Fear in the Forest

by Bernard Knight

  ‘But I should have been informed, William!’ bleated de Strete.

  Lupus turned to him slowly and spoke with naked insolence in his voice.

  ‘You are new to the task, Verderer. Your court deals only with offences against venison and vert. We are not concerned with deaths.’

  John de Wolfe exploded at this. ‘Ha! For once your corrupt tongue speaks some truth! Any sudden death is within the purview of the coroner – so don’t ever try to contradict me again.’

  The forester flushed at de Wolfe’s scathing tone.

  ‘Not in the forest, Crowner, when the death is within our laws.’

  Gwyn took a pace forward and thrust his big, red face towards Lupus.

  ‘Don’t talk such bloody nonsense, man! You can’t have it both ways.’

  De Wolfe beckoned Thomas out of the small crowd of people who were now gathered around, their ears almost flapping at this diverting quarrel involving the officers they hated most.

  ‘Take note of what is said, clerk, and write it on your rolls when we are finished,’ he snapped.

  William’s oafish page, Henry Smok, stepped to the side of his master.

  ‘You’re finished now, Crowner! Clear off, back to your city. You’ll never understand the ways of the forest.’

  The pugnacious Gwyn moved to flatten the man, but John halted him with a gesture.

  ‘If by that you are suggesting that the King’s writ runs in Exeter but not here, then you could be arraigned for treason. Even your thick neck would stretch nicely at the end of a rope.’

  Both Smok and Philip de Strete paled at the pure menace in the coroner’s words, for it was obvious that he meant what he said. But now he reverted to the original business.

  ‘You admit then, William Lupus, that you killed Edward of Manaton?’

  The forester’s impassive face moved to look briefly at Crespin.

  ‘I admit nothing. It matters not who actually put the arrow into the poacher. It’s a forester’s duty, whoever bent the bow.’

  The audience was hushed as de Wolfe faced Crespin.

  ‘Then it was you who murdered the man?’

  ‘Murdered be damned!’ blustered the other forester. ‘I’ll not say who shot this poacher. But the law allows us to stop any fugitive offending against the venison by whatever force is necessary. During the hue and cry, or if the offender will not stop when escaping, we are at liberty to kill.’

  Philip de Strete nodded vigorously in his officer’s defence. ‘That’s quite right, Crowner. As a new officer, I have been studying the forest laws most assiduously and what Michael Crespin says is correct.’

  William Lupus brought his harsh voice back into the argument.

  ‘This miserable thief had set traps all around the clearing. We had known him as a poacher for years, but this time we caught him in the act, with a coney on his belt and a bow in his hand. I called on him to stop, but he ran, so an arrow was quite properly put into him.’

  De Wolfe noted that they had carefully avoided naming the person who shot the fatal shaft. Crespin had regained his confidence after the support from the verderer and Lupus. ‘Yes, though I thought he was only winged. He gave a great yell and ran on into the trees. It was not worth us chasing him, so we pulled out his traps and left.’

  ‘Not worth your chasing him?’ snarled the coroner. ‘You had no concern that he might be wounded or dying – as indeed he was?’

  Lupus shrugged. ‘Why should we care?’ he answered callously. ‘If we had caught him, we would either have cut his throat as the coup de grâce, or if we brought him out he would have hanged for carrying a bow.’

  John, in spite of the endless atrocities he had seen – and even been part of – during his years of campaigning, was angry at this cold-blooded contempt for life shown in what should have been the peaceful English countryside.

  ‘Whether your casual killing was justified is not for you to decide,’ he snapped. ‘I have already attached you to attend the next Shire Court in Exeter to have your actions examined.’

  Lupus sneered, and even the two pages grinned at this threat.

  ‘The Sheriff’s Court? He won’t want me there, that I can tell you now, Crowner. You’re wasting your time, for we’re not coming.’

  ‘Then I’m also attaching you to attend the next visit of the King’s judges as Commissioners, in a month or two. You’ll not get out of this, for if you fail to appear you’ll be declared outlaw and can go to join your friend Robert Winter and his gang.’

