Squire Throwleigh's Heir

by Michael Jecks

  Baldwin smiled. Jeanne came to sit at his side. She called and Edgar brought a tray on which were two pots and a jug. When she nodded, he left them, and Jeanne herself poured.

  ‘It’s a beautiful morning,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She glanced up at the sound of a hound baying.

  ‘She’ll live,’ Baldwin said. His mastiff was still wounded that Baldwin should have deserted him for so long while he was at Throwleigh, and was still more anxious to see him for every minute of every day as a result.

  Jeanne passed him his wine, and he gratefully drank half of it at a single gulp. ‘That’s good!’

  ‘What do you think will happen to her?’

  Baldwin sadly shook his head. ‘I wish I knew, Jeanne. The Lady Katharine always looked so strong and independent, but I fear that the shock of losing her family, and then hearing her most favoured maid, the one in whom she had always placed her trust, assert that she herself had murdered the lady’s son, toppled her reason. She will be well looked after in the nuns’ convent, but whether she will ever truly recover, or will remain there, bound up for the rest of her days like a wild beast, is hard to tell. All I can say is, after so many horrors, perhaps it would be better if she never regained her faculties, for all that would mean is that she could once more appreciate her misery.’

  It was an appalling state for the young woman to have fallen into. Baldwin and Jeanne had seen Lady Katharine before they returned to Furnshill, and the sight was awful. She had lain on her palliasse, dribbling and moaning, gazing about her with unseeing eyes and for all the world dead. It was a hideous scene.

  ‘Ah well,’ Jeanne said with a sigh. ‘At least there will soon be the pattering of little feet to help us forget all about the incident.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Baldwin agreed sarcastically. ‘We’ll have another drunken brat about the place, just like Wat. Another puling, mewling sod determined to eat up everything in sight and then bringing it all back.’

  ‘Don’t be so scathing, Baldwin. Wasn’t it always you who said you wanted a baby?’

  Baldwin gave her a long look. ‘You know perfectly well that I meant one of my own. I didn’t mean another man’s.’

  ‘At least he was a priest.’

  ‘I don’t honestly feel that is any compensation, Jeanne.’

  ‘We couldn’t have left her there all on her own, my love.’

  ‘I suppose not, but I must confess that when you demanded your own maid, I didn’t realise you meant you wanted a page as well. We could have bought one - there was no need to hire a maid with her own brood ready to pod!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, Baldwin! I don’t want Petronilla to overhear you saying things like that; she might get upset, and that’s not good for a mother.’

  ‘Oh, very well, but all I can say is, I hope she will find time to look after you between feeds.’

  Glancing around, Baldwin saw that there was no one watching them. He grabbed Jeanne, picked her up, squeaking, and set her on his lap before kissing her thoroughly. The priest Stephen had not managed to settle his mind about his vow to chastity, but in a strange way, the death of Herbert himself had. Somehow Baldwin felt sure that it was right that he should love this woman, almost as if he had a duty to replace the lad.

  He was content.

  It was warm in the hall, and the boy had to pause before he could enter, it was so hot compared with the relative cool of the air outside. Also the sight of his master’s guest made him hesitate.

  ‘Hah! Jordan! Bring the wine here.’

  Sir Reginald wasn’t unkind, as Jordan had been led to expect, but he did require his servants to obey him speedily. The first thrashing Jordan had received after arriving here at Hatherleigh was caused purely by his being a little too slow in bringing the jug of wine when called. It had been a painful experience, and now he was prone to leap forward with alacrity when summoned, and as a result Sir Reginald appeared to have taken to him with a degree of fondness.

  The work wasn’t too arduous either. Jordan was expected to help about the hall, assisting the steward with whatever he thought needed doing, tidying the buttery, restocking the storerooms, fetching and carrying trays and jugs and pots.

  He brought the wine to his master and set it on the table silently.

  Simon watched him with a curious smile twisting the edge of his mouth. ‘How do you find your new home, Jordan?’

  ‘It’s fine, sir. I’m very happy here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to go home to your father?’

  ‘To him, sir?’ Jordan asked, his face blank.

  ‘Your mother has left him, lad. I thought if you were to go home again, you might be able to help him keep his land going.’

  Jordan sniffed and wiped his eye. ‘I don’t think so, sir. I don’t think I could help him. He never listens to anyone - not Mum, not me, not anyone. If I went back, he’d beat me for no reason, just like he always used to.’

  Simon smiled understandingly, and Sir Reginald waved the boy away.

  When he had left the hall, the knight glanced at the bailiff. ‘Well? He gave you a good enough answer, didn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes, Sir Reginald. I never doubted he would. He’s filling out nicely, too. You’re feeding him too much.’

  ‘Not me, bailiff, it’s the damned women of the place. They all insist on giving him candy and extra portions of ale. Daft buggers! When I was a boy, servants were lucky if they were allowed maslin. Rye and wheat was good enough for the animals, my old father used to say, so it was damned well good enough for the slaves as well!’

