The Bishop Must Die

Chapter Six

Rougemont Castle, Exeter

The steady tramp of feet along the corridor outside was followed by a muttered series of commands, and then the door was thrown wide and Paul de Cockington found himself being studied by his older brother, the sheriff. Paul grinned and rose from his brother’s chair, bowing and motioning to offer the chair.

His smile was not returned. ‘You’ve been a complete tarse, haven’t you?’ James said, glowering at Paul. ‘Do you realise how much trouble you’ve caused me? It’s a miracle the bishop isn’t here already. I’m half-tempted to have you taken back there again.’

‘There’s no need, brother,’ Paul said. ‘It’ll all blow over. I’ll pay the man back all the property he gave me, and tell him that if he keeps quiet, you won’t harm him. That’ll be enough.’

‘You haven’t been here long, have you, Cods-for-brains? This little city is Exeter, not some huge place like London, where a man could become lost among the teeming hordes. There aren’t all that many people here. What, six thousand all told? You will not be able to hide. This fellow Gydie will find you if he bothers to try — and he does have some small motivation. You stole his wife and raped her, and then you kept the ransom he offered you, as well as the wench. Dear God! I hope she was worth it.’

‘She was, brother — oh, she was! You don’t understand what it was like! I was a celibate for so long, and then that gorgeous woman started batting her eyelids at me during services. I couldn’t help but notice. No man with a heart and blood in his brains could have ignored her.’

‘It’s not blood in your heart or head that worries me.’

‘Very funny. She had the most incredible body though,’ Paul added reminiscently. ‘A pair of bubbies so large, it was hard to span one with both hands. Oh, brother, you should have-’

‘Spare me! No matter how you feel about her, the fact that you took her means that you will have trouble all the while you are in Exeter. You need to leave the city.’

‘Oh, come on! I don’t think-’

‘No, you don’t,’ his brother said directly. ‘You don’t think how the bishop may react to learning you’re free; you don’t think how Gydie will respond to finding you here; you don’t think how all this will make me look either, do you? No, you commit acts of pathetic theft and rape, and then leave it to me to pick up the pieces. But I am the law here, and if men learn I have shielded my brother from his punishment, I’ll not be safe either. I’ve spent the last months trying to convince the locals that I’m trustworthy, and now you’re throwing that all out of the window with last night’s soil. Well, swyve a sow, brother! I won’t have you ruining the best post I could have landed in the whole of Devon.’

‘What do you suggest, then?’

‘I shall find space for you on a boat to Gascony or France. You can go out there and try your luck for a little. I have some money you can take, and I will give you fresh clothing. When it’s all calmed down, you can come back, but not until then. You understand me? You’ll stay away — especially from here — until you’re called back.’

‘How long will that be?’ Paul said, flabbergasted that his brother had decided this.

‘As long as it takes.’

Tiverton Castle

The Lady Isabella was most grateful to the generous-hearted baron for allowing her to come here to this restful little castle up at the top of the hill overlooking two rivers. Without his kindness, she was not sure what she might have done when her carter’s horse fell by the roadside, his foreleg snapped in a pothole.

A widow’s life was never easy. The first loss of a husband had been a shock to her. A sudden, tragic death was always hard to accept, but at least her darling Peter Crok had died quickly, without apprehension, unlike Henry Fitzwilliam. He had languished for such an awful long time, in that cursed gaol, with no friends, no support or companionship. Just installed there, and left to rot for thirty-nine weeks, suffering all the torments a man may. The king would not consider a pardon; his heart forged from steel. So poor Henry waited and waited, until one day his heart simply gave out. Even then there was no honour in his treatment. His body was left in the gaol at Gloucester until his son came to collect it.

And Henry was but one of many. There were hundreds of decent, honourable men betrayed by their king as he continued his infatuation with the one knight whose every whim and fancy he would tolerate unquestioningly: Despenser. All others may be executed, bar this one. And that devil, Stapledon, was a friend of both men.

As a widow, the Lady Isabella was no threat to any man, and yet she had been persecuted by that evil bishop after her husband’s death. May his name live on in infamy!

She still prayed, whenever she was at the altar, that her son was safe. Poor, darling Roger had been forced to flee so quickly when the plot to steal their lands became plain, that he had no time to speak with her and tell her where he might go. She hoped he had made his way to Ireland or France. The Irish were devoted to Sir Roger Mortimer, while the French were happy to befriend any man who was an enemy of the English king.

She heard steps, and glanced around to see the tall figure of the coroner, Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple.

‘My Lady Fitzwilliam, I hope you are well?’

‘I thank you, Sir Peregrine, I am as well as I could hope,’ she said.

‘That is good. I am pleased to hear it.’

