Fear in the Forest (20 page)

Gwyn, who could spend all day on a horse without a twinge, set off to do a tour of all the other alehouses in the hope of hearing something useful. In the fourth, by which time he had drunk the better part of a gallon of common ale, he fell into conversation with two tinners, who had brought a train of pack ponies down that day from the high moor, laden with crudely smelted tin ready for the next assay. Their talk followed the usual pattern – complaints about the stinginess of their employers, the outrageous taxes on the tin and the corruption of the Warden of the Stannaries, who was none other than Sheriff Richard de Revelle. As the ale flowed and tongues became loosened, Gwyn turned the talk to extortion in the forest and had a useful response from the grousing tinners.

‘Thank God we’re exempt from the antics of these bloody foresters!’ said one. ‘The stannary laws and our parliament on the moor make sure that they don’t interfere with us. But I pity the folk who live off the land down here, they’re getting a harder time than ever.’

Gwyn encouraged them to keep talking by waving down a potboy and getting in more quarts. ‘What’s going on in the forest, then? I’m from Exeter, we don’t hear much about it there,’ he added ingenuously.

‘More oppression from the foresters. They’ve become worse lately,’ growled the other man, a huge bear of a fellow with a black beard. ‘Forcing alehouses to take their brew, setting up forges and tanneries – taking the very bread from people’s mouths.’

‘Can’t they do something about it?’ asked Gwyn, his blue eyes radiating innocent curiosity.

‘What can they do?’ retorted Blackbeard belligerently. ‘The manor-lords are either powerless to act against royal custom or their palms are being crossed with silver to persuade them to mind their own business.’

‘And the common folk can do nothing,’ snarled the other tinner. ‘If they complain, they are beaten up by the foresters or their hulking pages. And not only that, but lately they seem to have the damned outlaws on their side. I don’t understand it, I tell you.’

He had raised his voice and the other man nudged him forcibly in the side, slopping his ale over the rim of his pot.

‘Watch what you say, Tom,’ he growled in lower tones. ‘That fellow over there, I’m sure he’s one of Winter’s gang.’

He jerked his head to indicate a young man slouching on a low window shelf across the room, flirting with one of the slatternly maids who was clearing empty mugs and platters.

‘Who’s Winter?’ asked Gwyn, determined to draw the men out.

‘Robert Winter. He runs the main coven of thieving outlaws in these parts,’ grunted the smaller man. ‘They’ve become so bold lately they come into town to drink and wench now, for no one seems interested in stopping them. Someone seems to be protecting them.’

‘Are there any others in here, d’you reckon?’ asked Gwyn, looking around the crowded taproom. Blackbeard cautiously turned his head right and left. Although he was built like a bull, he seemed unwilling to get involved in any trouble.

‘No, I can’t see anyone else here that I recognise, but I’ve only seen these villains now and then on the verges or talking to the foresters. Although for all I know, all this damned lot might be wolf’s heads.’

The thought seemed to sober the two tinners and they refused to be drawn into any more discussion of the forest troubles. A few moments later they finished up their ale and shambled out, leaving Gwyn with the beginnings of a plan germinating under his ginger thatch.

Within minutes of the tinners leaving, Gwyn quietly rose from his corner bench and made his way to the door. The young man in the window recess was still talking to the ale-maid, trying to pull her to him with an arm around her waist, as she half-heartedly pushed him away with the empty drinking pots she held in her hands.

Gwyn hurried down the main streeet of Ashburton towards the inn where they were staying, stopping only in an alleyway to empty his bladder of some of the vast quantity of drink that he had taken that day. When he arrived at the Crown tavern, distinguished from other houses only by the tarnished gilt sign that was nailed over the door, he pushed his way in through the drinkers and made for the open ladder-like stairs that went up to the floor above. The loft was similar to that in the Bush, though dirtier and more squalid. A row of hessian pallets stuffed with hay lay along one wall, and on the other side a straggle of loose straw offered cheaper accommodation.

The place was almost deserted this early in the evening, but one man lay retching in the straw and, in a corner, another, older man appeared to be shaking with the rigors of some fever, unattended and uncared for. The Cornishman looked along the row of thin mattresses to one with a bulge, where Thomas lay wrapped in his thin mantle in lieu of a blanket. He stumped across the creaking boards and shook the clerk by the shoulder.

