The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Bad enough. What makes you think it was deliberate?’

  ‘Nothing, Huward,’ Piers sighed. There was little point telling him that Piers had gone to the chapel and prayed there before the inquest. There had been no fire then, he knew, nor had there been the collection of rubbish in the middle of the floor. It was all made clear from the ashes: someone had built a fire in the place and left it to rage. Not that Piers cared overmuch. ‘How are you, man?’

  ‘How do you think?’ Huward snarled. ‘I’ve lost my daughter. That doesn’t make a man happy.’

  Piers could see that. The miller’s face was pale, apart from the dark shadows under his eyes, and the lines seemed to have deepened at his brow and at the side of his mouth. He had been a cheery, happy-go-lucky fellow until Mary’s death: it was awful to see the change wrought by her passing.

  ‘Old friend, it’s hard to lose a child, but life continues.’

  ‘Ah! Life continues. Life goes on. One girl dies, but what’s that? All the others must live,’ Huward grunted. ‘It’s not very convincing right now, you know, Piers? Not what I’d call comforting. I loved her. She was my own, precious little angel, she was. Everything I ever wanted to see in a child. And now she’s snuffed out, her and her child within her.’

  ‘I know. It must be terrible.’

  ‘You know? You can’t know!’ Huward suddenly raged. He felt his frustration and hurt welling up. ‘I want to punch someone, kill them, take away another life. I want that snotty little scrote here, in my hands, so that I can strangle him, see the life slowly fade from his eyes as he feels his own death approach, then I’d release him, let him breathe a little, until he realised how precious his life was to him, and only then would I start to squeeze, squeeze again, until he was on the brink, and then I’d let him recover again. I’d do that ten times, or twenty, or thirty if I could. Make him suffer. Make him feel his own horror. Make him hurt like I hurt, like my poor wife…’

  ‘How is Gilda?’

  Huward wasn’t weeping. He couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come today, for some reason. Last night he’d cried like a baby when he huddled himself alone in his bed, but now there was nothing, as though he’d emptied his well of grief.

  ‘She’s still at the church, but Gilda is destroyed. She hasn’t spoken to me yet. Not since hearing that Mary’s died. She walks in a daze,’ he said. ‘That’s what I find really hard, you know? I can’t even talk to her about it. I can’t comfort my own wife.’

  He looked at Piers. The Reeve could do or say nothing to ease his pain. Huward had known Piers most of his life, but the two men had never shared their innermost secrets, they had never been close companions like some, and now in the depths of his misery, Huward looked at Piers and saw a stranger. Piers must have felt it, because the miller saw him half lift a hand as though to pat Huward’s shoulder in a show of affection, but then he allowed his hand to fall and thrust it behind his back like a thief hiding his gelt.

  ‘So I am a leper now, am I?’

  Piers didn’t raise his voice. ‘I want to give you my sympathy, Huward, but I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is try to help you and your family.’

  ‘We don’t need help. I just want to be left in peace.’

  ‘They may catch the monk.’

  ‘And what then? Would you allow me to kill him as I want? No, I didn’t think so. I’ll have to watch him be pulled up in the court before our lord, and then he’ll claim Benefit of Clergy. There’s no justice for my girl, is there?’ he added bitterly.

  ‘What do you want me to say? There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘No. So all we can do is get on with things. Mill the flour and fill the sacks. That’s all we’re good for, isn’t it? Serfs to our lord.’

  Piers nodded, but less sympathetically. Everyone hereabouts knew that the miller was treated with generosity when the rents were assessed. He shrugged his head lower, and water dropped from his hat and dribbled down his neck. This weather was only good for ducks and fish.

  ‘Hoy! Ben! Where are you going?’ Huward suddenly roared.

  ‘To an ale-house, Father. Away from this gloom-ridden midden.’

  ‘Get back in that house. We have work to do. You can’t go running about the vill today.’

  ‘I can do what I want,’ Ben said over his shoulder as he marched up the road towards Gidleigh.

