Michael Jecks - No Law in the Land

The messenger looked not at all refreshed, Simon reckoned. ‘You look like you could do with a rest,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you stay with Cardinal de Fargis here for the day? You’ll get no answer out of the abbey today anyway — they’ll all be involved in their prayers.’

‘I thank you,’ the messenger said, ‘but I must deliver this message, and that urgently. I would return to London as soon as I may.’

‘No need to break your cods over it, though,’ Sir Richard declared, earning a scandalised hiss from a cleric in the cardinal’s retinue. ‘What? What did I say? Did I say something amiss?’

‘Do not worry about him,’ Simon said, trying not to laugh. ‘Do you only have one message to deliver, then?’ he asked. ‘I know the king’s messengers will often have entire circuits to cover, but I suppose this is the end of yours?’

‘Yes. And now I must be gone,’ Stephen said shortly.

Simon looked over at the coroner. ‘If you must, then God speed. I wish you well on your journey.’

‘Thank you. And I you,’ Stephen said, and strode off towards the cardinal’s house and stables.

‘He is lucky, that fellow,’ Coroner Richard said thoughtfully. ‘If he’d spoken to me like that, I would have had his ballocks in a bucket.’

Jacobstowe

It took a little time for her to waken again. As she gradually appreciated that she was lying on the floor, she had to shake her head to clear it of the roaring sound in her ears, and then the strange conviction that there was a weight pressing down on her breast, holding her to the floor.

She tried to rise, but there was no strength in her arms, and she must strain and strain to try to get up.

‘No, no, stay there, mistress! Wait, let me help you!’

‘Hoppon!’ she recalled. It was him. He had come to the door, two men behind him, and had drawn his cap off, twisting it between his old hands as he told her of the death of her man. Her Bill. Her Lark. Her life. Beaten to death. It was that word, ‘beaten’, that had made her breast start to spasm, made the sound roar in her ears, made the breath hot and raw in her throat. ‘Help me up.’

One of the men had set her pot on the fire with water, and stewed some mint leaves for her. He passed a cup of it to her now, and the fragrance seemed to rise in her nostrils, clearing her mind and refreshing her. But not enough. Nothing could ever be enough, not now. ‘Bill, oh my Bill!’ she said, dropping the cup and gripping her stomach in a paroxysm of grief so intense she thought her heart must burst from her breast. She felt it like a clenching deep inside her, a tearing, desperate agony. Never to hold him to her, never to see his slow smile, his serious eyes turning tender and gentle when he held her, when he held the Ant. All was turned to misery and grim despair.

‘Mistress, do you want him in here, or shall we carry him to the church now?’ Hoppon asked.

She flung her head back. ‘In here. Let me clear the table for him.’

It was something to have a reason to be busy. She stood, and for now the feebleness seemed to have left her. It took a little time to move the bowls and spoons from the table, and the pastry she had been making for a pie, and then it was clear. She took salt and a brush and scrubbed the wood until it was bleached white. The men offered to aid her, but she snapped at them. This was her grief; it was her last duty for her man.

At last, content that all was as clean as it could be, she curtly commanded Hoppon to bring in the body.

They had him on an old plank of elm. That, she thought, was suitable. There was a great elm down in the hedge at the bottom of their plot, and he had always been fond of that tree, sitting underneath it for shade on the hottest days, and taking refuge beneath it when the weather turned to rain. Once he and she had made love against the trunk, both standing, both too taken with urgent lust to walk the fifteen or twenty yards to the house. He had been such a good lover. Such a good man.

And now he was as dead as the elm plank on which he lay. The men set the plank on the table and gradually tilted it until he was lying on the table itself. Not that it was large enough to accommodate his frame. He overhung it by a good few feet, his legs dangling from the knee.

Ant sidled across the floor on his backside, gurgling, and reached out for the nearer leg. Agnes had not the heart to stop him. Instead she turned to the men. ‘You have my gratitude, all of you. And now I would like to prepare him for his grave.’

‘I will ask my wife to-’

‘No. I will do this alone. He is my man. I will see to him,’ she declared with absolute determination. ‘It is not for anyone else.’

They left soon after, and she stood for a long time staring down at his face. His poor, bloody, ravaged face. She wanted to speak to him, to ask him what he had been doing, to rail at him for having the temerity to die when she hadn’t expected it. But the only words that came were, ‘It was only until next Michaelmas, you fool. Couldn’t you have stayed alive that long?’

Ant was on the floor, looking up at her with a face that showed only utter concentration, once more as always, assessing her mood, ready to fit his own to suit hers. And as she gradually subsided into sobs, deep, womanly sobs for the life lost, the future snatched away, he began to wail too.

Furnshill

Baldwin watched, almost hopping from foot to foot, as Jeanne ministered to the girl.

Given a sword in his hand, an enemy charging towards him, a horse beneath him, Baldwin was in control. He knew his strength, he knew how to fight, he understood the points at which to aim his weapon, how to reverse his blade, how to fight in unison with others, how to deceive and slash or stab to win swiftly — but in a situation like this, with a young woman weeping and desolate, he was as useful as a wooden trivet over a fire. ‘Do you want me to-’

‘No,’ Jeanne said curtly. ‘Go and sit down. You are being a nuisance.’

‘I don’t understand, though,’ Baldwin said, once he had taken himself away a short distance. ‘How can they think that your husband is involved in some form of treason?’

‘I don’t know! I wish I knew — I wish I could find out! Sir Baldwin, you will help us, won’t you? Peter’s father is doing all he can, but he says he has no influence with this new sheriff. He said I should ask you. You are Keeper of the King’s Peace, and you have been to London to see the king himself — can’t you help us?’

Baldwin looked at her. She was weeping all the time, her face red with her distress, and he felt his heart torn. ‘I will do all I can,’ he said, ‘but you have to understand, I am not so popular with the sheriff or others. They think of me as an enemy of their master, Despenser, and would prefer to see me hurt and broken. If they thought it would offend me to keep your husband in gaol, they would do so. It is hard, I know. What of your father? Simon must be told of this too.’

‘That was what they said. They said that they were holding Peter because of my father. Something about Peter being taken because of him. They said he wouldn’t have been arrested if it wasn’t for Father!’

Baldwin slowly walked to a stool not far from Edith and sat, studying her seriously. ‘You are sure of that?’

‘It is what my father-in-law said. As soon as I saw him and told him what had happened, he went straightway to see the sheriff, and the man said that it would have been better if Peter had never … never met me!’

Baldwin’s face hardened. His sympathy for Edith knew no bounds, because he had known her since he first arrived here nine years ago, when she was only a child, and looked upon her as a man would a favourite but occasionally wayward grandchild. There had been times when he had been made angry by her rudeness to her father in recent years, but he was forced to admit to himself that most of those had been situations in which any young woman would tend to illogical humours. Even his own darling Richalda would probably display the same kind of intolerance of her father when she grew to become fourteen or more. It was the way of young girls.