The Noble Outlaw

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In the late afternoon, John walked alone through the best part of the city to Raden Lane. When he reached the house of Gillian le Bret, he was relieved to find that Matilda was no longer there, having gone to her devotions in church. He was received in the hall by Joan and her cousin and pressed to wine and pastry wafers, though the fair young woman was too excited herself to eat or drink. John had the impression that only modesty and good manners prevented her from flinging her arms around his neck in exuberant thanks for the good news that Matilda had brought earlier — he was rather disappointed that she did not.

He repeated all that had passed between Hubert Walter and himself, the two women hanging on his every word.

'So there is now no hindrance to your husband reappearing in Exeter or anywhere else,' he concluded.

He was surprised to see a shadow pass over Joan's pretty face.

'There is only one problem, Sir John,' she said. 'I have not heard from Nicholas since you left for London. Normally, we get a message every week or so, but this week and the previous one, there has been no messenger waiting at the usual rendezvous in Moretonhampstead. I am so worried. What can have happened?'

De Wolfe had no answer to this or any reassuring words, other than vague platitudes that all would be well. It would certainly make his plans more difficult to carry out, if the object of his rescue operation was nowhere to be found.

'When is the next meeting due to take place in Moreton?' he asked.

Joan twisted a kerchief nervously between her fingers.

'Not until next Monday, sir. We sent our servant there only yesterday, but there was no sign of anyone from Challacombe.'

John thought rapidly of his commitments. 'I cannot ride tomorrow, but on Thursday my officer and I will go up on to the moor and seek him out. It may be that he has had to move camp for some reason.' With further profuse thanks, in which Matilda was also lauded as an angel of mercy, the two ladles saw John off at their door. As he walked back to Martin's Lane in the gathering dusk, he was more concerned than he had admitted about Nicholas's apparent disappearance.

Had de Revelle and de la Pomeroy decided to act to wipe Nicholas from the map before any action could be taken by London? No news of such an escapade had reached Exeter, but the two villains would be hardly likely to proclaim it abroad.

De Wolfe decided to have more words with the sheriff over this and made his way to the keep of Rougemont.

He found Henry de Furnellis sitting near the firepit in the hall, a quart of ale in his fist, spinning yarns with Ralph Morin, Sergeant Gabriel and a few of the older men-at-arms. John shouted to a servant for a jug and settled down with the group, all of whom he knew and trusted as loyal king's men. He told them of his new concerns for Nicholas de Arundell.

'We have heard nothing of any foray on Dartmoor,' said Ralph. 'Though news travels very slowly in those remote places, especially if people desire to conceal their actions.'

When John told them of his intention to search for de Arundell, the sheriff offered to send armed men with him. De Wolfe accepted a small escort, as the search would perhaps need to be wide.

'Sergeant Gabriel and a couple of mounted men would suffice,' he said. 'We're not looking to fight anyone, just to discover where the hell he has got to.'

'What's to happen about the Justiciar's decision to right this wrong?' asked the castle constable, twisting his forked beard pugnaciously. 'Are we going to hang those two bastards at long last?'

Henry de Furnellis held up a placatory hand. 'Easy, Ralph! Hubert says that he's sending Walter de Ralegh down to hold a special court to settle the issue. Then you can talk about hanging them.'

The burly constable buried his face in his ale jar.

'Those crafty swine will find some way to wriggle out of it, I'll wager. They've got Prince John and half the bloody clergy on their side.'

After supper that evening, Matilda went off to visit her 'poor relation', a cousin in Fore Street. Although the woman was the contented wife of a thriving merchant, she had been adopted as a charity case by John's overbearing wife, who called upon her at intervals to make sure she was not starving on account of marrying a mere tradesman.

John took the opportunity to 'take the dog for a walk', and although he had already called in at the Bush Inn earlier in the day to make his peace with Nesta, he went down again to Idle Lane as soon as his wife's back was turned.

Sitting at ease at his table near the hearth, he had time to recount all the details of his trip to Winchester and London, places that Nesta had only heard of, as her travels had taken her only between her home in Gwent and the city of Exeter. She was the widow of a Welsh archer who had fought alongside John de Wolfe in several French campaigns. When Meredydd finally hung up his longbow, John suggested that he move to Devon, and with his accumulated loot from fifteen years of fighting he had bought the Bush, then a rundown alehouse. The archer brought his wife from Gwent, and they worked hard to make it successful, but then Meredydd was stricken with a sudden fever and died.

