Fear in the Forest Page 9

  ‘What about the verderer? Does Humphrey le Bonde know of this?’

  The smith stopped short, suddenly remembering that le Bonde was dead.

  William Lupus leered down at him. ‘Yes, he’s no longer with us, is he? And the new verderer not only knows of it, he ordered it!’

  He pulled his horse’s head around, ready to move away. Desperately, Eustace grabbed his saddle-girth.

  ‘What about my sons? Are we all to come to Trusham?’

  The forester smacked his hand away with a gloved fist.

  ‘No, we don’t want to pay all your damned family. Just you. Be there at dawn, understand – or you’ll be in great trouble.’

  They cantered away, leaving the smith devastated at the prospect of having his small income halved and his family almost destitute.

  Some five miles away, on a densely wooded hillside above the Bovey river, Stephen Cruch was waiting on a sleek palfrey at the foot of some large rocks. Below him was a cataract where the river rushed even faster on its journey down from the moor towards Bovey Tracey and the sea beyond.

  Few travellers would risk penetrating the forest alone, especially this far from a main track or a village, but the horse-trader seemed quite at ease as he sat quietly in his saddle. Near by, two sturdy moorland ponies grazed contentedly, secured by their head-ropes to hazel saplings. Stephen looked up at the bright summer sun, occasionally crossed by a few stray clouds, and estimated that it was around the eighth hour. A few minutes more and he started to become a little impatient. Untying a thong on his belt, he raised a cow’s horn to his lips, blowing hard through the pewter mouthpiece. The mournful sound echoed through the valley, competing with the rush of water between the granite rocks.

  A moment later, there was an answering call from a distance, and with a smile he tied his horn back on his belt and slipped from the saddle. A few minutes later, a handful of men appeared, one on a pony, the other half-dozen on foot. The mounted leader went straight towards the tethered horses and examined them critically, before walking his own across to Cruch.

  ‘Satisfied with them, Robert?’ enquired the dealer. ‘You said you wanted them small and tough.’

  ‘They look well enough, Stephen,’ replied Robert Winter. ‘Short legs and good wind is what we need in the woods and on the moor, not some spindly, long-legged racer that would fall at every rabbit-hole and badger sett.’

  He threw a leg over the folded blanket that did service as his pony’s saddle and came across to Cruch, who turned to his own saddlebag and drew out a leather flask. He held it out to the outlaw who took a long swig of the brandy wine made by the monks of Buckfast Abbey.

  ‘That’s something you miss when you live in the forest,’ he said appreciatively, drawing a hand across his lips. ‘’But I hope you’ve got something even more pleasant for me?’

  The horse-trader delved again in his saddlebag and handed over the money pouch that Father Edmund Treipas had given him, though it weighed somewhat less now.

  ‘That’s what we agreed – but the price of two good ponies had to come out of it.’

  Robert grunted. ‘I doubt you’ve lost on the deal yourself, Stephen. You’re a bigger thief than I am!’ A grin robbed the words of any offence. The other men, dressed in a motley collection of clothes, stood at a distance and watched the transaction with curiosity. They were a villainous-looking bunch, several of them carrying longbows, the others having pikes.

  Robert Winter was a handsome man in his early thirties, with features quite different from those of the other men. Brown, wavy hair and a matching beard and moustache framed a slim face with high cheek-bones. A straight nose, full lips and intelligent hazel eyes might lead an observer to think that he was from an aristocratic family, though Cruch knew that he was from the merchant class. He led a band of several score of ruffianly outlaws that ranged over the south-eastern fringes of Dartmoor, from Moretonhampstead down through Widecombe and across to Ashburton. There were other outlaws scattered throughout the forest, but they had learned not to challenge Winter’s supremacy in robbery, theft and extortion.

  ‘Where are you living these days?’ asked Cruch casually.

  Winter took another drink from the flask and tapped the side of his nose artfully. ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies! We keep on the move, that’s the secret of survival – not that that bloody sheriff is much concerned with catching us. I’m more wary of that coroner fellow they brought in last autumn. I hear he’s a dangerous bastard – and one that’s impossible to buy off like most of the other law officers. I’d advise you to keep well out of sight when he’s around, Stephen.’

