Squire Throwleigh's Heir

by Michael Jecks

  But the squire knew he wouldn’t be around for much longer. All he could do was try to ensure that his son was shielded from some of the most obvious dangers.

  At least his wife would be able to advise their boy, he reminded himself. Katharine was capable of protecting herself and Herbert. Thinking of her brought a smile to his face. To him, their marriage still seemed little short of a miracle. His sole regret was knowing that he must leave her alone to fend for herself and their son. The certainty of their separation, until they could meet again in Heaven, made his spirits fall whenever his thoughts turned that way.

  Reaching the vill, he forced himself to throw off his dejection. The church stood alone under the looming height of the hills, while the houses and cottages huddled below it as if seeking some warmth from each other, like a pack of hounds curling up together against the cold. Some of the places had drifts of smoke wisping from them, all magically swept away with each fresh gust of wind. The road was thick with mud and dung from horse and cattle, and the squire swore as a gobbet of green-brown cow’s muck splattered on his tunic. He brought his leg back down to his stirrup and spurred to a slow canter.

  The first of the houses he must visit was out at the northern edge, and he knew his way there only too well. He had been there often enough before.

  It was little more than a shack. The whitewash had worn away from the walls, exposing the cob to the elements, and the mud mixture had been washed off it in large runnels. Without a man, it was hard for her to keep the cottage maintained, Roger reflected. He could see the dilapidation all around. The thatch was thin, sunken, moss-covered and holed by nesting birds; the door was crooked, and dragged on the ground, scraping an arc in the dirt; one shutter was almost off its hinges. Anney, the serf who lived here, was fortunate in having work at the squire’s hall, for without it, since her man’s dereliction, she would be reliant solely on the generosity of her neighbours.

  ‘Alan,’ he bellowed as he stopped outside her door, ‘where are you, boy? Alan!’ There was no reply, and the squire scowled. ‘Where is the little devil?’

  The berner gave a quiet cough. ‘I think he’s in the fields, scaring the birds.’

  ‘Well, Berner, you go and find the bastard and give him four lashes from your whip, all right? We’ll go and see the other lad.’

  The squire jerked his horse’s head round and set off unwillingly to Edmund’s farm. He didn’t want to see Edmund; not now he’d told the fellow he was to be thrown off his land.

  Edmund was drunk. There was nothing new in that, but today he was less bitter in his cups than usual; today he was maudlin, more keen on bemoaning his fate than blaming others for it. His wife was relieved because it meant she was less likely to suffer a beating, but their problems weren’t going to go away. Edmund sat on his three-legged stool at the door, his pot in his hand, drinking slowly. There was much to consider, for Edmund was about to be evicted from his home and his lands. Another man had offered money for the tenancy of his little parcel of land, and Edmund couldn’t better the offer, not after the last few years.

  If he had been a philosopher, Edmund would have blamed fate, but as it was he had no doubt about who was responsible for this disaster: his lord, Squire Roger.

  Hearing yelping, he stared down the road in a lacklustre manner. Soon he realised it must be a large pack of hounds -and there was only one man in many miles who could have such a number of beasts for hunting. Suddenly Edmund’s mouth went dry: the squire must be coming already to throw him from the land!

  He stood, spilling ale, and gazed up the road with a quick fear, expecting to see an army of retainers, but a moment’s reflection made him calm down, and he shakily set his pot on the ground. It wasn’t the quarter day, that wasn’t for two more weeks, and Steward Daniel had promised he had until then to find the money. Still, as the noise came closer, he was convinced that this must be his squire. Braced with a new resolution, Edmund stepped forward until he was in the roadway. He would beg.

  He had no choice. There was no way he could find the extra money. He had nothing to sell, neither produce from his land nor goods he had made, and any money he had saved had already gone on essentials. The squire was a kindly man -Edmund’s father had often said so - so surely Squire Roger would look favourably on him, the son of his favourite man-at-arms?

  Licking his lips nervously, Edmund glanced longingly at his pot, but before he could fill it, Squire Roger cantered into view, his hounds at his horse’s hooves.

  ‘Where’s your boy, Edmund?’

  Edmund blinked. ‘Jordan? He’s off playing somewhere, I think - with Alan, I expect. Squire, may I speak to you? I have a favour to beg, and—’

  ‘Silence! Just tell me where he is,’ Roger snapped. ‘He was in my orchard this morning and I want him punished.’

  ‘I will see to it, sir, but first can I ask you about my tenancy?’

  ‘What?’ The squire cast him an irritable look. ‘You need to speak to Daniel about that.’

  ‘But he says I must go if I can’t pay, sir! Where can we go if you throw us off our land?’

  The squire looked meaningfully at the pot by the stool. ‘Perhaps if you worked harder, you’d earn enough to keep the place, Edmund. Why should I help a family of trespassers? If you can’t keep your damned son under control, don’t expect me to help you!’

  ‘But, sir, think of my father and the service he gave you!’ Edmund had dropped to his knees, and now he touched the squire’s stirrup. ‘Please, sir, give me a little longer to pay’

  Squire Roger glowered down at his tenant with contempt. ‘Get up, man! Your father wouldn’t have begged like a leper.’

