'I saw a horseman ride out as if the devil was after him,' added Nicholas. 'I later learned that he had been sent to Berry Castle, to warn the Pomeroys of our return.
By now, some of our villagers had come around the gate, attracted by the noise. Robert Hereward was one and he told us what had happened, so we went back to the reeve's house to recover our wits.'
The rest of the story came out, a catalogue of deceit and violence. While the shaken Crusaders sat taking some food and ale in Martin's cottage, a force arrived from Berry. Henry de la Pomeroy was the leader, and brought with him not only his steward, castellan and a score of men, but also Richard de Revelle, who had been staying with him at Berry.
De Wolfe, working out the time-scale, strongly suspected that this must have happened during the very period when the two malcontents were plotting to join the rebellion of Prince John against the captured king languishing in Germany. But Nicholas and his men were still describing what had happened at Hempston.
'We confronted them in the compound surrounding my manor house,' he went on. 'I admit I was in a towering rage - and who could blame me? We shouted and abused each other roundly, each becoming more angry with every passing moment. My own men, good Hereward here and Martin and Philip, joined in the shouting, for they had suffered almost as much as me, with the loss of their positions in the manor.'
The haggard steward fervently agreed with his lord.
'This was the first time we had the opportunity to vent our feelings, Crowner,' he said. 'It seemed that at last Sir Nicholas had returned to rid us of these interlopers, so we stood together and trusted that our righteous cause would prevail.'
Nicholas shook his head sadly. 'When the words became inflamed, then Pomeroy and de Revelle turned nasty and ordered their men to eject us from the village.
A riot began, with my men and some more of the villagers turning on the guards from Berry, though they outnumbered us and were better armed. In fact, I and Philip Girard were the only ones wearing swords, as we had just arrived.'
'In a trice, it became violent,' said Robert Hereward. 'We were set upon by these oafs belonging to de la Pomeroy and had to fight back as best we could, with staves and cudgels.' His voice dropped as he recollected that day. 'A fellow came at me with a dagger and I hit him with my staff. He fell, as did others, but this one never got up. He died later of some unlucky damage to his brain.'
'We were being steadily pressed back by the armed men,' declared de Arundell. 'We had no chance of winning and I realised that those devils would either kill us or fabricate some charge against us to get us hanged. They could not afford to do otherwise: if they let us live they would lose their claim to the manor and probably be hauled before the king's justices themselves.'
'So what did you do?' asked John, gripped by the drama of the story.
'When I saw we had no hope of prevailing, I yelled to my men to run for the church. It is built close against the manor house, within the palisade hardly a score of paces away. Some of the other villagers, God bless them, threw themselves in the way of the usurpers for long enough for a few of us to stagger into the porch and slam the door shut. Henry Pomeroy was yelling for us to be dragged out, but our parish priest, old Father Herbert, screamed defiance at them and waved his crucifix in their faces, threatening them with eternal damnation and excommunication if they dared to break sanctuary.'
'Eight of us were in there, all of them here now,' said Philip Girard, waving his hand around the hut to encompass the faces gazing intently at the storytellers. 'De Revelle and Henry posted their men all around the church and shouted that they would starve us out well before the forty days that we were entitled to hide there.'
'That's against the law,' boomed Gwyn indignantly. 'Sanctuary seekers are entitled to be fed by the village for those forty days.'
'The law was whatever those bastards wanted it to be,' said Martin Wimund. 'We starved and thirsted for three days, as they stopped our people from coming near us, even the priest was kept from his own church until he promised not to bring us any aid.'
'Then Pomeroy's bailiff, that arrogant swine Coffin, shouted to us that one of their men was dead and that we were all murderers, with nothing to expect but a hanging when we were dragged out,' continued Hereward. 'I offered to surrender myself, as I was the one who had cracked his head - but my master and the others said that we would all shoulder the blame together.'
There was a growl of agreement from the men as the manor lord took up the story again. 'On the fourth night, we were sorely affected by hunger and thirst - all we had had between us was a pitcher of holy water for filling the stoup. There was nothing to lose, and for once the good Lord was with us, for around midnight we heard the few guards singing drunkenly, as they had been at the ale. By then, the rest had gone back to Berry, thinking that as we were within the stockade around the church and manor house, a few sentries would be sufficient when the gate was closed.'
'So I gather you made your escape that night?' suggested the coroner.
'It was the only choice other than starvation or hanging, especially when later the priest crept up to the door and told us that half the guards were fast asleep.
Then the good old man set fire to the thatch of one of the privies on the other side of the house, and in the confusion we just ran for the gate, beat up the one sentry left there and ran like hell out of the village into the night.'
'Thus putting yourself outside the law,' observed de Wolfe, not without sympathy.
Nicholas smiled wryly. 'There was no way we were going back to the Hundred Court in Tomes to answer charges. That would only have ended in a hanging, with de la Pomeroy and de Revelle the most powerful lords in the district.'
'So in due course, I presume that when you failed to answer four times to your attachments to the county court, you were all declared exigent?' concluded John. 'And here you are now, outlawed and at the mercy of any man who wishes to claim five shillings for your wolf's head.'
Robert Hereward nodded ruefully. 'They've got to catch us first. But I'm getting too old to live like a badger on the moor, skulking from one hole to another. This place is not too bad, but before we came here six months ago, we lived like rats.'
Gwyn looked around the hut. 'You said eight of you left Hempston - so where did the others come from?' Nicholas looked around the hut at his faithful band.
'Two more from the village eventually ran away to join us; they were unmarried and weary of the oppressive ways of this bailiff. The others, including Mother Gunilda, drifted here for refuge - and very welcome they have been. Others have come and gone over the years, a few found living on the moor too arduous for them and slunk away, God knows where.'
