The Turn of Midnight

by Minette Walters

  The day after, they began a second house and, whether drawn to help by the sight of a lord in rolled-up shirtsleeves or fuelled with new energy from the communal meals they were consuming, twenty men joined them in the enterprise, setting to work on multiple buildings. Watching from a distance, Hugh wondered what sedition Thurkell was preaching, for he knew the man well enough to know he wouldn’t be arguing in favour of God’s social order. Lady Anne had indoctrinated him too well in the profane belief that an accident of birth was the only difference between a noble and a slave.

  He suspected more sedition a week later when Thurkell returned from a two-day journey with six greybeards comfortably seated in My Lord of Bourne’s carriage. The elders showed none of the fear of punishment that Pikeman had predicted, and Hugh was certain Thurkell and his companions had tutored them in how to behave and speak along the way. They greeted their liege lord gravely and listed the names and ages of those who still lived in his vassal demesnes. Hugh recorded the names in his ledger and, when all were counted, the number of serfs remaining from a population in excess of three thousand a year previously was five hundred and three, some fifty of whom were too young to work.

  The elders were unable to say whether their own lords—vassal knights to Bourne—were alive or dead. Each had departed with his household when news came that the sickness had crossed the border between Dorseteshire and Wiltshire. Two were thought to have headed west and the third north, but no word had come from them since. One of the stewards had died, two had fled, and all three priests had perished. There were no bailiffs. Responsibility for My Lord’s demesnes had fallen to his bonded men and they had done their best to safeguard his land, livestock and property.

  After being shown the demesne by Pikeman, and consulting with him at length, the elders had expressed their willingness to bring their fellows to live and work in Bourne on the same terms that My Lord had agreed with his own serfs. Hugh watched in disbelief as Bourne signed a writ, prepared by Thurkell, which not only granted them extra land but rights of access to education, medicine and a meal of meat every seven days. It was a world in disarray when base-born men, sworn to obedience through their oaths of fealty, could expect rewards in return for their labour.

  The next two weeks saw columns of tired humanity and livestock shepherded into Bourne by Thurkell and his companions. Those too old or young to walk rode with caged poultry on open-sided bullock carts while the able-bodied drove their demesnes’ sheep, pigs and cattle ahead of them. Secured inside My Lord’s covered wagon were the gold reserves, weaponry and fine garments which had been abandoned by his vassal knights in their haste to flee. My Lord, watching the arrival of the first convoy, remarked to Hugh that Thurkell had the air of Moses, leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, and Hugh’s heart soured when he saw the description was accurate. The words ‘blessed saviour’ ran in whispers through each weary throng as Thurkell urged them to rest and eat the food that was brought to them.

  Brought back to the present by the weeping of maids at Athelstan’s departure, Hugh raised his eyes again to the shadowy figure of the old man, standing half hidden behind a pillar to watch the scenes in the great hall. Did Bourne understand now that the slave was less Moses than Judas? He should. It was a powerful betrayal to persuade a noble he could keep his people’s allegiance by rewarding them with kindness, only to take their gratitude to himself.

  One young maid clung desperately to Thurkell’s hand and begged him to stay. He had found her amongst the remaining house servants, a shy and frightened orphan of some twelve years whom others said had a knowledge of letters. She had learnt the skill from the priest but was fearful of admitting to it until Thurkell praised her for her cleverness and urged My Lord of Bourne to appoint her tutor to the children. He had sat at her side for seven days, helping in the teaching of the young ones, and she had grown in confidence under his guidance. But now she wept and shook with grief, for she had no belief My Lord of Bourne’s approval would continue once her protector was gone.

  The same apprehension was in every face.

  Edmund Trueblood turned in his saddle for a last look at the demesne before a bend in the highway hid it from view. The burnt-out remains of the old village lay like an ugly scar on the land but the new houses, some five hundred paces to the west, stood clean and fine as if to prove that life would go on. ‘Do you think My Lord cares enough about his people to continue what you’ve started?’ he asked Thaddeus.

  ‘It depends what you mean by caring. He understands the value of their labour well enough.’

