The Town House Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  PART ONE

  Martin Reed’s Tale

  Interval

  PART TWO

  Old Agnes’s Tale

  Interval

  PART THREE

  Anne Blanchefleur’s Tale

  Interval

  PART FOUR

  Maude Reed’s Tale

  Interval

  PART FIVE

  Nicholas Freeman’s Tale

  Interval

  COPYRIGHT

  PART ONE

  Martin Reed’s Tale

  I

  Few born serfs, like me, could tell you their birthdate, but I was born in that memorable year of 1381 when the peasants, armed only with the tools of their trade, supported by a few soldiers, back from the wars, and a few priests with hearts of compassion, rose up against their masters, against the laws and the customs that made a serf the property of his lord. They gave – according to the stories – a good account of themselves: the men of Kent reached London and forced the King himself to lend ear to their grievances. In the end, though, they were disbanded by trickery, sent away soothed by false promises, and the freedom they dreamed of did not come in their generation, nor the next. So, when I was born in the autumn of that year, 1381, I was born a serf, as much the property of my Lord Bowdegrave as the horse he rode, and – at least until I reached working age – of less value; for his horse had an Arab strain, far more rare and precious than my Saxon peasant blood.

  My mother died at, or soon after, my birth, and although some woman must have suckled me, or fed me with pap, I have no memory of it. For me life began in the forge where my father worked and where I learned not to touch hot things because they burned, not to get in his way because his hand was heavy, and not to go too near the horses’ heels. I was working the bellows – and doing it properly – when I was still so small that I had to stand on a great stone in order to hold them level with the fire.

  For his work on my lord’s horses and harness and field tools and armour an occasion, my father, being a villein, received no wage. He had his hut, a strip of land in each of the three open fields, and the right to eat his dinner at the lowest table in the hall. When he worked for other people he could make his charge in coin or in kind and he was not unprosperous. Some years before the rising of 1381 there had been a great sickness in which many people had died; skilled smiths were not as common as they had been. On some manors my father could have hoped and tried by industry and thrift, to have saved enough money to buy his freedom, but my Lord Bowdegrave was a lord after the ancient fashion and boasted that never, on any of his three manors, had he manumitted a serf for money. My father knew this and therefore, given the choice of a coin or payment in meat or drink, he would choose the latter, so in our hut we ate well and I grew taller and stronger than most of my kind.

  Maybe my wits profited from the good food too, for when the time came for me to learn the Catechism and Responses our parish priest praised me often, and in the end was taken with the notion of making a clerk of me. He was himself the son of a serf, base-born like me and set free by Holy Church, and he hoped to push me through the same door.

  To my surprise my father was in favour of the plan. He was already showing signs of the dreaded smiths’ palsy, that ungovernable shaking of the hands which results from the strain of lifting the heavy hammer and from the jar and thud of its fall. It was, as yet, slight, just a tremor which increased towards the end of the day so that sometimes in the evening he would slop a little ale from his mug, but he knew what it heralded. He knew, too, that on the manor of Rede, the old and the infirm had little to hope for. He would, of course, be entitled to a place by my fire, a share of the food of my table, but it would be a place and a share measured by the size of my family and the generosity or otherwise of the woman I married. He rightly reckoned that as the father of a celibate parish priest he would fare better, so, looking ahead, he allowed me time to take my lessons.

  Learning came easy to me. I was, naturally, idle as all boys are, and earned myself many a buffet, but the priest said I had the makings of a scholar and would do him great credit in later years. As time went on I would relieve the tedium of the lessons by concocting questions which I hoped he would not be able to answer; the hope was justified more and more frequently. He had forgotten much of what he had learned. At last, in the summer before I was ten years old he went to Norwich and bespoke for me a place in the monks’ school there, where he had got his own learning. After that there was only one thing needed to set me on my way to clerkdom, and that was the permission of my Lord Bowdegrave to leave the manor and his service. The priest never doubted that permission would be given.

  ‘My lord boasts that he has never sold a serf his freedom, but he will not hesitate to make a gift of you to Holy Church,’ he said.

  My Lord Bowdegrave was seldom at his manor of Rede; he had two others, one in Lincoln, one in Kent. This last was his favourite, being within easier reach of London, but the others were visited each year immediately after harvest at which time even the most trusty steward might go a little awry in his reckonings. Also, after harvest, when the great field was all a-stubble, was the best time of the year for hawking.

  It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me. My face and hands had been scoured, my hair was newly shorn and I was wearing a clean smock. I was very much fr ightened. The priest, who must have been – I now realize – a very simple and unworldly man, had warned me that my lord would surely wish to test my abilities. I must be prepared for questions; I must not answer hastily and without thought, nor must I answer slowly and thus appear stupid. Above all I must speak up so that I could be heard, and with the very greatest respect.

  The steward had plainly prepared my lord for our appearance, for as we entered the great hall, he said,

  ‘Ah! The smith’s son. I remember.’