The tale was now told, and de Wolfe sat back thoughtfully to digest what he had heard. 'One reason that I needed to seek you out,' he said grimly, 'was the matter of some bizarre killings in Exeter recently. Have you heard anything of those?'
Nicholas looked mystified and shook his head. John realised that he had not yet had a chance to hear any news from his wife from Peter Cuffe, who would have collected any messages from the servant Maurice. De Wolfe briefly described the slaying of the three guildsmen and then rounded off his narrative with an account of the attack on Matilda and the accusations made by her assailant.
De Arundell seemed genuinely shocked. 'I can scarcely credit this, Sir John. My wife last week sent me news that your wife had kindly befriended her - and now to hear that some swine has so badly used her! That's terrible.'
'It was indeed,' growled de Wolfe. 'But what of this claim the bastard made that he was avenging Hempston? The only thing to be read into that is that he was one of your band here.'
Nicholas was clearly aghast at this suggestion, and the growls from the men around showed that they were equally horrified.
'Impossible! No one here would do that - and anyway, what chance would they get of wandering around Exeter intent on mayhem and murder?' Nicholas avoided mentioning that he had entered the city with little trouble.
'So why should he say such a thing?' persisted John.
'Why would he want to link his attacks with de Revelle and Pomeroy, then claim it was for Hempston, unless he was connected with you?'
Nicholas, his face flushed with anger, stood up and faced his own followers. Gunilda stopped in the middle of bringing more bread and watched the tense scene with her hand to her mouth.
'Have any of you anything to tell me about this?' Nicholas demanded, glaring around the ring of faces. 'The coroner would not tell us anything other than the truth, so how can this be explained?'
There was silence, each man looking at his fellows with a mixture of apprehension and suspicion. 'I can't believe any of us are involved,' replied Robert Hereward. 'Could it be one of those men who used to be here, but have now gone?'
'What men have left, over the years you have been outlawed?' asked the coroner, as this seemed a reasonable possibility. There was an immediate buzz of voices, as this avenue of escape was seized upon.
'Probably six or eight have joined us and then drifted away,' said Martin Wimund. 'Mostly those who came from elsewhere, though several were originally Hempston villagers.'
There were murmurs of agreement around the room and one older man spoke up. 'That blacksmith, James de Pessy, he was a bad lot. Then there was William de Leghe, who thieved from us - but he had the phthisis badly and his chest could not stand the damp, so he's probably long dead by now.'
Several other men were mentioned, including a thatcher, Walter Lovetrot, who had stabbed another man and then run off into the hills.
'What happened to these other men?' asked Gwyn.
Robert Hereward shrugged. 'God knows, but several who went said that they were going to walk to distant towns like Bristol and Southampton and try their luck at staying undetected. As long as they were not identified as outlaws, they could claim their freedom after a year and a day.'
'Why d'you say this blacksmith was a bad lot?' queried the coroner.
'He was a freeman who had come from somewhere a few years earlier and set up a forge in the village. Always protesting and complaining about something, he was a pain in the arse. Though he joined us in our fight and was outlawed with the rest of us, he never stopped whining about the loss of his forge. One day, he said he'd had enough and just walked away. He was one of those who said he was going to try to settle elsewhere, maybe in Brittany.'
John tried to get a description of him, but the result was so vague as to be useless. 'Just a man in his thirties with dark hair,' was the best he could extract from the gang. The same applied to Walter Lovetrot, the murderous thatcher, so de Wolfe turned to another matter.
'This man who died, you swear it was not a deliberate killing?' he demanded sternly.
Robert Hereward leaned forward again. 'It was a free-for-all fight, sir. They were hitting the hell out of us and we were flailing around in response. This fellow pulled a knife on me and I swung at him with a stave. I've done it before and caused nothing but a sore head. It was just unfortunate that he must have had a thin skull or some such.'
'And as this was more than two years ago, before the coroners were introduced, there would have been no inquest,' mused de Wolfe. 'Was the sheriff involved in this at all?'
Nicholas de Arundell shrugged his broad shoulders.
'Hard for us to know, Crowner, being tucked away up here in Dartmoor. But we never heard any more of it, so I think Pomeroy and de Revelle kept their heads well down over the whole affair, so as not to draw attention to their misdeeds.'
'The sheriff then would have been the one before Richard de Revelle - and guess who that was?' cut in Gwyn cynically. 'The Count of bloody Mortain himself.'
De Wolfe nodded. 'Quite so. Though Prince John never showed his face in the county all the years he was supposed to be sheriff, after William Brewer gave up in '79. He left all the work to his serjeants and bailiffs'.
Robert Hereward voiced his continued indignation. 'No wonder the outrage was never challenged. As sheriff, he was hardly likely to condemn what his treacherous supporters had done. De Revelle undoubtedly got the shrievalty handed on to him because of Prince John's patronage.'
'So the whole bloody affair was nicely sewn up between them,' sneered Gwyn. 'I doubt it ever came to the ears of the judges or the Justiciar, let alone the king himself.'
Nicholas sighed and motioned Gunilda to go around again with her jug. 'That's the whole story, Sir John,' he said. 'That's what I get for going off to the Crusades, losing my manor and my wife - and if I'm caught, my very life. To say nothing of my honour and reputation sacrificed in this injustice.'
'What's to be done about it, that's the thing?' said Martin Wimund. 'You are our last and only hope, Crowner.'
There was a tense silence, as all the hardened men looked at de Wolfe, who was turning the situation over in his mind.
'You have lived as fugitives up here on Dartmoor for almost three years, robbing travellers, poaching and stealing from honest men?' he asked harshly.