Crowner’s Quest

Chapter Six In which Crowner John lurks behind a hedge

When there was no war, revolt or insurrection in England, the nobility had to find other ways to pass the time and release their aggression. The usual surrogate for armed conflict was hunting, where the urge to kill and maim was transferred from fellow men to animals. In Devon, the wolf, the wild boar, the fox and, above all, the stag were the victims of this pastime, which in the case of some Normans was almost a full-time occupation. The forests were sacrosanct, either to the lord of the honour or to the King, who reserved to himself vast areas for hunting. It might be a capital offence for any commoner to poach on these lands and a complex system existed to protect the hunting by means of verderers and even special courts for the punishment of offenders.

But on the day before the eve of New Year, the hunting on the lower reaches of the River Dart was untroubled by poachers: a score of the local aristocracy were scouring the heavily wooded valley in pursuit of their sport. The event had been organised by Henri de Nonant, the lord of Totnes, who had invited many of his friends and neighbours to hunt on his lands, as well as in the forest owned by Bernard Cheever and on the estates of other manorial lords whose domains were continuous with theirs.

De Nonant had started the day with a lavish breakfast for all the hunters in Totnes Castle. A remarkable fortress, it had been built by Juhael soon after the Conquest; hundreds of men had toiled to raise a high mound, on which he built a circular stockade. At one side was a large bailey, itself protected by a deep ditch, the whole edifice looking down on and dominating the little walled town that stretched down to the Dart. To his surprise, as he was not the most sociable of men, Sir William Fitzhamon was one of those invited, though his son was not. Being as fond of chasing the stag as any other man, he accepted the invitation, which had come at short notice the previous day. It was delivered by word of mouth by de Nonant’s bailiffs, who travelled around the district recruiting the guests.

The hunters assembled soon after dawn, none having to travel more than a dozen miles to reach Totnes. As many of the participants had their own squires, the company amounted to more than thirty men, and after eating and drinking, the already raucous throng set off from the castle bailey into the dense woods that rose on each side of the valley. There was no set route or organisation: the hunters dispersed into the forests and scrubland as they wished, some in small groups, others in pairs or with their squires. All had their own hounds running alongside, darting hither and thither, looking for the scent of deer or boar. Most hunters carried a long-bow and a supply of arrows, though a few relied only on lances.

Within minutes, the yelling and horn-blowing around the castle subsided, though occasionally the gatekeeper could still hear a distant blast or the yelp of a hound up on the hillsides. The weather had improved slightly and the wind was not so keen in the deep vale of the Dart, though there was still frost on the ground to keep the mud at bay.

Deprived of his son, William Fitzhamon had brought with him one of his reeves, a man called Ansgot, renowned for his prowess with the bow. His lord suspected him of being an accomplished poacher, but as long as he did not practise on Fitzhamon’s own land, he was not bothered – if the fellow wanted to risk a hangman’s noose elsewhere, that was his business.

With the Saxon close behind him, Fitzhamon cantered away from the castle with the rest of the crowd, but gradually they all diverged and when well into the trees, the two were alone. Ansgot had with him a pair of large hounds, loping along one each side, but so far they had shown no sign of raising a quarry.

Fitzhamon pushed ahead, along the east bank of the river, then splashed across and started to climb the other side of the valley. Although he knew more than half of the other hunters, who were either acquaintances or neighbours, he deliberately kept away from the distant sounds of the pack, preferring to hunt alone. Soon one of the hounds shot off to the right and, nose to the ground, vanished into the trees.

‘He’s taken a scent, master,’ called Ansgot, and for five minutes or so, they pushed their way through thickening forest to keep the hounds in sight – the other had chased away to join its companion. Then the reeve called again, shouting urgently at his master’s back. Impatiently, Fitzhamon reined in his horse and looked over his shoulder. Ansgot had stopped and was dismounting to feel his horse’s back leg.

Cursing, he trotted back to his servant to see what was wrong.

‘He’s lame. I thought there was something wrong a while back, master.’ The reeve picked up the animal’s hoof and held it between his thighs, the better to examine the lower leg. ‘There’s a cut here, in the fetlock,’ he exclaimed. ‘What bastard would do this to a fine mare?’

His master, anxious to follow the hounds, looked down impatiently from his saddle. ‘Was she sound when you left home?’

‘Yes, sir. This is a fresh wound. It must have been done when we ate at the castle. While you went to the hall, we serving-men were fed in the kitchens. The horses were left tied up in the bailey.’

Fitzhamon sighed in exasperation. ‘Then you’ll have to walk her back to the castle. I’ll see you there when the day’s sport is finished.’ He wheeled his horse around and hurried after the hounds, who were whimpering at the edge of the small clearing, anxious to follow their scent. Cursing, Ansgot began the long trek back, leading his lame mare by a rein.

While the nobles of south Devon were crashing through the forest in search of their quarry, a second meeting was taking place in the Archdeacon’s house in Exeter. Once again, the late-morning meals usually enjoyed by the clergy were being postponed by the need to devise a plan of action.

