Fear in the Forest Read online

  But today Nesta had no inclination for a shouting match. Her spirits were low and her mind troubled. All she could think about was the life that was growing deep in her womb – and the complications that it would inevitably bring. So far, no maternal urges had surfaced; she felt nothing yet for whoever it was that was lodging in her belly. Apart from the loss of her monthly flow – something that happened irregularly from time to time, anyway – she felt no different. It was only the realisation that she was going to have a child, and all the trouble that was to flow from it, which had suddenly turned her world upside down.

  As she walked through the West Gate, oblivious of the pushing and jostling of porters with their huge bundles of raw wool and the yelling of drovers bringing in sheep and pigs for slaughter, Nesta thought of John and his avowed determination to stand by her. Was he really happy at her condition? Or was his love for her suppressing his concern for the burdens and aggravation that would descend upon his head once it became common knowledge that he was going to recognise a bastard? And what of the other problem, the one that had kept her awake the whole of the night, giving her pretty face the dark smudges under her eyes and the sad droop of a usually cheerful mouth?

  Outside the city walls, she trudged on towards the unfinished bridge across the river, whose many arches curved up over the muddy grass of the tidal valley of the Exe before they came to an abrupt end at the main channel.

  Before reaching the ramp to the bridge, Nesta turned right, down into Frog Lane. This was a track going upstream across Exe Island, worn down by the feet of porters, pack mules and sumpter horses taking wool to the fulling mills at the upper part of the marshy island. There were dwellings dotted along the lane, mostly poor shacks of old timber which housed mill workers and those who could not afford to live within the city walls. Side tracks branched off Frog Lane towards the river, broken by leats that cut through the marsh and which filled up at every tide and when heavy rain fell on faraway Exmoor, the source of the river. Floods often carried away the flimsy huts, and every year lives were lost when spring tides or cloud-bursts deluged the island.

  It was on to one of these sodden tracks that Nesta now turned, heading for a solitary shack that looked even more dilapidated than most. Perched on the edge of a deep leat, it was little more than a collection of rotting planks that leaned dangerously to one side. The roof was thatched with reeds, on which ragged grass and weeds were growing. A hurdle that had once acted as a door had crumbled to the ground and the entrance was now covered with dirty hessian from the coverings of a couple of wool bales. The Welsh woman approached hesitantly, thankful that the dry weather had at least turned the usually glutinous mud into damp earth. Having no door to knock on, she stood uncertainly for a moment outside the crude curtain. At her feet, she saw a pile of white chicken feathers, guts and a severed cockerel’s head, probably from the vanquished contestant of a cock-fight, given to the old woman who lived here for her dinner.

  ‘Lucy? Lucy, are you there?’

  She called several times until a gnarled, filthy hand slowly pulled the sacking aside. A haggard face appeared, and though Nesta had seen this woman many times before her appearance still sent a tremor of fear and distaste down her spine. Bearded Lucy, as she was universally known, had wispy grey hair growing over all her face except for the upper cheeks and forehead. It surrounded her mouth and trailed over her pointed chin. Even the hooked nose was hairy, and a moustache partly concealed the toothless gums when her thin lips parted. Lucy’s eyes were milky with cataracts, and with her bent back and trembling claw-like hands Nesta wondered how she had avoided being condemned for a witch.

  ‘Who is it? I can see a woman’s shape – do you want what women usually want of me?’

  ‘It’s Nesta from the Bush. I need your advice.’

  The old crone shuffled farther out of the hut to peer more closely at her visitor. She was draped in shapeless, drab clothes that were little better than rags.

  ‘Ah, the Welsh woman. The crowner’s whore.’

  Nesta bit her lip to stop an angry retort to the old woman’s insolence – she needed Lucy today. ‘Can I come in? I’ll not keep you long.’

  The old crone cackled, but held aside the sacking with a gnarled hand.

  ‘I suppose you want what they all want, my girl.’

