The Elixir of Death

CHAPTER TWELVE

The two ship-masters who had worked for Thorgils were now more devoted to Hilda of Holcombe than ever. When her husband had been alive, she had looked after their wives and families if things went wrong while they were at sea. Now that he was dead, Hilda had seen to it that the dependants of their comrades, the murdered sailors, remained housed and fed. The latest sign of her concern for them was the arrangement she was entering into with Sir John and the portreeve, which would ensure that they and their crews would remain employed in the only trade they knew. So when Hilda asked them to take her to Salcombe, they agreed without demur. After all, the ships were hers and they were her servants, but they did it willingly, rather than as a duty.

'We need to go there soon anyway,' said Roger Watts, the older captain. He was a short, rotund man with a weather-beaten face and bright red hair. 'Must keep an eye on those shipwrights who are repairing the Mary.'

He did not see it as his place to ask the mistress why she wanted to make even a short voyage so late in the season, but the other ship-master, Angerus de Wile, was not so reticent. A lanky man of about twenty-eight, with an under-shot lower jaw that gave him the appearance of a bull-baiting dog, he respectfully wondered why Hilda wished to brave the cold and the possibly bad weather.

'For several reasons, Angerus,' she replied, as she poured them each a jug of cider in the kitchen room of her fine house. 'I have a need to see where my husband died on the ship he loved. Somehow it would help me to close off that part of my life. But I also wish to make some enquiries in the district, to know if anything has been heard of the villains who killed Thorgils.'

They knew better than to dissuade Hilda, as they knew from experience that her gentle manner hid an iron will. Once her mind was made up, nothing could divert her.

On a dawn high-tide two days later, the cog St Radegund, a slightly smaller version of the Mary and Child Jesus, sailed out of Dawlish creek and headed briskly south-west in a wintry east wind. Hilda had many times accompanied her husband on voyages to Brittany, Normandy and the Rhine, so was impervious to the pitching and rolling of the unladen vessel, but her maid, who was chaperoning her, soon wished she was dead. However, so favourable was the wind that her agony was short-lived, for they rounded Start Point by early afternoon and before dusk were safely at anchor in the calm waters of the Salcombe estuary.

Rowed ashore in the curragh, they were settled in one of the quayside inns by Roger Watts, who suppressed his concern at leaving his mistress without a male escort for some unknown purpose of her own.

'You will wait for me until I wish to return, Roger,' she ordered, giving him a purse of silver pennies to keep him and his crew fed for a few days. 'I may go on a short pilgrimage, so I cannot say exactly how long I will be away.'

With that he had to be content, and he went back to his vessel, where the crew slept in the hold, coming ashore to eat.

The following morning, Hilda was taken by Watts and Angerus to a boatyard in a small side creek just outside the town, where the Mary was beached, so that the shipwrights could check every plank. They were also restoring some caulking, lost during the buffeting she had received when driven ashore at Burgh Island. The new mast and main spar lay on the shore, ready for stepping when the hull was finished. Hilda clambered up a plank to her deck and tactfully the two ship-masters called the shipwright and his mates aside, so that she could be left in peace for a while. There was nothing to see on the small area of deck aft of the open hold. There were no bloodstains or scars on the timber from swinging swords, but the blonde Saxon woman stood silently for a few minutes, turning to slowly view each part of the little ship. She was remembering her voyages with Thorgils, and his amiable face came back to her clearly as she stared at the patch of planking where he would have stood to grip the big steering oar that rested in its bracket on the right side of the stern. She shed no tears, but her resolve to try to bring his killers to justice was hardened by the experience. After a time, she left the cog and had a few polite and intelligent words with the men who were making her seaworthy again, before asking Roger Watts to accompany her back to the inn. He left her there, still with misgivings about leaving such an attractive woman alone in a strange town, but resigned to falling in with her inflexible wishes.

Hilda then took her maid shopping in the bustling little town, which was becoming an important harbour and fishing centre. Wooden houses straggled along the steep banks of the branching estuary, but around the fine new church some stone buildings indicated the growing prosperity of Salcombe. Hilda's purchases were simple enough, and a short walk along the narrow winding lane that was the main street provided them all. At one stall she bought a long hooded cloak of brown wool with a cross sewn on one shoulder to indicate that she was a pilgrim. At a shop whose shutter hinged down to display its goods she haggled a little over a pair of strong walking shoes, and at another stall she bought a black felt coif, a close-fitting helmet that had laces which tied under the chin. On the way back to the tavern, they stopped by an old man who was crouching at the side of the street, amid a collection of walking sticks, shepherd's crooks, crutches and the like. From him she bought a thumb-stick, a holly pole with a small Y-shaped top, which would do service as a pilgrim's staff. Taking her purchases back to their tiny chamber, she changed into the sombre clothes she had bought and gave her bemused maid instructions for the next few days.

