Fear in the Forest Read online

  They found that they also had something else in common that morning, as today was a hanging day and it was Roger’s turn to shrive the two unfortunates who were to go to the gallows on Magdalen Street outside the city walls. The coroner also had to be present, so that his clerk could record the forfeiture of the felons’ property. The two men followed the sad procession as the ox-cart trundled its fatal burden from the castle gaol in the undercroft of the keep. When the condemned men had been dispatched into the next life, John left Thomas in Roger’s company and went back home for the midday meal, his appetite none the worse after watching the agonal thrashings of the strangled men dangling on their ropes.

  Matilda was away, visiting her cousin in Fore Street, and John ate the boiled pig’s knuckle that Mary put before him in peace and quiet. This was shattered just as he was dropping the stripped bone under the table for Brutus.

  A hammering on the front door was answered by the maid, as she was bringing a bowl of dried apricots for his dessert. Mary came through the screens into the hall, followed by the thin figure of one of the burgesses’ constables, responsible for trying to keep public order on the streets.

  ‘Osric’s here, in a lather of excitement,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘You’re wanted urgently, as usual, to the ruination of your digestion!’

  The lanky Saxon, who seemed all limbs and Adam’s apple, stood awkwardly, twirling his floppy cap in his hands.

  ‘There’s been a killing and an assault, Crowner. Not an hour ago, in St Pancras Lane. I went up to Rougemont to report it, but Gwyn said you were at home. He’s gone straight to the house.’

  At the mention of the address, de Wolfe rose to his feet.

  ‘St Pancras Lane – who’s involved?’

  ‘The dead ‘un is an old servant. Bottler to the injured party, Sir Nicholas.’

  The coroner was already moving towards the door. ‘God’s toenails, what’s going on? I was with both of them only last evening!’

  Striding through the streets, with the constable pattering alongside, the coroner looked like a large, avenging bat, his black surcoat flying wide over his long grey tunic. As they thrust aside folk dawdling in the lanes, Osric breathlessly added some details.

  ‘Must have happened earlier this morning … only just discovered by the cook who comes to make the dinner. The servant was dead in the vestibule, the master lying out of his wits in his hall.’

  There was knot of neighbours clustered outside the door of the Warden’s house, kept at bay by the massive form of Gwyn of Polruan, who stood on the step. Grimly, de Wolfe thrust his way through and, with the constable close behind, went into the vestibule with his officer, who slammed the heavy door behind them.

  ‘The cook called an apothecary, who’s with him now,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘The corpse is there, under that table.’

  As in John’s own house, the vestibule led at one end into the hall and at the other to a passage to the back yard. It was bigger than the one in Martin’s Lane and had a bench, a table and a row of pegs for cloaks and sword belts.

  The bench was overturned and the table knocked askew. Between the legs was the crumpled body of the old man who had served wine the previous evening.

  ‘Have you looked at him yet?’ demanded the coroner.

  ‘Just a quick glance. He’s had a beating, poor old devil. Look at his head.’

  John motioned for Osric to lift the table away and then crouched down alongside the cadaver, which was on its side, bent so that the knees were almost touching the face. An ominous pool of blood lay under the head, soaking into the earthen floor. When he turned the head, he saw a great tear in the skin of the temple and dark bruising covering most of the cheek.

  Something about the ease with which the neck moved gave him further concern.

  ‘I suspect his neck is broken, too. See what you think about it.’

  He rocked back on his heels to give Gwyn space to get at the body. His officer was as experienced as the coroner in the various modes of death, learnt in battles, riots and ambushes the length and breadth of Europe and beyond. They sometimes competed with each other over the accuracy of their diagnoses of different types of lethal injury. Gwyn tested the rigidity of the arms first, to compare with the neck.

  ‘Been dead more than a few hours, by the stiffness. I wonder when he was last seen alive?’

  As he gripped the bloody head to swing it about, the hovering Osric answered his question. ‘Last night, it seems. The cook gave them their supper, then went home. None of the neighbours saw them this morning.’

