A crowd of men, perhaps thirty in number, was milling along the manor road, clustered around someone in the centre. As they came nearer, it was clear that they were all tinners, both from their dress and the threatening way they were yelling abuse at whoever was being dragged along among them. Snow plastered their cloaks and hoods, which suggested that they had come down from the high moor, but in their anger and excitement they were oblivious of the weather.
Gabriel appeared alongside him, sent by the sheriff to see what was happening. ‘What in hell is going on, Gwyn?’ he muttered, looking at the approaching mob, who were dragging a man on the end of a rope.
‘I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of it.’
As the mass of men neared the square, the tinners who had just left the coinage were joined by many more flooding out of the alehouses, attracted by the uproar. Some were the worse for drink only half-way through the morning. They shouted questions to the mob, whose answers caused many more to merge into the swirling mass. By the time the crowd turned into the square, there were almost a hundred heads bobbing around, pushing and shoving to see the hapless captive in the centre.
‘You’d better do something about this, Gabriel — and quick!’ growled Gwyn.
‘I’ve only a handful of men — just enough to escort the sheriff over to Lydford,’ said the sergeant, apprehensively.
The rabble now almost filled the small square, jostling its way to the front of the coinage enclosure. Gabriel pushed his way round the edge of the crowd to reach Richard de Revelle, both to guard him and to get some instructions. Gwyn followed him, his huge shoulders barging a way through the agitated mob. A few men rounded on him, but he shoved them aside, his ham-like hands thrusting their chests or even faces out of his path.
The crowd came to a stop at the rope girdling the shelter and rapidly flowed all around it, like flood water encircling an island. When Gwyn got to the rope he could see de Revelle, pallid-faced, pressed alongside the manor lord of Lydford at the end of the shelter. Gabriel and his handful of soldiers clustered around them, their eyes roving around uneasily beneath their basin-like helmets. They wore no chain-mail, except iron plates on the shoulders of their boiled leather cuirasses, and their hands rested nervously on the hilts of their sheathed broadswords.
The assay officers gave up any attempt to continue their work, and as they withdrew to the back of the shelter, there was a sudden movement in the mob and a dishevelled figure was ejected to the front. His hands were lashed behind his back with a rope, the other end grasped by a burly tinner. Two others had dragged him to the front by his arms and now stood alongside him, shaking him roughly by pulls on his wrists. As Gwyn watched, another drunken roughneck left the edge of the crowd, and came to give the prisoner a punch in the face.
‘Here’s the bastard who’s caused all the trouble — and a bloody murderer into the bargain!’ he yelled, and sank back into the crowd.
Now Gwyn could see the victim more clearly, as he stood defiantly facing the shelter, snow spattering his hair and blood running from the corner of his mouth, where the blow had cut his lip.
He was tall and spare to the point of emaciation, with long, tangled grey hair around a gaunt, wild-looking face. Gwyn estimated his age at well over sixty, and in spite of his haggard leanness, he had a leathery hardness that told of his solitary survival on Dartmoor. This could be none other than Aethelfrith, the crazy Saxon — confirmed by the shouts and jeers that came from the mob.
‘Here he is, Sheriff! This is Aethelfrith, God rot him! You’re the Lord Warden, so pronounce his fate to us — or we’ll do it for you!’ yelled the man, a big, black-bearded tinner from near Lydford.
This triggered a fresh outburst of shouting from the crowd, directed as much at de Revelle as at the Saxon, a mixture of jeers and challenge.
The sheriff stood undecided, staring at this unexpected drama. As he seemed tongue-tied, Geoffrey Fitz-Peters, who had his own eye on the Wardenship, stepped forward to confront the tinners. ‘What’s been happening, men? Where did you find this man?’
Aethelfrith was given such a push from behind that he staggered and fell to his knees in the snow. Somehow, though, he kept a stolid dignity, glaring up at Fitz-Peters with silent defiance on his angular face.
‘Caught red-handed this time!’ yelled one of the men who had held his arms. ‘Smashing up one of the settling-troughs with an axe, up at Scorhill on the North Teign, not three miles from the town here!’
‘We’re going to hang him right now, Warden. You can pass that judgement on him, if you like — but hang he will, within the hour, whether you wish it or not,’ boomed Blackbeard.
There was an even louder babble of cries, all bloodthirsty demands for Aethelfrith’s life.
‘He slew Henry of Tunnaford, right enough!’ yelled one. Others screamed that he must also be the killer of their master, Walter Knapman, and yet more yelled that the damage to their stream-works and blowing-houses must be put down to the mad Saxon.
The mood became uglier as each man provoked his neighbours, until the surging mob threatened to break through the coinage rope. Even the supports of the enclosure were shaking with the press of men against them, snow falling off the edges of the flimsy roof. Geoffrey Fitz-Peters judged that this was no time to play either hero or candidate for the Wardenship and he stepped back to where the sheriff was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, with his sergeant and soldiers clustered around him.
‘You’ll have to say something to them, Richard. They’re in an ugly mood,’ he advised, in a low voice. Grasping his arm, he pulled de Revelle forward a few paces and the sheriff had no option but to confront the crowd.
‘What proof have you, men?’ he shouted, over the din. ‘Was he caught actually wreaking damage?’
There was a cacophony of yells, all confirming the Saxon’s guilt. Aethelfrith was now jerked back to his feet by two men on each side of him. He began to say something, but the tinner on his left gave him another punch in the mouth that silenced any confession or denial.
Nervously, de Revelle tried to assess his safest course of action. Already deeply unpopular, he feared that these unruly tinners might turn on him if he crossed them. With only a handful of men-at-arms, a hundred angry moor-men would swamp any resistance, and though he was the county’s law-enforcer, he had no wish to take any chances with his own life and limb against this enraged mob. However, he decided to make a token gesture towards the proper course of justice. ‘If he has done these things, then he should be brought to the Shire Court — or even before the King’s justices,’ he shouted over their heads, conveniently forgetting his usual antipathy to the royal courts. His words were met with derision, and the hisses, catcalls and yelled abuse became even more virulent. The mob surged forward again, and this time the rope was torn from one of the pillars and the front line of men erupted into the coinage enclosure.
De Revelle stepped back rapidly and turned to Fitz-Peters, shrugging his shoulders in desperation. ‘They’ll not listen to reason now,’ he said.
Gwyn watched and listened with increasing anxiety, wishing that the formidable coroner was here to control the situation. In de Wolfe’s absence he felt obliged to do his best and pushed himself along towards the men who were pinioning Aethelfrith.
Before he reached them, his captors started to pummel the old man about the head and chest, yelling at him to confess. At last, the Saxon started to yell back, in a clear, deep voice that held no trace of fear, though he had to spit blood every few words to clear his lips. ‘Aye, you Norman swine, I’ll confess! Confess to being a descendant of the true race who was here before you French bandits came to steal our land! Confess to loving the very ground that we held for centuries. Confess to having watched you bastards kill my son on the moor twenty years ago for trying to claim his own stake in the tinning!’ He got no further, as someone struck him with a club on the side of the head, a blow that sent Aethelfrith staggering, held up only by his tormentors.