Fear in the Forest

CHAPTER SIX

The coroner spent the afternoon examining a corpse discovered in the Shitbrook, a foul stream just outside the city wall which ran from St Sidwell’s down to the river. It was aptly named, for it served as one of Exeter’s main sewers, the effluent that oozed down many of the streets eventually seeping to the little valley that carried the brook. After heavy rain, it tended to cleanse itself, but most of the time it was a stinking channel infested with rats. Often a dead dog or cat lay in its ordure, but today a resident of Magdalene Street, when tipping a barrow-load of goose droppings into the stream, came across the corpse of a man. From the state of him he had been there for some days, and nothing could be learned of the cause of death. Even de Wolfe and his officer, hardened as they were to repulsive sights, found the advanced decay of the body and the putrid waters of the Shitbrook an unattractive combination in this hot weather.

The swollen cadaver was totally unrecognisable, and there was nothing about the nondescript clothing that helped to identify the man. John was in no mood to dally with the problem, and after Gwyn had turned the body over with a stout stick he declared that there no visible wounds, as far as could be seen. After a few local men had been herded together as a jury, the coroner held a five-minute inquest on the spot and declared that the unknown man had died from an act of God. He ordered Osric, one of the burgesses’s constables, to send for the man who drove the night-soil cart to come and remove the body to the shed behind the cathedral that acted as the public dead-house, until a priest could be persuaded to read a few words over a hastily dug grave in the pauper’s corner of the Close.

When they got back to their chamber in the castle, they found Thomas hard at work as usual with quill and ink. After swilling the smell of putrefaction from his throat with some of Gwyn’s cider, the coroner gave his two henchmen their orders for the coming few days.

‘I have decided to go down to Stoke-in-Teignhead in the morning, to visit my family,’ he announced. ‘I’ll be back in Exeter on Sunday, but I want you two to spend those few days trying to discover more about this unrest in the forest.’

His officer and his clerk looked puzzled, Thomas’s concern being mixed with apprehension, as his undoubted intelligence was not matched by his personal courage.

‘You want me to venture into the forest, Crowner?’ he murmured hesitantly.

John grinned at his clerk’s trepidation. ‘Don’t fret yourself, fellow! I’m not asking you to go charging into the woods waving a broadsword — I’m leaving that to Gwyn. No, I want you to do what you’re best at, worming out information from priests.’

He repeated what little he had been told by Thomas’s uncle about someone in Holy Orders who might be involved in a conspiracy.

The clerk was anxious to assist his master, but doubtful about his chances of success.

‘Where am I to start looking, Crowner, with so little information?’

‘These problems seem concentrated around the southern edge of Dartmoor, Thomas. Why not work your wiles on some of the parish priests around there?’

Leaving the little clerk to ponder his instructions, de Wolfe turned to Gwyn, who placidly sat munching bread and swilling cider.

‘Go with Thomas as far as Bovey Tracey or Ashburton — make sure he doesn’t get lost or fall from his pony! Then while he’s wheedling news out of priests, you can tour the alehouses and see what you can pick up. I’m particularly interested in these bands of outlaws. I’m sure they are being used to do some of the dirty work.’

This was a task that suited the Cornishman admirably — sitting in taverns with the blessing of his master was a commission sent from heaven.

‘We’ll ride out soon after dawn tomorrow,’ promised Gwyn. ‘And be back here on Sunday, hopefully with some useful news.’

John walked down to the stables opposite his house and arranged with Andrew the farrier for Odin to be groomed and given extra feed, ready for an early start the following morning. Then he went across the lane to confront Matilda, who was sitting up in the solar half-heartedly playing with some embroidery by the light from the only window, an unglazed shuttered aperture looking out on the back yard. She had been unusually withdrawn since the visit of Lord Ferrars and his friends, chastened by the seemingly endless untrustworthiness of her brother. But her husband had to broach a subject that was guaranteed to stir up her emotions — a visit to his relatives in Stoke-in-Teignhead.

‘You needn’t think I’m coming with you, John,’ she snapped, her pug face creased into a scowl. ‘I’ll not suffer a few hours on the back of a palfrey for the pleasure of enduring a stay in that primitive house with that old Welsh woman and the two yokels you call your brother and sister!’

Her rapid return to her usual rude and abrasive nature caused John to lose any sympathy that might have been lurking over her disillusionment with her brother. Her unreasonable dislike of his family, though nothing new, was no less insulting to him. It was also unfair, for his mother was a sprightly sixty and undeserving of Matilda’s epithet ‘old Welsh woman’. It was true that she had both Welsh and Cornish ancestry, but she had always tried to be pleasant and kind to Matilda, though her efforts had been in vain. As for the spiteful epithet ‘yokel’ flung at his brother and sister, William and Evelyn may not have been sophisticated city dwellers, but they were solid, dependable country folk. And to call their manor house at Stoke ‘primitive’ was nonsense — it had been rebuilt in stone by his father, Simon de Wolfe, when John was a child, and though it may not have boasted flagged floors and a chimney-piece, it was as good as many others in the county — and in his opinion, better than most.

