Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

‘That’s enough for now, Gwyn, let him be,’ ordered de Wolfe, after Smok had let out a tirade of yells and curses. Gwyn stepped back and the page scrambled to his feet and backed away, his piggy eyes blazing with hate.

William Lupus sat rigid, tight lipped with anger. It was something new for him to have his authority in the forest challenged so publicly.

‘You’ll regret this, de Wolfe!’ he hissed.

‘Sir John de Wolfe to you, fellow,’ snapped the coroner, with deliberate arrogance. ‘You’ll address a knight who carries the King’s commission with proper respect! Remember that you’re nothing but a common gamekeeper, even if you wear a fancy badge on your tunic.’

White faced with rage, Lupus pulled his stallion’s head around to leave, but John grabbed the bit-ring to stop him.

‘Wait, I’ve not finished with you yet. Get out of that saddle.’

The forester looked about him, ready to break away by force, but he found Gwyn on the other side, grinning up and rattling his sword in its scabbard.

With seething ill grace, he slowly dismounted and handed his reins to Henry Smok, who had got to his feet and was glowering at Gwyn, now his mortal enemy.

‘Well, what is it?’ he snarled to the coroner.

De Wolfe stood with his hands on his hips, his sword hilt prominently displayed as he glared at the other man.

‘I’ve been hearing bad tidings about you, William Lupus. I don’t know what your game is, but believe me, from now on you’re a marked man. So tread carefully, forester! Stick to your vert and your venison and don’t dare to question the powers of the King’s coroner again, d’you hear me?’

In spite of his innate arrogance, Lupus’s gaze dropped before the vulture-like figure of de Wolfe. He swung away and muttered threateningly under his breath, ‘You’ve not heard the last of this.’

John caught the words and snapped at the retreating back of the forester.

‘Neither has the Warden of the Forests. Nor the Chief Justiciar — nor King Richard himself, if needs be. Watch your step, William Lupus!’

This time the man made no reply, but after an angry gesture at his page he mounted up and the two cantered rapidly away, with the jeers of the villagers of Manaton ringing in their ears.

While John de Wolfe was riding back from the edge of Dartmoor, his mistress was giving instructions to Edwin and her maids about their tasks while she was away from the inn for an hour or so.

The day was as warm as ever, so Nesta wore no mantle or shawl when she went out into Idle Lane and walked across to the top of Stepcote Hill, the steep lane that led directly down to the West Gate. When she was bustling about the tavern, she always concealed her hair inside a linen helmet, but today she had discarded the coif and allowed her auburn tresses to hang in two plaits over her breast, the ends braided into two green ribbons.

As she passed the Saracen inn, she pointedly ignored the lewd stares and suggestive comments of a pair of foreign seamen who leaned against the wall, quart pots in their fists. The slope steepened and became terraced by shallow steps leading down to the level ground inside the town wall, alongside the appropriately named church of St Mary Steps.

A stream of dirty water washed sewage down the central gutter, much of it contributed by Willem the Fleming, the oafish landlord of the Saracen, who deliberately threw a leather bucket of slops out of the door just after she had passed. Lifting the hem of her woollen kirtle with one hand, she sidestepped the flow and ignored the coarse laughter behind her. Another day she might well have turned and given the offenders a lashing with her tongue, for she could curse with the best of them, both in English and Welsh.

But today Nesta had no inclination for a shouting match. Her spirits were low and her mind troubled. All she could think about was the life that was growing deep in her womb — and the complications that it would inevitably bring. So far, no maternal urges had surfaced; she felt nothing yet for whoever it was that was lodging in her belly. Apart from the loss of her monthly flow — something that happened irregularly from time to time, anyway — she felt no different. It was only the realisation that she was going to have a child, and all the trouble that was to flow from it, which had suddenly turned her world upside down.

As she walked through the West Gate, oblivious of the pushing and jostling of porters with their huge bundles of raw wool and the yelling of drovers bringing in sheep and pigs for slaughter, Nesta thought of John and his avowed determination to stand by her. Was he really happy at her condition? Or was his love for her suppressing his concern for the burdens and aggravation that would descend upon his head once it became common knowledge that he was going to recognise a bastard? And what of the other problem, the one that had kept her awake the whole of the night, giving her pretty face the dark smudges under her eyes and the sad droop of a usually cheerful mouth?

Outside the city walls, she trudged on towards the unfinished bridge across the river, whose many arches curved up over the muddy grass of the tidal valley of the Exe before they came to an abrupt end at the main channel.

Before reaching the ramp to the bridge, Nesta turned right, down into Frog Lane. This was a track going upstream across Exe Island, worn down by the feet of porters, pack mules and sumpter horses taking wool to the fulling mills at the upper part of the marshy island. There were dwellings dotted along the lane, mostly poor shacks of old timber which housed mill workers and those who could not afford to live within the city walls. Side tracks branched off Frog Lane towards the river, broken by leats that cut through the marsh and which filled up at every tide and when heavy rain fell on faraway Exmoor, the source of the river. Floods often carried away the flimsy huts, and every year lives were lost when spring tides or cloud-bursts deluged the island.

It was on to one of these sodden tracks that Nesta now turned, heading for a solitary shack that looked even more dilapidated than most. Perched on the edge of a deep leat, it was little more than a collection of rotting planks that leaned dangerously to one side. The roof was thatched with reeds, on which ragged grass and weeds were growing. A hurdle that had once acted as a door had crumbled to the ground and the entrance was now covered with dirty hessian from the coverings of a couple of wool bales. The Welsh woman approached hesitantly, thankful that the dry weather had at least turned the usually glutinous mud into damp earth. Having no door to knock on, she stood uncertainly for a moment outside the crude curtain. At her feet, she saw a pile of white chicken feathers, guts and a severed cockerel’s head, probably from the vanquished contestant of a cock-fight, given to the old woman who lived here for her dinner.

‘Lucy? Lucy, are you there?’

She called several times until a gnarled, filthy hand slowly pulled the sacking aside. A haggard face appeared, and though Nesta had seen this woman many times before her appearance still sent a tremor of fear and distaste down her spine. Bearded Lucy, as she was universally known, had wispy grey hair growing over all her face except for the upper cheeks and forehead. It surrounded her mouth and trailed over her pointed chin. Even the hooked nose was hairy, and a moustache partly concealed the toothless gums when her thin lips parted. Lucy’s eyes were milky with cataracts, and with her bent back and trembling claw-like hands Nesta wondered how she had avoided being condemned for a witch.

‘Who is it? I can see a woman’s shape — do you want what women usually want of me?’