The hart paused by a pool in the middle of the glade and turned its head this way and that, its snout twitching. It was a magnificent beast, fully-grown with ten tines on its antlers, only now beginning to run to fat in preparation for the approaching winter and the time of rut. Its chestnut coat matched the reddish-brown leaves that carpeted the ground beneath the trees. A thin blanket of mist hung a few feet above the ground; the landscape was silent save for a steady drip of condensation falling from the branches of trees, the air rank with the dank smell of decaying leaves. Satisfied that there was no immediate danger, the hart dipped its head to drink from the pool.
A twig snapped a short distance away. The hart raised its head abruptly, standing motionless as it stared through the trees, its hind legs tensed ready to spring. After a few moments it saw figures moving slowly towards it, three green-clad riders seated astride horses, allowing their mounts to crop at the occasional tufts of grass that grew amongst the trees as they advanced. Then it saw two more figures, a man being led by a dog on a leash snuffling at the ground before it.
It was the smell that decided the hart; the hunters had made the mistake of approaching from up-wind. Reacting at once, the hart leapt over the stream and bounded away from them. One of the riders turned to the huntsman on foot who held the leash of the scenting hound, ‘Sound the chasse!’
The huntsman had already lifted his horn, which hung from one shoulder by a baldrick, to his lips, and now he sounded the warbling fanfare to announce the chase. A hundred yards behind the three riders, more huntsmen unleashed their tawny-brown alaunts, swift and tenacious hunting dogs that would take over where the scenting-lymer left off and bring the hart to bay. The three riders spurred their mounts into a canter, riding as swiftly as they dared through the trees, but they were soon overtaken by the baying alaunts.
The hart had moved swiftly but, as the whole wood came alive with the sound of horns, baying dogs, and hunters urging the dogs on, it realised that this would be a lengthy pursuit, a race of endurance.
More alaunts were bounding out of the trees to the right, released by their handlers as the hart passed the relay points the huntsmen had planned in advance; it was now being driven. Crazy with panic at the tumult in its wake, driven on by fresh relays of alaunts, the hart crashed through the undergrowth, heedless of the trail it was leaving in its wake.
Half a mile further on, a spread-out line of green-clad archers waited amongst the trees. They had heard the sounding of the chasse, and now their ears picked up the distant but approaching crash of horses, dogs and men blundering through the bracken. They each took an arrow from the soft cloth quivers they wore at their belts and laid them across their elmwood bows, callused fingers finding grey goose-feather flights, nocking them to hempen bowstrings. They then stood waiting, motionless, even their breath no longer rasping from their lips to form clouds of condensation in the chill autumnal air. It took immense strength just to draw those massive bows, but these men were skilled and experienced archers. They were English yeomen, destined to make a name for themselves as the deadliest killers in Christendom.
Approaching the line of archers from up-wind, the hart could not smell them, and in its panicky flight it was too busy to look out for fresh dangers ahead. It burst out of the trees into a broad clearing, realised it had made a mistake in breaking cover, but did not check its flight for an instant, bounding over the grass and heading for the trees on the other side. It was less than ten yards away when the arrow took it full in the chest. It never saw its killer, for the young man who loosed the fatal shaft stood in front of a tree, his torn green coat and dirty face blending with the lichen-covered trunk. The barbed arrowhead tore effortlessly through flesh, and the hart stumbled, its long, powerful haunches crumpling suddenly beneath it, so that it was dead before it hit the ground, the paler fur of its chest now spotted with blood that steamed in the cold air.
The archers emerged from their concealment in the released tension of the moment after the kill, and gathered in a circle around the dead hart.
‘It’s… it’s dead,’ one man pronounced plaintively.
‘Aye and like.’ Only the youngest of the archers seemed unperturbed, crouching over the dead hart to tease his arrow free of the bloody wound. Although perhaps no more than sixteen years of age, he was tall, and possessed shoulders broadened from a decade of pushing a plough. His green coat was of coarse cloth, worn over a fustian tunic, woollen leggings, and wooden clogs. He wore a round, broad-brimmed ploughman’s cap over a torn hood, rags for mittens, and a bracer of hardened leather on his left wrist polished by years of use. A pair of dark, blue-grey eyes were set in a face that was tanned from a lifetime spent out in the open, and a tousled thatch of pale-blond hair spilled out from under his hood.
‘Dear heart alive!’ The speaker, though four years older, had the looks of the youth in coarser detail. ‘You’ve killed it, Martin!’
‘Aye.’ Having finally freed the barbed arrowhead from the hart’s flesh, Martin Kemp inspected it intently before cleaning it with a rag, as if more interested in the condition of the arrowhead than anything his brother had to say – which, Thomas Croft reflected wryly, was probably the case. Croft was the reeve of the village of Knighton, as responsible for conveying Sir John Beaumont’s demands to his villeins and tenants as he was for being the villagers’ representative to the lord of Stone Gate Manor. Croft was in his late thirties, a freeman who had been selected for the post of reeve by the tithing, the village’s governing body, an appointment which had to be approved by Beaumont. It was customary for the post of reeve to be reappointed each year at the end of September, but since both Beaumont and the villagers found the current incumbent honest and competent in his work, he had been reeve for several years now, and had already been re-elected for the coming agricultural year.
‘We were only supposed to wound it, to make it easier to catch,’ Croft pointed out. ‘The honour of the kill was supposed to go to Sir John.’