Repressing the urge to say that he had had no intention of asking her to accompany him, he turned on his heel and clumped down the stairs, going out to Mary’s cook-shed in the yard for a pint of ale and some soothing conversation, while his temper cooled. The maid easily diagnosed his irritation and turned the subject elsewhere.

‘How is Nesta? Is her child-carrying causing her any problems?’

John had confided in Mary soon after he learned that Nesta was pregnant, only narrowly beating the efficient grapevine that spread the news all over the city.

‘She has no problems with her body,’ he grunted. ‘But she is loath to let me acknowledge the child. I can’t understand her attitude. I would have thought she would be glad to have me stand by her.’

Mary had her own ideas on the matter, but prudently kept them to herself.

‘There’ll be several kinds of hell let loose, when she finds out,’ she observed, raising her eyes to the solar window at the top of the stairs.

De Wolfe nodded glumly as he drained his quart pot. ‘I know, but I’ve weathered worse before,’ he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Rising, he gave Mary a quick affectionate kiss on the top of her glossy brown hair as she bent over a fowl she was gutting for their supper.

‘I’ll have a quick stroll down to the Bush now, to see how she is. Last night she’d not speak to me — she locked herself in her room to cry.’

He spoke with the wounded bewilderment of a man to whom the moods of women were a total mystery, and Mary gave a secret sigh at the naivety of a man who in all other things was so forceful and dominant. Whistling for Brutus, who was lurking under Mary’s table hoping for scraps of offal, he marched away, leaving his maid shaking her head at what was to become of them all.

In the morning, though John left the city at about the same early hour as his assistants, they did not meet, as he went out through the South Gate and they left by the West, crossing the river to reach the main high road that went towards Plymouth.

The coroner’s route lay down the other side of the river as far as the port of Topsham, where he led Odin on to the flimsy skiff of the rope-ferry for the short crossing to other bank. In the fine air of early morning, he trotted across the flat, marshy ground of the estuary towards the line of hills that stretched down to the coast. With his sword hanging from his saddle, he had little fear of ambush, even though he rode alone. This well-used coast track was rarely plagued by outlaws, and the sight of the tall, hawkish figure in black on a heavy warhorse was not a tempting prospect for any casual robber.

Little over an hour after leaving the ferry, he found himself approaching the village of Dawlish, on its small creek leading up from the beach. Slowing Odin to a walk, he carefully scanned the few boats pulled up on the muddy bank of the tidal stream. With some disappointment, he saw that one was the larger seagoing vessel that often carried some of the wool sold to Brittany by Hugh de Relaga and himself. It belonged to Thorgils the Boatman, the elderly husband of the beautiful Hilda, who had been John’s adolescent sweetheart and occasional mistress ever since. His vessel had been damaged in a storm some time ago, and even now he could see that men were still working on it, replacing ribs and planks along both sides of the hull. Regretfully, he touched his stallion with a spur and moved on — even if Hilda had been available, his sense of loyalty to Nesta in her present condition was too great to allow him to dally in Dawlish, though his recent enforced celibacy, which seemed likely to continue for many months, gave him an uncomfortable ache in his loins. He wondered briefly whether he could last out that long, then chided himself for his selfish lack of honour.

The rest of the journey was pleasant and uneventful, as he gave Odin his head and cantered along the cliff-top track towards Teignmouth.

The sky was deep blue and the heat of the day increased as the morning wore on. The weeks of hot weather were giving manor-reeves and bailiffs concern about a drought, but far out on the western horizon he could see a line of clouds massing, suggesting that another day would see a change. When he reached the Teign, the river was very low and, with the tide out, he could wade his horse across the ford just above the beach, barely wetting his stirrups.

The de Wolfe family had two manors, the main one at Stoke and the other at Holcombe, just off the track between Dawlish and Teignmouth. In fact, the delectable Hilda was the daughter of their bailiff at Holcombe. He often called in passing, both to see her father and to look over the manor, but today he felt a need to see his family without distractions.

His brother William, a few years older and of a quite different temperament, ran their two manors with quiet efficiency. Their father had died fighting in Ireland for old King Henry fifteen years earlier and had left his estate to his eldest son, on condition that he supported his mother and sister and gave a quarter share of the income from the estate to John. This, together with the spoils of war from years of campaigning and the income from his wool partnership, kept John in comfortable security. He got on well with brother William, who, though he looked a lot like John, was of a much milder disposition, concerned only with farming and managing the estate, rather than fighting in foreign lands.

