The Noble Outlaw

CHAPTER TWELVE

The coroner and his officer made better progress eastwards than they had expected, as the rain had melted away the snow but had stopped before the roads became totally mired. A moderate east wind helped to dry up the tracks and by the early morning of the day after they left Exeter, they were leaving an inn at Bridport and making their way at a brisk trot towards Dorchester.

At dawn that day, men were also on the move many miles to the west, riding out from Berry Pomeroy Castle.

Henry's bailiff Ogerus Coffin and the reeve from Hempston Arundell were at the head of the column, with the two lords behind them. Then came the rest of the men, a collection of castle guards, yeomen and freemen from Berry, seated on a motley collection of horses, ranging from an old destrier to several rounseys, and from a lady's palfrey to a few packhorses taken from a baggage train.

Their armament was equally diverse, the guards having pikes and maces, the lords their swords, and the rest of the men a variety of weapons, including axes, staves and a couple of chipped, dented swords.

One of the posse was the chief huntsman from Berry Pomeroy and he had brought four of his hounds with him, who loped at his horse's heels, when they were not darting off into the bushes to investigate the scent of foxes and badgers.

Altogether, the posse consisted of twenty-two men, some ill at ease with this task, which was far removed from their usual occupation of ditching, thatching and ploughing — and several of them were secretly unhappy at having to harass the rightful inhabitants of Hempston, who they felt had already suffered enough.

One of their leaders was also not all that enamoured of the affair. Sir Richard de Revelle felt that the day would be far better spent in his comfortable manor at Revelstoke, sitting before a large fire with a glass of brandy-wine in his hand, and with another large meal when dinnertime came along. Instead, he was jogging along a winding track alongside the River Dart, shivering inside his riding cloak in spite of the padded gambeson under his chainmail hauberk. He was the only one wearing any form of armour, apart from a few men with iron helmets. Henry de la Pomeroy had a thick tunic of boiled leather under his colourful tabard emblazoned with his family crest, though little of this could be seen for the heavy, fleece-lined serge cape that he wore over the top.

The rest of the men were dressed in an irregular collection of outfits, including leather jerkins and several layers of woollen tunics; almost all wore breeches with cross-gartering on the legs.

'At least that damned frost has gone,' bawled Henry, riding alongside de Revelle. He seemed eager for a fight, having been in several campaigns in France and Ireland in former years. Richard was a reluctant soldier, he had wanted to become a lawyer as a stepping stone to politics, but his Crusader father had insisted that after attending the cathedral school at Wells, he became a squire to a local knight. Richard had managed to avoid any serious fighting, though he had become a hanger-on to several campaigns in northern France, which was where he had come to the attention of John, Count of Mortain.

Now he was trying to look as if he was enjoying this military escapade, having been persuaded by Henry that unless Nicholas was dealt with before the damned coroner persuaded Hubert Walter of the righteousness of de Arundell's claim, they would be in deep trouble.

As the column trotted through Buckfastleigh an hour later, curious stares followed them, as the sight of a troop of armed men riding purposefully along was a disturbing sight. A number of villagers ran inside, bolted their doors and crossed themselves fervently.

On they went, past the great Abbey of Buckfast, and then they began weaving through the valleys and over the downs of the rising ground that led on to the moor.

By noon they had covered another seven miles to Widecombe, where they halted to rest their horses and eat the provisions they had brought in their saddlebags — hard bread, cheese or scraps of meat in the case of the villagers, though the bailiff had carried better fare and a flask of wine for himself and the two manor lords.

'We'll not get back home by tonight, sirs,' he announced, stating the obvious. 'But I've told the innkeeper here that you two gentlemen will need a place to sleep, even if it's only by the firepit. The men can find themselves a barn or a cowshed.' After an hour's rest, they mounted up again and Henry de la Pomeroy conferred again with bailiff Coffin.

'Where do we go from here?' he demanded, being unfamiliar with this remote area of the county.

'Those miscreants are said to be somewhere on the West Webburn, the next valley to the west, Sir Henry. The alehouse keeper here is vague about it, I think he's afraid of vengeance from the outlaws if things go wrong.'

'How good is that information, bailiff?' snapped de Revelle, still unhappy with this whole expedition, especially if there was likely to be any danger to himself.

'Another of my spies from Ashburton says he has heard of Nick o' the Moor being camped somewhere up the vale of the West Webburn stream — though these villains are usually always on the move.'

'Where the devil is that?' brayed de Revelle.

'Widecombe is on the East Webburn brook, so it must be over there somewhere.' Ogerus Coffin waved vaguely to his left, where a misty grey hill obscured the view.

