With the drama over for the time being, the villagers began drifting away and, disconsolately, Matilda and her daughter trudged sadly back to the manor house. One of the other servants told them that Philip had been thrown into an unused stable and that Garth was standing guard outside. They went around to the side of the stockade where the horses were kept and tried to speak to Philip, but were chased off by the thickset thug who stood outside the door.
‘Clear off, will you!’ he shouted. ‘No one speaks to the prisoner until they hang him!’
Later, Matilda tried again, bringing some food and ale purloined from the kitchen, but this time Daniel was squatting outside and refused even to let her leave the victuals for Philip.
She went back to their sleeping place and sat on the mattress alongside Gillota, the other two girls already sound asleep on the other side of the bed. It was almost dark, but she and her daughter had one of those episodes where each knew the other’s thoughts.
‘Take it out, Mother. Maybe if it worked on Lady Joan, it can do something now,’ whispered Gillota. ‘It seems at its best when there is urgency, like the decline of Lady Joan!’
Matilda felt under the hessian palliasse and pulled out the stone. As she held it in her hands, she thought she felt that slight vibration again, though perhaps it was the quivering of her own nervous muscles.
Mother and daughter stared at it in the dim light, both uncertain what to do next.
‘Maybe if we send our thoughts and pleadings into it together, it might respond,’ suggested Gillota in a whisper.
Matilda rose from the bed and motioned to the girl. ‘Let’s go outside. We cannot risk waking these maids.’
They went out into the fitful light of the moon, which now and then broke through the drifting clouds, and went quietly around to the back of the hut.
‘We must both hold it,’ said Matilda, holding the stone out by one of the wings so that her daughter could grasp the other one. With no more words needed, they merged their thoughts and tried to project them into the strange little metallic object that joined them. For five long minutes they visualized justice, rescue, salvation and love together with an image of Philip’s features. Again, Matilda wondered if the tiny tremors she felt in her fingers were from her own tense muscles or the stone itself.
‘I think it is quaking more rapidly, Mother,’ said Gillota, reading her thoughts. ‘Let’s keep pleading with it.’
They stood in the cool night air for a further ten minutes, until something told Matilda that they had done all they could.
‘Leave it for tonight, child,’ she said eventually.
‘What shall we do with it now?’ asked the girl. ‘It seemed to work with Joan when it was very close to her.’
‘I shall leave it as near Philip as I can — tonight, at the court and, God forbid, near the hanging tree if it comes to that!’
She sent Gillota back to bed, then crept along the backs of the huts until she came to the stable where the prisoner was kept. At the back wall, she quietly pushed the stone into a hollow where one of the rough planks had rotted against the ground and covered it over with crumbled wood fragments and a clod of turf.
‘Do your magic until morning and I’ll come back for you,’ she said in her mind before creeping back to her bed.
The manorial court, or ‘court-baron’, was held at varying intervals in different manors, but in Kentisbury it was normally a three-weekly event. Most of the business was usually about mundane matters concerning land, disputes over crops and livestock, seeking consent for marriages and inheritance affairs, as well as minor offences like drunkenness, fighting, domestic disputes, short measures, poor ale and the like. Today it was a special court called by Simon Mercator on behalf of his lord Walter Lupus, though as usual the steward conducted the proceedings. Unusually, Walter sat on a bench to one side of him, together with Thomas, the parish priest, with the bailiff and sergeant standing behind them.
Normally, the court was held in an empty barn, but after the recent good harvest these were all full, so it was convened in the yard in front of the manor house itself. A chair and a couple of benches were brought out of the hall and placed below the entrance steps, the jury of twelve men being ranged before them. A large crowd of villagers had left their work in the fields and had pushed through the gate to stand in the stockade behind the jury.
Though legally all the men in the manor over twelve years of age were supposed to attend the court, usually only those who had any business there as jury or witnesses were obliged to turn up. Today was different, and a restive, truculent crowd came to see what was going on.
The jury were reluctant to take part, as though the steward was not supposed to act as a judge, the verdict being left to the jury, in practice this was often ignored, and there was a strong suspicion that this would be the state of affairs today.
As Matilda and Gillota were already in the compound, they had little difficulty in sidling around to the edge of the crowd, as close to Philip as they could get, when he was dragged out by Garth on the end of a chain attached to his fetters — probably the same ones by which they had been hauled back from Shebbear. The former soldier was dishevelled and gaunt from his night in a stable without food or water, and Matilda’s heart went out to him. She had retrieved the stone early that morning and now had it safely in the cloth pouch on her girdle, but she could detect no vibrations from it at all, much to her chagrin.
Simon Mercator stood up from his chair and yelled at the crowd to be silent, a task he had to repeat several times before the villagers grudgingly obeyed him. He knew that strong feelings and resentment were rife, from the obvious attitude of both the freemen and the villeins and from the visit of Thomas de Peyne earlier that morning.
The priest had come to see Walter Lupus, not the steward, but Simon pushed himself into the meeting in the hall and Walter had not denied him.
‘I am extremely unhappy about your determination to try this man Philip in such an arbitrary way,’ said the canon firmly. ‘I have had long experience of the legal system in this county and know that such a grave accusation should be placed before the King’s judges or his Commissioners of Gaol Delivery.’
He was a such a small man that it was difficult for him to assert himself adequately in front of these powerful men, but he was adamant about Philip’s right to be tried in Exeter before an experienced and independent tribunal. As he had expected, neither man was impressed by his demands.
‘With respect, parson, this is none of your business, whatever you may have done in the past,’ sneered Simon. ‘The issue is so simple that it should be dealt with summarily, as my lord Walter is quite entitled to do. We must make an example of such blatant thieving, to prevent anyone getting the idea that such a crime may be repeated with impunity.’
Walter Lupus, silent until now, nodded gravely. ‘A manor lord has a responsibility to his tenants to safeguard their lives and property,’ he said ponderously. ‘I am surprised that you think fit to object, considering that such a valuable and venerated object such as your Communion plate was the thing stolen by this man.’
‘You have already judged him, then?’ retorted Thomas bitterly. ‘I thought that was the function of the jury and that until they offer their verdict a man is considered innocent?’
‘You are too naive, father,’ brayed Simon. ‘Of course the damned fellow is guilty — the facts speak for themselves! No jury can think otherwise — and if they do, I will put them back on the right road!’
And so it proved within a very short time. The steward had Philip dragged in front of him by Garth and Daniel, who stood one at each side, pulling on his chains, while he harangued the prisoner and the jury.
‘We need waste no time over this!’ he shouted. ‘The sacred platter was found to be missing, this felon cannot account for his whereabouts at the time, and most damning of all, a search soon discovered it hidden in the thatch of his own house. There is no need for any more evidence!’ He glared at the discomfited line of men who formed the jury.