Squire Throwleigh’s Heir

Chapter Seven

When Sir Baldwin de Furnshill walked from his house, he didn’t even notice the bright spring sunshine. The Keeper of the King’s Peace was an intrepid fighter, a man who had survived wars and persecution, yet he had to pause on his threshold, staring at the throng before him with nervous trepidation, quelling the cowardly urge to turn and flee indoors. Only when his friend Simon joined him could he take a deep breath and set off.

The road to the church was packed. All his servants were there at either side of the path: the men grinning and bowing, one or two still holding the tools they had been using that morning, one man with a billhook dangling from his belt, another resting on his fork, a shepherd leaning on his crook, his dogs panting at his feet as if they too were laughing at the knight’s expense.

All the womenfolk chattered and giggled to themselves as they kept up a lewd commentary on Sir Baldwin from behind their hands. Urchins and beggar-children scampered along in his wake, calling out for alms and catching at the money tossed by Simon, who walked at his side.

‘Why in God’s name did I agree to go through with this?’ Baldwin muttered to his friend.

Simon struggled to keep his face blank, but failed. ‘It was your choice, old friend.’

‘My choice? She forced me into it.’

‘Aha! Do you mean that? A frank confession would add zest to the betting.’

Baldwin stopped dead and stared at Simon, his pale features reddening. ‘You mean they are betting on whether I have already… already…’

‘No,’ said Simon gravely.

Baldwin breathed a sigh of relief.

‘They are gambling on the sex of the child, that’s all. They’re sure it’ll be born in July or August.’

Baldwin groaned, ‘The bastards! ’ and eyed his tenants with a fresh suspicion. It felt as if he was seeing them all for the first time. On any other day they would treat him with respect – and a degree of caution – but today the normal rule of law had been inverted: today he was a figure of fun, a source of amusement to even the lowest of his serfs. They lined his route from his house at Furnshill all along the track to the church at Cadbury, and there, he knew, they would all stand about to witness his betrothal, chuckling or giggling at every stumble he made. He murmured gloomily, ‘I wish I were a mere serf. Then Jeanne and I could exchange vows without the need for all this.’

Simon laughed aloud. If Baldwin truly believed that, he also knew it was surely the only advantage in a life of utter poverty. For a marriage to be recognised it was necessary that a man and woman should be seen to give their promises, but there was no legal requirement for them to be made in the church’s grounds – that was merely a custom that had grown up. Often poorer people would swear their oaths in the presence of friends, and only at some later stage, when the wedding had long been consummated, would they go to the priest for his blessing. But the rich felt the urge to go to the church door, even if only on the practical ground that all their servants should be able to see their new mistress.

‘And miss out on your feast? How would Jeanne feel about that?’

‘Have you seen how many people she has invited?’

Simon clapped his friend on the back. It was many years since his own marriage, but he hadn’t forgotten the gut-churning embarrassment of standing before all his contemporaries and other hecklers at the church door. He knew how his friend felt – and took a cynical pleasure in maximising his suffering.

‘All your good money going to waste on wine and ale for comparative strangers, eh?’

‘I grudge no one my drink. If anyone will regret his thirst, it will be the drinker himself, tomorrow morning,’ Baldwin retaliated, casting a sidelong look at his friend. Simon had more than once been seen looking faintly green about the face, quiet and introspective, the morning after an evening of Baldwin’s hospitality.

The knight secretly studied his friend as they approached the church. The bailiff’s grey eyes gazed out at the world with a calm self-confidence, and Baldwin knew that in part his strength of spirit came from his wife, Margaret. Theirs had not been a marriage of estates, a contract between wealthy families designed to seal a business transaction or guarantee an inheritance; their vows had been willingly exchanged.

Baldwin was pleased that his own wedding had likewise sprung from mutual affection and friendship, but it was the other aspect of the ceremony which gave him a strong sense of unease, for Baldwin had been a Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, a Knight Templar, and ever since the destruction of the Order by an avaricious French King and his lackey, the Pope at Avignon, Baldwin had held the Church and its organisation in contempt. For that reason Baldwin had chosen to wear a tunic of white today, in memory of the Order he had served and the men with whom he had lived, at whose side he had fought, and whose lives had been betrayed and ended in persecution ordered by the French King.

