The Sacred stone

Act Two

North Devon, September 1236

The woman and the girl trudged wearily along the rough track in the gentle warmth of an autumn afternoon.

‘I’m feared that he will come back unexpectedly and follow us, mother,’ whined Gillota, the fourteen-year-old who was leading their only cow on a rope halter. ‘He’ll surely beat us and perhaps try to have his way with me again!’

Matilda Claper, strong in nature as well as in arm, tried to reassure her daughter. ‘Don’t worry, girl, Walter Lupus has gone to the Goose Fair in Tavistock. He’ll not be back home for three or four days — longer if he gets heavily into the drink.’

Only partly consoled by the thought of their manor lord being far away, Gillota trudged on. A large pack was strapped to her back, containing some food and all the clothes they possessed. In her free hand she dangled a wicker cage containing their tabby cat, a threadbare mouser with one ear shredded in many fights. In the cloth scrip on her girdle, she had five pennies and a cheap tin crucifix, the sum total of her possessions.

Her mother walked a few paces behind the skinny brown cow, a rope around her shoulders dragging a crude sledge of hazel withies lashed together with twine, piled with their bedding and a few cooking pots. Matilda was a handsome woman, dark-haired and slim — in fact, too thin for her height — but there was a sadness in her face that told of recent hard times.

She looked with affection at her only child, all she had in the world now that her husband Robert was dead. He had been a good thatcher and a good man, but God had taken him away three years ago, when he fell from the roof of the church and broke his back. Matilda had been taken in by her father, who was the manor reeve, elected by the serfs to represent them and to organize the work on the strip fields and on the lord’s demesne. Matilda and her daughter worked his croft alongside him, except when he gave his villein service to the manor three days each week.

She sighed as she thought again for the thousandth time of all that had gone wrong in the last two years. First, their manor lord, Matthew Lupus, had died of a gnawing cancer of the throat, leaving his evil son Walter to inherit and make their life a misery. Then her own father, Roger Merland, had died six months ago of lockjaw, contracted when he jabbed his foot with a pitchfork. Soon afterwards, Walter began trying to seduce the attractive widow. When she repulsed him, he turned his attention to her virginal daughter and Matilda was hard-pressed to keep him at bay. Now she had endured enough, and they were stealing away illegally from Kentisbury, a village a few miles from the north coast of Devon, heading far inland for Shebbear, which lay south of Torrington. Their opportunity came when Walter Lupus, together with his steward and bailiff, went off for a few days to the great fair at Tavistock. Matilda and her daughter left covertly before dawn, and, though many of the villagers knew of their departure, they were willing to look the other way and plead ignorance when Walter returned home. He was an unpopular successor to his father, being dour, selfish and arrogant, and Matilda’s sympathetic neighbours were well aware of the harassment that they were suffering.

Matilda, leading a pregnant goat on a cord, whistled to their hound Chaser to round up their two pigs, which were snuffling in the undergrowth at the side of the track. They could not be far from their destination now, as it was about twenty-five miles between Kentisbury and Shebbear and this was the second day of their flight. They had spent the night under a wide elm, well away from the track, to be out of sight of the footpads and thieves who infested the fringes of Exmoor. With the cow and goat tethered to a tree and the pigs hobbled with cords, they passed the night in uneasy and fitful slumber, after eating the bread and cheese they had brought with them.

Ahead of them the track lay through a stretch of deep forest, the last before they reached Shebbear. This was the sort of place where outlaws lurked, ready to steal, ravish and kill, so they entered the gloomy tunnel of oaks and beeches with trepidation. There were few people travelling this lonely road, but Matilda hoped that this might discourage robbers, who would get thin pickings from such sparse traffic.

‘Why has God treated us so badly?’ said Gillota suddenly. ‘We have done no evil that I know of! I go to confession with Father Peter, but I have little to tell him — not that he seems interested, anyway.’

Matilda smiled to herself. Her daughter was naive, certainly, but she was intelligent and always seeking for truths that neither her mother nor anyone else in the village could give her.

‘There is little opportunity for folks like us to sin, child,’ she called at Gillota’s back. ‘Sin is for men, who drink and lust and cheat — and for the lords, who fight and kill!’

She knew that the girl was perplexed by the misfortunes that had overtaken the family. Her childhood had been secure, albeit impoverished, until her father died. Even living with her grandfather was tolerable, but after his death Matilda and Gillota had to scrape a living from the half-acre toft that he left them, existing on their few animals and growing vegetables for their staple diet. Though at thirty-two she was comparatively young, Matilda also had a reputation as ‘wise woman’, so she was all the village had by way of health care and a midwife, which brought her in a few pennies for her poultices and herbal potions.

In spite of their fears, the few miles of forest were crossed without incident, and they emerged only a couple of miles from Shebbear, where the road dipped down into a small valley and strip fields began to appear on each side. This was a King’s manor, having no lord but a bailiff who administered several such parcels of royal land in this part of Devon.

‘Do you know where your aunt lives, mother?’ asked Gillota as the first tofts and cottages began to appear at the side of the road.

Matilda shook her head. ‘I’ve never been here before — in fact, this is the first time I’ve ever left Kentisbury,’ she confessed.

It was her husband Robert Claper who had been a Shebbear man, being sent to Matilda’s village years before when the two bailiffs exchanged a thatcher for a blacksmith — and as an unfree villein he had no more say in the matter than if he had been an ox or a sheepdog. However, his good fortune was to meet and marry Matilda and to father Gillota before death claimed him.

‘How will we find her, then?’ persisted her daughter, fearful of this unfamiliar place that was opening up before them. A stone church faced an alehouse, the inevitable pair of buildings seen in almost every English village.

Suddenly their attention was attracted by something on the grass verge in front of the church. It was just a very large boulder, probably weighing a ton, lying under an old tree. Though nothing remarkable, the mother and daughter stared at it and then at each other, and something unspoken passed between them. Increasingly as she grew older, Gillota showed that she was becoming as ‘fey’ as her mother, both having the rudiments of ‘second sight’, knowing things that were outside the normal five senses. It was this that allowed Matilda to function as a ‘wise woman’, though she was careful never to let it be known, in case of accusations of witchcraft. Now that Gillota was showing the same hereditary gift, her mother worried that she might not yet be mature enough to hide these sporadic but powerful insights.

‘That’s a work of the devil!’ said the young girl impulsively, looking at the greyish rock.

Her mother nodded but pushed her daughter onwards. ‘None of our business, my girl! We have more urgent matters to deal with.’

‘So how will we find Aunt Emma?’ persisted Gillota

‘Your father always said she had a toft just beyond the church,’ answered her mother. ‘We will ask the first person we see.’

This proved to be an old woman, bent almost double over a gnarled stick, who came out of the churchyard gate as they passed. The crone stared at the procession of animals and muttered a greeting through toothless gums, which Matilda answered with a question.

‘Mother, can you please tell us where Emma, who was once called Claper, lives?’

‘Claper? It’s many a year since I heard that name. Emma married a man called Revelle, but he ran off to the wars and was never heard of again.’ She cackled at some private secret.

‘So where can we find her dwelling?’ asked Gillota politely.

The old woman raised her stick and pointed up the track. ‘The last cottage on the right side. But she’s not well, you know.’

Matilda stared. Only three weeks ago she had had a reply from Emma by word of mouth via a friendly carter, saying that she would welcome them into her household, and there was no mention of illness then.

‘Not well? What ails her, then?’

‘She had a seizure last week,’ answered the crone with morbid satisfaction. ‘Lost the use of an arm and her speech, though I hear tell she’s past the worst. Her neighbours are looking after her as best they can.’

Numbed by yet another catastrophe, Matilda murmured some thanks and set off rapidly up the last few hundred paces to the toft that the woman had indicated.

‘What do we do now, Mother,’ snivelled Gillota tearfully. ‘How can we stay with a sick woman? Will we have to go back to Kentisbury?’

‘Stay out here with the beasts!’ she commanded as they reached a rickety gate in a fence around the croft. ‘I’ll go inside and see what’s happening.’

Shrugging off her sledge ropes, she went up the few paces to the door. The cottage was a square box of oak frames, filled in with wattle and daub, a mixture of lime, clay, dung and horsehair, plastered over woven hazel panels. The thatch was old but in good condition, and two shuttered window spaces were set each side of the open front door.

Matilda tapped on the half-open door and peered in. In the centre of the single room she saw a large matron standing over the fire-pit, stirring the contents of an iron pot resting on a trivet over the glowing embers. Beyond her, an older woman was slumped on a stool, supporting herself against a table. One arm rested uselessly in her lap, and the corner of her mouth drooped as if part of her face had melted.

The neighbour looked around questioningly as Matilda entered. ‘Who are you, woman?’ she snapped. ‘You’re a stranger!’

‘I’m Matilda, widow of Emma’s nephew. I’ve come with my daughter to live here.’

Shebbear, August 1237

Gillota threw down the pile of dry grass in front of their cow, which had filled out well since the previous autumn. Served by the village bull, she had recently produced a calf and now munched away contentedly at the feed that the girl had cut with her sickle from the verges outside the village.

Matilda came out of the cottage with turnip peelings for the goats, and for a moment mother and daughter stood looking with satisfaction at their livestock. Their pigs were penned behind hurdles at the bottom of the half-acre plot, though in a month they would be let loose in the woods beyond the pasture, to root for beechnuts, on payment of a halfpenny-a-week pannage fee to the bailiff. A dozen fowls and four geese paraded around the back of the house, and in a distant corner half a dozen ducks splashed in the muddy water of a large hole dug in the ground.

They had worked hard since that day last summer when they came to find Aunt Emma struck with the palsy. Helped by the neighbours, they had nursed her back to reasonable health, and, though her arm was still weak and her speech a little slurred, her legs were sound and after a month or two she was able to do a share of the work in both cottage and on the croft outside.

Emma was a strong character, of formidable appearance. Tall and bony, she looked younger than her sixty-five years. The grey hair that strayed from under her head-rail still had streaks of russet in it, and she had kept many of her teeth, albeit discoloured and crooked. A devout woman, she was not given to much humour but was always even-tempered and tolerant of the two younger women who now shared her home.

‘You may stay here for as long as you need,’ she announced within days of their arrival. ‘And when I die, the toft will be yours, for I’ve no child to hand it to.’

Her gratitude for the attention that Matilda and her daughter gave her during her illness was muted, but nonetheless sincere, and as the months went by the all-female household became strongly bonded. Thankfully, it was a mild winter, with little snow and ice, though by the spring their stocks of food were running dangerously low. By March they were living on turnips and carrots stored in clamps in the yard, winter cabbage, onions and a few eggs that the fowls managed to produce off-season. The cow had a drain of milk left from last year’s pregnancy, but did not come into full flow until the calf was born.

It was a lean time, but they survived. Matilda again acted as a midwife and herbalist to the village and was paid for her services in kind: a loaf of bread, a pat of butter, a pan of wheat or a rabbit poached from the village warren. As they were acknowledged as free from serfdom in Shebbear, they had no allotted strips in the surrounding fields as did the villeins, who paid for the land allotted to them by the manor by the three days each week they worked for the bailiff on the King’s demesne, plus many other ‘boon days’. With Gillota’s help, Matilda dug and planted half the ground behind the cottage, keeping the rest for the animals, though each day Gillota led the cow down to the common pasture to graze.

One winter evening, when the aunt had recovered fairly well, the three women had crouched around the fire-pit, Emma and Matilda on the two stools and the daughter on the bracken-covered floor.

‘I still don’t understand how you say you are a free woman,’ muttered Emma thickly. ‘Your husband Robert was a villein when he left this village to go to Kentisbury.’

Her speech was improving, but the other two had to listen hard to understand her. Matilda frowned as she worked out the complicated family relationships.

‘Yes, all the Clapers were serfs, but that wasn’t the way we became free,’ she explained. ‘Robert, God bless his soul, married me, a Merland, who were unfree ever since William the Bastard conquered at Hastings.’

The aunt interrupted rather testily. ‘So was I, like all the Clapers, until Alan Revelle married me. He was a soldier and was freed for his service, so that made me free as well.’

‘Did he die, Aunt Emma?’ asked Gillota innocently, getting a lopsided scowl in return.

‘No, he went off to fight in the barons’ armies against King John. That was twenty years ago, and I’ve not heard a word of him since. Thank God I had this freeholding to live on, or I’d have starved.’

Matilda had waited patiently to finish her story. ‘Your nephew Robert came to Kentisbury, married me and worked both as a thatcher and in the fields, like all the villeins. My father was the manor reeve for many years, and he worked so well and was so popular that our lord, Matthew Lupus, freed him about three years ago.’

