The Owl Killers Page 6

  Every birch trunk that was thick enough to be tapped now had its own reed dripping with the precious sap, and most of the beguines had already settled themselves on heaps of fallen leaves and were tucking into the food with hearty appetites.

  Kitchen Martha took no notice of fears of poor harvests; as far as she was concerned the beginning of winemaking was an excuse for a feast, and the great baskets set on the ground seemed bottomless. Out of them came round loaves of bread, pastries as big and broad as Pega’s hands, whole chickens with crisp golden skins glazed with honey and spices, tiny brown pigeons wrapped in slices of smoked pork, thick wedges of milky white cheese, dried apricots and figs, and great flagons of ale and cider.

  Smiles and grins broadened as bellies filled. One woman pulled out her pipes and began to play and those who weren’t too stuffed to move joined in the songs, while the children danced around, mostly out of step with the music, but no one cared.

  I leaned back against a tree. We were sheltered from the worst of the wind among the trees and I was full and sleepy. “This is almost as good as being back in the Vineyard,” I muttered, yawning.

  “Tell me again about Bruges.” Catherine asked eagerly. I’d forgotten she was there. The girl loved to hear stories about the Vineyard. I sometimes wondered if she thought it was Heaven, not the Vineyard, I was describing. Perhaps it was.

  “It’s beautiful. We have everything you could want there. A canal comes right inside, bringing water for the latrines and washing right to the door. Our own church, houses, an infirmary, a library for the books, stillrooms for herbs and cordials, and dairies full of butter and cheese. In autumn the air is so heavy with the musts of wine and mead, cider and perry, that it almost sends you to sleep the moment you set foot over the threshold. And every woman who crosses the bridge and enters the gate passes beneath the word Sauvegarde-the place of refuge.”

  “So why leave such a paradise?” Pega asked with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  God alone knows how many times I’d asked myself that question in the three years we’d been here in England. I suppose in part, though I could never explain it to Pega, it was the very order and permanence of the beguinage that made me feel ill at ease. I was stepping into another woman’s house again. I was reading labels and lists of supplies written in someone else’s hand. Afraid to change anything that was so neat, so ordered, and so settled; having no reason to change it, except to make it mine and it wasn’t mine.

  My life had always been written in another woman’s hand-first my mother’s, then his mother’s. My mother-in-law’s hand was on everything. Her order on the linen in the presses, her pattern in the herb garden, her recipes steeping on the shelves, her words, her virtue, her fecundity hanging over me, like a birch rod above a child. There was no Sauvegarde from that.

  So when they talked about founding a new beguinage in England, I couldn’t wait to volunteer. Among so many in the Vineyard I knew I would remain a beguine, but in the new beguinage I would become a Martha. I’d have a domain of my own. I could arrange things any way I chose. Do you really think that Servant Martha’s motives for coming were any more pure than mine? Don’t you tell me she was called by God, as she wants everyone to believe. Pure ambition, that’s all that called her, but at least I’m honest enough to admit what I wanted. I only wanted some small thing to call my own, not an empire like Servant Martha’s determined to have.

  Anyway, we set sail from Flanders within the year. I’d never been aboard a seagoing ship, but Merchant Martha knew what we were facing. The sailors swore at her as she followed them round testing every rope and knot holding our supplies, but that didn’t stop her. You wouldn’t believe the stench from the bilges, like a thousand rotten eggs constantly beneath your nose. I felt sick before we’d even left our moorings.

  A storm blew up as we left the coast and headed into open sea. The others tried to comfort one another with thoughts of England where cattle lazed in the sweet water meadows and children played in the sun, but all I could think about as the ship juddered and rolled were the tales the sailors told of whirlpools big enough to swallow mountains and leviathans that could break the back of a boat with a single flick of their tails. Icy spray dashed over me, drenching me and leaving me gasping. I clung to the side of that ship and vomited again and again. I thought I’d drown. I prayed to drown, just to end it.

