The Fair Maid of Kent

by Caroline Newark

  I wanted to stay and gaze at this house which had been my favourite home since I was nine years old, which I would never see again, but Bishop Bateman was eager to be on his way. Like all bishops, he had the liveried splendour and magnificence which accompanied him everywhere but as we rode down the river track, I saw dozens of armed men ahead of us, far more than was usual for a bishop’s train.

  ‘Dangerous times, my lady,’ said Bishop Bateman dourly.

  A mile downstream we crossed the bridge and rode quickly through the town of Great Marlow, looking neither to left or right. Doors were closed and the streets filthy with human waste. The road outside the walls, leading up the hill, was not well-used and the few people we met moved hurriedly into the bushes when they saw the bishop’s outriders. I had no idea where we were going.

  After a while the road dipped to a narrow wooded valley and before long I saw ahead of us the walls and rooftops of a small town.

  ‘Wyccim,’ said the bishop.

  The town must once have been prosperous but now the market square was empty and the shops deserted, only one man sheltering in a doorway observed our procession. Set back from the other buildings was a sturdy church and standing by the gate in the middle of a small group of men was Thomas Holand.

  There was no doubt that my first two marriages had both taken place in a climate of fear: fear of my cousin’s plans for me and his anger if I did not conform to his wishes. In Ghent, I took the only escape offered when I chose to run away from a marriage I did not want and at Bisham I was so cowed into a state of obedience by my mother’s threats and the violence she had already meted out that I would have married whoever she put in front of me.

  This time was different. This time I knew what I wanted. I thought it was love but the moment I saw Thomas standing by the church gate I knew it was more than that. It was desire of a most unseemly sort.

  It had been more than two years since the sand dunes in Calais and I had quite forgotten what he looked like. He wasn’t dressed in his best clothes, that was obvious, and for a moment I thought he might have changed his mind. How dreadful if after everything he didn’t want me. If that happened, I would be utterly shamed and have nowhere to go.

  I stayed in the saddle, too embarrassed to move, until Thomas strolled over taking all the time in the world as if he was an idle passer-by come to ask what we were doing.

  ‘My lady,’ he said giving a nod of his head and cursory glance at my cloak and my everyday boots. ‘God give you a good day. I see you come prepared for our second wedding, beautifully gowned just as I expected.’

  He wasn’t smiling.

  ‘I come as I am,’ I retorted, sounding braver than I felt. ‘If you don’t like what you see, Sir Thomas, I can always return to Sir William. He has my robes and my furs and my jewels and my women. Perhaps he would like to keep me as well.’

  ‘So there is no wagon with your chattels creaking along behind?’ he said, staring down the track as if one might magically appear out of a mist.

  ‘No, there is not. There is nothing. You’re lucky I have a gown on my back. If it hadn’t been for the bishop’s presence, I’d be here in my shift and that would be to shame us both.’

  He gave a short laugh and held out his hands to lift me down.

  ‘Come on then, let’s get this done.’

  He glanced back the way we had come. ‘Do you wish to wait for your girl?’

  I flushed. ‘I thought you understood, Sir Thomas. I have no girl. I have nobody; nobody to dress me or brush my clothes, nobody to comb my hair or help me with my shoes. I am entirely alone. I have been cast out with nothing but the clothes I stand up in.’

  ‘No gems? No trinkets?’

  ‘None. Just my mother’s ring.’

  The disappointment showed in his face. He must have expected a small fortune in jewels to accompany his bride. Instead he had a penniless woman in a plain cloak with no attendants and no dowry. It was a most unpromising prospect for any man, especially one who had just risked his fortune to retrieve a lost wife.

  At that moment Otho Holand emerged from the church bringing with him a nervous-looking priest. At the sight of Bishop Bateman, the priest fell to his knees and kissed the bishop’s ring, stuttering a greeting in Latin. I was surprised how gentle the bishop was with the man. He spoke kindly and after a moment, raised him up and went with him to the church door.

