The Noble Outlaw

by Bernard Knight

  Gwyn got himself a mug of cider, which was slightly more palatable than the ale, ignoring the hostile looks of some men who recognised him as the coroner's officer. Picking on an older man sitting alone against the wall, he began a conversation about the weather and then the iniquities of rising prices until he felt able to bring the talk around to missing persons in the city. He soon discovered he was wasting his time with the taciturn fellow and moved on to try the same ploy with others. His efforts fell on equally barren soil and he was about to give up in disgust and go to the Bush, when he felt a hand grip him roughly by the shoulder.

  'Why the hell are you asking all these questions, man?' snarled a voice. Turning, Gwyn saw a big black-bearded fellow, whose scarred face seemed vaguely familiar, though he could not put a name to him.

  'What's it to you? Unless you've got some answers for me!' responded Gwyn, not a man to take kindly to being spoken to in that tone.

  'Bloody spy, that's what you are,' spat Blackbeard. 'I know who you are - the crowner's nark, nosing your way in here like this.' He raised his fist in a threatening gesture and shook it under Gwyn's large nose.

  Gwyn, who was always partial to a fight to liven up the evening, pushed the fellow in the chest. Large as he was, Blackbeard staggered back under the thrust of a hand the size of a horse's hoof. Though fights were almost an hourly event in the Saracen, this one promised to be better than the usual run of squabbles, as it involved a red-haired Goliath and their own pugnacious tavern-champion.

  The patrons rapidly scattered to form a ring around the combatants and began yelling encouragement at Blackbeard, advising him to tear off the law officer's head. Though Gwyn was unusually large, the other man was also heavily built and a decade younger, as well as evidently being the possessor of an evil temper. He rushed back at the Cornishman, fists flailing, and landed one heavy blow on his upper belly and a sideswipe at Gwyn's lantern jaw. For all the effect it had, Blackbeard might as well have punched the stone wall opposite. Almost lazily, the coroner's officer reached out and repaid him with an open-handed slap across the side of the head, which sent him reeling.

  'I don't want to hurt you, son,' growled Gwyn. 'So for God's sake, stop irritating me!'

  Now livid with rage and humiliation, Blackbeard began mouthing invective at the ginger giant as he regained his feet and crouched in preparation for another assault. He was encouraged by renewed yells of support from the tipsy spectators, and especially the frenzied screams of the strumpets, who seemed near-orgasmic at the prospect of blood. One of them wore the red wig and striped gown of a Southwark prostitute, being for some reason far from her home territory. This time, the resident fighter managed to land a heavy blow on Gwyn's face, making blood spurt from his nose, and this so annoyed the coroner's officer that he grabbed Blackbeard by the throat and shook him like a dog shakes a rat.

  'Will you stop your bloody nonsense, man?' exploded Gwyn, exasperated now at this uncalled-for provocation. 'All I was asking was whether anyone here knew of someone gone missing in the city these past few months.'

  His adversary was incapable of speech with Gwyn's massive hand clamped around his throat, though as his face went blue, he continued to thrash his arms and legs in a futile attempt to land some blows. Seeing their champion getting the worst of the contest, the crowd began to quieten, but one moderately sober man, wearing a blood-stained butcher's apron, challenged Gwyn.

  'Why d'you want to know that, ginger? What business is it of yours?' he called aggressively.

  Gwyn flung Blackbeard back, so that he again staggered into the arms of the spectators behind him. Turning to the butcher, Gwyn bellowed an answer. 'Because we want to know the name of the corpse found in the forge just up the street. After all, he was a neighbour of yours, albeit as dead as mutton!'

  Instead of replying, the butcher suddenly pointed behind Gwyn. Swinging round, he saw that Blackbeard was running at him again, this time waving a wicked-looking knife that he must have snatched from his belt.

  'Oh Christ, not again,' muttered Gwyn, just having time to kick the man in the crotch as he came within reach. He grabbed his knife arm and wrenched it up and back, extracting a scream of pain as the shoulder dislocated, pain that merged into the agony of having his genitals hammered by a large boot. This time Blackbeard went down and stayed down, curled into a ball and moaning as he tried to clutch simultaneously his nether regions and his injured shoulder.

