The Bastard's Crown

by H A CULLEY

  ‘But I don’t feel I really know you. There are so many things I would like to talk to you about that I don’t know where to begin.’ For the first time Roland had started to get animated.

  ‘I didn’t really want to talk about myself; I wanted to get to know more about you.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ The boy seemed disappointed. ‘There’s not really very much to know. I’m here because a knight had a brief affair with a serving girl, as I am sure you know. I expect it happens all the time as household knights are not allowed to take a wife. I grew up in Viscount Peverel’s castle at Vengeons. My mother took care of me until I was seven. After she died my father did his best to look after me but he was busy and I was allowed to run wild. He was killed at the battle of Varaville when I was nine so Lady Peverel appointed me as one of her pages and I was taught what was expected of me by her master of pages. He had to beat me several times before I got the message and started to behave myself. That’s about it really.’

  Robert smiled he could just picture a small boy growing up and getting into all sorts of mischief in a large castle then having the unruliness tamed out of him, probably quite brutally. The Peverels had obviously thought him a bright child to have taken the trouble they had over him. Most would have sent such a boy to look after the dogs or work in the stables.

  Roland had gone back to polishing his armour. It was probably a mistake to try to get to know him too quickly. Some knights treated their squires like dogs but the good ones developed a strong relationship with them. But that took time and having cosy chats wasn’t the way to do it. He sighed and stood up, then left the room to go and find someone to get drunk with.

  ~#~

  Oswin had settled down to his new life as a housecarl. Edgar Broken Axe only had to glare at Esa and Cenric before they sheepishly repacked Oswin’s sack with the items they had filched. That wasn’t the end of the tricks played on the new boy, of course, but his easy going nature coupled with a natural talent for weapon training meant that he had rather fewer problems in being accepted than was usual. He discovered that he was naturally quick and agile which made up to some extent for the lack of muscular development of his shoulders and biceps when wielding the battle axe. Ever since he was eleven he had practiced with the sword, albeit a scaled down one at first, and he had been given his first shield when he was fourteen so he could already hold his own with these weapons against some of the older housecarls.

  After a month he was beginning to make steady progress and he started to stand watch. He detested being on guard at the place gates or at the entrance to the great hall; it was tedious and boring. However, he enjoyed guarding the king inside the hall for audiences, meetings of the Witan and of the inner council where he attended carefully to all that was said. When he tried to discuss this with his fellow housecarls he was amazed to discover that they rarely listened to a word. He suspected that, even if they did, they wouldn’t understand much of it.

  But he did. He was particularly interested when foreign policy was on the agenda or when the question of the succession came up. Of course he was there to protect the king against assassination attempts but this seemed unlikely, given the political situation. Edward was childless; indeed there were those who said that he was still a virgin, preferring scholarship and piety to the carnal world that the rest of humanity inhabited.

  By tradition the kings of England, like the kings of Wessex before them, were elected by the Witan from the direct descendants of Cerdic of Wessex. These royal princes were called athelings. The only atheling in England now was Edgar, a ten year old boy who was considered too young to hold together a kingdom riven by the intrigues of the powerful earls within and threatened by various foreign princes without. Before Edward the throne had been held by Danes and there were several Scandinavian claimants. Then there was the duke of Normandy who seemed to think that Edward had promised him the throne, though it wasn’t his to dispose of. Finally there was Harold, earl of Wessex, the most powerful man in the kingdom.

  The housecarls favoured Harold to a man. He was a proven leader in battle and popular, except with Earl Morcar of Mercia and Harold’s brother Tostig, earl of Northumbria, both of whom were jealous of Harold; at least that was the view of Oswin’s fellow housecarls.

  ‘Why does William the Bastard think he has a claim to England?’ Oswin asked. Five of them were sitting in a tavern enjoying a night off eyeing up the serving wenches and drinking tankards of ale.