These thoughts usually recurred to John as he was completing the last few miles to Stoke-in-Teignhead, which was in a small valley in the forests on the other side of the river. He came into the vale with his usual feelings of nostalgia, for it was here that he was born and where he spent his childhood and youth. The strip-fields were immaculate and the dwellings of the villeins and free men better built and maintained than in most villages. As he walked Odin down the track towards the manor house, he was met with salutes and beaming smiles from many who had known him all his life. It was a happy place, and he already felt better for the tranquillity that palpably pervaded the whole manor.

His father’s house was a square stone edifice behind a palisade of stakes. News of his coming had already been taken inside by an excited urchin running on ahead, and his mother and sister were on the steps of the main entrance to welcome him. A cluster of servants appeared from the cook-house and stables and a groom hurried out to take Odin’s bridle as he slid off and bent to kiss his womenfolk. His mother Enyd, a pretty woman still with only a few streaks of grey in her red hair, stood on tiptoe to hug him around the neck, her eyes sparkling with delight at the unexpected arrival of her second son.

‘William is off towards the river, where they are cutting assarts. He thinks no one can do anything properly unless he is there to supervise!’

John turned to embrace his sister, more of an armful than his mother. Evelyn was still a spinster, having once wanted to become a nun. She was in her early thirties, a plump, homely girl now satisfied to stay companion to her widowed mother.

The ground floor was occupied by the hall, the solar and several other chambers being upstairs. It was into the hall that John was ushered now, where smiling servants fussed around with food and drink as his mother and Evelyn sat opposite him at a table to make sure that he ate enough after his journey to feed a horse. They pressed him for news, wanting to know all the gossip of the big city, his sister asking unanswerable questions about fashions and the current length of toes on stylish shoes.

‘And is that insufferable wife of yours as rude as ever?’ asked his mother bluntly. After years of vainly trying to be pleasant to Matilda, she had given up the attempt and now was quite open about her regret at her late husband’s insistence on John marrying into the de Revelle family.

‘And what about that nice Welsh girl, Nesta?’ asked Evelyn. The fact that he had a mistress was no secret, and the practical mother and sister, detesting his wife as they did, were pleased that not only had he found some happiness elsewhere, but also that she was Welsh. As if to underline the point, Evelyn asked the question now in the Celtic language, which they all spoke fluently, as Enyd’s father had been Cornish and her mother came from Gwent, as did Nesta.

John smiled wryly at the question. He had not expected the motive for his visit to be arrived at so quickly.

‘It’s about Nesta that I’ve come for your advice — not that I wasn’t coming to see you anyway,’ he added hastily.

His mother gave him a roguish smile and punched him gently on the shoulder.

‘Come on, my son, out with it! Are you leaving Matilda and eloping with your inn-keeper?’

‘Maybe it will come to that one of these days,’ he said wryly. ‘Especially after what I’ve got to tell you now.’

Enyd fixed him with her bright eyes, a knowing smile on her face.

‘You’ve got her with child, haven’t you?’

John sighed at his mother’s perceptivness. Ever since his childhood he had known that it was useless trying to keep anything from her.

‘It’s true, Mother. I am to be a father towards the end of the year.’

Evelyn’s homely face creased into a smile. She was happy for her brother, who had so far been childless. Illegitimacy was so common among the ruling class that it was considered normal. Only the poor suffered the stigma of adultery and fornication and had their bastards taken from them to be reared in monastery orphanages.

Her mother turned to a more practical aspect.

‘Does your wife know about this?’

‘Not yet, though I suspect she will very soon. Exeter is a hotbed of gossip — news travels there faster than forked lightning.’

Enyd de Wolfe dumped another meat pasty on to his pewter platter and gave him a look that defied him to refuse it.

‘You’ll have a hard time, son, when she does find out.’

John nodded, his mouth full of mutton and pastry. When he had swallowed, he confirmed that he had an unpleasant time ahead.

‘She’ll go mad, I know. Not because she particularly cares about my sin, but she will be afraid that her grand friends, and all the lesser nobility she cultivates, will think the less of her.’

‘Silly cow!’ observed Evelyn, with blunt good sense.

‘And you, John — are you going to acknowledge the babe?’ asked his mother, her voice deadly serious now.

‘Of course! What else would I do?’ he snapped, rather put out that she needed to even ask such a question. ‘But that’s the problem, Nesta doesn’t want me to suffer in any way because of this and is refusing to let me proclaim the child as mine.’

His mother frowned. ‘She is a kind, considerate woman, that much I saw when we met in Exeter that time. But unless she goes away with the infant, perhaps back to her folk in Wales, it’s bound to become public knowledge. Do you mind that?’

‘Not at all. If people don’t like it, be damned to them. No doubt that swine of a sheriff will make as much capital out of it as he can, especially as his sister will seem to be the aggrieved party, but I don’t give a damn.’

