Anxious to stop this preying on her mind, he changed the subject.
‘Have you seen any sign of Matilda?’ he asked. ‘She still refuses to speak to me, though I’ve glimpsed her in the distance once or twice.’
Nesta gave a slight nod. ‘She’s passed by once or twice.’
She seemed unwilling to elaborate and John, suspecting that she had been ignored by his wife or even vilified, hesitated to probe further. There was no sign of Matilda when he left, and as the prioress was also nowhere to be seen he hauled himself on to Odin and took himself home, feeling that a good battle in the forest was preferable to trying to understand women.
Early on Sunday evening, a meeting was held in Rougemont of all those who were to be involved in directing the campaign the next day. To keep clear of the sheriff, they met in the Shire Hall in the inner bailey, using the benches and trestles on the platform of the bare courthouse for their conference.
The two Ferrars, de Courcy, Ralph Morin, John de Wolfe and Gwyn were joined by three Hampshire knights who had accompanied the foot soldiers from Portsmouth. Only Thomas de Peyne was absent, as John felt his timid presence would be no asset in a battle.
On a large piece of slate, fallen from some roof around the castle, the constable scratched a crude map with a lump of limestone. Like John, he was unable to read or write, but had a good sense of orientation and could draw a useful plan.
‘Here’s Ashburton — and up here is Moretonhampstead,’ he boomed. ‘Between them, and to the west, is a tract of forest where it seems most likely that Winter’s gang is camping at present.’
‘How can you know that?’ grunted Guy Ferrars.
‘Two reeves came in this afternoon, as arranged. They have been spying out the situation for a couple of days on my orders. Several of Winter’s men have been seen in alehouses along the road between these two towns — and they vanished into the forest west of the road.’
‘Does this knave have any useful information?’ asked Hugh Ferrars, jerking a thumb down towards the hall, where Sergeant Gabriel held the shoulder of a dishevelled Stephen Cruch, brought over in manacles from the cells under the keep.
Morin beckoned and Gabriel prodded the horse-dealer nearer the raised dais. ‘How many camps do these brigands have in that part of the forest?’ he demanded.
Cruch, very conscious of the fact that his life and liberty depended on his cooperation, stuttered out all he knew on the matter.
‘I’ve been to three, sire, but there may be more that I’ve never seen.’
At a sign, the sergeant dragged his prisoner up on to the platform and propelled him over to the table.
‘Point to where you think they might be!’ commanded the elder Ferrars. Lifting his chained wrists together, Cruch took the chalk lump and added some marks to the slate.
‘This one’s on the slope of the high moor about here.’
‘That’s the one I visited,’ cut in Gwyn.
The horse-trader pointed out two other sites and gave some directions as to how they could be reached.
‘Take him back to the keep until tomorrow,’ ordered Morin. ‘He can come with us to show us the paths to these places — and woe betide him if he’s trying to fool us!’
Guy Ferrars and Reginald de Courcy, some years older than John, had seen plenty of fighting in their time and were well-acquainted with campaign tactics.
‘I say we should divide the men into two groups and push into the forest from both ends, starting from Ashburton and Moreton,’ said Ferrars.
‘And also have a few men moving up and down the road between them, in case they break out of the middle and vanish across into the woods on the eastern side,’ added de Courcy.
They discussed variations on this plan for a while, with the coroner quietly hoping that they would be lucky enough to find any of Winter’s gang. From past experience, he knew how difficult it could be to find men in dense forest. However, late that evening they had some good fortune which allayed John’s fears about missing the outlaws altogether. A messenger from the bailiff in Lustleigh rode in on a lathered horse with the news that a group of twenty outlaws had been seen by a shepherd late that afternoon. They were crossing the old clapper bridge on the Bovey river, westwards into the forest between Manaton and North Bovey. This at least reduced the large area in which to search for some of them — and it was not far from one of the camps that Cruch had indicated, on the slopes of Easdon Tor.
Soon after dawn, the small army set out, the northern party under Ferrars and de Courcy marching for Moretonhampstead, together with Hugh Ferrars and a score of local men, who would patrol the road. They took Stephen Cruch with them, his wrists loosely tied and an archer stationed near him with orders to shoot him if he tried to escape.
Ralph Morin, de Wolfe and Gwyn took the remainder of the men south-westward to Bovey Tracey, as with the news of the latest position of Winter’s men it was now unnecessary to go as far south as Ashburton.
Both groups were accompanied by the few mounted knights and their esquires who had brought the troop from Portsmouth.
All set off at a marching pace, the riders walking their mounts behind the foot soldiers. At that speed it took until early afternoon to get into position, and after eating the rations they carried, the two arms of Morin’s pincer movement moved towards each other, their target being Easdon Down.
De Wolfe and Gwyn rode alongside the constable, feeling an exhilaration born of memories of many a campaign in years gone by. Even Odin, who was too young to have been in combat before, snorted his excitement as he stepped out along the track, and John had to keep him reined in so as not to pull away from the column of men walking behind.
It was six miles between Bovey and Moreton, with Lustleigh just off the track about halfway between them. Before they reached Lustleigh, Ralph Morin called a halt, and when the thirty men-at-arms had all caught up, he gave orders for them to put on their armour.
The hauberks had been carried in two ox-carts at the back of the column, as it was impractical for the men to march the fifteen miles from Exeter in hot summer weather wearing knee-length chain mail. The hauberks each had a pole thrust through their sleeves and were hung on two rails fixed in the carts. Each man helped a comrade to get the cumbersome garment over his head, then adjust the mailed aventail which hung from their basin-shaped helmets down to their shoulders. Morin and de Wolfe did the same, as although they had great horses to carry the weight, neither wanted to sit in a hauberk for four hours in the July heat. Gwyn always refused to wear mail, relying on an extra-thick jerkin of boiled leather, which he now put on, but he did condescend to jam a round helmet on his wild red hair, the long nasal guard having been bent up a little to accommodate his bulbous nose.
When all was ready, the ox-carts were left on the track in the care of their civilian drivers and the posse turned off into the woods, heading for the narrow valley of the Bovey to the north-west. Four archers, not wearing armour, were sent on ahead as scouts. When all reached the river, they crossed and carried on steadily up the right bank, where the trees were less of an impediment to the mounted men than on the valley slopes. For an hour they saw nothing but greenery and the shimmer of the small river. There was an occasional glimpse of a startled deer and the distant crash of a boar as it hurried out of their path.
They passed through an area which a local Lustleigh guide said was called Water Cleave and then curved below Manaton, though it was invisible, being high up to their left and a mile away. The guide advised the constable that to aim for Easdon Tor they should begin to bear west, as the ground flattened out a little from the thickly wooded valley. Soon after they had moved away from the river, two of the archers came running back.