The Turn of Midnight

by Minette Walters

  She had heard the same arguments from their fathers. ‘I can only be accused of perjury if he denies being Athelstan before we arrive,’ she said lightly. ‘Do you have so little faith in him that you believe he might?’

  ‘If he thinks it will help Develish, he will, milady.’

  She laid aside her plate. ‘Then we have nothing to worry about, for he knows it won’t. Every serf on the demesne will be punished if the steward believes they knew of the deceit.’

  ‘You more than anyone, milady.’

  She shook her head. ‘Master d’Amiens’ authority extends only to the serfs and tenants on his lord’s estates. He may convict a base-born man of criminality in Blandeforde’s absence but not a person of noble birth.’ She rested her soft gaze on their anxious faces. ‘Thaddeus is as knowledgeable of the law as Master d’Amiens. As long as he insists on his right to be tried by his peers, the steward cannot act against him.’

  ‘But what if it’s My Lord of Bourne who accuses him, milady?’

  Lady Anne leant forward to unbuckle the leather bag that Edmund had placed in front of her. ‘He’ll wish he’d held his tongue,’ she said, showing them the letters from Dorset widows. ‘I’ll not spare him if he’s broken the pledge he made to me in Develish.’

  Thaddeus’s prison was the last chamber at the end of a long corridor. The five guards who escorted him from it blocked his view of the other rooms they passed, but he guessed that, like his, they were used for storage. Ahead was a kitchen. The door stood slightly ajar and Thaddeus heard the clatter of pots and crockery before he was shepherded to the right and through an archway into the great hall. The room was quite empty. If servants slept in it, they had long since risen and placed their bedding rolls out of sight.

  Thaddeus wondered if he was being kept from their sight when the guards marched him to the front entranceway and took him outside. Were this Develish, the hall and forecourt would be humming with industry, but here there was none. The house and grounds seemed deserted, and he began to think it was by design that the only people he’d seen since his arrival were Norman fighting men. Yet why? What had the steward to fear from his English servants? And why had it taken the man so long to decide on what to do with him? By the sun, which was casting the shadows of trees across the forecourt, he estimated the time to be some four hours after dawn.

  They turned right out of the doorway, and the captain of the guard ordered him to relieve himself in a sewage channel which ran from the western end of the house to the river. Thaddeus made a play of viewing it with disgust, even though he recalled being taken over it twice in darkness. His nose had told him it was there even if the night had obscured it. ‘Is cleanliness unknown in this godforsaken place that you ask a guest to soil his boots on other men’s excrement?’

  ‘It’s this or nothing, sire. Be grateful for the chance. You’ll take a flogging from the priest if you foul yourself inside his church.’

  Thaddeus had already noticed the tower, sheltering amongst trees some two hundred paces farther to the west. He could also see a nearer building, which he guessed was the guard house where he’d spent the previous day. He could have wished to return to it, since he doubted the priest’s company would be as congenial as the soldiers’. ‘He should worry more about the filth you trample on his floor. God asks more of men than that they behave like pigs.’ He nodded to a small, planked bridge which carried a path across the channel. ‘Is that the route we’ll take?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then allow me to stop on it and perform the function there. I have more respect for my Maker than to carry the stench of this place into his house.’

  It was hard to say what the younger guards made of him. He was a full head taller than they were and, though his age was no greater than theirs, his thick black beard made him look closer to thirty than twenty. They’d abandoned any thought of trying to restrain him after he’d prised the captain’s fingers off his arm in the chamber. He was willing to accompany them, he said, if only to find out why he’d been confined all night in a stinking storeroom, but he had an aversion to being touched. The pain on the captain’s face as the bones of his palm were crushed in a giant fist persuaded the others to keep their distance.

  ‘Your lord and priest lack education,’ he murmured as he rebuttoned himself and stepped from the bridge, gathering the chain into his hands again. ‘It’s the habit of animals to pollute their ground and water in this way. I expect to find such foolishness in towns where land is limited, but not in a demesne like this.’

  One soldier eyed him curiously. ‘What other method is there?’