John had helped Nesta financially to keep the tavern going until it finally paid its way again, and in the process, they had become lovers in every sense of the word.

'You are a good man, John,' she said softly, putting a hand affectionately on his arm. 'Going all that way to fight an injustice. And I'm not even jealous, though I'll wager that this Lady Joan is pretty.'

He gave her a crooked grin and squeezed her thigh under the table.

'When was my head ever turned by a pretty face — apart from yours, cariad?' he replied in Welsh. 'My main reason was to do down that damned brother-in-law of mine.'

The inn was fairly quiet that evening, though Nesta was called away several times by either old Edwin or one of the serving maids to attend to some cooking problem or see to a new arrival who wanted a penny mattress in the loft for the night. When she came back to John after dealing with one such customer, he solemnly placed a penny before her on the table.

'Any chance of me also getting a bed tonight, mistress?' he asked with a straight face.

The pert answer she had ready was interrupted by the appearance in front of them of Thomas de Peyne, who had just slunk in through the back door. His natural reluctance to frequent taverns had increased since he had been recently restored to the priesthood, so John knew that he must have something important to tell him. However, this had to wait until Nesta had finished fussing over the clerk, as she was always convinced that he never get enough to eat in his mean lodgings in Priest Street. She went off to order a maid to find him a bowl of stew and a couple of chicken legs, and while she was in the kitchen, Thomas blurted out his news.

'I have been in the Guildhall, as you instructed, Crowner. Their records are in some disorder, but they are all there. I went through the rolls pertaining to the guild of Ironworkers and found that last summer, one of the journeymen was refused advancement because his master-work was deemed insufficient.' The little clerk's pinched face was pink with cold as he wiped a dewdrop from the end of his long nose with the sleeve of his black cassock.

'What was the name of the master who failed him?' asked John tensely, expecting that it might be one of the four dead guildsmen, until he remembered that they were not in the same trade.

'It was John Barlet, the previous warden of the ironmasters,' said Thomas. Deflated, the coroner then recalled that Stephen de Radone had said that his predecessor had died after a fall from a horse — an accident… or was it? It had not been one of John's inquests, but the man might have died outside south Devon, under the jurisdiction of a different coroner.

But Thomas had by no means finished his tale and as Nesta returned with a cup of wine and slipped back alongside John, he continued.

'The most interesting part, Crowner, is that the journeyman appealed against the decision and it was heard by four senior members of the city guilds — and again rejected.'

John was almost afraid to ask his clerk the names of the adjudicators, but when Thomas delivered them in a dramatic whisper, the coroner slammed his fist on the table and let out a shout that turned every head in the taproom.

'Thomas, you're a bloody genius! We've got him, thanks to you.' Then he glowered at his clerk from under his beetling black brows. 'But you've not yet told me the name of this damned journeyman!' Thomas looked furtively over his shoulder, as if he was about to impart some state secret. 'It was Geoffrey Trove, who works on Exe Island.'

De Wolfe stared at his clerk. The name rang some faint bell in the back of his mind and he struggled to retrieve it. 'Trove? Trove? That name is somehow familiar.'

Then the memory of the meeting in the Guildhall with the members of various guilds came back to him.

He recalled the pompous Benedict de Buttelscumbe who was the convenor and then the general discussion afterwards. Yes, that was it, there was a fellow, a journeyman smith, who had some sarcastic remarks to offer about the failure of the law officers to solve the killings.

The coroner half rose from his bench, as if to dash out and arrest the man at that moment, but Nesta pulled at his sleeve.

'John, it is pitch dark outside,' she scolded. 'These murders have been spread over weeks, so I doubt that waiting until morning will make any difference to your investigation.'

De Wolfe saw the sense in what she said and subsided on to his seat.

'You are right, as usual, woman. But at dawn, I shall visit the warden of the ironworkers and discover what I can about this Geoffrey Trove. And especially where he lives and works.'

