A Friar's bloodfeud

Chapter Twenty-Six

Isabel sat on her stool, and the three men were waved towards the table. As in so many peasants’ homes, there were only stools for the master and mistress, which meant that when Ailward had come home from his work he must have found himself perching on the edge of the table, because Baldwin was somehow convinced that no matter how strong the man had been he would have been hard pushed to it to gainsay the formidable woman who was his mother.

She was clad in grey wool, a heavy cloth that sagged shapelessly above her belt. In her youth she must have been a handsome enough woman, though. Baldwin could see through the years to when the high cheekbones and steady, firm brown eyes would have been attractive. Her lips would have been less thin and grey, too, more full and rosy, while her hair, now entirely grey, would have formed a thick brown mane. Her hands were callused now, but the fingers were long and elegant, and Baldwin was sure that she would have been an enticing catch for her man.

‘We are both poor widows now, you see,’ Isabel said quietly as the men chose places to rest. Simon crossed his arms and leaned next to Baldwin at the table, while Edgar took up a languid pose at the doorway, ankles crossed and thumbs stuck in his belt. As always, his face wore an accommodating smile, but Simon knew that his eyes were cold. A killer’s eyes.

‘When did your husband die, madam?’ Baldwin asked. He had often found that early on in an inquest it was better to have people talk about any matter rather than leave periods of silence. Then, when they were used to speaking, he could suddenly allow gaps to return; invariably the questioned person would speak hurriedly to fill them. In this way he often gained his most valuable information.

‘He was a brave man. A squire. But the mad Scots saw to him in Ireland when they invaded the king’s lands there.’

‘He was killed in Ireland?’

‘While the traitor Bruce was harrying our men in Scotland, he sent his brother to Ireland to attack the king’s servants there. My father-in-law, Squire William Monkleigh, said farewell as soon as the call went up for men to join the king’s host. We never had any doubts that he’d be back soon enough. But he was slain at Kells.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘That was a fearful battle, so I have heard.’

‘As have I,’ she said slowly, nodding to herself as old women may. ‘And my husband was also slain. Squire Robert. He was a fierce-hearted man too, and he likewise was killed in his lord’s service.’

Baldwin nodded and shot a look over his shoulder at Edgar, then at Simon. His face was serious. ‘He was also a squire?’

‘Yes. But he was poorer. When his father died, much of his wealth was with him, as is natural. We lost his horses, armour, and much treasure. My husband and I struggled, and we intended to make up for the losses, but it was hard. Very hard. And then he too died.’

‘How?’

‘At Bridgnorth,’ she said coldly, looking away.

Baldwin could see the tear form in the corner of her eye, and followed its path as it moved slowly, as though reluctantly, down her cheek. It found a crease in her skin and followed it to her jaw, where she irritably wiped it away. ‘So your husband and his father were vassals to Lord Mortimer?’

‘He was our liege. When he asked my men to go to him, they obeyed.’

Which explained a lot. Baldwin nodded. ‘My lady, I am sorry to hear of your losses. Your men were honourable to their commander.’

‘My family is poor now, but we had our pride. My men never lost that, and no one can take it from me.’

‘But then your son too was found dead?’

‘It was wrong!’ she declared hotly. ‘How could they murder him like that and hope to escape justice? They weren’t content with taking my husband, now they have killed my son too! I damn the Despenser family! I damn them to hell for eternity! Thank God some men here still have some honour. Sir Odo will protect us.’

‘You know him?’

‘Sir Odo has lived there at Fishleigh for many years now. He was there before Ailward was born, and he’ll still be there long after the brutal rabble in Monkleigh are all gone,’ she asserted.

‘He has said he will help?’ Baldwin pressed her.

‘He visits me here, to make sure we are all right. We need all the compassion we can be given in this sad time!’

As she bowed her head to her hands in grief, Baldwin’s attention returned to the other widow.

She had set aside the little basket of the eggs she had been seeking when they arrived, and now sat with her eyes downcast as her mother-in-law spoke. She looked the kind of young woman who had never been able to speak in the expectation of anyone’s listening, Baldwin thought.

‘Who do you think could have been responsible for his death?’

It was the older woman who answered for her. ‘Sir Geoffrey, of course. Who else could it have been?’

‘Why?’ Simon demanded. ‘You told us that Ailward’s father was a vassal to Roger Mortimer, but Ailward was steward to Sir Geoffrey. Why should Sir Geoffrey want to harm him?’

