The Marsh King's Daughter (5 page)

Miriel eyed the Abbess warily. 'Mother?'

The nun shook her head. 'A proper place to me is a niche that fits,' she said, meeting Miriel's puzzled stare. 'For the nonce you can help Sister Godefe and Sister Margaret in the infirmary. Sister Margaret has the gout and cannot move far for the pain, and Sister Godefe will need a companion when she rides out to tend Wynstan Shepherd's leg.'

A queasy feeling of joy and the fear that she had misunderstood turned in Miriel's stomach. 'You want me to go with Sister Godefe?' The prospect of open air and freedom for no matter how short a time was almost too wonderful to be true.

'Have I not just said so?' Now an open smile creased Mother Hillary's cheeks.

'But. . . but what about my punishment for insulting Sister Euphemia?'

The Abbess tilted her head. 'If you can perform your new duties without incurring my displeasure, then I consider the matter closed. Sister Euphemia will do the same once you have made your apology to her. Now, go and bring Sister Godefe to me, then wait in the cloister until she comes for you.'

'Yes, mother.' Miriel dipped another curtsey and, with Hushed cheek and sparkling eye, left the room. Although as a novice nun she was supposed to move with a decorous glide in the eyes of God, she could not prevent herself from skipping like a spring lamb.

Mother Hillary shook her head, and not for the first time wished a little blasphemously that she could change places with the cat.

Sister Godefe had entered St Catherine's as a ten-year-old orphan, and unlike Miriel had taken to the life as if she had never known any other. The community was her family and she truly saw the other thirty-five nuns as her 'sisters'.

As assistant to the ageing infirmaress Sister Margaret, she was currently tending an ulcerous wound on the senior shepherd's leg, which had to be dressed and anointed daily.

'Although it is mending well,' she said to Miriel in her earnest, anxious voice as they rode out from the convent on mules. 'By the week's end I shall not need to come again.' The words carried a note of relief, for she hated forays outside St Catherine's walls.

Miriel nodded for the sake of politeness, but she was not really listening. Although the mist enclosed her vision, she could still breathe the freedom of the open air. It was as if she had been constricted in a small, airless box and then suddenly set free. The day could have been lashing a storm and it would still have been glorious. The praise to God, which she had no inclination to sing in the dark enclosure of the chapel, swelled in her heart now.

Sister Godefe glanced at her sidelong. 'Mother Abbess says that you are to help in the infirmary.' She sounded doubtful.

Miriel concealed a grimace. As always her reputation seemed to have gone before her. 'I have a little knowledge of nursing. When my grandfather was sick, I was the one who cared for him.'

The nun relaxed slightly, although the anxious expression did not entirely leave her face.

'I won't cause trouble,' Miriel added.

'With Sister Margaret off her feet, you'll have so much work that you won't have time for trouble,' Godefe sniffed.

'I am not afraid of hard work,' Miriel said stoutly.

Godefe pursed her lips. 'We shall see.'

They rode on in silence, each attending to her own thoughts. The mist clung to their garments like air-spun cobwebs and the landscape was a dull, autumnal brown. In summer the fenland had glittered under the sky, each feature reflecting the other to a never-ending horizon. Now it seemed as if they were on the edge of the world. With each sway of the mule, Miriel half expected to be presented with a sudden precipice.

'Not far now,' Godefe announced with relief in her voice.

Miriel nodded. She could hear the clonk of the collar bell on a leading ewe and the disembodied bleating of sheep. She was also aware of a muted roaring sound, like the wind through the trees, but that was impossible on a day of heavy mist like this one.

'The sea.' Godefe cocked her own head to listen. 'Tide's new in.' She gave a little shiver and tightened her cloak around her body in a protective gesture.

Miriel lifted her head, seeking the elusive salt tang of the ocean. She had caught glimpses of its grey vastness from the convent bell tower on a clear summer day, but she had never been down to the shore. It was not permitted unless for a very good reason, wistful attraction not being one. 'Have you ever been on a ship?' she asked her companion.

Godefe looked at Miriel as if she thought her mad. 'No, and I wouldn't want to either. All that water with naught but a plank of wood between me and drowning.' She made the sign of the Cross.

Miriel smiled, her eyes full of distant remembering. 'I was thirteen years old when I went with my grandfather to the fair at Antwerp. We sailed on a Boston nef with her timbers painted red and her hold full of our cloth. Some folk were sick when the sea grew choppy, but I loved every moment.' She licked her lips, imagining the taste of spray on her tongue and saw again the green-blue glitter of fast, sunlit waves. The wildness, the sheer exhilaration.

It must have shown on her face, for Sister Godefe clicked her tongue with disapproval. 'You should not be talking of worldly matters,' she admonished. 'You're a nun now. It is not seemly.'

'I have taken no vows,' Miriel retorted. 'And is the sea not God's creation?'

Godefe opened her mouth. At the same time, Miriel's mount tossed its head and with an alarmed snort, shied onto the other mule which brayed and lashed out with sharp hooves.

Uttering an oath that would have earned her a beating had Sister Euphemia been within earshot, Miriel wrenched her mule to one side, controlling him with the strength of her hands and the tight grip of her thighs. Then she stared at what
had frightened him, and her heart lurched.

A man was sprawled in the dying brown grass. He wore naught but a torn shirt and linen braies, the garments clinging to his body in saturated outline. Sister Godefe let out an involuntary shriek, one hand rising to cup the sound against her mouth.

