Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

Thinking of Scut’s expression made Baldwin stop and consider a few moments. Mark had been in a terrible state, soaked, frozen, his feet bleeding. His hands were scratched, his skin red, raw and in many places cracked and weeping, and he had fallen on his chin and scraped all the flesh from the point of his jaw. If there could have been any doubt about his guilt, it was removed at the sight of him snivelling and shuffling, his head hanging at a slight angle, as though he could already feel the hemp at his throat. It was somehow terrible to see a man whose whole life should have been one of moderate ease brought to such a pass. He stood downcast, flinching when Godwen or Thomas came too near.

He deserved little sympathy, though, if he were truly guilty of killing the girl, Baldwin told himself.

‘What is your name?’ he grated in a rumbling tone that conveyed his authority.

‘I am a poor traveller, Sir Knight. Please, give me peace and a place to rest my–’

‘I didn’t ask what you were doing, I asked you your name.’

The Brother’s glance shot up at Baldwin, and then slid away when he saw the grim determination on his face. ‘I am named Edward of Axminster, Sir Knight.’

‘Come, now. What name did you take when you took up the cloth?’ Baldwin asked silkily. ‘What is your Christian, baptismal name?’

‘I…’

‘Then I shall tell you,’ Baldwin said, sitting at a bench and fixing a blank stare on the unfortunate wretch. He often found that this persuaded criminals to confess and become more helpful, and so it proved today.

Mark was worn down with his grief and his shame. His legs were aching, and sores and blisters made his limbs feel as though they were gangrenous. He had managed to come so far, yet now he would be taken all that weary way back to Gidleigh once more. A sob broke from his breast, and he could feel the tears well and course down his cheeks. He felt as though his ruination was indeed inevitable. He was destroyed. His hands were bound so tightly that he could scarcely feel his fingers, and escape was impossible.

‘Sir Knight, pity me!’ he said hoarsely. ‘I have done nothing wrong of my own volition, I am merely the dupe of fate. On the Bible, I swear, I have intended no harm to anyone.’

‘And yet you bolt from your vill as though the legions of Hell were at your tail.’

‘What would you have me do? Stand there and await the retribution of a father who is insane with rage to see his daughter murdered?’

Baldwin allowed no relaxation of his features. ‘Why should her father think to accuse you, a priest?’

‘I am ashamed to confess,’ Mark said bleakly, and his head dropped as if he truly felt how unwholesome his behaviour must sound. ‘I forgot my cloth and my honour with this woman, and I admit I was horrified to learn that she was with my child. If her father were to hear that, how else could he react, other than by trying to destroy me?’

In his years as Keeper of the Rolls of the King’s Peace, Baldwin had heard many men’s confessions, and he reckoned that Mark sounded genuine, but that made little difference to him and his duty. ‘You shall still have to explain yourself in your vill, in your local court. Godwen, you will escort him there. Take another man to help you guard him. He can’t go like this, not with his feet in that condition. You shall have to demand a pony for him. Tell Jack I sent you, and ask for the healthiest mount he has for the lowest price. When he gives you a price, no matter how much it is, tell him you’ll pay him five pennies less and he should be glad that I won’t accuse him of trying to profit at the King’s expense.’

Mark had listened dully, but on hearing Baldwin’s calmly authoritative voice, he broke down again, and dropped to his knees. ‘God’s own body! Don’t just take me there and leave me like garbage! They’ll kill me!’

Baldwin eyed him without feeling. ‘You must be returned to the vill where the Hue and Cry was raised against you. You know that. It will be for the vill’s court to decide whether you are guilty or not.’

‘But if you have me taken there, they will kill me without a hearing! You can’t do that. I am a priest, I should be tried in the Bishop’s court, not in that of a wayward and detestable knight like Sir Ralph! He will see me destroyed without trying to mete out justice.’

‘You slander a knight? You, who have forgotten your vows to God? I have made oaths too, to keep the King’s Peace and see justice done. I have my duty.’

‘What of your duty to the law? You call yourself Keeper of the Rolls of the King’s Peace, but if you leave me there, I shall die in hours. They will see to it.’

‘Perhaps that is no more than you deserve,’ Baldwin said bluntly.

‘No man can tell that,’ Mark protested. ‘Please, Sir Knight, convey me to the Bishop’s court, where I can be tried by men who would see me tested fairly – don’t send me back to that terrible vill! It’s too unjust! That I have sunk to lewdness and fornication, I admit freely but, Sir Baldwin, I am no murderer! Look at me! Could I be so cruel, so barbaric, as to willingly slay my own love and the child in her womb?’

As Brother Mark made his protestations, Saul the carter and his apprentice Alan were in the process of mending Saul’s carts in his yard near the church at Oakhampton, prior to filling them with goods to take to the market at Chagford.

‘Still don’t see why we have to get ready so early,’ Alan objected. ‘The market’s not until Saturday. Today’s Thursday. It’s not far.’

Saul grunted. A short man with grizzled hair and beard, his sharp, suspicious eyes gleamed brightly beneath his hood. He was carrying a heavy sack, and he threw it into the back of his cart and stretched. ‘Because it means we have more time in the tavern the night before the market, that’s why. And we avoid footpads, too.’

Alan, a weakly-looking lad in his late teens with a thin, wispy beard and sallow complexion, pulled a face. ‘Footpads? What do you mean, footpads?’

‘Nothing! It was a joke. What’d they do with us? Who’s going to rob us, when we’re travelling with so many others? I’ve made sure there are more than ten carters, and then there are the six others with their packhorses.’

‘But you’re worried about footpads?’ Alan said anxiously.

‘Come on, lad, I was only joking,’ Saul said, but he didn’t meet Alan’s eye. Alan had been thinking again, always a mistake for an apprentice. He’d obviously been listening to the stories about the mad bastard at Gidleigh. Time was, that used to be a good clear road – when Sir Richard owned it. Now that cocky bugger up there had got so he wouldn’t listen to anyone. Thought he was beyond the reach of the Justices. Maybe he was, too, Saul told himself glumly.

Indeed, Saul felt generally gloomy today. His sinuses were giving him a lot of pain, like sharp pins and needles stabbing at the back of his palate, and there was a tickling in his nostrils. He must be getting another cold. Wonderful! Six he had had last year – two in the middle of the summer, by God’s wounds! His wife was growing peevish, complaining that he never did enough work, spent all his time at the tavern, and here he was with another flaming cold on the way. He needed a warm pot of spiced ale to drive it off, that’s what he needed. Instead he was getting ready to join the convoy of carts on the way to Chagford and getting grief from his blasted apprentice as well. At least in Chagford he could go to a physician and maybe get bled.

‘There’s no reason to think he’d come to get us,’ Alan muttered hopefully. ‘Sir Ralph’s sat there in his castle, and you’ve already said we’re not going to go close. He can sit there waiting for us all week, if he wants, and miss us.’