Fear in the Forest (7 page)

Inside, the popular alehouse was as full as usual, but at least the normal fug of spilt ale, cooked onions and sweat was free from eye-smarting smoke, as there was no fire in the big hearth on this warm summer evening. Normally, the wood smoke hung about in a haze until it found its way out beneath the eaves, for unlike John’s house, most buildings did not have the luxury of a chimney.

From habit, he found his usual seat on a bench near the empty fireplace and Brutus crept into his accustomed place on the earthen floor under the rough table. He nodded to a number of other patrons who were regulars like himself and exchanged a few words with the nearest, who all were well aware of – and applauded – his relations with the Welsh innkeeper.

Usually old Edwin, the one-eyed potman, served him as soon as he arrived, but tonight Nesta herself bustled over with a large quart pottery jar of her best brew.

‘And how is the King’s crowner tonight?’ she asked, as she deposited the ale on the boards before him. In spite of her light tone, John already thought he detected something, maybe a forced gaiety. But he was so glad to see her, to be with her, that he pushed the thought aside in the pleasure of the moment.

‘Sit down, my love, and talk to me.’ He looked up at her as she leaned against the table, as neat as ever in a gown of yellow linen, tightly laced around her slim waist, emphasising the curve of her breasts above. Her heart-shaped face had a high forehead and snub nose, the full lips made for kissing. Some curls strayed from under her white linen helmet, as russet as Gwyn’s beard.

‘I can stay only a moment,’ she exclaimed, slipping onto the bench next to him. ‘There’s a party of wool merchants here tonight and they’re clamouring for their supper, so I must chase those idle girls in the back yard.’ The kitchen was in a shed behind the inn, the usual arrangement when fire was such a hazard to other buildings. The Bush had a reputation for the best cooking in the city, as well as for being the cleanest place to get a penny bed for the night.

John slipped an arm around her, heedless of the covert grins of some men on the next table. He felt her softness relax against him and somehow he was reassured that she had not found another man. Yet when they started talking about the events of the two days since he had last seen her, John still sensed that there was something she was leaving unsaid. He was reluctant to ask her straight out whether anything was amiss, in case she told him something he wouldn’t wish to hear. They talked for a few minutes, Nesta telling him of minor problems of the tavern, which she now ran herself with the help of Edwin, two maids and a cook. Until two years earlier, the innkeeper had been her husband Meredydd, a former Welsh archer in the service of King Richard. John had known him from his campaigning days, and when Meredydd had given up fighting because of a wound, he had taken on the Bush. But within a year he was dead of a fever, and for friendship’s sake de Wolfe had loaned his widow enough money to keep the inn going. He had helped her generally to survive, as a young woman trying to run a city tavern was a prime target for the unscrupulous. His protection had turned into affection and then genuine love, but they were sometimes disillusioned, mainly because Nesta fully realised that a Norman knight, married to the sheriff’s sister, was a hopeless long-term prospect for a lowly alehouse keeper.

John told her about the murder of the verderer and she listened carefully, as she always did to his tales of mayhem in Devon. He found it useful to pour out his problems, as it helped clear them in his mind – and her own quick brain not infrequently lighted on some point that he had missed. Sometimes, even more than Mary, she could give him some useful information, as Nesta was a mine of knowledge about what went on in the city and beyond. The Bush was the most popular inn for travellers passing through Exeter and she heard much of the gossip that was bandied about between the customers. This time, though, she had little to contribute.

‘I know nothing about these verderers, John, they’re just a name to me. Everyone knows of the foresters, though. All the country dwellers hate them for their harshness and corruption, that’s common knowledge.’

‘You’ve heard no idle chatter in here, about anything going on in the forests?’ he asked hopefully, but Nesta shook her head.

‘There was some talk the other day about the outlaws becoming bolder than ever. Some of the carters and drovers from the west were complaining that they sometimes get charged an illegal toll when passing through the more lonely stretches of the high road. They were cursing the sheriff for doing nothing about it.’

‘Nothing new about that!’ John replied cynically. ‘There’s no profit for de Revelle in chasing off a few vagabonds from the highway.’

Eventually, he ran out of other news and turned to a more immediate prospect.

