Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

De Wolfe thought about this for a moment.

‘He’s never seen me, to my knowledge. Tomorrow, could we not follow him discreetly to see if he gets up to anything near Ashburton?’

The Cornishman readily agreed. ‘Surely, if we keep well back, he’ll not notice us on the main west road. There are always travellers going back and forth.’

The coroner hawked and spat into his empty fireplace. ‘It would be good to catch him meeting up with an outlaw again. Then we could seize the pair of them and make them talk.’

It was agreed that they should ride out of the West Gate as soon as it opened in the morning, keeping a sharp eye open for the horse-dealer. They would ride a few miles along the Plymouth road and hide in the trees to await his passing, then follow him at a distance.

John suggested that, as they would both be up before dawn, they had better get a good night’s sleep, a rather shamefaced excuse not to go down to the Bush that evening.

‘We’re not taking the little fellow with us, I hope?’ grunted Gwyn.

‘No damned fear. He’d stand out like a sore thumb, sitting sideways on that old nag! If there were a chase, he couldn’t keep up.’

‘And if there were a fight, he’d wet himself and run!’ chortled Gwyn, not without some affection for the timid clerk.

In the early light the following day, they sat waiting for the city gate to open, lurking up the street towards the little church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall, whose priest had come to a nasty end a few weeks earlier.

De Wolfe watched the crowd clustered inside the gate, in case Stephen Cruch had also risen early, but there was no sign of him as the stout iron-bound gates swung apart. They waited for the confused thrusting and shoving to abate, as the people going out pushed past the traders and herdsmen coming in to market, driving sheep, calves and pigs before them, followed by a cavalcade of country folk carrying baskets of vegetables, poultry, eggs and everything else to satisfy the hunger of the citizens of Exeter.

Once the road was clear, they trotted out and forded the river, de Wolfe’s legs getting wetter than usual as he had borrowed a smaller mare from Andrew the farrier, the huge destrier Odin being too conspicuous for a surveillance exploit. As they clipped down the road that led to Cornwall, John decided to increase the distance before they turned aside to wait for the horse-dealer.

‘If he’s going to meet anyone, I doubt it’ll be much before Ashburton, as it’s too far away from your outlaw’s hideout. So we’ll put a good ten miles between us to avoid having to follow him too far.’

He silently hoped that Cruch was going to ride out that day and not decide to sleep off his drinking on his mattress in the city. It was pure speculation that he might be meeting anyone, other than in the course of his legitimate business.

An hour and a half later, John decided that they had gone far enough and turned off on a stretch of track where the trees came close to the edge of the dusty, rutted road. They found a place where some blackthorn bushes gave cover, then put their mounts on head-ropes farther back in the trees, where a small clearing offered them some grass to crop.

From where they sat on the ground behind the bushes, they could just glimpse the road, enough to see who was passing. Gwyn had taken the inevitable bread and hard cheese from his saddle pouch, along with a flask of cider, and they waited in comfort for over half an hour.

As Gwyn had prophesied, there was a constant trickle of traffic along what was the busiest road in this most western part of England. Ox-carts laden with goods, bands of pilgrims on their long journey to Canterbury, drovers with cattle and sheep, merchants on horseback and lesser folk on foot — all passed the gap in the blackthorn bushes. Only priests and the poorest folk travelled alone, having nothing worth stealing, the rest being in groups for mutual protection. A couple of clumsy horse-drawn carriages bore manor-lords or their wives and had an armed escort of a few men with pikes and swords against possible attack by footpads and outlaws.

After three-quarters of an hour, when all the cider had gone, Gwyn began to get restive. ‘D’you think the bloody man isn’t coming? Maybe I misheard what was said. I couldn’t get too near.’

‘Have patience!’ muttered De Wolfe. ‘Though if he’s a horse-dealer, he should have a good mount, which should have got here quicker than we did.’

Another ten minutes went by until Gwyn hissed in his ear.

‘That’s him, the fellow on the white stallion!’

John peered through another gap in the bushes and saw a rider trotting past on a big, good-looking horse. He was a small man in a brown tunic and breeches, with a floppy woollen cap on his head. As soon as he had passed, Gwyn jumped up and collected their own mounts, coiling the head-ropes on to his saddle bow.

The coroner climbed on to his chestnut mare. ‘There’s no great hurry. We don’t want to get too near. That big white steed’s all too conspicuous.’

They waited until a pair of merchants with two well-armed servants passed, then swung behind them and tried to keep Stephen Cruch in view. All was well for a mile or two, but the horse-trader was riding slightly more quickly than the merchants and was pulling ahead, so eventually the coroner and his officer had to risk overtaking.

Thankfully, a few minutes later two other riders came out of a sidetrack just behind Cruch and gave cover for another couple of miles until once again John and Gwyn were obliged to pass them.

‘This is getting difficult,’ growled John. ‘Try to make yourself look smaller!’ he added facetiously to the great red-haired lump.

‘Can’t be that far to Ashburton now. Perhaps the bastard is just going about his normal business,’ offered Gwyn.

They slowed up as much as they could, the merchants almost on their heels. Then the difficult situation was avoided as they rounded a slight bend and saw a tiny hamlet ahead. It was little more than a few cottages, one of which had a bush hanging over its door to signify an alehouse. The place was an outlier of a larger village half a mile off the road, the additional strip-fields here having being assarted by the manor-lord, being just outside the boundary of the Royal Forest.

‘He’s stopping there, Crowner,’ hissed Gwyn. ‘We’d better pull up.’

They reined in and let the merchants pass, getting curious looks at their riding antics. Their quarry had pulled over to the hitching rail of the tavern, where several other horses were tethered, then dismounted and gone inside. The merchants and their escort also stopped and entered the low building, while the coroner and his officer eased their horses on to the verge, partly sheltered by a scraggy elder tree.

‘Now what do we do?’ demanded Gwyn. ‘I could do with a quart myself, but we can’t go near that place in case there’s someone in there who would recognise one of us.’

De Wolfe pondered the situation, indulging in his habit of rasping his fingers over his stubble, which was again, almost due for its weekly mowing. ‘Depends on who might be in there with him — though he might just have fancied a drink. You can’t go, for if it’s one of Winter’s band, he’ll know you, like as not.’

Gwyn reluctantly agreed. ‘But you’re too well known as the coroner throughout the whole county, so you can’t risk it. We’re stuck here, then!’

They waited behind the stunted tree for what seemed an age. Gwyn dismounted and squatted on a dry-stone wall at the edge of the field, which contained serried rows of crops slanting up the hillside. De Wolfe lay on his side in the weeds, chewing a stem of long grass while he kept an eye on the alehouse, a few hundred yards away. After years of campaigning, he was well accustomed to waiting, as most soldiering consisted of weeks of inaction before a few hours of bloody battle. Almost an hour went by and the midsummer sun rose higher in a pale blue sky, making the morning hotter and hotter. Gwyn’s dust-laden throat was crying out for a jug of ale, but his saddle flask was empty.