  ‘The Bible tells us to bury our excrement.’ Thaddeus gestured to the grassland around them. ‘In a single day, a dozen men could dig a large enough pit to take the waste of the whole household for a year. Open sewers attract vermin. Do you enjoy the thought of your food being defiled by rats which carry other men’s faeces on their fur?’

  The soldier shrugged. ‘We don’t see many. The steward has a hatred of them and orders their nests destroyed. Rumour has it he found rats in his bed when he was a child and has had a fear of them ever since. The same with mice.’

  ‘His instincts serve him well,’ said Thaddeus mildly. ‘You’d be wise to follow his example.’ He glanced along the channel towards the river. ‘He should worry as much about polluted water. To bathe in sewage is worse than not bathing at all.’

  ‘We do neither.’

  Thaddeus gave a grunt of amusement. ‘Indeed. The reek of sour sweat blowing off your clothes would fell an ox.’ He continued along the path. ‘Come. I’m interested in meeting your priest. It’s an unchristian nature that condemns a shy little sparrow to Hell because she had the misfortune to fall ill of the pestilence.’

  The church was twice the size of Develish’s, and it was a moment before Thaddeus’s eyes were well enough adjusted to the gloom to see the figure of a man before the unlit altar. He wore a long black vestment with a cowl pulled over his head and he seemed to be struggling to set fire to the char in a tinderbox. The impatient click of flint on fire-steel echoed loudly in the vaulted chamber. He half turned at the sound of approaching steps.

  ‘Are you practised in the use of a tinderbox, Thurkell? I seem unable to strike a spark this morning.’

  The voice was the imposter’s, and his question so blatant a trick that it would have brought a smile to Thaddeus’s face had he been a mere observer to this piece of mummery. Instead, he looked about the church, showing more interest in the murals on the wall than the man at the altar. He understood now why the guildsmen had been so uneasy two nights before. They’d been brave to voice any thoughts at all in front of a priest who condemned townsfolk as fornicators and thieves, let alone caution Thaddeus to be wary of him.

  The captain stepped in front of him to catch his attention. ‘Father Aristide addresses you, sire,’ he said.

  Thaddeus frowned. ‘He does? Then I’m confused. Do names count for nothing in Blandeforde? Is this not the person who told me he was Jacques d’Amiens? Was he lying to me then or do you lie to me now?’ When he received no answer, he raised a manacled wrist to point at a silk-robed depiction of St Nicholas, carrying the Christ child across a river upon his shoulder. ‘Would that be the face of Lord Blandeforde? I see the shadow of an older image behind it, so the figure must have been painted recently. Is the likeness a true one?’

  ‘It is, sire.’

  ‘How strange. For myself, I would hesitate to display my arrogance so openly.’ He turned to address the priest. ‘I came for explanations. Begin with why I’ve been brought to this church under restraint.’

  ‘You know the reason.’

  ‘I do not, unless Blandeforde treats all his guests in the same way. Is he touched in the mind that he imagines himself to be a richly robed saint while demanding penance from visitors?’

  ‘It’s God who demands penance from you.’

  ‘Perhaps so, but only He knows how much.’

  The prie
st stared at him for a moment before instructing the captain to take his men outside. When the door had closed behind them, he pushed back his cowl and beckoned Thaddeus to approach the altar. ‘Let’s be done with pretence,’ he encouraged. ‘There’s no escape from the trials that await you. The steward is set on punishing you as an example to others. He fears rebellion across his master’s vassal demesnes if every base-born serf thinks he can feign nobility.’

  Thaddeus took the flint and the fire-steel from the altar. ‘If you speak of your pretence at being a priest, then I agree,’ he said, striking sparks onto the char cloth and blowing on the embers to encourage a flame. ‘On my reckoning, you’ve missed the hour of Terce by sixty minutes.’ He held a splint to the flame.

  ‘You’re foolish to mock. Be grateful for this chance to purge your sins while you can still speak.’

  Thaddeus lit each candle in turn. ‘Who offers me this chance?’

  ‘I do.’

  Thaddeus pinched the end of the splint between his fingers and studied the man’s face through the drift of smoke that rose from it. ‘Any deceiver can don a priest’s vestments. Who vouches for you? Certainly not the guildsmen who referred to you as the steward two nights ago.’

