Edward Marston - The Wildcats of Exeter

‘Who is that man with the widow of the deceased?’ he asked.

‘That is Dean Jerome.’

‘On the other side of her, I meant.’

‘Tetbald the Steward,’ said Saewin. ‘You will see a lot of him at the shire hall. He is to represent the lady Catherine. And there is someone else with whom you will become acquainted.’

Gervase followed the direction of his pointed finger and saw a tall, elegant woman accompanied by a stocky individual of middle years whose features, beard and garb confirmed his Saxon origins.

They seemed an unlikely couple and Gervase decided that the man must be her servant. He was too ill favoured to occupy a more intimate station.

‘Who is that?’ he enquired.

‘The lady Loretta, widow of Roger de Marmoutier.’

‘Why is she here?’

‘Everyone knew the lord Nicholas.’

‘Yes,’ said Gervase, ‘but she knew him as the man who, allegedly, took property from her which had formerly been in the hands of her husband and then her son. I would have thought she had reason to despise Nicholas Picard.’

‘She is a compassionate woman. And death can make even the vilest hatred melt away. The lady Loretta would hold no grudge against a man who had been murdered in such a terrible way.’

‘Who is the man with her?’

‘One of her household. Eldred by name.’

Gervase sought the identity of a dozen more people and Saewin was an obliging assistant. Work as the town reeve meant that he knew almost everyone in Exeter. From the looks and nods that his companion was collecting, Gervase could see that Saewin was greatly respected in the community. That boded well. Gervase was about to leave when he found that he himself was under surveillance. A short, slim young woman of quite striking beauty was studying him from the other side of the grave as if she was trying to weigh him up. When their eyes met, she gave him such a look of intense curiosity that he found it impossible to tear his gaze away from her.

‘Who is that young lady?’ he said, nodding his head towards her.

‘That is someone else whom you will come to know.’

‘Why?’

‘She will be involved in the dispute over the lord Nicholas’s property.’

Gervase was intrigued. ‘Is that Asa?’

‘Yes.’

What an extraordinary face! he said to himself. Entrancing!

He was alarmed by his reaction and lowered his eyes. Gervase had never experienced such a feeling of sudden affection at a funeral before. When he dared to look up again, Asa had vanished into the crowd.

Geoffrey, abbot of Tavistock, turned out to be a peppery individual.

He treated the commissioners less like royal agents to be respected than renegade monks to be brought into line by stern discipline. Attended by his prior, a cadaverous man with piercing eyes, the abbot stormed into the shire hall to advance his claim with unassailable confidence. He was a big man with a hooked nose and a domed forehead which was covered in freckles. Years of study had rounded his shoulders and left his eyes with an irritating blink. His voice seemed almost comically high for a person of his bulk but it was a potent weapon on behalf of his abbey.

‘Those holdings rightly belong to me,’ he asserted boldly. ‘They were granted to the abbey when I replaced Sihtric as father of the house and they should have remained in our possession.’

‘Why did they not do so?’ asked Ralph Delchard.

‘I was disseised of the property.’

‘You were,’ said Hervey de Marigny, ‘or the abbey was?’

‘The two are effectively the same.’

‘Not in law,’ corrected Canon Hubert. ‘The property in question was, in point of fact, once held by the abbey.’

‘For whom I speak, Canon Hubert.’

‘Granted, Father Abbot.’

‘Why, then, do you quibble so? I hold property through the abbey and on my own account as a layman. I have striven to build up the wealth of our house in Tavistock in order to do God’s work the more effectively but I have been baulked along the way by certain people.’ He glared along the faces ranged in front of him. ‘I hope that you will not baulk me as well.’

‘This case will be decided on its merits,’ Ralph assured him.

‘Then the land must be returned to me.’

‘To the abbey, you mean,’ said de Marigny.

‘To both of us. At the earliest opportunity.’

‘Unfortunately, that will not happen,’ said Ralph. ‘Four other people have lodged claims on this property and we must examine them all before we reach a final decision. What puzzles us is this. When our predecessors came to prepare the returns for this county, you did not come forward to contest these holdings.

Why was that?’

‘I was deliberately misinformed about the date of their visit here. By the time I reached Exeter, they had moved on to Totnes.

Do you see what this means?’ he said, eyes widening with anger.

‘I was the victim of a conspiracy. They prevented me from fighting on behalf of Tavistock.’

‘They?’ repeated Ralph. ‘Who might they be?’

‘One of them goes to his grave today.’

‘Nicholas Picard? How did he conspire against you, my lord abbot?’

‘With great cunning. Look how easily he tricked your predecessors. If they had been more diligent, you would not now be here to repair all these holes in their workmanship. I hesitate to speak ill of the dead,’ he continued without the slightest hesitation, ‘but the lord Nicholas was unscrupulous where property was concerned.’

‘Yet he did not take those holdings from you,’ said de Marigny.

‘That, according to your deposition, was the work of Roger de Marmoutier.’

‘Another grasping baron!’

‘Our evidence suggests otherwise.’

‘Then your evidence is false,’ retorted the abbot, eyes blinking rapidly. ‘The land in question was seized illegally by the lord Roger. I protested strongly but my protests were overridden.’

Ralph glanced down at a document in front of him. ‘Roger de Marmoutier had a royal charter to substantiate his claim.’

‘So does the abbey of Tavistock. Mine predates his.’

‘Then it is rendered invalid by the charter which succeeds it.

King William is empowered to give but he is also able to take away. Those holdings were granted to the lord Roger for services rendered on the battlefield.’

The abbot spluttered. ‘They were first given to me for services rendered on the much more important battlefield of missionary Christianity. When I came to Tavistock, the abbey was in a deplorable condition. Sihtric, my predecessor, had the most appalling reputation. He was a disgrace to the Benedictine Order.’

He inflated his chest. ‘I took a moribund house and turned it into a vigorous monastic centre.’

‘This is well known, Father Abbot,’ said Hubert, stepping in to cut him off before his speech became an extended sermon. ‘You have been justly praised for the remarkable work you have done at Tavistock. That is not the point at issue.’

‘It is, Canon Hubert.’

‘I beg to differ.’

‘Those holdings were granted to me by way of reward.’

‘But that reward was in time transferred to Roger de Marmoutier.’

‘And there is another factor to consider here,’ said Ralph. ‘The abbey was not cruelly stripped of that property. When it was taken from you, there was a compensatory grant of land.’

‘That is irrelevant!’

‘No, it is not,’ said de Marigny. ‘It alters the case completely.

This is not an act of disseisin. Fair exchange was involved.’

‘Fair exchange!’ The abbot’s voice soared even higher. ‘Prime land was taken from us and barren land given in return. Do you call that fair exchange, my lord? There is richer soil near Exeter.