About forty years old, he was coarsely handsome, with dark wavy hair and a rim of black beard around his face. Walter Tyrell was of average height, but looked small alongside the coroner's officer. Gwyn of Polruan was a huge, ginger-haired giant, with long moustaches of the same hue hanging down each side of his chin. The two antagonists were as unlike as could be imagined. Surrounded by a circle of neighbours, whose sympathies were totally with Gwyn, the pair squared up to each other, as red-faced as the fire behind them. God knows I've asked you often enough to get it mended!'Ī shouting match soon developed, each man vociferously denying the claims of the other. 'Your lousy roof collapsed on to my fire. 'Don't give me that, Walter Tyrell!' he boomed.
Though Gwyn, like many large men, was normally of a placid nature, this unjust accusation coming so soon after the loss of his home, made him lose his temper. 'What have you done to my house, you Cornish savage?' he yelled as he came close. The fire made the midnight scene as bright as day and in its glare, they saw a dark-haired man hurrying towards them, his whole demeanour suggesting pent-up anger. 'If he won't mend a rotten roof, he has to put up with the consequences.' 'Sod him, the tight-fisted bastard!' growled Gwyn. He rented his own dwelling from the same man, the owner of several fulling-mills on the river, which processed raw wool for the spinners and weavers of the city. 'What's our landlord going to say about losing his house?' asked another neighbour with ill-concealed satisfaction. She's good with herbs and potions and suchlike.'Īs they spoke, the front wall fell in with a crash and fresh streamers of fire spewed up into the night sky.
'Both lads are sickening for something, so she took them down to stay with her sister in Milk Lane. 'Nothing but damned trouble, this week,' grunted Gwyn. 'Thank God that Agnes and the boys weren't here,' said the tanner, relishing the drama that was enlivening the humdrum life of the village. The thatch had been laid on woven hazel withies supported by the rafters, always a hazard in dwellings where the fire was in the centre of the floor beneath. By the time the smoke woke me up, it was too late!' 'That bloody roof again! A chunk of withies and straw as big as my head fell down into the firepit. 'How did it start, Gwyn?' asked the man from next door, a mournful fellow who always stank, as he worked in the tannery. In the plot behind, the hut that his wife Agnes used for her cooking was emptied before it also fell prey to the flying embers - and their three goats, the fowls and a pair of pigs were also taken to safety in a nearby croft. The villagers of St Sidwell, a hamlet just outside Exeter's city walls, had helped Gwyn of Polruan to save what he could of the family's possessions, few that they were, but most of what was in the single-room had gone up in flames. They had carried leather buckets of turbid water from the well, but there was nothing they could do to save the little building, made of wood-framed wattle plastered with cob - a mixture of clay, straw and dung. The big Cornishman stood impotently in the road outside, watching the destruction in company with his neighbours, who although sympathetic to his loss, were more concerned over the threat to their own roofs by the flying sparks. With a crackling roar, Gwyn's home of twelve years was destroyed in as many minutes. The air became filled with specks of black ash and fragments of burning straw floated from the flaming thatch of the cottage. There was a thunderous crash as the roof fell in and a fountain of sparks erupted into the night sky. Ian Morson is the author of the Oxford-based Falconer series. Philip Gooden writes Shakespearean murder mysteries. Karen Maitland is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling C14th mysteries Company of Liars and The Owl Killers.
Former police officer Susanna Gregory's novels feature Matthew Bartholomew, a C14th Cambridge physician. Bernard Knight, a former Home Office pathologist, is the author of the acclaimed Crowner John series.
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