Chapter Four

Pulling back her curtains, Grace couldn’t help but smile as the rain washed down the window. The hot sticky weather was all very well if you were comfortable wearing floaty skirts, or were happy to reveal your pasty legs for the critical observation of others. Grace wasn’t. She never quite right unless she was wearing her trusty denims – black for work – blue for home.

There was something reliable and safe about pulling on a pair of jeans each morning. Grace knew they had become part of her identity over the years, and the last two weeks of sunshine-enforced thin linen trousers had made her feel wrong in a way she could never have explained to anyone else.

The view from her bedroom window was reassuringly the same as ever. Victorian terraced houses queued along the thin pavement opposite; parked cars lined up next to them in tight formation. Early morning dog walkers and paperboys and girls strode along the unexpectedly damp pavements of Howard Road.

Content with the scene, Grace reflected on how lucky she was to live in such a nice terrace within a stone’s throw of work, and to be occupying one of the few homes in the area that wasn’t neighboured by student accommodation on all sides.

It was only seven o’clock. Students usually cut through the street to the university from their residences at the top of Queen’s Road, but at this time of year it was blissfully quiet.

Grace showered, pulled on her jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, shook out her shaggy mass of unruly brown hair, ignored the idea of breakfast, and, gathering her notes together headed into the muggy, warm Midlands air.

She felt strangely optimistic. Finally, Grace could see that all her work was beginning to pay off. Her novel was coming together, and the usual small voice of doubt at her superior’s reaction at her prioritising of projects was, for once, happily lacking.

Determined to make the most of the day before her, Grace was already logged onto her office computer by eight o’clock, and was halfway through preparing a tutorial on the impact of the Black Death on the East Midlands for the MA students still in residence when, at ten o’clock, her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since her takeaway last night.

Saving her work, Grace grabbed the notes she’d written for the next chapter of her story and headed towards the senior common room, the prospect of a cuppa and suitably sticky muffin accelerating her speed.

Mathilda woke up disorientated by her surroundings. She had been laid upon a rough pallet stuffed with straw to make a mattress. A makeshift tapestry divider was drawn closed at her side, telling her that she was still in the main hall of the Folvilles’ establishment, but had been moved to one of the servant’s beds near the kitchen door to recover from her faint.

This consideration did not square with what she’d heard about the Folville family. Neither did the question about Robyn Hode, nor the amused demeanour of the man who’d asked it.

Mathilda had heard it said that Eustace de Folville would rip your head off with his bare hands if he so desired. There was no way that the man she had encountered could be Eustace. On the other hand, she wasn’t finding it difficult to believe that her clergyman jailer had been a Folville. Richard, the rector of Teigh, fitted perfectly into an image of the family that rumour and gossip had spread all over the shire. She’d heard stories about the family, of course, and although they always seemed to slip through the fingers of the law whenever a crime occurred, Mathilda knew with certainly that the family had been responsible for the organisation of thefts, kidnaps, assaults, and even the death of Baron Roger Belers three years earlier.¹ That murder of a Baron of Exchequer had been the stuff of local gossip ever since. Mathilda had been sixteen in that year, 1326, when the news that a gang led by the Folvilles had come together to dispose of the old man. She clearly remembered her father and brothers talking about Belers’ death in hushed tones, more in awe and relief at the removal of such an unscrupulous man who, rumour said, had acquired much of his lands illegally, than in horror at the manner of his death. The gossip went further: that two men Mathilda had never heard of before, Henry de Heredwyk and Roger la Zouche, had paid the Folvilles to removal the baron from the face of the earth.

No one had ever been properly tried for the crime, but at the same time, everyone knew who was responsible, and enough suspicion had arisen for the Folville family to have their lands at Reresby taken from them; more as a warning than an official punishment.

Mathilda rubbed her forehead; it was hot and sticky despite the cool of the room, and she feared she might be feverish. Or perhaps it was sheer terror, as she contemplated the household’s reputation. When she’d asked her eldest brother, Matthew, about Eustace after Beler’s death, he’d simply said, ‘he commits evils’ and refused to be drawn further. It was a simple sentence, but it had been enough to make Mathilda want to keep well away from the Folville villages and manor.

