And so it proved. Thaddeus called out their circumstances from across the moat and, with the agreement of my people, I have given permission for them to remain in Develish once they have served their fortnight’s exclusion. Thaddeus believes some may have kinship with our serfs and has given me their names so that I may search our registers. Certainly, John and Clara Trueblood have no doubt that Edmund’s small charge is part of their family, for he has the look of Edmund at the same age. They have pledged to raise the child as their own, and I don’t doubt others will be as generous.
Thaddeus and his men (they are too well grown now to be called boys) have cleaned one end of the open-sided barn and strung fleeces in the gaps between the upright posts to provide shelter for the Pedle Hinton serfs. Our sheep still have use of the other end and will add warmth from their bodies at night. It is hardly the most inviting of welcomes to our demesne, but the 2-week exclusion has served us well until now. For themselves, Thaddeus and his men use the hut they built when Bourne was here.
I have sent clean clothes and warm broth across on the raft, and in return Thaddeus delivered our chest of gold and a coffer of scrolls from Pedle Hinton. In a private letter atop the documents, he drew my attention to the warnings Pedle Hinton received from France—but did not heed—about the progress of the pestilence. He urged me to study one vellum in particular, dated August, 1348, which he found with its seal intact. This suggested to Thaddeus, as it does to me, that My Lord and his steward never saw it, being dead before it arrived.
The letter was scribed by a French monk who charged himself with informing My Lord of Pedle Hinton that his cousin, a bishop of Normandy, had relinquished his life after days of intense suffering. I record the second paragraph here to remind myself that the rules we follow are wise:
‘In his dying breath, His Grace implored that I request all in his family to protect themselves against this pestilence. His greatest fear was that none will survive and a proud name will be lost. Be comforted that you will do no wrong by closing your doors to sufferers since His Holiness, Pope Clement of Avignon, has granted remission of sins to all who die a painful death. Such benevolence will allow those you exclude to enjoy eternity. Nonetheless, His Grace’s wish was that you embrace life, and he asked that you pray daily for his soul, avoid contact with the sick and pledge yourself to the service of God.’
There is much to read in the words of this unknown bishop, not least his belated realisation that it might be possible to survive the pestilence. I am left to wonder why he didn’t come to this reasoning earlier and why His Holiness thought it kinder to remit sins—a fact which is known only to a handful of French clerics, I imagine—than offer wise advice on avoidance.
The fourth day of March, 1349. Midnight
Thaddeus and his companions will leave again at dawn, and I am sad to have had only one chance to talk with my gentle giant. Clara allowed us the use of her kitchen for a snatched hour once all were asleep, but our meeting was bitter-sweet, being too short and taken up with business. We both issued warnings as often as we exchanged expressions of tenderness.
Thaddeus worries that Harold Talbot will cause disharmony when I allow him into our enclosure, and urges me to assist his daughter, Alice Bartram, in the management of him. The old man’s mind has gone, causing him to dwell on the sins of others, and he makes his accusations with such force and anger that even Thaddeus’s companions find them unsettling.
In return, I worry that My Lord of Blandeforde’s steward will know Athelstan for an imposter. Thaddeus tells me his plan is to travel to Blandeforde in April, and I am already concerned for him and his companions. The steward’s name is Jacques d’Amiens and I have never met a man so clever or so knowledgeable about his master’s demesnes. In the time I’ve lived in Develish, he has come several times to oversee the collection of taxes, and I am deeply afraid he may have seen my dear friend performing ad opus work inside the moat. If he did, he will recognise him and know him for a serf. Thaddeus’s appearance is too distinctive not to have been noticed.
Thaddeus pays little heed to these fears, for he has no understanding of how eyes are drawn to him because of the tallness of his frame, the darkness of his skin and the fineness of his features. I have begged him to avoid all contact with the steward but he refuses to humour me. He says, quite rightly, that he cannot secure a future for our people without talking to the person who controls My Lord of Blandeforde’s affairs.
