Michael JECKS - The Leper's Return

Baldwin nodded and was about to walk from the room, when Simon said, “But why didn’t any of the servants come in? They must have heard the shouting and screams if Coffyn did. Why did all the servants, apart from Putthe, stay away? If they heard a fight going on in here, and their master being attacked, what were they thinking of?”

“Oh, they weren’t here, sir. Mistress had sent them all to the inn.”

“What?” Baldwin burst out.

“It was a treat for them. She even gave them money.”

Margaret smiled at Jeanne as they slowly made their way up the hill on the Cadbury road heading toward Baldwin’s home. “You’ll like his place. It’s not new like some, but he tells us he’s had a lot added this year. He’s built a new solar and kitchen.”

“Are you trying to sell it to me?” asked Jeanne lightly.

Margaret laughed and wisely decided to change the subject. “I thought Baldwin looked anxious. I hope this murder won’t take up too much of his time.”

“I think it a great insult that he should be spending his time looking into some horrible killing when he should be entertaining you, my lady.”

“Now, Emma,” said Jeanne, with what Margaret thought was a trace of coldness. “He has his duties to attend to. We cannot expect him to forget his responsibilities just because we happen to arrive as a man is killed.”

“I should have thought an important knight, a Keeper of the King’s Peace, no less, should have had enough minions to look into it, while he saw to his responsibility to you,” her maid responded sharply. “It’s not as if you’re some ordinary guest, you’re…”

“Enough, Emma! It is not your place to decide where his duty lies.”

It interested Margaret that the maid was so forthright in her views. Of course, many servants were, because they were commonly the closest friends and advisers to their masters or mistresses, and often a servant’s opinion would rate higher in a man’s estimation than that of a doctor or a lawyer, who were, after all, merely mercenaries after a man’s wealth. Still, for someone in Emma’s position to criticize her mistress’ host did show an extreme arrogance.

And what a maid she was! Where Jeanne was slim and elegant as a well-bred Arab mare, Emma was large and clumsy. Her face was harsh, and Margaret thought her small, deep-set eyes stared at the world with a vindictive distrust. That she enjoyed the confidence of her mistress, Margaret couldn’t doubt, but why was a different matter, and she found herself wondering how Jeanne could have kept such a maid by her side.

The bailiff’s wife found herself looking at Emma askance. After hearing her comments on Baldwin, Margaret felt that the maid was prepared to seek out any fault and emphasize it to Baldwin’s disadvantage.

“Is it very much further? It seems like an age since we left the town, and years since we saw a decent road,” Emma demanded some little while later.

Edgar was some distance in front now. In Margaret’s jaundiced opinion, he was trying to leave as much space as possible between himself and Emma. It would be difficult to question him. “What do you think, Hugh?” Margaret asked, glancing at him.

Hugh rode along uncomfortably, gripping the reins of the packhorse in his fist. He was one of those moormen who seemed to have held on to more of his Celtic past than most of his contemporaries. He was lithe and short, with a shock of untidy dark hair over his morose features. The man had been in Simon’s service for many years, and the bailiff swore that with Hugh at his side he need fear neither footpad nor trail baston, for Hugh’s expression was such that those upon whom he glowered would be certain to be turned to stone.

He now looked up at the sun, then at the road ahead, at the trees on either side and the icy mud at his horse’s hooves. “It’s about another league.”

“You can tell that by looking at the sky and the trees? Hah! I suppose it might be double that, or treble, for all you know. And my poor lady tired out there after coming all this way, too! Surely the knight could have arranged for a room at the inn so we could break our journey a little.”

Margaret listened with frank astonishment, then nodded to her man. “Hugh? Tell her how you know it’s one league.”

“That oak with the broken branch,” he pointed. “Lost that branch in the bad winter of ”15, and it was down when me and the master were riding back from Tiverton. I know it from the elm opposite, that one that’s got the sort of fork in its upper branches there. See? It’s quite odd. Don’t know another one like it. And that holly, up ahead there, is where I once saw a pair of thrushes attacking a magpie that was trying to get into their nest. It didn’t, though.“

“Was it scared off by the thrushes?” asked Jeanne, interested despite herself.

“No,” he said simply. “I killed it with my slingshot.”

“That was kind,” she smiled.

“Not really,” he grunted, scowling at his horse’s neck. “I was trying to get the thrushes. Make a good pie, do two thrushes.”

Emma was studying him with ill-concealed disgust, and on hearing this gave a little exclamation. “My lady adores little birds that sing. And you kill them for food? I hadn’t realized this area was so poor that peasants and bondsmen ate songbirds.”

Margaret saw Hugh’s expression become even more somber as he sullenly surveyed their path ahead. She quickly interrupted his thoughts before he could express his feelings, which she was sure were colored already by Emma’s eviction of him from the inn’s buttery. “I think you’ll find that the people living here are better off than your folk in Liddinstone, Emma. Your mistress no doubt has a flourishing estate, but the land here is most fertile. All farming prospers in Baldwin’s fields. And then again, he is known for his kindness and generosity to those who cannot support themselves.”

“That’s the trouble with so many knights nowadays. They have no idea how to treat their people. If they’re hungry, it’s because they’re idle. They need the whip more than they need largesse.”

On hearing this, Margaret surrendered in the unequal battle. The maid was plainly incorrigible, and Margaret preferred to ignore her rather than hear her friend the knight being slandered. She was surprised that Jeanne did not defend him, and shot her a glance. Jeanne exhibited every sign of anger. Her mouth was compressed into a thin line, and she stared ahead fixedly without blinking.

Margaret was content. Emma would be lashed by her mistress’ tongue later.

As they came to the top of a long rising slope, Edgar turned off into a rough track that led away to the right, and they set off after him.

Jeanne allowed her fury to fade away. There was no point in raging at the stupid woman, not once she had made up her mind. Jeanne knew Emma too well. The maid had already decided that Baldwin was no good for her. Emma thought that someone who lived so far from what she called “civilization” was likely to be a boor.

But Jeanne was also aware that Emma’s antipathy to Baldwin was not caused solely by concern for the welfare of her mistress. Emma liked running her own household. She enjoyed a good life at Liddinstone, the other servants all went in fear of her, and she could get her own way with ease. If she were to move with her mistress to live at Furnshill, there was no telling how the new servants would react to her.

It made Jeanne sigh. Emma had been with her from very early on – indeed, that was partly why her respect for her maid bordered on fear. When Jeanne had been orphaned, her uncle had taken her in to live with his household in Bordeaux, and had set Emma the task of being her maid. For a farmer’s daughter from Devon the rules and conventions of polite society in such an important town were mind-boggling, but under Emma’s rough tuition, Jeanne had avoided some of the worst and most embarrassing faux pas. While she grew to womanhood, Emma had been the constant reminder of the debt of honor and fidelity Jeanne owed to her uncle. Whenever she put a foot wrong, Emma snapped at her in correction; when Jeanne made a foolish comment, it was Emma who criticized. Even when she had married and returned to Devon as the mistress of Liddinstone, it had seemed impossible to discard Emma, and the maid had remained with her.