Michael Jecks: A Friar's bloodfeud

‘Garbage!’

‘Humphrey speaks the truth, I’m afraid,’ Matthew said. He did not so much as glance at Humphrey now. Instead he smiled at his old friend. ‘The Pope himself has ruled that men and women who took their vows under a certain age should be allowed to retract their oaths and leave without a stain.’

‘If they have sworn to God, they should see to their service and the service of the souls under their protection, not worry about escape. Escape! To a place like this!’

Perkin grunted as the others entered the tavern and offered him their sympathy, old friends looking down at him with amusement, some wincing to see his wounds, others laughing at them. Only Rannulf stood and surveyed him without comment for a long period, and then said:

‘’Twas your fault. You lost it for us.’

There was an edge of raw fury in his tone which stirred Perkin. He looked up and nodded. ‘I suppose you’d have seen him hiding in the furze there and beaten him?’

‘I’d have broken his head for him,’ Rannulf grated. ‘He was in your way. You could have run through him.’

Perkin shook his head once and looked away. This was the sort of activity Rannulf enjoyed, repeatedly insulting a man until he teased his victim into a fight, and Perkin was having none of it. ‘Go and fetch your ale. I’m not dickering about the details of the game now.’

‘No. Wouldn’t want to tire you now you’ve lost our winning run for us,’ Rannulf sneered. ‘You should have got him when you could.’

‘Ignore him,’ said Beorn.

‘I always do,’ Perkin muttered. His arm was giving him a great deal of pain, and he would prefer to leave the tavern and go to his bed.

Beorn was one of those men whose hair continued down his neck and over his shoulders. When he went without his shirt during harvest, Perkin had seen how the women would watch him with hungry eyes, staring at his muscled legs, his narrow waist, how his hair travelled down to the crease of his buttocks; but Beorn merely shrugged when he was told. He knew who would be available, and the others didn’t interest him. ‘Ach, there was nothing you could do,’ he said.

Perkin grimaced and turned his head away. ‘Rannulf is right, though. I should have guessed someone would be up there. It was obvious they’d have someone who could hold us off. It’s what I’d have done.’

‘How did they know? We’ve never gone that way before.’

‘So?’ cried Perkin bitterly. ‘A good general would make sure he anticipated an attack, and that’s what they did today. That’s why they won. All because of Ailward, too. He shouldn’t have been up there. He distracted me.’ The man who tackled Perkin was surely there to stop the Monkleigh team — but what Ailward was doing up there was a different matter. He hadn’t been with the vill’s men at the start of the game. Well, he couldn’t have been. No one had outstripped Perkin on the run up the hill. ‘Ailward had to have been there before the match started.’

Beorn nodded his agreement. ‘He should have stopped Walter. Walter’s not one of his men.’ There was no need to say more. Walter was one of the Iddesleigh men, a man-at-arms from the Fishleigh estates. Iddesleigh and Fishleigh fellows were as fiercely defensive of their independence as any others. They might be serfs to the lord of the manor of Ash Reigny, but even to him, Sir John Sully, they were a rebellious mob. God’s heaven, everyone knew that. The steward and his bailiff had their work cut out to try to keep the peace on his lands. ‘Maybe he was just nervous of getting into a fight with the men from up there?’

Very likely, Perkin reasoned: whatever happened, that cunning bastard Ailward would want to retain his authority. If he had been bested by the man-at-arms, a fighter used to defending himself, that authority would have been dented.

Not that it explained why he was there in the first place. He should have been down with the vill’s men when the game began.

And then Perkin had a strange feeling. Flashes of colour came back to his mind: the patch of green, then red, before he hit that rock. Odd colours to see up on a moor in winter. They’d all seemed to be about Ailward’s feet. And now in his mind a pattern seemed to be forming out of the colours.

Hugh grunted to himself as he finished his bowl of pottage and set the wooden spoon aside. He tore off a slab of bread and chewed it contentedly. Tired, it was true, but at least he was working on things that mattered. There was still the old hedge to be relaid, of course, but apart from that the little holding was in good condition now.

There was a shout, some angry words, and he tilted his head to one side. It was rare to hear men walking about so late; it was close to dark already. Cautiously he rose, and crossed the floor to the door.

His wife, Constance, was quickly at his side. ‘What is it?’

‘Didn’t you hear them?’

‘It was just a pair of drunks. Leave them. There’s nothing.’

Hugh peered out into the gloom. She was right, surely. What else could it be? He shook his head and wandered back inside. Just as he was about to pull the door shut, he saw a frown on his wife’s face. ‘Eh?’

‘I thought I saw the priest out there with another man … but that’s daft. He wouldn’t be there at this time of night.’

The priest was no concern of his. Hugh peered out again. ‘What of it? So long as they’re not troubling us.’

‘There were some men there earlier,’ she said, her pretty face frowning as she remembered. ‘The sergeant from Monkleigh, and a man-at-arms from Fishleigh …’

‘I doubt it,’ Hugh said. ‘Men from those manors don’t get on together.’ He pulled the door shut. ‘Anyway, whoever is out there,’ he said, thrusting the peg into the latch to lock it and dropping the bar into its slots, ‘they’re welcome to stay there. Me, I’m happy in here by my fire.’

Colours. The wrong colours, the wrong patterns …

Even after they’d finished their drinking and the tavern began to empty, that thought still rankled with Perkin. He was among the last to leave, wincing still with the rawness of his inner forearm, his bruised and painful chin, the tooth that seemed to have a red-hot needle at the root, and he stood in the roadway staring northwards towards the field where their opponents had achieved their victory that day, sucking at the tooth as though he could flush out the pain.

The land was flooded with a clear silver light. It was appealing to return home and fall into his bed, cosy under his skins and blankets, but there was something niggling at him as he gazed towards Iddesleigh, and at last he gave a grunt of resignation. The moonlight was an unmistakable hint, so it seemed to him, that God wanted him to go and investigate this. He turned off the roadway and set off down the hill again.

That scene still stuck in his mind, the colours vivid and fresh. At the time he’d given them no thought. The pain and the fear of losing were enough to wipe them from his mind, and he’d stood and walked away from the place where he’d fallen as soon as his legs had stopped wobbling enough for him to get up.

But now he was sure that there was something else up there, and he’d a suspicion that it was the reason for Ailward’s presence that day.

The climb was hard, and he felt as though he had aged a good few years in the last half-day. It was one thing to have a fancy about seeing something in the middle of a fight like the one today, and another to make his way up here in the dark when his feet were chilled from the frozen earth, his arm was stinging with each thud of his heart, and his mouth felt as if someone had hit him there with a hammer. Quite another thing, he thought, and he hesitated as he reached a furze bush halfway up the hill, in two minds whether to continue up, or abandon the search and get back to his bed. He glanced over his shoulder longingly, thinking of his palliasse only half a mile away, but then he set his jaw and carried on up the hill.