For answer, the steward kicked the helpless man in the face, causing blood to stream down from a cut over his eye. ‘Keep your mouth shut! Don’t add lies to your other sins,’ he hissed vindictively.
Walter Lupus regarded Philip impassively but did not interfere. Just then, the village priest limped up, great concern on his face.
‘You’ve found it, then, thanks be to God! Where was it?’
The steward gave Philip another kick, this time in the ribs. ‘This rogue stole it, canon. He hid it in the thatch of his cottage, no doubt until he could smuggle it away to sell.’
Thomas de Peyne, though greatly relieved at the restoration of the sacred plate, was nonetheless concerned at the steward’s behaviour. ‘You must not mistreat the man like that! He is innocent until proved guilty — which I find very hard to believe. In fact, now that the paten is restored, I do not wish to bring charges against anyone.’
Walter now came to life. ‘I am afraid that cannot be done, Father. This is a serious crime, both against my authority in my own manor and against the King’s peace, as well as being a serious sin against the Church.’
‘You were a coroner’s clerk yourself for many years,’ added Simon craftily. ‘You must be well aware of the law. That plate was worth at least nine marks — many, many times more valuable than the twelve pence that defines a felony.’
Thomas frowned. He already suspected that there was some conspiracy afoot here, but what the steward said about the law was correct.
‘But you must prove him guilty first. There is no call for arbitrary judgement — nor for the violence I just saw you commit upon this man.’
‘There is little doubt of his guilt,’ snapped Simon, who did not take kindly to being reprimanded by some ancient priest. ‘The stolen article was found hidden in his house — who else would do such a thing? He is a soldier, accustomed to looting. He has no land to work, so he needs money to live. He is guilty. Any trial would be a waste of time.’
Walter Lupus seemed to tire of his steward making all the decisions.
‘There will be a trial — at a special manor court tomorrow,’ he snapped. ‘Then he can be hanged!’
There was a general muttering from the crowd clustered around the gate and standing along the fence to the street. It was hard to tell if they were agreeing that this obvious thief should be summarily executed or whether they found it hard to believe that a man they had known since he was born in the village could have committed such a blatant and uncharacteristic act. Many already suspected that the unpopular steward and manor lord were involved in some scheme of their own.
‘How did that fellow of yours know to look so quickly in such an unlikely hiding place?’ asked Thomas suspiciously. But no one answered him, being too concerned with hustling Philip away, his arms locked behind him by the steward’s two acolytes. They marched him away down to the turning where the manor house lay, leaving the crowd of villagers staring after them, many as dubious about this performance as the parish priest had been.
Near the gate, Matilda and Gillota were almost paralysed by what was happening, unable to believe their own senses. One moment they were in Philip’s pleasant company, the next he was on his knees, assaulted and bleeding, before being dragged away to imprisonment and the promise of the hangman’s rope.
Several of their former neighbours tried to console them, knowing of their friendship with Philip. Many of the villagers were muttering about the high-handed actions of the men who ruled their hamlet with such severity, but it was to Thomas de Peyne that the woman and her daughter turned to for solace.
‘Father, they cannot hang him for this! It is such an obvious falsehood, to pay him back for accusing the steward of his foul behaviour,’ cried Matilda, her arm around her sobbing daughter.
Thomas knew about Simon Mercator’s indecency with Gillota and was shocked. As a young man, he had been falsely accused of the same offence with a girl pupil at the cathedral school in Winchester, which had blighted his life for several years until he was proved innocent. But now, the villagers who surrounded him were keen to confirm the steward’s reputation for such lewdness, and he had no reason to doubt them.
‘This sounds like a gross injustice!’ he agreed. ‘I will do what I can to stop this charade, but I have little influence here. I am not even the regular parish priest.’
‘Can’t you threaten to excommunicate them, Father?’ asked Matilda, almost beside herself with anguish.
Thomas gave a sad smile and shook his head. ‘It would require someone far higher than me to do that — and no grounds for such action exist in this secular matter.’
‘But it was a sacred vessel that was stolen from a church!’ she persisted. ‘Surely that is sacrilege?’
‘Yes, but as it stands Philip himself is the culprit and I fail to see how we can prove who else might be to blame.’ He sighed and gathered the skirts of his cassock together. ‘I will speak to Walter Lupus and try to make him see the truth — though I fear he seems too loyal to this Simon fellow for me to have much effect.’
With the drama over for the time being, the villagers began drifting away and, disconsolately, Matilda and her daughter trudged sadly back to the manor house. One of the other servants told them that Philip had been thrown into an unused stable and that Garth was standing guard outside. They went around to the side of the stockade where the horses were kept and tried to speak to Philip, but were chased off by the thickset thug who stood outside the door.
‘Clear off, will you!’ he shouted. ‘No one speaks to the prisoner until they hang him!’
Later, Matilda tried again, bringing some food and ale purloined from the kitchen, but this time Daniel was squatting outside and refused even to let her leave the victuals for Philip.
She went back to their sleeping place and sat on the mattress alongside Gillota, the other two girls already sound asleep on the other side of the bed. It was almost dark, but she and her daughter had one of those episodes where each knew the other’s thoughts.
‘Take it out, Mother. Maybe if it worked on Lady Joan, it can do something now,’ whispered Gillota. ‘It seems at its best when there is urgency, like the decline of Lady Joan!’
Matilda felt under the hessian palliasse and pulled out the stone. As she held it in her hands, she thought she felt that slight vibration again, though perhaps it was the quivering of her own nervous muscles.
Mother and daughter stared at it in the dim light, both uncertain what to do next.
‘Maybe if we send our thoughts and pleadings into it together, it might respond,’ suggested Gillota in a whisper.
Matilda rose from the bed and motioned to the girl. ‘Let’s go outside. We cannot risk waking these maids.’
They went out into the fitful light of the moon, which now and then broke through the drifting clouds, and went quietly around to the back of the hut.
‘We must both hold it,’ said Matilda, holding the stone out by one of the wings so that her daughter could grasp the other one. With no more words needed, they merged their thoughts and tried to project them into the strange little metallic object that joined them. For five long minutes they visualized justice, rescue, salvation and love together with an image of Philip’s features. Again, Matilda wondered if the tiny tremors she felt in her fingers were from her own tense muscles or the stone itself.
‘I think it is quaking more rapidly, Mother,’ said Gillota, reading her thoughts. ‘Let’s keep pleading with it.’
They stood in the cool night air for a further ten minutes, until something told Matilda that they had done all they could.
‘Leave it for tonight, child,’ she said eventually.
‘What shall we do with it now?’ asked the girl. ‘It seemed to work with Joan when it was very close to her.’
‘I shall leave it as near Philip as I can — tonight, at the court and, God forbid, near the hanging tree if it comes to that!’
She sent Gillota back to bed, then crept along the backs of the huts until she came to the stable where the prisoner was kept. At the back wall, she quietly pushed the stone into a hollow where one of the rough planks had rotted against the ground and covered it over with crumbled wood fragments and a clod of turf.
‘Do your magic until morning and I’ll come back for you,’ she said in her mind before creeping back to her bed.
The manorial court, or ‘court-baron’, was held at varying intervals in different manors, but in Kentisbury it was normally a three-weekly event. Most of the business was usually about mundane matters concerning land,
