The Noble Outlaw

by Bernard Knight

  'Thomas, you're a bloody genius! We've got him, thanks to you.' Then he glowered at his clerk from under his beetling black brows. 'But you've not yet told me the name of this damned journeyman!' Thomas looked furtively over his shoulder, as if he was about to impart some state secret. 'It was Geoffrey Trove, who works on Exe Island.'

  De Wolfe stared at his clerk. The name rang some faint bell in the back of his mind and he struggled to retrieve it. 'Trove? Trove? That name is somehow familiar.'

  Then the memory of the meeting in the Guildhall with the members of various guilds came back to him.

  He recalled the pompous Benedict de Buttelscumbe who was the convenor and then the general discussion afterwards. Yes, that was it, there was a fellow, a journeyman smith, who had some sarcastic remarks to offer about the failure of the law officers to solve the killings.

  The coroner half rose from his bench, as if to dash out and arrest the man at that moment, but Nesta pulled at his sleeve.

  'John, it is pitch dark outside,' she scolded. 'These murders have been spread over weeks, so I doubt that waiting until morning will make any difference to your investigation.'

  De Wolfe saw the sense in what she said and subsided on to his seat.

  'You are right, as usual, woman. But at dawn, I shall visit the warden of the ironworkers and discover what I can about this Geoffrey Trove. And especially where he lives and works.'

  And that was the first problem, for Geoffrey Trove was nowhere to be found.

  Soon after first light, while Thomas was busy at his devotions in the cathedral, John and his officer were at Stephen de Radone's forge in Smythen Street. When they told him of Thomas's discovery, the warden was aghast.

  'Could this really be a motive for murder?' he protested. 'I know this man Trove slightly, he has always been difficult and outspoken in matters concerning our trade - but murder?'

  'Is obtaining the rank of a master important?' asked de Wolfe.

  'Very much so, especially if a man is ambitious and wishes to set up on his own,' replied Stephen. 'And to have your master-piece rejected once, let alone twice, is indeed a slur on a craftsman's proficiency. It means that he would be condemned to working as a journeyman for ever, certainly in Exeter. His only hope would be to move somewhere far away, where his history is unknown, and to try again.'

  The warden told them that Trove worked for an iron founder down on the river, just outside the city on the marshes beyond the West Gate. Plentiful supplies of water flowing along the leets that meandered through the flood plain allowed a number of mills to operate there. Most were fulling mills for the wool industry, but there were also a few iron smelters and founders, who used the power of millwheels to drive bellows and hammers for their metalworking.

  The coroner and Gwyn hurried through the early morning crowds thronging the shops and stalls until they emerged through the West Gate. They took Frog Lane across Exe Island, the swampy ground between the city wall and the river, which curved around to the north where many of the mills were situated. Shacks and shanties were dotted around the edges of the leets and streams, always in danger of being flooded or washed away when the Exe flooded after rainstorms up on Exmoor. But today was dry and cold, and they soon reached the mill which Stephen de Radone had described to them.

  The place was a hive of activity. Looking into one of the high, open-fronted sheds, John could imagine that he was on the threshold of Hell. Amidst mounds of ore and charcoal, a bulbous furnace was issuing forth a stream of white-hot iron, around which several foundrymen were capering, holding long rods, guiding the liquid metal into stone and clay moulds. Though fascinated by the sight, John tore himself away and found the ironmaster cloistered with a miserable-looking clerk in a hut that served as their office and countinghouse.

  John tersely explained their mission to the master, a prosperous-looking man with a large paunch, and a rim of grey beard around his plump face.

  'He's gone,' declared the ironmaster. 'Said he was sick, then just walked out two days ago without a word. He always was an awkward fellow, though he worked hard enough.'

  'Did you know about his trouble with the guilds?'

  'Of course. Mind you, he brought it on himself, he was a cussed individual, wouldn't take advice.' He explained that Geoffrey Trove refused to offer a conventional object as his master-piece, even though he was a competent craftsman.

