The Noble Outlaw

by Bernard Knight

  'We've less than five hours of daylight, so let's get going,' he commanded and set off towards the south, guided by landmarks that had become all too familiar these past three years. The grotesque outlines of the tors, irregular columns of granite standing against the skyline, together with upright stones set up by men long ago, marked the tracks that only sheep and moor men could recognise. In single file, the four men trudged steadily onward, thankful that the snow was only up to the insteps of their leather boots, which had been greased with hog fat to make them at least partly waterproof.

  They marched in silence to conserve their breath.

  Though they had ponies back at Challacombe, they seldom used them for relatively short expeditions: on foot they could drop to the ground and lie invisible when either setting an ambush for unwary travellers or hiding from more powerful forces. With almost ten miles to go from where they had come up on to the high moor from South Tawton, they loped along steadily, occasionally stumbling on rocks hidden under the snow and plodding laboriously when they had to climb out of the sudden steep valleys that small tributaries of the Dart and Teign rivers had hacked deep into the moor.

  As the shortest day of the year was only a week away, daylight faded early, especially with such a heavily overcast sky. By the time they came into the final mile of their journey it was getting dark, and though for a while their silhouettes against the whiteness of the snow helped them to follow in Nicholas's footsteps, soon only their familiarity with the turns and twists of the sheep tracks kept them on the right path. Eventually they descended into a valley where a tiny glimmer of yellow light guided them the last few furlongs. Their approach was soon heralded by the deep barking of a pair of dogs.

  'Gunilda's set that old lantern outside for us, God bless her,' said Robert Hereward. Following a stony stream downwards, they passed through some bare trees to reach an opening in a low boundary wall and came into a tiny settlement of half a dozen stone huts, most of them derelict. The light had been placed on a boulder outside one which still had its roof of reed thatch. Daylight would have shown that this was tattered and rotting, but still held down against the gales by ropes slung over the top with heavy stones hanging on their ends. A door of rough planks was thrust open as they approached, and two wolf-like hounds rushed out, then cringed along the ground towards them, tails wagging. Behind them, outlined against a dim glow from a fire inside, was the figure of a tall woman, a sack around her shoulders to act as a shawl.

  'I wondered if you would get here or stay the night at the Cosdon shelter,' she said in greeting, her voice deep and harsh. Gunilda Hemforde was a formidable widow of about fifty, of extremely ugly appearance. Her deeply lined face was like leather, her greying hair was sparse and patchy, and the few teeth she had left were blackened stumps. Gunilda was a widow because she had killed her husband with an axe when she found him on their bed with her younger sister. Rather than face inevitable hanging, she had taken to the moor two years ago, later being declared by the shire court to be a 'waif', this being the female equivalent of an outlaw. Now she kept house for the dozen men of the Arundell gang at their main hideout in the deserted village of Challacombe.

  The woman stood aside to let the four weary travellers enter. Each greeted her warmly, for she made life more bearable for them by her simple ministrations.

  'Rest yourselves and I'll bring your meat directly,' she promised, going to the other end of the single, square room where she had a table for preparing food. The men slumped gratefully onto piles of dried ferns set back from the circle of stones that enclosed the firepit in the centre of the hut. Three other men were already there and the conversation centred around the day's activities.

  'We had very little luck,' observed Philip Girard. 'Two days lurking about the Okehampton road and almost nothing to show for it.'

  'An Exeter burgess who carried no more than thirty pence in his purse and a flask of wine on his saddle bow! ' added Peter Cuffe, in disgust. 'And we had to chase off a hulking great servant waving a sword to get even those.'

  Nicholas de Arundell pulled off his boots and held his feet towards the fire, steam soon coming off his damp hose. 'Any news of Martin and the others?' he asked. The remaining five men had gone south three days before to try their luck along the high road that ran between Plymouth and Exeter. There was some headshaking and grunting, then Gunilda replied from where she was hacking a large loaf into chunks as if it was her late husband's head.

  'By the sky today, I reckon the snow was worse down that way, so perhaps they've holed up in the cave near Dunscombe.'