‘I’m in no rush to get back tonight, madam. Will you be having a quiet hour before midnight?’ His eyes strayed to the wide ladder at the back of the inn, which led up to the upper floor. Here Nesta had a small room partitioned off from the rest of the loft, where the straw pallets of the guests were laid. She gave him one of her sidelong glances, then looked away.

‘Not tonight, John. It’s … well, not convenient.’

Gently, she pulled herself away and went off to the kitchen, tapping a shoulder here and giving a greeting there as she weaved through the patrons on her way to the back door. John followed her with his eyes, puzzled and disappointed. Their lovemaking upstairs, in the big French bed that he had bought her, was one of the most satisfactory things in his life. They were both enthusiasts in that direction, which made his devotion to her all the more complete. From her tone, he presumed that the time of the month had conspired against him tonight, but her attitude still made him uneasy. As he sat there despondently, staring down into his ale jug cupped between his hands, he felt the bench creak dangerously. Looking up, he found Gwyn’s huge frame alongside him, his eyes twinkling in his rugged face.

‘I thought you had gone home to St Sidwell’s. It’s past curfew now,’ grunted de Wolfe, jerking his head at the last of the twilight visible outside the open door. One of the maids was bringing a taper round to light the tallow dips hung in sconces around the walls.

‘I was going, but I got into a game of dice with Gabriel and some of the men up at the guardroom. I won three pence from them, so I thought I’d treat myself to one of Nesta’s mutton stews and a mattress here for the night.’

‘I’m glad someone will be staying up the ladder here tonight,’ grunted John sourly. ‘But it looks as if it won’t be me!’

The Cornishman’s straggling red eyebrows rose towards his even wilder hair. ‘Problems, Crowner?’ he asked solicitously. He had a dog-like fondness for Nesta and had been delighted when she and his master had got back together recently, after their rift a few months earlier. Now the prospect of more trouble genuinely worried him.

‘I don’t know, Gwyn, something seems to be concerning her. But I’ve been behaving myself these past weeks, haven’t I? There’s no reason why she should become cool towards me?’

Gwyn was more than a squire and bodyguard, he was a friend of twenty years’ standing, and each had saved the life of the other more than once in battles, ambushes and assaults. John was not the most articulate of men, and Gwyn was the only one to whom he could speak on intimate matters.

His officer scratched his armpit fiercely, annihilating a few fleas.

‘Come to think of it, the good woman has been a bit distant lately. Nothing to speak of, but she seems a bit far away sometimes, as if she has something heavy on her mind.’

Their conversation was interrupted by the potman, who stumped up to bring Gwyn a quart of ale.

‘You’ll be wanting another of the same, Captain?’ Edwin asked the coroner. He was an old soldier who had lost one eye and part of a foot in the Irish wars. Both de Wolfe and Gwyn had been in the same campaign and Edwin deferred to them as if he were still one of their men-at-arms.

John shook his head. ‘I’d better be getting back home,’ he muttered. ‘But no doubt my man here will want to be filled up with food.’

Whistling at Brutus to creep out from under the table, where the dog-loving Gwyn had been stroking his head, de Wolfe made for the backyard of the inn, to give Nesta a goodnight squeeze and a kiss, before trudging back to Martin’s Lane and his lonely side of an unwelcoming bed.

An hour after dawn the following morning, a cart drawn by two patient oxen drew up outside the alehouse in the village of Sigford. In the back were two large barrels and as soon as the clumsy vehicle came to a stop the driver and his villainous-looking companion jumped down and removed the tailboard. They propped a couple of planks against the back of the cart and knocked out the wooden wedges that secured the first cask.

As they rolled the heavy barrel to the ground, the door to the tavern flew open and the ale-wife bustled out.

‘What do think you’re doing?’ she screeched. ‘I don’t need any ale, I brew my own!

The driver’s assistant, a rough fellow dressed in little better than rags, gave her a gap-toothed leer. ‘Yes, and it tastes like cow-piss, so I’ve heard!’

Widow Mody, broad of hip and bosom, advanced furiously on the man and raised her hand to clip his ear, but he gave a her a push that sent her staggering.

‘This is some decent stuff, Mother, whether you like it or not.’

Outraged, but now wary after the threat of violence, the woman looked around the threadbare village green for someone to help her. Outside his cottage a hundred paces away, she saw their reeve looking towards the cart and she waved wildly at him.

