Squire Throwleigh's Heir

by Michael Jecks

  It was also why he wore his new riding sword. He wanted to have the symbol of his Order with him at his marriage: perhaps for sentimental reasons, perhaps because he felt the need to affirm his comrades at such an important ceremony. He was no philosopher, and did not seek to understand his own motives, but was happy that the new sword weighed heavily at his hip with the little carved Templar cross nearest his person.

  He had friends within the Church, it was true, men such as Peter Clifford, the Dean of Crediton Church, but for Baldwin, a knight who had taken the three-fold oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience, a system that was led by the Pope, a man who had cynically discarded the Templars purely for his own profit, was itself corrupt.

  Still, he reflected, approaching the grey block of the old church on the hill, at least today it wouldn’t be that damned fool Alfred, the priest who usually held the services at Cadbury; Peter Clifford himself had agreed to officiate.

  ‘Come on, Baldwin, stop dawdling!’ Simon chuckled and led the way up the last few hundred yards to St Michael’s Church.

  Here the crowd was thicker, with many friends from Crediton where Baldwin was the Keeper of the King’s Peace. The gravedigger was shamefacedly trying to conceal his spade behind him, thinking it looked out of place today. Mingled among the crowd were others: squires, knights and a banneret. Even the local Coroner had made the journey from Exeter. Their horses stood at the edge of the churchyard, held by grooms while their riders mingled and chattered, waiting for Baldwin and his bride. Near the entrance were parked Baldwin’s own wagons, filled with barrels of his latest brew of ale, and his servants and guests were all making free of it.

  For once the abstemious knight felt jealous of drinkers.

  Lady Katharine was in her hall. Outside the sun was high in the sky and it illuminated the room with long shafts of light in which dust-motes and insects danced. Occasionally a swallow entered and circled above, then darted out through the window again.

  If this was a normal time, she would be outside, sitting in her small garden, listening to the birds singing, while sewing or working with Daniel to ensure the manor produced a profit. If her husband were still alive, she might go hunting with him, her falcon on her wrist.

  But this was not a normal time. Her man was dead, and so was her son.

  She could remember when she first met her husband. It was seven years ago now, when the King had been in St Albans, and Katharine’s father, a knight banneret, had been in attendance.

  It had been wretched. Famine was striking all in the kingdom, for rain had killed off much of the harvest, and what remained had to be dried in great ovens before it could be used for anything. Although the King tried to control prices by issuing Ordinances which regulated the cost of all foodstuffs, these only strengthened the black market. Floods were widespread, and Katharine could remember the despair of farmers who couldn’t sow their crops. In St Albans there was no bread to be had, not even for the King himself.

  And in the midst of this gloom, she had been the target of every fool in parti-coloured hose. Youths so callow she had no wish to give them a second glance, had circled about her like dogs around a bitch. Some tried to amuse her with jokes; she ignored them. Others flattered her and tried to tempt her with gifts; she rejected them. But her success in ridding herself of these popinjays only led to others trying to attract her with lewd words; one even suggested she should let him visit her in her room. Him she had stared at coldly, and left.

  All the time she was pestered by these fools, Squire Roger had avoided her gaze. She had looked to him often, where he stood at the other side of the room, hoping that he might recognise her plight and come to rescue her, but he had nobly smiled and moved on. Only later did she realise that he had thought her content with men of her own age. Yet she had not desired them. She only ever wanted a strong husband, a real man. Someone like him.

  And it had been a real delight, a wonderful, ecstatic recognition, when she had seen the love in his eyes. She had thought him cold, but that was a mask to conceal his true feelings. When she confessed how she felt, she found him as passionate as herself, and that same day she and he had become handfast, engaged to be married.

  Her father had not been over the moon about it. He’d been hoping for a good local marriage to strengthen his lands, but he was too kindly a man to ignore the obvious adoration that Squire Roger felt for his daughter, and which was so clearly reciprocated. And, he might well have reflected, there could be advantage in being allied to the squire of Sir Reginald of Hatherleigh.

  But their time together had been too short, Katharine thought as the breath caught in her throat and she felt another bout of sobbing threaten her composure. And now their only child was gone as well.

  Her husband had fallen from his horse, and it must have been God’s will that he should have died there and then, but Katharine couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that Edmund had contributed to his end.

  A murdered man might be gathered up to God because He had ordained the fellow should die, but his killer should still be punished. That was why she had a personal determination to see Edmund pay, forcing him to revert to servile status. He had angered Squire Roger and possibly increased the heat of his blood, making him burst his heart.

  She clenched a fist and pounded the arm of her seat: Edmund would suffer for taking her husband from her!

  Baldwin took a deep breath and strode on, glancing neither to right nor left as he went up to the door where Peter Clifford stood waiting.

  ‘Sir Baldwin, good morning! The sun has favoured you on this happy day; God must be smiling on you.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it from the look of the weather yesterday. I was convinced we would get washed out,’ Baldwin admitted gruffly, his eyes darting hither and thither as he sought out his wife-to-be. ‘There’s still time,’ he added gloomily, glancing up at the thin, white clouds hanging peacefully in the almost clear sky.