‘That wouldn’t have made Robert free — and you were his wife,’ objected Emma.

The younger woman nodded her agreement. ‘No, not then. We remained in serfdom and worked for the lord as usual. But when Robert died, I became unencumbered by a bonded husband and so, as the daughter of a free man, became free myself.’

Emma thought about this for a moment. ‘Can your lord testify to his freeing Robert?’

Tears sprang to Matilda’s eyes. ‘This is the problem! Matthew Lupus died last year, and his son Walter refuses to accept the situation. He denies that his father freed mine, and, especially since my father also died, he claims that I and my daughter remain in his servitude. He made us carry on in bondage as before, working for the manor and paying our boons the same as the other villeins.’

Emma poked the small logs in the ring of whitewashed stones with a rod held in her good hand. ‘Was there no document to prove the act of manumission?’ she asked.

Matilda shook her head sadly. ‘No one in the village apart from the priest can read or write. The king’s steward from Barnstaple comes with a clerk every quarter to record all the village payments and debts.’

‘But surely the village knew that your father had been freed?’ objected Emma.

‘When it came to the test, Walter Lupus denied it,’ said Matilda sadly. ‘How can you go against what your manor lord says?’

Gillota looked from her mother to her great-aunt as the dialogue swung from side to side. She was still anxious about being dragged back to Kentisbury, even though months had passed.

Emma was still raising objections to Matilda’s story. ‘But the manor steward and the bailiff would have known about the manumission of your father by this Matthew Lupus,’ she declared. ‘Could you not have appealed to them?’

Matilda shook her head. ‘The bailiff at that time left for a better post in Suffolk, and when his father died Walter got rid of the old steward and appointed another, younger man, Simon Mercator, who was always eager to do his bidding.’

‘The manor court, then!’ said the old lady. ‘Could you not have appealed to them?’

‘I did, even though the new reeve who replaced my father was reluctant to put my case forward. But when it came to the hearing, the new steward held the court, with Walter sitting alongside him. They dismissed my plea with contempt, saying it was a frivolous lie.’

Over the following months they had this conversation several times, but nothing could be resolved, and as they had now escaped it seemed pointless to keep reviving the issue.

The winter turned into spring, then summer, and the two refugees settled into the steady routine of life in Shebbear. With one exception, everyone accepted them, and they became part of the village community. The exception was Adam the carter, a freeman who made a living from his ox-cart, in which he carried goods and material all over North Devon.

Much of his trade was in transporting grain and wool from the King’s manors to Barnstaple and Bideford for shipment, but he would take anything anywhere for a few pennies. For some reason he took against Matilda from the start, scowling at them in the road and muttering under his breath. In the alehouse he would complain about these foreign interlopers coming to his village.

‘Escaped serfs, that’s all they are!’ he would whine. ‘Absconded from their master and pretending to be free!’

As the rest of Shebbear became quite fond of the pretty woman and her daughter, they took little notice of him, but he persisted in his dislike of the women. This feeling was mutual, as Adam was a scrawny, ugly fellow with a face like a weasel and a nature to match.

When there was additional work to be done in the fields, Matilda and her daughter pitched in with the rest, even though as free women they had no obligation to do so. Matilda also continued to gain her neighbours’ favour by dealing with sickness and childbirth, her knowledge of herbs being welcome, since the previous ‘wise woman’ had died of old age a year before.

She noticed that Gillota’s gift of unusual perception was increasing, and sometimes they would exchange a swift glance when something came into their minds simultaneously. On one occasion, after a heavy rainstorm, they both knew that something was badly amiss at the little footbridge over the stream. Both ran towards it and found that one of the village children had fallen into the swollen brook and was in danger of drowning. Having rescued him, they explained away their presence by saying that they happened to be passing, not to arouse any suspicions, but Matilda guessed that several villagers had a shrewd idea that they were ‘fey’.

Another example of their shared powers was in the matter of the little stone that lay on a shelf in Emma’s kitchen. At the back of the square room that occupied the whole cottage, there was a crude lean-to, entered through a gap in the rear wall. Here food was prepared on a table, and the task of dealing with the day’s milking was carried out, skimming some for cream in a wide earthenware dish. Emma’s few pots and pans sat on a plank shelf fixed to the wall, and as soon as Matilda entered for the first time she knew that something powerful was concealed there.

As she reached up, Gillota came in and their eyes met in complete understanding. ‘What is it, Mother?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘It’s strong and good, whatever it is!’

Alongside a pottery jug, Matilda’s finger found a hard, cool object, and she lifted it down carefully. Though it looked like a stone, it was too heavy and had a metallic feel. She held it out to Gillota. ‘I’ve never seen the like of this before.’

Her daughter took it almost reverently and laid it across her palm. It was the size of her hand and had four irregular arms.

‘It reminds me of a flying bird or a funny-shaped cross,’ she said wonderingly. ‘But I don’t think it’s meant to be anything other than itself.’

Her mother took it back and looked at it closely, turning it over in her hands. ‘It’s telling me that it came from far away, perhaps beyond the sky itself.’

‘It’s not just a strange stone; it has a life of its own,’ said Gillota, crossing herself. ‘Let’s ask Aunt Emma where it came from.’

Her great-aunt was dismissive of the stone. Both Matilda and her daughter were well aware that Emma had no trace of their gift.

‘My husband had it from somewhere,’ she muttered. ‘He said it had been in the Revelle family for years. No one knows what it is, but I kept it as a curiosity. You can have it, Matilda, if it takes your fancy.’

Matilda readily accepted it and kept it under her mattress to keep it near her, curious to learn what its properties might be. This was the second strange stone they had come across in Shebbear. Soon after they arrived, Matilda enquired casually about the large stone that she and Gillota had seen near the church and which had triggered some primitive fear in both their minds.

‘That’s the Devil’s Stone,’ she was informed. ‘He threw it there when he was turned out of heaven by St Michael.’

In November they joined the rest of the village in an ancient ritual, standing around the stone well after dark in the light of a blazing bonfire, to watch some of the men turning the massive boulder over with stout poles, while the church bell clanged out a racket to frighten off Satan.

‘No one knows why we do it,’ admitted their neighbour. ‘But it’s always been done, to avoid bad luck for the coming year.’

After the turning, there was food and drink provided by the bailiff, a pleasant tradition that was repeated throughout the year, usually on saints’ days, when a holiday was declared and an ‘ale’ held in the churchyard. The weak beer brewed and drunk in large quantities got its name from these ‘ales’, when eating, drinking, dancing and flirting were conducted in equal measure.

Several men became interested in Matilda, a comely widow, but she was older than all the unmarried men and did not fancy the prospect of wedding an old widower. However, Gillota was a different matter and, at almost fifteen, was well into marriageable age. A number of the village youths showed their interest, though having managed to shrug off their serfdom Matilda was concerned that her daughter might fall for a villein again and lose her freedom.

In August harvest-time arrived, as the weather had been good this year, a welcome change for some recent bad summers. This was the culmination of the farming year, and everyone turned out to help bring in the wheat, barley and oats that together with the beans and root vegetables would hopefully see the village through the next winter.

Matilda and her daughter joined everyone else in the fields, following behind the men who reaped with scythes and sickles. They collected and bound the cut corn into sheaves and stooked them to dry. Older women came with wide wooden rakes to collect the fallen stems, even Emma managing to drag one behind her with her good hand. Children were put to gleaning, squatting to pick up fallen grains into bags tied around their waist, as every speck of food might mean the difference between starvation or survival by next February.

The strips belonging to the King’s manor were harvested first, then the rest of the corn was tackled, of which a tenth would go to the Church as tithes, as did a similar proportion of almost everything else that the villagers produced, be it eggs, ducks or lambs.

For three days they worked from first light until dark, the stooks cut on the first day now being dry, thanks to the good weather. As Matilda followed the reapers, Gillota gathering behind her, the ox-carts rumbled past, piled high with yellow sheaves, headed for the tithe barn and the barns at the manor barton, ready for winnowing the grain from the straw.

Both men and women sang as they worked, looking forward to noon, when they could rest for a few minutes and eat the bread and cheese or scraps of meat they had brought and replace their sweat with weak ale. Then they carried on until the sun was sinking, when eventually the reeve called a halt and the workers began streaming back to their homes to eat and then collapse on to their beds until dawn, when the whole exhausting routine would begin again.

But for Matilda and her daughter, daybreak would bring a very different scenario.

Just as the early summer dawn was breaking, Emma awoke and, using her good arm, levered herself up from the palliasse on the bracken-covered floor. She went to the fire-pit and blew on the embers under the white wood-ash, then added a few sticks, so that she could warm the iron pot of oat gruel that sat on a trivet.

She shook Matilda and Gillota awake and soon they were sleepily eating the gruel and some bread smeared with pork dripping that was their breakfast. They slept in their working clothes, calf-length shifts of coarse cloth, clinched at the waist with a rope girdle, so they were ready to be off as soon as they had washed down their food with some small ale.

But as they moved barefoot to the door, it suddenly flew open and Adam the carter burst in.

‘There they are, the runaway serfs!’ he shouted triumphantly and stood aside as two rough-looking men entered and advanced on the women. Behind them came another, dark-haired man, dressed in a short tunic, breeches and riding boots, of a quality that marked him as being from a higher station in life.

‘Walter Lupus!’ screamed Gillota and ran to hide behind her mother. Aghast, Matilda shielded her with her body, but one of the men dragged her aside and began snapping rusty iron fetters on the girl’s wrists, while the other did the same to Matilda.

Wriggling and shouting, she began protesting at the top of her voice. ‘Why can you not leave us in peace? We are free, don’t you understand?’

The lord of Kentisbury pushed his way further into the room. ‘Be quiet, woman!’ he shouted. ‘You are absconders, do you understand? You’re going back where you belong.’

The manacles were attached to long chains, and the two ruffians, whom Lupus had obviously brought from Kentisbury, began dragging the two women out of the door, with Emma stumbling behind them, shouting for help at the top of her damaged voice.

By the time the disorderly procession had reached the gate, neighbours were beginning to congregate in the road outside.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the man from next door. ‘Who are you and what are doing to those women?

For answer, one of the roughs pushed him in the chest, making him fall against the fence.

‘Mind your tongue, fellow!’ bellowed Walter. ‘Then mind your own business, for this is none of yours.’

There was a growl of anger from the small crowd, which was growing as more villagers congregated at the house.

‘Leave our women alone. What right have you to invade our village?’ shouted the smith, who had always been very friendly to Matilda and her daughter.

Lupus raised a riding crop he carried and smacked the man across the face, raising a red weal across his cheek.

‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, man, or I’ll have it cut out!’ he snarled.

The crowd fell back a pace, alarmed at this early show of violence. They could see that this was a man of substance from his demeanour and quality of clothing — and some of them had seen the fine horse that was tied up outside Adam’s cottage.

‘Send for the bailiff — and the sergeant!’ screamed Emma from the yard. ‘They’ll know how to deal with these outlaws!’

Her damaged voice carried well enough for some of the neighbours to start running back towards the centre of the village, but Lupus ignored her and began striding up the track towards Adam’s house.

The two louts followed, dragging the woman and the girl behind them by their chains. Matilda thrashed and struggled, calling out all the time for Lupus to let them go, but Gillota just stumbled along sobbing, tears streaming from her eyes.

Adam followed behind, but he was jostled and abused by his fellow villagers, several of whom managed to get in a punch or kick against this traitor in their midst.

They reached Adam’s dwelling, a cottage with large yard and a thatched byre where he kept his oxen. He hurried ahead and pulled open the crude door to the shed, revealing a heap of soiled straw and a manger where he fed hay to his two beasts. They were tethered in the yard, so the byre was empty, and the two men Lupus had brought from Kentisbury dragged the women inside and pushed them roughly down on to the straw. One of them secured the loose chains to one of the roof supports with a rusty nail-spike, which he hammered in with a large stone.

‘That’ll keep you from wandering until we’re ready to leave!’ he jeered.

By the time Walter Lupus had inspected the chains, new arrivals had appeared in the yard. The bailiff, Ranulf de Forde, and the Sergeant of the Hundred, Osbert de Bosco, had been summoned by the villagers. The first administered the King’s properties in the area, and de Bosco was responsible to the sheriff for law and order in the part of the county centred on Shebbear.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the bailiff. ‘Why are these women being shackled like this?’

Walter was not disposed to being questioned in such a peremptory fashion by a bailiff. ‘It’s none of your concern. I would have thought you would be aware that I am the lord of Kentisbury. I am merely recapturing two serfs who ran away last year. It has taken me this long to discover where they were, thanks to your carter Adam. I had thought that they had run to a borough like Barnstaple.’

