Crowner's Quest

by Bernard Knight

  The day was crisp and cold, but the wind had dropped and thin clouds scudded high in a pale blue sky as they trotted along. As the vicar had estimated, they came within sight of Dunsford in about an hour and a half. The church was just below the crest of a ridge above the valley and was visible from a distance. Gwyn wondered how they were to avoid becoming a public spectacle and maybe frightening off their quarry. The same problem had occurred to de Wolfe and he reined in at the side of the track before they reached the village. ‘We’ll split up here, not to be so noticeable,’ he said. Privately, he was not confident that this would help: most hamlets were so isolated and self-contained that the appearance of a solitary stranger, let alone four, would rapidly become a matter of considerable curiosity to the inhabitants.

  The two servants, closer to village life than the coroner, had a suggestion. ‘We can say we’re miners on our way to Chagford,’ said Wichin. ‘We could stop for some ale and a piece of bread – there’s surely some old dame who sells suchlike here. That could pass the time until they come without causing too much suspicion.’

  ‘What about us?’ asked Gwyn of his master.

  ‘We can either ride into the woods and wait outside the village for a time or maybe seize the bull by the horns and go into the church, pretending to be officials.’

  ‘We are officials!’ pointed out his henchman. ‘But maybe we should have brought that little runt Thomas. He’s good at worming his way in with parsons.’

  De Wolfe decided on the bolder course and sent the two servants ahead to carry out their tin-miner impersonation. He and Gwyn stayed out of sight in the trees for another half-hour, then walked their horses slowly into the village, which straggled along the upper slope of the ridge above a valley. The church had a simple nave and squat tower of old wood and evidently had not changed since the days of Saewulf. The usual tithe barn sat on an adjacent plot, the customary symbol of the people’s beholdenment to the power of the Church as well as to their manorial lord.

  As the ground was frozen, there was little work going on in the field strips that ran up and down from the road, but in the distance, the coroner could see men clearing ditches and repairing the fences that kept livestock off the arable land. On the crest of the ridge opposite, smoke was drifting from the inevitable forest clearance. As in Loventor, the manor was cutting new assarts to increase the farmland at the expense of trees.

  They dismounted at the church and tied their horses to fencing alongside the gate into the churchyard. There were a few inquisitive inhabitants about and several women with children were watching them as if they were visitors from the moon, but no one approached. The presence of two heavily armed men in the village, one wearing a Norman helmet, was not good news in any hamlet and it was best to keep clear.

  Gwyn was uneasy. ‘We can’t leave the steeds here. This Fulford will smell a rat at seeing a pair of war-horses in the very place he’s come to rob.’

  De Wolfe chewed his lip. His officer was right, as usual. ‘Thomas drew those fanciful directions to the treasure so that the search will be made in that copse above the church, between it and the open pasture beyond,’ he said, pointing to some trees a hundred paces away from the church tower. ‘If we bring the horses into the churchyard and shelter them behind the chancel, they will be well out of view.’

  The villagers were rewarded with the unusual sight of a pair of large horses being walked though the gate and up the steep slope from the road, around to the back of the church, where Gwyn tied them on long head-ropes to a low branch of an ash tree, where they could crop the grass.

  Then the coroner and his helper went into the church to keep out of the way. It was a bare hall, with a beaten earth floor. There was no seating in the nave, only a pair of benches at the further end, at right angles to the altar. This was a plain table covered with a linen cloth, carrying a large tin cross flanked by a pair of candlesticks.

  ‘Seems a poor sort of place,’ muttered Gwyn, as he sat himself on a window-ledge near the door. ‘They can never have recovered after this fellow Saewulf hid all their wealth a century ago.’

  De Wolfe wandered restlessly about, looking at the church’s lay-out. There were two window openings on either side of the nave, closed by shutters in the usual absence of glass. In the small square room at the base of the tower, which seemed to be used to hang the modest vestments of the parish priest, there was a single slit window at head height, which John found ideal for keeping a watch on the copse where the fictitious treasure was buried.