  'Instead of casting an elegant door knocker or forging a handsome dagger, the damned fool insisted on making some strange device. He claimed it was a miniature crossbow that a man could hang from his belt and use to deter robbers.'

  John and Gwyn looked at each other on hearing this apparent confirmation that Trove must have been the culprit

  'Was he much incensed at his rejection by the guild masters?' asked John.

  'Hard to tell, he was such a surly, close-lipped devil.

  I wouldn't have thought he would commit murder over it, but you never can tell with these silent ones.'

  Further questioning brought out the fact that Geoffrey Trove was unmarried, so far as anyone knew, though he had come several years ago from Bristol as a journey man and no one knew anything of his past history.

  'He lived alone in one of those huts on the island,' said the master, waving a podgy, be-ringed hand down towards the distant Exe bridge, still unfinished after several years' construction. 'Don't ask me which one, someone on Frog Lane will tell you. I have to admit that he looked very poorly when he left here.'

  'What was wrong with him?' asked de Wolfe.

  'God knows, he would rarely give you the time of day.

  But he held one arm stiffly and his face was flushed as if he had a fever. I told him to seek an apothecary.'

  Leaving the master to count his profits with his clerk, the two law officers retraced their steps back across the marshes, shivering as a fresh north wind moaned about them, reminding them that once again, snow might not be all that far away. 'Let's hope it keeps off a bit longer,' grumbled Gwyn, thinking of their proposed search of Dartmoor the next day.

  Enquiry led them to a cottage that was larger and more substantial than some of the shacks. It was built on the edge of a muddy channel that had been strengthened by stonework, making the cottage safer than some of the mean huts that were literally sliding into the leets.

  It was a square box built of cob on a wooden frame and had a thatched roof in fair condition. There were no windows, but a front and back door of oaken planks.

  The back door was barred from inside and the front door had a complicated metal lock.

  'Probably made it himself,' observed John, rattling the massive padlock in a futile attempt to shake it open.

  They hammered on the doors, getting no response.

  Gwyn stood back and studied the door with a critical eye. 'That will take some breaking down. Do you really need to get inside, Crowner?'

  John nodded, scowling at the barrier of oak that was frustrating them. 'If that device for shooting iron rods is inside, that would clinch his guilt,' he growled.

  'Do you want me to try and smash it open?'

  John reluctantly shook his head. 'You'd do yourself an injury. There's no great urgency, I'll get Gabriel to bring a couple of men down here later with a length of tree trunk. If there's no answer then, they can batter it open and see if there’s anything incriminating in there.

  As they walked back towards the city de Wolfe wondered where Geoffrey Trove might have got to, if he was not in his place of work or at home.

  'Let's try St John's Priory, maybe he's sought the ministrations of Brother Saulf in the infirmary, if he really is ill.'

  St John's was the only place in Exeter where sick persons could find a bed and have some sympathetic care offered to them. However, this time Brother Sanlf could not help, as no such person as Trove had been to the infirmary and he had never heard of him.

  Baffled, de Wolfe and Gwyn returned to Rougemont, where they found Thomas hard at work copying rolls for the next visitati
on of the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery. But he also had news of a different visitation, one that Hubert Walter had promised.

  'The sheriffs clerk asked me to tell you that Sir Walter de Ralegh, together with another justice, will arrive in Exeter one week from now, to hear the case of Nicholas de Arundell,' announced Thomas, with a satisfied smile on his peaky face.

  'That makes it all the more urgent to find our Nick o' the Moors,' said the coroner to his officer. As they settled down to their mid-morning ale and bread, John complimented his clerk on his genius in thinking of the iron connection in the murders, which now seemed to have been confirmed beyond any doubt.

  'We even know the name of the bastard who's responsible,' he concluded, as Thomas wriggled in self-conscious delight at this rare praise from his master.