This was a reasonable assumption, as most absconding villeins made for a town, where, if they could evade recapture for a year and a day, they were entitled to their freedom.

The sergeant was not happy with the situation. ‘I feel it is not right for you to just ride into our village with your men and seize two of our women without a by your leave or any gesture of courtesy to us.’

Walter turned on him angrily. ‘Damn you and your courtesy, fellow! These are not “your women”, as you call them — they are my serfs and I need every person to help with the harvest. This is nothing to do with you or this miserable vill of Shebbear!’

His arrogance annoyed them, but they recognized that he probably had the ear of the sheriff or one of the Devon barons, so they were afraid to antagonize him.

‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked de Bosco in a more conciliatory tone.

‘They are going back to my manor in chains,’ snapped Lupus. ‘Your carter Adam, who told me of their whereabouts, is taking them back today. I am angry that you gave them shelter here, when it must have been obvious that they were fugitive serfs.’

‘They claim they were freed, sir,’ objected the bailiff.

Walter Lupus gave a laugh that was more like a derisive bark. ‘They would, wouldn’t they! Liars, both of them. The woman’s father was my father’s reeve, from a long line of villeins.’

He turned his back on the two officials and snapped a command at Adam, who was lurking in the byre, trying to keep away from his irate neighbours.

‘Give these women a bucket and something to eat before you leave. I shall expect you in Kentisbury tomorrow night.’

An ox-cart moved at the pace of a man’s walk and would take two days to cover the miles between the villages.

Walter left one of the guards he had brought in Adam’s yard, then he and the other man walked back to the church and rode away on their horses, leaving a disgruntled but powerless community behind.

Emma marched into the ox-byre, defying the lout who tried to prevent her. ‘Get out of my way, you heartless swine,’ she screeched. ‘I need to see my niece and her daughter.’

A few of the village men pushed into the yard and stood threateningly around the man. Though they dare not defy the lord of Kentisbury by rescuing the women, they had no scruples about harassing his servant.

Emma went into the shed and spent a few minutes trying to console Matilda and especially Gillota, who was devastated by this reversal of their fortunes.

‘You’ll have to go back, but we will do all we can to get you home again,’ Emma promised. ‘I will ask the bailiff, sergeant and our priest what can be done.’

She went back to their cottage and put the few spare garments that the women possessed into a cloth bag, together with some food for the journey and a purse with a few pennies, all she had to give. At Matilda’s pleading, she also added the strange stone that her niece kept under the end of her mattress.

‘Something tells me that I might be needing it,’ she told Emma grimly as they were pushed on to the cart to start the long journey to Kentisbury.

Just as it had been in Shebbear, it was now harvest-time in Kentisbury, though it had started a week later there.

Once again, Matilda and Gillota were in the strip fields, toiling alongside their old neighbours, gathering sheaves, stooking and raking. The first shock of their kidnapping had worn off, to be replaced by sorrow and despondency, especially at the loss of their old home.

When their long and uncomfortable cart ride was over, they were turned off at Walter Lupus’s manor house, a grey-stone block set inside a wide compound surrounded by a wooden stockade. The surly guard dragged them by their chains around to the back of the house, where the huts of the servants lay between stables and barns. As he released their fetters by knocking out the rusty pins that held them, Matilda protested that they were in the wrong place.

‘Our home is further up the road!’ she complained.

‘Your home is here now!’ came a voice from behind her. Turning, she saw Simon Mercator, the steward to Walter Lupus, the man who had previously denied her attempt to establish her freedom at the manor court. He was a narrow-faced man with sandy hair and cold eyes, which roamed over her body as if he could see through the thin woollen smock that she wore.

‘We have our own croft, where I was born!’ retorted Matilda defiantly.

‘Not any longer,’ sneered Simon. ‘My nephew lives there now, so you’ll live here as the servants you are. When the harvest is over, you will help with the domestic work around the manor.’

He ignored her loud protests and pushed her into the hut that acted as one of the servants’ dormitories. The earth floor was strewn with rushes, and much of the space was occupied by a wide mattress, a hessian bag stuffed with hay and ferns. Apart from a milking stool and a couple of planks fixed to a wall to act as a shelf for their meagre belongings, the hut was bare.

‘This is where you will sleep with two of the other women,’ snapped the steward. ‘You will eat with the servants in that hut over there.’ He pointed nonchalantly at one of the other thatched buildings that clustered at the back of the compound, then walked away, oblivious to Matilda’s loud complaints.

The lout who had accompanied them back from Shebbear pushed her back into the hut. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your mouth and keep it shut!’ he growled. ‘Enjoy your last evening while you can, as from now on it’ll be work every daylight hour.’

Matilda was no stranger to that, as before her father was granted his freedom she was accustomed to the life of a villein — but then she at least had her own home, first with her husband, then with her father. Now they were back labouring in the fields, alongside the folk they had known all their lives until they escaped eleven short months ago. Their neighbours were sympathetic to their plight, but as the new arrivals were no worse off than themselves, apart from the loss of their croft, there was nothing they would or could do to help them. However, there was universal dislike and even fear of both the new manor lord and of his steward.

‘Mean, grasping bastards, both of them!’ muttered the man who used to live in the next cottage to them. ‘Walter is a totally different man from his father Matthew, God rest his soul! He is dour and bad-tempered, thinking of nothing but the weight of his purse. He has brought that bloody man Simon Mercator here, as well as those surly ruffians to enforce his will. I reckon they are outlaws from the moor that he’s allowed back in, as long as they do his every bidding.’

Each evening, when the work ceased as dusk was falling, they plodded back to the village with the others and made their weary way to the manor house, where an unappetizing meal was provided in the eating hut. Then, like the rest of the villagers, they slumped on the bed with two of the younger serving girls and slept the sleep of the exhausted until daybreak.

Matilda tried endlessly to think of ways to escape from this nightmare, but there seemed nothing she could do. It would be impossible to run away again — and where could they go, anyway? They no longer had their few animals to live on, and it was impossible to think of getting back to Aunt Emma a second time. Barnstaple was too small a borough to hide in for a year and day, even if they could reach it undetected — and Exeter might as well be at the other end of the world for all the hope they had of getting there.

Gillota seemed devastated by the change in their circumstances, and, although their former neighbours were kind to her and tried to cheer her up, she was quiet and withdrawn, her former bright nature crushed. She seemed permanently fearful of either Walter Lupus or his creepy steward accosting her, in spite of her mother’s constant assurances that she would protect her. As it happened, they saw little of either of these men, the daily work routine being directed by the manor reeve, her father’s successor, who seemed a reasonable fellow, though weak in spirit.

Thanks to continued fine weather, the end of the harvest came little more than a week after they arrived back in Kentisbury. When the last sheaf was stored in the barn, ready for winnowing, it was traditionally the time for the celebration of ‘harvest home’, the expected right of both villeins and freemen to be feted by their lord in thanksgiving for the land’s bounty.

‘If it’s like last year, don’t expect much from this mean bastard!’ muttered the village smith, in gloomy anticipation of the ‘ale’ to be held in the churchyard that evening.

The whole village turned out, many bringing what spare food they could manage, to add to the victuals and drink grudgingly provided by Walter Lupus. Trestles were set out to carry the bread, cheese, pasties, shellfish, boiled salmon and some sweetmeats. A pig was being spit-roasted nearby over an open fire, and in spite of the smith’s pessimism there seemed plenty of ale as well as some cider.

The mood was subdued until Walter and his steward left after a token appearance, when their departure and the effects of the drink began to loosen up the atmosphere. Music was provided by a set of bagpipes, a drum and a fiddle, to which the younger folk began dancing. Even Gillota brightened a little when several of the village boys began flirting with her and soon dragged her into the ring of dancers.

Matilda went to the table to take some food, the labours of the day making her hungry even through her tiredness. She was breaking a piece off a barley loaf to eat with a piece of hard, yellow cheese when someone at her elbow spoke gently.

‘The mussels are good — I suppose they’re from Combe Martin.’

She looked around and saw a face that was vaguely familiar, though for a moment she couldn’t place it. It was a man a little older than herself, tall and broad with a pleasant, open face below his wiry brown hair. He wore a long tunic of good broadcloth, with a wide leather belt carrying a long sheathed dagger at the back.

‘You’ve forgotten me, haven’t you? We used to play in the barns when we were little!’

Enlightenment lit up her face. ‘Philip? Philip de Mora! I’ve not seen you in twenty years!’

He grinned at her mischievously. ‘I’ve been away at the wars, a foot soldier and then an archer. But those days are over, I’m afraid!’

He held up his left hand, two of the fingers of which were missing and the others twisted, with an ugly scar across the wrist.

‘A French sword ended my military career, so I came home a few months ago. But I gained my freedom over it.’

His face became serious. ‘I have heard of your misfortune in that respect, mistress. It is a scandal. Something must be done about the situation in this manor.’

Philip lowered his voice as he muttered the last few words. Then he brightened again and held out his good hand to her. ‘But tonight is for revelling, so let’s join the dance. Your daughter should not have all the fun!’

He pulled her towards the increasing number of people stamping and twirling to the tune of the pipes and rebec and the thump of the drum. For a time she almost forgot her troubles, as they danced, then ate again and danced some more. She kept a wary eye on Gillota, but she also seemed to be enjoying herself with a group of younger boys and girls.

As it grew dusk, the older people began to make their way home, but many stayed in the churchyard, some drunk, others flirting and yet other couples vanishing into the growing darkness beyond the yew trees behind the church.

The large harvest moon was almost at the full as Matilda and Philip de Mora sat together on the grass in the pale light.

‘Where do you live now? Are you married?’ she asked him. She recalled now that he had gone off as little more than a boy to become a squire’s servant during the troubles early in King Henry’s reign.

‘I never married. I was always away at the wars,’ he replied. ‘My mother and father died years ago, but when I was wounded last year the knight for whom I served granted me my freedom. I decided to come home, at least for a time. I pay the manor a rent for our old house at the end of the village and will stay until I decide what to do with the rest of my life.’

They talked for a little while longer, until Matilda noticed that some of the lads with Gillota were getting too frisky from the amount of ale they had drunk. She decided it was time to go home, if one could call it that. Gathering her daughter up and ignoring her protests, she bade goodnight to her new friend.

‘I’ll see you safely to the manor house,’ he offered gallantly and escorted them back to the big gates set in the stockade around the Lupus stronghold.

As she watched him wave and turn away, Matilda felt a small glow of contentment at having made a new ally and possibly a champion.

Matilda preferred the hard labour of harvesting to the menial tasks that she and her daughter were given around the manor house. For the first week the steward set them to work in the large kitchen shed, where far from being allowed to cook they were forced to scour iron pots with wet sand, carry wood for the fires and scrape and clean vegetables. There was a cook and a baker, who lived in their own houses, together with the pair of young girls who shared their barren quarters in the sleeping shed. They all ate at a side table in the kitchen, and as Matilda and Gillota knew them well there was at least a friendly atmosphere, unless Simon Mercator saw fit to come prowling around, when he seemed to enjoy ogling Matilda.

The two ruffians who had captured them in Shebbear acted alternately as gate guards during the day, the heavy wooden gates of the stockade being shut and barred from nightfall to dawn. However, they did not challenge Matilda when one evening, after all the kitchen work was finished, she went out with Gillota to walk around the village. They stopped outside their toft and gazed sadly at the building and the plot of land around it. Two infants were playing in the dirt outside the front door, and a young woman, presumably their mother, stared at them as they stood looking in. She was a stranger to the village and must have been imported from wherever Simon Mercator came from.

They walked on, exchanging greetings with other villagers, some of whom enquired discreetly if there was any hope of their regaining their freedom. Then, with nowhere else to go, they sadly retraced their steps, Matilda rather hoping that she would meet Philip de Mora as they passed what had been his parents’ cottage at the top end of the village street. There was no sign of him and, forlornly, they went back to the room they shared with the younger servants and went to bed.

The only other occasions when they could leave the manor house were on Sundays, when virtually the whole village went to Mass. Though it was not strictly obligatory to attend church, very few failed to appear, unless they were very old, sick or infirm. In any case, going to church was a social event, where they could gossip to their friends and for an hour or two shrug off the dull, repetitive pattern of their claustrophobic lives.

St Thomas’s was a century old, built of stone on the site of a previous wooden Saxon church. The oblong nave was just large enough to take all the villagers, who stood shoulder to shoulder on the floor of beaten earth, apart from the old and infirm who ‘went to the wall’ to squat on a narrow ledge.

