The Awful Secret

Chapter Six In which Crowner John visits his mother

Once again, the horsemen reached Exeter just before the gates closed at the twilight curfew, though this was getting later every evening as March progressed. Gwyn left them outside the walls to go to his home in St Sidwell’s and the men-at-arms clattered away to the castle, leaving de Wolfe to stable Odin at the farrier’s.

He crossed the road to his own house and, whilst wearily taking off his riding clothes in the vestibule, heard voices from inside the hall. Hungry and thirsty, he pushed open the inner door fretfully, far more interested in filling his stomach than dealing with a visitor. As he walked across to the hearth, he saw Gilbert de Ridefort was talking animatedly to Matilda. Clad in a plain brown tunic, a hooded cloak discarded across a nearby stool, he rose courteously as John entered. ‘Your good lady has been entertaining me graciously until your return,’ he said. ‘I was anxious to hear if you had any more news, especially of somewhere where I might hide myself more discreetly.’

Instead of her usual grim welcome, Matilda gave her husband a weak smile and enquired solicitously after his leg following such a long ride. ‘Supper will not be long, John,’ she added uncharacteristically. ‘I’ve told Mary to make a special effort, as I’ve invited Sir Gilbert to dine with us again.’

De Wolfe groaned inwardly at the prospect of having to entertain a guest, when all he wanted was to eat, then go down to the Bush to see Nesta. Even sitting at his own fireside with a pitcher of ale would be preferable to listening to his wife and Gilbert prattling on about the glories of Normandy.

He sank on to the seat just vacated by de Ridefort, who took the one opposite.

‘Is there any news?’ persisted the former Templar.

De Wolfe shook his head wearily. ‘Nothing from the north of the county. It was a wasted trip.’

‘But what about this priest? And is there any sign of strange knights in the city?’

‘I’ve just set foot back in Exeter, so I have no means of knowing,’ he said irritably. ‘I must go up to the castle after the meal so maybe I can learn something then.’

‘I think that tonight my brother is attending a feast at the Guild of Cordwainers,’ said Matilda, with a return of her usual abrasive tone.

De Wolfe, however, was determined to fight for his alibi to visit the Bush. ‘That won’t be until later this evening – and, anyway, I have other business to attend to in my chamber, if you can call such a hole in the ground by that name.’

Mary came in to set places at the table, followed by Simon staggering under a basket of logs for the fire. He returned with more wine and ale, and for the next hour, the three ate and drank. De Wolfe sat mostly in silence, trying to stop his ears to Matilda’s persistent attempts to extract details from de Ridefort of his life in France. He found it difficult to reconcile the stern warrior he had known in Palestine with this urbane and courteous fellow, who so obviously had a way with women when the need arose.

Yet de Wolfe detected an undercurrent of anxiety in de Ridefort, and was conscious of the regular worried glances that the visitor gave him whenever he could disengage himself from Matilda’s importuning. Eventually the coroner took pity on him and disclosed his plans for settling him somewhere outside the city.

‘I’ve decided to lodge you in my home village, where I was born and where my family still hold the manor,’ he offered.

The younger man’s face lit up and his relief was obvious, though Matilda’s scowl gave away her feelings: she despised her in-laws as much as they disliked her.

‘Are you sure they will accept me, John?’ asked de Ridefort. ‘And where is this place of yours?’

‘Stoke-in-Teignhead, about fifteen miles south of Exeter, just inland from the coast. It’s a few hours’ gentle riding, as long as the tide is low enough to cross the river at Teignmouth.’

‘Not much of a place, I can assure you,’ sniffed his wife, ‘but I’ll admit that it’s remote enough, if you really feel you should leave the amenities of the the city.’

‘Apart from your gracious hospitality, I’m not seeing much of Exeter, madam,’ observed Gilbert. ‘I spend all day cooped up in the inn to avoid drawing attention to myself.’

John stood up and stretched his back, stiff after a day in the saddle. His leg seemed to have stood up to the journey remarkably well: it was pain-free and virtually back to normal. ‘I must go about my business for a couple of hours. Are you staying here or going back to your lodgings?’