‘Hey, little man, you’re on your own from here. I’m off into the forest to see if I can discover something straight from the horse’s mouth.’ Rudely awaken and bleary eyed, the ex-priest groggily sat up on his pallet and stared at the tousle-haired giant who had so abruptly disturbed him.

‘What do you mean, on my own? Where shall I go, then?’

‘Carry on with what you have been doing, man. It’s Thursday evening now. I’ll meet you back here on Sunday and we can ride back to the city.’

The clerk stared anxiously at his friend in the gloom of the windowless attic. ‘I’m unhappy at travelling alone. Must you leave me?’

Gwyn gave him a playful push on the shoulder, which flattened him on to his mattress. ‘Come on, have some spirit, Thomas. Who in God’s name would bother to rob such a poor-looking waif as you? I reckon a beggar would share his alms with you out of pity!’

‘What about your horse?’ wailed the clerk.

‘I’ll give the ostler a couple of pence to feed her until I come back – and put the fear of the crowner’s wrath into him not to sell her!’

Agog with consternation, Thomas watched Gwyn stump away to the ladder, then with a muffled wail of anxiety he lay down again and pulled his cloak over his head.

Outside, the coroner’s officer made his way back to the other alehouse and slipped back into the taproom, which was even more crowded than before. All the benches were full and men were standing shoulder to shoulder with hardly room to lift their tankards to their lips. There had been a local horse fair that day and some of the patrons were loudly discussing their bargains and their losses.

Gwyn pushed his way to the back of the room and gave a segment of a penny for a quart pottery mug of ale, dipped from an open cask by a slatternly woman with a huge goitrous swelling in her throat.

He turned, his eyes scanning the far corner to see if the young man was still there. The maid with whom he had been flirting was now struggling about the room with new pots of ale, urged on by the landlord, who was yelling at her to keep her mind on her work. Her previous place with the alleged outlaw had been taken by a short, scrawny man with a dark, leathery complexion, who was talking animatedly with the other fellow. Gwyn watched them covertly for a time and tried to edge nearer, though the press of jostling patrons made it difficult. Although the two were talking rapidly to each other, their voices were kept low and Gwyn could not pick up a single word without getting so close as to make them suspicious. Abruptly, the smaller man, after much nodding and gesticulating, turned and forced his way quickly to the door and vanished, leaving the other looking thoughtfully into his empty pot. Fearful that he was about to leave, Gwyn shouldered his way to his side, and with what he hoped was a furtive look behind him, gestured at the ale jar.

‘Want another, son?’ Gwyn was hardly old enough to be his father, but there was certainly many years between them. The other, a thickset, yellow-haired fellow with disconcertingly pale blue eyes, looked suspiciously at the huge, unkempt figure.

‘You buying it?’ he asked, in an accent from a long way east of Devonshire.

Gwyn gave another of his exaggeratedly furtive glances over his shoulder, then covertly displayed six whole pennies which he had clutched in his ham-like hand.

‘I struck lucky outside the fair today – the other fellow should be back on his feet within the week!’ He leered at the blond man, then waved at the chastened potgirl to bring more ale.

‘Nobody knows me in Ashburton – yet,’ he went on. ‘And I’m trying to keep it that way by getting out as soon as I can.’

The quarts arrived and, though the girl risked a simpering smile at the younger man, he ignored her, his attention now on this stranger.

‘I thank you for the drink, but what do you want with me?’

Gwyn sensed that here was a man who really did look over his shoulder much of the time. There was an alertness about him that confirmed he was uneasy in crowded places.

‘I was told, never mind by whom, that you lived among the wolves,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose.

‘That’s a dangerous thing to suggest, stranger. What if I do?’

Gwyn gulped the better part of a pint before answering.

‘I’m by way of seeking a place to lie up for a bit in similar company, if you get my drift. I’m tired of being on the run all the time, sleeping in a pigsty or a ditch and stealing every morsel of food or a few pence for ale – then often being too wary of taverns to spend it.’

