Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

Lady Annicia was gentle as she and a woman-servant washed Hugh’s bloody face and scalp. With the help of Godwen, who held Hugh’s head still, she shaved it before inspecting the gash.

Simon was easy about this, but Baldwin felt decidedly uncomfortable. It was one thing to see a dead body being prodded and poked, but to his mind it was quite another to see someone who was still alive being treated like this. Or maybe he didn’t like to see a personal acquaintance lying there. Whatever the reason, Baldwin couldn’t face remaining in that room. When Annicia stood and mumbled about fetching herbs, he was first to the door to open it for her.

They didn’t speak. Baldwin took deep breaths of the clean, smoke-tinged air as he trailed after her. There was a faintly sour sweetness on the air, and he realised it was her winey breath. He hoped that she had found time to doze after the court session, because he didn’t want Hugh to be harmed by being tended to by a drunken angel. As he considered this, she walked to the small room built on the side of the gatehouse, and opened the door.

When he peered in, he gave a low whistle. ‘A marvellous stock.’

‘Hmm?’ she asked, glancing up. ‘Oh, yes. It’s Wylkyn’s store. He used to make all sorts of things to ease Sir Richard’s pain.’

She sounded as though her mind was elsewhere. Baldwin set his head to one side. ‘My Lady, are you well?’

‘Well? Yes – why?’

‘My Lady, I merely noticed that you seem a little distracted, that is all. If it is something with which I can help, please feel free to ask.’

To his consternation, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘I am a foolish woman, Sir Knight. I was told a secret today, and just because I was in a fey and foolish mood, I told another. I fear that my husband will be very displeased with me when he hears. But no, there is nothing you or anyone else can do to help me.’

She was still slurring her words slightly, but it was hard now to see that she was drunk, apart from a certain deliberation in her movements. Baldwin watched her carefully as she moved among the potions, but she looked safe enough. Only very sad.

‘Sir Richard died suddenly, I heard.’

‘No. He was in his bed for a few days, but then he often was. Poor man. I think he gave up in the end. He knew he couldn’t keep this place.’

‘His back and face must have been constantly painful.’ Baldwin glanced at some drying leaves, and then he frowned.

‘Not just them. He had an awful case of gout in his good leg, which made it impossible for him to walk. That was why he took to his bed in the first place.’

‘Gout? That wouldn’t kill him.’

‘No.’ She had found the jug she wanted. She shook some powder into a cloth, then added some more from a second earthenware pot. Transferring them to a mortar, she began grinding and mixing the powders with the pestle. ‘He died, I believe, when he had a spasm, and that was that.’

‘Oh? I had thought he died from a fever.’

She squinted at him. ‘Not exactly. He had a bad case of gout, to which he was prone, and took to his bed. Then a mild fever attacked him and he was ill for some days.’

‘What were the signs of his illness?’

‘Blurred vision,’ she said, ‘I remember that. Then he grew giddy and complained of his head aching, and slept a great deal, but then he fell into delirium. In the end he had great convulsions, and during the last one, he died. I don’t know what could have done this to him. If he had cut himself, I should have thought it was one of those fevers, and I would have expected an inflamed limb, but there was no sign like that. Perhaps we should have bled him more. With such diseases, it is hard to know the best cure. And he had suffered so much during his life, with all his twisted and badly-set bones. Even eating was a torment, because of his mouth.’

Baldwin remembered Sir Richard’s face. It had been all but sliced in two by a massive sword-blow. One eye was gone, and his jaw had been shattered on that side. His hideous injuries can have given poor Sir Richard no peace from the moment he received them.

Baldwin glanced at the leaves again. Gout could be helped, he knew, by the leaves of henbane, but life could be ended: henbane was a fierce poison.

When they returned, rather than staying in the gloomy hall, Baldwin walked to Thomas, who stood watching the yard outside.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked the Constable.

Thomas shrugged. ‘I’m here, miles from my home, far from my wife, and stuck with him .’

Baldwin didn’t need to glance in the direction of his jerked thumb: he knew Thomas was indicating Godwen.

‘Come with me, then,’ he said, and strode out into the yard.

‘What do you want out here?’ Thomas asked, trotting to keep up with Baldwin’s long stride.

‘Roger Scut. I want to know what he thinks there is in all this for him.’

‘Him? He’ll see money. That’s the only reason he ever puts himself out for anything. Money or gold for himself.’

‘How could he see money in this place?’ Baldwin wondered.

Thomas glanced about him. ‘He’ll see some advantage, he always does. Same way as he always fleeces people – like poor Jack.’

Baldwin was listening with only half an ear to his mutterings, but the mention of the groom in Crediton made his ears prick up again. ‘What is all that about Jack? You said that Roger Scut is his landlord and that Jack’s rents are always going up, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Jack is one of his serfs, but he used to be successful until Scut took over his demesne. Scut inherited the land and all the free or servile tenants on it.’

‘Get to the point.’

‘It’s this. Until Scut arrived, Jack was doing well. He had bought land, animals, commuted his service by paying the Manor to get someone else in to do his work, and then increased his wealth and his animals by his efforts.’

‘That is good.’

‘Yes. Except Jack was a serf, so he couldn’t own anything without his lord’s agreement. Scut took the land back, then increased Jack’s rents and let him rent the extra lands back for still more money. He also told Jack that he couldn’t sell his produce anywhere except direct to the Canons at Crediton – and he had to agree to whatever price they offered. Now he can’t afford to resow his fields with grain, and he has to scratch a living by grooming horses, helping out at the tavern and trying to manage with his three cows.’

‘That is immoral. How can a lord take away lands that he never gave to his bondsmen in the first place?’ Baldwin asked. It was all too common, he knew, but he hated it nonetheless. It was an abuse of the power a lord held over his serfs.

‘There he is!’

Following Thomas’s pointing finger, Baldwin saw Roger Scut walking from the small chapel beyond the castle’s hall.

He looked pale, Baldwin thought, like a man who had swallowed a shellfish and realised that it did not agree with him. ‘Scut, I want to speak to you,’ he called out.

‘Yes, Sir Baldwin? Oh, and your Constable. What do you want?’ Roger Scut said, peering down his nose at them enquiringly.

‘What are you up to here?’ Baldwin asked. ‘You came here with us to protect the lad, or so you said, and then in the court you betrayed him badly.’

‘I surely said nothing that could have been construed as a betrayal? I listened hard to what he had to say, but when I commented on his abilities, that was your fault, Sir Baldwin.’

‘ My fault?’ Baldwin grated.

‘At the inn at Crediton, you suggested that Mark might not even have been a cleric, that he could have been an outlaw who had filched the papers of a clerk from one of his victims. Naturally, when he was asked to speak the words of a prayer, and could not, I began to wonder whether your initial scepticism might have been justified.’