Fear in the Forest (29 page)

Father Amicus was reflecting on the mysteries of birth and death, wondering what the young wife would find on the other side, when the last breaths of her diseased lungs finally ceased. His pony lumbered slowly along, needing no directions to take it to the sweet summer grass in the vicar’s meadow behind the churchyard. Suddenly, the beast stopped dead and tossed its head with a worried neigh, agitated by something at the side of the road. Woken from his sleepy reverie, the father looked down and saw a very real manifestation of the death he had been contemplating. In the long grass and flowery weeds at the side of the dusty track, face up, lay a man, one whom the priest recognised at first glance. He saw that it was Edward, a villein who lived in a mean hut at the extreme eastern end of the straggling village – in fact, little more than a few hundred paces away.

Clambering from his pony, Father Amicus hurried across to the verge, but he could have taken his time, as the man was undoubtedly dead. He wore a short tunic of worn brown wool, darned in several places and ominously stained with blood in both armpits. His legs were bare and crude home-made sandals covered his calloused feet. Cropped yellow hair marked him as a Saxon, and the priest knew him as an unfree man of about thirty-five who worked in the fields five days a week for the manor-lord. His lips were turned back in a rictus of agony, revealing a few blackened teeth, and his open blue eyes were already clouding over with the veil of death.

Murmuring some words in Latin as a makeshift requiem, Father Amicus pulled at a stiff arm to look under the body. A dead coney, as stiff as the man himself, hung by a string from his belt, but, far more ominous, the bent shaft of an arrow was embedded in his back, blood soaking all the surrounding area of clothing.

Gently letting the body sink back to the ground, the priest looked behind it and saw a track of flattened vegetation running back into the trees, only a few yards away. It looked as if the victim had staggered or crawled out of the forest to the road’s edge, before finally collapsing.

Father Amicus wiped his bloody hand on the long grass and stood up, staring down at the corpse, undecided as to what he should do next.

He could hoist it on to the saddle of his pony and take it back to the village, but after his recent experiences with the coroner he knew that it should be left where it was. In addition, his experiences with the foresters strongly suggested that John de Wolfe should be involved from the start, if justice was to be done.

But how could he leave Edward’s body lying at the edge of the forest, prey to stray dogs, rats and even the few wolves that were still hereabouts? It was not seemly, with the man’s cot only just along the track. As he stood there worrying, it seemed as if Providence was for once on his side, for coming towards him from the direction of Manaton was a flock of sheep, being driven by a man with a dog – and behind them was a figure on a horse. The shepherd was Joel, one of his parishioners, moving part of the manor flock to a new pasture half a mile down the road. As they came nearer, he saw with relief that the rider was Matthew Juvenis, the manor bailiff. A moment later, bleating sheep were swirling around him, but after one look at the cadaver Joel sent the dog on ahead, the intelligent animal being quite capable of driving the flock to its destination without human help.

Dismounting, the bailiff hurried to join the shepherd and the priest, who told them in a short sentence what he had found. Matthew also pulled the corpse on to its side and they looked at the missile lodged in the back. The head was deep in the flesh, but the shaft was still complete. The green wood had snapped when the victim fell on it, but not parted completely, and bedraggled feathers still formed the flight.

‘Poor fellow. His wife will be greatly anguished,’ commiserated the shepherd. ‘They have four children to feed.’

‘He was well known for poaching,’ said the bailiff. ‘But he didn’t deserve this, just for a rabbit.’ He pointed to the smaller corpse.

‘Who could have done this?’ asked the priest, sadly.

‘Either those bloody outlaws – or the foresters,’ declared Joel.

Matthew Juvenis shook his head. ‘I doubt it’s Winter’s gang – or even any stray wolf’s head. This was one of the poorest men in the village, with hardly a penny to his name. He had to take a few coney and the odd partridge to keep his family from starving. What robber is going to waste an arrow on him?’

The shepherd agreed. ‘Now I come to look at it, that’s too good an arrow for an outlaw. That’s a real fletcher’s shaft – the sort a forester would have!’

The bailiff let the corpse drop back to the now bloody ground.