  ‘Well you see Edward fled England as a small boy when the Danes seized the throne and killed all his brothers except Alfred.’ Cenric took a long swig of ale before continuing. ‘As his mother, Queen Emma, was the sister of Duke Richard of Normandy that was where they went. Later Emma married King Cnut but Edward stayed in Normandy for safety until Cnut died. The Normans launched an expedition to put him on the throne but the invasion failed due to a storm.’

  ‘But he did return to England with his brother Alfred after Cnut died. That was when Alfred was killed.’ Esa butted in.

  ‘Yes, that was later when Harold Harefoot seized the throne in opposition to Cnut’s son, Hardicanute.’ Cenric continued, glaring at Esa for interrupting. ‘Alfred was captured by Harefoot who had his eyes put out with a red hot poker and the boy died as a result. But Edward escaped back to Normandy and only returned when Hardicanute named him as his heir.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand why Duke William thinks he has a claim.’ Oswin knew the story well enough but, like most Anglo-Saxons hated the possibility of rule by a Norman. It was bad enough that Edward had brought so many of them back with him and given them plum jobs like the bishopric of London.

  ‘Why, it’s said that Edward promised his uncle, Richard of Normandy, the crown after him when he was desperate for his support in 1034 and that Duke William claims that he has inherited that right from Richard.’ Cenric shrugged. ‘Load of rubbish if you ask me. In any case our best protection is the Channel; it scattered Duke Richard’s fleet in 1034 and it will do the same to his son’s if he tries to invade now.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Oswin threw the contents of his tankard down his throat and, as the room started to spin round and round, he collapsed onto the floor, much to the amusement of his friends.

  ~#~

  By the time Hugo had rubbed the horses down and fed them Guillaume had the beginnings of a fire going in the hearth.

  ‘The oats were mouldy so they’ll have to make do with some straw tonight.’ The squire dumped the panniers from the packhorse on the floor and unpacked a change of clothes for them both. They were slightly damp, even wrapped in oilskin as they had been, so he pulled up a bench on which to air them in front of the fire.

  Once they had changed and put their wet clothes to dry he found some candles and lit them.

  ‘Where do you think everyone is?’

  Guillaume shrugged. ‘Go and see if there is anything to eat. We’ll see if we can find someone to tell us what has happened in the morning.’

  The next day dawned bright and clear. Puddles lay everywhere and water dripped off the trees but the storm had passed. Hugo went and fed the horses some more straw and saddled them just in case they were needed in a hurry. When he came out of the stables he saw with some relief that people were leaving their homes to go and work in the fields. He went back into the hall to tell Guillaume and the two made their way to the nearest house. The woman inside was feeding three small children. She screamed when she saw an armed knight in the doorway.

  ‘Quiet woman. I mean you no harm. I am Sir Guillaume Peverel, the eldest son of the Lady Maud, daughter of Lord Ingelric, the baseborn son of King Ethelred.’ He spoke in English, his mother’s language and one that he had started to teach Hugo, who understood enough to get the gist of what was said. This was the first that Hugo had heard of Guillaume’s descent from the king of England who was nicknamed ‘the Unready’ and who had died in 1016.

  ‘My lord’ she stuttered nervously ‘what do you want with a poor
woman like myself?’

  ‘Where is your husband?’ He had wisely decided that he was more likely to find out what was going on from him that he was from her.

  ‘In the fields’ she finally managed to get out.

  ‘Send the boy to bring him here.’ He indicated the eldest child, a lad of perhaps five or six who was cowering with the rest of the children behind their mother. The boy shot out of the room like a scalded cat without any further bidding.

  Guillaume was impatiently pacing up and down outside the house when he returned with a man in his thirties who was obviously his father.

  ‘Ah. Tell me what has happened here. Where is the bailiff and the servants from the hall?’ Then he noticed the still empty smithy. ‘And the blacksmith?’ The man held his hat in his hands, nervously turning it round and round.

  ‘I can’t rightly say sir.’ He looked over his shoulder to where another man was walking quickly towards them. ‘Ah. Here is the reeve. He can tell you what has befallen us, sir.’