  Otho nodded to me and then whispered to his brother.

  Our first wedding had been quick, simply a matter of clasped hands and whispered vows and to be truthful this one was not much better. The little priest gabbled his way hurriedly through the words and blessed the ring. To my surprise it was the very same one Thomas had produced for our first wedding nearly ten years before. Had he kept it as a keepsake or was he reluctant to buy a better one? Was this all I was worth? Even now?

  When the priest was finished, Thomas kissed me briefly on the cheek but without much enthusiasm. At the bishop’s insistence we went inside the church where I was to make a stumbling confession of my sins before we celebrated a hasty nuptial Mass. A purse of coins changed hands and the priest mumbled his thanks. He gave a final curious glance at our odd little group before scuttling away through a door at the side of the church.

  I thought Bishop Bateman would stay for the celebration feast but he was anxious to return, looking at the sky and murmuring about the lateness of the day.

  ‘I left my diocese, Sir Thomas, because I was charged by the Holy Father to undertake this task. It is no pleasure to remove a man’s wife under circumstances such as these no matter what the reason. But all is done as was required and now I have more important matters to concern me. The great mortality is killing thousands and I have clergy dying in their scores. I cannot leave the people without the benefit of a priest in their parish and every day I must bring dozens of young men into the priesthood. It is an unending task.’

  ‘We are grateful for your concern,’ said Thomas, looking at me.

  Clearly both men expected my gratitude so I knelt uncomfortably on the muddy ground and kissed the bishop’s ring.

  ‘Thank you, Reverend Father,’ I whispered. ‘You have been more than kind and I am truly sorry if I have caused you or those you serve any distress.’

  Somewhere behind me, Otho coughed.

  Thomas nodded his head to Bishop Bateman and raised me up.

  ‘We must leave also. I have no desire to stay a moment longer than necessary.’ He turned to me. ‘On your horse please, my lady.’

  This wasn’t what I had expected. Where was the feast, the entertainment, the singing and the minstrelsy? And where, now that I thought about it, were the silver coins which had been so conspicuously absent at my first wedding?

  I was hoisted unceremoniously into the saddle and told to make ready. Apart from that one brief brushing of lips across my cheek, Thomas had shown no sign of affection and no indication that he thought of me as his wife. I was treated like a maidservant, told to get in line, be silent and keep up with the others.

  We parted company with the bishop’s cavalcade and took a well-trodden road towards the west.

  ‘What lies this way?’ I asked Otho as we passed through the town gate.

  ‘Oxford,’ he said with no further elaboration.

  I indulged myself imagining a small inn somewhere in the narrow streets of the town and a comfortable bed for the night with Thomas and I wrapped in each others arms, but as night crept up and over us, we didn’t stop. Nobody bothered to ask if I was tired or hungry or if I wanted to rest, and nobody seemed interested in telling me anything. We just kept going, mile after mile after mile. When the others took a track to the right which appeared utterly deserted and led into even deeper darkness, I began to be frightened.

  The sky was a deep velvet black spangled with tiny stars and between the cr
iss-crossed branches of the trees there shone a huge white moon. We had stopped in a clearing but there was no sign of an ale house or anywhere to sleep for the night. Perhaps a priory was nearby, a place where we could shelter and be warm. And eat. I had begun to feel very hungry.

  ‘Where are…?’

  ‘Shh!’ hissed Thomas.

  He slid off his horse and the others did likewise. Thomas whispered instructions and the four young men disappeared into the darkness of the trees. Otho came to help me down.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ I whispered.

  ‘Taking a rest.’

  ‘Here?’ I said in disbelief.

  Thomas came over with a flagon of ale which he proffered to me.

  ‘You’d better drink something, there’s a long way still to go.’

  ‘Where are we going to sleep, husband?’

  I saw his teeth gleam in the moonlight. ‘We’re not; not tonight.’

