The Noble Outlaw

by Bernard Knight

  Having noted their appearance and numbers, the ginger-headed lookout slipped back over the skyline of the ridge and ran like a hare ahead of them, easily outpacing the horses who were stepping delicately along the stony path, anxious to avoid twisting a hoof.

  'Right, everyone take what they can carry and let's clear out.' Nicholas de Arundell spoke urgently, his commanding manner, honed on the battlefields of Palestine, spurring his men to frenzied activity. Peter Cuffe had just sprinted into the compound, bringing news of the approach of many armed men.

  'I reckon we've got about half an hour before they're within sight,' he panted, as he seized a bow and bag of arrows that had been propped against the wall near the pile of ferns that was his mattress. The other men ran to the other two huts and collected their arms, as well as a few treasured possessions. Robert Hereward took the time to dump a bucket of earth on the fire, in the faint hope that the smoke would not give away the position of the ruined village. Others grabbed the best parts of their food supplies, a haunch of venison, some bread and two dead coneys.

  Within minutes, they had assembled within the stone walls that marked the yard, ready to flee from the place that had been their home for many months.

  'Who d'you reckon it is, Peter?' snapped Nicholas as he stared down the valley.

  'Too far away to see, but I'm sure there were two destriers carrying men in long riding cloaks. The rest were a mixed bunch, at least twenty armed men.'

  'Those bastards Henry Pomeroy and Richard Revelle, I'll wager,' snarled Hereward. 'Thinking they'll catch us unawares.'

  'They want to finish us off,' growled Philip Girard.

  'Maybe they've had wind of the coroner's promise to plead our case with the king?'

  Nicholas tore his eyes away from the distant opening into the valley and turned to face the bleaker hills to the north.

  'Let's go, we can talk about it later. Did you see any bowmen amongst them, Peter?'

  The red-headed youth shrugged. 'Hard to tell, but I don't think so. They seemed a ragged lot, except for a few who may have been from a castle guard.' As they spoke, Nicholas led the dozen men towards the gap in the wall that led up on to the moor on the western side of the valley.

  'We'll get up high and walk along the crest of the down, then cross the valley at Headland Warren, up on to Hookney Tor.'

  As he left the compound, he cast a regretful glance at the tumbledown huts that had been their home. He wondered how many times it had been abandoned like this since men first came to Dartmoor. As they were filing through in orderly haste, the last man, Robert Hereward, suddenly stopped. 'Gunilda. What about Gunilda?' he exclaimed.

  The others halted in their tracks and stared at each other. 'She went to the other side of the valley to set rabbit snares,' said one of the men. 'That was a couple of hours ago.'

  'We can't leave her,' said Peter Cuffe, to whom the old woman had become a second mother.

  'She'll hear these swine coming,' said Girard.

  'Gunilda's a tough old bird, she'll go to ground until they're past.'

  Nicholas swore all the oaths he had picked up in years of soldiering.

  'We can't go looking for her now, we'd walk right into the path of these bastards.'

  There was a hurried debate and though opinions were divided, de Arundell was forced to make a quick decision. 'We have to leave her or we'll all be caught down here in the open. I'm sure she'll hide out somewhere. God knows there are enough holes in the ground around here.'

  Reluctantly, they began hurrying up the hillside, half a dozen of them carrying long yew bows over their shoulders. Within ten minutes, Challacombe Down looked as deserted as on the Day of Creation, the outlaws having vanished into the grey-green void that was the moor in winter.

  The solitude did not last long, however: before long a faint jingle of harness and soft thud of hoofs could be heard as the intruders came tentatively into the valley of the West Webburn stream. Richard de Revelle did not like the feel of this country, he was tense and his eyes roved ceaselessly from side to side, in spite of Henry's brash assurances that they would wipe out these outlaws like a pack of rats. Once again, Richard earnestly wished that he was back in his hall at Revelstoke instead of sitting on a horse in the cold damp of Dartmoor, where violence and mayhem might break out at any moment.

