'Where do we go from here?' asked Robert Hereward as the gloom thickened.
'We can stay up here tonight, sheltering in the huts. But some of us must go back down to Challacombe to make sure that the place is unusable after that fire. And of course, to seek for Gunilda. I have a bad feeling about her,' he added grimly.
After their ignominious defeat at Grimspound, Henry de la Pomeroy and Richard de Reverie headed back to Berry Pomeroy Castle to lick their wounds and to hold an inquest on their failure and the possible consequences. The darkness obliged them to spend the night at Widecombe and it was noon the next day before they limped home. That afternoon, the east wind moaned around the towers of the gatehouse as the two men sat in Henry's chamber easing their aching limbs after their long ride back from the moor. The gash in Pomeroy's leg had been cleaned and bound by one of the servants, but it still smarted enough to be a reminder of the fiasco at Grimspound.
They had eaten and now settled in chairs set on each side of a large brazier, a jug of Loire wine on a nearby table providing frequent refills for the silver goblets they held.
'It was those bastard archers who undid us,' snarled Henry for the fifth time. 'I'm going to hire a couple of Welshmen to train those clods of mine to shoot!' Richard was more of a realist. 'Don't waste your money, Henry. It takes years to make a man competent with a longbow - and I'll warrant we'll get no second chance against Arundell and his gang.'
'So what do we do about it now?' rasped de la Pomeroy, splashing more wine into his goblet. 'Run and shelter under Prince John's skirts, I suppose?' His tone was bitterly sarcastic.
'What else do you suggest?' retorted Richard huffily. 'Without his support, we could be in serious trouble.
Do you want to go the same way as your father?' he added maliciously, referring to the elder Pomeroy's suicide at St Michael's Mount. When accused of treachery to King Richard, he had ordered his physician to open the blood-vessels in his wrists, so that he bled to death, rather than face the Lionheart.
Henry was too worried to take offence. 'So how do we go about it? You are close to the Count of Mortain.'
A shutter rattled in the wind as de Revelle considered his answer. 'We must get ourselves to Gloucester as soon as we can and hope that the Prince is there. His support is vital to us. After all, he was nominally the sheriff of Devon when we seized de Arundell's manor - and he had had Devon and Cornwall in his fief at the time, so he could be considered to be Nicholas's ultimate landlord.'
Henry saw little that was helpful in this tortuous argument, but grudgingly agreed that a clever lawyer might be able to draw some legal justification from it. 'Sounds a thin excuse for us kicking out de Arundell's family and sequestering his lands,' he said. 'Still, if you think we are in personal danger over this, then by all means let us ride to Gloucester.'
Richard de Revelle, who had a much more perceptive and cunning brain than the boorish de la Pomeroy, was adamant. 'It's our only defence, Henry! I know this damned man de Wolfe. He's like a bull-baiting dog, he never lets go once he's got his teeth into something. Comes of being a bloody Crusader, I suppose. We need to speak to Prince John before de Wolfe gets back from kissing Hubert Waiter's arse!'
At the same time that afternoon, in a workroom behind a large forge on Exe Island, just outside the western wall of the city, a man was bent over a complicated device lying on a bench.
He murmured under his breath as he worked, filing a slot in a piece of iron that was part of a mechanism that consisted mainly of a powerful leaf-spring held back by a trigger device. The contraption seemed to owe much of its design to a cross bow, except that it was very much smaller and the bow part was replaced by a single arm.
The man, a fellow with a heavy, sullen face, was fashioning every piece with loving care, working from a diagram scratched on a square of slate with a sharp nail.
A lock of hair fell incessantly across his forehead and he brushed it aside with almost obsessional regularity.
Alongside the device he was fashioning, were several other metal articles, including large door locks, parts for ox-cart axles, iron swivels, and rings for horse harness.
From the yard outside came the rhythmic clang of hammer on anvil and, from an adjacent workshop, the tapping of a punch clinching over rivets, as other journeymen and apprentices went about their business.
