‘Yes, all the Clapers were serfs, but that wasn’t the way we became free,’ she explained. ‘Robert, God bless his soul, married me, a Merland, who were unfree ever since William the Bastard conquered at Hastings.’
The aunt interrupted rather testily. ‘So was I, like all the Clapers, until Alan Revelle married me. He was a soldier and was freed for his service, so that made me free as well.’
‘Did he die, Aunt Emma?’ asked Gillota innocently, getting a lopsided scowl in return.
‘No, he went off to fight in the barons’ armies against King John. That was twenty years ago, and I’ve not heard a word of him since. Thank God I had this freeholding to live on, or I’d have starved.’
Matilda had waited patiently to finish her story. ‘Your nephew Robert came to Kentisbury, married me and worked both as a thatcher and in the fields, like all the villeins. My father was the manor reeve for many years, and he worked so well and was so popular that our lord, Matthew Lupus, freed him about three years ago.’
‘That wouldn’t have made Robert free – and you were his wife,’ objected Emma.
The younger woman nodded her agreement. ‘No, not then. We remained in serfdom and worked for the lord as usual. But when Robert died, I became unencumbered by a bonded husband and so, as the daughter of a free man, became free myself.’
Emma thought about this for a moment. ‘Can your lord testify to his freeing Robert?’
Tears sprang to Matilda’s eyes. ‘This is the problem! Matthew Lupus died last year, and his son Walter refuses to accept the situation. He denies that his father freed mine, and, especially since my father also died, he claims that I and my daughter remain in his servitude. He made us carry on in bondage as before, working for the manor and paying our boons the same as the other villeins.’
Emma poked the small logs in the ring of whitewashed stones with a rod held in her good hand. ‘Was there no document to prove the act of manumission?’ she asked.
Matilda shook her head sadly. ‘No one in the village apart from the priest can read or write. The king’s steward from Barnstaple comes with a clerk every quarter to record all the village payments and debts.’
‘But surely the village knew that your father had been freed?’ objected Emma.
‘When it came to the test, Walter Lupus denied it,’ said Matilda sadly. ‘How can you go against what your manor lord says?’
Gillota looked from her mother to her great-aunt as the dialogue swung from side to side. She was still anxious about being dragged back to Kentisbury, even though months had passed.
Emma was still raising objections to Matilda’s story. ‘But the manor steward and the bailiff would have known about the manumission of your father by this Matthew Lupus,’ she declared. ‘Could you not have appealed to them?’
Matilda shook her head. ‘The bailiff at that time left for a better post in Suffolk, and when his father died Walter got rid of the old steward and appointed another, younger man, Simon Mercator, who was always eager to do his bidding.’
‘The manor court, then!’ said the old lady. ‘Could you not have appealed to them?’
‘I did, even though the new reeve who replaced my father was reluctant to put my case forward. But when it came to the hearing, the new steward held the court, with Walter sitting alongside him. They dismissed my plea with contempt, saying it was a frivolous lie.’
Over the following months they had this conversation several times, but nothing could be resolved, and as they had now escaped it seemed pointless to keep reviving the issue.
The winter turned into spring, then summer, and the two refugees settled into the steady routine of life in Shebbear. With one exception, everyone accepted them, and they became part of the village community. The exception was Adam the carter, a freeman who made a living from his ox-cart, in which he carried goods and material all over North Devon.
Much of his trade was in transporting grain and wool from the King’s manors to Barnstaple and Bideford for shipment, but he would take anything anywhere for a few pennies. For some reason he took against Matilda from the start, scowling at them in the road and muttering under his breath. In the alehouse he would complain about these foreign interlopers coming to his village.
‘Escaped serfs, that’s all they are!’ he would whine. ‘Absconded from their master and pretending to be free!’
As the rest of Shebbear became quite fond of the pretty woman and her daughter, they took little notice of him, but he persisted in his dislike of the women. This feeling was mutual, as Adam was a scrawny, ugly fellow with a face like a weasel and a nature to match.
