Free The Bishop Must Die by Michael Jecks

the company of men from the age of six, many of the poor lads would never again experience womanly affection and had no idea of how to treat a lady.
    Not so this fellow.
    ‘Sir Peregrine,’ she said, ‘would it be impertinent for me to ask you, what do you think will happen?’
    He did not do her the insult of pretending he did not understand, which she appreciated. There was little enough talk of anything else in the castle, other than the likely date of the French invasion.
    ‘The English navy is not so feeble that it could not prevent the French from landing, yet I fear that they
will
land. The king is not as popular as the queen. Many feel sympathy for her after the way that she has been treated by her husband.’
    ‘Yes,’ Isabella said. She could understand that all too easily.
    ‘I am sorry,’ Sir Peregrine said with a slightly anxious frown. ‘Of course, her husband has treated you abominably as well.’
    ‘No. I think it is not he,’ she said with perfect truth. ‘I think it was Despenser and the Bishop of Exeter. Those two alone are guilty of stealing everything I possessed. They made up a case against me, and Stapledon had my lands given to him as a directresult. The king believed the bishop when he said that my husbands and my son were all traitors. But they weren’t.’
    ‘Of course not,’ Sir Peregrine said.
    ‘And last year, I thought I might recover my lands. I had a case brought against the bishop, an assize of novel disseisin.’
    ‘Yes?’ Sir Peregrine gave her a blank look. ‘I have not been involved in the law.’
    ‘You are fortunate, sir. Well, if a man or woman is disseised, or dispossessed, they can seek the king’s special instruction to recover their property. It means that a jury must be summoned and the case heard before the king’s justices, to answer the question on seisin or disseisin. Restoration of the property or not. After all, possession is protected by the king in our country, so if something is unjustly taken, the king himself should seek to return it.’
    Sir Peregrine nodded, although there was a faintly perturbed expression in his eyes. ‘I see. So, you have had your lands returned?’
    ‘Oh, no. The bishop managed to persuade the jury that the lands,
my
lands, had been granted to him by the king for life. So it was impossible for me to have them back. And then they said that they must revert to the king when Stapledon was dead. I swear, I could have killed him there and then, were he within my reach!’
    ‘What then?’ Sir Peregrine asked. He was intrigued, listening intently.
    ‘I was told that the case couldn’t continue
rege inconsulto
, and the papers were all sent to the king himself. God bless him, King Edward placed the matter before another jury, and they agreed that my dower lands were of the free tenement of my poor dead husband, before I married Henry, my second husband. They awarded me huge damages, too – over two hundred pounds.’
    Sir Peregrine nodded, but lifted an enquiring eyebrow.
    ‘No,’ she smiled bitterly. ‘I don’t have them. Stapledon fought back, and even now I don’t know what will happen.’
    ‘What more can you do?’
    ‘Fight on. There is nothing else for me. My lands are all I have left. My husbands are both dead, my son is exiled – what more can a woman do?’
    ‘So you will continue your battle in the courts?’
    ‘I will not give up my sole means of livelihood without fighting every step,’ she said determinedly.
    ‘I can quite understand.’
    She doubted that. This knight banneret was a powerful man. He had the right to call on a number of knights and command them in battle, he was a king’s official in his capacity as coroner, and she knew he had the ear of powerful men like Sir Hugh de Courtenay, the baron of Devon. And yet Sir Peregrine had never had to endure the sort of fight into which she had thrown herself so wholeheartedly. He had no means of appreciating the dangerous waters on which she floated.