  Gwyn pushed open a shutter on the nearest window and peered through the crack down on to the lane through the village. ‘Those two fellows from the cathedral are better placed than us,’ he complained enviously. ‘They are sitting outside a hut opposite, with a pot of ale and a hunk of bread each.’

  An hour went by, and the four men still waited. John prayed that Fulford had not had second thoughts about risking another search in broad daylight. The only diversion was the appearance of the parish priest, who must have been warned by a villager that strange men had invaded his church. He was a short, elderly man, who approached with some trepidation and hesitantly asked their business.

  The coroner thought that at least part of the truth was the best policy, rather than fiction. He explained that they were waiting to arrest some miscreants who were looking for valuables that might belong to the diocese of Devon and Cornwall. The presence of agents of the Bishop, as he described the two men opposite, was more than enough to satisfy the priest.

  ‘I suppose this explains those men who came the other day and began digging in the hedge behind my church,’ he said, with some relief. ‘When I challenged them, they offered to break my head if I didn’t go away. I watched them from a distance as they dug several large holes, but I failed to see if they found anything.’ He seemed glad to take the coroner’s advice to scuttle off home before any violence began.

  ‘I hope these swine do come after all this,’ grunted Gwyn, hunching himself into his jacket in the dank air of the old building. ‘I would far rather be in the Bush or the Saracen with a quart of cider than sitting in this damp bloody church!’

  As if in answer to his prayer, Wichin, one of the men sitting opposite, suddenly motioned to Gwyn with his hand and pointed up the road. Then, with his companion, he vanished into the hut to keep out of sight.

  ‘Someone’s coming. Let’s see who,’ said the Cornishman, in satisfied anticipation of a fight.

  The coroner came to join him at the window crack and they watched as four horsemen trotted past the church then turned off the track to go up towards the copse.

  ‘Eric the vicar was the second man,’ muttered Gwyn, ‘and the third was Giles Fulford – I recognise him from the Saracen.’

  De Wolfe hurried back to his slit in the tower and peered out. ‘And the first is a fellow with curly red hair. We’ve got our Jocelin de Braose at last!’

  His eyes followed a burly young man dressed in a red cloak and, on his head, a green capuchon, a length of cloth wound like a high turban, the free end hanging down stylishly over one shoulder. From beneath it curly russet hair showed, much the colour of Nesta’s. A fringe of beard the same colour ran around the edge of his jawline, joined by a wispy red moustache. The four men had pushed into the stand of trees, around which was a confusion of scrub, but the bare branches allowed them to see some movement inside the copse.

  ‘Let’s get nearer to see what they’re doing,’ commanded the coroner. They let themselves out of the church and Gwyn waved to the two men lurking in the doorway opposite to join them.

  There was a thick hedge of rank brambles and small ash trees between the churchyard and the copse, which easily concealed John and his companions as they stealthily crossed the frosty grass from the church. They moved towards the further corner, where there seemed to be a gap in the hedge, and peered cautiously between the dead blackberry fronds.

  In the distance, they could see figures moving intermittently between the trees
and bushes. Scraps of speech came across on the cold, still air. They could not distinguish the words, but de Wolfe recognised the higher pitch of the vicar’s voice. Then came the swish of a sickle as brush and undergrowth were slashed. The coroner bent further to put his mouth nearer Gwyn’s ear. ‘We’ll wait until they start digging. That’s better evidence that they are actually searching for treasure trove.’

  A few moments later, he was rewarded by the sounds of a heavy hoe and a shovel. Whenever the iron blades struck a stone, there was a sharp crack, and once a muffled curse suggested that one of the diggers had hit his own foot.

  Gwyn was impatient to get into action, but de Wolfe laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘There’s plenty of time, they’re not going to give up now. And who is the third man, I wonder?’ he murmured.

