Fear in the Forest Read online

  ‘What are you doing, John? I’ve got a tavern to run!’ she protested.

  ‘The Bush can look after itself for half an hour. I want to talk to you.’

  The Welsh woman must have had an inkling of what was to come, for she went along meekly as they walked silently down the steep street towards the city walls near the river. At the south-west corner, a new gate had been cut through in recent years, to reach the quay-side where smaller ships lay beached on the mud outside the warehouses.

  John led Nesta over to some casks and crates awaiting shipment, where there was no one within earshot. He sat her on a large bale of wool wrapped in sacking and stood in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘Something is concerning you, my love. You may as well tell me what it is, first as last.’

  As Nesta looked up at him, her eyes brimmed over with tears. She shook her head and looked away, rubbing her face with the sleeve of her working gown.

  ‘Tell me!’ he commanded, his voice almost harsh from fear of what he might be about to hear.

  Nesta swung her face back towards him, her eyelids red and glistening. She sniffed back her tears, then leant forwards, her head against his wide sword-belt.

  ‘I think I may be with child, John. I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Sorry? Why should you be sorry, for God’s sake?’ he bellowed.

  After sixteen years of marriage to Matilda, never once had she conceived – though in truth he had been absent for most of that time and for the past few years they had never lain together.

  He pushed her gently away so that he could look down at her face, his own expression being a mixture of wonderment and anxiety.

  ‘Are you sure, dear woman?’

  She shrugged slightly. ‘Not sure, but something tells me that I am. My monthly curse has never been that regular since I miscarried when Meredydd was alive, so it’s difficult to tell.’

  He pulled her back tightly against him and bent to kiss the top of her head.

  ‘Have you been to see a good-wife who knows about these matters?’

  ‘Not yet – but I will, very soon.’

  De Wolfe eased himself away and then sat down alongside her on the bale, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘This is no reason for tears, Nesta,’ he said gently. ‘If it really is true, then I will be glad and proud to acknowledge myself as the father.’

  Nesta burst into tears, sobs this time, rather than just moist eyes. John jerked her shoulder helplessly, completely adrift with a weeping woman.

  ‘Don’t be sad, my love, please! Why are you crying? I said I’ll be joyful about becoming a father.’

  The Welsh woman shook her head desperately. ‘I’ve brought you nothing but trouble, John. You’re a high official, a knight and a Norman gentleman – and what am I? A lowly ale-wife.’

  ‘That be damned. Half the Norman gentleman I know have several families – both sides of the blanket, as they say. Even my poisonous brother-in-law has got two bastards by different mothers. And they are just the ones that we know about!’

  Nesta refused to be comforted and continued to sob against his side.

  ‘Matilda … she’ll make your life a misery if this comes to light, as it surely must. In this damned city no one can keep a secret longer than a candle burns.’

  John gave one of his rumbles, deep in his throat. ‘Matilda will be a problem, I’ll admit. But she’ll just have to accept it and be damned to her.’

  They sat quietly for a moment. Realisation began to seep into his mind and for all his bold promises to Nesta he started to see a rough road ahead – mainly because of his wife, who would use this to make his life a torment.

  But, pragmatic as always, the coroner decided to face the problem one step at a time – and the first was to make sure that Nesta’s suspicions were correct.

  ‘Do you know of a reliable midwife who can confirm what you think?’ he asked. ‘There is that formidable nun out in Polsloe Priory who seems a fount of knowledge in these matters.’

  Sniffing away the remnants of her tears, Nesta sat up straighter on the bale.

  ‘No need to go that far, John. The mother of one of my maids lives in Rack Lane and has a good reputation as a lying-in nurse. I’ll see her tomorrow.’

  She rose to her feet and looked up at the concerned face of her lover.

  ‘I must go back now, John. Life doesn’t stop for things like this.’

  She sounded so sad that his heart ached.

  ‘Are you not just a little glad of it?’ he asked gently.

  She smiled wanly at him. ‘Part of me is, John. But I will cause you so much trouble.’

