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sometimes south to Crediton, to attend court or just to pick up whatever gossip he could from the inns. The news was rarely good, and it concerned him to see how men had taken to wearing weapons. It wasn’t only he who practised; there were enough fighters in Crediton from old King Edward I’s wars to form a small army.
    When he returned to his manor, he would often soak in a bath. This was a luxury he had been forced to live without when he was a Templar, for the Rule of the Order forbade bathing, but now he saw to it that all the wood ashes were gathered from the fires, and these were boiled with mutton fat to produce his solid soap cakes. While bathing he could forget the troubles besetting the kingdom. Cleansed, he would dine with his wife before walking with her over his lands, or taking his dogs to hunt some kind of venison – boar, deer, rabbit or hare.
    But even as he chased his game, always at the back of his mind was the anxiety of the political situation. War would come. It might not be this month or the one after, but the loathing between the King and his lords was strong, mutual – and irreconcilable.
    That was why, when he received the invitation to visit Tiverton Castle during the feast of St Giles, he was not overly surprised. The de Courtenay family would want to test the loyalty of their knights if they were soon to be tried in battle. The saint’s feast and the fair which celebrated it would give Lord Hugh de Courtenay the excuse he needed to speak to all his men.

Chapter Four
     
    Once they arrived in Exeter Sir Gilbert began to wonder where their next destination should be. The noise was deafening, the city heaving. It was a Friday, and the whole place seemed full of farmers and other peasants who had turned up to sell their produce at the market or to buy provisions. Sir Gilbert dropped from his stallion and gave the reins to a boy. Glancing at the teeming marketplace in the Cathedral precinct, he saw it was packed with what looked like the whole of Christianity. Men and women shouted their wares, gaily dressed girls bustled about offering drink, beggars shuffled on crippled legs, piteously calling for alms; a child with a belly distended by starvation squeaked for food at his mother’s feet, a scrawny woman who sat with her back against a wall feebly watching passers-by with eyes made immense with hunger; Sir Gilbert threw the pair some coins.
    He paused at the ring, where a massive bull was trampling a dog, spraying blood and gore with defiant tosses of its head. Bulls had to be baited before death to tenderise their flesh, but Sir Gilbert was confident this hoary beast would have iron bands for muscles: even after baiting and hanging he would be inedible.
    An official jostled him, hurrying by with two scruffy men carrying long staves; behind them, a man was led by a rope, bawling his innocence – he was a tavern-keeper found selling short measures. There would be little sympathy for him here. Sir Gilbert’s dogs both lunged at the little procession, but he had put them on leashes as he entered the city and now he hauled them back. They were unsettled in so large a crowd and the knight decided to find somewhere to sit and rest.
    Overhead, flags fluttered gently in the breeze. Fresh air was certainly welcome, for the high walls of the city trapped the air within and Sir Gilbert’s nostrils were assailed with the stench. Sweat from the men and women all about him vied with animal and human excrement and the persistent tang of urine, thickened by the reek of putrefaction from the tanners on Exe Island. Fanning the air disgustedly, Sir Gilbert bought a bunch of herbs and held it beneath his nose in a vain attempt to drown out the surrounding odours.
    At Nobles Inn, Sir Gilbert paid off the boy and he and William ordered ale, sitting at a bench outside, the leather saddlebag containing the sacks at Sir Gilbert’s feet. Merry sat at his side, but Aylmer rolled over and was soon snoring