  'God's teeth, where are those swine hiding themselves?' growled Henry, his square head swivelling back and forth as he surveyed the bare hills and the scrubby trees along the stream. 'Ogerus, come here,' he yelled and the bailiff wheeled his horse around and walked back to his master.

  'Do none of your men know this damned place?' he demanded. 'Where are we supposed to be looking for the bastards?'

  Ogerus Coffin shook his head. 'We are all from down south, sire, this is a foreign land to us. But according to that man who gave the information, there is a ruined village here where the outlaws set up one of their camps.' Half a mile further on, he was proved to be right, for one of the men-at-arms from Berry Castle gave a shout and pointed over to the left. 'There are some buildings of sorts, across the stream, my lord,'

  They looked past some shabby trees bare as firewood, and saw the dark shapes of a few huts, built of almost black moorstone. There was no movement anywhere and no smoke wreathed up into the leaden sky.

  'We'll go across and look, but it seems our birds have flown,' snarled Henry, angry and disappointed. The posse turned off the track and began treading carefully through the boggy ground to the bank of the stream.

  Before the leading man reached it, there was a sudden commotion behind them, on the far side of the track.

  The four hounds belonging to the huntsman began barking furiously and streaked away up the lower slopes of the hill.

  'They've scented something, bailiff,' yelled the huntsman, slipping from his saddle and running after his dogs. A moment later, as the halted cavalcade turned to watch, the man vanished from view, apparently into a hollow in the ground. His shouts of command silenced the dogs, then he reappeared, dragging what seemed to be a large bundle of damp rags. Ogerus Coffin turned his horse and walked it up towards the huntsman, then turned in his saddle and shouted back.

  'It's a woman, sir. By Jesus, the ugliest old hag you ever saw.'

  A mile away, Nicholas led his men down into a bowl of marshland, where the stream spread out before the valley narrowed and bent to the left. Ahead was the high swell of Hookney Tor with a clump of misshapen stones on top. Between that and Hameldown Tor was the small pass through which the coroner had been taken on his journey from Moretonhampstead.

  'Any signs of them?' Nicholas asked Peter Cuffe, who had been in the rear, but who now came running up as the column merged into a ragged circle.

  'Nothing yet, though I fancied I heard hounds barking just now.'

  De Arundell stared back down the silent valley. 'I hope to God that Gunilda has hidden herself somewhere. It never occurred to me that they would have dogs with them.'

  Hereward was philosophical about it. 'God wills whatever is to happen, Nicholas. We have to look after ourselves now, until we can get back down there when they have gone.' He looked up at the slopes of rough grass, clumps of it in yellowed tussocks where it had died back for the winter. 'We must get up there and lie low.'

  They moved on, climbing up steeply alongside a stream that had cut deefa, irregular channels in the black peat. In a few minutes they were on the sloping saucer between the two high tors, where the ancient circle of Grimspound sheltered a dozen crumbling huts, tiny structures like stone rings, some with a tattered roof of branches and turf.

  From there, they could look down on the upper end of the valley, but could not see back to Challacombe because of the bulk of Hameldown Tor on their left.

  'You are our best pair of eyes - and have the fastest legs, Peter,' said the leader to the ginger lad. 'Get up along the ridge again and keep a sharp lookout down towards the village.'

  When he had loped off, Nicholas went wearily through th
e gap in the double palisade of stones that reached to waist height in a huge circle around the ancient encampment.

  'We may as well rest, until either something - or nothing - happens,' he suggested. The men broke up into three groups and each found a place in one of the primitive huts to sit and worry about their situation and especially about Gunilda. The little food they had managed to carry away was shared out, and one of the men went to fill an empty wineskin with the clear water from a small stream that trickled past the circle.

  They sat and waited, the silence broken only by a thin moan of wind across the uplands and the occasional squawk of a crow scavenging amongst the heather.

  The raiding party from Berry Castle had rampaged through the primitive dwellings at Challacombe, angry and disappointed that there was virtually nothing worth looting. They kicked apart the piles of ferns that the outlaws had used for beds and overturned the crude table and stools that were the only furnishings. A couple of men grabbed the paltry remnants of food that lay on a shelf and swallowed the dregs of home-brewed ale that remained in a small barrel in a corner.