  Slowly they walked back towards Idle Lane, as de Wolfe tried to get his mind around the anticipation of this unexpected and profound change in his life – becoming a father.

  That evening was to be full of unexpected events for John, as when he arrived back at Martin’s Lane he discovered that his brother-in-law had invited himself for supper.

  Though usually such a visit would have been received sourly by de Wolfe, he was rather glad of a distraction this particular evening. After having had such potentially momentous news from Nesta, a meal alone with Matilda would have been more of a strain than usual, as her gimlet eyes and shrewd mind may well have suspected that her husband had something new to hide from her. As it was, the patronising comments that were Richard’s usual form of conversation could be used as a cover for his own sullen silence, for Matilda was well aware of John’s dislike of and contempt for her brother.

  ‘And how are all the corpses today, Crowner?’ began de Revelle, in his bantering, sarcastic manner.

  ‘One dead bottler, so far,’ muttered de Wolfe, with a scowl that suggested that he would be happy if Richard were to be the next. ‘But you must have heard about that, being the guardian of the King’s peace in this county!’

  He tried to match his brother-in-law’s sarcasm, but it washed over their guest like a bucket of water on a goose.

  ‘I heard nothing of it. I leave such minor matters to the constables.’

  ‘Then you’ll not have heard that the poor fellow was slain at the same time as they left his master for dead – the Warden of the Forests.’

  The sheriff sat up suddenly from the settle in which he had been lounging, almost spilling a cup of wine he was holding.

  ‘Nicholas de Bosco? Holy Mary, I knew nothing of this!’

  Rather against his will, John somehow believed him. ‘A verderer and the Warden attacked within a few days. What’s going on, Richard?’

  Matilda had been listening to their exchange, her small eyes flicking from one to the other. ‘You told me you had appointed a new verderer already, brother,’ she observed.

  Richard nodded distractedly. ‘Yes, the woodmotes must carry on. This Philip de Strete will be a worthy successor in organising them.’

  ‘What are woodmotes?’ she demanded, and her husband answered her.

  ‘Some use that word for the Attachment Courts, others call them forty-day courts. Whatever they’re called, the forest folk hate them – they usually mean more fines and punishments.’

  ‘Careful, John, these are the King’s forests you’re talking about. You don’t want to be mouthing treason, do you?’

  Both the others knew that de Revelle was sneering at de Wolfe’s well-known devotion to Richard Coeur-de-Lion, but his sister was not amused.

  ‘The less you say about that the better,’ she growled, and her brother sank back in his settle, suddenly engrossed in the decoration around his pewter cup. This was a sensitive subject and Matilda’s warning was the first time she had broached the matter since de Revelle’s brush with treachery a few months earlier.

  Thankfully, the awkward silence was broken by Mary bustling in with a large bowl of stew, causing them to rise and take their places at the long table. Two fresh loaves cut into quarters and a platter of yellow butter accompanied the mutton-and-onion soup. Mary ladled big portions into wooden bowls
and laid deep spoons carved from cow horn before them. Then she came back with ale, cider and more wine, and left them to fill their bellies. This did away with the necessity for much conversation until the second course, a boiled salmon which John dissected with his dagger, placing portions in the empty soup bowls of the other two diners. As they picked out the bones and licked their fingers, the coroner returned to the problems in the forest.

  ‘There is increasing disaffection among some of the barons and manor-lords over this,’ he began. ‘My brother William down in Stoke-in-Teignhead, who knows more about rural life than I do, told me that in Hampshire and Northampton they are petitioning the King to disafforest some areas. Increasingly they resent not being able to hunt the venison on their own lands.’

  De Revelle dug a fish bone from between his teeth before answering.

  ‘They have no chance of that, unless they pay a large fee to the Crown. It was old King Henry who made the largest encroachments into their lands. Why should his sons give any of it up now?’