A member of the Leicestershire squirearchy, Sir John Beaumont was not a wealthy man; at least, not by the standards of the nobility. He could not afford enough dogs and men to hunt par force des chiens, as was the preferred manner on the continent, so instead he had to use the old style of ‘bow and stable’ hunting, using village bondsmen as archers, in return giving them half a day off from the boon-work that they owed him as his villeins. It was hardly befitting a man of noble birth, so he tried to combine this economy of manpower with the nobility of the chivalrous par force des chiens, riding after his quarry on horseback.
‘Then he should learn to catch his own venison,’ Martin asserted sullenly. Croft admired Martin Kemp’s spirit but did not approve of it; spirit was a quality villeins could well do without. Martin’s had always stood him in good stead in fights and football matches with the boys from the neighbouring village of Oadby, but with it came a rebellious streak that chafed against the three days’ boon-work he was required to work on Beaumont’s demesne each week. Croft had always suspected that one day it would lead him into a head-on clash with his superiors.
Beaumont’s squire, Richard Stamford, rode into the clearing on a roan courser even as the baying packs of alaunts streamed out of the undergrowth. Stamford was a handsome lad in his mid-teens, with bright blue eyes and curly blond hair hanging in a thick, waved bob, dressed in a close-fitting cote-hardie of emerald velvet that barely covered his crotch, a pair of tight-fitting hose, and a furred cloak with dagged hems fastened on his right shoulder with four silver buttons. Seeing the six peasants standing around the hart’s dead body he reined in abruptly, staring down his nose at them. Then he turned his attention to the slain quarry, and saw it was just as noble a beast as the chief huntsman had promised him. ‘Who slew the hart?’ he demanded coldly. He might be younger even than Martin Kemp, but he had all the years of the ancestors he could trace back to the time of the Norman Conquest to give him authority.
At first no one said anything; they shuffled their feet, unable to meet Stamford’s harsh glare.
‘Who slew…’ Stamford began again.
‘I did,’ Martin interrupted, meeting Stamford’s glare defiantly.
Stamford’s courser was prancing skittishly amongst the alaunts, and he had to tug on its reins so that he could continue to meet Martin’s gaze. ‘You were told not to kill the beast, man! You were to wound it, to bring it to bay so that I or my master could deal the death- stroke.’
Martin shrugged. ‘I’m a poor shot,’ he lied. Despite his youth, he was the best archer in the village, and the others could not suppress their sniggering.
Stamford suspected that he was being mocked, and knew he could not allow the insult to go unpunished. He glared at Martin for a moment, then dismounted, handing the bridle of his courser to another peasant before slapping Martin savagely. Martin took the blow without retaliating but without flinching from it, either, even though it drew a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. That only infuriated Stamford more. He knocked Martin’s hat from his head and, swinging wildly at him, caught him on the temple with a powerful blow that made the youth stagger. ‘Doff your hat when you address me, churl!’ he snapped.
‘Aye, Master Stamford,’ Martin replied sullenly, turning around and bending over to retrieve his hat from the ground. In a final venting of his frustration, Stamford kicked him in the backside, sending him sprawling on his face in the mud. Martin lay there for a moment with the alaunts running all around, and then something within him snapped and he pushed himself back on to his feet. Before he even realised what he was doing, he had struck Stamford.
Despite Martin’s size it was not a powerful blow, being guided more by anger than by skill. But it caught Stamford so off-guard that he stumbled, tripping over a dog to land on his backside in the mud. He stared up at Martin in numbed disbelief. ‘How… how dare you? How dare you?’
The other peasants were looking on in horrified disbelief, knowing Martin had overstepped the mark.
Stamford quickly pushed himself to his feet and swung at Martin again. The squire had trained for warfare since childhood, and was skilled with both sword and lance; but fist-fighting was for peasants. Martin ducked the blow, caught Stamford by the wrist, and twisted his arm up into the small of his back. Stamford gasped in pain.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ Martin snarled in his ear. Then he pushed Stamford forward so that he fell on his face as Martin had done a few moments earlier. The scene would have been comic had it been a fellow churl Martin had been fighting and not his lord’s squire.
‘Dear Heaven!’ protested Michael. ‘For all loves, Martin, what do you think you’re doing?’ He tried to grab his youngest brother by the arm, but Martin shrugged him off angrily.
Then Stamford was pushing himself to his feet, his face suffused with rage. Tugging his hunting sword from the scabbard that hung at his belt he lunged at Kemp.
‘Look out, lad!’ cried Simkin Sewell, the oldest of the six peasants, a grizzled ancient who was too old to care whether or not he earned the displeasure of his betters.
Martin turned and barely managed to dodge the thrust. He clamped his hand over Stamford’s wrist, and the two of them wrestled for possession of the sword until Croft decided that it was time to intervene, interposing himself between the two combatants. Taking their lead from the reeve, the other peasants lent a hand, pulling Martin and Stamford apart, and at that moment Sir John Beaumont rode into the clearing on his chestnut courser, followed by his daughter Beatrice astride a white jennet.
Beaumont was a tall, well-built man in his late thirties, the hood of his brown cote-hardie pulled back to reveal dark hair, his green cloak thrown back across his left shoulder.
Beatrice was dressed in a close-fitting green and auburn gown, her burnished-copper hair completely hidden from view by her coif. She was in her mid teens, small and delicate of stature, a sickly child who had defied the odds simply by living so long. With her pale, angular face and her large blue eyes with long dark lashes, she was the very image of her mother, who had died giving birth to her. But whereas her mother had been soft-spoken and demure, there was a wilful streak in Beatrice of which her father ill-approved. Yet he knew he had only himself to blame: deprived of the young wife he had loved so dearly, he had doted on his only child, denying her nothing.