  ‘But why?’

  He removed the flagon from my hands and took a drink himself. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth and passed the flagon to his brother.

  ‘Because by now Montagu will have men on our trail and the faster we get out of here the better our chances of staying alive.’

  ‘I’m sure Sir William wouldn’t…’

  ‘Wouldn’t what? You think he’ll let you ride away and do nothing? If a thief steals a lord’s best horse, he gets his throat slit, so why not the man who steals the lord’s wife? With the bishop gone, Montagu will have sent men to hunt us down and it won’t take them long to discover which way we’ve gone.’

  ‘How will they know?’

  ‘Anyone who saw the bishop’s train will have told his neighbour. The news that the Bishop of Norwich rode by with a pretty young woman at his side is choice gossip. Someone may even have recognised you.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘And you can be sure the priest at Wiccim is entertaining his parishioners in the alehouse this very night with his tale of the bishop’s visit and the marriage of some knight to his kitchen wench of a wife.’

  ‘They know which road we took,’ said Otho. ‘It was no secret but I doubt they’ll notice the track, not in the dark. We’re as safe here as anywhere.’

  ‘Can’t we stay awhile?’ I said, wondering how much longer I could ride at this pace.

  Thomas regarded me unsympathetically. ‘No. This is how men travel, my lady. We ride, we stop, we eat, we drink, we piss and sometimes we sleep. Then we ride again. Now which is it to be first – bread or piss?’

  I lifted my chin and stared him straight in the eye.

  ‘Piss, my lord, if you please.’

  By the time we stopped again, I was nearly asleep in the saddle. We had ridden for hours, first along a rough track, picking our way around outcrops of rock, following the path of a stream; then through stretches of open woodland studded with dangerous bogs and shallow pools where we had to ride in single file. For the past hour we had been climbing.

  We were at the edge of a thick wood. In the distance, dozens of lights flickered in the darkness and, to our right, a pale grey horizon heralded the dawn of another day.

  Two of the young men got down from their horses and melted into the shadows.

  ‘Off,’ said Thomas briefly.

  I slid into his arms and almost collapsed onto the ground. I wanted to lie on the cold leaves, I didn’t think I could stay awake a moment longer.

  Thomas hauled me upright. ‘There’s a hut back there amongst the trees,’ he said. ‘They’re making sure it’s empty. You can sleep there.’

  I didn’t care if the hut was inhabited by a tribe of woodland creatures or if the Holy Father himself was in residence. A hut would be dry and surely couldn’t be as cold as staying out here in the raw morning air.

  The roof thatch reached almost to the ground and the doorway was low, dark and unwelcoming. I stumbled across the threshold and without thinking, lay down on a pile of musty bracken piled in one corner. I had a vague recollection of a heavy cloak laid over my legs and the brush of a finger across my forehead as I tumbled over the edge of wakefulness into the depths of sleep, and then nothing.

  Someone was shaking my shoulder but I didn’t want to wake, I was far too comfortable. I grunted and pushed whoever it was away. The shaking became more persistent and the warmth on my legs suddenly vanished. Someone had stolen my cover. I opened my eyes in bewilderment.

  ‘Sister,’ whispered Otho Holand. ‘Wake up. It’s time to go.’

  I struggled to a sitting position. There was just the two of us.

  ‘Where is my husband?’

  ‘Seeing to your horse.’ He smiled and handed me some bread and a chunk of cheese. ‘You’d better eat this. We’ve another long ride ahead.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘North. Many days’ ride, so you’ll need all your strength.’ He went to the door of the hut and paused. ‘Be as quick as you can.’

  It hadn’t been much of a wedding night, alone in some wood-dweller’s hut. A thought struck me. Perhaps I hadn’t been alone. Perhaps they had all slept in here beside me, all six men, and that was why the hut had felt so warm. I wondered how many women in their dotage when such things might be said, could tell the story of how they spent their wedding night alone in a hovel with six men!