When there was additional work to be done in the fields, Matilda and her daughter pitched in with the rest, even though as free women they had no obligation to do so. Matilda also continued to gain her neighbours’ favour by dealing with sickness and childbirth, her knowledge of herbs being welcome, since the previous ‘wise woman’ had died of old age a year before.
She noticed that Gillota’s gift of unusual perception was increasing, and sometimes they would exchange a swift glance when something came into their minds simultaneously. On one occasion, after a heavy rainstorm, they both knew that something was badly amiss at the little footbridge over the stream. Both ran towards it and found that one of the village children had fallen into the swollen brook and was in danger of drowning. Having rescued him, they explained away their presence by saying that they happened to be passing, not to arouse any suspicions, but Matilda guessed that several villagers had a shrewd idea that they were ‘fey’.
Another example of their shared powers was in the matter of the little stone that lay on a shelf in Emma’s kitchen. At the back of the square room that occupied the whole cottage, there was a crude lean-to, entered through a gap in the rear wall. Here food was prepared on a table, and the task of dealing with the day’s milking was carried out, skimming some for cream in a wide earthenware dish. Emma’s few pots and pans sat on a plank shelf fixed to the wall, and as soon as Matilda entered for the first time she knew that something powerful was concealed there.
As she reached up, Gillota came in and their eyes met in complete understanding. ‘What is it, Mother?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘It’s strong and good, whatever it is!’
Alongside a pottery jug, Matilda’s finger found a hard, cool object, and she lifted it down carefully. Though it looked like a stone, it was too heavy and had a metallic feel. She held it out to Gillota. ‘I’ve never seen the like of this before.’
Her daughter took it almost reverently and laid it across her palm. It was the size of her hand and had four irregular arms.
‘It reminds me of a flying bird or a funny-shaped cross,’ she said wonderingly. ‘But I don’t think it’s meant to be anything other than itself.’
Her mother took it back and looked at it closely, turning it over in her hands. ‘It’s telling me that it came from far away, perhaps beyond the sky itself.’
‘It’s not just a strange stone; it has a life of its own,’ said Gillota, crossing herself. ‘Let’s ask Aunt Emma where it came from.’
Her great-aunt was dismissive of the stone. Both Matilda and her daughter were well aware that Emma had no trace of their gift.
‘My husband had it from somewhere,’ she muttered. ‘He said it had been in the Revelle family for years. No one knows what it is, but I kept it as a curiosity. You can have it, Matilda, if it takes your fancy.’
Matilda readily accepted it and kept it under her mattress to keep it near her, curious to learn what its properties might be. This was the second strange stone they had come across in Shebbear. Soon after they arrived, Matilda enquired casually about the large stone that she and Gillota had seen near the church and which had triggered some primitive fear in both their minds.
‘That’s the Devil’s Stone,’ she was informed. ‘He threw it there when he was turned out of heaven by St Michael.’
In November they joined the rest of the village in an ancient ritual, s
tanding around the stone well after dark in the light of a blazing bonfire, to watch some of the men turning the massive boulder over with stout poles, while the church bell clanged out a racket to frighten off Satan.
‘No one knows why we do it,’ admitted their neighbour. ‘But it’s always been done, to avoid bad luck for the coming year.’
After the turning, there was food and drink provided by the bailiff, a pleasant tradition that was repeated throughout the year, usually on saints’ days, when a holiday was declared and an ‘ale’ held in the churchyard. The weak beer brewed and drunk in large quantities got its name from these ‘ales’, when eating, drinking, dancing and flirting were conducted in equal measure.
Several men became interested in Matilda, a comely widow, but she was older than all the unmarried men and did not fancy the prospect of wedding an old widower. However, Gillota was a different matter and, at almost fifteen, was well into marriageable age. A number of the village youths showed their interest, though having managed to shrug off their serfdom Matilda was concerned that her daughter might fall for a villein again and lose her freedom.
