Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

‘So I am a leper now, am I?’

Piers didn’t raise his voice. ‘I want to give you my sympathy, Huward, but I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is try to help you and your family.’

‘We don’t need help. I just want to be left in peace.’

‘They may catch the monk.’

‘And what then? Would you allow me to kill him as I want? No, I didn’t think so. I’ll have to watch him be pulled up in the court before our lord, and then he’ll claim Benefit of Clergy. There’s no justice for my girl, is there?’ he added bitterly.

‘What do you want me to say? There’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘No. So all we can do is get on with things. Mill the flour and fill the sacks. That’s all we’re good for, isn’t it? Serfs to our lord.’

Piers nodded, but less sympathetically. Everyone hereabouts knew that the miller was treated with generosity when the rents were assessed. He shrugged his head lower, and water dropped from his hat and dribbled down his neck. This weather was only good for ducks and fish.

‘Hoy! Ben! Where are you going?’ Huward suddenly roared.

‘To an ale-house, Father. Away from this gloom-ridden midden.’

‘Get back in that house. We have work to do. You can’t go running about the vill today.’

‘I can do what I want,’ Ben said over his shoulder as he marched up the road towards Gidleigh.

Huward started as though to spring forward to catch his boy, but he stopped and bent his head, bursting into dry, racking sobs. He waved Piers’s hand away, spinning on his heel and leaning his brow against the doorframe, trying to regain control of himself.

The pause was embarrassing, but terrible too. Piers felt as though he was the unwilling witness to a man’s death. That was how it felt. Huward had always been a strong man, strong in the arm and in the head, and to see him in this state was scary, like seeing the collapse of an oak. No matter how hearty the soul, any man could be felled by losing a daughter, he reflected. Somehow it was worse than losing a son. At least a boy might have marked his attacker. A girl would be less likely, especially if she was punched suddenly. She could have been unconscious when her neck was broken.

Huward whispered, ‘Look at us! What can I do? My wife’s lost her mind, my son’s a wastrel, and look at me ! I can’t even control my son! What will become of us all? We’re ruined, and all because of an evil priest’s lusts! Nothing else. Just to satisfy a beardless lad’s greed.’

‘Is it a great deal further?’ Roger Scut asked plaintively.

It was foul weather, and sure enough, he was soaked through already. He almost regretted his spontaneous offer to escort Mark back to the wild lands west of Crediton. The rain here seemed to fly horizontally, especially now that they had climbed a hill and had nothing in front of them to shield them from the miserable weather.

‘We have only travelled some eight or maybe nine miles, Brother,’ Godwen responded cheerfully. ‘Not even a third of the distance, I reckon.’

‘God, please give me patience!’

There was a brief lull in the wind, and Roger Scut looked up. The terrible rain had stopped, and as he peered, he saw a sudden break in the clouds. A shaft of sunlight lanced down, and he could see the country ahead clearly. Already the horizon was taken up with the grim, blue-grey grandeur of the moors.

Perhaps if the weather was better, Roger might have felt happier. After all, this was the best outcome he could have hoped for. All he had originally intended was to thwart the knight’s aim of taking the monk back to Gidleigh, it being a firm principle of Roger’s that the secular authorities should always be forced to bow to the might and power of the Church. Under no circumstances would he ever agree to allow a knight to put a cleric in court, for that was an appalling concept, and yet if there was one monk whom he wouldn’t mind seeing in irons, that fellow was Mark.

Now that Sir Baldwin had made clear his determination to drag Mark back to Gidleigh, there was perhaps a benefit. Mark would certainly not be permitted to remain there in charge of the chapel whatever happened, and if Roger was there, he might be able to acquire the living. The man already present was more likely to be granted the running of the place than any other. He could take it over, smarten things up, and when the affair had blown over, install another young cleric so that Roger could farm the profits. There would be justice in Mark’s shame and fall, then. Just the thought made his mood lighten.

He shot a look at the forlorn figure on the pony at his side, his wrists bound together. Poor Mark! So innocent, so good, so bright ! The apple of the Chapter’s eye at Exeter, he was. Such a talented singer, an elegant and accomplished scribe, mathematically sound, and a good logician – and also, although with his calm manner, soft voice and gentle, doe eyes, he was almost as pretty as a maid, he was considered to be sticking to his vow of celibacy. No one had ever disputed his godliness. He behaved and looked like a saint of old, so it was said.

Saint my ballocks! Roger thought to himself scathingly. The wastrel was no better than he should be. No better than any number of other young fools who thought that they deserved a better, easier life by mere virtue of their learning. Learning! It hadn’t done much for young Mark now, had it? Roger tilted his head back the better to view Mark, but there was nothing to see except ordinary self-pity. That was it. The great fool was miserable because he’d been found out.

Roger wouldn’t waste any sympathy on him . Nor would he try to save the bastard – he could ensure that Mark was ruined utterly. That thought served to ease his mood as he jolted along on the broad back of his pony.

‘Roger?’

‘You should not be talking, Mark,’ Roger Scut said, peering down his nose at the roadway. ‘Rather, I feel you should be considering your sins – and how you are to explain yourself to Sir Ralph.’

‘Oh, my God! I can’t bear this!’

‘What?’ Roger said keenly. ‘The weight of your guilt?’

‘No! It’s the thought that my own father could seek my ruin.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘My father was a knight who passed through Axminster. He met my mother, and to his credit, he paid her handsomely when he realised that his dalliance had left her with child – me. Later the Bishop’s man came to the town and heard of me. My Latin was good, so he took me with him to the Cathedral, and there I have stayed.’

Roger Scut made a small, irritable gesture with his hand. ‘I don’t care… so this knight, you say, who was he?’

‘My mother told me he was Sir Ralph of Wonson. That was why I wanted to come here and see him. I thought he could help me, with patronage and support. Every bit of help is useful. You know that.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course.’

Roger Scut listened as Mark spoke further, but the boy’s babbling intruded but little into his thoughts. He was not here to help Mark. No, Roger would be the next Parson of Gidleigh. Not that he would stay. He thought again of his plan to install a youngster – maybe Luke? – in the chapel for a small salary, and add the revenues from this place to his other profits. Before long, if he was careful, he would have more money than a Bishop!

However, it was most unlikely that Sir Ralph would pass the chapel on to anyone else, if he knew that Mark was his own son. ‘Even though Sir Ralph knows you’re his son, he’s hunting you down?’ he enquired casually.

‘It’s because he doesn’t know I’m his son. Why should he?’ Mark wailed. ‘I never told him, because there never seemed to be the right moment.’