And that was the first problem, for Geoffrey Trove was nowhere to be found.

Soon after first light, while Thomas was busy at his devotions in the cathedral, John and his officer were at Stephen de Radone's forge in Smythen Street. When they told him of Thomas's discovery, the warden was aghast.

'Could this really be a motive for murder?' he protested. 'I know this man Trove slightly, he has always been difficult and outspoken in matters concerning our trade — but murder?'

'Is obtaining the rank of a master important?' asked de Wolfe.

'Very much so, especially if a man is ambitious and wishes to set up on his own,' replied Stephen. 'And to have your master-piece rejected once, let alone twice, is indeed a slur on a craftsman's proficiency. It means that he would be condemned to working as a journeyman for ever, certainly in Exeter. His only hope would be to move somewhere far away, where his history is unknown, and to try again.'

The warden told them that Trove worked for an iron founder down on the river, just outside the city on the marshes beyond the West Gate. Plentiful supplies of water flowing along the leets that meandered through the flood plain allowed a number of mills to operate there. Most were fulling mills for the wool industry, but there were also a few iron smelters and founders, who used the power of millwheels to drive bellows and hammers for their metalworking.

The coroner and Gwyn hurried through the early morning crowds thronging the shops and stalls until they emerged through the West Gate. They took Frog Lane across Exe Island, the swampy ground between the city wall and the river, which curved around to the north where many of the mills were situated. Shacks and shanties were dotted around the edges of the leets and streams, always in danger of being flooded or washed away when the Exe flooded after rainstorms up on Exmoor. But today was dry and cold, and they soon reached the mill which Stephen de Radone had described to them.

The place was a hive of activity. Looking into one of the high, open-fronted sheds, John could imagine that he was on the threshold of Hell. Amidst mounds of ore and charcoal, a bulbous furnace was issuing forth a stream of white-hot iron, around which several foundrymen were capering, holding long rods, guiding the liquid metal into stone and clay moulds. Though fascinated by the sight, John tore himself away and found the ironmaster cloistered with a miserable-looking clerk in a hut that served as their office and countinghouse.

John tersely explained their mission to the master, a prosperous-looking man with a large paunch, and a rim of grey beard around his plump face.

'He's gone,' declared the ironmaster. 'Said he was sick, then just walked out two days ago without a word. He always was an awkward fellow, though he worked hard enough.'

'Did you know about his trouble with the guilds?'

'Of course. Mind you, he brought it on himself, he was a cussed individual, wouldn't take advice.' He explained that Geoffrey Trove refused to offer a conventional object as his master-piece, even though he was a competent craftsman.

'Instead of casting an elegant door knocker or forging a handsome dagger, the damned fool insisted on making some strange device. He claimed it was a miniature crossbow that a man could hang from his belt and use to deter robbers.'

John and Gwyn looked at each other on hearing this apparent confirmation that Trove must have been the culprit

'Was he much incensed at his rejection by the guild masters?' asked John.

'Hard to tell, he was such a surly, close-lipped devil.

I wouldn't have thought he would commit murder over it, but you never can tell with these silent ones.'

Further questioning brought out the fact that Geoffrey Trove was unmarried, so far as anyone knew, though he had come several years ago from Bristol as a journey man and no one knew anything of his past history.

'He lived alone in one of those huts on the island,' said the master, waving a podgy, be-ringed hand down towards the distant Exe bridge, still unfinished after several years' construction. 'Don't ask me which one, someone on Frog Lane will tell you. I have to admit that he looked very poorly when he left here.'

'What was wrong with him?' asked de Wolfe.

'God knows, he would rarely give you the time of day.

But he held one arm stiffly and his face was flushed as if he had a fever. I told him to seek an apothecary.'

Leaving the master to count his profits with his clerk, the two law officers retraced their steps back across the marshes, shivering as a fresh north wind moaned about them, reminding them that once again, snow might not be all that far away. 'Let's hope it keeps off a bit longer,' grumbled Gwyn, thinking of their proposed search of Dartmoor the next day.

Enquiry led them to a cottage that was larger and more substantial than some of the shacks. It was built on the edge of a muddy channel that had been strengthened by stonework, making the cottage safer than some of the mean huts that were literally sliding into the leets.

