Chapter 4: SWAINLEY GAOL

The next morning Ferdinando leaves Thomasina, immediately after breaking his fast, saying he is off to Swainley, to release her son from the prison.

Why does he still not tell her that he has already released him, not four hours or more before he first made his acquaintance with the fair lady? Indeed, he admits, never a fairer lady has he met or enjoyed the company of before. The woman is attractive, as well educated as any woman of his immediate acquaintance, keeps a good house and is pleasant company. Yet he is both attracted and repelled, troubled by his own inexperience with the fairer sex, having never mated in love, nor has he ever contemplated real intimacy with anyone, until now. Thomasina disturbs his baser instincts like no one has before. Desire, how long, he asks himself, has it been since he desired love from anyone?

And there’s the young woman’s voice in his head, continuous in private conversation, without revealing her name or her circumstances. ‘No,’ Ferdinando tells himself, ‘I must take care, something here isn’t right, isn’t right at all.’

He had released young Benjamin fforde on his own cognisance two days ago, and sent him with Jones by his coach to the nearest respectable inn, The Lamb by Swainley market, while sending Handley off to arrange for a physician to attend immediately to his injuries. The report returned that he has a broken ankle, partly healed, which the doctor had to break again to reset correctly, otherwise the innocent young man would be crippled for life. He will be laid up here in the Inn for a week under the good doctor’s care before returning home to his mother.

While awaiting the doctor’s report, Briant had checked the two other male prisoners, finding both similarly severely beaten.

Then he saw the last prisoner, the maiden Isote Durney, who was beaten even more severely than them all, her lips split and bloody, one eye closed, her nose bone smashed flat by gaoler’s fist to her face. The girl tried to get up with difficulty, her dress ripped open, her teats bitten, weals and bruises commensurate with rape and sodomy, the oozing blood left unwashed from her tortured body. She was pale, weak, and riven hot with fever, barely able to stand. Again, Briant had despatched her off to the Inn, a private room for both innocent victims, full board and nursing care. Handley the coachman was reminded, with a disarming smile, to “get receipts for all, John, and no adding a sly penny here or there, I know the price of eggs”.

“Aye my Lord,” his long-serving servant had grinned in reply.

Revisiting them now, two days after their release, he notes, both patients are doing as well as the doctor expected, but Izote is still low with fever and unable to answer his questions.

Ben fforde claims to be unable to throw any light on what is already known of the case.

“I was asleep, exhausted from the long walk at the pace Sir Valentine on his horse dictated, the night I was attacked,” fforde said. “I have no idea why there has always been this animosity between us, or what brought this to such a conclusion.”

He is not aware that Valentine is his father and, as such, an embarrassment to the knight, Ferdinando realises.

The boy’s testimony is given some slight question by uncertain little glances away, Ferdinando notes. An honest boy, normally no doubt, but not telling the whole story in regard to his relationship with his employer. Does he know Valentine is his father, or has Thomasina never revealed this fact to him? Or is it because he is hiding that fact that he is enamoured with the girl Izote? No matter, the truth of that matter will keep for now.

“Ye are what ye eat, whatever tasted so sweet!”

Ferdinando was full, enjoying this meal more than any meal before. Even the little girl’s voice in his head is laughing with him; they are now conversing mind to mind, almost all the time during his conscious hours. A lovely voice that charms and captivates him. When he asks who she is, the apparently honest reply of ‘Thomasina fforde’, is confusing, while the very woman named is sitting opposite his place at the table, smiling sweetly as if totally unaware of his internal conversation with an external consciousness. Is he going mad, never having heard voices before this case landed in his lap? He keeps his powder dry by not saying anything directly to the lady hostess, however comely and charming she appears to be.

He is in the cottage enjoying his third evening meal here, roast shoulder of lamb, with minted potatoes and buttered baby turnips, the best meal yet, from the same ewe slaughtered just days ago. Ferdinando tells Thomasina that Ben is free and that he will remain in Swainley for a few more days yet. She nods, accepting the situation that the daily help she has employed to deal with the sheep will have to continue until Ben recovers and can resume his shepherding duties.

“And what of Izote Durnley?” she asks.

Of course, the girl is also of this village and once, no doubt, a pupil of Thomasina’s school. She talks fondly of the time she taught local children in the school for a penny each a week, closed shortly after the Albury’s took possession of the Manor. She still teaches a handful of the village children in her own parlour twice a week for a handful of coppers. Gently he explains what happened to the poor girl, Izote. Involuntary tears form in her eyes, echoed by the equally sorrowful lament of the girl’s voice in his head, and Ferdinando is moved to hold her physical hands in comfort and expressing empathy in his thoughts to two different women.

“I have wondered if she was really related to Mary Durnley, Albury’s housekeeper, as they look so unlike.” Lord Briant says.

“Izote is half sister to Mary, they share the same father. Mary is about seven years older than Izote, and lost her mother in infancy to the smallpox, as Izote’s mother did when she was only five. Mary was more of a mother to Izote. I hope this injustice to the poor girl doesn’t...” She leaves her thoughts in that direction unsaid. “And will the Magistrates hold a trial?”

“They will not need to, Ma’am. On my way here I stopped off where your son’s rough gaol was situated. I examined the mittimus that the gaoler held—”

“Mittimus?”

“The mittimus is a charge sheet, which forms the basis for the offender’s imprisonment pending trial. It is issued by the local Justice of the Peace, as a warrant to arrest persons of interest to the courts, and this one was written in barely legible dog Latin.”

“I never learned Latin, but I do teach the children of the village their English grammar and mathematicks.”

“Quite so, tho’ Latin is required for anyone wishing to enter the Inns of Court. I learned to speak, read and write my Latin like a native. Anyway, I endorsed the mittimus with my own seal and noted that the prisoner, your son Benjamin fforde, was accused of aiding witchcraft, although no evidence to thwart testimonies already received to the contrary were noted. So I released him on his own cognisance to be on good behaviour until his trial. I am sure no trial will actually need to take place as there are no viable charges for him to answer to.”