The chief huntsman emerged behind them, a burly man with thick black brows and a bushy beard.
‘God’s love!’ exclaimed Beaumont. ‘What is going on here? How came you to this pass, Dickon?’
The peasants holding Stamford hurriedly released him, and the squire returned his sword to its scabbard, straightening his clothing with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘This churl dared to raise his hand to me, Sir John,’ he said, indicating Martin with an arrogant toss of his head.
Beaumont turned his attention to where Martin stood between the two peasants still holding him. ‘Well, boy? Is it true? Did you raise your hand to Master Stamford?’
Martin, who had been staring up at Beatrice, turned now to meet Beaumont’s gaze. ‘Aye, Sir John, but…’ he began.
‘Silence! There is no excuse. You shall be punished for your impudence, churl.’ As lord of the manor, Beaumont’s powers over his bondsmen barely stopped short of life and death. ‘Take him, Wade,’ he added to the huntsman.
Martin said nothing, knowing it was useless to argue, but he glared malevolently at Beaumont as Wade grasped him firmly by the upper left arm. Beaumont had already turned his attention to where the body of the hart lay. ‘Who slew the hart?’
‘He did.’ Having climbed back into the saddle of his courser, Stamford indicated Martin. ‘That’s how we came to blows. He disobeyed our instructions.’
‘Should we unmake the hart?’ asked Wade. ‘Unmaking’ was the final ritual of hunting, the flaying and butchering of the hart’s carcass, and rewarding the dogs with the choicest giblets.
‘There seems little purpose in it now,’ muttered Beaumont. But the dogs had at least played their part and deserved their reward. Beaumont dismounted from his courser, rolling back his sleeves. With Stamford’s aid, he turned the carcass on its back and slit its throat up the length of the neck, pulling back the skin in flaps and cutting through the flesh down to the neck bone. Still holding on to Kemp with his right hand, Wade lifted his hunting horn to his lips and blew the ‘death’. The dogs were briefly allowed to run in and tear at the raw flesh with their teeth for a few moments, before the finest morsels were cut from the hart. The tenderest muscles were all destined for Beaumont’s dinner table, but the alaunts were rewarded with the rest of the meat, the lymer being given the heart. Black carrion crows circled in the sky above.
‘A pity that that peasant’s stupidity should rob us of our sport,’ grumbled Stamford while he rode at a slow walk to the manor house with Beaumont and Beatrice, followed by the huntsmen, dog-handlers, dogs and peasants. ‘It might have been a fine chase otherwise.’
‘I would rather be chasing Frenchmen,’ replied Beaumont, clenching his fist around the hilt of the broadsword that hung in its scabbard from his jewelled baldrick. ‘It is three years since I last drew my sword in battle.’
Stamford drew his own sword and leaned from the saddle of his courser to slash listlessly at a few stalks of wheat. ‘You at least have had the chance to prove yourself in battle, Sir John,’ he said, with an arrogant toss of his head.
‘I’m certain there will be other campaigns,’ said Beaumont’s daughter, smiling. It always amused her to hear men talk of fighting as if it were their whole raison d’être.
‘Aye, and like as not my lord of Derby will not ask us on those campaigns, either!’ said Beaumont. Only three months earlier Henry of Derby had sailed to the king’s fiefdom of Gascony to campaign against the armies of Philip of Valois, the man who sat – unrightfully, in the opinion of all loyal Englishmen – on the throne of France.
‘Oh, come now, Father!’ teased Beatrice. ‘Do not be so childish! Why not swallow your pride and volunteer your services?’
‘I have nothing to prove,’ he replied stoically. ‘I’ve already fought for his Majesty in the fields of France. If he should need my services again, he knows where I may be found.’
Beatrice turned to Stamford, who rode alongside her, attentive as ever. ‘And what about you, Dickon? I’ve often heard you talk of war, yet it seems to me you have much to prove before you can win your spurs. Will you offer your services to the king? Or simply grow old waiting for an invitation?’
‘My lady, I would fain ride alone against all the men the usurper Valois can muster, if you should but command it,’ Stamford replied gallantly, falling almost unconsciously into the formalised, exaggerated idiom of the court.
She laughed merrily. ‘How ridiculous you are!’
Stamford scowled. Ever since he and Beatrice were children, there had been a tacit agreement between their parents that they would one day be married. Yet Beatrice coquettishly persisted in spurning his romantic overtures, and he was reluctant to press the issue until he had proved himself worthy by winning his spurs in battle. For her part, Beatrice did not truly care whether or not a man had proved himself in combat, but she knew of Stamford’s obsession with winning glory in battle, and it amused her to tease him.
They had reached the fortified house of Stone Gate Manor. It had been built in Norman times, and the land had been in the possession of the Beaumont family for the past ten generations. The high-gabled stone house had neither doors nor windows in its two outer walls; the inner walls faced across a courtyard enclosed by a high stone wall. Inside the courtyard stood a chapel adjoining the house, and some small wooden buildings that comprised the kitchens, servants’ quarters, the stables, the kennels, and the mews and the falconer’s hut. There were also three beehives and a large dovecot. At the centre stood a drawing well, surrounding by a low stone wall and topped off with a roof and winch. The dog-handlers returned the lymer and the alaunts back to the kennels, and Beaumont, Stamford and Beatrice dismounted, handing the bridles of their horses to waiting grooms.
‘What should I do with this one?’ asked Wade, indicating Martin.
Beaumont had almost forgotten the insolent churl. ‘Flog him, of course. A dozen lashes.’
