Free An Honourable Estate by Elizabeth Ashworth Page B

cannot be His plan to take my husband?” she
asked.
     “He has taken other husbands – and wives and children
too.  Many have been taken.  Why should you expect exemption, Lady
Bradshaigh?”
    She looked down at her thinned hands, still grasped tightly
around her rosary and she knew the priest was right.  She was no different
from the poorest villein in God’s eyes.
    “Forgive me, Father, for my vanity,” she said.  The
priest laid his hand briefly upon her head and made the sign of the cross on
her forehead with his thumb.
    “Go home to your children,” he said.  “They need you, as
do the villagers.  You are called on to be strong; may God grant you that
strength.”
     
    Two
days later news came that Adam Banastre and Henry Lea had been taken at the
house of Henry de Eurfurlong.  They had sought shelter, but he had
betrayed them for a few paltry marks.  Henry Duxbury was also taken,
caught in the forest by a party of Neville’s men and conveyed to Lancaster to
stand trial.  Of William there was still no word.
    “They say Banastre was hidden in the barn and fought against
his captors valiantly,” Siward, another villager who had crept back to Haigh
under cover of darkness, told Mabel.  “But he was taken alive and was
beheaded at Martinmas on Leyland Moor at the command of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. 
Henry Lea also.” Mabel reeled at the news and reached for a stool to sit down.
“You’ve turned dreadful pale, my lady,” said the man.  “Just praise God it
was not Sir William.”
    “Indeed,” she managed to say.  Adam Banastre may have
been a fool, but she would never have wished this for him and she wept again,
though not so much for him as for the not knowing what had become of her
husband.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter
Five
    A Year and a Day
     
     
    It was
fast approaching Christmas and the days were growing ever shorter. 
Everyone was trying to complete their daytime tasks before the early dusk fell,
to save them having to burn the candles that must last them until the longer
days returned, and Mabel and her daughters were going early to their beds to
try to conserve their meagre supplies of food and fuel.
    One dull Thursday, when it seemed to have never come full
daylight, Mabel was helping Edith to pour the fresh brew of ale into barrels
and secure them when she heard horses approaching.  She looked up at Edith
whose face had frozen in fear at the sound and, briefly brushing her hand
across the girl’s arm, she went, wiping her hands on the rough apron that
covered her gown, to see who had come.
    She immediately recognised Sir Edmund Neville as he
dismounted his black stallion and walked across the courtyard towards
her.  He was dressed in a thick woollen cloak of the darkest blue that
made his pale eyes more intense, and his expression remained as enigmatic as
ever.
    “My husband is not here,” she told him defensively as he
greeted her with a formal but curt bow.
    “Though I see that some of the other villagers have
returned,” he remarked as he nodded his head towards the houses he had just
passed.
    “There are menfolk in the village, yes,” she agreed. 
“Maybe more than at your last visit, for on that day I think many had left
early to go to market‒”
    “Save yourself the trouble of concocting some story,” he
said, holding up his gloved hand to silence her.  “I do not care whether
the men were part of the rebellion or not.  They are only villagers and
villagers must do as their lord bids them.  I do not hold them
responsible.  Neither does my master, the Earl of Lancaster.  It is
the ringleaders, those who bid them rise up against the noble lords, that the
earl seeks to punish.”
    “My husband is not here,” repeated Mabel.
    “Then perhaps, my lady, he was slain in battle – or died from
his wounds soon after,” he remarked with a hint of cynicism.  “I offer you
my condolences.  It is sad that you do not have the small comfort of
burying his