Pilgrims

by Matthew Kneale

  So we put poor Edward in the ground and, instead of being full of cheer that Christmas, our home was a place of silence and mourning. Afterwards we wondered every day if Father and Hugo had heard our terrible news and if they’d come home, which we dearly hoped they would because it was hard to bear our sorrow alone. They had the right, their forty days being long finished, and that’s what they chose so it turned out. The first I knew of it was when I heard a clatter of hooves in the bailey and, looking down from my chamber window, I saw it was the men Father and Hugo had ridden out with. There was quite a little crowd of them and my eyes roved back and forth but I couldn’t see either Father or my brother. I watched as my mother walked out to greet them and I swear it was as if I knew what would happen before it did. She talked to Arnold de Thurlby just for a moment, then she took a step back and started toppling over so two of the thralls jumped forward to catch her. I ran down the stairs too shocked for tears, and the same thought went through my head over and again like the fiend’s rhyming. It’s Father, I thought. It’s Father, it’s Father. And it was done by those devil Welshmen pretending themselves trees.

  But I was wrong both times. It was the two of them and not from fighting but from lunch. It hadn’t even been in Wales but at a Chester inn. They’d gone there to meet a cousin of ours who lived in the city, and while the rest of the party, being tired from the ride, had gone up to rest in their rooms, my poor father, feeling he deserved something tasty after all the muck he’d eaten while soldiering, had ordered a big platter of fish with sauce. They’d thought it very fine, so we were told by father’s old war friend Arnold de Thurlby, and ate down every morsel, but soon the three of them were spewing and squirting in the latrine. At first everybody laughed at their being caught out by their greed for fish but then their sickness wouldn’t stop, they couldn’t keep even a drop of water down, till they were shivering and feverish and their skin turned wrinkled. My little brother Hugo was the first to go, then the cousin and finally my father. ‘I beat the cook black and blue with my own hands,’ Arnold de Thurlby told us, ‘and the landlord, too.’ As if that was any comfort.

  So one bad fish changed our lives forever. With tears on my cheeks I found I was heiress for a second time. As if I hadn’t lost enough dear ones already, now I lost Eleanor too, as, her betrothed being dead, she had to go back to her family. She wept as she said her farewells, telling me how she hated to leave me at such a moment as this. In a strange way the one thing that helped me during those black days was that my mother was worse even than me. She was like one who’s so bruised that any slight touch is agony, and she’d get into wrangles with the thralls or with me over the tiniest thing, and especially anything that was spoiled or gone. She’d find a spot of grease on her shoe, or a chip in a chair leg that had probably been there for years, or she’d lose a cheap ribbon or a favourite plate, and she’d be railing and demanding to know whose fault it was. And then, as quick as it had come, her rage would leave her and she’d start sobbing. Seeing her so broken let me keep my own grief at arm’s length. I wished I could have stayed with her longer but, being still only nineteen years of age, I was made a ward of Earl Henry, to whom Father had been in fealty. He’d been warring in Wales like all the rest of them but when he came home I was sent to him in London, with my maidservant Brigit at my side. London was a place I’d always dreamed of seeing but now, in my sorrow, I hardly cared for its noise and crowds. Not that I was there for long. After only a few weeks Earl Henry offered my marriage rights to sell.

  ‘Dear God,’ I prayed, ‘I know I haven’t been as righteous as I should have. I know I choked Geoffrey to his death, though it was only by accident. I beg you please give me a good and lovesome new husband.’ But there must have been too much clamour from other prayers that day, as God didn’t hear. The one who won the bid was Walter de Kingerby. He was from Lincolnshire like me but from the north and I’d never met him nor heard much about him. Earl Henry did his best to make him seem worthy. ‘He’s a handsome fellow, no question,’ he told me. ‘And brave.’ He’d ridden against the Welsh with all the rest, Henry said. But the moment I set eyes on Walter as we knelt side by side, praying at mass, I guessed the truth. Though he showed me every courtesy, praising my fine manners and my seemliness and telling me how joyed he was that we were to be wed, his eyes had a way of flicking aside and never quite looking at me. Brigit, who loved to make up nicknames for people, called him the Twitcher.

