A Friar's bloodfeud

Chapter Twenty-Seven

At that moment, Sir Geoffrey was feeling very little like a threat to anyone. He sat on his horse and bellowed while the grooms and hounds milled madly in the yard behind the hall. There was an insolence about the villeins today, a sulkiness that was not normal.

‘You! Get the men ready, damn their souls!’ he roared at Adcock. Then he struck with his lash at a hound which had approached too close to his mare’s legs. ‘Get back, you devil!’

Adcock eyed the men unhappily and, catching sight of his master’s expression again, hurriedly limped over to join them. ‘Come on, you heard Sir Geoffrey. He wants us all to help find Nick.’

He felt sick to think of the poor man out there in the wilds and the cold, stumbling onwards through the gathering gloom, knowing that at any moment he might be spotted by Sir Geoffrey’s men. It was a dreadful thought: being hunted like a wild animal, the full complement of Sir Geoffrey’s foul companions riding after him, shrieking and whooping in glee as they saw their quarry, while all the time Nicholas le Poter’s terror increased and he forced himself to run, run, run …

Beorn answered. ‘We don’t want any part of this.’

‘You refuse to join a legal posse? You can be punished for that. You know it, don’t you? Come on, you’re all grown men. All you have to do is show willing.’

‘Willing? And willingly help chase a man to death?’ Perkin said. ‘If he’s guilty, then it’s as likely as not that your master is involved, sergeant.’

Adcock shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. ‘Don’t speak so loud,’ he pleaded. ‘You don’t know what he’s capable of!’ God, but his ballocks still ached so much! He couldn’t bear the thought of another beating.

‘We’ve seen enough, of him and his men,’ Rannulf declared. His legs were apart, and his arms crossed, but he looked ready for a fight. From all Adcock had heard, he usually was.

‘If you don’t go and help him, all that’ll happen is the man will be caught anyway and probably he’ll die. There’s nothing much we can do to stop that. But if you stay here, he’ll make life for all of you hell. You know he can. He’ll impose new fines, take most of your crops, stop your women marrying who they want to … there’s no end to his power. You know that. Make a stand if you want, but think of how it’ll hurt your womenfolk.’

Perkin stepped closer. ‘You know that Sir Geoffrey is saying that le Poter killed Lady Lucy? Why’d he do that?’

‘Just to rape her, I suppose.’

‘Which is why she was tortured? Whereas if it was Sir Geoffrey, he could end up with her lands and manor, couldn’t he? Which do you think is more likely?’

Adcock desperately sought for the words that would allay this man’s suspicions without declaring his own doubts, but none came to him. He saw Perkin give a grim nod.

‘You think the same, don’t you? Why should we go and seek to punish someone for Sir Geoffrey’s crimes, just to help deflect any blame from Sir Geoffrey? He’s no lord of ours.’

‘You won’t come?’ Adcock asked desperately. He hated to think how his master would react if all these men refused.

It was Beorn who snorted long and loud. He hawked and spat out a gobbet of phlegm. ‘Damn Sir Geoffrey, and damn Nicholas le Poter. They’re two of a kind. I suppose if we’re all there, we can decide whether to protect le Poter if we want. We can’t do a thing if we leave him to Sir Geoffrey’s mercy.’

Perkin grunted, and Rannulf scratched at his ear. One or two other men shuffled and refused to meet Adcock’s eye. It was that more than anything that told him they’d go with Sir Geoffrey’s posse. They knew what sort of retribution Sir Geoffrey could demand from those who thwarted his will.

Adcock went back to his little horse and climbed on to it unhappily, sinking down very gently and carefully. He had his dad’s old sword swinging heavily at his hip, and a coil of rope was tied to his saddle, with which, he guessed, they might bind the man while he still breathed, and bring him back to the hall. It left him feeling most uncomfortable.

As the hounds were released, he set off towards the rear of Sir Geoffrey’s party. The sun was low in the sky, but at least up here with so few hills to the west, there was still enough light to see by.

A few of the hounds had gone off to follow the trails of badgers or rabbits, and had to be whipped into line. Sir Geoffrey had given an old bloodstained shirt of Nicholas’s to the master of the hounds, and the man had thrown it to all of them before setting off. Now there was a conviction in their voices as they gave vent to their excitement, and the men were soon clattering down the lane from the hall, over the roadway, and southwards towards the little chapel.

‘He’s gone to claim sanctuary,’ Perkin guessed from Adcock’s side.

Adcock couldn’t disagree. ‘But what’ll Sir Geoffrey do if he’s inside?’

‘He doesn’t care about the niceties, our master. I expect he’ll send us in to haul Nicholas out.’

Adcock shivered. He couldn’t do that. It was not just cruel and unfair to drag a man from sanctuary, it was blasphemy. He couldn’t break the sanctity of the altar just to satisfy Sir Geoffrey’s bidding.

