Emma marched into the ox-byre, defying the lout who tried to prevent her. ‘Get out of my way, you heartless swine,’ she screeched. ‘I need to see my niece and her daughter.’
A few of the village men pushed into the yard and stood threateningly around the man. Though they dare not defy the lord of Kentisbury by rescuing the women, they had no scruples about harassing his servant.
Emma went into the shed and spent a few minutes trying to console Matilda and especially Gillota, who was devastated by this reversal of their fortunes.
‘You’ll have to go back, but we will do all we can to get you home again,’ Emma promised. ‘I will ask the bailiff, sergeant and our priest what can be done.’
She went back to their cottage and put the few spare garments that the women possessed into a cloth bag, together with some food for the journey and a purse with a few pennies, all she had to give. At Matilda’s pleading, she also added the strange stone that her niece kept under the end of her mattress.
‘Something tells me that I might be needing it,’ she told Emma grimly as they were pushed on to the cart to start the long journey to Kentisbury.
Just as it had been in Shebbear, it was now harvest-time in Kentisbury, though it had started a week later there.
Once again, Matilda and Gillota were in the strip fields, toiling alongside their old neighbours, gathering sheaves, stooking and raking. The first shock of their kidnapping had worn off, to be replaced by sorrow and despondency, especially at the loss of their old home.
When their long and uncomfortable cart ride was over, they were turned off at Walter Lupus’s manor house, a grey-stone block set inside a wide compound surrounded by a wooden stockade. The surly guard dragged them by their chains around to the back of the house, where the huts of the servants lay between stables and barns. As he released their fetters by knocking out the rusty pins that held them, Matilda protested that they were in the wrong place.
‘Our home is further up the road!’ she complained.
‘Your home is here now!’ came a voice from behind her. Turning, she saw Simon Mercator, the steward to Walter Lupus, the man who had previously denied her attempt to establish her freedom at the manor court. He was a narrow-faced man with sandy hair and cold eyes, which roamed over her body as if he could see through the thin woollen smock that she wore.
‘We have our own croft, where I was born!’ retorted Matilda defiantly.
‘Not any longer,’ sneered Simon. ‘My nephew lives there now, so you’ll live here as the servants you are. When the harvest is over, you will help with the domestic work around the manor.’
He ignored her loud protests and pushed her into the hut that acted as one of the servants’ dormitories. The earth floor was strewn with rushes, and much of the space was occupied by a wide mattress, a hessian bag stuffed with hay and ferns. Apart from a milking stool and a couple of planks fixed to a wall to act as a shelf for their meagre belongings, the hut was bare.
‘This is where you will sleep with two of the other women,’ snapped the steward. ‘You will eat with the servants in that hut over there.’ He pointed nonchalantly at one of the other thatched buildings that clustered at the back of the compound, then walked away, oblivious to Matilda’s loud complaints.
The lout who had accompanied them back from Shebbear pushed her back into the hut. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your mouth and keep it shut!’ he growled. ‘Enjoy your last evening while you can, as from now on it’ll be work every daylight hour.’
Matilda was no stranger to that, as before her father was granted his freedom she was accustomed to the life of a villein – but then she at least had her own home, first with her husband, then with her father. Now they were back labouring in the fields, alongside the folk they had known all their lives until they escaped eleven short months ago. Their neighbours were sympathetic to their plight, but as the new arrivals were no worse off than themselves, apart from the loss of their croft, there was nothing they would or could do to help them. However, there was universal dislike and even fear of both the new manor lord and of his steward.
‘Mean, grasping bastards, both of them!’ muttered the man who used to live in the next cottage to them. ‘Walter is a totally different man from his father Matthew, God rest his soul! He is dour and bad-tempered, thinking of nothing but the weight of his purse. He has brought that bloody man Simon Mercator here, as well as those surly ruffians to enforce his will. I reckon they are outlaws from the moor that he’s allowed back in, as long as they do his every bidding.’
Each evening, when the work ceased as dusk was falling, they plodded back to the village with the others and made their weary way to the manor house, where an unappetizing meal was provided in the eating hut. Then, like the rest of the villagers, they slumped on the bed with two of the younger serving girls and slept the sleep of the exhausted until daybreak.
Matilda tried endlessly to think of ways to escape from this nightmare, but there seemed nothing she could do. It would be impossible to run away again – and where could they go, anyway? They no longer had their few animals to live on, and it was impossible to think of getting back to Aunt Emma a second time. Barnstaple was too small a borough to hide in for a year and day, even if they could reach it undetected – and Exeter might as well be at the other end of the world for all the hope they had of getting there.
Gillota seemed devastated by the change in their circumstances, and, although their former neighbours were kind to her and tried to cheer her up, she was quiet and withdrawn, her former bright nature crushed. She seemed permanently fearful of either Walter Lupus or his creepy steward accosting her, in spite of her mother’s constant assurances that she would protect her. As it happened, they saw little of either of these men, the daily work routine being directed by the manor reeve, her father’s successor, who seemed a reasonable fellow, though weak in spirit.
