The Devil's Diadem (20 page)

He paused. ‘Did no one notice? That my mother …?’

I could not look at Yvette. ‘She had been coughing at night, this past week or so,’ I said. ‘I thought it only that the child … I did not even think … how could she have caught it, my lord? Where?’

Again Stephen shrugged. ‘A travelling minstrel, a servant. Perhaps at Rosseley, perhaps on the journey here. Who knows? God,
God
.’ Again he paused. ‘Did
none
of you notice anything? That fungus was well spread … how could my lady mother have concealed it?’

Now I looked full at Yvette, challenging her.

She shifted uncomfortably, and finally spoke, her voice soft and apologetic. ‘The fungus came three days ago, my lord. My lady … my lady begged me not to tell anyone. We kept it well hid.’

Stephen stared at her. ‘You did not think for a moment to tell
me
? You did not think that I carry full responsibility for all at Pengraic and should by rights have known? Sweet Jesu, woman, if
I
had known, if
Owain
had known, mayhap we could have prevented my mother’s terrible death! She did not even have time to confess!
Why the silence?
’

Yvette raised her head, and her voice was stronger. ‘Your lady mother was terrified,’ she said. ‘As was I. We feared what might happen if we —’

‘You think something
worse
could have happened than what actually did?’ Stephen all but shouted.

Yvette dropped her eyes to her lap.

Stephen sighed. ‘I will speak with d’Avranches,’ he said, ‘within the hour. He needs to know. Together we shall organise castle and garrison against the panic and sickness that will come. I will also send word to my father. I will need to risk a messenger, someone recently arrived who may not yet have had any contact with the plague in the castle. My father needs to know that the plague is here, and that his lady wife …’

Stephen had to stop and collect himself. ‘We cannot let word of what truly transpired here spread about the castle. There would be panic. Thus we will tell people that while my lady mother gave birth to an infant son, both died within an hour. I don’t know … there must be some reason we can give?’

‘Your lady mother died of bleeding,’ Yvette said. ‘We could not staunch it. And the child? He was weakly and took a few bare breaths before expiring. If Mistress Maeb told people that all was well, then,’ Yvette shrugged, ‘she had left the chamber before these tragedies occurred.’

Stephen nodded. ‘Good enough.’ He rubbed at his eyes, tired and emotional. ‘Sweet Jesu. I will need to tell Alice and Emmette their beloved mother is dead, although I will tell them Yvette’s tale, not the true tragedy. Owain, what can we do to prepare for the sickness spreading?’

‘I will sort through my herbs,’ Owain said. ‘Some may possibly be helpful. And I will organise men to clean out the chapel for the sick.’

Stephen gave him a slightly puzzled look.

‘The sick need to go somewhere,’ Owain said, ‘and the chapel has a stone floor, walls and vaulting. It will be safe.’

I felt sick. Lady Adelie’s torturous death could easily have set the castle ablaze with its wooden floors and panelling. It had only been by the fastest and most concerted effort that the fire had not spread from her bed (I remembered Stephen moving the poor child to the stone hearth to die in flames there).

Suddenly I imagined a score of people burning at the same time.

Suddenly I imagined flames crawling down my own skin.

For the first time, I realised that I would likely die in the coming weeks.

I bit my lip to stop the sob that almost escaped. Sweet Mother Mary, I did not want to die!

I lifted my eyes, and met Stephen’s gaze. I saw in his face such sorrow, such care, that tears finally escaped, and the sob from my lips, and I bent my head and cried, given over to the grief of my lady’s death and my own impending doom.

Chapter Six

N
umbed by all that had happened, I nonetheless managed to get through the day, glad to be busy. Stephen announced the death of his lady mother in childbed, and the baby with her. She was to be laid to rest that very same day (for anyone asking about the rush, Stephen said that his grief and the summer heat did not allow further delay).

It was given to Yvette, Evelyn and myself to prepare Lady Adelie and her child for burial. The castle carpenters were building a casket for her, and we needed to shroud our lady in garments and wrappings suitable for one of her rank.

Normally we would have washed her body, dressed her hair, and garbed our lady in her finest robes for burial.

