In the glorious weather, long balmy evenings ran on from hot work in the fields, and couples went to drink in taverns and alehouses after slaving all day.
In retrospect, Surval was pleased that Mary’s last year had been so happy.
In the bright hall of his new castle, in the early spring of 1323, Sir Ralph de Wonson sat still a short while after his Reeve had spoken, and his face blanched as he took in the news. ‘But it’s monstrous!’ he thundered. ‘It can’t be true. Have you been there yourself? Have you seen the body?’
His son Esmon sniffed and looked bored, but Lady Annicia put a hand out on her husband’s wrist to calm him. She knew how his rage could explode.
Sir Ralph shook her hand off and glared at the Reeve. ‘Well?’
‘My Lord, there is no doubt. I haven’t been there myself yet, but I trust Elias. He’s no fool.’
‘CHRIST’S PENANCE! If I find this is true, I’ll take the man’s
ballocks
with my own knife and feed them to him!’ Sir Ralph bellowed and slammed a clenched fist into his left hand.
Then a thought struck him. His brother! The bastard had once killed a woman after getting her pregnant. That was why he had come back here to Gidleigh like a whipped hound, tail between his legs! Could he have taken Mary and realised that he couldn’t stay here if his second offence became known?
‘Christ Jesus!’ he swore. He felt numbed, broken.
Lady Annicia pursed her lips, for she was always distressed to hear the Good Lord’s name spoken blasphemously, but she curbed her tongue. It was only fair that her husband should be disturbed after hearing such terrible news, and in his present mood he was likely to strike her if she remonstrated with him.
‘What did Elias actually see?’ he asked, leaning forward in his new chair.
Piers Wike the Reeve was a slight man in his early forties, with narrow features and dark eyes. He had a strong cast in his left eye which lent him a somewhat piratical air that was entirely at odds with his nature. Shorter than the knight, he stood only some five and a quarter feet in his bare feet, but that might have been due in part to the bowed back, a defect granted to him at birth by a drunken midwife, so his mother said. ‘My Lord, Elias said he heard a shout in the late forenoon, while he was out at Deave Lane ploughing. Said he was turning, heading away from the moors, when he heard it.’
‘Heard what? Get on with it, fool! God’s precious wounds, you would take an hour to describe a nail!’
‘Elias said he heard voices, a man and Mary both shouting, and then she gave a scream, and there was a slap. There was silence for a while, and then someone ran off, up towards Throwleigh. He thought someone had been arguing, didn’t think more of it than that. Didn’t realise there could be anything wrong, what with no more shouting or nothing, so he didn’t make a move. Then, later, when he left with the ox team to settle them for the night, he found her lying in the roadway, poor chit.’
‘You mean to tell us that someone has killed one of our serfs?’ Esmon drawled. ‘Actually damaged our property? What a scandal!’
The knight stared at him and took a deep breath, his face growing purple. His mood was plain enough, even to an exhausted Reeve, and although Piers was tired out, he was no fool. He quickly continued, ‘As I said, it was Mary, the older daughter of Huward the miller. She was beside the roadway, as though she had crawled there to lie with her back to the wall. Her skirts were up, Sir Ralph, and there was blood all about her thighs.’
‘She’d been raped?’ the knight rasped. He strode over to Piers and stood with his head lowered, staring at the man. His voice dropped menacingly. ‘Is that what you’re saying? She was raped by some bastard while that cretin wandered about with his oxen for company, dreaming about cider?’
Esmon was gazing at Piers shrewdly. ‘You say that the old peasant heard voices shouting and so on. Who was the man?’
Piers glanced at his father, but Sir Ralph was clenching and unclenching his fists like a man with an anguished soul. ‘I spoke to Sampson,’ Piers said. ‘He saw the priest from the chapel going up there.’
Sir Ralph felt a momentary relief. At least it wasn’t Surval! But then his anger took over. He remembered seeing Mary at the priest’s door two years ago, and he recalled pulling the little monk to him and threatening him, should Mark ever go near Mary again. He hadn’t listened, though, had he? The little turd had gone ahead, and now he’d raped and killed her.
