Children of Clun

by Robert Nicholls

  “Yeah? S’pose you know how to do that, do ye?” Jack asked with poorly disguised interest.

  “Course I do!” Madeleine blustered. “Bit o’ bletch from a church bell or a cart wheel! That’s all!”

  “AND . . . ,” Anwen finally chipped in, having decided that Madeleine had the true measure of these boys, “youse’ll never catch them animals, neither! Two scrawny no-hopers like youse – if that’s what ya’s were thinkin’!”

  The boy’s grins faded as they reflected on their empty stomaches. The theft of a fine pig had been exactly the purpose of their lurking visit to the fringes of Clun. Now, to be confronted by these two well-fed girls, their stomaches full of oatcakes and apples, their voices full of defiance and confidence! Jack’s face grew hard. He followed a fateful impulse and, “Maybe,” he said, “maybe we don’t WANT to catch them animals! Maybe,” he said, “we’ll jus’ catch YOU instead!”

  Maude and Anwen looked at one another in sudden terror. Both apple seeds dropped off Anwen’s forehead and, at last, they gave their feet free rein. But it was already too late.

  * * * *

  The sun was falling down the western side of the sky when Gwenith began waddling her breathless way up the hill to the castle. Gwilym had told her of Maude’s selection for kitchen work by Jenny Talbot, so there was no doubting where that daughter was. But Madeleine and Annie were a different story.

  The pig and the goat had come home late in the morning. Both animals, but the pig in particular, had arrived in a state of some agitation. A timid intelligent creature (much like Maude!) the pig had come straight into the house and lay down in a corner, refusing to be moved. So where were those girls? Had they fallen into the river? Had they fallen into the hands of some wandering brigand? Were they meat in the bellies of the great wolves that still sometimes ventured near to settlements?

  As she shuffled along, Gwenith’s great rump stuck out behind her and her determined little chins stuck out before. Her breath was rasping and her lips moved spasmodically.

  “Oh, Jesus Lord!” she was huffing. “My poor babies! Where are my babies?”

  * * * *

  Her trip up the hill stemmed from utter desperation. Gwilym had wasted half a valuable hour looking for Maude before finally learning her whereabouts and storming home; only to learn this much worse news. He’d immediately roused a group of men from the fields and they’d tentatively entered the woods, their pitchforks, hoes and sickles brandished before them. But they were superstitious men – farmers rather than fighters – and few were willing to venture far into that endless and haunted place. In any event, the reeve’s jurisdiction technically ended where the ploughed fields ended which, coincidentally, was about the same place their courage ended. Neither threats nor entreaties had been able to take them further.

  Gwenith, on hearing of their reluctance, had yielded to a sudden, inexplicable impulse. Great warriors, it seemed, were resting over pints of her ale in the castle. In the normal run of events, knights and lords would be interested in peasants only if the ale stopped flowing or the geese became unavailable for roasting. Normally, lost children would be of no interest to them at all. Very likely, in fact, she would not even be allowed to speak to anyone in authority. And if, by some quirk of fate, she was, it might only be for their amusement – to let her audacity provide them with a laugh. Strong men with weapons often find the fear of others – especially women – reassuring. Nonetheless, her babies were missing and Gwenith was intent on trying every avenue. Unfortunately, by the time she was halfway to the castle she was all the way out of breath. She had to stop.

  On the common to one side of the road, a small crowd composed of a dozen or fifteen women had gathered around the strange little cart that Maude had dreamed into existence. They were milling about, laughing nervously, doing their best to focus on the words being spoken by the cart’s owner. And that’s where Gwenith, in breathless despair, seeking a word of comfort from a friend, stumbled to a halt. None of the villagers gave her so much as a second look.

  They didn’t look because they were mesmerised by the cart’s owner who, presumably, had also been dreamed into existence by Maude. She was a woman of indeterminate age – youngish in the slender erectness of her posture and the firmness of her step, but old in the stillness and intensity about her eyes. In her little cart, which doubled as her home, was a bewilderment of dried herbs, desiccated roots, powdered barks, pressed flowers and congealed unguents. A ‘Cunning Woman’ then! One of the mysterious tribe of wanderers, whose arcane knowledge of healing and magic and fortune-telling at once mystified, terrified and captivated simple folk throughout the land.

