The Mad Monk of Gidleigh (16 page)

‘Sir Ralph. I saw him ride away, a broad smile on his face – the bastard.’

‘When was this? Are you sure it was after she was killed?’

‘I heard something. I didn’t realise until later, but I’m certain of it. I heard her cry out. Then I was turning away, heading back along the next furrow, and it was when I got back that I saw him mounting his horse. He was on that big bugger. His head suddenly appeared above the hedge line.’

‘He could have been riding along and–’

‘Don’t give me that!’ Elias said scathingly. ‘Think I’m as thick as Sampson? If he’d been on his horse all the way along there, I’d have seen his head moving along, wouldn’t I? No, I saw him spring up into the saddle, and he saw me – and smiled. Like he was out for a happy little ride and fancied a–’

It was Piers’s turn to silence Elias. He shot the peasant a look, held up a hand in admonition. ‘I don’t want you to say that, not in my hearing, and not in anyone else’s. It’s a villainous tale, Elias, and it’d get you into trouble.’

‘That’s why he bolted,’ Elias said, a cynical grin twisting his face. ‘The priest wasn’t stupid. He came along a little after, when I was back near the hedge again.’

‘You saw him?’

‘No. But he’s the only man who’s run off, isn’t he?’

‘You’re certain you heard someone running off?’

‘I told you I did.’

‘But you didn’t mention our master at the time,’ Piers said sharply.

‘I missed that out,’ Elias agreed. ‘I like life. It was that priest who ran off.’

‘Why’d he do that if you’re right and Sir Ralph killed her?’ Piers said more quietly.

Elias shrugged. ‘He was a priest, and he got her with child. We’ve all heard of clerks who keep their women but try to kill them when they realise it could hurt them in future. He probably thought we’d all be after his blood. Anyway, he hit her – I’m sure of that. Maybe he was scared then – you know, shocked. Maybe he just saw her lying there and thought he’d actually killed her! He might’ve seen her and bolted.’

‘He should have waited.’

‘What – and let the Hue and Cry behead him in their rage?’ Elias’s smile seemed to hitch up the whole of his beard. ‘You know more about the law than I do, Piers, but I say this: if I was a poor priest like him, I’d not think twice. I’d bolt and make for the woods. Or I’d go to my Bishop. I wouldn’t bugger about here hoping for justice. Not when someone like Huward was hankering for my neck, and not when the man who owns the court was Sir Ralph; the man who’d actually killed the poor girl.’

Baldwin was already up before the landlord, and with the early dawn, he was in the inn’s hall with his sword and dagger, practising thrusts and parries, blocking imaginary blows at his head, at his belly, at his thighs and flanks, each time manoeuvring to keep his feet glued flat on the ground as he blocked, maintaining his position as he swung away. That was strength in a battle: remember, feet firm to give a base from which to strike. The man who moves his feet while striking is the man who will suffer defeat, because he is unbalanced.

When he could feel the sweat running freely, he began his exercises, swinging his weapons from side to side, holding them out at arm’s length and moving them in small circles, or up and down, until the pain in the junction of his shoulder and neck grew too extreme for him to continue. Only then did he set his weapons aside and take a deep breath, gradually relaxing all the tension. He drew himself a bowl of wine from the inn’s bar and, adding water from the pot beside the fire, he sipped the warm drink.

‘Most impressive, Sir Baldwin.’

The knight groaned inwardly. He had hoped to avoid the clerk today. ‘Brother Roger. How pleasing it is to see you.’

Roger Scut was sitting at a bench near the door. ‘I hadn’t expected to find you with your sword drawn at this time of day, Sir Baldwin,’ he said teasingly. ‘I needs must be careful not to upset so warlike a knight.’

Baldwin used his tunic to wipe away the sweat. ‘You should always seek to avoid upsetting a knight. Some do not possess such remarkable calmness of spirit as me.’

‘Haha! I am sure you are quite right in that, Sir Baldwin!’ Roger Scut laughed. He was aiming along his nose again, and that, together with his irritating voice, was already getting to Baldwin.

‘You look damp,’ he remarked through gritted teeth.

