The Owl Killers (11 page)

Servant Martha drew herself even more upright. “Very well, Agatha, since firm words are all that you will respond to, I will oblige you.”

Her tone was as sharp as a slap, shaking me out of the nightmare. I was almost grateful for that. I took a deep breath and looked up at her as coldly as I could. What firm words? What did she think she could say that I hadn’t heard my father say a thousand times before? Whatever it was, I wouldn’t let anything hurt me anymore.

“Mark this well, Agatha: If you are sent from here in disgrace, you will leave with only the clothes you stand up in. All else is forfeit.”

I almost laughed. Was that all? I knew it was too good to be true. Whatever she called it, this place was no different from a nunnery. She tried to stare me down, but I wouldn’t look away; I met her hard dark blue eyes without flinching.

Servant Martha stalked over to the door and called out to someone I couldn’t see. “Would you be so kind as to ask Kitchen Martha to attend us here?”

We waited, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire and the rattling of the shutters in the wind. Finally, the door opened, sending gusts of smoke swirling round the room. A small plump woman tumbled in. Despite the bitter wind, her face was flushed and shining from the heat of her fire.

“Kitchen Martha, this is Agatha; she seeks a home with us.”

Kitchen Martha beamed and hurried forward. “Welcome, child, you are very welcome.”

I had to stifle a scream as she swept me into a great hug, half smothering me in her massive bosom.

“She will be placed in your charge.” Servant Martha hesitated. “She will need as much guidance as is in your power to give her.”

I scowled at Servant Martha. Her careful words had not fooled me for one minute. What she meant was “Watch her, control her, and discipline her. She is a hellcat and must be tamed.”

But if I understood the code, Kitchen Martha clearly didn’t, for she looked from one to the other of us in bewilderment as if waiting for Servant Martha to say more, but eventually she nodded and began to bustle me towards the door.

Before we reached it, Servant Martha called out, “One thing more, Agatha. In the chapel on the Sabbath you will receive your new name, to mark the beginning of your new life with us.”

I felt a jolt of hope. “I can choose a new name for myself?”

“Of course not. We do not choose our own names in life; they are given to us. A suitable name will be chosen for you by the Marthas after much prayer and thought. It will be their gift to you.”

The despair came flooding back. It would be no different here than in my father’s house.

HOLDING OUR SKIRTS OUT
of the infernal mud we scuttled, heads down, through the driving rain to a long, low building. Kitchen Martha pushed me down on a stool in front of the fire and shook the rain from her cloak before unwrapping a steaming slice of bough cake from her scrip.

“Eat it up, child, while it’s hot. I’ve seen a plucked chicken with more colour in its cheeks. I don’t know what Servant Martha was thinking of, talking on like that, when even a blind man could see you were near to fainting. How can anyone listen to anything on an empty belly?”

The smell of the spiced honeyed batter suddenly made me realise how ravenous I was. I bit off a great mouthful of thick sweet batter and soft baked fruits inside and gulped it down greedily.

“Steady, don’t burn yourself, child.”

Kitchen Martha turned to poke the fire. Her hands were dimpled like rising dough and scarred with a hundred tiny burns, probably from years of cooking. No one could have called her pretty; her bulbous nose was lumpy and pitted and her cheeks crazed with red veins. But she had merry eyes and a mop of greying curls that, like mine, refused to stay in their bindings.

I gazed around me. We were in a long room. Narrow wooden cots
were ranged along the sides and between each of them was placed a simple banded wooden chest. Rough stools were set around a long table in the centre of the room with books and quills neatly stacked upon it. I longed to see what the books were, but I was afraid to pick them up. At the far end of the room several tallow candles were already set for the night around a crucifix. Night! Soon it would be dark again.

I shivered, pulling my cloak tighter around myself. My ribs and stomach ached. As I shuffled my feet, the smell of thyme rose up from the herb-strewn rushes on the floor. I longed to fill my body with the sharp cleanness of its smell. They say thyme expels the worm that gnaws at the mind and drives you mad. But nothing could drive that worm out. It was inside me. That demon was inside me and nothing I could do would expel the horror of it from my body. I took another gulp of air, but the scent had dissolved and I could not bring it back.

“And this is where you will sleep, child.” Kitchen Martha was pointing to the cots near the door. How long had she been speaking? What else had she said?

“I think that those four cots are unoccupied. You may choose whichever you wish. That chest has spare kirtles and the grey cloaks. You’re sure to find one that fits. You can put your own clothes in that one, though they’ll want cleaning before they’re stored away.” She came closer and turned my face to catch the light. “That’s a nasty cut. How did you come by it?”

I flinched away from her touch. “It isn’t anything, just a scratch.”

“Come with me and I’ll ask Healing Martha to look at you; she has many ointments that will soothe it.”

“Don’t touch me. I’ll tend it myself.” I could hear myself shouting, but I couldn’t stop. “Go away and leave me alone!”

Kitchen Martha looked startled. Her hand stretched out awkwardly as if she wanted to soothe me, but she withdrew it. I felt sick and every part of me was burning. I just wanted to hide in some dark corner and never come out.

“The other children will be joining you shortly.” Kitchen Martha waddled to the door. “Cheer up; you’ll soon make friends.”

I waited until the door had closed behind her, then chose the cot in the corner furthest from the occupied ones and lay down, curling up in a ball under my cloak. The straw in the pallet rustled under me. It was harder than the bed I was used to, but at least the cot was too narrow to share.