It was a square box built of cob on a wooden frame and had a thatched roof in fair condition. There were no windows, but a front and back door of oaken planks.

The back door was barred from inside and the front door had a complicated metal lock.

'Probably made it himself,' observed John, rattling the massive padlock in a futile attempt to shake it open.

They hammered on the doors, getting no response.

Gwyn stood back and studied the door with a critical eye. 'That will take some breaking down. Do you really need to get inside, Crowner?'

John nodded, scowling at the barrier of oak that was frustrating them. 'If that device for shooting iron rods is inside, that would clinch his guilt,' he growled.

'Do you want me to try and smash it open?'

John reluctantly shook his head. 'You'd do yourself an injury. There's no great urgency, I'll get Gabriel to bring a couple of men down here later with a length of tree trunk. If there's no answer then, they can batter it open and see if there’s anything incriminating in there.

As they walked back towards the city de Wolfe wondered where Geoffrey Trove might have got to, if he was not in his place of work or at home.

'Let's try St John's Priory, maybe he's sought the ministrations of Brother Saulf in the infirmary, if he really is ill.'

St John's was the only place in Exeter where sick persons could find a bed and have some sympathetic care offered to them. However, this time Brother Sanlf could not help, as no such person as Trove had been to the infirmary and he had never heard of him.

Baffled, de Wolfe and Gwyn returned to Rougemont, where they found Thomas hard at work copying rolls for the next visitation of the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery. But he also had news of a different visitation, one that Hubert Walter had promised.

'The sheriffs clerk asked me to tell you that Sir Walter de Ralegh, together with another justice, will arrive in Exeter one week from now, to hear the case of Nicholas de Arundell,' announced Thomas, with a satisfied smile on his peaky face.

'That makes it all the more urgent to find our Nick o' the Moors,' said the coroner to his officer. As they settled down to their mid-morning ale and bread, John complimented his clerk on his genius in thinking of the iron connection in the murders, which now seemed to have been confirmed beyond any doubt.

'We even know the name of the bastard who's responsible,' he concluded, as Thomas wriggled in self-conscious delight at this rare praise from his master.

'But like de Arundell, we can't find the bugger!' boomed Gwyn. 'They've both vanished into thin air, so if you really are a genius, tell us where we can find them. '

The little priest took him seriously and began to tick off the possibilities on his thin fingers. 'He's not at his work, or his dwelling. Neither is he sick in the infirmary. He's not likely to be in St Nicholas priory, as they don't encourage outsiders to share their sickbeds.' Thomas stopped with three fingers displayed. 'You say he was a stranger in Exeter, having come from Bristol, so he'll have no relatives to stay with, so either he's left the city or he's holed up in some lodging.'

The big Cornishman grunted derisively. 'Doesn't need a genius to come to that conclusion. Which lodging, that's the point?'

At the lodging in question, a young woman stood uncertainly in the centre of the room and looked down at the bed, a hessian bag stuffed with a random mixture of feathers from fowl, geese and ducks.

It was not this primitive mattress that caused the worried look on her face, but the man who lay on it, groaning as he nursed his left arm. Denise had done her best with a pot of salve from an apothecary and a wide strip of linen torn from her only bedsheet. She had anointed the angry slash on Trove's forearm with the green paste and wrapped it with several turns of the cloth, tying it in place with a length of blue ribbon. But the wound had become redder and more swollen, and pink tracks had begun to climb up the skin of his arm towards the shoulder.

'You need better attention than I can give you, Geoffrey,' she exclaimed for the tenth time. 'I'm no leech or Sister of Mercy, what do I know of tending wounds?'

The journeyman gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his arm as he struggled to a sitting position. 'It will pass, woman. Give it time, it was not much more than a scratch.'

He cursed the carelessness with which he had detached his shooting device from the back of the privy. In the dark and in haste to remove it before anyone came to investigate, he had slashed his bare forearm against the end of the laminated leaf-spring that shot the missile.

The injury itself was not serious, but by the next day, the deep scratch had become angry, and by the day after it was oozing pus. He suspected that some evil miasma had splashed upon his device from the ordure pit below, where there was a wide opening for the night-soil man to shovel out the contents.

