He was. But if this was a battle of sorts, the child looking happily around was outclassed by the woman opposite him; the dowager had all the dignity. With her pale, immobile face set round by its black wimple, she might have been a statue of contrasting marble. She also had more lawyers standing beside her, men who looked like lawyers in contrast to Master Dickon, now taking his place beside Pippy.
A voice spoke from the dais in the flat, thin timber of age that nevertheless traveled to the spectators and beyond. “Sheriff, has Philip of Wolvercote given you security for prosecuting his claim?”
“That’s Richard De Luci,” Emma breathed. “The Chief Justiciar himself. Oh, dear, this is so weighty. Should I be putting Pippy through it?”
The sheriff of Somerset, a florid, harassed-looking man in robes as scalloped as the awning over his separate bench, stood up. “He has, my lord.”
“And have you summoned by good summoners twelve free and lawful men from the neighborhood of Wolvercote Manor ready to declare on oath whether Lord Ralph of Wolvercote, father of the aforesaid Philip, was seized of his fee of the aforesaid manor on the day he died?”
“I have, my lord.” The sheriff waved toward a box nearby into which twelve men had been crammed like milk churns into a cart.
“Who speaks for them?”
One of the men extricated himself sufficiently to stand up. “I do, my lord. Richard de Mayne, knight, holding twelve virgates in the parish of Martlake. My land marches with Wolvercote’s on the north.”
“Have you and the others viewed the manor in this case?” The Chief Justiciar of England, like his voice, was thin. His head, which resembled a snake’s, moved slowly in the direction of his questions, giving the impression that it would strike at a lie like an adder at a frog.
“We have, my lord, and of our own knowledge we can say that Lord Wolvercote was receiving the rents and services. He died elsewhere, but we are in accord that he owned the manor at the time and that after his death his mother took possession of it, having previously occupied a dower house in the parish of Shepton.”
“That’s one answered,” Emma said. At Adelia’s look, she explained. “Two questions. Morte d’Ancestor asks just two questions… I can’t stand this, I swear I’m going to faint.”
Suddenly a new voice, a contralto, floated across the field, as unimpassioned as De Luci’s but considerably more beautiful. “My son was unlawfully hanged for treason by the king you serve.”
The Justiciar’s head turned by inches toward the dowager’s chair. “My understanding is that your son was hanged for murder, madam, not treason. However, that matter is not in question here. Nor, as a woman, are you permitted to speak in this court. Address your remarks through your counselor.”
The intervention had caused a flurry among the lawyers surrounding the dowager’s chair, the eldest among them speaking urgently into her ear. He put a warning hand on her shoulder, but, with one white finger, the dowager flicked it away.
The Chief Justiciar hadn’t finished. “Master Thomas, your client has been summoned three times to attend before us, and only now has she appeared.”
“I do not recognize the authority of this court.” Again, the dowager’s voice rang out.
This time Master Thomas’s hand clamped on the woman’s shoulder and would not be removed. “My lord, my client begs your mercy. The procedure is new to her, as indeed it is to us all. Her age confuses her.”
There was a murmur of sympathy from the crowd; liked or not, the dowager was a woman of Somerset, a county that regarded even the adjoining Devonshire as a foreign land. “What you at?” somebody cried out, “comin’ down from Lunnon to bully that poor old soul.”
De Luci ignored the shout. “And now, Sir Richard…”
“Dear God, here it comes.” Emma’s grip on Adelia’s arm became painful. “The second question.”
“… can you attest that the plaintiff is the heir to Lord Ralph of Wolvercote?”
There was a shifting among the jurors in the box.
The dowager’s lawyer stepped forward. “My lord, my client rejects that he is. She will swear on oath that there was never a marriage between the plaintiff’s mother and her son and that accordingly, the plaintiff is an impostor or a bastard or both.”
The crowd turned its attention to the little boy in the chair. Impervious to what was going on, he was beginning to be bored and had taken a piece of string from his sleeve and was playing cat’s cradle with it.
Emma’s and Adelia’s eyes met, agonized.
The dowager was right in essence; if a bride had to give consent, as according to the law she must, then Emma had never been married.
Abducted by Wolvercote, who wanted her fortune, from the Oxfordshire convent where she was being educated, her abductor’s hand had been placed over her mouth as she struggled to say “No” to the priest bribed to pronounce them married.
In effect, Pippy was the illegitimate child of rape.
Here was Master Dickon’s turn, and he stepped forward. He was enjoying the moment, and it was noticeable to Adelia that he was also softening his London speech. “My lord, we have produced a witness before the jury and a sworn statement from an unimpeachable source that there was indeed a marriage and that my client was subsequently born nine months later.”
“Has such a witness and such a statement been produced?” De Luci asked the jury.
Sir Richard was wriggling. “Well, they have, my lord, but we’d be glad to hear them again, to see what you think.”
“It is not what I think, it is what must be proved to you. However, we will allow a repetition.”
Master Dickon’s stripling dashed into the crowd and came back lugging a little old man in the long tunic of a priest.
Dickon introduced him to the judges. “This is Father Simeon, my lord, a priest of Oxford who will attest that he conducted a ceremony of marriage between the late Lord Wolvercote and Emma, daughter to Master Bloat, a vintner of Abingdon.”
“Mother of God, I can’t bear to look at him,” Emma whispered. “He was there; he said the words.” The memory made her retch.
In Wolvercote’s effort to secure Emma’s fortune for himself, Father Simeon had been just what he wanted, one of the Church’s derelicts who, having lost any cure or parish of his own, begged his bread at the tables of the charitable, and gave his blessing to anybody who’d buy it with a pot of ale. His tunic was filthy, his tonsure almost obscured by stubble, and he shook, with nerves or old age or drink, possibly all three.
Where had Master Dickon managed to find him? Adelia wondered. And was it worthwhile? The man was hardly a credible witness.
However, Father Simeon was producing a document as tattered as himself, proving that in the distant past he had been properly ordained.
“He’ll have to maintain that the marriage was legal,” Adelia reassured Emma, “or he’ll admit that he presided over an unlawful ceremony.”
“But will they take his word? Will they want papers? I don’t remember any certificate-I doubt that old pig can even write.”
Since some of the jury couldn’t read, the proof of Father Simeon’s priesthood had to be read out to them and then passed up to the judge.
The crowd listened with intent; nearly as good as trial by battle, this was.
At a nod from De Luci, Master Dickon began questioning his witness. On the feast of Saint Vintula in the year of Our Lord 1172 had Father Simeon solemnized a marriage between Ralph, Lord of Wolvercote, and Emma Bloat?
The priest’s shakes became more pronounced, and he was ordered to speak up. “Yes, yes,” he managed. “Yes, I did. Lord Wolvercote… yes, I remember perfectly, he asked me to marry them, and I did.”
“And was the marriage solemnized according to the law of the land?”
“Yes, it was. I’m sure it was, perfectly.”