‘You know what has happened to Mortimer in the last few years! First insulted, then forced to go to war against his king, and all because of the Despenser. And now the bodies of Despenser’s enemies hang all over the kingdom like common felons. Despenser has no hesitation in killing those whom he sees as his natural enemies, and any friend of his enemy is his enemy also.’

‘My husband’s fate was sealed as soon as Lord Mortimer ran from the king’s gaol,’ Malkin said softly.

Simon glanced at her while Baldwin continued to question the older woman. This woman Malkin was very attractive, and it made her grief all the more sad to witness. It made Simon realise that his own sense of being overwhelmed by the loss of Hugh was perhaps out of proportion to his loss. Yes, Hugh had been a close companion, and a good, loyal, and usually truthful friend. This woman, though, had lost her husband. From now on she would be alone in the world unless she could win herself a new man. Her grief was the mature heartache of a wife whose life must soon change.

‘Is this your property?’ he asked quietly.

Malkin glanced at Isabel, who was now denouncing Despenser and all his henchmen with no restraint and less subtlety, as if she wondered whether she ought to speak without asking Isabel first. ‘No. It is owned by Sir Geoffrey and the manor.’

‘What will happen to you if he throws you from the land?’

She shrugged. ‘We shall leave.’

‘If your father-in-law and his father were both squires, then surely they had their own demesnes?’

‘When he died in Ireland, Isabel’s father-in-law lost much; her husband scraped together enough to arm himself by mortgaging his lands, and when he died too, all those who had debts owing from him came to demand their money.’

‘With him dead, surely the debts were unenforceable?’

She met his gaze. ‘A man who has died while serving a rebel who’s holding his banner against the king’s has few friends to fight even unfair actions. Especially when the Despenser decides to take over the debts.’

‘How so?’

‘He sent this Sir Geoffrey, and as soon as he arrived he told us that the king had made over all our lands to Despenser. They were forfeit and added to the Despenser’s holdings.’

‘So — you mean that the whole of the Monkleigh estate was yours originally?’

‘Yes. And they forced us from our home and made my husband work for them as a menial, their bailiff. They couldn’t even recognise him as a steward. They had to make him suffer for his father’s actions.’

‘I had no idea of this.’

‘You know the grossest insult? They have blackened the name of the vill with their depredations. Raiding other tenants’ holdings nearby in an attempt to force people from their own lands so that Sir Geoffrey can steal it for himself, and more: he has taken to hiring many felons in the hall. Most of them stay hidden behind his walls because he cannot allow them to be seen in public in case they are denounced and arrested for the common thieves and cut-purses that they are.’

‘They are surely there in the hall for all to see,’ Simon said lightly.

‘You think so? He has some five and twenty men there, I think. How many do you see when you visit them? If you are lucky, you may see one man-at-arms and his sergeant, but all the others who are about the manor in daylight are his villeins. There are none of his draw-latches, rapists or murderers in evidence while the sun shines. They only come out at night, like mares!’ She had paled, and as she spoke she clutched at the neck of her tunic with a fist clenched in anger and dread.

It took Nicholas le Poter some little while to realise that the place was empty, and as soon as he did, he stood and gazed about him with panic setting in.

This little chapel was surely the only safe place for him. He had to find a place of sanctuary where even Sir Geoffrey’s men would be fearful of entering. Then he could wait until the coroner arrived and gave him protection to escape. That was all he needed, a place to wait, but if there was no priest here, if Humphrey was gone, there was nowhere for him to stay! He thought even now that he could catch something at the edge of his hearing, as though there was a mass of hounds being collected, and he remembered what Sir Geoffrey had said — that he could run now, but his men would be along to hunt him.

He’d seen enough hunts. There’d been a villein who’d been accused of stealing from the hall, taking a wooden spoon. The man had denied it, but Sir Geoffrey hadn’t believed him and they’d let him run, setting off shortly afterwards with the hounds. The body had been dragged back, its heels bound to Sir Geoffrey’s saddle, and when the man’s widow had seen it, she’d fainted dead away. Someone had said she’d died a week or so later from the horror of seeing her man’s body flayed of all the flesh on his buttocks and back where he’d been dragged over the stones. Nicholas wasn’t sure that he’d been dead at the start of that return journey, although he had been pricked by two boar-lances already, but he was certainly dead by the end of it.

The chapel was silent and as cold as only an empty building can be. He’d shouted as he first bolted up to the altar, gripping the cloth anxiously as he stared about him wildly.

He had two choices: remain and be caught and killed, or flee again and find another, safer refuge. Where, though? There was nowhere else … unless he managed to get to Iddesleigh. There the church would offer greater protection than this little chapel. Here, without the priest in charge, he could be dragged out without trouble; even if Isaac and Humphrey had been here, it would have been touch and go whether the pair of them could have defended him against Sir Geoffrey’s men … but if he could reach Iddesleigh, he’d be safe enough. The way would be hard, and he’d have to hurry, but he could make it.

