But the reflexes of an old soldier and a good share of luck saved the day. De Wolfe jumped towards Fulford and jabbed the tip of his sword forward. At the same time he felt an impact on the sole of his foot. He had trodden on the cross-piece of de Braose’s sword as he pricked Fulford’s upper arm. The big two-handed swords were designed for slashing, not fencing, and the tip was broad and rather blunt, but it penetrated the thick leather of Fulford’s jerkin and made him yell.
All this took no more than a few seconds, but when de Wolfe sensed de Braose trying to pull his sword from under his foot, he swung out with his other leg and caught the man under the chin. De Braose staggered back, gurgling, and the coroner stooped to grab the lost weapon and hurl it away into the nearest bramble thicket.
In spite of the bleeding flesh-wound in his arm, Fulford still grasped the knife and, though Gwyn was holding him by the arms, the crack the officer had received on his head had halved his fighting abilities, especially as blood was pouring down from a cut over his right eye, almost blinding him.
Afraid that Fulford might still slide the dagger between Gwyn’s ribs, John grabbed him from behind and put an arm-lock across his throat, doing all he could to crush his Adam’s apple. He was only too well aware that his back was to de Braose who, like every man, carried a lethal dagger on his belt. He screwed his neck around to look out for the danger but, to his surprise, Jocelin had vanished.
Afraid to release Fulford until Gwyn had recovered, he had no means of pursuing the leader and the trio staggered back and forth in stale-mate for another half-minute, with Fulford beginning to go blue in the face from de Wolfe’s grip on his throat. Gwyn resolved the situation by recovering enough wit to bring up his massive knee into Fulford’s crotch with a blow that almost crushed his genitals. Unable to scream because of the arm-lock, Fulford’s eyes bulged and he went limp. Afraid of some trick, John hung on for a little longer, but almost simultaneously he and Gwyn released their hold and stepped back. Fulford fell in a heap on the ground, gasping and groaning.
De Wolfe picked up the dagger, then turned to Gwyn, who subsided slowly to sit alongside Fulford, wiping the blood from his face with his fingers and holding his head with the other hand.
‘Are you all right, man?’ said the coroner, who had been in tighter scrapes than this one with his officer, but who was still concerned for his head injury.
Gwyn shook his head like a dog coming from water. ‘Yes, I wasn’t fated to be killed over a poxy treasure hunt. But that was a fair whack he gave me with that shovel handle.’ He looked around him, blinking the last of the blood from his eyelids. ‘What happened to de Braose?’
The sound of hoofs on the road was enough answer.
‘He thought escape better than heroism, leaving his squire behind,’ said the coroner, ‘though he was good with a sword, I’ll grant him that.’
Gwyn struggled to his feet and looked down at Fulford. ‘This one will live until he’s hanged, but what about the others?’
They looked round at the mayhem in the area of crushed grass. The groom from the Close was now sitting up, holding his head in his hands, a large blue bruise rapidly appearing around his left ear. ‘I’ll be fine in a while,’ he mumbled. ‘But where’s Wichin?’ The other cathedral servant, who had been wounded in the arm, was found lying on his side behind the nearest large bush. He had lost a lot of blood, but when de Wolfe cut away his jacket, he saw that the wound was now full of clot and that the haemorrhage had stopped.
‘I’ll get him taken to the parish priest,’ said a timid voice. Looking round, de Wolfe saw that Eric Langton, who had kept a safe distance during the fighting, had returned. He went off to find the priest and some help to carry Wichin to a nearby house to recover. David said that he would stay with him until the Archdeacon could send out a leech to see him and bring him back to the cathedral infirmary.
‘What do we do with this fellow?’ asked Gwyn, whose iron head had suffered no lasting ill-effects from the blow.
They looked down at Fulford, who was also recovering from the throttling and the scrotal insult. He had small red blotches in the whites of his eyes and his face was still slightly blue and swollen from de Wolfe’s attempts to strangle him. He sat on the ground, one hand over the small cut in his arm, the other over his aching testicles, but his defiance was returning. ‘Who in Satan’s name are you?’ he croaked. ‘And what right have you to attack us? Don’t you know that that was Sir Jocelin de Braose whom you assaulted and drove away?’
De Wolfe’s black and grey figure was hunched above him like a great crow. ‘You ask us that, Fulford? I am Sir John de Wolfe, if we are bandying titles. You obviously don’t know the King’s coroner when you see him – and his officer.’
The man’s confidence seemed to increase as the pain in his groin diminished. ‘Coroner? What is this to do with corpses – except those you seem to produce yourself?’ He pointed across at the bloody body lying on the other side of the hole.
Gwyn prodded him none too gently with his foot. ‘Enough of your lip, man. The crowner will ask the questions.’
De Wolfe motioned to his officer to pull the man to his feet. ‘You are a prisoner now. You will be taken back to Rougemont and lodged in the gaol there.’
‘On what charge? You will regret this, Crowner, you are meddling in matters you don’t understand.’
De Wolfe gave him a buffet on the ear. ‘You impertinent devil! You forget your station in life, young man. A squire to some shiftless mercenary is of little account to me. As for dead bodies, you should know that another part of a coroner’s duties is to safeguard finds of treasure trove, to keep them safe for the King from thieves like you.’
At this Giles Fulford remained silent, and Gwyn frogmarched him to the horses that were tied up some distance away at the edge of the little wood.
David had virtually recovered now from his bang on the head, and helped the coroner’s officer to tie Fulford’s hands to the saddle-horn with a spare thong.
‘What about the corpse? Another outlaw, by the looks of his clothing,’ said Gwyn.
Sullenly, the squire confirmed that the dead man was indeed another anonymous ruffian hired for the occasion, though from the quality of his fighting he must once have been a soldier.
‘Let the village bury him here,’ said de Wolfe. ‘This time, I’ll interpret the rules to accept that an outlaw is also outside the crowner’s law and we’ll do without an inquest.’
‘What about the treasure hoard?’ muttered Fulford. ‘Are you going to leave that half-dug hole there for the village to steal whatever is hidden in it?’
At this, de Wolfe took a perverse delight in holding up the parchment, which Eric Langton had returned to him a few minutes ago. Holding it up before the man tied on the horse, he slowly ripped it in half and then in quarters. ‘Written by my clerk the other night, especially for your benefit. There is no treasure, my lad – at least not in that hole!’