‘What are we coming to, Father?’ he asked bitterly. ‘We’ve all lived here the whole of our lives, yet never known a time like this. Is there no end to it?’

No one had an answer for him, and with a sigh Matthew turned to more practical matters. ‘We must tell the crowner about this. He’s the only one we can trust to do right by poor Edward,’ he said, echoing the priest’s thoughts. ‘I was riding to Lustleigh, but now I must go straight on to Exeter and fetch John de Wolfe.’

‘He’ll not be able to get back here until morning,’ said Father Amicus, looking up at the position of the afternoon sun. ‘What are we to do with the corpse until then?’

Joel took the initiative. ‘I’ll check that damned dog has put the sheep in the right place, then I’ll get back to the village and have men bring four hurdles down here. We can set them around the body to keep off any beasts during the night.’

The bailiff mounted up and prepared to spur his mare towards the city, some fifteen miles away. ‘Get word to my Lord Henry what’s happened – and tell my wife I’ll not be home tonight.’

As he left at a trot, the priest and the shepherd also parted.

‘I’ll have to call at his croft and give the sad tidings to his wife,’ said Father Amicus. ‘A task I’m not relishing, telling the poor woman she’s destitute.’

Despondently, he clambered on to his pony and set off up the road.

The now familiar pattern of a coroner’s investigation was repeated yet again. The bailiff of Manaton arrived at Rougement after almost a three-hour ride and sought out Gwyn, whom he remembered from the recent inquest on the tanner – who could forget Gwyn?

In turn, the coroner’s officer arranged for Matthew to sleep in the garrison’s quarters overnight, then went to find de Wolfe.

It was not hard to guess where he was that evening, and soon the Cornishman was sharing his table at the Bush, his big nose buried in a quart pot. Though John was supposed to be keeping his mistress company in a lover’s tête-à-tête, he was secretly glad to be interrupted by his henchman. Try as he would, he seemed unable to shake off Nesta’s apathy, which was just as bad as it had been the previous evening. She had given up weeping, but sat with eyes downcast, answering when spoken to, but otherwise in the lowest of spirits. Her face was pale and drawn and the tendrils of hair that escaped from her cap seemed limp and lustreless, compared with their usual red glory. She frequently had to visit the privy in the yard, John putting it down to the effects of her pregnancy. It was in a sense, as the substances Bearded Lucy had given her were still upsetting her bowels, without any other effect.

For her part, Nesta’s desperate resolution to pluck up courage to tell him of Alan’s fathering had evaporated, and she knew now that, in spite of her promise to Thomas, she would be quite unable to get the words out. The realisation of her cowardice added to her general despair, plunging her into the depths of a depression from which she could see no escape. Even the running of the inn, which she prided herself was the best in the city, no longer seemed important, and she let Edwin and the girls carry on without her usual constant chivvying.

She was also relieved to see Gwyn appear, trusting him to lighten the atmosphere, as his nature was even less sensitive than John’s. It was only the timid, gentle Thomas who sensed people’s inmost feelings and responded to them in a like manner.

Now Gwyn was telling his master about the summons to Manaton.

‘Another corpse at the roadside with an arrow in his back!’ he boomed in western Welsh, the language of his youth. ‘But at least it’s some wretched serf this time, not a verderer.’

De Wolfe shook his head in baffled astonishment. ‘This situation is getting out of hand. There’ll be another fight over jurisdiction, I can see it coming. Forest law against the common law – and, damn it, they’re both the King’s law, that’s the rub!’

‘So are we off at dawn, Crowner?’

‘Yes, back in the saddle at first light. At least I’ve not got my wife to nag at me for being away most of the time.’

To their mutual but unspoken relief, John told Nesta that he would sleep in Martin’s Lane that night, to be able to get Odin from the farrier’s before dawn and be on their way as soon as the city gates opened.

By the eighth hour next morning, they were trotting up the slope above the deep wooded ravine which hid the Becky waterfalls. They had made good time from Exeter, in spite of Thomas’s usual slower progress. De Wolfe had recently offered to buy him a woman’s palfrey, a larger mount than the pony he had, but the clerk resisted the exhortation to give up his side saddle and ride like a man.