In the distance he was almost certain he could hear the squeaking of harnesses and the baying of hounds. It decided him. He let go the altar cloth and fled through the door and out to the road, and then, staring wildly and fearfully up at the hall, he set off at as swift a pace as he could manage towards the little vill that stood out so prominently on the hill ahead, without noticing that he had left his pack behind.

While Nicholas bolted, Humphrey was already almost at his chosen resting place. He followed the roadway down the hillside towards the river, and at the bottom, where the river cut through in its shallow, rocky path, he splashed through the water with a grimace against the freezing cold.

Over the river the hillside was fairly thickly wooded, and with the sun already very low in the western sky, he knew a faint trepidation and a chill that felt as though his bones were sensing the cold before his flesh. It was a superstitious sensation, not a rational one, he told himself. There was no point in fearing ghosts and creatures of the night, not when he was more likely to suffer from the worst of what men could do. And their worst would be extremely unpleasant.

He wanted to get into a place where he could rest for the night and sleep. There was a path which led off through some trees towards a small assart, and, spotting it, he sighed with relief. He’d thought he’d missed it. Picking up his feet more quickly, he scurried up the track towards the little place he recalled from several months ago.

When he was last here, he had been exploring, partly to understand the lie of the land in this little parish, but also because he knew that it was possible that one day he would need to know how best to escape the vill. He’d stumbled upon this little deserted assart by pure chance, and at the time he’d instantly thought that it could be a useful location to bear in mind, should he ever need a quiet, secure place of concealment.

It stood in a tiny clearing, he remembered. An old, slightly tumbledown cott with the thatch holed and rotten, it wouldn’t provide any shelter from the rain or much from the wind, but for a one-night stay, it had the benefit of being off the beaten track and safe from investigation.

When he caught sight of it, he heaved a sigh of relief and stood a moment. There was an atmosphere of homeliness about it that tore at his memories, making him feel sad that he had lost his own home so many years ago. It was ruined, though. Worse than he remembered from when he’d last been here. The roof was almost all gone, and the door which had stood here had rotted away, and fragments of the planks that had constituted it lay haphazardly all about.

Hearing a crack behind him, he recalled what he was doing here, and darted into the clearing, then headed straight for the door. There was another crackle of broken twigs behind him in among the trees, and Humphrey felt the blood course more urgently through his veins. There was someone there! He must have been followed. For a moment he stood, irresolute, staring wildly over his shoulder at the thick boles of the trees, now smothered in their own twilight. Then he shot forward to the doorway, entered, and sprang back to stand with his back to the wall, panting heavily. ‘God’s blood,’ he muttered.

Now, his scalp crawling, he realised what had made the place appear so pleasingly homely: the odour of wood smoke. Now he could see that there was a good little fire of dry wood burning in a makeshift fireplace ringed about with small rocks in the middle of the room, and he felt his fear return to flood him. Slowly, cautiously, he leaned over to peer through the doorway.

And he shrieked as he caught sight of a mad, glowering face only inches from his own. Then he felt the crunch of a cudgel at the back of his head, and he forgot his panic as he slumped headlong into a vast pool of blackness.

Baldwin had heard their last exchange and he looked at Malkin now, asking, ‘Do you think Sir Geoffrey could have been personally responsible for your husband’s death, or was that an act by one of his men, then?’

‘I am certain it was him. He could have paid one of his men to thrust the knife home, but it was his order that led to my Ailward being killed.’

A man had entered now, a tall man with greying hair. He stood in the doorway scowling suspiciously at the men talking to the two women. ‘Who are you?’

‘Pagan, don’t worry. These men are here to learn what happened to the master,’ Malkin said.

‘We know what happened to him,’ the man spat. ‘He was killed so he couldn’t claim his lands back.’

Baldwin pricked up his ears. ‘Was there a chance that he might?’

Malkin drew a deep breath. ‘I had lodged a complaint at the king’s bench to demand my own lands be returned to me. Part of the manor was my own dower, and I wanted it back. And Ailward had never stood against the king. He had always remained a loyal vassal. Yet he was being punished for what his father had done. That was wrong — and I think that the king must have realised it before long and offered to return to us all of our lands. Sir Geoffrey knew that. So he had Ailward killed.’

‘It is a serious allegation to make against a man who is so strong,’ Baldwin commented.