Denise, a handsome girl of about twenty years, seemed close to tears. 'You'll die, Geoffrey, I know you will, unless you have it seen to properly. I had an uncle who stabbed his foot with a fork when he was hoeing turnips… he died in the most awful convulsions a week later.'

The iron-worker glowered at her. 'Thanks, that really cheers me up! Look, if it's worse by tomorrow, you can call an apothecary.' He subsided on to the palliasse again, waves of heat passing over him in spite of the coldness of the room, which was heated only by a charcoal brazier set on a stone slab in the centre of the rush-covered floor. The dwelling was a single room at the back of a silversmith's shop in Waterbeer Lane, behind the High Street. It had been Denise's place of business when she was a working whore, but now Geoffrey's generosity allowed her to keep all her favours for him. He had patronised her for a long period as a regular client, but a brusque affection and sense of possession had gradually developed, so that he had even thought of marrying the wench once he had set up in his own business as a master craftsman, but those bastards rejecting his application had scuppered all his plans.

Still, he had almost got even with them all now; only the last venture against Gilbert le Bator had gone wrong — and left him with a poisoned arm into the bargain.

He had had to leave his employment when the arm became useless and, though his master knew he was sick, he doubted whether he would ever go back. Something told him that the failed attempt on the weaver's life the other night would lead to his exposure if he stayed in the city, so he had abandoned his mean hut on the marshes and moved in with his mistress. As soon as his arm had healed, he would leave Exeter and take Denise away to yet another fresh start, perhaps this time in Gloucester. But first of all, he had one last score to settle.

Matilda's new hobby of being solicitous to Lady Joan de Arundell caused her to be very concerned at the news that Sir Nicholas had disappeared. She made none of her usual complaints when her husband announced that he had to ride off at dawn the next day to look for Nicholas, and she even added her own exhortations to John to spare no effort in finding the former outlaw.

'He must be told of his release from this iniquitous stigma,' she exclaimed. 'That poor woman, at first full of joy at his salvation, is now plunged into misery because he has vanished.'

It was unlike Matilda to be so melodramatic, and John wondered at her state of mind. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if her going mad could be grounds for annulment of their marriage, then forgot the notion.

In the cold light of the following dawn, Gwyn waited patiently outside on his mare while de Wolfe had the farrier saddle up his favourite gelding for the ride to Dartmoor. They met Sergeant Gabriel and two men-at-arms at the end of North Street and sallied out of the nearby gate towards the village of Ide and then onward to Moretonhampstead.

The sky was by now a sullen slate grey, with a suggestion of pinkness nearer the horizon, and the leather-faced sergeant mournfully prophesied snow before evening. The air was cold and still, but the going was good and they made rapid progress at a steady trot up and down the fertile undulations that led to the high moor.

'Where are we aiming for?' asked Gwyn when the little town locally known as Moreton came into sight. 'We haven't the slightest idea where Nicholas may be holed up.'

'Let's talk to the folk in the tavern, maybe someone will have an idea,' growled John. 'It was there that Lady Joan's messenger used to meet one of the men from Challacombe.'

When they reined in at the alehouse and entered for a welcome jug of ale and some hot potage, they learned nothing of Nicholas de Arundell's whereabouts, but picked up many rumours of an attack upon him.

Like all tales in the countryside, they improved with the telling, and the exaggerations of the attack on Challacombe had expanded until it seemed impossible that any of the outlaws could have survived. The patrons that morning were eager to offer their versions of the drama to de Wolfe, until his habitually thin store of patience ran out and he grabbed the taverner by the arm.

'For Christ's sake, man, let's have some sense here,' he snapped. 'Have you any real idea what happened over in Challacombe?'

The chastened landlord held up his hands in supplication. 'It's all gossip, Crowner,' he pleaded. 'But certainly some armed band came up from Widecombe way and there was a fight with Nick o' the Moor's men.

One of the locals here, who's not above taking a rabbit or even an injured deer over that way, said he was in the Challacombe valley a week past and saw the old huts burnt out and no sign of any life there.'

'Is there no rumour of where they might have gone?' demanded Gwyn belligerently, for he did not like the look of this crafty fellow.