'I will be going away alone for a short time, on a pilgrimage. You are to stay here all the time, understand? Roger Watts will come every day to make sure that there are no problems. You can go as far as the church and you may look at the stalls and shops, but nothing more. I have left money with the tavern-wife so that you may eat and sleep until I come back.'

The maid, a meek and dutiful girl, adored her mistress, who had taken her in when her widowed father had drowned at sea. She too was worried that Hilda was going off unaccompanied, but like the ship-masters she knew better than to try to dissuade her.

The next stop for the determined widow was the church of the Holy Trinity, a fine new building dominating the surrounding houses. She stood inside the empty nave and prayed with bowed head and clasped hands for the soul of Thorgils and his crew — and for the help of the Almighty in giving her strength to seek out the identity of his murderers. When she had finished, she went in search of the parish priest, tracking him down in the sacristy that opened off the chancel. He was an amiable and sympathetic man, a Saxon like herself. Tailoring her story a little, she explained that her husband had died at sea off the coast in Bigbury Bay and she wanted to make a pilgrimage in memory of him as near to the spot as possible. She enquired whether there were any pilgrims going in that direction whom she might join for safety and company.

'Indeed there are, my daughter,' he said earnestly. 'We get many folk landing here by ship from farther east, in order to make their way across country to Tavistock Abbey or farther down into Cornwall. Groups of them leave almost daily.'

She also learnt that there was a small chapel and a holy well of some repute, only some seven miles along that route, which was certainly inland from Bigbury Bay, where her husband had been lost.

'There will be a group leaving here at noon, no doubt aiming to reach Aveton Giffard before nightfall. Travel with them and in the morning you will be at St Anne's Chapel, as virtually all pilgrims stop there to pray and take advantage of the holy well.'

And so it turned out, as she was welcomed by a dozen cheerful pilgrims who had come from Rye by sea, on their way home to the West Country after their pilgrimage to Canterbury. Hilda was surprised by their merry manners — they seemed more like a party coming from a feast than devout pilgrims — but she was grateful for their ready acceptance of her company and their hospitality. Five of them were women, mostly of mature years, and at least two of them were widows, obviously hoping that their pilgrimage might land them a husband. Indeed, she suspected that a number of the band assumed that she was on the same mission, but for the short time she would be with them, she was content to let them think what they wanted.

Glad of her new strong shoes, Hilda walked with them gamely as they covered the league between Salcombe and Aveton before dusk fell. The men in their broad-brimmed pilgrim's hats, the women in their warm cloaks and hoods or snug coifs like her own, they marched along robustly, all with staffs and sticks to aid them. Accompanied by one man who played his bagpipes and another with a flute, they sang a mixture of psalms, hymns and popular ballads, some of them rather roguish. Hilda's education was broadened, as her former image of pilgrims being dour and sanctimonious was shattered by these gregarious, cheerful people.

Aveton was a large village, belonging to the manor of the Giffards. All she learned that night was that the land had been taken from her own Saxon people by the Normans and given to Walter Giffard, the standard bearer of William the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings. They stayed in a cheap alehouse that night, where a penny bought a plain but substantial meal and a bag stuffed with straw to sleep on. Next morning they set off after a bowl of oat gruel and a hunk of bread, marching the few miles to St Anne's Chapel, where they went through the routine of drinking the water from the holy well and kneeling in prayer in the tiny chapel at the crossroads. It was little more than a wooden hut with a turf roof, but inside there was an air of sanctity that was almost palpable.

Here Hilda left her companions, not without some regrets on both sides. The pilgrim band were quite concerned at leaving this comely woman alone in the middle of what they considered a rural desert, but she assured them, with tongue in cheek, that she had relatives in a nearby village with whom she would stay.

As they plodded off into the distance, bagpipes wailing and singing their hymns, Hilda suddenly felt very much alone. She turned back into the little chapel and, after another prayer, sought out the elderly man who was its custodian, though he seemed not to be in holy orders, even of the lowest grade. Half blind and bow legged, the old man, whose name, she learned, was Ivo de Brun, was friendly enough, especially when Hilda pressed a whole penny into his arthritic fingers.

After some amiable platitudes, Hilda began asking him some questions.

'Apart from pilgrims passing through, do you get any strangers here?'

The old fellow's milky eyes fixed on her, to pick up the blurred outlines of her face.

'Lady, I think your presence here is not altogether as a pilgrim. You are the second person to ask that question,' he said with a knowing smile. 'The King's Coroner himself was here not long ago on the same mission.'

Although John had told her that he had been in Ringmore for the inquest on Thorgils, he had not specified all the other places where he had sought information, so she was surprised to hear that he had already ploughed this particular furrow.

'Would this also be connected with the deaths of those shipmen?' asked Ivo. 'That is the only matter which has disturbed the peace of this area for a long time.'

