Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

She poured herself a small cup of wine and set it beside her favourite chair in front of the fire before walking up the stairs to her chamber. Here there was a garderobe set into the wall, a small chamber that projected outside, with a seat set into it. Below sat a box filled with wood ash which was regularly emptied and used as fertiliser. She settled, frowning.

The world was going mad. Girls like the miller’s daughter Mary enticing men like the priest. It was a great shame. Annicia could remember the girl. Tall and willowy, with lustrous eyes and a gentle smile constantly playing about her lips. Beautiful. No wonder that she might have tempted a priest from his oath of celibacy.

Oh dear. That nasty, disloyal thought was there again: what if she hadn’t only tempted the priest? What if she had tempted her master, too?

It was a relief to see that the weather had eased a little, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill thought, as he mounted his horse. Once in the saddle, he felt at his side for his short riding sword. It sat so comfortably against his thigh that he often forgot he was wearing it, but in these troubled times it was a foolhardy man who undertook any journey without carrying a weapon of some sort.

In his new crimson tunic, a present from his wife, who deemed, probably correctly, that his old one was too threadbare to reflect his authority as a Keeper of the King’s Peace, Baldwin felt slightly ill at ease. The rich embroidery at sleeve, neck and hem was too gaudy for a man who was used to the rigours of military life, and his green hose made his legs itch. Still, he would sooner cut off his own arm than hurt Jeanne’s feelings, so he could only hope that the clothes would grow more comfortable with the wearing.

The ride to Crediton was not arduous. From his home near Cadbury the road wandered gently about the hill to the westernmost edge of his demesne, and then climbed for a short distance before dropping towards Crediton, where he had his court. However, he was concerned these days that he might be attacked on the way. There were too many men-at-arms wandering the land without money, especially since the Scottish war last year. Before his marriage, he would have brought his steward, Edgar, with him on a journey like this, but not now. Baldwin preferred to know that a trained, professional and trusted warrior remained in the house while he was out.

It was ironic that he should have been created Keeper of the King’s Peace, with wide-ranging powers in this, his area. He often thought he should have refused the honour when it was first suggested to him by his friend Simon Puttock, the Bailiff of Lydford. With a wry grin, Baldwin could recall his shock, bordering on horror, when he realised that his friend, who was then a very recent acquaintance, had proposed him to fill the post. At the time Baldwin was effectively a newcomer to the district. Beforehand he had been a loyal member of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, a Knight Templar, until the arrest of the Order on 13 October 1307.

For a long while after that date he had not believed that his friends and comrades would be sent to the stakes. All through the hideous testing of the men, while they were tortured, many to death, threatened, and some summarily executed, Baldwin had believed that the Pope must rescue them. The Pope had to recognise their innocence and proclaim that their arrest was all a hideous mistake. When it didn’t happen, he wondered whether there was some vestige of truth in the allegations, and it was only when his Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, denounced his executioners and declared his innocence and the innocence of the Order, that Baldwin realised the truth: the whole matter had been staged in order that the French King and the Pope could grasp the wealth of the Knights Templar for their own advantage. The most noble Order of Knights had been destroyed, the most devout Christians murdered, in order that two implacably avaricious men should satisfy their lust for wealth.

It was that, so Simon had once said, which had forged Baldwin’s suitability for the task of weighing men’s innocence or guilt. Baldwin had seen how Justice could fail. He had lost faith in the Pope and secular rulers, for if the greatest Christian King and the Pope himself could be corrupt, how could a man trust those who worked beneath them?

The injustice and horror of it all had left Baldwin a cynical and caustic man in the years immediately following the destruction of his Order, but that aspect of his character had mellowed; indeed, these days it was all but gone. He still bore the same wrinkles and marks of pain which had grown to decorate his features during that lengthy period of rough living when his life was in perpetual danger, but now they simply looked like the honourable marks of a man who was older than middle age. Since he had been fortunate enough to find and marry Lady Jeanne de Liddinstone, his figure had filled out, and the expression in his eyes had lost some of the introspection of 1315. Today he was as likely to smile and laugh as to snarl.

Not that Sir Baldwin himself would admit that he had changed. If asked, he would have declared that he was the same man who had set sail in 1290 to join the defenders of Acre against the hordes of pagan Saracens. Yet he secretly knew it wasn’t the case. He felt the same, held some of the same opinions and beliefs, but in the same way that his body would occasionally let him down with sharp aches and pains or grumbling muscles when he had taken too much exercise, his attitude to life had changed. He was cooler, calmer, and more fiercely protective of this land of his.

It was probably the effect of the parlous state of the realm itself, the mutterings of dissatisfaction with the King, the open contempt for Edward’s two most trusted advisers, the Despensers, and of course the terrible disaster of the campaign against the Scots. There were certainly enough matters to cause an informed, intelligent man to pause and consider. Men muttered that it would be better to have open war and destroy the Despensers. That avaricious and murderous family ignored the law and robbed and imprisoned people without trial, purely to ransom them for whatever the Despensers wanted.

One man had even suggested, in Baldwin’s hearing, that an assassin should be hired to kill the Despensers. There Baldwin drew the line. When he had lived in Acre, and afterwards on Cyprus, he had heard of the dreaded Hashishim of the Old Man of the Mountain. He was a terrifying mercenary who would point his drugged adherents at any man if he was paid enough, and his crazed killers invariably succeeded in their murders. To Baldwin, a Templar, the idea of a clandestine murderer of that sort was uniquely repellent. A man should stand and fight in the open, calling on his enemy to defend himself. How different from the single madman hiding beneath a bed or behind a tapestry, stabbing or poisoning. That was the act of a coward, an act which must lead to terror among all right-thinking men.

Following the roadway as it curved around the last hill, Crediton was at last laid before him. Over the last few years the Canons of the great church had built many new houses for themselves, their servants and novices, and now the view that met Baldwin’s eye was one of bustle and confusion all the way out to the water meadow at the easternmost point of the town, especially near the church itself. There people milled about some more construction work. Craftsmen bawled orders to apprentices, smiths hammered, hawkers and tranters wandered shouting their wares. Over it all was the warm, light haze of the smoke from the fires.

He had little enthusiasm for business today, and he idled up the road. The shops and houses on either side gleamed, damp from the night’s rain, while the ground beneath him was foul, spatted with excrement from the herd of cattle which he could still see being taken through the town and out to the pastures near the river.