The Owl Killers (22 page)

Whoever old Gwenith had sent me in to see was not here. The old woman’s wits were wandering, hardly surprising living all alone in such a place. Perhaps she imagined her long-dead mother waited inside. The aged often think themselves children again and think they see their loved ones near them as if they still lived. It is as if the ghosts of the dead draw close to welcome those who are dying. I turned to go.

A faint slithering sound stopped me in the doorway. I whipped round, my heart thumping. I searched desperately for the source, afraid to move until I found it. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light I saw that a corner of the hut was screened off by a piece of cloth strung across it. The sound was coming from behind it. I cautiously lifted the edge with the point of my knife, then sprang back with a gasp.

A girl sat cross-legged in the corner. She was dressed in a thin torn shift, her wild red hair tangled loose about her shoulders. And, from a face as pale as the old hag’s was brown, gleamed a pair of cat-green eyes. It was Gudrun.

Her body was writhing and twisting, yet she sat perfectly still. Then, shuddering with horror, I realised what it was that was moving. Her body was alive with vipers. Twining themselves all about her, they slithered through her hair and twisted about her neck. A black-and-yellow bracelet curled about her wrist. She held it up to her face and her little pink tongue flashed in and out of her mouth as the viper flashed his tongue at her. Then without warning she looked straight at me. Her lips curled back as if she was laughing with delight, but no sound came from her mouth.

I fought my way out of the hut and scrambled down the hillside, back the way I had come, tumbling and slithering down the slope, only dimly aware of the thorns slashing at my clothes and legs. Catherine came racing towards me and caught me in her arms.

“What’s wrong, Beatrice? You look as if the demons from Hell are chasing you.”

“An old woman living up there—she startled me.”

Catherine glanced up at the hillside. “Was it old Gwenith? Pega said she lived hereabouts, but I never knew where exactly. Pega says she’s the gift of second sight. They say it’s dangerous to cross her.” She looked at me fearfully. “Did she curse you?”

I shook my head. “The old woman’s granddaughter was there too.”

Catherine’s eyes grew wider. “You saw Gudrun up close? She usually runs away before anyone can get near her. What was she like?”

I shook my head, trying to remember what I saw. Snakes! Were there really snakes? In that half-light, it was hard to be sure of anything. Who hasn’t walked along a track at twilight and seen an old man standing by the path only to find when you draw close that it’s nothing but the stump of a tree? Perhaps she had mazed me after all.

“I … I didn’t see her properly. Come on, you don’t want to be late for Vespers, do you?”

I knew that fear of being late for anything would drive all curiosity out of Catherine’s head.

· · ·

AS WE DREW NEAR
to the beguinage we saw a solemn procession making its way to the gates. Four men carried a shrouded corpse on a bier. A grey friar paced steadily in front of them. Several women followed silently behind, too well dressed to be from the village, but they were not women from the Manor either. There was no weeping or wailing, just a heavy silence. There seemed to be pitifully few mourners save for this sad handful; the corpse perhaps was someone very old, who had outlived most friends and relatives.

I caught Catherine’s arm and held her back. “We’ll wait here until they’ve turned towards the church. It’s bad luck to cross the path of a funeral procession. We should pray for the departed soul, whoever he or she might be.”

But to my surprise they didn’t turn towards the village. Instead, they walked to the entrance of the beguinage and laid the bier down before it. The friar spoke to Gate Martha, who disappeared inside, closing the gate firmly against them, but they waited and we waited too, not wanting to approach until they had gone. Presently Servant Martha came out with some of the beguines, who carried the bier inside. The friar and mourners turned and walked slowly back the way they’d come, eyes downcast, leaning on one another as if in great grief.

Catherine looked up at me, puzzled. “Why do they bring a corpse to us?”

“Perhaps I was mistaken and it isn’t a corpse, but someone very sick. We’d better hurry, Catherine. Healing Martha may have need of these herbs.”

g
ATE MARTHA CALLED ME
as soon as her sharp eyes spotted the procession on the road. We watched their slow progress towards us through the gate window. Even from there I could
see that Andrew was wrapped head to toe as if she was dead. Perhaps they feared that the people would press about her if they recognised her, or she had asked that her face be covered so that she could not look upon the outside world. The procession hardly seemed to draw any closer to us as they crept down the long track. They carried a holy woman, yet there was no joy in their footsteps, no lightness of step. There was something more here than I’d been told.