‘Could it affect your position as coroner?’ asked his sister, who was quite proud of her brother’s eminence.

‘Richard de Revelle will undoubtedly try to stir up trouble — he would dearly like to see me removed as coroner and some pliant nobody elected in my place. I don’t need the job, but I’ve come to enjoy it, I admit. If he tries any tricks, I’ll appeal straight away to the Justiciar.’

‘Might Matilda leave you?’ asked his mother, almost hopefully.

‘I doubt it. The house in Martin’s Lane is mine — I bought it many years ago with profit from the wars. She has money laid away by her family, I know, but she enjoys good food, clothes and a sound roof over her head too much to desert me. Though God knows, she’ll try to make my life hell.’

The two women were agog with excitement and curiosity. John’s unexpected visit had been surpassed by this momentous news. Enyd was to be a grandmother and Evelyn an aunt.

‘And is Nesta well with her pregnancy?’ demanded his mother. ‘I remember being so sick when I was carrying William.’

‘She is well in body, though it’s early days yet. It is only a short time since she suspected that she was with child and had it confirmed by a midwife.’

Enyd immediately picked up on part of his statement. ‘What do you mean, John — well in body?’ she demanded.

He shifted uneasily on the bench. His mother’s interrogations were always searching.

‘I told you, she does not wish me to acknowledge the child, for my sake. But she seems very upset generally, she cries a lot and sometimes refuses to talk to me. The other evening she ran to her chamber and locked herself in. Last night she was better, but seems always so sad and will not talk sensibly to me.’

His mother, wise with her years and from carrying three children, put a hand on his arm affectionately.

‘Being gravid affects women in different ways, John. Some say they never felt better in their life, others become weepy and withdrawn. Maybe it will pass soon. You must be patient.’

Privately she could think of several reasons why Nesta was in such a miserable state, but reassurance was what he needed now.

‘Why not bring her down here to stay for a time?’ she continued. ‘Nesta can lodge here for as long as she likes — she could come for childbed when that day comes.’

‘Thank you, Mother, you are the kindest person in the world. But she has an inn to run, certainly until near her time.’

‘Nonsense, having the baby is far more important. You say she has three servants working there. She could get someone to run the alehouse for a few months.’

With memories of Alan of Lyme in his mind, this idea did not greatly appeal to John, but he agreed to put it to Nesta on his return.

The chatter went on until even the two women had exhausted the subject of childbirth and babies. Almost too full to rise from the table, de Wolfe eventually made the effort and then decided to walk off his full stomach by seeking out his brother in the woods.

While John de Wolfe was riding down the coast, his officer and clerk were making a more leisurely excursion westwards, their speed limited by the shorter legs of Thomas’s pony and his awkward posture on its side saddle.

As churches and alehouses were almost invariably twinned in most villages, Gwyn decided to chaperone the little clerk for most of the journey, vanishing into each tavern while Thomas sought out the local healer of souls. The coroner had given them enough silver pennies to provide them with bed and board on a modest scale for four nights, so they looked upon this venture as a rare holiday from their usual routine.

Three hours after leaving Exeter, the pair made their first stop at Bovey Tracey, where Gwyn promptly vanished into one of the two alehouses. Thomas was dressed as usual in his long, threadbare tunic, which looked much like a black clerical cassock, helping to give the impression that he was still in Holy Orders. He made his way to the church and, after much genuflecting and crossing himself, found the parish priest and engaged him in conversation, using the excuse that he had come to see the new stone church built by the lord of the manor, Sir William Tracey. He was one of the four knights who had murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket at King Henry’s behest, and the erection of a church was in atonement for his sin. However, the clerk learned nothing useful from the local man, however skilfully he manoeuvred the conversation towards problems in the forest.

The same routine was followed as the coroner’s assistants made their way slowly around the villages on the eastern flank of Dartmoor. During the rest of the day, they went from Bovey up to Hennock, then to Lustleigh and finally across to Manaton, where Thomas renewed his acquaintance with Father Amicus and Gwyn drank in the tavern with the reeve, Robert Barat. Here they could make no pretence at being passing travellers, as they were well remembered from the inquest on Elias Necke, the dead tanner — but after the aggravation with William Lupus, the village men were happy to gossip about the iniquities of the foresters. They had no new information to pass on, but reported that the outlaws seemed to be becoming bolder, often being seen on the roads and lurking in the nearby woods with no concern about being apprehended.

‘And who is likely to challenge them?’ growled Robert Barat. ‘We never see a man-at-arms around here, the sheriff is but a distant figure in Exeter. No local man is going to risk his neck trying to get a wolf’s head when the foresters themselves seem to protect the vermin.’