'Like will-o'-the-wisp is that Nicholas. They do say he has several hideouts across the moor, one of them being up towards Sittaford Tot.' This was one of the most remote parts of the high moor, with vast areas of deserted land around it.

'Might just as well tell us he's somewhere on the bloody moon' grumbled Gwyn.

They could get nothing more of any use from the men in the tavern and after finishing their food and ale, John decided to strike out for Challacombe, across the indistinct track along which he had been taken when he first visited Nicholas de Arundell. The snow was holding off, and again they made good time over the firm, dry ground so that by noon, they were coming down below Hameldown Tor across the grassy bowl that held the strange ancient stories of Grimspound. There was nothing to tell them that a major ambush had been set here not long before, and they continued down on to the track that led southwards down the valley. The bleak countryside seemed deserted, and apart from birds the only life they saw was a dog fox lurking alongside the Webburn stream. Within a mile, they came to the stunted trees that surrounded the old village where John and his officer had spent a night.

'All burnt out, Crowner,' called Gabriel, who was riding a few yards ahead of them; the two soldiers were at the rear. As they crossed the stream and came up the slope to the old walls, they could see that the rough thatch that had been on several of the huts had collapsed into a blackened mess. When they dismounted and walked inside the wall around the settlement, the acrid smell of scorched branches and bracken assailed their nostrils. Though the large moorstones that made up the walls were still in place, the interiors of the primitive dwellings were reduced to heaps of sodden, blackened debris from the roofs. An ominous silence hung over the old village, broken only by the eerie hoot of a disturbed owl from the nearby trees.

There was nothing to be gained by staying, and the coroner motioned the others back to their horses. Just as they were filing through the gap in the wall, Gabriel stopped and pointed across the yard that lay in front of the nearest huts. 'What's that there? It looks very recent.'

John's gaze followed his finger and saw a heap of earth in a corner, on top of which was fixed a crude wooden cross made from two branches lashed together with cord. When they all went over to look, they saw that the earth was freshly dug; no weeds were on the surface, and the broken ends of the cross were pale where living sticks had been snapped through.

'What poor soul is under there, I wonder?' murmured John. The two soldiers crossed themselves and even the agnostic Gwyn bowed his head in respect. De Wolfe only hoped that the occupant was not Nicholas de Arundell, but there was no way of telling what had happened. It was now obvious from the destruction of the camp and the recent grave that the outlaws had been attacked and that someone had paid with their life.

'Where do we go from here?' asked Gwyn, as they swung back into the saddle and began walking their horses back through the trees to the place where they had crossed over the little river.

'Deeper into the moor, north from here,' answered the coroner, with a confidence that he did not feel.

Dartmoor covered about four hundred square miles and the outlaw band could be almost anywhere within it, assuming that they had not been wiped out in the attack.

As they turned left on the main track, retracing their path towards Grimspound, those behind suddenly saw the sergeant tense in his saddle and grab for the ball mace that hung from his saddlebow.

A voice called out from behind the last tree in the copse that lined the stream, and a figure stepped cautiously out from behind it.

'Crowner! Crowner John!'

A ginger-haired youth, muffled in a cloak made of poorly cured deerskins, advanced on them, his hands held high to show that he was no threat. Gwyn was the first to recognise him as one of the outlaws.

'Peter Cuffe, it is you, Peter?' he roared.

The redhead came up to them, smiling now that he was in no danger of being brained by Gabriel's fearsome mace. Explanations soon followed, and it became clear that the youngest of the gang had been sent as a lookout. He had been three days on his own, sleeping in a shallow cave up on the ridge above and watching for anyone approaching the ruined village.

'Nick hoped that we would be contacted by someone. We were unable to send anyone to Moreton last week to keep the usual rendezvous, though next Monday we were going to be there, as we knew Lady Joan would be worried.'

He described the attack on Challacombe and the tactical withdrawal of the outlaws to Grimspound, where they had outwitted the invaders and made them flee.

'I knew it, roared Gwyn. 'Those bastards de Revelle and Pomeroy! Surely they must hang for this.'

De Wolfe shook his head sadly. 'For what? Attempting to clear out a nest of outlaws, as is their right and indeed duty? They could even have claimed the wolf's head bounty had they succeeded.'

