A lean, pock-faced man was summoned to greet them. His eyes flickered when he saw strangers, not Squire Alfred nor his lady. ‘Wot’s dis ’ere, den?’ he muttered under his breath. He smiled ingratiatingly at the visitors. ‘Squire Alfred’s yer bruvver, den?’ He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice; a younger brother sent to do a reeve’s work? Interesting. A cock’s egg of a bruvver, ’an ’all, from the look o’ fings. With a flick of his wrist, he summoned boys to hold the horses’ bridles while the visitors dismounted; he gave orders to take the horses to stable, to groom them, water and feed them. It was Cedric, the hayward and pinder, the man who was useful to John Reeve, and who was now useful in keeping the prisoner in close captivity. Alfred had told him, ‘He knows how to keep order. Rely on him.’ There was disdain in the smile he turned on Edgar. ‘Book learning won’t be much help to you there, brother; what you need is a strong sword arm and that, I can promise you, is what Cedric Hayward has. John Reeve and his man Cedric were my wife’s choice to replace the old dodderer left in charge by my father. You will see how the manor suffered under him, and how much remains to be done to set all to right.’
It was the reeve’s responsibility to maintain the manor and its well-being. If he shirked his duty, how could the sokemen and villeins do their work? Perhaps the former reeve had been an old dodderer, as his brother said, but little ditching and delving had been done here this past year, from the look of it, and now the manor was reaping the rewards of sloth. Edgar checked himself. Unfair. It was not the fault of the villeins, whatever his brother might say. Perhaps it was not the fault of the reeve nor the hayward. It seemed that much of the year’s harvest had been sent to Rochby manor, together with slaughtered animals, for the Christmas feasting. Edgar remembered the silver dole ships laden with food for the poor. He looked at the village folk hastily assembled to meet him. The sokemen and their wives and children looked lean enough but the rest – the rebellious villeins, Edgar supposed – shivered, stinking skinny bodies in threadbare tunics and kirtles. The dole ships would have found a better harbour here.
Cedric called a servant to him and instructed fires to be lit and a meal to be prepared. The kitchens had not been much used, Master Edgar must understand, and the hall had stood empty. Hif there ’ad been warning of their arrival…
Edgar did not like this Cedric. He did not like the way the man swaggered about the place. A hayward, he thought, no more than that, then memory kicked in. Cedric was a bully. Agathi edged close and whispered that he reminded her of Big Aziz, the thuggish, terrifying righthand-man of fat Veçdet the slave trader. This man was not huge and muscular, like Big Aziz: he was whippy-lean; his face was thin, wedge-shaped, pock-marked; his eyes a watery pale-blue that never quite met your own. But there was about him the same love of cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Edgar paid heed to her, this one-time slave who was now his wife. Her instincts were always right. Besides, he was himself remembering Venezia, and how Dai had returned from the glass-making island of Murano saying that no one would talk to him; all were sullen and silent, intimidated by someone powerful enough to keep them from talking. These villagers when he met with them, sokemen and villeins alike, listened in sullen silence but they would not talk to him.
He and Agathi made an inspection of Bradwell village. The land must wait until next daybreak, and before that he needed to talk with the leading men of the village, and with Cedric Hayward. They started with the hall, since this was where they must live and sleep and Edgar was anxious for Agathi to have as much comfort as possible in this neglected place.
It was old-fashioned, built in the old Norman style, with outer stairs leading up to a stout wooden door, that much he remembered from childhood, but now he saw it was a good stone building for all its age, with solid shutters to the windows and, in the solar’s round-arched windows, parchment had been added made from oiled goatskin thin enough to let light through but strong enough to keep out the icy wind and swirling snow. With wall-hangings and warm cushions, the solar would be a cosy place where Agathi could find some peace and privacy. The hall rose up to the usual trusses and beams but, instead of a central hearth, there was a wall-placed hearth such as Philippa coveted, with a great cylindrical chimney climbing the outer wall and rising high above the thatched roof: a thick thatch, re-laid in time for winter. On the ground floor was the undercroft for storage of beans and fruit and grain – animals, if need be. Cedric pointed to the bolted and locked chamber where the villein Bernt was held. ‘’At’s ’im in ’ere, Master Edgar,’ he said. ‘’Ee’ll keep. ’Ee’s snug as a flea in an ’owd cat’s fur. I’ll check on ’im layter.’ And Edgar, berating himself for a coward, agreed, ‘Later.’