All the servants at the manor house came out to watch in numb silence. Floggings were rare there; they happened just often enough to make sure that everyone knew the consequences of displeasing Beaumont. Martin had never seen a flogging before, let alone been subjected to one; otherwise, as he reflected afterwards, he might have struggled more as he was dragged across to the cart that stood by the stables and tied by his wrists to the tailgate. Simkin Sewell helped Wade tie Martin’s hands, then took the leather sheath for his dagger and pressed it against Martin’s lips. ‘Bite on this, lad,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t give the whoresons the satisfaction of hearing you scream.’
Martin nodded, clamping his teeth over the sheath.
Sewell stepped back, and Wade pulled off Martin’s hood before ripping open his coat and tunic to expose his back. Then he fetched the whip from the stables, uncoiling it. The huntsman glanced across to where Beaumont stood at the top of the wooden steps leading to the first-floor entrance of the house with Stamford and Beatrice, perhaps hoping that the knight would reprieve Martin, but Beaumont merely nodded curtly.
Martin breathed in sharply around the sheath in his mouth as the first lash raised its bloody welt across his back, shuddering at the burning agony. His whole body flinched as each stroke lashed him, heaping pain upon the pain until he thought he must faint. But he clung tenaciously to consciousness, determined not to let Beaumont see that he was hurting him. After the first few lashes his whole back felt as if it was aflame, and he was panting raggedly through gritted teeth, his fists clenched until his nails drew blood from his palms, his face crimson with the effort of suppressing the sobs that rose within him.
‘Stop it!’ Beatrice screamed suddenly. ‘For pity’s sake, stop it at once! Can’t you see he’s suffered enough?’
Hearing her, Wade paused, glancing at Beaumont. The knight nodded, and Wade gratefully took that as a signal that the punishment should cease. ‘Get him out of my sight,’ Beaumont said quietly, his voice carrying clearly across the courtyard. Then he and Stamford turned, disappearing inside the house, and Beatrice descended the steps and crossed to where Sewell and Michael were unfastening Martin’s bonds. As soon as he was released, Martin sank to his knees, spitting out the sheath and sobbing air into his lungs. The ropes had chafed his wrists cruelly, but he felt only the agony of his bleeding back. Sewell and Michael supported him between them.
‘Will he be all right?’ asked Beatrice.
Sewell nodded curtly, not meeting her gaze. He hated Beaumont for what he had done to young Martin, and Beatrice was Beaumont’s own flesh and blood. He and Michael helped Martin walk towards the gateway and out of the courtyard, the rest of the peasants following behind them, subdued by what they had seen. The six of them walked the three-quarters of a mile back to Knighton in silence.
Knighton was a small village of about thirty cottages or so just over two miles south of Leicester town, nestling in the lee of the ridge above the Washbrook, where the water-mill and the old Norman church of Saint Mary Magdalen stood on its north bank. Pigs snuffled in the muddy lane, and hens picked their way fastidiously through the vegetable patches that stood outside every cottage. As Sewell and Michael walked Martin back to his father’s cottage, the villagers began to emerge from their homes to stare in silent astonishment at the sight. Little Jankin Petling stopped playing with his toy bow and arrows and ran down the street to announce the circumstances of Martin’s return.
Like most of the houses in the village, the Kemps’ cruck-framed thatched cottage was roughly thirty feet by eighteen, and was constructed of a timber frame with wattle-and-daub panels built on a low, stone foundation wall. By the time they reached it, John Kemp was standing by the midden outside the door with his burly arms folded across his barrel chest, his expression grim. He was a tall, heavily built man in his late forties, with blond hair and a face like tanned leather. Behind him, his wife Margery and his second son, Nicholas, peered out of the doorway. As soon as Sewell and Michael reached the door with Martin, Kemp stepped silently aside to allow them to enter. Inside, they had to pause momentarily while their eyes adjusted to the gloom of the windowless cottage.
The cottage was divided into two rooms: the hall, where the animals were kept, and the smaller bower at the back, where the family slept. Kemp followed Sewell and Michael through to the bower where they laid Martin face-down on the huge bed that the family shared.
‘What happened?’ Kemp demanded brusquely, addressing himself to Sewell.
‘Sir John had him flogged,’ Sewell replied grimly.
‘He was asking for it,’ added Michael. ‘He struck Master Stamford.’
‘There’s some might say as how young Dickon had it coming to him,’ Kemp replied with a humourless smile. ‘Who struck the first blow?’
‘Stamford,’ explained Sewell. ‘He struck the first several blows, as it happened. I didn’t think young Martin had so much patience in him.’
‘Did he take his punishment bravely?’ demanded Kemp.
Sewell nodded. ‘Without a murmur.’
Kemp nodded, and dismissed Sewell with a wave. The two men had been friends too long for Sewell to need any expression of thanks from Kemp; he knew that Kemp was grateful.
Kemp and his eldest son made their way into the main room of the cottage, where Kemp turned to his second son. ‘Nicholay, fetch Mistress Withcote,’ he ordered. Mistress Withcote was the village midwife, reputed to be a witch by some, but indispensable because of her cures for various maladies and wounds.
‘She’s already on her way,’ protested Nicholas. He was in his late teens, dark-haired, pale-faced and intense.
‘You know better than to argue with your father, my duck,’ Margery Kemp told her son softly. Nicholas nodded and slipped outside. ‘Michael, you go with him.’
As soon as the two young men had left, Kemp turned to his wife with a questioning glance, knowing that she had sent the boys away because she wanted to talk to him in private. ‘I blame Simkin,’ she said bitterly.
Her husband regarded her with some surprise. ‘How is it his fault?’