  Peter laughed and continued chatting inconsequentially. He had conducted many such ceremonies, and knew the torment Baldwin was going through, if only at second-hand. In his experience, grooms were always nervous and stiff until after the formal service. Baldwin was true to form.

  The knight was pale and, although Peter would never have said so, he was sure that Sir Baldwin was viewing the ceremony with the utmost trepidation. No matter, Peter thought to himself: once the food and wine began to flow, the most terrified groom always recovered.

  They were still waiting in the porch when Simon heard a murmur in the crowd, and he walked to the churchyard gate. There he found his wife standing in attendance to another woman.

  ‘Jeanne, you look wonderful,’ he said simply.

  Looking about her, Anney thought that Lady Katharine’s hall had the atmosphere of a prison. It was a place of doom and misery. There was nothing in it to lighten the spirit. If she could, she would have left long ago, but that was impossible, even though it contained almost every painful memory of her life: not only the trial of her man, but the inquest of her son. The husband she had sworn to cleave to had been accused here, in this very room, by his true brother-in-law, the brother of his first wife, the man who had come to expose his bigamy.

  There was no doubt of the validity of the charge. He had no choice but to confess, and although he protested that his first wife had trapped him, that he had never wanted to wed her, he had been forced from Throwleigh. Anney had been left alone with her children who, she learned, were legally bastards. She was ruined. No matter that she had given her vows in good faith; the men of the vill regarded her as tainted, and as they made clear to her from that day on, she should be grateful for any attention they might choose to offer.

  It had been hard. She had been abused by everyone. The women ignored her, or joked at her expense; the men were worse. A woman needed a protector. Without one, whether father or husband, grown-up son or brother, there was no security, no safety.

  This was brought home forcibly the first time she was r
aped on her way back from the hall. The man responsible was drunk and had seen her approach. She’d known him all her life - that was what really offended Anney more than anything, the fact that he was as old as her father before he died. The fellow had made advances and thrust her into the hedge before lifting her skirts and…

  It wasn’t the only time, either. The men of the village looked on her as fair game. She had given herself to a bigamist, so she was contaminated - a mere common stale. After a few weeks, Anney had taken to carrying her dagger as she walked, and that afforded her some little protection; once she wounded a man trying to molest her.

  And then, when her little boy Tom, Alan’s younger brother, died in that futile, stupid manner, the light had blown out from her life, like a rushlight caught in a gusting breeze. Once more she had been brought in here to this damned hall, to receive the terrible news, and when the Coroner arrived two days later, it was in here that he came, to undress the little body of her Tom.

  At first she had felt quite calm as they removed his clothes, which were still damp from when he drowned, but when the Coroner had pulled his arms and legs apart before the greedy gaze of the audience, all of the jury staring with rapacious eyes, she had felt her control slipping. Was it just that they were hungry to see another’s death because that made their own somehow less fearsome to contemplate? She didn’t care; she had loathed them all from that moment.

  That was why she had carried on working at the manor. She couldn’t face labouring in the fields with the other villagers after seeing their hideous excitement as the Coroner turned her boy’s body over, showing them in turn the back, the head, the neck, the arms, the legs, his belly, and his strangely sad little shrivelled penis. She could never work alongside those who had enjoyed her son’s humiliation, even after his death.

  This room would always be loathsome to her. Hateful. The officers were different, but the hall’s atmosphere was unchanged. She despised it and everyone in it.

  Especially the hypocrite - the priest who was supposed to be above worldly things, and who was no better than any of the other men in the village: he was a degenerate.

  Hadn’t she seen the proof?

  Chapter Eight

  Lady Jeanne de Liddinstone smiled at the bailiff and gave him a low curtsey. She was dressed in the gown of bright red velvet that Baldwin had bought for her at Tavistock Fair, but now it was trimmed with grey fur, and she wore a narrow girdle of red with a harness of silver. A linen wimple covered her red-gold hair, and the white of the head-gear made her cornflower-blue eyes stand out still more brightly in comparison.

  Simon opened the gate for her, and she and his wife entered, Jeanne walking at his side, his wife Margaret following a couple of steps behind, leaving the place of honour to the bride.

  ‘How is he?’ Jeanne whispered.

  ‘As twitchy as a deer at bay!’ Simon whispered back, and was rewarded by her throaty chuckle. He continued, ‘I doubt he’ll be able to remember the words. He won’t be happy until he’s out of here and back at his manor.’

  As he spoke, the enthusiastic chatter all around them died away, to be replaced by a contemplative quietness. Baldwin’s workers eyed the bride-to-be speculatively, wondering how far they might dare to try the patience of their new lady without causing her to lose her temper. The wealthier women in the crowd compared her cloth with their own, assessing the value of her tunic, rings and necklace, while their menfolk watched her movements lasciviously, gauging the line of her figure and nudging each other as they exchanged lecherous comments on her ability to tire her new husband during the coming night.