Hilda felt she should be frank with the custodian and told him that she was the widow of the ship-master who had been killed, come to visit the scene of his death. 'Then it is to Ringmore you should go, poor lady,' said the keeper of the chapel. 'They know most about the matter.'

'I will do that, good man. But what were you able to tell Sir John, the crowner, who is a good friend of mine?'

'Like you, he wanted to know if I had seen any strangers at around the time of the wrecking of your husband's vessel. All I could recall was that four cowled monks passed this way and strangely did not come into the chapel to offer a prayer, as is almost always their desire and indeed duty.'

Hilda's heart gave an extra thump. John de Wolfe had told her about such monks being seen at the time of Peter le Calve's horrid death, but had not mentioned any being seen down here.

'Where did they go? Do you recall?' she almost snapped.

'I told the coroner they marched straight off down the Bigbury lane there.' He waved a hand vaguely in the approximate direction. 'The gentleman and his officer went down that way to make enquiries, but I never heard any more of the matter until you came just now.'

Hilda felt a little deflated. The energetic John had already followed up every possible lead, so it seemed. She should have more sense than to think that a solitary woman like herself could achieve more than a highly experienced law officer like John de Wolfe. Still, she was here now, so she might as well make the most of the opportunity. But the day was wearing on and she felt that she must first go to Ringmore, which was her prime destination. Another penny made the custodian even more anxious to help, and he explained that the small village of Bigbury was about a mile along one of the arms of the crossroads, with Ringmore slightly farther down another.

With a final genuflexion, Hilda made the sign of the Cross towards the little altar and took her leave of the old fellow. With her thumb in the crook of her holly staff, she strode out towards Ringmore, apprehensive at being for the first time alone in a remote and deserted countryside, far from her familiar villages of Dawlish and Holcombe. However, after the first half-mile, in which she was neither robbed nor ravished by footpads or outlaws, her confidence returned, and she stepped out more confidently along the narrow track, rutted by cartwheels and fouled by ox-droppings, as were most of the country roads.

The lane began dropping, and she sensed the familiar smell and feel of the sea, though it was still more than a mile distant. Trees became lower and sparser, with gorse, broom and heather taking their place.

Then the track entered a shallow valley, where more trees were able to shelter from the gales, and soon some strip-fields heralded the edge of a village. She saw the tiny church at the top end of the hamlet and then the scattered dwellings, barn and manor-house that made up Ringmore.

A couple of bare-foot children appeared, guiltily clutching some scarred apples that they had obviously stolen from someone's trees, the last survivors of the autumn harvest. The sight of a strange woman in their village was enough to make them forget their crime for the moment and they stared open mouthed at this apparition from the outside world. Hilda asked them where she could find the bailiff, as William Vado was the only person that John had mentioned in Ringmore. Wordlessly, one pointed towards the stockade of the manor-house and she went towards it, soon meeting two men who came out of the gate, leading a pair of oxen. They stared at her curiously but said nothing, and she went inside the compound and peered in through the open main door. A couple of girls and an older woman were scattering new rushes on the floor, and stopped to stare open-mouthed at her as if she had just dropped down from the moon.

Within minutes, she had explained who she was to the woman, and as soon as the servant had assured herself that this was an earthbound woman and a Saxon as well, she was eager to help.

'I'll fetch the bailiffs wife directly,' she said in an accent so thick that even the village-born Hilda had difficulty in following it.

With much bustling and shouting, another woman appeared with a young baby swaddled across her chest in a shawl, two other young girls hanging on to her skirts. Once again, explanations were made and the bailiffs wife made Hilda welcome, taking her through to one of the rooms off the hall, where a couple more young women and an older grandmother were sewing and preparing food for the evening meal.

'My husband is out on his rounds,' explained Martha Vado. 'He has four vills to supervise for his lord's steward in Totnes, but he will be home well before the daylight ends.'

Hilda was pressed to take food and drink and afterwards offered to nurse the new baby, a job she remembered well from her days in Holcombe, where she had three younger brothers and a sister. With the other women clustered around, even though one was still plucking a pair of ducks, she explained all that she knew about the death of her husband and went on to tell them of the murder of the lord of Shillingford and the attack on his son and steward, which seemed to the coroner to be connected with the deaths of Thorgils and his crew.

The women were round eyed with wonder at these tales of mayhem from the world outside, which on top of the shipmen's killing and the murder of old Joel from Burgh Island gave them more to gossip about than for years past. Like the old man at St Anne's Chapel, they were concerned at an unaccompanied woman moving around the countryside, but Hilda impressed on them that she felt it her bounden duty to find out all she could about the death of her husband.

She said the same to William Vado and his reeve when they returned late in the afternoon. When he discovered that she was a friend and indeed now almost a business partner of Sir John de Wolfe and one of the Exeter portreeves, he became deferential and sympathetic.