  Huward started as though to spring forward to catch his boy, but he stopped and bent his head, bursting into dry, racking sobs. He waved Piers’s hand away, spinning on his heel and leaning his brow against the doorframe, trying to regain control of himself.

  The pause was embarrassing, but terrible too. Piers felt as though he was the unwilling witness to a man’s death. That was how it felt. Huward had always been a strong man, strong in the arm and in the head, and to see him in this state was scary, like seeing the collapse of an oak. No matter how hearty the soul, any man could be felled by losing a daughter, he reflected. Somehow it was worse than losing a son. At least a boy might have marked his attacker. A girl would be less likely, especially if she was punched suddenly. She could have been unconscious when her neck was broken.

  Huward whispered, ‘Look at us! What can I do? My wife’s lost her mind, my son’s a wastrel, and look at me! I can’t even control my son! What will become of us all? We’re ruined, and all because of an evil priest’s lusts! Nothing else. Just to satisfy a beardless lad’s greed.’

  ‘Is it a great deal further?’ Roger Scut asked plaintively.

  It was foul weather, and sure enough, he was soaked through already. He almost regretted his spontaneous offer to escort Mark back to the wild lands west of Crediton. The rain here seemed to fly horizontally, especially now that they had climbed a hill and had nothing in front of them to shield them from the miserable weather.

  ‘We have only travelled some eight or maybe nine miles, Brother,’ Godwen responded cheerfully. ‘Not even a third of the distance, I reckon.’

  ‘God, please give me patience!’

  There was a brief lull in the wind, and Roger Scut looked up. The terrible rain had stopped, and as he peered, he saw a sudden break in the clouds. A shaft of sunlight lanced down, and he could see the country ahead clearly. Already the horizon was taken up with the grim, blue-grey grandeur of the moors.

  Perhaps if the weather was better, Roger might have felt happier. After all, this was the best outcome he could have hoped for. All he had originally intended was to thwart the knight’s aim of taking the monk back to Gidleigh, it being a firm principle of Roger’s that the secular authorities should always be forced to bow to the might and power of the Church. Under no circumstances would he ever agree to allow a knight to put a cleric in court, for that was an appalling concept, and yet if there was one monk whom he wouldn’t mind seeing in irons, that fellow was Mark.

  Now that Sir Baldwin had made clear his determination to drag Mark back to Gidleigh, there was perhaps a benefit. Mark would certainly not be permitted to remain there in charge of the chapel whatever happened, and if Roger was there, he might be able to acquire the living. The man already present was more likely to be granted the running of the place than any other. He could take it over, smarten things up, and when the affair had blown over, install another young cleric so that Roger could farm the profits. There would be justice in Mark’s shame and fall, then. Just the thought made his mood lighten.

  He shot a look at the forlorn figure on the pony at his side, his wrists bound together. Poor Mark! So innocent, so good, so bright! The apple of the Chapter’s eye at Exeter, he was. Such a talented singer, an elegant and accomplished scribe, mathematically sound, and a good logician – and also, although with his calm manner, soft voice and gentle, doe eyes, he was almost as pretty as a maid, he was considered to be sticking to his vow of celibacy. No one had ever disputed his godliness. He behaved and looked like a saint of old, so it was said.

  Saint my ballocks! Roger thought to himself scathingly. The wastrel was n
o better than he should be. No better than any number of other young fools who thought that they deserved a better, easier life by mere virtue of their learning. Learning! It hadn’t done much for young Mark now, had it? Roger tilted his head back the better to view Mark, but there was nothing to see except ordinary self-pity. That was it. The great fool was miserable because he’d been found out.

  Roger wouldn’t waste any sympathy on him. Nor would he try to save the bastard – he could ensure that Mark was ruined utterly. That thought served to ease his mood as he jolted along on the broad back of his pony.

  ‘Roger?’

  ‘You should not be talking, Mark,’ Roger Scut said, peering down his nose at the roadway. ‘Rather, I feel you should be considering your sins – and how you are to explain yourself to Sir Ralph.’

  ‘Oh, my God! I can’t bear this!’

