The Awful Secret

by Bernard Knight

  Gwyn, alongside him, pointed down with a finger. ‘Plenty of wheels pass up and down here! Can that all be for fish?’

  Within a couple of minutes, they had reached the bottom of the glen, where the track flattened out on to a widening area above the beach, high wooded headlands rising on each side. Before it seeped through the pebbles, the river formed a large pool, filled at every high tide. A few small boats and curraghs lay on its banks, but beyond, on the wide, stony beach, a couple of bigger vessels were awash on the rising tide.

  On either side of the track, between the river and the left-hand hill, stood a few small shacks and cottages, mostly of cog or wattle and daub. At the further end, almost on the beach, was a longer building, roofed with flat stones, which appeared to be an alehouse. A few surprised men came out of the buildings at the sound of hoof-beats, and after one look at the mailed soldiers, two turned tail and ran towards the sea. A few women and small children peered from doorways, fearful to come out at the sight of these menacing strangers.

  The troop halted outside the tavern and the sheriff sent Gabriel and two men to run after the fleeing villagers.

  De Wolfe trotted his horse up to de Revelle and the constable. ‘I think the beach holds the key to this,’ he said, sliding off his horse. ‘We can’t ride on pebbles, so let’s take to our feet.’

  Cosimo and his two men stayed well back on their steeds, whilst the rest hurriedly tied their reins to some bushes that lined the bank of the stream. Then, running as fast as their mailed hauberks would allow, they followed Gabriel to the beach, where the muddy earth of the village street merged into the pebbles.

  Around the left-hand corner of the valley, the beach widened until it reached a rocky headland further along, and on this extension of the strand, two long, narrow vessels were lying side by side, pulled up high and dry. Each had a series of thole pins for oars fixed in the bulwarks and a short, stubby mast.

  ‘Galleys, just as that captive said!’ howled Gwyn, as he stumbled over the oval grey stones that formed the beach.

  Ahead, more than a score of men streamed out of a long, ramshackle wooden shed built well above the high-water mark at the base of the wooded slope. At the sight of the helmeted soldiers coming towards them, most ran back inside, but a few others sped away towards the steep, tree-covered cliff behind.

  ‘Into that building, at once!’ yelled the sheriff, who seemed to have gained courage since his escapade on Lundy two days before. Holding up his sword in both hands, he trotted towards it, with the constable and the six Templars in a line on each side of him.

  Sure that they were able to look after themselves without further help, de Wolfe diverted, Gwyn close behind him, to look quickly into the two galleys that lay on the beach. The first was empty, having no decking to provide any cover, but when they looked into the second vessel, he saw two men crouching below the gunwales. As soon as they saw that they were discovered, they leapt up with a yell, one brandishing a rusty spear, the other a long dagger.

  De Wolfe still had his sword in its sheath and jumped back to gain time to slide it out, but Gwyn, with a chain-mace in his hand, swung it at the spearman and knocked the weapon out of the fellow’s hands as he jabbed with it. The man leapt out of the galley on the other side and ran for the cliff, followed by his accomplice, who did not wait to try his dagger on the coroner.

  ‘Let them go, Gwyn. We’re missing the party over there.’

  They turned and ran towards the wooden building, from which almost a score of men had emerged, all now armed, to face the Templars and the sheriff’s soldiers. There was much yelling and screaming, but within five minutes it was all over. The local bandits were not only outnumbered but had no armour. Three were felled in the first few seconds, the Templar knights and their sergeants standing shoulder to shoulder forming an efficient killing team. Morin and the sheriff wounded two more, who collapsed bleeding on the stones, then chased three more away. The locals, mostly dressed in short seamen’s tunics and worsted breeches, fought valiantly: they knew they were in it to the death, either at the end of a sword or a rope. But their cause was hopeless and, after being gradually forced back and almost encircled by the soldiers, they suddenly broke rank and began to run away, dropping their weapons on the stones.

  With no armour or swords to slow them, a couple made it through the closing ring of attackers and joined their comrades at the base of the cliff, where some had already vanished into the trees. The rest were seized by Gabriel’s men and thrown roughly to the pebbles, sword points at their throats or ribs.

