When they finally flopped down on to their bench, Agnes noted with satisfaction that John’s arm remained draped around Nesta’s shoulders. She knew, through Gwyn, of de Wolfe’s frustrating marriage and also of his past affairs with Hilda of Dawlish and other women, but also knew that he was a lonely man at heart. It was about time, she decided, that he enjoyed some female company.
When the party broke up, Gwyn took Agnes up to her sister’s in Gandy Lane, as it was far too late to get out of the city, the gates being firmly closed at dusk. The others faded away and John, slightly unsteady on his feet, offered to help Nesta clear up, with Edwin and the two other servants. But the Welshwoman, having herself drunk a little more than her usual moderate amount, declared that it should be left until morning and told the others to go to their homes.
‘Off to bed with you, Sir John, Great Crusader!’ she said with an unusual lack of inhibition. She climbed the ladder to the loft, and missed her grip on the top step, falling back into his ready arms.
John pushed her up to safety and they stood swaying slightly outside her small room. There were several lodgers on the other side of the loft, but their lusty snores told that they were oblivious to what was going on. Her cheerful mood suddenly melted into tears and she laid her head on his chest.
‘John, thank you for everything. What would I do without you?’
His arms went around her and he drew her tightly to him. She raised her face and kissed him on the lips, long and earnestly. Then with a sudden movement, she twisted away and opened the door to her bedchamber. ‘Good night, sweet man, sleep well and may God watch over you this night!’
She slipped inside and the door closed with a click of finality as the wooden latch dropped into place.
John stood there stupidly, touching his lips where they had kissed. His rapid arousal faded almost as quickly as it had arisen and he stumbled across to his cubicle and sat heavily on the edge of his mattress.
‘I think I’m in love again, blast it!’ he muttered.
For the next few days, John went around in an abstracted frame of mind, behaving perfectly normally, but in a distant mood that Gwyn detected only too well. Agnes, who had almost a wise woman’s sixth sense, had told him what was going on and received a rebuke from her husband for meddling in matters that didn’t concern her. John still had his reservations about becoming emotionally involved with a friend’s widow, but he found Nesta increasingly attractive and desirable. At intervals, he chastised himself for his juvenile qualms — for God’s sake, he was a Norman knight, a member of a class who thought no more of seducing or even ravishing an alehouse keeper than kicking a stray dog! Why should he be different with this particular woman?
Yet Nesta affected him in a way similar to the feelings he had for Hilda, who was now out of his reach — and strangely, he felt more remote from her now that Nesta had come into his life. Not an introspective man, he usually dealt with such situations by demanding some robust action. One morning, he marched up to Rougemont and pulled Gwyn out of a game of cards in the gatehouse.
‘We need to start our campaign against these bastards who are infesting the roads,’ he proclaimed. ‘Let’s see what Ralph Morin has to say about it.’
They found the castellan in his chamber, haranguing Gabriel and another sergeant about the lacklustre appearance and performance of the last batch of recruits to the garrison.
‘Maybe we can offer something that will put some steel into their backs,’ suggested de Wolfe. ‘It’s about time we took some action against these scum who are attacking travellers and thieving from villages with little to discourage them.’
After an hour’s discussion and plotting, they decided to comb the forest area where John and Gwyn had been attacked.
‘Those three we dispatched seemed lone wolves, but there have been many more organized raids on passing traffic, so there must be a more substantial gang in there somewhere,’ he said.
They set a day the following week, giving the sergeant time to pick a score of men and get them fit and well equipped.
‘Are we going to tell de Revelle?’ asked Morin, dubiously.
‘I’ll tell him, just to let him know how idle we think he is, but it’s really none of his business. We are doing this on behalf of the Curia and Hubert Walter. In fact, when we talked in London not long ago, he hinted that he was thinking of setting up some unemployed knights in every county, as “keepers of the peace”, so we’re just anticipating his wishes.’
John was as good as his word and loped into his brother-in-law’s chamber, ostensibly to offer him congratulations on his recent birthday. ‘I trust you had a good celebration, Richard — Matilda told me that it was a festive occasion.’
De Revelle showed no embarrassment at the implied rebuke for the lack of invitation to John and merely asked if his sister’s house was fit for habitation yet, again with the implication that it was hardly suitable for a woman of her status.
‘We hope to move ourselves in there very soon,’ said John, omitting to say that he looked on the occasion with gloomy foreboding. He would a thousand times prefer to stay in his little cubicle in the Bush, almost within arm’s reach of Nesta.
‘You have engaged servants, I hope?’ enquired Richard, loftily.
‘A customer of Hugh de Relaga has recommended a young woman who used to cook for him before he moved to Dartmouth. And a church friend of Matilda’s has palmed off a French girl on her to act as her personal maid.’
Richard sorted parchments on his table with an impatient gesture, implying that John’s presence was delaying important work. ‘I hear that you are contemplating some vigilante activities against trail bastons,’ he said loftily. ‘Are you setting yourself up as an unofficial sheriff?’
De Wolfe glowered at him. ‘We’ve already got one of those, by the looks of it, except that he seems to have no interest in keeping the king’s peace!’
Richard shrugged indifferently. ‘It’s none of my business, John. I am merely doing a service for the prince — who at least is in England and not absenting himself for three years, probably never to return.’
He always knew how to rile his sister’s husband, as any criticism of the Lionheart was anathema to John.
‘I’m just doing what any honest knight should do, trying to clear our roads of the murderous villains that infest them!’ he roared. ‘When you have personally found a king’s servant with his throat cut and then been attacked on the highway by a couple of thugs intent on killing you, it’s a great incentive to do something about it!’
Richard pulled some documents towards him is a gesture of dismissal. ‘Then I wish you luck, John. I always travel with a strong bodyguard, so the matter is of no consequence to me.’
John gave up trying to hold a reasonable conversation with him and marched out, giving the heavy door a satisfying slam behind him.
SIXTEEN
The first expedition of the posse from Rougemont was an anticlimax, after the excited young men-at-arms had worked themselves up into a lather of expectation at defeating a band of murderous outlaws. Ralph and John had chosen Haldon Forest as their target, as this was where de Wolfe had been attacked. Twenty men, together with the two knights, Gwyn and Sergeant Gabriel marched the five miles out of Exeter, being seen off by rather mystified townsfolk as they stamped their way out of the West Gate, as if leaving from some distant battle.
They all wore short chain mail hauberks, breeches and round helmets, their weapons being a mixture of pikes and swords, with half a dozen archers amongst them. It would have taken twenty-score men to thoroughly comb that area of woodland, but a start had to be made somewhere, if only to leave a message that the authorities were not going to let lawlessness go unchecked.