Huward entered the barn, his attention fixed on Osbert with an expression that made Os shiver as though someone had walked over his grave. It was a dead face, as though Huward had already lost his soul and was staring into the pit of Hell.
‘Huward, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were there.’
Standing a little inside the doorway, Huward showed no emotion. He didn’t speak; he couldn’t. The discovery of his wife’s deceit and disloyalty had snapped something inside him. It felt as though his entire life had been a sham. He had believed in his wife, in her love, in her devotion – and in his children. To learn that the children might not be his own, that was too much to bear. Although he had spent the night with Surval trying to come to grips with this, to see how he could rebuild his life and make peace with his wife, the more he considered how she had lied to him over the years, the more he felt that he couldn’t go back.
This conclusion he had reached as he walked about during the morning after leaving Surval at dawn. He had not been hungry, and the idea of food made him feel physically sick. Perhaps he could have gone back to his mill, confronted his wife, demanded to know if it were true – but no. It could serve no useful purpose. All it could do was harm the memory of his Mary and hurt poor Flora. Ben would survive, and Gilda would probably be granted a pension from Sir Ralph, the
bastard
! No, Flora didn’t deserve to be hurt. And she might still be his own daughter. Gilda couldn’t know which was Sir Ralph’s and which was Huward’s child.
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.’
‘My love…’
‘Don’t call me that! I’m not your love. I’m just your serf – your slave. You owned me, but then you made a gift of me to another so that you could come and possess me again. You let another man protect your children, feed them, clothe them, never knowing that they were as cuckoos in his nest. And now my Mary is dead, all because of our deceits.’
‘It was the only thing we could do,’ he said. ‘What else could we have done? If we hadn’t, we would never have given birth to her.’
She shuddered again. ‘Better we hadn’t. I wish we hadn’t because losing her is so… so…’
‘We shall find her murderer and see him hang. You will feel better when you see him hanging from my oak tree.’
‘You would swear to do that for me? No matter who the murderer is?’ she said quickly, a light flashing in her eye.
‘As soon as I catch that shitty-trousered priest, I’ll–’
‘Not
him
,’ she said scornfully. ‘The man who killed her was your son. Your precious Esmon, the foul degenerate.’
‘No, it wasn’t him.’
‘He was there, wasn’t he? My son saw him in the lane, just after he saw you.’
Ralph was silent. It was the one clue he had hoped would not be discovered, the fact that Esmon had been there that day. The terrible gnawing fear began to scratch and scrabble at his bowels. He had lost Mary, he
couldn’t
lose Esmon too. ‘You must take my word. He is innocent of this.’
‘It’s one of the few crimes which are not his responsibility, then,’ she spat. ‘Ask him what he was doing there. Just ask him!’
‘I don’t have to,’ Sir Ralph said miserably. ‘He was trying to find Wylkyn, to kill him.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Baldwin was surprised when Lady Annicia took him and Simon out of the hall and into the solar behind. She graciously motioned to them to take seats, but waved the watchmen out, along with Hugh. Roger Scut hung around as though in two minds whether he was invited to join them, and she stood surveying him for a long moment, before finally shrugging her assent to his remaining. However, when she saw that Hugh too had stayed, planted stolidly next to Simon, her expression hardened, although she made no comment.
‘So, Lordings, you want these men released. Why should I do so?’
‘They are innocent travellers, my Lady,’ Baldwin said. He was a little confused by the way that this woman had taken control, but foremost in his mind was the desire to remove the captured men, as well as Simon, Hugh, the watchmen, and himself, from the castle. A castle was always a dangerous place for strangers, but this one, so Baldwin reckoned, was worse than most. The men-at-arms were too surly, and the whole place seemed to be ready to explode into violence and mutiny at any moment:
‘The men who are held are guilty of no crime, and were captured on the road while on the King’s business. Coroner Roger de Gidleigh had ordered the carter to our inn to wait for us, and he was on his way there under guard from two of the Coroner’s own men. These are the fellows you hold. Are they to be ransomed to the King himself?’
‘That would be the act of a felon.’
‘I know.’
‘I shall see them released,’ she said coquettishly, ‘on the understanding that any charges you might have brought against my son are forgotten. Esmon is a little wilful sometimes, but he is a good child, and I wouldn’t want to see him troubled by the threat of a court.’
Simon took an angry breath. ‘You wouldn’t want him… Your son tried to kill me, Lady, and if my servant hadn’t risked his own life, I might well be dead! My man Hugh threw himself between me and your son and saved my life.’
‘I am sure it was an accident. He will apologise.’
Simon cast a look at Hugh. ‘I require no apology, but my servant will need a physician’s aid when he gets to his home and I doubt that he could afford the services of a good man. Your son must pay for that. Shall we say fifty shillings?’
‘Fifty…’ The Lady Annicia was astonished to hear so high a sum suggested, but she recovered herself quickly. ‘I am sure that my son will be happy to pay. An accident like this is always unfortunate, and we must make sure that your fellow is as well looked after as he can be. Although,’ she added with a venomous look at the broadly grinning Hugh, ‘I cannot imagine that the physician in his vill would warrant such a price for his skills. I did nurse him myself, you know, and I think he has waxed well on our best wine all day.’
Simon saw Hugh’s glee and gave a slow nod. ‘I think that will be adequate compensation, Lady.’
‘So we can forget all matters which affect my son?’