An Honourable Estate (33 page)

“No,” she said, shaking her head.  “No.  He is not
a bad man.  Say it isn’t true,” she said to Edmund.  “Tell me that
you did not trick me.”

“I think perhaps I should leave,” said Edmund.

“No!”  Mabel struggled to her feet and held out her
hands to him.  “Edmund, please don’t go!  There must be a way to sort
this out!”  She turned to implore William to ask him to stay, to let him
explain his innocence, but William’s face was dark and angry.

“You are not welcome in my house, Neville,” he told him and
Mabel could only watch as Edmund nodded sadly and walked to the door where he
called for his horse.

Mabel tried to follow him but William caught her and held her
back.

“Where will you go?” she called after him.

“I will spend the night at Robert Holland’s house. 
Tomorrow I will go home to Middleton.”

“Will I see you again?”

He shook his head, incapable of words, and left without
looking back at her.  She wanted to go after him, to hug him and kiss him
and comfort him and assure him that everything would somehow be all right, that
it could all be sorted out.  But she didn’t know how it could be made all
right – and she could only watch as he walked away from her.

She felt William’s arms come around her again and she turned
and sobbed against him as he held her tightly and kissed and stroked her
hair. 

“It is you, isn’t it?” she said at last as she held his face
between her palms and gazed into his hazel eyes.  Then she pressed her
lips to his.

“Forgive
me Father, for I have sinned,” she confessed.  She had wanted to walk to
the church at Wigan to make her confession, but William had forbidden it,
saying that she was not strong enough and that he would send Dicken to fetch
Father Gilbert.          

Now she focussed her mind on what yet remained to be done
before she could feel cleansed.  “Father, I am guilty of the sin of adultery,”
she told him as she bent her head in penitence.  “I must make amends
before man and God.”

“Mabel, my child,” sighed the priest.  “I feel complicit
in your sin.  I counselled you to accept that your husband was dead and
urged you to take another.  If I had not, then the burden of sin that
rests upon your shoulders would not be so heavy for you to bear.  Accept
my absolution and go in peace.”

“No, Father.  I must make amends – before man and God,”
insisted Mabel.  “Only by doing what is right and what is expected can my
soul be cleansed from this grievous sin.”

“But you know what the penance is?”

“Father, I do.  And I will gladly perform it to renew
myself before God and to prove to my husband that I am truly sorry.”

Mabel
de Haigh paused on the edge of the market place.  Her bare feet were
bloodied and torn and the snow-laden wind made her shiver as she limped
forward, bareheaded and dressed only in her linen chemise.  In her hand
she shielded a lighted taper, almost burnt down now.  The villagers who
lined her path willed her on and gave her strength.  Although the penance
for adultery was designed to be a humiliation, these people neither mocked nor
jeered her as she passed, but the men averted their eyes from her unclothed
body and the women whispered words of encouragement and sympathy.

At last she reached the stone cross and knelt before it to
pray to God for the salvation of her soul.  She was an adulteress. 
She freely admitted her sin to God, priest and man.  But she prayed that
God would forgive her as easily as Father Gilbert, her confessor, and the
people of Haigh who stood protectively around her.

“That is enough,” said Father Gilbert as she felt a warm
cloak being placed around her shoulders and the hood raised to cover her hair
which hung loose and unbraided.  “Come away now.”

She held up her hand in a silent plea for a few more moments
of prayer.  Then she crossed herself, put out the taper and stumbled to
her feet as arms grasped hers and supported her.  It was over now and she
could go home, shriven, to have her feet bathed and bandaged and to recover
from her long penitential walk.

As the priest helped her up from the market cross she saw
Harry Palmer standing with his arm around his wife’s shoulders.  The battle
scar across his face gave him an added charm she thought.  Her daughters
Bella and Amelia came to her, their eyes bright with tears, but she smiled at
them to reassure them that although the penance had bruised her physically it
had cleansed her soul and she was now content.  Then William pushed the
priest aside and lifted her from her ravaged feet.

“I am proud of you Mab,” he told her and pressed his lips to
her temple.  “You have no need of forgiveness.  What you did was
forced on you.  I love you and I always have ‒ just as you have
always loved me.”

Yes, she thought, as her tired arms clung around his neck and
the familiarity of his body reassured her.  She had never stopped loving
him.  But as he carried her to the waiting palfrey that would take her
home, she glanced over his shoulder towards the northern hills and she said
another, silent, prayer that Edmund Neville would also be granted
absolution.  For even though she would never admit it to anyone, there was
a part of her that still loved him.

Author’s Note

My research for this novel was
greatly helped by various sources.  I am grateful to the Rev. T.C.
Porteus, whose small book,
New Light on the Mab’s Cross Legend
, I discovered
in the Lancashire Authors’ Association library at Accrington.  He points
out that the story of Lady Mabel and Sir William Bradshaw has been told and
re-told over the years and has many versions.  One comes from the
Bradshaigh Roll, an ornamental pedigree probably drawn up by Randle Holme of
Chester about 1647.  In this version, Sir William went away on Crusade and
Lady Mabel married a ‘Welsh Knight’.  On his return, Sir William chased
and killed the interloper at Newton Park.  Another version of the legend
comes from a manuscript 84 years older than the Bradshaigh Roll.  This
document is in the Harleian Collection and purports to be a Declaration by Sir
William Norris of Speke Hall, dated 9
^th
June, 1563.  In it, he
recounts a story told to him by Sir Roger Bradshaw of Haigh.  Once again,
Sir William goes off on crusade and Lady Mabel marries Sir Henry Teuther, and
once again the intruder is killed by Sir William who is then pardoned by the
king. However, this version does not record the penance at all, although on the
Bradshaigh Roll it says the penance was performed weekly.

Porteus goes on to look at the events
in the country during the years of Sir William’s absence and points out that
the years were from the Banastre Rebellion in 1315 until the execution of
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster in 1322.  It makes sense that Sir William was a
rebel and became a Lancastrian Robin Hood, hiding in the forest because he was
a wanted man, and it is this version of events that I have used in my
re-telling of the legend.

Sir Peter Lymesey was the man who
held the lands at Haigh for a year and a day, but Porteus suggests that it was
more likely that it was the county sheriff, Edmund Neville, who became Lady
Mabel’s bigamous husband as some accounts refer to the man she married as
‘Osmond’.

I am also grateful to Kathryn Warner
for her excellent blog
www.edwardthesecond.blogspot.co.uk
which provided invaluable background
information for this and future novels. 

The cross to which Lady Mabel de
Haigh walked barefoot as a penance for her adultery can be found outside Mab’s
Cross Primary School in Wigan.  And in Wigan Parish Church the effigies of
Lady Mabel and Sir William lie side by side – Mabel with her hands clasped in
prayer, and Sir William reaching for his sword.

More information about the background
history of the novel, along with photographs, can be found at my website
www.elizabethashworth.com

By the same author:

Fiction:

The de Lacy Inheritance

Non-fiction:

Champion Lancastrians

Tales of Old Lancashire

Lancashire: Who Lies Beneath?