‘I gave Thomas’s false document to Giles Fulford late last night,’ muttered Eric Langton. ‘He wanted to know where I had obtained it so I told him I found it among de Hane’s papers in the archives.’

‘Did he accept it as genuine, do you think?’ demanded John de Wolfe.

‘I’m sure he did. The greed showed on his face and he was in no frame of mind to question it.’

Thomas allowed himself a congratulatory smirk. He was proud of his forgery, which he had laboured over the previous evening. On a piece of vellum torn from an old hymnal, he had penned long-winded instructions to an imaginary site where the treasure was buried, using old ink he found in a stone bottle in the cathedral library. He had diluted this with dirty water from the yard outside, rapidly dried it over a candle flame, then rubbed and creased it until it looked genuinely old.

‘And you say Fulford will go to Dunsford to make the search tomorrow?’ confirmed the coroner.

The scar-faced vicar nodded gloomily. ‘He will be there at noon, he said. He was riding off somewhere at crack of dawn today, but will be back at Dunsford tomorrow.’

‘And he accepted that you must be there also?’ asked John de Alencon.

The vicar sighed. ‘Yes, sir, to my peril. In fact he gave me back the parchment. He said it was no use to him without me to read it. I am to meet him just outside the village at midday.’

‘Did he say who will be with him?’ demanded the coroner.

‘I tried to discover that, Crowner, but he told me to mind my own business. He’s not a man you can ask twice.’

John turned to his officer. ‘We will get there well before him and conceal ourselves somewhere within sight. Thomas is not needed. He can continue to look for this real document.’

The clerk had mixed feelings about this. A self-admitted coward, he was happy to avoid any violent confrontation, but he would have liked to witness the climax of the affair, preferably from a safe distance.

‘Archdeacon, we may take the two men you mentioned from these houses to add strength to our arms?’ asked de Wolfe.

The ecclesiastical John nodded, though his lean face looked worried. ‘I hope no harm will come to them. As cathedral servants, they do not expect to act as warriors.’

‘Look upon it as them policing the safety of the canons, John. This all stems from the murder of one of your brothers.’

This satisfied de Alencon’s conscience and he looked hard at Eric Langton. ‘If you conduct yourself well in this, it will go in your favour when you are judged by the Bishop. He returns tomorrow night and will have to be informed at once of all these unfortunate happenings during his absence.’ His grey eyes strayed to Roger de Limesi, who tried to look both virtuous and contrite.

‘How long did it take you to ride to Dunsford?’ the coroner snapped at the vicar.

‘My poor nag is broken in the wind and she can move at little more than a walk. But on your steeds you could reach the village in just over an hour – it is but seven miles away.’

The coroner arranged for Gwyn to make sure that the cathedral servants were well mounted and armed, and to meet himself and his officer at the ford beyond the West Gate three hours before noon the following day. Then the meeting broke up, but the Archdeacon took John aside as the rest were leaving. ‘Why are you avoiding the sheriff’s participation in this?’ he asked.

De Wolfe replied, in a low voice so that the others would not overhear, ‘There is something going on that I do not understand yet. This man Fulford – and, I suspect, his master de Braose – keeps appearing in various places, yet de Revelle seems reluctant even to question them. That is partly why I hope to catch at least one of them red-handed tomorrow. Then the sheriff can hardly avoid taking some official notice.’

The two Johns eyed each other steadily and each felt sure their thoughts were similar. ‘Are the old troubles starting up again?’ asked the priest cryptically.

The coroner sighed. ‘I have no proof, but my guts tell me that something is brewing. Let’s just watch and wait, old friend.’

Henri de Nonant’s breakfast, though lavish in quality and especially quantity, did not last the hungry hunters many hours. Chasing around the countryside, even on horseback, was an effective way for large, muscular men to use up energy – and when their quarry was nearby, they would dismount and chase on foot with their long-bows, working up both a sweat and an appetite. By noon, they were making their way back to Totnes, their throats dry from shouting and horn-blowing, their stomachs rumbling with hunger. In dribs and drabs, the score and a half men came back into the castle bailey, a few with deer draped across their squire’s saddle-bows and one or two with dead foxes. The sport had not been too good – most of the animals of the upper Dart valley had had the sense to keep out of range of the hunters and their hounds.

Once again, the lord of this honour had laid on plenty of food and drink, and soon the hall was resounding with noisy chatter, coarse laughter and the sounds of eating, drinking and belching. De Nonant was acting the perfect host, going from group to group, slapping backs, making jokes and listening to the interminable exaggerations of the hunters about the one that got away.

But outside, one man was not so cheerful and became more worried as time went by. Those who were not landowners or their squires were fed in the kitchens, a dozen or so men, usually far better hunters than their masters. Among them was Ansgot, whose eyes kept turning to the gateway in the bailey as he waited for his master to return. He began to question the others as to whether they had seen Sir William Fitzhamon after he himself had had to return with his lame mare. He was met with shaken heads and blank expressions – some of them wouldn’t have recognised Fitzhamon. Eventually, Ansgot left his food and climbed the wooden stairs to the entrance to the hall. He put his head in at the door and looked for de Nonant’s steward. After a while he managed to attract his attention – the older man was supervising the servants taking food, ale and wine around to the hunters.

