Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

All had been a little early, he recalled for the thousandth time. All had been delivered two to three weeks before their usual term. Did that mean he had been cuckolded perfectly and that all were Sir Ralph’s? That thought was like a screw tightening about his forehead, squeezing and making his brain work more slowly.

He had come here to see Piers to tell him that he would leave the area and seek his fortune in another town, because at least that way his remaining daughter might not learn and have to suffer the shame of being pointed at by all the other folk. She might still be his daughter. Ben, he cared less for. The boy had been a pleasing son until he changed a year or more ago, and since then he had grown sharp, bitter, unkind. Perhaps he would improve in later years, if Huward wasn’t here.

But Os’s words showed he was already too late. He wanted to save the family shame, but the whole vill knew. Os knew, Piers knew, and in a vill like this that meant surely everyone must soon know. There was no escape, only scandal and utter disgrace.

In his breast he felt the welling horror of dishonour. His heart seemed to harden to stone, a massy object in a body now suddenly emptied of all emotion other than all-consuming grief.

‘Huward, old friend, I am so sorry you had to learn like this,’ Piers was saying, and more in the same vein, but Huward, when he looked at him, wondered only whether Piers had cuckolded him too.

There were some husbands who happily sold their wives as whores, he knew, but that was whoring with the husband’s consent, to help provide for a family in sore straits, like during the famine years. But his wife had never mentioned spreading herself for the knight. She’d probably done it for all the men in the Hundred. If she’d betrayed him with one man, why not a thousand? He could never trust her again.

‘Do you want some food, Huward? Ale?’

‘Leave me alone !’ he suddenly roared as Piers put a hand to his shoulder. The miller lifted his arm and knocked the Reeve’s arm away. It had felt like a snake’s bite. Loathsome, then poisonous. It was repellent, this mental venom. There was no one, no man he could trust in the whole vill.

‘Huward, I…’

‘Leave me. Leave me to die. I want nothing more from this place!’

Piers felt as though his heart must rip apart with compassion as he stood in the doorway and watched Huward lumbering down the road towards his home. ‘Huward,’ he said again, but it was just a whisper. He couldn’t do anything. There was nothing any man could do to protect Huward. His life was ruined.

‘Sweet Mother of God!’ Osbert said, and covered his face with his hands. ‘He’s dead, already dead. Did you see his face? Jesus, save us all! My father has much to answer for!’

‘He has much to answer for,’ Piers repeated in agreement.

Sir Ralph found the place lying peaceful and calm as the sun dipped down behind the hills. He tied his horse’s reins to a sapling and entered with a feeling of trepidation, wondering whether Huward would be there. If he was, Sir Ralph was not sure how he might react.

It was hard. If he could have stopped himself, if Gilda could have, he would. Until he met her, he had enjoyed many of the women in the area, for they had no clerk to help them bring a suit against their legal owner, and when he wanted to slake his lusts, he could do so with almost any of them, but then he had grown to know Gilda, and that woman had turned his heart and stopped his whoring. He had watched Gilda grow to maturity, and he had been besotted.

She had been utterly different. Long-legged, tall, elegant as a young filly, and with a spark in her eye, she had attracted all the men for miles around. He had known that he must possess her, and she was nothing loath. They had begun meeting, and remained lucky, for she had not succumbed to pregnancy, but they couldn’t continue for ever and Annicia would have been very difficult if she had learned that he was whoring about so near to their home, so Sir Ralph had hit upon the scheme of making his mistress legitimate in his own way. He couldn’t marry her himself, but he could share her.

The idea was marvellous in its simplicity. He had often noticed the miller watching her with more than a little interest. A man notices another’s lustful glances at his woman. At first she had declared her reluctance, but she couldn’t live in the castle with him. Something must be done, and at least Sir Ralph could make her life easier than for most other women. One day, Sir Ralph broached the subject with Huward and told him that he thought she would accept him, saying that Sir Ralph himself would offer a sizeable dowry, and Huward had been embarrassingly grateful.

It had led to problems. She had been furious at first, demanding to know what he meant by giving her away to someone she found tedious, but eventually she agreed to follow his plan. The row had been furious like a summer fire on the moors, but when it burned out, they both enjoyed the slow making up.

For the next seventeen years, that was that. His daughters and son were born, and he and Gilda enjoyed their illicit liaison at every opportunity. Huward was delighted to have been told by his master to marry the most attractive wench in the vill, and she grew to agree that Sir Ralph’s choice had been good. Huward was a good man, a kind and never overbearing father, a diligent worker, and an undemanding lover. He never had any clue that he was being cuckolded.

Now all that was gone. All was at risk. Annicia was furious. Well, it was no surprise, but he had to confess the reason for his misery over Mary’s death. Annicia had accused him of being Mary’s lover and getting her pregnant. That accusation was so repugnant that Sir Ralph retaliated by confessing his affair with Gilda.

Poor Mary. She had been the image of her mother. Tall and slender as a willow-wand, soft, gentle, kind even to that half-brained cretin Sampson. And now no more. Gone, like a dandelion clock in a gust. It felt as though a part of him had been destroyed, like a slow stab-wound in his belly, a raking agony that wouldn’t mend.

All this passed through his mind as he bent beneath the lintel and glanced inside. There he saw Ben sitting at a bench with a large pitcher of ale before him. The boy stood, uncomfortable in the presence of the Knight, shooting a look at his mother, who sat near the hearth on a stool, watching the flames.

‘You, boy – out!’

Ben curled his lip, and Sir Ralph could have sworn he heard an oath, but then he sauntered from the place.

‘Gilda? Are you all right?’ he asked softly.

She looked across the room at him. Her face was ravaged, her eyes dull, all light dimmed. Where once she had been taut and firm, now she was a haggard bag of flesh that sagged. ‘So you came at last.’

‘I wanted to come before, but how could I while he was here? He’s gone?’

‘He didn’t come back here after your court. What did you do, taunt him with the facts of my infidelity? Did you say to him how good I was in bed for you, like some whore from the stews?’

‘Nothing, I swear it! I told him nothing at all.’

She sighed, a sound that shuddered like a sob, and picked up ash, letting it trickle through her fingers. ‘I don’t care. If he knows and comes back and kills me, it doesn’t matter. There is nothing for me to live for now. He will call me whore, reject my children, and maybe sell me to his friends to make their sport as they will. What is there for me? Ashes and dust. That’s all we all win in the end, isn’t it? I should never have married him – he deserved better.’

‘Don’t speak like this, my love, my darling. You are my only love, is there nothing I can–’

‘Keep away from me! This is all your doing! You wanted me although you were to marry that cold bitch for her lands, and to possess me, to make me whore for you, you gave me to another, so we could cuckold him – a good, kind man who didn’t deserve it, just so you could enjoy yourself with me.’