Fear in the Forest (44 page)

‘This is intolerable!’ gibbered de Revelle. ‘I am sheriff and they should be placed under my control. So don’t expect me to cooperate with you. I want nothing to do with this madness.’

‘You won’t be asked to take part, Richard,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘In fact, as Commissioner, I won’t have you anywhere near this operation. I don’t trust you.’

De Revelle ranted and raved for a few more minutes, being repeatedly rebuffed by the others. Finally, an irate Guy Ferrars leaned over his table and thrust his face close to that of the sheriff.

‘Listen, de Revelle! You’re lucky to be allowed to sit safely in this chamber while better men go off to clear up the chaos you helped to foment. But I tell you, though the friends you have among certain barons and churchmen may have protected you so far, your time is fast running out!’

He drew back and stalked to the door, his son and the coroner following him. As he jerked it open, Ferrars made one last threat.

‘I shall devote myself to getting rid of you as sheriff of this county. We need someone trustworthy, like Henry de Furnellis, to sit there in your place!’

After his visitors had stormed out, Richard de Revelle picked up a pottery ink bottle from his table and with a scream of ill temper hurled it at the opposite wall. The missile exploded and black fluid ran down the stones like blood leaking from his wounded heart.

The men-at-arms from Portsmouth spent the next two days resting from their long march and getting their equipment ready for the fray on Monday. During this time, the coroner was called out to a fatal accident in the small town of Crediton, where a wall around a cattle pound had collapsed on top of a wood-turner, crushing him under a pile of stones. The wall had been declared unsafe beforehand by many of the local people, and John attached the manor bailiff to the next Eyre, to appear to answer a charge of negligence. He did this with poorly hidden satisfaction, as the manor was one of many belonging to Bishop Marshal. He would have to pay any fine and compensation, which was likely to be substantial, as the turner was a craftsman with a wife and five children to support. John was sorry that he could not have declared the wall a deodand, as it was the instrument of death, but the value of a heap of stones confiscated on behalf of the widow was negligible.

This episode took much of the day, as he held the inquest as soon as he had inspected the scene and the corpse, so it was early evening before he made his daily visit to Nesta at Polsloe Priory. She still had a slight fever, but Dame Madge seemed satisfied that it had not become worse.

John sat by her bed and regaled her with a monologue about the day’s events and the sheriff’s discomfiture at having his authority usurped by his brother-in-law. His mistress listened quietly, holding his hand in hers, until he came to speak of the campaign planned against the outlaws in two days’ time.

Then she struggled more upright on her bed and turned a pale and anxious face towards him.

‘Be careful, John, please! For God’s sake, don’t risk your life again. You were nearly killed by them but a few days ago!’

She sank back, even the effort to rise exhausting her. He gave a lopsided grin, meant to be reassuring.

‘Don’t fret, there’ll be almost a hundred others there too – a few knights and scores of men-at-arms, as well as Ferrars, de Courcy and their men.’

Nesta looked up at him, fearful of losing him after all that she had gone through lately. ‘All the men in England can’t stop a stray arrow striking you, John!’ she whispered.

Anxious to stop this preying on her mind, he changed the subject.

‘Have you seen any sign of Matilda?’ he asked. ‘She still refuses to speak to me, though I’ve glimpsed her in the distance once or twice.’

Nesta gave a slight nod. ‘She’s passed by once or twice.’

She seemed unwilling to elaborate and John, suspecting that she had been ignored by his wife or even vilified, hesitated to probe further. There was no sign of Matilda when he left, and as the prioress was also nowhere to be seen he hauled himself on to Odin and took himself home, feeling that a good battle in the forest was preferable to trying to understand women.

Early on Sunday evening, a meeting was held in Rougemont of all those who were to be involved in directing the campaign the next day. To keep clear of the sheriff, they met in the Shire Hall in the inner bailey, using the benches and trestles on the platform of the bare courthouse for their conference.

The two Ferrars, de Courcy, Ralph Morin, John de Wolfe and Gwyn were joined by three Hampshire knights who had accompanied the foot soldiers from Portsmouth. Only Thomas de Peyne was absent, as John felt his timid presence would be no asset in a battle.