At last the bier was laid at my feet, but the figure under the wrappings looked immense, not the wisp of a woman I remembered. Had I mistaken who they brought me? I glanced questioningly at the Franciscan.

“Andrew is much changed of late” was all the friar said.

Merchant Martha had said the same thing to me, when she returned from the May Fair. I should have listened to her and gone to see Andrew then.

The beguines carried Andrew to a separate room that we had made ready for her and lifted her onto the cot. She moaned as if every movement hurt her. I sent them away and only when Healing Martha and I were alone did I peel back the cloths from Andrew’s face. The creature beneath the wrappings was unrecognizable. I hastily crossed myself. Merciful God, how could such a devout, beautiful young woman be brought to this! Andrew was bloated, her body and limbs so swollen that she couldn’t close her fingers. Her thin, delicate face was puffed up as if she had been stung by a swarm of bees, so that she could hardly open her eyes.

Healing Martha unwound the bandages covering Andrew’s head. The few clumps of broken hair that still clung to her skull were crawling with lice. Maggots swarmed in the festering sores. When Healing Martha and I rocked her over onto her side to cut away the filthy rags we could see that her back too was covered in deep sores from where she had lain for weeks on her pallet without moving. The skin under her armpits was raw and weeping. She was wheezing. It was painful to watch her struggling for breath.

“You are safe among your sisters now, Andrew,” I told her, but I don’t think she even heard me or knew what we did.

As we moved her limbs to wash her, she moaned, but she didn’t
look at us, though her eyes moved. She stared at the sunlight filtering in through the narrow window, her lips constantly murmuring strange words and sounds; it was no human language. A strange sickly sweet odour emanated from her and filled the room. It clung fast to me. I could smell it on my clothes and hair.

I saw now, all too clearly, why they wanted rid of her. She no longer drew the pilgrims. What use is a caged bear if it will not perform for the crowds? The mob want a beautiful girl to gaze upon, to watch while she whips herself and rolls on the ground in visions of ecstasy. They’re not interested in the purity of the spirit, only in the beauty of the skin, and there was no outward beauty left in her. The priests cared even less about her soul; they had eyes only for the money she brought them. Now she no longer served their turn, they had thrown her out. Perhaps they had already found a new, prettier creature to take her place.

How could any man who daily held in his hands the flesh and blood of our Lord have been so hardened as to have cast this poor woman out? Even the lowliest servant in a manor is granted some straw to lie on and a place near the fireside when he is too frail to work. St. Andrew’s could have bought the offices of some goodwife to nurse her. Any fool could see that she would not have troubled them long in this world.

c
ATHERINE RUSHED INTO THE KITCHEN
just before Vespers. It was obvious from her breathless excitement that the new arrival wasn’t the usual leper or cripple.

“She isn’t sick,” Catherine whispered reverently. “She’s a saint. I heard Healing Martha say her mind has already left this world—”

Osmanna interrupted. “How can she not be sick if she’s dying?”

“Oh no, she’s not dying. She has
abjured
her sinful body.” Catherine pronounced “abjured” carefully as if she tasted a new fruit. “Servant
Martha told me so,” she said triumphantly. “Andrew eats no food at all, but is sustained by the love of God and the blessed Host, which turns to honey in her mouth. And her body gives off a sweet perfume, like roses after a storm.”

“Have you smelt it?” Osmanna asked.

Catherine hesitated, crestfallen. “Only the Marthas are allowed to see her.”

“She must be so beautiful if she is a saint,” little Margery said. “Does she have long hair right to the floor like Saint Catherine?”

“I expect so.” Catherine beamed. “It’ll probably be golden.”

Osmanna opened her mouth to speak, but I managed to catch her eye and shake my head. I could see she didn’t believe any of it. I wished she could take more joy from life like Catherine. Osmanna behaved more like an old woman than a carefree girl, as though youth had been ripped out of her. Her face looked more hag-ridden than ever, as if she wasn’t sleeping at all. I longed to put my arms around her and comfort her—that’s what she needed—but Osmanna wouldn’t let anyone come close.

s
INCE FIRST LIGHT
I’d been sitting at my table in the tithe barn waiting. The villagers shuffled in one by one, twisting their hoods in their hands. Some carried baskets or sacks, but those were half empty. Many came with nothing. The story was always the same.