Although he was absorbed in his task, the man kept one ear tuned for approaching footsteps. Whenever it sounded as if someone might come into his back room, he rapidly covered up the device with a piece of sacking and seized some other article to work upon. Usually, it was a false alarm and as soon as the footsteps receded, he went back to his careful filing again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In which Crowner John travels across England
The journey to Winchester was tedious but unremarkable. Both John de Wolfe and his officer had made it a number of times over the years and the road was familiar.
The weather remained cold, but free from snow or significant rain, so their progress was good. The coroner was not riding his old destrier Odin, who was too heavy for a long haul like this. He had once again hired a younger gelding from Andrew the farrier who kept the stable in Martin's Lane, and the good beast kept up a brisk trot hour after hour, covering a good twenty-five miles each day.
Being in the saddle from dawn to dusk was enough for any man, even though the winter days were short.
A good supper, some ale and a gossip with whoever was in their lodging was a prelude to sound sleep, whether it was on the rushes alongside an alehouse firepit or in a castle hall. Two nights were spent at inns and another at Dorchester Castle, as the coroner considered that he was on the king's business and therefore entitled to accommodation there.
When, on the fourth day, they entered the walls of Winchester a few hours after noon, enquiry at the castle at the top of the sloping High Street soon brought about disappointment. Hubert Walter, the Chief Justiciar and virtual regent of England, was not there, but had left for London the previous week. One of the senior Chancery clerks, with whom de Wolfe was acquainted from previous visits, told him that as far he knew, Hubert was not planning to cross the Channel to see the Lionheart in the near future and could probably be found in Westminster or the Tower if John could get there within the next few days.
'We'll rest up today and tomorrow, to give both the horses and ourselves some respite,' he announced to Gwyn. 'Then hack on to London, as I half expected we would need to.'
The clerk readily found accommodation for the Devon coroner in one of the tower chambers in the castle, while Gwyn found a mattress in the soldiers' quarters, where he could drink and play dice to his heart's content.
John spent the next day renewing old friendships with a number of knights and clerks he knew from either Outremer or Ireland, as the faithful service of many old campaigners was rewarded with official posts - as indeed John himself had been. Winchester, the old capital of Anglo-Saxon England, was still an important seat of government, though gradually London was becoming predominant.
When their rest was over, they set off again eastwards, this time through less familiar countryside, passing through Hampshire and Surrey. The distance of this leg of the journey was much less and they needed only two nights' accommodation, the first at an inn in Farnham, the second by claiming hospitality at Chertsey Abbey.
On the third day, now over a week away from Exeter, they rode wearily along the bank of the Thames into Southwark and across the bridge into the swarming streets of London. Both men had been there a number of times before and were not overawed by its size or its frenetic activity, but as they passed over the old wooden bridge, they stared curiously at the new one which was slowly being built nearby. Started a long time before, it was evidently still many years away from completion: only the bases of the nineteen piers showed above the turbulent water.
'Where do we look first, Crowner?' grunted Gwyn as they halted their steeds at the corner of Eastcheap in the city itself. De Wolfe looked downriver to where the grim pile of the Conqueror's White Tower stood high above the city wall. He pondered whether to try there first or make the longer journey in the opposite direction to Westminster.
'Hubert is almost king these days, so let's try the palace,' he said rather cynically. They plodded westwards, passing through the walls near the huge headquarters of the Knights Templar and onwards through the fields along the Strand, around the curve of the Thames until they came to the village of Westminster where the great Saxon abbey stood. Opposite, nearer the fiver bank, was the palace built a century before, its huge hall a legacy of William Rufus. As well as being the residence of an absent king, it was now surrounded by a cluster of buildings to house the ever-increasing bureaucracy of government, making it a bewildering maze for anyone unfamiliar with its layout.
They stopped outside the main gatehouse and stared at the imposing building. 'Can we cadge lodgings here, Crowner?' asked Gwyn, looking doubtfully at the crowded courtyards and the hurrying clerks and monks who were crossing back and forth to the Abbey opposite.
