Bernard Knight - Crowner's Crusade

‘That poor woman, to see her husband struck down before her very eyes, then be ravished by that monster!’ she exclaimed, then bustled away to get clean linen to bind around his injured scalp. She held this in place with a close-fitting coif laced under the chin, then sat close to him and chafed his icy hands with her own.

It was cold in the taproom, as the fire had died down to glowing embers. Gwyn was concerned about John’s condition after such a violent knock on the head, as he began shivering as he sat on the bench, leaning on the table.

‘He should be lying down , cariad, and kept warmer for few hours,’ he murmured to her. ‘I don’t see how we can get him all the way back to St Martin’s Lane like this.’

‘Get him to his bed upstairs, then,’ she said in a worried voice, afraid that he might have sustained some serious injury inside his skull.

‘I should be going back up to that house to see how things have gone,’ muttered John.

Nesta scolded him gently. ‘You’re in no fit state for that, it’s not your responsibility, anyway. You’ve already done more than anyone else.’

De Wolfe was too cold and tired to argue and when Gwyn and one of his carpenter friends hoisted him to his feet and carefully eased him up the stairs, he made no protest. No one else was lodging in the loft that night and they took him across to his cubicle and laid him down, Nesta fussing over them like a hen with chicks. She brought a blanket and a large sheepskin from her own room and laid it over him, then told Gwyn to revive the fire and put more logs on it, to try to waft some warmth up to the dormitory.

‘I’ll sit with him for a while until he sleeps,’ she told Gwyn, who had decided to go up to Sun Lane. He wanted to make sure that a ‘hue and cry’ had been started, before going up to the castle to alert Ralph Morin that the violence had spread into the town itself. Though drunken fights and some deaths occurred within the city walls, an outright assault and rape in a dwelling was out of the usual run of crimes.

When he left, the other men went with him and Nesta was left alone in the loft, though Molly and the serving girl were not far away, sleeping in the kitchen shed and the wash house as usual. Sitting on a small milking stool near his bed, she could see that he was still awake, huddled under the covers.

‘This is a fine affair, John,’ she said softly. ‘Your first night in your new house and you spend it elsewhere, alone with a young lady!’

‘I expect that Matilda will have something to say about it,’ he murmured.

‘In fact I’m bloody sure she will!’

A few minutes later, she could tell from his breathing that he was asleep and after a while, she went quietly back to her box-like room and got into bed, pulling extra blankets from a chest to cover her. She lay for a while looking up into the darkness, thinking of what might have been that night.

When John awoke soon after dawn, he felt virtually back to normal, apart from a burning itch around his wound. He had suffered far worse many times before and now no longer sick and giddy, he got up and went down the steps, where he found Gwyn eating at a table. Nesta bustled in with oat gruel, bread and cheese, to enquire solicitously after his condition.

‘I’m fine, good lady! I just need to track down the swine that gave me this cut and pull his head off!’

Gwyn, who had slept on the floor near the fire, poured some honey over his porridge and passed the jug to John. ‘I went back up to the house after we put you to bed. The injured man had been taken up to St John’s and Brother Saulf said that he was showing signs of recovering his wits, so it looks as if he’ll live.’

‘What about the wife?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘That old nun from Polsloe was brought down by the other town constable, the fat one they call Theobald. She examined the lady and said she had certainly been sorely ravished, but was in no danger, except to her mind. She is sending a litter down this morning, to take her up to the priory.’

John attacked the gruel with a wooden spoon with a ferocity that suggested he wished it were the assailant’s guts. ‘So all we have to do now is find him! No luck with the hue and cry last night?’

Gwyn shook his hairy head. ‘No, Osric and a few men-at-arms joined the neighbours in scouring the streets, but it was the middle of the night, with no hope of finding anyone.’

‘We’ll get the bastard somehow,’ growled John. ‘But first I’d better go home and face my wife.’

Though not usually an early riser, the unfamiliarity of a new bed had woken Matilda early and the realization that her husband had not slept in it, got her up and dressed before he arrived. She had brusquely demanded her breakfast and Mary was serving it to her in the hall when John walked in.

Ignoring the unusual padded coif on his head, she glared at him. ‘And where did you spend the night, might I ask?’ she snapped. ‘The first one in our new dwelling and you spurn my company, probably for a drunken revel or the arms of some strumpet!’

His face darkened, as although he expected some complaint, he did not relish yet another unfair accusation even before he had the chance to open his mouth. ‘I spent it much of it in the Bush Inn, if you must know!’ he snarled. ‘That was after fighting with a rapist and being treated for this injury!’ He pointed at the bulge under his linen helmet.

‘The Bush!’ she yelled. ‘I might have guessed it was that Welsh whore again! How far will you go to shame me, husband?’ She began a tirade, but he brought her up short by kicking a stool across her new flagstones, making a clatter that stopped even Matilda in mid-speech.

‘Quiet, woman! Do you know a lady called Clarice, wife to a merchant, Richard de Beltona?’ he demanded stridently.

She gaped at him open-mouthed at this sudden twist in their dispute. Deflated, she answered in a flat tone of voice. ‘Of course, she is a friend of mine. I see her often at the cathedral.’

‘Then I regret to tell you that she has been raped in her own bed — and her husband beaten senseless alongside her!’

Matilda’s pug face rapidly changed from anger to genuine concern. She hauled herself to her feet, leaving half her meal left untouched, a sure sign of her agitation. ‘I must go to her at once, poor woman!’

‘You can’t, she’s on her way to Polsloe, to be cared for by Dame Madge and her nuns. The husband is lying unconscious in St John’s, up near the East Gate.’

Matilda sank back in to her chair. ‘And you have been involved in this, John?’

‘I went to their aid, yes. And got a hole knocked in my head by the assailant as he escaped. So keep the door locked when I’m not here!’

He doubted that any sane man would want to ravish Matilda, but he felt he should pay her the compliment.

Her anger evaporated, though she did not go so far as enquire about his injury. ‘Richard de Beltona is a cloth merchant in a good way of business, though Clarice complains that he is mean, as he could afford a better house than the one in Sun Lane.’

Again, her interest seemed more about affluence and social status than about the actual outrage.

They were interrupted by Mary putting her head around the screens near the door. ‘A servant just came from the house of the Archdeacon, Sir John. He brought a message from his master to say that he would be obliged if you would call upon him as soon as is convenient.’

Mary’s head vanished and Matilda looked at her husband with a tinge of respect, as any mention of a senior churchman wishing to consult him went some way to rehabilitate him in her eyes. ‘What can he want? De Alencon is the most senior of the canons.’