‘Is my master here, Sir William Fitzhamon?’ He wondered if, in some unlikely way, he had arrived unseen.

The steward shook his head. ‘Not in here, brother. I haven’t seen him since breakfast.’

The bailiff became more worried than ever, for although his lord was a stern, unbending man, he was not feared or disliked. He was always fair with his people, both freemen and villeins. His wife, too, was a good woman, who did her best to help the more unfortunate of the villagers, especially sick children. He had no desire to see Fitzhamon lying injured in the forest, perhaps gored by a maddened wild boar. Ansgot went back to the kitchen and spoke to a few men he knew, reeves and falconers from other villages. Two left their pots of ale and cider, and went out with him to look for his master. He borrowed a sound horse and the three men rode quietly away over the drawbridge and down through the town into the woods. The Saxon led the way along the path he had taken that morning, before his horse went lame, then continued on to the river, which was the way Fitzhamon had said he was going. At the other side of the small ford, the three men separated and went off at parallel routes, a few hundred paces apart.

Ansgot was now alone and carried on for the better part of a mile before he heard urgent blasts of a horn to his right, followed by the plaintive baying of hounds. The man on his left came crashing through the undergrowth to respond to the summons and Ansgot joined him. The three were soon together again, and Fitzhamon’s two hounds bounded to the familiar figure of the reeve.

The falconer slung his horn back over his shoulder and slid from his horse to approach something hidden by a clump of withered ferns covered in hoar-frost, with trees on every side.

‘It’s Fitzhamon, Ansgot. And he’s dead.’

Matilda was in a half-way mood, as John described it to Nesta later that evening. She was not raving at him or throwing shoes, as she sometimes did, but was distant and sullen, replying to his attempts at conversation with polite disdain, not using two words where one would curtly suffice. Thankfully, she managed enough speech to tell him that she was going to one of her interminable services at the small church of St Olave, at the top of Fore Street.

They had already eaten their evening meal, boiled belly of pork with cabbage and onions. The supper was a silent, strained affair, but Mary gave de Wolfe a broad wink every time she passed behind Matilda to show that she was sympathising with him. As soon as she had cleared the debris of the bread trenchers and spilt gravy from the scrubbed boards of the table, John retired to the fireside with another quart of cider, whilst his wife marched up to the solar for Lucille to dress her for church. Her maid was a refugee from the Vexin, north of the lower Seine, which Prince John had lost to Philip of France while the Lionheart was imprisoned in Germany.

When mistress and maid had left for St Olave’s, the coroner lost no time in leaving for the Bush, giving Mary a crushing hug and kiss of thanks on the way out.

In the tavern in Idle Lane, business was quieter than it had been on his last visit. His customary bench was empty and, after a few words with a couple of acquaintances on his way across, he sat down and waited for Edwin to bring over a jar of ale. As the old soldier slid it on to the table, he failed to make his usual salutation, but rolled his one good eye towards the back of the room and made a grimace that de Wolfe took as some sort of warning. Puzzled, the coroner took a few mouthfuls and waited for Nesta to appear, but after five minutes there was still no sign of her. He turned around and saw the Welsh woman standing at the door that led to the kitchens. She had been looking across at him, but as soon as their eyes met she turned abruptly and vanished through the door.

Edwin passed him, collecting empty tankards from the tables. ‘You’re in the shite, Cap’n. You want to keep your legs crossed for a bit,’ he muttered conspiratorially.

It dawned on John what had happened. ‘How in hell did she find out?’ he muttered to the old pot-man.

‘A carter from Dawlish came in this morning. He started talking about warhorses and the fool let drop that yesterday he had seen your Bran tied up outside the house of Thorgils the Boatman. Mistress Nesta was not amused!’

Never one to shirk a confrontation, he got up and pushed his way through the stools and benches to the back, followed by knowing glances and nudged ribs among the patrons, most of whom seemed to know exactly what was the problem.

He bent his head to go out into the cold darkness of the yard behind the inn. As well as the usual stables, privy and wash-house, there were two kitchen huts, each throwing out red light from their cooking fires. Silhouetted in the doorway of one was the trim form of Nesta, standing motionless. He strode over and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her into the gloom of the yard.

She jerked away, but let his hands remain on her, leaning back to stare up at him in the flickering light. ‘You bastard!’ she said. The light was just sufficient for him to see the glint of a tear in each eye.

He sighed and pulled her against his chest. Again she resisted, but the strength of his arms was overpowering and she suddenly relaxed against him. ‘I’m sorry, John. I can’t help it.’

He rocked her from side to side, ignoring the serving-girls, who were peeping from inside the kitchen door. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry, love,’ he said contritely, ‘but you know what I’m like, you’ve known it from the start.’