‘The weather is inclement,’ Roger replied. ‘The rain is sheeting down, and the wind tries to blow it through you.’

‘Typical!’ Baldwin said, thinking of his long journey homewards. He grimaced, then continued towelling himself dry.

‘I assume you, um, failed to find the man yesterday?’

‘We did not capture him, no. But I have men sweeping all around the town today,’ Baldwin said shortly.

‘The Dean has asked that you present the priest to him when you do catch him.’

‘You may tell the good Dean that I shall consider his request.’

‘It was not a request, I fear.’

Baldwin heard the slight intonation. He met Roger Scut’s bland expression with a keen look. ‘I fear it was exactly that, Roger. Dean Peter asked if I would present him with his murderous priest. I shall consider his request when I catch the fellow. First, of course, I have to catch the felon. Once I have done so, I shall think about whether I should release him to Peter or take him back to Gidleigh.’

‘He is a priest, you know.’

‘No, I do not. He is rumoured to have been living there as a priest, it is true – but that means naught. What if this was a felon who waylaid your priest on the way to his church? He might have slaughtered your cleric and buried the body, then thought to himself what fun he could have with a small congregation like Gidleigh’s.’

‘My God! You don’t mean that?’ Roger Scut said, blanching. He nervously felt for his rosary. ‘But how could a man hope to get away with such an imposture?’

‘Easily. I have known some outrageously bold felons in my time. Why,’ Baldwin said with a sudden sharpness, ‘how do I know that
you
are who you say you are? You could be another false man.’

‘I?’ Roger Scut spluttered, his face suddenly reddening like an apprentice caught with his buttocks bared with his master’s daughter. ‘But I have been here for years, I am known to–’

‘It was merely an example. I shall decide when I see the boy,’ Baldwin lied mildly; his mind was already made up. The lad’s crime was awful, and to Baldwin’s mind it was neither fair nor just that he should be allowed to escape to the Bishop’s court without having to face those whom he had wronged.

Gradually Roger Scut’s complexion returned to normal. ‘I am glad to hear it. So tell me,’ he said, his head tilting back again until he was drawing a sight on Baldwin once more, ‘why do you practise with your sword this morning? It is hardly the time of year to expect a war, is it?’

‘There is no time of year when one should not expect a war. Especially now, with the King’s army shattered again.’

‘Oh, that!’ Roger’s face fell. ‘We live in terrible times, Sir Baldwin. I sometimes wonder when we shall know peace again.’

‘So do I,’ Baldwin said with feeling. The Scottish had drawn the King northwards during the previous year at the completion of the latest truce, by swarming over the border and ravaging the lands of the north-west. King Edward II had gone with a massive, well-provisioned body of men. Yet the stories which were filtering back to the south were all of subterfuges and disasters.

The Scots had withdrawn before the might of the English host, refusing them battle, but also destroying all the food stores and animals in their path, with the result that the English were soon decimated by starvation and disease. The King had to pull back, but his orderly retreat was harried by Scottish forces, and one made its way even so far as the middle of Yorkshire. It was only with difficulty that King Edward II himself escaped capture in a skirmish near to Byland and Rievaulx. The whole of Yorkshire was struck with terror as their King fled and the upstart rebels from Scotland devastated their lands.

It was a disaster for everyone in the realm, with repercussions even down here in Devon. Simon, Baldwin’s friend, had helped a King’s Arrayer the previous year, organising men to be used in the King’s host, and some of these fellows had limped back, but all too few. The rest, they said, had been captured and slaughtered by the mad Scots, or they had died of pestilence or starvation. Many died because, after suffering the worst pangs of hunger, when they came across food, they gorged themselves and their poor bodies couldn’t cope. They died in terrible pain as their stomachs burst within them.

The cost was vast, too. Huge stocks of grain, meat and fish, all salted, had been taken to feed the men fighting for the King, but this was the food that the towns had expected for their own winter supplies, and without them, many households had gone hungry over the winter. Crediton itself was better stocked than many other towns, but Baldwin had several cases of families who must beg for food from Church stores.

‘We can only hope and pray that the Scottish rebels will accept their fate,’ Roger Scut said piously.