  The reeve introduced himself as Egbert.

  ‘Can I suggest we go back to the hall, Sir Guillaume?’ Egbert indicated the crowd of curious onlookers that was beginning to gather. He turned to them. ‘Go back to work, all of you. No-one gave you permission to stop.’

  Hugo knew that the reeve was the overseer, elected by the free villagers, who supervised the work on the lord’s land and was responsible for the security of property. He answered to the missing bailiff, who administered the manor, supervised the servants who worked in the hall and kept the accounts.

  ‘Well, where are the bailiff and the servants?’ Guillaume asked once they were seated by the fire that Hugo had just relit in the hall.

  ‘Well, Sir Guillaume, it is a sorry tale but the quick answer to your question is that the bailiff is dead and buried one week past. He was killed by the blacksmith who has fled with his family no-one knows where; not that the bailiff didn’t richly deserve it.’ Egbert looked Guillaume straight in the eye. ‘He was an evil man and no mistake.’

  ‘You had better tell me the whole story. Hugo, go and see if you can find us something to drink would you.’

  It seemed that the bailiff had been appointed by Ingelric on the recommendation of his steward, who had failed to mention that he was the steward’s cousin. At first he behaved well. Ingelric had visited the manor once a year to hear petitions and no complaints were made against him though one of the servants had overheard Ingelric complaining to his steward that his revenue from the manor seemed to have dropped.

  When Ingelric died and his only child, the Lady Maud, had inherited the manor she had discharged the steward and placed its overall supervision and that of the other manors she held in Wessex in the hands of her husband’s steward in Normandy. The man had never visited the Hertfordshire manor, presumably because it was such a small part of the vast Peverel estates and a long way from those in Wessex. This meant that the bailiff was at liberty to do as he pleased.

  His behaviour had slowly got worse and worse. He started by bullying the servants in the hall, which was not particularly unusual, but it turned to sadistic torment. Like many halls at the time the servants were all men and boys. The only females were the laundry maids but they lived in the village. None of the hall servants were safe from him, except for the fat cook and the old butler who looked after the pantry. The rest were serving boys, scullions, pot boys and the like. The younger they were the more likely he was to pick on them and take them into the solar to punish them, as he termed it.

  The butler was getting increasingly concerned about the bailiff’s sadistic behaviour but he didn’t know what to do about it until one fateful day he had had enough. One of the servants was his eleven year old grandson and when it was his turn to be punished he ran sobbing to his grandfather to tell him of the degrading treatment he had been subjected to. He had been told to take off his clothes and bend over the bed before being brutally canned by the bailiff. His behind stung so much that he was scarcely aware of what happened next until the pain made him realise that he was being raped. On hearing this the butler had seized a knife and tried to kill the bailiff but the old man had been disarmed easily and then the bailiff had cut his throat with his own knife. His body was left on the steps of the hall for several days as a warning to others.

  The reeve paused in his story at this point.

  ‘You have to agree that he was a most unholy and evil man, sir. You can’t blame the villagers for taking the law into their own hands. There was no-one we could appeal to for help.’

  ‘Could you not have written to Lord Ranulph and Lady Maud. I know that they would have investigated without delay; or else you could have complained to the ealdorman.’

  ‘None of us can write, not even me. My records are kept in my head. There used to be a priest here but the bailiff didn’t seek to get him replaced when he died. And I wouldn’t even know who the ealdorman is or where to find him. I have never left this village in my life.’

  ‘I see. Go on, and I want the truth. I am a just man and I will see you fairly treated but if you lie you will bitterly regret it.’

  Egbert swallowed and hesitated; then seemingly reaching a conclusion he went on with the sorry tale. It seems that the halls’ servants weren’t enough and the perverted man then started to pick on the young sons of the villeins and bondsmen. He left those of the churls alone but the village was not prepared to endure this treatment any longer and, led by the blacksmith, they had stormed the hall and hacked the bailiff to death. They had then built a large pyre and burnt his body, ground up the remains and scattered the ashes over the fields. The reeve stopped and looked at Sir Guillaume imploringly.

