At the door of the sacristy, he turned to John,
‘Please, let me come with you when you tell the bastard about all this. I wouldn’t want to miss seeing his face at the news!’
John decided that there was no time like the present, and they walked across the bailey to the keep, smugly anticipating the violent reaction of de Revelle when he heard how he was being sidelined. But the man was not there, and from the furtive looks and feeble excuses of his chamber servant, John suspected that he had some dubious assignation in some backstreet of the city.
‘Delay increases the anticipation of good things,’ he told Ralph philosophically. ‘We’ll ruin his day by telling him first thing in the morning.’
As he walked through the gatehouse arch on his way home, Sergeant Gabriel bobbed out of the guardroom to intercept him.
‘Crowner, Gwyn sent a message up by a lad a few minutes ago. He said to meet him as soon as you can just above the Saracen, but not to go inside.’
John stared at the grizzled soldier, unsure of the meaning of this cryptic message.
‘Any idea what it’s about?
‘No idea, sir, but it was from Gwyn all right — I questioned the boy and he said it was a giant with red hair who gave him a quarter penny to run with the message!’
For Gwyn to be so generous for such a small task must surely mean something important, thought John.
‘That Saracen’s an evil place, Crowner. Would you like me to come with you, in case there’s any rough stuff?’
The old soldier was obviously curious, as well as trying to be helpful, so John accepted his offer and they set off at a quick march for the lower town. The tavern of ill repute was at the top of Stepcote Hill, leading down to the West Gate, and ten minutes later they were within sight of the low thatched building, with dirty yellow-plastered walls displaying a crude painting of a Musselman over the door.
In the rays of the setting sun, they saw Gwyn lurking fifty paces short of the ale house, trying unsuccessfully to look inconspicuous in the doorway of the last house in Smythen Street. They walked cautiously up to him, as he peered down towards the hill.
‘What the devil’s going on, Gwyn? Are you spying on someone?’
He pointed a forefinger the size of a blood sausage towards the Saracen. ‘He’s in there! I didn’t want to scare him off before you came.’
The Cornishman was in one of his exasperatingly obscure moods.
‘Who, for Christ’s sake?’ snarled de Wolfe.
Gwyn looked as his master in surprise, as if he should already know.
‘Stephen Cruch, of course! I was going to the Bush along Idle Lane when I spotted him creeping down here. I followed him and saw him going into the tavern.’
‘After that affair in the forest near Ashburton, it’s a wonder he’d show his face within miles of the city,’ observed Gabriel.
‘Maybe he didn’t know about it — though every one else in Exeter does,’ replied de Wolfe.
‘From the way he was skulking along, I think he’s well aware of the danger,’ said Gwyn. ‘Perhaps he left something in the Saracen last time he stayed there, which he urgently needs before making a run for it, out of the county.’
De Wolfe stared down the street, keeping the door of the tavern in view.
‘If we seized him, it might help when the troops arrive. He can probably tell us where the various outlaw camps are placed. The one you saw, Gwyn — that must be only one of many.’
The big man’s huge moustache lifted as he grinned. ‘I’m sure he can “probably” tell us, crowner. Especially if I lean on him a little. He’s only a small fellow!’
‘How are we going to do it?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Just march in and grab him!’ said John bluntly. ‘Though I’ve got the King’s Commission to do almost anything I like, he’s already due for a hanging for consorting with outlaws — which I saw with my own eyes!’
‘A good bargaining point!’ chuckled Gabriel. ‘Let’s go.’
The taking of the horse-dealer was simplicity itself. The three men, two unusually large and the third in a military tunic, brandishing a sword, burst into the taproom of the tavern. There was a stunned silence from all the patrons, a rough-looking bunch with a sprinkling of resident harlots. As John and his friends scanned the room for Stephen Cruch, the silence was broken by the landlord, a grossly fat man called Willem the Fleming, with whom John had often had dealings, usually unpleasant.
‘What the hell do you want!’ he shouted.
Gwyn spotted Cruch sliding behind the fat innkeeper, trying to make for the back door. With a roar, he charged forward, brushed Willem aside and grabbed the horse-trader by his greasy hair. As he dragged the smaller man back towards the entrance, pandemonium broke out and the patrons surged forward, but Gabriel swished his sword back and forth in warning as he and de Wolfe retreated to the door and left.
Outside, their captive was writhing in Gwyn’s grasp, now with a massive arm locked around his neck, cutting off most of the oaths and blasphemies that he was trying to scream. They dragged him across to Idle Lane, where beyond the Bush on waste ground were a few scrubby trees. From the pocket of his jerkin, Gwyn produced a short length of stout twine and, pushing Cruch back against the trunk of an elder, he tied his wrists behind it, then stepped back.
The three men stood around him, regarding him grimly.
‘Your life is already forfeit, Cruch,’ said John harshly. ‘You have been seen not once but twice dealing with Robert Winter’s scum.’
The leathery features of the dealer contorted as he babbled his innocence, but the faces of his accusers remained implacable.
‘You will hang, unless the justices decide you should be mutilated, blinded and castrated,’ said de Wolfe. At this, Cruch sagged against the tree, almost fainting with terror.
‘There is one possible chance for you, if you can persuade me to be lenient.’
‘Anything, anything, Crowner! I had no part in the attack on you last week,’ croaked Stephen. ‘It was Winter who sent his men to deal with whoever was spying on them. We had no idea it was you.’
When de Wolfe put his questions to the man, he was so eager to reply that his words fell out in an almost incomprehensible gabble.
They learned that he admitted to being a messenger between Father Edmund and Robert Winter. This had arisen as an offshoot of his legitimate trading with Buckfast. Some months before, Treipas had paid him to seek out the outlaws, who were known to creep back into towns and villages for clandestine drinking and whoring. Cruch had provided ponies for the outlaws, paid for by the priest, then sent purses to them for reasons which Cruch claimed he knew nothing about.
‘There were slips of parchment with the money, which Robert Winter alone could read, for I could not. I keep my accounts on tally sticks.’
Even Gwyn’s heavy hands squeezing his neck until his eyes bulged and his tongue protruded failed to get the man to admit any more, and John was eventually satisfied that they had learned all they could for the moment.
‘We’ll keep you in the cells in Rougemont for now,’ he said. ‘When we move against Winter’s gang, we will need you to show us the various places where you met him in the forest. If you comply, then maybe I will turn my back at the end of it all and forget that you are a prisoner — understand?’
Cruch nodded his understanding, well aware that with hard men like the coroner and his officer, his life hung by a thread. Gabriel and Gwyn agreed to take the man back to Rougemont and deliver him to the care of Stigand the gaoler, while John went home to a well-earned rest. As they began to frog-march him away, de Wolfe called a last warning to the horse-trader.
‘I hear it rumoured that you yourself are already an escaped outlaw. If you have any sense, if we do let you go at the end of this you’ll either take ship out of England — or at least hide yourself in Yorkshire or Norfolk, well away from here!’