The Sanctuary Seeker

Chapter Seven In which Thomas de Peyne rides to Honiton

The mule was a game little animal, which kept up a steady trot. Though punishing to the clerk’s backside, it covered four miles each hour. This respectable speed was helped by a good road, as Thomas’s route took him along the main track to the east, the most frequented out of Exeter.

A day without rain had dried up all but the largest puddles, so the bare surface was, for once, neither a morass nor a dust bowl. Part of the road was still paved, as it followed the old Roman road, still in use after almost a thousand years.

Well before the November daylight faded, the former priest had reached Honiton, where the road branched to the old Roman towns of Ilchester and Dorchester. Accustomed to travellers, the village had several inns, which provided food and lodging for those who journeyed between Exeter, Cornwall, Southampton and the fleshpots of Winchester and London. One of these was the Plough, in a dip of the road near the centre of the village. It was a single storeyed, wide building with a high thatched roof, an untidy ramble of stables and huts lying on each side and at the rear. A crude model of a wooden plough hung on a bracket over the central front door.

The clerk jogged on his steed to the inn yard and slid off. He handed the bridle to a ten-year-old stable-boy, then took his saddlebag inside and negotiated a penny bed for the night, which included a meal.

By the time he had finished some fat mutton, bread and cheese and was sitting by the fire with a pot of cider, his earlier annoyance at having been sent out of Exeter had subsided. As his master had, at the Bush the previous evening, Thomas sank into a warm reverie, full of food and cider. With luck, he thought, if he avoided the cost of breaking his fast next morning, he might be twopence better off, thanks to Sir John’s unthinking generosity. For the moment, he forgot this errand, preferring to sit on his corner of the bench and enjoy his drink and the atmosphere around him.

After an hour or so, he moved reluctantly from the roaring log fire and went to the back of the main room. Here the innkeeper was knocking the plug out of a new barrel of beer, then pushing in a wooden spigot before more than a few cupfuls gushed away into the leather bucket held underneath. Thinking it best not to reveal his official interest, the clerk began to ask about the dead man, as if he had been a friend.

It was in vain, as the burly landlord, more intent on not spilling his ale, seemed to have no recollection of his former guest. ‘This is the busiest inn between Exeter and Bridport. I can’t recall a quarter of the folk who call here,’ he replied, with conviction.

‘Not even a man with a curious Saracen sword, curved within its sheath? And a dappled grey horse with a black ring around its eye?’

The man thought for a moment, holding the barrel firmly on its chocks. Then he shook his head. ‘No, I’ve seen a few like that in my time, swords and horses, but can’t recollect one lately. Best ask the lads in the stables – they see more of the guests and their beasts than I do.’

With that, Thomas had to be content. With a sigh, and resisting the urge to cross himself, he went to the door and stood on the threshold. It was pitch dark, and though there were no cathedral bells here to toll the hours, he guessed it must be a few hours before midnight. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he could make out a flickering glow around the right-hand corner of the building, from a bundle of tarred rushes burning in a bracket in the stable-yard. He decided to take the innkeeper’s advice and set off for the yard.

Other men would have been more wary of walking alone around highroad inns at night, but the years of sheltered life in a cathedral close had left Thomas oblivious of the risks. The moment he turned the corner, an arm came from nowhere to hook itself around his neck and simultaneously he suffered such a punch into the belly that most of the cider and his dinner shot from his mouth like an arrow from a bow. Though dazed, shocked and terrified, he realised from the cursing that his stomach contents had scored a direct hit on one of his assailants, but any triumph was short-lived.

‘You dirty little bastard,’ snarled a voice in English, and retribution came swiftly by way of a punch in the face, which split Thomas’s lip and made his nose gush blood like the innkeeper’s spigot.

Disoriented, but aware that he was about to be killed, the little clerk would have slumped to the ground but for the arm that was still half throttling him. Then he felt another hand tearing away the scrip at his belt, which held several quills, a lucky stone and all his worldly wealth, which amounted to three whole pence and several clipped halves and quarters. The man tipped the contents of the scrip into his palm and squinted at it in the poor light of the flaming torch across the yard. He gave Thomas another buffet, this time across the side of the head. ‘Three bloody pence! Why d’you always pick paupers to rob, you great fool?’ he yelled at his accomplice.

Before the villain who held Thomas could reply, the situation suddenly and dramatically changed.

