Van Relenghes gave a gentle laugh. ‘I know I am suffering -I drank far more than usual last night. I gather your men drank a lot as well. Especially after they had spoken to the bailiff and his friend the knight.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh,’ the Fleming chuckled. ‘They forgot to mention it, did they? Well, never mind. I am sure they didn’t tell the bailiff anything he didn’t already know.’
‘You bastard!’ Thomas blustered. He was feeling bitter: the little scene with the boy just now had reinforced his feelings of being ignored and treated like some kind of untrustworthy felon. He wanted to lash out and hurt someone, but there was no one suitable, apart from this tall, sarcastic Fleming. ‘You foreign buggers are all the same.’
‘Oh – in what way?’
‘You can’t lose gracefully, can you? You wanted my brother’s land, and now I won’t let you have it you’ll enjoy anything that discomforts me.’
‘I only enjoy scenes which I have myself created.’
His calm words took a moment to sink in, but when he realised what the man had said, Thomas gasped and stopped dead in the road. ‘You told her that I’d been negotiating with you? Is that why she made that scene in the church?’
Van Relenghes chuckled softly, then leaned forward until his face was only inches from Thomas’s. “ Yes, fool! If you had a brain to think with, you’d have realised that immediately. And now I have ruined your chances of settling down here, because she will make your life miserable in any way she can! That will be most pleasant for me to reflect upon when I return to my own hall.‘
‘You turd! You think you’ll make it home? Why, I’ll-’
Van Relenghes gave a massive yawn. ‘Godfrey, I think Thomas is about to threaten me. Do prepare yourself to look fearful, won’t you?’
He walked on, his guard laughing, and Thomas was left alone, clenching and unclenching his fists in the road.
‘You whoreson bastard! I’ll see to it you regret that! I’ll make you bloody eat your words!’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Baldwin and Simon were walking with their wives a few yards in front of this hushed dispute, and thus saw nothing of Thomas’s rage or the Fleming’s delight.
Simon could see that his friend was frustrated, but could think of no way to relieve his mood. Baldwin, he knew, would worry at the problem until a solution presented itself to him, and only then would he be able to relax.
‘Did you learn anything from that boy?’ he asked.
‘Nothing – no. If I had been able to speak to him a little longer, I might have done, and yet perhaps I did find out something,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The lad is plainly terrified of the priest.’
‘Well, of course he is. Many people are,’ said Margaret. ‘The parish priest is the only man of any learning that a villein will ever meet. He’s the one who officiates at every critical ceremony in their lives.’
‘Especially in a small place like this,’ said Jeanne. ‘Here Stephen is the only man who can read: he’s the one who will tell them whether it is a fasting day or a meat one, which day of the week it is, and so on.’
Baldwin smiled at her. ‘I know the people here are peasants, but even my own villeins know what the day is,’ he said in a tone of mild reproof. It was all too common for those in a higher station of life to assume that serfs were little more intelligent than the oxen which they used to pull their wagons.
Jeanne shook her head, amused by his presumption. ‘I do not speak from idle foolishness, Baldwin. You forget that I have lived as Lady of a manor similar to this one. I know these people. They have no time for speculation, no time to play or enjoy leisure. Their lives are hard, geared to the weather and to the hours of daylight rather than some arbitrary notion such as a day’s name. It’s different for you and your peasants, living up at Cadbury, where the weather is warmer, and where the rain runs away rather than sinking into the ground to form mires, where trees grow straight and tall rather than bent and warped.’
‘Perhaps, but I do not know whether young Alan was scared of the figure of authority, or of Brother Stephen the man.’
Simon agreed. ‘In that case we need to find out more about this mysterious cleric, don’t we?’
Nicholas was in the courtyard when the procession returned from the church. He had ordered the other men to remain in the stable out of the widow’s sight, from respect for her feelings; he himself stood quietly near a rain-butt. He had been sharpening his knife, but he set his whetstone and dagger aside when the mourning party slowly made their way to the hall.
When the mistress was out of the way, he picked up his blade once more and tested it with the ball of his thumb. Still blunt – it was taking an age to put an edge on this one. He was about to bend to his task again when he became aware of his master hurrying towards him.
‘Nicholas? Come here. Listen to me, I have a job for you.’
Hugh had been waiting at the door. Seeing the party approach, he walked quickly inside to stir the warmed wine in the jugs by the fire. As he crouched there, Lady Katharine entered. She acknowledged him with a pale shadow of a smile, and gratefully took a large mug from him.
Hugh politely offered Anney a cup, but she refused with a quick shake of her head, and Daniel took it in her stead.
Then the guests were filing in, and Hugh was having to serve faster than he could manage. When the jugs had all been emptied, he hurried from the room and into the buttery, where he found Wat, mercifully sober.
‘Quick! Fill this lot,’ Hugh ordered and sat on a barrel. ‘Where’s Petronilla? She ought to be helping.’
‘I suppose she’s gone for another walk.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish!’
‘I still don’t understand why she had such filthy hands yesterday,’ Wat frowned.
‘What are you on about?’ Hugh demanded, and listened with surprise as Wat told how he had seen her the day before, all mucky with black soil smeared over her hands. Hugh was no fool and, after being servant to the bailiff for so long, he was able to make quick inferences, but for the present he only muttered grumpily, ‘Never mind her, you get more jugs filled, lad. The party in there will be dying of thirst soon.’
As soon as the jugs of warmed wine were ready, he took them into the hall and began topping up people’s pots and mugs; the flow of conversation, muted at first, became louder. Shortly after this, Petronilla came in. She too carried jugs, and she took her station near her mistress, although with many a confused glance at Thomas. Hugh could understand her feelings: she knew her master was Thomas now, and although she was still loyal to her mistress, she had no wish to damage her position with him.
Hugh pursed his lips and went to his master’s side. ‘Sir?’
Simon listened, his expression unchanging as his servant told him about the girl and how she had returned from the moors with her hands covered in peaty soil. ‘Interesting,’ he murmured at last. ‘Well done, Hugh.’
At the other side of the hall, Baldwin had been trying to get closer to the priest, but each time he made his way through the throng, Stephen moved on. Eventually Baldwin fetched up against a pillar, and he stood there, testily staring at the tonsured figure for some while before he realised someone was speaking to him.
‘Anney, my apologies, my mind was elsewhere.’
The maidservant gave him a mocking curtsey. ‘So kind of you to apologise to a poor villein like me.’
Baldwin thought she was an attractive-looking woman. Her face, although marked by channels of grief, some for the loss of her husband, some for the loss of her son, was still fresh and youthful, and she had a glowing complexion that many ladies of position would have given much of their wealth for.