Edward Marston - The Foxes of Warwick

When breakfast was over the commissioners adjourned to the town to begin their first session. Gervase carried his satchel of documents and Benedict was amply supplied with writing materials. Ednoth the Reeve was already at the shire hall, ordering a servant to stoke up the fire and taking a last look around the room to make sure that all was in readiness. The appearance of the commissioners sent him off into a display of hand-washing unctuousness. Ralph pointedly ignored his ingratiation.

‘Where are the first witnesses?’ he asked.

‘Waiting in the antechamber, my lord.’

‘Do they know what is expected of them?’

‘I have explained it thoroughly.’

‘I hope so. We have no time to waste here.’

‘They stood before your predecessors,’ Ednoth reminded him,

‘so they have experience of speaking under oath. Shall I send them in?’

‘When we are ready.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

He backed away but hovered near the door. Ralph glowered.

‘Leave us, Ednoth.’

‘Can I be of no further help?’

‘Wait with the others.’

The reeve was slightly peeved and withdrew into the antechamber with a hurt expression. Ralph took his seat at the table with Gervase and Trouville either side of him. Their scribe sat at a right angle to them at the end of the table, thus able simultaneously to watch the faces of those who came before the commission and to catch any signals he might be given by his colleagues. When they had all settled into their seats Ralph gave them a brief lecture on how the proceedings would be conducted, then he looked towards the door, noting that it had been deliberately left a few inches open.

‘Send them in, Ednoth!’ he barked.

‘Yes, my lord,’ answered a voice.

Half a dozen people filed into the hall and were directed to the bench in front of the table. The reeve lingered annoyingly. Ralph shot him a withering glance and he retreated towards the door.

‘Close it properly this time!’ ordered Ralph.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘We will have no eavesdroppers.’

‘No, my lord.’

The reeve vanished once more and Ralph gestured to two of his men-at-arms to stand in front of the door. Six members of his escort had followed them to the shire hall to act as sentries and to indicate the status of the commissioners. An oath taken on the Bible was a powerful incentive towards honesty but Ralph had learned from experience that the presence of armed soldiers also helped to entice the truth out of people. He ran a searching eye over the faces in front of him.

‘Which one of you is William Balistarius?’

‘I am, my lord,’ said a square-jawed man in his thirties.

‘And which is Mergeat?’

‘Here, my lord,’ said a much older man in Saxon garb.

Ralph weighed the pair of them up then nodded.

‘Let us hear from William the Gunner first,’ he decided. ‘You will take an oath on the Bible that what you tell us is the truth.

If you are caught lying, God Himself will punish you in time but you will have to answer to me immediately. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Stand forth, William.’

It was not a complicated dispute. It concerned the boundary which separated one man’s land from another’s and which seemed to have moved substantially in the past couple of years. Left in Gervase’s capable hands, the whole matter would have easily been resolved during the morning session but Ralph thought it wiser to give Philippe Trouville and Archdeacon Theobald an opportunity to show their mettle. It would be an ideal way to baptise them into their roles. When the first claimant had taken his oath, therefore, and brandished his charter in the air, he was handed over to the new commissioners for examination.

Theobald was surprisingly impressive. A mild-mannered man whose questions were always couched in politeness, he burrowed slowly away until he began to unsettle the man who stood so proudly before him. It was not long before William Balistarius, a Norman soldier rewarded with land for services rendered to his overlord, was shifting his feet and beginning to stutter his replies.

When the archdeacon had revealed weaknesses, Trouville moved in to exploit them to the full. He was relentless. Question followed question like arrow after arrow until the witness was quite bemused. What struck the others was that Trouville did not have to browbeat the man at all. Everything was achieved with the blistering accuracy of his questions and the speed of their delivery.

There was no need for the watchful Mergeat to make more than a token contribution to the debate. His Norman neighbour was so clearly exposed as the one who had grabbed land unfairly from him by constant encroachment that the issue was never in doubt.

Ralph took charge once more and berated the losing disputant without mercy, warning him to cede at once the land which he had illegally seized from Mergeat. ‘On pain of arrest!’ he added.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Away with you!’

When the six of them had trooped out, the commissioners allowed themselves a smile of congratulation. A dispute which might have taken the whole of the allotted period of their first session had been settled in a quarter of the time. It gave them an unexpected respite.

‘Well done, Theobald!’ said Ralph. ‘You tore him apart.’

‘It was the lord Philippe who did that,’ said the archdeacon with admiration. ‘I merely suggested that the man might be lying to us. The lord Philippe proved it in the most effective way.’

‘You are a cunning lawyer, my lord,’ said Gervase approvingly.

‘The fellow was dissembling,’ said Trouville.

‘Yet he bore himself well at first.’

‘All that I did was to look into his eyes.’

‘His eyes?’

‘I could see his dishonesty.’

‘That is more than I could,’ admitted Ralph.

‘When he started to blink, I knew that he was on the run.’

‘With you in hot pursuit.’

‘The smell of his blood was in my nostrils.’

‘Until you had the fellow cornered.’

‘William Balistarius was a stag at bay,’ said Trouville with a grin of triumph, pulling his sword from its sheath and thrusting it viciously into the air. ‘My first kill as a royal commissioner.’

His harsh laughter reverberated around the shire hall.

*

*

*

It was slow work. Though he was used to handling the file for lengthy periods and imposing its abrasive kisses on solid iron, he had never done so under such constraints. The first thing which Boio had to consider was the rasping noise. Two guards were on duty in the corridor outside his cell. The door was made of stout oak, inches thick and hardened with age, but he was not sure if it would block out all noise of his handiwork. As he rubbed away at the fetters on his ankles, therefore, he muffled the noise by covering the file with layers of straw so that his labours were almost subterranean. To further decrease the risk of being overheard, Boio sat as far away as possible from the door. It laid his neck open to the fierce draught from the window but he felt that a small price to pay for the opportunity which had been given him.

Immobility depressed him. It was unnatural. The blacksmith was only happy when employed and, though he did not enjoy the freedom of his forge any more, he was at least using his skill and his strength again. He angled the file expertly and rubbed away at the weakest spot. When he tested the iron with an exploratory finger, it was reassuringly warm from his attentions. Blowing the filings away, he attacked the fetters with fresh determination.

He was patient and methodical. However, just when he felt he was beginning to make real progress he was interrupted.