Fear in the Forest

by Bernard Knight

  Through her tears, she smiled sadly at his innocence.

  ‘Dear Thomas, it is far more complicated than you imagine. I have sinned, I have attempted greater sins, and now contemplate an even greater sin.’

  The clerk looked up at her, his brown eyes wide with apprehension.

  ‘What are you saying, woman? You are goodness itself. What’s this talk of sin?’

  She gave a great sigh, then put both her hands on his shoulders, feeling the bones through his threadbare tunic. Face to face now, she told him of her despair.

  ‘Thomas, you just said that John is glad to be a father – but he is not a father, though he doesn’t yet know it.’

  As the clerk gaped at her, she went on, the words spilling out now that she had taken the plunge. ‘The father is Alan of Lyme, that viper I took to my bosom some months ago, when your master and I had fallen out. I had hoped against hope that it was not so, but when I visited Bearded Lucy down on Exe Island, she found that the time I have been with child makes it impossible for it to have been John’s.’

  Thomas’s head sagged so that his forehead rested on her knees for a moment. Then he looked up, his face filled with compassion.

  ‘That was your first sin – so what are these others?’

  Nesta’s hands left his shoulders to drop into her lap and screw up the folds of her thin leather brewing apron into a creased bundle.

  ‘I have tried to rid myself of this traitor in my womb. I have taken every herb and potion I could obtain. All they have done is make me sick, but not shifted this legacy of my infidelity!’

  Thomas rocked back on his heels in the dirt, staring up at her.

  ‘That is indeed a sin, Nesta. Understandable in your distress, but a sin nevertheless. You call the child a traitor, but he knows nothing of his creation, he can have no fault – at least until he is born, when he will have the same original sin as the rest of us.’

  Her hands left the torturing of her apron to rub her filling eyes again.

  ‘You are right, Thomas, the babe is not the one at fault, he is but the instrument of my own misdeeds. Anyway, these pills and potions failed, so the matter is of no consequence. I have ruined John’s life, his marriage, perhaps his standing as a high official.’

  The clerk made twittering denials at this.

  ‘Come, Nesta, be realistic! Every Norman knight has by-blows, some by many different women. It’s not something that is even worthy of mention in their company. Matilda’s own brother has several, that everyone knows about. And as for the crowner’s marriage, you know as well as any of us that it is an unhappy sham. If only this child were his, then it would have been one of the best things to happen to him.’

  ‘That’s the very point, can’t you see!’ she wailed. ‘It’s not his and when he discovers that, as he is bound to before long, then I will have destroyed him. He will hate me, reject me and that I cannot bear! There is only one course left.’

  He gaped at her, uncomprehending at first.

  ‘You should know, Thomas, you have been down that same road yourself, not long ago.’

  ‘No, Nesta, not that! Never that, you must never even think of that.’

  The clerk was aghast at what finally he understood her to be contemplating.

  ‘It is the only way, Thomas. He would be rid of the fruit of my wickedness and rid of me at the same time – me, who stands between him and fulfilment in his life.’

  De Peyne jumped to his feet, agitated and desperate. This time it was he who seized her by the shoulders and virtually shook her.

  ‘No, Nesta, no! You must never even think of it again! Yes, you said I had been down that road – but I turned off that road and now I know that madness had enveloped me at that time. My desperation was different from yours, but none the less awful!’

  He stopped for breath and shook her gently again.

  ‘Yet when I tried, God showed me I was wrong. He stopped me and now I would never, never contemplate that again! In fact, only yesterday I found another answer, if the need arises – to enter the peace of monastic life, like Matilda. There are always answers, Nesta – always!’

  He stood now with his arm around her as she sat on the stool, her head sinking against his waist. They were both shivering with emotion, as he crooned further encouragement to her.

  ‘If you harmed yourself, you would also wound John de Wolfe for life. I know he loves you, in spite of his gruff ways. And what of Gwyn and myself? We cherish you too. Think how we would be devastated if you were no longer with us.’