  I soon learned why he wanted me and it wasn’t for my fair face or my good name or my fine manners. He wanted my fortune, which he had the moment we were wed. He needed it, having only three manors of his own, and he’d borrowed from his cousins to win the bid for me, so Brigit heard from his thralls. He couldn’t wait to move into Bourne Castle, as his own manor house, where we only stayed a few days while he had his scant movables packed up, was a poor sort of place, poky and damp, with rot on the west side by the moat. I’d looked forward to going home to Bourne but when we got there I wished we’d stayed at his place, for all its funguses. My dear Eleanor was gone, my mother was gone, moved to a manor that was part of her dower, taking Father Tim and all our servitors, and Earl Henry had sold off the wards, so the only familiar face left there was my Brigit. It felt sad seeing rooms and views that I knew so well but feeling like I was a stranger. Nor was it helped by Walter. Though he’d been hungry as could be to live in Bourne Castle he was forever belittling it, complaining that the moat was too shallow or the hall fireplace didn’t draw properly, or wondering what fool had added another floor to the west tower, though he knew full well it had been my father. I could see what was really in his mind. He couldn’t bear the fact that my kin were nobler than his and wanted to beat me down till I felt I was beneath him.

  And of course he wanted an heir and without delay. He had no trouble managing what Geoffrey never had, and from our wedding night onwards he’d visit my bedchamber morning, noon and night, but he did it with so little sweetness that I soon dreaded the sound of his tread on the stairs, and I quite wished I’d had Geoffrey back. He soon knew my time and when he saw from the moon that it was come he’d ask me, ‘So, Lucy? D’you have any news for me?’ But I never did, more was the pity, and that was what brought out the brute in him like nothing else. The second time I had my bleed he cried out, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ like I’d done it purposefully. The third time he put his hand to my face and when Brigit shrieked he looked like he might give her a turn, too.

  ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ Brigit said afterwards when we sat sobbing together. Which was true, or so I thought then. So I made do with prayer. ‘Please God,’ I’d beg, ‘make me with child so my grub of a husband will leave me be.’ Or I’d pray, ‘Please, dear God, please start a new war and send Walter, and have him struck through with arrows by the Saracens or Welshmen or Mongols or whoever it is that he’s fighting, and be sure you give him a slow and painful end.’

  But the clamour of other prayers must have been too loud as, like before, God didn’t hear. How I stood that life for so long seems a mystery to me now, but for almost two years I stomached his curses and his swiving and his slaps. I might have put up with it all for another two years if it hadn’t been for my Pepin. He was a little terrier who’d belonged to Walter’s bailiff who’d died of fever not long before, and he belonged to nobody and everybody till I began feeding him and he became mine. He hated Walter to his bones and would growl whenever he came near, and Walter hated him. One day when I’d had my bleed again and Walter started slapping me, Pepin, being a loyal, fearless creature, jumped up and sank his teeth into Walter’s leg. Walter let out a howl and pulled him off, though he took a biteful of calf with him, and then he dashed his head against the wall so hard that that was the end of the poor little animal.

  After that I knew what I must do and I didn’t care how much sin or shame to my family name it brought. Good Brigit was in accord with me. ‘If he could do that to your poor whelp,’ she said, ‘then who knows what he mig
ht do to you?’ There was not much I could do all alone, I knew, and the only one I could think of who might give help was my Uncle Marmaduke who’d always been friendly to me when I was growing up. He lived not far away so Brigit feigned a story of needing to go to Lincoln to see a sick brother and paid him a visit. His first answer, which Brigit told me on her return, was that I should bide my time as God might bless us with a child yet, and that would make Walter kindlier towards me, but I was long past waiting. Then I remembered Marmaduke had a softness for dogs and how, when I’d been young, he was always telling me about his pack of hunters and which of them had just pupped or liked to have his belly stroked. So I sent Brigit back to tell him about poor Pepin. That was the right road, it turned out, and Brigit said that Marmaduke was so furious that he could hardly speak.

  In a few days it was arranged. Late one evening, when Walter was away visiting one of his manors and the household was fast asleep, Brigit and I took all the goods that I held dearest and, load after load, we sneaked them out through the postern gate to a nearby barn. Marmaduke was true to his word and at first light the next morning he was waiting there with horses for us, and half a dozen thralls who were already loading up a cart. So I kept my rings and my jewels, my best cups and napkins, a new hood and all my best gowns and sheets, and though I had to leave behind my bed and two chairs that I was fond of, they seemed cheap payment.

