After the better part of an hour’s silent tramping, they skirted some cultivated fields where the valley began to widen out and reached a narrow track, rutted by cartwheels. After following this for half a mile, they crossed a wider road which Gwyn recognised as the highway from Ashburton to Moretonhampstead. He could see a small hamlet in the distance, but after furtive glances up and down the road, Simon marched them straight across and took a path that led into the trees on the other side. This wound along for a while until it debouched into a large clearing in which there was a fair-sized cottage built of whitewashed cob, a mixture of mud, horsehair and dung, plastered on to a lattice of hazel withies.
A couple of sheds stood behind it, alongside a wattle fence enclosing a large patch of stinking mud in which more than two score pigs snuffled and grunted. In front of the dwelling was another fenced area, planted with orderly rows of beans, cabbage, onions, lettuce and herbs. Simon came to halt facing the cottage and pointed towards it with his club.
‘Right, boys, we’re to beat him up a little, but not enough to croak him — understand?’
Gwyn became very uneasy — as the dilemma had presented itself so abruptly. Simon stood at the fence around the plot and stared at the silent cottage, the others gathering behind him.
‘What are we here for?’ grunted Gwyn.
The leader turned his ugly head. ‘To teach this fellow a lesson — and to oblige William Lupus.’
‘Can’t a forester settle his own problems? What’s this cottar done to offend him?’
‘You ask a lot of questions, for a newcomer,’ snapped Simon.
‘It’s because I’m a newcomer. I don’t know what’s going on,’ Gwyn replied reasonably. One of the younger men explained.
‘He wouldn’t give Lupus everything he wanted. Under forest law, everyone dwelling in a royal forest must give the putre on demand to any forest officer and his groom, as well as fodder for his horse and food for his hound.’
‘What the hell’s “putre”?’
‘The forest fee — bed and board, oats for the horse, two tallow candles a night and black bread for the forester’s dog.’
‘So why’s bed and board a problem?’ muttered Gwyn.
‘Edwin, the freeholder here, refused to give Lupus everything else he wanted, including a couple of pigs and some fowls — in fact, he and his two sons threatened to give him a beating if he didn’t go away.’
‘So why didn’t this Edwin give the forester what he was entitled to?’
The cross-eyed outlaw sniggered. ‘Because Lupus had been back three times inside two weeks, demanding his dues. He’d cleaned the old man out of the last of his fodder, I heard. The final straw was him wanting three of his best breeding sows.’
Simon smacked the lad around the head with a heavy hand. ‘For Mary’s sake, give over gossiping! There’s work to be done. Go and chase those bloody pigs into the forest. That’ll get him into trouble for unlawful agisting, especially this time of year, in the fence month.’
Rubbing his sore head, the youth loped away towards the back of the cottage, while the leading outlaw gave the other youngster a push on the shoulder. ‘You, get in that garden and wreck those plants of Edwin’s. Let him go hungry, after he’s recovered from his thrashing.’
He motioned to Gwyn to follow him and made for the front of the cottage.
The coroner’s officer was feeling increasingly uneasy at what was happening, especially when he saw the carefully tended vegetables being either uprooted or trodden underfoot by the ruffian in the garden plot. But for the moment he could hardly afford to abandon his deception, just when he might be able to learn something. Reluctantly, he tramped after Simon, the cudgel he had been given dangling from his hand. As they neared the heavy sheet of thick leather that hung over the door of the windowless dwelling, he heard the squeal of pigs as they were chased off into the woods behind, from where it would be a marathon task to gather them together again.
As they stood near the rough timber frame of the door, there was still no sound from within. The youth was still crashing about in the vegetable plot, but there was no reaction from inside the cottage.
‘Maybe he’s not here,’ said Gwyn, trying to keep the relief from his voice. There was no way in which he could stand by and let these thugs assault an innocent man, even if it did expose him as a spy.
Simon looked disgruntled at the prospect of a wasted journey. ‘It’s a market day in Moretonhampstead. Maybe the bastard has gone there to sell some of his hogs.’
He pushed aside the leather with the point of his cudgel and peered into the single room. ‘No one here, blast it!’ he snarled.
Gwyn decided to use the anticlimax to try to wheedle out some more information.
‘I still don’t see why we’re doing the forester’s dirty work.’
Simon turned impatiently from the door. ‘Because Winter gets paid to do it, that’s why. And the rest of us get a share-out now and then. Where else d’you think we get money for ale and wenching when we slide into the town?’
‘Who pays him, then?’ asked Gwyn, boldly.
The outlaw glared suspiciously at him. ‘You’re a big fellow, but you’ve got an even bigger mouth! Why d’you want to know? It’s none of your business.’
Gwyn held up his hands apologetically. ‘I’ve just got a curious nature — I’m no sheriff’s man, for God’s sake!’
This seemed to amuse Simon.
‘Sheriff’s man — that’s a laugh, that is! Now shut up and get in there and smash everything within sight. If we can’t break Edwin’s head, we’ll just have break up his homestead.’ To demonstrate what he meant, Simon pulled violently at the leather door flap, ripping it from its fastenings.
As if this was a signal, all hell was let loose.
There was a warning scream from the lad in the garden and a pounding of feet from the direction of a small shed at the side of the house. Two men came flying around the corner, one hefting a three-foot piece of branch, the other waving a small but wicked-looking firewood axe. With yells of defiance, they fell upon the two men at their door, the younger fellow catching Simon a heavy blow with the branch, which he fended off with his left arm. The older man, obviously his father, took a swing at Gwyn with his axe, but the experienced fighter easily parried it with his cudgel, the blade becoming deeply embedded in the wood.
Edwin and his teenaged son were courageous enough, fighting desperately for their home, if not their lives. But once the element of surprise was lost, they were no match for the outlaws, especially when the two others came running, one from the garden and the other attracted by the noise on his way back from chasing the pigs. As Edwin, a grizzled, toothless man of about fifty, struggled to pull his axe from Gwyn’s club, the Cornishman put a massive arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.
‘Stop struggling and you won’t be hurt,’ he whispered into his ear. The older man looked at him in surprise, then went limp. At the same time, Simon, rubbing his bruised arm, was dodging another blow from the son, a burly youth who was red in the face with mixed anger and fear. The outlaw, no stranger to vicious infighting, rapidly rallied against the unexpected attack and swung his own club, striking the son hard on the shoulder, making him howl. By now, the two other ruffians had arrived and grabbed the son by the arms. He managed to pull his right one free long enough to deliver a swinging blow with his branch to the temple of the youth who had trampled his garden, sending the fellow to the ground as if poleaxed. Gwyn had to hang on to the father as he struggled and swore when Simon drove his fist into the son’s belly, causing him to double up. The lad sagged in the grip of the other outlaw, as he vomited his breakfast on to the ground.