  The bailiff kicked at the debris in the firepit. 'The ashes are still hot under that soil,' he reported to his master.

  'They must have smothered it within the past hour.' Henry stood with Richard de Revelle in the middle of the main hut, glowering around at the deserted room.

  'So where the hell are they? They must have had good warning of our approach.'

  'The bastards have had a couple of years to get used to these God-forsaken moors,' replied Ogerus. 'They've slipped away up one of these bloody hills.'

  De Revelle was secretly relieved, hoping this meant that there was to be no pitched battle. 'So what do we do now? Burn this place down and go home?'

  Henry looked at him with more than a hint of contempt, for he had long become aware of de Revelle's physical cowardice. 'I suppose so, though little good it will do. These damned stones won't burn - and they can rebuild the roofs in half a day!'

  'What about this old hag, my lord?' asked the bailiff.

  'She must be something to do with these men, there's no hamlet within four miles of here.'

  The two leaders walked out into the yard outside, where Gunilda was slumped on a log, two men from Hempston standing guard over her.

  'Sweet Jesus, what a disgusting old sow,' barked Henry, using the Norman French that he and Richard spoke together. He marched up to the old woman and snarled at her in the same language. 'Who the hell are you, woman?'

  She looked at him blankly and made no response, so he repeated himself in English. Gunilda rolled her bloodshot eyes up at him and gabbled something he failed to understand, so thick was her local accent.

  'Bailiff, speak to this animal, I can't understand her monkey language.'

  Ogerus translated, with rather too much relish to suit his master. 'She says, may your member turn green and rot off, to be devoured by wolves, sir.'

  With a snarl of rage, Henry stepped forward and gave the old woman a blow across the side of her head with his fist that knocked her off the log to sprawl on the floor. The two men standing behind her looked askance at de la Pomeroy, but wisely held their tongues.

  'Pick the old cow up, damn you,' he yelled at them. 'Perhaps she knows where these other villains have gone to.'

  They dragged her from the floor and held her between them, other men now drifting towards the group, curious to see what was happening.

  Gunilda sagged between her guards, her head drooped on to her chest, blood welling from a wound on her temple where one of Pomeroy's rings had gashed her.

  'Do you think she is part of this gang?' brayed de Revelle. He seemed unconcerned by this savage attack on an old woman, though the looks on some of the faces of the men from Berry and Hempston showed that they were not happy with the situation.

  'Ask her again, bailiff,' snapped Henry. He drew his sword and prodded the front of her ragged kirtle with the tip, as if to indicate what would happen if she spat out further abuse.

  Ogerus Coffin jerked Gunilda's head up by grabbing her hairy chin and glared into her face. There was a short exchange in the thick Devon patois, the woman mumbling her words, obviously still dazed from the blow to her head.

  'She says she was collecting herbs and knows nothing of any men, sir.'

  'A liar, if there ever was one,' snapped de Revelle, determined not to be subservient to Henry Pomeroy's leadership. 'What herbs are about in the depths of winter?. She's miles from any village and only yards from a hut with a fire barely dampened down. Of course she belongs to them!'

  'Probably a waif, there's a few of them in the county, consorting with outlaws,' suggested the bailiff.

  Henry raised his sword high in the air. 'Hear that, wretch,' he yelled. 'Anyone is entitled to remove your head. I could even claim five shillings for it if I took it to the sheriff.'

  Gunilda looked at him dully from the eyes that stared from above loose pouches of skin on her dirty, lined face. 'Do it then, damn you,' she muttered apathetically.

  'Perhaps she knows where her fellow criminals have gone,' suggested de Revelle. 'Ask her, bailiff, you seem to possess the same strange speech that she employs.' Ogerus grabbed her by the shoulder and shook it as he gabbled something at her. The old woman shook her bleeding head wearily and he repeated the question, shouting at her with his mouth inches from her face.