'They did succeed in one instance,' said Peter Cuffe sadly. 'Poor old Gunilda died, that's her grave in the yard. We found her body when we crept back after those swine had left.'

There were growls of anger from Gwyn and the men-at-arms, but John kept his mind on the present situation. 'We are hoping for a pardon for you all from the king,' he explained. 'So I need to talk to Sir Nicholas as soon as possible. Where is he now?'

Peter Cuffe explained that after the ruination of Challacombe, they had withdrawn to a temporary camp, in cave shelters that were just about habitable. A few days later, they had moved again to slightly less miserable quarters in old huts belonging to an abandoned tin-streaming works above Chagford.

As the winter's day was rapidly advancing, they set off at once, Cuffe sitting up behind Gwyn. He had no horse, and the back of the Cornishman's big mare was the broadest of the group's steeds. The ginger lad guided their path, which meandered between the bare downs and valleys, going ever northward without ever meeting any habitation. Even though de Wolfe reassured Cuffe that he was no longer in any danger of being beheaded, two years as a fugitive were too deeply ingrained in the lad's soul for him to take any chances.

The early dusk was falling as they reached a small valley, little more than a deep gouge cut into the moor by a fast-running stream. They were near the eastern edge of the high moor, and in the far distance a few glimmers of light showed where a hamlet or farm nestled in the greener, more fertile land down below.

Directed by Cuffe, the riders went carefully down into the small gorge, their horses slithering on the mud and stones of the bank until they reached the stream, which babbled and gurgled between boulders on its rapid journey to join the Teign a few miles away. The ginger youth gave a piercing whistle, and an answering whistle came from a few hundred yards further down. In the gathering gloom, John saw the rotting remnants of wooden sluices and troughs where tin-washing had once been carried on. Underfoot, serried piles of gravel lay in a herringbone fashion, where the river bank had been dug out in the search for ore and the useless railings had been discarded.

The whistling had come from a pair of low huts, built as usual of dark moorstones piled on top of each other, roofed with branches and turf. Originally shelters for the miners and places to store their tools, the huts were now the refuge of the outlaw band, an even more primitive lodging than the old village at Challacombe.

As de Wolfe's party approached, men hurried out of the holes that formed the doorways and stood awaiting them in anxious anticipation. Foremost was Nicholas de Arundell, unshaven and dishevelled, as were all of his men.

'Thank God it's you, Sir John,' he said fervently, clasping the coroner's hands. 'What news have you for us?'

'Good, certainly hopeful, Nicholas,' replied the coroner, shivering as he slid from his horse's back. 'Your accommodation here looks less luxurious than that when we last met, but I would be glad of some shelter while we talk.'

The outlaw chief hustled them to the doorway of the nearest hut, but Gabriel said he would go with his two men to the other shanty, a few yards away. The dozen or so residents clustered around, and some took the visitors horses to join their own, which were tethered further down the stream. With much shouting about hot potage and ale, the two groups parted, and de Wolfe and Gwyn squeezed into the main hut, which was barely high enough to allow them to stand upright. Nicholas waved a hand expressively at the heaps of bracken that lined the walls, inviting them to sit down in a circle around a small ring of stones in the centre, which confined a smoky fire of logs hacked from the stunted trees in the valley.

'Thank God we are old Crusaders, Sir John. These are poor quarters even for us, but I know you will understand that we have little option, as those bastards once again deprived me of my home, simple though the last one was.'

As they squatted on the beds, Philip Girard, Martin Wimund, Robert Hereward and a couple of other men pushed into the hut and shuffled into places opposite, eager to hear any news. Peter Cuffe found a pitcher of cider in a corner and passed around some pottery mugs. 'The stew is being heated in the other place, there's a better fire there than this one,' he explained sheepishly.

'You'll not need to suffer this much longer,' began John, reassuringly. 'From this moment, the Chief Justiciar says that you are no longer outlawed and may return to your homes without fear.'

There was a babble of joyful astonishment and the coroner heard a similar uproar from the other hut, where on John's instructions, Gabriel had passed on the same message. For a few moments, he could hardly speak for a barrage of questions from the men, until Nicholas yelled for quiet.

