“Dear God, here it comes.” Emma’s grip on Adelia’s arm became painful. “The second question.”
“… can you attest that the plaintiff is the heir to Lord Ralph of Wolvercote?”
There was a shifting among the jurors in the box.
The dowager’s lawyer stepped forward. “My lord, my client rejects that he is. She will swear on oath that there was never a marriage between the plaintiff’s mother and her son and that accordingly, the plaintiff is an impostor or a bastard or both.”
The crowd turned its attention to the little boy in the chair. Impervious to what was going on, he was beginning to be bored and had taken a piece of string from his sleeve and was playing cat’s cradle with it.
Emma’s and Adelia’s eyes met, agonized.
The dowager was right in essence; if a bride had to give consent, as according to the law she must, then Emma had never been married.
Abducted by Wolvercote, who wanted her fortune, from the Oxfordshire convent where she was being educated, her abductor’s hand had been placed over her mouth as she struggled to say “No” to the priest bribed to pronounce them married.
In effect, Pippy was the illegitimate child of rape.
Here was Master Dickon’s turn, and he stepped forward. He was enjoying the moment, and it was noticeable to Adelia that he was also softening his London speech. “My lord, we have produced a witness before the jury and a sworn statement from an unimpeachable source that there was indeed a marriage and that my client was subsequently born nine months later.”
“Has such a witness and such a statement been produced?” De Luci asked the jury.
Sir Richard was wriggling. “Well, they have, my lord, but we’d be glad to hear them again, to see what you think.”
“It is not what I think, it is what must be proved to you. However, we will allow a repetition.”
Master Dickon’s stripling dashed into the crowd and came back lugging a little old man in the long tunic of a priest.
Dickon introduced him to the judges. “This is Father Simeon, my lord, a priest of Oxford who will attest that he conducted a ceremony of marriage between the late Lord Wolvercote and Emma, daughter to Master Bloat, a vintner of Abingdon.”
“Mother of God, I can’t bear to look at him,” Emma whispered. “He was there; he said the words.” The memory made her retch.
In Wolvercote’s effort to secure Emma’s fortune for himself, Father Simeon had been just what he wanted, one of the Church’s derelicts who, having lost any cure or parish of his own, begged his bread at the tables of the charitable, and gave his blessing to anybody who’d buy it with a pot of ale. His tunic was filthy, his tonsure almost obscured by stubble, and he shook, with nerves or old age or drink, possibly all three.
Where had Master Dickon managed to find him? Adelia wondered. And was it worthwhile? The man was hardly a credible witness.
However, Father Simeon was producing a document as tattered as himself, proving that in the distant past he had been properly ordained.
“He’ll have to maintain that the marriage was legal,” Adelia reassured Emma, “or he’ll admit that he presided over an unlawful ceremony.”
“But will they take his word? Will they want papers? I don’t remember any certificate-I doubt that old pig can even write.”
Since some of the jury couldn’t read, the proof of Father Simeon’s priesthood had to be read out to them and then passed up to the judge.
The crowd listened with intent; nearly as good as trial by battle, this was.
At a nod from De Luci, Master Dickon began questioning his witness. On the feast of Saint Vintula in the year of Our Lord 1172 had Father Simeon solemnized a marriage between Ralph, Lord of Wolvercote, and Emma Bloat?
The priest’s shakes became more pronounced, and he was ordered to speak up. “Yes, yes,” he managed. “Yes, I did. Lord Wolvercote… yes, I remember perfectly, he asked me to marry them, and I did.”
“And was the marriage solemnized according to the law of the land?”
“Yes, it was. I’m sure it was, perfectly.”
Master Dickon nodded to the judge and handed over his witness to interrogation by the more formidable Master Thomas.
Was Emma Bloat’s father there to give his daughter away? If not, why not? Had all the solemnities been legally performed? Had a declaration been posted on the church door? Why had Lady Wolvercote not been informed of her son’s marriage?
“It was very snowy, you see,” Father Simeon pleaded. “I do remember that, very snowy. People couldn’t get through the drifts, I myself… Yes, I’m sure I put a notice on the door, but the snow, yes, I’m sure I did… but the snow, you see.”
“Were there witnesses?” demanded Master Thomas-he used the Latin: testes adfuerunt.
Father Simeon was floored. “What?” he asked.
Adelia groaned.
With a graceful outstretching of his arms, Master Thomas appealed to the judge. “Is this the man we are supposed to believe?”
De Luci brought his head round to the jury. “Do you believe him?”
Sir Richard consulted with his fellows. “Well, he’s a bit… well, my lord, his memory…”
Again Master Dickon stepped forward, waving a document. “My lord, if I might assist the court. I have here an affidavit from the abbess of Godstow in the county of Oxfordshire, a lady renowned for her piety and probity. She is elderly, my lord, though still keen in her wits, and could not make the journey to this court, for which she apologizes. Her affidavit has already been read to the jury, but if your lordship would care to peruse it.”
His lordship did. The document was passed up to him.