Matilda turned her eyes on the former Templar, her beseeching expression making her husband cringe. ‘You’ve just said you are imprisoned in that place, so stay awhile and sit at peace before a good fire. I’ll get the servant to fetch more wine.’

De Wolfe was indifferent as to whether the knight might ravish Matilda on the cold flagstones, but he suspected that even the fearless Crusader was not equal to that challenge. As he made for the door, he promised to take de Ridefort to his new hideaway next morning.

‘Be ready with your satchel and horse. I’ll meet you at the Bush just after dawn.’ With that, he vanished into the darkness of Martin’s Lane, turning in the opposite direction from Rougemont and the sheriff.

It had been some time since the coroner had had the chance to bed his mistress and he took advantage of a slack time in the tavern to spend an hour with her in her small room on the upper floor. There were a score of customers in the smoky room that occupied the whole ground level, most of whom were well known to him, but none remarked on his ascent of the wide ladder in the corner: his relationship with Nesta was too familiar to them to be worth a comment.

Nesta’s room had a proper bed with short legs, rather than the usual pallet on the floor. He had bought this for her a year ago, to keep them both up a little from the draughts that whistled across at floor level. It had seen a great deal of action in that twelve months, and it was a tribute to the French carpenters that its legs were still intact after their vigorous love-making.

Now they held each other quietly after this latest episode, contentedly snuggled under the coverlet of sewn sheepskins. Nesta enquired impishly after his aching back. ‘It must be all this riding today, Sir Crowner – both on your horse and elsewhere!’

He pinched her bare thigh in retribution, but at the same time, buried his face in the auburn curls at the base of her neck. ‘I wonder how Gilbert de Ridefort is dealing with Matilda at this moment? Has he managed to fend off her lecherous advances?’

The Welsh woman giggled. ‘I can’t imagine the poor woman having such a thought in her head – unless it’s for the fat priest at St Olave’s.’

The thought of his wife reminded de Wolfe that he was running out of time. ‘I’d better get back before she has the poor fellow stripped of his tunic and hose.’ He sighed, groping over the edge of the bed for his clothes.

Nesta slipped out the other side and dressed quickly in the gloom. ‘And I’d better attend to my business or that old fool Edwin and those daft serving maids will have driven all my patrons away with their stupidity.’ She opened the rough door and let in a dim light from a horn lantern left burning for the guests to find their way to their pallets. ‘Come down for a last mug of ale before you go – my last brew was better than ever, though I say it myself.’ As well as being a pretty woman and an enthusiastic lover, Nesta was an excellent cook and a talented ale-maker. De Wolfe often bemoaned the fact that both social barriers and his marriage prevented him from living with this jewel of a woman.

He hauled himself from the bed and pulled on his undershirt and long grey tunic, slit back and front for riding a horse. The long black woollen hose came up to his thighs and his pointed shoes and a heavy belt completed his garb. He had left his hooded cloak of grey wolfskin downstairs.

When he climbed down the wooden steps into the ale-room, lit by the flickering flames of a large fire and a number of tallow dips on the tables, he made out a familiar shape sitting near the door. As he reached the floor, Nesta bustled past, intent on chasing one of her harassed serving maids. ‘Thomas has been waiting patiently for you these past ten minutes – he has some message for you, he says.’

She sailed away and he went over to the little clerk, who hopped to his feet and peered bird-like up into de Wolfe’s face, his sharp eyes glistening in the candlelight. ‘I’ve found out who the priest is – the one from France,’ he squeaked excitedly. Eternally grateful to the coroner for giving him employment, which had saved him from penury and perhaps starvation, Thomas was always desperately anxious to prove his worth. Although de Wolfe and Gwyn usually treated him with scornful contempt, he had been inordinately useful to them on many occasions.

‘So who is he?’ demanded his master.

‘An abbot from Paris, called Cosimo of Modena.’

‘Modena? That’s not in France.’

‘No, he’s from the north of Italy. I gather he is a Vatican priest, posted to Paris some time ago as a special nuncio. No one knows what his special duties might be,’ sniggered Thomas.

‘How did you discover this? And where is he now?’ demanded the coroner.

‘I was talking to one of the Benedictines from St James’s Priory, who came up to a service for St Jerome today. He said that Abbot Cosimo has installed himself at the priory, much to the discomfort of the prior.’