But none of us could face her blackened, terrible corpse. We had loved Lady Adelie and owed her full respect, but we simply could not touch her terrible corpse in its full, horrific nakedness. To this day it is a guilt I still carry. I wondered how it would be for me upon my own death.

We first re-clothed the bed in fresh hangings and bedclothes and removed any trace of soot from the walls, floor and furniture. Then, gritting our teeth, we took Lady Adelie’s hastily-wrapped corpse from its shadowy corner, unwrapped as much as we could bear, then carried her to the bed. There she lay, wrapped in several layers of linen; we could not face unwinding her any more.

We stood, and stared.

‘What shall we do?’ I whispered, feeling anew the terror of the manner of Lady Adelie’s death.

Her corpse was twisted and contracted by the fire that had consumed it. Within the hour we needed to have her prepared for the casket the carpenters would be carrying into this chamber, and poor Lady Adelie needed to be laying flat, her arms crossed over her breast, in peaceful repose. If she were all crooked and twisted, then the tale that she had died in childbed was immediately going to be exposed for the lie it was.

‘We will need to fix things,’ Yvette said, full of practicality, and, her mouth fixed in a grim, tight line, she grasped Lady Adelie’s left arm, which poked upward beneath the wrappings. Try as she might, however, she could not move it.

‘We will need to break it,’ Evelyn said, and my mouth dropped open in horror as I stared at her.

‘When I was young,’ Evelyn continued, ‘my uncle died in a fire. His corpse looked much the same as the Lady Adelie’s. In order to fit him into his casket, we had to break his limbs.’

‘What can we use?’ Yvette said, and at that moment all I wanted was to flee the room. The thought of being here when Yvette and Evelyn …

‘Last year,’ Evelyn said, moving over to the fireplace, ‘there was a loose brick here in the hearth. If it has not been remortared … no, it is still loose.’

Oh sweet Jesu.

Evelyn came back to the bed, carrying the brick. ‘I am so sorry, my lady,’ she said, and she lifted the brick high.

I turned away; I could not watch. But I stood there, my face in my hands, for the next while as a sickening series of thuds and snaps came from behind me.

After a while, blessedly, it ceased and I felt a soft hand on my shoulder. ‘I am sorry, Maeb,’ Evelyn said, ‘but it needed to be done.’

I wiped the tears from my face. ‘We should pray for her.’

‘Later,’ said Yvette, ‘when she is safely in her casket. We must continue now, for who knows when the casket shall arrive.’

So we continued, the work not quite so vile. Lady Adelie was still wrapped in the linens — somehow Evelyn and Yvette had done their work without the need to unwrap her — and so we merely straightened her as best we could, avoiding looking at the loathsome stains where bodily fluids from her broken corpse seeped through the linens. We collected the form of the infant, also wrapped, and placed it across Lady Adelie’s feet, binding it tightly in place. Then we wrapped both corpses in many layers of some fresh unmarked linens, then in a thickly embroidered woollen wrap. These masked the destruction beneath, as well as the smell of burned flesh, and provided a suitable richness for Lady Adelie’s, and her child’s, rank.

I suppose the other two women, as I did, wondered occasionally about the plague the corpses must carry, but then, like me, they had already been so heavily exposed to Lady Adelie that I think we feared her wrapped corpse less than her living body.

We knelt by the bed, our hands clasped, our heads bent, and we prayed for our lady and her child. We begged Lady Adelie’s forgiveness for the vile things we had done to her corpse, and entreated the saints to take care of her in heaven, where she surely was.

Then, when the carpenters arrived, we rose from our knees and allowed them entry.

Lady Adelie and her child were interred late that afternoon in the chapel. It was a sombre affair for most attending — those of Lady Adelie’s children present within the castle, the senior commanders and soldiers of the garrison, the castle servants. But for Stephen, Yvette, Evelyn and myself it had an added overtone of dreadfulness. How soon before there were myriad services? How soon before a chorus of grieving carried on through each day and night? How soon before death grew so abundant that services were dispensed with and the dead buried unceremoniously in a pit beyond the castle walls and no one the strength left to grieve?

