Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

There could only be one purpose for Ben to spread the story, and that was to cause hurt. That was one thing at which the miller’s son excelled.

Ben was bitter, but at least he had punctured the thick ox’s self-satisfaction. How did he hear about that… Mary must have told him about it. No one else knew. Only him and her – yet Os knew. Mary must have said something, the cow!

There was nothing shameful about it. He was a young man, and she was a woman. He only wanted her to lie with him, so he could know what it was like. He did love her, after all, and all his friends had tupped girls in the vill. He had thought she would be willing, that she’d look on it as a great compliment. It wasn’t as if it was rare for a brother and sister. He’d have agreed if she had asked him .

If only she had agreed, he wouldn’t have hated her so much then. But she not only rejected him, she laughed at him. Made him feel stupid, small – nothing. She laughed at him, as though he had no manhood for her to consider, and that made him angry. He had caught her, made her hiss with pain as he pushed her to her knees, and then he hit her, to teach her to laugh at him. That was why he had grown to hate her, to loathe the sight of her. If he could, he would have killed her. Except there was always that little place in his heart which watched her with the jealous eye of a lover. A lover whose adoration could never be consummated. That was why he refused to honour her in death, even though part of him felt desolate that she was gone.

Flora was no better. He had never tried to sleep with her, but she was fearful of him – probably because Mary had warned her. If she had told Os, who else might she not have told? Shit! The bitch should have kept her mouth shut! There was no telling what trouble she could have brought to Ben.

Os had wanted her. He had watched her with his great bovine eyes whenever she passed nearby, almost drooling with delight. When she spoke to him kindly, he all but fell over at her feet like a puppy. Pathetic arse. He should have taken her. That’s what a real man would have done.

Suddenly Ben had a vision of another man, the sort who would have taken her without compunction: Esmon, Sir Ralph’s son.

‘Esmon,’ he muttered thoughtfully. ‘You were up there the day she was killed, weren’t you?’

He hadn’t been with Elias quite all the time out in the field. Elias had gone to empty his bladder twice, and once Ben had gone himself, and that was the time when he had seen his sister alone there by the gate. Only a short time later, he had seen Esmon riding nearby as well. Everyone was off hunting down the wayward cleric, and yet if Ben was to mention that sighting, many in the vill would immediately think that the Lord of the Manor’s own son should be questioned.

Ben gave a shrug. He didn’t miss his sister – not really. She hadn’t cared about him, so he wasn’t going to waste his feelings on her. She was nothing to him. She had rejected him, while opening her legs for that damned priest. Fine. And the priest killed her.

It was interesting to think of Esmon being there, though…

As twilight came, Baldwin had reached the road that led north to Eggesford, but after a few moments’ thought, he took the road that led almost due east in preference. Ahead of him, a lowering hulk in the far distance, was the great mound of Cosdon, the first of the huge hills of Dartmoor. To continue further was pointless. He had tested his initial conviction that Mark was running straight to the Bishop and found it persuasive. There was no need to carry on west. The priest must already have passed by here.

‘You want to go on, Sir Baldwin?’

The speaker was Godwen, one of Crediton’s two Constables. He was a small-boned and sharp-featured man with black hair and bright blue eyes in a narrow but attractive face. Women loved him, although many were jealous of his high cheekbones and slender nose. His eyes in particular were startling. They were the colour of cornflowers on a summer’s day, and when he turned them full onto a target, especially with his attention concentrated so that he scarcely blinked, Baldwin thought that they would be quite as hypnotic as a cat’s. Together with his gentle manner, soulful expression and tenor voice, let alone his quick and assured movements, he must have his choice of women in the town, especially with the expensive clothes he always sported.

‘I’m happy to carry on if you want, Sir Baldwin.’

This bass rumble came from the second Constable, Thomas, a larger, slower man, with a heavy, square head and a jaw that could have broken moorstone. His eyes were narrow slits that glittered darkly as he spoke, especially when he caught sight of Godwen. There was a perpetual antipathy between the two. Even in clothing they could not have been more different: Thomas wore cast-offs from his father that were so well darned that there was little of the original colour or thread of the original.

Baldwin sighed to himself. ‘We shall turn back now. All the other men have had time to search out the smaller bartons. If we head back along the road down here,’ he pointed, ‘to Coleford, we should begin to meet up with some of them. Then we can make our way back to Crediton if there is no news.’

‘Very good, Sir Baldwin,’ Godwen said, ducking his head obsequiously, but then throwing an amused glance at Thomas.

It was that which irritated Baldwin. Godwen and Thomas had always been on edge in each other’s company. Once he had heard it was because of some slight or insult that went back several generations. He knew that their fathers hadn’t exchanged a word intentionally in twenty-odd years, and these two now continued the feud. In another country, he reflected as he kicked his mount onwards, they would have come to blows, or more likely, one would already be dead. In most of the lands which Baldwin had visited, enmity was not allowed to rest, and insults weren’t permitted to go without punishment. Luckily English peasants were a little better behaved.

‘We shall return this way. With luck, we should be back at Crediton before dark,’ he added. He had asked the groom to see that a messenger was sent to his home to warn Jeanne that he would be staying overnight in Crediton. ‘I hope that fool Jack has not fallen asleep again and forgotten.’

Godwen gave him a smile. ‘You trusted him with something?’

‘I needed a message taken home to my wife.’

‘Jack is a cretin – he’s always forgetting things,’ Godwen said dispassionately.

‘He’s a good man!’ Thomas asserted harshly. ‘Even the best may grow drowsy with all the work he does.’

Baldwin glanced at him. ‘What do you mean? He is a groom, is he not? What is so tiring about looking after a few horses?’

‘He’s a groom during the day, yes, but he still keeps his three cows, and has to look to them as well, and after all that is done, he helps in Paul’s inn. Poor bastard, it’s no wonder he gets tired.’

‘I did not know he had so many jobs,’ Baldwin mused. ‘Why does he do all that?’

‘Needs must. He has a family to support.’

‘True,’ Baldwin said.

‘And he’s been fleeced by his landlord. His rents have been put up. Every time he’s close to having enough to keep his wife and children in food and ale, his landlord takes more.’

‘He’s just lazy,’ Godwen said, languidly dismissive. ‘His family always was.’

Baldwin made a guess. ‘He is related to you, is he not, Thomas?’

‘Brother-in-law to my sister,’ the man grunted with a sidelong look at Godwen.

They rode in silence for a good mile or so, through one small barton and out the other side towards Coleford. There they met the first of Baldwin’s posse, two men whom he had sent to question the master of the seyney-house at the riverside. This was a resting place for monks who had become exhausted from their onerous duties. Baldwin sometimes wondered how tiring rising in the middle of the night and kneeling throughout long services actually was, but all monasteries had these small retreats so that brother monks could have their blood let, and then recover with less stress, better food and more sleep. No doubt if he had taken on the robes of a monk and was still serving an abbey or priory, he would occasionally feel the need of good food and more sleep, he admitted to himself.