'The innkeeper says we must go back a little way, then cross over the foot of that hill towards Ponsworthy, then follow the next stream northwards.'

With these somewhat imprecise directions, the posse struggled back into the saddle and plodded off in the wake of the bailiff. An hour later, they were moving up a shallow valley, with grey-green slopes on either side and a small stream babbling down between straggling bushes and a few trees. There was no sign of habitation and the path was now reduced almost to a sheep track, forcing them to ride in single file.

Heavy low cloud darkened the day, but there was only a slight mist and no sign of the dense fog that could roll down within minutes and make the moor a dangerous place for travellers. In spite of the reasonably good visibility, none of them noticed a figure high up to their left, peering, over a large slab of moorstone.

Having noted their appearance and numbers, the ginger-headed lookout slipped back over the skyline of the ridge and ran like a hare ahead of them, easily outpacing the horses who were stepping delicately along the stony path, anxious to avoid twisting a hoof.

'Right, everyone take what they can carry and let's clear out.' Nicholas de Arundell spoke urgently, his commanding manner, honed on the battlefields of Palestine, spurring his men to frenzied activity. Peter Cuffe had just sprinted into the compound, bringing news of the approach of many armed men.

'I reckon we've got about half an hour before they're within sight,' he panted, as he seized a bow and bag of arrows that had been propped against the wall near the pile of ferns that was his mattress. The other men ran to the other two huts and collected their arms, as well as a few treasured possessions. Robert Hereward took the time to dump a bucket of earth on the fire, in the faint hope that the smoke would not give away the position of the ruined village. Others grabbed the best parts of their food supplies, a haunch of venison, some bread and two dead coneys.

Within minutes, they had assembled within the stone walls that marked the yard, ready to flee from the place that had been their home for many months.

'Who d'you reckon it is, Peter?' snapped Nicholas as he stared down the valley.

'Too far away to see, but I'm sure there were two destriers carrying men in long riding cloaks. The rest were a mixed bunch, at least twenty armed men.'

'Those bastards Henry Pomeroy and Richard Revelle, I'll wager,' snarled Hereward. 'Thinking they'll catch us unawares.'

'They want to finish us off,' growled Philip Girard.

'Maybe they've had wind of the coroner's promise to plead our case with the king?'

Nicholas tore his eyes away from the distant opening into the valley and turned to face the bleaker hills to the north.

'Let's go, we can talk about it later. Did you see any bowmen amongst them, Peter?'

The red-headed youth shrugged. 'Hard to tell, but I don't think so. They seemed a ragged lot, except for a few who may have been from a castle guard.' As they spoke, Nicholas led the dozen men towards the gap in the wall that led up on to the moor on the western side of the valley.

'We'll get up high and walk along the crest of the down, then cross the valley at Headland Warren, up on to Hookney Tor.'

As he left the compound, he cast a regretful glance at the tumbledown huts that had been their home. He wondered how many times it had been abandoned like this since men first came to Dartmoor. As they were filing through in orderly haste, the last man, Robert Hereward, suddenly stopped. 'Gunilda. What about Gunilda?' he exclaimed.

The others halted in their tracks and stared at each other. 'She went to the other side of the valley to set rabbit snares,' said one of the men. 'That was a couple of hours ago.'

'We can't leave her,' said Peter Cuffe, to whom the old woman had become a second mother.

'She'll hear these swine coming,' said Girard.

'Gunilda's a tough old bird, she'll go to ground until they're past.'

Nicholas swore all the oaths he had picked up in years of soldiering.

'We can't go looking for her now, we'd walk right into the path of these bastards.'

There was a hurried debate and though opinions were divided, de Arundell was forced to make a quick decision. 'We have to leave her or we'll all be caught down here in the open. I'm sure she'll hide out somewhere. God knows there are enough holes in the ground around here.'

Reluctantly, they began hurrying up the hillside, half a dozen of them carrying long yew bows over their shoulders. Within ten minutes, Challacombe Down looked as deserted as on the Day of Creation, the outlaws having vanished into the grey-green void that was the moor in winter.

The solitude did not last long, however: before long a faint jingle of harness and soft thud of hoofs could be heard as the intruders came tentatively into the valley of the West Webburn stream. Richard de Revelle did not like the feel of this country, he was tense and his eyes roved ceaselessly from side to side, in spite of Henry's brash assurances that they would wipe out these outlaws like a pack of rats. Once again, Richard earnestly wished that he was back in his hall at Revelstoke instead of sitting on a horse in the cold damp of Dartmoor, where violence and mayhem might break out at any moment.

'God's teeth, where are those swine hiding themselves?' growled Henry, his square head swivelling back and forth as he surveyed the bare hills and the scrubby trees along the stream. 'Ogerus, come here,' he yelled and the bailiff wheeled his horse around and walked back to his master.

