Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

There were many hermits infesting the country, Simon reminded himself as they rode up the steep hill towards Murchington and Gidleigh beyond. Some, of course, were charlatans, masquerading as religious men in a bid to conceal their felonious pasts.

‘Osbert, you were quiet enough in his presence. Why?’

‘I don’t trust him. When Sir Richard was alive, he didn’t either. Said Surval was a mad escaped felon who shouldn’t be here, and that one day soon he’d evict him, but then he died.’

Simon considered this for a while, and then decided that he would have to ask about this man and see what sort of hermit he was: genuine or fake.

Baldwin was impressed by Huward. There was a kindness in his face, which was clouded by the knowledge of the terrible fate of his daughter, but it was still there. He looked like a clear-thinking man, an honourable, upright sort who would work diligently for his master without complaint, although his present state of distress was obvious; all the time, while Baldwin spoke to him, he was fiddling with his drinking horn, a cheap pot of badly glazed earthenware, chipping with his thumbnail at a piece of encrusted dirt on the rim.

‘I am sorry about your daughter,’ Baldwin said.

‘I just want justice – but I won’t get it, will I? He’ll get sent to some court for priests and that’s going to be that. They never pay like we do, do they? If they’re churchmen, they’re safe.’

He spat the last words, avoiding Baldwin’s eye, and the knight considered before continuing.

‘The Coroner held his inquest?’

‘Yes. Her neck was broken. Coroner reckoned the weapon might have been a stick and charged us a shilling for it. Wanted to take all the priest’s stuff, too.’

Baldwin knew that the Coroner would have taken an estimate of the priest’s worldly value so that the amount the King could expect would be known. An outlaw lost all his possessions – they were forfeit to the Crown – so one of the Coroner’s more important jobs was to assess the value of an outlaw’s worth so that it could be recouped from the vill in which he had lived.

‘Neck broken,’ he mused. It didn’t tie up with what Mark had said about striking Mary and nothing else, but many a murderer was a committed liar. ‘What did the Coroner learn about the death of your daughter?’

Huward drank deeply, then put his hands over his face a moment. When he pulled them down again, Baldwin saw that his eyes were glistening with unshed tears. ‘Elias heard it, most of it. Heard my little Mary, he did, heard a woman’s voice, then a slap, but thinking it was just a lovers’ tiff, he turned his plough and went back the other way. When he returned, there was nothing more to hear. Later, when he was done, he walked down the lane and found her body.’

‘He could see them from the field?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Through the hedge, you mean?’

‘No, the lane’s very low there, and the hedges are overgrown. It was just voices.’

Baldwin narrowed his eyes. ‘But if a man is ploughing, it must be difficult to hear voices, surely? The noise of the blade cutting through soil, the hooves of the oxen, the calls and whistling of the boy leading them – how could he have heard so clearly?’

‘You’d have to ask him. I don’t know.’

‘I shall want to see this field. Who was leading the ox team?’

‘My lad, Ben. He often works with old Elias.’

‘Did anyone else see or hear anything?’

‘That fool Sampson said he heard them talk about killing her baby, then he heard a punch when Mark got angry, then a sound of vomiting, and then he ran away. He reckons Mark made for the chapel, but he must have been wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that was the wrong way. Unless he went there to fetch food and clothes, then bolted.’

‘I must speak to this Sampson,’ Baldwin muttered. ‘So it comes to this: your daughter’s and the priest’s voices were heard, but no one actually saw him hit her, let alone break her neck?’

‘They didn’t need to, did they? She was dead.’

Baldwin was about to speak, when there came a great clamour from the doorway. He spun around in time to see Godwen staggering backwards, a hand clutching his belly, and Thomas staring at him, then gazing at the man in the doorway with admiration bordering on adoration.

The sight made Baldwin sigh. ‘Simon, I asked them to keep people out. There was no need for that.’

Roger Scut waited with his toes tapping on the ground while the ostler fetched and saddled a pony for him. He already had some directions, but he made sure with the ostler just to be safe and then set off for the chapel.

It was a fine afternoon, albeit chilly, and he pulled his cloak about his breast to shield himself from the worst of the breeze, not that it stopped the whole of the icy blast. Some seemed to dive down to his breast like a fish. That was what it felt like, a dead fish slipping down between his tunic and his throat, cold as death itself. The reflection made him shiver.

The land was pretty, if you liked the wild. It certainly wasn’t cultivated like the fields and gardens about Exeter, but then he had always been told that Exeter was the edge of the civilised world. Other monks spoke with horror in their voices of the desolate lands further west. They implied that the sole place of any interest was Tavistock Abbey, and beyond that institution there was nothing of any merit whatever. The people were rough, untutored, and good only for manual labour.

In his humble opinion, the folk around here looked the same. They would be easy enough to lead. No doubt a priest like himself with a good understanding of people would be able to give them some direction. He would get them to do his bidding, and quickly find another priest to take over the duties here, and then he would live on the money which was sure to come in. A portion would go to his parson, but the rest he could pocket. That was the way for a man to make some money. Get someone else to do the work, while you yourself rested.

The roads were confusing, but before too long Roger had to ford a stream, then climb a hill before wandering along on the flat. When the roadway began to drop, he turned left, then forked right through trees.

Yes, it was good land, if uncultivated. The trees grew tall and strong, the soil looked dark but fruitful to his untrained eye, and he was sure that with some effort on the part of the locals, this place could be turned into a small Garden of Eden. All it took was a little labour, and there must be enough hairy-arsed workers down here. He would have to speak to the local lord and point out that he was failing in his duties to his local priest by not allowing the villeins enough time to work on the chapel’s lands.

He had almost reached the little brook when he recalled that the ostler had said, grinning, that he should have reached the chapel before he got thus far. There was nothing to see here, though. All he could discern was the faintly sweet odour of burning, as though someone had been coppicing recently and had burned some spare twigs to warm himself.

Looking back to his left, to the north, he pursed his lips. Either that boy at the ale-house was a fool, or…

As he caught sight of the ruins, his mouth fell open with stunned despair. ‘My God!’

‘A sad sight, eh, Priest?’

Roger Scut saw a tall figure at the door whom he recognised from the castle. ‘Master Esmon?’

‘Yes. Look at this! The bastards could have left it, couldn’t they?’ he said, kicking a blackened door-timber from his path and standing at the open entrance, hands on his hips as he glared inside. ‘What a shit-hole!’

‘Who was responsible?’ Roger Scut said, hurriedly dropping from his mount and going to the door. The sight that met his eyes made him groan aloud. His dreams had shattered like glass. All his hopes of creating a small area of lucrative peace here in this pretty valley had been broken and now seemed to lie at his feet in the mess of soot and ruined wood.