  Even this threat failed to make any impression on the forest officers, for they continued to smirk complacently at de Wolfe. ‘And who is going to get us to the court, Crowner? We deny your powers in this. The forest laws were set in place long before your recent office was even thought of!’

  ‘You’ll attend or suffer the consequences!’ snarled de Wolfe, now becoming increasingly outraged by the contempt with which these men viewed the King’s Court.

  ‘Are you coming to take us to Exeter yourself?’ gibed Crespin. ‘Or will you send the sheriff to arrest us?’ All four men, the foresters and their pages, guffawed as if this was the best joke they’d heard that month.

  ‘Or maybe the Lionheart will come back from France with his army to take us!’ cackled Henry Smok, emboldened by his masters’ attitude.

  De Wolfe smothered his rage as best he could and glared at the grinning faces.

  ‘For once in your life, Smok, you may have got near the truth,’ he snapped. ‘I doubt your sovereign lord will come in person, but after this I’ll see to it that Winchester and London attend to this problem. Not all of Richard’s army is in France, remember!’

  He turned on his heel and, motioning his officer and clerk to follow him, he stormed out of the market, coldly determined to find a radical solution to the fear in the forests.

  In the city that evening, John decided that it was pointless going to Polsloe again, merely to be turned away once more. He reasoned that if and when Matilda wanted to speak to him he would soon know about it. Instead he decided to go to the Bush some hours after returning from Moretonhampstead, spending the time until then with his friend Ralph Morin, the constable of Rougemont. De Wolfe wanted to sound him out about the possibility of taking some of the garrison’s men-at-arms to arrest the foresters and clean out Robert Winter’s outlaw camp.

  Sympathetic though he was, Ralph could see no way in which he could help in this.

  ‘Without the sheriff’s agreement – which he’ll never give me – I can’t take troops out of here, except in a dire emergency. Though we’ve had no trouble for fifty years, I’m sure it’s a hanging offence leaving a royal castle undefended.’

  John reluctantly agreed with his point of view, but tried a compromise.

  ‘Just a few men, together with Gwyn and myself, could surely take those forester bastards and their pages?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt we could, John – but without Richard de Revelle’s consent, think what the consequences would be! One set of king’s men arresting or even slaying another set of royal officials. No, I’m sorry, I can’t risk either my job or my neck, even for you.’

  The coroner sighed. ‘You’re right, Ralph. The only way is for me to get Hubert Walter to authorise a foray against all this unrest. Even then, he’ll take some persuading, as it looks as if a couple of bishops and their Prince John allies have a finger in this pie.’

  The castellan nodded. ‘Finding the Justiciar is the problem. He’s so often away from Winchester or Westminster. I heard that he was visiting the King in Normandy some weeks ago, but whether he’s back or not, I can’t tell.’

  ‘It’s a long ride to Winchester, if it’s for nothing,’ agreed John glumly. ‘But I’ll have to do it soon, after I’ve spoken again to some of the barons like Ferrars and de Courcy.’

  He had hoped that the atmosphere might have improved down at Idle Lane, but when he arrived at the inn he found Nesta still in the same apathetic state. As always, she got her maids to provide
him with a good meal and sat quietly with him as he ate, but she was downcast and had little to say for herself. He gave her a detailed account of his visit to Manaton and the Woodmote, partly in an attempt to fill in as much of the silence as possible. Then he launched into his intention to ride to the seat of England’s government, wherever he could find it, to seek out his old commander in Palestine, the Chief Justiciar.

  Nesta responded with little more than monosyllables and sighs, until John pulled her to him on the bench behind the screen and tried to get at the root of the trouble. He had little success, however, as she dissolved into quiet weeping again, which both embarrassed and terrified him. Peering over the top of the hurdle, he looked to see if the patrons were eavesdropping, but the relatively few drinkers were either unaware or were studiously pretending not to notice. John wished that they were upstairs in the privacy of her room, but for her to stumble across the taproom, red eyed and sniffling, would be worse than sitting tight. He wondered whether he really wanted to ask her whether he should stay the night – and immediately felt disloyal for preferring even his empty house to the prospect of endlessly trying to break through the barrier that had sprung up between them.

