Fear in the Forest

CHAPTER TEN

The following day, John was called to the port of Topsham, some four miles downriver, to deal with two deaths on a trading ship. The vessel had been beached on the mud alongside the wharf for unloading, but when the tide came back in the hull suddenly tilted over, as the uneven removal of a few tons of cargo had made her unstable. One stevedore was crushed between the ship’s side and the wharf, while a sailor who had been mending rigging was tossed into the swirling flood tide, his drowned body being recovered a quarter of a mile upstream.

The examination of the scene and witnesses, followed by an acrimonious inquest, in which de Wolfe accused the ship-master and the wharf-owner of negligence in discharging the cargo, lasted much of the day, and it was early evening when he returned to Exeter.

He went straight to Martin’s Lane and sat quietly in his echoing hall with his dog and a quart of cider for an hour, trying to deny to himself that he was reluctant to go to the Bush and face his mistress’s misery. Mary came to refill his pot and then stood looking down at him sternly, one fist on her hip, her handsome face creased in a frown.

‘What’s to become of me, Crowner?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve not cooked a meal for days, I’ve hardly seen you and you’ve slept here one night since your wife left. Should I look around for another master? — though God knows where I’ll find one.’

‘Mary! Don’t talk like that. I’ve told you everything will go on as before,’ he said placatingly. ‘Whether Matilda comes home or stays away, I have to live somewhere, break my fast, have my shirts and tunics washed and my fire made up in winter.’

‘And what if your Welsh lady decides to do all that, where will I be then?’

‘That seems very unlikely, good Mary. I just don’t know what’s going to happen between us.’

He looked so crestfallen that she softened immediately, as she had done so often in the past. Crouching down beside him, she listened while he poured out his tale of woe concerning Nesta.

‘She’s lonely and frightened, John. Afraid of losing you and of a hopeless future for herself.’

He waved his hands in desperation. ‘I’ve told her over and over, I’m glad about the child and will stand by her. Why won’t she listen?’

Mary stood up, shaking her head helplessly. ‘You men will never understand, will you? A pregnant woman, especially one in her position, is uncertain, bewildered, vulnerable — not that I’ve been like that myself, but I’ve seen it in a few.’

Unable to help him any more, she took herself off to her kitchen to make him some supper, for he guiltily decided to delay going down to the Bush until later. As fate decided, he was destined not to visit the inn that evening, for a couple of hours later, as the sun was setting, Gwyn turned up at his front door. Usually, his blustery arrival was a summons to some new death, assault or rape, but this evening he had more interesting news.

‘I’ve been having a few jugs in the White Hart,’ he announced, mentioning an alehouse in Southgate Street. ‘There’s been a horse market on Bull Mead today and some of the buyers and dealers were in the tavern. I saw that little fellow again, the one the outlaw was talking to in the alehouse at Ashburton.’

De Wolfe waved him to a chair and filled a pot for him from his ale-jug. Normally Gwyn would never come into the hall if he could help it, in case Matilda was there, as she thought him a Celtic barbarian and made her feelings painfully clear.

‘You mean the man who seemed to have some dealings with … what was his name, Martin Angot?’

‘That’s him! Now tonight I did some eavesdropping and found that this fellow’s a horse-trader,’ explained Gwyn, pleased with his spying activities. ‘I even got his name, listening to people who were either contented or complaining about what they had bought or sold. They’d all been drinking a fair amount, so they weren’t speaking in whispers, by any means.’

John was used to his officer’s long-windedness. ‘So what was his name?’ he asked patiently.

‘They called him ‘Stephen’ and ‘Cruch’, so I reckon he’s Stephen Cruch,’ he grinned, wiping ale from his huge moustache. ‘I gathered from the potman that he was sleeping tonight in the loft of the White Hart — but I also heard him tell some fellow that he was leaving early in the morning for Ashburton.’

‘Our Thomas said that he had come across a horse-dealer in Buckfast who had dealings with this priest, Edmund Treipas. What shall we do about this, Gwyn?’ pondered de Wolfe.

‘We could jump him and beat some truth from the fellow. I could take him blindfold, with one hand in my pouch!’

John grinned at his henchman’s enthusiasm. ‘Would he recognise you, if he saw you?’ he asked.

Gwyn shook his shaggy head. ‘I very much doubt it. I kept well back in the tavern in Ashburton and didn’t approach Martin Angot until this Cruch fellow left. There’s no reason for him to have remembered me from a crowded taproom. And he certainly wouldn’t have seen me tonight. I kept well down on a stool among the throng that was there.’

De Wolfe thought about this for a moment.

‘He’s never seen me, to my knowledge. Tomorrow, could we not follow him discreetly to see if he gets up to anything near Ashburton?’

The Cornishman readily agreed. ‘Surely, if we keep well back, he’ll not notice us on the main west road. There are always travellers going back and forth.’

The coroner hawked and spat into his empty fireplace. ‘It would be good to catch him meeting up with an outlaw again. Then we could seize the pair of them and make them talk.’

It was agreed that they should ride out of the West Gate as soon as it opened in the morning, keeping a sharp eye open for the horse-dealer. They would ride a few miles along the Plymouth road and hide in the trees to await his passing, then follow him at a distance.

John suggested that, as they would both be up before dawn, they had better get a good night’s sleep, a rather shamefaced excuse not to go down to the Bush that evening.

‘We’re not taking the little fellow with us, I hope?’ grunted Gwyn.