  The squire was struck with a sudden anger. This feebleminded dolt was behaving like a fool, pleading while his son was no doubt laughing behind the squire’s back, knowing he could go and play in the orchard any time the squire’s own son gave him warning. Herbert was proved to be a liar; his berner was God knew where, seeking the other brat, so Squire Roger couldn’t go hunting as he wanted - and now this wretch was clinging to his stirrup like a lovesick woman stopping her lover from riding to war.

  ‘Get up, I said!’ Tension was gripping his whole chest now as his rage built. Around his heart he could feel the growing tightness.

  ‘Please, Squire.’

  ‘Let go of my foot, you bastard!’

  His whipper-in came forward and idly, with as little emotion as if he were flicking a fly away, brought the heavy stock of his whip down on Edmund’s head. The farmer collapsed, calling, ‘Squire, please!’

  A sharp pain suddenly exploded in the squire’s head, and there was a simultaneous bursting in his chest. He couldn’t breathe: his mouth opened once, twice, but he could make no sound. There was a chill sweat springing from his forehead, and he wanted to wipe it away, but his hand was numb, while his arm was full of shooting agony; pain stabbing up and down like raking thrusts from a heavy knife. Through the horror of his sudden paralysis, he saw Edmund fall back, a gash on his forehead welling thick blood. The squire wanted to tell the whipper-in to stop, even as he saw the stock rise a second time.

  For Edmund, lying stunned as the horses danced around, the sight of the weighted whip’s handle looked like the instrument of his death. A hoof caught his forehead a glancing blow, and he felt nausea rising, but before he lost consciousness, he saw Squire Roger.

  The squire had gone an ashen colour - the colour of a corpse. His eyes were walled and blank, his lips blue. As Edmund watched, the squire gave a short gasp, as of infinite suffering, and toppled slowly from the saddle.

  He was dead before his head struck the roadway.

  ‘He’s what?“ Thomas cried, and dropped his goblet. His brother, Squire Roger of Throwleigh – dead! Blood-red wine spread out in a puddle by his foot, while the gaudy gilt cup rolled off the dais and came to rest against the messenger’s foot.

  ‘Sir, Daniel the steward sent me to warn you. The funeral will be…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I hea
rd you the first time,’ Thomas broke in impatiently, his face serious, demonstrating the correct sadness on hearing of his sibling’s death. ‘It’s awful! Poor Roger, dying like that - the manor must be in a turmoil. Well, it’s plain I must go back. You’ll need wine and food: there’s plenty in my kitchen. See my cook and get yourself vittles. I shall speak to you again before you leave. Poor Roger!’

  He dismissed the man with a wave of his hand, and sat staring at the door for several minutes, hardly moving. ‘Dead!’ he exclaimed once, shaking his head, but then slapped his thigh and gave a low, wheezing laugh. ‘Dead!’

  Standing, he retrieved his goblet, filled it, and held it up in a silent toast. Drinking deeply, he smacked his lips, and laughed again. ‘Oh, and here’s to my brother’s poor grieving widow, dear little Katharine, lady of the hall - but not for much longer!’ Pausing, he bellowed, ‘Nick!’

  ‘Sir?’

  The voice of his steward came from the screens passage, and Thomas jerked his head. ‘Come in here!’

  Nicholas was a little older than his master. Short, with a leather jack stretched tightly over his broad shoulders and a face marked heavily with the pox, he looked more a man-at-arms than a bottler, which was the case. He had been a soldier for a period, until his master had taken him on as a servant, and ever since he had served Thomas loyally. He glanced at his master curiously from shrewd brown eyes.

  ‘Tomorrow we leave for my brother’s house in Dartmoor. Pack clothing and essentials for four weeks,’ Thomas instructed self-importantly.

  ‘Your brother’s? But I thought you and he hated each other,’ Nick said, his spirits falling. In his mind’s eye he could see the moors again - cold, bleak lands in which a man could die without anyone realising.

  ‘Ah, but my brother, the skinflint with the heart of frozen lead, has died, Nicholas. That means we may have a solution to our problems - for a nice, fat, juicy inheritance may well be flying our way. Now make haste and pack, and with any luck when we return it’ll be with my brother’s money in our purses.’

  Chapter Three

  Godfrey swore under his breath and let the point of his rebated sword drop an inch or two. ‘I said hold your hand here, at the belly.’

  His student, a sulky youth brought up in Italy, sneered at him: ‘It’s hardly an elegant posture, is it? My teacher in Venice told me to hold my arm out behind because it balances the body. It puts the attacker at a disadvantage, too, because he can’t see so much of the body to hit.’

  ‘Really? Show me, then. I’m not too old to learn.’

  Godfrey returned to the outside guard, his sword hand well out to his right, blade angled upwards, so that he was peering just under the middle of the blade at his opponent, while he held his left hand out flat, low before his belly. The young man, little more than a boy, smirked happily, danced on the balls of his feet for a moment or two to ease his calves, then sprang into his imitation of the outside guard, his arm held out behind him.