‘You think I don’t know that!’ she hissed, and she met Baldwin’s look with eyes that seemed to blaze with a sudden green fire. ‘I have lost my husband and my lands, my servants … my future. All gone — and you tell me I make serious allegations because I want justice against the man who was responsible?’

‘If he had your husband killed, you should be careful. He may try to do the same to you,’ Baldwin murmured.

‘If he tries, he’ll find we’re not so easy to kill!’ Pagan declared. He stood with his arms crossed and jaw jutting defiantly. ‘Any man tries to break in here, he’ll find more than just two widows …’

Isabel held up her hand and spoke gently. ‘Pagan, that is enough. There’s no need for more rancour here. Besides, you don’t sleep here overnight. That could be … indecorous.’

‘You don’t have a man to sleep here with you?’ Baldwin asked.

‘We are in a strong enough group of buildings. If any tried to break in here we would be able to protect ourselves,’ Isabel said. ‘And Sir Odo has promised support if we need it. All we need do is send for help, and he and his men would be here.’

‘It may be safer to let Pagan stay here,’ Baldwin said.

‘It would not be right to have a man sleeping in our household. We are two widows. There are plenty of others here to protect us.’

Baldwin nodded, unconvinced. Turning to Pagan, he said, ‘You were servant to Ailward?’

‘I was servant to his father, then to him. I made my vow to serve his father and I haven’t faltered. I’ll protect their memory just as I did their bodies when they lived, and now both are dead I’ll protect their women as well as their honour.’

Baldwin watched Isabel as she smiled at Pagan. He guessed that there was a closeness between them, and it was no surprise. How often had he heard people in Crediton talking in hushed, shocked tones about widows who had married their stewards? Time beyond count. And yet he found it a little surprising in this case. Isabel did not look the sort who would be inclined to mix with a man like Pagan. She was too haughty by nature.

He nodded. ‘That is good, Pagan. If someone were to come here to attack and rape or kill your mistresses you would naturally be right to protect them. Now, is there anything any of you can tell me about the death of Ailward? Anything you have remembered since the coroner came?’

Pagan looked from Malkin to Isabel and back. ‘There is nothing I can think of. Ailward was found lying up on the hill leading towards Whitemoor. It was near to the stream, I think. Up at the top of a little rise.’

‘I do not know this area well. Is there someone who could take me there?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Such as the man who found him,’ Edgar suggested.

Baldwin nodded. ‘Yes, that would be best,’ he agreed.

‘That’s easy enough. You need Perkin from Monkleigh. He’s one of the men who used to be ours,’ Pagan declared. ‘If you tell him I said he should take you up there, he’ll do it.’

Baldwin smiled thinly. ‘I think I can make sure he does. What does he look like?’

While Pagan described him, Simon stood and stretched his legs. It was good to think that they’d soon be leaving this sad little hovel to return to the inn. He wanted to get away from this house and the feeling of cloying misery that hung about it. After losing Hugh, he had enough sorrow already, and he didn’t need to share in other people’s.

Outside the light was fading quickly, he saw, and he found himself wondering how well this place really could be protected against an attack. If a force of men were to ride through the vill and assault the house, they must succeed speedily. It took little time to hurl flaming torches on to a roof and set the whole ablaze, after all. Sir Geoffrey seemed a ruthless enough man. No doubt he would destroy this place with the women inside it in a moment if he thought that they were a threat to him. Just as, maybe, he had killed Hugh.

Hugh had lived on a patch of ground that was not on Sir Geoffrey’s manor, but was contiguous with it. If a man was to try to expand his holdings, stealing a plot like Hugh’s might make sense. Especially since Hugh was without a defender. Others about Iddesleigh were no doubt villeins, peasants who owed labour to their master in return for his protection: but Hugh was a free man. He had no one to defend him.

It seemed curious to him that the women were keen to have Pagan sleep away from their house. It would be more sensible to have their most loyal man sleeping in the hall with them. Yet it wasn’t distrust, surely, because they were happy for him to remain with them during the day. Their fear for their reputation could end with their being captured.

‘One thing,’ he asked on a whim. ‘You mentioned, Madam Malkin, that part of the manor was your dower. Where was that?’

‘It was the land nearer the river north and west of here. My husband’s family owned Monkleigh and the lands east of it, but mine owned the river and the banks for a mile or so. The fishing alone was worth a fortune. We used to harvest the salmon each year. Now we have nothing.’

Baldwin frowned. ‘But surely that is the land which is now disputed by Sir Geoffrey and Sir Odo?’

‘Yes. I think Sir Geoffrey has sold our lands to Sir Odo — and I gave no permission for that!’