The Sacred Stone

by The Medieval Murderers

  Simon Mercator persuaded Thomas de Peyne to sit down and poured a cup of wine for him. ‘I’ll not rest until we have got your plate back, Father!’ he said placatingly.

  ‘That’s the problem. It’s not my plate,’ replied Thomas. ‘I am but a temporary incumbent here and have betrayed my stewardship of this church’s sacred property!’

  ‘Not betrayed, Father. It is not your fault, but the fault of the evil, sacrilegious robber who has dared steal from the house of God!’ replied the steward. ‘But never fear, we’ll find him!’

  He walked towards the main door and yelled for Garth. By now, other servants had sensed that something was going on and had crowded near Matilda, so she no longer needed to hide. She whispered an account of the theft of the Eucharist plate and there were murmurings of outrage at such an impious crime. Its value of nine marks was almost beyond their comprehension, as a mark was worth more than thirteen shillings.

  Garth came clumping up the steps into the hall and, before Simon could speak, Walter Lupus had taken over. ‘Start a hue and cry around the village! Call in everyone who is in the fields, and we will set up a search. Let not a single stone go unturned – every croft and toft is to be ransacked! Look in every barn, cow-byre and fowl-house! Understand?’

  Garth gaped at him and looked at the steward, who usually gave him his orders. ‘But what are we to search for, sir?’

  ‘A silver plate, stolen from the church!’ snapped Simon. ‘Tell everyone that if it is not found by sundown, there will be trouble such as they’ve never known before!’

  The Communion paten was found well before sundown, mainly because two of the searchers knew exactly where it had been hidden.

  All normal community life had come to an abrupt halt, as everyone over the age of six who was not bedridden, senile or sick was turned out to comb the village. Matilda, Gillota and Philip kept together, as an added opportunity to enjoy each other’s company. They used sticks to beat the verges and search the ditch between the church and the further end of the village street, prodding between the withering weeds of autumn for the glint of silver plate.

  For more than an hour Kentisbury looked like an anthill, swarming with figures poking in and out of every cottage, barn, pigsty, ox-byre and privy. For the fifth time Thomas de Peyne made a futile exploration of his church and grounds, peering into every nook and cranny of his house, knowing that he was wasting his time but afraid to give up.

  About an hour before sunset a sudden cry went up from one of the cottages.

  ‘It’s here! I’ve found it!’ came a stentorian bellow from one of the searchers.

  There was a stampede of all those within earshot, followed by the rest of the villagers who had seen them running. Those first through the gate in the fence around the croft were rewarded by the sight of Garth brandishing a shining disc the width of a large handspan. He held it above his head, as Walter Lupus, Simon Mercator and the manor reeve came pounding from the various points where they had been searching.

  ‘It was pushed into the thatch, here!’ yelled the steward’s servant. Proudly, he indicated the frayed lower edge of the straw-covered roof, where it ended at head height, overhanging the whitewashed wall of cob.

  Garth pushed his fingers between the layers of the six-inch-thick thatch, then slid the plate back into the crack to show how it had been concealed.

  Hearing the commotion, Matilda and her daughter began trotting down the track towards the growing crowd, Philip close behind. Then, as they got closer, they slowed in horror.

  ‘That’s my cottage!’ howled Philip. ‘The bastards have trapped me!’

  Without even a sign from Lupus or Simon Mercator, Philip de Mora was grabbed by Garth and Daniel the instant he set foot through his own gate.

  Though he struggled violently, he was no match for the two large ruffians, who forced him to his knees before the manor lord and his steward, who were standing at the corner of the cottage where the plate had been found.

  ‘You contemptible thief!’ snarled Simon. ‘Stealing from a church is a blasphemous sacrilege, as well as a common crime. You’ll hang for this!’

  Struggling, the former archer howled back at him. ‘You set this up, damn you! To pay me back for accusing you of running your dirty hands over young virgins!’