  They talked in low tones for a long time, Thomas gradually winning from her a solemn promise not to harm herself or the child. Though a former priest, he made no threats of eternal hellfire or the damnation of the Church. Rather, he played on the desolation that would fall upon de Wolfe and the sadness and grief that would be inflicted upon her friends.

  ‘But what’s to be done, Thomas?’ she whispered, when her tears had almost dried and she was rational again. ‘Am I to tell him the babe’s not his?’

  This was where the clerk’s exhortations, fluent where mortal sin was concerned, became rather thin when applied to earthly practicalities.

  ‘Is he bound to find out, if we say nothing?’ he asked.

  Nesta turned up her hands helplessly. ‘It’s a great risk, especially if some busybody puts it about – and there are plenty of those in Exeter, God knows! Look how soon his wife was told of my condition.’

  Thomas nodded sadly. He was well aware of the gossip machine that operated so efficiently in the city.

  ‘Then you must tell him yourself. It would be far better coming from you than for him to be shocked by hearing it from some common chatter.’

  Nesta considered this, the worried look on her face deepening.

  ‘How could I screw up enough courage to break that news to him?’

  ‘Better from your lips than from anyone else,’ advised the clerk.

  She sighed and stood up to lean against one of the mash tuns.

  ‘You must be right, good Thomas. I must pick the right moment and pray to God that he does not spurn me for ever.’

  ‘Amen to that!’ he replied fervently.

  Back in his own house, de Wolfe sat by his hearth, the unlit wood behind the iron fire-dogs emphasising the coldness of the lofty hall. Strangely, he already felt lonely, in the knowledge that the solar above his head was empty. Even the presence of his surly and unpleasant wife made the house more than just a pile of timber and stone, which was what he felt it to be at that moment. Brutus had slunk away to the back yard to seek the company of Mary in the cook-shed, instinctively aware of some sea change in the household that day.

  John rarely drank wine except at meals or in the company of others, but today he went to a chest against the wall and took out a pottery flask of his best Loire red. He broke the wax seal and twisted out the wooden bung, pouring a liberal measure into one of the glass cups that he had looted in a distant campaign in Brittany.

  Sitting back in one of the hooded chairs, John drank and brooded on the day’s events. There was nothing more he could do about Matilda. He had made his best attempt to see her and persuade her to come home, so his conscience was clear on that score, if not on the cause of her leaving in the first place. She had long known of his affair with Nesta, as she was aware of his occasional fling with Hilda of Dawlish.

  It was his imminent fatherhood which seemed to have pushed her over the limit of her tolerance. John, in some ways a simple man, failed to see why having a mistress or two was at least grudgingly accepted, yet paternity was beyond the pale, even when it was the natural sequel to adultery. He reasoned that most men of his acquaintance had at least one bastard lurking somewhere – some of them even had a whole brood!

  Dimly, he comprehended that a difference might be that Matilda and he had never had children of their own – though the opportunities for conception had been very limited during their married life, as he had been absent for most of it and, since he
had returned from the Crusades, their marital relations had rapidly dwindled to nothing. John’s insensitive nature failed to appreciate that even if the most unmotherly Matilda had never desired the burden of maternity herself, she might be flagrantly opposed to her husband providing it to any other woman.

  He growled under his breath at this attack of introspection, so foreign to a man of action like himself. Pouring another cup of wine, he tried to divert his mind back to coroner’s business as a welcome relief from the worries forced on him by the machinations of women.

  Going over the meagre reports that Gwyn and Thomas had brought back from their expedition to the fringes of Dartmoor, he began arranging the intelligence alongside what they already knew.

  There was a concerted plan to cause trouble throughout that part of the Royal Forest, in which the foresters and probably the new verderer was involved. There was a plot to remove the Warden of the Forests, by violence if required, and to replace him with someone else. It seemed likely that this someone was Richard de Revelle, but de Wolfe could not decide whether this was mere opportunism or whether the sheriff was an integral part of the plot. Against the latter, he failed to see what even the avaricious sheriff could hope to gain.