‘No damned fear. He’d stand out like a sore thumb, sitting sideways on that old nag! If there were a chase, he couldn’t keep up.’

‘And if there were a fight, he’d wet himself and run!’ chortled Gwyn, not without some affection for the timid clerk.

In the early light the following day, they sat waiting for the city gate to open, lurking up the street towards the little church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall, whose priest had come to a nasty end a few weeks earlier.

De Wolfe watched the crowd clustered inside the gate, in case Stephen Cruch had also risen early, but there was no sign of him as the stout iron-bound gates swung apart. They waited for the confused thrusting and shoving to abate, as the people going out pushed past the traders and herdsmen coming in to market, driving sheep, calves and pigs before them, followed by a cavalcade of country folk carrying baskets of vegetables, poultry, eggs and everything else to satisfy the hunger of the citizens of Exeter.

Once the road was clear, they trotted out and forded the river, de Wolfe’s legs getting wetter than usual as he had borrowed a smaller mare from Andrew the farrier, the huge destrier Odin being too conspicuous for a surveillance exploit. As they clipped down the road that led to Cornwall, John decided to increase the distance before they turned aside to wait for the horse-dealer.

‘If he’s going to meet anyone, I doubt it’ll be much before Ashburton, as it’s too far away from your outlaw’s hideout. So we’ll put a good ten miles between us to avoid having to follow him too far.’

He silently hoped that Cruch was going to ride out that day and not decide to sleep off his drinking on his mattress in the city. It was pure speculation that he might be meeting anyone, other than in the course of his legitimate business.

An hour and a half later, John decided that they had gone far enough and turned off on a stretch of track where the trees came close to the edge of the dusty, rutted road. They found a place where some blackthorn bushes gave cover, then put their mounts on head-ropes farther back in the trees, where a small clearing offered them some grass to crop.

From where they sat on the ground behind the bushes, they could just glimpse the road, enough to see who was passing. Gwyn had taken the inevitable bread and hard cheese from his saddle pouch, along with a flask of cider, and they waited in comfort for over half an hour.

As Gwyn had prophesied, there was a constant trickle of traffic along what was the busiest road in this most western part of England. Ox-carts laden with goods, bands of pilgrims on their long journey to Canterbury, drovers with cattle and sheep, merchants on horseback and lesser folk on foot — all passed the gap in the blackthorn bushes. Only priests and the poorest folk travelled alone, having nothing worth stealing, the rest being in groups for mutual protection. A couple of clumsy horse-drawn carriages bore manor-lords or their wives and had an armed escort of a few men with pikes and swords against possible attack by footpads and outlaws.

After three-quarters of an hour, when all the cider had gone, Gwyn began to get restive. ‘D’you think the bloody man isn’t coming? Maybe I misheard what was said. I couldn’t get too near.’

‘Have patience!’ muttered De Wolfe. ‘Though if he’s a horse-dealer, he should have a good mount, which should have got here quicker than we did.’

Another ten minutes went by until Gwyn hissed in his ear.

‘That’s him, the fellow on the white stallion!’

John peered through another gap in the bushes and saw a rider trotting past on a big, good-looking horse. He was a small man in a brown tunic and breeches, with a floppy woollen cap on his head. As soon as he had passed, Gwyn jumped up and collected their own mounts, coiling the head-ropes on to his saddle bow.

The coroner climbed on to his chestnut mare. ‘There’s no great hurry. We don’t want to get too near. That big white steed’s all too conspicuous.’

They waited until a pair of merchants with two well-armed servants passed, then swung behind them and tried to keep Stephen Cruch in view. All was well for a mile or two, but the horse-trader was riding slightly more quickly than the merchants and was pulling ahead, so eventually the coroner and his officer had to risk overtaking.

Thankfully, a few minutes later two other riders came out of a sidetrack just behind Cruch and gave cover for another couple of miles until once again John and Gwyn were obliged to pass them.

‘This is getting difficult,’ growled John. ‘Try to make yourself look smaller!’ he added facetiously to the great red-haired lump.

‘Can’t be that far to Ashburton now. Perhaps the bastard is just going about his normal business,’ offered Gwyn.

They slowed up as much as they could, the merchants almost on their heels. Then the difficult situation was avoided as they rounded a slight bend and saw a tiny hamlet ahead. It was little more than a few cottages, one of which had a bush hanging over its door to signify an alehouse. The place was an outlier of a larger village half a mile off the road, the additional strip-fields here having being assarted by the manor-lord, being just outside the boundary of the Royal Forest.

‘He’s stopping there, Crowner,’ hissed Gwyn. ‘We’d better pull up.’

They reined in and let the merchants pass, getting curious looks at their riding antics. Their quarry had pulled over to the hitching rail of the tavern, where several other horses were tethered, then dismounted and gone inside. The merchants and their escort also stopped and entered the low building, while the coroner and his officer eased their horses on to the verge, partly sheltered by a scraggy elder tree.

‘Now what do we do?’ demanded Gwyn. ‘I could do with a quart myself, but we can’t go near that place in case there’s someone in there who would recognise one of us.’

De Wolfe pondered the situation, indulging in his habit of rasping his fingers over his stubble, which was again, almost due for its weekly mowing. ‘Depends on who might be in there with him — though he might just have fancied a drink. You can’t go, for if it’s one of Winter’s band, he’ll know you, like as not.’

Gwyn reluctantly agreed. ‘But you’re too well known as the coroner throughout the whole county, so you can’t risk it. We’re stuck here, then!’

