'Who are you? What are we doing here?' she croaked, as the face above her gradually took shape through the tears in her own eyes and the gloom of the chamber.
The woman with the bedraggled blonde hair did not reply at once. She had recognised the new arrival and was dumbfounded. An instant later, Matilda, even more incredulous, saw that the woman who was succouring her in her adversity was none other than Hilda of Dawlish, one of her husband's mistresses.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In which Crowner John meets a Fleming
It was many minutes before Lucille calmed down sufficiently to give any sort of coherent account of what had happened. Almost out of his mind with anxiety, the impatient coroner was inclined to slap the silly wench's face until she came to her senses, but it was Thomas who was best able to deal with her. He gave a meaningful glance and nod of his head at Gwyn, who took the hint and diverted John de Wolfe's attention, while Thomas led the maid aside and sat her on the old peoples' bench that ran along one wall of the chapel. Talking to her softly in her native French, for she came from the Vexin on the Seine, he soon reduced her hysterics to a steady snuffling sob, then began to extract the details of the recent tragic drama. As she haltingly mumbled and cried, Thomas beckoned to the others and they came nearer to listen.
'Poor Lucille here says that Mistress Matilda came here to pray and visit the holy well,' he explained. 'She rode out with her brother, who went off on some other business.'
'And what business would that be, out in this wilderness?' snapped de Wolfe.
Lucille looked up timorously at this stern, dark man. 'I know nothing of that, sir, but he told the mistress to wait a short while until he returned to collect us and take us back to Revelstoke.'
Gwyn looked at his master. 'So he must be somewhere fairly near, if they were waiting for him.'
'Then what happened, Lucille?' prompted Thomas gently. The skinny girl burst into tears once again and began shaking.
'Come on, girl, pull yourself together!' roared John de Wolfe. Though Thomas's softer approach seemed to have been successful, this outburst shocked the maid into lucidity.
'These three foreign devils burst in, sir! Terrible, they were! Huge men, dressed in long robes, cloths wound round their heads and waving great daggers.'
'What d'you mean, foreign?' snapped the coroner.
'Like Turks or Mussulmen. I saw some in a fair in Rouen once, jugglers and fire-eaters. Evil dark faces and hooked noses.'
'Then what? Tell us, quickly, for Christ's sake!'
'They seized Mistress Matilda - and I ran to bar myself in that room, otherwise they would have slain me as well. I saw them stab the old man, just as I was shutting the door.' She began shaking again and her eyes rolled wildly.
De Wolfe threw up his hands in desperation.
'What in hell is going on? These must be the same three Saracens. What do they want with my wife?'
Although none of them voiced the thought, it seemed unlikely that she was a target for ravishment, especially when Lucille, though skinny and unattractive, was a good twenty years younger.
'And where is Richard de Revelle, I wonder?' said Gwyn thoughtfully.
'I might have guessed that that bastard would be involved in anything underhand that was going on,' snarled de Wolfe.
'He would hardly want his own sister kidnapped,' Gwyn pointed out, reasonably.
John stalked to the open door, Gwyn and the bailiff behind him, leaving Thomas on the wall-seat with the snivelling maid.
'Where have they taken her, that's the thing?' he bawled, staring at the deserted road.
'And where's de Revelle?' repeated Gwyn. 'He can't have gone back to his manor without his sister!'
De Wolfe swung round to William Vado, who had been a silent and mystified observer of these strange events. 'Bailiff, you had better ride at once to Revelstoke, to make sure Sir Richard has not returned there. Then explain what has happened and get his steward to turn out with some armed men as fast as he can and come back here with them.'
'That will take a good few hours, sir. Where will you be when we return?'
The answer to all this mystery has to be somewhere near here. Gwyn and I will ride to Bigbury to see if anything is known there, so look for us along these roads.'
As Vado hurried to his horse, John called after him. 'You'd best take that damned girl with you on the back of your horse. We can't leave her here alone with that eyeless corpse. I'll attend to him later.'