  With distaste, but driven by necessity, Nesta pulled her skirts closer and edged sideways past the old woman into the dim interior of the shack, which was little bigger than her pigsty back at the Bush. It smelt about the same, too, and she was thankful for the gloom, such that the coarser details of the dwelling were obscured. She skirted a small fire-pit on raised clay in the middle of the floor, filled with dead ashes and reluctantly lowered herself on to a small stool which, apart from a rickety table, seemed to be the only furnishing other than a long box like a coffin against the far wall. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the walls and a perilously slanted shelf held a few pots and pans.

  ‘So tell me about it, Welsh woman,’ said Lucy, in her high-pitched, quavering voice. She aimed a blow at a mangy grey cat that sat on the long box, which had a few grubby blankets spread on top and obviously served as the old woman’s bed. The cat squealed maliciously and fled through the door, letting Lucy sit down, her joints creaking almost audibly as she lowered herself slowly on to the box.

  ‘I think I am with child,’ said Nesta, in a low voice.

  ‘You don’t need to come here to discover if you’re with child,’ said the hag, tartly. ‘A score of wives inside the town walls could tell you that. So you must think that I can help you to get rid of it, eh?’

  Nesta flushed with sudden shame, but stuck doggedly to her mission.

  ‘That all depends,’ she replied in muted tones.

  Lucy’s sparse eyebrows rose on her lined, dirty forehead.

  ‘That makes a change! On what can such a dangerous matter depend?’

  ‘I wish to know for how long I have been pregnant.’

  The crone nodded knowingly. ‘Ah, I see! You’re not sure who the father might be, is that it?’

  Nesta was unable to meet the old woman’s clouded eyes, but bobbed her head briefly. Bearded Lucy hauled herself painfully to her feet and held out a shaky hand, the finger joints knobbled like pebbles.

  ‘Let’s have a look at you, then, my girl. Open up that kirtle, I need to look at your dugs.’

  Reluctantly, Nesta unlaced the front of her bodice and shrugged it off one shoulder. In anticipation of what she would have to endure, she had left off her thin under-chemise, so one of her ample breasts was exposed. The old woman brought her head so close that her hooked nose was almost touching the skin, to give her poor sight the best advantage. With one of her claw-like hands, she grabbed the breast and squeezed, testing the firmness of the gland.

  ‘Is it tender yet, girl?’ she demanded. Nesta flinched as the rough massage continued, but murmured, ‘A little tense, but not tender.’

  Lucy shifted the open bodice to look at the other side, peering closely at the nipple, then pulled the woman’s neckline together and stepped back.

  ‘The teats are darkening a little,’ she muttered. ‘You’ve not had children before?’

  Nesta shook her head and pulled at the lacing to cover up her exposed skin. The hag turned and indicated the grimy blankets covering the box-bed.

  ‘Lay yourself down there and we’ll find what’s to be found.’

  With even greater reluctance, Nesta sat on the bed and swung her legs up on the end. She was already regretting the impulse that had driven her to Exe Island.

  ‘Lie back, this won’t take long.’

  Lucy hovered over the innkeeper like some huge dishevelled bat, feeling her belly at length through the thin material of her summer kirtle. Then, like the midwife in Priest Street, she examined Nesta internally, a process that the tavern-keeper endured with gritted teeth and screwed-up eyes. In an age when cleanliness and hygiene were usually thought irrelevant, she was unusually fastidious.
Nesta washed almost every day and, in the fashion of the Welsh, even cleaned her teeth with the chewed end of a hazel twig dipped in wood ash. It was anathema to have to lie on a flea-infested blanket and have the grimed fingers of an old woman, who had probably not washed since old King Henry was on the throne, pushed into her most private parts.

  But she endured it, as she had little choice if she was to learn what she urgently needed to know. Bearded Lucy, still muttering to herself, rummaged about inside her with one hand, the other digging into Nesta’s belly just above her crotch. Like all women, the innkeeper wore no underclothing around her hips, so the hag needed only to reach up under her skirt.

  After a few moments Lucy grunted and withdrew her hand, wiping it casually on the sleeve of the rags she wore.

  ‘You are with child, girl, no doubt of that.’

  Nesta pulled down the hem of her kirtle and swung her legs to the floor, rising thankfully from the grubby bed.

  ‘But for how long?’ she persisted.

