Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

He was too late by a minute, but joined the throng clustered solicitously around the fallen landlady. One of them happened to be Adam Russell, the apothecary, who pushed his way through to where one of the serving maids was pillowing Nesta’s head on her apron.

‘She’s fainted, but she looks terrible,’ said the girl.

The apothecary dropped to his knees alongside the Welsh woman and felt her pulse and lifted an eyelid. ‘Get her to her bed, that’s all we can do.’

Edwin looked dubious. ‘That’s up the bloody ladder, Adam! Hard to do until she comes to her senses.’

‘Put her on my pallet in the cook-house,’ suggested the maid. ‘That’s good enough until she can climb to her own bed.’

With much fussing and concern, willing hands lifted Nesta and carried her through the back door to the large hut in the yard, where the two maids lived and where they also prepared food. Thomas insisted on accompanying them, and as he was virtually accepted as a priest by the staff of the Bush, he was as welcome as the apothecary.

As they laid her on the long hay-filled sack that was the maid’s bed, and covered her with a coarse woollen blanket, Nesta began to stir and moan. Her eyelids fluttered and a moment later she was staring blankly at Thomas.

‘What’s happening?’ she began, then gave a weak cry as memory flooded back. ‘He’s dead! My John, he’s gone!’

‘Hush, girl, it’s just a rumour,’ crooned Thomas. ‘We don’t know what’s happened yet.’

Edwin chased everyone out of the hut except the apothecary, Thomas and the maid and stood guard outside the door, leaving them to comfort his mistress. Nesta tried to struggle upright, but Adam gently pushed her back on the pallet. ‘Stay quiet for a time, keep your head low until you feel stronger,’ he advised.

As Thomas held her hand and spoke softly and reassuringly in her ear, the apothecary felt the pulse in the other wrist, a worried expression stealing over his face.

‘Get her some wine with hot water in it,’ he murmured to the maid. ‘I’ll go back to my shop and get something to soothe and strengthen her — some valerian and other herbs might help.’ He rose and left, while the girl went out to the brew-house to find a flask of wine. Thomas was left with Nesta, who was gripping his hand tightly.

‘Tell me again it’s not true, Thomas,’ she whispered.

‘It’s certainly not true, good lady,’ he said with a confidence he did not really share. ‘I don’t know the truth of everything, but it seems he’s got lost in the forest. Knowing the crowner, that’s no great hazard, after all the wars he’s fought in his lifetime.’

She made no reply, but two tears appeared from under her closed eyelids and trickled down her cheeks, which were so pale as to look faintly green in the evening light from the unshuttered window.

The maid came back with a cup of hot, watered wine and managed to coax her mistress to take a few sips. Thomas sat for a long time holding her hand, gazing anxiously at her pale face. Nesta appeared to be sleeping, but when he tried to gently slide his hand from hers, her fingers gripped his to restrain them.

Eventually, Adam Russell came back with some potions in two small flasks and tried to persuade the landlady to drink the bitter fluids. As Thomas and the girl attempted to lift her up a little, Nesta groaned and her free hand slid to her belly. ‘It hurts me!’ she muttered.

With a look of concern, the maid lifted the blanket and looked underneath. Dropping it, she looked at the apothecary.

‘She’s losing blood down below. Her gown is soaking!’

Propriety prevented him from looking for himself, but he readily accepted her word. ‘Her pulse told me something was not right,’ he murmured, looking anxiously at the increasing pallor of Nesta’s face.

‘What can you do?’ demanded Thomas desperately.

Adam shook his head. ‘This is beyond my skill. I’m an apothecary, not a physician or midwife. Everyone knows she is with child. This is clearly some problem with that condition.’

There were no physicians in Exeter, all medical care apart from apothecaries’ drugs being provided by the infirmarians in the five priories in and around the city. Thomas thought rapidly, drawing on his experience with the coroner and his officer.

‘Then she must be taken to St Katherine’s in Polsloe. There Dame Madge is an expert on these matters.’

Adam readily agreed, not wanting to take any responsibility for a worsening condition. He jumped up and went back into the inn, returning a few moments later with the news that one of the local carters would willingly take her to the priory in his wagon.

As the man went off to harness up his ox, Thomas remained with Nesta, while the two maids scurried around fetching more blankets and some clothing for their mistress to take to Posloe.

‘We must take you to be cared for by the nuns, Nesta,’ said the clerk gently. He had to lean close to her as she lay pale and motionless on the mattress, but her lips moved in reply.

‘Then both John’s women will be in Polsloe,’ she murmured.

‘It’s the best place for you to recover, Nesta,’ advised Thomas. ‘You remember Dame Madge, who helped us some months ago? She will soon get you well again.’

‘Am I losing the child, Thomas?’ she whispered.

He was unable to lie to her, though he had no real knowledge.

‘I don’t know, my girl. I just don’t know. It’s in God’s hands.’

He crossed himself surreptitiously.

‘It’s God’s judgement, Thomas. As with you and the cathedral roof — he refused to let us take our own lives, but now he’s taking the babe’s instead.’

‘You don’t know that, Nesta. I know nothing of women’s ailments, but at Polsloe they may make everything well again.’

She shook her head weakly.

‘No, dear Thomas. This is God’s retribution upon me … maybe it’s just as well, for now there’ll be no child to be born in sin. And I’ll not have to tell John the truth after all.’

The tears forced their way from under her lids again as she sank her head wearily back on to the rough hessian of her maid’s bed.

Gwyn slept fitfully on the floor of the alehouse, getting up just as a trace of dawn had lightened the eastern sky. All around were the men-at-arms, snoring as they lay rolled in their riding cloaks. Ralph Morin and Gabriel had opted for a penny bed in the loft, but Gwyn had been too restless to bother with a mattress. He wandered outside and, to clear his senses, doused his head in cold water from the horse trough. Three of the soldiers were sleeping on the ground near the animals, with another acting as sentry trying to keep awake. Gwyn grunted at him, then wandered around the inn, willing the dawn to strengthen, so that he could begin the search again.

He had had a fantasy the previous evening, while walking from the lane back to the alehouse, that maybe he would walk into the taproom and find Crowner John sitting on a bench waiting for their return. Unfortunately it remained a fantasy, and he faced the day with foreboding. Ralph and the garrison men might leave later, but Gwyn was determined to stay and search these woods until he discovered what had happened to his master. They had not been together across most of the known world for almost twenty years for him to abandon him now, within a few miles of home.

To kill time until it was fully light, he wandered around the back of the small, low building, where there was a ramshackle privy alongside a stinking midden. Needing to rid himself of the last of the previous night’s ale, he loosened his belt and pulled down the front of his breeches to relieve himself into the ditch that ran behind the tavern, only a few yards from the first of the forest trees. The trunks were just visible in the growing light, and as he stood there he tried to throw his mind into the darkness to seek out John de Wolfe by sheer will-power.