Behind the table was a monk in a Cistercian habit, but with a wide leather belt around his waist, which carried a large document scrip.
The cellarer was standing up, sorting parchment lists with an air of grim determination, his strong features set in concentration. He looked up at the sound of the door opening, irritation on his face at the interruption.
‘What is it? Who are you?’
As Thomas’s objective was merely to get a look at the man, he took the quickest means of escape. Fumbling in his scrip for some coins, he made the excuse that as a passing priest grateful for accommodation for a couple of nights, he thought he should give his widow’s mite to the abbey — and having heard that Father Treipas was the focal point of the management, he had come to offer a few pence, which was all he had.
The burly priest waved him away impatiently.
‘There’s an offertory in the church, brother — and another in the guest hall. Put it in there, don’t bother me with such trifles. I’ve two hundred bales to be carted to Plymouth tomorrow.’
Thomas bobbed his head apologetically and withdrew rapidly, but not before impressing the father’s face on his mind, in case he needed to recognise him again. Content that he had done all he could for the coroner, Thomas made his way reluctantly to the stables to collect his pony. As he rode out of the abbey compound under the south gatehouse towards the high road, he looked back longingly at the place where, for a few short hours, he had been a priest again, among his own kind and the prayers, chants and ceremonies that were so dear to him. He had given up all thoughts of trying to end his miserable life, as God had given him a sign when he had failed in his solitary attempt — now perhaps this was another sign, for if his uncle’s attempts to have him reinstated in Holy Orders failed, then perhaps he could seek solace by spending the rest of his life as an unordained monk.
As he turned his pony’s head towards the Exeter road and his rendezvous with Gwyn at Ashburton, he clung on to his side saddle in a better frame of mind than he had experienced for many months.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was early evening before all three of the coroner’s team got together at Rougemont. De Wolfe had arrived back from Stoke-in-Teignhead late in the afternoon, to find no sign of Matilda at home. Thankful for a postponement of her inevitable sniping at his visit to his family, he assumed she had gone either to St Olave’s or to her long-suffering cousin in Fore Street. Neither Mary nor Lucille was at the house in Martin’s Lane, but as it was Sunday they were entitled to a few hours’ freedom.
He promised himself a visit to the Bush as soon as possible, but before that he wanted to make sure that his two assistants had returned safely and to hear what they had learned, if anything. When he climbed the stairs to his chamber above the gatehouse, he was relieved to find that they were both there. Thomas had met Gwyn as arranged at the inn in Ashburton, and together they had travelled back to Exeter. John lowered himself to his stool behind the table and glared at his two henchmen, his habitual fierce expression disguising the fact that he was relieved to see them safe and sound.
‘Why the new baldric strap?’ he asked, looking at the band of new leather running diagonally across Gwyn’s huge chest. His officer’s red moustache lifted as he grinned.
‘A long story, Crowner, but some bastard outlaw sliced through the other one. I must be getting old, it took me several seconds to kill him!’
Their more timorous clerk blanched at this casual talk of slaying, even though he had already heard the story. Now he heard it all again, as Gwyn related his brief penetration of the outlaw gang and then summed up his conclusions.
‘It’s clear that they are being paid by someone to aggravate whatever’s going on in the forest. As well as their usual tricks of thieving and robbery with violence, Robert Winter and his mob are doing dirty work for the foresters — or at least for two of them, William Lupus and Michael Crespin.’
De Wolfe considered this for a moment, brooding over his table like a great black crow. ‘Why are they doing it — and who’s paying them?’ he ruminated, half to himself.
‘It can hardly be for personal gain,’ piped Thomas. ‘To pay men to beat up some cottar just because he refused to give them a bit of fodder and a couple of pigs seems ridiculous. I think it more likely that there’s a campaign to make the forest administration look unmanageable — closing forges and burning tanneries, penalising alehouses. Surely that must be to make the forest dwellers so outraged that they demand change.’
‘Who the hell cares about how the forest is run?’ objected Gwyn, who usually appeared to ridicule anything the clerk said, though in reality, he had a deep regard for the little man’s intelligence.
John rasped his fingers thoughtfully over his black stubble — he had forgotten his Saturday shave the day before, being in Stoke.
‘Yes, who could possibly gain by it?’ he pondered. ‘But what if someone wanted to replace the existing senior forest officers by making it obvious that the present regime had lost its grip?’
Gwyn nodded his shaggy head. ‘We’ve had a verderer murdered and the Warden attacked and half killed. That’s a good start towards getting new officers.’
‘And our sheriff appointed a new verderer almost before the slain one was cold!’ added Thomas.
‘One of the outlaws sniggered when I suggested that their behaviour would have the sheriff down upon them,’ Gwyn recollected.
De Wolfe beat an agitated tattoo on the table with his dirty fingernails.
‘Yes, the bloody sheriff! He hinted to me that he would like to be Warden of the Forest himself. Though God knows why, there can’t be much money in it. There’s no salary and I can’t see the foresters sharing the loot from their extortions with him.’
There was a silence as John worked things over in his mind. Gwyn took the opportunity to lug out his pitcher of cider and get three pottery cups from a niche in the stony wall. Shaking out woodlice and spiders, he filled the mugs and handed them around.
‘Did you learn anything else in your brief sojourn as an outlaw, Gwyn?’ grunted the coroner.
‘Not much — only confirmation that the foresters have stepped up their oppression in the last few months. But we knew that already. The odd thing is that this Robert Winter — who seems quite a smart fellow — is getting paid for helping the foresters create their disturbances. I’ll wager that it was one of their gang who put an arrow in the verderer’s back, probably for money.’
‘So who the hell is paying them?’ mused de Wolfe, sipping his cider.
‘They seem to be quite bold in their dealings with townsfolk. I saw this Martin Angot deep in conversation with someone in the tavern in Ashburton,’ said Gwyn. ‘Someone like that could easily be passing on orders and payment.’
‘Did you recognise him?’
‘No, but I’ve got a feeling I’ve seen him here in Exeter at some time. He was a little, dark-featured fellow with a face like a dried fig.’
At this, Thomas sat up and took notice.
‘I saw a man in Buckfast yesterday who looked like that,’ he squeaked. ‘A lined, leathery face and no taller than me.’
The coroner looked dubious. ‘Plenty of men look like that.’
Thomas was not to be put off. ‘This one was a horse-trader, they told me. I don’t know his name, but he did a lot of business with the abbey, through Father Edmund, the cellarer.’