Thanks to continued fine weather, the end of the harvest came little more than a week after they arrived back in Kentisbury. When the last sheaf was stored in the barn, ready for winnowing, it was traditionally the time for the celebration of ‘harvest home’, the expected right of both villeins and freemen to be fêted by their lord in thanksgiving for the land’s bounty.
‘If it’s like last year, don’t expect much from this mean bastard!’ muttered the village smith, in gloomy anticipation of the ‘ale’ to be held in the churchyard that evening.
The whole village turned out, many bringing what spare food they could manage, to add to the victuals and drink grudgingly provided by Walter Lupus. Trestles were set out to carry the bread, cheese, pasties, shellfish, boiled salmon and some sweetmeats. A pig was being spit-roasted nearby over an open fire, and in spite of the smith’s pessimism there seemed plenty of ale as well as some cider.
The mood was subdued until Walter and his steward left after a token appearance, when their departure and the effects of the drink began to loosen up the atmosphere. Music was provided by a set of bagpipes, a drum and a fiddle, to which the younger folk began dancing. Even Gillota brightened a little when several of the village boys began flirting with her and soon dragged her into the ring of dancers.
Matilda went to the table to take some food, the labours of the day making her hungry even through her tiredness. She was breaking a piece off a barley loaf to eat with a piece of hard, yellow cheese when someone at her elbow spoke gently.
‘The mussels are good – I suppose they’re from Combe Martin.’
She looked around and saw a face that was vaguely familiar, though for a moment she couldn’t place it. It was a man a little older than herself, tall and broad with a pleasant, open face below his wiry brown hair. He wore a long tunic of good broadcloth, with a wide leather belt carrying a long sheathed dagger at the back.
‘You’ve forgotten me, haven’t you? We used to play in the barns when we were little!’
Enlightenment lit up her face. ‘Philip? Philip de Mora! I’ve not seen you
in twenty years!’
He grinned at her mischievously. ‘I’ve been away at the wars, a foot soldier and then an archer. But those days are over, I’m afraid!’
He held up his left hand, two of the fingers of which were missing and the others twisted, with an ugly scar across the wrist.
‘A French sword ended my military career, so I came home a few months ago. But I gained my freedom over it.’
His face became serious. ‘I have heard of your misfortune in that respect, mistress. It is a scandal. Something must be done about the situation in this manor.’
Philip lowered his voice as he muttered the last few words. Then he brightened again and held out his good hand to her. ‘But tonight is for revelling, so let’s join the dance. Your daughter should not have all the fun!’
He pulled her towards the increasing number of people stamping and twirling to the tune of the pipes and rebec and the thump of the drum. For a time she almost forgot her troubles, as they danced, then ate again and danced some more. She kept a wary eye on Gillota, but she also seemed to be enjoying herself with a group of younger boys and girls.
As it grew dusk, the older people began to make their way home, but many stayed in the churchyard, some drunk, others flirting and yet other couples vanishing into the growing darkness beyond the yew trees behind the church.
The large harvest moon was almost at the full as Matilda and Philip de Mora sat together on the grass in the pale light.
‘Where do you live now? Are you married?’ she asked him. She recalled now that he had gone off as little more than a boy to become a squire’s servant during the troubles early in King Henry’s reign.
‘I never married. I was always away at the wars,’ he replied. ‘My mother and father died years ago, but when I was wounded last year the knight for whom I served granted me my freedom. I decided to come home, at least for a time. I pay the manor a rent for our old house at the end of the village and will stay until I decide what to do with the rest of my life.’
They talked for a little while longer, until Matilda noticed that some of the lads with Gillota were getting too frisky from the amount of ale they had drunk. She decided it was time to go home, if one could call it that. Gathering her daughter up and ignoring her protests, she bade goodnight to her new friend.
‘I’ll see you safely to the manor house,’ he offered gallantly and escorted them back to the big gates set in the stockade around the Lupus stronghold.
As she watched him wave and turn away, Matilda felt a small glow of contentment at having made a new ally and possibly a champion.
Matilda preferred the hard labour of harvesting to the menial tasks that she and her daughter were given around the manor house. For the first week the steward set them to work in the large kitchen shed, where far from being allowed to cook they were forced to scour iron pots with wet sand, carry wood for the fires and scrape and clean vegetables. There was a cook and a baker, who lived in their own houses, together with the pair of young girls who shared their barren quarters in the sleeping shed. They all ate at a side table in the kitchen, and as Matilda and Gillota knew them well there was at least a friendly atmosphere, unless Simon Mercator saw fit to come prowling around, when he seemed to enjoy ogling Matilda.
The two ruffians who had captured them in Shebbear acted alternately as gate guards during the day, the heavy wooden gates of the stockade being shut and barred from nightfall to dawn. However, they did not challenge Matilda when one evening, after all the kitchen work was finished, she went out with Gillota to walk around the village. They stopped outside their toft and gazed sadly at the building and the plot of land around it. Two infants were playing in the dirt outside the front door, and a young woman, presumably their mother, stared at them as they stood looking in. She was a stranger to the village and must have been imported from wherever Simon Mercator came from.