The chancel was up a single step, carrying a plain altar with a brass cross and two candlesticks. There was a small sacristy through a door on the left of the chancel where the priest kept his robes and the makings of the Host. Matilda and Gillota stood right at the back, as even in church there was a pecking order. Walter Lupus and his pale, sad-looking wife were in the front, with his bailiff and steward on either side. The manor lord himself had no family, and it was widely whispered that his wife was barren, as well as ill.

On the first Sunday that they attended, Matilda whispered to her neighbour while they waited for the parish priest to appear from the sacristy.

‘Who is the parson now? I heard that old Father Peter had died since we left the village.’

‘He went to God just after Easter,’ was the reply. ‘We have another old one now, Father Thomas, the same name as our patron saint. He is a prebendary from Exeter Cathedral, a very learned man, they say.’

‘So what’s he doing in an out-of-the-way place like Kentisbury?’ murmured Matilda. Perhaps someone more learned, instead of the usual dullard or drunk posted to the more remote parishes, might be able to give her advice about her problem.

‘He’s really retired, but the bishop sent him here until they can find someone more permanent.’

As she spoke, the sacristy door opened and a small man, probably aged about seventy, appeared, stoop-shouldered and with a slight limp. The lank hair below his tonsure was grey, though some darker streaks still survived. Matilda peered between the heads of the people in front and saw that his face was narrow, with a pointed nose and a receding chin. In spite of his unprepossessing appearance, her sixth sense told her that there was something kindly about his nature and she resolved to try to speak to him as soon as she had the chance. Perhaps confession would be the most opportune time.

The Mass began and, as always, was conducted entirely in Latin, which not a soul present could understand. However, as a departure from what most were used to, when it came time for the congregation to be called up to receive the Eucharist of bread and wine, Father Thomas included a few words in English, to explain the significance of what they were doing. One of the last to kneel on the step, Matilda looked up at the priest as he passed from Gillota to her to offer her the scrap of pastry, which by transubstantiation became the body of Christ. Something passed between them as their eyes met, each being well aware that this was more than a friendly exchange of glances between a parson and a parishioner. She looked sideways at her daughter and caught a slight nod, telling her that Gillota was also aware of something significant.

Canon Thomas de Peyne, for that was his full title, then preached a short sermon in English, explaining in clear, easy terms the meaning of this particular Sunday in the Church calendar, and followed it with a gentle homily about respecting one’s neighbours. His words were free of the usual blood and thunder about the tortures of hell that were the wages of sin, a favourite theme for so many parish priests, who had little insight or imagination.

When the service was over, the congregation parted to allow their lord and his wife to pass to the door, followed by his senior servants. They strode out without a word to anyone, then the villagers straggled out into the churchyard and began a marathon of gossip, before going home to their dinner. No farm work was done on the Sabbath, apart from caring for livestock, but the manor-house servants had to hurry back to serve the meal to Lupus and his wife, two of the cooks having stayed behind all morning.

Matilda and Gillota were considered too lowly to serve at table, but they had other tasks in the kitchen and especially afterwards, when the clearing up was done. By late afternoon they could take their ease, walk around the village or go to their bed until it was time to prepare supper. Again, Matilda haunted the village street, hoping to come across either Philip de Mora or the priest, but neither of them appeared.

A couple of weeks after the harvest was finished, she tackled the steward again about her situation.

‘I wish to bring my complaint to the manor court again,’ she said stubbornly when he came into the kitchen to check on everyone’s work. ‘It is not right that our lord treats us in this way. There must be some way to appeal against his treatment of me and my daughter!’

Simon Mercator glared at her and for a moment she feared that he was going to strike her.

‘Be quiet, woman! You have been to the court and it was dismissed,’ he snarled contemptuously.

‘Dismissed? It was not even discussed! It should be considered by a jury of the villagers; they have the right to offer their opinion.’ Her face was red with indignation, but the steward was unmoved.

‘There is nothing to discuss!’ he shouted. ‘You were born a serf and a serf you will remain for the rest of your days!’

‘His father declared mine free!’ she replied stubbornly. ‘Why do you persist in denying it?’

Simon thrust his angry face near hers. ‘Because it never happened! Every villager could suddenly decide to claim that they had been freed, so why do you think that your particular lies should be heeded?’

‘You were not even here when my father was released from his bondage!’ she blazed.

Simon pushed her out of the way, making her stagger back. ‘I want no more of this nonsense, do you hear?’ he snarled. ‘If you open your mouth about it once more, I’ll have you back in chains again — and that brat of yours!’

He stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Matilda close to tears and Gillota trying to comfort her, as did the cook and one of the serving wenches. Later that day, she sat on her thin mattress and tried to think of a way out of this nightmare. Escaping again was impossible, and it seemed equally impossible to get justice at the manor court — and she knew of no way of seeking it elsewhere. She took her cloth bag that lay on a shelf on the wall and took out the strangely shaped stone, wrapped in a rag. To her, it still had an aura of power about it, which she could not describe but which she felt in her very soul. Yet it seemed unable or unwilling to translate its potency into action.

She turned it over in her hand and studied the strange marks on its surface, which meant nothing to her. Rubbing the steely-hard surface with the rag burnished it slightly, but had no other effect. Yet when she held it close to her chest, she fancied she could feel the slightest of vibrations deep inside. With a sigh, she wrapped it up again and was about to place it back in the bag when two crystal-clear images came unbidden into her mind. One was the face of Philip de Mora and the other was that of Father Thomas. They shone brightly in her mind’s eye for a moment, then merged together and faded.

Conscious that something unusual had taken place, she turned towards the door and saw that Gillota was standing there, watching her.

‘Those two men are our only hope, Mother,’ said the girl, not needing any words to know what Matilda had just experienced.

Though Walter Lupus had ignored her until now, a week later Matilda came to his attention once more. She was squatting outside the kitchen hut one morning, scouring cooking pots with wet sand and a rag, trying to remove the ever-present rust, when a pair of leather shoes suddenly came into her vision. Looking up, she saw Walter standing over her, staring down with his usual dour, inscrutable expression.

‘Come with me, woman,’ he commanded with a beckoning gesture. Reluctant and somewhat apprehensive, she rose to her feet and followed him towards the steps that led to the back door of the manor house.

‘What do you want with me now?’ she asked defiantly. ‘Have you reconsidered your bad treatment of me and my daughter?’

He ignored this and led her up into the hall of the house, which occupied most of the ground floor, apart from two small rooms partitioned off to one side. It was now early September and a fire smouldered in the large chimneyed hearth on the opposite side of the hall. Alongside, a doorway led to a narrow staircase set in the thickness of the wall, and she followed him up the stone steps, uneasy at this new departure from her routine. There were several men in the hall, merchants and tradesmen by their appearance, so she could hardly be ravished there, but going up the dark stairs was another matter.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, trying to conceal a tremor in her voice.

‘To see my wife,’ was the surprising reply, but at the top it proved to be true. The upper floor, beneath a sloping roof of stone tiles, was divided into a solar overlooking the front of the house and behind it, through a door, a larger bedchamber.

Walter stopped with his hand on this door and spoke in a low voice. ‘My wife Joan is ill and needs constant attention,’ he revealed. ‘She is cared for mostly by Alice, the housekeeper, who needs more help. You will work here now instead of the kitchens.’

He said this with an air of finality that did not invite questions, but Matilda was not satisfied. ‘Why me? I am no nursing nun. I know nothing of running a sickroom.’

‘You will fetch and carry at Alice’s direction. You need know nothing of physic!’ he snapped. ‘An apothecary comes each week from Barnstaple for that. Not that he’s of much use.’

Walter sounded bitter, and for a moment Matilda had a pang of sympathy for him, until his next words set him against her again.

‘In spite of your insolent nature, you have the glimmerings of intelligence and are preferable to those other slatterns in the kitchen. Now, go in and make yourself known to my wife and Alice, who recommended you.’

He pushed his finger through a hole in the door to lift the latch and shoved her inside before vanishing down the stairs.

A wide bed occupied much of the room, raised on a wooden plinth, instead of the usual position on the floor. Beneath covers of heavy wool and sheepskin lay Joan Lupus, staring listlessly up at the dusty rafters high above. Alice the housekeeper, a fat woman whom Matilda had known all her life, sat on a milking stool at the side of the bed, holding a pewter cup of posset, trying at intervals to tempt the lady to drink the honeyed mixture of milk and spiced wine.

‘Here’s Matilda, a nice young woman to help me look after you, my lady,’ coaxed Alice, but the pallid wraith in the bed gave no more than an uninterested nod, then turned her head away. Soon she was asleep, and Matilda took the opportunity to question the housekeeper.

‘What’s wrong with her? I saw her in church the other Sunday. She looked ill then, but not as bad as this.’

‘She is losing blood down below,’ said Alice primly. ‘She has been for months, but it’s getting worse and she’s getting weaker all the time. That apothecary is useless, so I thought you might be able to help. You have a reputation, Matilda. We sorely missed you when you went away.’

‘I’ll do my best for her. Anything is better than working as a skivvy. But I’ll not be diverted from my fight to regain my freedom!’ she added in a fierce whisper.

For several days she helped Alice, mainly in changing the soiled bed coverings, cleaning up the sick lady and fetching and carrying anything needed in the sickroom. She took turns in feeding her, trying to coax her to eat a variety of tempting morsels, but Joan Lupus seemed oblivious to their presence for much of the time, sleeping a great deal. Her husband came several times a day and tried to exchange a few gruff words with his wife, with little response.

‘Is she dying?’ he asked bluntly one day, speaking to Alice, but with Matilda standing alongside.

The housekeeper tried to reassure him, but Matilda was more honest.

‘She has lost so much blood that unless it stops she cannot survive,’ she said firmly.

Walter glowered at her. ‘That’s not what I wanted to hear,’ he said. ‘So what can be done? Shall I send for a physician? The nearest one of any substance would be in Bristol.’

Matilda shrugged. ‘I doubt any doctor could do much. Her strength needs to be built up, so that she can replace the blood she loses. And then you need a miracle to cure whatever is the root cause!’

The lord of Kentisbury turned on his heel and vanished down the stairs.

‘You are risking yourself, speaking like that,’ admonished Alice. ‘And what can we do to build her up, as you call it?’

‘Give her pig’s liver and green herbs like Good King Henry and cabbage,’ suggested Matilda. ‘An infusion of periwinkle may help to slow the bleeding. I’ll go out along the lanes with my daughter and see what I can find.’

This was partly an excuse to get out as much as possible, and also to get Gillota away from the drudgery of the kitchen hut, as she persuaded Alice that she needed her to search for the various medicinal herbs and plants that flourished in the hedgerows and woods. But the image of the priest and the former soldier was always in her mind, and she single-mindedly strove towards meeting them again.

Towards the end of that week, part of her hope was realized when she was grubbing in a ditch for wild spinach and a voice made her spin around.

‘Are you trying to dig your way out of the village?’

It was Philip de Mora, with a pack on his back and a long staff in one hand. He explained that he had been in Barnstaple, attending the burial of his old godmother, who had left him some money in her will, which explained why Matilda had not seen him around the village.

They sat on the verge for a while and she brought him up to date with her fortunes, such as they were.

‘At least I’ve managed to get away from slaving in the kitchen — now I need to get Gillota away from there, too.’

Philip listened thoughtfully to her tale. ‘Walter seems to have lessened his persecution of you. Perhaps he will come around to acknowledging your freedom — or at least letting it be heard properly in the manor court?’

She shook her head. ‘I doubt it — that foul man, Simon Mercator, seems to hate me, and he controls the court. He has a strong influence over Walter Lupus.’

De Mora thought for a moment. ‘The sheriff has to come twice each year for the view of frankpledge. That might be a chance to raise the matter with him and get it taken to the county court or even to the King’s court in Exeter.’

The ‘view of frankpledge’ was the six-monthly inspection by the county sheriff of the system whereby the population was divided into ‘tithings’. Each tithing was made up of all males over twelve years of age, from about ten households. All the members were held collectively responsible for the behaviour of the others and, if one committed an offence, all the rest were punished, usually by a fine.

‘A good idea, but I doubt if the steward would let me get within a hundred paces of the sheriff,’ said Matilda bitterly.

‘We’ll see when the time comes — he must be here by about Michaelmas or soon after, less than a month away.’

Matilda then told him of her idea to try to speak to Thomas the priest about her predicament. ‘Surely I can insist on making my confession,’ she said. ‘That would give me the chance to raise the subject. He seems to be a sympathetic man.’

