The Medieval Murderers - The False Virgin

‘For how long can you live a lie like this!’ barked the prior at chapter one day. ‘One of you has the mark of Cain upon himself, invisible though it be to all except the culprit.’

His voice gathered strength as he looked over the bowed heads of the abashed community. ‘I will never understand why you, whoever you are, could not recognise that John had a disordered mind and that he could never be able to carry out his threat of informing the world of his morbid fantasy! You may have done this wicked deed in the honest, but mistaken belief that you were safeguarding the reputation of this house. That could be taken into consideration when you face the consequences of your action,’ he cried, swinging a pointed finger around the assembled brothers. ‘God and the bishops he has appointed as his agents on earth, are full of mercy and compassion. The secular law has no control over your punishment and anything that the Church can mete out to you is as nothing compared to the abyss you face without confession, contrition and absolution!’

He worked himself up to the finale. ‘Repent and confess, or you will burn in hell and your miserable soul will suffer torments until the end of time! Confess to me and lift what must be an intolerable burden lying across your shoulders every minute of the day and night. Repent and confess!’

Paul continued in this vein for the next week, without any visible effect upon his reluctant listeners. He even began to wonder if his infirmarian’s diagnosis of murder could have been wrong, though the facts seemed to speak for themselves.

The scouts he had sent out to spy on the Welsh had not returned, but on the fourth day, they sent a message with a shepherd to say that so far, there were no signs of even the advance guard of the Welsh.

‘No doubt they are taking their time in destroying and plundering everything in their path,’ muttered Arnulf glumly, as he sat sharing a cup of wine in the cellarer’s room.

Brother Jude shrugged. ‘Certainly this Glendower has wrecked almost every castle in Wales and the Marches. I have not heard that he has been slaughtering or pillaging religious houses, thank God.’

‘We shall soon find out, Brother!’ grunted Arnulf, gloomily.

But it was almost a week before the scouts returned, trotting up to the main gate of St Oswald’s and breathlessly delivering their news to Prior Paul, who came to the steps of his house to meet them.

‘They are but five miles away by now,’ reported the lay brother, who normally was one of the millers. ‘They delayed for several days to sack Ledbury, but the day before yesterday, moved on to Eastnor where they camped again.’

Ledbury was a small market town and Eastnor was a village with nothing between it and the priory, other than woods and open country. Pale with anxiety, Paul ordered his monks to call in the villagers from outside the walls and within the hour, about fifty men, women and children were camping in the outer courtyard.

‘The women and children can stay in the guest-house,’ ordered Brother Matthew, now striding around officiously, organising the influx. ‘The men can remain out here, until we see what the situation is by nightfall.’

Several of the younger men had volunteered to stay outside to drive some of their best cattle, hogs and sheep up into the dense woods on the hills behind, hoping to keep them out of the clutches of the invaders.

‘The rest of them, and all the fowls, will have to stay where they are,’ said Jude sorrowfully. ‘I doubt we’ll see any of them again after this horde has passed.’

‘If they do pass!’ added Arnulf, looking askance at the ragged children running in and out of his tidy guest-house. ‘This place will never be the same again.’

There followed an uneasy couple of hours when the priory seemed to be holding its breath. The birds still sang and the remaining sheep still bleated outside the walls, but there was still no sign of the dreaded Welsh.

‘They move very slowly,’ said the lay brother who had gone scouting. ‘There are a few hundred mounted men in the lead, mostly French knights, but the main host is on foot, many of the men without shoes. And the slowest of all are the stolen carts, laden with food and weapons. Their oxen can only keep up half a man’s walking pace.’

But eventually, they came.

The two porters were keeping a lookout from the top of the arch over the main gates, which were firmly closed and barred. The first signs they saw were a couple of men armed with spears, appearing on ponies on the track out of the woods. Alongside them walked a pair of archers, each with the famous Gwent longbows slung across their back, the bowstrings coiled inside their leather hats to keep them dry.

The lookouts cried a warning down to the crowd assembled anxiously in the courtyards below, then watched until they saw the advance guard reach the cottages a few hundred paces away. The men began searching them and brought out a few objects from the humble shacks, then turned their attention to the mill placed over the small river, which meandered across the pastures until it vanished into the woods beyond. There had been no time to bring the mill’s stock of grain and flour into the priory, but Jude had been storing as much as he could in his cellarium over the past week.

When the soldiers emerged, they moved over to a point opposite the priory gates and began eating whatever food they had found in the cottages, sitting relaxed on the grass, obviously under orders not to approach the priory until the army arrived.

‘Our hopes for the horde to pass us by seem dashed already,’ said Brother Mark, who had been looking out through a small spy-hole in the main gate. ‘These scouts are waiting for their leaders to catch them up.’

He made way for the prior to peer through the flap. After a moment, Paul turned away and spoke gravely to his brothers.

‘I must go out and confront this Glendower when he comes, to plead with him that he leaves this religious house in peace, for I have heard that he is a devout man.’

An hour later, the prior had his chance of confrontation. The porters above the gate gave a cry of warning, as they saw the vanguard of the Welsh host appearing through the trees, half a mile away.

The first to break out on the narrow forest track were horsemen, a score of whom rode in pairs. There was little by way of extravagant heraldry, as this was a fighting force wary of opposition, but the leading pair held pennants aloft, attached to spears. One displayed a gold French fleur-de-lis, the other the red dragon of Cadwalader. As they advanced at walking pace, the next sight the anxious watchers had was of a dozen men on larger steeds, some wearing armoured breastplates. As they came nearer, it was obvious which was the leader, as a very erect man on a horse with more elaborate harness pulled slightly ahead of the others as they emerged from the narrow track on to the more spacious fields. Behind them came a stream of mounted knights, many in the more colourful uniforms of the French, then a long cavalcade of foot soldiers with a motley mixture of clothing and weapons. Some carried swords or maces, others had spears or pikes, but many were archers. The stream of men seemed endless and they were still emerging from the trees when the leaders had reached the cottages in front of the priory.

‘There’s thousands of them, Prior!’ shouted down one of the porters. ‘Looks as if they are going make camp in the fields outside.’

With the monks crowding around him, Brother Paul peered through the squint in the main gate and saw that the leading men had dismounted and were conferring amongst themselves.

‘I must go out and speak with their leader, this Glendower,’ he said stoically. ‘Throw ourselves on his mercy, if needs be.’