'Do none of your men know this damned place?' he demanded. 'Where are we supposed to be looking for the bastards?'

Ogerus Coffin shook his head. 'We are all from down south, sire, this is a foreign land to us. But according to that man who gave the information, there is a ruined village here where the outlaws set up one of their camps.' Half a mile further on, he was proved to be right, for one of the men-at-arms from Berry Castle gave a shout and pointed over to the left. 'There are some buildings of sorts, across the stream, my lord,'

They looked past some shabby trees bare as firewood, and saw the dark shapes of a few huts, built of almost black moorstone. There was no movement anywhere and no smoke wreathed up into the leaden sky.

'We'll go across and look, but it seems our birds have flown,' snarled Henry, angry and disappointed. The posse turned off the track and began treading carefully through the boggy ground to the bank of the stream.

Before the leading man reached it, there was a sudden commotion behind them, on the far side of the track.

The four hounds belonging to the huntsman began barking furiously and streaked away up the lower slopes of the hill.

'They've scented something, bailiff,' yelled the huntsman, slipping from his saddle and running after his dogs. A moment later, as the halted cavalcade turned to watch, the man vanished from view, apparently into a hollow in the ground. His shouts of command silenced the dogs, then he reappeared, dragging what seemed to be a large bundle of damp rags. Ogerus Coffin turned his horse and walked it up towards the huntsman, then turned in his saddle and shouted back.

'It's a woman, sir. By Jesus, the ugliest old hag you ever saw.'

A mile away, Nicholas led his men down into a bowl of marshland, where the stream spread out before the valley narrowed and bent to the left. Ahead was the high swell of Hookney Tor with a clump of misshapen stones on top. Between that and Hameldown Tor was the small pass through which the coroner had been taken on his journey from Moretonhampstead.

'Any signs of them?' Nicholas asked Peter Cuffe, who had been in the rear, but who now came running up as the column merged into a ragged circle.

'Nothing yet, though I fancied I heard hounds barking just now.'

De Arundell stared back down the silent valley. 'I hope to God that Gunilda has hidden herself somewhere. It never occurred to me that they would have dogs with them.'

Hereward was philosophical about it. 'God wills whatever is to happen, Nicholas. We have to look after ourselves now, until we can get back down there when they have gone.' He looked up at the slopes of rough grass, clumps of it in yellowed tussocks where it had died back for the winter. 'We must get up there and lie low.'

They moved on, climbing up steeply alongside a stream that had cut deefa, irregular channels in the black peat. In a few minutes they were on the sloping saucer between the two high tors, where the ancient circle of Grimspound sheltered a dozen crumbling huts, tiny structures like stone rings, some with a tattered roof of branches and turf.

From there, they could look down on the upper end of the valley, but could not see back to Challacombe because of the bulk of Hameldown Tor on their left.

'You are our best pair of eyes — and have the fastest legs, Peter,' said the leader to the ginger lad. 'Get up along the ridge again and keep a sharp lookout down towards the village.'

When he had loped off, Nicholas went wearily through the gap in the double palisade of stones that reached to waist height in a huge circle around the ancient encampment.

'We may as well rest, until either something — or nothing — happens,' he suggested. The men broke up into three groups and each found a place in one of the primitive huts to sit and worry about their situation and especially about Gunilda. The little food they had managed to carry away was shared out, and one of the men went to fill an empty wineskin with the clear water from a small stream that trickled past the circle.

They sat and waited, the silence broken only by a thin moan of wind across the uplands and the occasional squawk of a crow scavenging amongst the heather.

The raiding party from Berry Castle had rampaged through the primitive dwellings at Challacombe, angry and disappointed that there was virtually nothing worth looting. They kicked apart the piles of ferns that the outlaws had used for beds and overturned the crude table and stools that were the only furnishings. A couple of men grabbed the paltry remnants of food that lay on a shelf and swallowed the dregs of home-brewed ale that remained in a small barrel in a corner.

The bailiff kicked at the debris in the firepit. 'The ashes are still hot under that soil,' he reported to his master.

'They must have smothered it within the past hour.' Henry stood with Richard de Revelle in the middle of the main hut, glowering around at the deserted room.

'So where the hell are they? They must have had good warning of our approach.'

'The bastards have had a couple of years to get used to these God-forsaken moors,' replied Ogerus. 'They've slipped away up one of these bloody hills.'

De Revelle was secretly relieved, hoping this meant that there was to be no pitched battle. 'So what do we do now? Burn this place down and go home?'

