The Owl Killers (30 page)

“Then why should we need to take the Host repeatedly, if consuming
only once can save you? In a book I was reading it said …” I faltered, seeing the frown deepen on her brow.

“Because we repeatedly sin. You surely know this. But I am curious that anyone should question it. What exactly did this book say?”

“I can’t … remember,” I mumbled, though I knew she wouldn’t believe that. I could have kicked myself. I should never have mentioned the book.

Servant Martha took a step closer and stared down at me. I sometimes forgot how very tall she was. “Where have you been reading about this, Osmanna? I do not recall it from the books I have given you.”

I’d kept Ralph’s book hidden at the bottom of my chest, beneath my linens. I could not bring myself to share
The Mirror
with anyone. There were such thoughts inside that I had not known it was possible to think. Such questions I didn’t know you could even ask. To open its pages was like drinking stolen wine, a heady taste of excitement, fear, and guilt, which demanded I drink deeper, faster, but I couldn’t read it fast enough.

He has freely given me my free will and he will not take my virtue from me. My virtue cannot from me be taken unless my spirit wills it
.

The words were so new to me, so hard to understand, I was compelled to read the same lines over again while wanting to race on. Yet I was afraid to read too quickly, in case when the book was finished I was still left wanting.

The soul is transformed into God and so retains her true form, which is granted and given to her from before the beginning from the One who has always loved her
.

I felt as if my head would burst if I didn’t share it with someone and I knew Servant Martha was the only one who would understand the excitement of it. But what if she took the book from me? Would she do that? She couldn’t do that, not when I’d just found it. I wouldn’t give it up.

I felt Servant Martha’s gaze boring into me, but I daren’t meet her eyes.

“I assume it is a book you have read here in the beguinage. Your father did not seem the kind of man who—”

She broke off, wrinkling her nose. At that moment I smelt it too.
Smoke, but it wasn’t wood smoke from the beguinage fires. It was coming from somewhere beyond the walls, gusted in by the wind, but getting stronger even as we stood there. The stench was acrid, like … like scorched hair and burning flesh. The ground began to tip sideways.

“Osmanna, are you unwell?”

I staggered, dropping the pails. The water flooded out across our shoes. I felt two strong hands grab me as I pitched forward. I thought I was going to be sick. A wave of cold fear broke over me. I wanted to run to my room and bolt the door behind me, but I was shaking so much that I couldn’t even stand. It was the same smell as in the forest that night, the smell of the burning saint. I could hear the scream in my head, see the flames leaping upwards. Somewhere people were shouting. The sound was coming from the direction of the gate.

“Stay here,” Servant Martha ordered. She began to run towards the gate.

But I was too afraid to be left on my own. I stumbled towards the voices. A group of beguines stood in the gateway staring out at the fields beyond. I squeezed between them. A dozen huge columns of black smoke rolled up from the meadows. Beyond them were other fires, small, but bright with flames as if great stacks of wood were burning. The stench carried on the wind made me shudder violently. Kitchen Martha, feeling me beside her, put her arm about me and hugged me so hard against her that she almost squeezed the breath out of me.

“What is it? What are they doing?” I asked her.

“God have mercy on us, child, they say the murrain has broken out. They’re slaughtering the cattle, pigs, sheep—every beast on Manor land.”

“All of them?”

“It’s the law, child; they must be destroyed and the carcasses and byres burned alike to stop it spreading. It’s an evil sickness. Can kill a beast in less than a week and there’s nothing except a miracle can save it. Even those animals that live suffer great sores which ruin their hides. And it’s the ruin of their masters too, for what use is a beast if it can be neither eaten nor sold.”

“And ours, our cattle, are they also to be slaughtered? Oxen too?”

Kitchen Martha gave me another squeeze. “Servant Martha has even now gone with Shepherd Martha to see if they have the marks. Pray they are not infected, child.”

“Saint Beuno and all the saints aid us,” someone murmured.

The
amen
came from every throat.

k
ICK ME AGAIN
, you little vixen, and it’ll be your throat that gets cut.”

The bailiff lifted me off the ground, holding me around the waist so tight it hurt. I beat my heels against his legs. Then I saw his great fat hairy arm wrapped round me and sank my teeth into it. That made him drop me all right.

