With a background in history and archaeology, Jennifer Ash should be sitting in a dusty university library translating Medieval Latin criminal records and writing research documents. Instead, she is mainlining black coffee in Devon while creating stories of medieval crime.
Influenced by a lifelong love of Robin Hood and medieval ballad literature, Jennifer is writing The Folville Chronicles - a series of 5 novels based on the Fourteenth century criminal gang, the Folvilles.
Book 1- The Outlaw’s Ransom and Book 2- The Winter Outlaw are out now. Book 3- Edward’s Outlaw will be published this coming Christmas. Books 4 and 5 are still figments of her imagination.
Jennifer has also written three scripts for ITV’s hit show, Robin of Sherwood.
Details of Jennifer Ash's work can be found alongside that of her contemporary fiction persona, Jenny Kane, at www.jennykane.co.uk and http://www.littwitzpress.co.uk
(@JenAshHistory)
mybook.to/theoutlawsransom
mybook.to/thewinteroutlaw
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Chapter One
Mathilda thought she was used to the dark, but the night-time gloom of the small room she shared with her brothers at home was nothing like this. The sheer density of this darkness enveloped her, physically gliding over her clammy skin. It made her breathless, as if it was trying to squeeze the life from her.
As moisture oozed between her naked toes, she presumed that the suspiciously soft surface she crouched on was moss, which had grown to form a damp cushion on the stone floor. It was a theory backed up by the smell of mould and general filthiness which hung in the air.
Trying not to think about how long she was going to be left in this windowless cell, Mathilda stretched her arms out to either side, and bravely felt for the extent of the walls, hoping she wasn’t about to touch something other than cold stone. The child’s voice that lingered at the back of her mind, even though she was a woman of nineteen, was telling her – screaming at her – that there might be bodies in here, secured in rusted irons, abandoned and rotting. She battled the voice down. Thinking like that would do her no good at all. Her father had always congratulated his only daughter on her level-headedness, and now it was being so thoroughly put to the test, she was determined not to let him down.
Stretching her fingers into the blackness, Mathilda placed the tips of her fingers against the wall behind her. It was wet. Trickles of water had found a way in from somewhere, giving the walls the same slimy covering as the floor.
Continuing to trace the outline of the rough stone wall, Mathilda kept her feet exactly where they were. In seconds her fingertips came to a corner, and by twisting at the waist, she quickly managed to plot her prison from one side of the heavy wooden door to the other. The dungeon could be no more than five feet square, although it must be about six feet tall. Her own five-foot frame had stumbled down a step when she’d been pushed into the cell, and her head was at least a foot clear of the ceiling. The bleak eerie silence was eating away at Mathilda’s determination to be brave, and the cold brought her suppressed fear to the fore. Suddenly the shivering she had stoically ignored overtook her, and there was nothing she could do but let it invade her.
Wrapping her thin arms around her chest, Mathilda pulled up her hood, hugged her grey woollen surcoat tighter about her shoulders, and sent an unspoken prayer of thanks to Our Lady for the fact that her legs were covered.
She’d been helping her two brothers, Matthew and Oswin, to catch fish in the deeper water beyond the second of Twyford’s fords when the men had come. Mathilda had been wearing an old pair of Matthew’s hose, rolled up past her knees, but no stockings or shoes. She thought longingly of her warm footwear, discarded earlier with such merry abandon. She’d thrown haphazardly beneath a tree in her eagerness to join the boys in their work. It was one of the only jobs their father gave them that could have been considered fun.
Mathilda closed her eyes, angry as the tears she’d forbidden herself to shed defied her and fell anyway. With them came weariness. It consumed her, forcing her to sink lower onto the rotten floor. Water dripped into her lank red hair. The tussle of her capture had loosened Mathilda’s neatly woven plait and now it hung awkwardly, half in and half out of its bindings, like a badly strapped sheaf of straw.
