Fear in the Forest (45 page)

‘I wonder if there are still some ruffians down there,’ mused Morin.

‘It’s a long way south of here, but if we don’t find the ringleaders at this Easdon Tor place, then I suppose we’ll have to go back there,’ answered John.

They set off northwards again, wary of any further surprise contacts, leaving the bodies scattered where they had fallen. The four archers went on ahead as before, and gradually the ground flattened off, though it was still densely wooded. Where a fallen tree or a small clearing gave a glimpse to the north-west, now and then they could see the bare outline of the higher moor, with misshapen rocks sometimes crowning the skyline. The man Ferrars had given them as a guide from his manor at Lustleigh dropped back and touched his floppy woollen cap to the coroner.

‘Sir, if we are going to Easdon Down, then soon we have either to cut left across country past Langstone or go on up the river to the clapper bridge, then take the track westwards.’

‘Which is quickest?’

‘Past Langstone, Crowner. No more than a mile, I’d say.’

They decided on the direct route and started climbing rising ground, still thick with trees. The few houses and fields of Langstone were off somewhere to their right as they crossed the lower slopes of Easdon Tor.

‘What do we do if some of these bloody thieves throw up their hands without a fight?’ asked Morin.

John was wondering that himself and hoped the matter would not arise. Perhaps they had been lucky back in the valley, where all the outlaws had blundered on to swords and axes.

‘By definition, they are outside the law and don’t exist in any legal sense,’ he answered. ‘Anyone can kill them at will – and get a bounty for it!’

‘So we kill them all, even if they have their hands up in the air in surrender?’ queried Morin.

‘It sounds difficult, I know,’ replied John. ‘But if we take them back to Exeter they will be hanged without trial, as judgement has already been passed on them in declaring them outlaw. So it seems pointless to delay their deaths. They know this and may well try to flee as their only hope, in which case we can kill them with an easier conscience.’

‘What about this Robert Winter himself? Does the same apply to him?’

De Wolfe considered this as they trudged diagonally across the steepening slope. ‘He will die, one way or the other. But as the leader he might have information that could be useful, perhaps about the people behind this conspiracy.’

There was a soft call from ahead as one of the scouts turned back to warn them that the trees were thinning out ahead. They came to halt just inside the edge of the woods and saw that bare moor, with patches of bracken and bramble, rose up ahead to a jumble of rocks high above. To the right, the tree line curved around into the distance.

‘That’s Easdon Tor above – and the down runs right around its foot,’ explained the guide.

The posse stopped for rest, while Morin and the coroner conferred.

‘We don’t know where this camp is supposed to be. The other party has got Cruch with them to pinpoint it.’

‘And we don’t know where they are at the moment,’ growled Gwyn.

‘They had a shorter distance to march than we, so they should be in position somewhere near by.’

‘Surely the outlaws wouldn’t make camp out in the open up there,’ muttered Morin. ‘They’d stick to the trees.’

‘The place I saw was out of the trees, but they had a little nook in some rocks,’ Gwyn told them.

De Wolfe turned to the guide. ‘Is there anywhere like that up towards the tor?’

‘Not really, sir. There are some ancient old hut ruins around the other side of the tor, but I wouldn’t call that Easdon Down.’

‘That damned Cruch was pretty vague about where the camps were, though he only had a lump of chalk and slate to work with. It could be that way, I suppose.’

They decided to send their scouts in both directions, working along inside the tree line to see whether they could find Guy Ferrars and his men. The whole area in question was no more than a quarter-mile across so they had to be somewhere near. Settling back against a tree trunk, Morin signalled the perspiring men to rest, and they sank to the ground to take the weight of their hauberks from their shoulders.

Ten minutes later, a pair of archers came silently back from their left side, with news of the rest of the squadron.

‘Lord Ferrars and his men are concealed about five hundred paces to the west, Crowner. They were waiting for us, as they have sighted a large group of outlaws further up the hill, camped in some old ruins.’

‘Those are the tumbled huts I told of,’ said the guide. ‘They were built by the ancient men of the moor, God knows how long ago.’

In no mood to consider history now, John waved all the men to their feet and, demanding complete silence from now on, led the way with Ralph along the edge of the forest towards the other half of the posse.