They waited behind the stunted tree for what seemed an age. Gwyn dismounted and squatted on a dry-stone wall at the edge of the field, which contained serried rows of crops slanting up the hillside. De Wolfe lay on his side in the weeds, chewing a stem of long grass while he kept an eye on the alehouse, a few hundred yards away. After years of campaigning, he was well accustomed to waiting, as most soldiering consisted of weeks of inaction before a few hours of bloody battle. Almost an hour went by and the midsummer sun rose higher in a pale blue sky, making the morning hotter and hotter. Gwyn’s dust-laden throat was crying out for a jug of ale, but his saddle flask was empty.

Suddenly, John sat up on the grass. ‘There’s a priest just come out of the door,’ he whispered. ‘Get a good look at him and fix his face in your mind.’

They saw a fairly tall man in a dark clerical tunic go to the hitching rail and untie a handsome russet mare. Even at that distance they could see his bald scalp where his tonsure had been shaved, below which was a ring of dark hair above a shaven neck. Tucking his gown up between his legs, he swung himself expertly into the saddle and trotted off westwards, away from them. They had time to see that he had a strong, fine-featured face. His black hair had been shaved high on his neck, so that it looked almost as if a band of fur was wrapped around his head below the baldness of his tonsure.

‘Who the hell is he?’ growled Gwyn. ‘It can’t be Thomas’s monk from Buckfast — he was a Cistercian.’

His master was not listening. His eyes had swivelled back to the door of the alehouse. ‘Look who’s here! Our horse-trader! And staring after the priest. Maybe he’s his confessor!’

Stephen Cruch had indeed emerged and, after standing a moment to gaze after the diminishing figure of the cleric, went to his own horse and led him over to a water trough against the inn wall, placed out there as an encouragement for travellers to stop to relieve their own thirst. When his stallion had satisfied itself, he climbed into the saddle and walked his horse away, following the priest.

‘Now what? Do we carry on after him?’ queried Gwyn.

‘We’ve no choice or we’ve wasted a day,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘But wait until he’s far enough away before we follow.’

Cruch seemed in no hurry; his pace was much slower than when approaching the ale-house.

‘If he’s going to Ashburton or Buckfast, why didn’t he meet this fellow there, instead of making him ride up this far?’ grumbled the Cornishman. A few moments later, the horse-dealer answered him by wheeling his horse to the right and vanishing into the trees.

‘Now where the hell’s he gone?’ snapped de Wolfe, as they cautiously followed to the spot where Cruch had turned. ‘I trust he’s not spotted us and is about to disappear.’

However, when they came level they saw that a narrow track led off the main road, leading north towards the distant high moors that could be seen through gaps in the trees.

‘How can we follow him along there without being seen? It’s little better than a footpath.’ Both Gwyn and de Wolfe were about eight feet above the ground on their mounts, hardly inconspicuous in a forest lane.

They waited uncertainly at the entrance to the trail. ‘We’ve got to do something, or we’ll lose him altogether,’ snapped the coroner. ‘As far as I remember, Owlacombe is on the other side of this bit of forest, then far beyond is Widecombe, where we had that Crusader’s body in the stream last autumn. It’s nowhere near where you found your outlaw’s camp.’

‘Only a few miles as the crow flies,’ objected Gwyn. ‘Winter has far more men than I saw there. He must have several camps dotted around the forest. Maybe there’s another near here.’

De Wolfe threw his leg over his saddle and dropped to the ground.

‘We daren’t take the horses, so we can’t both go. You stay here on the road — or better still, go back to the alehouse to wait for me.’

Much as the prospect of a tavern appealed to him, his officer was reluctant to let his master go. ‘I’m coming with you! I’ll hobble them, they’ll be safe enough.’

De Wolfe waved him away imperiously. ‘No, Gwyn, not this time. He can only be tracked on foot and I’ll not leave the horses. If I don’t go now, I may lose him.’

He allowed no further argument and Gwyn watched anxiously as he loped away up the track, keeping to the edge where fallen leaves deadened his footfalls. His henchman waited until he had vanished around a bend, then slowly and unhappily rode back down the main road, leading the hired horse alongside him.

When Thomas de Peyne went as usual to the chamber in the gatehouse, he found it deserted, and it remained so for the rest of that morning, there being no sign of his master or Gwyn appearing for their usual food and drink. This was not all that unusual, as sometimes they were called out overnight and left the city without him. The clerk had plenty of work to get on with, copying duplicate rolls of inquests, confessions, depositions and other parchments that must eventually be presented to the Commissioners or the royal justices.

Eventually, he decided to walk down to the Bush inn. This was partly because he thought he should have some food, though poverty had trained him to be a frugal eater. After his disgrace in Winchester, he had been virtually a beggar until he walked to Exeter, where his archdeacon uncle had prevailed upon the coroner to employ him. However, a stronger reason for his going to Idle Lane was concern over Nesta, who had been so kind to him a couple of months ago, when he had been evicted from his lodgings on the false suspicion of being a murderer. Her present troubles preyed on the mind of the compassionate clerk, especially since she had revealed the identity of her child’s father and her thoughts of doing away with herself.

He walked down from Rougemont and through the crowded High Street to reach the lower town, his lame leg aching a little today, accentuating his slight limp. At the inn, one of Nesta’s maids, who both treated Thomas like a stray kitten, brought him a cup of watered wine and a bowl of stew with a small loaf of coarse barley bread. There was no sign of Nesta, and after the clerk had finished his simple meal he signalled to Edwin, the one-eyed potman.