  The crowd now seemed divided between those who resented their man being defeated by an outsider and those who felt that drawing a knife on an unarmed opponent was unsporting. Gwyn felt it diplomatic to leave, especially as the uncouth landlord, Willem the Fleming, was pushing his way through the throng, intent on restoring order with a large club that he kept near the ale casks.

  Gwyn shoved his way through to the street door, went out into the cold night air and crossed the narrow street to where Idle Lane went off at right angles. On the corner, he stopped to wipe the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, hawking and spitting out some that had trickled down into his throat. He chuckled at the memory of the brief fight, as he had felt that recently life had been getting too staid, with little to get the pulses racing.

  As he gave a final sniff, he suddenly heard a footstep behind him. He whirled around in case someone from the Saracen had decided to pursue him with retribution in mind. With fist half-raised, Gwyn peered in the wan light of the gibbous moon and saw a small man of indeterminate age, swaddled in a dark cloak, a woollen cap on his head, the tasselled point hanging over one ear.

  'Who the hell are you? Are you following me?' he growled. The fellow looked on closer inspection to be well past middle age and seemed an unlikely assailant.

  'I heard what you said in the alehouse just now. I know you for the squire of Sir John de Wolfe and I might have some information for him.' Gwyn peered more closely and saw a pair of sharp eyes glinting in a lined face free of any beard or moustache.

  'What sort of information? Who are you anyway?'

  'I am Waiter Pole, a harness maker from St Mary Arches. You were asking about persons who have gone missing from the city and I may be able to help you.'

  Gwyn gripped Walter by the shoulder. 'We can't talk out here, it's as cold as a witch's womb! If you'll walk a few hundred paces with me to the Bush tavern, you'll be able to tell your story to Sir John himself.'

  Gwyn displayed the harness maker to the coroner with a proprietary air, as if he had manufactured the fellow himself for de Wolfe's edification.

  'This is Walter Pole, Crowner. He says he has something useful to tell us about our corpse,' he announced, as they stood before John's table in the taproom of the Bush.

  De Wolfe's long face glowered up at the new arrival, but he waved him down to a bench opposite and beckoned to Edwin to bring Waiter a jar of ale. Glad to be near the fire and out of the biting cold outside, the craftsman lowered himself gratefully on to the seat and pulled off his pointed cap, revealing a shock of wiry grey hair.

  'So what's this you've got to say to me about the dead man in Smythen Street?' demanded John. He had already decided that Pole had an honest face and might be worth listening to.

  'I think I might know who he is, Crowner,' began the harness maker, taking a swallow of the ale that the potman had placed before him. 'Or at least, I can tell you about someone who's gone missing from the city.'

  De Wolfe's black eyebrows climbed up his forehead. 'Indeed? Who is he - and why has no one noticed his absence before this?'

  'I'm talking about Matthew Morcok, a former master saddler, sir. He had given up his trade due to bad health, almost a twelve-month ago.'

  'So why has no one raised a hue and cry about his disappearance?' asked John. 'Had he no wife or family to question his whereabouts?'

  Walter Pole shook his head firmly. 'That's the point, Crowner. He had been a widower these many years and had no children except a married daughter living away in Oxford. Morcok lived a solitary life in a small house
in Priest Street and kept very much to himself.'

  'Didn't his neighbours miss him?' said Gwyn, hovering over the table.

  Waiter sighed into his ale. 'To tell the truth, Matthew was not a very sociable person and Priest Street is not very neighbourly, with so many different clerks and suchlike coming and going all the time. I suspect he had snubbed those few who tried to befriend him, so they kept well clear.'

  'So how is it that you happen to know all this?' snapped de Wolfe.

  'I worked for him for ten years, first as a journeyman, then as a partner. We had a workshop in Rock Street, making leather accoutrements for horses and oxen. When he gave up due to ill health, I bought his share in the business.'

  'What sort of ill health did he suffer?'

