Leaving the other men-at-arms to patrol the village, he and Gwyn rode back down to the port where Richard de Revelle and Ralph Morin, together with the Templars, had rounded up all the prisoners. They were tied hand and foot, sitting in a dejected circle outside the alehouse. A small crowd of women, old men and children had emerged and were wailing and weeping, both for the few dead men laid out on the riverbank and the soon-to-be dead prisoners, whose fate must surely be hanging.
‘What was in that shed on the beach?’ demanded de Wolfe of the sheriff.
‘Goods of all sorts, none of which could possibly be afforded by this miserable vill,’ answered de Revelle complacently. ‘Undoubtedly looted from passing ships – to be carted away to Bridgwater or Taunton or even Bristol to be sold.’
‘I’d better look at it all later, to record it on my rolls,’ muttered de Wolfe. He saw a chance to let Thomas appear without arousing any suspicion. ‘I told my clerk to follow us from Exeter when he could. He had an attack of the bloody flux, but was recovering when we left, so I hope he finds us soon. I could do with his penmanship.’ He looked up at the sky and, though the sun appeared only fitfully, reckoned it was still about four hours to noon, when he had arranged to meet Thomas. ‘What do we need to do here now?’ he asked the constable.
‘I’ll set fires in those two galleys to stop them being used again, though this village will be without many men for a few years to come, if we hang all this lot.’ He indicated the bedraggled prisoners sitting in the mud, but was interrupted by a shout from one of the soldiers, who stood with outstretched arm, pointing at a sea-going knarr that had just appeared close inshore, having come around the eastern headland.
The tide was now just past its top and there was enough water for the knarr to enter the mouth of the little river before it ran aground. The ship-master and one of the crew splashed ashore and came to the village, looking in astonishment at the scene.
The sheriff was suspicious of this new arrival, but it became obvious that a vessel of this type was no pirate and it was soon established that it was the Brendan, out of Bristol, bound for Falmouth. The shipmaster had instructions to call at Lynmouth to pick up ten hogsheads of wine to take onward to Falmouth.
‘Obviously part of a looted cargo,’ snapped the sheriff. ‘Where else would that much wine come from in a place like this?’
The man shrugged, indifferent to the source of the cargo. ‘I do what I’m told,’ he said. ‘I don’t own the vessel, I just sail it.’
‘Well, you’re stuck here until tomorrow’s tide, that’s for sure,’ said Gwyn. ‘Unless you want to leave in the dark tonight.’ Philosophically, the master went back to his vessel to cook, eat and sleep until the morrow, while John decided it would soon be time to try to keep the appointment with his clerk.
Before he went, he became involved in another argument with his brother-in-law over jurisdiction. The sheriff announced that he intended trying the captives at a special Shire Court set up here today and hanging them straight away, but de Wolfe instantly objected.
‘Piracy and murder are pleas of the Crown. They must be arraigned before the king’s justices at the next Eyre of Assize!’
‘Impossible! We are fifty miles from Exeter and it would take almost a week to march these men all the way back. Then they would have to be kept in prison until the judges condescend to come to Devon. God knows when that will be!’
‘The Eyre is due next month, you know that.’
‘They said that last month, but they’ve not been to the city since October. We can’t guard and feed all the rabble in the West Country indefinitely – and the result will be the same. They’ll be hanged.’
They argued back and forth, but de Revelle was adamant. For once, Ralph Morin sided with him, as a matter of practicality, the captives being so far from the only town where the judges would sit. Though the Shire or County Court, run by the sheriff, was normally held in the Moot Hall in Rougemont, there was no legal reason why it could not be held anywhere in the county, as long as the sheriff was present.
Reluctantly, de Wolfe had to agree, mainly because of the geographical problems, but on condition that the details of the accused and their property were recorded by him for forfeiture. This was another reason for having Thomas present, though he could hardly admit to knowing that his clerk was already in the neighbourhood.
The coroner spent more than an hour inspecting the contents of the shed on the beach. It was a veritable treasure house of goods, even though much must have been carted away already for illicit sale in the big towns of Somerset. Bales of silk, rolls of worsted, cheaper russet cloth and hessian were piled on casks of wine. There were small barrels of raisins and other dried fruit from the South of France and even a pile of green cheeses from Mendip. He was not sure if the coroner’s duties ran to making a complete inventory of the looted cargoes, but hoped that they would have time for Thomas to make a list, not least to prevent it being spirited away by the villagers or even the manorial lord. If it could not be recorded, some soldiers must be left behind to guard it until trustworthy bailiffs could be sent from Barnstaple to have it carted out to safety. He doubted that the rightful owners would ever see any returned, but at least it could be sold for the king’s treasury – if the hands of people like the sheriff could be kept off it.
He walked back to the alehouse, guessing that by now it could not be far off noon. Outside were twelve fishermen-turned-buccaneers squatting dejectedly in their bonds, with Morin’s soldiers now searching for more looted goods in the houses and fish-sheds.
De Wolfe walked Odin away unobtrusively, leaving Gwyn to keep an eye on the Templars. He wondered if they still fancied stalking him on suspicion of concealing de Blanchefort somewhere, though with both of Cosimo’s strong-arm men virtually out of action, he felt that the Italian was no longer a threat.
Lynton was still deserted, apart from the three soldiers, who were burying the body of the slain fugitive at the edge of the village. Short of a house-to-house search, which might be necessary later, there was no way of discovering where the men who had escaped from the beach had hidden. De Wolfe thought that they might have taken to the woods or moors, to keep well out of sight until the sheriff’s men had left the district. There was no manor-house anywhere near and he did not know who the local lord was – or whether he knew or cared if his subjects were part-time pirates.
He stopped Odin in the centre of the village to look around and decide what to do next. The church was on his left, a small timber Saxon building. It had no tower and looked little different from a barn, apart from the plain wooden cross nailed to the gable at one end. He sat for a moment in the silent hamlet, looking around him. Then a movement caught his eye further up the track, at the edge of the village. A pony moved out from behind a thicket and he saw that sitting on it side-saddle was Thomas de Peyne, small and black in the threadbare mantle that still gave him the air of a priest.
Cautiously, the clerk trotted down to his master, looking right and left all the time in his usually furtive manner. ‘I said meet at the church!’ snapped the coroner. ‘And where’s the Templar?’
Thomas glanced apprehensively at the nearby building. ‘There are men in there – I looked just now and they all shouted at me to get out.’
Light dawned on de Wolfe. Now he knew what had happened to the escaped Lynmouth men. ‘Are they claiming sanctuary?’ he demanded.
Thomas gulped. ‘I didn’t wait to ask them, but certainly they were rough men in rough clothing. I doubt they were there for their devotions.’