‘Where’s the mistress? Is she brewing or baking?’

The old soldier looked uneasy. ‘She went out an hour ago, without a word to anyone. Mind you, she’s said very few words this past week. The girls and I are getting worried about her, poor soul.’

‘Any idea where she’s gone?’

‘No. She’s taken to walking by herself lately. I saw her going down towards the Water Gate on Thursday evening.’ He hesitated, his whitened eye rolling horribly in its scarred socket. ‘It didn’t help that the crowner failed to turn up last evening. She said nothing to us, but we could see she was on the lookout for him until dark.’

‘I think I’ll take a walk and see if I can find her, give her a little company,’ murmured Thomas. He hauled himself to his feet and put a quarter segment of one of his precious pennies on the table for his meal.

Edwin pushed it back to him and shook his head. ‘We’ve got strict orders from the mistress not to take anything from you, Thomas. Go you now and talk softly to her.’

Outside, the clerk surveyed the rough weed-covered ground either side of the tavern and the built-up lanes that led from it. On his right Smythen Street led down past the Saracen to Stepcote Hill and the West Gate. In the other direction, Priest Street crossed the end of Idle Lane, dropping down towards the Water Gate.

Remembering what Edwin had said, he decided to take the latter route, walking down past the lodgings of vicars and secondaries, with mild envy at their secure position in the ecclesiastical life that he longed for.

At the bottom, he turned left towards the Water Gate, which only in recent years had been knocked through the southern corner of the ancient city walls to give easier access to the quayside. Outside, the steep slope gave way to a level platform along the muddy river, part of the length being built up into a stone quay. The tide was in and several vessels floated against the wall: more were moored out in mid-stream.

Thomas stood amid the bales of wool heaped on the quay, waiting to be loaded. A procession of labourers were coming down two gang-planks from the nearest vessel, jog-trotting like a line of ants, each with a heavy sack on his shoulders. The rest of the wharf was cluttered with boxes and casks and heaps of rope, chain and bits of maritime equipment, between which sailors, labourers and merchants went about their business. The clerk searched the whole panorama for any sign of Nesta, but the only women in sight were two girls with reddened cheeks and lips who were eyeing the passing seamen with a view to doing business, even at that time of day.

Having no better plan, Thomas began walking downstream, as behind him was nothing but the unfinished bridge, the ford and the footbridge on Exe Island. He passed through the bustling activity on the stone quay and kept on along the natural bank of the river, which had a grassy rim below which was thick mud. At low tide this mud stretched halfway across the channel, on which vessels would heel over until the water flooded back again. To his left, past the wooden warehouses, the ground rose to the Topsham Road, where there were a few new dwellings and many more mean huts, the overspill of the thriving city. Thomas kept going until there were only trees and bushes on the bank, with a dusty path along the edge of the river. A growing stench told him he was nearing the Shitbrook, at the point where it vomited its sewage into the river. An old tree trunk had been rolled across it to act as a footbridge and, holding his breath against the smell and hoping that he could keep his footing on the mossy bark, he gained the other side. He walked on for a short distance until he decided he was foolish to keep going along a deserted path for no real reason.

Then, just as he was about to turn back, he glimpsed a flash of white some yards ahead. Staring, he made out the top of a linen coif, on the head of someone who was just below the lip of the river-bank. Hurrying as fast as his infirm leg would allow, he came up to the woman and saw that it was indeed Nesta, crouching in the long grass and cow parsley, within arm’s length of the turbid brown waters of the Exe. She appeared oblivious of his approach and was rocking herself dangerously back and forth on her heels, soft keening coming from her throat.

Afraid to surprise her too abruptly, lest she fell forward into the swirling flood tide, Thomas squatted on the path and whispered her name, repeating it until she stopped whimpering and slowly looked around.

‘Thomas? What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you, dear woman. Come here, take my hand.’

Gently, he coaxed her away from the bank and they stood on the path, arms around each other. She was an inch taller than the clerk, but they leaned together with chins on each other’s shoulders, Thomas patting her gently on the back.

‘They are worried about you at the Bush, Nesta,’ he said after a moment. ‘I came to look for you. What are you doing down here?’

She pushed back from him and dropped her eyes.

‘I came to think, Thomas. To think about ending it all.’

He knew better than to scold or plead with her at this stage.

‘Then like me, when I fell from the cathedral roof, the good God has sent you a sign, Nesta. I never expected to be worthy enough to be the Almighty’s messenger, but so it seems to have turned out!’

‘I’m not sure if I believe in God any longer, Thomas. He took my husband from me, then he taunted me by giving me John, only to make me drive him away.’

The little-ex-priest took her hands in his and gazed earnestly into her eyes. ‘That cannot be true, good woman! Yes, many lose good husbands, just as so many women lose their newborn and husbands lose their wives in childbed. That is the way of the world, and always has been. But to say that you have driven John de Wolfe away is just not true.’

Tears welled up in her eyes, dry until now.

‘But it is only his honour that forces him to say that he welcomes the child … and that in ignorance of knowing who the real father must be.’ She moved forward again and pressed her face into his faded tunic. ‘I tried to do what you advised, Thomas, truly I did! But the words would not pass my lips, for I knew they would finish everything between us.’

The clerk slid his arm around her and gently eased her along the path, a step at a time. ‘Jumping in the Exe will not benefit the crowner, my dear. It would destroy him with guilt. He would never be the same man again.’

She gripped his arm so tightly that he winced.