  Night shivered into day and day into endless night, but finally one morning I woke again to the sound of gulls. We were sailing into a tiny harbour stinking of decaying saltweed and rotting fish guts. There were no dwellings except for a cluster of fishermen’s huts on the slimy boardwalk. The dark green flat of the great salt marsh lay all around, belching and farting its indifference to our presence. Beyond that, a low wooded ridge marked the edge of the solid land. We had arrived in England.

  Ulewic itself crouched with its back to the forest, cornered, a village pushed to the very edge of Christendom. Sullen women watched us as we passed, peering out from the dark doorways of hovels that cattle would have scorned to lie in. Bowlegged children crawled over the rubbish heaps, fighting the pigs and dogs for any filthy scrap they could pry from the mud. Even the dirt road from Ulewic went nowhere but to that mud-slimed creek, and halted abruptly at the edge as if it had been running away from the village and had thrown itself into the grey waters in despair. And to the west of this midden lay our own benighted land.

  There were just twelve of us, twelve women in a foreign country. Our home was a hillock supporting nothing more than some scrubby bushes and a few moth-eaten goats, a dank wasteland trapped between a dense forest and that rat’s nest of a village. Kitchen Martha wept openly when she saw it, tears running down her fat red cheeks. The other women stood rigidly, staring as if they might conjure again the cattle and cherub-faced infants of their hopes.

  Even Servant Martha, for once, was silent, her head bowed and her face shadowed in her hood. Whether she prayed or despaired I couldn’t tell. Gradually all the women turned their faces towards her, an expression of helplessness in their eyes. Servant Martha lifted her head and gazed up for a long time at the great battlements of white cloud swelling up over the flattened land. Then she gave herself a little shake, pushed up her sleeves and patted Kitchen Martha briskly on her plump back.

  “Faith, Kitchen Martha, faith and hard work are all we need,” she said with grim cheerfulness. “Work was ever the master of the demon of despair.”

  If Servant Martha was right, there shouldn’t have been a demon left among us, for we had worked hard enough in these past three years to conquer a legion of demons.

  Pega prodded me with her staff. All around the women were hastily packing up and heading for the road to the beguinage. The wind was whipping through the trees now and a mass of purple clouds bubbled up behind us, turning the light to a thick sulphurous yellow.

  Pega nodded towards the tubs filling slowly with sap. “Best get those lids tied down tight. That storm’ll not hold off much longer.”

  I held the cords around one of the tubs while Pega’s deft fingers bound it tight. Pega’s hands always fascinated me. Her right hand was webbed, the fingers bound together with flaps of skin, just like a seal’s or an otter’s. The deformity didn’t stop her working, though; even with the webs, her hands were far more dextrous than mine. Gate Martha’s fingers were webbed too. Most of the villagers had the webs on one or both hands. Pega claimed that such webbing was a mark that the bearer came from an ancient village family. I think she was proud of the sign, for it showed she belonged to Ulewic.

  “Who’s that with Servant Martha?” Catherine was staring up the road.

  I turned to look. Two horses were trotting side by side in the direction of the beguinage. There was no mistaking the grey-cloaked figure on the larger of the two beasts. Servant Martha rode with the same grim determination as she walked, spoke, or prayed, but I didn’t recognise the other rider.

  Pega peered after the riders as they disappeared rou
nd the bend in the track. “Can’t tell from here.” She cuffed Catherine lightly over the head. “Come on, lass, the sooner you get home the sooner you’ll find out.”

  The first drops of rain hit us, sharp and stinging, as we hurried back towards the beguinage. Then it fell in a freezing torrent, heavy enough to knock the breath from you. Our sodden skirts slapped around our ankles. I could hardly see the gate through this curtain of water. My fingers were numb and my kirtle clung to me, twisting round my legs like wet seaweed. Gate Martha was hovering in the open gateway, an upturned bucket on her head to shield her from the downpour. She beckoned frantically as if she didn’t think we were running fast enough.