  For answer, the steward kicked the helpless man in the face, causing blood to stream down from a cut over his eye. ‘Keep your mouth shut! Don’t add lies to your other sins,’ he hissed vindictively.

  Walter Lupus regarded Philip impassively but did not interfere. Just then, the village priest limped up, great concern on his face.

  ‘You’ve found it, then, thanks be to God! Where was it?’

  The steward gave Philip another kick, this time in the ribs. ‘This rogue stole it, canon. He hid it in the thatch of his cottage, no doubt until he could smuggle it away to sell.’

  Thomas de Peyne, though greatly relieved at the restoration of the sacred plate, was nonetheless concerned at the steward’s behaviour. ‘You must not mistreat the man like that! He is innocent until proved guilty – which I find very hard to believe. In fact, now that the paten is restored, I do not wish to bring charges against anyone.’

  Walter now came to life. ‘I am afraid that cannot be done, Father. This is a serious crime, both against my authority in my own manor and against the King’s peace, as well as being a serious sin against the Church.’

  ‘You were a coroner’s clerk yourself for many years,’ added Simon craftily. ‘You must be well aware of the law. That plate was worth at least nine marks – many, many times more valuable than the twelve pence that defines a felony.’

  Thomas frowned. He already suspected that there was some conspiracy afoot here, but what the steward said about the law was correct.

  ‘But you must prove him guilty first. There is no call for arbitrary judgement – nor for the violence I just saw you commit upon this man.’

  ‘There is little doubt of his guilt,’ snapped Simon, who did not take kindly to being reprimanded by some ancient priest. ‘The stolen article was found hidden in his house – who else would do such a thing? He is a soldier, accustomed to looting. He has no land to work, so he needs money to live. He is guilty. Any trial would be a waste of time.’

  Walter Lupus seemed to tire of his steward making all the decisions.

  ‘There will be a trial – at a special manor court tomorrow,’ he snapped. ‘Then he can be hanged!’

  There was a general muttering from the crowd clustered around the gate and standing along the fence to the street. It was hard to tell if they were agreeing that this obvious thief should be summarily executed or whether they found it hard to believe that a man they had known since he was born in the village could have committed such a blatant and uncharacteristic act. Many already suspected that the unpopular steward and manor lord were involved in some scheme of their own.

  ‘How did that fellow of yours know to look so quickly in such an unlikely hiding place?’ asked Thomas suspiciously. But no one answered him, being too concerned with hustling Philip away, his arms locked behind him by the steward’s two acolytes. They marched him away down to the turning where the manor house lay, leaving the crowd of villagers staring after them, many as dubious about this performance as the parish priest had been.

  Near the gate, Matilda and Gillota were almost paralysed by what was happening, unable to believe their own senses. One moment they were in Philip’s pleasant company, the next he was on his knees, assaulted and bleeding, before being dragged away to imprisonment and the promise of the hangman’s rope.

  Several of their former neighbours tried to console them, knowing of their friendship with Philip. Many of the villagers were muttering about the high-handed actions of the men who ruled their hamlet with such severity, but it was to Thomas de Peyne that the woman and her daughter turned to for solace.

  ‘Father, they cannot hang him for this! It is such an obvious falsehood, to pay him back for accusing the
steward of his foul behaviour,’ cried Matilda, her arm around her sobbing daughter.

  Thomas knew about Simon Mercator’s indecency with Gillota and was shocked. As a young man, he had been falsely accused of the same offence with a girl pupil at the cathedral school in Winchester, which had blighted his life for several years until he was proved innocent. But now, the villagers who surrounded him were keen to confirm the steward’s reputation for such lewdness, and he had no reason to doubt them.

  ‘This sounds like a gross injustice!’ he agreed. ‘I will do what I can to stop this charade, but I have little influence here. I am not even the regular parish priest.’

  ‘Can’t you threaten to excommunicate them, Father?’ asked Matilda, almost beside herself with anguish.

  Thomas gave a sad smile and shook his head. ‘It would require someone far higher than me to do that – and no grounds for such action exist in this secular matter.’