Now that he had at least instigated some action, however futile it might prove to be, de Wolfe felt better. But two of his womenfolk were missing - he hoped to God that at least Nesta was safe in Exeter.
Matilda de Wolfe was a very self-sufficient, almost hard-bitten woman, but the shock of her recent experiences had caused her to dissolve into racking sobs as she slumped on the mattress in the dim chamber. Though she was exceptionally devout and firmly believed that she would eventually be received into heaven, she had no desire to go there just yet. Hilda crouched alongside her, speaking softly as she supported her shoulders and stroked the wiry curls of her hair, for the older woman's cover-chief and wimple had been lost when she was thrown across the horse.
As she gradually calmed down, Hilda's story slowly percolated into Matilda's brain. How she had vowed to seek out details of her husband's murder, then had been captured when she was following up the villagers' tales of strange activities in the forest. Though Matilda had long been aware of her husband's romance and adultery with the Saxon, she now felt a grudging admiration for her determination to track down her husband's killer. She had immediately recognised the handsome blonde, as she had seen her in Exeter a number of times and, in common with most of the population there, knew that she had been de Wolfe's mistress since before she herself had ever met him. Matilda also knew, through the grapevine of intelligence provided by her snobbish friends at the cathedral and St Olave's, that for some time John had not been dallying with the woman from Dawlish, being too besotted with the Welsh cow from the Bush tavern.
Their common peril, together with Hilda's tender concern and sympathy, prevented Matilda from voicing the scathing antipathy that she would have offered in any other circumstances.
'But why are we here?' she sobbed. 'Who are these terrible men? What is this place? Why does my brother not rescue me?'
Uneasily, Hilda felt that she could no longer delay telling Matilda another uncomfortable truth.
'I am afraid your brother is indeed here! But he is also a prisoner. He lies in the next room, beyond this wall.'
She explained to a dumbfounded Matilda that she had witnessed the attack by the Arabs upon Richard de Revelle and the French knight. 'But I have no notion of what it all signifies,' she concluded.
Perversely, the news seemed to have the effect of lessening Matilda's distress and strengthening her resolve. She stopped weeping and sat up on the mattress, drying her eyes with her sleeve. 'You are a resourceful woman, or you would not have come seeking your husband's killers. Surely there is something we can do between us?'
Hilda sighed, for she had spent several days trying to devise some plan, without success. 'I have tried knocking on the wall and shouting, but I can get no reply from your brother or the other man. The stonework is too thick - I doubt they even know we are here.'
She explained about the two loutish Saxons who seemed to be servants or guards and the two strange men in the crypt, one who appeared to be dumb. 'I do not think they are as evil as the Mohammedans - I cannot fathom who they are or what has been going on in this place. All we can do is wait, hope and pray.'
After the sparse explanations had been given, the two women relapsed into silence. Tacitly, neither mentioned John de Wolfe, who, as far as they knew, was far away in Exeter going about his business, oblivious to the fact that they were imprisoned and probably at risk of their lives.
Outside the cell, the crypt was in silence and the feeble illumination was even poorer, as some of the rush-lamps had run
out of oil and no one had replenished them. Alexander sat on a stool near the hearth, Jan squatting near by, the flames from the fire casting a ruddy glow on his bizarre features. All pretence at work had ceased. The furnace had gone out and the spouts of the distillation flasks no longer dripped into their beakers.
'They were bloody frauds, I suspected it all along!' muttered the Scotsman, for the twentieth time. 'They must have seeded those crucibles with blobs of gold, just as so many impostors have done in the past.'
Jan made some throaty noises which signified agreement. Alexander could recognise about a dozen different noises that the Fleming made, which gave him some degree of communication with his faithful servant.
'We are in big trouble, Jan, my lad,' he carried on, in his habitual monologue. 'I don't trust them when they say they will let us go on our way on Saturday.' He spoke in Gaelic, which Jan had picked up in his years with the alchemist. It was useful when they wanted to keep their conversation private. Jan made some signs and grimaces, using his fingers to denote running away.
