Fear in the Forest (34 page)

She gripped his arm so tightly that he winced.

‘So what shall I do, Thomas? Life is too difficult.’

‘Your life belongs to God, Nesta. He gave it to you and he will take it away in his own good time. As he showed me, poor sinner that I am, it’s not for us to decide when it shall end.’

He grinned wryly, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

‘And certainly not in the river, just downstream of the Shitbrook!’

De Wolfe cautiously followed Stephen Cruch for a mile up the track, which became narrower and more overgrown as he went. In some places the passage of the stallion had broken off thin branches which overhung the path. He kept well back for fear of being detected, but could hear the rider ahead by the occasional crack of a stick under the horse’s hoofs. The coroner wondered why this track existed, as they were now well away from the patch of cultivation near the alehouse and were in deep forest. Whatever it had been, it was clear it was a long time since it had been in use.

Eventually, John realised that he had heard nothing from up ahead for several minutes and stopped in case he overran his quarry. Leaving the path, he slid between the trees to one side, then struck off diagonally again. Soon the gloom of the oak-and-beech canopy seemed to lighten ahead and, as he crept forward, he saw a large clearing where trees had been felled in the past. Concealed behind a trunk, he realised that this was an abandoned settlement, possibly an illegal assart from many years earlier. Though there were no large trees, bushy saplings were springing up among the thick undergrowth and in a few years’ time this scar in the forest would have healed itself. Among the profusion of weeds and bushes he saw the remains of a burned cottage, the surviving timbers wreathed in ivy.

What was more interesting was the sight of the horse-dealer sitting in his saddle, in the act of raising a cow horn to his lips. Three mournful hoots echoed through the woods, then Cruch sat immobile, intently watching and listening. Nothing happened and, a few minutes later, three more blasts were given on the horn. Then, distantly, came an answering blast, repeated four times, on a horn with a higher pitch.

Soon, two riders came into the clearing from the opposite side and met Stephen Cruch in the centre, alongside the ruined hut. They were astride moorland ponies and wore swords, with maces hanging behind their saddles. John recognised neither man, but suspected from Gwyn’s description that these were Robert Winter and Martin Angot.

They remained on their horses and began an animated conversation, but from a hundred paces away John had no hope of catching any words.

A leather bag was passed over to the bearded man that he assumed was Winter, but again he had no way of knowing whether it contained money.

The meeting was very short, for as soon as the bag was stowed away in his saddlebag the leader raised his hand in salute and the pair pulled their short-legged ponies around and walked out of the clearing the way they had come. Stephen Cruch also turned and departed much faster than he had arrived.

De Wolfe was in a quandary as to what he should do. He doubted both the wisdom of following the presumed outlaws and his ability to do so, as only God knew how far they intended riding, and even in the woods he could never keep up on foot for any great distance. And what could he do, if he ended up at an outlaw camp with twenty or thirty desperate villains against him? Discretion seemed not only the better part of valour, but eminently more sensible, so he decided to retrace his steps and get back to Gwyn. He was eager to get a better description of the two outlaws, now that he had seen them with his own eyes.

No doubt Thomas would have advised him that ‘man proposes, but God disposes’, for as he left the shelter of his tree trunk to find his way back to the path, there was a bull-like roar from his right and a yell from his left. Two ragged men hurtled towards him through the trees, kicking up showers of dried leaves as they came. Shocked for an instant, as he had thought himself alone, he barely had time to draw his sword before the first was upon him. Thankfully – for it probably saved John’s life – the other caught his foot in a trailing brier and fell heavily on his face, delaying him for almost a minute.

During that time, the first man skidded to a halt before the tip of the coroner’s weapon, his expression suggesting that he had not expected to be confronted by a fighting man wielding a Crusader’s broadsword – and one who appeared to be well accustomed to using it.

‘I’ll get you, you bastard!’ he yelled, lifting a ball-mace in one hand, the other brandishing a dagger. He was not a big man, being a fellow of about twenty years, dressed in a tattered tunic which was pulled up in front between his legs, the hem tucked into his belt. His head was covered in unkempt brown hair which merged with a wispy beard of the same colour.