  Cruch shrugged – he too had heard about Sir John de Wolfe, but their paths were unlikely to cross unless he did something unwise. As for Winter, after a man was declared outlaw at the County Court he legally ceased to exist and could be legitimately killed by anyone who fancied the attempt. Indeed, an outlaw was declared to be ‘as the wolf’s head’, for if anyone could slay him and take the severed head to the sheriff, he would be awarded a substantial bounty, similar to the persecuted wolf. Stephen Cruch persisted in asking where they lived, and after another swig of brandy wine Robert Winter became more expansive.

  ‘We have a few places deep in the woods, where we keep the ponies – and some caves we keep provisioned in case the going gets too hot. But oftentimes we slink into a village or even a town for a night or two. A fistful of money is marvellous for keeping innkeepers’ mouths tightly closed!’

  The horse-trader knew that many outlaws crept back to their homes now and then – sometimes permanently. Many moved to another part of England where they were not known and slipped back into the community – some even gaining public office or becoming successful merchants. It was easier in towns, where the population was larger and less incestuous – in villages everyone knew everyone else and the frank-pledge system made it difficult for a stranger to become integrated. Cruch often wondered about Robert Winter, as an intelligent man like him was unlikely to spend the rest of his life skulking in the woods. He knew little about his past, except that he was from Exeter and had escaped a hanging there about three years earlier.

  The outlaw’s voice brought him back to the present.

  ‘Have you any more work like that for me?’

  Stephen’s monkey-like face wrinkled in thought. ‘Not at the moment. But the way I suspect things are moving, you may be needed for some more persuasion very soon. Things are changing fast in this bailiwick, but I can only pass on what others wish to have done.’

  Winter rattled the money bag. ‘More like this will be welcome any time. Leave a message as usual at the alehouse at Ashburton when you next need to meet.’

  Cruch nodded and carefully retrieved his wine flask before mounting up and riding away. Before he reached the track near the river, he turned in his saddle to look back, but men and ponies had already vanished without trace.

  By noon, Nesta knew definitely that she was pregnant. She had been taken by one of her maids to a house in Rock Street, where the girl’s mother had examined her. She was the self-appointed midwife and herbal healer to the street and the adjacent lanes in that part of the city. A rosy-cheeked widow, fat and amiable, she made Nesta welcome in the pair of small rooms she occupied at the back of the dwelling. After expelling a pair of boisterous children, she asked the innkeeper about her monthly courses and any symptoms that commonly went with being gravid. Then, with the rickety door firmly closed against the urchins, the midwife put Nesta on a low bed against the wall and gently examined her under the cover of her full woollen skirt. After a patient and careful examination with her warm hands, both on her belly and internally, she smiled and invited Nesta to rise, while she wiped her hands on a piece of cloth.

  ‘No doubt about it, my dear. You’re going to be a mother, bless you!’

  As Nesta shook down her shift and rearranged her skirt, she asked the widow whether she could tell how far gone she was.

  ‘Hard to sa
y, my love. It’s early, just enough for me to be definite about it. But you’ve plenty of time yet to make swaddling clothes!’

  With that Nesta had to be content, and after failing to get the woman to accept any payment she walked silently home with her cook-maid, who solicitously held her arm as if she were likely to go into labour at any moment.

  When they arrived at the Bush, Nesta climbed the steps to her room and threw herself on the bed that John had bought her the previous year.

  She lay unmoving for a long time, staring up at the dusty rafters and the woven hazel boughs that supported the thatch. It was on this bed, she thought bitterly, that she and John had so often made love – and where she had betrayed him, albeit for such a short time. Nesta was well aware that he had not been faithful to her – but this was the way of men, who could rarely refuse the favours of another woman. Yet she sensed that lately he had not wandered from her, though she was realistic enough to wonder whether this was from choice or lack of opportunity.