Thaddeus has written a long report of all that happened in Bourne, begging me to read it to our people once he and his companions have left. It seems the youths have lost their taste for storytelling, having learnt the last time that there is always a clamour for more. I wonder if they finally understand why Gyles was so reluctant to speak of his final journey with Sir Richard. After all, some things are best kept to oneself.
Thaddeus and his companions will ride first to Dorchester and Melcombe to discover how many still live in those towns. From there, they will travel to the west, charting the deserted demesnes along the way, and then to the east for the same purpose. They expect to arrive in Blandeforde in the second week of April, and Thaddeus hopes their knowledge of how south Dorseteshire fares, along with news of France and Italy from the Pedle Hinton letters, will stand them in good stead when they arrive.
This eve, the raft carried their newly laundered liveries, together with half the gold nobles from Eleanor’s dowry. Our leather workers have created 6 separate saddle packs so that the weight of the coins can be spread evenly between 6 riders. The packs have been stitched in such a way that the coins stand in a series of columns inside them and the slimness of the design should allow them to escape notice beneath the bulkier packs above them. I pray this is so, for it will be a tragedy indeed if bandits believe they see something worth stealing.
Thaddeus is so determined to prove himself a worthy match for me by purchasing a demesne of his own, he’s quite foolhardy enough to give his life in defence of gold.
Ten
Develish, Dorseteshire
CLARA TRUEBLOOD HAD WITNESSED MANY things in her kitchen but never a wild-haired old man pushing a young maid to the floor and raising her skirts to beat her naked buttocks with a wooden paddle. She thrust through the crowd of startled servants and seized Harold Talbot’s wrist before he could land another blow. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ she demanded.
He turned his fury on her. ‘You dare lay hands on an elder?’
‘I dare and I will. You have no authority here, Master Talbot. By what right do you chastise one of my helpers?’
‘By God’s right. She profaned against one superior to her.’
Clara nodded to the girl to stand up. She was half-sister to Thaddeus and had yet to turn eleven. ‘Is this true, May? Did you speak ill of Lady Anne?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Who then?’
She wriggled her shoulders. ‘Father Anselm . . . but I said only what others say.’
‘Which is?’
‘No one wants to clean his chamber because he lives like a pig.’
Clara turned her face so that Harold Talbot wouldn’t see the smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth. She received more complaints about the drunken priest’s dirty habits than anything else, and had heard rather worse slurs than ‘pig’ used to describe him. Some days, when she was feeling kind, she left the kitchen in another’s charge and did the job of cleaning his quarters herself, if only to give some respite to the younger servants. It was one thing to empty the old brute’s semen-filled piss-pot, quite another to run the gauntlet of his groping fingers. She had a sense that Harold Talbot was cut from the same cloth, since he had been overly keen to raise little May’s skirts in order to give her a beating.
She resisted his attempts to free himself. ‘Calm yourself, sir. This is my kitchen and you are an uninvited guest.’
He slapped her face. ‘Where is your respect? I don’t take orders from women.’
Clara, bigger and
stronger than he was, caught his other wrist and twisted both arms behind him. ‘You are in Develish, sir, where customs are different from Pedle Hinton.’ She picked out thirteen-year-old Isabella Startout, who was standing near the doorway to the great hall. ‘Oblige me by fetching Milady, Isabella. She will know better than I how to judge the rights and wrongs of this. Be sure to explain the situation to her. I wouldn’t want her to be unprepared for what she finds.’
Isabella gave a nod of understanding before darting from the room. It was minutes only before she returned with Lady Anne, and Clara was relieved to see that her mistress seemed fully aware of why she had Harold Talbot under restraint. She spoke gently to him, but her words were intended for everyone.
‘Do you know me, sir? We met two days ago when I welcomed you to Develish as your new liege lord.’
The old man spat on the floor. ‘My Lord has been dead these many months. His wife also.’
‘Indeed. Pedle Hinton suffered cruelly from the pestilence. Only you and a handful of women and children remain from the hundreds who once lived there.’