There was a roar from a different voice and through the haze of pain and fear, the clerk heard the metallic scrape of a sword being pulled from a scabbard and a vague flash as the blade shone in the dim light. Then there was a howl of pain from the robber with his purse, the arm around his neck was abruptly removed and Thomas slid to the ground.

‘Stand and fight, you scabs!’ came a harsh bellow from the wielder of the sword, but the footpads had vanished into the night.

As his sight and hearing slowly returned, Thomas was aware of a large shadow standing over him. Another scrape told him that the sword had been slammed back into its sheath.

‘Bloodied one of the swine, at least. If he’d stayed, I’d have cut his head off!’ said the shadow, with some regret. He bent down and pulled Thomas none too gently to his feet. ‘Let’s have a look at you – nothing broken or missing by the looks of it. But we’ll get you into the better light inside. We could both do with a pot of something to drink.’

A quarter of an hour later, when the clerk’s teeth had stopped chattering with fright and he had swilled the blood and filth from his face, he sat at a rough table opposite his saviour, who was unconcernedly champing his way through a meal. He was a broad, muscular man of about thirty, tanned from the Levantine sun. A rim of brown beard surrounded his face, surmounted by a thick moustache like Gwyn’s. He wore a conical leather cap with earflaps and a thick leather cuirass, the outfit midway between ordinary clothing and armour. A huge broadsword clanked at his belt, as well as a formidable dagger. On his feet, Thomas was intrigued to see, were a pair of patterned boots similar to those on the mysterious Widecombe corpse. As he watched the other man eat, he was puzzled by the nonchalant way in which he had dismissed the violent robbery.

Indeed, the landlord of the Plough seemed equally unconcerned about such crimes being perpetrated in his backyard. ‘What d’you expect me to do?’ he had retorted. ‘The forest is full of outlaws, who live by murder and theft. I have an inn to run. I can’t be going out every five minutes to chase off criminals.’

Though the shaken clerk tried to thank his champion, the other seemed unconcerned. As the gratitude of one with only threepence in his purse seemed inadequate, Thomas disclosed that he was the agent of the King’s coroner, from whom appreciation might be of more substance. At this, Alan Fitzhai, for that was the name he gave, seemed more interested. ‘Sir John de Wolfe, you say? He who was with the King at Acre and on the march to Jerusalem?’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘I arrived there later, just before the Lionheart left for home, but I remember seeing de Wolfe several times. He was much thought of in Palestine, especially by Hubert Walter, who commanded the English army after the King sailed away.’

As Thomas had suspected, Fitzhai was another returned Crusader and, as such, might have news of their anonymous corpse. He plunged into the story of why he had come to Honiton and the Plough.

In the middle of hacking off the leg of a roast fowl with his dagger, Fitzhai stopped to stare at Thomas. ‘A fair man with a green jacket and a Mussulman sword?’

The clerk nodded. ‘He had a grey horse with a black ring around one eye. He stayed here at this inn.’

‘Ten days or so since?’

‘About two days short of a fortnight, yes.’

Fitzhai took the chicken leg almost to his lips, then paused. ‘I know him. And you say he’s dead?’

‘Stabbed in the back during a sword fight.’

Thomas sensed that the other’s attitude had changed. From being careless and self-confident, he was now cautious, looking warily at the clerk over his meat.

‘You say you knew him?’ Thomas persisted.

Fitzhai threw the stripped bone onto the table. ‘Well, I might have seen him somewhere,’ he replied evasively. ‘Your description makes him a Crusader, like myself – no doubt about that. There are hundreds like us.’

‘But you know his name?’

‘Not at all! How am I to tell one knight from another among all those coming home in dribs and drabs ever since the King left three years ago.’

Thomas knew that Fitzhai was avoiding the truth.

‘When did you come back yourself?’ he asked.

The broad man seemed on firmer ground here. ‘Five weeks back. I sailed into Southampton from Harfleur in early October. Took two months to get across France from Marseille.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Long before your man got himself killed,’ he added.

The clerk wondered why he had seen fit to add that. He tried further questions, hinting that maybe Fitzhai had known the dead man either in the Holy Land or on the long journey home, but Fitzhai became surely, and even annoyed.

Eventually, he threw down the last of his ale and stood up so abruptly that his bench fell over with a clatter. ‘Look, I saved your hide out there, but that’s the end of it. I want nothing to do with any affair of the law or to waste my time as juryman or witness. I want to keep clear of sheriffs and crowners and the like. So I’ll say goodnight to you, and advise you to stay indoors on dark nights.’ He grabbed his sword belt from the end of the table and buckled it on as he pushed his way to the door.