Esmon murmured, ‘Christ’s cods! A damned clerk raped and killed her!’
Piers found himself meeting Esmon’s gaze. The lad looked amused! It was awful, and Piers had to bite back a comment. He met Sir Ralph’s gaze, and his voice was hard when he replied, ‘No, Sir Ralph. Least, if she was raped, it wasn’t the first time. That young maid was with child.’
Chapter Four
Mark would have been grateful for any company, even if it meant his arrest and later death, he was so worn out from flight and mental torment after seeing her lying dead.
It was almost an instinctive thing at first, heading for the water, but as soon as he was in it, he knew he had to go where pursuit wouldn’t think of looking. That meant following the stream to its source, he reckoned, heading northwards. Surely the Hue and Cry would think he was going to head straight for the coast, maybe following the river south to the Teign and thence to the sea. No. He’d not make his capture easy.
He was soaked. Shortly after slipping into the sluggish brown water of the brook, he tripped and fell headlong, slamming down onto the flat surface with a force that knocked the air from his lungs. His head struck a rock, and instantly he was overwhelmed. It was as though his senses were destroyed in an instant. His eyes could discern nothing, his ears were full of a rushing noise, and his mouth was filled with water. There was no up or down, no north or south, only this perpetual immersion: nothing had happened before, and there was no future, only an all-enveloping
now
of noise. Although a part of his mind knew he must surely die if he remained here, that this would be his grave, it was comforting, somehow. He was tired, bone tired, and just the chance of closing his eyes and shutting out the horror of the world was so attractive, that he allowed himself to be dragged along for a short while.
But then the world impinged upon him once more. He was rolled over, and air struck his face, bright sunlight burst upon his closed eyes. Coughing and choking, he realised that the air was so much warmer than the water, it was like a waft of dragon’s breath.
The water pushed him gently into a shallow, and he felt his head bump another rock, but softly, as though the river itself was trying to stir him without alarming him, conscious of his suffering.
His suffering! What could water – yea, or earth or fire! – know of suffering? Mark felt as though he had been born to suffer, that his existence was marked by the endurance of pain and fear, overwhelming sorrow and misery.
Mark lifted himself from the river, shivering uncontrollably, and stumbled up to the bank, but he couldn’t carry on. He threw himself to his hands and knees, retching, and while there, all he could see in his mind’s eye was her: Mary.
It was the sight of her body that had made him bolt. He had hit her, yes, but not hard. Not hard enough to kill. Not hard enough to make her miscarry! He had slapped at her, the blow glancing off her shoulder and then, as she stared at him with her love turning to loathing, he had felt his life shatter like a window struck by a stone. He was supposed to be celibate, yet he had lain with this maid; he was supposed to be kindly, yet he had struck at her in rage. And then, when he went back later, he saw that she was dead, and he was sure that it was he who had killed her. Overwhelmed with horror, he fled the sight and that cursed vill.
He knew what he had done, knew that he was wrong to have lain with her, not once, but at every opportunity during the last summer and autumn, no matter how many times he had prayed to God. It was no use. Every time she had come to him again, drawn to him by some power that neither could understand, he had allowed himself to submit to his natural instincts. They had once tried to pray together, when he had insisted, hoping that if he were to ask help from God while she was there at his side, perhaps God could give him a sign, or merely eradicate every vestige of whoring from Mark’s soul, but even that had failed. It was as though He had turned his back on Mark.
The young priest wiped his mouth on his sleeve, went to a tree-stump and slumped against it. Until today his whole life had been marked out: he would go on his journey, and when he returned, he would go to the university. From there, he would take up a senior position with Bishop Walter at Exeter, or perhaps, if the good Bishop was still Treasurer, then maybe Mark might be able to find a position with him in the King’s Exchequer in London. His future had seemed bright and ripe for promotion; now all was lost, and all because he couldn’t keep his tarse in his hose.
It felt as though the entire world had rejected him. Until today his life had been untroubled except by loneliness, but now his future had been snatched from him. His past friends would be his companions no longer; the teachers and choir at Exeter Cathedral would not stop to talk as had been their wont. All the delights he had anticipated, all the pleasures, all the duties, had been cruelly snatched away. His life was ruined purely because of one error – the girl, and a thoughtless fist.