  'But like de Arundell, we can't find the bugger!' boomed Gwyn. 'They've both vanished into thin air, so if you really are a genius, tell us where we can find them. '

  The little priest took him seriously and began to tick off the possibilities on his thin fingers. 'He's not at his work, or his dwelling. Neither is he sick in the infirmary. He's not likely to be in St Nicholas priory, as they don't encourage outsiders to share their sickbeds.' Thomas stopped with three fingers displayed. 'You say he was a stranger in Exeter, having come from Bristol, so he'll have no relatives to stay with, so either he's left the city or he's holed up in some lodging.'

  The big Cornishman grunted derisively. 'Doesn't need a genius to come to that conclusion. Which lodging, that's the point?'

  At the lodging in question, a young woman stood uncertainly in the centre of the room and looked down at the bed, a hessian bag stuffed with a random mixture of feathers from fowl, geese and ducks.

  It was not this primitive mattress that caused the worried look on her face, but the man who lay on it, groaning as he nursed his left arm. Denise had done her best with a pot of salve from an apothecary and a wide strip of linen torn from her only bedsheet. She had anointed the angry slash on Trove's forearm with the green paste and wrapped it with several turns of the cloth, tying it in place with a length of blue ribbon. But the wound had become redder and more swollen, and pink tracks had begun to climb up the skin of his arm towards the shoulder.

  'You need better attention than I can give you, Geoffrey,' she exclaimed for the tenth time. 'I'm no leech or Sister of Mercy, what do I know of tending wounds?'

  The journeyman gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his arm as he struggled to a sitting position. 'It will pass, woman. Give it time, it was not much more than a scratch.'

  He cursed the carelessness with which he had detached his shooting device from the back of the privy. In the dark and in haste to remove it before anyone came to investigate, he had slashed his bare forearm against the end of the laminated leaf-spring that shot the missile.

  The injury itself was not serious, but by the next day, the deep scratch had become angry, and by the day after it was oozing pus. He suspected that some evil miasma had splashed upon his device from the ordure pit below, where there was a wide opening for the night-soil man to shovel out the contents.

  Denise, a handsome girl of about twenty years, seemed close to tears. 'You'll die, Geoffrey, I know you will, unless you have it seen to properly. I had an uncle who stabbed his foot with a fork when he was hoeing turnips.., he died in the most awful convulsions a week later.'

  The iron-worker glowered at her. 'Thanks, that really cheers me up! Look, if it's worse by tomorrow, you can call an apothecary.' He subsided on to the palliasse again, waves of heat passing over him in spite of the coldness of the room, which was heated only by a charcoal brazier set on a stone slab in the centre of the rush-covered floor. The dwelling was a single room at the back of a silversmith's shop in Waterbeer Lane, behind the High Street. It had been Denise's place of business when she was a working whore, but now Geoffrey's generosity allowed her to keep all her favours for him. He had patronised her for a long period as a regular client, but a brusque affection and sense of possession had gradually developed, so that he had even thought of marrying the wench once he had set up in his own business as a master craftsman, but those bastards rejecting his application had scuppered all his plans.

  Still, he had almost got even with them all now; only the last venture against Gilbert le Bator had gone wrong - and left him with a poisoned arm into the bargain.

  He had had to leave his employment when the arm became useless and, though his master knew he was sick, he doubted whether he would ever go back. Something told him that the failed attempt on the weaver's life the other night would lead to his exposure if he stayed in the city, so he had abandoned his mean hut on the marshes and moved in with his mistress. As soon as his arm had healed, he would leave Exeter and take Denise away to yet another fresh start, perhaps this time in Gloucester. But first of all, he had one last score to settle.

  Matilda's new hobby of being solicitous to Lady Joan de Arundell caused her to be very concerned at the news that Sir Nicholas had disappeared. She made none of her usual complaints when her husband announced that he had to ride off at dawn the next day to look for Nicholas, and she even added her own exhortations to John to spare no effort in finding the former outlaw.

  'He must be told of his release from this iniquitous stigma,' she exclaimed. 'That poor woman, at first full of joy at his salvation, is now plunged into misery because he has vanished.'