  I knew leaving Walter would be like punching the devil in the nose, and I expected him to come at us with every man he had. Marmaduke set his serfs watching day and night like they were his own little army, but that wasn’t Walter’s way so I found out. No, his answer was slower and colder. He liked to squeeze your last breath from you with laws. Worse, he started not with me but with Marmaduke and Aunt Juliana. As well as charging them with abduction and seizing my goods – which he wanted back of course, having so few himself – he sued them both with a writ of ravishment. Seizing was one thing but if they were found guilty of ravishment then that would be jail or hanging. When Marmaduke heard, he said he’d challenge Walter to a combat, which was wild folly as he was far too old, and happily Aunt Juliana talked him out of it. She’d hardly look at me and I can’t say I blamed her. How wrong I felt for bringing danger to the very ones who’d saved me.

  All in all it was as well I had somewhere else to go. Because only a few weeks after I fled Walter my twenty-first birthday came, so I was finally of age and could sue Geoffrey’s mother for my dower. She fought me, as I’d known she would, but the case was clear enough and before long I was a lady of fortune. Together with my marriage gift I had fourteen manors to my name, which was more even than Walter had robbed from my family heritance. The best manor house was at Ropsley and, though it was no castle, it had strong stone walls and a moat. It had last been lived in by Geoffrey’s grandmother, who’d died only a few years earlier, and was in good repair. I wasted no time and moved from Uncle Marmaduke’s and made it my home. I had my goods brought and I purchased kitchen gear and hangings and carpets for the floors. My mother, who lived not far away at Ancaster, gave me two of our old thralls whom she said she could spare. One was Alwyn, who’d been Father’s footman and whom I made my steward, and the other was Jack, who’d done small work about the house, including in the kitchen, so I tried him as cook and not a bad cook he made.

  Mother said I also might have Father Tim if he was willing, which he was, saying he’d be joyed to his heart. I was joyed to my heart to have him, in part because he was a dear old friend and in part because I’d far rather shrive my sins quietly to one whom I knew and trusted than say them aloud in church for every reeking delver behind the screen to hear. As the manor house had no chapel I had one made from the storeroom next to the hall, and though it was small it had an altar and benches and a pretty statue of Jesus on the cross, while it was all rightfully blessed. With two more thralls from my manors I had a full household. I started attending my lordly duties, visiting my tenants and making sure they paid their dues, and getting the bondsmen on my manors to pay their rents and debts and fines, which I found I had a talent for. I saw through their guiles so well that I made my land pay better than Geoffrey’s mother ever had, so I heard.

  All the while I was at war with Walter, and our battlefields were the courts of Lincoln City, church and royal. I launched my first foray by going to the dean and chapter of Lincoln and suing for divorce on grounds of consanguinity. I had a case as Walter and I were cousins, so I’d been told by Earl Henry when he sold me to him, and which was no great surprise seeing as most of the gentle folk of Lincolnshire were cousins to some degree. Nobody was sure if we were close enough to make it incest, which must be four times removed or less, but if I could win round the court then my marriage would be annulled clean, and I’d get back all my lands without any more squabbling. For good measure I also sued that I shouldn’t be forced to return to Walter’s bed because of his violence. But he was cunning. When I next went to Lincoln, bringing my uncle as a witness to my incest, we both had to flee as Walter had set the sheriff to arrest us. So I had another cause on my hands, petitioning the king to rescind his order to the sheriff, which I did on the grounds that it was delaying my suit and it was putting my soul in danger, as I might die in sin. Though I won, that set me back a few months. Then, though, I had good fortune. Walter lost his suit against my uncle and aunt, which made me laugh, because he might have won if he had only been more temperate. The justices ruled against him because he’d accused my aunt as well as my uncle and they said no female could ravish another female.

  After that I made my peace with Aunt Juliana, which was a joy to me. And I had a triumph of my own, as the church court ruled that because of Walter’s violence I needn’t return to him, which was a great respite. Then I heard Walter had appealed over the church court in Lincoln to stop me getting my divorce, and he’d sent a plea direct to Rome. I answered with a new suit of my own, for money for my living, which he should have been giving me, and when he didn’t pay I sued for him to be excommunicated, which the court agreed. After that I hungered each day for news to come that he’d drowned in a river or been kicked dead by his horse and, being cast out of the church, he was gone straight to hell, but it never came, and it wasn’t long before he wriggled his way back into the church’s communion.