  ‘You say the blacksmith was the instigator of the attack that led to the bailiff’s murder?’

  Egbert nodded. ‘I fear so, which is why he fled.’

  ‘I would imagine that he is something of a hero to the villagers; in which case they are unlikely to betray him, even if he were still here.’

  ‘That is probably so, but I assure you he is long gone.’

  ‘Well, I hope that is the truth.’ Sir Giullaume got up and the reeve did likewise. ‘I shall let my parents know what has transpired here. I am sure that they will select a bailiff with more care next time and I will recommend that the steward pays an annual visit and holds a manor court here when he does so complaints can be heard. I shall also have to let the ealdorman know. It will be his business to investigate the bailiff’s murder.’

  He looked around him. ‘You can tell the hall servants and the stable boys that they can come out from wherever they are hiding in the village. And I would be grateful for your recommendation as to a new butler. I shall be staying for a few days to inspect the rest of the manor and I would rather live in comfort than otherwise.’

  The reeve bobbed his head and made to leave.

  ‘Oh, and well done. You seem to have kept the work in the fields up to scratch through all this. When I leave you will be in charge until the new bailiff arrives.’

  ‘Thank you Sir Guillaume.’ The man seemed vastly relieved as he left.

  ‘Do you think that the blacksmith has really fled?’ Hugo asked when Egbert had closed the door behind him.

  ‘I do hope so. If he is here the ealdorman’s men will soon root him and his family out.’

  Suddenly Guillaume had a thought. ‘Go after Edgar and just check that the bailiff had no family. If he did the villagers will end up living in poverty for years whilst they pay them the weregild for his death.’

  ‘What’s weregild?’ Hugo hadn’t heard the term before.

  ‘Under Salic law, which operates in England, a value is placed on all life, injury and property. If damage is done or someone is killed, for whatever reason, the person responsible has to pay a sum to the person injured or, in the case of death, to his family. A rough translation would be blood money.’

  He smiled grimly. ‘But given the horrific deeds of our friend the bailiff I don’t expect anyone wil
l want to claim kinship with him.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose so’ Hugo agreed and went after the reeve.

  Two days later Guillaume and Hugo set off on the return journey to Barnet. Unlike the day of their arrival, the sun shone and it was a pleasant ride. When they reached Cheshunt woods the sunshine created a mesmerising dappled effect as the leaves moved in the slight breeze. So the pair were taken unaware when they entered a clearing and were suddenly surrounded by a group of a dozen men wielding a mixture of farming implements and spears.

  ‘Throw down your weapons or die’ one of the group told them; then smiled at them in a particularly unpleasant way, revealing a mouthful of rotten, blackened teeth.

  ~#~

  King Edward rarely travelled much these days but after Oswin had been with the housecarls for a few months he decided to visit Winchester. When the king travelled the royal court and all the officers of state and their staff went with him, the whole procession taking up three miles of road. As was the case with the bishop of London’s procession, the convoy moved at the speed of the slowest ox cart. Oswin therefore counted himself lucky to have been selected as part of the escort to the comptroller of the household who went ahead to get the accommodation en route ready. Not only was Oswin saved the tedium of crawling along eating dust all the way but he and his companions in the escort always managed to get themselves a decent billet for the night.

  Housecarls fought on foot but they used horses to reach the battle. Oswin was used to riding at home but he hadn’t been in the saddle for any length of time since his arrival in London. Like the others, he soon got saddle sore from riding for several hours every day. He was therefore less than pleased when, on the point of leaving Chertsey on the third day, he was told to ride to Barnet to deliver a message to Bishop William asking him to join the king at Winchester. Barnet was well over twenty miles away and it would take him several hours to get there. The one consolation was that he was on his own and so at liberty to ride at the pace he chose.