  ‘They’ll abscond if he doesn’t keep his word,’ said Peter Catchpole. ‘I answered more questions about journeying the roads than I ever did about burying turds or getting rid of fleas. There isn’t a lad in Bourne who hasn’t thought about slipping away at night to make his fortune as a freeman.’

  Olyver Startout nudged his horse to the left to avoid a rut. ‘And Thaddeus will be blamed when they do. Master de Courtesmain will make sure of it.’

  Peter gave a snort of derision. ‘He’s a weaselly little fellow. It galls him that even Joshua tops him by a couple of inches now. He puts it down to eating meat. I heard him tell My Lord of Bourne it was a bad idea to add mutton to a serf’s diet.’

  Joshua grinned. ‘How did My Lord reply?’

  ‘Coldly. He advised the steward to count the number of surplus rams and explain what he planned to do with them if they weren’t eaten. He’s no more enamoured of de Courtesmain than Lady Anne was.’

  Edmund glanced at Thaddeus. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘For the moment . . . but de Courtesmain’s no fool. He’ll work his way into the old man’s favour in time. My guess is the elders will be blamed for failing to meet My Lord’s hopes of the harvest before I’m blamed for absconders.’

  ‘Have you warned them?’

  Humour glinted in Thaddeus’s dark eyes. ‘No need. They’ve laboured under stewards like de Courtesmain all their lives. I’ve left him a letter, urging him to make them his allies, but he’ll not heed the words. It pleases him to think peasants too ignorant to merit his respect. He’ll cite their laziness and stupidity for producing lower yields than he predicts.’

  ‘What if My Lord believes him?’

  ‘He won’t. He has a keen understanding of what his land can produce.’

  ‘You shouldn’t put so much faith in him,’ Peter scolded. ‘He has no more liking for his serfs than de Courtesmain has. I saw it in his eyes. He can’t stand to be near them.’

  ‘Maybe so, but he’s willing to tolerate them as long as his greed’s satisfied. He made a bargain with the elders that if his people, working together, can increase the yield on his land by in excess of one-fifth on previous years, he’ll award them the profit on the surplus. There’s no better spur to persuade men to work. Rightly or wrongly, they all believe they can surpass a fifth quite easily.’

  ‘De Courtesmain will hate you even more if you’re right,’ said Olyver. ‘Did you tell him we were going in search of Eleanor’s dowry?’

  Thaddeus shook his head. ‘It’s not his business. I let him believe we’re returning to Develish, looting what we can from every deserted demesne we pass. The idea pleased him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’d rather remember me as a common thief than a serf who passed for a lord. It galled him more than he could bear to have to bend his neck to me.’

  ‘Then you’d better not have signed your letter Athelstan,’ Olyver warned, ‘or he’ll be feeding it to the pigs by now.’

  Thaddeus laughed. ‘I did not. My intention was to help him, not provoke him. He needs to open his eyes to the future and stop yearning for a past that is gone.’ He nodded to the road ahead. ‘I suggest you do the same. I don’t care how many young maids won your hearts in Bourne, everything we do from hereon in, we do for Develish.’

  (THADDEUS THURKELL’S LETTER TO HUGH DE COURTESMAIN)

  Honoured Sir,

  I write in the hope that you wi
ll see advantage to yourself in upholding the pledges My Lord of Bourne has made to his people. He is more receptive than you realise to the ideas he encountered in Develish, and to argue against them may cause him to doubt you. He understands well that the future of his estates depends on the goodwill of his serfs to work his fields and seeks ways to encourage their loyalty rather than weaken it.

  He is persuaded that our world will look different when the pestilence ends, and I advise you to give some thought to this yourself. I have tried several times to engage you on the subject, but your clear resistance to men being rewarded for their work suggests you believe that obedience can only be won through the whip. If so, you are wrong. No whip has been wielded in Develish for over a decade. Instead, Lady Anne has allowed her people to share in the profits of their labour, and the yields per head have been significantly higher, year on year, than anything Bourne has managed to achieve.