  Simon smiled thinly. ‘Yes, I have no doubt. The main thing is, he appears happy enough, and I am sure he will flourish under your benevolent eye. What of the other one?’

  ‘Alan? He appears to have an excellent aim with a sling and bullet, so I’ve sent him off to help watch the flocks north of here. I’m sure he’ll “flourish” too! Hah!’ The knight began to laugh rustily, like an old man who was dry of throat.

  Jordan heard the men moving on to talk about the knight’s lands nearer the moors, and this held no interest for him, so he silently walked out to the buttery, putting the tray down and setting a jug to fill under the wine butt.

  The place was easy enough; certainly the work here was less arduous than it had been at home. There he’d always been up before dawn to do his chores in the house before setting off for the fields. Now he need rise only when he heard others already about their duties, and when he did go to the hall, there was food for him. He messed with the second shift of workers in this busy manor. There were so many staff that there wasn’t space for all to eat at the same time, and even if there had been, someone must fetch the food and drink and serve the servants. So they ate in shifts, the knight with the first, and Jordan helped wait upon him before eating with the second.

  No, Jordan was pleased with his new position. It was quite a stroke of luck. He hadn’t expected to be able to live as well as this, not after he had confessed to killing Master Herbert.

  But he was no fool, and knew that if he were to put a foot wrong, he might find life much more difficult. That was why he was so cautious. He kept his mouth shut, just as he always had. He was taking no risks. A word out of place could lead to severe punishment, and he had no wish for that.

  Mind, Jordan had a feeling that he could control his life. There were not many men of his age who had killed, who knew the surge of power at ending another human’s life. He turned off the wine tap, setting the jug on the tray once more.

  No, not many people of his age had killed. Herbert had been a genuine, panicky mistake, but for all that, his death had been necessary, purely to prevent his telling Stephen and then his mother about Jordan and Alan hurting him. He’d been going to tell the priest immediately, and Jordan couldn’t allow him to do that. As Herbert turned to run towards the stream, Jordan had already fitted the pebble to his sling, and a moment later his prey was down, whimpering.

  After that they had no choice. They c
ouldn’t let Herbert go then, not after what they’d done. And when they were finished, they’d dragged his body to the road, to drop in front of the next wagon.

  It was all very logical.

  He wasn’t sure why he was so determined never to go home again. Perhaps it was because of the treats he kept being given here. He’d never known so much food. After all, he’d been prepared to risk everything for his father, hadn’t he? And only very recently, too, when Squire Roger had come to visit.

  Jordan grinned to himself. He could feel the sling in the waistband of his hose, a comforting, protective little weight. It was odd, he thought, walking back to the hall; everyone had always thought that Alan was a good shot with a sling, and yet even Alan wouldn’t have been able to hit the old squire on the head from that range…

  He idly wondered to himself, while pouring wine for the knight and the bailiff, whether any boys as young as himself had committed two murders before the age often.

  It was quite a thought.

  Author’s Note

  Historical novels present some unique problems for the author. A plot may form with great clarity and precision in the author’s head - books often more or less write themselves once the characters have been fleshed out - but what sort of vocabulary should one use to tell a story, set like this one, in the 1300s?

  English is an astonishingly rich language, with a fabulous bank of old or ancient words upon which an enterprising novelist can draw to add authenticity. By throwing in references to, for example, a ‘misericord’ - the dagger used by knights to put an enemy out of his misery, or a ‘falchion’ - a heavy-bladed, single-edged sword used by some men-at-arms, and by mentioning trailbastons and shavaldours, crucks and cob… one can delight those readers who enjoy discovering medieval terms.

  And yet no one could write an entire story using the same vocabulary which was current in the 1300s.

  English in those far-off days was a mixture of Latin, Norman French, German, Saxon, and even some Arabic - utterly incomprehensible to most of us in the late twentieth century. Any person doubting this should get hold of a copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in its original form, unedited and untranslated; I defy anyone to understand a single line.

  Even apparently familiar words can fool the casual reader; our modern interpretation will often be completely different from that understood in centuries gone by. For an easy example, look at the word ‘nice’: its meaning has altered from ‘foolish’ or ‘stupid’, ‘extravagant in dress’, and ‘slothful’ in the 1300s, through ‘particular’ and ‘precise’ in the 1600s, to its present meaning of ‘agreeable’.

  Many writers try to get around this problem by giving a spurious patina of authenticity to their work. They throw in the odd ‘Gadzooks’ in the hope that it will lull the reader into believing that they have researched their subject carefully.

  Reader, beware! ‘Gadzooks’, for example, was first recorded in the late 1600s, so would be completely out of place in one of my novels. Most people recognise words of this nature because they were used by Shakespeare, and link that later medieval period with earlier times, but people in England and their language changed massively between 1300 and 1500.