Nothing wrong with the hall nor undercroft nor, across the yard from it, the thatched, timber kitchen with bakehouse and brewhouse backing on to it. The dairy was ranged around the same side of the open court. On the third side were stables for the hall horses, and a lean-to timber building with a thick plank door, another that was well secured. Across the bare-branched orchard was the church, a small, simple building of stone, no tower: a single bell hung in the bell-cote. The thatching was in need of repair, Edgar noted. Further off was the great granary but there were gaps in its sides and the thatch was rotting on that as well. Easy pickings for vermin. They had passed one of the sokemen’s farms on their way down the rutted track to the plank-bridge; two more were in the valley bottom and another part way up the opposite hill where the track climbed up towards the ridge. The sixth was out of sight but, since all were on the land that was left to the manor, he supposed it must be beyond the church. The rest were now the property of adjoining manors. These sokemen’s farms were more dilapidated than he liked to see but spring repairs would see them sound enough. It was the villeins’ cotts that shocked Edgar. They were opposite the manor house, on the other side of the track, each with its croft extending towards the beck. From most of them, no smoke rose, and wisps from only a few. They were all unkempt, dilapidated, meagrely thatched with last year’s rushes; all stank of shit. The villeins looked gaunt and hungry. Worst of all, beneath the sullenness was an undercurrent of unrest and hostility that worried him. Then there was the shocking dilapidation of the land: signs of neglect and disrepair everywhere he looked.
He remembered it from seven – maybe eight – years ago, before he was sent to Croyland, when he had visited in company with his brothers and his father, that stern, rigorous lord, but a fair one. Edgar was a young boy then but he remembered that the manor had been well administered, well husbanded and returning a good profit. A good reeve was in charge, whatever Alfred might say; an elderly man but much respected. Summer time, and the manor lands sat well in their shallow valley. A peaceful place, and he was content to spend day after day proddling in the beck for small fish, and riding over the open lands and through woodland. Higher up the cliff was heathland, wild and uncultivated. Lower down the Fens began, those great watery tracts brimming with fish and fowl.
‘It’s not profitable now, Edgar,’ his brother had said. ‘That’s the truth of it. Father should never have sold land to the Templars, and that was before you were born, when the Templars were still powerful. They had a huge holding higher up the heath, a great temple, and lands abutting Bradwell. He said it made sense to sell to them, if he had to sell at all, since the lands roundabout were all Templar held.’
Since then, the Templars had been finished by the second Edward, after Philippe le Bel had organised his rout of the sect in France. Their lands were forfeit to the Crown; the great temple was desolate, abandoned to whoever cared to seek shelter under its roof. And not many dared. It was hag-ridden, they said, a cursed place. Its great domed temple was visible on the winter skyline. Edgar had seen it as a young boy, and its towers, but now the wind whistled around it and, if it were not cared for, would sink into decay. Alfred had said there were rumours that the Hospitallers at Eagle were to establish a Commandery there, and Edgar hoped that would prove to be true. Better by fa
r bring the lands back into order, life into the temple, than have this perpetual reminder of a brutal act.
Since land had been sold to the Templars, this manor had shrunk even more. Since then, Alfred had leased or sold huge amounts of what land remained – woods, arable, pasture – to other manor holdings, and with them the sokemen’s farms and villeins’ crofts and tofts and, of course, their legal service to the running of the manor.
But it was big enough still to make a living for those who lived here, thought Edgar, if it were efficiently managed. If the leased land could be brought back into its care. If – small hope – some of the sold land could be bought back. It was well watered by springs and a beck, and the land was fertile red-brown earth up to the eastern boundary with limestone gravel that made the earth rough but good for all that; sandy land at the western boundary, ideal for the warren, and he remembered seeing black rabbits when he was a boy, bred for their pretty, valuable fur as much as for their flesh. The manor still retained the warren, and there were limestone seams that could be quarried for boundary walls and building, if he’d a mind to build more in stone. If Alfred didn’t quarry out all the good stone in this ambitious building scheme of his; it seemed the stone he was using came from Bradwell.
