King's Gold

Baldwin shrugged. ‘I have been in court. All I know is that a butcher had a half-lamb stolen, a pastry cook was kicked by his mule, and a drunken shepherd fell in the well at the Cock at Crediton and drowned. My interests have been, as you might say, rather parochial of late.’

He was utterly unprepared for the banneret’s next words.

‘A force stormed the castle at Kenilworth, Sir Baldwin,’ Sir Peregrine said sombrely. ‘They tried to free Sir Edward.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Willersey

That afternoon, Agatha sat by her hearth and made oat cakes. And for some reason, she kept weeping.

Ham was gone – she knew that. Her husband of fifteen years had left her, and the whole focus of her life was unbalanced. Here at her home, she felt completely out of place. It should have Ham in it.

‘Why are you crying, Mother?’ Jen asked as Agatha rose to sweep the floor.

‘Quiet! Can’t you see I’m trying to get some work done?’

Jen turned away, hurt, and Agatha felt a fleeting guilt, but then her thoughts were back on her husband.

She knew that her neighbours thought she had no affection for Ham, just because she shouted at him when he infuriated her. True, she complained about his laziness, his drunkenness when he returned from the ale-house reeking of cider, his snoring, his sudden deafness when she needed him to listen, or his inability to remember anything she told him for more than a moment or two – and yet she needed him. He was infuriating, but he was hers. And without him, life lost its savour.

The church bell tolled, and she set her broom in the corner of the room where it always stood, next to the family’s rolled palliasses – the large one which she and Ham had always shared, and the smaller one that she had made for Jen when the girl was old enough. It had taken an age to save up enough material for their daughter’s bedding, but Agatha had been determined that they would not always share their bed with their children, like so many others. Better that there was a little peace for parents. They always set the beds there, near the corner of the room. It was like so much of their life: ordered and tidy.

Agnes had set upon marrying Ham from the first time she had met him, and this had been his house, with his parents. When Ham and she were wed, making their vows out in the pasture late at night after the midsummer feasts with five of their friends around to hear them, they had been only fifteen, both of them. It was frightening to leave her parents and come here, to be inspected by her father-in-law. But he was a kindly old man, and it was a black day when he died, Ham’s mother too a short time later.

Later, when her friend Alice married and left, she began to feel the first stabs of envy. Alice’s husband was an apprentice, but soon he took over the business, and the couple lived in luxury. Mild vexation grew to disgruntlement that her own husband could not provide so well.

Still, they had the house, and the land about here was abundant. Fruit grew thickly on the trees. The cider here was the best in the land, she swore, and no man need go hungry. They did not suffer hardship.

She saw that over the fireplace, hooked in the hole in the wood where the plaster had fallen away, was the old goosefeather which Ham had bought her for dusting and cleaning. It was a silly thing, just a length of feather, nothing more, and yet the sight of it was enough to make the tears flood her face. The feather held so many memories for her – of times when she and Ham had been happy, when Jen had been a little child. So many happy things to recall, and all now in the past. Ham had left her – had gone away to find a new life. She could almost wish she had been less shrewish.

‘Mother?’

Agatha opened her eyes and looked at her daughter. The girl was anxious, wishing to console, but sad too, to think that her father was gone – because Jen was no fool. Agatha held her arms open and embraced her daughter, and soon she was sobbing like a maid. The emptiness in the cottage, the anxiety about her husband, all conspired to bring her to an emotional collapse.

It was not that she feared he was dead. Rather that he was alive and well, and enjoying another woman.

‘I miss him so much!’ she wailed, and the sound of her despair scared her.

‘Mother, what did Father Luke mean? He said there was money. Papa had no money, did he?’

‘No, of course not.’ Agatha wiped her eyes. ‘Must have meant the purveyor.’

Jen blew her nose. ‘Why did Father Luke have to go with them?’

‘I don’t know,’ Agatha said. But now there was a vague memory . . . She cast her mind back to that fateful day. Father Luke had approached her to ask where her husband was, hadn’t he, and a little later she had heard that the priest was joining Ham and the purveyor. Ham had said he must go to the church to fetch something before he and the purveyor left. The words he muttered made her think it was a heavy item belonging to the priest.