Philip agreed with her, knowing something of the man in question. ‘He was once the clerk to the famous coroner Sir John de Wolfe, back in Richard the Lionheart’s time. He was well known for his honesty and love of justice, so maybe some of that rubbed off on to his clerk!’

They walked back to the centre of the village together, and Philip promised to think further about her problems and to see her after church next Sunday. She left him feeling much more cheerful than usual and, back in their dormitory, she took out the stone and sat looking at it with Gillota.

‘Maybe it’s working its will slowly?’ suggested her daughter.

She took it from her mother and held it tightly against her head. ‘Though I don’t feel anything special today. Maybe it has to rest, just like us.’

The rest of the week did not go so well for Matilda. She spent a lot of time trying get Joan Lupus to take the various concoctions she had made, from the herbs she had collected to potage made from meat and liver, in an effort to improve her blood.

Alice explained to Walter on one of his daily visits that Matilda had been looked on as having special skills, inherited from her mother, and he seemed vaguely content that something was being attempted to save his wife. This did not translate into any increase in friendliness towards Matilda, and she dismissed any hope that his gratitude might extend to reversing his attitude towards her bondage to the manor.

It was Simon Mercator who was the main problem, for he obviously resented the softening of Walter’s regime that held the two women in strict bondage.

‘You’ve wheedled your way out of the hard work, I see,’ he sneered at her as she passed through the hall with a bundle of clean clothing for the invalid. ‘It won’t last, I assure you. You’ll be back scouring pots and chopping firewood before long.’

At every opportunity he scolded her and made threatening remarks about her, but worst of all he began badgering Gillota when her mother was occupied upstairs. The girl came to her one day, weeping because Simon had cornered her behind the kitchen shed and kissed her roughly while he groped his hands over her breasts and bottom. Gillota had broken away and run off, leaving the steward laughing at her distress. Infuriated, Matilda went running to seek out Simon, unsure what she was going to do when she found him, but it came to nothing, as he was nowhere to be found. Then she went looking for Walter Lupus, but again he was away, said by the stablemen to have ridden to Ilfracombe.

Frustrated, she went back to Gillota, who was being comforted by the cook, who sounded as if she was ready to use her biggest knife on the steward if he crossed her path.

‘He’s well known to have molested several of the girls in the village since he arrived,’ she said indignantly. ‘In a few months there will already be two babies who could call him father!’

According to her, the village gossip claimed that he had had a wife where he lived in Taunton, before coming to Kentisbury, but that she had run away from him.

Gillota recovered rapidly but vowed to keep well out of his way in future, if that was possible. Once she had settled down and was being kept company by two of the other girls, Matilda resolved that the time had come for resolute action, if she was to save her daughter from more harassment and eventual shame.

As soon as the lady of the manor was made comfortable for the night and Alice had said that Matilda could go, she threw a shawl over her kirtle and went out into the evening twilight. The first chill of autumn was in the air as she hurried down to the centre of the village and pushed open the gate into the churchyard. Passing the porch, she carried on along the path to the small house on the further side of the yew-encircled graveyard.

The parsonage was little bigger than the cottages in the village, but it had two rooms under the steep thatched roof. Summoning up her courage, she knocked on the frayed boards of the front door. Getting no answer, she knocked again several times, with the same lack of response. Feeling deflated after her impulsive gesture, she turned away from the door and slowly made her way back towards the gate. However, just as she was level with the porch again, she heard some coughing from inside the church and hurried into the nave to find their priest brushing away with a birch besom at some loose leaves on the hard floor.

He greeted her cordially, leaning on his brush. ‘Hello, my child! The autumn has started early this year. These leaves are down already.’

‘I am Matilda Claper, father,’ she answered. ‘I work at the manor house, more’s the pity.’

The small priest looked at her quizzically. ‘That’s an unusual introduction, at least. Tell me more about it.’

She felt his soft brown eyes on her and knew instinctively that here was a man with compassion in his heart. ‘Sir, I came to ask if you would hear my confession — and the first thing I would have to confess is that it was but an excuse to seek your advice.’

Thomas de Peyne smiled, his old face lighting up so that he looked decades younger. ‘You don’t need an excuse for that, daughter! That’s what parsons are for — or should be!’

He dropped his brush and led her to the stone shelf around the wall, sitting down and motioning her to perch beside him.

‘Tell me your troubles, Matilda. I have seen you and your daughter at Mass but know nothing of you.’

Feeling secure with this mild-mannered man, she explained her whole predicament from start to finish. At the end she said, ‘They will not allow me to be heard at the court-baron and I doubt I can get the sheriff to listen to me when he comes for his view of frankpledge. Now this vile behaviour of the steward towards my daughter makes it all the more urgent that we leave this village.’

Thomas listened gravely to all she said and now sat with his chin in his hand, considering the problem.

‘It is true that this is not a happy manor, compared with most I have known,’ he conceded. ‘There is little I can do about that, being an outsider who is here only on sufferance until a new priest is appointed. I will speak to Walter Lupus, but from past experience he is not a man who accepts any view but his own.’

He sighed and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. ‘You do not need me to tell you that the nub of the matter is proof that Matthew Lupus did in fact grant your father his freedom.’

She nodded, fearful that in spite of her hopes this man would also side with those who dominated the manor. ‘But at the time, most of the village heard about it and accepted it,’ she pleaded. ‘If there was a genuine hearing before a jury, surely they must confirm that?’

‘Was there no document of manumission provided, as there should have been?’ asked the priest.

‘I don’t know. My father never showed me one, but what would be the point? No one except the priest could read or write.’

The prebendary pondered this for a moment. ‘There should always be a document of manumission, properly witnessed by one or preferably two people. As those in holy orders are usually the only literate ones, the witnesses are usually priests. Then the document should be confirmed by the county court. Do you recall your father ever going down to Exeter for that purpose?’

Matilda shook her head. ‘The furthest he ever went in his whole life was Combe Martin, a few miles away.’

‘The priest who was here before me must have been involved,’ he murmured. ‘Father Peter, God rest him. But he left no parchments behind. This house was bare of anything but a few sticks of furniture.’

‘Perhaps Walter Lupus took them — maybe he destroyed them?’ suggested Matilda, but Thomas shook his head.

‘I doubt that, because any document should have gone to Exeter for ratification, as I said.’

He stood up and extended a hand to politely raise up the woman from the bench. ‘I have to go to Exeter on the Monday after the next Sabbath, so I will make enquiries, as I still have good friends there. I will be back in time for the following Sunday, in case I have any news of this matter.’

Matilda dropped to her knees and bowed her head before this good man, who made the sign of the cross over her as he blessed her.

‘Come to me at any time for advice — or for that confession you mentioned,’ he said with a grin.

‘I fear my confession would be full of uncharitable thoughts towards those who hold this manor in their grip,’ she whispered.

When Matilda had gone, Thomas finished his brushing of the nave, then went back to his gloomy dwelling, where he lit a pair of rushlights and sat at his small table. He poured himself a cup of cloudy cider, for he had never been a lover of ale, and began to think about the sorry tale that the woman had related. He had noticed her at Mass, for there was something about her, and to a lesser degree her daughter, that was different from the usual run of villagers. He was intelligent and well read, having been educated at the cathedral school in Winchester many years before, but had no pretensions to second sight, only a sharp awareness of character, and was convinced that these two women had some occult gift.

Sadly, he felt that Matilda’s predicament was insoluble, unless some tangible proof could be produced of her father’s release from bondage — or if the villagers organized a mass protest and forced the matter into the manor court. Given the tyrannical way in which Lupus and his odious steward held the levers of power, this seemed unlikely.

As he sat in the twilight, with the smoky flames of the grease-soaked reeds flickering on each side, he thought of the absolute authority that men like Walter Lupus had over the inhabitants of a manor. Though most were not great barons, often being mere knights or even successful merchants with the ear of the King’s court, they wielded the power of life and death over their subjects, some even erecting their own gallows at the village crossroads. No one could leave the village, accept an inheritance, get married or enter the Church or a trade without their consent — almost invariably dependent on a fee. These lords held their fief from the King, who owned the whole of England, keeping about a third for himself, as with royal manors like Shebbear, apart from the huge estates owned by the Church. These greater barons often sublet manors to lesser lords, taking either military knight-service or a rent from these other vassals. The latter passed this despotism down to their own subjects, so it was no wonder that Lupus could dictate to that poor woman and ignore her demands for justice.

Yet, thought Thomas, there had to be a balance between manor lord and villagers, for each was dependent on the other. In return for the lord’s promise of protection from marauding barons and bands of robbers, as well as his organization of the production of the food that saved them from starvation, the inhabitants supported him and his family by working for him year in, year out. The free men paid a rent, either in money or in kind, and the bondsmen — the serfs or villeins — had to work his fields for at least three days each week, as well as many extra ‘boon’ days, plus providing him with extra support throughout the year in the form of eggs, fowls, pigs and other produce. For that, the lord gave them a ‘toft’, a cottage and a croft, as well as several acres of strips in the fields to work on their free days. Below those were the cottars, a poorer class who had a cottage but no land and paid for their home by working at ditching, hedging, thatching, herding and other menial labour.

Thomas knew that being a serf was not necessarily degrading, as they could own personal property and pass it on to their heirs — in fact, some bondsmen were richer than their free man neighbours. But he accepted that none of this solved this poor woman’s problem. He would do what he could for her, even if it incurred Lupus’s displeasure — at least his incumbency of the parish did not depend on the lord’s gift, as so many did. And, he thought as he pinched out the lights before going to his bed, it did not matter if Lupus got rid of him, as he was only here as a favour to the bishop and would be quite happy to go back to his comfortable lodgings in Exeter.

In spite of Matilda’s attempts with herbs and her advice to Alice to put more green cabbage and especially spinach in Joan’s diet, there seemed no change in her condition and she continued to lose blood. The day after her meeting with Canon Thomas, Matilda sat on the palliasse in their mean sleeping hut and wondered what else she could do for the lady of the manor. Though she detested Walter Lupus for ruining her life, her natural compassion for anyone who was ailing made her concerned for Lady Joan, for she was afraid that death could be the only end result, unless something radical was done.

As a last resort, she felt under the head of the mattress where she and Gillota lay with the other two maids and pulled out the little stone from its hiding place. For the hundredth time, she held it in her palm and studied it. Though it seemed so inert, something told her that it was a force for good. Unlike the great rock in Shebbear, which was alleged to be the work of the devil, the cross-shaped stone seemed benign, though Matilda sensed that in spite of its suggestive shape it had nothing to do with the Christian faith, being infinitely older.

‘If this can work any miracles, then they’ll not be like any of those that the priests tell us are described in the Scriptures,’ she murmured as she slipped the stone into the pouch on her belt.

Going up to the sickroom, she waited until Alice had gone out on some errand, then, while gently putting Joan’s pillow more comfortably under her head, slipped the stone under the mattress. ‘It’s three times thicker than mine,’ she thought to herself. ‘But if it has any powers at all, a few inches of goose-feather won’t stop it!’

Next day was Sunday and Matilda had the chance to speak to Philip when they mingled in the churchyard after Mass. She told him of Canon Thomas’s kind words to her and his promise to see if there was any sign of a document of manumission in Exeter. Then she went on to describe Simon Mercator’s foul behaviour towards Gillota, and the effect on the former soldier was remarkable. Normally placid and amiable, he instantly reddened with anger.

‘The bastard! He can’t be allowed to get away with that! I know of his bad reputation with women, but when it concerns someone you know and respect it’s not to be tolerated.’

She put a hand on his arm in alarm. ‘Philip! Gillota and I are villeins, at least to him, to do with as he likes! We must avoid him as much as we can, that’s all that can be done.’

Philip was not to be mollified, his face set in a grim scowl of determination. ‘I will warn him, for I am a free man — and one used to fighting and confronting enemies. I will make him understand that, if he approaches Gillota again, he will have me to contend with!’

He glowered in the direction of Walter and his steward, who were just leaving through the churchyard gate.

‘I will go to Walter Lupus as well. He is supposed to be the man’s master, though sometimes I wonder who is in charge of this manor!’

Now Matilda was really worried, for she recognized the stubborn streak in Philip and knew he meant what he said. For a moment she wondered if this violent reaction to an insult to Gillota meant that it was her daughter, rather than herself, who interested him, but their ages were so far apart that it would be ridiculous.

‘Please do not be hasty,’ she pleaded again. ‘They are powerful men and the likes of us cannot hope to prevail against them. My daughter and I will just make sure we avoid him at every turn.’

The churchyard had emptied now, and they were obliged to leave as well, though they arranged to meet in the early evening near the mill. Many villagers, especially youngsters and courting couples, paraded the village on a Sunday, as all work, even on their own crofts, was forbidden on the Sabbath, other than tending the animals.