“God’s fecking arse! I’ll have you for that, you little witch.”

He tried to grab me again, but I ran to Mam and hid behind her.

“See what your brat did to me, woman.” The bailiff waved his arm under Mam’s nose. “She wants a good thrashing, she does.”

The two men who’d come with the bailiff stood there grinning as he rubbed the bite. Their faces and hands were smeared with soot and blood.

Mam held me tight against her rough skirts. “You lay a finger on my bairn and I’ll give you more than a bite, you see if I don’t.”

I gaped up at her. If anyone complained about me, she always took their side and I was the one that got the wallop. I wiped my mouth on her skirts, trying to get rid of the taste of the bailiff’s sweaty arm.

He glared at me. “Then keep the brat out of my way, Mistress, or I’ll not be held responsible. Come on,” he grunted at the two men. “Let’s get these pigs slaughtered as fast as we can. Every hour we waste arguing, the more time it gives the rest of these fecking villagers to hide their beasts.” The bailiff took a step closer to Mam. “I know what your game is, woman. You think if you can delay us here, it’ll give your
friends time to spirit their own animals away.” He pushed his face close to Mam’s. “But it’ll not work, you hear me? Your neighbours can’t keep their beasts hidden forever. Sooner or later we’ll find every single one of them. D’Acaster’s out even now in the forest with his pack of hounds, hunting down all the livestock the villagers have driven in there.

“And you can tell your friends this: If we have to waste our time tearing Ulewic apart looking for their scabby animals, they’ll earn themselves a hefty fine into the bargain, or worse, much worse. So they may as well hand the stock over now, save themselves time and money.”

“Is that so?” Mam put her hands on her hips. “I’m not the one standing around blathering. Seems to me the only person wasting time here is you.”

The bailiff glared as if he’d like to kill Mam instead of the pigs, but he jerked his head at the men and the three of them strode off round the back of our cottage.

I tried to run after them, but Mam held me back. “Leave it, lass, there’s nowt can be done.”

“If Father was here, he’d stop them.”

Mam sighed and raked back a strand of her hair. “Aye, he’d try, right enough, and get his head cracked open for his pains. Then where would we be?”

Round the back of the cottage the pigs started to squeal and shriek. Mam winced and closed her eyes tight.

“But why, Mam, why are they killing our pigs?”

“Black bane, lass.” She stroked my hair, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes had a faraway look. “If it comes, it’ll kill the pigs anyway.”

“Who’s Black Bane? Is he like Black Anu?”

I knew about Black Anu. There was a carving of her over the church door. She was an ogre who lived in a deep dark pool up in the hills where no one ever went. Her face was green and so were her teeth and she had great sharp claws instead of fingers. She came into the village at night looking for bairns for her supper. She couldn’t see, but she could hear the softest squeak or whisper. So we had to be very quiet after dark, so she didn’t know we were there. If Black Anu heard
any bairns crying or being naughty, she’d reach in through the window with her great long arms and snatch them. Then she’d carry them back to her pool and suck out all their blood and bones, and leave their skins hanging on an oak tree to dry in the wind, that’s what Mam said.

William said he was too big to be pulled out through the window, but I was just the right size. If Mam went out after dark and she told William to stay and mind me, he’d call out to Black Anu to tell her where I was. I hated my brother. I couldn’t wait until I was as big as him and then I’d—

“Black bane’s a sickness, lass,” Mam said. “Beasts get covered in great sores that turn black. If it goes to the lungs and the guts, that’s the end of them. Cruel death it is. You weren’t born last time we had it in these parts. Wish to God, I’d not been neither.”

“But, Mam, they can’t kill our pigs, not our Sibley. You can’t let them. She hasn’t got any black sores. I fed her this morning and—”

“How many times have I told you not to go naming animals?” Mam snapped. “No good ever comes of it.”

There was a loud wail from the road in front of the cottage. “May God and his Holy Virgin save us!” Fat Lettice waddled up the path, flapping her skirts over her flushed face. “They’ve come for yours too? Of course they have.” She didn’t wait for Mam to answer, but peered round the side of the cottage. “Blood everywhere, don’t look, my dear,” she said, as she flapped back to where we stood. “I swear on my dear husband’s grave, God rest him, I’ll not survive the winter. This’ll be the death of me.”

