and former Crusader, had a mother who was half-Welsh, half-Cornish.
    ‘I hear that a number of priests have been searching the cathedral archives, hoping to find another parchment leading to a hoard like that found in Alphington churchyard,’ said John, carefully avoiding the fact that it was Thomas who had told him. Even more than her dislike of Saxons, Matilda detested his clerk for being a perverted priest, even though his unfrocking had been reversed when the allegations that he had indecently assaulted a girl pupil in the cathedral school in Winchester were proved to be false.
    ‘Good luck to them,’ she declared firmly. ‘The Church should benefit as much as possible from the riches of those heathens!’
    Her husband forbore to point out that the Saxons had been Christians for centuries before the pagan Viking fathers of the Normans ever set foot in Normandy.
    Mary, their cook and maid-of-all-work, came in from her kitchen-shed in the back yard to clear their wooden bowls of mutton stew and to place trenchers before each of them on the scrubbed oak boards of the table. These were stale slabs of yesterday’s barley bread on to which Mary slid thick slices of fat bacon with a heap of fried onions alongside. In these winter months, the range of available vegetables and meat was very limited, and most were stored or preserved from the previous autumn, as were the wrinkled apples that were offered as dessert, supplemented by dried figs and raisins imported from southern Aquitaine.
    Eating was a serious business, and de Wolfe did not attempt to reopen the conversation until they had finished and were sitting on each side of the fire with a pewter cup of Anjou wine apiece.
    ‘This treasure today will certainly go to the king, as it was found inside Rougemont,’ he said with some satisfaction. ‘The bloody bishop won’t get his hands on this lot!’
    Matilda scowled at him from under the fur rim of the velvet cap she wore against the cold. ‘It would do far more good in the coffers of the cathedral,’ she snapped. ‘It will be wasted on more troops and arms for Richard to fight that futile war against France. Better if he came back to England and tended to his own dominions!’
    John headed her off by mentioning the Chief Justiciar, as he knew Matilda revered the archbishop almost as much as the Pope. ‘Hubert Walter does an excellent job in Richard’s stead. He has been a good friend to us over the years.’
    He knew this would mollify his wife, who loved to think that she was close to the high and mighty. Hubert Walter had been the Lionheart’s second-in-command in the Holy Land, and de Wolfe had earned his friendship and respect there during the Crusade. Having adroitly warmed up his wife’s mood, if not her body, he finished his wine and rose to his feet. ‘I must go back to Rougemont now. There is an inquest to be held on that treasure.’
    ‘And I will be at my devotions in St Olave’s Church for much of today, John,’ declared Matilda as he left.
    ‘And after the inquest I will be down at the Bush Inn visiting my mistress!’ said John – though he said it under his breath after he had