  For her part, Nesta knew that nothing had changed, but that some kind of nemesis was fast approaching. Try as she would, she could not bring her to tell him that he was not the father of this creature in her womb, as she had begun to think of it. She knew well enough that this big, awkward, craggy man was doing his utmost to be kind and gentle to her, but the great lie that she was living prevented her from responding.

  Eventually, as the evening wore on, she did invite him to stay, managing to reason that she might as well lie passively in his arms all night as suffer alone. John took this as Fate’s rebuff to his previous reluctance to share her bed and, as the daylight faded, the sad pair climbed the ladder to her tiny chamber.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In which Crowner John follows a horse-trader

  The following day, John was called to the port of Topsham, some four miles downriver, to deal with two deaths on a trading ship. The vessel had been beached on the mud alongside the wharf for unloading, but when the tide came back in the hull suddenly tilted over, as the uneven removal of a few tons of cargo had made her unstable. One stevedore was crushed between the ship’s side and the wharf, while a sailor who had been mending rigging was tossed into the swirling flood tide, his drowned body being recovered a quarter of a mile upstream.

  The examination of the scene and witnesses, followed by an acrimonious inquest, in which de Wolfe accused the ship-master and the wharf-owner of negligence in discharging the cargo, lasted much of the day, and it was early evening when he returned to Exeter.

  He went straight to Martin’s Lane and sat quietly in his echoing hall with his dog and a quart of cider for an hour, trying to deny to himself that he was reluctant to go to the Bush and face his mistress’s misery. Mary came to refill his pot and then stood looking down at him sternly, one fist on her hip, her handsome face creased in a frown.

  ‘What’s to become of me, Crowner?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve not cooked a meal for days, I’ve hardly seen you and you’ve slept here one night since your wife left. Should I look around for another master? – though God knows where I’ll find one.’

  ‘Mary! Don’t talk like that. I’ve told you everything will go on as before,’ he said placatingly. ‘Whether Matilda comes home or stays away, I have to live somewhere, break my fast, have my shirts and tunics washed and my fire made up in winter.’

  ‘And what if your Welsh lady decides to do all that, where will I be then?’

  ‘That seems very unlikely, good Mary. I just don’t know what’s going to happen between us.’

  He looked so crestfallen that she softened immediately, as she had done so often in the past. Crouching down beside him, she listened while he poured out his tale of woe concerning Nesta.

  ‘She’s lonely and frightened, John. Afraid of losing you and of a hopeless future for herself.’

  He waved his hands in desperation. ‘I’ve told her over and over, I’m glad about the child and will stand by her. Why won’t she listen?’

  Mary stood up, shaking her head helplessly. ‘You men will never understand, will you? A pregnant woman, especially one in her position, is uncertain, bewildered, vulnerable – not that I’ve been like that myself, but I’ve seen it in a few.’

  Unable to help him any more, she took herself off to her kitchen to make him some supper, for he guiltily decided to delay going down to the Bush until later. As fate decided, he was destined not to visit the inn that evening, for a couple of hours later, as the sun was setting, Gwyn turned up at his front door. Usually, his blustery arrival was a summons to some new death, assault or rape, but this evening he had more interesting news.

  ‘I’ve been having a few jugs in the White Hart,’ he announced, mentioning an alehouse in Southgate Street. ‘There’s been a horse market on Bull Mead today and some of the buyers and dealers were in the tavern. I saw that little fellow again, the one the outlaw was talking to in the alehouse at Ashburton.’

  De Wolfe waved him to a chair and filled a pot for him from his ale-jug. Normally Gwyn would never come into the hall if he could help it, in case Matilda was there, as she thought him a Celtic barbarian and made her feelings painfully clear.

  ‘You mean the man who seemed to have some dealings with … what was his name, Martin Angot?’

  ‘That’s him! Now tonight I did some eavesdropping and found that this fellow’s a horse-trader,’ explained Gwyn, pleased with his spying activities. ‘I even got his name, listening to people who were either contented or complaining about what they had bought or sold. They’d all been drinking a fair amount, so they weren’t speaking in whispers, by any means.’