Philip de Mora was a man of his word, and after he had eaten his solitary dinner of thin potage, bread and salted fish, he set off for the manor house, which was on a side turning from the main track that ran through Kentisbury towards Combe Martin.

There was a dry ditch around the outside of the stockade, which Philip crossed at the big gates on a wooden ramp that could be quickly removed as a further defensive measure. No one had attacked the village in living memory — the main danger was from marauding pirates coming in from the coast. The Severn Sea was rife with marine bandits, some based on Lundy Island, as well as from Wales, Ireland and even as far afield as the Mediterranean, but as Kentisbury was a few miles inland, the coastal villages suffered most.

One of the thugs imported by Lupus was lurking inside the gate and demanded to know his business. He was known as Garth, a hulking man with shaggy black hair and a rim of beard around his face and chin, widely suspected of being an Exmoor outlaw who had crept back into the village with Simon’s connivance.

‘I’m seeking the steward,’ snapped Philip, fingering the hilt of his long dagger. ‘Where is he?’

He was in no mood to be questioned further by some low-life servant and strode straight past as Garth pointed towards the door of the hall. This was up some wooden steps, the hall being built over the undercroft, a semi-basement used for storage.

Inside he found the steward sitting alone at a table, though several servants were nearby, clearing dishes and scraps of food from other trestles. A pewter goblet of wine was in front of him and a small wineskin lay nearby. There was no sign of Walter Lupus, who was upstairs with his wife.

‘What do you want?’ growled Simon, looking up at the new arrival. ‘You can’t just walk in here on a Sunday. Come back tomorrow, if your business is urgent.’

If the former archer had not been a free man, the steward would have called for Garth or his fellow thug Daniel to throw him out, but he knew that this Philip de Mora had been a member of the King’s army. He needed to be treated with circumspection in case he had some influential friends, as he had been under the standard of Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon.

‘My business is urgent,’ snapped Philip, becoming flushed with anger once again at the steward’s dismissive manner. He was a tall, powerful man and hovered threateningly over Simon Mercator. ‘I came to warn you that if you act indecently again with that young maid Gillota, you’ll have me to contend with! Understand?’

The steward shot to his feet, his stool clattering over behind him. He was shorter and slighter than Philip, but his years in office as a right-hand man to manor lords gave him an arrogance that compensated for his physical disadvantage.

‘You insolent swine!’ he howled, quickly outdoing Philip for the redness of his features. ‘Get out of here at once, before I have you flogged!’

‘You have no power over me, Mercator,’ snapped Philip. ‘I am not one of your serfs to abuse and torment. I only rent a dwelling from your master, and I can walk out of this village tomorrow — and perhaps I will, except that I need to stay to make sure you behave yourself!’

Several of the hall servants were starting to smirk at their hated steward’s discomfiture, and Simon, suddenly realizing they were present, turned to scream at them to clear off. Then he began to yell for one of his creatures, Garth or Daniel, to rid him of this interloper.

Philip jabbed him in the chest with a finger of his good hand. ‘Think on what I’ve said, steward!’ he rasped. ‘Lay a finger on that girl or her mother, and I’ll find you and beat you senseless! Is that clear?’

Simon’s flushed face now drained into a pallor of rage, as he could hardly credit that any villager was rash enough to speak to him in this manner, especially in front of gossiping servants.

Any caution because of the man having been a soldier was thrown to the winds in his fury. He began to rant and threaten Philip with every punishment from mutilation to branding, but Gillota’s champion had turned on his heel and was making for the door. As he reached it, Garth lumbered up the steps and, at the steward’s screeched command, tried to grab the archer. Philip gave him a hefty push in the chest, which sent him stumbling back to fall over a bench, and by the time he got to his feet the visitor had vanished.

Quivering with rage and damaged pride, Simon Mercator threw down the rest of his wine in a savage gesture.

‘The insolent swine, he’ll regret this!’ he snarled, mainly to himself, as Garth had no idea what was going on. ‘I’ll see him swing for this.’

When they met near the watermill that evening, Matilda’s concern for Philip increased when he told her of his warning to the manor steward.

‘He’s an evil, vindictive man,’ she said. ‘He’ll not take such an insult to his rank lightly. He will plot your downfall somehow.’

She even suggested that Philip should leave the village and seek his future elsewhere, though this was the last thing she wanted from a purely selfish point of view. Even on their short acquaintance, she felt drawn to him, the first time since her husband died that she had even entertained the thought of marrying again.

But he shook his head deliberately. ‘I’ll not stir from here until I know that you and your daughter are safe from this man, even if it takes me years!’

They sat on the grass above the millpond and looked at the big wheel, now silent on a Sunday. It was another example of the hold that a manor lord had over his subjects, as everyone was forced to use the mill to grind the corn that they grew on their crofts, just as they had to use the lord’s baking ovens to fire their bread — all for a fee, of course.

‘They say in the village that you have special gifts, Matilda,’ he said. ‘I recall when I was a lad, there was a wise woman in the village who used to treat everyone’s ills, but it was not your mother, was it?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it was old Sarah, wife of the farrier. I just happen to have picked up some knowledge of herbs and suchlike — no magic about it!’ Matilda played the matter down for her own protection, though a number of the villagers, who had known her all her life, suspected that she had unusual gifts. That ability was now niggling at the back of her mind, worrying that this brave man was heading for serious trouble if he persisted in antagonizing the steward.

As it grew dusk, Philip walked her back to the manor house and then went back to his empty cottage, determined to strengthen his position with Matilda by ensuring that no harm came to her or her daughter.

It was two days later before Alice noticed the first change in the appearance of Joan Lupus. When she awoke, the invalid seemed to be brighter in the eye and sat up in her bed to take more interest than usual in the food that was brought. When Matilda and the older nurse came to change the cloths that staunched her bleeding, they found them dry for the first time in weeks. Next day, her colour was noticeably better, the pallor of her inner eyelids having changed to pink — and the following morning the lady of the manor declared herself strong enough to get out of bed and sit for a while in a leather-backed chair in the solar.

Everyone was delighted, as, unlike her husband, his wife was popular — or perhaps pitied — by the villagers and manor servants. Alice was commended by them for her expert care, and Matilda was content to keep well in the background, wondering if her stone had had any effect or whether this recovery would have happened anyway. She decided to leave it in place under the bed for the time being, in case it was still working its charm.

However, a few days later Joan was so much better that Alice said that there was no need for Matilda to help her any longer, as the lifting and general bed-care now seemed unnecessary. Afraid that she might not be able to recover her stone if she no longer had access to the bedroom, she retrieved it and put it back in its old hiding place. This was in the morning, when she reluctantly went back to her previous toil in the kitchen, but in the afternoon the village was hit by the equivalent of a thunderbolt.

The first Matilda knew of it was when she was returning to the kitchen after tipping a wooden bucket containing turnip and carrot peelings into the pigsty. As she crossed the bailey, she saw Parson Thomas hurrying from the gate towards the hall door, his limp accentuated by his haste. For a brief moment hope surged in her breast that he was coming with some news of her father’s manumission, but then she remembered that it was next week that he was going to Exeter. However, even the faintest hope of some development made her seize some clean platters from the kitchen and use them as an excuse to go to the back door of the hall and lurk just inside, where shelves held the dishes and utensils for meals. Walter Lupus, his steward and bailiff and the miller were sitting at a table within earshot and she could hear the grey-haired priest’s high-pitched voice quite clearly.

‘It was there the day before yesterday, for I cleaned it myself!’ he announced in an agitated voice. ‘Together with the chalice, it’s always stored in that aumbry in the chancel.’

Matilda knew that he was referring to an oak chest near the altar, where the priest’s vestments and the sacred vessels for the Eucharist were kept.

‘And you’ve looked everywhere else, father?’ rumbled Walter Lupus.

‘Of course I have!’ snapped Thomas, for once made irritable by his concern. ‘Three times, in fact. And there are precious few hiding places in that bare little church.’

Keeping as still as possible in the shadows, Matilda soon gathered that what was missing was the paten that held the scraps of pastry that were used to offer the body of Christ during the Mass. Walter Lupus rose to his feet and thumped the table with his fist.

‘That plate was silver! My father, God rest him, donated it to the church at the time of my birth, in thanks for a son, after having had three daughters!’

Simon Mercator leaned back on his bench to look up at his master. ‘That makes it all the more terrible, sir, for it has sentimental as well as monetary value!’

‘It was good Devon silver fashioned by smiths in Exeter and cost more than nine marks, so my father was fond of telling me,’ ranted Walter. ‘It must be found! Turn the village inside out if needs be!’

The steward and bailiff were on their feet now, Simon trying to reassure the manor lord that it would be retrieved.

‘It has to be in the village. No one from outside has been here these past few days,’ he brayed. ‘I’ll find the thief, have no fear of that! ’

‘What about that poxy carter, that Adam from Shebbear?’ roared Walter. ‘Though he was useful over those women, he’s a shifty character. I’d not trust him with a stale loaf, let alone a silver plate!’

The bailiff shook his head. ‘I’ve not seen him here for weeks. I think he may well have fallen foul of the villagers over that affair and taken his trade elsewhere.’

Simon Mercator persuaded Thomas de Peyne to sit down and poured a cup of wine for him. ‘I’ll not rest until we have got your plate back, Father!’ he said placatingly.

‘That’s the problem. It’s not my plate,’ replied Thomas. ‘I am but a temporary incumbent here and have betrayed my stewardship of this church’s sacred property!’

‘Not betrayed, Father. It is not your fault, but the fault of the evil, sacrilegious robber who has dared steal from the house of God!’ replied the steward. ‘But never fear, we’ll find him!’

He walked towards the main door and yelled for Garth. By now, other servants had sensed that something was going on and had crowded near Matilda, so she no longer needed to hide. She whispered an account of the theft of the Eucharist plate and there were murmurings of outrage at such an impious crime. Its value of nine marks was almost beyond their comprehension, as a mark was worth more than thirteen shillings.

Garth came clumping up the steps into the hall and, before Simon could speak, Walter Lupus had taken over. ‘Start a hue and cry around the village! Call in everyone who is in the fields, and we will set up a search. Let not a single stone go unturned — every croft and toft is to be ransacked! Look in every barn, cow-byre and fowl-house! Understand?’

Garth gaped at him and looked at the steward, who usually gave him his orders. ‘But what are we to search for, sir?’

‘A silver plate, stolen from the church!’ snapped Simon. ‘Tell everyone that if it is not found by sundown, there will be trouble such as they’ve never known before!’

The Communion paten was found well before sundown, mainly because two of the searchers knew exactly where it had been hidden.

All normal community life had come to an abrupt halt, as everyone over the age of six who was not bedridden, senile or sick was turned out to comb the village. Matilda, Gillota and Philip kept together, as an added opportunity to enjoy each other’s company. They used sticks to beat the verges and search the ditch between the church and the further end of the village street, prodding between the withering weeds of autumn for the glint of silver plate.

For more than an hour Kentisbury looked like an anthill, swarming with figures poking in and out of every cottage, barn, pigsty, ox-byre and privy. For the fifth time Thomas de Peyne made a futile exploration of his church and grounds, peering into every nook and cranny of his house, knowing that he was wasting his time but afraid to give up.

About an hour before sunset a sudden cry went up from one of the cottages.

‘It’s here! I’ve found it!’ came a stentorian bellow from one of the searchers.

There was a stampede of all those within earshot, followed by the rest of the villagers who had seen them running. Those first through the gate in the fence around the croft were rewarded by the sight of Garth brandishing a shining disc the width of a large handspan. He held it above his head, as Walter Lupus, Simon Mercator and the manor reeve came pounding from the various points where they had been searching.

‘It was pushed into the thatch, here!’ yelled the steward’s servant. Proudly, he indicated the frayed lower edge of the straw-covered roof, where it ended at head height, overhanging the whitewashed wall of cob.

Garth pushed his fingers between the layers of the six-inch-thick thatch, then slid the plate back into the crack to show how it had been concealed.

Hearing the commotion, Matilda and her daughter began trotting down the track towards the growing crowd, Philip close behind. Then, as they got closer, they slowed in horror.

‘That’s my cottage!’ howled Philip. ‘The bastards have trapped me!’

Without even a sign from Lupus or Simon Mercator, Philip de Mora was grabbed by Garth and Daniel the instant he set foot through his own gate.

Though he struggled violently, he was no match for the two large ruffians, who forced him to his knees before the manor lord and his steward, who were standing at the corner of the cottage where the plate had been found.

