By the time Walter Lupus had inspected the chains, new arrivals had appeared in the yard. The bailiff, Ranulf de Forde, and the Sergeant of the Hundred, Osbert de Bosco, had been summoned by the villagers. The first administered the King’s properties in the area, and de Bosco was responsible to the sheriff for law and order in the part of the county centred on Shebbear.
‘What’s going on here?’ demanded the bailiff. ‘Why are these women being shackled like this?’
Walter was not disposed to being questioned in such a peremptory fashion by a bailiff. ‘It’s none of your concern. I would have thought you would be aware that I am the lord of Kentisbury. I am merely recapturing two serfs who ran away last year. It has taken me this long to discover where they were, thanks to your carter Adam. I had thought that they had run to a borough like Barnstaple.’
This was a reasonable assumption, as most absconding villeins made for a town, where, if they could evade recapture for a year and a day, they were entitled to their freedom.
The sergeant was not happy with the situation. ‘I feel it is not right for you to just ride into our village with your men and seize two of our women without a by your leave or any gesture of courtesy to us.’
Walter turned on him angrily. ‘Damn you and your courtesy, fellow! These are not “your women”, as you call them — they are my serfs and I need every person to help with the harvest. This is nothing to do with you or this miserable vill of Shebbear!’
His arrogance annoyed them, but they recognized that he probably had the ear of the sheriff or one of the Devon barons, so they were afraid to antagonize him.
‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked de Bosco in a more conciliatory tone.
‘They are going back to my manor in chains,’ snapped Lupus. ‘Your carter Adam, who told me of their whereabouts, is taking them back today. I am angry that you gave them shelter here, when it must have been obvious that they were fugitive serfs.’
‘They claim they were freed, sir,’ objected the bailiff.
Walter Lupus gave a laugh that was more like a derisive bark. ‘They would, wouldn’t they! Liars, both of them. The woman’s father was my father’s reeve, from a long line of villeins.’
He turned his back on the two officials and snapped a command at Adam, who was lurking in the byre, trying to keep away from his irate neighbours.
‘Give these women a bucket and something to eat before you leave. I shall expect you in Kentisbury tomorrow night.’
An ox-cart moved at the pace of a man’s walk and would take two days to cover the miles between the villages.
Walter left one of the guards he had brought in Adam’s yard, then he and the other man walked back to the church and rode away on their horses, leaving a disgruntled but powerless community behind.
Emma marched into the ox-byre, defying the lout who tried to prevent her. ‘Get out of my way, you heartless swine,’ she screeched. ‘I need to see my niece and her daughter.’
A few of the village men pushed into the yard and stood threateningly around the man. Though they dare not defy the lord of Kentisbury by rescuing the women, they had no scruples about harassing his servant.
Emma went into the shed and spent a few minutes trying to console Matilda and especially Gillota, who was devastated by this reversal of their fortunes.
‘You’ll have to go back, but we will do all we can to get you home again,’ Emma promised. ‘I will ask the bailiff, sergeant and our priest what can be done.’
She went back to their cottage and put the few spare garments that the women possessed into a cloth bag, together with some food for the journey and a purse with a few pennies, all she had to give. At Matilda’s pleading, she also added the strange stone that her niece kept under the end of her mattress.
‘Something tells me that I might be needing it,’ she told Emma grimly as they were pushed on to the cart to start the long journey to Kentisbury.
Just as it had been in Shebbear, it was now harvest-time in Kentisbury, though it had started a week later there.
Once again, Matilda and Gillota were in the strip fields, toiling alongside their old neighbours, gathering sheaves, stooking and raking. The first shock of their kidnapping had worn off, to be replaced by sorrow and despondency, especially at the loss of their old home.
When their long and uncomfortable cart ride was over, they were turned off at Walter Lupus’s manor house, a grey-stone block set inside a wide compound surrounded by a wooden stockade. The surly guard dragged them by their chains around to the back of the house, where the huts of the servants lay between stables and barns. As he released their fetters by knocking out the rusty pins that held them, Matilda protested that they were in the wrong place.
‘Our home is further up the road!’ she complained.
‘Your home is here now!’ came a voice from behind her. Turning, she saw Simon Mercator, the steward to Walter Lupus, the man who had previously denied her attempt to establish her freedom at the manor court. He was a narrow-faced man with sandy hair and cold eyes, which roamed over her body as if he could see through the thin woollen smock that she wore.
‘We have our own croft, where I was born!’ retorted Matilda defiantly.
‘Not any longer,’ sneered Simon. ‘My nephew lives there now, so you’ll live here as the servants you are. When the harvest is over, you will help with the domestic work around the manor.’
He ignored her loud protests and pushed her into the hut that acted as one of the servants’ dormitories. The earth floor was strewn with rushes, and much of the space was occupied by a wide mattress, a hessian bag stuffed with hay and ferns. Apart from a milking stool and a couple of planks fixed to a wall to act as a shelf for their meagre belongings, the hut was bare.
‘This is where you will sleep with two of the other women,’ snapped the steward. ‘You will eat with the servants in that hut over there.’ He pointed nonchalantly at one of the other thatched buildings that clustered at the back of the compound, then walked away, oblivious to Matilda’s loud complaints.
The lout who had accompanied them back from Shebbear pushed her back into the hut. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your mouth and keep it shut!’ he growled. ‘Enjoy your last evening while you can, as from now on it’ll be work every daylight hour.’
Matilda was no stranger to that, as before her father was granted his freedom she was accustomed to the life of a villein — but then she at least had her own home, first with her husband, then with her father. Now they were back labouring in the fields, alongside the folk they had known all their lives until they escaped eleven short months ago. Their neighbours were sympathetic to their plight, but as the new arrivals were no worse off than themselves, apart from the loss of their croft, there was nothing they would or could do to help them. However, there was universal dislike and even fear of both the new manor lord and of his steward.
‘Mean, grasping bastards, both of them!’ muttered the man who used to live in the next cottage to them. ‘Walter is a totally different man from his father Matthew, God rest his soul! He is dour and bad-tempered, thinking of nothing but the weight of his purse. He has brought that bloody man Simon Mercator here, as well as those surly ruffians to enforce his will. I reckon they are outlaws from the moor that he’s allowed back in, as long as they do his every bidding.’
Each evening, when the work ceased as dusk was falling, they plodded back to the village with the others and made their weary way to the manor house, where an unappetizing meal was provided in the eating hut. Then, like the rest of the villagers, they slumped on the bed with two of the younger serving girls and slept the sleep of the exhausted until daybreak.
Matilda tried endlessly to think of ways to escape from this nightmare, but there seemed nothing she could do. It would be impossible to run away again — and where could they go, anyway? They no longer had their few animals to live on, and it was impossible to think of getting back to Aunt Emma a second time. Barnstaple was too small a borough to hide in for a year and day, even if they could reach it undetected — and Exeter might as well be at the other end of the world for all the hope they had of getting there.
Gillota seemed devastated by the change in their circumstances, and, although their former neighbours were kind to her and tried to cheer her up, she was quiet and withdrawn, her former bright nature crushed. She seemed permanently fearful of either Walter Lupus or his creepy steward accosting her, in spite of her mother’s constant assurances that she would protect her. As it happened, they saw little of either of these men, the daily work routine being directed by the manor reeve, her father’s successor, who seemed a reasonable fellow, though weak in