That night Gwyn and Thomas found a free bed in an outhouse behind the reeve’s cottage. It was only a pile of straw, but it was clean and the night was warm, though the clouds that their master had seen massing over the sea had rolled in and threatened a change in the weather for the coming days.

Half a penny had bought them a good meal in the alehouse, and in the dusk of a late summer evening they lay sleepily discussing what they had learned that day, which was very little.

‘Let’s hope we ferret out more than this tomorrow and the next day,’ murmured the Cornishman eventually. ‘Else the crowner will want his money back!’

The clerk slapped at some ants that were crawling up his face.

‘No one has heard of any priest who’s in league with either the foresters or the outlaws,’ he said. ‘I wonder if that’s just some idle tale, as no parish priest is able to wander around the countryside as the fancy takes him. Only fairly senior clerics can travel any distance.’

Gwyn rolled over on his heap of straw and pulled up the pointed hood of his leather jerkin to shut out the world.

‘Let’s worry about that tomorrow, Thomas. I need my sleep now.’

Next morning they worked their way along the very edge of the barren moor, coming down to Widecombe, where the previous year their master had investigated the corpse of a young Crusader found in a stream. From there, they jogged to Dunstone, Buckland and Holne, repeating their routine in church houses and taverns. In the evening, they arrived back on the main Exeter road at Ashburton. This was one of the four Stannary towns involved in the assay of the Dartmoor tin, which along with wool was the major export of the county. Here they had a choice of alehouses, but only one church. Thomas, a poor and reluctant horseman, was saddle sore and weary and could not face replaying his usual confidence game with the local priest that evening. This time they had to pay for a place to stay in one of the inns, and after an indifferent meal of leek stew and a leathery fowl the clerk climbed into the loft to collapse face down on to his hay-filled palliasse, giving his aching backside a chance to recover.

Gwyn, who could spend all day on a horse without a twinge, set off to do a tour of all the other alehouses in the hope of hearing something useful. In the fourth, by which time he had drunk the better part of a gallon of common ale, he fell into conversation with two tinners, who had brought a train of pack ponies down that day from the high moor, laden with crudely smelted tin ready for the next assay. Their talk followed the usual pattern — complaints about the stinginess of their employers, the outrageous taxes on the tin and the corruption of the Warden of the Stannaries, who was none other than Sheriff Richard de Revelle. As the ale flowed and tongues became loosened, Gwyn turned the talk to extortion in the forest and had a useful response from the grousing tinners.

‘Thank God we’re exempt from the antics of these bloody foresters!’ said one. ‘The stannary laws and our parliament on the moor make sure that they don’t interfere with us. But I pity the folk who live off the land down here, they’re getting a harder time than ever.’

Gwyn encouraged them to keep talking by waving down a potboy and getting in more quarts. ‘What’s going on in the forest, then? I’m from Exeter, we don’t hear much about it there,’ he added ingenuously.

‘More oppression from the foresters. They’ve become worse lately,’ growled the other man, a huge bear of a fellow with a black beard. ‘Forcing alehouses to take their brew, setting up forges and tanneries — taking the very bread from people’s mouths.’

‘Can’t they do something about it?’ asked Gwyn, his blue eyes radiating innocent curiosity.

‘What can they do?’ retorted Blackbeard belligerently. ‘The manor-lords are either powerless to act against royal custom or their palms are being crossed with silver to persuade them to mind their own business.’

‘And the common folk can do nothing,’ snarled the other tinner. ‘If they complain, they are beaten up by the foresters or their hulking pages. And not only that, but lately they seem to have the damned outlaws on their side. I don’t understand it, I tell you.’

He had raised his voice and the other man nudged him forcibly in the side, slopping his ale over the rim of his pot.

‘Watch what you say, Tom,’ he growled in lower tones. ‘That fellow over there, I’m sure he’s one of Winter’s gang.’

He jerked his head to indicate a young man slouching on a low window shelf across the room, flirting with one of the slatternly maids who was clearing empty mugs and platters.

‘Who’s Winter?’ asked Gwyn, determined to draw the men out.

‘Robert Winter. He runs the main coven of thieving outlaws in these parts,’ grunted the smaller man. ‘They’ve become so bold lately they come into town to drink and wench now, for no one seems interested in stopping them. Someone seems to be protecting them.’

‘Are there any others in here, d’you reckon?’ asked Gwyn, looking around the crowded taproom. Blackbeard cautiously turned his head right and left. Although he was built like a bull, he seemed unwilling to get involved in any trouble.

‘No, I can’t see anyone else here that I recognise, but I’ve only seen these villains now and then on the verges or talking to the foresters. Although for all I know, all this damned lot might be wolf’s heads.’

The thought seemed to sober the two tinners and they refused to be drawn into any more discussion of the forest troubles. A few moments later they finished up their ale and shambled out, leaving Gwyn with the beginnings of a plan germinating under his ginger thatch.

