Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

The three men stood around him, regarding him grimly.

‘Your life is already forfeit, Cruch,’ said John harshly. ‘You have been seen not once but twice dealing with Robert Winter’s scum.’

The leathery features of the dealer contorted as he babbled his innocence, but the faces of his accusers remained implacable.

‘You will hang, unless the justices decide you should be mutilated, blinded and castrated,’ said de Wolfe. At this, Cruch sagged against the tree, almost fainting with terror.

‘There is one possible chance for you, if you can persuade me to be lenient.’

‘Anything, anything, Crowner! I had no part in the attack on you last week,’ croaked Stephen. ‘It was Winter who sent his men to deal with whoever was spying on them. We had no idea it was you.’

When de Wolfe put his questions to the man, he was so eager to reply that his words fell out in an almost incomprehensible gabble.

They learned that he admitted to being a messenger between Father Edmund and Robert Winter. This had arisen as an offshoot of his legitimate trading with Buckfast. Some months before, Treipas had paid him to seek out the outlaws, who were known to creep back into towns and villages for clandestine drinking and whoring. Cruch had provided ponies for the outlaws, paid for by the priest, then sent purses to them for reasons which Cruch claimed he knew nothing about.

‘There were slips of parchment with the money, which Robert Winter alone could read, for I could not. I keep my accounts on tally sticks.’

Even Gwyn’s heavy hands squeezing his neck until his eyes bulged and his tongue protruded failed to get the man to admit any more, and John was eventually satisfied that they had learned all they could for the moment.

‘We’ll keep you in the cells in Rougemont for now,’ he said. ‘When we move against Winter’s gang, we will need you to show us the various places where you met him in the forest. If you comply, then maybe I will turn my back at the end of it all and forget that you are a prisoner — understand?’

Cruch nodded his understanding, well aware that with hard men like the coroner and his officer, his life hung by a thread. Gabriel and Gwyn agreed to take the man back to Rougemont and deliver him to the care of Stigand the gaoler, while John went home to a well-earned rest. As they began to frog-march him away, de Wolfe called a last warning to the horse-trader.

‘I hear it rumoured that you yourself are already an escaped outlaw. If you have any sense, if we do let you go at the end of this you’ll either take ship out of England — or at least hide yourself in Yorkshire or Norfolk, well away from here!’

With a wry grin at Cruch’s abject terror, the coroner set off for home and bed.

The interview with the sheriff next morning, which Ralph Morin had been anticipating with such delight, came fully up to his expectations. He marched into de Revelle’s chamber behind the coroner, a forbidding figure in his long mailed hauberk, wearing a round iron helmet and a sword dangling from his hip, as if ready to do battle that very moment.

De Wolfe’s armament was less obvious, but even more potent. He carried three rolls of parchment, from which dangled the red seals of both the Chief Justiciar and one of the lesser seals of King Richard, which had been entrusted to Hubert Walter during the monarch’s absence abroad.

John threw these down on to the sheriff’s desk with a flourish. Though he could not read them himself, he knew every word by heart, thanks to Thomas’s translation.

‘Read those first, before you even open your mouth to protest!’ he snarled to his brother-in-law, a more literate man than himself. The coroner’s triumphant tone stifled Richard’s tirade before it began and he rapidly scanned through the unambiguous Commissions that the Justiciar had issued. His appreciative audience watched the sheriff’s narrow face tighten with horror, indignation and finally anger as the import of the documents sank in.

‘This is intolerable — outrageous!’ he fumed, as he threw the rolls back across the table towards John. ‘I am the supreme authority in this county. You can’t usurp the shrievalty with something penned on a piece of parchment!’

De Wolfe leered at him, delighted at this further opportunity to pay Richard back for all the sneers and slights he had inflicted in the past — especially his spitefulness in telling Matilda of Nesta’s pregnancy.

‘That smacks of outright treason, brother-in-law!’ he responded. ‘See those seals? They are those of your king and the man to whom he has entrusted his kingdom. The king who, misguided as he may have been, made you sheriff. Are you now saying you dispute those orders or intend to disobey them?’

De Revelle’s mouth opened and closed like that of a stranded fish, as his face flushed like a beetroot. He was desperate to protest, but afraid that any rash words would brand him openly as a rebel or traitor. The coroner went through the main provisions of the Commission, ticking off the points on his fingers. When he came to the matter of the Wardenship, he took particular delight in demolishing de Revelle’s ambitions.

‘You are specifically excluded from putting yourself forward as Warden of the Forests, in the unlikely event of Nicholas de Bosco giving up that office. And unless you tread very carefully indeed, Richard, you may well be deprived of the office you now hold. It was only thanks to our sovereign’s good nature — some would say folly — that he failed to crack down on all the supporters of John’s rebellion.’

It was a fact that when the Lionheart had been released from his incarceration in Germany he had been extraordinarily lenient with those who had plotted to steal his throne in his absence — he even forgave the ringleader, his brother John, and restored many of his possessions.

The sheriff began some stuttering condemnation of this latest humiliation, but his past record of flirting with the rebels left him too vulnerable to make any effective argument against John’s new-found supremacy.

‘We are going to march against these outlaws and bring these forester friends of yours to account,’ declared the coroner. ‘And I doubt that your verderer protégé Philip le Strete will have his appointment ratified when the matter next comes before the County Court!’

At that moment the door burst open and Guy Ferrars and his son strode in, ignoring the attempts of the guard on the door to announce them.

‘You’ve told him already, then?’ barked the irascible baron. ‘We arrived from Portsmouth last night. The foot soldiers should be here by this evening.’

Richard de Revelle, his nerves now twanging like a bow-string, stared at the new arrivals as if they had come from the moon.

‘What soldiers? What are you talking about?’

‘I’d not got around to that yet, Richard,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘You explain, Ralph — they’re your troops.’

The castle constable gleefully told the sheriff that he had been put in command of a company of men-at-arms destined for the King’s army, to flush out the outlaws and other undesirables from the most troublesome part of the forest.

‘This is intolerable!’ gibbered de Revelle. ‘I am sheriff and they should be placed under my control. So don’t expect me to cooperate with you. I want nothing to do with this madness.’

‘You won’t be asked to take part, Richard,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘In fact, as Commissioner, I won’t have you anywhere near this operation. I don’t trust you.’

De Revelle ranted and raved for a few more minutes, being repeatedly rebuffed by the others. Finally, an irate Guy Ferrars leaned over his table and thrust his face close to that of the sheriff.

‘Listen, de Revelle! You’re lucky to be allowed to sit safely in this chamber while better men go off to clear up the chaos you helped to foment. But I tell you, though the friends you have among certain barons and churchmen may have protected you so far, your time is fast running out!’