It was also why he wore his new riding sword. He wanted to have the symbol of his Order with him at his marriage: perhaps for sentimental reasons, perhaps because he felt the need to affirm his comrades at such an important ceremony. He was no philosopher, and did not seek to understand his own motives, but was happy that the new sword weighed heavily at his hip with the little carved Templar cross nearest his person.

He had friends within the Church, it was true, men such as Peter Clifford, the Dean of Crediton Church, but for Baldwin, a knight who had taken the three-fold oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience, a system that was led by the Pope, a man who had cynically discarded the Templars purely for his own profit, was itself corrupt.

Still, he reflected, approaching the grey block of the old church on the hill, at least today it wouldn’t be that damned fool Alfred, the priest who usually held the services at Cadbury; Peter Clifford himself had agreed to officiate.

‘Come on, Baldwin, stop dawdling!’ Simon chuckled and led the way up the last few hundred yards to St Michael’s Church.

Here the crowd was thicker, with many friends from Crediton where Baldwin was the Keeper of the King’s Peace. The gravedigger was shamefacedly trying to conceal his spade behind him, thinking it looked out of place today. Mingled among the crowd were others: squires, knights and a banneret. Even the local Coroner had made the journey from Exeter. Their horses stood at the edge of the churchyard, held by grooms while their riders mingled and chattered, waiting for Baldwin and his bride. Near the entrance were parked Baldwin’s own wagons, filled with barrels of his latest brew of ale, and his servants and guests were all making free of it.

For once the abstemious knight felt jealous of drinkers.

Lady Katharine was in her hall. Outside the sun was high in the sky and it illuminated the room with long shafts of light in which dust-motes and insects danced. Occasionally a swallow entered and circled above, then darted out through the window again.

If this was a normal time, she would be outside, sitting in her small garden, listening to the birds singing, while sewing or working with Daniel to ensure the manor produced a profit. If her husband were still alive, she might go hunting with him, her falcon on her wrist.

But this was not a normal time. Her man was dead, and so was her son.

She could remember when she first met her husband. It was seven years ago now, when the King had been in St Albans, and Katharine’s father, a knight banneret, had been in attendance.

It had been wretched. Famine was striking all in the kingdom, for rain had killed off much of the harvest, and what remained had to be dried in great ovens before it could be used for anything. Although the King tried to control prices by issuing Ordinances which regulated the cost of all foodstuffs, these only strengthened the black market. Floods were widespread, and Katharine could remember the despair of farmers who couldn’t sow their crops. In St Albans there was no bread to be had, not even for the King himself.

And in the midst of this gloom, she had been the target of every fool in parti-coloured hose. Youths so callow she had no wish to give them a second glance, had circled about her like dogs around a bitch. Some tried to amuse her with jokes; she ignored them. Others flattered her and tried to tempt her with gifts; she rejected them. But her success in ridding herself of these popinjays only led to others trying to attract her with lewd words; one even suggested she should let him visit her in her room. Him she had stared at coldly, and left.

All the time she was pestered by these fools, Squire Roger had avoided her gaze. She had looked to him often, where he stood at the other side of the room, hoping that he might recognise her plight and come to rescue her, but he had nobly smiled and moved on. Only later did she realise that he had thought her content with men of her own age. Yet she had not desired them. She only ever wanted a strong husband, a real man. Someone like him.

And it had been a real delight, a wonderful, ecstatic recognition, when she had seen the love in his eyes. She had thought him cold, but that was a mask to conceal his true feelings. When she confessed how she felt, she found him as passionate as herself, and that same day she and he had become handfast, engaged to be married.

Her father had not been over the moon about it. He’d been hoping for a good local marriage to strengthen his lands, but he was too kindly a man to ignore the obvious adoration that Squire Roger felt for his daughter, and which was so clearly reciprocated. And, he might well have reflected, there could be advantage in being allied to the squire of Sir Reginald of Hatherleigh.

But their time together had been too short, Katharine thought as the breath caught in her throat and she felt another bout of sobbing threaten her composure. And now their only child was gone as well.

Her husband had fallen from his horse, and it must have been God’s will that he should have died there and then, but Katharine couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that Edmund had contributed to his end.