  I have deliberately chosen to write my stories in the language of today, having made the simple assumption that if an English reader were to buy a copy of War and Peace by Tolstoy, or even The Three Musketeers by Dumas, he or she would expect the Russian and French texts to have been translated; likewise the work of Geoffrey Chaucer.

  But there is another problem, of course. If one writes in the language of today, one may be tempted to use words that couldn’t have been in common parlance in the historical period in question. I recently received a letter of complaint on exactly that point: the lady was irritated that I had used words like ‘posse’ and ‘gang’, along with ‘thug’ and ‘lynch’. She said that these words were too modern for her taste and dragged her back from the 1300s to the present, distracting her from the main story.

  It is a difficult charge to answer, because it shows precisely the double-sided problem confronting a writer of historical novels.

  Take ‘posse’. Most people associate this word with cheap extras playing a band of grubby cowboys in a Hollywood Western; in reality, it is a very ancient word; ‘posse comitatus’ was a legal term defining a group of armed men or an armed force, and ’posse‘ was certainly in use in 1300; at the same time ’gang‘ was being used as a collective term for a group of things or people. Thus these two words were actually correct for the period, and the fact that they are still in use today is hardly my fault! In the case of ’thug‘ and ’lynch‘, ’thug‘ has been known in English only since the 1600s, and ’lynch‘ since the 1780s; if a writer were to exclude any words which have come into use over the last two hundred years - or, worse, four hundred - he or she would find it next to impossible to write anything!

  Writing an historical novel is therefore fraught with dangers; one faces upsetting some folk by using archaic, incomprehensible terms, and alienating others by employing words which are simply too contemporary. All I can do is plead the best of intentions and try to steer a middle road in the hope that people will enjoy my books for what they are: lively medieval mysteries that spring from my own overheated imagination!

  It is time now to apologise to those readers who expect to find an accurate local history within these pages. In Squire Throwleigh’s Heir I have shamefully misused north-eastern Dartmoor. There was no manor west of Throwleigh towards Shilstone to the best of my knowledge; its existence was invented by me for the benefit of the story.

  Nor was there ever a Squire Roger with a son called Herbert. I am not aware of the existence of a real James van Relenghes, nor his guard Godfrey, Thomas of Exeter, Stephen of York, or of any of the other characters.

  However, similar incidents to those portrayed in this novel did happen. Men and women who had been freed from their serfdom were sometimes appallingly badly treated, their status as freemen being denied by avaricious lords and ladies. For one real-life example of sheer greed, look to Countess Margaret of Norfolk, who challenged poor Alice Comyn, accusing her of not being a freewoman. Alice’s father had been made free by Earl Thomas, the Countess’s father, but the Countess found a loophole: Earl Thomas’s estate was under an entail such that the Earl couldn’t alienate property except during his lifetime. Thus, the Countess argued, Alice couldn’t be free. On the Earl’s death, Alice’s father’s rights to freedom were automatically revoked, as were those of all his children.

  This was sharp practice of the worst kind, but it wasn’t the only example. Other cases abound.

  In the same way, I have not invented ‘Conventionary Tenure’. This unpleasant form of tenancy came into existence during the early 1300s in the earldom of Cornwall, and appears to have been used around the western borders of Devon too. Under its terms, people could be thrown from the land they and their forefathers had held for decades simply because another person offered a higher rent. Fortunately, not all landlords took part in this.

  * * *

  One last word is important, I feel.

  In this novel, I have made some comments on the English martial arts. Some may doubt that there were expert English fighters because over the years we have happily forgotten these predecessors of modern boxing.

  However, although now it is considered wrong for people to learn to use weapons, and the police control all access to firearms for even target purposes, this is an extremely recent development. In previous decades the British have led the world in methods of self-defence because we have traditionally believed in the right to ‘keep and bear arms’ to protect ourselves from foreign invasion or against overbearing governments in London. In both world wars this century, it was the rifle and pistol shooters of Great Britain who were first to join the Army. The proof of this lies in the archives of clubs such as my own; over half its members were wiped out during one day on the Somme.

  Throughout Britain’s long hist
ory, skills and techniques have been passed down that have enabled our fighting men to win battles all over the world. For instance, our sailors were still learning sword-fighting with sabres up until very recent times - skills which were recorded before the Conquest.

  For those who wish to learn more about ancient English fighting techniques, I heartily recommend Terry Brown’s English Martial Arts, published by Anglo-Saxon Books. This fascinating book tracks the development of the ‘Master of Defence’ through history, and because Terry himself is a modern martial-arts expert, he can bring to life some of the methods of fighting with broadsword, sword and buckler, sword and dagger, and especially quarter- and half-staff.

  Even so, in Squire Throwleigh’s Heir the way in which fights are presented, the types of weapons used and the methods of using them, are all drawn from my imagination, and any errors are entirely my own responsibility.

  Dartmoor

  October 1998