Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

‘At least we’ve found your man and you can take him back to his family for a decent burial.’

The baron glowered at the corpse. ‘I want the swine who killed him. Was it these outlaws or the foresters? Whoever it is will be sorry when I catch up with them.’

‘The King’s law will deal with them. But we have to find them first.’

Ferrars ordered his men to make a rough bier of branches to carry the body home and they then set out on the tramp back to Lustleigh.

‘De Wolfe, I’ve been thinking about your journey to Winchester. In the circumstances, I’ve decided to come with you. I need to go there soon on other business, but you may need a little extra persuasion to get the Curia to send a force down here. To them, Devon is a distant country full of yokels and savages, good only for producing tin and wool for their benefit.’

Privately, John felt that his personal connections, especially with his old crusading commander, Hubert Walter, would be sufficient, but he was in no position to contradict Lord Ferrars. He accepted with good grace, and on reflection thought that however proficient he and Gwyn were with swords, a larger party would be that much safer on the long road to Hampshire.

When they arrived back in Lustleigh, they delivered the dead man to his wailing wife and grieving family. For formality’s sake, to fulfil the legal requirements, John held a five-minute inquest using the members of the search party as jurors, to deliver a verdict of murder by persons as yet unknown. Thomas was not there to record the very abbreviated proceedings, but de Wolfe could dictate the essentials when he returned to Exeter.

Ferrars and his son and steward were going back to Tiverton, so John bade them farewell at Lustleigh, arranging to meet them at Honiton, on the road to the east, at noon in two days’ time, all prepared for the journey to England’s royal capital.

John debated whether or not to take Thomas de Peyne with them to Winchester. He doubted whether such a poor horseman could keep up with the party, especially as Ferrars was such a short-tempered, intolerant man. However, on Gwyn’s suggestion, they hired a better horse from the farrier’s stables for the clerk, a sturdy but docile palfrey, meant for a lady’s mount. In the one day they had before leaving, Gwyn insisted that Thomas give up his side saddle and ‘sit on a horse like a man’, as he put it. Ignoring Thomas’s protests, he made him practise up and down Canon’s Row for an hour until the little fellow learned not to fall off. On Friday morning, the three of them set of for Honiton, which was a convenient meeting point for riders from both Exeter and Tiverton. Guy and Hugh Ferrars arrived with half a dozen men-at-arms in leather cuirasses. These were covered with tabards bearing Ferrars’ armorial emblem, in the new fashion for displaying the family crest — in this case a golden arm grasping a hammer, on a field of crimson. De Wolfe suspected that Ferrars was developing political ambitions to match his increasing lands and wealth and wanted to make an impression on the established grandees who ran England in the continued absence of the King. It was probably this motive, as much as concern about the forest problem, which was taking him to Winchester.

The journey was long but uneventful, apart from Thomas slipping from his saddle near Wimbourne Minster, to the great amusement of Ferrars’ soldiers. The distance from Exeter was over a hundred miles, and at a steady pace the journey took them three days.

They stopped overnight at Dorchester and Ringwood, where Ferrars claimed hospitality from manorial lords that he knew — in one case, he actually owned the manor himself. He, together with his son, steward and John de Wolfe, fed and slept in the manor houses, while Gwyn, Thomas and the men-at-arms found a heap of straw in the outhouses and barns and ate well in the kitchens, to the delight and amusement of the maids.

During the many hours of riding through the long summer days, John had plenty of time to mull over his personal affairs back in Exeter, not that such prolonged meditation brought him any nearer a solution. What did he really feel about the women in his life? Similar to his devotion to King Richard, his ingrained sense of honour tilted him towards his duty to Matilda, much as she exasperated and annoyed him for most of his waking hours. It had been a marriage of convenience, and though John had had virtually no say in the decision, the bond had been made under the judicial and spiritual laws and was almost impossible to put asunder. His hopes that Matilda’s entry into a nunnery would annul the marriage contract seemed doomed, as John de Alençon, who should be best informed, seemed to be pessimistic about his chances.

In any case, would Matilda stay in Polsloe? After more than sixteen years of wedded purgatory, he knew his wife’s character very well indeed, and was all too aware of her fondness for good food and fine clothes. Though he did not doubt her genuine regard for the Church and all its appurtenances, as well as her faith in God and all his saints, he also well knew that there was a large social element in her endless attendances at St Olave’s and the cathedral. They were the places to be seen with the wives of burgesses, knights and guildmasters — venues for showing off her newest kirtles and mantles and currying invitations to feasts in the Guildhall.

As they trotted along through endless lines of trees and past a legion of strip-fields around the villages on the Winchester road, his thoughts turned to Nesta, whom he had left still pale and fragile in a priory cell.

She had changed somehow, he reflected. In the weeks since she had announced her pregnancy, she seemed to have shrunk away from him, though since her miscarriage her attitude had slanted a different way, one that his blunt masculine sensibility could not fathom. He felt recently that even Thomas now had more of a rapport with Nesta that he did himself. Though it would be ludicrous to feel any jealousy for the little clerk, he had the impression that there was some secret between them to which he was not privy. He loved Nesta, he decided with some trepidation — and having got used to the idea of becoming father to her child, the sudden ending of that prospect seemed to have left him adrift.

Was he being punished for his sins? he wondered. Like everyone — with the possible exception of Gwyn — he believed in the Almighty. He had never even contemplated not believing, as faith was an ingrained part of life, like sleeping, eating and making love. It was dinned into everyone from the moment they could crawl — mothers, fathers and the priests built up a solidly tangible milieu of God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints and angels, as well as heaven, hell and the Devil. Sin was inescapable: the clerics thundered that every child was born with original sin and you should spend the rest of your life trying to diminish its burden before you died. Most people lost no sleep over this, and though they never dreamt of questioning it most never gave it a thought, except perhaps during the hour spent standing in a cold church being harangued by the parish priest.

But maybe he had done something so wrong that his burden of sin had increased almost beyond redemption, and now he was being warned to be vigilant before it was too late. As he rode along, he went over all his potential mortal sins during the past forty-one years. He had killed plenty of men, God knew — and, of course, God did know. But they were all slain in battle or self-defence, so surely that was no sin? He had dispatched two in the forest only a few days ago, but it was him or them. He had killed dozens in Palestine, but surely ridding the Holy Land of Mohammedans was the whole point of the Crusades! Did not the Church actively canvas for recruits to liberate Jerusalem? John himself had accompanied Archbishop Baldwin around Wales in ’88 in an intensive recruiting campaign for the Third Crusade. In the Irish and French campaigns, again he had slain countless men, but that was for his King, the anointed of God. No, a soldier’s duty could be no sin.