Within a few minutes they were reunited and the leaders quietly discussed tactics.

‘There’re a lot of men up there, you can see them moving about. I can’t see any lookouts posted, the useless scum,’ growled Guy Ferrars. ‘But it’s all open ground between us here in the trees and those heaps of stones that they’re using to shelter their camp.’

John and Ralph Morin moved cautiously to the edge of the wood to look up the slope of Easdon Tor. It was a double hill, with a higher, rugged silhouette on the left and a lower, smoother mound on the right. The ruined huts were much lower down on a small, flatter part of the hill.

‘They can’t escape uphill, it’s too steep. We must attack them in a broad arc, to stop them running down into the trees,’ advised Ralph Morin. The other leaders agreed and the soldiers were spread out in a single line three hundred paces long, each behind a tree until the signal was given.

‘If they see all of us they’ll scatter and run for it, so let’s entice them down here first,’ advised de Wolfe. ‘Keep the men-at-arms out of sight for the moment.’

With Gwyn and several of the roughly dressed men from Lustleigh, the coroner stepped boldly out of the trees and began walking up towards the little plateau that carried the tumbled stones, partly covered with grass.

‘Slowly does it, Gwyn,’ muttered John.’We don’t want to be too far away from the men behind when they catch sight of us.’

As if the outlaws had heard him, there were some distant yells from above and a dozen heads appeared to stare down the slope at them. Then, with yells of derision and anger, a crowd of men surged from between the stones and began running down at them, waving swords, staves and maces. At least a score of ruffians came storming down the hillside, and the men from Lustleigh faltered at the prospect of being massacred.

But just at the right moment, thanks to the timing of old campaigner Guy Ferrars, the whole force of mailed soldiers burst out of the trees and began running in an unbroken line towards the outlaws, the ends of the line curving around in a constricting arc.

At the sudden appearance of three times their number of mailed soldiers, the men from the camp skidded to a halt and desperately looked for a way of escape. Some who had just come out of the old ruins turned around and vanished uphill, but the men lower down had nowhere to go except into the arms of the rapidly closing troops.

It was almost a repeat of the earlier blood-bath, as the men-at-arms had been told to give no quarter and the outlaws knew that the only alternative to escape was death. The ragtag crowd, with not a single piece of armour between them, fought furiously but were no match for the mailed and helmeted troops. The four archers stood slightly to the rear, and whenever a clear target presented itself they shot with deadly accuracy.

Within ten minutes it was all over. Four of the outlaws managed to evade both the soldiers and their arrows and, being fleet of foot, fled across the scrub-covered ground and vanished into the trees. The rest lay dead among the scrubby vegetation of Easdon Down. Gwyn had dispatched two himself, crushing one man’s head with his mace and hacking the neck of another. De Wolfe, at the spearhead of the attackers, also accounted for two, running one through the chest with his sword and stabbing another in the throat with his dagger, after the man had wrapped the chain of his mace around John’s sword-hilt.

He looked around at the scene of mayhem, with twenty-seven corpses lying on the ground. In the battles in the Holy Land, especially at Acre, and to a lesser extent in Ireland and France, he had seen ten times that number of dead in one engagement. Still, this was Devon, and he had a momentary twinge of conscience until he again recognised that any survivors would have been either beheaded or hanged.

The only casualty among the attackers turned out to be Hugh Ferrars, who had received a hacking blow on his left arm. The sleeve of his hauberk had saved him, but he had a large bruise spreading from elbow to wrist. He seemed mightily pleased with it, as a token of his first wound in combat. Although well trained by his father and his squires, Hugh had been short of a war in which to fight, and now had something to boast about to his drinking friends.

Gabriel was prowling with his sword amongst the defeated men, giving the
coup-de grâce
to one or two who still twitched, until all was still.

Morin called back the soldiers to rest on the grass, then came over to where the Ferrars and de Courcy were talking to John de Wolfe.

‘Are there any more left?’ he demanded. ‘I suspect that any who stayed up in those ruins made a quick getaway across the shoulder of the tor. They’ll be a mile away by now.’

