The Huntsman's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 3)

by Ann Swinfen

  She shook her head. ‘Nay, Master Mordon has brought his own household priest from London. I think he looks down on our country priest.’

  And there he was mistaken, I thought, for it was Sire Raymond who had taught me as a boy, well enough that I was able to hold my own when I went as a student to Oxford. He was growing old and somewhat frail now, but he called down a blessing on the Lammas loaves, on the harvest, and on the present company, in a voice as sweet as ever, which always seemed to me to sing God’s words, even when he spoke them.

  The women must have been cooking long before I had risen in the morning, or mayhap Susanna and her daughter had already prepared much before we arrived, for the tables groaned under the weight of every kind of savoury and sweet pie, mounds of richly golden butter moulded into floral shapes, early apples stuffed with dried plums and baked with honey, jugs of thick cream, great rounds of yellow cheese, and smoked hams. Edmond passed from table to table, slicing the Lammas loaves and ensuring that everyone had a piece, even the youngest baby from the village, a stout lad just learning to sit up, who tore his bread apart with great interest and dropped most of it to be quickly scooped up by the dogs.

  We had settled well into our meal, finding ourselves with hearty appetites after the day’s work in the field, when there was a late arrival.

  Into the circle of light cast by the candle lanterns James and Thomas had hung from hooks in the wall of the barn, stepped a man of my own age, a woman on his arm, and a boy of about fourteen following.

  ‘So you are able to join us, Alan!’ Edmond rose from his seat and drew the newcomers to the table.

  As the light fell on them, I saw that it was Alan Wodville, a boyhood companion of mine, with his wife and the orphaned nephew he had taken in, when the lad’s parents died in the Pestilence.

  Alan nodded to me. ‘By rights, we’ve no part in your harvesting, Edmond, though we thank you for inviting us.’

  ‘You have always come in the past,’ Edmond said. ‘By reason of cousinage, you are part of the family.’

  Alan was indeed a distant cousin on Susanna’s side. I shifted along the bench to make room for him, while Susanna drew his wife Beth down beside her, and the boy Rob squeezed between James and Thomas.

  Edmond served them with Lammas bread and Hilda went round the table, filling everyone’s cups from a large jug of ale.

  ‘I had feared you would be summoned to the table of the new lord of the manor,’ Edmond said. ‘Does he not hold the Lammas feast for all of his people?’

  Alan drank deeply of his ale, and shrugged. ‘I think he feasts only his fine friends from London. He would see no need to treat those who work for him. He has only London manners. He may own the manor, but he knows nothing of his duties.’

  I could hear in his voice more than the dislike everyone showed for the new man. There was anger there too. I turned to Edmond.

  ‘But why should you think Alan would feast at the manor? Is his position confirmed?’

  ‘Ah,’ Edmond said, ‘you will not know. Alan has indeed taken up his father’s old position there. He is the manor huntsman, now that the manor has a lord again.’

  Alan shook his head.

  ‘I am turned away,’ he said grimly. ‘I am no longer his lordship’s huntsman.’

  Chapter Three

  Everyone stopped speaking and stared at Alan. Studying the well known lines of his face, I realised that he had grown even more like his father, who had been huntsman to the de Veres, and his grandfather before him. The whole family, back beyond memory. They were quiet men, speaking little, moving through the woods as soft as any wild creature, skilled in all the arcane knowledge of the hunt, such as lords demand. Though to be sure, everyone in the village also hunted, legally and illegally, but they had little care for the rituals of the lordly hunts. Alan had been brought up in the certainty that he too would be the de Veres’ huntsman one day, and had been learning the skills almost before he could walk. By the age of fourteen he was already assistant huntsman to his father on the de Vere manor.

  When we were boys, Alan and I had often gone poaching with my elder brother John, deep into Wychwood. There had been hares on the open stretches of rough ground, and twice we had taken a deer, but never a boar, for they were growing rare. Out of respect for the de Vere family, we had avoided those parts of the forest where they hunted, instead going deep into the king’s domain. The fearful punishments if we had been caught added spice to the adventures. It was always Alan who was first to spot the tracks or fewmets of our quarry. We had stayed good friends until we had gone our separate ways – I to be a scholar, he to be a huntsman – though we had seen little of each other since.