  The outlaw band lived partly by armed robbery, especially during the winter months when there were few other sources of income. However, crime was not their only means of survival. Sometimes, they got casual work with the tinners, as the headmen of the teams often wanted extra labour when regular workers fell ill or were injured. At haymaking or harvest time, some village reeves would turn a blind eye to the employment of a stranger, and payment in kind, a goose or a small sack of corn, would be added to Gunilda's store of provisions.

  Tonight, their supper came from poaching, a deer that Philip Girard had shot with a crossbow the previous week in the park of a manor near Widecombe. Thanks to the icy weather, it had hung outside the hut in good condition, providing venison for many days, and now Gunilda had used the last of it in another stew, eked out with winter cabbage and stored carrots and turnips.

  They ate their food from a motley collection of tin, pewter and wooden bowls at a long table with benches on each side, luxurious surroundings compared with their refuge holes dotted over the moor. A couple of tallow dips, cord wicks floating in a dish of animal fat, provided the only light apart from that of the fire, but it was sufficient to dispel the gloom as they washed down the food with pottery mugs of ale and cider brewed by their grim housekeeper.

  As they drank, they talked, the topics ranging from the best wood for making quarterstaffs to the usual nostalgia for homes and families from whom they were for ever banned, at least in theory. This last theme was pursued by their leader, to the concern of some of the others.

  'I've made my mind up, I'm going into the city this week,' announced Nicholas.

  This obviously worried Robert Hereward, who in their former life had been de Arundell's steward. 'Sir, I well know how badly you wish to see your good lady, but is it wise to put your head into the lion's mouth?'

  His master shook his head, Hereward recognising the obstinate look that appeared on his weathered face. 'Not only do I wish to see my wife, but I need to talk to her about our situation,' he grated. His voice shook with anger. 'I'm damned if I'm to stay an outlaw for the rest of my life, especially when those bastards de Revelle and Pomeroy are at the root of it all!'

  There was a growl of agreement from the others. 'But can you get into Exeter and stay there unrecognised?' persisted Peter Cuffe doubtfully.

  'Getting in is no problem, I'll wait outside the West Gate at dawn and push in with the press of people entering for the market. With a wide pilgrim's hat and a few badges sewn on an old cloak, the porters'll not look twice at me.'

  'And when you're in, what then?' persisted Robert Hereward, anxious for the safety of his hot-headed leader, as the penalty for discovery would be a summary hanging or beheading.

  'Lady Joan is lodging there with a cousin, using a different name. No one knows of the connection between her and a noble outlaw, so she's quite safe. She's supposed to be on a pilgrimage to pray for her sister's health at the shrine of Saint Radegund in the cathedral.'

  'And you'll be sheltered by them?' asked Peter dubiously.

  'Yes, almost no one knows me in Exeter,' said Nicholas confidently. 'We're Cornish people, even though I inherited a Devon estate.'

  He waved his mug at Gunilda for a refill and she plodded over with an earthenware pitcher of cider. 'I just hope you don't stay too long, that's all,' she growled fiercely. 'Every day makes the risk greater for you.' He shook his head as she poured th
e murky liquid.

  'A day or two at the most. Then I'll be back here with some sort of notion of what to do next. My wife has sharp wits and talking to her will settle my mind.'

  The old woman went round the circle of men, topping up their pots. 'Then may God and his Blessed Mother protect you, for if you were caught, this gang of numbskulls would perish without your guidance.'

  That evening a biting east wind was whistling down the narrow tunnel of Martin's Lane as Sir John de Wolfe loped towards his house, the second of two dwellings in the short alley. Opposite was the side wall of an inn on the corner of High Street, next to a livery stables, where the coroner stabled his old warhorse Odin. The house was tall and narrow, being timber-built with a roof of wooden shingles. It had an almost blank front, with a single unglazed window at ground level, covered with heavy shutters. The only other opening was the front door of blackened oak with studded metal hinges. This led into a small vestibule, with a passage around to the backyard at one end. At the other, a door led into the hall, a high gloomy chamber which occupied all the interior of the building, though a solar had been added on upstairs at the back.

