He greeted her cordially, leaning on his brush. ‘Hello, my child! The autumn has started early this year. These leaves are down already.’
‘I am Matilda Claper, father,’ she answered. ‘I work at the manor house, more’s the pity.’
The small priest looked at her quizzically. ‘That’s an unusual introduction, at least. Tell me more about it.’
She felt his soft brown eyes on her and knew instinctively that here was a man with compassion in his heart. ‘Sir, I came to ask if you would hear my confession — and the first thing I would have to confess is that it was but an excuse to seek your advice.’
Thomas de Peyne smiled, his old face lighting up so that he looked decades younger. ‘You don’t need an excuse for that, daughter! That’s what parsons are for — or should be!’
He dropped his brush and led her to the stone shelf around the wall, sitting down and motioning her to perch beside him.
‘Tell me your troubles, Matilda. I have seen you and your daughter at Mass but know nothing of you.’
Feeling secure with this mild-mannered man, she explained her whole predicament from start to finish. At the end she said, ‘They will not allow me to be heard at the court-baron and I doubt I can get the sheriff to listen to me when he comes for his view of frankpledge. Now this vile behaviour of the steward towards my daughter makes it all the more urgent that we leave this village.’
Thomas listened gravely to all she said and now sat with his chin in his hand, considering the problem.
‘It is true that this is not a happy manor, compared with most I have known,’ he conceded. ‘There is little I can do about that, being an outsider who is here only on sufferance until a new priest is appointed. I will speak to Walter Lupus, but from past experience he is not a man who accepts any view but his own.’
He sighed and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder. ‘You do not need me to tell you that the nub of the matter is proof that Matthew Lupus did in fact grant your father his freedom.’
She nodded, fearful that in spite of her hopes this man would also side with those who dominated the manor. ‘But at the time, most of the village heard about it and accepted it,’ she pleaded. ‘If there was a genuine hearing before a jury, surely they must confirm that?’
‘Was there no document of manumission provided, as there should have been?’ asked the priest.
‘I don’t know. My father never showed me one, but what would be the point? No one except the priest could read or write.’
The prebendary pondered this for a moment. ‘There should always be a document of manumission, properly witnessed by one or preferably two people. As those in holy orders are usually the only literate ones, the witnesses are usually priests. Then the document should be confirmed by the county court. Do you recall your father ever going down to Exeter for that purpose?’
Matilda shook her head. ‘The furthest he ever went in his whole life was Combe Martin, a few miles away.’
‘The priest who was here before me must have been involved,’ he murmured. ‘Father Peter, God rest him. But he left no parchments behind. This house was bare of anything but a few sticks of furniture.’
‘Perhaps Walter Lupus took them — maybe he destroyed them?’ suggested Matilda, but Thomas shook his head.
‘I doubt that, because any document should have gone to Exeter for ratification, as I said.’
He stood up and extended a hand to politely raise up the woman from the bench. ‘I have to go to Exeter on the Monday after the next Sabbath, so I will make enquiries, as I still have good friends there. I will be back in time for the following Sunday, in case I have any news of this matter.’
Matilda dropped to her knees and bowed her head before this good man, who made the sign of the cross over her as he blessed her.
‘Come to me at any time for advice — or for that confession you mentioned,’ he said with a grin.
‘I fear my confession would be full of uncharitable thoughts towards those who hold this manor in their grip,’ she whispered.
When Matilda had gone, Thomas finished his brushing of the nave, then went back to his gloomy dwelling, where he lit a pair of rushlights and sat at his small table. He poured himself a cup of cloudy cider, for he had never been a lover of ale, and began to think about the sorry tale that the woman had related. He had noticed her at Mass, for there was something about her, and to a lesser degree her daughter, that was different from the usual run of villagers. He was intelligent and well read, having been educated at the cathedral school in Winchester many years before, but had no pretensions to second sight, only a sharp awareness of character, and was convinced that these two women had some occult gift.
Sadly, he felt that Matilda’s predicament was insoluble, unless some tangible proof could be produced of her father’s release from bondage — or if the villagers organized a mass protest and forced the matter into the manor court. Given the tyrannical way in which Lupus and his odious steward held the levers of power, this seemed unlikely.
As he sat in the twilight, with the smoky flames of the grease-soaked reeds flickering on each side, he thought of the absolute authority that men like Walter Lupus had over the inhabitants of a manor. Though most were not great barons, often being mere knights or even successful merchants with the ear of the King’s court, they wielded the power of life and death over their subjects, some even erecting their own gallows at the village crossroads. No one could leave the village, accept an inheritance, get married or enter the Church or a trade without their consent — almost invariably dependent on a fee. These lords held their fief from the King, who owned the whole of England, keeping about a third for himself, as with royal manors like Shebbear, apart from the huge estates owned by the Church. These greater barons often sublet manors to lesser lords, taking either military knight-service or a rent from these other vassals. The latter passed this despotism down to their own subjects, so it was no wonder that Lupus could dictate to that poor woman and ignore her demands for justice.
Yet, thought Thomas, there had to be a balance between manor lord and villagers, for each was dependent on the other. In return for the lord’s promise of protection from marauding barons and bands of robbers, as well as his organization of the production of the food that saved them from starvation, the inhabitants supported him and his family by working for him year in, year out. The free men paid a rent, either in money or in kind, and the bondsmen — the serfs or villeins — had to work his fields for at least three days each week, as well as many extra ‘boon’ days, plus providing him with extra support throughout the year in the form of eggs, fowls, pigs and other produce. For that, the lord gave them a ‘toft’, a cottage and a croft, as well as several acres of strips in the fields to work on their free days. Below those were the cottars, a poorer class who had a cottage but no land and paid for their home by working at ditching, hedging, thatching, herding and other menial labour.
Thomas knew that being a serf was not necessarily degrading, as they could own personal property and pass it on to their heirs — in fact, some bondsmen were richer than their free man neighbours. But he accepted that none of this solved this poor woman’s problem. He would do what he could for her, even if it incurred Lupus’s displeasure — at least his incumbency of the parish did not depend on the lord’s gift, as so many did. And, he thought as he pinched out the lights before going to his bed, it did not matter if Lupus got rid of him, as he was only here as a favour to the bishop and would be quite happy to go back to his comfortable lodgings in Exeter.
In spite of Matilda’s attempts with herbs and her advice to Alice to put more green cabbage and especially spinach in Joan’s diet, there seemed no change in her condition and she continued to lose blood. The day after her meeting with Canon Thomas, Matilda sat on the palliasse in their mean sleeping hut and wondered what else she could do for the lady of the manor. Though she detested Walter Lupus for ruining her life, her natural compassion for anyone who was ailing made her concerned for Lady Joan, for she was afraid that death could be the only end result, unless something radical was done.