Gwyn was the first to see the spot they were seeking. Ahead, on a straight part of the track, a group of people were waiting for them alongside a box-like erection of wattle panels. As they approached, they recognised Robert Barat, the village reeve, and Father Amicus. Hovering behind were a couple of villagers, including the shepherd, who had had the foresight to bring a handcart to take the body away.

‘Nothing personal, Crowner, but we’re seeing too much of you lately,’ said the priest, motioning to the reeve to pull down the hurdles.

De Wolfe and the bailiff stood contemplating the corpse, around which flies and bluebottles were already congregating, while Father Amicus enlarged on the story already related to John by the bailiff.

‘I found him just as he is, yesterday afternoon. He’s not been moved, except to lift him to see where that blood was coming from.’

The coroner and his officer knelt on the grass and began to examine it as the priest went on with his tale.

‘I went to his cot up the road and broke the sad news to his wife. They are a poor couple, finding it hard to make ends meet. And she’ll find it harder still, though the village will rally round as best it can.’

As John felt the rock-hard stiffness in the arms and legs, Father Amicus continued.

‘We all knew he took a coney or a bird from the forest now and then – and he’s not the only one in the vill who does that. Until recently the foresters turned a blind eye, as long as deer or boar were not the targets. His wife said that latterly the coneys had been playing havoc with his young vegetables behind the cottage – they depend on them for much of their food. So yesterday, he went out at dawn to see to the traps he had laid the previous night.’

‘Where were they laid?’ asked Gwyn.

‘There’s a small warren in a clearing a few hundred paces into the forest behind their dwelling, riddled with burrows. These rabbits are becoming a pest. A pity our Norman grandfathers ever brought them into the country!’ The priest’s annoyance suggested that his own garden plot had suffered as well.

Gwyn hauled the cadaver over on to its face and the two men sat back on their haunches to look at the broken arrow mutely protruding from the back, as the priest continued his tale.

‘But he never came back – he should have gone to his work in the strip-fields soon after daylight, but they saw no sign of him. The wife sent the son out to search for him, but he found nothing, except that his traps around the warren had been pulled out and thrown aside.’

That was the whole story, and there was silence as the onlookers watched the coroner working out the arrowhead, just as he done with the verderer before. Owing to the long shaft, the tunic could not be taken off over it, so John pulled the arrow out first and laid it on the grass near by.

‘Different from the verderer’s,’ grunted Gwyn. ‘Better made than that one.’

‘That’s what I said yesterday,’ chipped in the shepherd. ‘It’s the sort the foresters buy from the fletcher in Moretonhampstead,’ he added with deliberate emphasis.

The coroner and his henchman went through their usual routine of raising the dead man’s tunic, examining the wound and the rest of the body. Then de Wolfe stood up and motioned to the shepherd and another villager that they could load the corpse on to the cart and trundle it off to the village.

‘We’d better have a look in the forest, now we’re here’, grunted de Wolfe. He led the way along the trampled grass and weeds into the tree line, followed by Gwyn and Matthew Juvenis.

‘A few spots of blood here and there, nothing else.’

After a few yards the trail almost petered out, as the grass finished under the shade of the tree canopy. Some broken wild garlic and scuffed leaves could be seen for a short distance, then there was nothing that could be distinguished from the tracks of deer, badgers and foxes.

‘Where’s this warren they spoke of?’ demanded John.

Matthew led them away to the left for a while, swishing through the dead leaves in the silence of the deep woods, broken only by birdsong high above and the sough of the wind in the tree tops. They came out in a clearing around a huge fallen beech, which was rotting and half covered in moss. Around the exposed root was a patch of soft earth covered in grass and riddled with rabbit holes.

‘Here’s one of his snares,’ said Gwyn, picking something from a bramble bush, where it had snagged on a brier. A sliding noose of thin wire was attached to the top end of a stout wooden peg. The snare would have been hammered into the ground alongside a run leading from a burrow, the loop arranged so that the head of a running beast would be trapped, strangling the animal.

‘They’ve been pulled out – there’s another one over there,’ said the bailiff.

‘Not much doubt who did that – and to be fair, it’s their job,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘But putting an arrow into a poor coney-trapper’s back is hardly justified.’