A Friar's Bloodfeud: (Knights Templar 20) Page 4

  It was a long, low building, looking a little grubby now where the limewash had faded and started to turn green, with a thickly thatched roof and the aura of wealth. Massy logs lay piled at one end, a makeshift thatch over the top to protect the wood from the worst of the rains. Smoke drifted from beneath the eaves, and there was a bustle about the yard as men darted here and there. Adcock could see that the buildings at the side were where the stables lay, because as he sat on his mount studying the place, he could see horses being brought out by grooms, all saddled and ready to be ridden. Soon a group of men stepped over the threshold and stood eyeing their beasts.

  The man in front took Adcock’s attention. Even from this distance the fellow clearly had commanding presence, a round-shouldered man with grey hair already turning white. His face was grim, square, and broad as he donned soft leather gloves, and he contemplated Adcock from half-lidded eyes as the newcomer approached the hall. It was a cold, devious look, and when Adcock noticed an archer with a bow at the ready, an arrow nocked on the string, he felt a rush of fear flood his soul. He was suddenly aware that this man was dangerous.

  ‘Who are you?’ the commander called as he drew near.

  ‘Adam of Rookford, master,’ he answered quickly, feeling himself flush a little under the amused gaze of so many men.

  ‘Oh, aye, the new sergeant,’ Sir Geoffrey said. ‘You’ll be wanting to hasten inside, then, and find some ale after your journey. There’s bread and meats. Shout for the servants for anything you need.’

  ‘You are off?’ Adcock looked about him for the raches and other hunting dogs, but there were none about other than the odd sheepdog and cattle-herding brute.

  ‘Yes, we go to visit a neighbour or two,’ Sir Geoffrey said.

  ‘I thought you were hunting,’ Adcock said. He felt the eyes of all the men on him as he reddened and began to stammer. ‘I was looking for dogs, but then I realised there weren’t any for hunting. Not out here, anyway.’

  ‘You want to see my dogs?’ Sir Geoffrey asked, and a strange smile came over his face. ‘Perhaps later, eh? For now, you rest until I return.’

  He took the reins of the horse brought to him by a shorter, narrow-shouldered youth, and swung himself into the saddle, adjusting his sword until it was more comfortable on his hip, tugging at his glove again, settling himself in his seat. Then he grinned at Adcock, and the new sergeant felt a renewed apprehension.

  At his bellowed command, the other men clambered on their horses, and then, when he whirled his arm about his head and set off at a smart canter, the others followed behind him in an untidy, straggling mass.

  Hugh was lost in contentment as he carried his tools down to the road where the hedge stood.

  It was an old one, this. A good local hedge, with solid moorstone inside to support it, covered with turves. Earth had been piled at the top, and the first farmers would have thrown acorns and berries on to it, or perhaps planted young whips of hawthorn, blackthorn, rose and bramble. Anything that would help to form a prickly, dense mass. And as the years passed, the thin little plants had grown strong and tall, and when they were thick enough the farmers had come back with billhooks and slashers and axes, and had cut half through the inch-thick stems and laid them over, fixing them in place by weaving them between stakes. And the hedge had grown, solid, thick, impenetrable, self-renewing.

  All that was long in the past. Hugh had kept his eyes on this one for the last two years, thinking that it was grown too tall and straggly, and he had begun work here a week and a half ago, cutting out all the dead wood, trimming the smaller branches, hammering in new stakes. Now he had to hack at the surviving plants so that he could lay them afresh.

  It was all but done. He had only a few more hours’ work, and the field could be used again for pasture. That would be a good day. With luck, the ale that Constance had put to brew last week would be ready at the same time and they could celebrate their fresh little success with her best drink.

  ‘God’s blessings on you!’

  Hugh peered through the hedge to see the priest from the chapel down the road at Monkleigh. ‘Father.’