  The coroner and his officer, distracted by the scuffle at the galleys, arrived too late for any fighting, which the sheriff was quick to notice. ‘Maybe old age is slowing you up, John! Or are you losing your stomach for fighting, these days?’

  The remark was too puerile to merit an answer and de Wolfe ignored him, addressing himself to Ralph Morin. ‘Half these rogues have got away across the beach. We should try to catch at least some of them, surely.’

  Morin called to Gabriel and some men were sent lumbering across to the cliff to seize some of the fugitives. The soldier who knew the locality panted across to the constable. ‘Sir, they can get back to the village at Lynton up that bank. Shouldn’t we ride up there and catch them at the top?’

  ‘I’ll do that with a few of your men, Ralph,’ offered the coroner. With Gwyn, he began to trot back to the horses, Sergeant Gabriel and five men-at-arms behind them. But when they reached the alehouse and looked up what passed for the village street, he saw that they had further problems. One of the abbot’s men was hanging off his horse, one foot caught in a stirrup, his body on the ground. An arrow was sticking out of his neck and a large pool of blood was soaking into the soil.

  ‘Where the hell is Cosimo?’ shouted de Wolfe, staring around. The priest’s horse was still tied to a bush, but the saddle was empty and there was no sign of his other acolyte.

  ‘In there, Crowner!’ shouted Gabriel, pointing at the low doorway of the alehouse.

  Figures were moving inside the dark interior and De Wolfe raced for the entrance, sword in hand and Gwyn at his back. He skidded to a halt on the threshold, looking at the tableau in the bare room. In the further corner, Abbot Cosimo was crouched against the whitewashed wall, kneeling on the earthen floor, whilst immediately in front of him, blood streaming from his left hand, was the second of his bodyguards. He held a sword and was waving it slowly between two ruffians who were crouched in front of him, one with a dagger, the other with an axe.

  Only as de Wolfe darkened the doorway, did the two attackers realise his presence. The one with the axe began to turn, but the coroner gave a two-handed swing of his heavy sword, level with the floor, which took half the breeches off the man together with a considerable part of his right buttock. He screamed and dropped to the floor, his blood mingling with that which was running down inside the guard’s sleeve and dripping off his fingers.

  The other man turned and jumped with his dagger at Gwyn, who had come in alongside his master. Almost casually, the red-haired giant spitted him with his sword through the centre of his chest, with such force that the point came out under the man’s right shoulder-blade. The guard turned and, with his sound hand, lifted the abbot gently to his feet, without a word to anyone.

  ‘Thank you, Sir John, that was most timely,’ shrilled Cosimo. ‘With only one arm, I fear that even this man of mine may not have able to protect me much longer.’

  ‘What happened, Abbot?’

  ‘We were waiting with the horses when, without warning, an arrow felled one of my men from his horse. The other was struck in the arm, though he plucked it out. When these two appeared, he ran me in here for shelter. But these two swine cornered us – perhaps they thought they could use me as a hostage to bargain for their own safety.’

  ‘Now that you are safe, I have to go up to the village above – some other villains are escaping,’ explained de Wolfe. ‘The sergeant here will do his best for the wound in y
our servant’s arm.’

  He took with him Gwyn and the soldiers, they found their horses and galloped back up the glen, slowing to a brisk walk on the steepest gradient towards the top. Once on the flat, they stared at the score of crofts that was Lynton, scattered around an open area through which the track passed. There was no sign of anyone, for no doubt the inhabitants were hiding fearfully in their houses.

  ‘Those cliffs must come up behind the village – in those woods towards the sea,’ said Gwyn. They wheeled round to the right and passed between two huts and their tofts – the gardens and strips of land that made up the personal estate of each occupant. There were no fields on this side of the village, as it was too near the cliffs. Scrub and trees lay behind the dwellings, and spreading out, the riders pressed on as far as they could, until the undergrowth and the steep drop forced them to a halt.

  ‘There’s one – and another!’ yelled Gwyn, spurring his mare sideways to cut off a man who was crouching in the bushes.

