They had the usual warm welcome at Stoke and after eating their fill, sat in the hall of the manor house to hear John’s latest news of buying a house.
‘You’re settling down at last, John,’ beamed his sprightly mother. ‘A pity it has to be with that surly woman Matilda, but perhaps she will mellow with time.’
Enyd made no pretence at liking her son’s wife and secretly wished that he could have married Hilda of Holcombe. Her husband, shortly before he was killed, had given Hilda’s father his freedom from serfdom, which also made Hilda a free woman. But at that time, the social gap between them would still have been too wide — though now that she had married a wealthy shipmaster who owned three vessels, she would easily be eligible, had she been available.
The talk turned to the increasing dangers on the highways of England, sparked by Gwyn’s mention of their wariness coming through Haldon Forest.
‘That place and many others are becoming dangerous,’ complained John’s brother. ‘A week ago, they robbed and half-killed a corn merchant riding from Brixham to Exeter. His servant was also badly beaten and they still fear for his life.’
John told them of the body of the king’s courier that he had found on his way back from his last visit to Stoke. ‘God knows where he was put into the river, we can find no trace of him on his journey back from Cornwall.’
No one at Stoke had any memory of such a man in that area and John remained convinced that Roger Smale was killed upstream of where he was found.
He and Gwyn were persuaded to stay two nights and spent much of the next day inspecting the manor, of which William de Wolfe was inordinately proud. He was an excellent estate manager and his steward, bailiff and reeve were sensible, reliable men. They made the manor a profitable and happy place, unlike many where the manor lord was a harsh and often cruel tyrant. Orderly fields, plump sheep and barns now being filled with an early harvest ensured that the community would not go hungry over the coming winter.
‘We have a good surplus of oats and barley, which I am selling on, so your share of the profits will be even better this year, John,’ confided William. ‘By the sound of what you are doing to this house of yours, you’ll need it!’
They left early next morning and took the same route home.
When they reached Haldon Forest, they were even more alert than on the outward journey, after William’s account of the recent attacks on travellers. All seemed quiet and when they were almost within sight of more open scrubland beyond the trees, they relaxed a little. A moment later, Gwyn’s big mare whinnied and jerked, her acute hearing picking up the whine of an arrow in flight. Almost simultaneously, the missile thwacked into the thick leather of Gwyn’s saddle pommel, missing his leg by inches. With a roar of anger, he instantly swung the mare’s head around and galloped off the track into the undergrowth, where he estimated the shot had come from. As he went, he grabbed the shaft of his mace from the saddlebow and plunged under the trees, where he almost ran down the archer, who was just about to loose another arrow at him. Swinging the heavy spiked ball on the end of its chain, he smashed the bow from the man’s hands and following through, the mace ball caught the ruffian across the temple, pulping the skin and bones.
Simultaneously, John de Wolfe had been attacked by two men who rushed from the bushes, one wielding a rusty sword, the other a short spear. The three bandits had picked the wrong pair to attack, as the seasoned Crusaders, each with twenty years’ experience of fighting behind them, reacted with almost automatic precision.
Bran, virtually without orders, reared up and his front hoofs came down on top of the man with a spear. With a force of almost half a ton, the assailant was flattened into the hard-packed earth of the track. At the same time, John’s long sword had slithered out of its scabbard and as the big destrier came back down, it whistled through the air and almost completely severed the other outlaw’s arm at the elbow.
With a scream of pain and terror, he fell to the ground and watched his life’s blood pumping out into the dust of the high road. The two horsemen, wary of further attacks, closed together side-by-side in the middle of the track and scanned both sides of the road for further assailants.
‘There seem to be no more, Gwyn,’ called John after a moment. ‘But keep your eyes open while I see if these bastards are going to live.’ He slid from his saddle and, with his sword half raised, warily approached the two he had routed. The one that Bran had crushed was obviously dead, his neck bent back at an impossible angle.
The other lay in a spreading pool of blood, which had run into the ruts of the dried mud in the road. He was already barely conscious, his face having a deathly pallor, but he had enough wits left to spit weakly at de Wolfe as he bent over him.
‘You are dying, man!’ snapped John. ‘Are there more of you here?’ But the fellow’s eyes rolled up and he fell back, still just alive, but totally unresponsive.
‘Is your man able to speak?’ he called to Gwyn, who was looking down from his steed at the bowman he had struck.
‘No, and he’s not going to live long, Sir John. His brains are leaking from his ear!’
The forest was silent, apart from the twitter of uncaring birds and the distant howl of one of the few surviving wolves.
‘These three must have been trying their luck alone,’ observed John. He wiped the blood from his sword in the long grass and slid it back into its sheath. ‘They don’t seem to be part of a bigger gang.’
Gwyn dismounted and they looked at the three unsuccessful robbers, who were now either dead or on the point of expiring. Though they had just slain three men, they had no false sense of sorrow or guilt. These fellows had tried to murder them in an ambush solely for the contents of their purses; it was a matter of ‘kill or be killed’ and they felt no remorse for the outcome of their vigorous defence.
‘These seem to be low-class villains,’ grunted John. ‘Tattered clothes and home-made weapons, so they are presumably outlaws trying their luck on passers-by.’
Gwyn stood with his huge hands on his hips, staring at the scattered corpses. ‘What the hell are we going to do with them?’ he asked.
De Wolfe shrugged. ‘Drag them off the highway and leave them to rot. With no sheriff to report to, no one cares what happens to them. The local manor might bury them if they can be bothered, but I expect the local animals will see them off come darkness.’
As they pulled two off the track on to the weedy verge, Gwyn complained about the state of the country under Prince John. ‘We’re descending into barbarism, I reckon! I keep hearing that these attacks are now so common that many folk will only use the roads in company with at least a dozen others.’
When they got back to Exeter and made the same point to Ralph Morin, he not only agreed, but pointed out that even large groups of travellers had been attacked by bands of marauding outlaws. ‘You were lucky only to have a trio of lousy fighters against you,’ he said. ‘Even tough Crusaders like you would have a hard time if you were jumped on by Willem the Fleming or Harald de Marisco. They can each muster a score or more men, so it’s said. Even a squad of my men-at-arms would have their work cut out to defeat an ambush by them.’
They were sitting in the Bush, as Ralph had come down to see what changes had been made at the inn since John returned home.
‘Is there nothing that can be done to clear these vermin out of the forest?’ asked Nesta, who was sitting with them. ‘It’s got worse these past few years.’
The big constable shrugged. ‘There are a lot more vagrant soldiers about now, since the Irish wars cooled down and the Crusade is over. Knights without land and mercenaries without masters abound in the countryside. The forest is often the only place they have to lurk and highway robbery their only occupation.’