‘He’s the one that’s always filled Martin’s head with all those stories about King Arthur. Is it any wonder that the boy wants to be like one of the Knights of the Round Table, his head filled with daft ideas of honour and chivalry?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a love of honour,’ asserted Kemp.
‘Jankin Kemp! You stand there and tell me that, while our youngest son lies in the next room, his back torn to ribbons, because he thought he was just as good a man as Master Stamford?’
‘Our Martin’s a better man than Dickon Stamford will ever be.’
‘Perhaps, but he’s still just a villein. It’s a pity that you and Simkin couldn’t have taught him his station in life at the same time you taught him all that nonsense about chivalry. You of all men should know better. Where are you going?’ she added, seeing that her husband was pulling on his cloak.
‘I’ve something to attend to,’ he replied gruffly.
‘Don’t you do anything we might all have cause to regret!’ Margery called after him, her voice tense with fear.
He shook his head. ‘What I go to do should have been done a long time ago.’
It was afternoon by the time John Kemp reached Stone Gate Manor House, and he marched through the gateway into the courtyard unchallenged. As he mounted the flight of wooden steps leading to the door of the house, Beaumont’s steward, Treroose, emerged.
‘Good afternoon, Kemp. Can I help you?’
Kemp brushed past him. Treroose wheeled and tried to seize him by the arm.
‘Sir John is not to be disturbed. If there is a matter you wish to bring to his attention, I suggest you do it through Master Croft, or else present your plea at the manorial court next Thursday…’
Kemp shrugged him off brusquely and burst into the hall, where Beaumont sat at the table, listening as Stamford plucked at the strings of a gittern. The two noblemen glanced up as Kemp entered, followed by Treroose. ‘I tried to stop him, Sir John…’
Beaumont made a dismissive gesture. ‘We can all see where Kemp’s youngest whelp learns his manners,’ he said coldly.
‘I didn’t come here to discuss manners!’ Kemp snarled angrily. ‘What makes you think you’ve the right to flog my son without a fair hearing?’
‘There were no disputed facts to the case,’ Beaumont said mildly. ‘Your son admitted to striking my squire…’
‘If Martin struck Master Dickon, it was because he was provoked! What true man of spirit would not retaliate under such circumstances?’
‘I have already discussed the matter with Richard.’ Beaumont’s tone had grown cold. ‘Your son disobeyed his instructions. Furthermore, when asked to explain himself, he was insolent.’
‘He’s a fifteen-year-old boy! Can he help it if he is spirited at that age?’
‘Then he must learn to curb his spirit. Perhaps today’s flogging will have taught him to do so in future. Now I suggest you leave, Kemp, before your impertinence pushes my patience too far. You have not grown so old that I would shrink from having you likewise flogged.’
‘Have me flogged!’ Kemp’s face was puce with apoplexy. ‘You God-damned ungrateful whoreson!’ he roared. ‘After all I have done for you, now you talk of flogging me! Damn you, Beaumont! Sometimes I think it would have been better had I let that Scotchman slay you at Dupplin Moor!’
Beaumont leapt angrily to his feet. ‘God’s passion, Kemp, you try my patience!’ he snarled. ‘Am I to feel indebted to you for the rest of my life?’
‘Indebted! I never asked you a favour in my life, Sir John!’ Kemp was trembling with rage. ‘I’ve served you loyally on battlefields and wheat fields alike, and this is how you repay that loyalty!’
‘You insolent dog! You’re just like that whelp of a son of yours! By God’s bones…’ He broke off, frowning. Kemp was trying to speak, but it was as if his rage was choking him. He clutched at his upper left arm, his face screwed up in pain, then gasped, sinking to his knees. Beaumont stepped back hurriedly, upsetting a table with a flagon of wine on it so that the wine spilled in a broad red puddle across the white flagstones. ‘Kemp?’
Kemp fell forward to lie on his face, motionless. After a few moments of stunned silence, Treroose ran forward and felt for a pulse in his throat.
‘I never touched him!’ Beaumont had blanched. ‘You saw, didn’t you, boy?’ he asked Dickon. ‘I never laid a finger on him!’
‘He’s had some kind of seizure,’ Treroose observed grimly.
‘Is he all right?’
Rising slowly to his feet, Treroose shook his head. ‘He’s dead.’
The church of Saint Mary Magdalen at Knighton was too small to warrant a priest of its own, so arrangements for John Kemp’s funeral had to wait until the following Sunday when the curate came down from Saint Margaret’s church in Leicester. The bier was placed at the entrance to the chancel with brass altar candlesticks on the floor at its four corners, and that evening the villagers stood in the nave while the curate performed the Placebo Domino in regione vivorum, the Office of the Dead.
Early the following morning, Martin attended the penitential matins and lauds in the church with the rest of his family, while the curate prepared the ground for Kemp’s grave. It was the first time Martin had left the house since his flogging. He was still unsteady on his feet, but he refused the various offers of support he received, the paleness of his face emphasising his grim expression. After the mass of requiem, the curate led them in communion. He went through the liturgy mechanically, reciting the words without understanding, for he was as ignorant of Latin as he was of God; not that anyone in the village was any the wiser, except perhaps Nicholas.
After the mass had been sung, the curate led them in prayers. There were prayers for the dead to be said, not only John Kemp but also the Earl of Leicester. Then the curate led them in a prayer for the health and well-being of the earl’s son, Henry of Derby, who was campaigning against the French beyond the seas and was as yet unaware of the death of his father. The prayer seemed a spontaneous addition by the curate; there was no indication that he was acting under the orders of the priest of Saint Margaret, handed down to him by the Bishop of Lincoln, who had received the orders from the Archbiship of Canterbury, who in turn had been encouraged to spread anti-French propaganda by the king. Similar prayers were said in every church and cathedral in the land that month.