  Again she shook her head, but momentarily her eyes flickered to her right as she looked anxiously up the valley. Ogerus, by no means a stupid man, caught the glance and began ranting at her again, shaking her by the shoulder, but she stubbornly refused to answer.

  'She won't say a thing, my lord,' said the bailiff, looking over his shoulder at the two knights. 'But I've got a notion that they went up the valley, that way.' He gestured in the direction that Gunilda's eyes had turned, towards the distant hump of Hameldown Tor.

  Henry Pomeroy, still red with anger, lifted his sword again and threatened the Saxon woman. 'Where are they, damn you? Did they go that way? Answer me, you ugly old hag.'

  For answer, Gunilda spat in his face. Enraged, Henry punched her in the chest with his powerful fist. Caught by surprise, the two guards lost their grip on her arms and she tumbled backwards, falling full length and hitting her head on a large moorstone which had tumbled from the old wall behind her. There was an ominous crack and she lay inert - never to move again.

  Several of the men muttered their concern, but were soon stilled as Henry glared around. 'What are you staring at, damn you?' he yelled. 'Get to your horses, we are going farther up the valley to find these swine. Go on, move!'

  Without a second glance at the still body on the grass, Henry de la Pomeroy beckoned to de Revelle and the two men strode away towards their steeds, Richard by no means enthusiastic about the imminent prospect of a fight.

  Within half an hour, Peter Cuffe came pounding down the slope from the brow of the hill where he had been keeping watch.

  'They're coming, Sir Nicholas,' he shouted breathlessly as he dashed in through the gap in the boundary wall. 'And they must have fired the huts, for I see a column of smoke down the valley.'

  The men stumbled from the shelters where they had been resting and congregated around their leader and the ginger youth who had brought the unwelcome news.

  'We are going to have to fight, after all,' exclaimed de Arundell. 'I had hoped that when they found the place empty they would give up and go home.'

  'What about Gunilda? Has she been taken, I wonder?' asked Philip Girard. 'If so, perhaps they forced her tell them where we were.'

  Robert Hereward shook his head vehemently. 'Never. She would have her tongue cut out before she would give us away,' he snapped.

  'If they failed to find us down in Challacombe, then they must realise that we are up this way, for they came on the only track-southwards,' observed Nicholas.

  'And they have dogs, which will pick up our trail,' added Peter.

  Their leader stared down the slope
to the track, thinking hard. 'What remains now is to defeat the bastards - or at least harry them until it becomes too dark, then we can slip away.' For five minutes, de Arundell described their plan of campaign, giving instructions to each man as to how they were going to carry out the ambush, The men made hasty preparations to their weapons, the half-dozen with bows now stringing them with the animal-gut filaments that they kept under their caps to protect them from rain. The others had swords, axes, iron-tipped staves, a couple of long pikes and a few wicked-looking ball maces swinging on chains from a short handle.

  'Did you check again on their numbers, Peter?' demanded their leader.

  'As I first thought, about twenty, all on horses of varying sorts. The two riding destriers must be that swine Henry Pomeroy and Richard de Revelle.'

  'But no bowmen?' rasped Nicholas. 'Are you sure about that?'

  The redhead nodded. 'I saw none, and the way most of them are sitting on their saddles suggests that they would be more at home with a cabbage hoe or a thatcher's rake!'

  Nick o' the Moor gave rapid orders to his band of outlaws. He sent most of them up the two hillsides that sloped away from the great circle of Grimspound, ordering them to find somewhere to conceal themselves, either in hollows in the ground or behind large rocks. He placed an archer on each side of the shallow gully down which the stream tumbled to the valley below, the only practical approach to Grimspound. The other four bowmen he sent to hide in strategic positions on the slopes around the camp. Once again, he dispatched Peter up to the corner of the ridge, to signal when the intruders had reached the nearest point on the main track below. With luck, they might pass by and continue up the narrowing valley towards the Chagford road.

  Together with Robert Hereward, he climbed up the flank of Hookney Tor to the north and they hunkered down in a slight hollow behind large tussocks of coarse grass.