'Tomorrow, we will take you to where the vessel was beached and also to where your unfortunate husband was found,' he promised. 'Also you may see the church where his body lay in dignified rest for a time. No doubt our Father Walter will speak to you to reassure you on that point.'

That night, Hilda was given one of the best mattresses, one stuffed with goose feathers rather than straw or ferns. She bedded down with the women and children in the side room, Martha and William Vado taking the other small chamber where the new baby slept in an old box alongside them.

The following morning she followed the itinerary that the bailiff had suggested, calling at the church for a prayer and a rather short, stiff interview with the parish priest, who seemed unimpressed by her pilgrimage to the scenes of her husband's demise. Then William found her a pony, which she sat on easily with just a sack for a saddle, and they went down to the beach opposite Burgh Island to view the resting place of the Mary and the place where Thorgils and his men had been found. She looked up at the now deserted cell on top of the island and was told that Joel had been laid to rest in the churchyard at Ringmore, where he had spent the last two decades of his life.

'The parson revealed that he had been a Knight of the Templars,' said William Vado. 'But no one seemed to know anything of his family, and we thought he would have preferred to be laid to rest among us.'

Hilda realised that she had learned nothing at all of any use to her from these well-meaning people, mainly because they had nothing to tell her. What now exercised her mind was the shadowy image of three black-robed monks, who seemed to have appeared too many times for it to be coincidence. They had been seen on the track up from the other beach near Ringmore, then at St Anne's Chapel and once again far away near Shillingford. True, it seemed at their first appearance that there were four, rather than three, but she felt that these appearances might have some significance.

Now this single-minded woman wanted to pursue their last sighting in this area, which seemed to be down the road from the chapel, according to the poor vision of the old custodian. She needed to get away from Ringmore now and with a twinge of conscience at her deception, decided to fabricate a means of leaving her most recent hosts.

'I am meeting another group of pilgrims at St Anne's Chapel,' she lied. 'I met them in church at Salcombe some days ago and they said they would be returning from Tavistock to take ship at Salcombe again, passing the chapel hopefully around noon.'

The Vado family insisted on filling her with food before she left, and the bailiff sent his older sister and Osbert, his reeve, as chaperone and escort on the short journey up to the chapel. They wanted to stay with her to see her safely reunited with her mythical pilgrims, but she managed to dissuade them by saying that she would remain in the chapel in prayer for her husband and his men until the travellers arrived. Thankfully, the bandy old man did not blurt out his ignorance of any pilgrims due to arrive and, with expressions of genuine good feeling, the pair from Ringmore said farewell and left for home.

After they had vanished around a bend in the track, Ivo de Brun, the scarecrow that cared for the little chapel, gave Hilda a conspiratorial leer.

'I think, my lady, that you have other things in mind.'

She sighed and nodded. 'I have indeed! I have sworn not to rest until the murderers of my husband have been brought to justice. I need to follow every suggestion that might lead the law officers to them.'

'I told you that the crowner has already been here on that mission,' the old man pointed out. 'He went down to Bigbury, but I doubt he learned anything useful.'

'I know Sir John well,' she answered. 'He has told me of the monks you saw and he tried to discover more, but to no avail. Yet the itching of my thumbs tells me that some mystery attaches to those men.'

The custodian shrugged his pitifully thin shoulders. 'Go you then to Bigbury, lady. It is but a mile or so down the road, so I doubt any harm can befall you in that distance. Then return here and wait for more travellers who can see you safely back to Salcombe, for the roads are no place for a solitary woman, especially at this time of year. It threatens snow again today.'

The sky had a pink-tinged greyness that confirmed his forecast, but at least the cutting east wind had abated. Hilda pulled her pilgrim's cloak more firmly around her and thanked the old man before setting off down the other branch of the junction. She trudged along the narrow track, the ground firm where the mud had dried. On either side were scattered bushes and low trees almost devoid of leaves. There was no cultivated land here, and beyond the irregular tracts of heathland the edge of the forest stood in mottled shades of black and brown. There were no travellers on this path, and the only life she saw was a slinking red fox and a pair of circling buzzards. More used to the mild bustle of Dawlish, for a while she had the fancy that all humanity had perished and she was alone in a world deserted by all but the animals and birds.

It seemed a long mile, but eventually she came into the small hamlet, a dozen crofts and tofts around a church, a blacksmith's hut and a cottage with a drooping bush above the door, the universal sign of a tavern. Behind the village, a band of strip-fields ran up to the edge of the dark forest, which loomed oppressively into the distance, where it dipped down towards the valley of the Avon.

Though hammering came from the open front of the smithy, there was almost no one in sight, other than an old woman sitting on a tree stump outside her tumbledown cottage, spinning wool from a distaff under her arm on to a spindle hanging from one gnarled hand. She looked up curiously as Hilda approached, the sight of a solitary woman being unusual in these parts, even if she was wearing the garb of a pilgrim.