  Gwyn finished his manoeuvres and stood up, wiping his stained hands on his breeches. ‘You’re right, Crowner. His neck’s snapped. Must have been a tidy stroke on his head to do that, though he’s a frail old fellow.’

  They stood looking down at the pathetic remains of the aged bottler.

  ‘A club or a baulk of timber did that. Nothing sharp edged,’ announced de Wolfe, determined to have the last word on fatal injuries. ‘Now what about Sir Nicholas?’

  He turned to the door into the hall and lifted the crude wooden latch. Inside, he saw the same high, gloomy chamber that he had sat in the previous evening. Now the owner was stretched out on the long table, lying on a sheepskin coverlet fetched from his bed. He was groaning and moving restlessly, with an anxious-looking man standing alongside, a cup of some liquid in his hand. De Wolfe recognised him as Adam Russell, an apothecary from a shop in High Street, a well-known and trusted dispenser of remedies.

  ‘He’s getting his senses back, then?’

  The apothecary, a small man with a round, owl-like face, nodded thankfully.

  ‘Just these past few minutes, Sir John. He’s also had a nasty crack on the skull, though naturally not so heavy as the poor fellow outside. There was nothing I could do for him.’

  De Wolfe advanced to the side of the table and looked down anxiously at the Warden of the Forests. Part of his concern was for the victim himself, but part was the fear that de Bosco might not be able to identify his attacker and the possible motive. The man’s eyes were open, but rolling about. He was moaning and trying to lift his hands towards his injured head, where a deep cut could be seen through the thin white hair. Blue bruising spread down his forehead and his upper eyelids were black and puffy.

  ‘Can he hear me, I wonder? What potion have you got there?’

  Adam allowed himself a slight smile. ‘The best medicine for this, Crowner – a little brandy wine.’ He bent over the Warden and held the cup to his lips. Nicholas spluttered as the strong spirit burned his mouth, and he struggled to sit up, but fell back with a groan.

  ‘De Bosco, it’s John de Wolfe, the coroner. We met only yesterday, in kinder circumstances. Can you understand what I say?’

  The victim’s eyes stopped swivelling and focused on the speaker’s face. His thin lips parted to show his bare gums and a weak voice emerged.

  ‘De Wolfe? Why have they done this to me?’

  John bent lower to catch the whispers. ‘They? There were more than one?’

  The Warden tried to nod, but the movement made him hiss with the pain in his head. ‘Two men – burst in here at dawn. I was just out of bed, sitting here drinking ale. I never take food to break my fast.’

  De Wolfe had feared that the Warden’s mind was wandering, but he seemed to be recovering his wits by the minute.

  ‘Did you recognise them? What did they say?’

  The apothecary frowned at the coroner. ‘He’s not yet in a fit state to talk much.’

  John bobbed his head impatiently. ‘I know, but just a few words. We need to set up a hue and cry.’ He looked down again at Nicholas de Bosco, who returned his gaze through blood-shot eyes, and raised his head a little from the coverlet.

  ‘I recollect very little – not even being struck. But they were rough louts, poorly dressed. They said nothing, not a word.’

  He groaned and closed his eyes, his head sinking back again. At the apothecary’s disapproving frown, John st
raightened up and stepped back.

  ‘I’ll not bother you more at present. When you are stronger, we’ll talk again.’

  He looked at Adam Russell. ‘Do you want him taken to the monks at St Nicholas or St John’s?’ These were the two priories that had infirmarers with some skill as physicians.

  ‘There’s little they can do that God and time will not, Crowner. I’ll get some men to carry him to his bed, then I’ll send my apprentice around to sit with him. I’ll return myself in a few hours.’

  ‘When can I talk to him again?’

  ‘Try this evening – or better, tomorrow morning.’

  With that John had to be content and, leaving the injured Warden in the care of the apothecary, he took Gwyn back to their chamber in Rougemont.