  ‘This hedge is a mess. It must take a lot of effort to keep it clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hugh said, feeling his former sense of well-being begin to ebb away.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘I’m Hugh. Some call me Hugh Drewsteignton or Shepherd,’ he responded. He swung the billhook at a stem and sliced three-quarters of the way through the thick wood.

  ‘Well, Hugh Drewsteignton or Shepherd, are you one of the villeins of Sir Odo?’

  ‘No. My master lives at Lydford.’

  The priest lifted his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Really? What are you doing here, then?’

  ‘My wife lives here.’

  ‘Your wife? Who is that?’

  ‘Constance.’ By now Hugh’s contentment was all but gone, and he wished that this priest would go too. There were some in the vill who had muttered when he had arrived there with Constance. It was noticeable that one or two had turned away from them when they went to the church door to be married, as though no woman before had ever wedded her man with a swelling belly.

  The priest must have heard the tale, because he gave Hugh a very shrewd look. ‘I have heard much about her.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She is a wise woman, so they say. Good with healing potions and salves.’

  ‘Yes. She learned it at Belstone.’

  ‘What did she do there?’

  Hugh began to chop at the stems again, concentrating on the work in hand. ‘She was busy learning potions and the like, I dare say.’

  ‘Well, you look after her, man. She deserves all the care she can receive.’

  Hugh ignored him, and soon the young priest was off again, walking slowly homeward down the Exbourne road, his feet splashing in the puddles and mud. For a moment Hugh wondered what he had meant, but then he shrugged. He had work to do.

  Robert Crokers could have saved himself if he had kept his eyes open. The riders would have been clearly visible coming through the trees.

  He had lived here only a few short months. Born at his father’s house at Lyneham near Yealmpton, he had been sent to Lord de Courtenay’s household when he was five, so that he could learn manners and humility, and he had hated it from the first. A great lord’s household was never at rest. When it was newly arrived at a manor there was the noise and bustle of unpacking, the fetching and carrying of boxes and chests, and the coming and going of the peasants bringing food for men and beasts; after a few days there would be more uproar as the men set off to hunt morning and afternoon, with raches and harriers snuffling and slobbering about the place, and horses stamping and chomping at their bits … and when all was done and the stores were gone, there was the trouble of packing everything up and preparing to leave for the next manor.

  When he had heard that this little manor needed a new bailiff he had seen a chance to escape, and Lord de Courtenay’s steward had been kind enough to let him. Better that he should be at a quiet manor where he could annoy only a small number of people with his whining and moaning, rather than at Tiverton or Okehampton, where he could upset many more, the older man had said, and then grinned and wished him all good fortune.

  This land was good, Robert told himself now. Up here at his house there was plenty of wood, while down at the vill the fields were bursting with health. In many parts of the country people were starving because of the terrible harvests, but here in Devon the populace was a little better provided for. Their diet was geared towards hardier crops, which could bear the dreadful weather. He sometimes thought that the peasants here were like the oats they grew. Both seemed stoical in the face of the elements.

  His home was a small building, cob-built under a thatched roof, but it was comfortable and snug even during the worst of the winter’s storms. From the door, he could look over a large garden where he hoped his beans and peas would thrive, while beyond the beds was a small are
a of pasture which rolled down the hill south-west towards the river. The ford was in front of the house, and the lane from it led past his door and on up the hill towards the lands north and east: Iddesleigh and Monk Oakhampton. The way was cut through thick woodland, and few travellers ever passed this way.

  Robert was making his way home, a man of middle height, slightly built, with a slender waist and narrow shoulders. He had fine features: his nose was straight, his lips were sensuous, and his brown eyes were intelligent and kindly; and he was as hungry as the peasants on the estate. Food had been plentiful enough through the cold, barren months, but now that winter was drawing to a close and the stocks were low his teeth were aching badly, as usual, and one or two were loose in his jaw as the scurvy started to take hold again. It was the same every year, ever since he’d been a little lad. When the food grew scarce, he began to suffer. If fortune favoured, he would soon recover. He always did when the weather improved.

