The Turn of Midnight

by Minette Walters

  Hugh shifted uncomfortably. Too much of what he’d said and done when Sir Richard was alive had been witnessed, and little of it spoke to his credit. ‘Sir Richard was not a reasonable man, milady. His rages were alarming.’

  ‘They were,’ she agreed. ‘Consider yourself blessed that you endured but one and that his death meant you were released from your pledge of obedience. Having surrendered to him once, you could not have resisted his instruction to falsify our yields to My Lord of Blandeforde.’ She held his gaze. ‘Did you write of that in your scrolls, Master de Courtesmain? Or do you reserve your enmity only for Athelstan? You had evidence of my husband’s dishonesty but none at all of my cousin’s.’

  De Courtesmain stared at her in disbelief. ‘He called himself Thaddeus Thurkell and dressed in peasant clothes, milady.’

  ‘Is that what offends you?’ she asked gently. ‘That he allowed you to think him beneath you? You thought the same of me while Sir Richard lived, believing my fondness for homespun kirtles was evidence of a weak and timid nature. I remember your shock when you discovered how wrong you were.’

  He spread his hands in entreaty. ‘I believed what I was told, milady. Had you taken me into your confidence when I arrived, all would have been different. Did I not offer you my allegiance on the day you told me Sir Richard had died?’

  ‘You did, sir.’

  ‘Why did you not tell me then who Thurkell was?’

  Lady Anne allowed a wry smile to play across her lips. ‘You were too afraid of the pestilence to listen to anything I or Athelstan said, sir. When you weren’t accusing us of heresy and wickedness, you were wailing that pustules were growing on your neck. There wasn’t a moment in the day when you were able to forget your terror long enough to show you had command of yourself.’

  ‘Your lack of fear made mine worse,’ he cried. ‘I worried that you had no understanding of what you were doing.’

  ‘Yet Athelstan and I did our best to explain it to you. We even asked your advice, and you had no solutions to offer other than constant penance from my people. You found fault in all of us . . . but my serfs most of all. You made your dislike of them so clear I had no desire to give you further cause to distrust them by revealing they’d stayed silent about Athelstan while Sir Richard was alive.’

  ‘But he was the one I distrusted, milady,’ Hugh protested. ‘I thought such confidence unnatural in a slave and questioned why you were so willing to take his advice. Had you informed me he was of noble birth my concerns would have vanished.’

  This time her laugh was genuine. ‘Come, sir,’ she said with eyes full of amusement. ‘You’re far too clever to be so ignorant about yourself. I told you at Christmas who Athelstan was and you could barely speak for rage. You were able to tolerate his clever mind and handsome looks while you thought him a slave, but to learn he was superior to you in every way made your jealousy ungovernable.’

  Hugh’s anguished silence said more than any words could have done.

  Twenty-two

  ONCE THE JURORS HAD BEEN selected, a table set up for Andrew Tench to act as clerk and benches arranged across the forecourt for seating, Matthew Miller approached Gyles, Alleyn and James. Close up, his sharp eyes noticed the threadbare appearance of their liveries and the shaggy, ungroomed look of their horses, and he saw a passing resemblance between one of the men and Athelstan’s master of hounds. Had d’Amiens been right to call them Develish serfs? he wondered. Might he also be right about Athelstan?

  ‘You should intercede with the captain on behalf of Milady’s cousin,’ he told Gyles. ‘He’s been standing for well over an hour and his face looks markedly paler than when I first saw him. He’s not far off collapse unless I miss my guess.’

  Gyles had the same concern but, since soldiers could only serve one master, he nodded towards the river. ‘You must raise the matter with his men, sir.’

  ‘He’ll drop before I reach them.’ Miller gave his ear a thoughtful scratch. ‘Mind, he’s a rare sort of noble. Any other would have swooned long since from the pain of a knife through his hand.’

  ‘His forebears on his mother’s side were Moors,’ Gyles said. ‘There’ll not be another like him outside Spain.’

  ‘How is he related to Lady Anne?’

  ‘Through his grandfather, who was brother to hers.’