  But his actions were no excuse for her, though she had been provoked several months ago by his neglect. She had known that it was from force of circumstances, before another coroner was appointed for the north of the county, but she should have been more understanding. As she stared up at the roof, her eyes filled with tears as doubt and indecision clouded her mind. The midwife had confirmed what she knew already, as for several weeks something inside had told her as plain as day that she was with child. She wished that the woman could have been more definite about the duration of her pregnancy, but the widow was no professional and had done her best out of kindness.

  Laying a hand on her still-flat stomach, Nesta wondered whether to love or hate what was growing within her womb. Turning on her side, she wept herself softly to sleep, for once uncaring about her busy taproom down below.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which Crowner John visits a tannery

  The next few days passed quickly for the coroner, as there was a Summer Fair in Exeter, including a Horse Fair on Bull-mead outside the South Gate. Hundreds of traders flocked into the city, and stalls and booths sprang up along the main streets, though the focus of activity was in the cathedral Close, the fair being linked to a saint’s day. Many fairs in England were franchised by the Church, which made a handsome profit from licences to traders. Unlike some towns, which closed all the regular shops during the fair, the merchants of Exeter joined in the general scramble for custom, and for several days the city was a seething hotbed of buying, selling, trading, entertainment and revelry. Every bed in every inn was taken and the alehouses were overflowing with drinkers and drunks.

  John de Wolfe was kept busy with a number of incidents, most related to the turmoil of the fair. There was a brawl at the Saracen inn on Stepcote Hill, in which a man was killed from being kicked in the head, several others being injured in the drunken mêlée. Then a visiting stall-holder from Dorchester was stabbed in a dark alley behind a brothel in Bretayne, the poorest part of the city. His purse was stolen and he died before he could be carried off to the small infirmary at the nearby St Nicholas Priory.

  John managed to get to the Bush for an hour on Saturday evening, and upstairs in her little cubicle a subdued Nesta confirmed to him that she was indeed pregnant. As they both had more or less accepted the fact even before she had visited the midwife, it was no great surprise to him, but Nesta failed to respond to her lover’s efforts at reassurance and support. John was puzzled and rather hurt by her lack of reaction to his attempts at being enthusiastic about the future.

  ‘I’ll bring the lad up as if he were my legitimate son,’ he declared, oblivious to the fact that the child might be a girl. ‘If Matilda doesn’t like it, then to hell with her. We’ll live apart, it will be little different from my present existence.’

  Nesta shook her head sadly. ‘How can you do that, John? Everyone will know – they’ll know even months before the birth, if I judge Exeter gossips correctly.’

  ‘What of it? I’ve told you before, half the men I know have one or two extra families about the place. Matilda’s own brother, for one.’

  The auburn-haired innkeeper sat mutely, and John persisted in his uphill attempts to cheer her. ‘The name ‘Fitzwolfe’ sounds impressive, eh? Then later we’ll have to decide on his baptismal name.’

  At this, Nesta burst into tears and an embarrassed and half-terrified John pulled her jerkily to his chest with spasms of his arm and incoherent mutterings intended to soothe her. He tried to console himself with the assumption that these strange moods were a passing symptom of pregnancy, like the strange appetites that he had vaguely heard about.

  Though he hated to admit it even to himself, he was relieved when a tapping on the door heralded the potman. Old Edwin came to tell them that he was needed downstairs, where Gwyn was waiting with an urgent message.

  It turned out to be a summons to a house near the East Gate, where a middle-aged cordwainer had returned early from his stall at the fair, to find his young wife in bed with an itinerant haberdasher, who had persuaded her into more than his ribbons and buttons when he called at the door.

  When de Wolfe arrived, the haberdasher was lying naked and dead on the floor of the solar and the husband was spread-eagled across him, unconscious and bleeding from a deep gash on his scalp.

  ‘It seems the cuckolded merchant stabbed the fellow in the back while he was lying across his wife,’ explained Gwyn. ‘Then the woman got up and smashed the water pitcher over her husband’s head, in a fury at having been deprived of a far better lover than the shoemaker!’

