The Tainted Relic (11 page)

‘The bastard sent half a dozen men-at-arms to the Bush and they’ve dragged her off to Rougemont!’

Though Gwyn was unwelcome in the house because of his wife’s antipathy to what she called ‘Celtic savages’, the urgency of the situation made both him and his master careless of her antagonism.

‘There’s even talk of putting her to the ordeal of water,’ roared Gwyn angrily. This was a primitive test for guilt reserved for women, whereby they were thrown bound hand and foot into deep water. If they sank, they were innocent; if they floated, they were guilty and hanged. Men were forced to run barefoot over nine red-hot ploughshares or pick a stone from the bottom of a cask of boiling water–if burns developed, they were judged guilty.

John leapt up from the supper table, his stool crashing over behind him.

‘She can’t be put in those foul cells under the keep!’ he yelled. ‘Not with that evil pervert Stigand as her gaoler.’ He glared across at his wife. ‘Your damned brother is doing this out of sheer malice, Matilda! No woman should be kept in Rougemont at the mercy of that fat swine!’

Matilda looked back impassively at her husband for a long moment, and John wondered whether she was going to use this as a way of punishing him.

Then she too rose from her chair and came around to him.

‘Call Lucille to bring my mantle. I’ll come with you to see Richard–but only to keep that woman from the cells. I’ll not interfere in anything else.’

The next morning saw John de Wolfe at the castle at the crack of dawn, after an almost sleepless night worrying about Nesta and the implacable resolve of Richard de Revelle to blame her for the killing at the Bush.

In the cold morning light of his gatehouse chamber, he told Gwyn and Thomas what had transpired the previous evening when he had confronted the sheriff.

‘Thank God my wife had enough compassion to persuade her brother to lock Nesta in an empty chamber on the upper floor of the keep, rather than in that hellhole in the undercroft. Gabriel’s wife will attend her and at least see that she is fed until I can get her released.’

‘What about the bloody sheriff?’ growled Gwyn. ‘Is there no chance of him coming to his senses over this?’

John shook his head. ‘He has the bit between his teeth, aided by that damned precentor. This is a heaven-sent opportunity for them to get even with me for hounding them about their treacherous sympathy for Prince John.’

Thomas looked even more miserable than usual, hunched on his stool, wringing his hands in anguish. ‘How can we save dear Nesta, Crowner? I fear for her very life, now that the sheriff is set upon making her a scapegoat.’

‘Find the real killer, this Simon Claver! I tried to persuade de Revelle last night that this was the obvious way, but his mind is as closed as his ears. He refused even to countenance a search for the man, saying that the word of an imbecile lad was no grounds for looking for anyone other than the landlady of the tavern!’

‘But where the hell would we start looking, Crowner?’ observed Gwyn glumly.

‘That stolen relic is of no value to the thief until he can sell it,’ pointed out Thomas. ‘He has to find a buyer, and the only people interested would be religious houses.’

De Wolfe drummed his fingers on his table. ‘He may first have gone back to his outlaw gang in the forest. I couldn’t persuade the sheriff to lift a finger against them, he claimed it was a waste of effort.’

Gwyn scratched a few fleas from his unruly red thatch as he thought.

‘Gabriel told me that de Revelle was leaving this morning for his manor at Tiverton, to spend a few nights with his wife, God help her. Maybe we can persuade Ralph Morin to take out a posse while the sheriff’s away?’

The ‘posse comitatus’ was an invention of old King Henry, who authorized each county to mount bands of armed men to seek out wrongdoers when necessary. The idea appealed to the coroner, and he went off to the keep to seek his friend the constable, who commanded all the men-at-arms of the castle garrison. Though Ralph had no love for de Revelle, he was at first uneasy about going against his wishes, but John persuaded him that the sheriff had not actually prohibited a search, only shown a lack of enthusiasm.

By the tenth hour, a score of soldiers, led by Morin and Sergeant Gabriel, were marching over the drawbridge of Rougemont and meeting up at the South Gate with the coroner, his officer and another twenty volunteers from the Bush. These had rallied around to try to help the plight of their favourite innkeeper, and with a motley collection of swords, pikes and daggers, they tagged on behind the column of soldiers. All were on foot, as horses were of no use for combing the woods for fugitives.

