Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

He drew back and stalked to the door, his son and the coroner following him. As he jerked it open, Ferrars made one last threat.

‘I shall devote myself to getting rid of you as sheriff of this county. We need someone trustworthy, like Henry de Furnellis, to sit there in your place!’

After his visitors had stormed out, Richard de Revelle picked up a pottery ink bottle from his table and with a scream of ill temper hurled it at the opposite wall. The missile exploded and black fluid ran down the stones like blood leaking from his wounded heart.

The men-at-arms from Portsmouth spent the next two days resting from their long march and getting their equipment ready for the fray on Monday. During this time, the coroner was called out to a fatal accident in the small town of Crediton, where a wall around a cattle pound had collapsed on top of a wood-turner, crushing him under a pile of stones. The wall had been declared unsafe beforehand by many of the local people, and John attached the manor bailiff to the next Eyre, to appear to answer a charge of negligence. He did this with poorly hidden satisfaction, as the manor was one of many belonging to Bishop Marshal. He would have to pay any fine and compensation, which was likely to be substantial, as the turner was a craftsman with a wife and five children to support. John was sorry that he could not have declared the wall a deodand, as it was the instrument of death, but the value of a heap of stones confiscated on behalf of the widow was negligible.

This episode took much of the day, as he held the inquest as soon as he had inspected the scene and the corpse, so it was early evening before he made his daily visit to Nesta at Polsloe Priory. She still had a slight fever, but Dame Madge seemed satisfied that it had not become worse.

John sat by her bed and regaled her with a monologue about the day’s events and the sheriff’s discomfiture at having his authority usurped by his brother-in-law. His mistress listened quietly, holding his hand in hers, until he came to speak of the campaign planned against the outlaws in two days’ time.

Then she struggled more upright on her bed and turned a pale and anxious face towards him.

‘Be careful, John, please! For God’s sake, don’t risk your life again. You were nearly killed by them but a few days ago!’

She sank back, even the effort to rise exhausting her. He gave a lopsided grin, meant to be reassuring.

‘Don’t fret, there’ll be almost a hundred others there too — a few knights and scores of men-at-arms, as well as Ferrars, de Courcy and their men.’

Nesta looked up at him, fearful of losing him after all that she had gone through lately. ‘All the men in England can’t stop a stray arrow striking you, John!’ she whispered.

Anxious to stop this preying on her mind, he changed the subject.

‘Have you seen any sign of Matilda?’ he asked. ‘She still refuses to speak to me, though I’ve glimpsed her in the distance once or twice.’

Nesta gave a slight nod. ‘She’s passed by once or twice.’

She seemed unwilling to elaborate and John, suspecting that she had been ignored by his wife or even vilified, hesitated to probe further. There was no sign of Matilda when he left, and as the prioress was also nowhere to be seen he hauled himself on to Odin and took himself home, feeling that a good battle in the forest was preferable to trying to understand women.

Early on Sunday evening, a meeting was held in Rougemont of all those who were to be involved in directing the campaign the next day. To keep clear of the sheriff, they met in the Shire Hall in the inner bailey, using the benches and trestles on the platform of the bare courthouse for their conference.

The two Ferrars, de Courcy, Ralph Morin, John de Wolfe and Gwyn were joined by three Hampshire knights who had accompanied the foot soldiers from Portsmouth. Only Thomas de Peyne was absent, as John felt his timid presence would be no asset in a battle.

On a large piece of slate, fallen from some roof around the castle, the constable scratched a crude map with a lump of limestone. Like John, he was unable to read or write, but had a good sense of orientation and could draw a useful plan.

‘Here’s Ashburton — and up here is Moretonhampstead,’ he boomed. ‘Between them, and to the west, is a tract of forest where it seems most likely that Winter’s gang is camping at present.’

‘How can you know that?’ grunted Guy Ferrars.

‘Two reeves came in this afternoon, as arranged. They have been spying out the situation for a couple of days on my orders. Several of Winter’s men have been seen in alehouses along the road between these two towns — and they vanished into the forest west of the road.’

‘Does this knave have any useful information?’ asked Hugh Ferrars, jerking a thumb down towards the hall, where Sergeant Gabriel held the shoulder of a dishevelled Stephen Cruch, brought over in manacles from the cells under the keep.

Morin beckoned and Gabriel prodded the horse-dealer nearer the raised dais. ‘How many camps do these brigands have in that part of the forest?’ he demanded.

Cruch, very conscious of the fact that his life and liberty depended on his cooperation, stuttered out all he knew on the matter.

‘I’ve been to three, sire, but there may be more that I’ve never seen.’

At a sign, the sergeant dragged his prisoner up on to the platform and propelled him over to the table.

‘Point to where you think they might be!’ commanded the elder Ferrars. Lifting his chained wrists together, Cruch took the chalk lump and added some marks to the slate.

‘This one’s on the slope of the high moor about here.’

‘That’s the one I visited,’ cut in Gwyn.

The horse-trader pointed out two other sites and gave some directions as to how they could be reached.

‘Take him back to the keep until tomorrow,’ ordered Morin. ‘He can come with us to show us the paths to these places — and woe betide him if he’s trying to fool us!’

Guy Ferrars and Reginald de Courcy, some years older than John, had seen plenty of fighting in their time and were well-acquainted with campaign tactics.

‘I say we should divide the men into two groups and push into the forest from both ends, starting from Ashburton and Moreton,’ said Ferrars.

‘And also have a few men moving up and down the road between them, in case they break out of the middle and vanish across into the woods on the eastern side,’ added de Courcy.

They discussed variations on this plan for a while, with the coroner quietly hoping that they would be lucky enough to find any of Winter’s gang. From past experience, he knew how difficult it could be to find men in dense forest. However, late that evening they had some good fortune which allayed John’s fears about missing the outlaws altogether. A messenger from the bailiff in Lustleigh rode in on a lathered horse with the news that a group of twenty outlaws had been seen by a shepherd late that afternoon. They were crossing the old clapper bridge on the Bovey river, westwards into the forest between Manaton and North Bovey. This at least reduced the large area in which to search for some of them — and it was not far from one of the camps that Cruch had indicated, on the slopes of Easdon Tor.

Soon after dawn, the small army set out, the northern party under Ferrars and de Courcy marching for Moretonhampstead, together with Hugh Ferrars and a score of local men, who would patrol the road. They took Stephen Cruch with them, his wrists loosely tied and an archer stationed near him with orders to shoot him if he tried to escape.

Ralph Morin, de Wolfe and Gwyn took the remainder of the men south-westward to Bovey Tracey, as with the news of the latest position of Winter’s men it was now unnecessary to go as far south as Ashburton.