John took in all this in the instant the man came to a stop in front of him, which was his undoing. With a quick prod, almost a reflex, the coroner jabbed the sharpened point of his blade into the fellow’s left forearm and the dagger went spinning away as the man howled in pain. Clutching the bleeding arm against his chest, he made a vicious swing with the mace, a studded metal ball on a chain attached to a short rod. If the chain had wrapped itself around John’s sword, it would have snatched it from his grip, but wise to the ways of infighting he dropped the point and stepped back, letting the ball whistle past his nose. The momentum of the heavy weight turned the assailant’s shoulder towards de Wolfe and, without hesitation, he slid his sword into the armpit, deep into the man’s chest. It was killed or be killed, and after twenty years of practising survival, the coroner gave not a second thought to inflicting a fatal wound.

But his minute was up, and as the first man staggered away to die the other, now recovered, was upon him. Seeing what had happened to his mate, he was more cautious and stopped when de Wolfe swung round to menace him with his sword, held two-handed before him.

‘Clear off, or I’ll kill you as well!’ snarled the coroner. The outlaw’s eyes flicked briefly to where his partner was oozing his lifeblood into the leaf mould.

‘You’ll not be so lucky this time, whoever you are!’ snarled the lout.

Even in such a perilous situation, John realised that the attackers had no idea who he was. Cruch must have sensed that he was being followed up the track and had told the two outlaws. They had presumably left a couple of sentries outside the clearing and had now told them to circle around and get rid of whoever had been spying on them. John fervently hoped that there were no more of them around, as without Gwyn odds of two to one were the most he wanted to cope with.

This man was older and more heavily built, bare footed and wearing a torn leather jerkin over brown serge breeches. A florid, dirty face was cracked in a ferocious grimace, exposing crooked, yellow teeth. He gripped a heavy pike, a dual-purpose weapon which was both a staff and a lance, having a sharp spearhead on one end. For a moment, they faced each other without twitching a muscle, each waiting for the other to make the first move. John knew that the pike had a much longer reach than his own sword – it could not slash sideways, but as a stabbing weapon it easily surpassed his own in range.

Suddenly, the outlaw lunged, and though John hacked at the pike shaft to divert it, the edge of the iron tip scored through his tunic over the left side of his hip bone. A searing pain swept up from his loin, but he sensed that the wound had not gone deep. His adversary was still out of range and drew back for another lunge, grinning evilly at having made the first strike. They feinted again and John saw that his hacking blow with the sword had cut through half the thickness of the pike, just below the head. Another swipe might sever it completely, and he deliberately left himself open for a split second to tempt the outlaw. But the man was too canny a fighter to be tricked and backed off, giving John time to wonder whether he was facing another old campaigner.

‘You’re bleeding, Big Nose!’ taunted the ruffian. ‘In a minute, I’ll have you gutted like a goose!’

John could feel the warmth of blood seeping into his clothing, but he had no time to look down at the damage. The other fellow made another sudden charge, aiming for de Wolfe’s heart, but this time the coroner was ready for him. As he twisted away, he snatched his left hand from his sword hilt and grabbed the spear just below the head, throwing his weight sideways, so that it fell full on the weakened shaft. With an audible crack, the wood split and the wicked iron point fell uselessly to the ground. Off balance, John had no chance to land a precise blow with his sword, but he swung it wildly and was rewarded with a bellow as the heavy cutting edge sliced into the thigh of his opponent.

Then things happened with lightning speed, as the enraged man used the shaft of his broken pike to deliver a smashing blow to de Wolfe’s left shoulder, numbing his arm completely. A fraction of a second later, John, though reeling from the pain, lunged forward and jabbed his sword into the lower belly of his antagonist, feeling the point go in until it crunched against bone. As he pulled it out, the sharp edge was dragged across the man’s groin and a fountain of blood spurted from the severed main artery. With a scream of mortal agony, the outlaw used the last of his strength to swing his pike handle again. This time it caught John cleanly across the temple and he collapsed unconscious on to the forest floor.