  ‘What?’ Roger said keenly. ‘The weight of your guilt?’

  ‘No! It’s the thought that my own father could seek my ruin.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘My father was a knight who passed through Axminster. He met my mother, and to his credit, he paid her handsomely when he realised that his dalliance had left her with child – me. Later the Bishop’s man came to the town and heard of me. My Latin was good, so he took me with him to the Cathedral, and there I have stayed.’

  Roger Scut made a small, irritable gesture with his hand. ‘I don’t care… so this knight, you say, who was he?’

  ‘My mother told me he was Sir Ralph of Wonson. That was why I wanted to come here and see him. I thought he could help me, with patronage and support. Every bit of help is useful. You know that.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course.’

  Roger Scut listened as Mark spoke further, but the boy’s babbling intruded but little into his thoughts. He was not here to help Mark. No, Roger would be the next Parson of Gidleigh. Not that he would stay. He thought again of his plan to install a youngster – maybe Luke? – in the chapel for a small salary, and add the revenues from this place to his other profits. Before long, if he was careful, he would have more money than a Bishop!

  However, it was most unlikely that Sir Ralph would pass the chapel on to anyone else, if he knew that Mark was his own son. ‘Even though Sir Ralph knows you’re his son, he’s hunting you down?’ he enquired casually.

  ‘It’s because he doesn’t know I’m his son. Why should he?’ Mark wailed. ‘I never told him, because there never seemed to be the right moment.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  And he did. He could see how to win the chapel. All he had to do was make sure that Sir Ralph never learned of his son’s parentage. Simple.

  It was late in the morning when Flora reached the lane that led to her home. She was still shivering, but it wasn’t the rain and getting soaked, it was the shock of being chased. The vision of that great horse bearing down on her, Esmon screaming with glee, knowing that she couldn’t outrun his beast, kept returning to her. She couldn’t get the picture out of her mind, nor that of Esmon reaching up with his switch held high, ready to swipe it down at her. The very thought made her shudder again; it was awful, terrifying. At that moment she had been convinced she was about to die, raped like her sister, forced to couple with the filthy, sweating Esmon.

  The similarity between this and her sister’s death made her feel as though her very marrow had turned to ice. She had told herself to run, and keep running until her heart gave out and her soul was freed, but she couldn’t. Like a young rabbit caught by an adder’s gaze, all she could do was stare in terror.

  Then, with a suddenness that had made her feel faint with relief, Esmon’s father appeared and forced himself between them, saving her. He glanced down at her, and she saw compassion in his eyes, she was sure. That made her feel a slight easing of her fear, but then she caught sight of Esmon’s expression, and she knew that she was not safe. She could never be safe while he lived.

  Now that she was almost home again, she glanced about her with her heart thundering in her breast. It was so close to the castle. At any moment Esmon might leap from the trees and assault her. She had never seen another man who looked so uncaring, so greedy. That was all she was to him, she was sure – a slab of useful meat he could devour. And he could do so at any moment. She had no defence.

  The wearisome vigil of the night before was wearing her down. Her knees ached, oh so badly, after praying all night for her sister’s soul, and she felt dried out and scratchy. Her throat was rough with thirst, and her eyes felt as though someone had thrown fine dust in them. And all the while, she felt guilt at that feeling, that faint little feeling of relief at her sister’s death.

  She’d left her mother with Mary. Gilda couldn’t do much more than sit on her haunches and rock, moaning gently as she surveyed the winding-sheeted body of her daughter. Even Sir Ralph had gone there and tried to speak to her earlier that day, before Flora left her, but Gilda had only stared at him with her broken eyes, then turned back to the corpse, crossing herself like a mad penitent. It had hurt Sir Ralph, Flora could see that, but for anyone to come close to madness was terrifying. Lunatics were usually ostracised, and best avoided by all sane and wholesome folk. Except when it was your own mother, of course.