‘Why should he complain?’

‘First, because Cosimo is a Cistercian – in their strictness they look down on these Cluniac Benedictines, even though their Orders have the same origins. Also it seems he arrogantly demanded accommodation and sustenance for himself and his two men on the authority of Pope Celestine, producing some letter from Rome that virtually overrides any reluctance, even by bishops.’ Thomas crossed himself spasmodically as he spoke.

De Wolfe considered this, leaning against the inside of the inn door. ‘And no one knows on what errand this Italian is engaged?’

The little clerk looked crestfallen. ‘I couldn’t discover this, Crowner. No one seems to know. The abbot is a very secretive person, it appears.’

John thoughtfully rubbed the dark stubble on his long chin. ‘We got on well with the jolly prior at St James’s, did we not?’

Thomas, delighted to be asked his opinion, bobbed his head eagerly. ‘Prior Peter was very amiable when we were there for the catching of that fish a few months ago,’ he agreed.

Just before de Wolfe’s disaster, when his old horse both broke his leg and saved his life, they had visited the priory when the coroner had had to attend the landing of a sturgeon. The prior, a rubicund fellow with a taste for good wine, had made them welcome on that occasion.

‘Be ready at dawn, Thomas, with whatever you need for a few days’ absence from that flea-pit you stay in near the cathedral. I have a task for you that you may well enjoy.’

And with that the former priest had to be satisfied.

The coroner thought that at forty he must already be getting old as he jogged on Odin through the early-morning mists alongside the river Exe. As an active soldier, he had woken as fresh as a daisy at whatever hour the trumpet sounded, but now he felt bleary-eyed and his brain remained sluggish until he could shake off the effects of sleep.

Behind him rode Gwyn on his big brown mare, and Thomas, sitting side-saddle on his moorland pony. Alongside him was Gilbert de Ridefort, sitting as tall and erect as a fence-post on his grey gelding. He looked every inch a Templar knight, even if the famous white cloak with the large cross was missing.

The quartet rode silently, each with his own thoughts, though every few hundred yards Gilbert would give a quick look over his shoulder, checking that no pursuing shapes were dashing after them through the morning fog.

They passed a number of peasants and traders making for Exeter, many carrying huge bundles or pushing handcarts with goods to sell in the city, others with laden donkeys or ox-carts full of produce. The road went due south from Exeter towards Topsham, the small port at the head of the estuary of the Exe. Between them was the tiny priory of St James, founded half a century before by Baldwin, the famous sheriff of the county. The small building was down on the slope, just above the floodplain of the river, and John told Gwyn to stay up on the main road with Sir Gilbert, out of sight of the priory, in case the mysterious Roman priest was abroad. He and his clerk went down to the building and, within a few minutes, de Wolfe had returned alone. ‘As I hoped, it was an easy task,’ he explained, as they set off more briskly towards Topsham. ‘Prior Peter seems to have no real love for this Italian, who he feels has battened upon him like an unwelcome leech.’

‘So what of your clerk?’ asked de Ridefort.

‘The prior is letting him stay there under the guise of a travelling brother on his way to take up a parish in Cornwall. Thomas is well suited to spinning such deceptions. He could probably make them believe he was the new archbishop!’

‘Why should the prior agree to this?’ grunted Gwyn.

‘I told him that the secular authorities wanted to know why a papal nuncio was in England without announcing himself to the authorities. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but neither does the prior. Thomas is going to snoop about to try to find out why this Italian is here.’

‘I have no doubt why that man Cosimo is here,’ commented de Ridefort bitterly. ‘He was sent last year to investigate the Cathar heresy in the Albi region of France and to report back to his master in Rome. Now he has a similar mission to find me.’

De Ridefort had already confirmed that Cosimo of Modena was indeed the priest he used to see about the Commandery in Paris. He was now convinced that this abbot had been sent to deal with him, either by capture or elimination.

Presumably with the stimulus of the abbot so near, the Templar set a cracking pace and within half an hour they were in the little port of Topsham, seeking the ferry that crossed the river to the marshes on the western side. From there, they trotted to Powderham then on to Dawlish, the first village on the open coast. As they passed through, Gwyn watched his master from the corner of his eye and, as he expected, saw him look longingly at a fine stone house in the only street.

