Simon laughed aloud. If Baldwin truly believed that, he also knew it was surely the only advantage in a life of utter poverty. For a marriage to be recognised it was necessary that a man and woman should be seen to give their promises, but there was no legal requirement for them to be made in the church’s grounds – that was merely a custom that had grown up. Often poorer people would swear their oaths in the presence of friends, and only at some later stage, when the wedding had long been consummated, would they go to the priest for his blessing. But the rich felt the urge to go to the church door, even if only on the practical ground that all their servants should be able to see their new mistress.
‘And miss out on your feast? How would Jeanne feel about that?’
‘Have you seen how many people she has invited?’
Simon clapped his friend on the back. It was many years since his own marriage, but he hadn’t forgotten the gut-churning embarrassment of standing before all his contemporaries and other hecklers at the church door. He knew how his friend felt – and took a cynical pleasure in maximising his suffering.
‘All your good money going to waste on wine and ale for comparative strangers, eh?’
‘I grudge no one my drink. If anyone will regret his thirst, it will be the drinker himself, tomorrow morning,’ Baldwin retaliated, casting a sidelong look at his friend. Simon had more than once been seen looking faintly green about the face, quiet and introspective, the morning after an evening of Baldwin’s hospitality.
The knight secretly studied his friend as they approached the church. The bailiff’s grey eyes gazed out at the world with a calm self-confidence, and Baldwin knew that in part his strength of spirit came from his wife, Margaret. Theirs had not been a marriage of estates, a contract between wealthy families designed to seal a business transaction or guarantee an inheritance; their vows had been willingly exchanged.
Baldwin was pleased that his own wedding had likewise sprung from mutual affection and friendship, but it was the other aspect of the ceremony which gave him a strong sense of unease, for Baldwin had been a Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, a Knight Templar, and ever since the destruction of the Order by an avaricious French King and his lackey, the Pope at Avignon, Baldwin had held the Church and its organisation in contempt. For that reason Baldwin had chosen to wear a tunic of white today, in memory of the Order he had served and the men with whom he had lived, at whose side he had fought, and whose lives had been betrayed and ended in persecution ordered by the French King.
It was also why he wore his new riding sword. He wanted to have the symbol of his Order with him at his marriage: perhaps for sentimental reasons, perhaps because he felt the need to affirm his comrades at such an important ceremony. He was no philosopher, and did not seek to understand his own motives, but was happy that the new sword weighed heavily at his hip with the little carved Templar cross nearest his person.
He had friends within the Church, it was true, men such as Peter Clifford, the Dean of Crediton Church, but for Baldwin, a knight who had taken the three-fold oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience, a system that was led by the Pope, a man who had cynically discarded the Templars purely for his own profit, was itself corrupt.
Still, he reflected, approaching the grey block of the old church on the hill, at least today it wouldn’t be that damned fool Alfred, the priest who usually held the services at Cadbury; Peter Clifford himself had agreed to officiate.
‘Come on, Baldwin, stop dawdling!’ Simon chuckled and led the way up the last few hundred yards to St Michael’s Church.
Here the crowd was thicker, with many friends from Crediton where Baldwin was the Keeper of the King’s Peace. The gravedigger was shamefacedly trying to conceal his spade behind him, thinking it looked out of place today. Mingled among the crowd were others: squires, knights and a banneret. Even the local Coroner had made the journey from Exeter. Their horses stood at the edge of the churchyard, held by grooms while their riders mingled and chattered, waiting for Baldwin and his bride. Near the entrance were parked Baldwin’s own wagons, filled with barrels of his latest brew of ale, and his servants and guests were all making free of it.
For once the abstemious knight felt jealous of drinkers.
Lady Katharine was in her hall. Outside the sun was high in the sky and it illuminated the room with long shafts of light in which dust-motes and insects danced. Occasionally a swallow entered and circled above, then darted out through the window again.
If this was a normal time, she would be outside, sitting in her small garden, listening to the birds singing, while sewing or working with Daniel to ensure the manor produced a profit. If her husband were still alive, she might go hunting with him, her falcon on her wrist.
But this was not a normal time. Her man was dead, and so was her son.
She could remember when she first met her husband. It was seven years ago now, when the King had been in St Albans, and Katharine’s father, a knight banneret, had been in attendance.
It had been wretched. Famine was striking all in the kingdom, for rain had killed off much of the harvest, and what remained had to be dried in great ovens before it could be used for anything. Although the King tried to control prices by issuing Ordinances which regulated the cost of all foodstuffs, these only strengthened the black market. Floods were widespread, and Katharine could remember the despair of farmers who couldn’t sow their crops. In St Albans there was no bread to be had, not even for the King himself.
And in the midst of this gloom, she had been the target of every fool in parti-coloured hose. Youths so callow she had no wish to give them a second glance, had circled about her like dogs around a bitch. Some tried to amuse her with jokes; she ignored them. Others flattered her and tried to tempt her with gifts; she rejected them. But her success in ridding herself of these popinjays only led to others trying to attract her with lewd words; one even suggested she should let him visit her in her room. Him she had stared at coldly, and left.
All the time she was pestered by these fools, Squire Roger had avoided her gaze. She had looked to him often, where he stood at the other side of the room, hoping that he might recognise her plight and come to rescue her, but he had nobly smiled and moved on. Only later did she realise that he had thought her content with men of her own age. Yet she had not desired them. She only ever wanted a strong husband, a real man. Someone like him.
And it had been a real delight, a wonderful, ecstatic recognition, when she had seen the love in his eyes. She had thought him cold, but that was a mask to conceal his true feelings. When she confessed how she felt, she found him as passionate as herself, and that same day she and he had become handfast, engaged to be married.
Her father had not been over the moon about it. He’d been hoping for a good local marriage to strengthen his lands, but he was too kindly a man to ignore the obvious adoration that Squire Roger felt for his daughter, and which was so clearly reciprocated. And, he might well have reflected, there could be advantage in being allied to the squire of Sir Reginald of Hatherleigh.
But their time together had been too short, Katharine thought as the breath caught in her throat and she felt another bout of sobbing threaten her composure. And now their only child was gone as well.
Her husband had fallen from his horse, and it must have been God’s will that he should have died there and then, but Katharine couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that Edmund had contributed to his end.
A murdered man might be gathered up to God because He had ordained the fellow should die, but his killer should still be punished. That was why she had a personal determination to see Edmund pay, forcing him to revert to servile status. He had angered Squire Roger and possibly increased the heat of his blood, making him burst his heart.