The redhead sniffed, rubbing her face against his tunic. ‘I get jealous, now and then. It’s stupid, I’ve got no claim on you, John.’

He bent to kiss the top of the linen cap that covered her auburn curls. ‘You are the one I love best, Nesta,’ he said in Welsh. ‘The one I always come to, my best friend as well as lover.’ She slipped her arms around him in the darkness, but said nothing. ‘The others are just a passing dalliance, Nesta. A rare adventure that I can never resist when the chance arises. I admit, Hilda is a girl from my youth, I like her very much but she knows I’m a leaf in the wind that passes her door now and then and blows away as quickly. It’s not like that with you.’

She raised her face and managed a smile. ‘You’re a lecherous old ram, Black John.’ She used the name by which he was known on campaigns and the battlefield, told her by Edwin, who was proud of de Wolfe’s military reputation. She moved away and took him by the hand, drawing him back to the lighted door of the inn. ‘You’re a disgrace, John, but I’ll have to put up with you, I suppose. I’m going to see the blacksmith tomorrow, to see if he can forge me a chastity-belt for you!’

‘He’ll need to stock up on iron, then, to make one to fit me, woman!’

Now all smiles, they went hand in hand into the taproom and, for a moment, John feared that the assembled patrons, who had been watching the back door, would break into a round of applause. After another quart of best ale, and some beef and bread taken before the fire, the reconciled pair climbed the wide ladder in the corner to the upper floor, where they spent a hour in Nesta’s bed, partitioned off from the common lodgings where pallets or bundles of straw accommodated the guests of the Bush Inn.

At around midnight, Devon’s coroner crept up to the solar in his house in Martin’s Lane to slip under the blankets and furs at one edge of their bed and listen to the snores of Matilda on the other.

The next morning, the ambush party set out from Exeter. Eric Langton went out of the city at the same time but, as he had claimed, his slow nag would get to Dunsford well after the others. De Wolfe wanted to be in place before Giles Fulford arrived, to get the best vantage-point to see what he did.

Dunsford was almost directly west of Exeter, on the road to the stannary town of Chagford, where tin-mining was carried on right under the edge of Dartmoor. Dunsford was in fertile farming land, which climbed up and down small steep valleys, with woodland and forest breaking it up into many separate manors and villages. The coroner’s party consisted of Gwyn and the two servants from Canons’ Row, the stocky young groom David and another powerful Saxon called Wichin. Decent horses had been allotted to them by John de Alencon from among the pick of the stables in the Close, and Gwyn had seen to it that they were armed with thick staves and daggers. The only swords were with John and his officer, clanking at the sides of their saddles. The coroner wore a round metal helmet with a nose-guard over an aventail of chain-mail that tucked under the collar of the thick leather cuirass that he wore under his cloak, but he had no other body armour, feeling that a full mail hauberk was too much for the arrest of a couple of adventurers.

The day was crisp and cold, but the wind had dropped and thin clouds scudded high in a pale blue sky as they trotted along. As the vicar had estimated, they came within sight of Dunsford in about an hour and a half. The church was just below the crest of a ridge above the valley and was visible from a distance. Gwyn wondered how they were to avoid becoming a public spectacle and maybe frightening off their quarry. The same problem had occurred to de Wolfe and he reined in at the side of the track before they reached the village. ‘We’ll split up here, not to be so noticeable,’ he said. Privately, he was not confident that this would help: most hamlets were so isolated and self-contained that the appearance of a solitary stranger, let alone four, would rapidly become a matter of considerable curiosity to the inhabitants.

The two servants, closer to village life than the coroner, had a suggestion. ‘We can say we’re miners on our way to Chagford,’ said Wichin. ‘We could stop for some ale and a piece of bread – there’s surely some old dame who sells suchlike here. That could pass the time until they come without causing too much suspicion.’

‘What about us?’ asked Gwyn of his master.

‘We can either ride into the woods and wait outside the village for a time or maybe seize the bull by the horns and go into the church, pretending to be officials.’

‘We are officials!’ pointed out his henchman. ‘But maybe we should have brought that little runt Thomas. He’s good at worming his way in with parsons.’

De Wolfe decided on the bolder course and sent the two servants ahead to carry out their tin-miner impersonation. He and Gwyn stayed out of sight in the trees for another half-hour, then walked their horses slowly into the village, which straggled along the upper slope of the ridge above a valley. The church had a simple nave and squat tower of old wood and evidently had not changed since the days of Saewulf. The usual tithe barn sat on an adjacent plot, the customary symbol of the people’s beholdenment to the power of the Church as well as to their manorial lord.

As the ground was frozen, there was little work going on in the field strips that ran up and down from the road, but in the distance, the coroner could see men clearing ditches and repairing the fences that kept livestock off the arable land. On the crest of the ridge opposite, smoke was drifting from the inevitable forest clearance. As in Loventor, the manor was cutting new assarts to increase the farmland at the expense of trees.