On a large piece of slate, fallen from some roof around the castle, the constable scratched a crude map with a lump of limestone. Like John, he was unable to read or write, but had a good sense of orientation and could draw a useful plan.

‘Here’s Ashburton – and up here is Moretonhampstead,’ he boomed. ‘Between them, and to the west, is a tract of forest where it seems most likely that Winter’s gang is camping at present.’

‘How can you know that?’ grunted Guy Ferrars.

‘Two reeves came in this afternoon, as arranged. They have been spying out the situation for a couple of days on my orders. Several of Winter’s men have been seen in alehouses along the road between these two towns – and they vanished into the forest west of the road.’

‘Does this knave have any useful information?’ asked Hugh Ferrars, jerking a thumb down towards the hall, where Sergeant Gabriel held the shoulder of a dishevelled Stephen Cruch, brought over in manacles from the cells under the keep.

Morin beckoned and Gabriel prodded the horse-dealer nearer the raised dais. ‘How many camps do these brigands have in that part of the forest?’ he demanded.

Cruch, very conscious of the fact that his life and liberty depended on his cooperation, stuttered out all he knew on the matter.

‘I’ve been to three, sire, but there may be more that I’ve never seen.’

At a sign, the sergeant dragged his prisoner up on to the platform and propelled him over to the table.

‘Point to where you think they might be!’ commanded the elder Ferrars. Lifting his chained wrists together, Cruch took the chalk lump and added some marks to the slate.

‘This one’s on the slope of the high moor about here.’

‘That’s the one I visited,’ cut in Gwyn.

The horse-trader pointed out two other sites and gave some directions as to how they could be reached.

‘Take him back to the keep until tomorrow,’ ordered Morin. ‘He can come with us to show us the paths to these places – and woe betide him if he’s trying to fool us!’

Guy Ferrars and Reginald de Courcy, some years older than John, had seen plenty of fighting in their time and were well-acquainted with campaign tactics.

‘I say we should divide the men into two groups and push into the forest from both ends, starting from Ashburton and Moreton,’ said Ferrars.

‘And also have a few men moving up and down the road between them, in case they break out of the middle and vanish across into the woods on the eastern side,’ added de Courcy.

They discussed variations on this plan for a while, with the coroner quietly hoping that they would be lucky enough to find any of Winter’s gang. From past experience, he knew how difficult it could be to find men in dense forest. However, late that evening they had some good fortune which allayed John’s fears about missing the outlaws altogether. A messenger from the bailiff in Lustleigh rode in on a lathered horse with the news that a group of twenty outlaws had been seen by a shepherd late that afternoon. They were crossing the old clapper bridge on the Bovey river, westwards into the forest between Manaton and North Bovey. This at least reduced the large area in which to search for some of them – and it was not far from one of the camps that Cruch had indicated, on the slopes of Easdon Tor.

Soon after dawn, the small army set out, the northern party under Ferrars and de Courcy marching for Moretonhampstead, together with Hugh Ferrars and a score of local men, who would patrol the road. They took Stephen Cruch with them, his wrists loosely tied and an archer stationed near him with orders to shoot him if he tried to escape.

Ralph Morin, de Wolfe and Gwyn took the remainder of the men south-westward to Bovey Tracey, as with the news of the latest position of Winter’s men it was now unnecessary to go as far south as Ashburton.

Both groups were accompanied by the few mounted knights and their esquires who had brought the troop from Portsmouth.

All set off at a marching pace, the riders walking their mounts behind the foot soldiers. At that speed it took until early afternoon to get into position, and after eating the rations they carried, the two arms of Morin’s pincer movement moved towards each other, their target being Easdon Down.

De Wolfe and Gwyn rode alongside the constable, feeling an exhilaration born of memories of many a campaign in years gone by. Even Odin, who was too young to have been in combat before, snorted his excitement as he stepped out along the track, and John had to keep him reined in so as not to pull away from the column of men walking behind.

It was six miles between Bovey and Moreton, with Lustleigh just off the track about halfway between them. Before they reached Lustleigh, Ralph Morin called a halt, and when the thirty men-at-arms had all caught up, he gave orders for them to put on their armour.

