high, and where there were no handholds, just a smooth, shiny metal surface. Water kept flooding into the tank, and she could survive only as long as her strength held out to keep swimming, knowing all the time that she wasn’t going to escape and that eventually she would drown. After an interminable time, her panic became a rage, first against him and then turned against herself. What had she done to deserve such treatment? She felt like an animal. Waves of nausea swept over her, then feelings of abasement, of self-loathing, as she smelt her unwashed body, the reek intensified by the pungent aroma of abject fear.
Marda thought that he was probably mad, and now she knew without doubt that he was also a killer. The image of Denise’s skeleton constantly marched through her mind.
After the initial shock subsided, she found that she was detaching herself from her body, becoming two people, the one frightened, childlike and compliant, the other a mature adult observing the deteriorating habits of this helpless woman-child. She clung to a certainty that she would be released soon, but should her inevitable freedom be delayed, she knew-without understanding why-that her best chance of psychological survival would be to hang on with all her reason to her own personality and not be broken by captivity. Let the woman-child disintegrate; the real Marda would become stronger. Let him see the weaker woman, the one he wanted to control. She would play-act for him, but her inner core had to be safeguarded. When she was free, she would still be Marda Stewart. No one and nothing else. Until she was free again she must separate these two parts of her, these two personalities. She had to separate her reason from her fear. It was the only way to keep alive, to stay sane…yet she threatened her own sanity by continuously asking herself whether Duval’s other victims had attempted the same strategy-and failed.
Christine left the audience with the bishop with fear in her heart, and yet hope that justice would be done. She feared excommunication and an eternity in Hell, but the fires of vengeance burned almost as fiercely. Christine was made to wait in the convent for two weeks.
She was anxious about being summoned to the court which the bishop had explained would take place in the Sheriff’s Court in Guldenford castle. The petty court met every three weeks, she was told, but the Assizes were a very special event, where the King’s travelling judges heard serious cases of crime. She dreaded, but steeled herself for, the confrontation with Sir Richard. The bishop’s advocates visited her three times in the convent to rehearse her words. “What can I speak but the truth?” she kept saying, but she decided that lawyers did not understand truth.
They explained that her testimony about her lord’s lewd behaviour was only a small part of the bishop’s indictment, which was principally concerned with Sir Richard’s theft of properties to which the Church lay claim. Despite the turmoil of the civil war, the rule still stood: no alienation of Church land without royal licence. True, the tyrant Edward II had, with his allies, despoiled much of the land of his opponents, including the fiefs of the clerics who had supported the insurrectionary barons, but the new king needed to restore his alliance with the Pope. The young king’s position after his father’s forced abdication and mysterious death was still tenuous. In sum, Edward III, the new king, needed the Church if he was to keep his throne.
In this case, the simplest solution for monarch and clergy was the death of one man by an arraignment for treason.
Sir Richard, although he had sympathised with the rebels, had carefully managed to avoid the fate of many knights and nobles who had fought the old king. He had not been exiled, nor had he forfeited lands, but the bishop was determined to regain for the Church the lands that Sir Richard had disseised and taken for himself. The knight would suffer, the bishop would prosper with the new archbishop’s backing, and Christine was a mere pawn. She knew this, but she would play her part.
Nothing was said by Christine’s guardian, the abbess, about excommunication. Instead, she decked out the anchoress in a new habit so that she would represent the Church in best holy orders-to impress the judges.
When the day came, the abbess accompanied her in a small open wagon drawn by two bay mares and driven by a male servant of the abbey. This was the first time Christine had travelled in such style, and it only added to her nervousness.
The dining hall of the castle had been transformed into a court room. On the high table sat three judges, with an elaborate canopy erected above their heads to emphasise their rank. Two had travelled from Canterbury and one from Winchester, carrying the writs with the king’s great seal. Beside the judges sat the Bishop of Hereford, to advise on the laws of the Church. On benches along the side of the hall, local noblemen were arrayed; commoners, of course, were not allowed to sit in judgement on a knight.
This was English justice witnessed by Sir Richard’s peers, but his fate was to be decided by high politics, not by law or natural justice, although justice it would be to Sir Richard’s too numerous enemies. His attempts to play both sides in the civil war had succeeded for a while. Wisely, he had been in France during the climactic battle of Boroughbridge when the king’s opponents had been defeated. He did not suffer in the first wave of massive recriminations, but he had not tempered his land hunger sufficiently. The bishop had bided his time, and now the last of Sir Richard’s allies at the royal court had been removed.
The judges sat for three days while Sir Richard’s alleged crimes were carefully recited. The lawyers debated the significance of the deeds of the lands claimed by the Bishop of Winchester, while the last day was reserved for the destruction of the knight’s position as dutiful custodian of the laws of the realm.
Sir Richard’s tenants were paraded, and they confirmed that his enforcement of forest law was unduly harsh. The Charter of the Forest had been binding on countrymen for a century, but Sir Richard had claimed to be acting for the king, they said. Two men had been unjustly hanged for killing a deer; another man-Wat Smith-had suffered the loss of both his hands for carrying a longbow near a roe deer; a villager had been blinded, said the witnesses, for merely disturbing a royal deer. The prosecution then built up its case on cows and sheep and stolen acres. Commoners could not sit in judgement, but witnesses they could be: dyers, weavers and fullers chastised the crusader with pretty lies and practised truths. In short, Sir Richard had undeniably breached local custom and law.
The hall resounded to the phrase “Quasi veteri more Anglicano,” according to the old English custom. Two best beasts, not the traditional one, had been taken by the lord for heriot, death duty. Sir Richard had denied access to common land. Armed men had been levied for more than sixty days for the Scottish wars. And so it went on: Sir Richard’s aggrieved bonded men came from the Welsh Marches, from his lands in Surrey and Kent. Occasionally men spoke well of their lord, especially those who had fought by his side, but complimentary words were silenced by the bishop’s lawyers. Sir Richard’s own learned advocates, sniffing the changes in the political climate, fell silent too.
Two hundred men, knights and nobles, filled the smoky hall; no woman spoke to the court until Christine was led in. The prosecution thundered that the lord’s right of prima nocte was not acceptable in the settled lands of England, although it was admitted that it was not uncommon in the conquered parts of the Celtic territories.
Christine was asked to stand before the high table, with the bishop’s chief lawyer by her side. He read out a brief description of who she was and whence she came.
The judge in the centre of the high table spoke first, although Christine could not understand his curious Latinised French. In English she said, “My lord, I do not comprehend your words for I am unlearned in such affairs.”
The bishop’s man translated into English, “Summarise your indictment against Sir Richard.”
Christine had been told to be as brief as possible, and not to speak further unless the judges asked her to say more, which was not likely, they said.
So far Christine had not looked at Sir Richard, whom she had always remembered in his fine linen and purple tunic. Above all she recalled his jewelled dagger. This day he was dressed in a simple black robe, with no adornments. His feet were chained together, his face was dirty, and his beard bedraggled. He had aged ten years in the two since last she saw him. Although her enclosure had honed her hatred, the period of intense devotions permitted some pity to enter her soul.
She recited the lines the bishop had instructed. “I swear to God and King that I verily speak unto ye this day.” She spoke quietly and nervously. “I am Christine of Shere, the daughter of William, also of Shere. I confirm the times the deposition states regarding Sir Richard’s offences against my person and against my sister Margaret, now deceased. I confirm that Sir Richard…” She stopped staring at the floor and looked into her tormentor’s face. The words died in her mouth.
The bishop’s lawyer poked her with his finger. “Proceed,” he said.