  Walter shrugged and turned his hands palms up. 'God alone knows its nature, sir. But he began shuffling as he walked and had a spasmodic twitch of the head. His fingers were always working, as if he was rolling pills between them.'

  Gwyn broke in again. 'I remember seeing such a man about the streets a year or so back. Did he lean forwards as he walked as if he was going to fall on his face at every step?'

  Waiter nodded in agreement. 'That he did! But his mind was clear, even if his speech wasn't. He could get about well enough, but his disability made him shun the company of others, which is why he hasn't been missed.'

  De Wolfe gave one of his grunts, which could signify almost anything. 'So how is that you know he vanished? And when was this?'

  'As I worked with him for so long, I tried to keep in touch, though even with me he was distant in his manner. I think he was so conscious of his ailments that he wanted to be left alone. But as he had been so active in the Guild of Leatherworkers, I usually went down to see him after a guild meeting to keep him abreast of what was being discussed - not that he seemed that interested.'

  'And the last time?' asked John, striving to conceal his impatience at the long-windedness of Waiter Pole.

  'Soon after Midsummer's Day, it must have been. I called upon him and tried to be sociable, but he was in his usual sour mood. Then I went again after the guild meeting at Michaelmas, but I got no answer at his house. I went back a few days later, but again I had no reply, the place was all shut up.'

  'Was that the last time you tried?' said the coroner.

  'No, I went down to Priest Street again a few weeks ago, but still no sign of him. I asked a couple of neighbours, but they said they hadn't laid eyes on him for months. Mind you, several of them had only been there that long themselves, there are so many lodging houses in that street with folks coming and going all the time.'

  'Couldn't he have gone away, maybe to live with his daughter?' suggested Gwyn.

  Walter Pole's lined face took on a dubious expression. 'They were never that close, sir. Morcok made no secret of the fact that he disliked the fellow she married, especially when he took her to live halfway across England. She hadn't visited him for a good three years that I know of, so I can't see him going to Oxford. In any case, what about his house? It was a decent freehold burgage, worth a few pounds of anyone's money, but it's never been put up for sale. So where is he?'

  John saw Nesta weaving her way through her patrons to come to sit with him and decided that her company was preferable to that of the harness maker, as he seemed to have exhausted his tale about the missing saddler. Standing up, he gravely thanked Walter Pole for his help.

  'You asked where is this Matthew Morcok?' he finished. 'Possibly still in the old forge, just up the street. I want you to come there an hour after dawn tomorrow and see if you can identify him for me. He's in bad shape, but you might still be able to recognise him.'

  Taking the hint, Gwyn ushered Walter to a stool on the other side of the firepit, where a glowing pile of logs threw out a comforting heat. Motioning to one of the serving wenches to fetch the leatherworker another quart, Gwyn went back to his master's table and sat where Waiter had been, opposite de Wolfe and the fair Nesta, who had her arm through that of her lover.

  'What d'you think of that tale, then?' he demanded of them.

  John had just told Nesta the gist of Pole's story, while Edwin eavesdropped shamelessly. The old one-eyed servant, standing at the end of the table with a brace of empty jugs in his hands, took it upon himself to answer.

  'I remember that old man from Priest Street, the one with the shaking palsy. He used to shuffle up this way now and then, I always was afeared that he would pitch forwards on to his nose, poor fellow. But I've not clapped my eye on him for many a month.' As if to illustrate this, he rolled the sunken, white orb of his horrible dead eye in its deformed socket, the legacy of a spear thrust during the Battle of Wexford.

  'Well, we should know in the morning, if this man Pole can make anything of the features of the corpse,' observed John, gently massaging Nesta's shapely thigh under the table. 'Richard de Revelle has got some crazy notion that he was planted there by a Dartmoor outlaw just to discredit his bloody school.'

  'What outlaw would that be, John?' asked Nesta, sliding her fingers over his.