  The future which had been so clearly laid out before Alan had all come to naught with the deaths of the entire de Vere family. His father had died soon after, of some disease of the lungs, and Alan had been left with nothing but a cottage and barely land enough to sustain himself, his wife, his sister, and the boy. The heir to the manor had employed him for a few duties, but it could hardly have paid much. Somehow he had scraped through, even working sometimes as a labourer for Edmond, though he must have found that humiliating. It was not surprising that someone should have suggested to the new owner of Leighton Manor that he should employ Alan as his huntsman. If Mordon intended – as it seemed – to live the life of lord of the manor, a manor with rights of the chase in Wychwood, then he would need a skilled huntsman who knew every yard of the ground, and every creature dwelling in the wood.

  So it seemed that Alan had been given the post of huntsman once more. Yet now, barely weeks after this Master Mordon had arrived, he was cast off. What could have happened?

  Edmond’s thoughts must have echoed mine, for he demanded, ‘What is this? No longer his huntsman? The man has been in residence but a few weeks, and has not even been hunting as yet! How can this be? Do his London friends dare to think they know our forest?’

  His tone was scornful, and he leaned forward enquiringly. Alan shook his head.

  ‘Not now. I’ve no wish to cast a blight on your feast. We will speak of it later.’

  He refused to say more, and the temporary shadow cast by this news was soon dispersed as the ale went round and the lavish food was consumed. Later, when the children had been sent off to bed and the women were clearing away the broken meats of the feast, I looked about for Alan, hoping to speak to him quietly about his disturbing news.

  Edmond saw me searching. ‘He has gone back to the village with the others. I cannot make it out. This Master Mordon is a fool if he thinks he can hunt in Wychwood without a huntsman of Alan’s skill.’

  I would try to find an opportunity to speak to Alan before many days were out. From all I had heard, the advent of this new man to the manor did not augur well for the village and its people, or indeed for Edmond, after the interference with our mill stream. Perhaps it was nothing but the ignorance of a London merchant about the customs of the countryside and he would mend his ways when he knew us better. Yet somehow all that I had already learned of the fellow did not promise much chance of that. On the other hand, he might tire of country life and yearn for the excitements of London once more. Perhaps he would return there, never to trouble Leighton-under-Wychwood again. It would be easier to judge when I saw him for myself, should that happen during my short time here at the farm.

  The next morning I awoke even stiffer than before, as I had expected, but this was but normal, after the first day’s harvest work following months as a sedentary Oxford bookseller. Edmond and his sons would not be suffering, for their daily physical labour would keep their muscles in fine trim, while mine had grown soft, so I held myself back from complaint over breakfast, though I noticed that Jordain and Philip also winced from time to time. In their youthful pride, the two students also said nothing, though I noticed that they moved a little more carefully than usual.

  The day progressed much as the previous one. The labourers from the village brought their women with them
from the outset, and the work went well, so that by the end of the second day less than a third of the wheat field remained to be cut. There was no Lammas feast in the evening and we went to bed with the sun, in the country fashion.

  Edmond was out early the following morning, and came in looking pleased.

  ‘The first day’s cut is already dry enough to bring into the barn,’ he said, as he helped himself to nearly half a loaf and a large chunk of Susanna’s cheese. ‘I think I will set some of us to hauling it in, while the rest finish cutting the field.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘With less than a third of the way to go, we should manage it. Then will you move us to the barley, or do you want to make a start on dressing the wheat?’

  ‘Oh, the threshing and winnowing may wait yet a while,’ he said, washing down his bread and cheese with a deep draught of ale. ‘We shall cut the barley first. Best to get all the corn safely in, while the weather lasts.’

  I nodded. ‘We have been fortunate so far. This exceptional hot sun cannot go on forever.’