  It was a pose Godfrey had seen often enough with those who had stayed a while on the continent. There men preferred to look fashionable rather than fight effectively. Godfrey’s attitude was entirely pragmatic and English: if he was forced into a fight, he had one aim, and that was to win! If his left hand was dangling out behind his body, it might well give some benefit in terms of balance, but that advantage was outweighed by the fact that it left his whole left side unprotected. While he concentrated on the lad before him, Godfrey decided how to teach this simple lesson.

  There was a flash. Godfrey saw the attack not so much in the movement of the blade itself, but in the sudden narrowing of the lad’s eyes as he moved his sword arm, lunging forwards with his whole body. Godfrey gave an inward sigh as he saw his pupil shift foot, hand and body in one united movement, and brought his own blade down to block it easily. He made no other move, unsure whether the stabbing manoeuvre could be a part of a feint, but his attacker pulled back, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead, and Godfrey had to suppress a groan. He had hoped that there might be a second blow concealed beneath the obvious one.

  When the second stamp, lunge, stab came, Godfrey blocked the sword, then stepped quickly to his left, grabbing his opponent’s sword arm as he went. He put his foot on the boy’s forward boot and pulled. The lad was already off-balance, and this dragged him over. As he fell, Godfrey held his blade at his belly.

  ‘That’s not fair! You shouldn’t hold a man’s arm!’ the student spluttered angrily once he had managed to rise to a sitting position.

  Godfrey hauled him up by his shirt and held him close, staring into the suddenly scared face while the point of his blunted sword tickled the boy’s throat. ‘You think an outlaw could give a bollock about what’s fair or not?’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You reckon a drawlatch would think, “Oh, I mustn’t kick the poor master in the coddes because he’s got a sword, and it wouldn’t be fair”?’ He dropped the mincing tone he had adopted and shook his pupil with contempt. ‘If you want to stay alive, assume your enemy will be devious and unfair - and make sure you’re nastier than him. Now pick up your sword and try again.’

  They had three more bouts. In the second, Godfrey scornfully knocked the lad’s sword aside and grabbed his shirt, kicking away his legs and shoving him over. Next his student tried a half-decent left attack followed by a right slash that almost surprised Godfrey, but he blocked both, knocked the fellow’s arm and spun him around before drawing his sword along the length of his opponent’s back and kicking him down. Their last combat involved a short flurry of blades, a hit, then a second and a third, before Godfrey had come close enough to punch the boy, not too hard, on the jaw while his blade pressed unrelentingly on his belly.

  It was while he was wiping his face with his shirt that he heard the door shut, and turned to see his newest client standing in the doorway, a faint smile on his face as he perused the scene. On the floor before Godfrey, his student was gazing up with fury in his eyes while he felt his jaw, but Godfrey also saw the beginnings of respect. He kicked his opponent’s sword away before reaching down and helping him to his feet. ‘Right! You’ve tried your Venetian ways, and you’ll agree there’s merit in mine. Next week we’ll practise techniques which won’t look elegant, but which’ll save your life.’

  ‘Not next week, Godfrey.’

  The master of arms glanced at his client. He was leaning on the wall, a broad grin on his face.

  ‘No, next week you will come with me to a little manor out on the moors, where we will visit the house of an old friend of mine. A squire who has, very sadly, died. You will be my guard.’

  It was three days later that Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin Furnshill made their journey to the little village of Throwleigh. They had left the knight’s home in Cadbury early in the morning, and after taking two halts to rest their horses and take refreshment from their wineskins, they had not made particularly good time, but were at least reasonably fresh as they breasted a hill and could at last see Dartmoor ahead through the trees.

  For Simon, as they jogged slowly down the muddy, rutted track, it was a return to his new home. As one of the bailiffs to the Warden of the Stannaries he had been living at Lydford for five years now, riding out over the wild lands to settle arguments or arrest criminals. Seeing the bleak landscape ahead was almost welcome. At the sight of the awesome bulk of Cosdon Hill to their right, Simon felt his heart give a leap before their view was obliterated once more and the travellers had to duck beneath another spread of low beech branches.

  Baldwin couldn’t feel the same pleasure. To him the landscape of Dartmoor was barren, infertile. It was as if a race of giants had fought a pitched battle here and blasted the whole area until nothing remained, not even a tree. To him it felt threatening and unwholesome.

  It wasn’t only the moors, either. Even here, in the lush woodland immediately north there were very few people; wherever Baldwin saw evidence of habitation, it looked long deserted. Every so often he would notice a weed-strewn t
rack leading into the trees, proof of a long-disused assart, where someone had hacked down trees to build his cabin or to feed his fires. These woods had been cleared for coppices and farming; men had burned out the roots of old trees, gradually beating back the frontier of the woodland until enough bare soil existed to graze a cow. This was the way the land had been brought to heel over decades - but now the land had won.

  The assarts looked as if they had lain deserted for ages. Since the appalling famines of 1315 and 1316, many of the smaller farms and homesteads even this far west had been evacuated, and where men had once worked, burning and sawing, now the brambles and nettles had taken over. Wherever the trees allowed a sprinkle of sun to strike the ground, the ubiquitous foxglove had colonised and erased almost all evidence of man’s occupation.