‘And don’t forget, my son, you tell Nesta that this house is always open to her at any time. She can come down here when she is heavy with child and go to childbed here, if needs be. She can scream out her labour pains in Welsh, for we’ll understand her well enough!’
CHAPTER SEVEN
In which Gwyn takes to the forest and Thomas to an abbey
Gwyn woke up at dawn to find himself staring at a rocky ceiling. He was used to curling up in a wide variety of places and could sleep soundly anywhere, from the heaving deck of a fishing boat to the open deserts of Outremer. However, since settling down a couple of years ago, he now usually awoke either in his family hut in St Sidwell’s – or somewhere in Exeter, if he had been out drinking after the city gates closed at curfew.
He stared at the damp rock for a moment, gathering his sleep-fuddled senses, before recollecting that he was in an outlaw’s cave about five miles north of Ashburton. After leaving the alehouse the previous evening, Martin Angot had walked with him out of the little town for about a mile up the road towards Haytor. It was almost dark by then, though a pink summer glow in the west gave enough light for them to see their way. At a bend in the lane, Martin suddenly plunged off the road and, a few hundred paces through the trees, came upon a sturdy pony on a long head-rope, contentedly cropping the grass in a clearing.
‘You’ll have to walk behind, it’s a couple more miles at least,’ he said rather thickly, as the outlaw did not have the iron head that Gwyn possessed when it came to drinking ale.
They plodded for an hour along an ill-defined track through the woods alongside a valley, then came out on moorland and began to climb towards the rocks of a jagged tor silhouetted against the sky.
A full moon now rose above the eastern horizon, and for another mile the coroner’s officer, who had given his name as Jess, followed the rump of the pony up towards the high moor.
There was a hoot ahead which was a fair imitation of an owl, though Gwyn was well aware that it came from a human throat. Martin Angot called a soft reply and a moment later the figure of a sentinel loomed up from behind a rock, a lance in his hands.
‘Who’s this, Martin?’ he demanded.
‘A new recruit – an abjurer who lost his way,’ jested the blond man.
The guard waved them on, and in a few minutes they came upon a deep dell set into the edge of the escarpment. Behind a barrier of piled moor-stones the glowing ashes of a fire remained, one fed only with dry wood to avoid smoke. A few crude shelters made of stones and wood, with turf roofs supported on branches, were propped against the rocky faces of the dell, and at its apex was a wide, shallow cave. Snores from the shelters and the cave drew Gwyn’s gaze to about a score of sleeping men, wrapped in cloaks and rough blankets. Martin slid from his pony and pulled off the oat sack he used for a saddle. Giving the beast a slap on the rump to send it out of the dell for the night, he muttered, ‘It’ll not go far, there are others tethered around the corner. Find a space in the cavern – at least it’s better than a ditch or pigsty,’ he grunted, making for one of the turfed shelters. ‘I’ll take you to the chief in the morning – he’ll either accept you or slit your throat.’
Now, at dawn, Gwyn lay wondering what he had let himself in for, penetrating this den of thieves. If any of them recognised him as the coroner’s henchman, he was in big trouble, but he felt it worth the risk if he could learn something useful for his master.
The danger was that, though probably none of the gang of outcasts would have seen him before, the description of a huge, ginger-haired Cornishman acting as the crowner’s officer might be common enough currency in the countryside to give him away. It would surely happen sooner or later, but as he intended only to spend a day or so as an outlaw, he gambled on it being later.
As the dawn strengthened, men began to move, stretching and cursing as they pulled on their boots. They drifted to the fire, which someone had blown into life, piling on fresh wood, so that a cauldron of yesterday’s stew could be heated for breakfast. Some stale bread, stolen at knife-point from some village bake-house days before, was the only accompaniment, washed down by a sour ale.
The other men, who varied from hideous ruffians to weak-looking runts who must have been clerks escaping from embezzlement charges, seemed incurious about him, and Gwyn assumed that the membership of the gang was a fluid affair, with much coming and going. During the desultory converation around the cauldron, he stuck to his story about being ‘Jess’, an absconding abjurer, and no one seemed interested enough to question him in any detail about his orginal crimes. Thankfully, no one leapt to his feet and pointed a quivering finger at him, accusing him of being the Exeter coroner’s officer.