  “Come in, come in! Kitchen Martha’s some warm ale mulling for you. You’ll not believe who’s come to join us! You’re not going to like it, Pega, you’re not going to like it at all.”

  servant martha

  d’ACASTER’S PAGE BOY RODE AHEAD as fast as his little pony would go. Several times he was forced to stop and wait for me to catch up. But I had no intention of allowing my horse to gallop, despite his pleadings. As I told him, such recklessness on a muddy track would inevitably lead to broken bones, ours or our mounts, and nothing could be so urgent as to justify risking that.

  A huddle of women and children planting beans in one of the Manor’s strips paused to watch us ride past, but I think they stared more as an excuse to straighten their backs than from any real curiosity.

  “Please hurry, Mistress,” the page begged. “Look, the Manor’s in sight. It’s not far now.”

  I gazed up to where he pointed. In front of us, on a slight rise, stood a fine imposing gatehouse protected by a huge wooden gate studded with iron bosses and surmounted by sharp spikes. The gate seemed more fitting for a castle under siege than a manor in such a remote corner of England, which no invading army was ever likely to stumble across unless it was hopelessly lost. The gatekeeper sullenly stirred himself to open the gate at the boy’s cry, before scuttling back to his smoking brazier.

  Beyond the gate, the courtyard was almost deserted. I glimpsed a couple of servants lurking in the dark doorways or slinking about their duties in shadows, but it was strangely quiet. Not even the dogs and chickens rooting about in the mud seemed interested in our arrival. The kitchen, bakehouse, and stables were well enough appointed, but the leaking, ill-thatched huts in the corner of the courtyard were evidence that Robert D’Acaster paid better heed to the comfort of his bloodstock than to that of his servants.

  In contrast the sturdy grey walls of the Manor were lavishly adorned, though adorned hardly seemed the right term for the carved grotesques of men and imps grimacing down as if turned to stone in the very act of shouting “Go back!” These human figures were similar to those on the village church, but on the Manor house, between each distorted human head, were carved the figures of hounds, wolves, lions, and birds of prey all captured in the act of killing, doubtless to remind all who saw them that there were some powers on earth they should fear more than those in Heaven.

  The page raced ahead of me up the stone staircase on the outside of the building and into the great hall. He gabbled something through the open doorway, then fled past me back down the stairs, as if he feared an arrow would come flying after him.

  I don’t know to whom he made his address, for when I entered the great hall it too appeared to be deserted. The hall was long and narrow. Tapestries of battle and hunting scenes lined the walls, the bloody wounds of man and beast congealed to brown by the smoke of long winters. Wax from the night candles still hung in yellow waterfalls from the spikes and long tables still bore the platters and beakers from the last meal, but there were no servants busy clearing up the mess. Only the fire had been repaired and the flames were roaring over the logs as though someone had been poking at them violently and repeatedly.

  Something moved in the dark corner on the raised dais at the far end of the hall. A peregrine falcon sat on a perch behind the largest and most ornate chair in the room, the one which Lord D’Acaster would surely occupy at meals. The jesses fastening the bird to the perch were long, and it was unhooded. It swivelled its head, watching me, its bright dark eyes ringed with amber. Doubtless it amused Lord D’Acaster to feed the bird during meals, though I had heard some men kept a falcon close by for fear of an assassin’s hand. Such creatures can be trained to fly at the face of anyone foolish enough to lunge at their masters.

  The bird’s wings beat furiously as a man burst out from behind one of the tapestries that I now realised concealed a small door. He strode down the length of the hall towards me. I’d seen him often enough to recognise him as Lord Robert D’Acaster, but I had never before had occasion to waste words with him. Well, let him come to me, I thought, for I would not go running to meet him.

  “You took your time, Mistress,” he bellowed.

  He offered me no courtesies of chair or drink or even greetings. So I stood and waited for him to approach near enough for us to hold a civil conversation. I had no intention of raising my voice.

  Though I would not presume to judge the way God designed any man, I couldn’t help thinking if there was a design, it now was unrecognisable beneath the weight of loose flesh that sagged upon my host’s bones. Robert D’Acaster had perhaps been handsome enough in his youth, but what remained of his yellow hair clung to his pate in thinning tufts, like a moulting fowl, and his small eyes had almost disappeared under the florid folds of his puffed face.