She tried not to start blaming her father, but it was difficult not to. Why hadn’t he told her he’d borrowed money from the Folvilles? It was an insane thing to do. Only the most desperate …
Mathilda stopped her thoughts in their tracks. They were disloyal and pointless.
They’d been relatively well-off when Mathilda was younger. They’d owned four horses, chickens, a cow and a goat, and three furlongs for planting vegetables and a small amount of wheat. There was also the pottery shed and kiln where her father made his tableware and cooking pots, and a small orchard which backed onto the two-roomed house. Slowly, over the past few years, it had almost all been sold off. Only the workhouse, orchard, one horse and cart, and a single furlong remained.
Now she had nothing to do but think, Mathilda realised that her father had been that desperate. . He’d been a tall man once, but since his forty-fifth year he’d dwindled, his beard dappled with more grey by the day. It was as if he’d become disillusioned; fed up with the routine of daily existence without her mother. Until now, Mathilda had been so busy making the best of things, she hadn’t had time to see their situation for what it was.
Since her mother had died four years ago, the cooler weather, and the disastrous crop failure a few harvests back, combined with the decline in the demand for locally made pottery had taken their tool. Ceramic tableware from the south, Wales, and even France flooded the market, and her father hadn’t been able to compete. Each time he travelled the ten miles to the weekly market at Leicester to sell his pots, he came home more dejected than the trip before, and with more and more unsold stock.
Last time her father had travelled into Leicester he’d returned home early, a desolate figure, with a cartload of broken pottery shards. A thief had struck in the market place, and in their unthinking eagerness to apprehend the villain the bailiff’s men had run roughshod through the stalls, toppling her father’s table as they went, leaving him with broken stock and an increasingly broken faith.
‘Our Lady,’ Mathilda muttered in the gloom, her voiced hushed in fear, ‘please deliver me from this place.’ Then, guilty at having asked for something so boldly from someone she’d begun to neglect of late, Mathilda added, ‘I’m sorry, Our Lady, forgive me. I’m frightened, that’s all. Perhaps, though, you could take care of my brothers and my father.’
Mathilda didn’t even know if any of her kin were still alive. The Folvilles’ reputation made it more than possible that they’d all been killed.
The men had taken her so easily; lifting her bodily from the water as if she was as light as air. Bundled into a covered wagon, Mathilda had been transported to the manor at Ashby Folville in the company of a large man who stank of fish. He’d tied her hands behind her back and sat over her, shoving a filthy rag between her lips to fend off the protests that failed to escape from her mouth.
The journey, although bumpy and bruising, couldn’t have been further than two miles. On arrival Mathilda had been untied and un-gagged and, having been thoroughly stared at from top to bottom by her impertinent guardian, who seemed to have the ability to see through her clothes to the flesh beneath, then wordlessly bundled below stairs to her current lonely location. Her stomach growled, complaining pointlessly at its emptiness. Mathilda was cross with herself. How could she even consider food when her family was in danger?
‘Just as well I don’t want to eat,’ she told herself sternly, ‘as I probably won’t ever see food again.’ Then she collapsed to the cold damp ground, the terror and shock of the morning abruptly washing over her in a wave of misery.
Mathilda had no idea how long she’d been in the cell when a large hand gripped her shoulder and shook her awake. Fear crept back over her like a heavy blanket as the light from the adjoining room illuminated the mocking face of her gaoler.
‘You’re wanted, girl.’ Dragging her by the arm, he took no notice of the fact he was bumping her legs against the stone steps as he removed her from her prison.
‘Where are you talking me?’ Mathilda’s voice wavered as she tried not to trip over her own feet.
‘You’ll see.’ Increasing the squeeze of her upper arm, he propelled Mathilda along a corridor, before pushing her before him into a large open hall, shouting ahead, ‘You want me to tie her up?’
Mathilda didn’t hear anyone answer. The hall was foggy from a poorly set fire, and it took her a few moments to take in her surroundings as she was pushed towards a long table. The smoke stung her eyes, and she blinked against the light.