  Was that the truth? Miller wondered. Perhaps. It was hard to imagine a serf-woman producing such a giant of a man. ‘He’s struggling nonetheless. If the steward doesn’t call the court together shortly, he’ll not have the wits to argue his case.’

  Gyles had expressed similar worries to Alleyn. They were all troubled by the length of time Milady had been with the steward because none could think of a benign reason why d’Amiens would extend her detention. Yet how to act when they hadn’t the authority to enter the house and demand her release? ‘What do you suggest, sir? I doubt My Lord will agree to sit on a bench if it means placing himself in a lower position than the people who accuse him.’

  ‘Demand that My Lord of Blandeforde’s chair be brought out. It’s a hefty carved throne and your man will not lose stature by resting in it.’

  Your man . . . ? ‘Such a demand would come better from you, sir. You have more acquaintanceship with the captain than I. He’ll pay closer heed to your worries for My Lord’s welfare than he will to mine.’

  Miller shook his head impatiently. ‘You make a mistake by distancing yourselves,’ he warned. ‘Nothing suits d’Amiens better than to rule through division. He has Milady where he wants her, My Lord too weak to stand, and you and these others—’ he gestured to where Ian and his companions stood by the river —‘split by a furlong of grass. Do you think your mistress so able she can win this case alone?’

  Alleyn was staring towards the entranceway. ‘She seems to have persuaded the steward,’ he murmured.

  Miller turned to watch d’Amiens escort Lady Anne onto the forecourt. Her hand rested lightly on his forearm and they stood for several moments, talking quietly together while servants brought out three armed chairs. Hovering at her other side was a formidable-looking matron who seemed to be daring every man on the forecourt to test her ability to protect her adopted mistress. When the chairs arrived, d’Amiens made an extravagant bow to Milady before helping her to settle in the one to the left. He then called the captain to bring Athelstan forward.

  Miller suppressed a laugh as the two men crossed the open ground. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,’ he muttered as d’Amiens lowered his head in respect to Athelstan and begged him to take the chair on the right. ‘You’re mighty fortunate in your liege lady, though I pray to God there are no more like her. The world is unsettled enough by the pestilence. We’ll lose our way completely if women become our masters.’

  ‘Or find it more easily,’ James Buckler countered dryly. ‘Your numbers would not be so depleted if you’d had Lady Anne as your guide these last twelve months.’

  Miller’s belief that the eight fighting men were Develish serfs was confirmed by Lady Anne after d’Amiens declared himself satisfied that Athelstan’s nobility had been proved. She rose with the assistance of the matron but, despite her clear weariness, her small figure stood strong and firm throughout her speech. She believed the townsmen would better understand the earlier confusion over Athelstan’s status if she explained why some of her serfs had been given the liberty of freemen, for she wanted no lingering doubts about her demesne’s honour and virtue. Miller expected a tale for the gullible, but she spoke so simply of her people’s commitment to her and each other that he found himself greatly moved.

  The trappings of nobility had meant nothing when the pestilence arrived at Develish’s gate, she said. Fine gowns and embroidered jerkins gave no protection to the wearers, and both she and her cousin had felt it wrong to make a distinction between themselves and the serfs. If the lowest born were willing to share all they had with their masters, then it ill behoved those of higher birth to set themselv
es apart. For this reason, all in Develish had worn homespun, eaten their meals together and shared the tasks. Only Sir Richard of Develish’s steward, Master de Courtesmain, who had come to the demesne as a stranger a bare few weeks before the pestilence struck, had resisted, seemingly out of a belief that to keep company with serfs was demeaning.

  She singled out her captain of arms, Gyles Startout, for the greatest praise. Born a serf, he had been elevated to fighting man a decade previously by her husband, and it was he who had brought his master home and given Develish early news of the plague’s virulence. The lone survivor of Sir Richard’s ill-fated journey to Bradmayne, Gyles had been as determined as she and Athelstan to prevent the sickness entering their compound. To that end, he had tended and buried his master alone and then remained outside the moat for fourteen days, ready to accept whatever fate God had ordained for him.