Mischievously, the ginger-haired officer couldn’t resist some comment, which was lost on de Ridefort, though his thoughts were mainly on his own predicament.

‘Quite a few vessels beached here, Crowner,’ observed Gwyn, with a false air of innocence. ‘Some of them real sea-going vessels – the Normandy fleet must be in.’

De Wolfe merely grunted – he knew what the Cornishman was hinting at. One of his favourite mistresses, the blonde Hilda, lived in Dawlish. She was wife to Thorgils the Boatman and with most of the cross-Channel shipping lying in the little creek, he was now probably at home with his young and beautiful wife.

With no chance of a visit the coroner kept his eyes on the track, and they continued along the coast for a few miles until they came to the wide valley of the Teign. At the point where it entered the sea, a sand-bar drastically narrowed the river so that at low tide horses could splash across. This morning they were in luck and could wade straight across with no delay. By noon the three riders were winding their way down a pleasant wooded valley into Stoke-in-Teignhead. The manor house was just outside the village, which consisted of a new church to St Andrew and a dozen houses and huts, of a better quality than in most other villages.

The coroner’s father, Simon de Wolfe, whose family had come from Caen in the last years of the previous century, had been killed fifteen years before in the Irish campaigns. Though, like his son, he had spent much of his life fighting, he was also a careful and considerate landowner: his two manors at Stoke and at Holcombe near the coast were kept in good condition and the villagers were well treated.

Inside the bailey around the house, servants and freemen came running to greet their popular master, for now John de Wolfe, his brother William and his sister Evelyn jointly owned the honour, with their sprightly mother Enyd enjoying a life interest in the manor.

Their Saxon steward, Alsi, came out to organise the stabling of the horses then effusively escorted de Wolfe and de Ridefort into the house. Gwyn made for the kitchen hut, where he knew from long experience that giggling maids would ply him with food and drink until he was fit to burst.

The house was solidly built of stone: one of Simon’s last acts before he died had been to provide his family with a substantial home built to resist attack, though thankfully there had been no fighting around here for decades. The stockade, which encircled the bailey, was still sound, but the drawbridge over the small moat had not been raised for many years, a good indicator of peaceful times.

‘Are the family at home, Alsi?’ asked de Wolfe as they climbed the outer staircase to the entrance on the first floor.

‘Your mother and sister are here, Sir John. Your brother is overseeing the cutting of new assarts in the West Wood.’

John grinned at the familiar tale. William, though he looked remarkably like himself, was no soldier. All his enthusiasms were for farming and managing the estate, which suited John well as he shared in the profits. Together with a steady income from his share in the wool-exporting business with Hugh de Relaga, he had a comfortable income without having to work for it.

In the solar, he introduced Gilbert de Ridefort to his mother and sister. Enyd de Wolfe was a still-pretty woman of sixty, with a little grey in her fair hair – de Wolfe’s colouring came from his father. Enyd was pure Celt, which explained part of Matilda’s antipathy to her. Her father was Cornish and her mother Welsh, and John’s fluency in those similar languages had been learned in childhood at Enyd’s knee.

Evelyn was a plump, cheerful woman of thirty-four, still unmarried. She had once wanted to become a nun, but her mother had rightly suspected that her daughter was too garrulous to settle under the constraints of the veil and insisted that she stay at home and help run the manor-house.

De Wolfe gave them an edited version of de Ridefort’s problem, emphasising that the knight wanted somewhere quiet to stay until his companion arrived from France. His sharp-witted mother, who knew every nuance of her son’s character, knew full well that there was more to the man’s problems than a need for peace and quiet, but she said nothing and, with Evelyn, gave him a warm welcome. Gilbert became his usual charming self and soon had them eating out of his hand. He offered, with just the right amount of reluctance, to stay at the local inn to save them the trouble of boarding him, but they would have none of it.

‘Not that the church hostel is uncomfortable,’ said Evelyn, proudly. ‘My father established it for travellers, instead of a rowdy alehouse. But you will be far better off here.’ After her intuitive reading of the situation, she could have added ‘and safer’, but she held her tongue.