  In any event, he thought as he gulped some more of the rather sour wine, the outlaws under Robert Winter were deeply involved. They were acting as mercenaries in assisting the foresters to cause disaffection amongst the forest dwellers, being paid for their efforts through some intermediaries. This horse-dealer was a possible candidate for that, if the man Gwyn had seen in the Ashburton tavern was the same as that seen by Thomas at Buckfast – though both incidents may have been quite innocent, unless there was some proof to the contrary. Against that was the tenuous rumour about the involvement of a ‘priest from the west’. The frequent dalliance of the horse-dealer with this Cistercian from Buckfast was probably sheer coincidence, but it was worth looking into.

  Here John’s deliberate diversion from his marital problems dried up, just as the last of the wine drained from his flask. With a sigh, he hauled himself up and went down the alleyway to the back yard to find Mary.

  She had softened her attitude since his visit to Polsloe and listened quietly as he brought her up to date with the situation.

  ‘So the mistress will not be home yet awhile, until she works off her disaffection with me, Mary,’ he concluded. ‘But no doubt when the novelty of pretending to be a nun wears off, she’ll return to make my life even more miserable than before. I’ll never hear the end of this.’

  His maid looked doubtful. ‘If you say so, Sir Crowner – but I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve never seen her in such a state before, not in all the other times you’ve fallen out with the mistress.’

  He shrugged helplessly. ‘We’ll just have to see, good girl. What about Lucille, has she shown up yet?’

  Mary nodded and pointed to the box-like structure beneath the high supports of the solar steps. ‘She came back an hour ago, full of weeping, and shut herself in. I told her what you said about keeping her on and she seemed a little easier then.’

  Matilda’s maid was a refugee from the Vexin, the part of France north of the Seine which was fought over continually by Richard the Lionheart and Philip of France. Lucille had no surviving family, though John suspected that Matilda had taken her on at the suggestion of her Normandy relatives, more from the social clout of having a French maid than from any feelings of compassion.

  ‘Did my wife take all her finery with her?’ he asked, knowing of Matilda’s attachment to her wardrobe. He knew that Mary could not have resisted a quick foray into the solar, once she knew his wife had left.

  ‘Hardly anything, apart from a couple of shifts and chemises. That’s why I think she’s really serious this time.’

  John responded with his habitual growling in his throat, which could mean anything. ‘I think I’ll take a walk into the Close to see the archdeacon,’ he announced. ‘Then I’m to bed. It’s been a hard day!’

  Though the longest day of the year was fast approaching, it was almost dark when de Wolfe called upon John de Alençon at his house in Canon’s Row. There was still an hour to go before the archdeacon had to leave for matins in the cathedral, and John joined him in his bare study for a cup of wine and a talk. The coroner first related the story of Matilda’s departure and the reason for it. De Alençon listened gravely to his friend’s admission of Nesta’s pregnancy, a rather shamefaced account of the fruits of his adultery, in that he was making it to a senior man of God. In fact, the canon was already well aware of the matter, as was most of the city, but he listened with a grave face as if it were news to him.

  ‘It seems typical of our sheriff that he should delight in distressing his sister with the revelation,’ he commented. ‘But again, it is another manifestation of his desire to do you as much harm as possible.’

  John steered the conversation on to the matter of his marital status.

  ‘If my wife really has left me for good and intends taking her vows as a nun, does this annul our marriage?’

  The archdeacon steepled his hands as if praying for guidance.

  ‘My friend, the honest answer is that I do not know, but I doubt it very much. This situation is outside my experience, for almost invariably, most mature women who take the veil are widows. The majority of nuns are younger girls who enter as virgins, but married women with living husbands must be exceptionally rare candidates.’

  De Wolfe’s spirits sank. ‘But surely I have heard that in some of the most strict monastic orders entry is equated with death and all civil rights of that person are extinguished?’

