The Manor of Death (40 page)

When John came out of the Bear Gate passage into Southgate Street, the stall-keepers were packing up their wares as the evening waned. Crossing into the small lanes that led down towards the river, he passed wives gossiping outside their huts and cottages, their shrieking children still playing in the dirt of the road, dodging the occasional handcart or packhorse going down to the quayside through the Watergate. He wondered if he would miss all these familiar scenes when he went to London, until he reminded himself that one town was much like the next, only there would be far more of it in the case of the capital.

When he reached Idle Lane, he also wondered what sort of reception he would get from his mistress, having been away for a day or so. He once again found Nesta in a quiet mood, amiable but somehow distant. She sat with him and listened attentively to his detailed story of the ambush of the pirate ship the previous day and the foray that was planned on Axmouth in the morning. Once again, she cautioned him about his own safety.

'Be careful, John, if you are going with a troop of soldiers to fight!' she warned with a worried look. 'You are not so young as you were and, though I have no doubt about your courage, your eyes may not be so keen and your sword-arm might not be as brisk as they once were.'

He bridled a little at this. 'I downed the pirate captain at my first stroke yesterday!' he protested. 'I am not yet a feeble old man in his dotage - as I could prove to you up in the loft tonight.'

Nesta smiled wanly at him. 'Perhaps not tonight, John. I feel tired and out of sorts this evening. Maybe there is a thunderstorm brewing - it affects me that way.'

John recalled a blue sky free from a single cloud as he walked down to the tavern. This time the moon could not be blamed for her indisposition, and again a niggle of concern slid into his mind. He looked around the crowded taproom, but he saw no sign of the Welsh stonemason.

'Are you perhaps sickening for something,
cariad
?' he asked in their habitual Welsh.
 

She shook her head. 'No, John, just a headache and a passing lowering of the spirits.'

De Wolfe recalled that when she had been pregnant the previous year, she had been in a strange state of mind - indeed, it was only Thomas's intervention that had saved her from doing away with herself. John did some rapid calculation in his head and decided that this was unlikely to be the problem now, unless he himself was responsible.

They talked on quietly for a while, and Nesta spoke of the journey they had made some months earlier, when she had accompanied him back to Wales for a short visit. He had been on the king's business but had left her in Gwent to visit her family, whom she had not seen for several years. Now, she spoke longingly of her mother, who lived not many miles from Chepstow, wondering about her health, as she was advancing in years. John was on the point of promising her another such pilgrimage when he realised that soon he would be two hundred miles away in London.

He had still not told Nesta of his new appointment, being held back by some ill-formed fear of her reaction, but now he saw that he could delay no longer. Bolstering his courage, he reached to take her hand.

'Nesta, my love, I have something to tell you. This came about when I was with the king in Normandy.'

She looked at him almost fearfully, her big eyes wide in her heart-shaped face. 'I feel that this is news that will alter our lives, John!', she said. Like the mother she pined for, she was blessed - or perhaps cursed - with a certain clairvoyance, which had led her near mortal trouble in the past.

Still holding her hand, he slowly and clearly told her of the Lionheart's summons to London, an order that could not be disobeyed. 'I must go within a few weeks,
cariad
, as soon as this Axmouth problem is dealt with. I have sent news of it to Matilda, and she has not replied in any shape or form. So the way is clear for you to come to London with me - it will solve our eternal problem, as we could start afresh in a great city where no one knows or cares about us!'

When he had finished, he wondered if her famous temper, which went with her red hair, would explode over him. He did not know what to expect by way of her reaction. Would it be joy, confusion, hysterics or anger? What ensued was none of these, but a calm appraising look that unnerved him.

'Why did you not tell me this before, John?' she asked, her hazel eyes upon him.

'I lacked the courage until now. But tomorrow, though the danger, is slight, I will again be handling a sword and, as you keep telling me, maybe I am getting too slow to keep out of trouble, so I felt I should unburden myself to you tonight.'

'And what of us? What of me? I have this alehouse, which is my life.'

'You must come to London with me, my love. We have spoken of leaving many times. This is a chance to make a clean break.'

Nesta looked at him dispassionately. 'There is the small matter of your wife, John. Will you just abandon her?'

John made an impatient gesture. 'I have told her what is to happen. She has made no response. It is now up to her to do what she wants.'

'And the Bush? What of my home and my livelihood?'

'We can arrange for someone to run it for a year, until we see what is to happen. I told you, this is for a trial period - for all I know, I will be back here in a twelve-month. '

He half-turned and gripped her by her upper arms. 'Nesta, this is the opportunity we have been waiting for! London is a huge place; no one knows us there. Gwyn and Thomas will be with me, there will be new friends to make, new sights to enjoy! It will be exciting, moving from place to place when the court travels to the country. Sometimes we will be near Wales, and you can visit your family there.'

The mention of Wales caused a shadow to pass over her face, but John was too intent on persuasion to notice. 'All we have meant to each other over these past few years cannot be lost to us now,
cariad
! But I have no choice but to go where my king commands.'

She was silent for a moment, the colour drained from her face. 'This is a great shock, John. I had not expected anything like this. I must think deeply about what you ask.'

He pulled her gently against his chest, ignoring the covert glances of others in the taproom. 'Nesta, come with me to a new life! It is the chance we have sought for so long.'

She pulled away and sat looking down at her hands folded in her lap. Then she looked up into his eyes. 'Go to your battle tomorrow, John, and may God preserve you. When you come back, I will give you my answer.'

Sir John de Wolfe went to battle soon after dawn reddened the eastern sky. The jingling of harness, the scraping of impatient hooves and the snorting of horses marked the second armed contingent that week to assemble in the inner courtyard. The same men-at-arms who had sailed on the
St Radegund
were there, plus a few reinforcements. The sheriff felt obliged to accompany them and wore an old and slightly rusted hauberk that had not seen service for a decade, since he had given up campaigning.