'Are you lost, good girl?' the crone asked, her bright eyes taking in every detail of the new arrival's appearance. 'There's nothing down this road other than the river and the sea.'

'I thought I could get back to Aveton, mother,' answered Hilda, putting on her strongest rural accent, honed in her own village of Holcombe.

'You can, if the tide is out,' replied the dame. 'Though you'll be hard pressed to walk there before nightfall.'

'Can I find some food and drink here, mother?' she replied. 'I have some pennies and that looks like an alehouse.'

'Madge will give you something there, no doubt. But a fair woman like you should not be walking the roads alone, especially these days.'

Something in the spinner's voice made Hilda take notice.

'What is happening these days to give you concern, mother?' she asked.

The old woman's brows came together and she looked somehow furtive.

'Strange things are going on in the forest hereabouts,' she muttered. 'Ghostly figures seen at night, food and livestock vanishing. Voices calling in the woods … I fear for our souls in this vill.'

Hilda felt a frisson of unease shiver up her spine. 'Have you seen three or four Benedictines come through here at any time lately?' she asked.

The aged woman shook her head. 'I hear that some king's officer came asking the same question not long ago. But we've seen no monks here, only ghostly shapes in white robes in the woods, according to our sexton.'

Hilda thanked the lady and moved on to the alehouse, where the buxom widow Madge told her much the same story after she had given her a plain but wholesome meal for a ha'penny.

'The village men are fond of their drink, but so they have been these many years,' she explained. 'Yet it's only in the last few weeks that they have been telling these tales about strange goings-on in the forest.'

Hilda had given a cautious version of her own story, of the widow seeking answers about her husband's murder. The ale-wife, a widow herself, had responded with sympathy, though she too was surprised and curious about an attractive woman wandering the byroads alone.

'What do you think is the explanation for these visions?' asked Hilda, as she sat at the only table and ate fat bacon, eggs and beans, with fresh bread washed down with cider.

Madge, her ample bottom overflowing a stool near by, lifted her hands in supplication.

'Who knows such things? Even allowing for the romancing of some of our menfolk with too much ale in them, something unusual is happening in the forest. Months ago, men sent by the manor-lord went into the woods on the other side from the village and stayed there a week or more. We heard distant hammering, but no one was allowed near — not that anyone wished to prowl, given the villains and outlaws that sometimes infest the forest.'

'Is there anything deep in the woods? Buildings or suchlike?' asked Hilda.

'Only ruins, those of an ancient castle and next to it what was once a priory in the old days. I've never seen them myself, I keep clear of such places, but my father spoke of these derelict remains. He used to go in there poaching, I must admit. Men are too afeared these days — one lad a month ago was beaten up and almost killed by some rough fellows in there.'

At that point, the landlady went off to pour a quart of ale for a ploughman, who seemed to have come in mainly to ogle this handsome woman who had descended upon their village. Left alone with her trencher of food, Hilda thought about what the two village women had told her about the surrounding forest and became convinced that something was going on in there that was connected with these crimes. Her feelings were mainly based on what John de Wolfe had told her about this whole area … the murder of the shipmen, the warnings from Winchester about a new Prince John rising, the possibility of Moorish involvement and, not least, the appearance in several sites of these hooded monks. To such an intelligent and determined woman as Hilda of Dawlish, this was a challenge that could not be ignored. If there was someone hidden away in those woods, then surely a circumspect reconnoitre might be well worth the effort?

'Can you give me a corner to sleep in tonight, good-wife?' she asked, when Madge had finished serving the nosy villein. 'I need to be at St Anne's Chapel tomorrow to meet my pilgrim friends and return to Salcombe,' she said, manipulating the truth again.

They agreed on a palliasse alongside Madge's own in the lean-to behind the inn, as well as another meal that evening. Then Hilda announced that she was going for a walk to familiarise herself with the village, while daylight lasted, it now being early afternoon. The ale-wife looked troubled at this and urged her not to stray too far.

'Certainly don't go into the forest,' she declared. 'And be sure to be back well before dark!'

Hilda demurely agreed, put on her cloak and, once out of sight of the tavern, made straight for the edge of the forest. The lonely atmosphere of deep woodland held no terrors for her, a country girl who had spent well over half her life around Holcombe. She found a deer path and, by a combination of natural instinct and observation of the motion of the drifting grey clouds above the trees, aimed her feet directly away from the village, towards where she gathered the old ruins lay.