  She sat on one of two stools, the second having held a constant succession of bums for the whole of the morning. However, when Gwenith bumbled into the crowd, the seat was momentarily empty. A thin woman – content with the assurance that her husband, despite his appetites, was no demon – had only just risen. Another was sliding into the seat when the Cunning Woman abruptly rose and scanned the faces. Spying Gwenith, she reached for her and held her by the shoulders. She’d been turning cards and reading palms for the other women but, at Gwenith, she levelled a searing gaze.

  “You cannot stop here!” she hissed and, gesturing toward the castle, said, “Go! Finish!”

  Gwenith, already addled by anxiety, gaped and tried to cross herself but the Cunning Woman immediately stilled the movement and shook her head. “There is no help in that!” she said sternly. Her eyes were as mesmerising as candles in a dark room, even though the sun was still an hour above the horizon. “Go!” she ordered again.

  “Ooooowwaaaa!” Gwenith wailed, suddenly convinced that the woman held some terrible knowledge. “My babies! Where are they? What’s happened to them?”

  “They play their parts, woman! As you must do! Go! Finish what’s begun!”

  Despite the urgency of the demand, Gwenith’s self control was perilously fragile. She needed more.

  “Who . . .? Who . . .?”

  Her movements were those of a person nearing collapse. It took no seer to know that soon she’d be a wailing heap on the ground. And the Cunning Woman could not allow that!

  “I am Myfanwy. And I tell you, a great undertaking is at hand. You must go on! They will not wait!”

  Seer though she was, Myfanwy could not see all events. But one thing she knew was that a process had begun – a many stepped process – a process as involved as the weaving of a spider’s web. She herself had been called to Clun to be part of it. Gwenith – the lost children, Maude and many others – they all had their roles to play. That was how great things were brought into being; by the orchestration of many little things. Myfanwy clutched Gwenith’s shoulders and shook hard. For a moment, Gwenith’s eyes cleared and she managed a beseeching look. But fear yet held her in place.

  Alright then! Myfanwy’s craft allowed for many roads. She rolled her eyes back in her head and drew a wincing, sipping breath, smiling inwardly at the blended gasps that fell into the quivering silence. Sometimes words came unbidden to Myfanwy, rising from unknown sources. But she was not above choosing her own, to suit her needs and premonitions.

  “A fire comes,” she intoned, “flesh will burn; a prince be lost, a queen return! From a brewer, those at castle learn! ”

  Slowly, she allowed her eyes to roll forward again, bringing them to a focus again on Gwenith who swayed unsteadily, her hands clapped together over her gaping mouth. Myfanwy drew the hands away and, fishing amongst the rags of her clothing, she brought forth a small, shiny, kidney-shaped nut, which she placed in Gwenith’s palm.

  “This is a sea-bean,” she whispered. “A Molucca bean. Very rare. A great charm for luck. It will protect you. And your babies. But you must go now! Luck does not tarry!” Then she added, for no reason that even she understood, “Tell your husband! The wounded one must stay free.”

  She tapped Gwenith’s cheeks; a pair of light stings. “That’ll be a ha’penny, please,” she said,
holding out her cupped hand.

  And Gwenith, without regard for the request, pushed herself away, staggering from the crowd. She was terrified, confused, relieved and newly determined, all at the same time! Her confidence that help would be found at the castle was now as strangely tangible as the mysterious sea-bean that she later would re-discover, clutched in her palm.

  * * * *

  In the bailey, outside the ancient stable, two knights were haggling with Lazy Davey. Oats, the knights were insisting, were not half so costly in other parts of the kingdom. Oats, Davey was explaining (a little too pompously for his own good, some would have said; but it was Samuel Rowe – not he – who set the prices), oats would soon be in very short supply, what with all the visiting dignitaries and their hungry animals.