After a good meal, Gilbert was shown to a small chamber off the hall, the only other room apart from the solar and the ladies’ sleeping chamber. He dropped the large satchel that held his possessions and looked with satisfaction at the thick straw mattress laid for him on the floor. As John prepared to leave for Exeter, de Ridefort begged him to keep him informed of any developments. ‘Your clerk must find out what Cosimo of Modena is really engaged in,’ he pleaded.

‘One small priest cannot be any threat to you, surely,’ said de Wolfe, reassuringly. ‘Even his two escorts could hardly abduct a fighting Templar against his will.’

‘Not personally, it’s true,’ replied de Ridefort. ‘But he is an accomplished organiser and schemer. There will be other men to do any strong-arm work, you can depend on it. That’s why I’m keen to know if any strange fighting men appear in the district. You will let me know that, John?’ he ended, with an imploring look in his eyes.

With promises to keep him up to date with any developments, and especially to tell him when Bernardus de Blanchefort arrived, the coroner took his leave, with hugs for his mother and sister.

After collecting Gwyn, he rode via the West Wood, to greet his brother William. They could do this as part of their homeward journey by going through the band of forest that bordered the river and thence up to Kingsteignton, as the tide would by now prevent them from crossing back at Teignmouth.

They found William with his tunic pulled up between his thighs and tucked into a broad belt, serge breeches inside stout boots, swinging an axe with his bailiff and half a dozen villeins from the village. They were cutting down trees to extend the arable land and oxen were dragging away the larger trunks for timber and firewood, the smaller branches being burned on a large bonfire.

‘There must be few lords of the manor who work alongside serfs,’ muttered Gwyn, slightly disapproving of this degree of egalitarianism.

‘He does it because he likes swinging an axe. So do I, but I prefer hitting a Saracen rather than a beech tree,’ replied de Wolfe, gazing benignly at his brother.

When William saw them approach, he dropped his axe, and for fifteen minutes the brothers talked animatedly, the Cornishman going discreetly to the bailiff for a chat. John explained to William the situation concerning de Ridefort, more forthright with him than with the women. ‘This threat against him seems real enough, but he sees an assassin behind every tree,’ he concluded. ‘I’ll be glad when this other Templar arrives and the pair of them can clear off to Ireland or wherever they wish to go.’

Before they parted, his brother promised to do all he could to make his unexpected guest as welcome as possible. De Wolfe collected Gwyn, and they rode off along the narrow track into the forest that bordered the tidal part of the river. The sky was overcast, with the threat of rain, but it held off as they crossed the Teign where it narrowed suddenly four miles inland from the sea. At a steady pace, they expected to reach Exeter in the early evening, following the road from Kingsteignton through Ideford and Kenn.

The two men rode side by side, mainly in silence. They had covered thousands of miles together over the years, in snow and sandstorm, sleet and sun. Neither was talkative and, except when reminiscing over a quart of ale in a tavern, their conversation was confined to immediate matters, such as deciding which fork of the track to take or a suspicion of a lame horse.

Today their steeds were performing well, and de Wolfe was pleased with Odin, a worthy successor to his beloved Bran. At a steady trot, letting the stallion and the mare set their own pace, the pair could keep going for many hours. On a decent track in good weather, when the mud was dry, they could cover thirty miles a day. This particular route was not the main road between Exeter and Plymouth, that being further north, but it was well used and had many villages and patches of farmland between the stretches of forest. So it was something of a shock when the two riders came round a bend inside a mile of trees to find themselves confronted by half a dozen armed ruffians, obviously intent on highway robbery.

With bloodcurdling yells, the footpads rushed at their intended victims, wielding a variety of weapons. One ragged outlaw swung a long stave, trying to knock Gwyn from his horse. Two others converged each side of de Wolfe, one waving a rusted sword and the other jabbing with a broken lance, the lower part of its shaft missing. The other trio circled behind, armed with an axe, a long dagger and another staff.

If they had thought they were ambushing a pair of fat merchants, returning from Kingsteignton market, they were sadly mistaken. The coroner and his officer had been attacked a score of times in several parts of the known world and were well versed in defending themselves.