‘So what shall I do, Thomas? Life is too difficult.’

‘Your life belongs to God, Nesta. He gave it to you and he will take it away in his own good time. As he showed me, poor sinner that I am, it’s not for us to decide when it shall end.’

He grinned wryly, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

‘And certainly not in the river, just downstream of the Shitbrook!’

De Wolfe cautiously followed Stephen Cruch for a mile up the track, which became narrower and more overgrown as he went. In some places the passage of the stallion had broken off thin branches which overhung the path. He kept well back for fear of being detected, but could hear the rider ahead by the occasional crack of a stick under the horse’s hoofs. The coroner wondered why this track existed, as they were now well away from the patch of cultivation near the alehouse and were in deep forest. Whatever it had been, it was clear it was a long time since it had been in use.

Eventually, John realised that he had heard nothing from up ahead for several minutes and stopped in case he overran his quarry. Leaving the path, he slid between the trees to one side, then struck off diagonally again. Soon the gloom of the oak-and-beech canopy seemed to lighten ahead and, as he crept forward, he saw a large clearing where trees had been felled in the past. Concealed behind a trunk, he realised that this was an abandoned settlement, possibly an illegal assart from many years earlier. Though there were no large trees, bushy saplings were springing up among the thick undergrowth and in a few years’ time this scar in the forest would have healed itself. Among the profusion of weeds and bushes he saw the remains of a burned cottage, the surviving timbers wreathed in ivy.

What was more interesting was the sight of the horse-dealer sitting in his saddle, in the act of raising a cow horn to his lips. Three mournful hoots echoed through the woods, then Cruch sat immobile, intently watching and listening. Nothing happened and, a few minutes later, three more blasts were given on the horn. Then, distantly, came an answering blast, repeated four times, on a horn with a higher pitch.

Soon, two riders came into the clearing from the opposite side and met Stephen Cruch in the centre, alongside the ruined hut. They were astride moorland ponies and wore swords, with maces hanging behind their saddles. John recognised neither man, but suspected from Gwyn’s description that these were Robert Winter and Martin Angot.

They remained on their horses and began an animated conversation, but from a hundred paces away John had no hope of catching any words.

A leather bag was passed over to the bearded man that he assumed was Winter, but again he had no way of knowing whether it contained money.

The meeting was very short, for as soon as the bag was stowed away in his saddlebag the leader raised his hand in salute and the pair pulled their short-legged ponies around and walked out of the clearing the way they had come. Stephen Cruch also turned and departed much faster than he had arrived.

De Wolfe was in a quandary as to what he should do. He doubted both the wisdom of following the presumed outlaws and his ability to do so, as only God knew how far they intended riding, and even in the woods he could never keep up on foot for any great distance. And what could he do, if he ended up at an outlaw camp with twenty or thirty desperate villains against him? Discretion seemed not only the better part of valour, but eminently more sensible, so he decided to retrace his steps and get back to Gwyn. He was eager to get a better description of the two outlaws, now that he had seen them with his own eyes.

No doubt Thomas would have advised him that ‘man proposes, but God disposes’, for as he left the shelter of his tree trunk to find his way back to the path, there was a bull-like roar from his right and a yell from his left. Two ragged men hurtled towards him through the trees, kicking up showers of dried leaves as they came. Shocked for an instant, as he had thought himself alone, he barely had time to draw his sword before the first was upon him. Thankfully — for it probably saved John’s life — the other caught his foot in a trailing brier and fell heavily on his face, delaying him for almost a minute.

During that time, the first man skidded to a halt before the tip of the coroner’s weapon, his expression suggesting that he had not expected to be confronted by a fighting man wielding a Crusader’s broadsword — and one who appeared to be well accustomed to using it.

‘I’ll get you, you bastard!’ he yelled, lifting a ball-mace in one hand, the other brandishing a dagger. He was not a big man, being a fellow of about twenty years, dressed in a tattered tunic which was pulled up in front between his legs, the hem tucked into his belt. His head was covered in unkempt brown hair which merged with a wispy beard of the same colour.

John took in all this in the instant the man came to a stop in front of him, which was his undoing. With a quick prod, almost a reflex, the coroner jabbed the sharpened point of his blade into the fellow’s left forearm and the dagger went spinning away as the man howled in pain. Clutching the bleeding arm against his chest, he made a vicious swing with the mace, a studded metal ball on a chain attached to a short rod. If the chain had wrapped itself around John’s sword, it would have snatched it from his grip, but wise to the ways of infighting he dropped the point and stepped back, letting the ball whistle past his nose. The momentum of the heavy weight turned the assailant’s shoulder towards de Wolfe and, without hesitation, he slid his sword into the armpit, deep into the man’s chest. It was killed or be killed, and after twenty years of practising survival, the coroner gave not a second thought to inflicting a fatal wound.

But his minute was up, and as the first man staggered away to die the other, now recovered, was upon him. Seeing what had happened to his mate, he was more cautious and stopped when de Wolfe swung round to menace him with his sword, held two-handed before him.

‘Clear off, or I’ll kill you as well!’ snarled the coroner. The outlaw’s eyes flicked briefly to where his partner was oozing his lifeblood into the leaf mould.

‘You’ll not be so lucky this time, whoever you are!’ snarled the lout.

Even in such a perilous situation, John realised that the attackers had no idea who he was. Cruch must have sensed that he was being followed up the track and had told the two outlaws. They had presumably left a couple of sentries outside the clearing and had now told them to circle around and get rid of whoever had been spying on them. John fervently hoped that there were no more of them around, as without Gwyn odds of two to one were the most he wanted to cope with.