  ‘Some peasant or outlaw to do the hard work, I suspect,’ grunted his officer. ‘Digging would be below the dignity of a knight.’ From the sounds, thought John, there were two men at work, so presumably the other was Fulford, the squire, as the weedy vicar would be of little use. If two were busy with spade and hoe, then they could not instantly use their weapons when it came to a fight. He decided to satisfy Gwyn’s eagerness for action. Slowly sliding his sword from its sheath, inching it out to avoid making a tell-tale noise, he jerked his head towards the gap in the bushes and led the way at a crouch. The hole in the hedge was not complete, but the undergrowth was much lower and they could step across the crisp dead brambles. The continuous clash of iron on earth and stones covered any faint crackling made by their feet and soon they were creeping forward over grass and weeds between the trees.

  De Wolfe motioned Gwyn to go to the left with Wichin, while he and David circled the other way, to come on the diggers from both directions.

  As he got within twenty paces of the bushes beyond which they were excavating, a face was suddenly raised and a pair of eyes met his. It was Eric Langton and, for a tense moment, John was afraid that the fool might cry out in surprise. He raised a finger to his lips, then motioned with his hand for the vicar to move away from the others.

  A voice from behind the thicket said, ‘Where the hell d’you think you’re going, priest?’

  ‘To have a piddle, that’s all,’ came the vicar’s tremulous reply.

  ‘Well, have it here, we’re not particular. And check that damned parchment of yours. There’s no sign of anything yet and we’re down well over two feet.’

  As de Wolfe crept even nearer, the sound of digging started again, and a moment later, there was a loud clang and another curse.

  ‘There’s a bloody great stone down here. Give me a hand to heave it out, will you?’

  The coroner heard the tools being dropped as the men struggled with a boulder set in the red earth. It seemed the ideal moment to surprise them, so John stood erect, gave a great yell for Gwyn and crashed round the bush that separated them from the diggers.

  He had a momentary impression of the four men frozen in utter surprise, two of them knee-deep in a hole in the ground, then confusion erupted. The first to react was the red-haired man standing on the other side of the hole, who pulled out his sword and, holding it two-handed, advanced on de Wolfe with a roar of defiance.

  The coroner picked de Braose as the main adversary and, in a second, their steel blades had clashed with arm-tingling impact. But before de Wolfe could pull back for another strike he felt a numbing blow on his left leg, which threw him off balance. One of the men in the hole, probably Fulford, had seized his discarded shovel and swung it almost at ground level to strike the coroner on the shin, giving him the chance to scramble out of the hole and join the fight.

  De Wolfe came within an ace then of being killed, as the auburn-haired leader poised himself for a chopping swing with his broadsword, but David, the groom, swung his thick stave in the path of the blade. The stout wood was splintered by the blow, but it turned the swing away from de Wolfe, who had fallen sideways, supporting himself with one hand on the ground.

  Gwyn and his cathedral companion Wichin had been delayed a few seconds by a thicker wall of undergrowth on their side, forcing them to run a few yards to the left to get through. Now, with ferocious yells, the wild Cornishman crashed across to the mêlée, his first thought being for the safety of his master, whom he saw almost on the ground under the menacing blade of de Braose. But the latter had been diverted by the intervention of David and his staff and, in anger, Jocelin turned his blade on the groom. He swung his great sword again, but fortunately for David the flat of the blade, rather than the edge, caught him on the side of the head. He fell as if poleaxed and took no further part in the fight.

  As Fulford scrambled out of the hole, John recovered sufficiently to face de Braose again, but he found that both knight and squire were now coming against him, as the other digger, far from being a menial labourer, showed himself an experienced combatant. Ignoringhis discarded hoe, he seized a long spear lying on the grass and, almost before his feet were out of the excavation, lunged forward with it at Gwyn. Though the officer had his sword at the ready, its reach was far less than that of the spear and the hairy giant had to hop back and chop sideways at the shaft to avoid being skewered. Eric Langton had taken to his heels and was out of sight of the yelling, thrashing group of men, but the battle was not to last long.

  As Fulford and de Braose advanced on de Wolfe, Gwyn backed around to try to stand by him, dodging repeated short jabs from the unknown man’s spear. The coroner was now facing a sword and a long-handled spade, waving his own sword slowly from side to side.