After the first few seconds of surprise, the reflexes of these two old soldiers snapped into action. Though de Wolfe wore no hauberk or helmet, his long sword swung at his hip and a mace and chain stood in a pocket on his saddle. Gwyn wore his usual battered cuirass of thick boiled leather with metal-studded shoulder pads. In addition to his massive sword, he had a long-handled axe slipped into a loop on his saddle-bow.

Almost as the yelling began, there was a rattling hiss as both swords were slid simultaneously from their scabbards. Gwyn, with an exultant howl that matched his almost manic grin of delight at the promise of action, hoisted his mare’s forelegs high into the air and pulled her round, then let her drop on to the villain with the staff, who screamed with pain as her metal-shod hoofs struck him in the chest. As he staggered back and fell on to the track, Gwyn kept his steed turning to face the two men who had come up behind. The one with the dagger had frozen rigid at the realisation that they had picked the wrong pair to rob, and before he could gather his wits, Gwyn had swung his sword at his neck. He fell poleaxed into the road, already dying from the fountain of blood that shot from a main artery into the leaf-mould of the track.

Meanwhile, de Wolfe had his two bandits to contend with. The man with the lance, his face contorted into a broken-toothed snarl of rage, jabbed up at him. The coroner’s sword was not long enough to reach the attacker and he felt the tip of the lance dragging at his riding cloak, although the wolfskin was tough enough to resist the thrust. As the second man came to his other side and attempted to hack at de Wolfe’s leg with his sword, he dug both his prick-spurs into Odin’s flanks. Indignantly, the stallion leaped forward, leaving the two outlaws facing each other across an empty space. Dragging on the reins, de Wolfe pulled Odin round and repeated Gwyn’s manoeuvre, rearing the horse up to fall upon the most dangerous adversary – the man with the lance.

He managed to dodge the flailing hoofs the first time, but fell to his knees and was trampled by the big destrier when John ruthlessly pulled Odin round a second time. An iron shoe landed squarely between the ruffian’s shoulder-blades and even above the shouting of the men and the neighing of the protesting horses, John heard the crack as the spine snapped.

Realising the fatal error they had made, the other four tried to make their escape. The one that Gwyn had first knocked to the ground was slowest off the mark and paid for it with his life. He made for the trees, but the big brown mare was upon him before he reached them. Gwyn had couched the bare sword under his left armpit to hold the reins with that hand, whilst he pulled his axe from its thong and slid his right hand down the shaft. As the mare came level with the fugitive, the wedge-shaped axehead whistled down to strike him on top of the head. The blade cleaved his skull almost down to the nape of the neck and the man fell twitching to the road in a welter of blood and brains. The momentum had taken the Cornishman almost into the trees, but he hoisted the mare round to see how his master was faring with his contest.

Two of the remaining outlaws had already reached the safety of the dense woodland, but de Wolfe was pursuing the last one diagonally across the track, his sword poised for a strike as soon as he was within reach. But the man was lucky: he shot between two beech trunks only inches ahead of the weapon. The trees and the thorny scrub between them at the edge of the road were too dense to allow a horseman to follow and Odin skidded to a halt with his nose in a tangle of brambles.

The two old Crusaders trotted back to each other and halted in the middle of the road, slamming their swords back into their sheaths. Gwyn, his wild carrotty hair poking from under his pointed leather cap, grinned with unashamed delight. ‘We haven’t done that for a long time, Crowner!’ he growled, swinging down from his mare to wipe the mess from his axehead in the long grass at the edge of the track.

He walked over to the robber whose neck he had half severed and rolled him over with his foot. ‘Dead already – most of his blood is on the ground.’ As he checked that the other outlaw with the split head had also given up the ghost, the coroner slid from his saddle. He was suddenly aware that, contrary to his expectations, his damaged leg was still not quite restored to normal, especially when called upon to perform gymnastics upon a warhorse. He stroked Odin’s neck and whispered into his ear, as the stallion was still quivering with excitement and exertion.

When his horse was calmer, John walked over to the body of the man he had felled with Odin’s hoofs. He was lying face down and, expecting him to be unconscious or dead, he was surprised to see the fellow move as he approached. Futilely, he was trying to pull himself towards the trees on his hands, his legs trailing uselessly behind him, paralysed by his broken back.

