The Noble Outlaw (37 page)

Baffled, de Wolfe and Gwyn returned to Rougemont, where they found Thomas hard at work copying rolls for the next visitation of the Commissioners of Gaol Delivery. But he also had news of a different visitation, one that Hubert Walter had promised.

'The sheriffs clerk asked me to tell you that Sir Walter de Ralegh, together with another justice, will arrive in Exeter one week from now, to hear the case of Nicholas de Arundell,' announced Thomas, with a satisfied smile on his peaky face.

'That makes it all the more urgent to find our Nick o' the Moors,' said the coroner to his officer. As they settled down to their mid-morning ale and bread, John complimented his clerk on his genius in thinking of the iron connection in the murders, which now seemed to have been confirmed beyond any doubt.

'We even know the name of the bastard who's responsible,' he concluded, as Thomas wriggled in self-conscious delight at this rare praise from his master.

'But like de Arundell, we can't find the bugger!' boomed Gwyn. 'They've both vanished into thin air, so if you really are a genius, tell us where we can find them. '

The little priest took him seriously and began to tick off the possibilities on his thin fingers. 'He's not at his work, or his dwelling. Neither is he sick in the infirmary. He's not likely to be in St Nicholas priory, as they don't encourage outsiders to share their sickbeds.' Thomas stopped with three fingers displayed. 'You say he was a stranger in Exeter, having come from Bristol, so he'll have no relatives to stay with, so either he's left the city or he's holed up in some lodging.'

The big Cornishman grunted derisively. 'Doesn't need a genius to come to that conclusion. Which lodging, that's the point?'

At the lodging in question, a young woman stood uncertainly in the centre of the room and looked down at the bed, a hessian bag stuffed with a random mixture of feathers from fowl, geese and ducks.

It was not this primitive mattress that caused the worried look on her face, but the man who lay on it, groaning as he nursed his left arm. Denise had done her best with a pot of salve from an apothecary and a wide strip of linen torn from her only bedsheet. She had anointed the angry slash on Trove's forearm with the green paste and wrapped it with several turns of the cloth, tying it in place with a length of blue ribbon. But the wound had become redder and more swollen, and pink tracks had begun to climb up the skin of his arm towards the shoulder.

'You need better attention than I can give you, Geoffrey,' she exclaimed for the tenth time. 'I'm no leech or Sister of Mercy, what do I know of tending wounds?'

The journeyman gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his arm as he struggled to a sitting position. 'It will pass, woman. Give it time, it was not much more than a scratch.'

He cursed the carelessness with which he had detached his shooting device from the back of the privy. In the dark and in haste to remove it before anyone came to investigate, he had slashed his bare forearm against the end of the laminated leaf-spring that shot the missile.

The injury itself was not serious, but by the next day, the deep scratch had become angry, and by the day after it was oozing pus. He suspected that some evil miasma had splashed upon his device from the ordure pit below, where there was a wide opening for the night-soil man to shovel out the contents.

Denise, a handsome girl of about twenty years, seemed close to tears. 'You'll die, Geoffrey, I know you will, unless you have it seen to properly. I had an uncle who stabbed his foot with a fork when he was hoeing turnips.., he died in the most awful convulsions a week later.'
 

The iron-worker glowered at her. 'Thanks, that really cheers me up! Look, if it's worse by tomorrow, you can call an apothecary.' He subsided on to the palliasse again, waves of heat passing over him in spite of the coldness of the room, which was heated only by a charcoal brazier set on a stone slab in the centre of the rush-covered floor. The dwelling was a single room at the back of a silversmith's shop in Waterbeer Lane, behind the High Street. It had been Denise's place of business when she was a working whore, but now Geoffrey's generosity allowed her to keep all her favours for him. He had patronised her for a long period as a regular client, but a brusque affection and sense of possession had gradually developed, so that he had even thought of marrying the wench once he had set up in his own business as a master craftsman, but those bastards rejecting his application had scuppered all his plans.