He stared at the faces around him. ‘I see many in this room alone.’
‘But all are strangers to you, Master Talbot, for this is Develish and not Pedle Hinton. Will you allow me to take you to your daughter, so that she can tell you again why you are here? I believe weariness has caused you to forget the journey you made to reach us.’
He frowned in confusion. ‘My daughters are lost to me.’
‘Not all, sir. One still lives. Her name is Alice. You will know her when you see her.’
He gave a baffled nod, and Lady Anne signed to Clara to release him. The woman did so, but remained ready to seize him again if he raised his hand to her mistress. She had more knowledge than most of the anger that accompanied the scrambled wits of age, for her grandmother had suffered the same debility.
‘Shall I come with you, milady?’ she asked.
‘I believe we can manage on our own,’ Lady Anne answered, putting her hand beneath Harold’s elbow. ‘It’s but a few steps to the great hall, where Alice awaits us. It would be a kindness to make Master Talbot a bowl of chamomile tea with an infusion of valerian. He is much in need of rest, I think.’
‘Isabella will bring it to you promptly, milady.’
Clara watched them make their way through the door and then took a jar of dried chamomile and a vial of valerian tincture from a high shelf on the wall behind her. ‘You’ve nothing to feel anxious about,’ she told May Thurkell as she spooned petals into an earthenware bowl and added a ladleful of water from the boiling cauldron on the fire. ‘Milady finds no fault in you.’
‘Are you sure, Mistress Trueblood?’ the girl asked tearfully. ‘I thought her kinder to Master Talbot than to me.’
‘He’s old and his mind has wandered. She sought to lessen his rage not provoke it further.’ Clara strained the liquid into a second bowl and poured in the vial of valerian. ‘He’ll give us no more trouble today, as this tea will send him to sleep, but you must take care to avoid him tomorrow.’ She beckoned Isabella forward. ‘You also,’ she said, handing her the dish. ‘He’s not so confused that he won’t remember the prettiness of both your faces.’
Isabella knew Clara was right when she saw how the old man leered at her as she entered the hall. His daughter stood beside him and he seemed less confused than in the kitchen. He was telling Lady Anne he’d been a man of importance in Pedle Hinton.
Milady smiled as she took the bowl from Isabella. ‘We must find you some quarters suitable to your status, sir. It’s not fitting for an elder to sleep in this hall with children and servants.’
‘I had a fine house in Pedle Hinton.’
‘And you shall have the same in Develish. Alice tells me you’re a man of devotion and, from recollection, we have an empty dwelling on the path to the church. You will be neighbour to one of my leading advisers and able to make confession at times of your own choosing.’ She turned to Isabella. ‘Will you ask your mother to help you make the hut comfortable, child? Master Talbot will sleep more soundly on a good bed of rushes. A handful from each of the rolls in my chamber should suffice.’
Martha Startout tut-tutted loudly as she and Isabella swept dusty remains from the empty shelter and laid new straw on the floor. ‘The women will resent having their mattresses depleted for the sake of a vicious old man.’
‘They’ll complain more if he pulls up their daughters’ skirts in the middle of the night,’ said Isabella.
Martha straightened the rushes and stood back. ‘Thaddeus was wrong to bring him here. Not one of the Pedle Hinton women can control him—certainly not Alice, who flinches every time he approaches her.’
‘It’s not her fault, Mama. She has told me some of her story and it makes me glad I wasn’t born in Pedle Hinton. It sounds a cruel place.’
‘How so?’
‘Girls and women were treated as slaves. All Alice has ever been shown is that men are above her.’
‘Develish was no different before Milady came.’
‘That doesn’t make it right, Mama.’
‘I don’t say it does, but pity won’t help them. The best lesson Lady Anne taught me was to learn to speak up for myself. She was a year older than you when she married Sir Richard, but she refused to back down before any man.’ A smile lit her eyes. ‘She took your father to task in a way I would never have dared, never mind he was more than twice her age.’
Isabella eyed her curiously. ‘What had he done?’