  Thomas was already there, busy writing up duplicate copies of the rolls, which eventually would have to be presented to the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery or the Justices in Eyre when they next came to Exeter. He sat on his usual milking stool at one side of the trestle table and pulled his parchments and inks nearer to give space to de Wolfe, as he bumped down on to his bench opposite. Gwyn took up the only other flat surface in the bare room, perching his broad backside on the stone sill that ran below the pair of slit windows. The inevitable pitcher of cider came out for the coroner and his officer, though the abstemious clerk declined, preferring water – when he could get any that looked even halfway clean. He had already heard of the trouble in St Pancras Lane from one of the guards and started off the debate about its significance.

  ‘Can this be connected with the killing in Sigford, Crowner?’

  ‘God knows, Thomas! It could be a chance robbery, though the cook says that de Bosco never had much of value in that small town house. He had several manors out in the country where most of his goods and his strongbox were kept.’

  Gwyn lowered his drinking pot long enough to comment.

  ‘The assailants may not have known that, though. Yet they made no attempt to force either the old bottler nor the Warden to tell them where there might have been valuables.’

  John drummed his fingers on the table restlessly. ‘To my mind, it’s too great a coincidence that a pair of forest officers get attacked within as many days. De Bosco told me that he had had several threats recently, seemingly designed to force him out of office.’

  ‘Three feet of arrow certainly put the verderer out of office!’ said Gwyn. ‘But I wonder if they intended to kill the Warden – or just beat him up as a warning?’

  ‘Is there no clue as who these villains might be?’ piped Thomas.

  ‘No one saw them, except the servant and Nicholas de Bosco,’ growled John. ‘And one of those is dead and the other has wits back only partly yet. No one saw them in the street, so I suspect they climbed into the garden and came from around the back.’

  ‘Any chance of finding them still in the city?’ asked the clerk optimistically.

  Gwyn fell back to heckling Thomas, a sign that the clerk’s melancholia was improving. ‘You’re an idiot, little man! Do we go around asking almost four thousand people whether they were nasty enough to batter two old men this morning?’

  The clerk stuck his tongue out at Gwyn in a most unpriestly manner, but the officer persisted. ‘Even if the sheriff shifted himself to put a watch on the city gates, who would they look for? Two men can walk in and out as they like, especially if they were pushing a barrow or carrying a bale of wool.’

  The mention of the sheriff started de Wolfe’s fingers drumming again.

  ‘I’ll swear he’s up to something concerning this affair – but I’m damned if I see what. Why was he in such a hurry to appoint this fellow as a new verderer? Does anyone know anything of this Philip de Strete?’

  Gwyn shook his big head, but Thomas de Peyne, whose large ears collected all manner of information, knew a little.

  ‘He’s a knight from down the west end of the county, fairly young, I hear. He was in one of the French campaigns and scraped enough loot together to buy out his knight-service and get himself a freeholding.’

  The coroner digested this, but was none the wiser.

  ‘Why should he want to burden himself with a thankless, unpaid job like that of a verderer? He’d be better off staying home to look after his flocks and his fields.’

  As the words left his mouth, he realised that the same applied to himself and his coroner’s appointment – though he had no flocks and fields to labour over. His brother William was quite content to look after the two family manors and John’s business partner, city burgess Hugh de Relaga, turned them a nice profit from their wool-exporting enterprise.

  But the fact remained that Richard de Revelle had produced this man from nowhere and was going to install him in a dead man’s shoes.

  ‘The post may be unpaid, master – but anything to do with the forests is suspect of being involved with extortion and corruption,’ Thomas reminded him. They argued the issues back and forth for a time, but with no solid facts to hand it became a futile exercise.

