The Noble Outlaw

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Even Thomas de Peyne, still squeamish after serving for more than a year as coroner's clerk, found little to upset him in the appearance of this particular corpse.

What little flesh that could be seen reminded him more of the cheap dried cod that hung from the fishmongers' stalls than of a human being. The leathery face and shrivelled hands protruding from the mouldering clothes looked unreal, like some amateur woodcarving.

'Been here some time, Crowner' boomed the broad Cornish accentof Gwyn of Polruan, the coroner's officer and right-hand man. 'Dried up like an old boot, not a trace of corruption about him.'

They stood with their master in the back yard of a house in Exeter's Smythen Street, a lane that ran down to Stepcote Hill and the city wall in the southern part of the city. It got its name from the number of smiths' forges and metal-working shops that lay along its length, though a few of the burgages, like the one they were in now, had recently been turned into places of education.

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