  ‘But it was a sacred vessel that was stolen from a church!’ she persisted. ‘Surely that is sacrilege?’

  ‘Yes, but as it stands Philip himself is the culprit and I fail to see how we can prove who else might be to blame.’ He sighed and gathered the skirts of his cassock together. ‘I will speak to Walter Lupus and try to make him see the truth – though I fear he seems too loyal to this Simon fellow for me to have much effect.’

  With the drama over for the time being, the villagers began drifting away and, disconsolately, Matilda and her daughter trudged sadly back to the manor house. One of the other servants told them that Philip had been thrown into an unused stable and that Garth was standing guard outside. They went around to the side of the stockade where the horses were kept and tried to speak to Philip, but were chased off by the thickset thug who stood outside the door.

  ‘Clear off, will you!’ he shouted. ‘No one speaks to the prisoner until they hang him!’

  Later, Matilda tried again, bringing some food and ale purloined from the kitchen, but this time Daniel was squatting outside and refused even to let her leave the victuals for Philip.

  She went back to their sleeping place and sat on the mattress alongside Gillota, the other two girls already sound asleep on the other side of the bed. It was almost dark, but she and her daughter had one of those episodes where each knew the other’s thoughts.

  ‘Take it out, Mother. Maybe if it worked on Lady Joan, it can do something now,’ whispered Gillota. ‘It seems at its best when there is urgency, like the decline of Lady Joan!’

  Matilda felt under the hessian palliasse and pulled out the stone. As she held it in her hands, she thought she felt that slight vibration again, though perhaps it was the quivering of her own nervous muscles.

  Mother and daughter stared at it in the dim light, both uncertain what to do next.

  ‘Maybe if we send our thoughts and pleadings into it together, it might respond,’ suggested Gillota in a whisper.

  Matilda rose from the bed and motioned to the girl. ‘Let’s go outside. We cannot risk waking these maids.’

  They went out into the fitful light of the moon, which now and then broke through the drifting clouds, and went quietly around to the back of the hut.

  ‘We must both hold it,’ said Matilda, holding the stone out by one of the wings so that her daughter could grasp the other one. With no more words needed, they merged their thoughts and tried to project them into the strange little metallic object that joined them. For five long minutes they visualized justice, rescue, salvation and love together with an image of Philip’s features. Again, Matilda wondered if the tiny tremors she felt in her fingers were from her own tense muscles or the stone itself.

  ‘I think it is quaking more rapidly, Mother,’ said Gillota, reading her thoughts. ‘Let’s keep pleading with it.’

  They stood in the cool night air for a further ten minutes, until something told Matilda that they had done all they could.

  ‘Leave it for tonight, child,’ she said eventually.

  ‘What shall we do with it now?’ asked the girl. ‘It seemed to work with Joan when it was very close to her.’

  ‘I shall leave it as near Philip as I can – tonight, at the court and, God forbid, near the hanging tree if it comes to that!’

  She sent Gillota back to bed, then crept along the backs of the huts until she came to the stable where the prisoner was kept. At the back wall, she quietly pushed the stone into a hollow where one of the rough planks had rotted against the ground and covered it over with crumbled wood fragments and a clod of turf.

  ‘Do your magic until morning and I’ll come back for you,’ she said in her mind before creeping back to her bed.

  The manorial court, or ‘court-baron’, was held at varying intervals in different manors, but in Kentisbury it was normally a three-weekly event. Most of the business was usually about mundane matters concerning land, disputes over crops and livestock, seeking consent for marriages and inheritance affairs, as well as minor offences like drunkenness, fighting, domestic disputes, short measures, poor ale and the like. Today it was a special court called by Simon Mercator on behalf of his lord Walter Lupus, though as usual the steward conducted the proceedings. Unusually, Walter sat on a bench to one side of him, together with Thomas, the parish priest, with the bailiff and sergeant standing behind them.