Henry looked at him with more than a hint of contempt, for he had long become aware of de Revelle's physical cowardice. 'I suppose so, though little good it will do. These damned stones won't burn — and they can rebuild the roofs in half a day!'

'What about this old hag, my lord?' asked the bailiff.

'She must be something to do with these men, there's no hamlet within four miles of here.'

The two leaders walked out into the yard outside, where Gunilda was slumped on a log, two men from Hempston standing guard over her.

'Sweet Jesus, what a disgusting old sow,' barked Henry, using the Norman French that he and Richard spoke together. He marched up to the old woman and snarled at her in the same language. 'Who the hell are you, woman?'

She looked at him blankly and made no response, so he repeated himself in English. Gunilda rolled her bloodshot eyes up at him and gabbled something he failed to understand, so thick was her local accent.

'Bailiff, speak to this animal, I can't understand her monkey language.'

Ogerus translated, with rather too much relish to suit his master. 'She says, may your member turn green and rot off, to be devoured by wolves, sir.'

With a snarl of rage, Henry stepped forward and gave the old woman a blow across the side of her head with his fist that knocked her off the log to sprawl on the floor. The two men standing behind her looked askance at de la Pomeroy, but wisely held their tongues.

'Pick the old cow up, damn you,' he yelled at them. 'Perhaps she knows where these other villains have gone to.'

They dragged her from the floor and held her between them, other men now drifting towards the group, curious to see what was happening.

Gunilda sagged between her guards, her head drooped on to her chest, blood welling from a wound on her temple where one of Pomeroy's rings had gashed her.

'Do you think she is part of this gang?' brayed de Revelle. He seemed unconcerned by this savage attack on an old woman, though the looks on some of the faces of the men from Berry and Hempston showed that they were not happy with the situation.

'Ask her again, bailiff,' snapped Henry. He drew his sword and prodded the front of her ragged kirtle with the tip, as if to indicate what would happen if she spat out further abuse.

Ogerus Coffin jerked Gunilda's head up by grabbing her hairy chin and glared into her face. There was a short exchange in the thick Devon patois, the woman mumbling her words, obviously still dazed from the blow to her head.

'She says she was collecting herbs and knows nothing of any men, sir.'

'A liar, if there ever was one,' snapped de Revelle, determined not to be subservient to Henry Pomeroy's leadership. 'What herbs are about in the depths of winter?. She's miles from any village and only yards from a hut with a fire barely dampened down. Of course she belongs to them!'

'Probably a waif, there's a few of them in the county, consorting with outlaws,' suggested the bailiff.

Henry raised his sword high in the air. 'Hear that, wretch,' he yelled. 'Anyone is entitled to remove your head. I could even claim five shillings for it if I took it to the sheriff.'

Gunilda looked at him dully from the eyes that stared from above loose pouches of skin on her dirty, lined face. 'Do it then, damn you,' she muttered apathetically.

'Perhaps she knows where her fellow criminals have gone,' suggested de Revelle. 'Ask her, bailiff, you seem to possess the same strange speech that she employs.' Ogerus grabbed her by the shoulder and shook it as he gabbled something at her. The old woman shook her bleeding head wearily and he repeated the question, shouting at her with his mouth inches from her face.

Again she shook her head, but momentarily her eyes flickered to her right as she looked anxiously up the valley. Ogerus, by no means a stupid man, caught the glance and began ranting at her again, shaking her by the shoulder, but she stubbornly refused to answer.

'She won't say a thing, my lord,' said the bailiff, looking over his shoulder at the two knights. 'But I've got a notion that they went up the valley, that way.' He gestured in the direction that Gunilda's eyes had turned, towards the distant hump of Hameldown Tor.

Henry Pomeroy, still red with anger, lifted his sword again and threatened the Saxon woman. 'Where are they, damn you? Did they go that way? Answer me, you ugly old hag.'

For answer, Gunilda spat in his face. Enraged, Henry punched her in the chest with his powerful fist. Caught by surprise, the two guards lost their grip on her arms and she tumbled backwards, falling full length and hitting her head on a large moorstone which had tumbled from the old wall behind her. There was an ominous crack and she lay inert — never to move again.

Several of the men muttered their concern, but were soon stilled as Henry glared around. 'What are you staring at, damn you?' he yelled. 'Get to your horses, we are going farther up the valley to find these swine. Go on, move!'

Without a second glance at the still body on the grass, Henry de la Pomeroy beckoned to de Revelle and the two men strode away towards their steeds, Richard by no means enthusiastic about the imminent prospect of a fight.

Within half an hour, Peter Cuffe came pounding down the slope from the brow of the hill where he had been keeping watch.

'They're coming, Sir Nicholas,' he shouted breathlessly as he dashed in through the gap in the boundary wall. 'And they must have fired the huts, for I see a column of smoke down the valley.'