After the prayers, the curate removed his chasuble and put on his cope, sprinkling the body with holy water and then censing it. Then the altar party and mourners formed into a procession, singing the antiphon In paradisum as they marched out into the churchyard where Sewell, in his capacity as church sexton, had finished digging the shallow grave. There the curate asperged and incensed the body again, and the shrouded corpse was laid in the grave, the curate placing a cross of stamped lead on its breast.
Leaning on his spade, Sewell watched the faces of the Kemps as the body was asperged and incensed a third time. Martin’s expression was blank and unreadable, while Michael glared at his younger brother with undisguised hatred, as if blaming him for the death of their father. Margery Kemp’s eyes were fixed on the body of her husband for the last time, while beside her Nicholas stood with his hands clasped in a gesture of rapt piety.
Nicholas had been the runt of the litter, and his parents had been surprised that, unlike his two sisters, he had survived the first year of life. But it had always been obvious that he would never make a good farmer. Nicholas lacked his brothers’ strength, and had always been fastidious, not liking to get his hands dirty. Lazy, Sewell called it. John Kemp had raised no serious objections when Margery suggested that Nicholas be allowed to attend the local almonry school in Leicester town. He might be a poor prospect as a farmer, but at least if he gained an education he might be able to supplement the family’s meagre income by going into a lettered profession. Beaumont had already given him permission to leave the manor to study theology at Oxford as soon as the harvest was in. His departure would mean another mouth less to feed, and he had never been much use with a plough, scythe or flail; ‘too busy dreaming about what he reads in them there books of his,’ his father had always scoffed disapprovingly.
Another psalm was recited, followed by more prayers, and the curate spaded the first few clods of earth on to the corpse in the form of a cross. Then the burial party returned to the church singing the seven penitential psalms, leaving Sewell behind to finish filling in the grave.
The villagers spent the rest of the day in the fields, men and women alike, for the following Thursday would be Michaelmas, and the harvest had to be brought in before the weather turned against them. John Kemp might be dead, but life went on in the village, and there was always work to be done. Martin was hacking at a swathe of corn, wincing at each stroke of the scythe from the pain of his back; but he was too proud to ask for a rest from his labours, and knew that Beaumont would have refused if he had.
Thomas Croft, overseeing the work, sidled up to him. ‘I’m sorry about your father, Martin.’
‘So am I.’ Concentrating on his work, Martin did not meet the reeve’s eyes.
‘Your father and I were good friends.’
‘I know.’
‘You understand that your father’s death was a mischance, don’t you? That he died of a seizure. It might as easily have happened to him working here in the fields as it did when he was up at the manor house, talking to Sir John.’
‘All I understand is that my father went to see Sir John about my being flogged, and the next thing I knew he was dead.’
‘Sir John regrets your father’s death as much as any man…’
‘That I very much doubt,’ sneered Martin.
‘You cannot blame him for what happened.’
Martin stopped reaping to meet Croft’s gaze coolly. ‘Can’t I? If the likes of Sir John reckon they can do as they please just because they can trace their father’s fathers to the Conquest, they’ve got another thing coming.’ Martin, who had practically been raised on the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, found it hard to reconcile that image of chivalry with the real nobility he occasionally encountered. ‘They reckon they own us.’
‘You’re a villein, Martin,’ Croft reminded him bluntly. ‘One of Sir John’s bondsmen. He does own you – and you’d be well advised to bear that in mind, if you would avoid another flogging.’
‘We’ll see,’ was all Martin would say, returning to his work.
Margery Kemp was in no state to prepare supper that night, pottering about the cottage as if she could block out her grief by burying herself in housework, repeatedly sweeping the same patch of beaten earth floor over and over again; the meal was left to Nicholas, who had often helped his mother about the house while his brothers were out working in the fields. The four of them sat down to their usual meagre supper of a mess of vegetables and oatmeal pottage, served with dark bread, all of them painfully aware of the empty place at the head of the table. No one spoke.
On Michaelmas Eve, the third day after the funeral, when the last sheaves of wheat had been carted into storage for winnowing, the Kemps made their way to the church to attend the solemn mass for the soul of the departed. The words ‘Heri et hodie ipse et in specula’ were carved in the stone arch over the side door of the church. Martin could not read English, let alone Latin, but Nicholas had already translated the meaning of the words to him: ‘The same yesterday, today and for ever.’
To Martin, those words always seemed to sum up the futile monotony of the peasant’s life, and in the wake of his father’s death they were given an added poignancy. John Kemp had spent his whole life working on the land, Martin reflected bitterly, struggling hard to scrape a meagre living from the soil for himself and his family, and in the end it had killed him. Was such to be Martin’s own fate? It filled him with a sense of rage and frustration. All year long they struggled to make ends meet, telling themselves that they had only to wait until the harvest was in, and then everything would be all right. When the harvest was finally gathered in, it was never as plentiful as it should be. In a life lived on the knife-edge between hunger and starvation, it did not take much to tip the balance: a blight on the crops; not enough rain; too much. And the various taxes – from the tithe paid to Beaumont to the Peter’s Pence collected by the ecclesiastical authorities – were not reduced in times of hardship. Beaumont cared no more than the Pope whether or not the people of Knighton starved.