They dismounted at the church and tied their horses to fencing alongside the gate into the churchyard. There were a few inquisitive inhabitants about and several women with children were watching them as if they were visitors from the moon, but no one approached. The presence of two heavily armed men in the village, one wearing a Norman helmet, was not good news in any hamlet and it was best to keep clear.

Gwyn was uneasy. ‘We can’t leave the steeds here. This Fulford will smell a rat at seeing a pair of war-horses in the very place he’s come to rob.’

De Wolfe chewed his lip. His officer was right, as usual. ‘Thomas drew those fanciful directions to the treasure so that the search will be made in that copse above the church, between it and the open pasture beyond,’ he said, pointing to some trees a hundred paces away from the church tower. ‘If we bring the horses into the churchyard and shelter them behind the chancel, they will be well out of view.’

The villagers were rewarded with the unusual sight of a pair of large horses being walked though the gate and up the steep slope from the road, around to the back of the church, where Gwyn tied them on long head-ropes to a low branch of an ash tree, where they could crop the grass.

Then the coroner and his helper went into the church to keep out of the way. It was a bare hall, with a beaten earth floor. There was no seating in the nave, only a pair of benches at the further end, at right angles to the altar. This was a plain table covered with a linen cloth, carrying a large tin cross flanked by a pair of candlesticks.

‘Seems a poor sort of place,’ muttered Gwyn, as he sat himself on a window-ledge near the door. ‘They can never have recovered after this fellow Saewulf hid all their wealth a century ago.’

De Wolfe wandered restlessly about, looking at the church’s lay-out. There were two window openings on either side of the nave, closed by shutters in the usual absence of glass. In the small square room at the base of the tower, which seemed to be used to hang the modest vestments of the parish priest, there was a single slit window at head height, which John found ideal for keeping a watch on the copse where the fictitious treasure was buried.

Gwyn pushed open a shutter on the nearest window and peered through the crack down on to the lane through the village. ‘Those two fellows from the cathedral are better placed than us,’ he complained enviously. ‘They are sitting outside a hut opposite, with a pot of ale and a hunk of bread each.’

An hour went by, and the four men still waited. John prayed that Fulford had not had second thoughts about risking another search in broad daylight. The only diversion was the appearance of the parish priest, who must have been warned by a villager that strange men had invaded his church. He was a short, elderly man, who approached with some trepidation and hesitantly asked their business.

The coroner thought that at least part of the truth was the best policy, rather than fiction. He explained that they were waiting to arrest some miscreants who were looking for valuables that might belong to the diocese of Devon and Cornwall. The presence of agents of the Bishop, as he described the two men opposite, was more than enough to satisfy the priest.

‘I suppose this explains those men who came the other day and began digging in the hedge behind my church,’ he said, with some relief. ‘When I challenged them, they offered to break my head if I didn’t go away. I watched them from a distance as they dug several large holes, but I failed to see if they found anything.’ He seemed glad to take the coroner’s advice to scuttle off home before any violence began.

‘I hope these swine do come after all this,’ grunted Gwyn, hunching himself into his jacket in the dank air of the old building. ‘I would far rather be in the Bush or the Saracen with a quart of cider than sitting in this damp bloody church!’

As if in answer to his prayer, Wichin, one of the men sitting opposite, suddenly motioned to Gwyn with his hand and pointed up the road. Then, with his companion, he vanished into the hut to keep out of sight.

‘Someone’s coming. Let’s see who,’ said the Cornishman, in satisfied anticipation of a fight.

The coroner came to join him at the window crack and they watched as four horsemen trotted past the church then turned off the track to go up towards the copse.

‘Eric the vicar was the second man,’ muttered Gwyn, ‘and the third was Giles Fulford – I recognise him from the Saracen.’

De Wolfe hurried back to his slit in the tower and peered out. ‘And the first is a fellow with curly red hair. We’ve got our Jocelin de Braose at last!’

His eyes followed a burly young man dressed in a red cloak and, on his head, a green capuchon, a length of cloth wound like a high turban, the free end hanging down stylishly over one shoulder. From beneath it curly russet hair showed, much the colour of Nesta’s. A fringe of beard the same colour ran around the edge of his jawline, joined by a wispy red moustache. The four men had pushed into the stand of trees, around which was a confusion of scrub, but the bare branches allowed them to see some movement inside the copse.

‘Let’s get nearer to see what they’re doing,’ commanded the coroner. They let themselves out of the church and Gwyn waved to the two men lurking in the doorway opposite to join them.

There was a thick hedge of rank brambles and small ash trees between the churchyard and the copse, which easily concealed John and his companions as they stealthily crossed the frosty grass from the church. They moved towards the further corner, where there seemed to be a gap in the hedge, and peered cautiously between the dead blackberry fronds.