  Fright boiled in my throat. I knew I could never answer a question no matter how simple. Fright laid a heavy hand on my neck, so that my head was bowed, my eyes fixed on the rushes, fresh spread for my lord’s visit.

  Above me the voice asked one question.

  ‘How many sons has the man?’

  The steward said,

  ‘This one, my lord.’

  ‘Then he cannot be spared. Bad clerks are plentiful; good smiths are few.’ Thus briefly was my future, the priest’s hopes, my father’s old age comfort disposed of. From my lord’s verdict there was no appeal.

  I was able then, for some reason, to raise my eyes and look into the face of the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father, the Pope in Rome. It was a handsome, well-fleshed face, highly coloured; stern too, as befitted a man of consequence, but not ill-natured. From the height of his chair on the dais he looked down at me and his light hazel eyes took my measure.

  ‘You’re a stout, likely-looking lad,’ he said, ‘far more fitted to handle a hammer than a quill.’ Having thus dismissed me he lifted and crooked a finger and said,‘A word in your ear, Sir Priest.’

  What the word was was not for me to know, but I noticed that from that day onward the priest favoured me no more but seemed rather to avoid me.

  The priest may have suffered some disappointment. Now that I am older and know more, I can see that having made the one great stride from serfdom to clerkdom, he had shot his bolt; he had ended as a priest in a small, poor parish. Had I become the scholar that he thought I had it in me to be, then he would have been more, for great scholars remember their teachers and many a man of small learning is immortal because he taught the rudiments to one who has become famous. But this, of course, I only guess at.
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  My father and I, on the other hand, suffered nothing so positive as disappointment. I had been dreading the discipline of the convent school and the break with everything I knew, the harder lessons, the competition with boys born free. And my father was consoled for the loss of a more secure old age by the thought that in the immediate future he would have my assistance at the forge. Also – and this I have seen proved many times in later years – it is seldom those who are oppressed who resent their oppression; they wear it as they wear their clothes. Serfs, when they rise against their serfdom, are always led by free-born men. There was nothing of resentment in us. My lord had spoken and as he said, so it would be. I went back to the forge and the anvil; I began to take great pride in my strength, and later in my skill. Smith’s work is a man’s work, and it was quite as much to my taste as the question-and-answer work with the priest who would drub my head if I erred.

  So, year followed year; life went on in the old pattern. I grew and I learned, toiling on the working days and making merry on Holy days. I might well have lived and died at Rede, one of my Lord Bowdegrave’s possessions, had I not fallen in love.

  II

  Love is not, it is rightly not, a thing for every day, for ordinary people. Love is for the minstrels and the singing men to make tales of. That way it is safe.

  How often have I heard a singing man strum his lute and raise his voice –

  A gracious fate to me to me is sent;

  Methinks it is by Heaven lent.

  From women allmy heart is bent

  To joy in Alyson.

  There is a pleasant thought, set to a tunable air, and suitable for a singing man who means nothing by it. Pity the poor fool of a man who in this our life, suffers such a fate; who goes mad and sets one woman above all others, above all else. I know whereof I speak, for such a poor fool was I.

  Men of property choose women who will bring them good dowers; acres to link with their acres, coin to rattle with their own, or a good name to boast of, or some other advantage: poor men, when the itch comes upon them, take the wench who is handiest, or, if they are uncommonly prudent, have a care to pick one with sound limbs, sweet breath and – so far as such things can be judged aforehand – an amiable temper. And they all do very well, since any woman can bear a child or boil a dumpling.

  But I … I must needs fall in love!

  There was, at first sight, no reason why my love for my sweet Kate should cause any upset. She belonged to our manor of Rede and her father was, like mine, a villein. He was a shepherd and lived on the sheep run, over by the river in a remote and lonely place; and since Ancaster church was nearer his hut than ours of Rede, he and his family went to Mass there; so I was twenty and Kate was seventeen before I noticed her, and then it was only by chance.

  I was by this time a skilled smith and more active than my father, so when there was a job to be done at a distance I was the one to go; and on an April afternoon I was coming home from Ancaster, walking downhill towards the river where the stepping stones were, when I saw, on the Rede side of the stream, a child – as I thought – washing some linen in the stream. That was an ordinary sight enough on an April day when the body-clothes worn through the winter could be sloughed off and cleansed, and I took no notice until a woman came out of the shepherd’s hut, walked towards the child, berating her as she walked, and then, snatching up a broken branch that lay near-by, began to lay on heavily.

  That again was no extraordinary sight and it was not for me to interfere between parent and child; only the priest, or perhaps the steward, had the right to do that. The little girl took the punishment without outcry and, for all I knew, deserved it. But after a moment, I, who all my life had seen women beating their children, was struck by the ferocity with which this woman went about the job. I splashed over the stones and on the other side slowed my pace and at last stood still. The woman seemed to be in a killing rage, and the prevention of murder is every man’s Christian duty. So I said.

  ‘Have a care, good wife. Such heavy stripes might kill the little wench.’