The men stumbled from the shelters where they had been resting and congregated around their leader and the ginger youth who had brought the unwelcome news.

'We are going to have to fight, after all,' exclaimed de Arundell. 'I had hoped that when they found the place empty they would give up and go home.'

'What about Gunilda? Has she been taken, I wonder?' asked Philip Girard. 'If so, perhaps they forced her tell them where we were.'

Robert Hereward shook his head vehemently. 'Never. She would have her tongue cut out before she would give us away,' he snapped.

'If they failed to find us down in Challacombe, then they must realise that we are up this way, for they came on the only track-southwards,' observed Nicholas.

'And they have dogs, which will pick up our trail,' added Peter.

Their leader stared down the slope to the track, thinking hard. 'What remains now is to defeat the bastards — or at least harry them until it becomes too dark, then we can slip away.' For five minutes, de Arundell described their plan of campaign, giving instructions to each man as to how they were going to carry out the ambush, The men made hasty preparations to their weapons, the half-dozen with bows now stringing them with the animal-gut filaments that they kept under their caps to protect them from rain. The others had swords, axes, iron-tipped staves, a couple of long pikes and a few wicked-looking ball maces swinging on chains from a short handle.

'Did you check again on their numbers, Peter?' demanded their leader.

'As I first thought, about twenty, all on horses of varying sorts. The two riding destriers must be that swine Henry Pomeroy and Richard de Revelle.'

'But no bowmen?' rasped Nicholas. 'Are you sure about that?'

The redhead nodded. 'I saw none, and the way most of them are sitting on their saddles suggests that they would be more at home with a cabbage hoe or a thatcher's rake!'

Nick o' the Moor gave rapid orders to his band of outlaws. He sent most of them up the two hillsides that sloped away from the great circle of Grimspound, ordering them to find somewhere to conceal themselves, either in hollows in the ground or behind large rocks. He placed an archer on each side of the shallow gully down which the stream tumbled to the valley below, the only practical approach to Grimspound. The other four bowmen he sent to hide in strategic positions on the slopes around the camp. Once again, he dispatched Peter up to the corner of the ridge, to signal when the intruders had reached the nearest point on the main track below. With luck, they might pass by and continue up the narrowing valley towards the Chagford road.

Together with Robert Hereward, he climbed up the flank of Hookney Tor to the north and they hunkered down in a slight hollow behind large tussocks of coarse grass.

'They are all mounted, so do you think they'll climb up here still on horseback?' queried Robert.

Nicholas shook his head, his face grim but lit with the expectation of battle, such as he had not experienced since the Holy Land. 'It's too steep and slippery with yesterday's rain. They'll have to leave their mounts down on the track, probably leaving a couple of men to look after them.'

Hereward crossed himself and muttered some prayer under his breath, then took a firmer hold on the long-shafted battleaxe that he held with a knuckle-whitening grip. They waited and shivered in the cold air, every man now silent in order not to betray their presence, as in that wilderness sounds carried a long way.

They watched intently, looking up at the ridge where Peter crouched on the edge of Hameldown Tor. A layer of grey cloud hovered like a moist blanket, blotting out the extreme tops of the hills, but leaving the lower slopes and the valley clear apart from a few wraiths of detached mist that drifted on the breeze. Nicholas de Arundell remembered similar ambushes in other campaigns and had the same thoughts: whether or not he would be dead within the next few minutes — and whether it would hurt so very much with a spear or sword through his belly.

His eyes strayed down to the steep slope where the stream cut its way through the peat to the track below, but suddenly he felt a nudge from Robert's elbow.

'Peter must have spotted them,' he hissed. They swivelled their eyes up and saw Cuffe running down the hillside, bent low and keeping out of sight of the road below. He stopped for a second and made urgent pointing gestures, then ran a few hundred paces more and dropped out of sight behind a slab of moorstone.

Silence fell again, but soon they could all hear the intermittent neigh of a horse and the faint jingle of harness, as well as the bark of a hound. A human shout next broke the stillness, and a muffled curse as a fretful stallion kicked out at another beast.

A few moments later, they saw the first heads appear, bobbing over the curve of rank grass as they climbed up the sheep track alongside the stream. The horses and hounds had obviously been left down below.

Nicholas had hoped to evade detection altogether, but he realised that it was a forlorn hope. Amongst these men were huntsmen and even poachers, who could easily recognise a recent footmark in the wet soil and realise than men had trodden the same path not long before.

Soon about a score of figures had risen out of the valley and were cautiously approaching the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to the ancient settlement. They were led by a pair who wore thick leather curiasses and round iron helmets, suggesting that they were part of the Berry Castle guard. Behind them strutted the sturdy figure of Henry de la Pomeroy, followed more hesitantly by the slimmer Richard de Revelle.

