Michael Jecks - The Outlaws of Ennor

‘That pile of cow dung!’

‘Isok!’

‘I am not afraid to speak my mind, woman!’ Isok spat.

‘He is a hard master?’ Baldwin enquired.

Isok answered him. ‘A brute. On Ennor the taxes are paid to support him and his idle men-at-arms. They sit about and slurp wines and ales we couldn’t afford, and then demand customs from us when we take food to Ennor’s market or offload our fish there. We bleed to death, but they don’t care. When the terrible rains came, we starved. Many died. Not the Lord, though, nor his men. They lived like kings up there in their keep, while the mothers wailed and buried their children. Blancminster is a devil, as is his gather-reeve. All they want is more, more, more! They aren’t our masters, but they still take our money, the thieves!

Baldwin nodded, but unsympathetically. He couldn’t like this man. His manners were gross, especially towards his little wife. ‘It is the way. A taxman is always unpopular,’ he said, gazing out to sea, musing on the remoteness of the islands once more. He would find it intolerably restricting here, he thought. No space for a decent ride, every day the same limiting landscape. Never a new sight. It was a strange idea.

‘Unpopular? The gather-reeve is evil!’ the other man spluttered. ‘He demands all our money and food just because they are too lazy to grow their own on Ennor. They live in luxury while we starve. And then he wants other things, too.’

Baldwin heard a catch in his voice, but when he glanced around, he saw that the more affected of the two was Tedia. She stood haughtily, chin raised, and met her husband’s stare with defiance.

Here, Baldwin told himself, there is something I have missed.

‘Shall we seek my sword, then?’ he asked aloud, and saw the woman’s husband turn away with a curse.

Without looking at either the knight or his wife, Isok said in Cornish, ‘I’ll wait for you at the house. Try to remember you’re still my wife.’

‘It would be easier,’ she said sharply, ‘if you would make me feel like your wife.’

Isok felt the warm waves of shame wash over him. It was like a tide of self-pity, rolling up and back, removing the few remaining sand-particles of pride. He could do or say nothing. His head hanging, he walked up the dunes towards the track that led to their home.

Baldwin watched him go without regret. As far as he was concerned, the man was a boor and a brute, lacking any politeness or respect.

Rudeness was a fault in any man, by Baldwin’s reasoning. It was simple commonsense. If a man was arrogant enough to think that he could insult all those whom he met, he would soon find a man who was bold enough to offer a challenge, and that could mean, even to a competent warrior, that he could die. For a mere peasant, rudeness was unforgivable. In some it could be caused by the humours, something which was beyond their control, he knew, but in many people it was no more than the proof of ignorance, and especially when the target of their ire was a man from so different a station as Baldwin. No, the man deserved no sympathy. He was a mere fool. At any other time, Baldwin could have taught him a lesson, he thought with a grim smile.

As he thought this, he automatically slapped his waist, where his sword normally hung, and at once his attitude altered.

He had no right to be so dismissive of the man. Baldwin was without his signs of honour and rank, he was a mere drifter on the tides. If it was not for Isok’s wife, he might be dead by now. If he had been left out here on the shore for any time, he would have died — that much was certain. He had no sword: he was a nothing. A person in a strange land, who had wished to take issue with a woman’s husband just because that husband was a glowering, mean-spirited churl. Well, Baldwin knew plenty of men who were similar in temperament. Quite possibly this Isok was no worse than any other, and it was certainly the case that many men would grow irritable when they saw their wives bending over backwards to help another man. At least this Isok had not tried to remove his woman, but instead had left her with Baldwin.

He must, Baldwin thought, trust her a great deal.

Isok trudged home gloomily. His wife was a slut — no better than the drabs you met at the harbours and fishing ports up and down Cornwall, for all her pretended honourable ways.

He had loved Tedia from the first moment of seeing her, and perhaps that was the problem. Other men beat their wives, he knew. They thrashed the wenches to make them obedient. It was no different from training a dog, after all. All creatures needed to know their place in the world. A man had to know to whom he must answer: Isok to the reeve, David, David to the Prior, Cryspyn — just as the Prior himself answered to the Abbot and the Abbot to the Pope. The men of the island of Ennor were the same, they had their own masters. The taxman Robert, rot his soul, responded to Thomas, who was Ranulph de Blancminster’s man, and he reported to the Queen, because Isabella had been given the Earldom of Cornwall by her husband, Edward II. Everyone had a master.

But his wife chose to ignore him. She flouted his will, and would see to the dissolution of their marriage. That thought was like a bitter north-eastern wind that blew through his soul. It had been there for many a day now, ever since he had heard that she planned to leave him.

‘You can’t, you’re my wife!’

‘That’s not what Luke says,’ she’d replied defiantly, tossing her long hair back. ‘He says that if a man isn’t doing his duty to his wife, she can divorce him. And you aren’t, are you?’

‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said, but with a terrible dawning fear that she would. ‘Who would have you? A used …’

‘Who has used me?’ she instantly retorted. ‘ You haven’t, have you? Why should you think that someone else wouldn’t?’

‘You want them to, don’t you?’ he had demanded, torn with the pain of his own failure. He knew that she had been willing to be his lover, Christ Jesus! He knew that from her behaviour with him. She was uncontrollable — a whore on heat; she couldn’t understand that it was impossible for him. He’d tried, Christ’s pains, he’d tried so hard.

He lived with his failure. Now, for him, just to have her at his side was enough. He was not consumed with desire like she was; although he adored her he couldn’t consummate his love. He’d always thought, if you loved your wife, that should be enough, provided she knew it. Except even a man who treated his wife well wanted to lie with her, and Isok couldn’t.

He sniffed sadly. He knew that there was something wrong with his tarse. Something prevented him hardening and being able to service her. It was his failing, not hers, which was breaking their marriage. But she should accept that he adored her and be content.

Except she couldn’t be satisfied with that; she wanted a lot more — she wanted the use of his body, and he couldn’t do anything to help her. He knew that unless he could give her a child, she would leave him. Sooner or later, it would happen: she would either decide to leave him for a man on the island, or she might go over to that damned nest of thieves and robbers, to Ennor.

From here he could see the sweep of Ennor. He stopped and surveyed the island, noted the group of men huddled at the shoreline near Penn Trathen. The Lord’s men, he thought. Damn them!

So they thought they could win his wife, did they? Never! He’d not let them have her. He’d rather kill her than have her live with those who taxed him and his friends so highly. She was his, his — and he wouldn’t let any man take her.

‘Isok, friend. Are you well?’ It was David, the leader of their vill.