“The harvest, Father. It’s ruined. I can’t pay the church tithe. We’ve not enough left to feed ourselves this winter.”

It wasn’t just the grain; they hadn’t been able to tithe the full measure of hay back in June and what little they had had gone mouldy in my barn. Many sheep had died from the fluke and the cold wet spring had killed half the lambs, so that the tithe on lambs, wools, and hides was also far short of what it should have been. Hens and eggs too. It
had been the same tale for months. They couldn’t pay their full tithe. Some couldn’t pay at all.

Alan had been one of the first to arrive with a block of salt wrapped in sacking. He dropped it with a thud on the long wooden table.

“Saltcat, Father; it’s what’s owed.”

I turned the pages of the ledger tracing down until I found his name. “You’re valued at two saltcats a year for the tithe, Alan, and you brought none in spring.”

I flicked back the edge of the sacking. Even I could see that the cone of salt was about a third shorter than it should have been.

I looked up at Alan. He was a burly, thickset man, a hard worker by all accounts. He’d managed to rise up to become a weller, the most skilled job there was in the salterns, for he had to boil the brine and collect the good salt at exactly the right moment before it could be spoiled by the bittern salts that came after.

“It’s short measure, Alan. A tithe is given not to me but to God. It is a grievous sin to withhold what you owe from God.”

Alan folded his muscular arms and scowled. “You think rain only spoils the crops, Father. Salt mould won’t form on sand, not unless sun and wind can get to it. We need dry weather for the saltcats to harden too. We’ve barely worked half the days we ought this year and the year afore that. Worked like an ox those days we could, all night too without sleeping, but we can’t make salt without mould.”

He leant forward, resting his great hands on the table. Like many workmen his hands were bound up in filthy rags to protect them from the rough work.

“It’s not just weather, Father; there’s the flour. We need flour or sheep’s blood to take off the scum from the brine, but if the sheep are dying and grain fails, prices go up and we have to pay whatever merchants charge ’cause we can’t make salt without them.”

“I know it’s hard, Alan,” I said sympathetically, “but—”

“No, you don’t know, Father!” Alan roared. “What do you know of sweating over the pans day and night in the steam and smoke of the fires? You think it’s easy?”

He picked at the knot in the rags on his left hand and slowly peeled off stained cloth. He thrust the huge hand in front of my face. The
skin on his palms was peeling off and between each of his fingers there were deep raw cracks. He turned the hand over; every joint of his fingers and thumb were covered with great open sores.

“Salt does that, Father, dries out the skin so it cracks wide and won’t heal up. You ever felt the sting of salt in an open wound, Father? When you have, you’ll know all about
hard.”

But I had felt it. I knew a salt sting only too well. The scars on my back burned again, as I felt once more the coarse salt rubbed into flayed flesh, the agonising fire of it, building and building until I thought I would faint, except the pain itself kept from me that mercy.

I stared at Alan’s hand, wondering what it must be like to feel that smarting day after day and have to force those fingers to work through that burning. Alan bandaged his hand again with a fumbling haste, as if he was ashamed that he had shown his wounds to me.

I dipped my quill into the black ink. “I’ll record that you have tithed the full amount, Alan. I only have to send a quarter of the tithes to Norwich; the salt you’ve brought will be enough to satisfy that quarter. Then … then you can bring what you can for the parish later, when things improve.”

He flinched as if he had been forced to beg and was humiliated by it. He did not look at me as he walked away.

Alan was by no means the last I said those words to that day. I knew what each cottager was supposed to bring. It was all carefully recorded in the ledgers: what each holding was worth; what land they worked; what stock they had. Every croft, toft, field strip, beast, and workshop in Ulewic had been valued and assessed. The Church had calculated how much they could wrest from each household, but those calculations were based on good years. There was no allowance made if the harvest was poor or the beasts died. To surrender a tenth of all produce and labour in a good year was difficult enough. In a hard year, a tenth of next to nothing meant starvation.