With no clock nearer than Germany, Gwyn had no way of knowing how long he sat outside the alehouse on the Plymouth road, but judging by the height of the sun it was noon by the time his patience ran out. He had seen the horse-dealer trot past the inn in the direction of Exeter about an hour after leaving his master, showing no signs of having been in a fight. Unsure of what to do next, Gwyn spent the next couple of hours drinking several quarts of ale, eating a loaf and cheese and, not long since, a sheep’s knuckle with fried onions. He had also questioned the crippled man who ran the tavern about the priest and his acquaintance – and discovered that the smaller, wizened fellow was indeed a well-known horse-dealer by the name of Stephen Cruch. The landlord had no idea who the cleric was; he had never seen him before.

In between these activities, Gwyn had paced up and down outside with increasing concern, looking a hundred times back down the road to where the entrance of the track lay. He blamed himself for letting the coroner go into the forest alone, though he knew that de Wolfe’s stubborn streak could not have been overcome. The road continued to be fairly busy, with travellers within sight every few minutes, but there was no sign of the coroner emerging from the lane.

Eventually, Gwyn could stand it no longer. He went around to the side of the crude wattle-and-daub building to check on the horses, which he had tied up in the shade, with two leather buckets of water dipped from the ditch behind and a ha’p’orth of hay bought from the inn. Satisfied that they were safe to leave, he tightened up his sword belt and stalked off down the road, with a foreboding that all was not well with John de Wolfe.

Reaching the old track in a couple of minutes, he turned into the cool green of the trees. Going as cautiously and quietly as his large body would allow, he followed the path into the forest, noting the few recently broken twigs and branches that told of the recent passage of a rider. He stopped every few minutes and listened, his hand on the hilt of his big sword, but there was nothing except the twitter of birds and the occasional rustle of some small woodland animal.

Obliviously, he passed the spot where the coroner had cut off left from the path, as there was nothing to show for it. Like John, he now saw the brightening ahead where the clearing lay, and even more cautiously he walked to the edge of the trees and looked around. All was quiet and, after a moment, he advanced to the charred timbers of the old cottage and saw the crushed vegetation in the centre of the clearing. A pile of fresh, still-moist horse droppings lay there and, looking beyond them, Gwyn saw that more disturbed grass and bracken indicated that at least one rider had gone off through the far side of the clearing. He stopped to consider what he should do. For all he knew, Stephen Cruch, as he now knew him to be, had himself ridden straight across, but the width of the flattened undergrowth suggested that several horses had turned around here. He walked to the opposite trees and went into the wood again for a few hundred yards, finding nothing. Returning, he stood again in the clearing and risked giving a few piercing whistles, ones that he knew the coroner would recognise from their old campaigning days. There was no response and he circled the perimeter of the clearing, whistling again, then finally calling ‘Crowner!’ at the top of his voice a few times.

Only the birds replied.

Worried and frustrated, he began a more systematic search of the edges of the clearing, reasoning that if there had been some meeting there his master would have been spying on it. Of course, there was always the possibility that he had followed the other party, presumably outlaws, in which case he could be miles away by now.

The Cornishman decided on one more circuit, this time a few trees back from the edge, where John may have been hiding to be within sight of the conspirators. Halfway around, he stopped, fear suddenly gripping him. On the waxy green leaves of some wild garlic, he saw a spatter of blood. A few feet away there was more, and scuff marks through the fallen leaves were deep enough to expose the almost black leaf mould beneath. With his heart in his mouth – and his sword in his hand – he followed the intermittent trail for a dozen yards, to the lip of a depression which looked like an old badger sett, drifted over with leaves. Three or four feet lower, he saw the inert body of a man, which instinct told him was a corpse. After the first lurch of fear, he saw straight away that it could not be the coroner, though the head was buried in leaves where he had pitched face down. The clothing was brown and the fellow was bare footed.

Sheathing his sword, Gwyn tipped the dead body over and saw a total stranger, but enough of a ruffian to qualify as one of the outlaw band. The cadaver was still warm and the limbs and jaw were slack, so he had been dead less than a few hours. The eyes were wide open and the mouth gaping. His jerkin and tattered tunic were saturated with blood from the waist down and, on probing, Gwyn saw a gaping slash in his upper thigh and gouts of blood clot oozing from a wound in his lower belly.