Her great-aunt was dismissive of the stone. Both Matilda and her daughter were well aware that Emma had no trace of their gift.
‘My husband had it from somewhere,’ she muttered. ‘He said it had been in the Revelle family for years. No one knows what it is, but I kept it as a curiosity. You can have it, Matilda, if it takes your fancy.’
Matilda readily accepted it and kept it under her mattress to keep it near her, curious to learn what its properties might be. This was the second strange stone they had come across in Shebbear. Soon after they arrived, Matilda enquired casually about the large stone that she and Gillota had seen near the church and which had triggered some primitive fear in both their minds.
‘That’s the Devil’s Stone,’ she was informed. ‘He threw it there when he was turned out of heaven by St Michael.’
In November they joined the rest of the village in an ancient ritual, standing around the stone well after dark in the light of a blazing bonfire, to watch some of the men turning the massive boulder over with stout poles, while the church bell clanged out a racket to frighten off Satan.
‘No one knows why we do it,’ admitted their neighbour. ‘But it’s always been done, to avoid bad luck for the coming year.’
After the turning, there was food and drink provided by the bailiff, a pleasant tradition that was repeated throughout the year, usually on saints’ days, when a holiday was declared and an ‘ale’ held in the churchyard. The weak beer brewed and drunk in large quantities got its name from these ‘ales’, when eating, drinking, dancing and flirting were conducted in equal measure.
Several men became interested in Matilda, a comely widow, but she was older than all the unmarried men and did not fancy the prospect of wedding an old widower. However, Gillota was a different matter and, at almost fifteen, was well into marriageable age. A number of the village youths showed their interest, though having managed to shrug off their serfdom Matilda was concerned that her daughter might fall for a villein again and lose her freedom.
In August harvest-time arrived, as the weather had been good this year, a welcome change for some recent bad summers. This was the culmination of the farming year, and everyone turned out to help bring in the wheat, barley and oats that together with the beans and root vegetables would hopefully see the village through the next winter.
Matilda and her daughter joined everyone else in the fields, following behind the men who reaped with scythes and sickles. They collected and bound the cut corn into sheaves and stooked them to dry. Older women came with wide wooden rakes to collect the fallen stems, even Emma managing to drag one behind her with her good hand. Children were put to gleaning, squatting to pick up fallen grains into bags tied around their waist, as every speck of food might mean the difference between starvation or survival by next February.
The strips belonging to the King’s manor were harvested first, then the rest of the corn was tackled, of which a tenth would go to the Church as tithes, as did a similar proportion of almost everything else that the villagers produced, be it eggs, ducks or lambs.
For three days they worked from first light until dark, the stooks cut on the first day now being dry, thanks to the good weather. As Matilda followed the reapers, Gillota gathering behind her, the ox-carts rumbled past, piled high with yellow sheaves, headed for the tithe barn and the barns at the manor barton, ready for winnowing the grain from the straw.
Both men and women sang as they worked, looking forward to noon, when they could rest for a few minutes and eat the bread and cheese or scraps of meat they had brought and replace their sweat with weak ale. Then they carried on until the sun was sinking, when eventually the reeve called a halt and the workers began streaming back to their homes to eat and then collapse on to their beds until dawn, when the whole exhausting routine would begin again.
But for Matilda and her daughter, daybreak would bring a very different scenario.
Just as the early summer dawn was breaking, Emma awoke and, using her good arm, levered herself up from the palliasse on the bracken-covered floor. She went to the fire-pit and blew on the embers under the white wood- ash, then added a few sticks, so that she could warm the iron pot of oat gruel that sat on a trivet.
She shook Matilda and Gillota awake and soon they were sleepily eating the gruel and some bread smeared with pork dripping that was their breakfast. They slept in their working clothes, calf-length shifts of coarse cloth, clinched at the waist with a rope girdle, so they were ready to be off as soon as they had washed down their food with some small ale.
But as they moved barefoot to the door, it suddenly flew open and Adam the carter burst in.
‘There they are, the runaway serfs!’ he shouted triumphantly and stood aside as two rough-looking men entered and advanced on the women. Behind them came another, dark-haired man, dressed in a short tunic, breeches and riding boots, of a quality that marked him as being from a higher station in life.
‘Walter Lupus!’ screamed Gillota and ran to hide behind her mother. Aghast, Matilda shielded her with her body, but one of the men dragged her aside and began snapping rusty iron fetters on the girl’s wrists, while the other did the same to Matilda.
Wriggling and shouting, she began protesting at the top of her voice. ‘Why can you not leave us in peace? We are free, don’t you understand?’
The lord of Kentisbury pushed his way further into the room. ‘Be quiet, woman!’ he shouted. ‘You are absconders, do you understand? You’re going back where you belong.’
The manacles were attached to long chains, and the two ruffians, whom Lupus had obviously brought from Kentisbury, began dragging the two women out of the door, with Emma stumbling behind them, shouting for help at the top of her damaged voice.
By the time the disorderly procession had reached the gate, neighbours were beginning to congregate in the road outside.
‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the man from next door. ‘Who are you and what are doing to those women?
For answer, one of the roughs pushed him in the chest, making him fall against the fence.
‘Mind your tongue, fellow!’ bellowed Walter. ‘Then mind your own business, for this is none of yours.’
There was a growl of anger from the small crowd, which was growing as more villagers congregated at the house.
‘Leave our women alone. What right have you to invade our village?’ shouted the smith, who had always been very friendly to Matilda and her daughter.
Lupus raised a riding crop he carried and smacked the man across the face, raising a red weal across his cheek.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, man, or I’ll have it cut out!’ he snarled.
The crowd fell back a pace, alarmed at this early show of violence. They could see that this was a man of substance from his demeanour and quality of clothing — and some of them had seen the fine horse that was tied up outside Adam’s cottage.
‘Send for the bailiff — and the sergeant!’ screamed Emma from the yard. ‘They’ll know how to deal with these outlaws!’
Her damaged voice carried well enough for some of the neighbours to start running back towards the centre of the village, but Lupus ignored her and began striding up the track towards Adam’s house.
The two louts followed, dragging the woman and the girl behind them by their chains. Matilda thrashed and struggled, calling out all the time for Lupus to let them go, but Gillota just stumbled along sobbing, tears streaming from her eyes.
Adam followed behind, but he was jostled and abused by his fellow villagers, several of whom managed to get in a punch or kick against this traitor in their midst.
They reached Adam’s dwelling, a cottage with large yard and a thatched byre where he kept his oxen. He hurried ahead and pulled open the crude door to the shed, revealing a heap of soiled straw and a manger where he fed hay to his two beasts. They were tethered in the yard, so the byre was empty, and the two men Lupus had brought from Kentisbury dragged the women inside and pushed them roughly down on to the straw. One of them secured the loose chains to one of the roof supports with a rusty nail-spike, which he hammered in with a large stone.
‘That’ll keep you from wandering until we’re ready to leave!’ he jeered.
