He bridled a little at this. 'I downed the pirate captain at my first stroke yesterday!' he protested. 'I am not yet a feeble old man in his dotage — as I could prove to you up in the loft tonight.'
Nesta smiled wanly at him. 'Perhaps not tonight, John. I feel tired and out of sorts this evening. Maybe there is a thunderstorm brewing — it affects me that way.'
John recalled a blue sky free from a single cloud as he walked down to the tavern. This time the moon could not be blamed for her indisposition, and again a niggle of concern slid into his mind. He looked around the crowded taproom, but he saw no sign of the Welsh stonemason.
'Are you perhaps sickening for something, cariad?' he asked in their habitual Welsh.
She shook her head. 'No, John, just a headache and a passing lowering of the spirits.'
De Wolfe recalled that when she had been pregnant the previous year, she had been in a strange state of mind — indeed, it was only Thomas's intervention that had saved her from doing away with herself. John did some rapid calculation in his head and decided that this was unlikely to be the problem now, unless he himself was responsible.
They talked on quietly for a while, and Nesta spoke of the journey they had made some months earlier, when she had accompanied him back to Wales for a short visit. He had been on the king's business but had left her in Gwent to visit her family, whom she had not seen for several years. Now, she spoke longingly of her mother, who lived not many miles from Chepstow, wondering about her health, as she was advancing in years. John was on the point of promising her another such pilgrimage when he realised that soon he would be two hundred miles away in London.
He had still not told Nesta of his new appointment, being held back by some ill-formed fear of her reaction, but now he saw that he could delay no longer. Bolstering his courage, he reached to take her hand.
'Nesta, my love, I have something to tell you. This came about when I was with the king in Normandy.'
She looked at him almost fearfully, her big eyes wide in her heart-shaped face. 'I feel that this is news that will alter our lives, John!', she said. Like the mother she pined for, she was blessed — or perhaps cursed — with a certain clairvoyance, which had led her near mortal trouble in the past.
Still holding her hand, he slowly and clearly told her of the Lionheart's summons to London, an order that could not be disobeyed. 'I must go within a few weeks, cariad, as soon as this Axmouth problem is dealt with. I have sent news of it to Matilda, and she has not replied in any shape or form. So the way is clear for you to come to London with me — it will solve our eternal problem, as we could start afresh in a great city where no one knows or cares about us!'
When he had finished, he wondered if her famous temper, which went with her red hair, would explode over him. He did not know what to expect by way of her reaction. Would it be joy, confusion, hysterics or anger? What ensued was none of these, but a calm appraising look that unnerved him.
'Why did you not tell me this before, John?' she asked, her hazel eyes upon him.
'I lacked the courage until now. But tomorrow, though the danger, is slight, I will again be handling a sword and, as you keep telling me, maybe I am getting too slow to keep out of trouble, so I felt I should unburden myself to you tonight.'
'And what of us? What of me? I have this alehouse, which is my life.'
'You must come to London with me, my love. We have spoken of leaving many times. This is a chance to make a clean break.'
Nesta looked at him dispassionately. 'There is the small matter of your wife, John. Will you just abandon her?'
John made an impatient gesture. 'I have told her what is to happen. She has made no response. It is now up to her to do what she wants.'
'And the Bush? What of my home and my livelihood?'
'We can arrange for someone to run it for a year, until we see what is to happen. I told you, this is for a trial period — for all I know, I will be back here in a twelve-month. '
He half-turned and gripped her by her upper arms. 'Nesta, this is the opportunity we have been waiting for! London is a huge place; no one knows us there. Gwyn and Thomas will be with me, there will be new friends to make, new sights to enjoy! It will be exciting, moving from place to place when the court travels to the country. Sometimes we will be near Wales, and you can visit your family there.'
The mention of Wales caused a shadow to pass over her face, but John was too intent on persuasion to notice. 'All we have meant to each other over these past few years cannot be lost to us now, cariad! But I have no choice but to go where my king commands.'
She was silent for a moment, the colour drained from her face. 'This is a great shock, John. I had not expected anything like this. I must think deeply about what you ask.'
He pulled her gently against his chest, ignoring the covert glances of others in the taproom. 'Nesta, come with me to a new life! It is the chance we have sought for so long.'
She pulled away and sat looking down at her hands folded in her lap. Then she looked up into his eyes. 'Go to your battle tomorrow, John, and may God preserve you. When you come back, I will give you my answer.'
Sir John de Wolfe went to battle soon after dawn reddened the eastern sky. The jingling of harness, the scraping of impatient hooves and the snorting of horses marked the second armed contingent that week to assemble in the inner courtyard. The same men-at-arms who had sailed on the St Radegund were there, plus a few reinforcements. The sheriff felt obliged to accompany them and wore an old and slightly rusted hauberk that had not seen service for a decade, since he had given up campaigning.
John's similar long coat of mail, slit at the back and front for riding, was in better condition, as the previous evening Gwyn had insisted on giving it a rub-down with sand and wet rags. Ralph Morin, who had plenty of manual labour in Rougemont for such tasks, had armour whose links glittered in the morning light. The mounted soldiers, as well as Gwyn, wore thick jerkins of boiled leather, with metal plates on the shoulders — and all wore the usual basin-shaped helmets. The only one with nothing but a faded black robe was Thomas, who rode uneasily in the centre of the troop. He had protested when John ordered him to join the expedition, but the coroner was adamant that he might need someone to write down any confessions that might be made — and promised the very nervous priest that he would be kept well out of any violence until all conflict had finished.
They left at a steady trot in good weather, and even Thomas on his borrowed rounsey managed to keep up with them. They stopped at Sidford to rest the horses and eat their rations, but by noon they had covered the twenty miles to the Axe valley. The last stretch of the journey was down from the bridge over the river at Boshill Cross, upstream of the inland end of the estuary. The troop went more cautiously now, riding in pairs with the sheriff and constable at the head. A couple of furlongs from Axmouth, they kept their promise to Thomas and left him hidden behind a hazel thicket at the side of the track, where he squatted uneasily with his writing bag of parchments, pens and ink beside him. They continued down the road, the wooded slopes of Hawkesdown Hill rising steeply to their left, until the few outer cottages and then the north wall of the village came in sight. The gate was firmly closed, and Henry de Furnellis raised his gloved hand to bring them to a halt a hundred paces away.
'Never seen that shut before,' growled Ralph Morin. 'Is it for our benefit, I wonder?'
'It's hardly Dover Castle!' said the sheriff cynically. 'So what's the point?'
The wall seemed more suited for keeping out livestock than resisting a siege, for it was a dry-stone wall little more than the height of a man, though it ran from the edge of the high ground inland to the edge of the estuary, where piles driven into the mud extended a fence a little way out into the water. The gate was of stout oak, about the same height as the wall and wide enough for a cart to pass through.