Only the birds replied.
Worried and frustrated, he began a more systematic search of the edges of the clearing, reasoning that if there had been some meeting there his master would have been spying on it. Of course, there was always the possibility that he had followed the other party, presumably outlaws, in which case he could be miles away by now.
The Cornishman decided on one more circuit, this time a few trees back from the edge, where John may have been hiding to be within sight of the conspirators. Halfway around, he stopped, fear suddenly gripping him. On the waxy green leaves of some wild garlic, he saw a spatter of blood. A few feet away there was more, and scuff marks through the fallen leaves were deep enough to expose the almost black leaf mould beneath. With his heart in his mouth — and his sword in his hand — he followed the intermittent trail for a dozen yards, to the lip of a depression which looked like an old badger sett, drifted over with leaves. Three or four feet lower, he saw the inert body of a man, which instinct told him was a corpse. After the first lurch of fear, he saw straight away that it could not be the coroner, though the head was buried in leaves where he had pitched face down. The clothing was brown and the fellow was bare footed.
Sheathing his sword, Gwyn tipped the dead body over and saw a total stranger, but enough of a ruffian to qualify as one of the outlaw band. The cadaver was still warm and the limbs and jaw were slack, so he had been dead less than a few hours. The eyes were wide open and the mouth gaping. His jerkin and tattered tunic were saturated with blood from the waist down and, on probing, Gwyn saw a gaping slash in his upper thigh and gouts of blood clot oozing from a wound in his lower belly.
‘This is John de Wolfe’s work, I’ll wager!’ he muttered to himself, letting the corpse fall back again. ‘But where in the Virgin’s name is he?’
He began yelling again, uncaring about concealing his presence, then began following the blood trail back in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, it virtually petered out just at the point where he had first seen it. A close search revealed a few spots ten yards away, but there were no visible tracks in the forest floor. Two deer trails crossed near by, which confused the issue, and in spite of many minutes casting about, he failed to find anything to help him locate the coroner.
He leaned against a big oak, to recover his wits. There was a dead outlaw back there and it was highly likely that John de Wolfe was responsible. But that by no means meant that the coroner was still around here — or that he was dead or injured. Had he taken off after the other outlaws?
Gwyn sighed and scratched his tangled hair in indecision. There was no way in which he could search the forest — it went for miles in various directions. For all he knew, de Wolfe might emerge somewhere else and either walk or borrow a horse to come back to the alehouse. But some sixth sense niggled at him to say that the situation was not that simple — so he must have help to look for his friend and master.
Having made a decision, he now hurried to carry it out. Still yelling John’s name at intervals, he strode back to the track and jogged down it to the main road. At the inn, he slapped a couple of pennies down before the cripple, telling him what had happened and to care for the hired horse until it was collected the next day. With a last admonition to keep a sharp lookout for the coroner, he spurred his big mare towards Exeter to get help.
Even pushing his strong mount as hard as he could, it took Gwyn almost three hours to reach Rougemont. The first person he saw when he clattered his steaming mare under the gatehouse arch was his drinking and gambling friend, the garrison sergeant.
‘Gabriel, the coroner’s gone missing!’
He poured the whole story into the sympathetic ear of the old soldier, who was another who thought highly of Black John.
‘But we don’t know for certain he’s in trouble, just because he saw off some bloody outlaw!’ Gabriel tried to be reassuring.
The coroner’s officer shook his head. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, friend. He wouldn’t have gone off for hours, leaving me and the horses without any word.’
‘So what do you think may have happened to him?’
‘With a dead man there, there’s no doubt he’s been in a fight. We must go to look for him. He may be lying wounded. It needs more than a few men to search that area. I couldn’t do it alone.’
Gabriel worriedly chewed his lip. ‘The bloody sheriff won’t be too keen on sending men-at-arms to look for John de Wolfe. He’d be glad to see the back of him.’
‘Surely his sister would give him hell if he refused!’ bellowed Gwyn.
‘Let’s find Ralph Morin. We can get some sense out of him.’
They found the castellan in the lower ward, inspecting some repairs to the palisade that topped the high earth bank of the outer defences.
He listened gravely to Gwyn’s urgent news and without hesitation agreed that a search party must be mustered without delay. To their great relief, Morin also said that Richard de Revelle had just gone on one of his duty trips to his manor at Tiverton, to spend Sunday with his wife.
‘So I’ll take it upon myself to assume that he would have been anxious to safeguard the well-being of his dear brother-in-law!’ he said sarcastically, a broad grin splitting his bearded face. ‘So let’s get a posse together, right now!’
Gabriel looked up at the sky which, though still blue, showed a sun leaning well over to the west. ‘By the time we get men mounted up and ride almost to Ashburton, there’ll be precious little daylight left.’
Gwyn, though he had already sat six hours in the saddle that day, was in no mood for delay. ‘Can’t be helped. The crowner may be bleeding to death somewhere. Let’s go!’
Such was their devotion to de Wolfe that the three men almost ran back to the inner bailey, where their horses were stabled. As they went, Gabriel and Ralph Morin yelled orders at some of the men-at-arms standing about, who in turn began running to knock up their fellows in the huts and lean-to buildings within the castle precinct. Before the three leaders returned on horseback, the outer ward was buzzing with activity, as a dozen soldiers took their mounts from the main stables and saddled up with the help of the ostlers and farriers.
A crowd of wives, children and off-duty members of the garrison came to gawk at the urgent preparations and cheered as the troop trotted briskly through the outer gate. As they hurried through the city, scattering the crowds in the High Street and Fore Street, the Exeter rumour mill started in full swing. In these peaceful times in the West of England, the sight of what looked like a war party of soldiers racing out of the city gave rise to all manner of speculation, from a French invasion to a new rebellion by Prince John! It was only when a couple of pedlars, who had been selling trinkets to wives in Rougemont, came out of the castle with the news that the King’s coroner was missing, probably wounded and quite possibly killed, that the rumour took on a new twist, spreading like wildfire throughout the city.
With the sense of urgency that Gwyn had engendered, the posse made good time to the alehouse on the Ashburton road. In the cooler part of the day, they trotted and occasionally cantered the fifteen miles from the city and arrived there when there was still some of the evening left, it being now early July. They stopped at the tavern for the troop to water their horses, while Gwyn went with the constable and sergeant to see whether the landlord had any news of de Wolfe.
The twisted man leaned on his stick and shook his head. ‘Not a sign of anyone asking for you, sirs.’
‘Where does that track lead to, the one just down the road?’ demanded Gwyn.
‘Nowhere now. It used to go to a woodward’s dwelling, but it caught fire and he died in the flames, some ten years ago.’