After they had finished picking out shreds of fatty meat and gristle from the pot with their knives and drinking the thin soup dipped out with their empty ale-mugs, a dozen of the outlaws trooped off on foot, one of them telling Gwyn that they were going up to the high moor to steal some sheep belonging to Buckfast Abbey. For some reason, the mention of this religious house seemed to cause some amusement, and Gwyn heard one man cackling about ‘Biting the hand that feeds you!’.
As they left, Martin Angot came across from one of the shelters, walking with a tall, slim man with brown hair and beard. He was better dressed than the others, with a green tunic circled with a belt and baldric from which hung a heavy sword. Ankle-length boots were worn over cross-gartered breeches, and his head was partly covered by a pointed woollen cap that flopped over to one side.
‘Is this the man, Martin?’ he asked his lieutenant. Gwyn recognised that his voice was more cultured than the other men’s, though he spoke English with a Devon accent.
Gwyn lumbered to his feet and nodded to the newcomer, who he assumed was Robert Winter. ‘Jess is my name. I seek somewhere to stay in peace for a time, until I can carry on with my journey.’
The outlaw grinned, his face lighting up pleasantly, his intelligent eyes scanning Gwyn’s huge frame and his dishevelled clothing.
‘Martin tells me you’ve walked from Bristol? You look as if it was from York, by the state of you.’
Now it was Gwyn’s bulbous features which cracked into a smile. ‘Almost as far, for I walked from Anglesey in Wales to Bristol, having taken ship from Ireland.’
He knew Ireland and Wales well and felt easier talking about somewhere that was not pure invention.
‘What were you doing in Ireland?’ asked Martin.
‘Selling my sword-arm as usual. But they’ve run out of wars there at the moment, so I was making for home. Then, being without money after a gaming match, I relieved a Bristol merchant of his purse, but the damned man had two servants following behind. I laid them out, but then had to run for sanctuary.’
It was a simple enough story to be credible, and neither of the outlaws seemed suspicious.
‘D’you mind risking your head as an outlaw?’
Gwyn grinned at the question.
‘It makes no odds to me whether my neck is severed or stretched on the gallows tree, which is what would happen if Bristol caught up with me!’
Winter looked keenly at the big man, sizing up his huge muscles before his eyes settled on the broadsword hanging from his baldric.
‘Are you any good with that thing, Jess?’
Gwyn rattled the battered blade in its scabbard of scuffed leather.
‘It’s kept me alive these past twenty years, so I reckon on being able to use it well enough – though I’ll admit I’m no bowman.’
Both Robert Winter and his deputy Martin Angot asked some more questions, mainly about his origins and where he had served as a mercenary soldier. Once again, Gwyn stuck as near to the truth as possible, which he could do without difficulty. His accent confirmed him as a Cornishman and he correctly claimed to be the son of a tin miner who had given up the trade to become a fisherman at Polruan, where Gwyn had spent the first sixteen years of his life. As to campaigning, he stuck to his actual escapades in France, Ireland and Wales
, leaving out any mention of the Holy Land or Austria, which might have brought him uncomfortably near John de Wolfe.
After a few minutes, the other men appeared satisfied that this dishevelled giant was what he claimed to be.
‘You’re welcome to stay with us, Jess, until you want to move on. But you’ll have to earn your keep and our protection,’ said Winter.
‘Anything you say, Chief,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘What happens today?’
The outlaw leader looked at Angot, who jerked a thumb towards the men sitting around the fire.
‘A few of them are doing a little task for a forester today. Go with them, Jess – there’s hardly likely to be much rough stuff, but someone your size might be useful if any persuasion is needed.’
Apparently satisfied, the two outlaws sauntered back towards the bigger shelter, leaving Gwyn to his own devices. He wandered over to the rest of the men and squatted down with them.
‘I’m to go with you on some persuading expedition,’ he announced. ‘What’s it all about?’
