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– none the worse for coming from your brother-in-law’s piggery!’
    John grinned up at her amiable face. ‘I’ve only just heard about his venture with hogs and sows. Let’s hope he’s better at making bacon that he was at being sheriff!’
    He declined the offer of a meal, saying that as it was approaching noon he would soon have to go back to Martin’s Lane, where Mary, his cook-maid, would have prepared his dinner.
    As Martha moved away to greet her other patrons with her easy manner, de Wolfe was reminded of how Nesta used to do the same, both of them able to chaff and tease their customers without giving offence, but also capable of dealing firmly with those who had drunk too much and became either overfamiliar or aggressive. The thought of his former Welsh mistress made him pensive for a moment, as she so often used to share this very same bench with him, as well as the little room directly overhead in the loft, where they had spent so many tender and passionate hours.
    Suddenly, Gwyn was looming over him, rubbing his spade-like hands on a cloth. ‘Sure you’ll not have a bite to eat, Crowner?’
    John shook his head, then sniffed at a strong smell of ale that exuded from his officer. ‘God’s bones, man, have you been drinking the inn dry? I thought you were still up at the castle?’
    The ginger giant grinned. ‘I’ve just come back down to start off a new tub of mash. Haven’t touched a drop of ale since breakfast! What you smell is the fruit of my new career – apart from being the coroner’s officer,’ he added hastily. ‘My good wife has appointed me brew-master. A job made for me in heaven!’
    He explained how he was now in charge of making the ale, except when called away on coroner’s duties. ‘I’m sticking to the recipe that dear Nesta used to use. Everyone says she made the best ale in Exeter, so I see no reason to change.’
    Once again, the spectre of the woman he had loved rose up, but John was nothing if not a realist. Hilda of Dawlish was equally dear to him now, and the very thought of her made him eager to throw himself on to his horse and canter off down to the coast to see her. Even the dozen miles that separated them were far too many. She refused to move to Exeter, even though he could well afford to find another house for her. Matilda was entrenched in Martin’s Lane, so he seemed doomed to pound the road to Dawlish, back and forth like the shuttle in a loom.
    His reverie was broken when he realised that Gwyn was talking to him again.
    ‘I’ve just heard a rumour that some folks down in Bretayne have fallen sick with the yellow plague. If that’s true, then it’s getting uncomfortably close to us.’ John noticed that the low murmur of talk in the taproom had suddenly altered. There seemed to be a wave of more urgent conversation sweeping across the few dozen customers, people huddling closer to hear the news brought in by a couple of porters who had just arrived.
    ‘Are we keeping clear of it, if there are deaths, Crowner?’ asked Gwyn, worried about his wife and two young sons.
    ‘Unless there’s anything untoward about any of them,’ said John reassuringly. Though there was no written law on the matter, the vague declaration of the king’s justices in September two years ago, which had set up the office of coroner, had been refined piecemeal by the judges ever since when problems had arisen. It seemed clear that while murder, accident, suicide and sudden or suspicious deaths fell within the coroner’s purview, the majority of deaths from obvious disease or old age were excluded, as long as they occurred in the presence of the family. A few of the men in the ale-room were now rising and making for the door, with worried expressions on their faces.
    ‘Best get home and warn my wife and daughters,’ said one as he passed, a shoemaker whom John recognised. ‘Tell them to keep indoors until we know the truth of this tale.’
    De Wolfe could well appreciate how