The other man relaxed. This scruffy giant, who looked as if he had stolen his clothes from a scarecrow, could easily be another fugitive from justice.

‘You look as if you might be handy with a staff or a mace, friend,’ he said in a more affable voice. ‘How did you come to be on the road?’

Gwyn guffawed and clapped the other on the shoulder.

‘Off the road, more like it. I was an abjurer, sent from Bristol to take ship at Southampton, by the evil whim of the bloody coroner. I threw away my cross around the first bend in the road and stole the clothes of the first man who was big enough for them to fit me!’

He laughed uproariously again and poured the rest of his ale down his throat, some of it dribbling down the sides of his long, drooping moustache. ‘Now I’m working my way down to my native Cornwall, where I can slip back into my old trade as a tinner.’

The fair-haired man grinned, all suspicion now evaporated. Gwyn’s abjurer story was a common one – criminals who sought sanctuary in a church had forty days’ grace, during which, if they confessed their crime to the local coroner, they could ‘abjure the realm’ by promising to leave the shores of England as soon as possible. Dressed in sackcloth and carrying a home-made wooden cross, they would be directed by the coroner to a particular port, where they had to catch the first ship going abroad. If the weather prevented sailing, they had to wade out up to their knees in each tide, to show their willingness to leave England.

From sheer perversity, many coroners would send them to a far-distant port, to worsen their labour of walking and increase the risk of their being killed on the way. If an abjurer so much as strayed a yard off the highway, anyone was entitled to kill him on the spot without penalty. Injured victims or their bereaved relatives were quite likely to do this to the perpetrator of the crime. In fact, few abjurers ever reached their harbour, either being slain on the way or, far more likely, running into the forests to become outlaws, risking the penalty of being beheaded for the bounty.

So Gwyn’s story was not only credible but commonplace, and the younger man had no qualms about accepting it. Now it seemed that the hulking Cornishman was looking for a resting place for a time, on his journey home – and from the size of his muscles and his obvious acquaintance with the rougher side of life, he might be a useful addition to Robert Winter’s band of desperadoes.

‘My name’s Martin Angot – buy me another quart with one of those stolen pennies and maybe I’ll have some good news for you!’

For John de Wolfe, it was also something of a holiday. For the first time for months – in fact, since he had been laid up with a broken leg – he was experiencing some peace and quiet. The tranquil life of the manor at Stoke calmed his usually restless nature, and the absence of Matilda’s carping, surly behaviour felt like a weight lifted from his shoulders. Though he missed Nesta, a small part of his mind experienced relief that he was away from her present unhappy mood and her reluctance to go along with his willing acceptance of her pregnancy. He felt vaguely disloyal about this, but consoled himself that it was only for a couple of days. In the meantime, he luxuriated in the fond attention of his mother and sister, who appeared genuinely delighted to have him home. They fussed over him and over-fed him, as if he was the returned Prodigal Son.

His brother William, a rather reserved and inarticulate man, also seemed pleased to see him, and on this Friday morning they both went hunting together. Being well outside the bounds of the royal lands, there was no hindrance to their foray through the manor woods. John enjoyed a day’s carefree riding in the company of pleasant companions, but unusually for a Norman knight he was not a very enthusiastic hunter. Unless an animal was urgently needed for food, as it often was in his former campaigning days, or was a dangerous pest like a boar or fox, he found little joy in killing handsome beasts just for sport.

Today he was on a mare borrowed from William’s stables, as Odin was too large and clumsy for hunting. Their steward and two grooms rode with them, as well as a houndsman who handled the four dogs that ran alongside.

The Stoke lands stretched down towards the river, where thick woods lined the tidal mud banks. For a couple of hours they traversed commons and clearings, as well as the forest, without raising a single beast apart from a fox, who outpaced the hounds and vanished down a deep hole under an oak tree. Eventually they halted and let their mounts graze in a clearing while they took refreshment.

The steward had a bag of bread, meat and cheese on his saddle, and one of the grooms had a stone flagon of cider. William, though always treated with the greatest respect by his servants, had an egalitarian streak that was hardly typical of most manor-lords, and the other hunters sat with the brothers and shared the food, passing the crock of cider around from mouth to mouth.