After a few attempts, he sank hopelessly back to the dirt road, his face turned sideways towards de Wolfe, his hands beneath his body. As the coroner bent down to speak to him, he suddenly brought up his right hand and made a desperate attempt to stab upwards with the dagger he had drawn from his belt.

As de Wolfe stepped back in surprise, Gwyn, who had come across the road to join him, swore and began to pull out his sword but John put out a hand to stop him. ‘Leave him be, Gwyn. He’s going to die, anyway. Not much point in carrying him back to Exeter to be hanged.’

‘He’s an outlaw, Crowner, so he is as the wolf’s head. Best kill him now, then I could claim the bounty.’

Anyone declared by the courts to be outside the law did not exist officially under the king’s peace and any citizen was entitled to kill them on sight, as if they were a wolf. If the severed head was taken to the county gaol, a payment could be claimed from the sheriff as a reward for helping to rid the forests of the bands of armed robbers that plagued the countryside.

De Wolfe shook his head. ‘I don’t think it would be either legal or politic for a coroner or his officer to claim the wolf’s head. And I would have to hold an inquest on it, anyway.’ Gwyn, looking disappointed, indicated the two corpses. ‘What about them? Will you hold inquests there?’

John considered for a moment. ‘I see no point – we will never know their names nor be able to get presentment of Englishry. There are no witnesses except us and no one knows or cares what happened to them. Legally, they don’t exist.’ He turned to look down at the paralysed ruffian, whose head had fallen forward to press his face into the soil, in an attitude of final despair. De Wolfe wondered briefly what it would be like to know that death was soon inevitable. He was not an imaginative man and had only vague notions of the resurrection that the priests seemed to take for granted. Would he meet this robber in Heaven – or Hell? Would all the men who had ever lived be there? All the children, all the infants, all the unborn babes? It seemed an unlikely proposition, but he shrugged off this sudden introspection and bent down to speak to the doomed outlaw. ‘What made you take to the forest, fellow? Are you a thief on the run – or an escaped sanctuary-seeker?’

Slowly the man lifted his head enough to turn it to face the coroner. ‘Neither, damn you! I killed a man in fair fight, after he cheated me at dice in a tavern in Lyme. But the bailiffs gave false witness. The man I fought was cousin to a burgess and the court condemned me in five minutes.’

‘So you escaped and ran for the woods?’

‘My wife and my mother paid a bribe to the gaoler – it left them destitute and they lost their breadwinner, for I was an ironsmith. I’ve not seen them since – nor never will now.’

The story was too familiar to tug at anyone’s heartstrings. The man was no more than twenty-five, by the looks of him, though he was filthy and dressed in little better than rags.

‘What are we to do with him?’ asked Gwyn, still fingering the hilt of his sword. ‘It would be kinder to put him out of his misery, not leave him there in the road, paralysed with a broken back.’

While he was thinking of an answer, de Wolfe noticed that both their horses were wandering down the road, nibbling at choice clumps of new spring grass that were appearing along the verges. They both walked over to take their bridles and turn them to bring them back to the scene of the fight.

A sudden movement of the surviving outlaw drew their eyes back to him and they saw that he had solved the problem himself. The dagger that he had tried to stick in the coroner was lying near his outstretched hand. Seizing it in one hand, he used the other with one last despairing effort to lift himself off the road. Holding the knifepoint upwards against his breast, the hilt against the ground, he lurched downwards to force the sharp point into his heart. With a bubbling cry, which sounded almost like joy, he released himself from an intolerable life, dying in the dirt of the king’s highway. Gwyn and his master stood holding their reins, their eyes meeting after they watched the last convulsive spasm of the body.

‘That’s settled that, then,’ grunted Gwyn.

De Wolfe climbed on to Odin, his leg still giving him a twinge of pain. ‘I’ll call out the manor reeve from Ide when we pass through. He’ll have to send someone to bury these corpses in the forest. They can’t be left here to stink.’

Before riding off, he took one last look at the dead outlaw and again the fleeting thought came into his mind: where had the spirit of the man gone in the last few minutes? Was killing a man any different from sticking a pig? Or was there something extra that made a body, arms and legs into an ironsmith?

He cursed himself for foolishness – he must be getting old to start this wondering what secrets the grave held for him.