In the distance, they could see figures moving intermittently between the trees and bushes. Scraps of speech came across on the cold, still air. They could not distinguish the words, but de Wolfe recognised the higher pitch of the vicar’s voice. Then came the swish of a sickle as brush and undergrowth were slashed. The coroner bent further to put his mouth nearer Gwyn’s ear. ‘We’ll wait until they start digging. That’s better evidence that they are actually searching for treasure trove.’

A few moments later, he was rewarded by the sounds of a heavy hoe and a shovel. Whenever the iron blades struck a stone, there was a sharp crack, and once a muffled curse suggested that one of the diggers had hit his own foot.

Gwyn was impatient to get into action, but de Wolfe laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘There’s plenty of time, they’re not going to give up now. And who is the third man, I wonder?’ he murmured.

‘Some peasant or outlaw to do the hard work, I suspect,’ grunted his officer. ‘Digging would be below the dignity of a knight.’ From the sounds, thought John, there were two men at work, so presumably the other was Fulford, the squire, as the weedy vicar would be of little use. If two were busy with spade and hoe, then they could not instantly use their weapons when it came to a fight. He decided to satisfy Gwyn’s eagerness for action. Slowly sliding his sword from its sheath, inching it out to avoid making a tell-tale noise, he jerked his head towards the gap in the bushes and led the way at a crouch. The hole in the hedge was not complete, but the undergrowth was much lower and they could step across the crisp dead brambles. The continuous clash of iron on earth and stones covered any faint crackling made by their feet and soon they were creeping forward over grass and weeds between the trees.

De Wolfe motioned Gwyn to go to the left with Wichin, while he and David circled the other way, to come on the diggers from both directions.

As he got within twenty paces of the bushes beyond which they were excavating, a face was suddenly raised and a pair of eyes met his. It was Eric Langton and, for a tense moment, John was afraid that the fool might cry out in surprise. He raised a finger to his lips, then motioned with his hand for the vicar to move away from the others.

A voice from behind the thicket said, ‘Where the hell d’you think you’re going, priest?’

‘To have a piddle, that’s all,’ came the vicar’s tremulous reply.

‘Well, have it here, we’re not particular. And check that damned parchment of yours. There’s no sign of anything yet and we’re down well over two feet.’

As de Wolfe crept even nearer, the sound of digging started again, and a moment later, there was a loud clang and another curse.

‘There’s a bloody great stone down here. Give me a hand to heave it out, will you?’

The coroner heard the tools being dropped as the men struggled with a boulder set in the red earth. It seemed the ideal moment to surprise them, so John stood erect, gave a great yell for Gwyn and crashed round the bush that separated them from the diggers.

He had a momentary impression of the four men frozen in utter surprise, two of them knee-deep in a hole in the ground, then confusion erupted. The first to react was the red-haired man standing on the other side of the hole, who pulled out his sword and, holding it two-handed, advanced on de Wolfe with a roar of defiance.

The coroner picked de Braose as the main adversary and, in a second, their steel blades had clashed with arm-tingling impact. But before de Wolfe could pull back for another strike he felt a numbing blow on his left leg, which threw him off balance. One of the men in the hole, probably Fulford, had seized his discarded shovel and swung it almost at ground level to strike the coroner on the shin, giving him the chance to scramble out of the hole and join the fight.

De Wolfe came within an ace then of being killed, as the auburn-haired leader poised himself for a chopping swing with his broadsword, but David, the groom, swung his thick stave in the path of the blade. The stout wood was splintered by the blow, but it turned the swing away from de Wolfe, who had fallen sideways, supporting himself with one hand on the ground.

Gwyn and his cathedral companion Wichin had been delayed a few seconds by a thicker wall of undergrowth on their side, forcing them to run a few yards to the left to get through. Now, with ferocious yells, the wild Cornishman crashed across to the mêlée, his first thought being for the safety of his master, whom he saw almost on the ground under the menacing blade of de Braose. But the latter had been diverted by the intervention of David and his staff and, in anger, Jocelin turned his blade on the groom. He swung his great sword again, but fortunately for David the flat of the blade, rather than the edge, caught him on the side of the head. He fell as if poleaxed and took no further part in the fight.

As Fulford scrambled out of the hole, John recovered sufficiently to face de Braose again, but he found that both knight and squire were now coming against him, as the other digger, far from being a menial labourer, showed himself an experienced combatant. Ignoring his discarded hoe, he seized a long spear lying on the grass and, almost before his feet were out of the excavation, lunged forward with it at Gwyn. Though the officer had his sword at the ready, its reach was far less than that of the spear and the hairy giant had to hop back and chop sideways at the shaft to avoid being skewered. Eric Langton had taken to his heels and was out of sight of the yelling, thrashing group of men, but the battle was not to last long.

As Fulford and de Braose advanced on de Wolfe, Gwyn backed around to try to stand by him, dodging repeated short jabs from the unknown man’s spear. The coroner was now facing a sword and a long-handled spade, waving his own sword slowly from side to side.