  Before the pestilence, a nobleman’s wealth was assessed by how many serfs he owned. The greater the number the more profitable his land. Yet, even by merging four demesnes into one, My Lord still lacks the workers to return Bourne to profit. The same will be true of every landowner in Wiltshire because none will have taken the measures Lady Anne did to protect her people. I beg you to ask yourself how this shortage will be managed except by lords luring their neighbours’ serfs away on a promise of payment for work and an end to their oaths of fealty. Should this happen, My Lord of Bourne will look to you to keep his people true to him, and your success in the venture will earn his gratitude.

  That task is already begun. Robin Pikeman tells me he and his neighbours dare to believe in a future since My Lord gave his undertakings, and their confidence in him will only increase as their health and strength improves. You may not agree that the dark ages of serfdom are almost over, Master de Courtesmain, but you must surely accept that every landowner, including My Lord of Bourne, will welcome skilled workers who declare themselves free and willing to work for a small imbursement. No questions will be asked about the truth of the claims when fields need planting and crops harvesting.

  I urge you most strongly to put aside your doubts and suspicions of the English peasant class and seek allies amongst the elders. Not one is your enemy unless you choose to make him so. Robin Pikeman has the ear of all and will be an honest adviser on how to draw the best from My Lord’s people. Robin’s family is buried in Bourne and he has made himself responsible for the many young boys who’ve been orphaned by the pestilence. He and they will have no cause to leave unless the pledges they’ve been given are abandoned.

  Our paths are unlikely to cross again, Master de Courtesmain, since our loyalties lie in separate directions, but please accept my sincere hope that you enjoy good fortune in the weeks, months and years ahead.

  Your obedient servant,

  Thaddeus Thurkell

  FEBRUARY, 1349

  Eight

  Pedle Hinton

  THEY RODE TWO DAYS TOWARDS the south-west, sleeping in woodland by night and taking to the road again when the sun came up. The weather had been cold for weeks but a change in the wind on the second night presaged snow. By mid-morning of the third day, they shivered under an icy blast from the east which snatched at breath and bit at exposed skin. The youths drew their chaperon hoods about their faces and looked warily to their left, where leaden clouds were building in the sky. Thaddeus took a firmer hold on the pack pony he was leading and urged his companions to pick up the pace while the going was good. There would be no steering their horses clear of ruts and holes when the roads were blanketed with snow.

  He kept to himself that he was beginning to question whether they were on the right highway. It was one thing to memorise a list of landmarks, described to him more than a month ago by Gyles Startout in Develish, quite another to recognise them now. He was confident they’d ridden the Shafbury to Sherborne road because milestones along the way had told him so, but he was deeply concerned he’d chosen the wrong crossroads to turn south towards Pedle Hinton. You’ll know it by an oak tree which stands at the north-east corner, Gyles had said. It’s as wide as it’s tall and casts such deep shade that nothing grows within twenty paces of it.

  But had Thaddeus been right to assume the burnt and blasted trunk of a once-great tree was the landmark Gyles had meant? It was three years since Gyles had ridden this road from the north as part of Sir Richard’s retinue, and a bolt of lightning could well have cleaved the mightiest oak in the meantime, but there was little else to recognise along the way. If milestones had ever existed, they’d been long hidden by encroaching foliage.

  Ian drew alongside as Thaddeus slowed before a shallow ford. ‘We’ll have to make camp soon,’ he said, gesturing to the sky. ‘The snow’s almost upon us.’

  Thaddeus nodded.

  Ian looked to some woodland on their right. ‘Wouldn’t here be a good place? There’s water close by and no one to see us.’

  Thaddeus ignored him to stare up the incline ahead. ‘Your father spoke of a ford in the valley before Pedle Hinton. He said the highway would veer to the south-west on the other side of the river.’

  Ian followed his gaze. ‘We’ve crossed several fords already and the road has continued south or south-west each time.’

  ‘Mm.’ Thaddeus turned to study the advancing line of cloud. ‘We’ve another hour yet. We’ll strike camp when we’ve breasted the hill.’

  ‘It’ll be harder to build a shelter if we leave it too late,’ Ian warned.