Martin hated and envied the nobility at the same time. He dreamed of being a member of their ranks, never having to worry about whether he had enough food to see him through the winter. There was only one way he could aspire to join those ranks. If he became a soldier and took service with the king, he might win booty at the very least. He was about old enough, if his parents had kept an accurate account of the years. If the harvest was rich enough that year, he would feel no qualms about leaving the village and setting out into the world beyond to seek his fortune as a soldier. If it was not, then he would have to stay another year, until the family was well set up enough for him to be able to make the break. Except there would always be something else to hold him back, another poor harvest, something to ensure that his dreams were never realised but remained just that: dreams.
At noon on Michaelmas Day, the villagers gathered outside Joan Cradock’s alehouse for a meal of cheese and bread, provided at Beaumont’s expense, before the harvest thanksgiving ceremony to be held in the church that afternoon. The Kemp brothers found themselves sharing one of the old oak tables with Sewell. The old man was generally shunned, and Michael and Nicholas tried to ignore him as politely as they could, but Martin never tired of the veteran’s reminiscences of his long military career. Sewell was always happy to recount the numerous battles in which he had fought against the Scots, and it always pleased Martin to hear that villeins could acquit themselves in battle as nobly as any Knight of the Round Table.
The villagers were still eating, drinking and talking in front of the alehouse when Beaumont rode past with his family and retinue on their way to the church to join in the thanksgiving mass. The completion of the harvest was as important to him as it was to his villeins, for although he was the least likely of all the manor’s residents to starve, a good harvest meant more money for him. Apart from exchanging a few curt words with Croft, he barely acknowledged the villagers; but Stamford spotted Martin, and shot him a look of unreserved hatred.
The arrival of Beaumont and his family was the signal for the villagers to drain their pots of ale and follow him down to the church. Beaumont and his household were seated on the single pew at the front of the nave, while everyone else stood on the rush-strewn flagstone floor. The sevice was led by Beaumont’s chaplain, a stocky little man with a hooked nose and a bald head. Like the curate, he had only the weakest grasp of the basic tenets of Christianity. Most of the villagers lost interest during the sermon and started to talk amongst themselves, while Beaumont, trying to pretend an interest in the chaplain’s words, struggled to control his temper towards his ill-mannered villeins.
When the service was over, the congregation filed out after Beaumont and his family. By the time the Kemp brothers emerged from the lych-gate, Beaumont, Stamford and Beatrice were mounting their horses. Martin found himself staring at Beatrice as she rode past and – as if feeling his eyes upon her – she twisted in her saddle and saw him. Their eyes locked, and she momentarily smiled with amusement before spurring her jennet on after the rest of her family.
‘She’s not for you, lad,’ a voice murmured in Martin’s ear. ‘Her kind are far above the reach of the likes of us.’
Martin turned and saw Sewell standing there, baring his toothless gums in a wicked grin. ‘I… I weren’t thinking that at all,’ he stammered.
‘You’re a rotten liar, young Martin. Just remember: a cat may look at a queen, but don’t torture yoursen by thinking you could ever do more than just look.’
‘I wouldn’t want to do more than just look at a stuck-up little girl like that anyhow,’ scoffed Martin, trying to convince himself that he meant it.
Simkin chuckled. ‘That’s some little girl,’ he drawled.
Martin chose to ignore him, hurrying on to catch up with his brothers while the grizzled veteran stood cackling in his wake, shaking his head sadly.
Nicholas departed for Oxford a few days later, and with both him and father gone the tiny, two-room cottage seemed empty. Margery seemed to retreat within herself, while Michael and Martin rarely exchanged words except to argue, but then it had always been like that between them. Nothing had really changed in the village, but then nothing ever did, except the usual seasonal variations. Autumn gave way to winter. The months between Michaelmas and Candlemas were the lean months, when the whole village attained a state close to hibernation. With the soil too frozen to be tilled and often blanketed with snow, there was little work to be done apart from repairing buildings and fences, or sitting inside mending old tools or fashioning new ones. In the long winter evenings the villagers would huddle around the fireplace in the alehouse, supping pots of ale while listening to Simkin’s tales. The stories were mangled versions of the Arthurian legends he had learned from his grandfather, or his own reminiscences of the wars against the Scots. It was hard to say which tales were more mythical in their content, but Simkin had enough military experience to imbue his stories with a convincing degree of detail, whether he was talking of jousting knights, or of archers holding off charges of wild Scotsmen.
Yuletide came, its celebrations a welcome break in the yearly round. The peasants decorated the interiors of their homes with evergreen to provide a cheery contrast with the stark world of white and black outside. On Christmas Eve they went wassailing in the alehouse; in a life of suffering and misery, drinking and festivity provided a welcome relief.
The trees were bare when Stamford and Beatrice went out riding in Knighton Woods one day early the following January, their trunks and branches black against the white patina of snow that lay across the landscape. Breath billowed in clouds of condensation from the mouths of humans and horses alike in the crisp winter air.
Conversation between the two was stilted. They lived in the same house and saw each other over breakfast, dinner and supper. It was always difficult for Stamford to find new topics of conversation to discuss with her. ‘They say the king will lead an army to join Henry of Derby in Gascony this year,’ he remarked after they had ridden in silence for some time. ‘Perhaps I will have my chance to fight in battle before the year is out.’
Beatrice nodded absently. She listened to the same chansons des gestes as Stamford and took the same pleasure from the feats of arms of the men of olden times, men like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Charlemagne and his twelve peers; but she suspected that the reality of war was very different from those stylised, poetic adventures. ‘Is that all you ever think of? War?’ she teased him.
He shrugged, puzzled by the question. ‘What else is there? If I were a churchman I could think of God; if I were a peasant I could worry about the crops. But I am the son of a nobleman: born for war, trained for war. I would not have it any other way.’