  De Wolfe noticed that he said ‘sons’, a slip which showed that the sheriff still had John, Count of Mortain, in mind as one of the possible beneficiaries of the fruits of the forest. He thought of making an issue of it, but decided that he was in no mood to reopen the old controversy again and further distress Matilda, as she had been devastated when her brother’s active sympathy for the usurper had been discovered by her husband.

  She reached across the table to scoop up another segment of pink fish with her spoon. ‘Have the Devonshire gentry expressed the same concerns to you, Richard?’

  ‘In passing, yes. Guy Ferrars and Arnulf de Mowbray were moaning to me about having to do all their hunting in their chases and parks, instead of on all the other land they own. But they’re always complaining about something – the more they have, the more they want.’

  John gave a derisive grunt – that was rich, he thought, coming from de Revelle, who was a champion money-grubber himself.

  ‘Why should anyone want to kill Nicholas de Bosco?’ persisted Matilda. ‘He seemed a harmless enough fellow. I’ve often seen him at worship in the cathedral.’ Anyone who was a devout attender at Mass was bound to be looked on favourably by her, even if he had horns and a tail.

  ‘Nice he may have been, but I’d prefer to say he was weak,’ snapped Richard. ‘A new Warden is needed. De Bosco is just an old soldier, given that job as a sinecure for past services.’

  He gave a meaningful look across at his brother-in-law as he said this, but John steadfastly ignored the jibe.

  ‘Is it possible that someone tried to remove him from office by an attempt to murder him?’ asked Matilda, oblivious of a trickle of salmon fat running down her chin. ‘But who would want such a job, so dismal and unpaid?’

  John stared pointedly at de Revelle, until the sheriff began to look decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Well, Richard, haven’t I heard rumours about your ambitions in that direction?’

  ‘If the office happened to fall vacant, then yes, I’d be interested. It would be a challenge, as this de Bosco has let things slip recently. The forests are teeming with outlaws, the discipline of the foresters is all to hell, and I’m sure the royal exchequer is not gaining all the profit it should from the forests.’

  De Wolfe leered across the table at his brother-in-law. ‘No, I’m sure you would find many ways of increasing the revenue, Richard!’

  He avoided saying that much of this extra revenue would never reach the royal treasure chests in Winchester or Westminster, but the sheriff knew very well what he was implying.

  After a bowl of early summer fruits swimming in fresh cream and a glass of sweet dessert wine, Richard left for his apartments in Rougemont and Matilda called for her maid Lucille to prepare her for bed, as the late summer dusk was now upon them.

  To give them time for their womanly pursuits in the solar, John took Brutus for a walk around the cathedral Close. Walking amid the graves, the rubbish piles and the rank grass, he pondered the news that Nesta had laid upon him that evening.

  Did he really want to be a father? Could he survive the inevitable onslaught from Matilda, who would taunt him for ever with having sired a bastard on a tavern-keeper? Would Nesta survive childbirth, which claimed such a large proportion of new mothers? Why had this come now, when he had been lying with Nesta for two years? And why had none of his other women, going back over many years, ever conceived?

  These questions milled about in his mind as he loped around the huge church of St Mary and St Andrew, following his hound, which dashed hither and thither in search of new smells. He passed beggars sleeping alongside new grave-pits, truant urchins playing tag in defiance of their mother’s screeching, and lovers walking hand in hand or kissing in dark corners under the cathedral’s looming walls. Oblivious to all these familiar sights, he circled the Close and plodded back to his house with none of the questions answered in his turbulent mind.

  Hennock lay about two-thirds of the way between Exeter and Sigford and was a larger village than the latter. Early the next morning, three riders came into Hennock and reined up outside the forge. It was a large shack set at the edge of the roadside, its walls of wattle and daub set in a rough timber frame. The sagging roof was covered with faded wooden shingles, which were less inflammable than straw thatch. Behind was a cottage sitting in a patch of garden, with two pigs penned in by a fence and a few chickens scratching in the dust.