  ‘I’ll hold the inquest on the bottler this afternoon in the courthouse – not that it will advance us one inch farther,’ grumbled John. ‘Gather the neighbours for a jury in a couple of hours, Gwyn. Afterwards, I’ll go to see if de Bosco has recovered any more of his memory.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  In which Crowner John receives some momentous news

  Though considerably recovered, de Bosco was of little further help when John went to visit him in the early evening. Adam Russell, the apothecary, was just leaving as the coroner arrived and confirmed that the older man would have a sore head for a week or two, but was in no danger as long as fever did not set in from the gash on his head. When the coroner climbed to the solar where the injured man was in his bed, he found a neighbour’s ample wife came to sit with him until nightfall.

  Standing alongside the pallet like some great black crow, John looked down at the bandaged head and saw that the eyes were now almost closed from the bruised swelling of the lids. However, what could be seen of them was bright enough and Nicholas spoke quite rationally.

  ‘I suppose you have no hope of catching those murdering bastards?’

  He had been told of the death of his bottler and was grieving for the loss of the innocent old man.

  ‘I wish I had better news for you, but there was no chance of finding these men. We had no description whatsoever and they had been gone from your house many hours before you were found. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No matter. When I’m able to move, I’ll take myself off to one of my manors, where I can feel safe with my servants around me. For they’ll try again, mark my words.’

  ‘So you don’t believe they were common robbers?’

  De Bosco’s toothless mouth made a derisory sound. ‘Not at all, Crowner! You can’t think that yourself, with the verderer slain not two days before – and me having been threatened to give up my duties.’

  ‘Will this encourage you to do that?’ ventured de Wolfe.

  ‘No, be damned to them, whoever it is!’ snapped Nicholas. ‘I was appointed by my King to do his duty, just as I fought for him in the wars. I’m not going to be frightened off by a bang on the head.’

  John forbore to mention that his bottler had suffered more than a bang on the head, as had Humphrey le Bonde. He admired the older man’s courage, but hoped that he would do as he promised and retire to the safety of one of his manors to carry out his duties.

  ‘Can you hazard any guess at all as to what’s behind this?’ he asked, as a last query.

  ‘Someone wants to infiltrate the forest administration, I suspect. But why, God alone knows! There’s plenty of graft and dishonesty there, but that’s mainly the perquisite of the foresters and woodwards. It would be unusually well-organised corruption if the verderers and the Warden had their fingers in the same pie.’

  As John left, he wondered whether de Bosco had struck nearer the truth than he imagined.

  In the long summer evening
s, they ate supper much later in the house in Martin’s Lane, and John found he had a couple of hours to spare before he need sit with Matilda at their silent meal. His feet took him automatically towards Idle Lane, and as he strode through the town his thoughts abandoned dead men and split heads, in favour of his lady love.

  He became more uneasy the nearer he came to the Bush. It was over a week now since he had been with Nesta in her room upstairs in the inn. Usually, their lovemaking was carefree and enthusiastic, sometimes even boisterous. Dour as John was to the outside world, alone with the Welsh woman he was a changed man – tender, sensual and happy.

  So it was with grave concern that he pondered what had happened over this past week or two. Once again, he tortured himself with thoughts of Nesta being involved with another lover, but somehow the signs of that were lacking. He wondered with dread whether she was ill or sickening for something, though she looked healthy enough. As he stooped to enter the low door of the inn, his resolve hardened to find out what was going on. A coward in the face of embarrassing emotions, he steeled himself to confront Nesta head on tonight. For once, fortune favoured him as he saw her standing at the back of the low room, watching Edwin hammering a wooden spigot into a fresh cask of ale. There were relatively few patrons sitting around and he grabbed his mistress by the hand and pulled her towards the back door.

  ‘We’re going for a little walk, madam,’ he said firmly, leading her into the yard behind. As she turned a surprised face towards the suddenly masterful coroner, he saw that they were not alone, as one of the cook-maids was coming out of the kitchen shed and a customer was relieving himself against the fence behind the brew-house.

  ‘This way, then,’ he snapped, turning sharply to avoid an audience. He opened the wicket gate that led out on to the waste ground alongside the inn, and with an arm now around her shoulders walked Nesta towards the junction of Idle Lane and Priest Street.