  ‘You heard the captain address me by name five minutes ago.’

  ‘I’ve no more reason to believe him than I have you. Why would God have spared Father Aristide when every other priest in Blandeforde is dead? What marks him out for saintliness? Does he honour his vows to comfort the dying with more sincerity than his fellows?’

  He was surprised at how easily the other was provoked when he saw a flush of anger rise in Aristide’s cheeks. Or was it shame? Whichever, Thaddeus took heart from the display of emotion, since he didn’t doubt the priest had been tasked with teasing a confession from him. A man who couldn’t be riled would be harder to manage than one who rose to every bait, yet he questioned why a confession was necessary if Hugh de Courtesmain’s allegations of imposture were believed.

  ‘You accuse Blandeforde of arrogance but yours is worse,’ Aristide snapped. ‘Pride will be your downfall. You think you can speak and act with impunity, but your crimes are so numerous God will have His vengeance—if not in this life, then in the next.’

  Thaddeus shifted his gaze to the south-facing chancel window. Through the panes he could see the graveyard, and beyond, the river. He wondered what his chances were of shaking off the guards and swimming to the far bank. Since none bathed, he doubted they’d learnt the skill of staying afloat, but he knew he’d fare no better, dressed as he was in the full regalia of a lord and carrying the weight of shackles. ‘What crimes do you say I’ve committed?’ he asked.

  ‘Murder . . . thievery . . . imposture . . . heresy. You embraced Satan when you denied the authority of the Church.’

  Thaddeus gave an involuntary laugh. ‘Then it’s a mystery I’ve avoided God’s vengeance for so long.’ He glanced back when the priest made no answer. ‘What crimes did the young maid commit to warrant His wrath? The fighting men called her Little Sparrow because of her shyness, but I find it hard to imagine that a timid, illiterate child was guilty of anything as venal as heresy.’

  ‘She judged herself to be wicked when the signs of the pestilence first appeared on her neck.’

  The guards had told a different story but Thaddeus let the falsehood pass. ‘Did Father Aristide offer comfort and absolution? He will have known from her confessions that her view of herself was flawed.’

  ‘No priest can decide a person’s worth. Only God sees into our hearts.’

  ‘Indeed . . . yet it’s hard to understand why He found so little worth in the clergy of Blandeforde that He allowed them to perish along with those they tended. Is that not the puzzle the guildsmen wanted explaining?’ A glint of irony appeared in Thaddeus’s dark eyes. ‘How would Father Aristide have answered them had he been there?’

  This time there was no mistaking anger for shame. The priest slammed his fist upon the altar, causing the candle flames to flicker. ‘You’re a slave . . . the bastard son of a harlot . . . incubus to a black-hearted woman who stole her husband’s demesne by denying him access to it. And you dare accuse Aristide of perfidy?’

  Perfidy . . . It was an interesting choice of word. ‘I imagine he accuses himself,’ Thaddeus murmured, placing his hand on the wooden cross at the centre of the altar to steady it. ‘There are kinder ways to separate the sick from the healthy than to persuade an innocent maid she’s too evil to live amongst righteous people.’

  ‘She left of her own free will.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ He repeated the thoughts he’d shared with the soldiers in the woodland. ‘A ten-year-old would have been fearful even to seek solace from her family after being told the town was full of thieves and fornicators. God was merciful to allow her to live long enough to learn she’d been sold a bag of lies. She received more kindness and charity in five days from sinners than she ever did here.’

  ‘You speak from ignorance.’

  ‘Maybe so, but her story’s no different from others I’ve heard. Do you think you’re alone in shunning those you suspect of having the pestilence? Or that sufferers don’t feel anguish to die in wretched abandonment?’

  Aristide’s face darkened. ‘You must know this better than I, for you condemned your sworn lord to die in such a way.’