  The old woman rubbed her fingers over her wispy beard, a gesture that irrelevantly reminded Nesta of Gwyn of Polruan.

  ‘About three months, that’s as near as I can tell you. These things are never exact.’

  A cold hand reached into Nesta’s chest and seized her heart. This was the news she dreaded, though it was half expected.

  ‘So it could be before early April?’

  Lucy wagged her grotesque head. ‘It’s now past mid-June, so they tell me – so certainly you conceived not later than the middle or end of March. You may be able to tell that better than me, if you can remember when you rode the tiger around that time!’ She cackled crudely.

  Nesta ignored her and sank down on to the stool, which at least was wooden and free from obvious filth.

  ‘There can be no mistake?’

  ‘Yes, within a couple of weeks, either way. But if your crowner friend wasn’t rogering you for a month or two before mid-April, then he’s not the father.’ She had astutely guessed Nesta’s problem.

  The younger woman stared blankly at the floor for a few moments.

  ‘I need to be free of it, God help me,’ she said in a hollow voice.

  Bearded Lucy stood over her, hands on hips.

  ‘God can’t help you, dear – and I’m not sure I can, though so many women think otherwise.’

  Nesta raised her head slowly and her eyes roved over the bunches of dried vegetation hanging around the walls. ‘Some of them think rightly. Will you try for me? I have money I can give you.’

  ‘I can be hanged for that, Welsh woman. Even for trying.’

  ‘But will you do it? I’m desperate, I cannot have this child. Not for my sake, but for that of a good man.’

  The old crone considered for a moment. ‘He came here once, that man of yours. He was not unkind, like some who would see me hanged or worse.’

  ‘Then you’ll do it?’ Nesta’s voice carried the eagerness of desperation.

  Lucy raised her crippled hand.

  ‘Wait. I’m not doing anything. The days when I could put a sliver of slippery elm into the neck of a womb have long gone. With these poor fingers and my failing sight, I’d as like kill you as cure you.’

  Crestfallen, Nesta looked at her pathetically.

  ‘But you can help me some way? Give me some potion or drug?’

  Sighing, the old woman shuffled over to her shelf and took down a small earthenware pot.

  ‘You can try these, but never say that I am trying to procure a miscarriage for you. I am only trying to bring back your monthly courses, understand?’

  Nesta nodded mutely as Lucy shook out from the pot half a dozen irregular brown lumps, the size of beans.

  ‘What are they?’ she asked in a lacklustre voice.

  ‘A mixture of my own – just to bring on your flow, mind,’ she warned again. ‘Only herbs – parsley, tansy, pennyroyal, laburnum, rue and hellebore.’ She dropped the crude pills into Nesta’s hand and closed her fingers over them. ‘I make no promise that they will work. You will feel ill after you take them and no doubt spend half the day in the privy. If you begin to bleed, then probably God would have willed it anyway. And if you bleed too much, call an apothecary – but whatever you do, never mention my name. Though my life here is hardly worth living, I prefer not to end it dangling from a gallows!’

  In the late afternoon of that day, John de Wolfe was relaxing as best he could before his own cold fireplace. He had not long arrived back from Manaton and, ignoring Matilda’s displeasure, was sprawled in one of the monk’s chairs with a quart of ale in one hand, the other resting on Brutus’s head. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, his feet enjoying their freedom after a day in tight riding boots. His wife’s tut-tutting was due to his lounging in his black woollen hose without shoes, especially as one big toe protruded through a hole in the foot.

  ‘You still behave like a rough soldier, John!’ she scolded, sitting opposite him in tight-lipped disapproval. ‘Why can’t you comport yourself like a knight and a gentleman? What would anyone think if they came in now?’

  He rolled up his eyes in silent exasperation at her eternal snobbishness.

  ‘I’ll do what I like in my own house, wife,’ he grunted. ‘And who in hell is likely to come calling here on a hot Monday afternoon, eh?’

  Promptly, as if the fates were conspiring against him, there was a loud rapping on the front door. Mary was cleaning his boots in the vestibule and answered straight away, then put her head around the screens to announce visitors.