  For a few seconds, there seemed to be a stand-off, until the canon’s man Wichin, who had been obscured behind Gwyn, gave a great yell, swung his stave over his head and brought it down on the shaft of the spear. He forced it to the ground, but before he could lift his stave again, the spearman had pulled back his weapon and jabbed it into Wichin’s shoulder. The leaf-shaped point dug deeply into the muscle, and blood welled immediately through the leather jacket. Wichin screamed, dropped his staff and, as the lance was pulled out, fell to his knees with the pain and shock.

  But the intervention had given Gwyn his opportunity. He reversed his move towards the coroner and, raising his great sword, swung it in a whistling horizontal arc at the spearman. The blade connected with the side of his neck and the man collapsed in a welter of blood and agonal convulsions.

  With hardly a glance at the man whose life he had just taken, Gwyn leaped back to John’s side. Within two minutes of the fight beginning, three of the combatants had been eliminated and now it was two against two, all seasoned warriors. However, the coroner and his officer had twice the number of years’ experience on the battlefield than the younger men, and Fulford was armed only with a shovel – his sword lay sheathed on the ground where he had left it to go digging.

  ‘Give in, both of you,’ yelled de Wolfe. ‘We don’t want to kill you!’

  For answer, Jocelin de Braose, his capuchon unwound and fallen down his back, swung his sword back and forth to form a zone of protection in front of him and tried to move forward towards the coroner. That old campaigner dropped his own massive blade at an angle, holding the hilt above waist-level, then suddenly moved it forward into the path of de Braose’s weapon. There was a clang as metal hit metal and when de Wolfe jerked his hands forward again, the other blade was deflected towards the ground. But the younger man leaped backwards and freed his sword before John could make a swing at him.

  As this duel was going on, Giles Fulford was attempting to use the longer reach of the shovel to hit Gwyn on his sword arm. One blow landed, but the coroner’s officer merely grunted and waited his opportunity. As the tool swung again, he sidestepped and hacked down on the wooden shaft just above the heart-shaped blade. Though it was too thick and hard to be severed, a deep chop mark appeared, which then split several inches up the centre of the handle. With a roar, Gwyn opened himself deliberately to another blow, which landed with a thwack on his leather-covered ribs. As he had antic
ipated, the split handle gave up the ghost instantly and the shovel-head fell off on to the ground.

  ‘I’ve got the bastard!’ he yelled, and dived on Fulford, knowing that the coroner would prefer these two alive rather than dead. As Jocelin and de Wolfe entered another cycle of striking and parrying, Gwyn became over-confident of seizing the squire. He tossed his sword behind him to grab Fulford in a bear-hug. But Giles still had half the shovel-shaft in his hands. With it he gave Gwyn a bone-shattering crack on the temple, which made the big Cornishman stagger and put his hands to his head in a temporary stupor, though he wasn’t knocked out. Fulford put a hand to the back of his belt and whipped out an eight-inch dagger. The flash of the blade caught de Wolfe’s eye. In desperation he brought down his sword with a sledge-hammer of a blow that skidded down de Braose’s weapon and struck the hilt-guard with such force that it was twisted out of his hand. Before the sword had even hit the ground, John made another swing at Fulford, trying to strike his knife arm. He missed as the man jumped aside, but by then Gwyn, though groggy, had recovered enough to grab his attacker’s arms and the pair began to wrestle with the dagger waving dangerously a few inches from Gwyn’s ribs. De Wolfe was trying to watch both adversaries, afraid that Fulford would manage to stab his officer and that de Braose would retrieve his sword and return to the attack while the coroner’s attention was divided.

  But the reflexes of an old soldier and a good share of luck saved the day. De Wolfe jumped towards Fulford and jabbed the tip of his sword forward. At the same time he felt an impact on the sole of his foot. He had trodden on the cross-piece of de Braose’s sword as he pricked Fulford’s upper arm. The big two-handed swords were designed for slashing, not fencing, and the tip was broad and rather blunt, but it penetrated the thick leather of Fulford’s jerkin and made him yell.