Chambers of Death (22 page)

He sighed. Nothing had ever been uncomplicated for him, and he had no cause to think that would change. All men owed God allegiance, whether king or villein. For those sent to a religious house, even the ones who doubted or felt undeserving, they must bend the knee and find ways to pray. And he was most certainly one of the most unworthy to enter any priory.

Yet Anchoress Juliana had given him both direction and hope with her advice. Patience was a virtue he was trying to learn, and he could only wait for something to happen to guide him into the right choices. Friends he most certainly had in this life and now, it seemed, the favor of his prioress. With grim humor he considered how often she was placed in the middle of unnatural deaths. If he wanted adventure, he might be well-advised to stay at her side.

With that thought, Thomas took a deep breath, urged his horse forward, and followed his prioress and their company on the road leading back to Tyndal Priory.

Author’s Notes

No matter how bleak the events in this story, the months following were the beginning of a far more disconcerting historical time.

By August 1284, Edward I had finally arrived home and was crowned. While his father, Henry III, has never been considered one of England’s more talented monarchs, Edward ranks with the most noteworthy. A fascinating and complex man, his reign would be marked by both greatness and brutality. On one hand, he was the “Hammer of the Scots” and known for castles, like Harlech and Beaumaris, which he built in an attempt to beat the Welsh people into submission. In 1290, he cruelly expelled the Jews from England after he bled them dry from taxation. On the reverse side, he was the “lawyer king”, renowned for his efforts to codify and strengthen the rule of law after the lax administration of his father.

For those who became adults under Henry III’s comparatively quiet reign and the waning influence of the vibrant intellectual atmosphere of the twelfth century, the 1300s would prove an era less inclined to tolerance or acceptance of even reasoned dissent. There were many causes for this, all common ingredients in the creation of fear and uncertainty which often lead to the blunting of reason and inventiveness. Some of these were the frequent wars, a little ice age that wreaked havoc with agriculture, and the Black Death. That said, no shift in attitudes or behavior is ever born without intimations of its coming, yet those living during the evolution are often amazed when the change becomes obvious. Eleanor and Thomas have some interesting times ahead, and their storyteller does feel much sympathy for what she plans to put them through.

But, to return to the current tale, there are some less dramatic, but nonetheless interesting details worthy of more explanation.

A steward, or seneschal, acted as a deputy in estate management to men of high rank, both secular and ecclesiastical, whose lands were scattered all over the country and sometimes the continent. A secular steward was often a knight, but sometimes a younger son, and was chosen for his prudence, loyalty, and skill in farming, law, accounting, and the direction of subordinates like craftsmen, bailiffs and reeves. In charge of several properties, he visited each several times a year to preside over manor courts, review the farm work needed with the local bailiff and reeve, arrange for property repairs, and gather information needed for the annual account due his lord on Michaelmas (September 29) which was the end of the agricultural year. A good steward was highly prized and well paid, often earning enough to buy small properties of his own or gifted with same by his lord for profitable service rendered. If Tyndal Priory acquires any more property, Prioress Eleanor will also have to find a cleric to act as steward so she will not repeat the unfortunate trip she took in this book.

Since the era was primarily agrarian, we often assume that people learned farming and property management, virtually from the cradle. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered that there were actually courses for the “man of business” and treatises on good farming practices. Although universities were geared to the religious career, there were sometimes teachers in the surrounding town who offered courses in the drafting of contracts, the holding of a court, accounting, writing, business Latin, and other skills useful to the small middle class entrepreneur and those who would run estates. According to Margaret Wade Labarge in
A Baronial Household of the Thirteenth Century
, there were such instructors near Oxford in the reign of Henry III. The course lasted six months to a year.

As for treatises on farming, Walter of Henley was one of the most famous writers with his
Husbandry
. Bishop Robert Grosseteste wrote his thoughts on the subject, compiled as
Rules of St. Robert
, and an anonymous author included particular details to help stewards in
Seneschaucie.
These are just a few of the known “how to” manuals of the era.

In modern times, under laws founded in English jurisprudence, children may be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their biological parents unless the mother was married to another at the time of conception. This was not true in the thirteenth century, nor for some time after. The most famous example involved the Beauforts, children of John of Gaunt and his longtime companion, Katherine Swynford. In 1397, Richard II signed Letters Patent legitimizing them, although the parents had married in 1396 and received papal legitimation from Pope Boniface IX. Despite this official recognition, they still remained barred from succession, and many never did accept them as legal offspring. Thus it is unlikely that Stevyn and Maud, Huet’s true parents, could ever prove Stevyn’s paternity since the boy was conceived and born during his mother’s prior marriage. The truth of his birth will probably remain secret.

Regarding the issue of adultery, we assume medieval law was pretty brutal to women who committed it and more tolerant of the men. From the available documentation, this is largely true. As household head, the husband was responsible for disciplining a wife or servant who showed disobedience or disloyalty. This meant he could beat either for “good cause” and, if he killed the individual in the course of his chastisement, he might be found guilty of no greater crime than manslaughter—if he was found negligent at all. A woman who killed her husband in the process of defending herself against the blows, however, was guilty of petty treason and might be burned at the stake.

That said, we must recognize that legal records show only the cases where there was an accusation of murder. They do not include the larger number of wife-beatings that did not result in death, the deaths of husbands deemed “accidental”, nor those situations where husband and wife came to some other resolution. In this book, I wanted to show a man who did not resort to violence, to balance out popular assumptions about the era. Had Luce not been murdered, Stevyn might well have arranged “a religious vocation” for her. As a solution, it had the merit of being non-violent, and, from the medieval perspective, “saved her soul”.

Many of us know something about jongleurs and minstrels but less about theater before the famous York Cycle of a later century. Although the Church frowned on plays as pagan things, they also recognized that enactment of an event is a powerful teaching tool. Thus we have a tenth century nun, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, writing didactic dramas in the manner of Seneca, and liturgical dramas in the thirteenth century that remind one of early opera. As a university student, Huet would have known scholars who put on amateur performances of popular tales. When he visited Arras, in the area called the Artois and on the River Scarpe, he would have discovered the secular dramas of such masters as Adam de la Halle and Jehan Bodel. The tale he tells of the prodigal son is probably based on a popular play,
Courtois d’Arras.

Garderobes may have been privies or latrines, but, in some cases, they were also storage places for clothing and furs. According to a pamphlet from Old Soar Manor in Kent, the stench was believed to keep moths away, an early and equally unpleasant form of moth balls. Some might even wonder which method was more toxic—to humans as well as to insects.

And in conclusion (a phrase beloved by any who suffer through interminable speeches, common to business and politics), I must add a
mea culpa.

Not long ago, a reader in England pointed out, with graceful kindness, that I had, in my
Author’s Notes
to
Wine of Violence
, retired Eleanor of Aquitaine and Eleanor of Provence to Amesbury Priory at the end of their lives. Since both queens were notably strong-willed in life, thus likely to be possessed of equally formidable and incompatible spirits in death, they had the good sense not to die in the same place where I so foolishly put them. Instead, they wisely put the English Channel between them. Although Eleanor of Provence did spend her last years, from1286 to 1291, at Amesbury Priory in Wiltshire, Eleanor of Aquitaine retired and was buried at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou some eighty-seven years before.

Bibliography

Once again, I would like to list a few books that might be of interest to readers and ones that most certainly gave me many hours of pleasurable reading. Any erroneous use of information is my fault alone and sincerely regretted.

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