'We beseech you, Crowner, tell us everything. We have waited so long for this.'

There was silence as John carefully related his visit to Hubert Walter and the promises that the Justiciar had made to them.

'This is virtually as good as the word of King Richard himself,' he concluded. 'But until the royal justices, in the shape of Walter de Ralegh, make a full investigation and pronounce on the matter, we must all tread carefully.'

This sobered the excited men a little, and Nicholas asked what exactly de Wolfe meant by this.

'There is no doubt that the stigma of outlawry has been lifted from you all, as there will be no going back on the word of the king's chief minister. But as to Hempston Arundell, we have to wait for Waher's verdict, though knowing him as I do, I doubt there will be any lack of sympathy for you.'

'So what does that mean as far as we are concerned?' asked Robert Hereward.

'I need Sir Nicholas back in Exeter straightaway, as he must appear before the sheriff, who may wish formally to remove this curse of being an outlaw — and as soon as de Ralegh arrives next week, he will want to see Sir Nicholas.'

'And the rest of us?' demanded Martin Wimund.

'As I said, you are entitled to leave this place as free men. The problem is that Henry de la Pomeroy and Richard de Revelle still occupy the manor they stole from you and will not take kindly to your turning up there before official decisions have been made.'

'So where can we go?' pleaded Philip Girard. 'Most of our band came from Hempston. Our homes are there, and our families.'

John looked across at Gwyn, now dimly visible in the twilight of the unlit hovel. 'No doubt you will all be required as witnesses when Walter de Ralegh begins his enquiry next week, so I do not see any objection to you being housed in Rougemont for that short period. Do you think that is possible, Gwyn?'

His officer bobbed his head over a pot of cider. 'The garrison is small these days, so there's plenty of room.

I'll ask Gabriel, and if he thinks it's practicable, we must get permission from Ralph Morin, the castle constable.' De Wolfe turned back to Nicholas, who looked haunted, as if he feared this was a dream or a cruel joke, and that he would soon wake to find that he was still an outlaw.

'I suggest that you return with us to Exeter in the morning', John said. 'No doubt that kind cousin of your wife will accommodate you in her house. The men must, I'm afraid, stay here for a day or so until we send for them to come down to Rougemont. It would be too risky for them to return to Hempston until the threat of Westminster is held over those bastards down there.' He suggested that Nicholas go over to the other hut and explain the position to the other half of the band, while he was away, Martin Wimund, the former reeve of Hempston, told John of the attack on Challacombe and the routing of Pomeroy's force up at Grimspound.

'They killed poor Gunilda, a defenceless woman,' growled Girard. 'We found her body, and buried it, when we went back to look at the wreckage of our homes after they fired them.'

'She may have fallen and cracked her skull,' said Hereward. 'But there were bruises on her, and however she came to die, those swine were responsible.' Nicholas came stooping back into the shed and posed another question: 'We defeated twice our number up at Grimspound,' he said. 'Our archers saved us, but killed two of their men in the battle. Will we be indicted for murder over that?'

John de Wolfe, sticking scrupulously to the law as he saw it, scratched his stubble as he deliberated on this.

'An inquest must be held eventually and I am the coroner for the south of the county. I will hear the evidence, but this was virtually an act of war. You were attacked without provocation by a much larger force, whose members undoubtedly wished to kill you all, so you had no option but to act in self-defence by whatever means you could. That sounds like a good reason to call the deaths justifiable homicide. But we must put the matter to an inquest jury when the time comes.'

The more formal part of the discussion over, the men fell to animated talk about the future and the prospect of seeing their families once again. They trooped out into the open and mixed with their fellows from the other hut. A few who were not from Hempston, but who had drifted into the outlaw band later, wondered what was to become of them, but Nicholas promised that they would be welcome in his manor when it was restored to him. 'We have stuck together in good times and mostly bad, so I'll not see you thrown out to fend for yourselves, good men that you are.'

It was almost dark, but the excited men felt in no mood to sleep, so another hour or more passed before they divided themselves between the two huts and curled up on their crude beds, wrapped in every garment they possessed, but still half-freezing in spite of the glowing wood on the central firepits.