All day I’d been wandering round stuck in a waking nightmare. I hurt so much that I couldn’t even think about where I was being taken or what would happen to me. Now, lying in a strange bed, I suddenly realised that for the first time ever, I was alone among strangers, without any idea what to do or what they wanted of me. Panic choked me. I’d always longed to escape from my father’s house, but now that I had, I wanted to run straight back. At least there I knew what to do. But I couldn’t go back; my own father had disowned me and thrown me out into the street as if I was a servant. I had no home and no family. I had nothing but these foreign women.

Servant Martha, Kitchen Martha, Healing Martha—who were they? My father said they were nuns from some wealthy order. He knew that by the way they threw their money about like pig slops. He could always find a reason for docking a hired man’s wages and he despised anyone who couldn’t.

He knew all about these wealthy orders, he said. Convents made rich by the dowries of highborn women who were too ugly to be married off, so their families hid them away in nunneries where they busied themselves in needlework and prayer for the souls of their fathers and brothers until they withered up and died quietly. But the first time I’d seen these women I knew that if they were nuns, they certainly weren’t like any I’d ever met before.

The year they arrived was a bad summer, wet and cold. Crops wouldn’t ripen. The wind and rain beat them into the mud where they stank and rotted away. The servants at the Manor cursed the foreign women for bringing the evil weather with them.

The first time I saw them close up was at Mass at St. Michael’s Church in the village, standing together, all dressed alike in plain grey kirtles of heavy wool with grey cloaks and hoods drawn about their heads. I couldn’t take my eyes off them; they were so still. My two older sisters, Edith and Anne, were praying piously, moving their lips
with great exaggeration as we’d been taught, so that everyone could see that they were praying. Everyone else in the church was mumbling away to themselves, like my sisters, but not these women. Their lips didn’t move at all. The old priest, the one before Father Ulfrid, was watching them too, and he looked angry. The villagers edged away from them. It was dangerous to be different in Ulewic; everyone knew that.

A SINGLE BELL RANG OUT
over the courtyard. Before I could sit up, the door burst open and the wind flung a child into the room. She raced across the floor and threw herself facedown on her cot laughing and panting, as other little girls chased in after her.

“I’ve won, I’ve won,” she squealed, then sat up as she caught sight of me in the corner. Her playmates followed her gaze. We stared at one another. I knew I should be the one to speak and explain my presence in the room, but the unsmiling faces of the little girls watching me reminded me of the hostile stares of the servants’ children who always ceased their games when I approached.

“Are you Agatha? Kitchen Martha said you’d be here,” called a voice from the door. “I’m Catherine.”

The newcomer shook the rain from her cloak. The girl looked five or six years older than the others, about my age, with skinny brown braids framing a long melancholy face, making it look even longer. She reminded me of my father’s wolfhound.

“I thought everyone was called Martha here,” I said peevishly.

“Oh no, everyone has a beguine name—not their old name, of course, a gift name—but if a beguine is elected to help run the beguinage she’s then called a Martha after the blessed Saint Martha who worked for our Lord.” Catherine gabbled so eagerly, I could hardly understand what she was saying. “Servant Martha is the head, then Kitchen Martha runs the kitchen, Shepherd Martha tends sheep—”

“I’m not stupid; I had worked that out for myself.”

She looked as hurt as Kitchen Martha had and I felt a little prick of guilt, but not enough to make me care.

Catherine bit her lip. “You come from Ulewic, don’t you?”

“What of it?”

Catherine glanced uneasily at the children, but they had already lost interest in me and were huddled round the far end of the table engrossed in a game of knucklebones. Catherine came closer and glanced at me shyly. “I heard some of the beguines talking about the fire in the forest, about the … Owl Masters. Who are they?”

“No one knows who they are; that’s the point. Why else would they wear masks?” I shuddered, desperately trying not to see those feathered masks circling the fire.

“But why owls?”

“I don’t know! I suppose because owls bring ill fortune and death to any house they alight on. That’s what the Owl Masters do.”

“Pega says owls eat the souls of dead babies if they die unbaptised,” Catherine whispered.

“So why ask me?” I snapped. “Ask this Pega. I’m not a villager. Stop asking stupid questions. I don’t want to talk about it.”

The bell sounded again and Catherine jumped up. “Vespers! We mustn’t be late.”

Her earnest expression was so irritating that for a moment I almost felt like ignoring her, but Servant Martha’s words echoed in my head:
If you are sent from here in disgrace
… If I was sent away from this place, where would I go? I would have no money and no craft by which to earn a living. What happened to girls like me? I couldn’t survive out there alone.

Catherine was jiggling anxiously from foot to foot, her hand on the iron ring of the half-open door. Outside, the rain drummed down on the muddy courtyard. The light was fading fast under the thick canopy of clouds.

If you are sent from here …

In the deep forest, beyond the safety of the courtyard walls, it would already be dark. The trees would be closing together, their branches blotting out the sky like the walls of a cave. There was no escape, no way out of that living prison. No way of running from the brambles that dug their claws into my skirts, or the roots that wrapped themselves around my ankles, chaining me down in the suffocating
reek of rotting leaves. And somewhere in the forest, that creature would be watching for me to step outside the beguinage gate. I felt the rush of air from its wings on my face, the cold talons gripping my skin. The demon was waiting somewhere out there in the darkness, waiting for me to come again.