This man was older and more heavily built, bare footed and wearing a torn leather jerkin over brown serge breeches. A florid, dirty face was cracked in a ferocious grimace, exposing crooked, yellow teeth. He gripped a heavy pike, a dual-purpose weapon which was both a staff and a lance, having a sharp spearhead on one end. For a moment, they faced each other without twitching a muscle, each waiting for the other to make the first move. John knew that the pike had a much longer reach than his own sword — it could not slash sideways, but as a stabbing weapon it easily surpassed his own in range.

Suddenly, the outlaw lunged, and though John hacked at the pike shaft to divert it, the edge of the iron tip scored through his tunic over the left side of his hip bone. A searing pain swept up from his loin, but he sensed that the wound had not gone deep. His adversary was still out of range and drew back for another lunge, grinning evilly at having made the first strike. They feinted again and John saw that his hacking blow with the sword had cut through half the thickness of the pike, just below the head. Another swipe might sever it completely, and he deliberately left himself open for a split second to tempt the outlaw. But the man was too canny a fighter to be tricked and backed off, giving John time to wonder whether he was facing another old campaigner.

‘You’re bleeding, Big Nose!’ taunted the ruffian. ‘In a minute, I’ll have you gutted like a goose!’

John could feel the warmth of blood seeping into his clothing, but he had no time to look down at the damage. The other fellow made another sudden charge, aiming for de Wolfe’s heart, but this time the coroner was ready for him. As he twisted away, he snatched his left hand from his sword hilt and grabbed the spear just below the head, throwing his weight sideways, so that it fell full on the weakened shaft. With an audible crack, the wood split and the wicked iron point fell uselessly to the ground. Off balance, John had no chance to land a precise blow with his sword, but he swung it wildly and was rewarded with a bellow as the heavy cutting edge sliced into the thigh of his opponent.

Then things happened with lightning speed, as the enraged man used the shaft of his broken pike to deliver a smashing blow to de Wolfe’s left shoulder, numbing his arm completely. A fraction of a second later, John, though reeling from the pain, lunged forward and jabbed his sword into the lower belly of his antagonist, feeling the point go in until it crunched against bone. As he pulled it out, the sharp edge was dragged across the man’s groin and a fountain of blood spurted from the severed main artery. With a scream of mortal agony, the outlaw used the last of his strength to swing his pike handle again. This time it caught John cleanly across the temple and he collapsed unconscious on to the forest floor.

With no clock nearer than Germany, Gwyn had no way of knowing how long he sat outside the alehouse on the Plymouth road, but judging by the height of the sun it was noon by the time his patience ran out. He had seen the horse-dealer trot past the inn in the direction of Exeter about an hour after leaving his master, showing no signs of having been in a fight. Unsure of what to do next, Gwyn spent the next couple of hours drinking several quarts of ale, eating a loaf and cheese and, not long since, a sheep’s knuckle with fried onions. He had also questioned the crippled man who ran the tavern about the priest and his acquaintance — and discovered that the smaller, wizened fellow was indeed a well-known horse-dealer by the name of Stephen Cruch. The landlord had no idea who the cleric was; he had never seen him before.

In between these activities, Gwyn had paced up and down outside with increasing concern, looking a hundred times back down the road to where the entrance of the track lay. He blamed himself for letting the coroner go into the forest alone, though he knew that de Wolfe’s stubborn streak could not have been overcome. The road continued to be fairly busy, with travellers within sight every few minutes, but there was no sign of the coroner emerging from the lane.

Eventually, Gwyn could stand it no longer. He went around to the side of the crude wattle-and-daub building to check on the horses, which he had tied up in the shade, with two leather buckets of water dipped from the ditch behind and a ha’p’orth of hay bought from the inn. Satisfied that they were safe to leave, he tightened up his sword belt and stalked off down the road, with a foreboding that all was not well with John de Wolfe.

Reaching the old track in a couple of minutes, he turned into the cool green of the trees. Going as cautiously and quietly as his large body would allow, he followed the path into the forest, noting the few recently broken twigs and branches that told of the recent passage of a rider. He stopped every few minutes and listened, his hand on the hilt of his big sword, but there was nothing except the twitter of birds and the occasional rustle of some small woodland animal.

Obliviously, he passed the spot where the coroner had cut off left from the path, as there was nothing to show for it. Like John, he now saw the brightening ahead where the clearing lay, and even more cautiously he walked to the edge of the trees and looked around. All was quiet and, after a moment, he advanced to the charred timbers of the old cottage and saw the crushed vegetation in the centre of the clearing. A pile of fresh, still-moist horse droppings lay there and, looking beyond them, Gwyn saw that more disturbed grass and bracken indicated that at least one rider had gone off through the far side of the clearing. He stopped to consider what he should do. For all he knew, Stephen Cruch, as he now knew him to be, had himself ridden straight across, but the width of the flattened undergrowth suggested that several horses had turned around here. He walked to the opposite trees and went into the wood again for a few hundred yards, finding nothing. Returning, he stood again in the clearing and risked giving a few piercing whistles, ones that he knew the coroner would recognise from their old campaigning days. There was no response and he circled the perimeter of the clearing, whistling again, then finally calling ‘Crowner!’ at the top of his voice a few times.

Only the birds replied.