  It was late in the morning when we set out and the sky to the north was dark with the ominous sight of those deep-bellied clouds which herald snow. Whilst I had slept two of the others had ridden to the nearest settlement to make enquiries about strangers and buy feed for the horses.

  ‘Did nobody sleep?’

  ‘We took turns,’ said Otho shortly.

  We wound our way down from the ridge and for the rest of the day rode along the flat lands, skirting several villages and stopping only once to ask directions. At a crossroads we met a monk with his dog who told us he’d been travelling for six days looking for his bishop. All the brothers in the priory were dead, he’d buried them with his own hands. When God didn’t take him too, he gathered up his bowl and his dog and set out to find his bishop to ask what he should do.

  ‘I wrote down the names,’ he said plaintively. ‘It’s all recorded just as it should be. I prayed for guidance but there was no answer and nobody came.’

  We left him wandering down the road, complaining of the injustice of it all. By now I was losing track of time in a misery of hunger, cold and tiredness. It felt as if we had been riding north for ever.

  Sometime in the late afternoon we turned our horses off the road. As we plodded further and further into the deserted countryside I kept my head down, wondering what malign trick of fate had conjured me here into the middle of nowhere with a husband I barely knew who paid no heed to my comforts.

  I thought of William and how angry he had been and of Edward who, when he heard, would be incandescent with rage. He had warned me of the dangers of being shackled to Thomas Holand and I had chosen to ignore him. As darkness fell, I thought of my royal cousin who would never again acknowledge me. He would instruct his clerks to erase my name from every register. There would be no more invitations to Windsor or to his private palaces for the festivities; there would be no royal gifts of costly furs, no jewels, no fond kisses and never again would he pull me onto his knee and call me his little Jeanette. I would be dead to him.

  ‘We’ll stop here for the night.’ Thomas’s voice broke into my indulgence of self-pity.

  I sniffed and looked up. Even with the moonlight casting a ghostly whiteness over everything, I could see no house.

  Here turned out to be a cave cut deep into the rock, half-hidden by a tangle of overgrown ivy and sheltered by the trees. It was large enough for the horses to be stabled at the entrance and for us to sleep at the back.

  After the usual meagre meal, I lay
down next to the rocky wall, shivering in my cloak. I curled up as tightly as I could but my teeth were still chattering and I couldn’t feel my toes.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Thomas whispered into the darkness.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking miserably of roaring fires and warm spiced wine and wondering who was making merry in my solar at Bisham now I was no longer there.

  Thomas crawled over and moved behind me, covering us both with his cloak. His arm came round my shoulder and in the darkness he gathered me tightly against him. We lay like small children tucked into a cradle with me barely daring to breathe at his unaccustomed closeness. I felt the warm roughness of his face against my hair and the touch of his hands on my waist but he didn’t kiss me or whisper any words of love. He behaved like an old man with a five-year-old granddaughter.

  Reluctantly I felt myself drift off to sleep in the warmth of his arms and when I awoke he was gone.

  It must have been the third evening when we stopped at the deserted ale house. It stood on its own in a clearing by the side of what must once have been a well-used track. It looked as if no-one had passed this way for weeks.

  Thomas was careful and made us wait in the trees while he and one of the others went to see if it was safe.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ I whispered to Otho.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The pestilence. Dying in the night.’

  ‘It would be a foolish man who was not but men are well used to fear. And I have these.’

  He delved into his pouch and produced a small packet. Inside were four grey pills.

  ‘Stag’s horn,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I bought them from an apothecary in Lincoln. Swore it was better than bishop’s piss for the plague. Promised me my money back if it didn’t work.’

  ‘Has my husband got some?’

  Otho laughed. ‘Thomas is not a believer in remedies for which you have to pay hard coin any more than he is a man who depends on the parings of a saint’s toenails to save his life in battle.’