Nicholas stared across the few hundred paces of ground with loathing in his eyes. These were the men who had dispossessed him, driven his wife from her home and made him an outcast. He almost wished he had given his archers orders to strike them down where they stood, but even after the tribulations that had forced him to live like a hunted fox, remnants of his chivalrous upbringing prevented him from killing without warning.

He watched as all the invading force gathered inside the wide circle of Grimspound. There was much waving of arms on the part of de la Pomeroy, then some of the men went around the low circular huts, peering inside those that had not collapsed or lost their roofs. Soon there was a shout, clearly heard in the still air, and one of the searchers came out with what could have been a crust of bread — then another found a recently chewed piece of bacon. After a hurried conference, the faces of all the posse turned to scan the surrounding hills, their hands clutching their weapons in readiness for an attack.

De Arundell cursed under his breath. Though his men had been careless in leaving signs of such recent occupation, he was realistic enough to accept that he could not prevent the searchers from discovering their presence in the area. All he could do now was wait and see what happened.

After a hurried discussion between the two manor lords, their bailiff and the leading man-at-arms, and half a dozen of the more soldierly men came out of the enclosure and began walking cautiously up the slopes on each side. They had their swords or pikes at the ready and began searching behind each large rock and in every hollow. It was only a matter of time before they came upon one or other of the outlaws, and Nicholas felt it was beholden upon him to take the initiative. As he saw a big fellow wearing an iron helmet with a wide nosepiece clambering up towards his hideout, he suddenly stood up and brandished his sword, the light of battle glowing in his eyes.

'Stop there, or I'll slit your gizzard, damn you,' he yelled, his volatile temper flaring up. The man almost dropped his sword in surprise as the apparition seemed to appear from the very earth in front of him.

There was a roar from the rest of the posse down below as they caught their first sight of their quarry, but almost simultaneously, almost all, the outlaws, except the archers, popped up from their hiding places and gave answering yells of defiance as they waved their weapons at the foe.

The big man in front of Nicholas soon got over his shock and with a roar of triumph launched himself towards the outlaw leader. However, he was lumbering uphill and suddenly found himself facing two adversaries, as Robert Hereward hoisted himself from his crouch and stood alongside his master, brandishing a long staff with a wicked spike on the end. With a great shout, Nicholas went to meet the man, parried a swing from the big sword and kicked him hard on his shin.

As the man grunted with pain, de Arundell swung the flat of his yard-long sword against the side of the fellow's head and he fell to his knees, blood streaming from his lacerated ear.

'Clear off, you bastard,' screamed Hereward, his own battle lust awakened. He prodded the man in his sword arm with his spiked staff and though the tough leather jerkin prevented any deep injury, the man screamed with pain.

By now, other single combats had begun, as the few invaders outside the enclosure were being attacked by Nicholas's men. They had the advantage of the higher ground and within a few moments, two of the Berry men were lying wounded and the others had taken flight back down the slope. Most of those in the compound were racing to the opening to join the affray, though a few were scrambling over the wall, a difficult task as it was not only chest-high, but was double, with a space between the two layers of moorstone.

As a dozen men began jostling through the entrance, the outlaw archers made themselves known, standing up to loose off a rapid succession of arrows into the press of figures pushing through the narrow gap. There were screams of pain and the rest of the men dived back to take cover behind the grey stones of the palisade.

Amongst them were the two knights, with Richard de Revelle lying almost flat on the ground, shaking with fear as he watched two wounded men dragging themselves into cover.

'Bloody archers,' yelled Henry de la Pomeroy, livid with anger rather than fear. 'Where in hell did they get archers?'

Had he but known it, the six men in the outlaw band had made themselves expert bowmen by sheer dint of practice. Often with little to do between forays, they had spent their time in learning the skill from Morgan, a man from Gwent in South Wales, the home of the longbow. Outlawed for an alehouse brawl in Plymouth, which had left a man dead, he had joined the band almost at the beginning and taught those interested how to make bows and how to use them. Hundreds of hours of practice had strengthened their arms and sharpened their eyes so that, though not up to the standard of professionals in an army, they were more than proficient in a close-quarter situation like this.

As most of the Berry posse cowered behind the protective wall, the few that had clambered over it were in various stages of fight with Nicholas's men. One was set upon by Martin Wimund and another outlaw, receiving a hearty kicking that left him senseless on the ground, while another had managed to fell Peter Cuffe with a blow from a heavy staff. His assailant was about to finish off the ginger-headed youngster, with his dagger, when the nearest archer saved Peter's life with an arrow through the assailant's throat.