  John entered the vestibule, thankful to be out of the wind, though it was still freezing inside. He took off his wolfskin cloak and sank on to a bench, wearily pulling off his boots in favour of house shoes. Going into the hall, he passed between the wooden screens that attempted to block the worst of the draughts, then advanced on the hearth, which was his pride and joy. Most houses still had a central firepit, the smoke having to rise to the roof and find its way out under the eaves, leaving a great deal behind to smart the eyes and irritate the throat. Several years before, copying from a house he had seen in Normandy, he had had a stone wall built at the back of the hall to support a conical chimney that passed through the roof and took the smoke from the hearth beneath. Together with the stone-flagged floor, which his wife had insisted upon as being a cut above the usual rush-strewn beaten earth, it made his house one of the most up-to-date in the city, about which Matilda could boast to her snobbish cronies at St Olave's Church.

  She was sitting by the fire now, waiting for their serving woman Mary to bring in supper, another innovation, as most people were content with a single large dinner at noon.

  'My brother is calling upon me tomorrow, John,' she snapped, without a word of greeting. 'I trust that you can manage to be civil to him for once.'

  Considering that he had saved the man's life less than a month ago, de Wolfe thought this less than gracious, but Matilda was woefully short of grace. He rapidly scanned a mental list of possible excuses not to be at home for Richard de Revelle and hoped for a murder or a rape in the morning to keep him away.

  Sitting in a wooden monk's chair, which had side panels and a hooded top to deflect draughts, John looked across at his wife on the opposite side of the hearth. Matilda's stocky body was enveloped in a thick kirtle of heavy green wool, with a long velvet mantle around her shoulders for warmth. Her head was encased in a tight-fitting helmet of white linen, tied with laces under her double chin, framing a square, pugnacious face with heavy-lidded eyes. A big fire of crackling logs kept their faces scorched, but behind them the bleak hall, towering up into the darkness of the rafters, was icy.

  'Well?' snapped Matilda. 'Are you going to be here or not?'

  Bereft of any excuse on the spur of the moment, he nodded reluctantly. 'What brings him here tomorrow? I thought he would be at Revelstoke or up at Tiverton.'

  Richard had several manors in Devon and another in Somerset, and compared to John, he was a rich man. His wealth came both from lands inherited by his haughty wife Lady Eleanor and from his own incessant pursuit of money, some of which had come from his embezzling activities when sheriff.

  'You surely must know that he has recently bought a house in North Gate Street as a pied-de-terra' said Matilda sharply. 'Is it so unnatural for him to want to see his only sister when he is in our city?'

  John glowered at her, wondering again how he had survived seventeen years of marriage to this woman. Neither of them had wanted to be wedded to the other, but they were forced into it by their families, one lot anxious to see their plain daughter married off to a knight, the other keen to marry the youngest son into a richer family.

  'Richard is rarely happy to set eyes on me,' he replied dourly. 'So why do you want to inflict me upon him tomorrow?'

  His wife glared at him. 'Because he has asked to speak to you, that's why. Something about that fellow who was found dead in the school in Smythen Street.'

  De Wolfe groaned. 'I might have guessed that was it. He's afraid the gossip will harm his bloody purse, by putting off rich students from signing up to his poxy college. We don't yet know who the dead man was.'

  Matilda began a scandalised tirade against his denigration of her brother's educational initiatives, but was diverted by Mary bustling in with a tray bearing their supper. Ever eager for food and drink, Matilda heaved herself up and went to her stool at one end of the long table, ready to attack the spit-grilled trout that lay on a thick trencher of bread.

  Slitting it expertly along the backbone with a small knife, she picked up the succulent flesh in her fingers. Afterwards she washed them in a bowl of rosewater and wiped them on a napkin, all produced by the tireless Mary from her journeys back and forth from the kitchen hut in the backyard, where she cooked, ate and slept.

  John poured his wife a cup of wine, then went to sit at the opposite end of the table to have his own meal, the distance between them exemplifying the emotional gulf between them. He was grateful for the silence that the serious business of eating required, a silence which went on through the second course of slices of cold pork with onions, followed by fresh bread and hard yellow cheese.