  John was used to his officer’s long-windedness. ‘So what was his name?’ he asked patiently.

  ‘They called him ‘Stephen’ and ‘Cruch’, so I reckon he’s Stephen Cruch,’ he grinned, wiping ale from his huge moustache. ‘I gathered from the potman that he was sleeping tonight in the loft of the White Hart – but I also heard him tell some fellow that he was leaving early in the morning for Ashburton.’

  ‘Our Thomas said that he had come across a horse-dealer in Buckfast who had dealings with this priest, Edmund Treipas. What shall we do about this, Gwyn?’ pondered de Wolfe.

  ‘We could jump him and beat some truth from the fellow. I could take him blindfold, with one hand in my pouch!’

  John grinned at his henchman’s enthusiasm. ‘Would he recognise you, if he saw you?’ he asked.

  Gwyn shook his shaggy head. ‘I very much doubt it. I kept well back in the tavern in Ashburton and didn’t approach Martin Angot until this Cruch fellow left. There’s no reason for him to have remembered me from a crowded taproom. And he certainly wouldn’t have seen me tonight. I kept well down on a stool among the throng that was there.’

  De Wolfe thought about this for a moment.

  ‘He’s never seen me, to my knowledge. Tomorrow, could we not follow him discreetly to see if he gets up to anything near Ashburton?’

  The Cornishman readily agreed. ‘Surely, if we keep well back, he’ll not notice us on the main west road. There are always travellers going back and forth.’

  The coroner hawked and spat into his empty fireplace. ‘It would be good to catch him meeting up with an outlaw again. Then we could seize the pair of them and make them talk.’

  It was agreed that they should ride out of the West Gate as soon as it opened in the morning, keeping a sharp eye open for the horse-dealer. They would ride a few miles along the Plymouth road and hide in the trees to await his passing, then follow him at a distance.

  John suggested that, as they would both be up before dawn, they had better get a good night’s sleep, a rather shamefaced excuse not to go down to the Bush that evening.

  ‘We’re not taking the little fellow with us, I hope?’ grunted Gwyn.

 
‘No damned fear. He’d stand out like a sore thumb, sitting sideways on that old nag! If there were a chase, he couldn’t keep up.’

  ‘And if there were a fight, he’d wet himself and run!’ chortled Gwyn, not without some affection for the timid clerk.

  In the early light the following day, they sat waiting for the city gate to open, lurking up the street towards the little church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall, whose priest had come to a nasty end a few weeks earlier.

  De Wolfe watched the crowd clustered inside the gate, in case Stephen Cruch had also risen early, but there was no sign of him as the stout iron-bound gates swung apart. They waited for the confused thrusting and shoving to abate, as the people going out pushed past the traders and herdsmen coming in to market, driving sheep, calves and pigs before them, followed by a cavalcade of country folk carrying baskets of vegetables, poultry, eggs and everything else to satisfy the hunger of the citizens of Exeter.

  Once the road was clear, they trotted out and forded the river, de Wolfe’s legs getting wetter than usual as he had borrowed a smaller mare from Andrew the farrier, the huge destrier Odin being too conspicuous for a surveillance exploit. As they clipped down the road that led to Cornwall, John decided to increase the distance before they turned aside to wait for the horse-dealer.

  ‘If he’s going to meet anyone, I doubt it’ll be much before Ashburton, as it’s too far away from your outlaw’s hideout. So we’ll put a good ten miles between us to avoid having to follow him too far.’

  He silently hoped that Cruch was going to ride out that day and not decide to sleep off his drinking on his mattress in the city. It was pure speculation that he might be meeting anyone, other than in the course of his legitimate business.

  An hour and a half later, John decided that they had gone far enough and turned off on a stretch of track where the trees came close to the edge of the dusty, rutted road. They found a place where some blackthorn bushes gave cover, then put their mounts on head-ropes farther back in the trees, where a small clearing offered them some grass to crop.