  Law wasn’t the only way he assailed me. Once when I was riding back from Lincoln and yet another day in court, I’d just reached the way that led up to the manor house when I noticed something white hanging from a tree. It was a sheep tied by its back legs, its throat freshly cut and dripping red onto the ground below. The bailiff said it was from our little flock that we kept on the hill above the house. I had the steward Alwyn ask every delver in the village if they’d seen strangers but none had. After that I brought two more thralls into my household, not because they were needed but so I felt safer. When I went to court at Lincoln I’d always take Alwyn along with me, and Jack the cook, who was a big strong fellow, and three others, and I never went out alone even for a stroll round the moat.

  I’m not asking for pity as it might’ve been a good deal worse for me, as I soon learned myself. One day I was riding over Gate Bridge at Lincoln, on my way to court once again, when I saw a woman walking the other way whose face I knew, and it was dear Eleanor, with whom I’d played Lancelot and Guinevere all those years ago. What with Walter and everything else that had happened I hadn’t seen her since she’d left us, and I hardly recognized her as, though she was younger than me, I swear she looked seven years older. She told me her tale, which wasn’t a happy one. Like me she’d been an heiress and though her heritance wasn’t very much, being only two manors, still it had been enough to bruise her life. After she left us and went back to her family she was walking in an orchard close by the house when four men jumped out from behind the wall and seized her. So she fell into the hands of one of the worst malefactors in the county, Albin of Snarford, who took poor Eleanor to a pond and dunked her head under the water so she thought she’d d
rown, till she finally spoke up and agreed to wed his son, which was done before witnesses. Eleanor’s father went to the king’s court and with time he won her back but by then she was already with child, a little boy who was frisking about beside her on the bridge. It was no wonder she looked older. ‘My father’s looking for a new husband for me,’ she said. ‘I just hope he finds a good man.’

  Her story made me more anguished than before and that was what sent my days on their next turn. My uncle and aunt, being warmer towards me again, now that they weren’t feared of finding themselves in jail, bid me come to their oldest boy’s wedding, and that was where I met Everard de Lessingstone. I knew him, as his father had been a tenant of my father’s and Everard had been Father’s ward for a time, just before my father died, though he’d changed since then and was now grown into a tall, strong, handsome fellow. He’d heard all about my leaving Walter but didn’t cast blame onto me, like some did, but was very tender, and said he’d always thought Walter a foul brute. When I told him about poor Pepin and the dead sheep, and that I was anguished even to leave the manor house, he gave me a look that was full of care. ‘Let me come and guard you,’ he said. ‘It would be an honour to watch over such a seemly and noble lady.’ He’d ask for nothing but bed and board, he said. ‘I’ll be your very own mercenary, paid with lunch and dinner,’ he said, which made me laugh. So I gave my assent.

  Uncle Marmaduke said I was being very foolish. Everard was a second son with no fortune to his name, he said, so all he was thinking of was getting mine, while the last thing I should do now, when I was battling Walter in every courtroom of Lincoln City, was to become sinfully and adulterously entangled with another. ‘Everard knows he can’t have my fortune,’ I answered him, ‘as I’m still married to Walter.’ As for the rest, Everard was to guard me and nothing else. Or so I thought. But then when Everard was in my home, strutting about with his sword, looking grave as he hurried to keep watch from the battlements, or marched off to tour the grounds, it was hard not to wonder. One evening we stayed up late, just the two of us, drinking ale and then mead and then a bottle of malmsey wine that I’d been keeping, and Everard grew very hot about Walter, saying he was a wicked man who deserved to die. He’d go himself, he said, carefully so nobody saw, and he’d slay him. ‘I’ll be doing a favour to all Lincolnshire,’ he said, ‘as he’s loathed by all. It’ll be like killing a wolf.’ If Walter was gone there was no denying that my life would be a good deal sweeter. Not that I said Everard should do such a thing but I didn’t say he mustn’t. His fervour made me warm, which he saw, and when the last of the malmsey wine was drunk, without so much as a word, but just with looks, we’d reached an accord and we went up together to my bedchamber. We were there till dawn. Everard wasn’t a brute like Walter, nor too sudden like Geoffrey, and we had a very merry night of it, as busy as a pair of ferrets.