'What in Christ's name do we do now?' hissed Richard de Revelle to Henry, as he cowered against the boundary wall.

'Break out and attack the swine,' snarled Pomeroy, his temper getting the better of his good sense. 'They had luck and surprise on their side just then, but it can't hold.'

He was wrong. As Henry waved to the men sheltering around him and got them to dash with him to the gap in the palisade, they ran into another shower of arrows that killed another man-at-arms and slightly wounded Henry in the leg.

Cursing, he dragged himself back into the shelter of the wall, where de Revelle, who had not stirred an inch, looked at the injury and declared it not to be serious, just a glancing cut above Pomeroy's ankle.

As the blaspheming lord bound a kerchief around his leg to staunch the bleeding, there was a loud shout from the nearby slopes.

'Pomeroy! De Revelle! Are you listening? This is Sir Nicholas de Arundell. Can you hear me?' Henry struggled to stand up, putting his weight on his good ankle and using the lumpy stones of the wall to pull himself erect.

'Be careful, man,' hissed de Revelle desperately. 'He may put an arrow through your head.'

De la Pomeroy might be a bully and a boor, but he was no coward, and ignoring Richard's warning he hoisted himself high enough to peer over the palisade.

He saw Arundell, looking much rougher than he remembered him, standing on higher ground a hundred paces distant. Two other men, one an archer with an arrow ready on the string, stood alongside him. Looking round, Henry saw a dozen men encircling the camp, several more of them archers.

'What do you want, you murdering thief!' he yelled at Nicholas.

'I've murdered no one,' de Arundell called back. 'And neither am I a thief, like you and that snivelling coward de Revelle. Where is he, anyway, has he died of fright?'

Pomeroy looked down and hissed at his co-conspirator.

'Stand up, for God's sake! Show yourself, will you?' Reluctantly, Richard slowly rose and peered over the wall. When he saw the archers, he dropped again, but Henry grabbed his cloak and hauled him up to stand alongside him.

'Give yourself up, de Arundell,' blustered Pomeroy. 'You are outnumbered.'

This was met by a chorus of laughter from the men surrounding Grimspound and for devilment, one of the archers loosed off an arrow which smacked against a stone within a foot of de la Pomeroy's head. He jumped and de Revelle ducked below the parapet once more.

'And for what shall we give ourselves up to you, Pomeroy?' shouted Nicholas. 'To be hanged or beheaded?'

'You are outlaws, damn you,' raved Henry. 'We are a lawful posse, come to cleanse the moor of your evil presence.'

'Lawful posse, my arse,' retorted de Arundell. 'Only the sheriff can raise a posse — and he knows the righteousness of my case, as does the coroner, who is riding to petition the king about your wrongdoing.' Henry ground his teeth in frustrated anger. There was nothing he could do to confound this bold outlaw.

He and his men were trapped inside the ring-wall, with half a dozen archers able to massacre anyone who tried to make a dash for it through the narrow portal, 'Can't we hide inside these little huts?' quavered de Revelle.

Henry looked down at him with contempt. 'What good would that do, you fool? They could come to the doorways and pick us off like rats in a barrel.'

The knight they had ousted from Hempston was calling to them again. 'You started this fight, damn you. I wanted no part of it, and if you had not followed us up here and tried to kill us, we would have left for another part of the moor.'

Pomeroy, thankful that Nicholas did not yet know that his old woman retainer had been killed, now realised that there was nothing to do except save his skin and whatever dignity he could salvage.

'So what do you propose, outlaw?'

'I want no more killing or wounding. I never wanted any in the first place. If you throw down your arms, you can walk out of this place and take your dead and wounded with you.'

There was a mutter of agreement from the men cowering inside the pound, echoed fervently by Richard de Revelle. 'Agree to it, accept his offer at once!' he hissed.

Henry gave him a scathing glance, but realised that he was right — they were trapped and had nothing left to bargain with. He shouted across to Nicholas, still standing on a tussock with a sword in his hand.

'Very well, but remember, there will be another day, and next time you will be overwhelmed.'

De Arundell gave a cynical laugh. 'Tell that to King Richard or his Chief Justiciar when they haul you before them. For now, just drop your weapons and clear out of here! You'll not find us in this area again, if you are foolish enough to come seeking us before royal retribution is visited upon you.'

The light was failing by the time the men from Berry had tramped despondently down to the road to regain their horses. They carried two dead men and two who had suffered arrow wounds. Two more who had lesser injuries were helped along by their compatriots, including Henry de la Pomeroy himself, who leaned heavily on the arm of his bailiff as he limped along to his stallion on a damaged leg.