  ‘My Lady?’ Simon asked, holding out his arm. Lady Jeanne had asked him to act as her nuptial father, giving her away at the wedding, for she was orphaned, and her only living relatives dwelt in the English possessions in Bordeaux. She slipped her hand through his elbow, and together they walked slowly to the waiting knight.

  Peter Clifford smiled broadly, straightening his back as the two came near. Baldwin, he saw, had gone quite pale, but the priest wasn’t worried: he knew most grooms looked close to fainting. And that was only right, because they were about to take part in one of the most important ceremonies of their lives.

  When Jeanne reached Baldwin’s side, her hand still through Simon’s arm, the priest made the sign of the cross, scowled at one merchant who chose that moment to give a loud guffaw, and called out in a carrying voice: ‘We are here to witness the marriage of Sir Baldwin de Furnshill to Lady Jeanne de Liddinstone. Is there anybody here who knows any reason why these two might not be legitimately wedded in the eyes of God?’ He paused, his gaze sternly flitting over the people gathered all about before resting on Baldwin. ‘Sir Baldwin, please make your oath.’

  Baldwin swallowed. On a sudden his mouth felt dry, and there was a flickering in his belly which, matched with his lightheadedness, made him feel disorientated, nearly sick. Licking his lips, he faced Jeanne. Touching the cross of the hilt of his sheathed sword with his left hand, and taking Jeanne’s hand in his right, he repeated the words he had heard so often before. ‘My Lady, let all those present witness that I here take you as my wife, for better or worse, in health and sickness, to have and to hold from now until the end of my life, and there I give you my oath.’

  She smiled as he spoke, and he saw the sunlight dance in her eyes as she made her own vow to him.

  There was a stillness as Jeanne confirmed her dower, her whole estate of Liddinstone. The silence continued while Baldwin handed Peter Clifford a purse of coins for the poor. Peter took the ring from Simon and blessed it, before passing it to Baldwin. The knight lifted Jeanne’s right hand and slipped the ring over her index, middle and third fingers, while Peter solemnly intoned, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ before he finally set it on the third finger of her left hand.

  And then suddenly all was bustle. While the ceremony at the church’s door would always remain crystal clear in Baldwin’s mind, the rest of the day went by in a whirl. While he stood, smiling proudly at his wife, a garland of fresh flowers was thrust between them, and Baldwin was prompted by the priest to kiss his wife through it, seeing her through the mixed yellow and red flowers as if for the first time. A moment before his lips met hers, he saw her eyes close.

  He marvelled at his good fortune; it took an effort of will not to laugh with sheer joy.

  Thomas could hear the sobbing in the hall even as he left the stables, and he screwed up his face in disgust. Rather than enter the scene of such melancholy, he took a seat near the gate on a lump of moorstone and surveyed the view with satisfaction. At last his financial embarrassments were coming to an end.

  It was the famine which had started his decline, but knowing that was no comfort. So many had left the city then, back in 1315 and during the following two years, and Thomas had speculated happily, sure that his fortunes would build nicely once the food began to flow again, but all at once he discovered that he had accumulated too much property, and couldn’t cover his debts with ready cash.

  There hadn’t been any great concern at first, because Thomas had loads of friends in the city, and knew he could rely on them to help him. He’d met some at a tavern one night, and had confessed to a slight difficulty, nothing more. Thomas knew he wasn’t stupid, and could remember most of that night quite distinctly - even though one of his mates had insisted on mixing him several drinks, which must have been strong, for Thomas’s head the next day was God-awful - but still, Thomas knew he was far too shrewd and cautious to have made any stupid comments in a place like an inn near the docks.

  And yet the curious thing was, that was the last time he had been able to discuss his troubles with those friends. Someone else must have been listening while he spoke, Thomas thought. That was why his credit with suppliers had been frozen.

  But now all was well; and all because his brother had fallen dead from his horse and his nephew had died.

  When you looked at it, life was quite a joke rea
lly, he thought, and now, while he was facing away from the hall and was quite alone, he allowed himself to smile broadly at last.

  There was no need to conceal his very real joy.

  Peter bellowed for quiet as the guests cheered, rowdier elements calling out crude suggestions to help Baldwin and his wife during the coming night. The priest offered up prayers for them, giving them blessings in God’s name. He led them into the church and, while they knelt in the nave, he gave more prayers in their favour, and then handed them each a small, lighted candle before celebrating Mass with them.

  Unseen as the knight and his lady had entered the church, two men at the back of the crowd had glanced at each other meaningfully. While the press outside thinned, all joining the bride and groom in the church, these two strolled unhurriedly to the wagons.

  Edgar, man-at-arms to Sir Baldwin, and more recently the knight’s bottler and steward, a tall, straight man, serious by nature and assured of his own importance, went straight to the largest wagon, on which two great casks were set. He rummaged under its seat until he found a small sack which he opened. Inside were two drinking pots, which he passed to his accomplice, Simon’s servant Hugh.