John's similar long coat of mail, slit at the back and front for riding, was in better condition, as the previous evening Gwyn had insisted on giving it a rub-down with sand and wet rags. Ralph Morin, who had plenty of manual labour in Rougemont for such tasks, had armour whose links glittered in the morning light. The mounted soldiers, as well as Gwyn, wore thick jerkins of boiled leather, with metal plates on the shoulders - and all wore the usual basin-shaped helmets. The only one with nothing but a faded black robe was Thomas, who rode uneasily in the centre of the troop. He had protested when John ordered him to join the expedition, but the coroner was adamant that he might need someone to write down any confessions that might be made - and promised the very nervous priest that he would be kept well out of any violence until all conflict had finished.

They left at a steady trot in good weather, and even Thomas on his borrowed rounsey managed to keep up with them. They stopped at Sidford to rest the horses and eat their rations, but by noon they had covered the twenty miles to the Axe valley. The last stretch of the journey was down from the bridge over the river at Boshill Cross, upstream of the inland end of the estuary. The troop went more cautiously now, riding in pairs with the sheriff and constable at the head. A couple of furlongs from Axmouth, they kept their promise to Thomas and left him hidden behind a hazel thicket at the side of the track, where he squatted uneasily with his writing bag of parchments, pens and ink beside him. They continued down the road, the wooded slopes of Hawkesdown Hill rising steeply to their left, until the few outer cottages and then the north wall of the village came in sight. The gate was firmly closed, and Henry de Furnellis raised his gloved hand to bring them to a halt a hundred paces away.

'Never seen that shut before,' growled Ralph Morin. 'Is it for our benefit, I wonder?'

'It's hardly Dover Castle!' said the sheriff cynically. 'So what's the point?'

The wall seemed more suited for keeping out livestock than resisting a siege, for it was a dry-stone wall little more than the height of a man, though it ran from the edge of the high ground inland to the edge of the estuary, where piles driven into the mud extended a fence a little way out into the water. The gate was of stout oak, about the same height as the wall and wide enough for a cart to pass through.

'Do we shout, knock or smash it open?' asked Morin. 'They obviously knew we were coming - probably had spies posted on the road.'

'I'll go and look,' volunteered Gwyn, slipping from his saddle.

'Have a care - remember those arrows last week,' warned de Wolfe as his officer ambled towards the gate. The expedition watched as the big Cornishman picked up a rock from the side of the road and used it to pound on the gate. 'God blast you, open this bloody door!' he yelled in a voice that could probably be heard over in Seaton.

There was no response, even after Gwyn had hammered on the unyielding panels a few more times.

Impatiently, the constable nudged his horse's belly to walk it towards the gate, where from his elevated position he could see over the top. The main street stretched before him, houses on either side, with the church and the gate to the quayside in the distance.

'Half the damned village is standing in the road!' he shouted over his shoulder. Turning back, he bellowed over the gate at the few dozen men and a handful of women who were staring at the head that had appeared above the wall.

'The sheriff is here and he commands you in the name of the king to open this gate!'

There was some shuffling and gesturing amongst the throng, who stood some distance away, outside the house of the bailiff. A few defiant shouts were thrown at him, but no one approached to unbar the gate.

'Are they armed?' called de Wolfe, starting to move his own horse up to the barrier.

'A few sticks and cudgels, but nothing more,' said Ralph, wheeling his horse away and coming back to meet the others, who were now moving closer to the gate.

'I'll soon get us in there!' growled Gwyn, spitting on his hands. Reaching up, he seized the top of the gate and with a mighty heave pulled himself up until he could tilt his belly across the top. Though he was a big, heavy man, he had such strength in his arms that he could lift his bulk sufficiently to straddle the top and pull his legs over, to drop to the ground on the other side. There was an outburst of angry shouts from the crowd down the road, but still no one approached.

Gwyn pushed up the long bar from its iron sockets on the back of the gate and threw it aside, then hauled the gate wide open. Led by the sheriff, the troop trotted through and advanced on the throng further down the track.

As they approached, some of them scattered, but others stood their ground and jeered truculently as the king's men bore down on them. John saw that Edward Northcote stood by the fence around his cottage, with Elias Palmer and John Capie by his side. Further away, the old priest, Henry of Cumba, leant on his stick alongside some of the less demonstrative of his parishioners.

'Why have you broken into our village, uninvited?' demanded the bailiff. 'This is Church land. You know well enough that it belongs to the Priory of Loders.'

'It is not Church land, as you call it,' snapped de Furnellis. 'It is a manor ceded to an alien house. Which is irrelevant, anyway, as in murder or treason the king's writ runs everywhere, apart from the temporary respite of sanctuary.'

Before Northcote could argue, the coroner broke in. 'Why did you bar the gate against us? A futile gesture, as you see, but it points towards your guilt before we even ask a single question!'

'Guilt about what?' demanded Northcote.

'Don't play the innocent with me, man,' snapped the sheriff. Henry was getting too old and intolerant to bandy words and came straight to the point. 'You know damned well that
The Tiger
and her crew were caught red-handed in an act of piracy. Martin Rof is in gaol and will be hanged - he should be hanged twice, once for being a pirate and again for strangling that lad Simon Makerel.'

'What has that to do with me?' shouted Northcote angrily. 'I know nothing of piracy. What Rof or anyone else is up to in secret is their affair, not mine.'

'Tell that to the king's justices when you are arraigned before them,' suggested de Wolfe. 'For I don't believe that anything can happen in Axmouth without your knowledge - and probably your permission.'