  The riders sat silently on their mounts for a few moments, listening to the rhythmic clanging of a pair of hammers on the anvil, as the smith and his eldest son rained precise blows on a red-hot length of rod than was destined to be a cart axle. A younger boy, about eight years of age, was in the shadows at the back of the hut, pumping away at a large leather-and-wood bellows to keep the charcoal of the furnace glowing almost white.

  Eventually, forester William Lupus gave a curt nod to one of the others and his page slid from his horse and walked towards the forge. Henry Smok was utterly unlike the usual image of a ‘page’, being a bull-necked man of about forty, with a roll like a sailor and a coarse face surmounted by a tangle of dirty black hair. His breeches were coarse cloth and his brown leather jerkin was tightly belted to carry the weight of a broadsword as well as a dagger.

  Smok ambled up to the open double doors of the smithy and stood insolently alongside the anvil, his thumbs hooked into his belt.

  ‘Hey, you! You’re wanted outside.’

  Eustace Smith jerked his head up to look at the intruder. He was a crop-haired Saxon in middle age, his leathery face pitted with small scars from sparks and hot metal. The alternate clanging of the hammers ceased and the younger Smith stared uneasily at Smok.

  ‘As soon as we finish this piece, before it cools too much,’ he grunted.

  The page gave the son a shove that sent him staggering. Though both the ironworkers were tough, muscular men, Henry Smok had the physique of a bull and the temperament of a bully.

  ‘Out, I said! Both of you.’

  The craftsmen knew very well who Smok was and who would be outside. Like all villagers in the forest, they had suffered the arrogance of the foresters and their creatures for years. Reluctantly dropping their hammers to the floor, they walked out into the morning sunshine and looked up at the other two horsemen. One was the forester, the other Walter Tirel, a woodward employed by the de Pomery estate, but who often acted as an assistant to Lupus.

  ‘Well, William Lupus, what is it now?’ asked Eustace wearily. ‘Has your mare cast a shoe – or do you just want to increase the private tithes you extort from me?’

  His words were bravely defiant, but there was a tremor in his voice.

  ‘Watch that mouth of yours,’ growled the forester, looking down at the smith as if he were a heap of manure.

  ‘We’ve come with some good news for you,’ sneered Walter Tirel, who acted as a sycophantic shadow to William Lupus. He was a thin, wiry man with one drooped eyelid that made him look as if he were permanently winki
ng.

  ‘That’ll be the day when you bring anything but trouble,’ said the smith bitterly.

  ‘The news is that you’re going to work for the King,’ grated Lupus.

  Eustace stood in his scorched and scarred leather apron, looking suspiciously from one man to the other.

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘A new forge has been built at Trusham, two miles up the road.’

  Eustace scowled at the reminder. ‘So I’ve heard – though why, I can’t fathom. There’s no need for two so close together.’

  Walter Tirel grinned. ‘I agree, so now there’ll be but the one … at Trusham.’

  Eustace gaped at the two mounted men, words failing him.

  ‘This forge is closed as from tomorrow,’ snapped William Lupus. ‘The new rule in the King’s forest is that smiths work only for the King. You’ll be paid a wage, like any other workman. But you’ll labour at Trusham, under a forge-master I’ve appointed. You’ll have company, for Lawrence the smith from Coombe is in the same position as yourself.’

  ‘The Coombe smithy is closed too?’ said Eustace’s son, aghast.

  ‘It will be from tomorrow, like yours here. Finish what work you’ve started, then take your tools across to Trusham in the morning.’

  The elder blacksmith found his voice again.

  ‘This is madness! I have had this forge for fifteen years. I have a licence from my manor-lord and pay him rent for it.’

  ‘Lucky man! Now you can save yourself the rent,’ cackled Henry Smok, swinging himself back into his saddle.

  Eustace advanced up to the forester’s horse, his fists clenching as incredulity gave way to anger. ‘You can’t do this! I’m away to see my lord or his steward. He’ll soon put a stop to your games.’

  ‘He has no say in the matter. This is forest land, the King does what he wishes here. So keep your tongue quiet and be at Trusham at first light tomorrow.’