Guy Ferrars, his rugged face redder than usual with the exertion and excitement, leaned on his long sword. ‘We’ll take a walk up there in a moment to see. What about this lot? Did we get the leaders?’

They scanned the crumpled bodies lying among the ferns and long grass.

‘Gwyn is the only one who can recognise them now,’ said de Wolfe. True to his promise, he had let Stephen Cruch loose back in the tree line and the horse-dealer had vanished like a puff of smoke.

Gwyn ambled among the dead, turning some face up with his foot. After a while, he gave a shout. ‘This one’s Martin Angot, the fellow I saw with Cruch in the alehouse,’ he called. He looked at all the rest, then shook his head.

‘Robert Winter’s not among them. We’ve missed the leader, but now he has no one to lead.’

Ralph Morin stared around at the corpses strewn around.

‘What are we to do with these? They’ll be stinking by tomorrow!’

The guide and two of his fellows from Lustleigh deferentially tugged at their floppy caps, before making a suggestion.

‘We can get a bounty for each of these, sir. If we undertake to bury them all back in the wood there, can we take the heads and claim the bounty?’

Ralph and John roared with laughter, even at such a macabre suggestion. The thought of Richard de Revelle’s face, when an ox-cart trundled up to Exeter Castle filled with amputated heads, was too good to deny.

‘You do that, good man! And add those from the last camp to your collection for the sheriff. If he refuses to pay you, let me know.’

As the local men went enthusiastically about their business, the coroner decided that he would like to see what was in the camp up above.

The leaders of the expedition, together with Gabriel and two of the bowmen, began to walk up the slope towards the grassy platform where the ruined foundations lay. As they neared the edge, they became cautious, in case any surviving outlaws were laying in wait. The archers tensed their bow-strings and the others gripped their weapons, but all was quiet as they stepped between the mossy piles of stones, barely recognisable as the bases of old round huts.

In the centre of the jumble of rocks was a fire, a radiating ring of logs still smouldering. Some cooking pots and pottery mugs lay round about and the half-eaten carcass of a deer was spread on a large flat stone.

A few of the hut remnants had been partially and crudely rebuilt and roofed over with branches to make a couple of shelters, high enough for men to crawl inside.

‘What a way to live!’ said Reginald de Courcy in disgust. ‘Even animals fare better than this.’

‘Do you think we’ve wiped most of them out?’ asked Morin. ‘We’ve missed this man Winter – maybe he’s with another nest of the serpents somewhere?’

‘There can be very few of his gang left,’ replied de Wolfe. ‘Together with the ones we killed on the way, this accounts for most of those who the villagers allege were plaguing the countryside.’

‘We had better call at that camp Gwyn saw, down towards Ashburton,’ advised the constable. ‘I’ll take a dozen men and go that way back to Exeter.’

‘You’d best go with him, Gwyn,’ said the coroner. ‘You know exactly how to find it.’

But the Cornishman failed to respond. He had walked a little way from the group and was standing with his head cocked on one side, listening intently. Then tucking the handle of his mace into his belt, he slid out his sword and quietly advanced on one of the brush-covered shelters.

Bending down, he looked inside, and with a roar tore off one of the branches that straddled the stone walls.

‘Look what we’ve got here, Crowner!’ he yelled exultantly, waving his blade dangerously back and forth in the entrance of the shelter.

The others dashed over and Gabriel helped Gwyn drag off more of the crude roofing. Cowering inside the tunnel-like bivouac were four men, crouched against the end wall in a desperate effort to remain hidden.

‘Get out, blast you! Come out of there!’ yelled Gwyn, stabbing down with his sword to encourage the quartet to stumble out into the open.

De Wolfe stared in amazement when he saw who they had found.

‘God’s bowels! It’s the bloody foresters and their tame monkeys!’

With expressions of mixed fear and defiance, William Lupus and Michael Crespin came out of the shelter, followed by the ugly Henry Smok and another burly man, who John assumed was Crespin’s page.

Guy Ferrars was beside himself with rage, waving his fists in the air as he yelled at the foresters.

‘You’ll hang for this, you bastards! Consorting with outlaws, caught red handed in their very camp!’