After the better part of an hour, she began to wonder whether she was doing the most foolish thing in her whole life, blundering about an unknown forest on the strength of a couple of drunken yokels' fantasies about ghosts. She eventually stopped and began debating whether she should turn around and go back. Then she heard a horse neigh in the distance and wondered if she had come almost right through the trees and reached the other side of the forest. The next thing she noticed was through her nose, rather than her ears. A waft of woodsmoke reached her nostrils, and carefully she walked ahead again, tracking down the smell until she could see a thin line of grey smoke wavering in the wind. It seemed to be coming from the ground itself, and when she delicately trod towards it, saw that it was indeed rising from the centre of a larger thicket of brambles.

That was the last she saw for some time, as suddenly an oat-sack was thrown over her head from behind. Rough hands pinned her arms to her side, dragging her off her feet and carrying her bodily away, her cries of distress muffled by the smelly hessian of the dirty sack.

During the week that followed, life for John de Wolfe went on much the same as usual — at least, much the same as since he had moved out of Martin's Lane and taken up residence with his mistress Nesta. He was by turns happy and uneasy, then content and irritated. Life had changed radically, even though the people he was with were the same and the orbit of his life still revolved mostly within the same quarter of a mile.

He sat now at his table in the Bush, warmed by the same fire and drinking the same good ale brewed by the woman he loved, yet he could no longer slump by his own hearth, stroking the head of his old hound until it was time for a leisurely amble down to the Bush. He leaned now against the door-post of the inn's cook shed, watching Nesta and her girls preparing food for hungry customers, yet he could no longer perch on Mary's little stool in her kitchen, cadging hot pastries and gossiping about the day's events.

Passionate nights in Nesta's warm bed were a delight, and he certainly did not miss the barren mattress in Matilda's solar. But even up in the little room in the Bush's loft, he felt it was somehow unseemly for Gwyn or a castle man-at-arms to come tapping on Nesta's door when there was some midnight emergency, rather than being woken by Mary climbing the solar steps. In short, the familiar routines of the past couple of years had become so ingrained that this abrupt change to a different set of routines had unsettled him. He realised this well enough himself, but was powerless to shake off the mood of unease. John even daydreamed about giving up this split lifestyle and running off with Nesta to live in Wales or Cornwall, making a fresh start. But the practicalities were insuperable. There was his obligation to the King to continue as coroner, as well as Nesta's attachment to her beloved Bush, which gave her both an intense interest in life as well as a fair living.

The cold light of every morning saw him back in his chamber in the castle gatehouse, and the familiar round of duties drove any decisions about the future direction of his life into the background once again. John called briefly at his house in Martin's Lane every day, choosing early afternoon when he knew Matilda would either be snoring in her bed during an afternoon siesta or on her knees in St Olave's church. He went there to check that Mary had sufficient money to meet domestic expenses and to replenish the cash in his chest in the solar for Matilda's benefit, even though she had an income of her own from her father, dispensed by Richard de Revelle. John's earnings came from his venture with Hugh de Relaga, which was increasing in value as the months went by, thanks to the boom in Exeter's economy.

On calling at the house almost a week after he had moved out, he learned from Mary that on this particular day he need not have timed his visit to avoid his wife, as she had had just departed again with her brother to his manor at Revelstoke, taking Lucille with her.

'She didn't say when she was expecting to come back,' added Mary, severely. 'So you just carry on back to your hideout until you come to your senses!'

Any other cook-maid would have received a whipping from their master for such forthright criticism, but given their past history, John knew that Mary was trying to be helpful- and deep down, he suspected that she was right.

Hilda was a very intelligent woman and she rapidly decided that her best chance of survival was to play the part of a simple peasant who would be no danger to anyone. It soon became clear that she had not been captured by common outlaws who were intent on robbery and rape. After she was thrust inside the coarse sack, a rope was tied over it around her waist, effectively pinning her arms. Then she was half dragged, half carried a short distance before being thrown to the ground, a heavy foot planted on her back preventing her from getting up.

Two gruff voices began debating her fate, using English with a coarse local accent. At that moment, she determined to speak only in that language and pretend to be ignorant of the French that someone else now began using, this time in far more refined tones.

The upshot of the discussion was that the two Saxons, Alfred and Ulf, had found a woman wandering within a few hundred paces of the camp and had brought her back with them. The two guards spoke abysmal French, but their master now replied in passable English.

'Take that damned sack off and let's have a look at her.'

The rope was loosened and the hessian bag hoisted over her head. Hilda found herself lying in long grass inside some kind of ruin, with remnants of old masonry and a few dilapidated shacks. A tall and rather handsome man was standing over her, as the two burly ruffians displayed her much as though they had brought in a deer from the hunt.

'Who are you, woman? And why were you spying on this place?' demanded Raymond de Blois in French.

She looked blankly up at him, pretending not to understand. The younger oaf repeated the question in English, ogling the blonde as he realised for the first time that she was attractive, even though she was almost old enough to be his mother.