  ‘It’s Lord Guy Ferrars – and some other nobles,’ she proclaimed in a somewhat awed voice. Matilda jumped to her feet as if struck by lightning, and hurriedly began to straighten the wimple at her throat and pat down her kirtle.

  ‘Put on your shoes, at once!’ she hissed, as John hauled himself from the chair and groped for his house slippers. A moment later, Mary had stood aside for three men to stride past her into the hall.

  ‘De Wolfe, forgive us for intruding unannounced,’ boomed the leading man, who sounded as if he was in no way seeking such forgiveness. A powerful, arrogant fellow, some years older than John, Guy Ferrars was one of the major landowners in Devon – and indeed had manors in half a dozen other counties. De Wolfe knew him slightly and disliked him for an overbearing, ruthless baron, whose only saving grace was that he had been a good soldier and a loyal supporter of King Richard.

  Behind him was Sir Reginald de Courcy, a lesser light but still an important member of the county elite, with manors at Shillingford and Clyst St George, as well as property outside Devon. The third man was also known to the coroner by sight, being Sir Nicholas de Molis, whose honour included a number of manors along the eastern edge of Dartmoor. Rapidly gathering his wits together after this sudden invasion, John ushered the visitors to the long table, as there were too few chairs at the hearth.

  ‘Mary, wine and some wafers or whatever you have for our guests,’ he commanded, pulling out the benches on either side of the table. Matilda, her sallow face flushed with mixed pride, excitement and shame at her husband’s dishevelled appearance, stopped bobbing her head and knee and rushed after their cook-maid to accelerate the arrival of refreshments.

  John took the chair at the end of the table, with Reginald de Courcy on his left and the other pair to his right. Lord Ferrars began without any preamble, his harsh voice echoing in the bare hall.

  ‘We have just come from the castle, where we attended upon your dear brother-in-law.’ The tone was unambiguously sarcastic, and John was glad that Matilda was out of the room. The speaker was a large, florid man with a mop of brown hair and a full moustache, both flecked with grey. He wore a long yellow tunic, slit back and front for riding, with a light surcoat of green linen on top. The last time the coroner had seen him he had had a full beard, but this was now gone. That had been a sad occasion, as the fiancé of Ferrar’s son Hugh had been found dead in an Exeter churchyard – and she had been the daughter of Reginald de Courcy.r />
  ‘Our meeting was less than satisfactory, de Wolfe,’ continued Ferrars. ‘We went as a deputation of landowners to protest at various happenings in the Royal Forest, but received little satisfaction.’

  ‘None at all, to be frank!’ snapped the third man, Nicholas de Molis. ‘De Revelle was his usual mealy-mouthed self, full of evasions and excuses.’

  Mary bustled back with a tray full of savoury tarts and fresh-baked pastry wafers, together with a large jug of wine. Matilda was close behind and de Molis, a burly man with a face like a bull-dog, snapped his mouth shut on any further condemnation of her brother. She went to a chest against the far wall and took out some goblets of thick Flemish glass, only brought out on special occasions.

  When she had poured wine for them all, simpering and nodding at these county luminaries who had graced her house, she retired to one of the fireside chairs. Only the linen cover-chief over her head stopped her ears from flapping, determined as she was to hear every word of their conversation. Guy Ferrars looked across at her in irritation, but he could hardly evict the woman from her own hall. He turned back to the coroner.

  ‘I know you have been involved twice within the past few days on some of these matters, de Wolfe. But our complaints go back much farther.’

  ‘And concern many more than we three,’ said de Courcy, speaking for the first time. ‘We are but a deputation – the Abbot of Tavistock was to have joined us today, but he is indisposed.’

  John knew that Tavistock Abbey was a major landholder in Devon and anything that interfered with its business would be greatly resented. In fact, he had learned only today that the burned-out tannery in Manaton had belonged to them.

  ‘So what can I do for you in this situation?’ he asked cautiously.

  De Courcy, a thin, gaunt man with a completely bald head and a thin rim of grey beard running around his jaw, thumped the table with his fist.

  ‘We know you for a man of honour and one totally loyal to the King. There seems to be a campaign afoot to greatly increase the royal revenues from the forest at our expense.’