  Her soft eyes searched out Gyles as she spoke and the grizzled serf’s face flushed with pleasure as he bent his knee to her. For a brief moment afterwards, her gaze locked with Matthew Miller’s and the sweetness of her smile disarmed him. He had no doubt then that she had spoken the truth when she said she and her cousin had made themselves the equals of underlings. In Miller’s whole life, he had never felt the warm acceptance that her smile of recognition bestowed on him.

  She went on to speak of how the road north had filled with desperate people looking to flee the pestilence, drawing a comparison with the numbers who had passed through Blandeforde. She and Athelstan were happy for the demesne’s fields to be raided for food but not to allow strangers carrying the pestilence into the compound. To that end, Athelstan and Gyles Startout had trained every male serf in the use of weapons so that they might defend the moat should the need arise. By God’s grace, they’d only had to do it once.

  A voice called out, asking if they’d triumphed, and Lady Anne smiled, saying they had. She believed that Develish now had some of the best archers in Dorseteshire, and the most proficient were the five who rode with Athelstan. He had chosen them to travel with him when he left the demesne to learn what was happening in the world outside. It had needed men of courage to make the journey, and it was a source of pride to her that Athelstan had found them amongst her serfs.

  ‘Why did he have no fighting men of his own?’ the same voice called.

  ‘For the reason you heard before,’ she answered. ‘He came to Develish in the guise of a serf. A retinue would have proclaimed him as a noble.’

  ‘Why didn’t he want that?’ called another.

  ‘He knew my husband would have prevented my speaking with him if he’d known of his presence.’

  A clamour of further questions rose on the air—Miller’s louder than most—and Gyles felt his heart sink. What possible explanation could Milady give that would appease sceptical freemen? For himself, he thought she was only making this speech to help Thaddeus understand what she’d told the steward, but the big man’s quickly veiled look of disquiet suggested he, too, thought she had backed herself into a corner. Certainly, neither he nor Gyles expected the doughty matron to rescue her.

  Mistress Wilde glared at the crowd and then harangued them in Dorseteshire brogue. It was better she satisfy their vulgar curiosity than that Milady be obliged to do it, she declared. The poor soul had been forced to endure much from her brutal husband, not least his disdain for her Saxon lineage. Were English men so much less able than English women to understand the pain of being taken from their families and made to suffer under a Norman yoke? It was no wonder she had sympathy for her serfs, whose treatment at the hands of their master had been as vile as hers. Did the men of Blandeforde not ask themselves why Sir Richard had brought a vicious criminal to govern his estates? If de Courtesmain thought nothing of a driving a blade into the arm and hand of My Lord of Athelstan, consider the punishments he would have inflicted on Milady’s people if they had been unable to meet her husband’s demands for a higher levy on their crops. Praise God for her kindness in trying to protect them, and praise God for sending Athelstan to protect Milady.

  She directed her last remark at Jeremiah Slater. ‘Your life ’a not bin zo eazy you canna unnerstan ’ow badly hurt a wife is from a beäten or ’ow close they serfs are to starvin when en crop is ta’en.’

  ‘I unnerstan it well,’ he answered. ‘What be the reason for the Franky’s haëtred o’ milor’?’

  Mistress Wilde tapped her heart. ‘Jalousie.’

  She went on to tell the townsmen what de Courtesmain had said when he withdrew his accusations against Athelstan. He took no fault to himself, blaming Milady and her serfs for allowing him to believe that Athelstan was inferior to him. It made no matter that he should have guessed so unusual a man could never be a serf. To be tricked had caused him heartache and grief, for he felt he had done nothing to merit their mockery. He admitted trying to turn Milady’s daughter and her people against her after Athelstan’s departure, but only to restore himself to his rightful position as steward. Bereft of Athelstan’s support, and with her serfs in revolt, she would have leant on de Courtesmain as she should have done from the start.

  Jeremiah Slater looked amused. ‘Be he smitten wi’ ’er?’

  ‘He be.’

  ‘He mus be blin’ to ’issel’.’

  Just witless, said Mistress Wilde dismissively. Despite all he had said and done, he had still fallen to his knees before Milady, begging her forgiveness and pleading with her to allow him to return to Develish.

