'I'm but a poor chapman, travelling to Honiton,' he pleaded. 'All I want is a lift on the back of your wagon.'
'He said, bugger off!' shouted the driver, joining the fray. 'If you're some scout for a bunch of outlaws, tell 'em we've got another two armed men inside.'
'Do I look like a trail robber, with this damned pack on my back?' persisted the pedlar. 'Any Christian man would give me aid. It costs you nothing to be charitable. '
For answer, the man with the cudgel hopped down from his seat behind the shafts and began raining blows on Segar, who screamed and sheltered his head with his arms, then blundered back into the brambles and scrub at the side of the track. The guard followed him for a few paces, cursing and blaspheming as he gave him a valedictory few whacks on the shoulders. Then he gave up the chase and ran back to catch up with the wagon, clambering back on to the driving-board.
Setricus cowered in the long grass and nettles until the creaking vehicle had passed out of sight. Then he stood up and stumbled back into the roadway, shaking a fist after his assailants.
'You miserable bastards, may you rot in hell!' he shouted, but not loud enough to provoke the man to return with his club. He began walking again, his shoulders and neck aching from the blows they had suffered. The next village could not be far off now. Wilmington was the last hamlet before the small town of Honiton, not that he would be able to stop at either at this time of night, with not a single coin to buy a pallet in an alehouse loft. As he walked he began to wonder why a covered wagon with an armed guard would be travelling at dead of night along the highway. He wished he knew what was in the back of the cart, for as well as being as curious as a cat, there was always the chance of being able to steal something worthwhile.
Setricus toiled on, stumbling now and then in some deeper rut than usual, though the pale moonlight revealed the road fairly well. If it had been cloudy or if the moon had not risen, it would be impossible to walk at night and he would have had to curl up under a tree unless he could find a barn that was not guarded by dogs.
The road ran from Axminster to Honiton, where it joined the high road from Exeter eastwards to Ilminster, Salisbury and eventually London. Setricus had never been further than Yeovil on that road and now had no ambition other than to get near Honiton tonight, find some niche to sleep in until the morning and make an early start on an empty stomach towards Exeter. He optimistically hoped to make some sales in the city, if he could sneak in through the gates past the porters and then avoid the constables seeking unlicensed hawkers.
As he plodded over a rise, he could see the roofs and church tower of Wilmington in its hollow below. One faint flickering light was visible - he presumed from either a candle or a horn lantern - but otherwise the place looked dead, as was normal in the countryside, where folk went to bed with the dusk and rose with the dawn. When he got down to the hamlet, he was intrigued to see that the light was coming from the open door of the alehouse and that several figures were moving in front of it, their shapes silhouetted against the flames from a log fire in the middle of the room. Even more interesting was the presence of the covered wagon just outside the tavern.
After the blows he had suffered, he approached cautiously, keeping out of the moonlight in the shadow of a hedge on the other side of the road. The rags on his feet muffled any sound, and he sidled along until he was opposite the cart. He stopped and watched what was happening outside the inn. The two men who had been on the footboard were carrying small kegs into the low thatched building whose whitewashed walls stood out starkly in the harsh moonlight. At the door, a fat man was watching them, presumably the landlord. The pedlar waited as about half a dozen of the firkins were taken inside. Then about the same number of flat bales were transferred from the back of the wagon, before he saw the driver pulling down the canvas cover and lashing it to cleats on the tailboard. At the alehouse door, the man who had beaten him was in close conversation with the innkeeper, and though
Setricus could make out none of their muttering he distinctly heard the clinking of coins.
The two men climbed back on to the cart and the inn door was quietly closed as the oxen jerked into life and the vehicle rumbled away out of the village. The pedlar followed it at a safe distance and for a quarter of an hour he trailed behind, wondering what manner of delivery needed to be made after dark in the depths of the countryside. He guessed that their boast that there were more armed men in the back was a bluff, as there had been no sign of them when they stopped at the tavern.
Assuming that they were going to Honiton, he stepped out quite boldly a couple of hundred paces behind, there being no chance that his soft footfalls could be heard over the rumble and squeak of the solid cartwheels. Suddenly, however, the wagon began to make a sharp turn off the highway, and Setricus scurried into the shadow of the bushes in case they looked back the way they had come. He saw that they had pulled into a space alongside a small toft, a solitary dwelling of cob-plastered wattle, with a thatched roof that even in the pale moonlight looked ragged and grass-grown. A rickety fence marked off a neglected plot of land, but there was no sign of man or beast.