  Normally, the court was held in an empty barn, but after the recent good harvest these were all full, so it was convened in the yard in front of the manor house itself. A chair and a couple of benches were brought out of the hall and placed below the entrance steps, the jury of twelve men being ranged before them. A large crowd of villagers had left their work in the fields and had pushed through the gate to stand in the stockade behind the jury.

  Though legally all the men in the manor over twelve years of age were supposed to attend the court, usually only those who had any business there as jury or witnesses were obliged to turn up. Today was different, and a restive, truculent crowd came to see what was going on.

  The jury were reluctant to take part, as though the steward was not supposed to act as a judge, the verdict being left to the jury, in practice this was often ignored, and there was a strong suspicion that this would be the state of affairs today.

  As Matilda and Gillota were already in the compound, they had little difficulty in sidling around to the edge of the crowd, as close to Philip as they could get, when he was dragged out by Garth on the end of a chain attached to his fetters – probably the same ones by which they had been hauled back from Shebbear. The former soldier was dishevelled and gaunt from his night in a stable without food or water, and Matilda’s heart went out to him. She had retrieved the stone early that morning and now had it safely in the cloth pouch on her girdle, but she could detect no vibrations from it at all, much to her chagrin.

  Simon Mercator stood up from his chair and yelled at the crowd to be silent, a task he had to repeat several times before the villagers grudgingly obeyed him. He knew that strong feelings and resentment were rife, from the obvious attitude of both the freemen and the villeins and from the visit of Thomas de Peyne earlier that morning.

  The priest had come to see Walter Lupus, not the steward, but Simon pushed himself into the meeting in the hall and Walter had not denied him.

  ‘I am extremely unhappy about your determination to try this man Philip in such an arbitrary way,’ said the canon firmly. ‘I have had long experience of the legal system in this county and know that such a grave accusation should be placed before the King’s judges or his Commissioners of Gaol Delivery.’

  He was a such a small man that it was difficult for him to assert himself adequately in front of these powerful men, but he was adamant about Philip’s right to be tried in Exeter before an experienced and independent tribunal. As he had expected, neither man was impressed by his demands.

  ‘With respect, parson, this is none of your business, whatever you may have done in the past,’ sneered Simon. ‘The issue is so simple that it should be dealt with summarily, as
my lord Walter is quite entitled to do. We must make an example of such blatant thieving, to prevent anyone getting the idea that such a crime may be repeated with impunity.’

  Walter Lupus, silent until now, nodded gravely. ‘A manor lord has a responsibility to his tenants to safeguard their lives and property,’ he said ponderously. ‘I am surprised that you think fit to object, considering that such a valuable and venerated object such as your Communion plate was the thing stolen by this man.’

  ‘You have already judged him, then?’ retorted Thomas bitterly. ‘I thought that was the function of the jury and that until they offer their verdict a man is considered innocent?’

  ‘You are too naive, father,’ brayed Simon. ‘Of course the damned fellow is guilty – the facts speak for themselves! No jury can think otherwise – and if they do, I will put them back on the right road!’

  And so it proved within a very short time. The steward had Philip dragged in front of him by Garth and Daniel, who stood one at each side, pulling on his chains, while he harangued the prisoner and the jury.

  ‘We need waste no time over this!’ he shouted. ‘The sacred platter was found to be missing, this felon cannot account for his whereabouts at the time, and most damning of all, a search soon discovered it hidden in the thatch of his own house. There is no need for any more evidence!’ He glared at the discomfited line of men who formed the jury.

  ‘The verdict is yours, but you can have no other answer than to declare him guilty!’

  However, Simon Mercator was not to have it all his own way. The blacksmith, daring to contradict the man who had his livelihood in the palm of his hand, stood forward to object.

  ‘Steward, we need time to discuss this! Not to beat about the bush, the whole village knows that this man was in bad odour with you. To be fair to him, you should not be trying him here yourself. The matter should be heard in Barnstaple or even Exeter.’

  A few yards away, Matilda heard the brave words and her heart leaped with hope – but when she gripped her pouch, she felt nothing from the stone hidden there.