  From where they were standing, Ian and his companions felt a deep discomfort to see de Courtesmain dragged in chains from the house to face trial for his attack on Thaddeus. They could tell from the respect d’Amiens showed Milady when he brought her outside that she must have prevailed, but they questioned whether that victory should be at the expense of the Frenchman.

  ‘He was a fool to stab Thaddeus,’ said Peter. ‘It wouldn’t be happening otherwise.’

  ‘Except Thaddeus probably drove him to it,’ muttered Edmund. ‘He can be mighty provoking when he has a mind to it.’

  The same thoughts were in Gyles’s mind. He had no liking for de Courtesmain, whose duplicitous ways had been the cause of Isabella’s wounding by Lady Eleanor, but he had no wish to see the snivelling creature flogged. Far more lies had been told and written against him than any he had conceived. Alleyn and James showed their unease in the guilty shifting of their feet, and Gyles was grateful Miller had joined the townsmen on the benches and wasn’t close enough to feel their discomfort.

  Gyles wouldn’t have recognised de Courtesmain in the sad appearance the little Frenchman presented now. Gone was the well-oiled hair, clean-shaven face and prettiness of dress, and in their place were straggled locks, a scruffy beard and peasant clothes. Runnels of tears glistened on his cheeks and he clasped a small wooden cross between his shackled hands as if to show penitence. Behind him walked the priest, his face harsh and unsmiling.

  There was a blood lust in the air if the caterwauls that came from the back of the crowd were any guide. Perhaps floggings appealed to these men, or they’d grown bored with the interminable wait for something to happen. For once, Gyles felt himself disappointed in Milady, who watched without emotion as de Courtesmain was forced to his knees in the centre of the forecourt. And what of Thaddeus? Was he untroubled by his conscience?

  It seemed not. With a brief nod to Lady Anne, as if to acknowledge an agreement between them, he rose lazily to his feet and asked d’Amiens’ permission to address the court. His pallor was less marked from sitting for a quarter-hour, and he made an impressive figure, towering as he did over every seated person on the forecourt. He stood for a moment or two in silence, and then bent his head in respect to the assembled men, touching his fingers to his forehead as he had to Lady Anne.

  ‘I am your humble servant, sirs. Should a time arise when one or more of you has need of my help, you have but to ask.’ He smiled to see their surprise. ‘Not all traditions are the same. That part of me which is Moorish
requires me to repay kindness with kindness, and I offer you my services gladly in return for the courtesy you’ve shown me.’ He paused to collect his thoughts. ‘I count myself fortunate that I was raised in the customs of two traditions, because both have taught me wisdom. The giving of charity is common to each, but I have yet to meet a person, English or Moor, who is as steeped in human kindness as Lady Anne of Develish.’

  He turned to bend his knee to her. ‘God was gracious when he permitted your letter to reach me, cousin. We have written to each other many times down the years, but you had never before asked for my help. I bless God that you did and that He allowed me to make the journey in advance of the pestilence. It was my honour to help you defend your people against this terrible disease, and a greater honour to take your message of hope to the men and women of Dorseteshire. From what I have witnessed in my travels these past months, I believe the worst has passed, and through God’s grace we can all begin to dream of a future.’

  He faced the crowd again, walking forward to stand in front of de Courtesmain’s kneeling figure. ‘English justice demands that this man be punished for the crime he has committed against me. Do any of the jurymen doubt that he wounded me most gravely?’

  ‘We do not, sire,’ called their foreman. ‘But we will hear his explanation if he has one.’

  The priest placed his hand on de Courtesmain’s head. ‘It’s an offence against God to attack a noble,’ he declared loudly. ‘There is no excuse. The prisoner has expressed penitence and will accept his punishment.’

  Thaddeus smiled slightly. ‘He thought me a serf, Father. Should we condemn him for being wrong?’

  ‘He believed what he wanted to believe.’

  ‘As did you.’ Thaddeus produced the dagger from his pocket. ‘Is this yours? It has the cross of Christ on its haft, though I question how de Courtesmain came by it.’