spirit.
Thanks to continued fine weather, the end of the harvest came little more than a week after they arrived back in Kentisbury. When the last sheaf was stored in the barn, ready for winnowing, it was traditionally the time for the celebration of ‘harvest home’, the expected right of both villeins and freemen to be feted by their lord in thanksgiving for the land’s bounty.
‘If it’s like last year, don’t expect much from this mean bastard!’ muttered the village smith, in gloomy anticipation of the ‘ale’ to be held in the churchyard that evening.
The whole village turned out, many bringing what spare food they could manage, to add to the victuals and drink grudgingly provided by Walter Lupus. Trestles were set out to carry the bread, cheese, pasties, shellfish, boiled salmon and some sweetmeats. A pig was being spit-roasted nearby over an open fire, and in spite of the smith’s pessimism there seemed plenty of ale as well as some cider.
The mood was subdued until Walter and his steward left after a token appearance, when their departure and the effects of the drink began to loosen up the atmosphere. Music was provided by a set of bagpipes, a drum and a fiddle, to which the younger folk began dancing. Even Gillota brightened a little when several of the village boys began flirting with her and soon dragged her into the ring of dancers.
Matilda went to the table to take some food, the labours of the day making her hungry even through her tiredness. She was breaking a piece off a barley loaf to eat with a piece of hard, yellow cheese when someone at her elbow spoke gently.
‘The mussels are good — I suppose they’re from Combe Martin.’
She looked around and saw a face that was vaguely familiar, though for a moment she couldn’t place it. It was a man a little older than herself, tall and broad with a pleasant, open face below his wiry brown hair. He wore a long tunic of good broadcloth, with a wide leather belt carrying a long sheathed dagger at the back.
‘You’ve forgotten me, haven’t you? We used to play in the barns when we were little!’
Enlightenment lit up her face. ‘Philip? Philip de Mora! I’ve not seen you in twenty years!’
He grinned at her mischievously. ‘I’ve been away at the wars, a foot soldier and then an archer. But those days are over, I’m afraid!’
He held up his left hand, two of the fingers of which were missing and the others twisted, with an ugly scar across the wrist.
‘A French sword ended my military career, so I came home a few months ago. But I gained my freedom over it.’
His face became serious. ‘I have heard of your misfortune in that respect, mistress. It is a scandal. Something must be done about the situation in this manor.’
Philip lowered his voice as he muttered the last few words. Then he brightened again and held out his good hand to her. ‘But tonight is for revelling, so let’s join the dance. Your daughter should not have all the fun!’
He pulled her towards the increasing number of people stamping and twirling to the tune of the pipes and rebec and the thump of the drum. For a time she almost forgot her troubles, as they danced, then ate again and danced some more. She kept a wary eye on Gillota, but she also seemed to be enjoying herself with a group of younger boys and girls.
As it grew dusk, the older people began to make their way home, but many stayed in the churchyard, some drunk, others flirting and yet other couples vanishing into the growing darkness beyond the yew trees behind the church.
The large harvest moon was almost at the full as Matilda and Philip de Mora sat together on the grass in the pale light.
‘Where do you live now? Are you married?’ she asked him. She recalled now that he had gone off as little more than a boy to become a squire’s servant during the troubles early in King Henry’s reign.
‘I never married. I was always away at the wars,’ he replied. ‘My mother and father died years ago, but when I was wounded last year the knight for whom I served granted me my freedom. I decided to come home, at least for a time. I pay the manor a rent for our old house at the end of the village and will stay until I decide what to do with the rest of my life.’
They talked for a little while longer, until Matilda noticed that some of the lads with Gillota were getting too frisky from the amount of ale they had drunk. She decided it was time to go home, if one could call it that. Gathering her daughter up and ignoring her protests, she bade goodnight to her new friend.
‘I’ll see you safely to the manor house,’ he offered gallantly and escorted them back to the big gates set in the stockade around the Lupus stronghold.
As she watched him wave and turn away, Matilda felt a small glow of contentment at having made a new ally and possibly a champion.
Matilda preferred the hard labour of harvesting to the menial tasks that she and her daughter were given around the manor house. For the first week the steward set them to work in the large kitchen shed, where far from being allowed to cook they were forced to scour iron pots with wet sand, carry wood for the fires and scrape and clean vegetables. There was a cook and a baker, who lived in their own houses, together with the pair of young girls who shared their barren quarters in the sleeping shed. They all ate at a side table in the kitchen, and as Matilda and Gillota knew them well there was at least a friendly atmosphere, unless Simon Mercator saw fit to come prowling around, when he seemed to enjoy ogling Matilda.
The two ruffians who had captured them in Shebbear acted alternately as gate guards during the day, the heavy wooden gates of the stockade being shut and barred from nightfall to dawn. However, they did not challenge Matilda when one evening, after all the kitchen work was finished, she went out with Gillota to walk around the village. They stopped outside their toft and gazed sadly at the building and the plot of land around it. Two infants were playing in the dirt outside the front door, and a young woman, presumably their mother, stared at them as they stood looking in. She was a stranger to the village and must have been imported from wherever Simon Mercator came from.
They walked on, exchanging greetings with other villagers, some of whom enquired discreetly if there was any hope of their regaining their freedom. Then, with nowhere else to go, they sadly retraced their steps, Matilda rather hoping that she would meet Philip de Mora as they passed what had been his parents’ cottage at the top end of the village street. There was no sign of him and, forlornly, they went back to the room they shared with the younger servants and went to bed.
The only other occasions when they could leave the manor house were on Sundays, when virtually the whole village went to Mass. Though it was not strictly obligatory to attend church, very few failed to appear, unless they were very old, sick or infirm. In any case, going to church was a social event, where they could gossip to their friends and for an hour or two shrug off the dull, repetitive pattern of their claustrophobic lives.
St Thomas’s was a century old, built of stone on the site of a previous wooden Saxon church. The oblong nave was just large enough to take all the villagers, who stood shoulder to shoulder on the floor of beaten earth, apart from the old and infirm who ‘went to the wall’ to squat on a narrow ledge.
The chancel was up a single step, carrying a plain altar with a brass cross and two candlesticks. There was a small sacristy through a door on the left of the chancel where the priest kept his robes and the makings of the Host. Matilda and Gillota stood right at the back, as even in church there was a pecking order. Walter Lupus and his pale, sad-looking wife were in the front, with his bailiff and steward on either side. The manor lord himself had no family, and it was widely whispered that his wife was barren, as well as ill.
On the first Sunday that they attended, Matilda whispered to her neighbour while they waited for the parish priest to appear from the sacristy.
‘Who is the parson now? I heard that old Father Peter had died since we left the village.’
‘He went to God just after Easter,’ was the reply. ‘We have another old one now, Father Thomas, the same name as our patron saint. He is a prebendary from Exeter Cathedral, a very learned man, they say.’
‘So what’s he doing in an out-of-the-way place like Kentisbury?’ murmured Matilda. Perhaps someone more learned, instead of the usual dullard or drunk posted to the more remote parishes, might be able to give her advice about her problem.
‘He’s really retired, but the bishop sent him here until they can find someone more permanent.’
As she spoke, the sacristy door opened and a small man, probably aged about seventy, appeared, stoop- shouldered and with a slight limp. The lank hair below his tonsure was grey, though some darker streaks still survived. Matilda peered between the heads of the people in front and saw that his face was narrow, with a pointed