Hilda rapidly improvised her story. Haltingly and fearfully, she claimed to be a pilgrim who had come to St Anne's well to pray and collect holy water to treat her mother's advancing blindness. She was staying in the village while she waited for her fellow pilgrims to return the next day, but had got lost in the woods while out looking for mushrooms. Ulf called her a silly cow for expecting to find mushrooms this late in the year, but did not seem to find this a significant flaw in her story. Raymond de Blois studied her dishevelled appearance, and her plain rural clothing and accepted that she was some pathetic Saxon, of no danger to their mission.

'What shall we do with her, sir?' asked Ulf. 'Kill her, perhaps? Alfred and me could have some fun with her first. Pity to waste such a fair woman.'

The chivalrous knight was outraged at the suggestion and ordered the two outlaws to lock her in one of the small storerooms in the crypt.

'Put a mattress and a bucket in there, and find some food and drink for her. If either of you so much as lays a finger on her, you'll answer to me with your lives.' He slid his sword halfway out of its scabbard and slammed it back again, the hiss of metal on leather emphasising his determination to preserve the woman's life and honour.

Grumbling under their breath, they reluctantly led Hilda away. Seeing no hope of escape at that moment, she thought it best to stay passive and let herself be pushed down the steps and through the gloomy undercroft, where the strange sight of three Saracens and two other even odder fellows gave her plenty to think about after she was locked into a small, almost dark room. It was lit only by a narrow shaft in the side wall which was almost totally obscured at its upper end by profuse vegetation.

When her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, she saw some crates and jars stacked in the chamber, the rest being a floor of damp earth. After a straw-filled palliasse and a bucket were provided, Hilda sat on a crate and considered her position. A brave woman, she accepted that she might not survive this abduction, but felt sure that this sinister camp in the forest was in some way connected with her husband's death. She had not the faintest idea what was going on in this place, but the presence of Moors and the general air of concealment and mystery told her that it must surely be connected with the scraps of information that John de Wolfe had told her about. There was no chance of getting out of this secure prison, as the light shaft was almost vertical and wide enough only for a dog. All she could hope to achieve was to learn more about this mysterious place and trust that she could somehow survive long enough to tell it to the law officers.

Hilda pulled a box across to the door and squatted on it, so that her ear was near the crack on the side where the rusty hinges were attached. Though the door was thick and strong, it was a poor fit in the frame, and not only could she hear through the gap, but one eye placed against it gave her a very narrow view down the long crypt. As figures passed to and from the hearth, they were fleetingly visible in the dim light from the fire and the rush-lights. Most of them were the white-robed Saracens she had glimpsed when she was dragged in, but now and then she saw a large man in a dark tunic and a smaller one wearing what appeared to be a thin jerkin over a skirted robe.

The snatches of speech were disjointed and hard to make out, as the crypt was long and the acoustics poor. The Turks were farther away, and she could distinguish almost nothing of what they said to each other, but she did a little better with the little man in the tunic. He was asking questions in French, with a strange accent that she could not identify. It seemed that the Turks also had a problem understanding him, as he spoke slowly, loudly and with pedantic correctness. Only one voice ever answered him, in slurred French, and she decided that the large fellow and the other two Turks spoke none of that language at all.

The gist of the questioning was at first about her and her presence there. When the small man demanded to know what was going on, the Arab informed him shortly and with apparent ill temper that this was some local woman who had been caught spying on them.

'She should be killed, for safety's sake!' he snarled, which sparked a gust of protest from the questioner. Hilda failed to hear much of the rest of the argument, as the men seemed to have turned away from her. After this, all she heard were sporadic questions and even more grudging answers about some processes in which they were engaged.

In spite of her good intentions to eavesdrop indefinitely, within a couple of hours Hilda felt overcome by fatigue and worry and crept to the bag of straw, where she soon fell asleep.

De Wolfe had been living in the Bush for more than a week when one afternoon two worried men called at his chamber in Rougemont. They were Roger Watts and Angerus de Wile, the two ship-masters from Dawlish.

'We left it until now in the hope that Mistress Hilda would come back,' said Watts. 'But we waited at Salcombe until yesterday, then decided we had better catch a fine sou'wester and sail back home.'

John listened with mounting consternation as the two men related how their new employer had sailed with them to Salcombe, ostensibly to visit the Mary and Child Jesus and see the scene of her husband's death.

'But then she left her maid in the tavern and took off somewhere, dressed as a pilgrim,' declared Angerus. 'It took us a day to ask around and finally discover from the parish priest that she had left with a party for St Anne's Chapel.'

At this, de Wolfe guessed straight away that Hilda must have gone on to Ringmore to see where Thorgils had been washed ashore and laid in the church. Roger Watts soon confirmed this.

'We were worried out of our minds, Crowner,' he said bleakly. 'We felt responsible for taking her there and letting her go off on this wild-goose chase all alone.'