  The rain of the late morning had stopped, and although the sun was hidden behind clouds, the landscape glowed as though someone had washed every blade of grass, every leaf. Occasionally the sun would try to shove its way through and the rivers and streams glittered like silver, the trees shining as though their branches were scattered with fine diamonds, but then the cloud squeezed the sun away again and the land seemed almost to die without its warming light.

  She wrapped her arms about her body in a bid to keep warm, but it was little help. More than the weather, she knew that it was the thought of that great horse bearing down on her that really chilled her to the core.

  Esmon was a foul man. She was sure of it. In the vill there was talk that he’d grabbed young Avice Fletcher last month and raped her. Men said she was a flirt, that she’d lifted her skirts to show him her legs and she’d got what she deserved, but Avice had told Flora the truth of the matter. She’d been minding the flock out near Throwleigh when she heard a horse approaching at speed. It was coming along the lane at a gallop, from the sounds of it, and she’d climbed up into the hedge to see who it was. Esmon saw her at the same time.

  He had often made eyes at the girls in the vill. With his handsome looks and aura of danger, many of the local beauties had been happy to flirt with him, hoping he’d take them. Some of the girls dreamed of being married to a man like him, being taken up to the great castle and allowed to live in luxury: fresh rushes on the floor each month, two, maybe even three dresses, a thick cloak for winter – and enough food and strong wine to fill even the hungriest belly. That was what most craved now, a surfeit of food, after these last seven lean and hungry years.

  Esmon fancied several of the girls. Flora knew that he regularly tupped Margery, and he’d had Johanna as well. There were others, she was sure, but that was no surprise. He put his faith in his strength, and that was all the girls had to care about. If their menfolk dared to stand before Esmon and denounce him, he could beat them for insolence, and his father might well arrest them and hold them until his court next met, at which time Sir Ralph could order them to be hanged for petty treason, or merely order that their rent should be increased to a level where their lives were at risk. He owned the land, and he owned them.

  But if those girls were willing enough companions, Avice wasn’t. She was already sworn to marry Pike the shepherd’s son, and wanted nothing of Esmon’s rough handling, so she ducked down and pelted away across the field, trying to find sanctuary.

  Esmon had hallooed like a hunter seeing a stag. He’d leaped the hedge, his mount digging great divots in the grass where his forefeet fell, and set off after her at a canter. She had almost reached the safety of a small copse, when she felt him grab her under her arm, his hand
curling about her breast, scooping her up while she kicked and struggled. He laughed, lifted one leg over his horse’s head, and dropped with her to the ground. There he pushed her backwards, forcing her onto her back, and all but ripped her clothing from her before covering her. She screamed and wept, but for all the compassion her cries aroused in him, she might as well have remained silent. He knew full well that there was no one who could hear her so far from the vill.

  Flora had been walking from the mill towards Avice’s home when she saw the girl. Avice was clasping the remains of her clothing to her breast, limping painfully, an eye blackened and swelling, and dried blood marking her thighs. She couldn’t talk, only sobbed piteously, her hair bedraggled and scattered with twigs and leaves. Her lips were red and sore-looking from being crushed by his teeth as he tried to force her to kiss him, and her face was ravaged with shame and pain.

  The memory of that sight would live with Flora for ever. Esmon and his father could take any woman who attracted them, and if a father or brother objected, and Esmon’s blood was up, he might set about them with his sword. He was perfectly capable of it. It was strange that his father today had protected her. Flora had heard that other girls had been taken by him in just so rough a manner. Perhaps – she shuddered with revulsion – perhaps Sir Ralph wanted to save her for himself.

  The idea that her father might realise what had happened and try to defend her honour by attacking the vile son of their lord was appalling, because it could only end in Huward being slaughtered.

  ‘Oh God, thank you for saving me,’ she whispered, the tears beginning to fall again.

  ‘Come, maid! Try to dry your eyes. Your sister’s gone to a good place where she’ll live like a queen.’

  She jumped almost out of her skin, but then she saw Piers smiling at her with that twisted grin of his, and she felt her heart recover a little – only a little, though. After being chased by Esmon that morning, she was wary of any man. Even one so friendly and decent as Piers.