Outraged, Hal swung from them to Simon, demanding, “You’re not agreeing to that, are you? Three pence? Three pence instead of two? Where’s the justice in that?”
‘I don’t know,“ Simon said. ”If it was me, I’d have said justice would have been better served in charging you four pence for it.“ Then added while Hal gaped at him, ”Or maybe I would have made it five.“
Offended past words, Hal snapped his mouth shut and swung toward the priest, plunging hand in pouch to fumble out the needed coins and throw them on the table before stalking away in perfected fury, leaving Simon to suppose it would take at least two bowls of ale to bring him around the next time they met.
To hand next was the more troublesome matter of Jenet atte Forge and Hamon Otale, and Simon was glad they were both the nunnery’s villeins and so Master Naylor’s problem, not his. As all of Prior Byfield knew, Jenet had loaned Hamon-and why she had ever thought he could repay it, Hamon being, even by the most generous estimate, hardly competent to do anything more on his own than tie up his hosen-three shillings last autumn, to be repaid at Whitsuntide. Whitsuntide being past and no sign of her money coming home, Jenet had brought plea against him.
Master Naylor, with his usual intent attention, listened to Hamon’s shuffle-footed admitting that he hadn’t the money anymore or anything even close to it. “I meant to buy a cart and do some carting,” he said. “Only the cart broke down at midwinter, see. Past fixing, it was, and nothing I could do about, so there I am, aren’t I?”
There he was indeed, Master Naylor agreed, forbearing to point out what everyone in the village knew-that the cart had been almost past use even when Hamon had first brought it back from Banbury. But Hamon was not someone who learned from anything he ever did or anything he was ever told, and Master Naylor merely asked Father Edmund to read out, for the jurors to hear, the indenture drawn up between Jenet and Hamon last autumn. It was among the first things Father Edmund had done when he first came to be priest here. After the rather under-learned and under-devoted priest they had had for a while between Father Clement’s death and him, his clerkly skills were almost as welcome as his churchly ones. He had laid out the indenture simply and clearly, and the jurors nodded easy understanding at its end and asked Hamon’s sureties, Walter Hopper and Dick Blakeman, to come forward.
Because manor law required everyone who held property in Prior Byfield manor to attend all manor courts, Walter and Dick were inevitably there, even if they had not known this was coming, and came elbowing out from among the other holders to acknowledge that those were their sign manuals, yes, they had agreed to stand surety for Hamon repaying Jenet her three shillings, and since he could not, yes, they agreed-Dick very unhappily- that they were responsible to Jenet for her money.
‘And since I talked Dick into it, when he would rather have not,“ Walter said, ”I’ll take the whole of it on myself, please you, Master Naylor.“
Dick and Master Naylor and everyone else fixed surprised looks on Walter.
‘You’ve the money to hand to pay her?“ Master Naylor asked, ready money in that quantity not easily come by for most folk, even someone who made the best of his holding and something more on the side with leather work the way Walter did, and it was no surprise he answered, ”Nay.“ But he went on, ”But I’ve a cow in milk that I’ll turn over to Jenet’s use until I can repay her, if she will. Though likely that won’t be until after Michaelmas,“ he added apologetically.
‘It’s your brown-spotted cow you mean?“ Jenet asked. ”With the cracked horn?“ There was as little about each other’s livestock as about each other’s lives the villagers didn’t know, and if that was the cow Walter was offering, it was a good offer indeed.
‘Aye, that’s her,“ Walter said.
‘Done,“ Jenet answered and looked toward the jurors for confirmation. ”Yes? You agree it’s fair?“
If Jenet thought a thing was fair, there was unlikely to be anyone foolish enough to disagree with her. Six heads nodded ready agreement and she nodded back, saying, “Good, then. Father Edmund, put it down.”
Simon was not altogether sure he saw a twitch that might have been a smile in a more open man at the corner of Master Naylor’s mouth, but there were smiles enough among the onlookers, and Dick Blakeman was shaking Walter Hopper’s hand with gratitude at being saved responsibility for three shillings he could ill afford just now, what with his wife being near to birthing their fourth child and Dick needing to hire the help she wouldn’t be able to give him in their fields this summer.
The question was, for Simon, why either man had agreed to stand surety for someone as hapless as Hamon Otale. Or, more to the point, why Walter had been willing to stand surety and talked Dick into it. But maybe Dick would hire Hamon for the summer and then Hamon would be able to pay Walter something back.
For the time being anyway, everyone seemed satisfied on all sides and that was better than the next matter was likely to turn out, Simon thought uncomfortably as Father Edmund called Tomkin Goddard and John Gregory forward.
Probably sharing Simon’s certainty of trouble coming and knowing the brunt of the decision and the displeasures that would fall on them afterward, the jurors shifted on their benches, while the onlookers roused to smothered laughter and elbowing among themselves as Tomkin and John shoved out from opposite sides of the crowd into the open in front of Simon and Master Naylor, sending each other angry looks and keeping what distance between them they could. Even as boys, the two of them had never been able to abide each other, and that wasn’t helped by their messuages-their houses and garths-being side by each at the green’s lower end, making it easy for them to be forever able to find ways of offending one another. Nor did it help that Tomkin Goddard was Lord Lovell’s villein while John Gregory was the nunnery’s, and each expected reeve or steward to back whatever they did against the other, no matter what it was.
Unhappily for them, neither Simon nor Master Naylor chose to see matters that simply. More often than not, Tomkin and John found themselves at the displeasure of both men, and today was one of those times. Master Naylor, with no sign of the discomfort Simon and the jurors were sharing, fixed a hard stare first on them both, then looked at the jurors and asked, “May I question?”
The jurors nodded readily. There were more ways than one to handle court matters but inevitably someone would have to question, and very openly every juror preferred it to be someone else this time. In truth, so did Simon, and when Master Naylor looked to him for his permission, he gave it readily. Questioning Tomkin and John too often turned into a shouting match between them and against whoever was trying to determine where right and wrong might lie in the matter, and even now both men had their mouths open, ready to speak, but finding themselves suddenly in Master Naylor’s care, they snapped their mouths shut, wary, because they had been dealt with by Master Naylor before this and had not enjoyed it.
Nor did they now, as Master Naylor tersely asked at Tomkin, “It was your goat went through John Gregory’s fence and ate three young cabbages and a dozen onions in his garden?”