'Not that we knew what she was going to do,' added de Wile, defensively.

They described how they had followed her route to the chapel and discovered that she had walked from there to Ringmore. They sought out the bailiff and were told that she had left there to return to Salcombe, allegedly with a pilgrim band, but the old custodian of the chapel had already told them that she had come back and gone down to Bigbury village.

'We hastened there and were told that she had arranged to stay the night with the ale-wife in a tavern,' said Watts dolefully. 'But she went out that afternoon and vanished. No one knew what had become of her, but she seemed to have this marked interest in the forest.'

The trail had petered out at that point, and though the two sailors had made half-hearted attempts to search along the edge of the nearby woods, they decided it best to hurry back to Exeter and report to de Wolfe, whose interest in Mistress Hilda was well known to everyone in Dawlish.

'Did you learn anything more from any of the people in that miserable village?' snarled John, now angry and worried at the news.

'Only that she questioned everyone she could about what might be in the forest there,' said Angerus. 'There were unlikely tales about ghosts and demons trotted out by the local folk, but they are a pretty backward and superstitious lot in Bigbury. We reckon there are outlaws and chicken thieves aplenty there, and the worry is that our lady might have been attacked by some of those bastards.'

This seemed all the two shipmen could tell John, but as they were leaving, Watts fumbled in the scrip on his belt and pulled out a crumpled scrap of parchment.

'When we were searching for Mistress Hilda just inside the forest boundary, I came upon this on the faint track that led deeper into the trees. I doubt it has any bearing on the matter, but I thought I had best bring it.'

He held out the parchment, which was stained with dried muddy water and had some shreds of grass stuck to the surface. John looked at it and saw some unintelligible writing, interspersed with strange symbols, which meant absolutely nothing to him. He thrust it at his clerk, who, like Gwyn, had been listening with avid concern to the ship-masters' tale.

'Does this mean anything to you, Thomas?'

The clerk smoothed out the small page of sheepskin on his table and picked off a few shreds of vegetation as he studied it.

'These are alchemical symbols,' he pronounced. 'I am no expert, but I recognise the signs for mercury, sulphur, lead, tin, copper and gold.'

'What about the other writing there?' demanded the coroner, now very worried about Hilda's disappearance. 'Even I can tell that it's not Latin.'

Thomas peered more closely at the soiled and smudged parchment.

'Some of it is Greek, but some is an oriental script that I have no knowledge of. It could be the language of Araby.'

'You are a great scholar. Can you make anything of the Greek?' demanded de Wolfe.

'I know only a few words of Homer and Aristotle,' said the little priest, defensively. 'I can make out 'life' several times and 'water' or 'fluid' … and yes, there is 'gold' again.'

Gwyn had a suggestion. 'Maybe the fat monk Rufus up at Rougemont could read it — he seems to be familiar with the Saracen world.'

Thomas bridled at this reflection on his linguistic abilities.

'I doubt he'll make much of these few words! It seems to me that the congruence of 'mercury, lead, tin and gold' points to the main preoccupation of alchemists, the transmutation of base metals into gold.'

'What about the rest of it?' snapped de Wolfe.

'The words 'life' and 'fluid' may refer to the parallel search for the liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone — the Elixir of Life, which is supposed to confer health and everlasting life on those who partake of it.' Thomas crossed himself as he spoke. 'It is a form of blasphemy, seeking an alternative path to everlasting life other than through the love of God and the Holy Trinity.'

Gwyn was the usual dissenting party. 'Whatever it means, it doesn't help us find Hilda.'

John rasped his fingers over his stubble, a habit that seemed to stimulate his thoughts. 'I'm not so sure, Gwyn. Parchments like that don't land in lonely Devon forests unless someone is there to lose them. It tells us that someone is in that area who doesn't belong there. It smacks of Mohammedans with that Levantine script, adding to the suspicions we already have.'

'What about this alchemy gibberish?' grunted the Cornishman, still unconvinced.

'If someone can make gold from Devon tin, then Prince John can buy all the armour, pikes and horses he wants,' pointed out Thomas. 'This fits in twice over with what the Chief Justiciar said in his message.'

Even the coroner was scornful at this point. 'But that claim is nonsense, surely! Fools have been trying to make gold since Noah built his ark, but no one has ever succeeded.'

'There have been certain claims of success,' countered Thomas, cautiously. 'Though admittedly none has ever stood the test of time. But eventually, someone has to be first. '

'What about Mistress Hilda?' asked Angerus de Wile, who had stood with his friend in the doorway while the others debated the parchment. 'Shall we go back to Salcombe and start searching again?'

De Wolfe thought for a moment, then shook his head. 'I considered whether it would be quicker for you to take us by ship, but it's not practicable to carry our horses with us and we need them there. You go back to Dawlish and await events. I will seek out the sheriff at once and see what's best to be done.'