  ‘Then make haste,’ said Thaddeus, clicking his tongue to set Killer going again. ‘We’ll need dry kindling if we want a fire tonight.’

  The snow began to fall when they were halfway up the incline, soft flakes that melted as they came to rest on the chaperon hoods and woollen coats. Before long, the boys felt the icy water penetrate through the fabric to their skin and watched in growing dismay as a wispy veil of white began to shroud the road and the hedgerows. Joshua, bringing up the rear with his pack of dogs padding miserably at his horse’s heels, muttered that the poor beasts would die of cold if they didn’t find shelter soon.

  Thaddeus, fifty paces ahead, halted on the breast of the hill to lean forward in his saddle and stare through the falling snow at the valley below. Gyles had said he would know Pedle Hinton by the way the manor house was situated and built. Standing on a bend of the River Pedle, the structure had the appearance of a cross with an elongated entrance porch on one side of the great hall, a kitchen and buttery on the other and part of a church showing behind it. The village would be clustered to the right of the highway with a hunting forest to the east and vast acres of cleared land to the west.

  He scratched his beard thoughtfully as he waited for his companions to draw level. The swirling flakes were nigh impenetrable, but he thought he could make out the walls of a large building some thousand paces distant. He gestured into the valley when Ian and Edmund drew level. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.

  Ian narrowed his eyes. ‘Not much,’ he admitted. ‘Ask Edmund. He has the best sight for distance.’

  Edmund linked his hands across his face like a visor and studied the valley through a slit between his fingers. ‘There’s a river behind the tree line on the southernmost boundary. I see a gap where the highway crosses it to the left of what must once have been a manor house. The walls still stand but half the roof has gone. There’s a church behind it.’

  ‘What shape is the house?’

  ‘Long and thin with protrusions on both sides.’

  ‘Like a cross?’

  ‘Yes. There’s cleared land to the right but I can’t tell which are peasant strips and which pastures. There’s the remains of a village beside the road and a mound about a hundred paces beyond.’ He dropped his hands. ‘It’s huge. If anyone’s still alive here, it’ll be the poor wretch who buried the bodies.’

  They’d come to recognise that a feature common to all demesnes was the bank of earth that spoke of a mass burial site. ‘The pestilence was in P
edle Hinton even before Sir Richard reached it,’ said Thaddeus. ‘Gyles told us some forty had died in the week before they arrived.’ He aped Edmund’s trick with his fingers. ‘I wonder what caused the roof to collapse.’

  ‘Flames,’ said Ian. ‘Maybe the gravedigger went mad and set fire to everything. The village too. Burning seems to be the only way to cleanse a place.’

  By then, the other four boys were lined up beside them. ‘Are we there?’ Peter asked hopefully. ‘Does it look right this time?’

  Thaddeus nodded. ‘As close as anything we’ve seen.’ He gathered up his reins. ‘We’ll know for certain when we’ve crossed the river. There should be a track into the forest some quarter-mile beyond which was wide enough to take Sir Richard’s wagon.’

  Joshua glanced at his shivering dogs. ‘What if we find the track but not the wagon?’

  ‘Worry more that we will,’ said Thaddeus unsympathetically. ‘When Sir Richard abandoned it, there were five dead bodies inside. I doubt they’ve been removed.’

  The snow fell relentlessly as they pushed on to the river, but if Thaddeus felt the biting wind through his sodden clothes he didn’t show it. The boys consulted in whispers about encouraging him to look for shelter before the river, but none voiced the idea aloud. They all knew what his answer would be. Do as you like. I’m not your keeper. And the last they would see of him was when he was swallowed by the blizzard.

  He had warned them often enough that they must accept his decisions or be left behind, but even Ian, his most loyal supporter, questioned the sense of continuing. The purpose of their journey was to recover a chest of gold—Lady Eleanor’s unpaid dowry—which the twins’ father had left in woodland outside Pedle Hinton some seven months previously. He had given Thaddeus directions on how to find it, but neither believed it would still be there. Half a year was a long time to abandon a coffer of coins, unprotected, on a forest floor.