Still, he had almost got even with them all now; only the last venture against Gilbert le Bator had gone wrong - and left him with a poisoned arm into the bargain.

He had had to leave his employment when the arm became useless and, though his master knew he was sick, he doubted whether he would ever go back. Something told him that the failed attempt on the weaver's life the other night would lead to his exposure if he stayed in the city, so he had abandoned his mean hut on the marshes and moved in with his mistress. As soon as his arm had healed, he would leave Exeter and take Denise away to yet another fresh start, perhaps this time in Gloucester. But first of all, he had one last score to settle.

Matilda's new hobby of being solicitous to Lady Joan de Arundell caused her to be very concerned at the news that Sir Nicholas had disappeared. She made none of her usual complaints when her husband announced that he had to ride off at dawn the next day to look for Nicholas, and she even added her own exhortations to John to spare no effort in finding the former outlaw.

'He must be told of his release from this iniquitous stigma,' she exclaimed. 'That poor woman, at first full of joy at his salvation, is now plunged into misery because he has vanished.'

It was unlike Matilda to be so melodramatic, and John wondered at her state of mind. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if her going mad could be grounds for annulment of their marriage, then forgot the notion.

In the cold light of the following dawn, Gwyn waited patiently outside on his mare while de Wolfe had the farrier saddle up his favourite gelding for the ride to Dartmoor. They met Sergeant Gabriel and two men-at-arms at the end of North Street and sallied out of the nearby gate towards the village of Ide and then onward to Moretonhampstead.

The sky was by now a sullen slate grey, with a suggestion of pinkness nearer the horizon, and the leather-faced sergeant mournfully prophesied snow before evening. The air was cold and still, but the going was good and they made rapid progress at a steady trot up and down the fertile undulations that led to the high moor.

'Where are we aiming for?' asked Gwyn when the little town locally known as Moreton came into sight. 'We haven't the slightest idea where Nicholas may be holed up.'

'Let's talk to the folk in the tavern, maybe someone will have an idea,' growled John. 'It was there that Lady Joan's messenger used to meet one of the men from Challacombe.'

When they reined in at the alehouse and entered for a welcome jug of ale and some hot potage, they learned nothing of Nicholas de Arundell's whereabouts, but picked up many rumours of an attack upon him.

Like all tales in the countryside, they improved with the telling, and the exaggerations of the attack on Challacombe had expanded until it seemed impossible that any of the outlaws could have survived. The patrons that morning were eager to offer their versions of the drama to de Wolfe, until his habitually thin store of patience ran out and he grabbed the taverner by the arm.

'For Christ's sake, man, let's have some sense here,' he snapped. 'Have you any real idea what happened over in Challacombe?'

The chastened landlord held up his hands in supplication. 'It's all gossip, Crowner,' he pleaded. 'But certainly some armed band came up from Widecombe way and there was a fight with Nick o' the Moor's men.

One of the locals here, who's not above taking a rabbit or even an injured deer over that way, said he was in the Challacombe valley a week past and saw the old huts burnt out and no sign of any life there.'

'Is there no rumour of where they might have gone?' demanded Gwyn belligerently, for he did not like the look of this crafty fellow.

'Like will-o'-the-wisp is that Nicholas. They do say he has several hideouts across the moor, one of them being up towards Sittaford Tot.' This was one of the most remote parts of the high moor, with vast areas of deserted land around it.

'Might just as well tell us he's somewhere on the bloody moon' grumbled Gwyn.

They could get nothing more of any use from the men in the tavern and after finishing their food and ale, John decided to strike out for Challacombe, across the indistinct track along which he had been taken when he first visited Nicholas de Arundell. The snow was holding off, and again they made good time over the firm, dry ground so that by noon, they were coming down below Hameldown Tor across the grassy bowl that held the strange ancient stories of Grimspound. There was nothing to tell them that a major ambush had been set here not long before, and they continued down on to the track that led southwards down the valley. The bleak countryside seemed deserted, and apart from birds the only life they saw was a dog fox lurking alongside the Webburn stream. Within a mile, they came to the stunted trees that surrounded the old village where John and his officer had spent a night.