Within minutes of the tinners leaving, Gwyn quietly rose from his corner bench and made his way to the door. The young man in the window recess was still talking to the ale-maid, trying to pull her to him with an arm around her waist, as she half-heartedly pushed him away with the empty drinking pots she held in her hands.

Gwyn hurried down the main streeet of Ashburton towards the inn where they were staying, stopping only in an alleyway to empty his bladder of some of the vast quantity of drink that he had taken that day. When he arrived at the Crown tavern, distinguished from other houses only by the tarnished gilt sign that was nailed over the door, he pushed his way in through the drinkers and made for the open ladder-like stairs that went up to the floor above. The loft was similar to that in the Bush, though dirtier and more squalid. A row of hessian pallets stuffed with hay lay along one wall, and on the other side a straggle of loose straw offered cheaper accommodation.

The place was almost deserted this early in the evening, but one man lay retching in the straw and, in a corner, another, older man appeared to be shaking with the rigors of some fever, unattended and uncared for. The Cornishman looked along the row of thin mattresses to one with a bulge, where Thomas lay wrapped in his thin mantle in lieu of a blanket. He stumped across the creaking boards and shook the clerk by the shoulder.

‘Hey, little man, you’re on your own from here. I’m off into the forest to see if I can discover something straight from the horse’s mouth.’ Rudely awaken and bleary eyed, the ex-priest groggily sat up on his pallet and stared at the tousle-haired giant who had so abruptly disturbed him.

‘What do you mean, on my own? Where shall I go, then?’

‘Carry on with what you have been doing, man. It’s Thursday evening now. I’ll meet you back here on Sunday and we can ride back to the city.’

The clerk stared anxiously at his friend in the gloom of the windowless attic. ‘I’m unhappy at travelling alone. Must you leave me?’

Gwyn gave him a playful push on the shoulder, which flattened him on to his mattress. ‘Come on, have some spirit, Thomas. Who in God’s name would bother to rob such a poor-looking waif as you? I reckon a beggar would share his alms with you out of pity!’

‘What about your horse?’ wailed the clerk.

‘I’ll give the ostler a couple of pence to feed her until I come back — and put the fear of the crowner’s wrath into him not to sell her!’

Agog with consternation, Thomas watched Gwyn stump away to the ladder, then with a muffled wail of anxiety he lay down again and pulled his cloak over his head.

Outside, the coroner’s officer made his way back to the other alehouse and slipped back into the taproom, which was even more crowded than before. All the benches were full and men were standing shoulder to shoulder with hardly room to lift their tankards to their lips. There had been a local horse fair that day and some of the patrons were loudly discussing their bargains and their losses.

Gwyn pushed his way to the back of the room and gave a segment of a penny for a quart pottery mug of ale, dipped from an open cask by a slatternly woman with a huge goitrous swelling in her throat.

He turned, his eyes scanning the far corner to see if the young man was still there. The maid with whom he had been flirting was now struggling about the room with new pots of ale, urged on by the landlord, who was yelling at her to keep her mind on her work. Her previous place with the alleged outlaw had been taken by a short, scrawny man with a dark, leathery complexion, who was talking animatedly with the other fellow. Gwyn watched them covertly for a time and tried to edge nearer, though the press of jostling patrons made it difficult. Although the two were talking rapidly to each other, their voices were kept low and Gwyn could not pick up a single word without getting so close as to make them suspicious. Abruptly, the smaller man, after much nodding and gesticulating, turned and forced his way quickly to the door and vanished, leaving the other looking thoughtfully into his empty pot. Fearful that he was about to leave, Gwyn shouldered his way to his side, and with what he hoped was a furtive look behind him, gestured at the ale jar.

‘Want another, son?’ Gwyn was hardly old enough to be his father, but there was certainly many years between them. The other, a thickset, yellow-haired fellow with disconcertingly pale blue eyes, looked suspiciously at the huge, unkempt figure.

‘You buying it?’ he asked, in an accent from a long way east of Devonshire.

Gwyn gave another of his exaggeratedly furtive glances over his shoulder, then covertly displayed six whole pennies which he had clutched in his ham-like hand.

‘I struck lucky outside the fair today — the other fellow should be back on his feet within the week!’ He leered at the blond man, then waved at the chastened potgirl to bring more ale.

‘Nobody knows me in Ashburton — yet,’ he went on. ‘And I’m trying to keep it that way by getting out as soon as I can.’

The quarts arrived and, though the girl risked a simpering smile at the younger man, he ignored her, his attention now on this stranger.

‘I thank you for the drink, but what do you want with me?’

Gwyn sensed that here was a man who really did look over his shoulder much of the time. There was an alertness about him that confirmed he was uneasy in crowded places.

‘I was told, never mind by whom, that you lived among the wolves,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose.