Her arms and feet hadn’t been tied, but as a precaution against Mathilda’s potential escape, the surly man stood uncomfortably close to her. Now her senses were slowly coming back under her control, Mathilda recognised him as the person who’d stolen here from her home. The unpleasant odour of ale, sweat and fish made his identity as her original kidnapper unmistakable.
As the fishy aroma assaulted Mathilda’s nostrils once more, her thoughts flew to her brothers. Desperate for news of her family, she opened her mouth to speak, but another man raised his hand, warning for her to remain silent, before the words had chance to form.
Mathilda stared at the shape of this new figure came properly into focus through the smoke. He was finely dressed in a peacock blue cloak, with a green and brown tunic and matching hose. Despite the fine braiding around his collar, she could tell this was not a man of high birth, nor was he the sheriff or bailiff. This probably made him one of the lesser nobility or a public servant.
Swallowing nervously, Mathilda lowered her gaze to the floor in a natural response to before her betters – even if ‘betters’ was entirely the wrong description in this case. This man had to be a Folville. Mathilda began to shake with increased fear as a million possibilities of what might happen to her next flew around her brain. None of them were pleasant.
‘You wish to ask questions,’ His voice was husky but soft, without the harsh edge she’d been expecting, ‘and yet you are keeping quiet. Perhaps, if I decide you deserve answers, then you will be given permission to speak. For now, I am asking the questions.’
Mathilda kept her eyes firmly on the dusty floor, concentrating on her cold bare feet.
‘What is your name, child? What age are you?’
‘Mathilda of Twyford. I’m nineteen, my Lord.’
‘You appear younger.’ He looked harder into her face for a second before carrying on, ‘Tell me, Mathilda of Twyford, do you know the stories of Robyn Hode?’
Surprised by the question, Mathilda’s head snapped up and for a second she found herself meeting her captor’s blue eyes. Was he one of the Folville brothers after all? His manner suggested not.
There was a grunt of derision from the large man Mathilda had come to think of as her jailer. Glaring over Mathilda’s shoulder, straight at her escort, the richly dressed man spoke with a far cruder edge to his voice, ‘I’m sure you must have parishioners to lead astray, brother. I can attend to this girl alone. You are dismissed.’
The religious Folville, the rector of Teigh? Surely the man who’d dragged her here couldn’t be a man of the cloth? Mathilda had no time to speculate on this revelation however, for the man in blue was repeating his question. ‘I asked if you knew the stories of Robyn Hode, child?’
‘Why … yes, yes, I do, my Lord.’
Catching the gleam in his eyes, Mathilda remembered herself, and hastily lowered her own eyes again, frightened of his reaction to her infraction.
He seemed more amused than cross at her boldness however. Mathilda was confused. She was convinced she could detect suppressed laughter the man’s voice as he continued, ‘Well, Mathilda, can you tell me what Hode does?’
‘He takes from rich people, my Lord, and helps those he thinks deserve it.’
‘That is almost correct. Although if you listen to the balladeers carefully next time they come to the fair, you’ll notice that Hode takes from those who are cruel or greedy. They weren’t necessarily rich.’
The man stood and came closer, and stared at her stained clothing, filthy from the cell. His stare was doing nothing to calm the shake in Mathilda’s shoulders. ‘Do you enjoy the stories, Mathilda?’
‘Yes, my Lord. My mother used to sing them, and I’ve heard them played at the fair, as you say.’
Satisfied with her answer, he confined, ‘I particularly like the bit when Robyn Hode demands a tax from those passing through Barnsdale, and how he punishes those who fail to discharge their debts.’
Bile rose in Mathilda’s throat; so all this was about money, then. She wondered how much her father owed this man.
‘Do you believe everyone should pay their debts, child?’
She tried to say ‘Yes, my Lord,’ but the words died in her throat as Mathilda visualised her father thrown into a cell like the one she’d so recently occupied, and her brothers, hurt or dead. The horrific pictures within her mind suddenly swam together in an incoherent blur. Her legs began to buckle…
(C) Jennifer Ash 2018