  Thaddeus allowed a frown of puzzlement to crease his brow. ‘Now you speak from ignorance. What is it you fear? That your lies about absolution and cleansing rituals will be exposed?’ He turned back to the window when the priest made no answer. ‘The steward should have ordered a hospital built on the cleared land beyond the river,’ he said, nodding to the trees on the other side. ‘More of the townsfolk might have survived had the sick been given care away from their families and neighbours. It won’t please Blandeforde to find that his paying tenants have perished while his unproductive household lives. What use will a hundred servants be to him when the King demands his taxes and the Church her tithes?’

  ‘God will provide.’

  ‘I pray you’re right,’ Thaddeus responded dryly, ‘for I doubt many cooks know how to drive a furrow through compacted earth.’

  Behind him, he heard the sound of the door to the priest’s chamber creak open, followed by the scuff of boots across the rushes on the church floor. He made out two sets of steps—the first determined and strong, the second faltering—and it didn’t require much guesswork to tell him the bolder tread was Jacques d’Amiens’ and the weaker Hugh de Courtesmain’s.

  If this was to be his trial, he thought, his chances of escaping justice were slim. It wouldn’t matter how cleverly he tied Hugh de Courtesmain in knots, or how poorly the Frenchman gave his evidence, the zealous steward and self-righteous priest would find Athelstan guilty.

  Ian explained to Lady Anne that there were only two ways to Blandeforde: to return along the riverbank, or to ride down the Shafbury to Dorchester highway in the hope Edumund was right that a crossroad he’d seen some mile to the south would take them to the Blandeforde road. The riverbank, being completely encroached by forest, would have to be walked and might take upwards of five hours; the highway could be done on horseback at greater speed, making their arrival earlier. Lady Anne chose horseback.

  ‘If we had time to spare, I would prefer to go on foot,’ she said with a wry smile, ‘but since we do not, I beg you to ignore my groans and sighs. I had forgotten how painful it is to sit astride a horse.’

  ‘There’s no shame in groaning, milady,’ said Peter. ‘We all cursed mightily the first time we rode any distance.’

  Ian looked towards the saddlebags which were piled beneath a tree. ‘You might be more comfortable if you’re willing to sit across one of our laps, milady,’ he said. ‘We can fashion a cushion out of Thaddeus’s clothes to give you a softer seat, and as long as you hold tight to the horse’s mane, you’ll not slide so much.’

  ‘I’d hate to be a trouble, Ian.’

  ‘You won’t
be, milady,’ he answered gruffly. ‘In any case, Thaddeus will have our hides if he thinks we haven’t looked after you properly.’

  ‘Not to mention that you’ll be too weary argue his case if you’re as sore as we were the day we left Develish,’ Peter said. He clapped Edmund on the back. ‘You should choose this fellow. He’s the strongest of us all except Thaddeus.’

  Joshua nodded agreement. ‘And the most accomplished rider, milady. He’ll give you more support than we can.’

  ‘And see the ruts in the road sooner,’ added Olyver. ‘It wasn’t by accident that we chose him to bring the news of Thaddeus’s arrest to you.’

  Lady Anne had to take a breath to quell the sudden emotion that rose in her throat. It was one thing to dream of giving her people the chance of freedom, quite another to have the worth of the idea proved through results. These five conducted themselves so well they were quite unrecognisable as the unformed serf boys who’d departed Develish with Thaddeus the previous summer. ‘It would be a great kindness if you felt able to oblige me, Edmund.’

  Edmund ducked his head in a bow. ‘It will be my pleasure, milady. If I had half Ian’s cleverness, I’d have thought of it myself before we left the demesne.’

  Lady Anne expressed confidence in Ian’s saddle-pack cushion, though in truth she viewed it with considerable alarm, since there was no way of attaching it to Edmund’s saddle. Both youths seemed to think it was enough to empty one bag, fill the other with soft, woollen clothes, and then lay the central strap and flattened bag along the saddle. Edmund mounted to sit astride the strap, settling the cushion over the pommel and into his lap and then invited Ian to jump Milady backwards into his arms. She was so small and slight that he caught her with ease and placed her to sit sideways in front of him with her legs across his thigh.

  ‘You’ll feel more secure if you hold the horse’s mane in your right hand and grip my belt at the back with your left,’ he said, steering her arm around his waist. ‘It’s the way your husband used to take Lady Eleanor around the demesne when she was younger.’