Like their leaders, the men seemed to have accepted Gwyn without query. He suspected that there was a high turnover of similar recruits and deserters in the gang. One of them spat into the fire before answering him.
‘We’re going to shake up some freeholder who refused to honour his obligations to William Lupus,’ explained the man, a tough-looking fellow of about twenty. He had a fringe of dark beard and a jagged scar on his right cheek. The name Lupus rang an alarm bell in Gwyn’s mind.
‘Who’s he?’ he asked gruffly, not wishing to show that he already knew.
‘One of the foresters around here. This bloody pig-keeper refused to feed the horses belonging to him and his page, so we’re to teach him some manners.’
Gwyn leaned forward to push a log farther into the fire.
‘Why are we doing such a favour for a forester? Where I come from, we prefer to cut their throats!’
One of the other men answered this time, a young weaselly fellow with a bad squint.
‘It pays not to ask too many questions around here,’ he advised.
Gwyn shrugged indifferently.’I don’t give a damn. When are we going?’
For an answer, three of the men, including the one with the scar, clambered to their feet. One ambled across to a pile of weapons and brought over four heavy cudgels, one of which he handed to Gwyn.
‘Here you are, Jess. You won’t need your sword today – this isn’t the Battle of Wexford!’ said the bearded youth.
There was no way that Gwyn was going to be parted from his blade, but no further jest was made when he left it hanging at his side. The four men set off down the steep heathland, leaving a few outlaws back in the camp. A few hundred yards below the rocky outcrop, the bare ground gave way to trees, and soon the single file of marauders was winding its way along an ill-defined path through dense woodland down into the valley. Gwyn was in the rear, the leader being Simon, a swarthy ruffian of about thirty who reminded Gwyn of a wild boar, as his dark hairy face and boasted a mouth that had a pair of large yellowed eye-teeth projecting like tusks from his lower jaw. He loped through the fallen leaves and wild garlic with the assurance of one who knew every step of the way, swinging his ugly-looking club in one hand. The other two, Scarface and the one with the squint, were dressed in little better than rags, and Gwyn wondered what sins had driven them from home to eke out this miserable existence in the forest.
After the better part of an hour’s silent tramping, they skirted some cultivated fields where the valley began to widen out and reached a narrow track, rutted by cartwheels. After following this for half a mile, they crossed a wider road which Gwyn recognised as the highway from Ashburton to Moretonhampstead. He could see a small hamlet in the distance, but after furtive glances up and down the road, Simon marched them straight across and took a path that led into the trees on the other side. This wound along for a while until it debouched into a large clearing in which there was a fair-sized cottage built of whitewashed cob, a mixture of mud, horsehair and dung, plastered on to a lattice of hazel withies.
A couple of sheds stood behind it, alongside a wattle fence enclosing a large patch of stinking mud in which more than two score pigs snuffled and grunted. In front of the dwelling was another fenced area, planted with orderly rows of beans, cabbage, onions, lettuce and herbs. Simon came to halt facing the cottage and pointed towards it with his club.
‘Right, boys, we’re to beat him up a little, but not enough to croak him – understand?’
Gwyn became very uneasy – as the dilemma had presented itself so abruptly. Simon stood at the fence around the plot and stared at the silent cottage, the others gathering behind him.
‘What are we here for?’ grunted Gwyn.
The leader turned his ugly head. ‘To teach this fellow a lesson – and to oblige William Lupus.’
‘Can’t a forester settle his own problems? What’s this cottar done to offend him?’
‘You ask a lot of questions, for a newcomer,’ snapped Simon.
‘It’s because I’m a newcomer. I don’t know what’s going on,’ Gwyn replied reasonably. One of the younger men explained.
‘He wouldn’t give Lupus everything he wanted. Under forest law, everyone dwelling in a royal forest must give the putre on demand to any forest officer and his groom, as well as fodder for his horse and food for his hound.’
‘What the hell’s “putre”?’
‘The forest fee – bed and board, oats for the horse, two tallow candles a night and black bread for the forester’s dog.’
‘So why’s bed and board a problem?’ muttered Gwyn.