  Gwenith, having edged through the sagging, unlockable gates, saw them and, though she feared to approach, heard the word “oats”, (sounding as it did like “goats”), and mention of “hungry animals”, (conjuring up, as it did, a picture of fierce forest creatures). Swallowing her terror, she threw herself before them, stammering out her story, including mention of the “cowardly” and “hopeless” village men who would not enter the forest to find her children. And, with astonished gratification, she saw the glint of interest flare the men’s eyes. Were they not knights, after all? And was not the rescue and defence of the helpless exactly their cup of tea (or ale, if it could be made available)?

  “Back to the village, mistress,” smiled Sir Cyril Halftree – he so recently arrived as escort to Lady Joan de Beaufort’s party. “We’ll ride through shortly, we will.”

  “And whatever mischief is afoot,” said Sir Angus of Atholl cheerily, with a mock bow, “you can be sure your true solutions stand now before you.”

  These gallants were young men, perhaps twenty-four or five, but with long years of harrowing training behind them. They could wield a sword or battle-axe or lance with one arm, shield themselves from blows with the other while galloping full tilt on an eighteen hand horse. They could perform near miracles of endurance when strapped into their armour. They could also speak grandly and convincingly (even to the point of convincing themselves) of their chivalrous ideals – to protect the weak, the unfortunate, the poor and the holy.

  But their real jobs were to protect the feudal system – to ensure that every class and rank of society stayed subordinate and submissive to the classes and ranks above. Happily for them, their own knightly class and rank (not to mention their training) assured them great privilege and power. Less happily for everyone else, privilege and power have a way of tempting people to profit from, rather than protect, the weak and the unfortunate. Noble intentions sometimes degrade into self-serving brutality. So it goes with power.

  On this day, however, Sirs Angus and Cyril were bored with escort duties, restless for something more challenging to do and anxious for an opportunity to share battle histories. And so, a short time later, they rode through the village, gathering only the vaguest of directions from the awed peasants. The idealistic might think that a pity, since they could perhaps have gotten some really useful information. The realistic might think that typical because, as Gwenith had first feared, they really weren’t concerned to find much of anything anyhow. Nevertheless, they cantered off toward the sinking sun, leaving Gwenith to groan onto a stool outside her house. The strange prophecy made by the soothsayer flickered through her mind. Stuff about fire and princes and queens and wounds!

  “Lordy!” she muttered. “What on earth is happening to us?”

  At that very moment, Father Reginald began lowering his great girth onto the bench opposite her. “Did I hear you mention the Lord?” he said with a greedy glint in his eye. “Because there’s a fellow I can help with. Especially if you’ve a quenching ale at hand to oil the way!”

  * * * *

  Like mice, carrying food to a pen full of enormous hogs – that’s how Maude and Branwen felt as they scuttled back and forth between the kitchen and the Great Hall. Jenny Talbot had absorbed them into her hastily assembled kitchen staff early in the day. They’d carved and cut and chopped and stoked without let up. And when that was done, they were set to serving at the tables in the Great Hall.

  Maude alone felt she’d carried enough food to feed the village for a week: boiled eel, roast lamb, stuffed goose, cheese, fresh bread – and gallons of wine and ale. But for the serving staff, there was only what they could lick from their fingers. Furthermore, none of the nobles paid them the least courtesy. They might have been shadows for all the notice they got. In fact, it seemed to Maude that the only person who’d even come close to actually looking at her through the whole day was Hubert, Samuel Rowe’s boy-of-many-duties – the one-time pincher of Anwen’s bottom and one of those who’d stirred Gwilym’s talk of marriage. Hubert’s glance, though, was rank with embarrassment – to see if she’d seen him wink at Branwen and reach to pat her bottom as she passed – if she’d seen him reel from Branwen’s stinging slap.

  Maude had seen but, so demanding was the work and so awe-inspiring the company, she’d not dared even to frown in his direction. It was all she could do to keep her legs under her!

  At a long table down one side, beneath Sir Roland Lenthall’s coat of arms, sat the official party. In the centre, Sir Roland himself held court, chatting less and less amiably with the lady on his right, Lady Joan de Beaufort, half-cousin / half-niece (in the convoluted way of royal intermingling) to King Henry – and extending only the coolest of courtesies to those further along – the fabulous French knight, Sir Perceval de Coucy-Guines and his beautiful young wife, Marie.

