‘They’ve flown, right enough,’ growled Ralph Morin. ‘But where the hell are the servants?’
John swung around in his saddle to speak to Gwyn, who rode behind. ‘Get into the village and see what’s happened here.’
The Cornishman, wrapped in his tattered brown cloak with a pointed hood covering most of his unruly ginger hair, wheeled his mare around and clattered out of the gate.
Within minutes he was back with his news. ‘The cook and the washerwoman are in their cottages. Their master was here soon after dawn and told them he had to go to France on urgent business. He paid them their wages and told them to go home until they were needed again. Then he left with the two ladies, one of them his sister, and all their horses loaded down with bags.’
‘The servants will never hear from him again, that’s for sure!’ snapped de Revelle. He glared at the coroner. ‘You’ve lost him, John.’
De Wolfe returned his look calmly. ‘If we’re talking about losing people, what about you letting Fitzosbern slip through your fingers?’
Lord Ferrars for once joined in on John’s side. ‘Yes, if you’d arrested the silversmith that night, as I’d demanded, he would not have been murdered. He’d have lived to be killed by Hugh in combat – or hanged. And this Picot wouldn’t need to be escaping now!’
Once again, the taciturn constable of Rougemont reminded them of time-wasting. ‘If he’s going to France, he may well be trying to sail from Topsham. That’s the nearest port and he’s got Joseph’s ships to use there.’
They all turned their horses and sallied out through the gate into the road. They wheeled again, turning away from Exeter to pass through the village to rejoin the road that followed the river down from Holloway towards Topsham.
Just as they vanished around a bend, Thomas clip-clopped into sight and resignedly carried on in their wake. The wind gusted at his back and he turned to look at the sky. The pale winter blue was now being encroached on by an enormous mass of blue-black cloud that was creeping up over the northern horizon. He shivered and pulled his thin mantle more closely around his bent shoulders, as the pony ambled after the distant band of horsemen.
Topsham was another three miles further on, and some twenty minutes later the pursuers trotted into the single street that ran parallel to the river until it reached the small quayside. Here there was a long thatched warehouse, belonging to Joseph, and a variety of huts and sheds close to the water’s edge.
The stone wharf was quite short, sufficient to moor two vessels, but on each side the sloping mud of the Exe was used to load and unload other smaller vessels at low tide. A hundred yards away, on the other side of the river, miles of mud flat and reed bed stretched up and down the estuary, with the low hills at Exminster and Powderham far away on the other side.
Ralph Morin reined in near the edge of the quay and looked down at a stubby vessel tied up to two tree-stump bollards set in the wharf. A man and a boy sat on the deck repairing sails and it was obvious that this ship was going nowhere in the near future. The constable swung back to Richard de Revelle and the coroner, the rest of the party clustered behind them. ‘If they left from here, then they’ve long gone,’ he called.
Gwyn looked at the river. The muddy water was swirling downstream, though the level was high and two small boats upstream from the quay were afloat pulling strongly at their moorings. ‘It’s an hour or so past the top of the tide,’ he pronounced. Then he dragged on his mare’s reins and pulled her round to canter to the further end of the wharf. He stopped and held a hand above his eyes to shield them from the winter sun that was low in the south, directly over the river mouth. ‘There’s a vessel making downstream, on the ebb tide. She’s got full sail on and, with this rising wind, she’ll be out of the river in less than an hour.’
The wind was indeed rising with a vengeance, whipping the surface of the river into steep wavelets and whistling across the bare quayside, whirling old leaves and rubbish into the water.
John walked his horse to the edge of the quay and shouted down at the pair working on the ship’s deck. ‘What vessel is that down-river?’ he demanded, in English.
The older man, a grey-bearded sailor, stared up blankly, then looked at the teenager. The boy shouted back at the coroners, ‘He speaks only Breton, sir. That other boat is the Saint Non.’
John immediately changed to western Welsh, which was virtually the same as Breton. ‘Where is she bound for, then?’
The grey-beard, happy with the change of tongue, called against the whistle of the wind, ‘She’s taking wool to St Malo, sir. Though the master was far from happy to set sail with this coming!’ He looked up and pointed heavenwards with his sail-maker’s needle. Everyone within earshot followed his gaze and saw that the ominous bank of steel-blue cloud had now reached zenith and the northern horizon was virtually black. The gusting wind was now throwing down a few slivers of sleet.
‘Did he have any passengers, my man?’ called the sheriff, not wishing to be outdone by his brother-in-law in this chase.
As he spoke no Celtic, the boy had to answer. ‘Yes sir, the wine-master and two ladies. That’s why Matthew, the ship-master, was persuaded to sail.’
‘What d’you mean, “persuaded”?’ yelled de Revelle.
The boy spoke rapidly to the old man, who leered and tapped the side of his nose significantly. The boy turned back to the sheriff. ‘Money, sir! The wine merchant offered the ship-master more money. He said it was urgent he got across the Channel without delay.’
Richard de Revelle swung away and confronted the other mounted men. ‘He’s aboard that vessel, damn him. Can we do anything about it?’ He sounded furious, baulked of his prey at the last moment.
Everyone looked at Gwyn, the only one among them with experience of the sea. He shot another look down-river, where the Saint Non was dwindling in size with every passing moment. He shook his head. ‘Not a chance, unless someone, can persuade her master to anchor before he reaches the mouth of the river.’
‘Any hope of a fast horseman catching her up before she reaches the open sea?’ snapped the coroner.
Again Gwyn pulled a doubtful face. ‘This wind is dead astern and is sending her scudding down at a fair old rate – and the ebb tide is helping her on. Though these merchant vessels are ungainly old tubs, in these conditions she’ll be moving as fast as a cantering horse.’
The sheriff looked desperately after the distant ship. ‘But perhaps not a galloping horse! Morin, send your best rider down the riverbank, try to get within hailing distance of that vessel and tell her to stop. Now, d’you hear?’ he roared. ‘I don’t care if the horse is flogged to death. Stop that ship!’
The constable of Rougemont, though muttering under his breath at what he felt was a futile gesture, decided to try himself, rather than delegate to a soldier. He dug his spurs into his big roan stallion and shot off down the track that ran along the east side of the river, towards distant Exmouth. Within minutes, he had vanished among the scrubby bushes and stunted trees that lined the road.
As he left, Thomas de Peyne jogged up on his pony and joined the band on the quayside, in time to hear Gwyn grumbling, ‘It’s useless. He’ll never get the master to heave to, even if he were to get within earshot.’
Ferrars, as eager as the sheriff to get Eric Picot in his clutches, tried to be optimistic. ‘The river mouth is very narrow, the channel between Dawlish Warren and the Exmouth side can be no more than a few hundred paces wide.’
A great sand bar, most of it overgrown with grass and scrub, stretched far out from the western lip of the river mouth, leaving the Exe to squeeze its way against the opposite bank through a narrow passage.