‘Is she dying?’ he asked bluntly one day, speaking to Alice, but with Matilda standing alongside.
The housekeeper tried to reassure him, but Matilda was more honest.
‘She has lost so much blood that unless it stops she cannot survive,’ she said firmly.
Walter glowered at her. ‘That’s not what I wanted to hear,’ he said. ‘So what can be done? Shall I send for a physician? The nearest one of any substance would be in Bristol.’
Matilda shrugged. ‘I doubt any doctor could do much. Her strength needs to be built up, so that she can replace the blood she loses. And then you need a miracle to cure whatever is the root cause!’
The lord of Kentisbury turned on his heel and vanished down the stairs.
‘You are risking yourself, speaking like that,’ admonished Alice. ‘And what can we do to build her up, as you call it?’
‘Give her pig’s liver and green herbs like Good King Henry and cabbage,’ suggested Matilda. ‘An infusion of periwinkle may help to slow the bleeding. I’ll go out along the lanes with my daughter and see what I can find.’
This was partly an excuse to get out as much as possible, and also to get Gillota away from the drudgery of the kitchen hut, as she persuaded Alice that she needed her to search for the various medicinal herbs and plants that flourished in the hedgerows and woods. But the image of the priest and the former soldier was always in her mind, and she single-mindedly strove towards meeting them again.
Towards the end of that week, part of her hope was realized when she was grubbing in a ditch for wild spinach and a voice made her spin around.
‘Are you trying to dig your way out of the village?’
It was Philip de Mora, with a pack on his back and a long staff in one hand. He explained that he had been in Barnstaple, attending the burial of his old godmother, who had left him some money in her will, which explained why Matilda had not seen him around the village.
They sat on the verge for a while and she brought him up to date with her fortunes, such as they were.
‘At least I’ve managed to get away from slaving in the kitchen — now I need to get Gillota away from there, too.’
Philip listened thoughtfully to her tale. ‘Walter seems to have lessened his persecution of you. Perhaps he will come around to acknowledging your freedom — or at least letting it be heard properly in the manor court?’
She shook her head. ‘I doubt it — that foul man, Simon Mercator, seems to hate me, and he controls the court. He has a strong influence over Walter Lupus.’
De Mora thought for a moment. ‘The sheriff has to come twice each year for the view of frankpledge. That might be a chance to raise the matter with him and get it taken to the county court or even to the King’s court in Exeter.’
The ‘view of frankpledge’ was the six-monthly inspection by the county sheriff of the system whereby the population was divided into ‘tithings’. Each tithing was made up of all males over twelve years of age, from about ten households. All the members were held collectively responsible for the behaviour of the others and, if one committed an offence, all the rest were punished, usually by a fine.
‘A good idea, but I doubt if the steward would let me get within a hundred paces of the sheriff,’ said Matilda bitterly.
‘We’ll see when the time comes — he must be here by about Michaelmas or soon after, less than a month away.’
Matilda then told him of her idea to try to speak to Thomas the priest about her predicament. ‘Surely I can insist on making my confession,’ she said. ‘That would give me the chance to raise the subject. He seems to be a sympathetic man.’
Philip agreed with her, knowing something of the man in question. ‘He was once the clerk to the famous coroner Sir John de Wolfe, back in Richard the Lionheart’s time. He was well known for his honesty and love of justice, so maybe some of that rubbed off on to his clerk!’
They walked back to the centre of the village together, and Philip promised to think further about her problems and to see her after church next Sunday. She left him feeling much more cheerful than usual and, back in their dormitory, she took out the stone and sat looking at it with Gillota.
‘Maybe it’s working its will slowly?’ suggested her daughter.
She took it from her mother and held it tightly against her head. ‘Though I don’t feel anything special today. Maybe it has to rest, just like us.’
The rest of the week did not go so well for Matilda. She spent a lot of time trying get Joan Lupus to take the various concoctions she had made, from the herbs she had collected to potage made from meat and liver, in an effort to improve her blood.
Alice explained to Walter on one of his daily visits that Matilda had been looked on as having special skills, inherited from her mother, and he seemed vaguely content that something was being attempted to save his wife. This did not translate into any increase in friendliness towards Matilda, and she dismissed any hope that his gratitude might extend to reversing his attitude towards her bondage to the manor.
It was Simon Mercator who was the main problem, for he obviously resented the softening of Walter’s regime that held the two women in strict bondage.
‘You’ve wheedled your way out of the hard work, I see,’ he sneered at her as she passed through the hall with a bundle of clean clothing for the invalid. ‘It won’t last, I assure you. You’ll be back scouring pots and chopping firewood before long.’
At every opportunity he scolded her and made threatening remarks about her, but worst of all he began badgering Gillota when her mother was occupied upstairs. The girl came to her one day, weeping because Simon had cornered her behind the kitchen shed and kissed her roughly while he groped his hands over her breasts and bottom. Gillota had broken away and run off, leaving the steward laughing at her distress. Infuriated, Matilda went running to seek out Simon, unsure what she was going to do when she found him, but it came to nothing, as he was nowhere to be found. Then she went looking for Walter Lupus, but again he was away, said by the stablemen to have ridden to Ilfracombe.
Frustrated, she went back to Gillota, who was being comforted by the cook, who sounded as if she was ready to use her biggest knife on the steward if he crossed her path.
‘He’s well known to have molested several of the girls in the village since he arrived,’ she said indignantly. ‘In a few months there will already be two babies who could call him father!’
According to her, the village gossip claimed that he had had a wife where he lived in Taunton, before coming to Kentisbury, but that she had run away from him.
Gillota recovered rapidly but vowed to keep well out of his way in future, if that was possible. Once she had settled down and was being kept company by two of the other girls, Matilda resolved that the time had come for resolute action, if she was to save her daughter from more harassment and eventual shame.
As soon as the lady of the manor was made comfortable for the night and Alice had said that Matilda could go, she threw a shawl over her kirtle and went out into the evening twilight. The first chill of autumn was in the air as she hurried down to the centre of the village and pushed open the gate into the churchyard. Passing the porch, she carried on along the path to the small house on the further side of the yew-encircled graveyard.
The parsonage was little bigger than the cottages in the village, but it had two rooms under the steep thatched roof. Summoning up her courage, she knocked on the frayed boards of the front door. Getting no answer, she knocked again several times, with the same lack of response. Feeling deflated after her impulsive gesture, she turned away from the door and slowly made her way back towards the gate. However, just as she was level with the porch again, she heard some coughing from inside the church and hurried into the nave to find their priest brushing away with a birch besom at some loose leaves on the hard floor.