  From what Kate told me later I have no doubt the woman would, sooner or later, have done that, but not out in the open under the eye of a witness. She gave me a savage look and laid on three more blows as though to prove her right, but they were lighter ones, and then she threw down the branch and went stamping and grumbling away back into the hut.

  My fate then made me go to comfort the child, and as soon as I was within arm’s reach of her I saw that her smallness belied her years; inside the torn dress was the white curve and the pink bud of a girl’s breast. I looked on it and was lost.

  I am not a poet or a singing man to tell of love. When I think of what made her dearer to me than any other I can only say that she was so small, so light and thin and small, like a little bird, a little rabbit. To the end of our days together I never grew used to the smallness of her, and my hands – sometimes against my will – always went gentle when they neared her. For the rest, her hair was the colour of new run honey and her eyes as blue as a speedwell.

  I held her close to me for comfort, and dragging down the end of my sleeve I dipped it in the water and wiped away the blood where the skin was broken. She cried then. That was ever her way; to bear the blow, no matter how heavy, with fortitude, and then melt at a word or touch of kindness. When she was quiet again I asked for what reason her mother dealt so ill with her.

  ‘She is not my mother. She is my father’s new wife and she wishes me out of the house.’

  ‘To go would be better than to be treated thus roughly,’ I said.

  ‘I cannot. The steward orders me to stay. I help my father with the sheep.’

  ‘Then he must stand between you and the woman.’

  ‘Ah, but she lays about him with her tongue,’ Kate said. ‘I should think shame to tell you what she says of us if ever he even looks at me kindly.’

  I held her in the crook of my arm and thought more rapidly than I had done for years, since I had done the last time the priest questioned me. Up to that moment the business of bedding and breeding had troubled me less than it does most men. One day, I had said to myself, I should marry and get a son to work in the forge when I, in my turn, began to shake and shudder, but it had never seemed an urgent or even a desirable business. There had never been a woman in our hut, and father and I had managed very well; we were peaceful and better fed than most. But now I knew.…

  ‘Be of good heart,’ I said, ‘and keep out of the woman’s way as far as you can. I shall be back tomorrow, to see how you fare.’ I dared not say more lest I should raise a hope which it would be cruel to cast down. Rede, though in many ways a manor far behind the times, was well run, and the priest kept the Kin Book in order to make sure that no marriage was within the forbidden degree. There were the laws of the Church to be minded and other, unwritten laws which ruled against the wedding of double cousins, that is, cousins related upon both sides. Experience had proved such unions to be bad alike for mind and body, hare-lips, fits, deafness, dumbness and blindness had been the penalties of such near-incest in the past. So, on all properly managed estates, even the lowest hind had his ‘Pedigree’ and it must be consulted before leave to marry was given.

  When I left Kate I went straight to the priest’s house. I told him that I wished to marry Kate, daughter to the shepherd, and he said something which I always remembered.

  ‘I have watched you, Walter, my son, and it has vexed me lest all unwitting, I made a monk out of you when you were young yet failed to bestow the benefit of clergy upon you. I was not to blame.’

  ‘I know that, Father. You had no cause to be vexed for me.’

  ‘You are twenty years old. Half your life is sped.’

  A cold thought for a man in love. I shuffled it off, looking at him; he had been in his middle years when he taught me.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘clerks live longer. That is the rule. Measure your years not by mine but by your father’s. He lacks a year of his two s
core and he is an old man.’

  That was all too true. Oh hurry, I said in my mind; open that Kin Book, give me leave to marry Kate, for twenty years is all too short a time. And yet, if we cannot marry, twenty years without her will last for ever, they will last so long that I cannot live them out.

  He used his finger on the page of parchment which, with other pages, all of slightly different size and tied by thongs on to a stave of wood made up the book. Sweat broke out on my forehead and around my mouth. Weeks, months, years went by; and at last he lifted his head and said,

  ‘You are no kin to her.’

  I thanked him as though he, and he alone, had arranged it.

  It was too late, that evening, to disturb the steward; but early next morning, before he went out on his rounds, I went to him.

  ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘And about time too. By the Rood I don’t know what is happening to you young rascals. Too idle to breed! With labour so scarce, too.’ That reminded him of something else. ‘The wench must stay at her work,’ he said. ‘So she does that, nobody minds in which hut she sleeps. Except you, of course,’ he gave me a nudge and a leer. ‘You can tell shepherd that the bride fee will be two geese, rightly fattened. That being settled, I am sure you will have my lord’s permission to marry. It is a pity that you must wait until his harvest visit.’

  That day I whistled as I worked, and as soon as I could down tools, went, without waiting for my supper, over to the shepherd’s hut and said to that weak-minded man,

  ‘I have from priest and steward, permission to marry your daughter, Kate.’

  The woman looked pleased, but he grunted, and said something about talk coming cheap; he was a poor man with a wife and two children younger than Kate; where was the merchet coming from? He supposed I had never even thought of that; young men in their heat never remembered that every time a girl married the lord exacted his due.