For a few seconds, there seemed to be a stand-off, until the canon’s man Wichin, who had been obscured behind Gwyn, gave a great yell, swung his stave over his head and brought it down on the shaft of the spear. He forced it to the ground, but before he could lift his stave again, the spearman had pulled back his weapon and jabbed it into Wichin’s shoulder. The leaf-shaped point dug deeply into the muscle, and blood welled immediately through the leather jacket. Wichin screamed, dropped his staff and, as the lance was pulled out, fell to his knees with the pain and shock.

But the intervention had given Gwyn his opportunity. He reversed his move towards the coroner and, raising his great sword, swung it in a whistling horizontal arc at the spearman. The blade connected with the side of his neck and the man collapsed in a welter of blood and agonal convulsions.

With hardly a glance at the man whose life he had just taken, Gwyn leaped back to John’s side. Within two minutes of the fight beginning, three of the combatants had been eliminated and now it was two against two, all seasoned warriors. However, the coroner and his officer had twice the number of years’ experience on the battlefield than the younger men, and Fulford was armed only with a shovel – his sword lay sheathed on the ground where he had left it to go digging.

‘Give in, both of you,’ yelled de Wolfe. ‘We don’t want to kill you!’

For answer, Jocelin de Braose, his capuchon unwound and fallen down his back, swung his sword back and forth to form a zone of protection in front of him and tried to move forward towards the coroner. That old campaigner dropped his own massive blade at an angle, holding the hilt above waist-level, then suddenly moved it forward into the path of de Braose’s weapon. There was a clang as metal hit metal and when de Wolfe jerked his hands forward again, the other blade was deflected towards the ground. But the younger man leaped backwards and freed his sword before John could make a swing at him.

As this duel was going on, Giles Fulford was attempting to use the longer reach of the shovel to hit Gwyn on his sword arm. One blow landed, but the coroner’s officer merely grunted and waited his opportunity. As the tool swung again, he sidestepped and hacked down on the wooden shaft just above the heart-shaped blade. Though it was too thick and hard to be severed, a deep chop mark appeared, which then split several inches up the centre of the handle. With a roar, Gwyn opened himself deliberately to another blow, which landed with a thwack on his leather-covered ribs. As he had anticipated, the split handle gave up the ghost instantly and the shovel-head fell off on to the ground.

‘I’ve got the bastard!’ he yelled, and dived on Fulford, knowing that the coroner would prefer these two alive rather than dead. As Jocelin and de Wolfe entered another cycle of striking and parrying, Gwyn became over-confident of seizing the squire. He tossed his sword behind him to grab Fulford in a bear-hug. But Giles still had half the shovel-shaft in his hands. With it he gave Gwyn a bone-shattering crack on the temple, which made the big Cornishman stagger and put his hands to his head in a temporary stupor, though he wasn’t knocked out. Fulford put a hand to the back of his belt and whipped out an eight-inch dagger. The flash of the blade caught de Wolfe’s eye. In desperation he brought down his sword with a sledge-hammer of a blow that skidded down de Braose’s weapon and struck the hilt-guard with such force that it was twisted out of his hand. Before the sword had even hit the ground, John made another swing at Fulford, trying to strike his knife arm. He missed as the man jumped aside, but by then Gwyn, though groggy, had recovered enough to grab his attacker’s arms and the pair began to wrestle with the dagger waving dangerously a few inches from Gwyn’s ribs. De Wolfe was trying to watch both adversaries, afraid that Fulford would manage to stab his officer and that de Braose would retrieve his sword and return to the attack while the coroner’s attention was divided.

But the reflexes of an old soldier and a good share of luck saved the day. De Wolfe jumped towards Fulford and jabbed the tip of his sword forward. At the same time he felt an impact on the sole of his foot. He had trodden on the cross-piece of de Braose’s sword as he pricked Fulford’s upper arm. The big two-handed swords were designed for slashing, not fencing, and the tip was broad and rather blunt, but it penetrated the thick leather of Fulford’s jerkin and made him yell.

All this took no more than a few seconds, but when de Wolfe sensed de Braose trying to pull his sword from under his foot, he swung out with his other leg and caught the man under the chin. De Braose staggered back, gurgling, and the coroner stooped to grab the lost weapon and hurl it away into the nearest bramble thicket.

In spite of the bleeding flesh-wound in his arm, Fulford still grasped the knife and, though Gwyn was holding him by the arms, the crack the officer had received on his head had halved his fighting abilities, especially as blood was pouring down from a cut over his right eye, almost blinding him.

Afraid that Fulford might still slide the dagger between Gwyn’s ribs, John grabbed him from behind and put an arm-lock across his throat, doing all he could to crush his Adam’s apple. He was only too well aware that his back was to de Braose who, like every man, carried a lethal dagger on his belt. He screwed his neck around to look out for the danger but, to his surprise, Jocelin had vanished.