‘That’s a dangerous thing to suggest, stranger. What if I do?’

Gwyn gulped the better part of a pint before answering.

‘I’m by way of seeking a place to lie up for a bit in similar company, if you get my drift. I’m tired of being on the run all the time, sleeping in a pigsty or a ditch and stealing every morsel of food or a few pence for ale — then often being too wary of taverns to spend it.’

The other man relaxed. This scruffy giant, who looked as if he had stolen his clothes from a scarecrow, could easily be another fugitive from justice.

‘You look as if you might be handy with a staff or a mace, friend,’ he said in a more affable voice. ‘How did you come to be on the road?’

Gwyn guffawed and clapped the other on the shoulder.

‘Off the road, more like it. I was an abjurer, sent from Bristol to take ship at Southampton, by the evil whim of the bloody coroner. I threw away my cross around the first bend in the road and stole the clothes of the first man who was big enough for them to fit me!’

He laughed uproariously again and poured the rest of his ale down his throat, some of it dribbling down the sides of his long, drooping moustache. ‘Now I’m working my way down to my native Cornwall, where I can slip back into my old trade as a tinner.’

The fair-haired man grinned, all suspicion now evaporated. Gwyn’s abjurer story was a common one — criminals who sought sanctuary in a church had forty days’ grace, during which, if they confessed their crime to the local coroner, they could ‘abjure the realm’ by promising to leave the shores of England as soon as possible. Dressed in sackcloth and carrying a home-made wooden cross, they would be directed by the coroner to a particular port, where they had to catch the first ship going abroad. If the weather prevented sailing, they had to wade out up to their knees in each tide, to show their willingness to leave England.

From sheer perversity, many coroners would send them to a far-distant port, to worsen their labour of walking and increase the risk of their being killed on the way. If an abjurer so much as strayed a yard off the highway, anyone was entitled to kill him on the spot without penalty. Injured victims or their bereaved relatives were quite likely to do this to the perpetrator of the crime. In fact, few abjurers ever reached their harbour, either being slain on the way or, far more likely, running into the forests to become outlaws, risking the penalty of being beheaded for the bounty.

So Gwyn’s story was not only credible but commonplace, and the younger man had no qualms about accepting it. Now it seemed that the hulking Cornishman was looking for a resting place for a time, on his journey home — and from the size of his muscles and his obvious acquaintance with the rougher side of life, he might be a useful addition to Robert Winter’s band of desperadoes.

‘My name’s Martin Angot — buy me another quart with one of those stolen pennies and maybe I’ll have some good news for you!’

For John de Wolfe, it was also something of a holiday. For the first time for months — in fact, since he had been laid up with a broken leg — he was experiencing some peace and quiet. The tranquil life of the manor at Stoke calmed his usually restless nature, and the absence of Matilda’s carping, surly behaviour felt like a weight lifted from his shoulders. Though he missed Nesta, a small part of his mind experienced relief that he was away from her present unhappy mood and her reluctance to go along with his willing acceptance of her pregnancy. He felt vaguely disloyal about this, but consoled himself that it was only for a couple of days. In the meantime, he luxuriated in the fond attention of his mother and sister, who appeared genuinely delighted to have him home. They fussed over him and over-fed him, as if he was the returned Prodigal Son.

His brother William, a rather reserved and inarticulate man, also seemed pleased to see him, and on this Friday morning they both went hunting together. Being well outside the bounds of the royal lands, there was no hindrance to their foray through the manor woods. John enjoyed a day’s carefree riding in the company of pleasant companions, but unusually for a Norman knight he was not a very enthusiastic hunter. Unless an animal was urgently needed for food, as it often was in his former campaigning days, or was a dangerous pest like a boar or fox, he found little joy in killing handsome beasts just for sport.

Today he was on a mare borrowed from William’s stables, as Odin was too large and clumsy for hunting. Their steward and two grooms rode with them, as well as a houndsman who handled the four dogs that ran alongside.

The Stoke lands stretched down towards the river, where thick woods lined the tidal mud banks. For a couple of hours they traversed commons and clearings, as well as the forest, without raising a single beast apart from a fox, who outpaced the hounds and vanished down a deep hole under an oak tree. Eventually they halted and let their mounts graze in a clearing while they took refreshment.

The steward had a bag of bread, meat and cheese on his saddle, and one of the grooms had a stone flagon of cider. William, though always treated with the greatest respect by his servants, had an egalitarian streak that was hardly typical of most manor-lords, and the other hunters sat with the brothers and shared the food, passing the crock of cider around from mouth to mouth.

Though the sky was half filled with cloud today, it was still fine, and in the warmth of early summer, with the birds bursting themselves with song in the surrounding trees, John lay back against a trunk and felt at ease with the world. The conversation drifted from topic to topic and came back to the lack of any success in the hunt that morning.