‘Morcar, Morcar, come here!’ she yelled, before turning back to the pair, now getting the second cask down to the ground.

‘There’s some mistake! Where’s this come from? I don’t want it.’

The carter, a milder-looking man who seemed embarrassed by the proceedings, spoke for the first time.

‘It’s nothing to do with us, woman. We’re just delivering it.’

He started rolling the barrel towards the door of the alehouse, the other fellow grinning as he began to follow him.

‘If you’ve got any questions, ask them!’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and turning, the widow saw two men on horseback coming into the village. As Morcar arrived, so the riders reined up alongside the cart. By now several other men had been attracted by the shouting and were drifting towards the green, the smith amongst them.

The village reeve scowled up at the first horseman, a thin, erect fellow with grizzled iron-grey hair. He had unusually high cheekbones, over which the skin of his face was stretched like a drum. His chin and hollow cheeks were covered with dark grey stubble, framing a humourless, thin mouth. He wore a green tunic and a short leather cape, the hood hanging down his back. A thick belt carried a short sword and a dagger, and from his saddle hung a long, evil-looking club. On the breast of his tunic was a yellow badge depicting a hunting horn, the insignia of a forester. The other rider stayed a few paces behind in deference to his master, as he was what was euphemistically called the forester’s ‘page’, though he was a rugged bruiser in his late thirties.

Morcar continued to eye the newcomer with distaste.

‘What’s all this about, William Lupus?’

The forester stared down impassively at the village reeve.

‘From today, only this ale will be sold in Sigford. It will save that good-wife from the labour of brewing her own.’

Incredulous, Widow Mody screeched back at the man in green. ‘I don’t want your bloody ale! Take it away, wherever it came from!’

‘Where did it come from, anyway?’ asked the smith, truculently.

‘From the new brew-house near Chudleigh. From now on, all the alehouses within a day’s cart journey will sell it.’

‘Who says so?’ yelled the ale-wife, her hands planted belligerently on her hips.

‘I say so, woman! On behalf of the King, whose forest this is.’

‘And is this ale a present from King Richard?’ she snapped sarcastically.

William Lupus looked down at her coldly. ‘It will cost you one shilling for a twenty-gallon cask. How much you sell it for is your business.’

For a moment, Widow Mody was speechless at the extortion.

‘That’s well over a ha’penny a gallon! I can brew it for less than half that price. No one will buy it from me. I’ll be ruined and will starve!’

There was a general murmur of horror from the bystanders, who saw their only pleasure being priced beyond their reach, but the forester shrugged indifferently.

‘If they don’t buy it, then they can go thirsty – or drink water.’

Morcar, though he already had a presentiment that the fight was lost before it had begun, felt that he must make some effort on behalf of his village.

‘This is part of the manor of Ilsington, Lupus. I must first hear what our lord William de Pagnell has to say.’

‘It matters not what he says, Reeve. He does not sell ale, so mind your own business.’

‘I will still have to send word to him and his steward and bailiff, Forester. No doubt he will need to protest this to the verderer.’

William Lupus gave a nasty smile, the thin lips parting over his yellowed teeth. ‘The verderer is dead. You all should know that only too well, as his body lay here only yesterday.’

‘There will be a new verderer appointed soon,’ persisted Morcar doggedly.

The smile cracked even wider. ‘There will indeed – and undoubtedly it will be Philip de Strete, who will have little sympathy with your useless complaints.’

There was renewed murmuring amongst the small crowd of villagers who had gathered around the cart. Philip de Strete was about as popular in mid-Devon as Philip of France.

‘No doubt our lord will appeal to the Warden, then,’ grumbled the reeve obstinately.

‘He has no say in the matter – and I doubt he’ll be there for much longer,’ snapped Lupus. When he saw that the carter and the other man had taken the casks inside, he gave a sign to his thuggish page, who slid from his horse and ambled into the alehouse. The widow took fright and hurried after him, but she was too late. There was a scream of anguish and a splashing of liquid, then the page and the ruffian from the cart reappeared with four large earthenware crocks, each of several gallons’ capacity, the dregs of mash and ale still dripping from them. William Lupus nodded at the men, and almost carelessly they tossed them into the air, letting them smash into a thousand pieces on the hard-baked ground.