'All burnt out, Crowner,' called Gabriel, who was riding a few yards ahead of them; the two soldiers were at the rear. As they crossed the stream and came up the slope to the old walls, they could see that the rough thatch that had been on several of the huts had collapsed into a blackened mess. When they dismounted and walked inside the wall around the settlement, the acrid smell of scorched branches and bracken assailed their nostrils. Though the large moorstones that made up the walls were still in place, the interiors of the primitive dwellings were reduced to heaps of sodden, blackened debris from the roofs. An ominous silence hung over the old village, broken only by the eerie hoot of a disturbed owl from the nearby trees.

There was nothing to be gained by staying, and the coroner motioned the others back to their horses. Just as they were filing through the gap in the wall, Gabriel stopped and pointed across the yard that lay in front of the nearest huts. 'What's that there? It looks very recent.'

John's gaze followed his finger and saw a heap of earth in a corner, on top of which was fixed a crude wooden cross made from two branches lashed together with cord. When they all went over to look, they saw that the earth was freshly dug; no weeds were on the surface, and the broken ends of the cross were pale where living sticks had been snapped through.

'What poor soul is under there, I wonder?' murmured John. The two soldiers crossed themselves and even the agnostic Gwyn bowed his head in respect. De Wolfe only hoped that the occupant was not Nicholas de Arundell, but there was no way of telling what had happened. It was now obvious from the destruction of the camp and the recent grave that the outlaws had been attacked and that someone had paid with their life.

'Where do we go from here?' asked Gwyn, as they swung back into the saddle and began walking their horses back through the trees to the place where they had crossed over the little river.

'Deeper into the moor, north from here,' answered the coroner, with a confidence that he did not feel.

Dartmoor covered about four hundred square miles and the outlaw band could be almost anywhere within it, assuming that they had not been wiped out in the attack.

As they turned left on the main track, retracing their path towards Grimspound, those behind suddenly saw the sergeant tense in his saddle and grab for the ball mace that hung from his saddlebow.

A voice called out from behind the last tree in the copse that lined the stream, and a figure stepped cautiously out from behind it.

'Crowner! Crowner John!'

A ginger-haired youth, muffled in a cloak made of poorly cured deerskins, advanced on them, his hands held high to show that he was no threat. Gwyn was the first to recognise him as one of the outlaws.

'Peter Cuffe, it is you, Peter?' he roared.

The redhead came up to them, smiling now that he was in no danger of being brained by Gabriel's fearsome mace. Explanations soon followed, and it became clear that the youngest of the gang had been sent as a lookout. He had been three days on his own, sleeping in a shallow cave up on the ridge above and watching for anyone approaching the ruined village.

'Nick hoped that we would be contacted by someone. We were unable to send anyone to Moreton last week to keep the usual rendezvous, though next Monday we were going to be there, as we knew Lady Joan would be worried.'

He described the attack on Challacombe and the tactical withdrawal of the outlaws to Grimspound, where they had outwitted the invaders and made them flee.

'I knew it, roared Gwyn. 'Those bastards de Revelle and Pomeroy! Surely they must hang for this.'
 

De Wolfe shook his head sadly. 'For what? Attempting to clear out a nest of outlaws, as is their right and indeed duty? They could even have claimed the wolf's head bounty had they succeeded.'

'They did succeed in one instance,' said Peter Cuffe sadly. 'Poor old Gunilda died, that's her grave in the yard. We found her body when we crept back after those swine had left.'

There were growls of anger from Gwyn and the men-at-arms, but John kept his mind on the present situation. 'We are hoping for a pardon for you all from the king,' he explained. 'So I need to talk to Sir Nicholas as soon as possible. Where is he now?'