  It was unlike Matilda to be so melodramatic, and John wondered at her state of mind. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if her going mad could be grounds for annulment of their marriage, then forgot the notion.

  In the cold light of the following dawn, Gwyn waited patiently outside on his mare while de Wolfe had the farrier saddle up his favourite gelding for the ride to Dartmoor. They met Sergeant Gabriel and two men-at-arms at the end of North Street and sallied out of the nearby gate towards the village of Ide and then onward to Moretonhampstead.

  The sky was by now a sullen slate grey, with a suggestion of pinkness nearer the horizon, and the leather-faced sergeant mournfully prophesied snow before evening. The air was cold and still, but the going was good and they made rapid progress at a steady trot up and down the fertile undulations that led to the high moor.

  'Where are we aiming for?' asked Gwyn when the little town locally known as Moreton came into sight. 'We haven't the slightest idea where Nicholas may be holed up.'

  'Let's talk to the folk in the tavern, maybe someone will have an idea,' growled John. 'It was there that Lady Joan's messenger used to meet one of the men from Challacombe.'

  When they reined in at the alehouse and entered for a welcome jug of ale and some hot potage, they learned nothing of Nicholas de Arundell's whereabouts, but picked up many rumours of an attack upon him.

  Like all tales in the countryside, they improved with the telling, and the exaggerations of the attack on Challacombe had expanded until it seemed impossible that any of the outlaws could have survived. The patrons that morning were eager to offer their versions of the drama to de Wolfe, until his habitually thin store of patience ran out and he grabbed the taverner by the arm.

  'For Christ's sake, man, let's have some sense here,' he snapped. 'Have you any real idea what happened over in Challacombe?'

  The chastened landlord held up his hands in supplication. 'It's all gossip, Crowner,' he pleaded. 'But certainly some armed band came up from Widecombe way and there was a fight with Nick o' the Moor's men.

  One of the locals here, who's not above taking a rabbit or even an injured deer over that way, said he was in the Challacombe valley a week past and saw the old huts burnt out and no sign of any life there.'

  'Is there no rumour of where they might have gone?' demanded Gwyn belligerently, for he did not like the look of this crafty fellow.

  'Like will-o'-the-wisp is that Nicholas. They do say he has several hideouts across the moor, one of them being up towards Sittaford Tot.' This was one of the most remote parts of the high moor, w
ith vast areas of deserted land around it.

  'Might just as well tell us he's somewhere on the bloody moon' grumbled Gwyn.

  They could get nothing more of any use from the men in the tavern and after finishing their food and ale, John decided to strike out for Challacombe, across the indistinct track along which he had been taken when he first visited Nicholas de Arundell. The snow was holding off, and again they made good time over the firm, dry ground so that by noon, they were coming down below Hameldown Tor across the grassy bowl that held the strange ancient stories of Grimspound. There was nothing to tell them that a major ambush had been set here not long before, and they continued down on to the track that led southwards down the valley. The bleak countryside seemed deserted, and apart from birds the only life they saw was a dog fox lurking alongside the Webburn stream. Within a mile, they came to the stunted trees that surrounded the old village where John and his officer had spent a night.

  'All burnt out, Crowner,' called Gabriel, who was riding a few yards ahead of them; the two soldiers were at the rear. As they crossed the stream and came up the slope to the old walls, they could see that the rough thatch that had been on several of the huts had collapsed into a blackened mess. When they dismounted and walked inside the wall around the settlement, the acrid smell of scorched branches and bracken assailed their nostrils. Though the large moorstones that made up the walls were still in place, the interiors of the primitive dwellings were reduced to heaps of sodden, blackened debris from the roofs. An ominous silence hung over the old village, broken only by the eerie hoot of a disturbed owl from the nearby trees.

  There was nothing to be gained by staying, and the coroner motioned the others back to their horses. Just as they were filing through the gap in the wall, Gabriel stopped and pointed across the yard that lay in front of the nearest huts. 'What's that there? It looks very recent.'