  He came close and thrust his face into mine, scowling. But if he was hoping I would flinch, he was sadly disappointed. I was a good half a head taller. Clearly unused to a woman staring him down, he quickly moved away to pace up and down before me. Height sometimes has its advantages.

  “You will take my daughter,” he commanded. “I want her out of this house this very hour.”

  There was a muffled sob behind me. I turned to see a pale, dough-faced woman hunched in a corner of the window seat. Her plump beringed fingers twisted and knotted a handkerchief with such agitation that it appeared her mind did not know what her hands were doing. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was shiny and pink at the tip. She had evidently been crying for some time.

  D’Acaster turned furiously towards her. “I knew that God-cursed whelp of yours would never get a husband. That much was as plain as the prick on a rutting stallion from the day that miserable brat first drew breath and I would to God she never had. I should have drowned her the moment I laid eyes on her, but no, I’m too tender of heart for that. I raised her, put food in that sour mouth of hers and clothes on her back, and this is how she repays me!”

  His face ripened to purple as he yelled and his wife shrank back against the walls, as if trying to melt into them. He looked in danger of choking on his own rage. He paused to draw breath, then turned and bellowed as if he was calling a hound to heel. “Agatha! Here! Now!”

  There was a slight movement in the shadows of the gallery above our heads.

  “Yes, you, girl. I know you’re there. Get down here at once!”

  He paced the floor again, pounding his fist into the palm of his hand until a girl appeared at the foot of the narrow staircase.

  “Here!” He clicked his fingers.

  The child walked cautiously towards him, her arms wrapped tightly around her ribs. She looked no more than thirteen years of age, but something in her expression suggested she might be older. Her gown, though a rich burgundy, was stained and torn, with dead leaves clinging to it and more tangled in her mop of loose brown hair. She was plainly tense and wary, but for all that, she held her head high, her chin jutting out defiantly. She wisely stopped just out of reach of her father’s hand. She didn’t even glance at me, but stared into mid-space as if trying to shut us all out.

  “Look at the little slut,” D’Acaster spat, circling around her. “This is my daughter. This is what I have sheltered at my fireside. This is what I have clothed and fed and nurtured-a shrew and a hellcat. And do you know how she repays my generos
ity? I’ll tell you. She attacks her gentle sisters without provocation. She refuses to master any womanly art. She’s stupid, disobedient, and wilful. And if that was not enough to make any father rue the day he ever bedded her mother, I find she is nothing but a common village whore.”

  The girl stood apparently unmoved by this recitation of her many sins. Much of her face was hidden by her tousled hair, but as the light from the window fell on her, I glimpsed a cut on her cheek made livid by the blue and mauve bruise around it. She didn’t look like a demon, but the Devil can be at work in many a seemingly innocent form, even a child.

  “Look at her; she is so hardened that she does not even weep with shame. Running around the forest all night like a bitch in heat. Crawling back to my gate at dawn.” He pivoted towards his wife again. “This is your doing.”

  “But I was certain she was in the Manor somewhere,” Lady D’Acaster sobbed. “I thought she’d returned from the May Fair with her sisters. She’s never been out unchaperoned before, I swear it.”

  “Swear all you like, I’ll not shelter the whore under my roof another night. I’ll not suffer her to corrupt her innocent sisters. Nor will her reputation stain theirs. From now on I have only two daughters.”

  He scooped three small leather money bags from the table and thrust them at me so hard I grunted from the impact of his fist against my stomach.

  “This is all the dowry that comes with her. I’ll not waste a penny more on her, so do not ask it.” Dragging the child by the wrist, he slapped her small hand into mine as though he were betrothing us. “Take the little hellcat and never let me set eyes on her again.”

  “And what exactly would you have me do with her?” I asked him.

  “You may feed her to the ravens for all I care.”

  He clicked his fingers at his wife, who obediently rose and followed him down the hall.

  As she passed her daughter she murmured, “Be a good girl, Agatha.” But she did not once look at her child, not even when she reached the door at the far end of the hall.