  'Another landless knight, I suppose. There are so many about these days. Since the Crusade ended, many warriors, mostly second sons without an inheritance, find themselves without either a war to fight or a manor to farm, so they take to armed robbery.' He paused to lift his pot with his free hand and take a long swallow, before continuing. 'This fellow is from some Cornish family. Maybe you know of them Gwyn, coming from those parts. He's Nicholas de Arundell, according to my dear brother-in-law. I vaguely recall the name, but our paths never crossed in Palestine.'

  'It's a well-known family in Cornwall,' replied his officer. 'Been there since the Conquest, for William the Bastard handed out many parcels of land to the Arundells, all over the West Country.'

  The potman, a champion nosy-parker well able to rival the inquisitive Thomas de Peyne, still hovered with his empty mugs, reluctant to leave without adding to the discussion.

  'I know something of this outlaw fellow Nicholas,' he said. 'Some call him Nick o’ the Moor and many have a lot of sympathy with him.'

  John was willing to listen to Edwin, as the old man often had useful snippets of information. Endlessly passing amongst the patrons of the Bush, distributing ale and collecting pots, he heard all kinds of conversations from men who travelled to Exeter from all over England and beyond.

  Resting his pottery mugs on the end of the trestle, Edwin leaned forward and in a lowered voice, as if what he had to say was confidential, he told them what he knew about Nick o' the Moor.

  'Gwyn's right about him being from this big Cornish family, but he inherited a small manor in Devon from his father. Somewhere near Totnes it is, I forget the actual name, but it's nigh to Berry Pomeroy.'

  The coroner nodded, as this was what Richard de Revelle had told him. 'Hempston Arundell, that's the manor,' he grunted as Edwin went on with his story.

  'Seems he had not long taken over the place after his father's death, when he was persuaded to take the Cross, back in 'eighty-nine. Doesn't get back for a few years and then finds that he has been declared dead and his manor confiscated by the Count of Mortain, who puts Pomeroy and de Revelle in his place.'

  De Wolfe groaned. 'It's no surprise to hear those treacherous bastards would be involved in some underhand scheme like that. But how came this Nicholas to be outlawed?'

  Here the potman had run out of gossip. 'I'm not sure of that, Crowner, I only overheard part of the talking and that was a year or two past. I seem to recall that this Nicholas is a hothead and he assaulted and killed somebody in his rage over the loss of his estate. He was arrested but escaped and ended up on the moor with a band of other men, most of them his own retainers.'

  De Wolfe prodded Edwin a little more, but the old man had nothing further to offer. 'Now that I know the bones of it, I must discover the whole story,' John said ruminatively. 'De Revelle must have been up to his tricks before I got back from Austria.' That return was a sore memory for de Wolf
e, for he had been one of the king's bodyguard when the Lionheart had been seized in Vienna and held to ransom in Austria and Germany for eighteen months. John still felt guilty of letting his monarch down, even though in fact he had been away foraging for fresh horses when the mayor of Vienna burst into the tavern and arrested Richard.

  Pushing the recollection away, he decided to probe further into this affair of Nicholas de Arundell, though he thought it was preposterous to suggest it had anything at all to do with the death of the man in the forge. Slipping an arm around Nesta's shoulders, he looked meaningfully at the ceiling planks, which were also the floorboards of her little chamber up in the loft.

  'Tomorrow, I'll get the full story from our sheriff,' he said, standing up as a signal to Gwyn and Edwin that he had other, more immediate plans in mind. 'Henry de Furnellis is of old Devon stock, he'll know all the scandal about the gentry. This might be another useful stick with which to beat my brother-in-law.'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which Crowner John gossips with the sheriff

  Soon after first light the next morning, the coroner's trio was back at the school in Smythen Street, where they found Waiter Pole already waiting for them outside the yard of the old forge. When Gwyn banged on the weathered boards of the gate that stood at the side of the plot, they were eventually pulled aside by Henry Wotri, the servant they had met when the body was found. As they trooped into the yard, the sounds of chanting could be heard from the main building, which used to be not only the residence of the forge master and his family, but also a shop on the ground floor where he sold his wrought-iron products. Now Magister Anglicus lived on the upper floor along with two other teachers, the lectures being given in the big chamber down below, which had been formed by knocking the old shop and the metal store into one large space.