‘Yes,’ Baldwin agreed, although privately he wondered whether they ever would. It was all very well having the Pope’s approval for the King’s claim to the Scottish crown, but if all the people continued to refuse, point blank, and wouldn’t offer battle either, but instead ran away into the bleak, miserable far north of their lands, it was hard to see what the King could do about it.

He was considering this miserable fact and wondering what miracle of strategy could be used to defeat the Scottish, when there was a sudden shouting and laughter from the road. Baldwin paid it little heed at first, thinking it was only some folk playing the fool, but then the noise drew nearer and he realised that the source of the row was already in the cross passage. He stood, putting a hand near his sword, but did not draw it. In a few minutes a group of cheerful men entered.

Godwen was first to walk in. ‘Sir Baldwin, I think we have your man!’

‘
That
is him?’ Baldwin asked with ill-concealed disbelief.

Sir Ralph eyed the sky as he climbed up the three steps of moorstone and mounted his horse. It had been blowing like a horn since before dawn, and the rain had come across like a grey mist, obscuring everything behind it. Now at least there was a brief period of calm and dryness, but the grey clouds above left him feeling dubious as to how long it would last. The wind had not abated.

He shivered. It felt as if there was an ague in his guts. Since the death of Mary, he’d been feeling like this. It was hard to swallow food or drink, and he must force himself. It was no comfort to observe that the energy which had at last failed him would appear to have been transferred entirely to his son.

While a groom led him a short distance away, Esmon leaped lightly into his own saddle and nonchalantly pulled on his gloves.

Esmon was quite a chip off the old block, Sir Ralph had to admit, but he wasn’t sure that it was pleasing. Certainly he had the fair-haired good looks and the appearance of hardness, but his mouth was all too often a thin line, displaying his petulance. Although his eyes were a clear, bright green like emeralds, they did not reflect mere jealousy but comprehensive and consuming avarice. He didn’t care what his neighbour possessed: what he wanted, he would take. In many ways, he would be the ideal knight, Sir Ralph thought. He was not prepared to allow any rudeness or cheek to his honour, he wouldn’t take any foolishness that might reflect upon him, and he had just enough sense to know when to hold his tongue when the odds were heavily laden against him.

That was the trouble with fellows today. Sir Ralph knew so many of them, men of strength and apparent intelligence, who would yet charge a thick line of Genoese crossbows and spears alone just because of an imagined slight. That was madness, in Sir Ralph’s opinion. To join in a charge was a glorious experience, but as a military force he felt that it was overrated. He wasn’t alone, either. Others too had witnessed the disaster of Bannockburn, when the mounted chivalry of the realm was shattered on the pikes and spears of the Scots like waves on the seashore. There was nothing that a knight could do to break into a solid, packed phalanx of men with good, long polearms. That was the job of footsoldiers.

It wasn’t only Bannockburn, either. He had heard of the field of Courtrai, where the mad peasants had destroyed the French cavalry, and Morgarten, where the mountain men had wrought destruction on more noblemen. Both were examples of that most appalling of things, a slaughter of the knightly class by the lowest forms of life: serfs. In the Christian world, there were only three orders: the holy men, whose task it was to protect the souls of the living and the dead; the warriors, whose job it was to keep society in check; and then far down the list, the peasants and freemen. The knights’ job was to control them and keep them in check. If serfs could fight knights and defeat them, the whole order of the world was topsy-turvy. It didn’t bear considering.

However, the means by which they could win a battle was instructive. Clearly it wasn’t because God was on their side – He would hardly support the peasant! – so it was the methods which they used. Even King Edward II was moving towards a mobile host of men-at-arms, who could ride to the point where they were needed, but who would then dismount and fight on foot, in among the archers and others. Dismounted knights, standing among the peasants! It was a horrible thought and yet it worked. The Scots had proved that. Rebels they might be, but they could fight – and win.

They were moving off eastwards, and Sir Ralph realised that they were soon to pass in front of Mary’s home. His back stiffened at the thought. He could still remember his first sight of her body lying at the side of the path, under the wall. It was hideous. With the recollection he felt he must gag.