'We can but try, but first I need to see if Hubert is actually in residence,' grunted de Wolfe, kicking his mare into motion again. The gates were open, but guarded by two soldiers wearing tabards displaying the three couchant lions of King Richard's royal arms. John displayed a small parchment roll from which dangled the impressive wax seal of the Chief Justiciar, which Hubert had given him on a previous occasion. Though the sentinels could not read, they recognised the seal and directed the two visitors to a guardroom inside the gates, where in addition to a sergeant-at-arms they found a tonsured clerk sitting behind a table covered in documents.
John explained who he was and proffered the warrant again, which this time the black-garbed official was able to read. It was an authority which Hubert Walter had given de Wolfe when Richard de Revelle needed disciplining the previous year. It ordered every one of the King's subjects to provide John with any aid he required and made it clear that the bearer was well known to both Justiciar and King Richard himself. After scanning it, the clerk rose to his feet and spoke respectfully to the coroner.
'I have heard of you, sir, you have a certain reputation at the court.' He said this without any trace of sarcasm and went on to offer both good news and bad news.
'I regret that the Archbishop has gone to attend to his episcopal duties at Canterbury and will not return until tonight. But I am sure he can give you audience in the morning - and in the meantime, I would be happy to arrange accommodation for you - and your officer.' He looked rather doubtfully at the dishevelled Cornish giant who stood behind the coroner, but wisely refrained from any comment.
An hour later, after seeing that their horses were fed and watered, John and Gwyn were taken into the Great Hall by a servant, who placed them at a table near one of the several firepits and arranged for food and drink to be brought. The place was huge, a double row of columns supporting a vast roof, under which hundreds of people were milling about. Sections of the hall had been partitioned off, and it seemed to be part courthouse, part official chambers. The rest was a turbulent meeting place for those who either governed England or sought audience with those who governed England.
'What the hell do we do now?' queried Gwyn as he started to demolish a platter of fried pork and onions which a serving lad had placed in front of him, along with a jug of ale. John, similarly engaged in tearing the meat from a boiled fowl, peered at his henchman from under his black brows.
'You may do as you wish, Gwyn, but after a week in the saddle, I'm going to my bed and staying there until the morning.'
Though Hubert Walter was the most powerful man in the country, he eschewed ostentation and dressed soberly, unlike many of the popinjays that strutted about the court. With Richard Coeur de Lion absent in France, the Chief Justiciar carried much of the burden of government on his shoulders, especially the task of endlessly finding money.
'Little more than half the 150,000 marks ransom has so far been paid to Henry of Germany,' he confided to John de Wolfe the next morning. 'I have stripped most of the churches of their silver plate, taxed the wool producers until they groan and installed you and your fellow coroners, as well as the new Keepers of the Peace to squeeze all I can from the legal system.' They were sitting in a barely furnished room that Hubert used as his working office when in the palace of Westminster. A good fire burned in the hearth, which was modern enough to have a chimney, and the two chairs on either side of the large table were comfortable enough, but otherwise it hardly looked like the chamber of an archbishop and the virtual ruler of a country.
Hubert was a lean, tanned man with a face like leather, his cropped brown hair greying at the temples. He wore a plain red tunic, the only gesture to his ecclesiastical rank being a small gold cross hanging on a slender chain around his neck. They sat each with a silver cup of wine before them, like old comrades. Hubert had been in Palestine ostensibly as chaplain to the English Crusaders, but his role became more and more military as time went on. He acted as chief negotiator between King Richard and Saladin, and when the Lionheart had left for home on his ill-fated voyage, Hubert was left to command the army and arrange for its withdrawal. When Richard was captured in Vienna and imprisoned first in Durnstein Castle on the Danube and then in Germany, it was Hubert who visited him and arranged the lengthy process of negotiating the huge ransom to get him released. It was during this time that he had come to know and respect Sir John de Wolfe.