In August harvest-time arrived, as the weather had been good this year, a welcome change for some recent bad summers. This was the culmination of the farming year, and everyone turned out to help bring in the wheat, barley and oats that together with the beans and root vegetables would hopefully see the village through the next winter.
Matilda and her daughter joined everyone else in the fields, following behind the men who reaped with scythes and sickles. They collected and bound the cut corn into sheaves and stooked them to dry. Older women came with wide wooden rakes to collect the fallen stems, even Emma managing to drag one behind her with her good hand. Children were put to gleaning, squatting to pick up fallen grains into bags tied around their waist, as every speck of food might mean the difference between starvation or survival by next February.
The strips belonging to the King’s manor were harvested first, then the rest of the corn was tackled, of which a tenth would go to the Church as tithes, as did a similar proportion of almost everything else that the villagers produced, be it eggs, ducks or lambs.
For three days they worked from first light until dark, the stooks cut on the first day now being dry, thanks to the good weather. As Matilda followed the reapers, Gillota gathering behind her, the ox-carts rumbled past, piled high with yellow sheaves, headed for the tithe barn and the barns at the manor barton, ready for winnowing the grain from the straw.
Both men and women sang as they worked, looking forward to noon, when they could rest for a few minutes and eat the bread and cheese or scraps of meat they had brought and replace their sweat with weak ale. Then they carried on until the sun was sinking, when eventually the reeve called a halt and the workers began streaming back to their homes to eat and then collapse on to their beds until dawn, when the whole exhausting routine would begin again.
But for Matilda and her daughter, daybreak would bring a very different scenario.
Just as the early summer dawn was breaking, Emma awoke and, using her good arm, levered herself up from the palliasse on the bracken-covered floor. She went to the fire-pit and blew on the embers under the white wood-ash, then added a few sticks, so that she could warm the iron pot of oat gruel that sat on a trivet.
She shook Matilda and Gillota awake and soon they were sleepily eating the gruel and some bread smeared with pork dripping that was their breakfast. They slept in their working clothes, calf-length shifts of coarse cloth, clinched at the waist with a rope girdle, so they were ready to be off as soon as they had washed down their food with some small ale.
But as they moved barefoot to the door, it suddenly flew open and Adam the carter burst in.
‘There they are, the runaway serfs!’ he shouted triumphantly and stood aside as two rough-looking men entered and advanced on the women. Behind them came another, dark-haired man, dressed in a short tunic, breeches and riding boots, of a quality that marked him as being from a higher station in life.
‘Walter Lupus!’ screamed Gillota and ran to hide behind her mother. Aghast, Matilda shielded her with her body, but one of the men dragged her aside and began snapping rusty iron fetters on the girl’s wrists, while the other did the same to Matilda.
Wriggling and shouting, she began protesting at the top of her voice. ‘Why can you not leave us in peace? We are free, don’t you understand?’
The lord of Kentisbury pushed his way further into the room. ‘Be quiet, woman!’ he shouted. ‘You are absconders, do you understand? You’re going back where you belong.’
The manacles were attached to long chains, and the two ruffians, whom Lupus had obviously brought from Kentisbury, began dragging the two women out of the door, with Emma stumbling behind them, shouting for help at the top of her damaged voice.
By the time the disorderly procession had reached the gate, neighbours were beginning to congregate in the road outside.
‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the man from next door. ‘Who are you and what are doing to those women?
For answer, one of the roughs pushed him in the chest, making him fall against the fence.
‘Mind your tongue, fellow!’ bellowed Walter. ‘Then mind your own business, for this is none of yours.’
There was a growl of anger from the small crowd, which was growing as more villagers congregated at the house.
‘Leave our women alone. What right have you to invade our village?’ shouted the smith, who had always been very friendly to Matilda and her daughter.