‘You contemptible thief!’ snarled Simon. ‘Stealing from a church is a blasphemous sacrilege, as well as a common crime. You’ll hang for this!’

Struggling, the former archer howled back at him. ‘You set this up, damn you! To pay me back for accusing you of running your dirty hands over young virgins!’

For answer, the steward kicked the helpless man in the face, causing blood to stream down from a cut over his eye. ‘Keep your mouth shut! Don’t add lies to your other sins,’ he hissed vindictively.

Walter Lupus regarded Philip impassively but did not interfere. Just then, the village priest limped up, great concern on his face.

‘You’ve found it, then, thanks be to God! Where was it?’

The steward gave Philip another kick, this time in the ribs. ‘This rogue stole it, canon. He hid it in the thatch of his cottage, no doubt until he could smuggle it away to sell.’

Thomas de Peyne, though greatly relieved at the restoration of the sacred plate, was nonetheless concerned at the steward’s behaviour. ‘You must not mistreat the man like that! He is innocent until proved guilty — which I find very hard to believe. In fact, now that the paten is restored, I do not wish to bring charges against anyone.’

Walter now came to life. ‘I am afraid that cannot be done, Father. This is a serious crime, both against my authority in my own manor and against the King’s peace, as well as being a serious sin against the Church.’

‘You were a coroner’s clerk yourself for many years,’ added Simon craftily. ‘You must be well aware of the law. That plate was worth at least nine marks — many, many times more valuable than the twelve pence that defines a felony.’

Thomas frowned. He already suspected that there was some conspiracy afoot here, but what the steward said about the law was correct.

‘But you must prove him guilty first. There is no call for arbitrary judgement — nor for the violence I just saw you commit upon this man.’

‘There is little doubt of his guilt,’ snapped Simon, who did not take kindly to being reprimanded by some ancient priest. ‘The stolen article was found hidden in his house — who else would do such a thing? He is a soldier, accustomed to looting. He has no land to work, so he needs money to live. He is guilty. Any trial would be a waste of time.’

Walter Lupus seemed to tire of his steward making all the decisions.

‘There will be a trial — at a special manor court tomorrow,’ he snapped. ‘Then he can be hanged!’

There was a general muttering from the crowd clustered around the gate and standing along the fence to the street. It was hard to tell if they were agreeing that this obvious thief should be summarily executed or whether they found it hard to believe that a man they had known since he was born in the village could have committed such a blatant and uncharacteristic act. Many already suspected that the unpopular steward and manor lord were involved in some scheme of their own.

‘How did that fellow of yours know to look so quickly in such an unlikely hiding place?’ asked Thomas suspiciously. But no one answered him, being too concerned with hustling Philip away, his arms locked behind him by the steward’s two acolytes. They marched him away down to the turning where the manor house lay, leaving the crowd of villagers staring after them, many as dubious about this performance as the parish priest had been.

Near the gate, Matilda and Gillota were almost paralysed by what was happening, unable to believe their own senses. One moment they were in Philip’s pleasant company, the next he was on his knees, assaulted and bleeding, before being dragged away to imprisonment and the promise of the hangman’s rope.

Several of their former neighbours tried to console them, knowing of their friendship with Philip. Many of the villagers were muttering about the high-handed actions of the men who ruled their hamlet with such severity, but it was to Thomas de Peyne that the woman and her daughter turned to for solace.

‘Father, they cannot hang him for this! It is such an obvious falsehood, to pay him back for accusing the steward of his foul behaviour,’ cried Matilda, her arm around her sobbing daughter.

Thomas knew about Simon Mercator’s indecency with Gillota and was shocked. As a young man, he had been falsely accused of the same offence with a girl pupil at the cathedral school in Winchester, which had blighted his life for several years until he was proved innocent. But now, the villagers who surrounded him were keen to confirm the steward’s reputation for such lewdness, and he had no reason to doubt them.

‘This sounds like a gross injustice!’ he agreed. ‘I will do what I can to stop this charade, but I have little influence here. I am not even the regular parish priest.’

‘Can’t you threaten to excommunicate them, Father?’ asked Matilda, almost beside herself with anguish.

Thomas gave a sad smile and shook his head. ‘It would require someone far higher than me to do that — and no grounds for such action exist in this secular matter.’

‘But it was a sacred vessel that was stolen from a church!’ she persisted. ‘Surely that is sacrilege?’

‘Yes, but as it stands Philip himself is the culprit and I fail to see how we can prove who else might be to blame.’ He sighed and gathered the skirts of his cassock together. ‘I will speak to Walter Lupus and try to make him see the truth — though I fear he seems too loyal to this Simon fellow for me to have much effect.’

With the drama over for the time being, the villagers began drifting away and, disconsolately, Matilda and her daughter trudged sadly back to the manor house. One of the other servants told them that Philip had been thrown into an unused stable and that Garth was standing guard outside. They went around to the side of the stockade where the horses were kept and tried to speak to Philip, but were chased off by the thickset thug who stood outside the door.

‘Clear off, will you!’ he shouted. ‘No one speaks to the prisoner until they hang him!’

Later, Matilda tried again, bringing some food and ale purloined from the kitchen, but this time Daniel was squatting outside and refused even to let her leave the victuals for Philip.

She went back to their sleeping place and sat on the mattress alongside Gillota, the other two girls already sound asleep on the other side of the bed. It was almost dark, but she and her daughter had one of those episodes where each knew the other’s thoughts.

‘Take it out, Mother. Maybe if it worked on Lady Joan, it can do something now,’ whispered Gillota. ‘It seems at its best when there is urgency, like the decline of Lady Joan!’

Matilda felt under the hessian palliasse and pulled out the stone. As she held it in her hands, she thought she felt that slight vibration again, though perhaps it was the quivering of her own nervous muscles.

Mother and daughter stared at it in the dim light, both uncertain what to do next.

‘Maybe if we send our thoughts and pleadings into it together, it might respond,’ suggested Gillota in a whisper.

Matilda rose from the bed and motioned to the girl. ‘Let’s go outside. We cannot risk waking these maids.’

They went out into the fitful light of the moon, which now and then broke through the drifting clouds, and went quietly around to the back of the hut.

‘We must both hold it,’ said Matilda, holding the stone out by one of the wings so that her daughter could grasp the other one. With no more words needed, they merged their thoughts and tried to project them into the strange little metallic object that joined them. For five long minutes they visualized justice, rescue, salvation and love together with an image of Philip’s features. Again, Matilda wondered if the tiny tremors she felt in her fingers were from her own tense muscles or the stone itself.

‘I think it is quaking more rapidly, Mother,’ said Gillota, reading her thoughts. ‘Let’s keep pleading with it.’

They stood in the cool night air for a further ten minutes, until something told Matilda that they had done all they could.

‘Leave it for tonight, child,’ she said eventually.

‘What shall we do with it now?’ asked the girl. ‘It seemed to work with Joan when it was very close to her.’

‘I shall leave it as near Philip as I can — tonight, at the court and, God forbid, near the hanging tree if it comes to that!’

She sent Gillota back to bed, then crept along the backs of the huts until she came to the stable where the prisoner was kept. At the back wall, she quietly pushed the stone into a hollow where one of the rough planks had rotted against the ground and covered it over with crumbled wood fragments and a clod of turf.

‘Do your magic until morning and I’ll come back for you,’ she said in her mind before creeping back to her bed.

The manorial court, or ‘court-baron’, was held at varying intervals in different manors, but in Kentisbury it was normally a three-weekly event. Most of the business was usually about mundane matters concerning land, disputes over crops and livestock, seeking consent for marriages and inheritance affairs, as well as minor offences like drunkenness, fighting, domestic disputes, short measures, poor ale and the like. Today it was a special court called by Simon Mercator on behalf of his lord Walter Lupus, though as usual the steward conducted the proceedings. Unusually, Walter sat on a bench to one side of him, together with Thomas, the parish priest, with the bailiff and sergeant standing behind them.

Normally, the court was held in an empty barn, but after the recent good harvest these were all full, so it was convened in the yard in front of the manor house itself. A chair and a couple of benches were brought out of the hall and placed below the entrance steps, the jury of twelve men being ranged before them. A large crowd of villagers had left their work in the fields and had pushed through the gate to stand in the stockade behind the jury.

Though legally all the men in the manor over twelve years of age were supposed to attend the court, usually only those who had any business there as jury or witnesses were obliged to turn up. Today was different, and a restive, truculent crowd came to see what was going on.

The jury were reluctant to take part, as though the steward was not supposed to act as a judge, the verdict being left to the jury, in practice this was often ignored, and there was a strong suspicion that this would be the state of affairs today.

As Matilda and Gillota were already in the compound, they had little difficulty in sidling around to the edge of the crowd, as close to Philip as they could get, when he was dragged out by Garth on the end of a chain attached to his fetters — probably the same ones by which they had been hauled back from Shebbear. The former soldier was dishevelled and gaunt from his night in a stable without food or water, and Matilda’s heart went out to him. She had retrieved the stone early that morning and now had it safely in the cloth pouch on her girdle, but she could detect no vibrations from it at all, much to her chagrin.

Simon Mercator stood up from his chair and yelled at the crowd to be silent, a task he had to repeat several times before the villagers grudgingly obeyed him. He knew that strong feelings and resentment were rife, from the obvious attitude of both the freemen and the villeins and from the visit of Thomas de Peyne earlier that morning.

The priest had come to see Walter Lupus, not the steward, but Simon pushed himself into the meeting in the hall and Walter had not denied him.

‘I am extremely unhappy about your determination to try this man Philip in such an arbitrary way,’ said the canon firmly. ‘I have had long experience of the legal system in this county and know that such a grave accusation should be placed before the King’s judges or his Commissioners of Gaol Delivery.’

He was a such a small man that it was difficult for him to assert himself adequately in front of these powerful men, but he was adamant about Philip’s right to be tried in Exeter before an experienced and independent tribunal. As he had expected, neither man was impressed by his demands.

‘With respect, parson, this is none of your business, whatever you may have done in the past,’ sneered Simon. ‘The issue is so simple that it should be dealt with summarily, as my lord Walter is quite entitled to do. We must make an example of such blatant thieving, to prevent anyone getting the idea that such a crime may be repeated with impunity.’

Walter Lupus, silent until now, nodded gravely. ‘A manor lord has a responsibility to his tenants to safeguard their lives and property,’ he said ponderously. ‘I am surprised that you think fit to object, considering that such a valuable and venerated object such as your Communion plate was the thing stolen by this man.’

‘You have already judged him, then?’ retorted Thomas bitterly. ‘I thought that was the function of the jury and that until they offer their verdict a man is considered innocent?’

‘You are too naive, father,’ brayed Simon. ‘Of course the damned fellow is guilty — the facts speak for themselves! No jury can think otherwise — and if they do, I will put them back on the right road!’

And so it proved within a very short time. The steward had Philip dragged in front of him by Garth and Daniel, who stood one at each side, pulling on his chains, while he harangued the prisoner and the jury.

‘We need waste no time over this!’ he shouted. ‘The sacred platter was found to be missing, this felon cannot account for his whereabouts at the time, and most damning of all, a search soon discovered it hidden in the thatch of his own house. There is no need for any more evidence!’ He glared at the discomfited line of men who formed the jury.

‘The verdict is yours, but you can have no other answer than to declare him guilty!’

However, Simon Mercator was not to have it all his own way. The blacksmith, daring to contradict the man who had his livelihood in the palm of his hand, stood forward to object.

‘Steward, we need time to discuss this! Not to beat about the bush, the whole village knows that this man was in bad odour with you. To be fair to him, you should not be trying him here yourself. The matter should be heard in Barnstaple or even Exeter.’

A few yards away, Matilda heard the brave words and her heart leaped with hope — but when she gripped her pouch, she felt nothing from the stone hidden there.

The steward was almost apoplectic with rage at the blacksmith’s defiance. Red in the face, he screamed at the man. ‘Have a care, Edwin Pace! Lord Walter will not stand for your insolence and pig-headed obstinacy and neither will I! You will take the course of common sense or it will go hard with you and your family in this manor!’

The threat was undisguised, and after a few nudges from his fellows Edwin gave in, for he knew his own survival and that of his wife and children depended on the tolerance, if not goodwill, of the steward and, through him, Walter Lupus himself.

There were catcalls from the crowd when after much shuffling and muttering the jury capitulated and shamefacedly agreed that the prisoner was guilty of the theft.

Instantly, Simon translated that into the sentence. ‘Philip de Mora, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers. The holy plate which you so sacrilegiously stole from our own house of God was worth many marks, far above the value of twelve pence that constitutes a felony. You will therefore be hanged at noon this day from the oak tree used for the purpose.’