A pile of swords, pikes, maces and staffs lay inside Grimspound, though Nicholas chivalrously agreed that the two knights could keep their swords, so long as they promised not to unsheath them again that day. As the winter dusk approached, the outlaws watched the defeated posse ride away down the valley, the archers keeping a watchful eye for any last-minute treachery until the cavalcade had vanished out of sight. Two of their men had slight injuries, though Peter Cuffe had soon recovered from his blow on the head.

'Where do we go from here?' asked Robert Hereward as the gloom thickened.

'We can stay up here tonight, sheltering in the huts. But some of us must go back down to Challacombe to make sure that the place is unusable after that fire. And of course, to seek for Gunilda. I have a bad feeling about her,' he added grimly.

After their ignominious defeat at Grimspound, Henry de la Pomeroy and Richard de Reverie headed back to Berry Pomeroy Castle to lick their wounds and to hold an inquest on their failure and the possible consequences. The darkness obliged them to spend the night at Widecombe and it was noon the next day before they limped home. That afternoon, the east wind moaned around the towers of the gatehouse as the two men sat in Henry's chamber easing their aching limbs after their long ride back from the moor. The gash in Pomeroy's leg had been cleaned and bound by one of the servants, but it still smarted enough to be a reminder of the fiasco at Grimspound.

They had eaten and now settled in chairs set on each side of a large brazier, a jug of Loire wine on a nearby table providing frequent refills for the silver goblets they held.

'It was those bastard archers who undid us,' snarled Henry for the fifth time. 'I'm going to hire a couple of Welshmen to train those clods of mine to shoot!' Richard was more of a realist. 'Don't waste your money, Henry. It takes years to make a man competent with a longbow — and I'll warrant we'll get no second chance against Arundell and his gang.'

'So what do we do about it now?' rasped de la Pomeroy, splashing more wine into his goblet. 'Run and shelter under Prince John's skirts, I suppose?' His tone was bitterly sarcastic.

'What else do you suggest?' retorted Richard huffily. 'Without his support, we could be in serious trouble.

Do you want to go the same way as your father?' he added maliciously, referring to the elder Pomeroy's suicide at St Michael's Mount. When accused of treachery to King Richard, he had ordered his physician to open the blood-vessels in his wrists, so that he bled to death, rather than face the Lionheart.

Henry was too worried to take offence. 'So how do we go about it? You are close to the Count of Mortain.'

A shutter rattled in the wind as de Revelle considered his answer. 'We must get ourselves to Gloucester as soon as we can and hope that the Prince is there. His support is vital to us. After all, he was nominally the sheriff of Devon when we seized de Arundell's manor — and he had had Devon and Cornwall in his fief at the time, so he could be considered to be Nicholas's ultimate landlord.'

Henry saw little that was helpful in this tortuous argument, but grudgingly agreed that a clever lawyer might be able to draw some legal justification from it. 'Sounds a thin excuse for us kicking out de Arundell's family and sequestering his lands,' he said. 'Still, if you think we are in personal danger over this, then by all means let us ride to Gloucester.'

Richard de Revelle, who had a much more perceptive and cunning brain than the boorish de la Pomeroy, was adamant. 'It's our only defence, Henry! I know this damned man de Wolfe. He's like a bull-baiting dog, he never lets go once he's got his teeth into something. Comes of being a bloody Crusader, I suppose. We need to speak to Prince John before de Wolfe gets back from kissing Hubert Waiter's arse!'

At the same time that afternoon, in a workroom behind a large forge on Exe Island, just outside the western wall of the city, a man was bent over a complicated device lying on a bench.

He murmured under his breath as he worked, filing a slot in a piece of iron that was part of a mechanism that consisted mainly of a powerful leaf-spring held back by a trigger device. The contraption seemed to owe much of its design to a cross bow, except that it was very much smaller and the bow part was replaced by a single arm.

The man, a fellow with a heavy, sullen face, was fashioning every piece with loving care, working from a diagram scratched on a square of slate with a sharp nail.

A lock of hair fell incessantly across his forehead and he brushed it aside with almost obsessional regularity.

Alongside the device he was fashioning, were several other metal articles, including large door locks, parts for ox-cart axles, iron swivels, and rings for horse harness.

From the yard outside came the rhythmic clang of hammer on anvil and, from an adjacent workshop, the tapping of a punch clinching over rivets, as other journeymen and apprentices went about their business.

Although he was absorbed in his task, the man kept one ear tuned for approaching footsteps. Whenever it sounded as if someone might come into his back room, he rapidly covered up the device with a piece of sacking and seized some other article to work upon. Usually, it was a false alarm and as soon as the footsteps receded, he went back to his careful filing again.