  He was almost at his house when he heard the drumming of hooves in the distance. The sound was loud enough for him to stop and turn, frowning. Horses were making their way down the rough road that led towards the Okement river and the ford that led to the big house over west. Robert had no cause to be anxious, so far as he knew. He was far from the main manor here, but who would dare to attack him on Lord de Courtenay’s lands? No one would be so foolish. Still, there was something about the relentless approach that made him turn back and move more quickly towards his door and the promise of safety within.

  There was a sudden silence behind him, and he wondered at that. If the riders were heading for Fishleigh they must pass him, surely, and that would mean the noise of hoofbeats would grow … unless they had turned off and were even now haring off towards another homestead.

  The thought was curiously unreassuring. If there were riders in force around the manor, he wanted to know about them. On a whim, he went to the edge of his garden, peering up the road through the trees. Sounds could play a man false up here. Sometimes he had heard voices which sounded as though they were from only a few yards away, and yet when he had gone to investigate, he had discovered that they were men talking at the far side of the river.

  So now he stood frowning, straining his ears to discover where the riders could be. It was only sensible to be wary, especially with neighbours as unpredictable as the men under Geoffrey Servington. When he had first come here, he had been warned that Geoffrey’s men were prone to violence. Not long before there had been a scuffle of some sort, and Geoffrey’s men had killed Robert’s own predecessor.

  There was a sharp explosion of noise, and he spun round to find the area before his house filled with horses. He had been too keen to listen out for the riders coming along the track to think that they might approach another way. Somehow these men had ridden through the woods and come at him from the river. He moved aside as their beasts stamped and pawed at the soil, snorting and blowing after their urgent ride.

  ‘You the bailiff here?’

  Robert turned to find himself confronted by a thickset figure on a horse. He nodded.

  ‘I am Sir Geoffrey Servington. This land is my lord’s, bailiff. So I want you to leave.’

  ‘This is land of Sir John Sully. No one else’s,’ Robert said, but he was nervous in the face of all these men-at-arms. A black horse backed, stamping angrily, and Robert moaned when he saw it crush his carefully planted bean and pea plants.

  Following the direction of his gaze, Geoffrey shouted, ‘Get off the garden! After all,’ he added, smiling evilly at Robert, ‘when we have our own man living here, we won’t want him to starve, will we?’

  Chapter Four

  Hugh brought the axe down one last time, wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and set the axe by the side of his pile of wood. Gazing about him, he grinned as he told himself that he had never been so happy as since he started to live with Constance.

  This old tree had collapsed during the year before last, when he’d first come here. Over time the other larger boughs had been cut out, but this one had, for some reason, survived. And then a foul storm had struck and it had collapsed, taking a lot of the old Devon hedge with it.

  It was a problem with older parcels of land in this area. The little holding where Hugh and Constance lived was once part of the Priory of Belstone’s demesne, but when Constance had been sent here by the prioress it had been empty for some years. The hovel which had stood here had been all but derelict, and when Hugh first saw it his temper had if anything grown more sour.

  ‘Best work on that first,’ he had declared, and stood staring at it while Constance gazed at him anxiously. She had been anxious a lot of the time back then, he remembered. About her baby, about her life, whether she had made the right choices, whether she should be here at Iddesleigh at all … there were so many concerns for a young woman with no vocation.

  What else could a moorman do, though? Hugh knew that a place like this needed a man to look after it, just as a woman needed a man to provide for her. It was all well and good to say to a woman like Constance, ‘Woman, there’s a place at Iddesleigh. There’s a house and some acres. Go and take it. You can live there,’ as though that was an end to the matter. But no one who’d ever farmed would think that. No, as Hugh knew, a farm which was left fallow for any length of time would soon be overwhelmed with weeds and brambles, the coppices overrun with small, useless stems, and the house … well, it would look as this one had.

  Constance was lucky the prioress had given her anything, of course. It was proof of the regard in which she was held by the prioress – but God’s ballocks, it was fortunate that Hugh had been here to see to it.