  Within minutes, they saw half a dozen figures creeping out of the trees. One was cut down by a soldier, and another was seized by the other men-at-arms, who leaped from their horses and grabbed the fugitive, who was exhausted after his frantic climb up from the beach far below.

  Gwyn and de Wolfe pursued another pair, but they vanished between the crofts.

  ‘We’ve missed a few, damn it,’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘There were more than seven who made a run for that cliff.’

  Leaving two of the soldiers to deal with the captives and the corpse, the coroner and his officer rode back into Lynton’s village street, but there was no sign of anyone. They cantered to the far end, almost to the start of the valley of rocks, but the track was deserted.

  ‘They must be hiding in the houses – maybe their own, for many of those shipmen must live up here. There are too few dwellings down in Lynmouth.’ John was annoyed that they had not been able to account for all the miscreants – it seemed as if most of the men in the two villages were involved in crime, from the way that they had fought or run before even knowing why the sheriff’s expedition had come.

  Leaving the other men-at-arms to patrol the village, he and Gwyn rode back down to the port where Richard de Revelle and Ralph Morin, together with the Templars, had rounded up all the prisoners. They were tied hand and foot, sitting in a dejected circle outside the alehouse. A small crowd of women, old men and children had emerged and were wailing and weeping, both for the few dead men laid out on the riverbank and the soon-to-be dead prisoners, whose fate must surely be hanging.

  ‘What was in that shed on the beach?’ demanded de Wolfe of the sheriff.

  ‘Goods of all sorts, none of which could possibly be afforded by this miserable vill,’ answered de Revelle complacently. ‘Undoubtedly looted from passing ships – to be carted away to Bridgwater or Taunton or even Bristol to be sold.’

  ‘I’d better look at it all later, to record it on my rolls,’ muttered de Wolfe. He saw a chance to let Thomas appear without arousing any suspicion. ‘I told my clerk to follow us from Exeter when he could. He had an attack of the bloody flux, but was recovering when we left, so I hope he finds us soon. I could do with his penmanship.’ He looked up at the sky and, though the sun appeared only fitfully, reckoned it was still about four hours to noon, when he had arranged to meet Thomas. ‘What do we need to do here now?’ he asked the constable.

  ‘I’ll set fires in those two galleys to stop them being used again, though this village will be without many men for a few years to come, if we hang all this lot.’ He indicated the bedraggled prisoners sitting in the mud, but was interrupted by a shout from one of the soldiers, who stood with outstretched arm, pointing at a sea-going knarr that had just appeared close inshore, having come around the eastern headland.

  The tide was now just past its top and there was enough water for the knarr to enter the mouth of the little river before it ran aground. The ship-master and one of the crew splashed ashore and came to the village, looking in astonishment at the scene.

  The sheriff was suspicious of this new arrival, but it became obvious that a vessel of this type was no pirate and it was soon established that it was the Brendan, out of Bristol, bound for Falmouth. The shipmaster had instructions to call at Lynmouth to pick up ten hogsheads of wine to take onward to Falmouth.

  ‘Obviously part of a looted cargo,’ snapped the sheriff. ‘Where else would that much wine come from in a place like this?’

  The man shrugged, indifferent to the source of the cargo. ‘I do what I’m told,’ he said. ‘I don’t own the vessel, I just sail it.’

  ‘Well, you’re stuck here until tomorrow’s tide, that’s for sure,’ said Gwyn. ‘Unless you want to leave in the dark tonight.’ Philosophically, the master went back to his vessel to cook, eat and sleep until the morrow, while John decided it would soon be time to try to keep the appointment with his clerk.

  Before he went, he became involved in another argument with his brother-in-law over jurisdiction. The sheriff announced that he intended trying the captives at a special Shire Court set up here today and hanging them straight away, but de Wolfe instantly objected.

  ‘Piracy and murder are pleas of the Crown. They must be arraigned before the king’s justices at the next Eyre of Assize!’

  ‘Impossible! We are fifty miles from Exeter and it would take almost a week to march these men all the way back. Then they would have to be kept in prison until the judges condescend to come to Devon. God knows when that will be!’