A murdered man might be gathered up to God because He had ordained the fellow should die, but his killer should still be punished. That was why she had a personal determination to see Edmund pay, forcing him to revert to servile status. He had angered Squire Roger and possibly increased the heat of his blood, making him burst his heart.

She clenched a fist and pounded the arm of her seat: Edmund would suffer for taking her husband from her!

Baldwin took a deep breath and strode on, glancing neither to right nor left as he went up to the door where Peter Clifford stood waiting.

‘Sir Baldwin, good morning! The sun has favoured you on this happy day; God must be smiling on you.’

‘I didn’t expect it from the look of the weather yesterday. I was convinced we would get washed out,’ Baldwin admitted gruffly, his eyes darting hither and thither as he sought out his wife-to-be. ‘There’s still time,’ he added gloomily, glancing up at the thin, white clouds hanging peacefully in the almost clear sky.

Peter laughed and continued chatting inconsequentially. He had conducted many such ceremonies, and knew the torment Baldwin was going through, if only at second-hand. In his experience, grooms were always nervous and stiff until after the formal service. Baldwin was true to form.

The knight was pale and, although Peter would never have said so, he was sure that Sir Baldwin was viewing the ceremony with the utmost trepidation. No matter, Peter thought to himself: once the food and wine began to flow, the most terrified groom always recovered.

They were still waiting in the porch when Simon heard a murmur in the crowd, and he walked to the churchyard gate. There he found his wife standing in attendance to another woman.

‘Jeanne, you look wonderful,’ he said simply.

Looking about her, Anney thought that Lady Katharine’s hall had the atmosphere of a prison. It was a place of doom and misery. There was nothing in it to lighten the spirit. If she could, she would have left long ago, but that was impossible, even though it contained almost every painful memory of her life: not only the trial of her man, but the inquest of her son. The husband she had sworn to cleave to had been accused here, in this very room, by his true brother-in-law, the brother of his first wife, the man who had come to expose his bigamy.

There was no doubt of the validity of the charge. He had no choice but to confess, and although he protested that his first wife had trapped him, that he had never wanted to wed her, he had been forced from Throwleigh. Anney had been left alone with her children who, she learned, were legally bastards. She was ruined. No matter that she had given her vows in good faith; the men of the vill regarded her as tainted, and as they made clear to her from that day on, she should be grateful for any attention they might choose to offer.

It had been hard. She had been abused by everyone. The women ignored her, or joked at her expense; the men were worse. A woman needed a protector. Without one, whether father or husband, grown-up son or brother, there was no security, no safety.

This was brought home forcibly the first time she was raped on her way back from the hall. The man responsible was drunk and had seen her approach. She’d known him all her life – that was what really offended Anney more than anything, the fact that he was as old as her father before he died. The fellow had made advances and thrust her into the hedge before lifting her skirts and…

It wasn’t the only time, either. The men of the village looked on her as fair game. She had given herself to a bigamist, so she was contaminated – a mere common stale. After a few weeks, Anney had taken to carrying her dagger as she walked, and that afforded her some little protection; once she wounded a man trying to molest her.

And then, when her little boy Tom, Alan’s younger brother, died in that futile, stupid manner, the light had blown out from her life, like a rushlight caught in a gusting breeze. Once more she had been brought in here to this damned hall, to receive the terrible news, and when the Coroner arrived two days later, it was in here that he came, to undress the little body of her Tom.

At first she had felt quite calm as they removed his clothes, which were still damp from when he drowned, but when the Coroner had pulled his arms and legs apart before the greedy gaze of the audience, all of the jury staring with rapacious eyes, she had felt her control slipping. Was it just that they were hungry to see another’s death because that made their own somehow less fearsome to contemplate? She didn’t care; she had loathed them all from that moment.

That was why she had carried on working at the manor. She couldn’t face labouring in the fields with the other villagers after seeing their hideous excitement as the Coroner turned her boy’s body over, showing them in turn the back, the head, the neck, the arms, the legs, his belly, and his strangely sad little shrivelled penis. She could never work alongside those who had enjoyed her son’s humiliation, even after his death.

This room would always be loathsome to her. Hateful. The officers were different, but the hall’s atmosphere was unchanged. She despised it and everyone in it.

Especially the hypocrite – the priest who was supposed to be above worldly things, and who was no better than any of the other men in the village: he was a degenerate.

Hadn’t she seen the proof?