Michael Jecks: A Friar's bloodfeud

The bladder was gone, and as he moaned and rolled over, prodding with his tongue at a loosened tooth, he looked up to see his attacker holding the ball. He recognised him now: it was Walter, one of Sir Odo’s blasted men-at-arms. Still, he was older, slower. If Ailward was quick, if he could just hold Walter a moment, then Beorn would be there too, and they could win the ball back. But when he stared at Ailward, his teammate was standing steady, unmoving, his legs apart, his eyes anxious.

With a careful swing of his arm, Walter brought the bladder back, and then uncoiled like a snake to send the thing soaring high into the sky, to drop down towards the plain, far beyond the men of Monkleigh’s team.

Perkin closed his eyes again. There was nothing more for him to do.

From the hill at Monkleigh, Isaac watched with his rheumy old eyes narrowed against the weather, mumbling his gums while Humphrey held his cloak about his shoulders, trying as best he could to explain what was happening down on the plain.

‘The Monkleigh men are streaming back now. Martin from Iddesleigh has the bladder and is at full pelt. The whole of the Monkleigh team is just behind him, and … and Agnes the fuller’s daughter is there, she’s running at him! Yes, she must capture him … she’s only feet away now, and- Ach! No, he’s slipped round her, a hand in her face, and he’s past. Agnes is down …’

Isaac had been here for over forty years, so Humphrey had heard, and so far as he could tell, it was a miracle that the man was still alive. No man should have to live in so backward a place as this, not without a significant reward for doing so, in Humphrey’s humble opinion. For him, of course, it was different. He was a coadjutor, here to fulfil the offices which were in fact Isaac’s responsibility, but were beyond his capability now. At over sixty years of age, by Humphrey’s reckoning, the poor old man was deaf in one ear, had a terrible limp from the gout, and was blind at more than twenty paces. Plainly Humphrey could give no credence to anything the senile old man next to him might say; after so many years’ passage, it was a blessing that he could remember even his own name. Certainly his estimate of his own age was nothing more than that: a guess.

The game was thrilling, though. For Humphrey, who had seen only one before this, it was exciting to see how the men and women slid and slithered in the mud, their enthusiasm waxing and waning with the fortunes of their sides. He should have liked to have joined them, had he been a little younger, but his post was not that of a mere vill’s priest who must throw himself wholeheartedly into every banal activity; rather it was that of a professional adviser and steward of his master’s resources. Except that his master’s mind was so addled now that Humphrey could scarcely interest the man in any of the issues he raised. It was a wonder that no one else had noticed that Isaac was quite unfitted for his duties until Humphrey arrived, but that was apparently the case.

There were good reasons why no one paid much attention to the decrepitude of the priest. This land was ever filled with enmity. There was the dispute between Sir John Sully’s steward, Sir Odo de Bordeaux, and the repellent brute Sir Geoffrey Servington who managed the neighbouring manor, for a start. It made little sense to Humphrey, and he did not care what lay behind the dispute. All he knew was that there was constant bickering between the two parties, and he could play a useful role in the middle, speaking for one side to the other and vice versa, while maintaining Isaac in his post and helping him to keep up the services at the chapel.

The fighting was not only about land, of course. There was the age-old matter of lordships. Sir John Sully was a vassal of Lord Hugh de Courtenay, who had reportedly been close to joining the Lords of the Marches in their dispute with the king and his detested advisers, the Despensers. It was only good fortune and his innate common sense which had held him back. And a fortunate thing, too. Too many others who had not heeded sounder counsel were even now dangling from gibbets and spikes at the gates to all the great cities in the land, and the little manor next to Lord Hugh’s, which had been owned by the great general Mortimer before he raised an army against the king was now in the hands of the Despensers. While the Despensers were in the ascendant, Lord Hugh could scarce risk upsetting them, but even so he would not give up parcels of land to them willy-nilly, no matter what they threatened.

And threaten they would. It was their preferred means of acquiring lands and fortune. They had already broken many, even snatching up widows and holding them to ransom or, to their eternal disgrace and dishonour, torturing the poor women until they gave up their children’s inheritances. These were evil, dangerous thieves, who could and would attack any man who tried to thwart their ambitions.

While men like the Despensers and their neighbours battled over lands, Humphrey reflected, other men of ambition were left with the potential to take advantage of the situation. There were many about this area with private grudges to settle, and he would not be at all surprised if some of them tried to turn circumstances to their own benefit. Perhaps, in his capacity as coadjutor, he should learn which of the other landowners in the area were seeking to benefit from the disputes.

‘Are you enjoying the game, Father?’

Humphrey turned sharply to find Father Matthew from the church at Iddesleigh standing behind him. There was something about the neighbouring priest which Humphrey had never liked — perhaps it was just that he was suspicious of Humphrey’s lack of formal documentation. Still, there was little the man could do. Isaac was happy with him, and that was all that mattered.

Isaac muttered, ‘It seems very boisterous today. The lads are … mmm … showing more enthusiasm than they do in church!’

Matthew chuckled. ‘It is good to see them letting off steam. And when the pigs are killed, at least this means there’s a use for the bladders. Marvellous animal, the pig. Nothing ever goes to waste. I have a brawn cooling even now. The jelly about it is splendid.’

Isaac pulled a face. ‘If I tried to eat some I’d be unwell for days. I find only a little … mmm … gruel is all I can keep down. Still, Humphrey tries to tempt me with little morsels.’

‘Does he?’ Matthew responded, turning and giving Humphrey his full attention again. Unsettling bastard! To change the subject, Humphrey pointed to a man at the side of the hill.

‘Who’s he?’

‘That grim-faced fellow?’ Matthew said, peering through narrowed eyes. ‘Oh, he’s the man who came here with the woman from Belstone.’

Isaac drew in his breath and shook his head. ‘No good. No good can come of that.’

‘What?’ Humphrey asked. He’d never heard anything about a ‘woman from Belstone’.

Matthew answered him. ‘She came here some two years ago with this man. He comes and goes, for I think he serves a family in Lydford.’

‘She was a nun, and has chosen to deny her vows. She’s evil! Evil!’ Isaac spat. ‘She made her vows, but changed her mind when she grew large with a baby in her belly. They couldn’t keep her in a holy convent, so they threw her out to bounce down here to our door. Now she lives in sin with her man.’

‘Not quite,’ said Matthew more kindly. ‘I married them. She was allowed to leave because she had been unfairly coerced into making her vows when she was too young. Her oaths were not valid.’

‘That is … mmm … no excuse!’ Isaac expostulated, throwing a hand into the air and almost striking Humphrey.

‘It is, Father, it is,’ Humphrey said soothingly. ‘Just think, if a young child was taken into a life of celibacy without the ability to understand it was a lifetime’s commitment. Imagine how he would feel when he grew to maturity and saw his terrible mistake. A fellow who could have been content as a saddlemaker, and a good one at that, for ever chained to a service that made no sense to him.’