'Where do we go from here?' asked Robert Hereward as the gloom thickened.
'We can stay up here tonight, sheltering in the huts. But some of us must go back down to Challacombe to make sure that the place is unusable after that fire. And of course, to seek for Gunilda. I have a bad feeling about her,' he added grimly.
After their ignominious defeat at Grimspound, Henry de la Pomeroy and Richard de Reverie headed back to Berry Pomeroy Castle to lick their wounds and to hold an inquest on their failure and the possible consequences. The darkness obliged them to spend the night at Widecombe and it was noon the next day before they limped home. That afternoon, the east wind moaned around the towers of the gatehouse as the two men sat in Henry's chamber easing their aching limbs after their long ride back from the moor. The gash in Pomeroy's leg had been cleaned and bound by one of the servants, but it still smarted enough to be a reminder of the fiasco at Grimspound.
They had eaten and now settled in chairs set on each side of a large brazier, a jug of Loire wine on a nearby table providing frequent refills for the silver goblets they held.
'It was those bastard archers who undid us,' snarled Henry for the fifth time. 'I'm going to hire a couple of Welshmen to train those clods of mine to shoot!' Richard was more of a realist. 'Don't waste your money, Henry. It takes years to make a man competent with a longbow — and I'll warrant we'll get no second chance against Arundell and his gang.'
'So what do we do about it now?' rasped de la Pomeroy, splashing more wine into his goblet. 'Run and shelter under Prince John's skirts, I suppose?' His tone was bitterly sarcastic.
'What else do you suggest?' retorted Richard huffily. 'Without his support, we could be in serious trouble.
Do you want to go the same way as your father?' he added maliciously, referring to the elder Pomeroy's suicide at St Michael's Mount. When accused of treachery to King Richard, he had ordered his physician to open the blood-vessels in his wrists, so that he bled to death, rather than face the Lionheart.
Henry was too worried to take offence. 'So how do we go about it? You are close to the Count of Mortain.'
A shutter rattled in the wind as de Revelle considered his answer. 'We must get ourselves to Gloucester as soon as we can and hope that the Prince is there. His support is vital to us. After all, he was nominally the sheriff of Devon when we seized de Arundell's manor — and he had had Devon and Cornwall in his fief at the time, so he could be considered to be Nicholas's ultimate landlord.'
Henry saw little that was helpful in this tortuous argument, but grudgingly agreed that a clever lawyer might be able to draw some legal justification from it. 'Sounds a thin excuse for us kicking out de Arundell's family and sequestering his lands,' he said. 'Still, if you think we are in personal danger over this, then by all means let us ride to Gloucester.'
Richard de Revelle, who had a much more perceptive and cunning brain than the boorish de la Pomeroy, was adamant. 'It's our only defence, Henry! I know this damned man de Wolfe. He's like a bull-baiting dog, he never lets go once he's got his teeth into something. Comes of being a bloody Crusader, I suppose. We need to speak to Prince John before de Wolfe gets back from kissing Hubert Waiter's arse!'
At the same time that afternoon, in a workroom behind a large forge on Exe Island, just outside the western wall of the city, a man was bent over a complicated device lying on a bench.
He murmured under his breath as he worked, filing a slot in a piece of iron that was part of a mechanism that consisted mainly of a powerful leaf-spring held back by a trigger device. The contraption seemed to owe much of its design to a cross bow, except that it was very much smaller and the bow part was replaced by a single arm.
The man, a fellow with a heavy, sullen face, was fashioning every piece with loving care, working from a diagram scratched on a square of slate with a sharp nail.
A lock of hair fell incessantly across his forehead and he brushed it aside with almost obsessional regularity.
Alongside the device he was fashioning, were several other metal articles, including large door locks, parts for ox-cart axles, iron swivels, and rings for horse harness.
From the yard outside came the rhythmic clang of hammer on anvil and, from an adjacent workshop, the tapping of a punch clinching over rivets, as other journeymen and apprentices went about their business.
Although he was absorbed in his task, the man kept one ear tuned for approaching footsteps. Whenever it sounded as if someone might come into his back room, he rapidly covered up the device with a piece of sacking and seized some other article to work upon. Usually, it was a false alarm and as soon as the footsteps receded, he went back to his careful filing again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The journey to Winchester was tedious but unremarkable. Both John de Wolfe and his officer had made it a number of times over the years and the road was familiar.
The weather remained cold, but free from snow or significant rain, so their progress was good. The coroner was not riding his old destrier Odin, who was too heavy for a long haul like this. He had once again hired a younger gelding from Andrew the farrier who kept the stable in Martin's Lane, and the good beast kept up a brisk trot hour after hour, covering a good twenty-five miles each day.
Being in the saddle from dawn to dusk was enough for any man, even though the winter days were short.
A good supper, some ale and a gossip with whoever was in their lodging was a prelude to sound sleep, whether it was on the rushes alongside an alehouse firepit or in a castle hall. Two nights were spent at inns and another at Dorchester Castle, as the coroner considered that he was on the king's business and therefore entitled to accommodation there.
When, on the fourth day, they entered the walls of Winchester a few hours after noon, enquiry at the castle at the top of the sloping High Street soon brought about disappointment. Hubert Walter, the Chief Justiciar and virtual regent of England, was not there, but had left for London the previous week. One of the senior Chancery clerks, with whom de Wolfe was acquainted from previous visits, told him that as far he knew, Hubert was not planning to cross the Channel to see the Lionheart in the near future and could probably be found in Westminster or the Tower if John could get there within the next few days.
'We'll rest up today and tomorrow, to give both the horses and ourselves some respite,' he announced to Gwyn. 'Then hack on to London, as I half expected we would need to.'
The clerk readily found accommodation for the Devon coroner in one of the tower chambers in the castle, while Gwyn found a mattress in the soldiers' quarters, where he could drink and play dice to his heart's content.
John spent the next day renewing old friendships with a number of knights and clerks he knew from either Outremer or Ireland, as the faithful service of many old campaigners was rewarded with official posts — as indeed John himself had been. Winchester, the old capital of Anglo-Saxon England, was still an important seat of government, though gradually London was becoming predominant.
When their rest was over, they set off again eastwards, this time through less familiar countryside, passing through Hampshire and Surrey. The distance of this leg of the journey was much less and they needed only two nights' accommodation, the first at an inn in Farnham, the second by claiming hospitality at Chertsey Abbey.