He had a kind smile, and she felt sure that he was already fond of her. A man his age — what, some five-and-forty years? — it was a surprise that he had never married. And yet he had once formed an association, so she had heard: it was said that he had adopted two children when their mother died. Certainly he did not appear to her to be afraid of her sex.

Many men were uncaring about a woman’s feelings. They some of them affected an insouciance in a woman’s company, while others simply preferred the companionship of other men. Those who had been raised as knights in training were, not surprisingly, unsure how to behave with women, and could be unthinkingly brutal. There were plenty who would seek to impress a lady by taking her, as though she had no feelings, no rights, no more authority than a dog. For some, it was as though they believed that a woman would respect and adore them once she had been raped, as though that was proof of sincere adoration! When boys were sent away from home and brought up in the company of men from the age of six, many of the poor lads would never again experience womanly affection and had no idea of how to treat a lady.

Not so this fellow.

‘Sir Peregrine,’ she said, ‘would it be impertinent for me to ask you, what do you think will happen?’

He did not do her the insult of pretending he did not understand, which she appreciated. There was little enough talk of anything else in the castle, other than the likely date of the French invasion.

‘The English navy is not so feeble that it could not prevent the French from landing, yet I fear that they will land. The king is not as popular as the queen. Many feel sympathy for her after the way that she has been treated by her husband.’

‘Yes,’ Isabella said. She could understand that all too easily.

‘I am sorry,’ Sir Peregrine said with a slightly anxious frown. ‘Of course, her husband has treated you abominably as well.’

‘No. I think it is not he,’ she said with perfect truth. ‘I think it was Despenser and the Bishop of Exeter. Those two alone are guilty of stealing everything I possessed. They made up a case against me, and Stapledon had my lands given to him as a direct result. The king believed the bishop when he said that my husbands and my son were all traitors. But they weren’t.’

‘Of course not,’ Sir Peregrine said.

‘And last year, I thought I might recover my lands. I had a case brought against the bishop, an assize of novel disseisin.’

‘Yes?’ Sir Peregrine gave her a blank look. ‘I have not been involved in the law.’

‘You are fortunate, sir. Well, if a man or woman is disseised, or dispossessed, they can seek the king’s special instruction to recover their property. It means that a jury must be summoned and the case heard before the king’s justices, to answer the question on seisin or disseisin. Restoration of the property or not. After all, possession is protected by the king in our country, so if something is unjustly taken, the king himself should seek to return it.’

Sir Peregrine nodded, although there was a faintly perturbed expression in his eyes. ‘I see. So, you have had your lands returned?’

‘Oh, no. The bishop managed to persuade the jury that the lands, my lands, had been granted to him by the king for life. So it was impossible for me to have them back. And then they said that they must revert to the king when Stapledon was dead. I swear, I could have killed him there and then, were he within my reach!’

‘What then?’ Sir Peregrine asked. He was intrigued, listening intently.

‘I was told that the case couldn’t continue rege inconsulto, and the papers were all sent to the king himself. God bless him, King Edward placed the matter before another jury, and they agreed that my dower lands were of the free tenement of my poor dead husband, before I married Henry, my second husband. They awarded me huge damages, too — over two hundred pounds.’

Sir Peregrine nodded, but lifted an enquiring eyebrow.

‘No,’ she smiled bitterly. ‘I don’t have them. Stapledon fought back, and even now I don’t know what will happen.’

‘What more can you do?’

‘Fight on. There is nothing else for me. My lands are all I have left. My husbands are both dead, my son is exiled — what more can a woman do?’

‘So you will continue your battle in the courts?’

‘I will not give up my sole means of livelihood without fighting every step,’ she said determinedly.

‘I can quite understand.’

She doubted that. This knight banneret was a powerful man. He had the right to call on a number of knights and command them in battle, he was a king’s official in his capacity as coroner, and she knew he had the ear of powerful men like Sir Hugh de Courtenay, the baron of Devon. And yet Sir Peregrine had never had to endure the sort of fight into which she had thrown herself so wholeheartedly. He had no means of appreciating the dangerous waters on which she floated. At any time a sudden squall could overwhelm her and sink her entirely. The bishop might grow irritable and seek to have her removed. She was under no illusions about her security in this dangerous land of England. Here she was nothing more than a poor nonentity. She had no one to fight for her. If she wanted her lands back, she must take them back. But being a woman, she could not take them by force. Guile and the law were her tools.

‘You look sad, madam,’ Sir Peregrine said.

‘I miss my husbands. And my son.’

‘I understand,’ he repeated.

This time, she rounded on him, stung by his presumption. ‘You understand? And how do you think you can understand, when I have lost so much? You, a noble knight, full of pride and authority. I have lost two husbands and my boy … No, you can have no idea how I feel!’

