Michael JECKS - The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

He retreated from her. ‘No, no, Esmon’s not so cruel. He couldn’t have done that,’ but he knew that his protestations were useless. There could be no doubt in any man’s mind that Esmon was perfectly capable of the crime.

‘It wasn’t him,’ he said once more. ‘He wasn’t up there. He couldn’t have been.’ Yet he knew Esmon had been there. He could have ridden past, just as Sir Ralph himself had; he might have seen Mary weeping, just as Sir Ralph had, and could have decided to take her there and then – afterwards breaking her neck. Perhaps it was only a short while after Sir Ralph had been there, a few moments after, while she was still alone.

‘It couldn’t have been him,’ he said more firmly. No. Esmon was a wild boy, certainly, and he was a warrior, but he didn’t murder women for no reason. He wouldn’t have gone to those extremes to conceal his rape of a peasant; a slave.

Yet once Gilda had voiced it, Sir Ralph was haunted by the idea. He had seen his son when the red mist of rage came over him like a veil of blood, when he would snatch at any weapon to hand.

And then Sir Ralph realised that Mary herself might have goaded him. She could have chided him, telling him to leave her, questioning his chivalry. She was capable of that. And then he could have struck at her in a rage, finally breaking her neck to silence her.

Gilda was rocking back and forth, weeping and calling on God to avenge her poor daughter. A part of Sir Ralph wanted to go to her and comfort her, but he was overwhelmed by the loss of Mary, her accusations against Esmon – and his own newly fired doubts about his son.

When he heard a sound at the door and looked up to see Flora, it was a relief. ‘Child, see to your mother. She is uneasy.’ He fiddled with his purse, rooted out a coin and was about to give it to her when he felt a pang of shame. It felt as though he was paying a whore. He thrust the coin into her hand as he left the mill, glad to be leaving such a gloom-filled, wretched hovel. Outside, he grabbed his reins and launched himself into his horse’s saddle, turning and staring back at the house, wondering what had happened to the miller, why Huward had disappeared so precipitately. He clapped spurs to his beast and swept off up the roadway, but soon he slowed to a trot.

Huward knew. If he could, the big man would surely try to take revenge on Sir Ralph. That’s what any man would do – kill the rival who had systematically cuckolded him over many years. It was insane of Annicia to have told him, but when Sir Ralph recalled her pained expression when he admitted Mary was his own child, he could not find it in his heart to blame her. She had been as badly hurt as Huward. So many years, and now all was coming back to destroy him. All he had done, he had done for love – but now all loathed him.

He glanced back at the mill, mouthing a curse at the foolishness of women, but when he saw the smoke and the tongues of fire licking at the building, his anger was forgotten.

Ben watched the knight canter away towards the castle with as much relief as Sir Ralph felt in escaping the place. For Ben it had been a shock to see the knight’s horse out at the front of the mill. He didn’t understand what he could be doing here at first, because Sir Ralph’s visits had grown more infrequent over the years. He remembered the knight dropping in quite often when he was younger, and being sent out to mind the chickens or to fetch water, while his mother entertained him, but in recent times Sir Ralph avoided the place. Ben wondered whether his chat with Elias in the tavern might have reached Sir Ralph’s ears.

‘Well, Mother, and how was the great man today?’ he asked breezily, entering the mill and seeing his mother and Flora at the edge of the hearth.

‘Can’t you be kind for once?’ Flora demanded. ‘She’s upset again.’

‘Yes, well, she’s been upset since dear sainted Mary passed on, hasn’t she?’

‘We’ve all been sad since then.’

‘Except some of us realised that life had to go on,’ he said. ‘There’s no point whingeing about her dying now. It’s too late.’

‘How can you be so callous about our sister? She was your sister too, wasn’t she?’

Ben smiled and walked to the ale barrel.

‘So you have nothing to say?’ Flora shouted. ‘Your sister’s lying in her grave, and you just reach for the next ale, is that it?’

‘Haven’t you told her yet, Mother?’ he said, glancing at Gilda.

She sat huddled within Flora’s arms, but when he spoke, his contempt made her recoil as though he had hit at her.

Flora hugged her tightly, alarmed to see the tears springing from Gilda’s eyes once more, but to her consternation, the woman pushed her away. ‘Leave me alone!’

‘I see you haven’t,’ Ben observed.

‘Leave us alone!’ she sobbed again. ‘Why do you want to taunt Flora too?’

‘Our mother wasn’t quite the upright woman she should have been, you know,’ he said relentlessly.

‘Few can reach your heights, I suppose,’ Flora said witheringly.

‘I use the whores when I can, but I’m not married,’ he said simply.

Flora opened her mouth, but then a horrible doubt assailed her and she looked at Gilda. Her mother was sitting quite still now, eyes firmly closed against the horror of her own son’s insults. ‘Mother?’

‘Why do you think Father has disappeared?’ Ben went on relentlessly. ‘Because he learned the truth about our mother – that she has been fucking Sir Ralph all the time she was married to him. I say “Father”, but perhaps “fool and cuckold” is fairer. Don’t you think so, Mother? “Cuckold” is so much more accurate than a silly term like “Father”, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t be so stupid, Ben,’ Flora said scathingly. ‘You don’t know what you’re on about, does he, Mother? It’s nonsense, isn’t it? Mother? Please, tell me it’s not true!’ Seeing the woman sitting with eyes still firmly closed as though in denial that this conversation was going on around her, she thought Gilda looked more like a carven figure than her real, flesh and blood parent.

She only turned away when she heard her father’s voice in the doorway. ‘Yes, deny it, woman, if you can!’

Huward was a different man from he who had left this home the day before. Since leaving, he had found that the whole foundation of his life was a lie. The love he thought he possessed from his wife was nothing. She had all the while been slaking her lubricious appetites with another man – and not just any man, but the man who owned Huward, the mill, everything! It was the most hurtful betrayal he could conceive.

‘Deny it, you bitch!’ His voice was slurred. He had more words he wanted to use – angry, bitter words that would lash at her like whips – but he couldn’t get them out. They stuck in his throat as though the barbs he intended for Gilda were choking him.

Ben walked to him wearing a sly grin. ‘So, Father, and how are you today? Drunk, I see. Perhaps I should buy you a pot of ale now, to recompense you for all your efforts over the years!’

Huward looked at him wildly. This lad, this monster , was taunting him, and suddenly Huward saw the remainder of his life clearly. All men must scorn him: the fool, the butt of jokes, while this boy, the fellow he had thought was his own flesh and blood, laughed at him and lived at Sir Ralph’s expense, deriding the peasant who had thought he was his parent. Gilda would live with him, no doubt, in luxury, while he, Huward, shivered in the cold of a loveless old age.

It was impossible to live like that, dishonoured for ever. He couldn’t do it; he wouldn’t do it.

He clenched his fist before Ben could see the quick change in his eyes, and swung it upwards. There was a crack as his knuckles slammed into the point of Ben’s chin and the slight figure lifted from the ground before hurtling back to crash down on the floor.