Worried and frustrated, he began a more systematic search of the edges of the clearing, reasoning that if there had been some meeting there his master would have been spying on it. Of course, there was always the possibility that he had followed the other party, presumably outlaws, in which case he could be miles away by now.

The Cornishman decided on one more circuit, this time a few trees back from the edge, where John may have been hiding to be within sight of the conspirators. Halfway around, he stopped, fear suddenly gripping him. On the waxy green leaves of some wild garlic, he saw a spatter of blood. A few feet away there was more, and scuff marks through the fallen leaves were deep enough to expose the almost black leaf mould beneath. With his heart in his mouth — and his sword in his hand — he followed the intermittent trail for a dozen yards, to the lip of a depression which looked like an old badger sett, drifted over with leaves. Three or four feet lower, he saw the inert body of a man, which instinct told him was a corpse. After the first lurch of fear, he saw straight away that it could not be the coroner, though the head was buried in leaves where he had pitched face down. The clothing was brown and the fellow was bare footed.

Sheathing his sword, Gwyn tipped the dead body over and saw a total stranger, but enough of a ruffian to qualify as one of the outlaw band. The cadaver was still warm and the limbs and jaw were slack, so he had been dead less than a few hours. The eyes were wide open and the mouth gaping. His jerkin and tattered tunic were saturated with blood from the waist down and, on probing, Gwyn saw a gaping slash in his upper thigh and gouts of blood clot oozing from a wound in his lower belly.

‘This is John de Wolfe’s work, I’ll wager!’ he muttered to himself, letting the corpse fall back again. ‘But where in the Virgin’s name is he?’

He began yelling again, uncaring about concealing his presence, then began following the blood trail back in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, it virtually petered out just at the point where he had first seen it. A close search revealed a few spots ten yards away, but there were no visible tracks in the forest floor. Two deer trails crossed near by, which confused the issue, and in spite of many minutes casting about, he failed to find anything to help him locate the coroner.

He leaned against a big oak, to recover his wits. There was a dead outlaw back there and it was highly likely that John de Wolfe was responsible. But that by no means meant that the coroner was still around here — or that he was dead or injured. Had he taken off after the other outlaws?

Gwyn sighed and scratched his tangled hair in indecision. There was no way in which he could search the forest — it went for miles in various directions. For all he knew, de Wolfe might emerge somewhere else and either walk or borrow a horse to come back to the alehouse. But some sixth sense niggled at him to say that the situation was not that simple — so he must have help to look for his friend and master.

Having made a decision, he now hurried to carry it out. Still yelling John’s name at intervals, he strode back to the track and jogged down it to the main road. At the inn, he slapped a couple of pennies down before the cripple, telling him what had happened and to care for the hired horse until it was collected the next day. With a last admonition to keep a sharp lookout for the coroner, he spurred his big mare towards Exeter to get help.

Even pushing his strong mount as hard as he could, it took Gwyn almost three hours to reach Rougemont. The first person he saw when he clattered his steaming mare under the gatehouse arch was his drinking and gambling friend, the garrison sergeant.

‘Gabriel, the coroner’s gone missing!’

He poured the whole story into the sympathetic ear of the old soldier, who was another who thought highly of Black John.

‘But we don’t know for certain he’s in trouble, just because he saw off some bloody outlaw!’ Gabriel tried to be reassuring.

The coroner’s officer shook his head. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, friend. He wouldn’t have gone off for hours, leaving me and the horses without any word.’

‘So what do you think may have happened to him?’

‘With a dead man there, there’s no doubt he’s been in a fight. We must go to look for him. He may be lying wounded. It needs more than a few men to search that area. I couldn’t do it alone.’

Gabriel worriedly chewed his lip. ‘The bloody sheriff won’t be too keen on sending men-at-arms to look for John de Wolfe. He’d be glad to see the back of him.’

‘Surely his sister would give him hell if he refused!’ bellowed Gwyn.

‘Let’s find Ralph Morin. We can get some sense out of him.’

They found the castellan in the lower ward, inspecting some repairs to the palisade that topped the high earth bank of the outer defences.

He listened gravely to Gwyn’s urgent news and without hesitation agreed that a search party must be mustered without delay. To their great relief, Morin also said that Richard de Revelle had just gone on one of his duty trips to his manor at Tiverton, to spend Sunday with his wife.

‘So I’ll take it upon myself to assume that he would have been anxious to safeguard the well-being of his dear brother-in-law!’ he said sarcastically, a broad grin splitting his bearded face. ‘So let’s get a posse together, right now!’

Gabriel looked up at the sky which, though still blue, showed a sun leaning well over to the west. ‘By the time we get men mounted up and ride almost to Ashburton, there’ll be precious little daylight left.’

Gwyn, though he had already sat six hours in the saddle that day, was in no mood for delay. ‘Can’t be helped. The crowner may be bleeding to death somewhere. Let’s go!’

Such was their devotion to de Wolfe that the three men almost ran back to the inner bailey, where their horses were stabled. As they went, Gabriel and Ralph Morin yelled orders at some of the men-at-arms standing about, who in turn began running to knock up their fellows in the huts and lean-to buildings within the castle precinct. Before the three leaders returned on horseback, the outer ward was buzzing with activity, as a dozen soldiers took their mounts from the main stables and saddled up with the help of the ostlers and farriers.