There was an outcry from the crowd, who began to surge forward, but Walter Lupus drew his sword, and the steward, bailiff and sergeant closed around him, brandishing heavy staffs and cudgels.

‘Get out of this bailey!’ roared the manor lord. ‘Clear the yard, damn you all!’

Incensed as they were at this tyrannical behaviour of their masters, the villagers knew that they had no real redress, short of starting a peasants’ revolt, which would soon bring down the wrath of the sheriff and the King upon them and lead to far more necks being stretched on the gallows.

Still shouting, cursing and protesting, they backed away through the gates, which Daniel ran to close securely, leaving Garth to hold the prisoner.

Philip seemed bemused by the whole proceedings, standing with his head bowed, accepting the inevitable. The servants were chased away by the bailiff and in tears, Matilda and Gillota went back to their labours in the kitchen.

‘The stone has failed us,’ said Gillota miserably as they stood chopping vegetables to add to the cauldron of potage. ‘Perhaps it never worked anyway and Joan would have improved of her own accord.’

Her mother wiped her eyes, her misery made more obvious by the onions she was peeling. ‘I’ll not give up yet… How long has he got, poor man?’

Though telling the time was sheer guesswork, by the sun it was mid-morning, so noon could not be much more than an hour away.

Some minutes later, with the connivance of the cook, Matilda crept out and looked into the bailey. Now that the crowd had dispersed, the gate was open again. Taking an empty leather bucket and reaping hook as camouflage, she went out unchallenged, as Garth and his fellow thug were keeping a strict guard on the condemned man in the stables.

Matilda walked down the road from the manor house to where the track to Furzepark forked south of the village. Here was the notorious oak tree, large and gnarled, which had stood there since before the Normans arrived. The thickness of the massive trunk was so great that four men would be needed to touch hands around it. Fifteen feet above the ground, the first thick branch stuck out, from which the hangings took place. At one point a dozen feet out from the trunk, grooves rubbed in the bark by ropes were a sinister reminder of the number of men who had died there over the years.

In this early autumn the leaves were already turning colour, but there was still a thick canopy of green and gold shielding the sky. No one was around yet, and quickly Matilda found the hole she remembered from her childhood days, about shoulder high in the rough bark. She recalled that birds used it for nesting and squirrels left nuts there, but now she quickly thrust the little stone into the crack and covered it with a handful of moss pulled from the other side of the tree. With a last glance to make sure she had not been observed, she hurried back to the manor after cutting some wayside herbs to put in her bucket.

Meanwhile, Walter Lupus and his steward had again shrugged off Thomas de Peyne’s impassioned plea for mercy for the condemned man and his repeated request that the matter be sent to the justices in Exeter.

Thomas was uncertain what Walter was thinking about this issue. He remained silent and just shook his head at all the priest’s supplications, but it was the steward who did all the talking, almost as if he had the manor lord under his thumb, instead of the other way around.

‘You’re wasting your time, parson — and mine!’ snapped Simon. ‘Better if you employed it in shriving the man and getting his confession. Time is rapidly running out for him.’

Despondently, Thomas took this advice and went to the stable to spend the last hour with Philip, who seemed dull and apathetic, hardly answering him. He made a mumbled confession, which did not ring true to the priest’s ears, though Philip firmly denied stealing the Eucharist plate.

Soon, Garth came in to jerk on his fetters and pull him out to lead him down the road to the hanging tree, followed by Walter Lupus, Simon and the other officers and senior servants of the manor such as the bailiff, sergeant, huntsman, hound-handler and hawker. Thomas de Peyne walked alongside the alleged felon, talking earnestly to him and saying prayers for his soul, which seemed to fall on deaf ears. A few villagers were waiting at the gates, but the majority of the manor deliberately kept away. This was unusual in a hanging, as when a known criminal or outlaw was to be dispatched it became almost a festive occasion. Now, however, the absence of most of the village was intended as a mute protest against the tyrannical behaviour of the lord and especially his evil steward.

By the time the dismal procession reached the large oak, Daniel had already gone ahead to throw a rope over the large branch and form a noose in one end, which hung down ominously at about head height. Where permanent gallows were erected, such as those in Exeter or Tavistock, the condemned were either made to climb a ladder and were then pushed off with a noose around their neck — or stood on an ox-cart, which was then driven away, leaving them dangling. Here the execution was performed more simply, by hauling them up until their feet left the ground.

Without any delay, Philip was marched across to stand under the branch, which was as thick as a man’s waist where the rope ran over it.

Thomas, his eyes moist with compassion, stood alongside the doomed soldier, continually intoning Latin prayers. Well back, Matilda and Gillota, with a handful of villagers, stood weeping as they watched the noose being placed over Philip’s head by Garth.

Through her tears Matilda tried to concentrate her willpower on the winged stone, though she was beginning to despair of its powers. She felt Gillota doing the same and, with a surge of mental effort, they both urged the artefact to help them.

‘Get out of the way, Father!’ called Simon Mercator. ‘You’ve done all you can. Now let justice take its course.’

Daniel and Garth went to the other side of the branch and grasped the free end of the long rope, taking up the slack until the noose was dragging Philip’s head erect. Simon moved towards the trio, holding his hand up in the air, ready to give the fatal signal.

‘Now, pull!’ he shouted, letting his hand fall. As Thomas made the sign of the cross in the air and despairingly chanted a last valediction, the two ruffians hauled on the rope together. Philip made a gargling noise as he was lifted from the ground by his neck.

The next moment there was a creaking groan and then an ear-splitting crack as the sturdy branch tore away from the trunk of the great oak and thundered to the ground in a blizzard of dust and leaves. There were screams from Daniel and Garth as the falling branch swept them aside like dolls. Miraculously, Philip was untouched, rolling well clear with the rope still around his neck. The further end of the branch landed on Walter Lupus, the foliage and smaller branches flattening him to the ground, bruising and scratching much of his body.

But it was Simon Mercator who fared worst, as he was standing midway between the two thugs and the manor lord. The half-ton of wood fell directly upon him, pinning him to the ground and breaking both his legs.

With much shouting and screaming, the onlookers ran towards the chaotic scene, though no one seemed in a hurry to tend to the steward. The bailiff and sergeant of the Hundred hastened to aid Walter Lupus, whose clothing was ripped and whose face and hands were bleeding from superficial wounds. He seemed to have been struck on the head, as though he was conscious he was groaning and unable to stand or speak.

Gillota and Matilda raced to help Philip, who was on his hands and knees, tugging to get the rope from around his neck.

‘Are you hurt?’ asked Gillota, who was first to reach him.

‘No, but it was a miracle! I thought my last moment had come,’ he gasped. ‘What happened?’

Thomas de Peyne put a helping arm around him as he staggered to his feet. ‘A miracle indeed!’ agreed the priest, still bemused by what had happened. He had suspected for some time that there was more to Matilda than met the eye, but as a devout Christian he had to eschew anything outside his faith, so he held his tongue for fear it might land her in serious trouble.

By now, more people had appeared, streaming down from the centre of the village, having heard the commotion. They stood and marvelled at the huge fallen branch. Several went behind the mass of foliage that lay on the ground and dragged out Daniel, who had a broken arm, and Garth, who was unconscious from a blow on the head. Then they attended to the steward, as the bailiff and sergeant were still fussing over Walter Lupus. The branch was across Simon’s legs, and it took eight men to shift it off him.

‘He’ll never walk again without sticks,’ said the blacksmith, the strongest man there when it came to lifting trees. ‘If he survives this, he’ll be no use as a steward or anything else. Maybe it’s God’s retribution!’

The injured men were propped against the bole of the great oak until it was decided how to move them, and together with some of the villagers Philip and Thomas stared up above them at the yellow-white scar where the branch had come away from the trunk.

‘It doesn’t look rotten, so why did it fall?’ asked Philip. He was thankful yet mystified at being snatched from the brink of death.

‘No rot there. The wood’s as healthy as me!’ declared the village wheelwright, an expert in anything to do with timber. ‘A little tug on a rope wouldn’t snap that! You should have been able to swing a pair of oxen from that branch.’

Matilda, now openly clinging to Philip’s arm, gave her daughter a look of triumph, and in return Gillota gave her a nod of secret delight.

‘I can hear the stone singing from here,’ she whispered.

A month later Emma’s cottage in Shebbear had a visitor. A docile pony arrived at the gate and an elderly man in a priest’s cassock under his black cloak gingerly slid from the saddle.

‘Father Thomas!’ cried Gillota in delight as she rose from her weeding to greet him. Inside the toft, he was regaled with food and drink, as he was introduced to Emma, who had recovered almost completely from her earlier stroke. Matilda and Gillota sat at his feet as he told her his news.

‘I’ve finished my penance in Kentisbury at last,’ he said. ‘The bishop found someone who was willing to live there permanently, so I’m on my way back to Exeter but came out of my way to see you, as I have news.’

‘We have news, too, Father Thomas,’ said Matilda proudly. ‘I am soon to be wedded to Philip and live here. That will make me and Gillota free women again, against any challenge!’

The canon smiled roguishly. ‘I am delighted to hear it, Matilda — but as to becoming free by that route, there is no need, for you are already free!’

He explained that, as he had promised some time ago, he had searched the county court records in Exeter for any evidence of a document of manumission for Matilda’s father. He found nothing, but by chance had spoken to a parish priest in Exeter who remembered witnessing such a document from Kentisbury when he was in Barnstaple several years before, though he could not recall the name of the freed man. The next time Thomas was in Barnstaple, he called on the chaplain of St Peter’s Church who, searched the archives and produced the parchment which confirmed that Matthew Lupus had indeed given Roger Merland his freedom!

Matilda threw her arms around Thomas’s neck and gave him a very un-ecclesiastical hug of delight.

‘That means we needn’t have run away again, if only we’d known!’ she exclaimed.

After the chaos and confusion of the miracle at the hanging tree, Philip had hustled Matilda and Gillota away before Walter Lupus or any of the surviving officials could recover their wits. Abandoning his house, he had set off with them for Shebbear that day, and after three days’ walking they had arrived at Emma’s croft, who welcomed them with open arms. Reunited not only with their aunt, but with their cow, pigs, cat and dog, they settled back into the life they had enjoyed for almost a year until Walter had kidnapped them.

Philip worked their croft with them and was negotiating to rent several acres more from the bailiff, having some money put by after his military service. For decorum’s sake, he was lodging with a family at the other end of the village until the wedding. Gillota was delighted to have him as a stepfather and teased her mother that he had only proposed to her because she was carrying the stone in her pouch at the time!

Before Thomas left to return to the city, Matilda asked him a question that had been worrying her ever since their second escape from Kentisbury.

‘Is Philip still in danger from the law? He was still under sentence of death when that branch fell.’

The little priest shook his head. ‘I think you can rest easy on that score. That evil steward is crippled for life. He lives in his nephew’s house — your house, really — and I doubt he’ll ever walk again. Walter Lupus seems subdued since then and has got himself a new steward, an older man who seems to have plenty of sense and tolerance. The villagers know well enough what the real truth was, and I have spoken to the sheriff about it, so if, God forbid, the matter should ever be raised again, it will go before the justices in Exeter, who will undoubtedly condemn what happened in Kentisbury.’

He would dearly like to have asked Matilda about the small stone he had seen her covertly take out of the hole in that oak tree and slip into her pouch when she thought no one was looking — but he decided to let sleeping dogs lie, though he noticed that it now sat in a place of honour on a shelf over the door lintel.

A little later, as he rode sedately out of Shebbear on his way home, he passed the great rock lying outside the church. He knew of the legend and of the pagan ceremony of turning it each year and hastily averted his Christian eyes.

‘There are too many strange stones in this part of Devon — sacred and profane!’ he muttered, crossing himself as he passed and reciting St Patrick’s Shield under his breath until he was out of the village.

Historical note

This story, including the names of the main characters and the places involved, is based on an actual case recorded in the rolls of the Crown Pleas of the Devon Eyre of 1238, the forerunner of the later Assizes and now Crown Courts. Though the later part of the story is fictitious, the records show that Matilda Claper’s complaint brought Walter Lupus before the King’s justices at Exeter Castle in June 1238 and that after initial denials he admitted that he had brought her back to Kentisbury in chains and that she was free. He was found guilty and fined twenty shillings.

The Devil’s Stone does lie outside the church in Shebbear and is turned by the villagers to the accompaniment of the church bells at eight o’clock in the evening on each 5 November, though this has nothing to do with Guy Fawkes!