Bernard Knight - Crowner's Crusade

‘Hey there, hold it!’ yelled Gwyn in a voice that could be heard half a mile away. He began running to the bemused fellow, John close behind him, with an excited Brutus adding his loud barks to the sudden confusion. The shipmaster, standing at the stern of the cog alongside the steersman, also began yelling at this interference with his vessel’s departure.

John left Gwyn to stop them casting off and went to the edge of the wharf nearest the shipmaster, who was almost level with him at this state of the tide. ‘I need to look at your crew before you sail,’ he shouted.

The captain of the ship, a hard-faced man with a black beard, swore a few choice oaths at him and told him to clear off, but John was in no mood to be intimidated.

‘I am a king’s officer,’ he yelled, stretching the terms of Hubert Walter’s commission a little. ‘Are these all your crew?’ He waved an arm to encompass the four other men scattered around the deck of the little ship.

Before he could get a reply, the problem was solved as Brutus went right to the edge of the wharf and began barking and snarling furiously at a man standing within a couple of arm’s lengths of him. Though now in a short brown tunic and breeches, he was tall and heavily built. John had no way of recognizing him as the man who had cut his head last night, but the man’s actions now put it beyond doubt. Pulling a long knife from his belt, he ran to the shipmaster and grabbed him from behind, holding the dagger to his neck.

‘Cast off, I say!’ he shouted. ‘Throw off the ropes, or I’ll cut his throat.’

The other sailors looked bemused, but as the villain repeated his threat, one began moving towards the stern mooring rope, intending to unlash it. John drew his sword, which he had picked up when he had collected Brutus from his house. Though the gangplank had been pulled inboard, he made a running jump and landed on the deck, followed by Gwyn, who had his dagger ready in his hand. Not to be outdone, Brutus also made a flying leap up on to the deck and made straight for the man who had given him a kick the previous night.

John was instantly afraid that his dog would be stabbed, but the canny animal ran around behind the man and jumped up, sinking his teeth into his back, out of reach of the blade. In seconds it was all over, as with a yell, the attacker had to release the shipmaster, who promptly gave him a vicious elbowing in the belly, by which time John had smashed the knife from his hand with a blow from the flat of his sword. Gwyn now floored the rapist with a blow from his ham-sized fist and kept him down on the deck by standing on the back of his neck.

John called Brutus away and slowly order was restored. The shipmaster, grateful for their intervention, even though it was their presence that started it all, said the man’s name was Joel of Calais, a ruffian who was a good shipman, but an evil man to cross. As the shipmaster was anxious to catch the flood tide, John did not delay them any longer and after lashing Joel’s wrists with rope, he was pushed ashore and jostled through the city with Gwyn leading him like a cow to slaughter — which was what would happen to him eventually. The inhabitants rapidly learned who he was and by the time they had dragged him up Southgate Street as far as the Carfoix crossing, a jeering crowd was following, some spitting at him, gesturing angrily and soon throwing missiles of all sorts at this black-hearted ruffian who broke into decent folk’s houses at night to beat and ravish them. They delivered him to Stigand’s care in the castle undercroft and went to report to Ralph Morin that he now had yet another guest in his castle gaol.

‘That must be the quickest investigation and arrest in Exeter’s history!’ said the castellan. ‘What with catching Arnulf of Devizes and then letting Walter Hamelin break his neck, you’re single-handedly clearing Devon of all its villains!’

‘The credit for catching this shipman is all down to the hound,’ admitted John, feeling rightly proud of his old dog.

‘But what do we do with the swine now?’ demanded Ralph. ‘Just hang him and be done with it?’

John shook his head. ‘He should be either tried before the sheriff’s court or committed to the next Eyre of Assize or when the Commissioners come. . but we don’t have a bloody sheriff!’

‘Let the bastard rot downstairs then,’ decided Ralph. ‘With a bit of luck, he’ll die of dog-bite fever, thanks to Brutus!’

Even Matilda was mildly impressed by the acclaim that her husband and his hound had generated by that evening. She had been to St Olave’s for one of her twice daily conversations with the Almighty, where her women friends, all wives of affluent merchants, had been enthusing about the capture of the evil ravisher, as well as her husband’s success in his other recent exploits.

After their early supper of cold meat, bread and cheese, she was almost civil to John as he recounted the events of the afternoon. She even desisted from complaining about Brutus lying near the hearth, a change from her usual caustic remarks about ‘that stinking dog’.

The same accolades were voiced far more robustly when he took ‘the stinking dog’ down to the Bush, after Matilda had retired to the solar for Lucille to help her to bed. At the inn, a larger crowd than usual had gathered to congratulate de Wolfe and Gwyn — and Brutus had a large and meaty bone given him by Nesta and Molly.

Another convivial evening followed, though this time they stopped short of music and dancing. After it was over, John made his way back home without being diverted by rape and robbery with violence. After a final cup of cider with Mary in her warm cook shed, he climbed the stairs to the solar and for the first time, slid into bed in his own house, oblivious to the heavy breathing and occasional grunts from the other side of the mattress.

As he lay staring at the new rafters just visible in the glow from a tiny rushlight set on a shelf, his mind went back to a year ago, when he would have been somewhere on a small ship, being tossed about in the Adriatic. So much had happened since then, yet twelve months had passed and his sovereign lord was still a prisoner of his enemies.

John never prayed, as since his youth he had felt that it was talking to an empty void, but if he had even a remnant of belief, he would petition God to release Richard Coeur de Lion from his incarceration — and certainly prevent him falling into the hands of Philip Augustus of France, who would find some excuse to have him killed. With the memory of the Balkan bora whistling in his ears, he turned over and slid into blessed sleep.

The second week of December brought the first snow. John rose from his cold conjugal bed soon after dawn and fancied that the light coming between the cracks in the shutters was brighter than usual. When he peered out of the door, he looked out on a white world, the yard and the roofs running down the back of High Street being coated in a couple of inches of pristine snow.

He was due to call on Hugh de Relaga at the Guildhall after the cathedral bells had rung for Sext and None. By then, the High Street was already grey slush churned by the feet of hundreds of traders, porters and goodwives doing their shopping at the stalls that lined the main streets of the city. Hugh greeted him with his invariable good humour and a cup of hot posset, welcome on such a cold day.

He reported that trade was doing well, even though no exports could be dispatched out of the deep-sea sailing season — and also in spite of the greatly increased taxes to pay for the king’s ransom. The previous king Henry had imposed a ‘Saracen tithe’ to help pay for the coming Crusade and now Hubert Walter had introduced a new ransom tax on both income and movable goods.