  While it did, however, work in the fields was exhausting in such heat. The children, who had found it exciting at first, were more reluctant to spend the entire day under the broiling sun in the insect infested field, and by that afternoon had slipped back to the farm again to play with Rowan and pursue some games of their own. Thomas hitched up the farm cart and Jordain brought ours into service, so with Giles and Guy helping they hauled the first day’s cut wheat back to the barn, where the sheaves were stacked up ready for threshing when time allowed. Four men short at the scything, we proceeded more slowly, but managed to cut the last of the wheat as dusk was drawing in. The last clump of stems had been left standing in the centre of the field, which would be ritually cut by custom the next day.

  As we were eating our supper that evening, later than usual, since we had stayed in the field till the task was done, Alan’s nephew, the boy Rob, knocked on the door.

  ‘My uncle says, do you need another pair of hands at your harvesting?’ The boy spoke his message with reluctance, and a certain glint of angry pride in his eyes. ‘I can also come, if you wish it so.’

  Even if Alan had learned to swallow his resentment at being obliged to work as a day labourer, the boy clearly had not. Alan had been training him up in his own huntsman’s skills, and he must have hoped for a better future than working as a farm labourer.

  ‘Aye, I should be glad of him,’ Edmond said easily, ‘glad of you both. For despite these friends coming from Oxford, there can never be too many at harvest time. You will be welcome to start tomorrow, along with the rest of us. Tell Alan so. And your aunt too, if she can be spared.’

  The boy nodded briefly. If he was at all mollified at being bracketed with ‘friends from Oxford’, he showed no sign of it, but bowed stiffly and left with his head held high.

  Susanna sighed and shook her head. ‘Poor lad, he has not taken this change of fortune kindly.’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow we may discover what lies behind this mysterious dismissal,’ I said. ‘I will try to contrive an opportunity to speak to Alan apart.’

  ‘Aye, do that,’ Edmond said. ‘You were always good friends. I do not like the way matters are going at the manor.’

  Before heading to the barley next morning, we had one last task in the wheat field. The final clump of uncut wheat still stood proud in the centre of the field, while all the rest stood dotted about in stooks, drying in the sun. The air was filled with the warm scent of ripened grain and the sweetness of the cut straw.

  Sire Raymond had walked up to the farm and joined us as we gathered around the last of the wheat. It is said that the spirit of the wheat lodges in the last uncut sheaf, and to ensure good fortune and a bountiful harvest next year, the priest blessed the standing corn, before taking a sickle and cutting a large spray of fat ears of corn together with about two feet of straw, which he handed to my mother, the oldest woman present.

  While we watched, she began to weave the straws swiftly together. She might be aging, but her fingers were still as nimble as ever, and I had watched her do this each year since I was younger than Rafe, who was now watching intently, peeping out from behind Margaret’s skirts.

  First my mother made a wreath like a small crown, weaving into it strands of rosemary, lavender, and thyme, which she handed to Edmond, and then began the more complex task, creating the figure which some call a ‘dolly’, though in fact it is a representation of a hare. When I used to do my lessons with Sire Raymond, he told me what he understood to be the origin of the straw figure, for he had always been interested in old customs.

  ‘In the olden days,’ he said, ‘when men had not heard of our Blessed Lord and worshipped all manner of pagan gods, they believed that there was a goddess called Eostre, who watched over the fertility of the land.’ He shook his head, smiling gently at such folly. ‘It is from her name that our word Easter comes, for the early fathers who brought the Faith to England thought it wise to humour the people by letting them keep some of their customs, such as celebrating the first appearance of the new growth of the crops in Spring.’

  ‘But what has that to do with the straw hare?’ I said.

  ‘Folk believed that Eostre often took the form of a hare, so by weaving her image out of the last cut straw, honour was done her, and if the straw hare was kept safe, to watch over the farm for a twelve month, the crops would prosper in the coming year.’

  I remembered this conversation now, as my mother handed the straw hare to Sire Raymond to be blessed. As always, he smiled benignly as he did so, happy to respect ancient customs, even if they carried a whiff of pagan magic.

  ‘Now’, Edmond said, ‘Alysoun shall be our harvest maid this year, in thanks for all who have come to help with the harvest.’ He placed the wreath on Alysoun’s head, and she blushed with pleasure.