They walked on, exchanging greetings with other villagers, some of whom enquired discreetly if there was any hope of their regaining their freedom. Then, with nowhere else to go, they sadly retraced their steps, Matilda rather hoping that she would meet Philip de Mora as they passed what had been his parents’ cottage at the top end of the village street. There was no sign of him and, forlornly, they went back to the room they shared with the younger servants and went to bed.
The only other occasions when they could leave the manor house were on Sundays, when virtually the whole village went to Mass. Though it was not strictly obligatory to attend church, very few failed to appear, unless they were very old, sick or infirm. In any case, going to church was a social event, where they could gossip to their friends and for an hour or two shrug off the dull, repetitive pattern of their claustrophobic lives.
St Thomas’s was a century old, built of stone on the site of a previous wooden Saxon church. The oblong nave was just large enough to take all the villagers, who stood shoulder to shoulder on the floor of beaten earth, apart from the old and infirm who ‘went to the wall’ to squat on a narrow ledge.
The chancel was up a single step, carrying a plain altar with a brass cross and two candlesticks. There was a small sacristy through a door on the left of the chancel where the priest kept his robes and the makings of the Host. Matilda and Gillota stood right at the back, as even in church there was a pecking order. Walter Lupus and his pale, sad-looking wife were in the front, with his bailiff and steward on either side. The manor lord himself had no family, and it was widely whispered that his wife was barren, as well as ill.
On the first Sunday that they attended, Matilda whispered to her neighbour while they waited for the parish priest to appear from the sacristy.
‘Who is the parson now? I heard that old Father Peter had died since we left the village.’
‘He went to God just after Easter,’ was the reply. ‘We have another old one now, Father Thomas, the same name as our patron saint. He is a prebendary from Exeter Cathedral, a very learned man, they say.’
‘So what’s he doing in an out-of-the-way place like Kentisbury?’ murmured Matilda. Perhaps someone more learned, instead of the usual dullard or drunk posted to the more remote parishes, might be able to give her advice about her problem.
‘He’s really retired, but the bishop sent him here until they can find someone more permanent.’
As she spoke, the sacristy door opened and a small man, probably aged about seventy, appeared, stoop-shouldered and with a slight limp. The lank hair below his tonsure was grey, though some darker streaks still survived. Matilda peered between the heads of the people in front and saw that his face was narrow, with a pointed nose and a receding chin. In spite of his unprepossessing appearance, her sixth sense told her that there was something kindly about his nature and she resolved to try to speak to him as soon as she had the chance. Perhaps confession would be the most opportune time.
The Mass began and, as always, was conducted entirely in Latin, which not a soul present could understand. However, as a departure from what most were used to, when it came time for the congregation to be called up to receive the Eucharist of bread and wine, Father Thomas included a few words in English, to explain the significance of what they were doing. One of the last to kneel on the step, Matilda looked up at the priest as he passed from Gillota to her to offer her the scrap of pastry, which by transubstantiation became the body of Christ. Something passed between them as their eyes met, each being well aware that this was more than a friendly exchange of glances between a parson and a parishioner. She looked sideways at her daughter and caught a slight nod, telling her that Gillota was also aware of something significant.
Canon Thomas de Peyne, for that was his full title, then preached a short sermon in English, explaining in clear, easy terms the meaning of this particular Sunday in the Church calendar, and followed it with a gentle homily about respecting one’s neighbours. His words were free of the usual blood and thunder about the tortures of hell that were the wages of sin, a favourite theme for so many parish priests, who
had little insight or imagination.
When the service was over, the congregation parted to allow their lord and his wife to pass to the door, followed by his senior servants. They strode out without a word to anyone, then the villagers straggled out into the churchyard and began a marathon of gossip, before going home to their dinner. No farm work was done on the Sabbath, apart from caring for livestock, but the manor-house servants had to hurry back to serve the meal to Lupus and his wife, two of the cooks having stayed behind all morning.
Matilda and Gillota were considered too lowly to serve at table, but they had other tasks in the kitchen and especially afterwards, when the clearing up was done. By late afternoon they could take their ease, walk around the village or go to their bed until it was time to prepare supper. Again, Matilda haunted the village street, hoping to come across either Philip de Mora or the priest, but neither of them appeared.
A couple of weeks after the harvest was finished, she tackled the steward again about her situation.
‘I wish to bring my complaint to the manor court again,’ she said stubbornly when he came into the kitchen to check on everyone’s work. ‘It is not right that our lord treats us in this way. There must be some way to appeal against his treatment of me and my daughter!’
Simon Mercator glared at her and for a moment she feared that he was going to strike her.
‘Be quiet, woman! You have been to the court and it was dismissed,’ he snarled contemptuously.
‘Dismissed? It was not even discussed! It should be considered by a jury of the villagers; they have the right to offer their opinion.’ Her face was red with indignation, but the steward was unmoved.
‘There is nothing to discuss!’ he shouted. ‘You were born a serf and a serf you will remain for the rest of your days!’
‘His father declared mine free!’ she replied stubbornly. ‘Why do you persist in denying it?’
The Sacred Stone Page 12