He looked up at Sir Geoffrey’s back. It exuded confidence, and Adcock knew that the steward would break any man who stood in his path. A picture of Nicholas’s back flashed into his mind. The flesh ripped apart, the blood oozing thickly …

Edgar rode along easily. Their path took them east to the main road from Exbourne to Iddesleigh, and he was looking forward to a pot of ale when he reached the inn again. The thought of a good, hot fire was appealing, especially when associated with a bowl of pottage and maybe some rabbit or pork to go with it. He jogged along contentedly enough.

The setting sun painted the sky with pinks and purples, and he reflected how much his wife would have enjoyed the scene. Petronilla was always looking for beauty: she saw it in flowers, in water, in bird feathers, and here she’d have found it in the sky. It took little to make her happy. So long as he was behaving, anyway!

It was a sobering reflection that while he was here still, happy with his wife, poor Hugh’s family was gone. Edgar was at bottom a pragmatic man, and he knew that if someone tried to rape and kill his wife, they’d have to kill Edgar first. The idea of living knowing that someone had done that to her was so appalling that he could feel a shiver of revulsion travel down his spine at the mere thought. It would be unbearable.

He wanted to know who had done this to Hugh’s family so that he could look them in the eye and try to understand what sort of man could perform such a foul act. Oh, he had seen plenty of felons in his time, and all too often they were dim, gormless men who saw an opportunity and took it. That explained only too many sudden attacks and killings. But that wasn’t what had happened at Hugh’s place. There it hadn’t been a sudden, random assault. It had been premeditated, as far as Edgar could see.

There had been a party at the inn, which had concealed the attack — but everyone in the vills about here could have known about the party at the inn that night. There was nothing secret about it.

Simon and Baldwin were silent as they rode and Edgar did not see any reason to break the peace. They ambled along, the twilight darkening the country about them, hearing the screeching of a blackbird as they disturbed her from her perch, the sudden clatter of a pigeon overhead, the distant mournful call of a fox. There were so many noises. Even the wind seemed loud as it whistled in his ears.

And then he heard the other noises. With ears that had been attuned for almost all his adult life to the sound of potential danger, he heard a squeaking of leather, the high-pitched jingling of metalwork, and then, as he turned his head and frowned in concentration, the cries of men and the baying of hounds.

‘Sir Baldwin! Listen!’

Sir Geoffrey was annoyed with the delay. Trying to gather all the villeins together had taken an age, and then the miserable curs had tried to avoid their duty. They wouldn’t get away with that sort of shirking, not while he was master of the manor. No, they’d damned well learn to obey.

Nicholas le Poter was a fool. He might have thought he could evict Sir Geoffrey, but it was the last mistake he’d make. When this posse caught up with him, he’d be pulled apart. Literally.

‘Sir Geoffrey? There are men ahead.’

He swore quietly under his breath. Round the curve in the road, he suddenly saw three men on horseback. They stopped at sight of his little force, and one horse reared as the hounds reached them.

‘Sir Baldwin!’ he bellowed. ‘I am glad to see you, sir. I am chasing the man who killed Lady Lucy. Have you seen him going this way?’

Baldwin and Edgar exchanged a look. Simon was glowering down at a hound that kept darting under his mount, making the rounsey skittish.

It was Baldwin who responded. ‘We’ve seen no one on this road.’

Sir Geoffrey swore under his breath again. This was not turning out as he had planned. Surely the hounds weren’t mistaken …

‘Sir Geoffrey, they’re going down towards the chapel,’ his huntsman suddenly called.

‘After them! He’s trying to reach sanctuary!’ Sir Geoffrey shouted and set spurs to his horse.

He was aware of his posse springing into the chase behind him. Yes, as he passed by the angry-looking bailiff, whose beast was dancing like a tamed bear, he saw the main part of the pack turning off the road and taking the little lane that went down the hill to the chapel. That was where the fool had gone, thinking he’d be safe down there. Well, he was mistaken. Sir Geoffrey felt his lips pull into a snarl of satisfaction as he urged his horse down the incline towards the chapel.

It was quiet. The dogs were at the door, sniffing and protesting, although two or three had trotted off towards the fields nearby. He ignored them, but bellowed at the top of his voice. ‘Nicholas le Poter — come out and surrender or I shall have you pulled out.’

‘You will not!’

Sir Geoffrey turned to see the calm face of the Keeper at his side. ‘Sir Baldwin, this is a matter for my manor. It’s none of your concern.’

Baldwin was quiet for a moment. He glanced about Sir Geoffrey at the men with him. There were some few, he thought, who looked like ordinary peasants from the vill, but others … others were different. He recalled the widow’s words about men who would keep to the hall in daylight and only appear at night, and he told himself that the careers of some of these fellows would bear little scrutiny. He had not seen so many dangerous-looking characters together in many a year.

‘I think you are wrong,’ he said at last. ‘If there is a man in there who has committed murder, it is very much my concern. It is my duty to seek felons and murderers. And it is not your place to command a man to leave a place of sanctuary, either.’

‘It is not sanctuary. It’s a chapel, and it has never been declared sanctuary to my knowledge.’

‘Perhaps not. Nevertheless, it is a holy chapel and you will not desecrate it by entering with armed men and pulling a defenceless man from within.’

‘I can do what I like on my estates,’ Sir Geoffrey declared more quietly, his voice dropping.