  ‘That is so for men, John. But we know that in our Norman and Saxon society, there is no equality for women – they are but chattels of men, unlike in the Celtic lands of Ireland and Wales, where women stand on the same level as men in almost all things.’

  De Alençon saw the disappointment on the coroner’s face and sought to ease his gloom.

  ‘In any case, I think you are crossing your bridges before you come to them,’ he said gently. ‘Like me, you must surely doubt that the good Matilda will persist with this intention. You have wounded her more than usual and, in her typical fashion, she has flared up into a passion of outrage. But how long will it last?’

  His thin face, under its shock of wiry grey hair, fixed seriously on John’s more saturnine features.

  ‘You know as well as I, John, that though she is a devout Christian and a constant attendant at her devotions, she is also fond of her earthly pleasures of food and fine clothing. Before you make great plans for the future, I advise you to wait a few days, weeks or even months before counting your unhatched chickens!’

  With this wise if discouraging advice, de Wolfe had to be content, so he moved to the other matter that had brought him to the cathedral Close.

  ‘You mentioned some rumour to me the other day about a senior priest outside the city, maybe somewhere to the west, who may have an involvement with these problems in the forest.’

  De Alençon looked warily at the coroner, perhaps now regretting even this most ephemeral of revelations. ‘It was perhaps unwise of me to mention that. I have heard no more about it, John.’

  De Wolfe shook his head, his black locks bouncing over the collar of his tunic. ‘I ask for no more confidences, only information on a name which has turned up in my enquiries. Do you know anything of the monks of Buckfast?’

  The ascetic face of the archdeacon expressed surprise, his bright blue eyes opening wide.

  ‘Buckfast? Our diocese has no jurisdiction over them. They look only to their mother house of the Cistercians, at Citeaux in France.’

  ‘Yes, but I wondered if you had any knowledge of individuals there.’

  ‘I have met Abbot William several times, a good and holy man.’ De Alençon smiled rather roguishly. ‘That institution is not only a great religious house, it is one of Devon’s biggest traders. They probably produce more wool that anyone else her
e in the west.’

  De Wolfe rasped his fingers over his stubble, now a full week’s growth.

  ‘That may be connected, in fact. Do you know of the man who seems to conduct the fiscal affairs of the abbey, one Father Edmund?’

  John saw a fleeting look of understanding pass over the archdeacon’s face, before it settled into its usual serenity.

  ‘Ah, Edmund Treipas! Yes, I know of him. He spent a few weeks here several years ago, but in some personal attachment to Our Grace the Bishop.’

  ‘What can you tell me about him, John?’ asked his namesake.

  ‘I knew him only slightly, but gossip is as rife in these cloisters as in any marketplace. He came here from Coventry, where I seem to recollect that he was a chaplain to the bishop there. As you know, our Henry Marshal was a close associate of the former Bishop of Coventry.’

  He said this with a hint of sarcasm, the gist of which was not lost on de Wolfe. During the abortive rebellion of Prince John a few years back, that bishop had been one of the ringleaders – and Henry Marshal, Bishop of Exeter, supported him, though far back enough in the column to avoid any direct repercussions later.

  ‘So how did this Edmund end up in Buckfast?’

  ‘When he was here, he was just an ordained priest, not in any monastic order,’ replied de Alençon. ‘He became a Cistercian only on moving to Buckfast, where I understand he is now the linchpin of their economic success. In fact, I am sure that is why he was sent there, because in his early career, before entering the Church, he was a merchant in Coventry, well used to the ways of the world and its commerce.’

  He glanced up at the open shutters over his small window and saw the darkened sky. ‘I must prepare for Matins soon, John. But why are you interested in Edmund Treipas?’

  The coroner shrugged as he rose to leave. ‘His name has come up in passing, though I have no real reason to think anything sinister about it. It is is just that he might be in frequent contact with someone involved in this trouble in the forest.’