Edgar thought of the accused man Bernt held in tight bonds in the undercroft in the cold and dark; of his wife Ellen, a pretty young woman as silver haired as Agathi though her hair was a tumble of curls where Agathi’s was shining straight. Ellen’s face was haggard where it should have been smooth and smiling. There was a son, Oluf, barely nine summers old, with his mother’s silver-fair curls. When Edgar looked at the boy, he imagined a son of his own; he saw Niko and the way his long lashes would quiver and cover the mischief in his dark eyes, though little mischief there was in these hazel eyes. But this boy looked him full in the face, as Niko did, and his chin was raised in that proud way Niko had, beaten but not cowed, daring this new-come stranger, this brother of the Lord of the Manor, to call his father murderer.
Edgar was consumed with worry and, truth be told, guilt. He thought how Dai had stayed behind in Venezia though he knew he was a hunted man. ‘Get them all to safety,’ he had told Giles. Edgar had heard him. Yes, Dai knew Edgar was as much in need of protection as Kazan and Agathi. A runaway novice, a young man unused to the wide world, even after two years’ journeying; a novice sword-fighter. How could he restore order to this manor with its undercurrent of violence? How could he protect Agathi? As well as Blue, he needed Dai here, a dangerous man but one to give him good counsel about this death, the man accused, evidence of theft, a cruel bully against whom no man was willing to give evidence, and such a gap between those who lived in comfort and those who struggled to survive.
Agathi was disturbed by what she saw. While Edgar discussed the terrible business with the hayward, Cedric, she explored the place. There were pitifully few barrels of salted meat and fish stored away; remnants of cheeses on the shelves in the dairy; sacks of coarse flour in the bakehouse. She thought of the lavish banquet that had been served the night before at Rochby and wondered how much provision had come from this poor manor. She watched women come with pitifully small quantities of mixed barley and pea meal to be baked on the bakehouse stones. They had no fire in their own homes but even if they had these wretched creatures were obliged to use the manor bakehouse, and pay for the privilege. One of the sokemen’s wives was escorting her, and explained this to her and yes, she had understood the woman’s words. They were speaking in laborious French; Edgar had taught her that language and her understanding was good enough but she did not have the words for what she saw now.
The same woman escorted her round the manor cotts. Agathi was shocked by the stinking poverty in which the villeins lived. There was an old grandmother, rheumy-eyed and blue-cold in a cott where there was no bright hearth, no food, no warm blankets, and young children crawled about the filthy earth floor, their teeth chattering with cold. The thatch had mostly blown away or rotted. Green mould seeped down the walls. ‘She must be taken into the hall,’ Agathi said, and her speech was painfully slow and halting. Rémi’s signs, learnt from Edgar, conveyed as much as her words. ‘They are making a good fire now in the hall. It will be warm there tonight, and there will be food for the grandmother.’ She looked at them, this pitifully underclad, underfed family, and she in her warm travelling gown and fur-lined cloak. The rest of the villeins’ wives crowded outside the opening of the cott, agog for a sight of this foreigner. Agathi spoke to them all: ‘Will you all live here in the hall this winter? In spring we shall repair your homes. Make them good.’
The sokeman’s wife frowned, wondering if she had understood this foreigner’s meaning. It was the young woman Ellen who understood and translated. The village women looked frowningly at Agathi, suspicion on their faces. The young squire, for squire he was though his brother had made him reeve, had brought a heathen wife back from the Holy Land, and one who couldn’t speak Norman-English, let alone good Lincolnshire.
Agathi regarded their faces: they were like Hatice, she thought, so harsh-seeming but inside wanting the best for their men and children and nothing to give them in way of comfort, neither a warm hearth nor a full belly. Little wonder they mistrusted her, with one of their own bound hand and foot in that dark, cold cell and like to die unless Edward could save him.
