was a mild winter, with little snow and ice, though by the spring their stocks of food were running dangerously low. By March they were living on turnips and carrots stored in clamps in the yard, winter cabbage, onions and a few eggs that the fowls managed to produce off-season. The cow had a drain of milk left from last year’s pregnancy, but did not come into full flow until the calf was born.
It was a lean time, but they survived. Matilda again acted as a midwife and herbalist to the village and was paid for her services in kind: a loaf of bread, a pat of butter, a pan of wheat or a rabbit poached from the village warren. As they were acknowledged as free from serfdom in Shebbear, they had no allotted strips in the surrounding fields as did the villeins, who paid for the land allotted to them by the manor by the three days each week they worked for the bailiff on the King’s demesne, plus many other ‘boon days’. With Gillota’s help, Matilda dug and planted half the ground behind the cottage, keeping the rest for the animals, though each day Gillota led the cow down to the common pasture to graze.
One winter evening, when the aunt had recovered fairly well, the three women had crouched around the fire-pit, Emma and Matilda on the two stools and the daughter on the bracken-covered floor.
‘I still don’t understand how you say you are a free woman,’ muttered Emma thickly. ‘Your husband Robert was a villein when he left this village to go to Kentisbury.’
Her speech was improving, but the other two had to listen hard to understand her. Matilda frowned as she worked out the complicated family relationships.
‘Yes, all the Clapers were serfs, but that wasn’t the way we became free,’ she explained. ‘Robert, God bless his soul, married me, a Merland, who were unfree ever since William the Bastard conquered at Hastings.’
The aunt interrupted rather testily. ‘So was I, like all the Clapers, until Alan Revelle married me. He was a soldier and was freed for his service, so that made me free as well.’
‘Did he die, Aunt Emma?’ asked Gillota innocently, getting a lopsided scowl in return.
‘No, he went off to fight in the barons’ armies against King John. That was twenty years ago, and I’ve not heard a word of him since. Thank God I had this freeholding to live on, or I’d have starved.’
Matilda had waited patiently to finish her story. ‘Your nephew Robert came to Kentisbury, married me and worked both as a thatcher and in the fields, like all the villeins. My father was the manor reeve for many years, and he worked so well and was so popular that our lord, Matthew Lupus, freed him about three years ago.’
‘That wouldn’t have made Robert free — and you were his wife,’ objected Emma.
The younger woman nodded her agreement. ‘No, not then. We remained in serfdom and worked for the lord as usual. But when Robert died, I became unencumbered by a bonded husband and so, as the daughter of a free man, became free myself.’
Emma thought about this for a moment. ‘Can your lord testify to his freeing Robert?’
Tears sprang to Matilda’s eyes. ‘This is the problem! Matthew Lupus died last year, and his son Walter refuses to accept the situation. He denies that his father freed mine, and, especially since my father also died, he claims that I and my daughter remain in his servitude. He made us carry on in bondage as before, working for the manor and paying our boons the same as the other villeins.’
Emma poked the small logs in the ring of whitewashed stones with a rod held in her good hand. ‘Was there no document to prove the act of manumission?’ she asked.
Matilda shook her head sadly. ‘No one in the village apart from the priest can read or write. The king’s steward from Barnstaple comes with a clerk every quarter to record all the village payments and debts.’
‘But surely the village knew that your father had been freed?’ objected Emma.
‘When it came to the test, Walter Lupus denied it,’ said Matilda sadly. ‘How can you go against what your manor lord says?’
Gillota looked from her mother to her great-aunt as the dialogue swung from side to side. She was still anxious about being dragged back to Kentisbury, even though months had passed.
Emma was still raising objections to Matilda’s story. ‘But the manor steward and the bailiff would have known about the manumission of your father by this Matthew Lupus,’ she declared. ‘Could you not have appealed to them?’
Matilda shook her head. ‘The bailiff at that time left for a better post in Suffolk, and when his father died Walter got rid of the old steward and appointed another, younger man, Simon Mercator, who was always eager to do his bidding.’
‘The manor court, then!’ said the old lady. ‘Could you not have appealed to them?’
‘I did, even though the new reeve who replaced my father was reluctant to put my case forward. But when it came to the hearing, the new steward held the court, with Walter sitting alongside him. They dismissed my plea with contempt, saying it was a frivolous lie.’
Over the following months they had this conversation several times, but nothing could be resolved, and as they had now escaped it seemed pointless to keep reviving the issue.
The winter turned into spring, then summer, and the two refugees settled into the steady routine of life in Shebbear. With one exception, everyone accepted them, and they became part of the village community. The exception was Adam the carter, a freeman who made a living from his ox-cart, in which he carried goods and material all over North Devon.
Much of his trade was in transporting grain and wool from the King’s manors to Barnstaple and Bideford for shipment, but he would take anything anywhere for a few pennies. For some reason he took against Matilda from the start, scowling at them in the road and muttering under his breath. In the alehouse he would complain about these foreign interlopers coming to his village.
‘Escaped serfs, that’s all they are!’ he would whine. ‘Absconded from their master and pretending to be free!’
As the rest of Shebbear became quite fond of the pretty woman and her daughter, they took little notice of him, but he persisted in his dislike of the women. This feeling was mutual, as Adam was a scrawny, ugly fellow with a face like a weasel and a nature to match.
When there was additional work to be done in the fields, Matilda and her daughter pitched in with the rest, even though as free women they had no obligation to do so. Matilda also continued to gain her neighbours’ favour by dealing with sickness and childbirth, her knowledge of herbs being welcome, since the previous ‘wise woman’ had died of old age a year before.
She noticed that Gillota’s gift of unusual perception was increasing, and sometimes they would exchange a swift glance when something came into their minds simultaneously. On one occasion, after a heavy rainstorm, they both knew that something was badly amiss at the little footbridge over the stream. Both ran towards it and found that one of the village children had fallen into the swollen brook and was in danger of drowning. Having rescued him, they explained away their presence by saying that they happened to be passing, not to arouse any suspicions, but Matilda guessed that several villagers had a shrewd idea that they were ‘fey’.
Another example of their shared powers was in the matter of the little stone that lay on a shelf in Emma’s kitchen. At the back of the square room that occupied the whole cottage, there was a crude lean-to, entered through a gap in the rear wall. Here food was prepared on a table, and the task of dealing with the day’s milking was carried out, skimming some for cream in a wide earthenware dish. Emma’s few pots and pans sat on a plank shelf fixed to the wall, and as soon as Matilda entered for the first time she knew that something powerful was concealed there.
As she reached up, Gillota came in and their eyes met in complete understanding. ‘What is it, Mother?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘It’s strong and good, whatever it is!’
Alongside a pottery jug, Matilda’s finger found a hard, cool object, and she lifted it down carefully. Though it looked like a stone, it was too heavy and had a metallic feel. She held it out to Gillota. ‘I’ve never seen the like of this before.’
Her daughter took it almost reverently and laid it across her palm. It was the size of her hand and had four irregular arms.
‘It reminds me of a flying bird or a funny-shaped cross,’ she said wonderingly. ‘But I don’t think it’s meant to be anything other than itself.’
Her mother took it back and looked at it closely, turning it over in her hands. ‘It’s telling me that it came from far away, perhaps beyond the sky itself.’
‘It’s not just a strange stone; it has a life of its own,’ said Gillota, crossing herself. ‘Let’s ask Aunt Emma where it came from.’