The Folville family, from what Mathilda knew of them, had adopted crime as a way of making a living, alongside the maintenance of their lands and overseeing of the immediate area, although few would have been foolish enough to accuse them of such activities face to face. Thus, the family of brothers had made their presence felt beyond Ashby Folville, across the Hundred of East Goscote and the county of Leicestershire as a whole.²

Mathilda sat up slowly on the bed. Her head thudded, but she no longer felt dizzy. She supposed she should try and escape, but realistically Mathilda knew that would be suicide, and might well endanger her family. She felt as helpless as she felt useless. Should she sit where she was until someone came to sell her to move? Should she announce that she was awake?

Aware of voices beyond the tapestry curtain, Mathilda could hear approaching footsteps. Someone was moving across the hall to where she’d been placed to recover …

The sound of Doctor Who’s TARDIS landing cut through Grace’s concentration, forcing her to return to the present time-stream so she could answer her mobile.

‘Hi, honey,’ Daisy’s interrupted thoughts of all the possible ways out of Mathilda’s plight.

‘Hello, everything OK?’

‘Fine. Look, I’m really sorry to disturb you at work, but it’s this bloody wedding stuff. It’s only a small do but it’s already taking over my life. Anyway, I need to hassle you about getting a bridesmaid dress.’

Hearing the stress in Daisy’s voice, guilt stabbed at Grace; she’d totally forgotten about her emailed promise to sort out a shopping date that morning, ‘Of course, no problem at all. Hang on …’ putting the phone down for a moment, Grace rummaged in her bag for her diary ‘… here we go. Now, when’s good for you?’

‘Any late afternoon in July, or any weekend apart from this coming one and the two before the wedding.’

Grace flicked through her calendar. That hardly left any time at all. She caught sight of the following Friday’s appointment in Nottingham on her calendar. She supposed that once she was there she’d be on the way to Hathersage anyway, and if her Friday was being disturbed, she might as well lose the Saturday as well. ‘I could head your way a week tomorrow. I have to be at Nottingham University all day, but I could come up to you from there and stay over, if you could stand it. Then we could shop on the Saturday.’

‘That’s fantastic,’ Daisy failed to keep the surprise out of her tone.

‘Why so shocked?’

‘Well, come on, honey, you’re not the easiest lass to drag away from work, even over a weekend.’

Grace blushed down the phone, ‘I’m sorry, Daze, but I promise you, nothing is going to come between me and my best friend’s wedding.’

‘Not even a certain gentleman in green tights and his associated criminal rogues?’

‘Not even them!’ Grace was surprised by her determination, and was even more surprised by the fact that it was genuine. She wasn’t going to let her need to work ruin Daisy’s big day. ‘I can’t promise to find a dress I like though!’

‘Well if it comes to that, neither can I. These magazines are useless unless you’re stick-thin with fake boobs and perfect skin.’

‘That’s you and me out then.’

Daisy’s sigh was audible down the line, ‘I’m sure there must be a shop in Sheffield with exactly the sizes 14 and 16 we’re searching for.’

‘Of course there will be; let’s hope they’re not in pink frou-frou though, shall we!’ Grace was relieved to hear Daisy chuckle down the line, and was suddenly reluctant to hang up. It was, she realised, a long time since she’d spared the time to have a proper chat with her friend. Still, if she was going to have a weekend off, she’d better crack on now, ‘I’m sorry Daze, I have to go. I have scripts to mark and a viva to prepare for.’

‘Sure thing. I’ll see you in nine days!’

After she’d shut off her phone, Grace sat quite still. It had been years since she’d considered her outward appearance beyond the requirements of comfort and a gesture towards token smartness. She knew she didn’t look too bad; she wasn’t a fashion disaster or anything. She was just ordinary; jeans, T-shirts, jumpers, casual jackets, trainers – all the normal stuff. Nothing special; just normal. A feeling of inadequacy swept through Grace. How could she possibly do Daisy and Marcus justice? She didn’t have a clue about how to be a bridesmaid, let alone what to wear.

The papers on her lap began to slip off, and the action of retrieving them brought Grace back to herself. For a split second she was shocked to find herself sat in the common room and not in her office.

‘Ridiculous woman.’ She murmured to herself, slugging back the remains of her cold tea, and heading back to work and the fourteen projects on the role of women in medieval society that awaited the judging scrawl of her red pen.