  The house was in chaos, with Osric the constable trying to restrain the screaming wife. The grandmother and several relatives were all shouting and wailing, and it was midnight before the coroner and his henchman could get away from the turmoil, John deeming it wise to attach the cordwainer for ten marks to appear at the inquest on Monday. There was no way in which the man would ever be convicted of murder, in the circumstances of finding a stranger in flagrante delicto with his wife. De Wolfe felt that a low-key handling of the affair was all that was required for the present – let the justices sort the matter out when they next came to Exeter.

  The next day was quieter, so John could find no excuse to avoid being hauled off by Matilda to morning Mass at the cathedral, something she succeeded in doing about once a month. Unlike Gwyn, he had no strong objection to going to church, though he was supremely uninterested in both the future of his immortal soul and the boring liturgy purveyed by the clergy. Being dragged to the cathedral was at least preferable to her forcing him to St Olave’s, her favourite little church in Fore Street. One of his objections to this place was Julian Fulk, the smug priest who officiated there. During the recent spate of priestly killings in Exeter, Fulk had been a suspect and the collapse of John’s suspicions against him gave the podgy priest an extra reason to smirk at the coroner.

  After midday dinner, John arranged to met Gwyn and walk down to Bull-mead, just outside the town, where the Horse Fair was still in progress. Like most active men, they were both interested in horses, and this was an opportunity to walk around the field and look at the profusion of animals and gossip about them both with the dealers and many of their local cronies. As the tall, stooping coroner and his massive wild-haired officer paraded along the lines of beasts and watched them being pranced around the display area in the centre, at least one pair of wary eyes followed them. Stephen Cruch, who had a dozen stallions, mares and geldings there for sale, contemplated the former Crusader thoughtfully – and wondered what it was about him that made even the reckless Robert Winter a little uneasy.

  It was often mid-morning when new cases were reported to the coroner from outside Exeter. In the summertime, a rider from a town or village in the south or west of the county could leave at dawn and be in Exeter after two or three hours’ riding, before the cathedral bells rang for Prime or Terce.

  The Monday after the fair was no exception, and before the eighth hour the manor-reeve from
the village of Manaton had clattered up to the gatehouse of Rougemont and slid from his horse to enquire for the coroner. Though Gwyn and Thomas were in the bare chamber above, John de Wolfe had gone across to the castle keep to view the body of the man kicked to death in the Saracen inn. Usually, dead bodies were housed in a ramshackle cart-shed against the wall of the inner ward, but this had recently been knocked down for rebuilding. Now any stray corpses awaiting burial were being taken to an empty cell in the castle prison, the dismal undercroft beneath the keep, ruled over by Stigand, the repulsive gaoler. The cadaver had been carried up to the castle before de Wolfe had visited the tavern – an offence in itself for which someone would be amerced – so he was obliged to view it before the inquest later that morning.

  It was here that the gatehouse guard sent Robert Barat, the reeve of Manaton, a village between Moretonhampstead and Ashburton, on the south-western edge of Dartmoor. The reeve, a tall man of thirty-five, had hair and a flowing moustache of an almost yellow colour that pointed to Saxon ancestry, in spite of his Norman name. He was the headman of the village, responsible for organising the rota of work in the fields and acting as the link between the lord’s bailiff and steward and the common folk of the hamlet.

  Robert cautiously went down the few steps from ground level into the undercroft, a semi-basement below the keep which acted as gaol and storehouse. When his eyes became accustomed to the gloom after the bright morning sun outside, he saw a low chamber with stone pillars supporting an arched roof, discoloured with patches of lichen and slime. The floor was of damp beaten earth, divided across the centre by a stone wall containing a rusted iron fence, in the centre of which was a metal gate leading into a passageway lined with squalid cells. The only illumination came from a pair of flickering pitch brands stuck into iron rings on the wall and a charcoal brazier in one of the alcoves, where the gaoler slept on a filthy straw mattress. The whole place stank of damp, mould and excrement.