Michael Jecks - A Friar's bloodfeud

Other men were bold and sought to promote the interests of their lords: some the Lord de Courtenay, some the Lords Despenser and the king. ‘Because it will come to war, lady, make no mistake!’ Emma had declared, jowls wobbling.

It was hard, when Emma was in such a state, not to study her closely. She was short, but with a large frame, and her breast was carried like a weapon, projecting far before her. Her eyes were a soft brown, but Baldwin had once said that they held the bile and spite of a dozen Moors whenever they latched on to him. Jeanne knew what he meant, because Emma’s eyes were shrewd and calculating. When she fixed a man with her gaze, he would quail. The jut of her warty chin was enough to make a lion whimper. Jeanne had seen strong market stall holders blench when she fixed them with her sternest look.

When Emma compared Baldwin with her first husband, Jeanne would try to defend him, but in Emma’s eyes it was irrelevant what the man said or did. She adored Jeanne, and in the usual way anything that would make Jeanne happy was Emma’s delight, but that did not extend to Baldwin.

When Emma and he had first met, she had been entirely unimpressed with his home, his lands and his choice of companions in his hall. Most despised of all, as Jeanne and Baldwin knew only too well, was his mastiff, Uther. Emma detested the old monster, and although even Baldwin could, on occasion, admit that Uther was a little overwhelming at times, he would never admit that in front of Emma, and especially not since Uther had died. If anything, his loyalty to the brute had increased rather than diminished now that Uther was dead.

In like fashion, Emma would not give up her oft-stated opinion that the animal was a vicious monster that should have been killed when still a pup, before he could upset anybody else. The only thing Baldwin had ever done, or rather not done, that had elevated him in her opinion was to decide not to replace Uther when the dog died.

However, his reluctance to speak for either side in the present political climate struck Emma as dishonourable.

‘That’s what it seems like to me, and I speak as I find. Can’t abide people who won’t stand by their lords. Look at him! He should declare his loyalties, either to the king or to the Lord de Courtenay. Where’s the difficulty in that?’

‘Enough, Emma! It is not your place to decide where his duty lies!’ Jeanne snapped at last.

‘No, my lady, but it’ll be his soon enough, when there is a fight down here, on our manor, or perhaps on his own up at Furnshill,’ Emma retorted. ‘He should state where his allegiance lies, that’s all I’m saying. Hoi! You! Where are you going with that?’ and she was off after a hapless peasant before Jeanne could reprimand her again.

The worst of it was not Emma’s blundering clumsiness in her language, nor the apparent pleasure she took in denigrating Baldwin, a man whom Jeanne was sure Emma had never liked, but more the disloyal feeling in Jeanne’s own breast that her husband really should have declared on which side his interests lay. There were so many men for whom life under the present rule was all but intolerable. The Despensers were notoriously and aggressively acquisitive. They could not see or hear of another man’s wealth without attempting to steal it.

No, Jeanne would hate to think that her Baldwin could join the king and the Despensers and fight for them. Only recently the Lord Mortimer had escaped from the Tower in London, and made his way overseas somehow, if the rumours were true. Baldwin had been told by another judge at the Court of Gaol Delivery that Mortimer was in French territory. His liberty had to be a massive concern for the Despensers because they knew Mortimer was the only one of their enemies left with extensive military experience. If he returned to Britain, Baldwin said, he could pose a threat to them, and maybe even the king himself.

‘Are you well?’ Baldwin asked.

She smiled at his solicitous tone. ‘Do not try to change the subject. You know that I was worried about you because if you were to have a fall you might not be found for an age. If you have to go riding, could you not take a man with you?’

‘My love, I was only going for a canter around your lands.’ Baldwin sighed. ‘I have ridden in more dangerous locations, you know.’

‘Yes, I know, but a wounded man who falls can die all too easily. You should be resting, husband!’

He groaned. ‘I need to be fit, woman! I have to get myself ready again …’

‘For what? Do you think that if the king was to send his host to Scotland again, he’d order all the oldest knights to join him?’

‘I don’t think I’m quite his oldest,’ Baldwin protested.

‘Perhaps not quite,’ she agreed.

‘I’m good enough for some activities still,’ he persisted.

As they had spoken, they had left the stables, and now they stood before the little manor. ‘Do not think to get round me like that!’ she scolded him.

‘If you won’t stop your nagging,’ he said firmly, stepping forward until her back was against the wall of the manor, ‘I shall have to see how I may silence you.’

‘You won’t stop me by frivolous diversions. I want you to rest more.’

‘Don’t avert your face, woman,’ he growled, mock-aggressively, putting a hand to her throat and turning her face towards him with his thumb.

‘Mistress?’

Baldwin stared deeply into his wife’s widely innocent eyes. ‘I swear I’ll murder that …’

‘We’re here, Emma!’ Jeanne called happily, slipping under his arm and away. ‘What is it?’

Emma looked from one to the other with a scowl of distaste on her face. ‘There’s a message for the master. Sir Baldwin, I think you should come and see this wretch.’

‘Who is it?’ Baldwin demanded, furious to have missed an opportunity for dalliance with his wife, but pleased that at least Jeanne could not return to her attack about his resting.

‘Sir Baldwin! It’s me, sir, Wat. I have an urgent message from Edgar!’

Robert Crokers had needed all the Sunday and Monday just to clear the mess from his house. The fire had taken all his belongings with it, and the building was a blackened shell that stank of tar and soot, but with the help of the man whom Sir Odo had brought it was soon cleared out, and the rubbish taken to his little midden.

The worst of the burned rafters had been pulled down, apart from one which wouldn’t break apart, and that they had left, assuming that if the weight of three men dangling from it wouldn’t move it, neither would some straw thatching. They’d swept and brushed the walls and floor until the stench of burning was all but gone, and meanwhile others had thrown poles up over the roof to create a ridge, to which they nailed long, thin planks. Before long, straw brought from Sir Odo’s storehouse had been thrown haphazardly on top, and today two of the men from the vill who were best at thatching came to finish the job, complaining all the while that the men should have waited for them to arrive.

‘It’d have been easier if those useless turds had laid the straw more carefully.’

‘Ah. If they had more than shit for brains, they’d be dangerous,’ his friend commented, chewing a straw.

Still, by the middle of the third day, the Tuesday, the house was almost renewed. There was a roof, and Robert had a palliasse laid out on a low, rough bed. His hearth was soon lighted, and for lunch he was able to set his pot over the fire and make his own pottage from the peas and leaves which Odo’s men had left for him.

‘Should be all right now,’ said Walter. He was a cadaverously thin man, one of Sir Odo’s older men-at-arms, who squatted beside the fire and held his gnarled hands to it appreciatively. ‘The roof is safe enough.’