  The scowl on his face lightened a moment. Being born on the moors lent a man a suspicious nature, and for a moment Hugh wondered whether that could have been at the heart of the prioress’s suggestion that Hugh should travel here with Constance … the old woman was certainly crafty enough to see that this servant was already attracted to the former novice. Only it was more than that. Hugh felt the same adoration for Constance that a sheepdog feels for its master. There was no denying it: he loved her. She was … well, there weren’t words for her.

  He’d even given up his master, Simon Puttock, and his family for Constance. Perhaps if he hadn’t met her, he’d still be in service with Simon, living with him at Dartmouth. When Master Simon had been given that post – the Abbot Robert’s representative in the town with full authority under the Abbey of Tavistock’s seal – Hugh had known so many doubts, it had felt as though his heart was being torn in two; but there was no choice as far as he was concerned, not really. He’d seen Constance’s new home by then, and although he’d rebuilt the worst of the hovel, there was too much to be done on the land about it for him to leave her alone yet. Simon, who knew him so well, had given him a small purse and wished him Godspeed when they last parted. There was no pointed comment, no demand that he ought to continue to serve his master as he had before, no bitterness: only a wholehearted and generous wish for his happiness.

  Hugh could remember that last meeting.

  ‘Hugh, make her happy – and I will pray that God makes you as content with her as I always have been with my darling Meg. Constance is a good woman, and she deserves a man who’ll honour her, so look to her, protect her, and you can always send a messenger to me if you are in want. Remember that!’

  And with that, Hugh could remember the glistening at his master’s eyes. Simon had actually wept at losing Hugh’s company. It made Hugh feel terrible, but there was no choice. Not really. Hugh hefted the axe again and let its weight draw it down into a long branch.

  No, Master Simon could always find a new servant. He’d said that he had one already – a lad called Rob – who was efficient and ever cheerful. That was what Master Simon had said: the lad was always cheerful. It was a daft comment. Hugh had always been cheerful enough, God’s blood! He normally greeted his master with a respectful duck of the head of a morning. He scowled, remembering: what more c
ould anyone ask?

  He swung the axe again, glancing up at the sky. It was darkening in the way that it did in the late winter, deepening to blue overhead with pink in the west. Looking at the remaining trunk, he sniffed, then slung the axe over his shoulder. There would be time enough tomorrow to finish the job, and then it would be a matter of carrying all the logs back to the house. He had a small hurdle which he’d made from the smaller branches, and he reckoned he could lash the logs to that, and hitch it to an ox. The beast would drag the lot back home.

  Mulling over his plans for the next day, he wandered slowly through the gathering gloom to the house. Soon he could smell the fire, and he snuffed the air happily. It was good to know that he was nearly home. The mere idea of ‘home’ was enough to make him smile. When he’d been a youngster he’d had a home, of course, but then he’d become a shepherd, and that lonely life had marked him profoundly.

  His path took him over the line of the hill, along the lane westwards, and thence down to the cottage. He stopped once, gazing along the sweep of hills to the south to where, in the distance, he could see his old haunt: Dartmoor, sitting like a brooding animal preparing to pounce on the far horizon, dark and dangerous. Sometimes he liked to think of himself like that: a man of action who rested at present, but only like a moor viper, coiled, alert and ready to attack.

  Tonight all he wanted was a quiet evening, and then his bed. The house looked shabby and in need of a fresh coat of limewash and a new roof, but he stood still and smiled at the sight of it. It was all he had ever wanted. A good, solid house, when all was said and done, with space for the animals at the bottom of the slope so that their filth would drain through the hole in the wall, while he and his woman and child slept in the northernmost portion, up the hill. It was a sight to warm an old shepherd’s heart.

  Sighing happily, he strode into the yard, and had gone six paces when he realised that something was wrong; terribly wrong.

  There was a smell of burning pitch, and he had none here at the farm. He could smell the fumes as though they were very close, and it was a few moments before he realised that the odour came from a torch, and that the breeze was behind him.