Afraid to release Fulford until Gwyn had recovered, he had no means of pursuing the leader and the trio staggered back and forth in stale-mate for another half-minute, with Fulford beginning to go blue in the face from de Wolfe’s grip on his throat. Gwyn resolved the situation by recovering enough wit to bring up his massive knee into Fulford’s crotch with a blow that almost crushed his genitals. Unable to scream because of the arm-lock, Fulford’s eyes bulged and he went limp. Afraid of some trick, John hung on for a little longer, but almost simultaneously he and Gwyn released their hold and stepped back. Fulford fell in a heap on the ground, gasping and groaning.

De Wolfe picked up the dagger, then turned to Gwyn, who subsided slowly to sit alongside Fulford, wiping the blood from his face with his fingers and holding his head with the other hand.

‘Are you all right, man?’ said the coroner, who had been in tighter scrapes than this one with his officer, but who was still concerned for his head injury.

Gwyn shook his head like a dog coming from water. ‘Yes, I wasn’t fated to be killed over a poxy treasure hunt. But that was a fair whack he gave me with that shovel handle.’ He looked around him, blinking the last of the blood from his eyelids. ‘What happened to de Braose?’

The sound of hoofs on the road was enough answer.

‘He thought escape better than heroism, leaving his squire behind,’ said the coroner, ‘though he was good with a sword, I’ll grant him that.’

Gwyn struggled to his feet and looked down at Fulford. ‘This one will live until he’s hanged, but what about the others?’

They looked round at the mayhem in the area of crushed grass. The groom from the Close was now sitting up, holding his head in his hands, a large blue bruise rapidly appearing around his left ear. ‘I’ll be fine in a while,’ he mumbled. ‘But where’s Wichin?’ The other cathedral servant, who had been wounded in the arm, was found lying on his side behind the nearest large bush. He had lost a lot of blood, but when de Wolfe cut away his jacket, he saw that the wound was now full of clot and that the haemorrhage had stopped.

‘I’ll get him taken to the parish priest,’ said a timid voice. Looking round, de Wolfe saw that Eric Langton, who had kept a safe distance during the fighting, had returned. He went off to find the priest and some help to carry Wichin to a nearby house to recover. David said that he would stay with him until the Archdeacon could send out a leech to see him and bring him back to the cathedral infirmary.

‘What do we do with this fellow?’ asked Gwyn, whose iron head had suffered no lasting ill-effects from the blow.

They looked down at Fulford, who was also recovering from the throttling and the scrotal insult. He had small red blotches in the whites of his eyes and his face was still slightly blue and swollen from de Wolfe’s attempts to strangle him. He sat on the ground, one hand over the small cut in his arm, the other over his aching testicles, but his defiance was returning. ‘Who in Satan’s name are you?’ he croaked. ‘And what right have you to attack us? Don’t you know that that was Sir Jocelin de Braose whom you assaulted and drove away?’

De Wolfe’s black and grey figure was hunched above him like a great crow. ‘You ask us that, Fulford? I am Sir John de Wolfe, if we are bandying titles. You obviously don’t know the King’s coroner when you see him – and his officer.’

The man’s confidence seemed to increase as the pain in his groin diminished. ‘Coroner? What is this to do with corpses – except those you seem to produce yourself?’ He pointed across at the bloody body lying on the other side of the hole.

Gwyn prodded him none too gently with his foot. ‘Enough of your lip, man. The crowner will ask the questions.’

De Wolfe motioned to his officer to pull the man to his feet. ‘You are a prisoner now. You will be taken back to Rougemont and lodged in the gaol there.’

‘On what charge? You will regret this, Crowner, you are meddling in matters you don’t understand.’

De Wolfe gave him a buffet on the ear. ‘You impertinent devil! You forget your station in life, young man. A squire to some shiftless mercenary is of little account to me. As for dead bodies, you should know that another part of a coroner’s duties is to safeguard finds of treasure trove, to keep them safe for the King from thieves like you.’

At this Giles Fulford remained silent, and Gwyn frogmarched him to the horses that were tied up some distance away at the edge of the little wood.

David had virtually recovered now from his bang on the head, and helped the coroner’s officer to tie Fulford’s hands to the saddle-horn with a spare thong.

‘What about the corpse? Another outlaw, by the looks of his clothing,’ said Gwyn.

Sullenly, the squire confirmed that the dead man was indeed another anonymous ruffian hired for the occasion, though from the quality of his fighting he must once have been a soldier.

‘Let the village bury him here,’ said de Wolfe. ‘This time, I’ll interpret the rules to accept that an outlaw is also outside the crowner’s law and we’ll do without an inquest.’

‘What about the treasure hoard?’ muttered Fulford. ‘Are you going to leave that half-dug hole there for the village to steal whatever is hidden in it?’

At this, de Wolfe took a perverse delight in holding up the parchment, which Eric Langton had returned to him a few minutes ago. Holding it up before the man tied on the horse, he slowly ripped it in half and then in quarters. ‘Written by my clerk the other night, especially for your benefit. There is no treasure, my lad – at least not in that hole!’

Fuming at the deception, and not a little uneasy at what the immediate future might hold, Fulford was led alongside Gwyn’s mare and the cavalcade set off for Exeter.