'I doubt we'll get the chance, Jan. But you are the stronger and faster, so if you see any opportunity, take it and run. Find that village that we were told to make for - it can't be more than a mile or two away, through the forest.'
The Fleming nodded and Alexander fell silent, regretting again that he had ever agreed to take the generous payment to come here and try to augment Prince John's diminished treasury. The transmutation of base metals had never been his prime interest - the Elixir of Life was his goal, and he thought that he had now succeeded. He had a small phial safe in his pouch, but it was difficult to know whether the contents were potent as, by definition, producing immortality or even longevity was hard to demonstrate.
The thought of his little phial sparked a new idea in his fertile brain and getting up, he went to his work table and began tipping some powders and liquids from various stock bottles into a small mortar. Grinding them up, he decanted them into another empty vial. Carefully stoppering this, he placed it in an inside pocket of his loose-fitting blouse and went to sit down again to await events.
Some time later, there were heavy footsteps on the stairs and the door was unbarred to admit Alfred. The ungainly outlaw, who carried a long battleaxe, scowled at the two occupants and jerked his head towards the entrance.
'The Mohammedan says you had better have something to eat,' he growled ungraciously. Alexander shot a knowing look at Jan, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
'What about the people in those chambers?' demanded Alexander, as he moved warily past the big oaf with the vicious-looking weapon. They need something, especially the poor women!',
The Saxon prodded the alchemist with the blunt head of the axe. 'I don't know nothing about them, so get going and be thankful!' he snarled.
The Scot and his servant went out blinking into the daylight and crossed to the shack where they had their food, Alfred following them watchfully. Jan's eyes swivelled from side to side, but he decided that he had no chance of making a run into the trees with the guard so close behind.
In the hut, the three Turks were crouched in the centre, busy eating with their fingers from a common platter piled with a mush of boiled wheat and some unidentifiable vegetables. Ulf, the other local ruffian, motioned the pair to a low bench and dumped half a stale loaf and a wooden bowl of cold mutton stew between them. With some distaste, which was overcome by hunger, Alexander tore the bread in half and gave some to Jan, while he dipped his in the mess, in lieu of a spoon. The Fleming did the same, sucking at it with his toothless gums. When they had eaten, Ulf splashed some thin ale from a pitcher into a dirty pot and again slapped it down on the bench. The three Arabs continued to eat in silence and totally ignored the others, including the two Saxons lounging by the door.
Alexander took a deep draught from the pot, then offered it to his servant. As he did so, he caught a wink from his servant, who refused the ale, giving a series of loud belches. Then Jan groaned and bent forward, clutching his stomach and releasing several spectacular farts. This sudden activity caught the attention of Alfred, and even the Turks briefly raised their heads as the Fleming groaned again and made some retching sounds. He staggered to his feet and Ulf pushed himself from the door-post.
'What's the hell's the matter with you?' he demanded. Jan groaned, gargled and rolled his eyes, then held his grotesque nose with one hand and pointed towards his backside with the other, before gesturing at the door and then fumbling with his belt buckle.
Ulf guffawed coarsely, also pinching his nostrils in a parody of the Fleming's discomfort.
'The food's not that bad, you dirty bastard!' he sneered. 'But don't go crapping in here, get outside.'
Jan stumbled outside, the alchemist watching him anxiously, as it was obvious to him what his man was intending. Ulf followed him out, holding a bare dagger by his side, watching as the Fleming seemed ready to drop his breeches. But then, with lightning speed for such a large man, Jan thrust the Saxon hard in the chest and sent him flying backwards, to stumble and fall on the ground. Ulf's yell of rage brought Alfred out with his axe, but by then Jan was hammering across the old castle yard towards the trees.
Inside the shack, the three Arabs shot to their feet in alarm and Malik dived for his cross-bow, which was leaning against the wall. They ran out of the hut, Malik cranking the lever to draw back the bow-string and fitting a bolt on to the platform. Screaming at the two hulking guards who were blocking his shot as they pursued the Fleming, he raised the bow and fired his bolt between them, careless whether he hit them or not.