‘Edwin, the freeholder here, refused to give Lupus everything else he wanted, including a couple of pigs and some fowls – in fact, he and his two sons threatened to give him a beating if he didn’t go away.’
‘So why didn’t this Edwin give the forester what he was entitled to?’
The cross-eyed outlaw sniggered. ‘Because Lupus had been back three times inside two weeks, demanding his dues. He’d cleaned the old man out of the last of his fodder, I heard. The final straw was him wanting three of his best breeding sows.’
Simon smacked the lad around the head with a heavy hand. ‘For Mary’s sake, give over gossiping! There’s work to be done. Go and chase those bloody pigs into the forest. That’ll get him into trouble for unlawful agisting, especially this time of year, in the fence month.’
Rubbing his sore head, the youth loped away towards the back of the cottage, while the leading outlaw gave the other youngster a push on the shoulder. ‘You, get in that garden and wreck those plants of Edwin’s. Let him go hungry, after he’s recovered from his thrashing.’
He motioned to Gwyn to follow him and made for the front of the cottage.
The coroner’s officer was feeling increasingly uneasy at what was happening, especially when he saw the carefully tended vegetables being either uprooted or trodden underfoot by the ruffian in the garden plot. But for the moment he could hardly afford to abandon his deception, just when he might be able to learn something. Reluctantly, he tramped after Simon, the cudgel he had been given dangling from his hand. As they neared the heavy sheet of thick leather that hung over the door of the windowless dwelling, he heard the squeal of pigs as they were chased off into the woods behind, from where it would be a marathon task to gather them together again.
As they stood near the rough timber frame of the door, there was still no sound from within. The youth was still crashing about in the vegetable plot, but there was no reaction from inside the cottage.
‘Maybe he’s not here,’ said Gwyn, trying to keep the relief from his voice. There was no way in which he could stand by and let these thugs assault an innocent man, even if it did expose him as a spy.
Simon looked disgruntled at the prospect of a wasted journey. ‘It’s a market day in Moretonhampstead. Maybe the bastard has gone there to sell some of his hogs.’
He pushed aside the leather with the
point of his cudgel and peered into the single room. ‘No one here, blast it!’ he snarled.
Gwyn decided to use the anticlimax to try to wheedle out some more information.
‘I still don’t see why we’re doing the forester’s dirty work.’
Simon turned impatiently from the door. ‘Because Winter gets paid to do it, that’s why. And the rest of us get a share-out now and then. Where else d’you think we get money for ale and wenching when we slide into the town?’
‘Who pays him, then?’ asked Gwyn, boldly.
The outlaw glared suspiciously at him. ‘You’re a big fellow, but you’ve got an even bigger mouth! Why d’you want to know? It’s none of your business.’
Gwyn held up his hands apologetically. ‘I’ve just got a curious nature – I’m no sheriff’s man, for God’s sake!’
This seemed to amuse Simon.
‘Sheriff’s man – that’s a laugh, that is! Now shut up and get in there and smash everything within sight. If we can’t break Edwin’s head, we’ll just have break up his homestead.’ To demonstrate what he meant, Simon pulled violently at the leather door flap, ripping it from its fastenings.
As if this was a signal, all hell was let loose.
There was a warning scream from the lad in the garden and a pounding of feet from the direction of a small shed at the side of the house. Two men came flying around the corner, one hefting a three-foot piece of branch, the other waving a small but wicked-looking firewood axe. With yells of defiance, they fell upon the two men at their door, the younger fellow catching Simon a heavy blow with the branch, which he fended off with his left arm. The older man, obviously his father, took a swing at Gwyn with his axe, but the experienced fighter easily parried it with his cudgel, the blade becoming deeply embedded in the wood.
Edwin and his teenaged son were courageous enough, fighting desperately for their home, if not their lives. But once the element of surprise was lost, they were no match for the outlaws, especially when the two others came running, one from the garden and the other attracted by the noise on his way back from chasing the pigs. As Edwin, a grizzled, toothless man of about fifty, struggled to pull his axe from Gwyn’s club, the Cornishman put a massive arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.
Fear in the Forest Page 17