‘And what of love?’ she asked, smiling.
‘I love you, of course, my lady, and hope that one day I shall have the chance to prove my love by wearing your favour into battle.’
Removing her gloves, Beatrice contrived to drop one on the forest floor. ‘Oh! My glove! Pick that up for me, would you?’
Stamford dismounted unhesitatingly, but as he stooped to retrieve the fallen glove Beatrice dug her spurs into the flanks of her mare jennet and galloped off, laughing. He cursed under his breath and vaulted nimbly back into the saddle, urging his palfrey to give chase.
She rode at such a breakneck pace through the trees that he was hard-pressed to keep her in sight, and he feared not only for her safety, but also for his own. Just when he thought he had lost track of her, he caught sight of the jennet tied to a tree at the edge of a small clearing. He rode into the clearing and dismounted, trampling across the dead leaves to where the jennet stood. There was no sign of…
‘What kept you?’
He looked up. She was perched on one of the lower boughs of an oak tree, her green and auburn gown blending with the lichen-covered trunk. She smiled down at him.
‘Were you trying to get us both killed?’ he demanded angrily.
‘No one asked you to follow me,’ she replied, pushing herself from the bough to land nimbly on the balls of her feet before him, still smiling. ‘Besides, faint heart never won fair maid.’
He was panting slightly, both from the exertion of the ride and from his lust for her. He could see her small but well-rounded breasts clearly outlined through the fabric of her gown. She stood with her arms akimbo, her hands on her hips, as if taunting him, goading him. Suddenly he found himself encircling her narrow waist with his arms, drawing her roughly against him, bringing his mouth down on hers. She neither resisted nor responded, letting her arms fall so that they hung loosely at her sides. After a few moments she relaxed her jaw enough to allow his probing tongue into her mouth. He slid his hands down the small of her back, smoothing his palms over her buttocks, pulling her hips hard against him. She brought up her hands and placed them on either side of his head, pulling his face down against hers for a few moments. Then she traced her bony fingers down the sides of his neck until her palms rested against his chest.
He broke off the kiss to come up for air. ‘I want you,’ he rasped urgently.
She smiled, and suddenly pushed him away from her. Caught unawares, he struggled momentarily to keep his balance, and stared at her in bewilderment.
She laughed at his puzzlement. ‘I’ll not grant you the gift of mercy before you’ve won your spurs, remember?’ she teased. ‘You have to prove yourself worthy first.’ She unfastened the jennet’s halter and was in the act of swinging herself into the saddle when something flew out of the trees, and the jennet reared wildly, throwing her to the ground. She lay there dazed for a moment, the breath knocked out of her body, while the jennet keeled over to lie on its side.
Stamford ran to where she lay, crouching down beside her. ‘Are you injured, my lady?’ he asked, taking one of her hands in both of his own.
She sat up and clung to him momentarily, needing to feel the touch of another human being to reassure herself that she was still alive.
She managed to smile at him. The boy could be so kind and gentle when he wanted to be… he really was rather dull, just like every other young squire she had ever met, desperately trying to be the very epitome of chivalry. How she longed for a man who would treat her as a woman, rather than as if she were a delicate piece of glassware. ‘I am not hurt,’ she assured him. ‘Merely winded, that is all.’
‘You know I would rather suffer the fires of Hell for eternity than see the slightest injury befall you.’
‘How kind you are.’ How full of the formulaic graces of the court, rendered meaningless by the very strength of their hyperbole. She struggled to suppress a yawn.
He realised that the jennet had not risen after its fall, and glancing across to where it lay he saw its pelt flecked with blood where the shaft of an arrow had pierced its chest. He frowned, reaching for the hilt of his sword, and was about to speak when three men ran into the clearing. One of them carried a longbow; the other two were armed with ancient, rusty swords.
Stamford pushed himself to his feet to face them. ‘You damned careless jackasses! Don’t you look where you shoot? Someone might have been killed!’
‘Someone may yet be killed, if you don’t hold your tongue and stand still!’ The leader of the three rogues levelled the tip of his sword at Stamford’s throat. ‘I’ve a dozen more archers hidden in the woods, the shafts of their arrows aimed at your heart.’
Stamford froze. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded harshly.
‘Your gold will do to start with.’ The leader indicated the bulging purse that hung from Stamford’s belt.
Stamford’s face flushed with anger. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘No, and nor do I care. All I know is that my men and I haven’t eaten in a week, and that gold should keep us fed for at least a month.’
‘You’ll not get away with this,’ snarled Stamford, unfastening his purse and tossing it at the leader’s feet. ‘I’ll hunt you down and…’
He broke off as Beatrice screamed, and they turned to see her struggling with the man armed with a longbow. ‘She’s a spirited one, this,’ he said. ‘We can have some fun with… arrgghhh!’ He staggered back, one hand to his cheek, while blood seeped between his fingers. Beatrice stood there, panting heavily, her dagger in her hand, its blade ruddy with the man’s blood.
‘How dare you touch me!’ she demanded.
The leader laughed. ‘There’s little we’ll not dare. We’re outlaws – we’ve naught to lose.’ He nodded at the third man, who had been circling around behind Beatrice, and the man suddenly leapt forward, catching her by the wrist. He twisted her arm up into the small of her back until she cried out in pain and dropped the dagger, and then caught her, struggling, around the waist.
‘Unhand her!’ commanded Stamford.
The leader laughed. ‘You’re in no position to give orders, my fine peacock.’
‘You heard the man,’ growled a new voice. ‘Unhand her!’