‘Demanded food after eighteen hours’ toil in the fields.’
‘And that was wrong?’
Martha laughed. ‘Milady thought so. She pointed to the cauldron of meat she’d prepared and instructed him to serve himself, saying that only the most selfish and uncaring of men would expect the mother of newborn twins to act as his slave.’ She shook her head, remembering. ‘It was but a month since the boys had been delivered, and your sister Abigail was yet to reach her second birthday. I had scarce enough milk to feed one baby, let alone two, and without Lady Anne’s help, I could not have managed. She came each day to care for the babies while I worked in the kitchen, and even persuaded other women still in milk to act as wet nurses at the end of their long days.’ She touched her finger to Isabella’s chin. ‘Best of all, by staying late that eve, she showed me your father wasn’t the monster I thought he was.’
Isabella struggled to believe Martha had ever seen Gyles in such a light. ‘How?’
‘He begged her to tell him what else he could do to ensure his wife and his children’s welfare and, such was her understanding of his position, she insisted on speaking to him outside so that all in the village would hear.’ She saw her daughter’s puzzlement. ‘He was a man,’ she explained. ‘His duties were to honour his oath to his lord, plant and grow crops, and govern his household according to custom and law. To tend one twin while the other fed at my breast or prepare a meal to give me time to sleep were tasks reserved to women. Milady attracted much criticism for forcing a proud man to demean himself, but she freed Gyles of blame.’
‘Did Father feel demeaned?’
Martha shook her head. ‘It made good sense to him that a husband should tend his wife and children as carefully as he tended his master’s stock. Your brothers were the first set of twins ever to live beyond six months in Develish and Gyles has sung Milady’s praises ever since.’ She gestured towards the door. ‘We should go. There’ll be no advantage to anyone if Master Talbot falls asleep in the house.’
Isabella followed. ‘Develish is lucky Milady passed her wisdom to Father,’ she remarked thoughtfully. ‘If she’d chastised a man like Master Talbot, he’d have turned the demesne against her.’
‘He still might,’ said Martha sourly. ‘There’ll be no keeping him in that hut unless she orders John Trueblood to padlock the door.’
Father Anselm made no attempt to hide his suspicion as Lady Anne closed the church door and joined him at the altar where he was l
ighting candles for Vespers. There was too much distrust between them for her to have an amiable reason to seek him out. He gave a token nod of his head. ‘Milady.’
‘Father,’ she answered courteously.
He waited for her to state her business but, as ever, she teased him with silence. ‘Is there some service I can perform for you?’ he asked.
‘I’ve come in that hope, sir.’ She watched him offer a spill to a wick but his hand trembled so much that the two never met. She took the spill from him and held the flame to the wick herself. ‘Clara tells me you’re out of mead. Is she right?’
He made no answer.
‘We have a goodly store of wine at the house which has remained untouched since Sir Richard’s death. I’ll have some sent to you. My husband’s tremors were never so bad as when he was forced to abstain from drinking because the carter was late in bringing fresh supplies.’ She lit the remaining candles and then blew out the taper.
The priest put need before pride. ‘Milady is kind.’
She pulled a wry smile. ‘Don’t be too keen to thank me, Father. You have yet to hear my request.’
He cursed himself for not guessing she would set a trap. ‘Does the wine depend on my agreement, milady?’
She shook her head. ‘I give you that with the same willingness I have given you tinctures in the past to cure the aches in your bones. I have no wish to see you suffer. The disputes between us have been over matters of conscience, never medicine.’
Father Anselm doubted heresy could be dismissed so easily, but he was willing to accept that wine was a medicine. ‘I have always recognised that your skill in healing is superior to mine. I told Sir Richard of it many times.’
Lady Anne answered with a laugh. ‘For which I had little reason to thank you. My husband found a new ailment each day to bring to my attention. Had he been less ready to accept a vial of tinted water as a cure, I might have encouraged him to bedevil with you with even more requests for confession and absolution.’
The Turn of Midnight Page 17