Bernard Knight - Fear in the Forest

He pushed a heavy leather bag across the table, the neck tied securely with a thong. ‘That’s the price we agreed. Count it if you wish.’

Edmund Treipas shook his head briskly. ‘No need. We’ve done business too often for you to short-change the abbey.’

He pulled the bag of silver coins nearer, then looked quickly around the room, to check that no one else was within sight. Dipping into a deep pocket in his loose robe, he pulled out a smaller purse and slid it across to Stephen. The bag, clinking a little, vanished as if by magic into some recess in Cruch’s brown serge surcoat.

‘I don’t want to know any details, understand?’ said the monk. ‘Just don’t tell me. It’s none of my business how you arrange these affairs.’

He threw down the rest of his drink and stood up, nodding rather curtly at the horse dealer.

‘I’ll see you off with the beasts in the morning, straight after Prime. And you’ll be back here as arranged, in three days’ time.’

He strode out without a backward glance.

In the gathering dusk, John de Wolfe made his way across the Close, the large space around the cathedral. It was almost a city within a city, being under canon law, where the jurisdiction of neither the sheriff and burgesses nor himself could run without the consent of Bishop Henry Marshal.

Tonight no offences were being committed there, apart from Brutus’s leg-lifting desecration of every tree and occasional grave-mound in the cluttered, rubbish-strewn area. Even the irreligious John thought this place was an eyesore, so close to the magnificent church which had so recently been completed.

However, John’s mind was not on the state of ecclesiastical Exeter, but on Nesta, the landlady of the Bush Inn and his beloved mistress. For the last week or two, he had had the feeling that something was wrong. Nothing that he could put a finger on, but in the back of his mind there was a little flutter of concern. Nesta was as affectionate as ever, as talkative as usual and looked as beautiful as always — but something was amiss. He had caught the odd sideways glance when she thought he was not looking and his ear, attuned by two years of loving her, picked up a change in the timbre of her voice now and then.

Much of the time he berated himself for being an old fool, but the worm of doubt always came back to wriggle in his brain. They had had their bad patches and it was only a couple of months since they had got back together again, following her brief affair with Alan of Lyme, the rogue who had run off with her virtue, a week’s takings and her prettiest serving maid.

He could not but help wonder whether some other bastard had taken her fancy, but somehow he thought not. Before the Alan business, he had given her cause for disaffection by neglecting her during a time of particular problems in the coroner’s work, but since they had been reconciled he had gone out of his way to be more attentive. He had not seen any of his other women for a long time — one had dropped out of circulation by getting married again and even the glorious Hilda of Dawlish, the blonde he had known from his youth, was unavailable because her seafaring husband was now shore-bound after a shipwreck.

De Wolfe churned all this around in his mind as he loped through the lanes into South Gate Street and across to Priest Street and then down the hill towards Idle Lane and the tavern. His dog zigzagged before him, marking every house-corner with an inexhaustible supply of urine until they reached the inn on its open patch of ground. Its low stone walls supported a huge thatched roof, and over the low front door a bundle of twigs hung from a bracket to mark its name for the illiterate majority.

Inside, the popular alehouse was as full as usual, but at least the normal fug of spilt ale, cooked onions and sweat was free from eye-smarting smoke, as there was no fire in the big hearth on this warm summer evening. Normally, the wood smoke hung about in a haze until it found its way out beneath the eaves, for unlike John’s house, most buildings did not have the luxury of a chimney.

From habit, he found his usual seat on a bench near the empty fireplace and Brutus crept into his accustomed place on the earthen floor under the rough table. He nodded to a number of other patrons who were regulars like himself and exchanged a few words with the nearest, who all were well aware of — and applauded — his relations with the Welsh innkeeper.

Usually old Edwin, the one-eyed potman, served him as soon as he arrived, but tonight Nesta herself bustled over with a large quart pottery jar of her best brew.

‘And how is the King’s crowner tonight?’ she asked, as she deposited the ale on the boards before him. In spite of her light tone, John already thought he detected something, maybe a forced gaiety. But he was so glad to see her, to be with her, that he pushed the thought aside in the pleasure of the moment.

‘Sit down, my love, and talk to me.’ He looked up at her as she leaned against the table, as neat as ever in a gown of yellow linen, tightly laced around her slim waist, emphasising the curve of her breasts above. Her heart-shaped face had a high forehead and snub nose, the full lips made for kissing. Some curls strayed from under her white linen helmet, as russet as Gwyn’s beard.

‘I can stay only a moment,’ she exclaimed, slipping onto the bench next to him. ‘There’s a party of wool merchants here tonight and they’re clamouring for their supper, so I must chase those idle girls in the back yard.’ The kitchen was in a shed behind the inn, the usual arrangement when fire was such a hazard to other buildings. The Bush had a reputation for the best cooking in the city, as well as for being the cleanest place to get a penny bed for the night.

John slipped an arm around her, heedless of the covert grins of some men on the next table. He felt her softness relax against him and somehow he was reassured that she had not found another man. Yet when they started talking about the events of the two days since he had last seen her, John still sensed that there was something she was leaving unsaid. He was reluctant to ask her straight out whether anything was amiss, in case she told him something he wouldn’t wish to hear. They talked for a few minutes, Nesta telling him of minor problems of the tavern, which she now ran herself with the help of Edwin, two maids and a cook. Until two years earlier, the innkeeper had been her husband Meredydd, a former Welsh archer in the service of King Richard. John had known him from his campaigning days, and when Meredydd had given up fighting because of a wound, he had taken on the Bush. But within a year he was dead of a fever, and for friendship’s sake de Wolfe had loaned his widow enough money to keep the inn going. He had helped her generally to survive, as a young woman trying to run a city tavern was a prime target for the unscrupulous. His protection had turned into affection and then genuine love, but they were sometimes disillusioned, mainly because Nesta fully realised that a Norman knight, married to the sheriff’s sister, was a hopeless long-term prospect for a lowly alehouse keeper.

John told her about the murder of the verderer and she listened carefully, as she always did to his tales of mayhem in Devon. He found it useful to pour out his problems, as it helped clear them in his mind — and her own quick brain not infrequently lighted on some point that he had missed. Sometimes, even more than Mary, she could give him some useful information, as Nesta was a mine of knowledge about what went on in the city and beyond. The Bush was the most popular inn for travellers passing through Exeter and she heard much of the gossip that was bandied about between the customers. This time, though, she had little to contribute.