The village road led up to the gates of Sir Robert’s demesne farm. A ditch and thorn hedge enclosed the barns, sheds, and cattle yards. A track led to a timber gatehouse set into a high stone wall. Beyond it stood Sir Robert’s manor house.
“Hoi! You!” someone called. William looked around and saw Edmund Maudit, the bailiff of the manor, standing in the doorway of a cart shed. He was a short, stout man whose face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. William had seen him around the village but had never spoken to him. “What are you doing here, boy?”
“I have a message for Sir Robert from Prior Ardo at Crowfield Abbey.”
The bailiff walked over to him. “And what would that message be?”
“The prior wants one of Sir Robert’s stonemasons to come and look at the wall of the church. He thinks it’s in danger of falling down.”
Master Maudit looked a little startled by this. He wiped his grimy hands on his tunic and rolled down his sleeves. “Well, we’d better go and see what’s to be done about that. Come with me and remember your manners in front of Sir Robert.”
William noticed the wary looks from people working around the farm as Master Maudit passed by. It was clear that they had a healthy respect for their bailiff.
“Gate!” Master Maudit yelled as they approached the gatehouse. William heard someone scrabbling around on the other side, and the heavy timber gate swung open. A young boy ducked his head to the bailiff as he strode by, but Master Maudit took no notice of him. Sir Robert’s hunting dogs barked wildly as they passed the fenced run beside their kennel, making William jump.
Weforde manor house was a two-story stone building with a tiled roof. There was a garden beside the house, a little maze of low turf walls and wooden archways over which the rambling stems of roses had been twisted and tied in. An ancient mulberry tree grew in the middle of the garden, its sprawling boughs propped up with wooden staves.
William followed the bailiff around the end of the house, past the garden, and through a gateway into a cobbled yard that was surrounded on two sides by the stables, several storerooms, and a barn. The manor house and a large, newly built wing formed the remaining sides of the yard. Glancing back at him, the bailiff said, “Wait here.”
The new building looked very different from the old part of the house. The two upper-floor windows were tall and arched, reminding William of the ones at the abbey. The walls were lighter in color, and the stones were smaller and more carefully shaped. The roof was covered in red, fired clay tiles. It looked odd and out of place against the sturdy old manor house.
There were several men in the yard. William guessed they were the stonemasons. They wore leather aprons, and the tools laid out on trestle tables in an open-fronted shed were not quite like any he had seen before. There was a pile of stone at the far end of the yard and a stack of long, thin timbers nearby. The cobbles were white with stone dust and the puddles looked like spilled milk. The stonemasons took no notice of William but went about their work in silence.
A few minutes later the bailiff returned. “Sir Robert will see you. Wipe your boots over there before you come in,” he said, pointing to a patch of grass near the gateway. William did as he was told while Master Maudit waited for him with obvious impatience. When he’d scraped off the worst of the mud, William hurried across the yard and followed the bailiff into the house.
A wooden staircase led up to a doorway that had been hacked through the thick wall of the older building. The door stood ajar. The bailiff knocked and pushed it open.
“This is the boy from the abbey, my lord,” he said. He grabbed William’s sleeve and pulled him forward. A man stood by the huge fireplace, his hands clasped behind his back. He was about William’s height, slight of build and probably in his late forties. He had a thin, clean-shaven face beneath closely cropped gray hair and an unmistakable air of authority.
“Come into the light, where I can see you properly.”
William walked farther into the room and stood there awkwardly. The wooden floorboards were not covered with straw or rushes, but with brilliantly colored and patterned pieces of cloth. They didn’t look as if they’d been woven or embroidered, and the surface of the fabric had a glossy sheen. He wondered why anyone would put such beautiful things on the floor for people to walk on. The toes of his boots just touched the edge of one, and he took a hasty step backward.
“What’s your name?”
“William Paynel, my lord,” he said, ducking his head in a quick bow.
“My bailiff tells me the abbey church is about to fall down, William. Is that so?”
