‘The verdict is yours, but you can have no other answer than to declare him guilty!’
However, Simon Mercator was not to have it all his own way. The blacksmith, daring to contradict the man who had his livelihood in the palm of his hand, stood forward to object.
‘Steward, we need time to discuss this! Not to beat about the bush, the whole village knows that this man was in bad odour with you. To be fair to him, you should not be trying him here yourself. The matter should be heard in Barnstaple or even Exeter.’
A few yards away, Matilda heard the brave words and her heart leaped with hope — but when she gripped her pouch, she felt nothing from the stone hidden there.
The steward was almost apoplectic with rage at the blacksmith’s defiance. Red in the face, he screamed at the man. ‘Have a care, Edwin Pace! Lord Walter will not stand for your insolence and pig-headed obstinacy and neither will I! You will take the course of common sense or it will go hard with you and your family in this manor!’
The threat was undisguised, and after a few nudges from his fellows Edwin gave in, for he knew his own survival and that of his wife and children depended on the tolerance, if not goodwill, of the steward and, through him, Walter Lupus himself.
There were catcalls from the crowd when after much shuffling and muttering the jury capitulated and shamefacedly agreed that the prisoner was guilty of the theft.
Instantly, Simon translated that into the sentence. ‘Philip de Mora, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers. The holy plate which you so sacrilegiously stole from our own house of God was worth many marks, far above the value of twelve pence that constitutes a felony. You will therefore be hanged at noon this day from the oak tree used for the purpose.’
There was an outcry from the crowd, who began to surge forward, but Walter Lupus drew his sword, and the steward, bailiff and sergeant closed around him, brandishing heavy staffs and cudgels.
‘Get out of this bailey!’ roared the manor lord. ‘Clear the yard, damn you all!’
Incensed as they were at this tyrannical behaviour of their masters, the villagers knew that they had no real redress, short of starting a peasants’ revolt, which would soon bring down the wrath of the sheriff and the King upon them and lead to far more necks being stretched on the gallows.
Still shouting, cursing and protesting, they backed away through the gates, which Daniel ran to close securely, leaving Garth to hold the prisoner.
Philip seemed bemused by the whole proceedings, standing with his head bowed, accepting the inevitable. The servants were chased away by the bailiff and in tears, Matilda and Gillota went back to their labours in the kitchen.
‘The stone has failed us,’ said Gillota miserably as they stood chopping vegetables to add to the cauldron of potage. ‘Perhaps it never worked anyway and Joan would have improved of her own accord.’
Her mother wiped her eyes, her misery made more obvious by the onions she was peeling. ‘I’ll not give up yet… How long has he got, poor man?’
Though telling the time was sheer guesswork, by the sun it was mid-morning, so noon could not be much more than an hour away.
Some minutes later, with the connivance of the cook, Matilda crept out and looked into the bailey. Now that the crowd had dispersed, the gate was open again. Taking an empty leather bucket and reaping hook as camouflage, she went out unchallenged, as Garth and his fellow thug were keeping a strict guard on the condemned man in the stables.
Matilda walked down the road from the manor house to where the track to Furzepark forked south of the village. Here was the notorious oak tree, large and gnarled, which had stood there since before the Normans arrived. The thickness of the massive trunk was so great that four men would be needed to touch hands around it. Fifteen feet above the ground, the first thick branch stuck out, from which the hangings took place. At one point a dozen feet out from the trunk, grooves rubbed in the bark by ropes were a sinister reminder of the number of men who had died there over the years.
In this early autumn the leaves were already turning colour, but there was still a thick canopy of green and gold shielding the sky. No one was around yet, and quickly Matilda found the hole she remembered from her childhood days, about shoulder high in the rough bark. She recalled that birds used it for nesting and squirrels left nuts there, but now she quickly thrust the little stone into the crack and covered it with a handful of moss pulled from the other side of the tree. With a last glance to make sure she had not been observed, she hurried back to the manor after cutting some wayside herbs to put in her bucket.
Meanwhile, Walter Lupus and his steward had again shrugged off Thomas de Peyne’s impassioned plea for mercy for the condemned man and his repeated request that the matter be sent to the justices in Exeter.
Thomas was uncertain what Walter was thinking about this issue. He remained silent and just shook his head at all the priest’s supplications, but it was the steward who did all the talking, almost as if he had the manor lord under his thumb, instead of the other way around.
‘You’re wasting your time, parson — and mine!’ snapped Simon. ‘Better if you employed it in shriving the man and getting his confession. Time is rapidly running out for him.’
Despondently, Thomas took this advice and went to the stable to spend the last hour with Philip, who seemed dull and apathetic, hardly answering him. He made a mumbled confession, which did not ring true to the priest’s ears, though Philip firmly denied stealing the Eucharist plate.
Soon, Garth came in to jerk on his fetters and pull him out to lead him down the road to the hanging tree, followed by Walter Lupus, Simon and the other officers and senior servants of the manor such as the bailiff, sergeant, huntsman, hound-handler and hawker. Thomas de Peyne walked alongside the alleged felon, talking earnestly to him and saying prayers for his soul, which seemed to fall on deaf ears. A few villagers were waiting at the gates, but the majority of the manor deliberately kept away. This was unusual in a hanging, as when a known criminal or outlaw was to be dispatched it became almost a festive occasion. Now, however, the absence of most of the village was intended as a mute protest against the tyrannical behaviour of the lord and especially his evil steward.
By the time the dismal procession reached the large oak, Daniel had already gone ahead to throw a rope over the large branch and form a noose in one end, which hung down ominously at about head height. Where permanent gallows were erected, such as those in Exeter or Tavistock, the condemned were either made to climb a ladder and were then pushed off with a noose around their neck — or stood on an ox-cart, which was then driven away, leaving them dangling. Here the execution was performed more simply, by hauling them up until their feet left the ground.
Without any delay, Philip was marched across to stand under the branch, which was as thick as a man’s waist where the rope ran over it.
Thomas, his eyes moist with compassion, stood alongside the doomed soldier, continually intoning Latin prayers. Well back, Matilda and Gillota, with a handful of villagers, stood weeping as they watched the noose being placed over Philip’s head by Garth.
Through her tears Matilda tried to concentrate her willpower on the winged stone, though she was beginning to despair of its powers. She felt Gillota doing the same and, with a surge of mental effort, they both urged the artefact to help them.
‘Get out of the way, Father!’ called Simon Mercator. ‘You’ve done all you can. Now let justice take its course.’