  Then the last sheaf was cut, and some of the heads of grain beaten into the earth where it had stood, to ensure the fertility of next year’s crop. Alysoun was raised up on the linked arms of her cousins James and Thomas, before being paraded about the field and back to the farm, where Susanna hung the straw hare carefully from a hook over the kitchen door, after taking down last year’s hare. It too would be buried in the field.

  Before we returned to our work, we all drank to the success of the crop, and ate one of the small saffron cakes my mother had brought from her cottage. Saffron is a precious herb, and the cakes are always very small, but golden and sweetened with honey.

  We could not spend long back at the farm, so as soon as Sire Raymond left to return to the village church, we went back to the fields. Today we would make a start on the barley field, while more of the wheat that had dried enough in the sun would be carted to the barn. When I looked over the barley, however, I thought Edmond had been too optimistic to think it might be cut in two days. This was relatively fresh land, only assarted about twenty or so years before, and regularly manured every winter since then, by stock grazing on the stubble and new grass. The result was a rich soil, not tired with years of tillage, bringing forth a very dense and healthy crop of barley which would require some labour to cut. Only two days remained before Sunday, when we would be obliged to leave the work. I thought we should not finish before the evening of Monday, but I did not express my thoughts aloud.

  We had barely made a start when Alan, his wife Beth, and the boy Rob appeared and joined us, after a brief greeting. Beth seemed perfectly content with the work, but like most village wives she probably was accustomed to helping with the harvest, even if her husband ranked above the other villagers, on account of his position as the manor huntsman. Alan looked grim and the boy rebellious, but they set to work along with the rest of us, and both could swing a scythe as well as any.

  Although the sun continued to shine undiminished, I could feel a change in the air. If anything, the heat was even more oppressive, and the air was heavy as a wet cloth, so the sweat which sprang up as we worked seemed to drench us worse than before, nev
er drying off our skin in the heat. Away in the east, there were the first traces of cloud to be seen for several weeks, distant still, but curdling thick and grey along the horizon, promising a thunder storm before too many days had passed. I knew there were villages where the people continued with the harvest even on Sundays, but although Sire Raymond was tolerant in many things, he would not permit farm labour on a Sunday, save for the necessary daily care of the stock. A man might tend a sick ewe, his wife could milk the cows, but no one might dig a ditch, mend a hedge – or cut the harvest grain.

  I cannot say that anyone has much enjoyment from cutting barley. Added to the heat and the maddening attention of the insects – worse than ever – barley is a vicious crop, spiky and painful to handle. It was worse for the women, gathering the sheaves and building the stooks, than it was for us, swinging our scythes, although even we could not avoid some contact with the sharp barbs. Still, the barley must be gathered in, for without it there would be no ale in the coming year. Wheat for bread and barley for ale. The oats, which still awaited us, would provided porridge for us and extra nourishment for the horses when hay alone meant poor fodder in the depths of winter.

  Despite my best efforts, I was not able to speak to Alan privately, either that day or the next. I began to think he was avoiding me, though I could think of no reason why he should do so. As I expected, when we made our way back to the farm in the near dark of Saturday evening, about a third of the barley field remained uncut. And the worrying sense of a change in the weather weighed heavily upon us.

  Our large household walked down together for Mass at the village church of St Mary the Virgin the next morning. It was a modest church compared to our Oxford parish church of St Peter-in-the-East, consisting as it did of no more than a nave without side aisles, and very short transepts to north and south. There was a stumpy tower at the west end, which held the single bell, though it was a bell with a very sweet voice. Leighton Manor possessed its own small chapel, used on weekdays, but the de Vere family had always attended Mass at the village church on Sundays, along with the villagers. Some early Lord de Vere had installed a window of stained glass at the east end of the chancel, behind the altar, which depicted the Virgin holding the infant Christ Child up to admire a blossoming tree of uncertain variety. The flowers were almost as large as the Baby’s head. The remaining windows of the church were plain glass, quite thick and irregular.