“I . . . I don’t know for sure. There’s a crack in the chancel wall, and the ground on that side of the church is underwater. Prior Ardo is worried that the wall might collapse. He asked if you could spare a stonemason to come and look at it.”
Sir Robert turned to the bailiff. “Fetch Master Guillaume.”
The bailiff nodded and left the room.
“How long have you lived at the abbey?” Sir Robert asked, after regarding William in silence for several moments.
“Since the summer before last.”
“So you met Master Bone and his manservant last winter?”
William looked at the man warily. Of all the things Sir Robert could have asked him, this was the most unexpected. “Yes, my lord,” he said cautiously.
“I was told that the manservant, Shadlok, stayed at the abbey after Master Bone’s death. Is that so?”
“Yes.” Why was Sir Robert interested in Shadlok?
Sir Robert was quiet for some moments. “How does he fit in there? Amongst the holy brothers?”
“Well enough, my lord,” William said. He was feeling more uncomfortable by the moment.
“I would have said he had little in common with them.” The sharp gray eyes watched him closely.
William twisted his hands together behind his back and said nothing. Did Sir Robert somehow know that Shadlok was a fay? Did he suspect that William knew it, too?
Sir Robert walked over to a window and folded his arms. He looked down at the courtyard behind the house and seemed to be lost in his thoughts. His dark tunic was somber, but even William could tell that the cloth was of the finest quality. There was a heavy silver buckle on his belt and he wore a gold ring on one finger. And he was clean, William noticed, from his carefully cut fingernails to his soft calfskin boots.
William glanced surreptitiously around the room. He had never dreamed that such luxury existed. More of the vividly colored cloths hung on the walls, showing people on horseback hunting in forest glades. There were tables and chairs, chests and two large cupboards, all richly carved and gleaming in the light from the four narrow, arched windows. There was a closed door in the end wall, half hidden behind the folds of a wall cloth. On either side of the window embrasures there were seats piled with embroidered cushions, and a richly decorated candlestick, as tall as a man and made of silver, stood beside the huge fireplace.
What would it be like to live in such a house? William wondered. To look out of the window and know that everything you saw belonged to you?
Something caught William’s eye and he gasped in surprise. On a table lay Jacobus Bone’s lute. Sir Robert turned at the sound. He saw what William was looking at and frowned slightly.
“You recognize it?”
“It belonged to Master Bone,” William said hesitantly. And he left it to me when he died, he added silently. It is rightfully mine.
Sir Robert walked over to the table and picked up the lute. He held it for a moment, his fingers spread over the strings, and then he began to pick out a tune with his thumb and forefinger.
William held his breath. His heart seemed to swell inside his chest as he listened to the music. The sound was as perfect as he had known it would be.
Sir Robert finished the tune and laid the lute carefully back down on the table. “A fine instrument,” he said softly, his fingers gently stroking the golden wood.
The hollow thump of footsteps sounded on the staircase outside the door, and the bailiff came into the room, closely followed by a tall, well-built man with sun-browned skin. The mason wore a leather apron, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms covered with thick black hair. He pulled off his woollen hat and stood in the doorway. There was a look of distaste on Sir Robert’s face as his gaze flickered down to the mason’s boots, caked with mud and stone dust.
William barely listened as Sir Robert explained the situation to Master Guillaume and arranged for the mason to visit the abbey the following day. Instead, he stared at the lute and remembered the sound it had made. He was filled with a strange hunger, an urge to grab it and run. It was a sin to covet another man’s possessions, but sin or no sin, it should have been his. He glanced up at Sir Robert with a frown. The lord of Weforde was a wealthy man with so many fine and valuable possessions already. Why should he have the lute as well, simply because he had money to buy it?
“Tell Prior Ardo that my master mason will be there first thing in the morning,” Sir Robert said, glancing at William. He turned his attention to a sheet of parchment on the table beside him and ignored the bowed heads of William and the two men.
The bailiff nudged William in the back and pushed him toward the doorway. William hurried down the staircase behind Master Guillaume. He stepped out into the yard and glanced up with a weary sigh. It had begun to rain again.