Something seemed to drain out of Mam and she sank down on the threshold, her head in her hands. “I don’t know what Alan is going to say when he gets back. He’s fetching us salt for the pickling when he comes. We shouldn’t have waited. If we’d slaughtered last week, we’d have had enough salt pork to see us through the next few months.”

“Who slaughters pigs in fattening month?” Lettice said, spreading her hands wide. “Summer’s been so bad there’s not a pick of flesh on them. They needed two full moons feeding on the forest mast just to put as much fat on as this little mite, and she’s as skinny as a piece of thread.” Her hard fingers poked my belly. “Am I right?” The black bristles on her chin waggled when she talked.

“But even without fattening, we’d have got something off them.” Mam clenched her hands into fists. “Now we’ve nothing, no meat, no fat to cook with. I’ll not even have the scrimmings to dip the rushes in for candles. Bailiff says the whole carcasses are to be burnt.”

Her shoulders were shaking and she was making strange gulping noises, her face twisting up as if she was trying not to cry. It frightened me. Mam never cried, not ever.

“Mam, don’t, please don’t.” I tried to put my arms round her, but fat Lettice pushed me out of the way and put her arm round Mam instead.

“There, there, dear. Don’t take on so. They’re not burning them all, no matter what that bailiff tells you. Most’ll find their way into D’Acaster’s pickle barrels. His stores will be groaning with the fitches of pork this time next week.”

She looked all round her, then whispered. “That tall one with the bailiff, one with the squint. Get him on his own when bailiff’s not looking. Slip him a coin. He’ll make sure there’s a dead pig that doesn’t reach the cart.” She tapped the side of her nose. “There’s a few carcasses gone missing from that cart round the village. Not that I’m saying anything, of course.”

“Aye, we slipped a few coins to the Owl Masters too. They promised us they’d keep us safe.” Mam’s eyes were red and watery, but her face was angry, not sad. “Said they’d stop anything else going wrong this year. Much good that’s done us. If they show their faces round here again, you’ll not catch me giving them owt but in a flea in their ear.”

“Hush! Hush!” Fat Lettice flapped her hands at Mam. The old woman waddled to the corner of the cottage and peered round the side again. Then she sidled back to Mam. “It doesn’t do to be talking about the Owl Masters like that. You never know who’s listening. Bailiff could be one of them. You heard what happened to old Warren when he refused to pay up? Course you have, who hasn’t? Accident, so his wife said, but everyone knows different.”

I remembered the door to his yard where the old man made his pots and jugs had been closed for nearly a week now, but I thought he’d just got the ague.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

Lettice jerked her head in my direction. “Little pitchers have big ears.”

“Make yourself useful, lass; go fetch some water,” Mam said sharply.

“But, Mam, what did happen to Warren?”

“What will happen to you if you don’t fetch that water. Now off with you.” She pointed. Mam meant it when she pointed. That was a last warning.

I picked up the bucket and walked away as slowly as I could, trying to listen, but fat Lettice was whispering to Mam and I couldn’t hear anything except “smashed and broken.” There were no more squeals coming from the back of the cottage. I glanced behind me. Lettice and Mam were busy talking. I slipped round the side of the cottage.

Scarlet blood was splashed all over the cottage walls and dribbling down the sty walls. There were bright puddles of it on the ground, as if it had been raining red. The pigs were all dead, everyone’s in the whole road. They were lying in a big heap on top of one another. The bailiff was bending over a pig on the ground. Its trotters were jerking and twitching. Then they shuddered and stopped. The bailiff’s men heaved the last pig onto the heap; it fell with a loud wet
slap
. Its head dropped back and there was a big red gash in its neck, but its eyes were still open, and it was looking at me.

The bailiff still had his back to me, but he must have felt me looking, because he turned. His hands were red and steaming; blood was dripping from his dark hairy elbows onto the ground. He was holding a long pointed knife.

“You, brat, come here, I want you—”

But I didn’t wait to hear more. I ran as if Black Anu herself was after me.