Jan was just at the edge of the trees when the short arrow struck him in the shoulder, but he crashed on and vanished at full speed. The two Saxons lumbered after him, but a cry from Nizam pulled them up short.
'Leave him, I need you here! He is of no account and will wander the forest until he dies of his wound. Who cares about some dumb servant?'
Crestfallen, the two guards trudged back, and the Saracens returned to the hut, where, after some rapid discussion in their own language, they impassively resumed their interrupted meal. With a smirk of satisfaction, Alexander surreptitiously slid an empty vial back into the folds of his blouse.
With Thomas following somewhat apprehensively behind, John de Wolfe and Gwyn rode down the track towards Bigbury, carefully scanning the land on either side for any signs of Richard de Revelle or the dastardly villains who had descended on St Anne's Chapel. It was now mid-afternoon and the sky still had its brooding grey appearance, though the threatened snow had held off.
'Not a damn thing to be seen, Crowner,' growled the Cornishman after they had covered almost a mile. 'Plenty of side tracks on to the heathland and into these bloody trees, but we can't explore them all.'
De Wolfe grunted his agreement. 'If it was wet, then we might see fresh hoof marks. But half-frozen ground like this is useless for such signs.'
He felt totally impotent and frustrated, knowing that Matilda and possibly Hilda might be in the clutches of these Turkish madmen, without any real notion of where they were.
Another mile brought them to Bigbury, the hamlet lurking at the edge of the forest that covered the plateau stretching from west of the chapel across to the banks of the Avon and up as far as Were Down, towards Aveton Giffard. As they rode down the track between the dozen tofts and cottages that made up the village, there was no sign of anything untoward. Across the road, an ox team was ploughing the hard soil to turn in the stubble of a meagre harvest, and at the side of the track a couple of men were repairing a dry-stone wall. De Wolfe reined in to ask them whether they had seen any strangers passing through that day, but received mystified shakes of the head.
'Few people come this way, sir,' said one, who recognised the coroner from his previous visit to Bigbury. 'The fisherfolk who go down to the river are all known to us. The only excitement we've had is that poor lady pilgrim who came and then disappeared a few days back.'
Thomas piped up for the first tim
e since leaving Lucille. 'That means they must have gone either down to Ringmore or back towards Kingston.'
'Or vanished into the God-forsaken woods at any point,' muttered Gwyn, pulling ferociously at the ends of his bedraggled moustache. He was almost as worried about the situation as his master, even though he and Matilda could barely stand the sight of each other.
They rode on to the alehouse opposite the small church and confronted the clutch of people who came out to meet them, warned by the unfamiliar clatter of hoofs.
'Crowner, you're back again!' called Madge, the alewife. 'You'll be wanting food and drink?' she added hopefully.
There was nothing to be gained by refusing a short halt, as they had no definite plan of campaign. Inside the dim, smoky taproom, they drank ale and cider and chewed on some cold mutton chops, followed by bread and hard cheese. Urgently, John described the violent events at St Anne's Chapel that morning and explained that his own wife, sister to the lord of Revelstoke, had been abducted. Then he enquired about any strange events since the two ship-masters had come looking for Hilda.
Madge shook her head. 'Nothing at all, sir. Even our village scaremongers have seen no ghosts in the forest and we have neither seen nor heard anything strange in the woods.'
'Mind you, no one fancies entering there these days,' added the village smith, who sat watching them from a stool in the corner. 'Even the poachers have taken to going in the opposite direction, though the pickings are poorer there.'
'Where did the lady from Dawlish go, when she left here and never returned?' asked Thomas, sipping his cider cautiously.
The tavern-keeper held up her hands in bewilderment. 'I wish I knew, sir! I told her not to stray far, given the odd happenings here, but she was a wilful woman. She must have gone into the forest, for no one saw her on the roads.'
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