The hauberks had been carried in two ox-carts at the back of the column, as it was impractical for the men to march the fifteen miles from Exeter in hot summer weather wearing knee-length chain mail. The hauberks each had a pole thrust through their sleeves and were hung on two rails fixed in the carts. Each man helped a comrade to get the cumbersome garment over his head, then adjust the mailed aventail which hung from their basin-shaped helmets down to their shoulders. Morin and de Wolfe did the same, as although they had great horses to carry the weight, neither wanted to sit in a hauberk for four hours in the July heat. Gwyn always refused to wear mail, relying on an extra-thick jerkin of boiled leather, which he now put on, but he did condescend to jam a round helmet on his wild red hair, the long nasal guard having been bent up a little to accommodate his bulbous nose.

When all was ready, the ox-carts were left on the track in the care of their civilian drivers and the posse turned off into the woods, heading for the narrow valley of the Bovey to the north-west. Four archers, not wearing armour, were sent on ahead as scouts. When all reached the river, they crossed and carried on steadily up the right bank, where the trees were less of an impediment to the mounted men than on the valley slopes. For an hour they saw nothing but greenery and the shimmer of the small river. There was an occasional glimpse of a startled deer and the distant crash of a boar as it hurried out of their path.

They passed through an area which a local Lustleigh guide said was called Water Cleave and then curved below Manaton, though it was invisible, being high up to their left and a mile away. The guide advised the constable that to aim for Easdon Tor they should begin to bear west, as the ground flattened out a little from the thickly wooded valley. Soon after they had moved away from the river, two of the archers came running back.

‘More than a dozen men, camped in a clearing, five hundred paces ahead,’ panted one.

Quickly, Morin divided his force into two and took half up the slope to the left, leaving de Wolfe to take the rest along the flatter ground to the right. Silently, his score of soldiers padded between the trees, one of the archers out ahead. A few moments later the scout held up his hand and the men slunk forward carefully. Another archer stood immobile, near the body of a young outlaw with an arrow sticking out of his chest, obviously a sentinel who had paid with his life for his inattention. The bowman pointed forward and John saw thin smoke rising from above some bushes where the sunlight was brighter in a gap in the trees. He gestured to the men-at-arms to spread out and then waved them on as he advanced, Gwyn at his side.

John was uncertain when to attack, as he did not know whether Ralph’s force was in position yet on the other side, but his dilemma was soon solved as there was a sudden yelling and crashing from ahead.

‘Come on, men!’ he screamed, his pulse suddenly racing with the prospect of battle. The line of soldiers dashed forward towards the clearing, straight into the remnants of the panic-stricken outlaw band, who were fleeing from Morin’s assault from the other side.

The action lasted no more than a couple of minutes and was more of a massacre than a combat. The two archers dropped the first pair of fugitives, then the rest careered blindly into the line of soldiers, to be cut down with sword and hand-axe. Every man was killed on the spot, which solved one problem for de Wolfe, as he was in no position to waste men on guarding prisoners.

A hoarse shouting from the clearing was a warning from Morin and his force that they were not to be mistaken for more adversaries, and seconds later the big constable lumbered up to John, still swinging a ball-mace threateningly.

‘Any of yours left?’ he demanded, looking at the still corpses scattered between the trees.

‘All dead. None of them lifted so much as a finger against us,’ grunted Gwyn, in disgust. As a fight it was a non-event as far as he was concerned.

‘Like butchering sheep in the shambles,’ confirmed de Wolfe. ‘I don’t think many of them even had time to pick up a sword before they fled.’

Ralph Morin stood counting the bodies. ‘We put down eight – one ran away and it’s not worth wasting time chasing him. So that makes fourteen exterminated so far.’

He called the scattered men-at-arms together and they began their march again, after a cursory look at the outlaw camp. There was little there, apart from some rude shelters made of boughs and canvas and some food and utensils around the fire.

‘No sign of either Robert Winter or his lieutenant, this Martin Angot?’

De Wolfe addressed this to Gwyn, as he was the only one who knew them by sight. The Cornishman shook his head. ‘Never seen any of this bunch before. They weren’t in that camp down towards Buckland.’