‘Do you not keep a woodward these days?’ he asked his brother.

William shook his head. ‘I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to spend half my life chasing around after buck and hind,’ he replied. ‘There’s no Royal Forest within five miles of here, so why go to the trouble and expense of a woodward?’

A woodward was to a private estate what a forester was to the royal lands. Hunting grounds of large estates, especially those running adjacent to royal demesnes, were called ‘chases’ — or, if walled or fenced, ‘parks’ — and the landowners were obliged to employ woodwards to police them and preserve the wildlife. These men had divided loyalties, for although employed at the landowner’s expense, they had to abide by the same code as the royal foresters and to swear fealty to the verderers, Warden and the King, reporting any breach of forest law that affected the royal interests. Most of the problems arose where a chase abutted against the King’s forest, and complicated rules existed to prevent beasts from the royal land from escaping — or being driven — into private ground.

William explained all this to his brother, heartily glad that these problems did not afflict his manor.

‘The barons and lords who have bigger fiefs up against the King’s forest are having increasing problems,’ he explained. ‘They can no longer trust their own woodwards, who are often under the thumb of the foresters. I hear there are new tricks that are being played, like driving deer from the chases and parks into the King’s land — the very opposite of what traditionally used to happen.’

The conversation brought John’s mind back to the duties he had waiting in Exeter, and he wondered how Thomas and Gwyn were faring on the expedition he had commanded them to undertake. He knew his officer could look after himself, but he worried slightly about the timid Thomas, who openly admitted to his own cowardice. Still, he thought, talking to a string of priests could not present much danger, and he dismissed his concerns as the hunting party gathered themselves to resume their search for the elusive animals.

In the next two hours they found nothing, but then the hounds caught the trail of a roe deer. Before long they had brought it down and the huntsmen dispatched it cleanly within seconds. They decided to call it a day and wended their way back to the manor house, with the fresh carcass slung across the houndmaster’s mare.

‘We’ve brought you tonight’s supper, Mother,’ announced William, with some satisfaction, as the women came out on the house steps to greet them. The steward and other servants went off to deliver the venison to the kitchens, and the brothers flopped on to benches in the hall. A jar of wine appeared between them as they regaled Enyd and her daughter with exaggerated tales of their prowess in the hunt. This was a fairly short story and the conversation soon came around to John’s domestic problems.

‘How will you deal with this matter of the baby, my son?’ asked his mother, concern in her voice. She offered no censure to John over the affair, accepting that this was what men did, marriage or not. She knew that even her own late husband, Simon, had a bastard somewhere in the north, a product of a long sojourn away during one of King Henry’s campaigns. Her worry was over the practicalities of the child’s upbringing, especially knowing of Matilda’s vindictive nature.

Her younger son scratched his head through his black thatch.

‘I’ve not given it that much thought yet, Mother,’ he admitted. ‘He’ll not want for anything, I assure you — including my love and affection.’

‘You seem very sure it’s going to be a boy, John,’ said Evelyn.

His sister’s prim nature made her slightly more uneasy with the situation than her mother. She had wanted to become a nun years before, until, on the death of her father, his widow had vetoed the ambition and made her stay at home to help with the household duties.

Her brother grinned sheepishly. ‘Of course it’ll be a boy! How could I ever sire a daughter? I need to teach him to swing a sword and hold a lance!’

‘Will the babe live in the inn? Is it a suitable place?’ asked Enyd, still worrying away at the problem.

John considered this. ‘I think it will serve. There’s plenty of room upstairs. I can get another room built alongside Nesta’s chamber, then hire a good woman to look after the child while Nesta runs the inn.’ He grinned. ‘At least she’ll not need a wet-nurse, as nature provided well for her in that regard!’

Evelyn pursed her lips primly. ‘You shouldn’t jest about such things, John, it’s not decent.’

His mother laughed at her daughter’s prudishness, and even William’s long face cracked into a smile. ‘The babe will certainly be well fed, as far as I remember from my one meeting with the young woman.’

‘This will be my first — and probably only — grandchild, John, so look after it well,’ commanded Enyd. ‘You should get her seen by that woman in Polsloe Priory that you told us about. She seems wise in the ways of women and childbirth.’

‘You mean Dame Madge, the nun?’ responded John. ‘Yes, that’s a good notion, Mother. She helped me several times when women’s problems were an issue.’

Dame Madge was a gaunt sister at the Benedictine priory just outside Exeter, a woman well versed in diseases of women and the problems of childbirth. When John had had cases of rape and death from miscarriage to deal with, she had proved of considerable help, in spite of her forbidding appearance and manner.

‘And don’t forget, my son, you tell Nesta that this house is always open to her at any time. She can come down here when she is heavy with child and go to childbed here, if needs be. She can scream out her labour pains in Welsh, for we’ll understand her well enough!’