The Elixir of Death

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The coroner's deep voice competed with the wind whistling past the ears of the two horsemen. They waited on the seaward end of a long ridge, high above the beach, while a third man laboured up behind them, his pony trudging wearily after the tedious journey west from Exeter.

'Not this far down-channel, now that we're well into the autumn,' agreed his henchman, a huge disheveled Cornishman astride a large brown mare. Gwyn of Polruan had ginger hair poking from under his shabby leather hood and a bushy moustache of the same colour hanging down on either side of his mouth. All were damp from the spray and fitful rain that half a gale was hurling at them from the west, under dark clouds that scudded across the afternoon sky.

'Are you sure that's Thorgils' vessel, Crowner?' asked the thin figure on the pony, as he pulled alongside them. Thomas de Peyne was the coroner's clerk, his sallow face looking as miserable as the Dartmoor pony on which he sat side-saddle like a woman.

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