Dismounting, Miriel thrust her reins at Godefe and hastened to kneel at the man's side.

'Is he dead?' Godefe's voice was watery with fear.

Miriel touched his throat with tentative fingers. His flesh was cold and clammy, but she could feel a thready pulse. Against the dark spikes of his hair, his skin was corpse-white.

'No, he's still alive,' she reported, 'but he soon won't be if he continues to lie here; he's chilled to the bone.'

Godefe chewed her lip. 'What are we going to do?' Her voice was tearful with panic.

Miriel nearly snapped at her not to be such a milksop, but reminded herself just in time that the nun had dwelt in the convent for more than twenty years. Although Godefe was accustomed to tending the ailments of the other sisters and administering occasional potions and ointments to the abbey's lay servants, injured young men in a state of near nudity must be a horrifying prospect.

'Well, we can't let him die,' she said tartly. 'You must return to the abbey and fetch help.'

'And leave you alone with him?' Godefe's voice rose in distress.

'You know the way back, I've never been on this path before,' Miriel snapped. 'He is hardly going to ravish me, is he? If you are concerned for my modesty, then know that after nursing my grandfather, there is no part of a man's body that is a mystery to me.'

Godefe made a shocked little sound in her throat.

Miriel unpinned her cloak and tucked it around the young man. 'Give me yours too,' she commanded. 'We have to keep him warm.'

Dominated by Miriel's more forceful personality, Godefe unfastened her cloak and handed it down. 'Who can he be?' she whispered. 'What is he doing here?'

'We'll never know if he dies.' Miriel gestured pointedly in the direction they had come. 'Ask Mother Hillary for her litter and make haste.'

Huge-eyed and white-faced with anxiety, the nun reined the mule about and clopped off through the mist.

Miriel tucked the second cloak around the first, drawing Godefe's hood up around the young man's face. The dark wool made him look paler than ever. She too wondered from whence he came. Travellers on the marshes were few. Those they received in St Catherine's guest house were usually on their way from Lynn to Cambridge and Lincoln and they did not come from this direction. All that lay beyond the sheep pasture were mud flats and the grey North Sea.

Frowning, Miriel reached beneath the hood of the cloak and touched his hair. Then she licked her fingertips and her memory of the sea was fulfilled in the taste of the salt. He must have fallen overboard from a fishing vessel or Lynn trader, she thought. Perhaps he was a poor sailor, which would explain the sparse state of his clothing.

She took one of his frozen hands to chafe in her own. 'The palm was work-blistered as she had expected, but there were narrow bands of white skin at the base of some fingers, suggesting that rings had recently been worn. There were also scratches on the backs of his hands as if he had been fighting his way through thick undergrowth. Pin-pricks of dark bronze stubble outlined his jaw and rimmed his mouth. There was bruising on one cheekbone, fading to yellow. Miriel touched the mark, but he neither moved nor made a sound.

Whoever you are,' she murmured, 'you are going to create unholy stir at St Catherine's.' The thought made her smile with relish.

The church bell which Nicholas had heard as he collapsed, was still tolling as he opened his eyes. For a moment he thought that he had died and gone to hell, for he was naked and his limbs felt as if they were on fire. By smoky candle-light a black-robed demon was embalming him with a pungent lotion that stung like nettle burn.

He yelled a protest, but it emerged as little more than a croak, and when he tried to move, his limbs would not obey his will.

The demon turned its head. A face, double-chinned and whiskery, loomed over his own and he inhaled a waft of garlicky breath.

'He's waking at last,' it announced.

More of the demons crowded around him. One of them made a disapproving sound and covered his loins with a linen towel. 'Will he live?'

'Too early to tell,' said the first demon. 'I have rubbed his body with warming herbs and now he must be well wrapped to help them do their work. If he survives the night, then his chances will improve.'

So he wasn't dead, and these were not demons. 'Where am I?' he asked weakly.

'In the convent of St Catherine's-in-the-Marsh,' said the looming face. 'You were discovered lying on the sheep pasture by two of the sisters.'

Nicholas nodded. He seemed to remember a young woman's voice saying something about his creating an unholy stir at St Catherine's. That must be where his notion of demons had originated. The dark robes were habits and he was obviously lying on a bed in the convent's infirmary.

'Can you tell us who you are and what happened to you?'

The question came from an elderly nun. She was tiny and thin as a twig, but her gaze was a piercing pale blue and she had an air of authority that dwarfed her size.

'The tide,' he said and swallowed.

'You perhaps fell overboard from a ship?'

Nicholas shook his head. The looming faces swam out of focus and all he could see was water, all he could hear were the screams of drowning men and horses. And cutting through that sound, the incessant tolling of a bell. He closed his eyes and wished he had not woken.

A rim was set against his lips and warm liquid flowed over his tongue. He fought to push it aside, imagining it was sea-water, but his head was held in an inexorable grip, his nose was pinched and when he opened his mouth to breathe, the brew was forced down his throat, not salty, but bitter as aloes. Then he was parcelled up like a fly in a web and left.

The bell ceased to ring and silence descended. Behind his lids, the darkness was shot with lightning flashes of nightmare. He was swimming in glutinous, liquid mud, his arms hampered by a bulky wooden coffer that grew heavier and heavier as he tried to kick for the shore. Every time he looked at the beach to see how much progress he had made, he discovered that he had gained no distance at all. From below, the hands of those already drowned began

pulling him down.

A loud crash jerked him into awareness, and he gulped with desperate greed at the cool, herb-scented air.