Michael Jecks - A Friar's bloodfeud

Perkin stood back as Beorn jumped down into the trench. They had driven a channel all the way up to within two spade spits of the bog, and now they needed only a little more work to be able to see the water drain.

‘Go on, you old woman,’ he called to Beorn, and the peasant showed his teeth in a smile, then started to drive his shovel into the boundary of the bog. Perkin watched with amusement.

The first shovelful hurtled through the air and narrowly missed Perkin, landing with a damp slap only a foot away from him. ‘Hey!’ The second would have hit him in the midriff, had he not leaped backwards. ‘You mad bugger!’

Beorn grinned again, and took two more spadesful, and then climbed from the channel quickly as a filthy-looking black-brown tide began to breach the remaining wall. It swirled, mud slid aside, and suddenly there was a dark stream trickling through a narrow fissure of soil. Soon the trickle had washed the fissure into a breach that bubbled with the draining water.

’Tin was up at the front, peering down into the bog. It was a strange sight, he thought. Usually it would be a soggy mass of matted rushes and grass that looked like a continuation of the pastureland all about, but now, as the level sank, the top of the bog was gradually starting to lower itself.

There were spots, he saw, where the rushes or grasses remained in place as the water seeped away. As Perkin called a boy and told him to go and find the sergeant and fetch him here to tell them what to do next, ’Tin stepped forward cautiously, testing the firmer clumps with his foot. The surface gave, like mud, but was held together with the mat of vegetation. Soon the water was low enough for the full extent of the bog to be seen as it dropped below the level of the surrounding pasture. Beorn was in the ditch again, shovelling out the excess mud before it could block the channel and stop the water flowing away, and ’Tin watched him flinging black mud towards a cursing and laughing Perkin, who rolled balls of mud and hurled them back.

’Tin grinned at the sight, and turned for a last look at the bog’s level. It was slowly falling around him, but in the middle it seemed to be dropping much faster, as though in there it was more like a pool of water, and not a bog at all. Things were sticking up from there, and ’Tin peered more closely, repelled and fascinated simultaneously. People had said that there’d be dead animals, even a few men, probably, because this bog had been here for as long as anyone could remember, and he wondered what a man who had died many years before might look like. There was a brown twig lying in a grassy hillock, and he grinned as he imagined it might be a hand, twisted and broken, and cast aside as though this was merely a midden.

Nah! There was hardly likely to be anything here. If anything, some long-dead cow’s carcass or a sheep that had wandered this way before ’Tin was born. Nothing more recent than them. Wouldn’t be a man, he told himself sadly. No one had been missing for so many years that the chances of finding a human body down there were remote. It was a shame, because he’d never had a chance to go to witness a hanging. In the old days, hangings used to happen here on the manor, apparently. Then executions were made a bit less arbitrary, and instead of being able to hang anyone he wanted, a lord of the manor had to have the coroner there, make sure everything was legal and stuff …

’Tin was annoyed that he’d missed out on those old days. Men were braver then, not like the present lot. If they’d had a little courage, they’d have been off to the wars rather than hanging about the vill here. He would. He wanted to join a host and fight; he’d be good at that. Except his mother would go completely potty if he told her …

Then he frowned and blinked. As the waters receded, they left a lump in the filth at the bottom of the rank pool. He could see the shape amidst the mud, and where he had seen the twig in the little clump of grasses he now saw that a thin, frail stick-like wrist connected it to a thicker one, as though they were forearm and upper arm leading to a shoulder …

‘Perkin! Perkin! ’

There was nothing to show that this was the grave of two people who had been loved. It was a small, almost square hole in the ground, with soil heaped over it and a few heavy stones piled on top to stop animals from rooting about and digging up the bones. A spare wooden cross had been made from a couple of lathes lashed together, and this was thrust in at the head.

‘There was no money to pay for the funeral or the mourners,’ the priest said sorrowfully. ‘I used some of my own funds to do the best I could for them. Of course they’d only been here a year or so, so there was hardly anyone here who really knew them.’

‘Two years,’ Baldwin corrected him coldly.

Simon heard his voice, but could say nothing. In his breast there was only a great emptiness, and as he stood staring at the bare little cross he felt it welling up and rising to his throat, threatening to choke him. He daren’t trust his voice. Instead he made a pretence of clearing his throat, but the action was belied by his having to wipe his eyes.

He had scarcely known this woman. When he first met her, she had been a fearful novice in need of help, and it was to Hugh’s credit that he had given it. Hugh had taken her away from the convent where she had been so unhappy and brought her here, and had protected and served her to the best of his ability. Monosyllabic, morose, taciturn Hugh had given up everything for this woman, and now, because Hugh was dead, this pathetic grave was all that would ever be erected in memory of Constance. Simon felt another sob start to grip him. It washed over him like a shiver of utter coldness, as though the whole of the winter was condensed upon his shoulders and spine, and he shuddered with the bone-aching misery of it all.

He had lost Hugh, and Hugh had had life, woman and child stolen from him. In the midst of his intense wretchedness, Simon felt a rising surge of something else: rage.

If Constance had been unknown to him, perhaps Simon wouldn’t have been so moved to fury, but the sight of her grave, and the knowledge of what had been done to her and his man, swamped his sense of justice with the desire for vengeance.

He spoke quietly. ‘Have a carpenter put up a proper cross. One with jointed timbers and their names carved on it.’

‘If you are sure,’ Matthew said. ‘Be assured, though, she had all the benefits of a Christian burial, and I prayed with the mourners all night before burying her.’

‘I am grateful. And let me know how much the mourners cost, and I’ll pay for them.’

‘There is no need …’

‘I want to,’ Simon snapped harshly, eyes blazing as he spun round to confront the priest.

‘The other man has already paid. The man-at-arms.’

She had only once known a man’s love. That was something she still found painful to recall, the memory was so poignant. When she had been at Jeanne’s uncle’s house for some while, she had met a boy delivering meats to the kitchens, and she had stopped whatever it was she was doing.

He was slim, but with broad shoulders and thick thighs. His hands were elegant, with long fingers, and they weren’t yet calloused from work. But it was the face that attracted her. Long, with a slightly pointed chin, it bore a faint beard of reddish-gold, and a tousled mop of fair hair that begged to be stroked and patted into a neater shape. His eyes were laughing blue, and his mouth looked as if it was made to kiss a girl. He was perfect to her.

She and he had managed to meet every so often. Back in those days, of course, Emma had been slimmer, but very full-busted, and she liked to think that she was pretty enough in her own way. Not that many would have argued. Men often pinched her buttocks, like women prodding and poking at slabs of meat on the counters at the market; and there was the behaviour of her master to prove her allure.