The hunting party, about a dozen in number, assembled on their horses and waited whilst the huntmaster and his assistants marshalled their hounds. The different types of dog had different functions — the scent-pursuing lymer, the running-dog for stamina and the greyhound for the speed needed once the quarry was sighted. The hunters carried a variety of weapons, some with short bows, others with crossbows. A few preferred the short lance and most carried clubs hanging from their saddle-bows. A platoon of servants ran beside them when they began to move, some holding hounds on the leash, others beating the trees and yelling to drive the quarry out of hiding. Several green-clad hunt-masters and their assistants were mounted and kept in touch by blasts on their horns.
Soon the party broke up into smaller groups, most with a hound or two out ahead, being controlled by a handler running behind. John cantered down a path between the trees and then turned to follow the sudden urgent sound of horns, somewhere away to his right. Gwyn came close behind, with Bernard de Montfort, dressed in a very un-clerical brown tunic and breeches, his silent manservant Raoul close behind on foot. The path narrowed and then petered out so that they had to go forward between the trees and saplings at a walk, their horses brushing aside leafy branches and bushes.
‘This is getting us nowhere, de Wolfe!’ called the archdeacon from behind. ‘Best to go back and work our way around on the main track.’
John, brought up against what seemed to be an impenetrable thicket of ash and hazel, had to agree and pulled his courser’s head around to face back down the path of crushed vegetation that they had just made. As he did so, there was a distinct and chillingly familiar twanging sound from beyond the bushes and John de Wolfe jerked in his saddle as a crossbow bolt hit him in the chest.
‘I’m all right, Gwyn! You get the bastard!’ roared John, who rather to his surprise was still alive and apparently uninjured.
He looked down at the tear in his grey riding cloak, which now overlaid a smarting bruise over his ribs, but nothing else.
Gwyn, ignoring his master’s command, hastily came back and slid from his saddle, with de Montfort close behind. John looked down and saw a bolt on the ground nearby, with some odd red fragments scattered around it. The Cornishman insisted on feeling around de Wolfe’s chest to see if there was any wound or bleeding. Both he and de Montfort took some convincing that he was not seriously hurt, but again he yelled at his officer to pursue whoever had loosed off the crossbow at him. With a roar of rage, the Cornishman set off on foot, crashing through the bushes towards where the bolt must have come from.
‘My man has already gone after him, he’s quick on his feet,’ bellowed the archdeacon. ‘But you, Sir John, what about you? How could you survive that bolt?’
The coroner, still in the saddle, had been investigating his chest, pulling aside his cloak over the painful bruise that was now smarting like fury. He gave a shout of surprised astonishment.
‘Hubert Walter saved my life! By God’s guts, that’s incredible!’
He opened his short cloak and showed Bernard de Montfort a torn parchment in a ripped inside pocket. Pulling it out, a shower of brittle red fragments fell from where a length of pink tape carried the sparse remnants of a thick wax seal.
‘But a crossbow bolt would go through that easily!’ protested the priest, unable to believe his eyes.
‘It must have been a glancing blow and it skidded off sideways! Thanks be to the Virgin and all her saints!’ he added fervently. ‘Now let’s get after your servant and my officer; we need to catch this murdering swine and find out who he is.’
Shocked by his miraculous escape, but too hardened to admit it, he kicked his horse into action and heedless of branches and brambles tearing at him, charged off down the path to the main track, with de Montfort struggling to keep up with him. He turned left in the direction that Gwyn and Raoul must have taken, pounding along, shouting for his officer to say where he was. Suddenly, the trees thinned and they found themselves almost at the edge of the forest, with the park fence ahead of them.
‘There he is, at the deer-leap!’ shouted Bernard and true enough three figures were seen in the pit beneath the sheer wall of the trap. John slid from his horse, wincing at the pain in his chest and stumbled down the steep slope which formed part of the one-way system for the deer.
Gwyn and Raoul were bending over a still shape that lay at the foot of the ten-foot drop from the outer side of the leap.
‘The sod is dead, blast it!’ yelled Gwyn, incensed beyond measure. ‘I wanted the joy of twisting his head off myself, but he’s beaten me to it!’
‘Damn that!’ stormed de Wolfe. ‘I wanted him alive so that I could discover who’s behind this.’
‘How did this happen, Raoul?’ demanded the archdeacon of his servant.
The powerfully built Raoul looked sullen at this condemnation of his efforts. ‘He was dead by the time I got here, sire!’ he growled. ‘He was well ahead of me when I heard him crashing through the bushes. Then he streaked down here and started to climb the leap, as the fence is too high elsewhere. He almost got to the top, then fell back and must have broken his neck.’
The angry coroner looked at the low man-made cliff that fronted the grassy ramp on the other side. It was made of earth and rocks, partly colonised by clumps of coarse grass and weeds.
The dead man lay crumpled on the ground at its foot, his head bent at an unnatural angle. A few large stones lay tumbled nearby as if they had fallen out of the cliff face when he attempted to climb up.
‘Turn him over, Gwyn, let’s have a look at the bastard,’ commanded de Wolfe. He did so and the sightless face of a rough-looking man in a brown smock and serge trousers stared up at the sky. He had a tight wide belt carrying a long dagger and wore wooden-soled shoes on his feet.
‘Anyone recognise the bastard?’ asked Gwyn. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’
None of the others admitted to knowing him and by this time one of the Greenford hound-masters had joined them, as his dogs had run to this unusual gathering as they passed by on the main track. He was told of the failed crossbow attack and after some strenuous blasts on his horn, others of the hunting party came to join them. The prior was one of them and he was aghast at yet another attempt on the life of the palace coroner.
‘You must have made some persistent enemies, Sir John,’ was his comment, as he studied the features of the dead man. The face of the corpse was dirty and coarse-skinned, with heavy brows and a lantern jaw. He had no beard or moustache, but a raised dark brown mole, the size of a thumbnail and covered in coarse hairs, sat on his right cheek amongst the cow-pox scars.
‘I seem to recall this fellow’s face and that hairy tumour on his cheek. I have seen him about Westminster, though I have no idea who he is.’
More hunters gravitated to the leap and soon almost all the party was there, commiserating with John and making sure that he did not need the services of an apothecary. They all clustered around the corpse and one of the lay brothers that came with the abbey precentor also recognised the man.
‘He is a ruffian I have seen about the town,’ he said confidently. ‘I remember that disfiguring mole and once saw him staggering drunk out of the Crown alehouse in Tothill Street and starting a fight with another man.’