  ‘The Eyre is due next month, you know that.’

  ‘They said that last month, but they’ve not been to the city since October. We can’t guard and feed all the rabble in the West Country indefinitely – and the result will be the same. They’ll be hanged.’

  They argued back and forth, but de Revelle was adamant. For once, Ralph Morin sided with him, as a matter of practicality, the captives being so far from the only town where the judges would sit. Though the Shire or County Court, run by the sheriff, was normally held in the Moot Hall in Rougemont, there was no legal reason why it could not be held anywhere in the county, as long as the sheriff was present.

  Reluctantly, de Wolfe had to agree, mainly because of the geographical problems, but on condition that the details of the accused and their property were recorded by him for forfeiture. This was another reason for having Thomas present, though he could hardly admit to knowing that his clerk was already in the neighbourhood.

  The coroner spent more than an hour inspecting the contents of the shed on the beach. It was a veritable treasure house of goods, even though much must have been carted away already for illicit sale in the big towns of Somerset. Bales of silk, rolls of worsted, cheaper russet cloth and hessian were piled on casks of wine. There were small barrels of raisins and other dried fruit from the South of France and even a pile of green cheeses from Mendip. He was not sure if the coroner’s duties ran to making a complete inventory of the looted cargoes, but hoped that they would have time for Thomas to make a list, not least to prevent it being spirited away by the villagers or even the manorial lord. If it could not be recorded, some soldiers must be left behind to guard it until trustworthy bailiffs could be sent from Barnstaple to have it carted out to safety. He doubted that the rightful owners would ever see any returned, but at least it could be sold for the king’s treasury – if the hands of people like the sheriff could be kept off it.

  He walked back to the alehouse, guessing that by now it could not be far off noon. Outside were twelve fishermen-turned-buccaneers squatting dejectedly in their bonds, with Morin’s soldiers now searching for more looted goods in the houses and fish-sheds.

  De Wolfe walked Odin away unobtrusively, leaving Gwyn to keep an eye on the Templars. He wondered if they still fancied stalking him on suspicion of concealing de Blanchefort somewhere, though with both of Cosimo’s strong-arm men virtually out of action, he felt that the Italian was no longer a threat.

  Lynton was still deserted, apar
t from the three soldiers, who were burying the body of the slain fugitive at the edge of the village. Short of a house-to-house search, which might be necessary later, there was no way of discovering where the men who had escaped from the beach had hidden. De Wolfe thought that they might have taken to the woods or moors, to keep well out of sight until the sheriff’s men had left the district. There was no manor-house anywhere near and he did not know who the local lord was – or whether he knew or cared if his subjects were part-time pirates.

  He stopped Odin in the centre of the village to look around and decide what to do next. The church was on his left, a small timber Saxon building. It had no tower and looked little different from a barn, apart from the plain wooden cross nailed to the gable at one end. He sat for a moment in the silent hamlet, looking around him. Then a movement caught his eye further up the track, at the edge of the village. A pony moved out from behind a thicket and he saw that sitting on it side-saddle was Thomas de Peyne, small and black in the threadbare mantle that still gave him the air of a priest.

  Cautiously, the clerk trotted down to his master, looking right and left all the time in his usually furtive manner. ‘I said meet at the church!’ snapped the coroner. ‘And where’s the Templar?’

  Thomas glanced apprehensively at the nearby building. ‘There are men in there – I looked just now and they all shouted at me to get out.’

  Light dawned on de Wolfe. Now he knew what had happened to the escaped Lynmouth men. ‘Are they claiming sanctuary?’ he demanded.

  Thomas gulped. ‘I didn’t wait to ask them, but certainly they were rough men in rough clothing. I doubt they were there for their devotions.’

  The coroner stared up the road again. ‘What have you done with de Blanchefort?’

  ‘I hid him in a small wood, just off the road outside the village. After finding those men, I thought it better to leave him there until I had seen you.’

  John nodded his agreement. ‘This may be to our advantage, but he must keep out of sight, at least until tonight. Has he some food with him?’