A crowd of wives, children and off-duty members of the garrison came to gawk at the urgent preparations and cheered as the troop trotted briskly through the outer gate. As they hurried through the city, scattering the crowds in the High Street and Fore Street, the Exeter rumour mill started in full swing. In these peaceful times in the West of England, the sight of what looked like a war party of soldiers racing out of the city gave rise to all manner of speculation, from a French invasion to a new rebellion by Prince John! It was only when a couple of pedlars, who had been selling trinkets to wives in Rougemont, came out of the castle with the news that the King’s coroner was missing, probably wounded and quite possibly killed, that the rumour took on a new twist, spreading like wildfire throughout the city.

With the sense of urgency that Gwyn had engendered, the posse made good time to the alehouse on the Ashburton road. In the cooler part of the day, they trotted and occasionally cantered the fifteen miles from the city and arrived there when there was still some of the evening left, it being now early July. They stopped at the tavern for the troop to water their horses, while Gwyn went with the constable and sergeant to see whether the landlord had any news of de Wolfe.

The twisted man leaned on his stick and shook his head. ‘Not a sign of anyone asking for you, sirs.’

‘Where does that track lead to, the one just down the road?’ demanded Gwyn.

‘Nowhere now. It used to go to a woodward’s dwelling, but it caught fire and he died in the flames, some ten years ago.’

‘What’s beyond it, in the other direction?’ asked Ralph Morin.

‘Just trees, your honour. Miles of them, till you come out towards Halshanger Common, up on the moor. Not that anyone would want to go through there, unless you had armed men like your party. Riddled with outlaws it is, these days.’

The horses attended to, they rode on quickly to the lane and turned in off the road. Gwyn had considered dismounting and walking up, but thinking that even minutes might be precious he led the posse along the mile of track on horseback, now careless of any noise. The troops were told to keep their eyes open for anything to be seen on either side, though the low sun and dense bushes along the path made this difficult. The men were not in full battle array and wore only round helmets and leather jerkins, rather than their mail hauberks. Some wore swords, others had pikes and there were two bowmen, though this was meant to be a rescue mission rather than a fighting force.

Soon the clearing was visible ahead and Gwyn reined in his mare to point off to the left. ‘That’s where the dead man is, a couple of hundred paces away and just in from the edge of the trees.’

Everyone dismounted and lashed their reins to the nearest sapling, then Gabriel took three men and fanned out in the direction that the coroner’s officer had indicated. Morin led the way into the clearing and headed for the other side with three of his soldiers, while Gwyn struck off with the rest on the other side of the path, a direction in which he had not searched earlier. For a few minutes there was a general rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs as fifteen men searched the forest. Then a loud shout came from the left, which Gwyn recognised as Gabriel’s voice. He was calling the Cornishman’s name, so he went back to the path and dived into the darkening wood on the other side.

‘I’m coming! Have you found him?’ He was almost afraid to ask, in case the sergeant had stumbled upon John de Wolfe’s body.

Gabriel directed him by shouting and, as he approached, he called a question. ‘I thought you said this corpse had been stabbed through the belly and groin?’

As Gwyn stumbled up to Gabriel and another man-at-arms, the sergeant said, ‘This fellow’s had a sword stuck into the side of his chest, man.’

As he looked down, Gwyn’s bushy eyebrows rose an inch up his forehead.

‘That’s not him! That’s another one!’

This was a much smaller, younger fellow, with brown hair and a thin beard. His hessian tunic was saturated with blood all down his right side, clotting into the leaves beneath him.

‘The coroner’s been having a field day, if he saw this one off as well!’ observed Gabriel. A yell from another soldier announced that the first outlaw that Gwyn had come across had also been found, a hundred yards away.

‘To hell with these two,’ growled Gwyn. ‘Where’s the coroner, that’s all that concerns me.’

The search went on as the light began to fade. Ralph and his men tramped about the far side of the clearing and worked their way around to where the corpses lay, meeting up with Gabriel’s party, without finding anything. Constantly, the men called de Wolfe’s name without success. Gwyn went back to the other side of the path and combed the area with his soldiers. Eventually, as dusk fell, they all gravitated despondently to where the horses were tethered, tired and anxious.

‘God knows where he is!’ exploded Morin, his forked beard jutting like the prow of a ship. ‘We must have covered almost a square mile all around that clearing — but he could be five miles away.’

‘It’ll be pitch dark in half an hour. There’s little more we can do until morning,’ said Gabriel, mournfully. He was almost as devoted to de Wolfe as was Gwyn and the thought of him dying alone in some deserted forest was hard to bear.

Slowly and uneasily, the party went back along the track. This time they walked in single file, leading their steeds by the reins. In the near twilight, they still peered hopefully to either side and continued to call the coroner through cupped hands. Now even the birds were silent and only the rustle of the wind in the tree-tops answered them.

When they reached the road, a gloom deeper than the dusk settled upon them as they were forced to acknowledge their failure.

‘At least we didn’t find him dead or wounded.’ Ralph Morin tried to lift the mood, which was affecting even the youngest of the garrison guard, as all of them knew something of John de Wolfe’s past military reputation. As they walked up the road towards the inn, intent on some getting some food and ale inside them, Sergeant Gabriel voiced their concerns. ‘Now what do we do?’

Gwyn looked at the castle constable. ‘I don’t know what you intend, but I’m going back in there at first light — and I’m not leaving until I’ve found him, dead or alive!’

Morin grunted his agreement. ‘We’ll stay with you for most of the day, but I’ll have to take the men back before de Revelle returns. He’ll go crazy if he discovers that I’ve been away that long with some of the best of the garrison — especially if it was because of John de Wolfe!’

In an oppressive silence of defeat, they trudged up the road towards the alehouse.