  To Sir Roland’s left sat his wife, Lady Margaret, doing her best to impress and engage the woman next to her – the restrained and confident young Scottish girl, Mary Gordon, who’d ridden the great horse like a man. The last at the table were Mary Gordon’s attendant ladies, Annabel and Effemy. It seemed to Maude that every time she passed this table, she’d had to squeeze past some different young knight who’d strolled by to whisper amusing stories to Annabel and Effemy. They all, so far as Maude could see, were equally rewarded with flashing smiles, laughter and, ultimately, dismissal.

  They were all exciting and glorious people, but the real master of the banquet was much less in evidence. That was Samuel Rowe, steward of the castle, who hovered in ghostly disapproval behind the great table. A small, nervous, unsmiling man with a calculating eye and a mind like an abacus, he’d become used to supervising the household and staff without the presence of a lord – a responsibility which had compressed him into a stony, gnomish creature with a voice like the call of a crow. Throughout the entire dinner, he watched, signalling to, pinching, pushing and swearing at servants who were too slow or too careless for his liking.

  “Move yourself, girl!” Maude had heard him caw once, not daring to look to see if she was his target. “Don’t linger near your betters!”

  He controlled the feasting and the servants as perfectly as a stomach ulcer controls a diet.

  Late in the afternoon, when at last the noble company had eaten and drunk its fill, Maude and Branwen crawled into an empty and partially darkened corner of the Great Hall. Exhausted and hungry, they listened to the great din of threats, jokes, reminiscences, drunken laughter and pounding of fists on tables. Maude thought of Madeleine. Would even this abundance of joy bring pleasure to Maddie? She tried to picture Madeleine, moping at home in their cottage but, strangely, all her mind would show her was trees.

  On an impulse, Branwen grabbed the collar of one of the many hounds that prowled about the hall, picking up discarded bones and morsels. This particular hound had managed to claim a large bone – part of a sheep’s shank. Branwen wrenched it from the animal’s mouth, clouted the beast on the head with it and sent it skittering away before she and Maude began scratching off the last morsels of meat.

  “Imagine if we smuggled this out!” whispered Branwen. “We could make some soup! Boil up a nice turnip in the broth! Yum!”
r />   * * * *

  Far off, unusually deep in the wood, Brenton LeGros raised his head. For seven months, he’d been limping about the fields of Clun, nursing the raw scar on his side. A soldier in King Henry’s army at the battle of Bauge, he’d been cut deeply by a French lance. But, having made it home, he was still one of the lucky ones. A mixed army of French and Scots had inflicted on England one of its worst losses in the long series of battles that would one day be known as the Hundred Years’ War. More than a thousand English yeomen still inhabited the dirt of that terrible field.

  Today Brenton was half-heartedly looking for wild berries. The scar on his side had been thrumming all day, as it still did from time to time, as though the flesh itself had a twitching memory of being split by steel. He’d come into the forest more for the stillness than for berries. He raised his head because he heard – or thought he heard – a distant and muted cry.

  Chapter 5 – Into the Darkness

  Roland Lenthall was a tall, powerful man. Temperamentally, he was better suited to action than to feigning graciousness. Inwardly, his wish was that Lady Joan’s twice-widowed mother (ten years ago by the Earl of Somerset and seven months ago by the king’s brother, the Duke of Clarence) was a better disciplinarian and had kept her supercilious daughter, along with her foreign friends, at home. And he wished the Scots had stayed in their God-forsaken north where they belonged.

  Nonetheless, he was a knight of the realm and duty was duty. He rose in his place to perform the obligatory formal welcome, causing wooden goblets to thump back onto tables and dogs to slink away into corners that were already filled with long October shadows. He motioned to Lady Joan de Beaufort, on his right, and to Mary Gordon on his left.

  “We have honoured company amongst us, knights and ladies! Most particularly, the Lady Joan de Beaufort . . .” (he waved his hand airily, selecting amongst the possible connections, and chose) “. . . niece to his majesty, King Henry of England! She brings us news of the royal court in London.” He began to sit, remembered his manners and managed to execute a half-bow in her direction before flopping awkwardly into his chair.