Several of the wives of the castle servants stood to one side and wailed and sobbed, rending their hair. It was to be expected at a funeral for someone of the rank of Lady Adelie, and no one paid them much mind. Owain conducted the service with swiftness, spending only a little time on the sermon, speaking to us of Lady Adelie’s life spent serving her lord, her children and those within her household. He spoke also of the nature of grief and of comfort, and how we should hold dear Lady Adelie’s memory.

I listened to little of it as I held dear Rosamund in my arms. I had not spent much time with her in the past weeks, for my service to her mother had taken up so much of my days. But now I cuddled her tight, stroking her forehead now and then and murmuring comfort to her. Poor girl, she did not understand what was happening, and was upset more by others’ grief and the wailing of the women than from her own comprehension of the loss of her mother.

I held her tight, and wondered what would become of her.

Looking about the chapel, I could see some of the subtle changes Owain had wrought to turn the chapel’s use from worship to care of the dying. Right at the back were stacks of trestle beds, from what I could glimpse beneath the cloth coverings. There were a pile of bowls and some cloths discretely stacked in another corner. The chapel had little furniture in the nave, but I did notice that some of the side screens had been moved against the walls. It would take little time for the sick to be accommodated.

I bent my head and wept, now unable to keep my sorrow from Rosamund, my sobs joining in chorus with those of the other women. I had shed so many tears today, but it seemed that there was supply enough left to shed many more.

That night, late, Stephen came to the solar. All three of us — Evelyn, Yvette and myself — shared this space, but now Stephen did not care overmuch for convention, or what Evelyn and Yvette thought.

More than anything, that drove home how dire he regarded our situation.

‘Mistress Maeb,’ he said, shaking me awake by my shoulder. ‘Rise if you will, robe yourself, and join me. I will be waiting in the stairwell.’

Then he was gone.

‘Maeb?’ Evelyn, wakening.

I struggled to sit on the side of the bed, not certain if I had dreamed Stephen’s presence.

‘Was that Lord Stephen?’ Evelyn said.

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘he wants me to join him.’

I could almost hear Evelyn thinking this through in her mind, but eventually all she did as I pulled on my robe and laced it tight was to sigh and tell me to be careful.

Yvette, on a trestle bed a short distance away, said nothing, but I could see the glint of her eyes in the gloom.

I kissed Evelyn on the cheek and said I would not be long. Then, straightening out my braids as I went, I joined Stephen in the stairwell.

He led me upward to the roof of the great keep. It was a vast space, a roof of slate that gently sloped to the outer walls.

In marked contrast to our earlier night excursion, Stephen was in a sombre mood.

‘Dear God,’ he said as we halted near the southern parapet of the roof, ‘this is going to be bad, Maeb. I am sorry you have been caught up in it.’

‘I would have been caught up in it wherever I was, my lord. Even had I stayed in Witenie.’

‘I sent a messenger to my father earlier. This will take him hard. He believed we’d be safe here. The loss of my mother …’

‘He loved her.’

‘She was a good wife to him. He held her in high esteem.’

I nodded.

‘Look at the river from up here on high. See how it gleams silver in the moonlight?’

I looked. From our vantage point we could look right down the Usk Valley and the winding silver ribbon of the river. The night was so peaceful, I could almost let myself believe that all was right with our world.

‘I cannot tell what will happen here, Maeb, but I do not think it good.’

‘If the plague has struck all along our route, then any of us who travelled from Rosseley might already be harbouring the death. We cannot assume your lady mother will be the only death.’

He looked at me sombrely, and nodded. ‘She was the first, perhaps, because she was already weakened by the child.’

Again, I felt cold, and ill. There was not just the family and Lady Adelie’s attending women, but also the servants and the large escort who had come with us. Perhaps even now I was sickening and did not yet realise it. Perhaps even now a soldier in the northern keep was coughing gently during the night and thinking little of it.

‘What is going to happen, my lord?’

‘People within this castle are going to fall ill. There is nothing we can do to prevent that. We must manage this horror as best we can, but eventually panic will consume this castle, and then, well, then it will become unsafe. I have talked long and hard with d’Avranches. I think we can maintain discipline for as long as the sickness here remains confined to a few. But once … if … it spreads throughout the castle, then panic will be impossible to avoid.’