In less than two hours, the posse was in position, half the men forming a line that entered the forest from the side where the chapman had been killed, the rest two miles away, approaching from the main track to the north. The men-at-arms, dressed in partial battledress of iron helmets and boiled leather jerkins, alternated with the city volunteers.

De Wolfe and his officer were with the southern party, the constable and his sergeant with the others. They had little hope of catching all the scattered outlaws, who infested every patch of forest, but within three hours their pincer movement through the almost bare trees and scrub managed to grab two men, one found cowering in a bramble thicket, the other up a tree. The latter betrayed his presence when the branch broke and he fell with a scream and a crash within fifty yards of the nearest soldier. With a twisted ankle, he was unable to make a run for it, and when the two lines of searchers met up, de Wolfe and Morin decided that, given the failing light, they had done all they could that day.

The two captives, desperately frightened, ragged wrecks of humanity, were forced to their knees inside the wide circle of their hunters. As outlaws, they were well aware that their lives were forfeit and it was only the means of their deaths which lay in the balance.

John stood over them, sliding his great sword partly out of its scabbard, then slamming it back again.

‘We are entitled to strike off your heads here and now!’ he rasped. ‘The men I appoint to do it will be pleased to earn an easy five shillings’ bounty. So is there anything you have to say that might delay that moment?’

Nothing could have been more effective in loosening their tongues than the sight and sound of that sword, and within a few moments John learned that Gervase and Simon Claver had indeed been members of their outlaw band.

‘Simon reckoned he was entitled to a bigger share of Gervase’s loot, so he said he was going after him in Exeter,’ quavered the older captive, a toothless scarecrow with some pustulous disease of his hands and neck.

‘Just before he left, Gervase let slip the fact that some relic in a little box might be valuable,’ croaked the younger man with the injured leg.

‘That set Simon thinking and he left us the next day.’

The cavalcade set off for Exeter, the older man half supporting, half dragging the other along the track, both destined for the cells in Rougemont until they were dispatched on the next hanging day.

As the four leaders marched at the head of the column on the four miles back to the city, they discussed the results of their expedition.

‘It’s clear what happened now and we know the identity of the two villains,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘Ralph, there’s no reason now why Nesta should be kept locked in that damned chamber!’

The constable pulled at his beard, worried at his own position in all this. ‘I agree, John, but I can’t let her out until de Revelle gets back. I’ll be in enough trouble with him as it is, taking a troop of soldiers out of the city against his inclinations.’

‘He’ll be back in a couple of days, Crowner,’ said Gabriel, soothingly. ‘My wife will see she’s comfortable until then.’

John gave an angry grunt and Gwyn tactfully changed the subject.

‘What about finding this bastard Simon Claver? That would really put Nesta in the clear.’

De Wolfe rasped a hand over his black stubble as they walked faster in the gathering dusk, anxious to get to the South Gate before it closed at curfew. ‘Nesta said that this Gervase claimed he was going to get a bed at Buckfast Abbey the next night, though I wouldn’t trust anything he said.’

‘As your clerk mentioned, he has to sell the relic to a bunch of monks or priests to realize any profit on his theft,’ added Ralph Morin. ‘But from the direction that chapman was going, he could have been aiming east, to sell it somewhere like Wells Cathedral or Glastonbury Abbey.’

Gwyn nodded his shaggy head. ‘That old fellow in Clyst reckoned the dying man mentioned Glastonbury just before he passed out.’

With this information as the only clues they possessed, the coroner and the constable agreed to search in both directions as soon as the city gates opened in the morning.

‘You and Gwyn go east towards Somerset,’ suggested Ralph Morin, ‘and I’ll send Gabriel and a couple of men down the Plymouth road towards Buckfast. This fellow is on foot, so horsemen should catch him up, even though he may have had two days’ start.’

John spent a restless night, even though he knew Nesta could come to no harm in the castle, with the sheriff away and the sergeant’s wife pledged to look after her. Matilda was as surly as usual and made no mention over supper of her unexpected intercession on the Welshwoman’s behalf. Once again, John realized how little he understood Matilda, who was capable of surprising him with acts of kindness, even though she maintained her grim façade most of the time.

