Michael Jecks - A Friar's bloodfeud

Pagan was not like them. A little younger than Isabel, his family had served Isabel’s dead husband’s for many years going back into the dim and distant past. The fact that Pagan was still here was a measure of his commitment to them, and a proof of his honour, although he was only a common peasant in truth. At the same time, knights who called themselves honourable were stealing manors from defenceless widows like her.

She gazed into the flames, lost in thought.

‘Mother? Are you well?’

Malkin’s soft voice drew her back to the present. ‘Yes! Of course I am,’ she snapped without thinking, and then regretted her harshness. ‘I am sorry, Malkin. It’s just …’ She waved her hands feebly. ‘I don’t know how to say it.’

‘I know,’ Malkin said. Tears appeared in her eyes again. ‘I can’t think how to face life without my man.’

‘That is easy,’ Isabel said sternly. ‘You survive. I have lost three men now. My father, like my husband’s, killed by the Scots in Ireland, Robert himself in that treacherous attack at Bridgnorth, and now my son. My beloved son …’

‘I loved him so much,’ Malkin said.

‘I know you did, little sweeting.’

‘It seems so hard to imagine that he’s gone.’

‘The thing to concentrate on for now is my grandson. You have to look after him, child. It is he who matters, who has to be protected. No one else.’

Sir Baldwin de Furnshill stood in the cool morning air wearing only a thin linen shirt and a fine tunic of flaming crimson, and drew his sword as he faced the rising sun on the grassy slope, tossing the scabbard aside on to the grass and standing still a moment.

He was a tall man, broad and thickset about the shoulders and neck as befitted a warrior used to wearing armour, and his right arm was more heavily muscled than his left from working with heavy weapons. Yet for all his warlike appearance, his face showed a different quality. He lacked the brute arrogance and cruelty of so many modern knights. Instead, he had kindliness in his dark brown eyes — kindliness and a sort of wariness, a man always slightly on guard. A thin beard followed the line of his lower jaw. Once it had been dark, but now, like his hair, it was showing more and more grey. There was more salt than pepper, his wife had said recently, and he could not deny it.

Today he felt unsettled, and it was not merely his wound: it was a curious manor, this, the small estate which had been his wife’s first husband’s.

It had a lovely outlook, being some miles north of Tavistock but not quite on the moors, with a view of Dartmoor itself. The manor house was a good, solid moorstone building, with sound grey walls, lately whitewashed (Baldwin suspected because the local steward had heard that his mistress’s husband was coming to see the place) and thatched well only the previous summer. It stood on a small knoll, as though on its own shallow motte, and all about it at a distance of some sixty yards were woods, with the only bare aspect being to the south, where a man could see almost all the way to Brent Tor on a clear day, so it was said. Sir Baldwin didn’t know about that, but he did know that today he needed to try his muscles.

Some three or four months ago he’d been the victim of an attack, and the encounter had nearly killed him. Even now, the wound in his breast was enough to make his chest seize up when he over-exerted himself. The pain was normally a dull ache, but every so often it grew into a flaming agony that seemed to threaten to rip his ribs apart. Last night had been one such occasion.

They had come here to Liddinstone a matter of a month ago. He had promised his wife that they would come to see how the manor was faring, and as soon as he felt able to make the journey from his little estate near Cadbury, a short distance south of Tiverton, they had arranged their affairs, leaving Edgar in charge.

Edgar had been his most loyal servant for more years than either cared to remember. They had met in the hellhole of Acre in 1291, both arriving in time to witness the city’s death at the hands of many thousands of Moors. They had set up a vast siege encampment all about the city walls, and during their time there, Baldwin had found Edgar and saved his life. Subsequently, both had been injured and would have died, had it not been for the generosity of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, the Knights Templar, who had rescued them. As a result, as soon as they could, both had given their oaths to serve the Order, and Baldwin became a knight while Edgar became his sergeant. They served together for many years, until the appalling day when the Order was arrested.

Friday 13th October 1307. It was a date that felt as though it had been engraved with a red-hot burin on Baldwin’s heart. Each year he felt drawn to toast his comrades on that day, and yet he could not. The idea that he should celebrate their destruction was repellent. No, it was better that he remembered them all on days like today, when the sun was newly risen with the promise of clear weather, like so many of those other days when he and his companions had woken with the dawn.

He held his sword out forwards, his arm straight, elbow and wrist locked, the peacock-blue steel of the blade sitting still in his grip, and he smiled to himself grimly. There were few knights who were as old as he and yet still capable of holding their swords outstretched for any period. He was more than fifty years old now, and although he knew that he could best most men half his age, he had to pick his moments and his opponents.

Yet if there was one thing that the Templars had taught him, it was the benefit of constant practice. A man who trained was a man who could rely on his reflexes, and now Baldwin swung the sword in his wrist, first letting the point drop down then spinning it up on his right, then dropping it and flicking it up on the left of his forearm to form a figure 8. After twenty of those, he threw the sword spinning into the air, and caught it with his left hand, repeating the exercise before tossing it up again and catching it in his right hand once more.

Now he started the serious training. This was basic work, but he had performed these actions almost every morning since his acceptance into his Order. It was only at times of great pain that he had neglected his training, such as late last year, 1323, when the crossbow bolt had laid him low for so long.

He could consider the near-death with equanimity now, although at the time he had been appalled that he could die and leave his wife and daughter without a protector. True, Edgar would be there, and knowing Edgar he would continue to offer his support and what security he could to Baldwin’s widow and offspring, but it wasn’t the same.

It was a dreadful thought, that his wife should be widowed and left to fend for herself. Of all his nightmares, that was the one which recurred most often and left him distraught, unrefreshed and emotionally drained in the morning.

Jeanne de Liddinstone, as she had been before marrying Baldwin, had been born to a moderately wealthy family, but when they had been murdered she had left to live with family in Bordeaux, only returning when she married Ralph de Liddinstone.

Sadly Ralph proved to be a brute. He took to abusing his wife when she couldn’t produce a child for him, and accused her of barrenness. Shortly before Baldwin first met her, Ralph died. A little while later, Baldwin married Jeanne. Now they had a daughter, Richalda.

He lifted the point of the blade so that the tip was in line with his arm, the point up-slanting, and then swivelled his body right, blocking an imaginary hack; with a flick of his wrist he moved the blade to point out to his right, and brought his fist across, the blade trailing, covering a thrust at his head. The sword’s point fell and he covered a series of attacks at his legs, always a vulnerable target, especially in this age of staffs and polearms, then began a series of defensive manoeuvres, first to cover his right flank, then his left. At the end of this, he was panting, and there was a fine sheen of sweat over his features, as well as what felt like a small snake of ice on his spine where the perspiration had soaked into his shirt.