Lupus raised a riding crop he carried and smacked the man across the face, raising a red weal across his cheek.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, man, or I’ll have it cut out!’ he snarled.
The crowd fell back a pace, alarmed at this early show of violence. They could see that this was a man of substance from his demeanour and quality of clothing – and some of them had seen the fine horse that was tied up outside Adam’s cottage.
‘Send for the bailiff – and the sergeant!’ screamed Emma from the yard. ‘They’ll know how to deal with these outlaws!’
Her damaged voice carried well enough for some of the neighbours to start running back towards the centre of the village, but Lupus ignored her and began striding up the track towards Adam’s house.
The two louts followed, dragging the woman and the girl behind them by their chains. Matilda thrashed and struggled, calling out all the time for Lupus to let them go, but Gillota just stumbled along sobbing, tears streaming from her eyes.
Adam followed behind, but he was jostled and abused by his fellow villagers, several of whom managed to get in a punch or kick against this traitor in their midst.
They reached Adam’s dwelling, a cottage with large yard and a thatched byre where he kept his oxen. He hurried ahead and pulled open the crude door to the shed, revealing a heap of soiled straw and a manger where he fed hay to his two beasts. They were tethered in the yard, so the byre was empty, and the two men Lupus had brought from Kentisbury dragged the women inside and pushed them roughly down on to the straw. One of them secured the loose chains to one of the roof supports with a rusty nail-spike, which he hammered in with a large stone.
‘That’ll keep you from wandering until we’re ready to leave!’ he jeered.
By the time Walter Lupus had inspected the chains, new arrivals had appeared in the yard. The bailiff, Ranulf de Forde, and the Sergeant of the Hundred, Osbert de Bosco, had been summoned by the villagers. The first administered the King’s properties in the area, and de Bosco was responsible to the sheriff for law and order in the part of the county centred on Shebbear.
‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the bailiff. ‘Why are these women being shackled like this?’
Walter was not disposed to being questioned in such a peremptory fashion by a bailiff. ‘It’s none of your concern. I would have thought you would be aware that I am the lord of Kentisbury. I am merely recapturing two s
erfs who ran away last year. It has taken me this long to discover where they were, thanks to your carter Adam. I had thought that they had run to a borough like Barnstaple.’
This was a reasonable assumption, as most absconding villeins made for a town, where, if they could evade recapture for a year and a day, they were entitled to their freedom.
The sergeant was not happy with the situation. ‘I feel it is not right for you to just ride into our village with your men and seize two of our women without a by your leave or any gesture of courtesy to us.’
Walter turned on him angrily. ‘Damn you and your courtesy, fellow! These are not “your women”, as you call them – they are my serfs and I need every person to help with the harvest. This is nothing to do with you or this miserable vill of Shebbear!’
His arrogance annoyed them, but they recognized that he probably had the ear of the sheriff or one of the Devon barons, so they were afraid to antagonize him.
‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked de Bosco in a more conciliatory tone.
‘They are going back to my manor in chains,’ snapped Lupus. ‘Your carter Adam, who told me of their whereabouts, is taking them back today. I am angry that you gave them shelter here, when it must have been obvious that they were fugitive serfs.’
‘They claim they were freed, sir,’ objected the bailiff.
Walter Lupus gave a laugh that was more like a derisive bark. ‘They would, wouldn’t they! Liars, both of them. The woman’s father was my father’s reeve, from a long line of villeins.’
He turned his back on the two officials and snapped a command at Adam, who was lurking in the byre, trying to keep away from his irate neighbours.
‘Give these women a bucket and something to eat before you leave. I shall expect you in Kentisbury tomorrow night.’
An ox-cart moved at the pace of a man’s walk and would take two days to cover the miles between the villages.
Walter left one of the guards he had brought in Adam’s yard, then he and the other man walked back to the church and rode away on their horses, leaving a disgruntled but powerless community behind.
The Sacred Stone Page 11