“Good God,” Adelia whispered. “Mother Edyve.” It was from her convent that Emma had been abducted. “How? Who?” Oxfordshire was a long way away; there hadn’t been time…
“The king,” Emma told her. “I thought you knew. The moment he received your report, he sent messengers galloping to search out that swine of a priest along with others to secure Mother Edyve’s affidavit. Apparently, Master Dickon says, Henry saw the chance of using this Morte d’Ancestor writ in my case. It’s his pride and joy; he and Lord De Luci spent sleepless nights shaping it, according to Master Dickon.”
So that was why Henry Plantagenet had winked at his clerk. A teasing mood. He’d known all along. Kept his precious writ up his sleeve…
“I’ll kill him,” Adelia said.
The Justiciar of England was reading. “Mother Edyve, abbess of Godstow, attests here that shortly after the supposed marriage, both bride and groom attended Christmas festivities at her abbey and that Lord Wolvercote in her hearing addressed the plaintiff’s mother as ’wife.’”
All strictly true as far as it went, but did it go far enough?
Adelia was gripping Emma’s arm as hard as Emma grasped hers.
De Luci raised his reptilian head. “I have to declare an interest in this matter. The abbess of Godstow is known to me.”
“A good woman, my lord?” Sir Richard asked.
“A very good woman.”
“Good enough for us, then.” Sir Richard looked at the nodding heads around him. “My lord, we are prepared to declare that the late Lord Wolvercote was legally married to the plaintiff’s mother and that Philip of Wolvercote is the legal issue of said marriage and, therefore, heir to the Wolvercote lands and appurtenances.”
Master Dickon uttered an unlawyerlike whoop. Adelia and Emma collapsed on each other. The new Lord Wolvercote looked up from his cat’s cradle, surprised by the noise. Dowager Wolvercote remained in her chair. Angrily, Master Thomas flung his cap on the ground, picked it up, put it back on, and began talking urgently to his client, who might have been deaf, a stone effigy.
“The writ’s two questions having been answered to the satisfaction of this jury,” De Luci went on, “this court grants immediate seisin of Wolvercote Manor to the plaintiff.” He rose.
The lovely contralto belled out across the field. “I recognize neither this court nor its judgment. You, De Luci, are a Plantagenet puppet.”
Over the crowd’s gasp, Master Thomas began pleading for his client to be given time to remove her chattels from the disputed manor.
But the Lord Chief Justiciar of England had gone.
Master Dickon came struggling through the press to Emma and Adelia. Emma turned and kissed him on both cheeks. Roetger came hauling himself to her; she kissed him, too, before running onto the field to pick up her son and hold him high. “We’ve won, Pippy Oh, you were so good.”
Master Dickon wiped the sweat off his brow. “Nasty moment or two there,” he said, “but the dowager saying she didn’t recognize the court did it for us. I knew we was home; judges don’t like that.”
“Is that it?” Adelia asked him. “Emma’s won? She can move into the manor?”
“Any time she likes,” the young man told her. “Better take bailiffs with her, of course. But no, that ain’t it. The dowager will appeal, for sure, contesting the marriage and the lad’s legitimacy. All to be seen to later. More work for us.” Master Dickon rubbed his hands in anticipation of the fees he’d earn.
“Then I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you, mistress?” Dickon flung out an arm in the direction of the field from which people were departing and where only the dowager sat, staring over the heads of her clustering lawyers as if they were midges. “No blood on that grass, is there? Lady ’Em didn’t have to use force to get her son’s rights, nor didn’t the dowager use force to defend what she thinks is hers. No battling. No wounds. Just a writ from the king. A temporary measure so’s the apparent heir can be in possession of his property while the arguments over it can be sorted out legally. To keep the peace, d’you see?”
“I see.”
“Barons don’t like it, of course-takes authority away from their courts and makes a common law available to everybody, but they ain’t prepared to go to war over it, Lord be thanked. Oooh, he’s a cunning old lawmaker is Henry.”
“Yes,” Adelia said, and then paused. “Master Dickon, could you provide me with pen and ink? I must write a letter to the king.”
ON THEIR WAY to view Pippy’s new property, Emma’s pure soprano soared into the blue sky accompanied by birdsong, her bard’s harp, her son’s tremolo, Roetger’s basso profundo, and the trot of their horses’ hooves.
“Come lasses and lads, take leave of your dads, and away to the maypole hie.”
Adelia swayed in her saddle to the tune while Millie, behind her, smiled at a jollity she couldn’t hear.
Emma broke off to lean over and touch her lover’s knee. “I didn’t consent to him, dearest, ever.”
Roetger took her hand and kissed it. “I know you did not, brave girl.”
“There ev’ry he has got him a she, and the minstrel’s standing by…
Emma broke off again. “So really, we have gained by an old priest’s lie.”
“That worries me not at all,” Roetger told her.
“God’s justice to womankind,” Adelia said.
“For Willy shall dance with Jane, and Stephen has got his Joan…”