‘Not while I am here, Sir Geoffrey,’ Baldwin said calmly.

‘Out of my way!’ Sir Geoffrey grated and reached for his sword’s hilt.

As he did so, he heard a swift rasp of steel from his right. Glancing down, he found himself staring at a naked blade held by Baldwin’s man.

‘You dare draw steel against me?’ he growled.

‘Against any who threaten my master, yes,’ Edgar said happily.

‘You will regret this!’

‘I doubt it,’ Baldwin said coolly. ‘Now, please, do you wait here while I go inside. Edgar, you stay with him.’

Jeanne was still at the inn, although she would have been happier to leave and go for a walk. Richalda had fallen asleep, and Jeanne had set her down on a bench nearby. From experience she knew that Richalda could sleep through a charge of cavalry. The noise in this bar would be nothing to her.

The racket was growing, too. First Emma declared that she needed more wine, then that she needed food, that she was starving, that her head ached; all of which were interspersed with comments on the local population, the quality of the staff, especially Jankin, and the general lack of amenities.

In the end, from sheer embarrassment, Jeanne left her to it. She slipped out of the inn and stood outside just as the sun was fading. As the door closed she distinctly heard her maid demanding a quart of wine, and ‘None of that pissy water you call wine round here. I want a good dark red. Quickly, man!’

Jeanne closed her eyes in shame. If there was ever a time when she could have cheerfully discarded her maid, it was now. Even when she had first been introduced to Baldwin, she had not been quite so appallingly rude. Not that Jeanne could remember, anyway. Admittedly the woman was atrocious in any company, but her behaviour today had been even worse than usual.

At a burst of raucous laughter, Jeanne shuddered, convinced that someone was gaining revenge for some of Emma’s foul comments, and she walked quickly away from the inn. The church was a short walk away, and she felt the need for a little spiritual comfort just now. She was almost at the small gate which barred the entrance to the vill’s pigs and dogs when she heard panting and rapid footfalls. Turning swiftly and frowning into the gloom, she saw a figure lurching up the lane.

Jeanne was a lady of quality, and the thought that a man could be approaching her at this time of night in a distressed state was hardly pleasing, but she was only too aware of the responsibilities laid on a Christian who found a fellow being in a state of need. She was tempted to go to the inn’s door and pull him inside to the warm, but something in his manner told her that it would be pointless. He came past the inn with his gaze fixed and staring, almost lunatic from the look of him. Jeanne shivered to see how his face was so set, like a man who was already wounded to death, but retained just enough energy in his legs to carry on. In fact, she thought he looked like a man who must keep moving, as though he must die as soon as he stopped.

He came closer, and Jeanne hurriedly made her way to the church. She had entered the yard at the eastern point, and she walked round to the southern door and opened it. Behind her she could hear the desperate rasping breath of the man.

The priest was already inside. ‘Lady Jeanne. How pleasant to see you again. I am just preparing for the evening’s …’

He was silenced as the figure lurched in after her. Wide-eyed, fearful, he pushed past Jeanne and fell to his knees in front of the priest. ‘Sanctuary! Sanctuary!’

Jeanne gasped at the sight of his shirt. It was dripping with blood, which in the candlelight looked almost black. The colour had seeped into the thin linen material making it appear bright and clotting! ‘Who did this to you?’

Matthew frowned as Nicholas le Poter bowed his head and began to weep. ‘I am innocent! Sir Geoffrey seeks to accuse me of murder. He says I killed Lady Lucy, but I had nothing to do with her death! I never saw her until they pulled her body out of the mire. It was nothing to do with me. I accuse Sir Geoffrey of killing her. He wanted to take her lands!’

‘Man, be silent. Before anything else, we must wash your back,’ Matthew said soothingly. He looked up at Jeanne, who nodded.

‘I shall fetch some help from the inn. They must have water and cloths there. I’ll bring some men, too.’

‘I’m not sure we need …’

She curtly shook her head, then bent to the sobbing man. ‘Who is after you now?’

‘Sir Geoffrey. He has all his men with him and they mean to kill me.’

‘No one will harm you here,’ she said.

Nicholas looked up at her. His eyes were raw, and filled with the pain of his run all the way from the chapel to this church; his feet felt as though they were beaten to raw meat with the pace of his flight, and his lungs were sacks of loosened flesh. It was all he could do to take in air.

‘No harm? No harm? After the way he burned out and murdered the poor man in the cottage here? I’m dead. It’s just a matter of how long it takes him to pull me from the altar.’

Matthew stiffened. He lifted Nicholas and pulled his arm about his own shoulders, grabbing Nicholas’s wrist in one hand, and putting his left arm about Nicholas’s waist to support him. ‘No one will pull you from my altar, man,’ he declared sharply. ‘This is God’s house, and any damned heretic who seeks to pollute my sanctuary will find God’s vengeance is swift!’

So saying, he led Nicholas up to the altar and set him at the side, pressing a fold of the altar cloth into his hand. ‘Lady Jeanne? A pot of wine, too, please. I have a feeling this poor fellow will need it before long.’