‘Please tell the women, Ellen, whoever wishes may sleep in the hall this winter. They may sleep there tonight. The men also. We shall be many but there will be fire and food enough and a warm place to sleep.’
‘Does your man agree to this?’ Ellen asked.
Would Edgar agree? Agathi did not know. She had not stopped to think. It seemed so long now since Edgar had rescued her from wretched captivity, and Edgar had been pleased to allow her to make choices. He valued her thoughts and opinions. But this? ‘Yes,’ she said with certainty, ‘my man will agree.’
Ellen nodded. This could only be good.
Ellen seemed to like her well enough, one of the women muttered, and Ellen with most cause for distrust. Besides, she was a gentle little thing, said another, nobbut a bairn herself, and for sure she thought the world of her handsome husband. Not like that vemonous beezum Lord Muck had brung back from southern parts, Hilda said, that toad dressed up in silks and damask. But Hilda was always brazenly outspoken. Got her into trouble with John Reeve, that tongue of hers, and a lashing from that brute Cedric.
Agathi caught at some of what they said. If only she could speak their language! She scrabbled in her memory for Blue’s words. ‘We can tent best for the abless and bairns like this,’ she told them, each word quaintly precise. They stared at her, astonishment all over their faces. She heard Blue’s voice in her head as clear as if he stood next to her. ‘It is doable if we remble ourselves.’
Hilda started to laugh, a wheezing laugh but laughter all the same. ‘Then let’s git agaäte o’ moving our tuts, lass,’ she snorted. ‘Yer heard the mistress,’ she said to the rest. Ellen smiled though there was sadness in it. ‘They will come,’ she said. ‘It is a good thing you do, to give them warmth and comfort for the winter. The bairns will be healthy and the old grandmother will live, and the rest of us will have food in our bellies.’
Agathi felt tears misting her eyes: she knew who Ellen was. Generous, graceful Ellen, wife of Bernt-the-villein who was imprisoned in the undercroft. How cold it must be there, this drear dark day. The curly-haired boy was their young son; as many curls as Edgar but as silver fair as herself. He glowered at her, reminding her of Niko, her brother, though he was as fair as Niko was dark.
Perhaps the child she was carrying would have silver-fair curls like this child. This third week in January, their first day in the manor, she was sure she was with child. Part of her was elated, longing to give her husband a son. Perhaps a daughter. What did it matter? A man like Edgar would welcome boy or girl child. How lucky she was to be the wife of such a man. But he was worried, she knew, because this was a dangerous place. She fel
t it. It reminded her of the slave camp, and the way Veçdet controlled them all with the help of his guard, Big Aziz. John Reeve was dead but his man Cedric Hayward controlled the village. This she knew without being told. She had sensed it from the moment of meeting him earlier that afternoon. But what proof did she have? No one would dare speak out, as no one dared speak in Veçdet’s camp. She frowned, thinking hard, staring through the thin parchment that protected the window at the growing dark beyond. Niko, my brother, she thought, if you were here you would not allow this. Kazan, bright Kazan, boy-girl, warrior and maiden, you would not allow this. Dafydd, strange, frightening man that you are, you rescued me and Niko and Hatice and Asperto. You grieved for the death of the child Hatice loved. You grieved for poor, drowned Asperto. You hate slavery, and these villagers are slaves. They live in fear, as we did. Edgar, my gentle husband, you hate injustice and you will not, must not, allow this.
She went down the outer steps from the hall and across the yard to the kitchens. The ground was frozen now but come the thaw it would be a morass of mud, unless they found a way to make it firm. She should see what food was being prepared, and if there was enough to feed all, not just the newly arrived reeve and his wife and servants. Perhaps there would be those who would talk to her. Talk to her! How could they talk to her, she who spoke Greek and Turkish and a smattering of the Venetian language, and the pitiful French that Edgar had painstakingly taught her? She needed Blue’s language that even Dafydd could barely understand. But Edgar knew it. Edgar knew these people. He came from here. This was his country. She felt calmed, confident.
The Heart Remembers Page 11