  Eventually, they finished and Matilda rose, as he knew she would, seeking Lucille, her browbeaten French handmaid, to prepare her for bed.

  'I'll expect you home for dinner tomorrow, John,' she said in a tone that invited no contradiction. 'Richard needs to hear from you about this corpse and I'll not have him disappointed.'

  With that, she sailed out of the hall to go around to the yard, where there were outside stairs to her solar. This was a room built high up on to the back of the hall, supported on stout timbers, under which Lucille lived in a small boxlike chamber.

  Left to himself, John sank with a sigh into his chair by the hearth and waited for Mary to come to clear the debris of the meal. As she entered, his old hound Brutus slunk in and laid at his feet to enjoy the warmth of the fire, knowing full well that his master would soon be taking him out for a stroll - a nightly excuse to visit the Bush Inn and its attractive Welsh landlady.

  As an unfrocked priest only recently restored to grace, Thomas de Peyne was not overly fond of visiting taverns, but the Bush was an exception. Just around the corner from his modest lodging in Priest Street, the building in Idle Lane was the nearest thing to home for him, as the kindly Nesta insisted on mothering the little cleric. Even though he had a few more pennies to spend since his rescue from abject poverty, the landlady fed him gratis whenever he appeared, convinced that his weedy frame, with the slight hunchback and lame leg, needed more sustenance than he bothered to give it.

  Tonight, he was just finishing a bowl of mutton stew, sitting at a table near the hearth with Gwyn, who had just demolished his favourite pork knuckle with a pile of beans and onions. The big Cornishman seemed always hungry and thirsty and justified his appetite by the soldier's adage that one should sleep, eat, drink and make love whenever the opportunity arose, as one never knew when the next chance would come along. On the other side of the trestle sat John de Wolfe, with a quart of Nesta's best ale in front of him, just topped up by old Edwin, the one-eyed potman. Brutus lay under the table, waiting expectantly for Gwyn to drop the stripped bone down to the rush-covered floor. This peaceful tableau was completed a moment later by the appearance of the shapely landlady herself, who slipped down on to the bench alongside the coroner and pushed h
er arm through his.

  'Tell me all the day's gossip, John,' she demanded.

  The lean, dark face of her lover broke into a rare smile as he looked down at the pretty redhead. 'Not a great deal today, my girl. Just a mouldy old corpse found around the corner from here, hardly a hundred paces away.' He told her briefly about the finding of the body in the nearby forge.

  'Have you any idea who it might be, given that you are almost neighbours?' he demanded, with mock severity. The question was not completely facetious, as Nesta was a fount of gossip, her inn being one of the most popular in Exeter, especially amongst travellers passing through the city. Like his maid Mary, Nesta had often been the purveyor of titbits of information that were of use to the coroner.

  'No one has gone missing from this part of the town,' she replied seriously. 'How long had the poor man been there?'

  De Wolfe shrugged. 'Hard to say, given that it was dried out like a smoked herring, up above that forge. Some months, I would guess.'

  'When did the metalworkers leave there, I wonder?' asked Gwyn, brushing bits of food from the luxuriant ginger moustaches that hung down each side of his chin.

  The landlady had the answer to this. 'Michaelmas, that was. I heard that their lease ran out then and it was bought for this college, whatever that place might be.'

  Thomas could never resist airing his knowledge of anything remotely academic. 'It's one of these new schools that are springing up in some cities - Oxford was the first, but a few other places are now aping Paris and Bologna.'

  'I thought schools were where young boys and girls learned to read and write,' offered the more philistine Gwyn, picking shreds of pork from his teeth. 'Like the one in Winchester where you got into trouble, Thomas,' he added slyly.

  The clerk's pinched face coloured immediately. 'I was totally innocent, as you well know - you great Cornish clown,' he retorted, with a sharpness that was unusual for him. Now that he had been vindicated of the allegations that had got him ejected in disgrace from the priesthood, he was even more sensitive than before about having the matter brought up.