‘I never managed to marry. I was in love three times, but each time …’ Sir Peregrine’s voice grew quieter, until he was whispering. ‘They died. My last love, I had hoped to marry, but she too … And she left me her children, whom I love. I miss them when I am away from home for too long. This feels like a very long absence. It is more than four weeks since I last spoke with them. So you see, I do understand. I have lost my loves, and now my children too.’

‘Why are you here, then? Why do you not return to them, to make sure that they are all right and that you have not lost their affection?’

‘I need have no concern on that. If they hold any affection for me, I am fortunate — if they do not, well, no matter. I do what I can for them in memory of their mother. It is enough.’

‘Why do you not go to them?’

‘Duty. And a feeling that my place is here, at Tiverton, for now. I am an experienced man. I know that the next months will be difficult, and the idea that I should hide myself away and try to avoid the great matters which are set to threaten our little realm, that would feel like cowardice. When all is said and done, deeds and honour mean everything. To behave with integrity, that is what counts. And a knight who runs off to spend more time with his family, no matter how beloved they may be, he would be a poor fellow. I cannot do that.’

He spoke quietly but with passion, and in the stillness she had to catch a sob at the sight of this decent, kind man gazing out over the valley with such sad longing.

Furnshill

Baldwin broke his fast, and afterwards he sat in his hall and listened to three disputes between villeins on his lands. None was serious, nor did they require the wisdom of Solomon to resolve, but they were the kind of little bickerings that could fester for a while and then rise up and cause real trouble.

So Baldwin listened carefully to the men as they recounted their tales of petty insults and mindless foolishness, before settling their arguments in the best manner he could, trying always to balance his justice with the need for the King’s Peace to be upheld.

He could not help but wonder whether such problems would rank so highly in a few weeks. Were the country to be invaded by the queen with, as had been alleged, a French force to support her, would these same stolid peasants stand in line side-by-side, or would they turn against each other, remembering a slight given months or years before? He had the strong impression that these men of his would throw aside any ill-will, but it was hard to be sure of anything in these uncertain times.

‘You have fought, haven’t you?’ he asked one of the older men as he dismissed the last of the claims and the rest of the petitioners filed from his hall.

Saul of Cadbury squinted up at him. He was not so old as Baldwin, but his body had been shaped by his work. He had the bent back which labour in the fields had given him, while his hands were large and powerful. Fortunately, the expression in his eyes was always amiable. Baldwin had only ever seen him angry once, and that was when a small bull had butted him into a wall. Saul had bellowed, ‘Ye auld bugger!’ and punched the beast so hard that it retreated, blinking. It was only later that Saul realised the bull had broken his rib.

‘I’ve had my share. I took my billhook up to the muster when the old king wanted men for Wales.’

‘What of the men now, Saul? What’s the mood among the villeins?’ Baldwin asked. He beckoned Edgar and passed Saul a large mazer filled with wine.

Saul was pensive a moment. ‘They’ll fight for you, I reckon. If a man tried to overrun our lands, they’d all fight at your side, Sir Baldwin.’

‘You know the rumours.’

‘We all do,’ Saul said, his weather-beaten face cracking into a smile. ‘The queen was a good lady, but we follow you.’

Baldwin watched him leave a few moments later with a frown of concern.

‘Sir? Do you want more wine?’ Edgar said.

‘No, no. I’ve had enough,’ Baldwin said. He was not so abstemious as once he had been, but he had more work to do. ‘What do you think?’

‘Saul is right. The people will fight for their lord, and that is you. Although I would be happier were I at your side.’

‘Petronilla wouldn’t, though. And nor would I. I only wish Simon was …’

Edgar looked at him. ‘You could try to see him.’

‘I don’t think so. He doesn’t want to speak with me.’

‘Sir Baldwin, you don’t know that.’

‘I hurt his feelings badly. I think I was right, but that will have little impact on him. If he had forgiven me, I would have heard from him by now. The fact that we’ve seen nothing of Simon, Meg nor Hugh is significant. And I do not know — perhaps I couldn’t forgive him if he had endangered my Richalda’s life. Even if afterwards he was proved to be correct, how would I respond? Maybe it is better that we do not meet again for a while.’

‘You have so many friends you can afford to lose your best?’ Edgar said pointedly, and left.

Baldwin was about to call after him, but then subsided back into his chair.

He knew all about losing friends; so many had died over the years — in Acre, in skirmishes against Moslems in Spain, and then in the terror of the inquisition against the Templars. If ever a man should have grown experienced to loss, it was Baldwin.

Yet in recent times he had been more fortunate. He had been able to settle here, in the little manor in Furnshill, and marry his lovely Jeanne who had given him Richalda and little Baldwin. In his professional life he had been fortunate, too, being granted the post of Keeper of the King’s Peace, and regularly serving as a Justice of Gaol Delivery too. He was busy, and he should have felt fulfilled.

But he could not. Even now, he remembered the worries that had assailed him during the night.

Pictures of death and anguish seared his mind.