After a quick but substantial breakfast in his maid Mary’s cook-shed in the yard, the coroner went across to the stables opposite, where the farrier was saddling up the patient Odin, and a few moments later he rode out to meet Gwyn at Carfoix. They had agreed to leave Thomas behind, as his reluctant efforts at riding side-saddle on his miserable pony would only slow them down–and he was needed at Rougemont to write down the confessions of the two outlaws now incarcerated in the foul cells below the keep.

Gwyn was waiting cheerfully on his big brown mare, ready for anything the day might bring. As they trotted out of the South Gate and along past the empty gallows on the Honiton road, the coroner’s officer debated their chances of finding Simon Claver.

‘If he went westward, then he would have reached Buckfast by now, even on foot. But Gabriel and his men should still get news of him there.’

‘We have the better chance, if he’s making for Glastonbury or Wells,’ called de Wolfe, over the clip of the hoofs. ‘Few men will cover more than fifteen miles in these shortening days.’

Their fear was that, after Honiton, Simon might have turned off towards Bridport and Dorchester, if he was aiming for the abbeys and cathedrals of the south-east. But Somerset was still the best bet, thought John, and they kept on doggedly for the next few hours. The rutted track of the high road was in its best condition in this cold, dry weather, and they were able to put a good many miles behind them before dusk fell. They found an alehouse in a village beyond Ilminster and endured a poor meal there, before finding a heap of hay in a nearby tithe barn for a night’s sleep. The coroner and his officer had slept in far worse places during their campaigning days and were quite content with their accommodation.

The next morning, after some stale bread and hard cheese from Gwyn’s saddlebag, they were on their way again, John still anxious about Nesta, now that Richard de Revelle might have returned to Rougemont from his marital duties at Tiverton. They passed the usual thin stream of travellers going in both directions–pilgrims, merchants, ox-carts, flocks of sheep and a few pigs and goats, as well as the occasional chapman and pedlar to remind them of the relic dealer’s fate. An east wind now blew a fine powdering of snow on to the grey countryside, and John huddled deeper into his wolfskin cloak and pulled the hood up over his head. Gwyn now sported a leather shoulder cape with a pointed cowl, under which he wore an old barley sack wrapped around his neck.

They trotted on for another couple of hours, staring suspiciously at every traveller they passed, trudging along the highway. At an alehouse in a small hamlet, they stopped for some bread and meat, warming themselves with a pot of ale which the landlord mulled with a red-hot poker. They enquired whether any man with a rotted nose had called there in the past day or so, but no one had seen such a traveller.

When they went on their way again, under a leaden sky that promised more snow, Gwyn voiced a question that had been in de Wolfe’s mind.

‘How long are we to keep going, Crowner?’ he asked.

‘Until nightfall. We’ll turn back in the morning,’ grunted John. ‘By then we’ll have outdistanced him on foot. If we don’t see any sign of the swine, it means he must either have gone west or turned off to Dorchester.’

‘Then let’s hope Gabriel had better luck at Buckfast,’ prayed the Cornishman. But a mile farther on, the luck turned out to be theirs.

Here the road passed between dense woods on either side, the trees coming right down to the edge of the track. A cart laden with straw passed them in the opposite direction, and on the empty road ahead, they saw a lone figure trudging along, a long staff in one hand. As they came nearer, they saw that he wore a shabby grey mantle with a hood and that he was limping slightly. From the back, he looked little different to scores of others they had encountered, but on hearing the clip of their horse’s hoofs, the man turned his head. Being an Exeter man, living near the Bush, he recognized the coroner immediately. Throwing down his staff, he ran for the shelter of the trees, only a few yards away. With a roar, Gwyn spurred his mare after him, but he was too late to reach him before the man vanished into the undergrowth that choked the spaces between the tall trees.

De Wolfe was only inches behind, and with a curse he slid from Odin’s back as Gwyn leapt from his own saddle and plunged into the forest after the fugitive. Though most of the leaves had fallen, there were tangled masses of bramble and bracken between the first trees, but once they were in deeper, the ground was almost bare and the three men pounded along, weaving between the trunks. Though Gwyn had a start, he was heavier than the wiry coroner and de Wolfe rapidly caught him up.