He could see the pain in her eyes as soon as he struck her. She had fallen and he had hesitated, sickened, before bolting. Later, when he came to his senses and returned, there she was, lying on the ground, her legs parted and blood, blood
everywhere
! He’d nearly thrown up on the spot, revolted by the sight of his lover, exposed like a slab of pork on the butcher’s table.
Standing there, his mind seemed to work with an immediate clarity. Everyone would think he had intentionally killed her. He hadn’t, he’d only lashed out at her, but that wouldn’t be enough for the locals here, Christ’s blood, no! They would appeal him. He was an outsider who had got one of their women pregnant and wanted to avoid the shame and expense of an illegitimate child.
If he was found, if he was caught, he could claim Benefit of Clergy, demand to be tried in the ecclesiastical court, but he knew he’d be dead long before he could get there. No one in the village would try to protect him. He knew how the place worked: it was Sir Ralph’s manor against the world. They looked upon a man who came from South Tawton as a foreigner, and that was a town only some four miles away. If the Hue was raised against him and he were captured, his life would be worth nothing. What was the value of a foreigner’s life compared to the hurt and sorrow felt by a father for his murdered daughter?
Nothing!
They would castrate him and hang him from the nearest tree, rather than wait for the Law to take its measured time to consider his case and release him into the Bishop’s hands for trial.
The Bishop’s court. He had been there several times listening to cases; once he had helped make a note of the transcripts of a case. Sitting there before the Bishop’s steward and the clerics who would try the matter, he had felt as though their importance and glory was reflected upon him, just as light from a candle could illuminate the faces of three or four, although it was intended to assist only one man to read.
Once or twice, while the judges were deliberating, he had studied the man who stood so patiently before them. Pale, thin, worn down with work, he had been accused of stealing a sheep from the Cathedral. If he was found guilty, he would be hanged immediately. In his eyes, Mark saw resignation. No shame, no guilt, just a weary acceptance. He didn’t expect sympathy. That was some seven years ago, 1316, and famine was killing people up and down the country: men, women and children lay starving, weakened by malnutrition, their souls weighed down with the grim weather. Oh, what weather! Mark could recall it only with horror. It rained all through the winter, and then on into the summer in those famine years. Harvests failed. Animals collapsed and died. It was as though God Himself had decided to punish the world. First the loss of the Crusader kingdoms, then the announcement of the crimes of the Templars, and now famine, pestilence – and the war in Scotland. No one would consider a man who stole to fill his belly to be deserving of kindness. If he were treated leniently, others would try the same. So he had been hanged.
Never, during that trial, had it occurred to Mark that he might one day stand there himself, pleading his own case. At least he wouldn’t be hanged by the Bishop. Priests could anticipate a less rough form of justice. The penance might be severe, but it would not entail death.
That was the spur that had set his legs running originally. He couldn’t simply wait there to be taken and executed without trying to save himself. He had pelted up Deave Lane, hardly knowing where he was going, through Throwleigh and out towards the mill east of the vill. There was a stream there that flowed from the moors. The Baron would seek him with dogs, he knew. He must escape by evading their noses.
The stream was cold enough to take the breath away, but Mark didn’t care. He splashed on through the water, desperate to put as many miles between him and pursuit as possible. The way was hard, with trees and bushes snagging at his clothes. He had to duck beneath straggling branches, soaking his tunic with water so cold he felt his flesh creep. His chest was constricted, his breath ragged with exertion, and his toes and shins were bruised and barked from falls against rocks and tree trunks. A blackthorn branch was before him now, a sharp spike almost piercing his eye, and his breath sobbed in his throat as he took hold of it, moving it away from his face. His hands were already scratched from a thousand wild roses and brambles, and as he moved on, a spine slid into his palm. In his pain, he let the branch go, and it scraped along his tonsure, two splinters breaking off in his scalp. He wailed with the pain, but he had to continue, driving himself onwards, sploshing through shallows, wading noisily through the deeper waters, until at last he reached a tributary.