The Owl Killers (8 page)

Her thin lips shrugged, which was the closest they ever came to a smile. “Tolerable, I suppose. Which is as well, since we need every penny we can get.”

That meant better than she expected, for she would not seal any bargain until she was sure she had wrested the last farthing she could from the buyer.

Merchant Martha shook her head dolefully. “By my reckoning we’ll need to buy more grain before the feast of Saint John. What’s in the barn will not see us through to next harvest, not with the food we’ve given to the beggars this winter. And take it from me, the price of grain won’t be falling.”

“But if our stocks are running low, the poor will be in worse straits. We’ll doubtless see more coming to our gate before this year is out.”

Merchant Martha scowled. “The villagers curse us with their left
hand while holding out their right for any meat we’re fool enough to give them. Getting spat at by their lice-ridden brats is all the thanks we get.”

There was no point in contradicting her. Every woman in the beguinage had sensed the growing resentment of the village towards us. I prayed daily that the villagers would stick to spitting and cursing and that their hostility would not boil over into something worse.

I sighed. “Having to ask for charity breeds bitterness in honest men. God grant us all a better harvest this year than last, so that the villagers have no need to beg.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.” Merchant Martha shuffled her feet, impatient to be about her work.

She was a neat, compact woman and though she had a healthy appetite, she was all bones, for she was always restless with a fiery energy that seemed to burn up her flesh. When her husband was alive she had run his wool business single-handed; she’d had to, for when he wasn’t drunk, he was off whoring or gaming. It was only her hard work that kept bread on the table of her household and his fortune intact. And even now, as if she still lived in constant fear of ruin, she couldn’t bear to be idle for a moment.

“Merchant Martha, did you find time to deliver the candles and the book to Andrew?”

“I did because you asked it, but I didn’t linger there. Too many thieves and vagabonds hanging around that church.” She grimaced. “Andrew attracts the worst sort of rogues.”

“Sinners are in more need of her grace—”

Merchant Martha snorted. “They may need her grace, but take it from me that’s not what they’re seeking.”

“Did she send a message?”

Without warning, Merchant Martha pounced on a hen which was ambling across the yard and, tucking it under her arm, poked expertly at its breast to feel the crop. It squawked indignantly.

“Andrew sent you her blessing.” She glanced at me sideways, hesitating. Then she added, “You should go and see Andrew yourself, Servant Martha. She’s … she’s much changed since you last saw her.”

I frowned. “What do you mean—changed?”

Merchant Martha set the hen down. She watched it bustle away, shaking out its feathers. “Go and see Andrew,” she repeated. “And do it as soon as you can.” She peered up at me from under her heavy black brows. “You know I don’t hold with what she does—starving herself like that when she could afford to eat, while all around there are those that starve because they have no choice. I’ve no time for such self-indulgent nonsense. But all the same I feel sorry for the girl, and something tells me she may be in urgent need of friends before long.” With that, Merchant Martha strode rapidly away towards the barn before I could ask more.

I stared after her, puzzled. Merchant Martha always had a good instinct for trouble, acquired from years of buying and selling in the seething marketplaces and squalid ports of Flanders, but I couldn’t imagine why she would think that Andrew of all women might be in need of friends.

Andrew was an anchorite who lived in a tiny cell attached to the church of St. Andrew, never leaving it, receiving all her food through the window on the outside wall and the Blessed Sacrament through the slot that overlooked the church altar. A life devoted solely to the perfection of her own soul was not one I could ever endure, any more than Merchant Martha could, but I envied Andrew all the same. She was so certain that our Lord loved her and approved of what she did. I wished I could feel that kind of certainty, even but once in my life.

Andrew would have been about twenty years of age when I last saw her, though she looked scarcely more than fifteen, with long beechnut hair tumbling loose like a child’s. Such a tiny, fragile girl, her pale face with high cheekbones made sharper by her meagre diet of hard bread and herbs, and her skin so transparent that her veins stood out as blue seams in her white-marble hands. Even though she was young, Andrew had already gained such mastery over her body that it was no longer polluted by the menses.

Men, particularly her confessor at the church, were fascinated by her and guarded her cage jealously as if she was a rare and beautiful animal, but the priest didn’t drive the spectators from her window or silence the cries of the hot food sellers and alewives who spread their wares below the walls of her cell. Nor would the crowds of pilgrims
have heard him if he had, for they were too intent on bargaining for the tin emblems and snippets of bloodstained cloth which the cleric swore Andrew had worn next to her skin during her visions. As a living cat is sealed up inside the walls of a new manor to keep the dynasty inside from falling, so Andrew was walled up in the church to keep it wealthy.

I shook myself sternly and picked up my rake, attacking a stubborn patch of compacted mud. A flock of geese wheeled as one, and charged across to the pile of dung, trampling it across the yard again as they squabbled over grubs and worms. A prod from my rake and they scattered, hissing malevolently, and wandered off to find a quieter corner.

The wizened face of Gate Martha appeared at my elbow. “Kitchen Martha’ll not be best pleased if you drive the fat off the birds, Servant Martha. There’s a lad begs leave to see you at the gate,” she added, before I had time to reply.

“What does he want?”

She shrugged unhelpfully.

“Do you know the boy?”

Gate Martha nodded, but didn’t seem to think it necessary to enlighten me. She was a local woman of few words. It was one of the reasons we had appointed her as Gate Martha, for she said she was known for keeping her counsel. But there were times when I wondered where discretion stopped and dour began.

I followed her to the gate. There I found a boy of about eleven or twelve years shuffling from one foot to the other, scarlet in the face and sweating. The pony beside him was also in a lather and no wonder, for the boy had been free enough with his whip, judging by the marks on the beast’s coat. The boy could scarcely wait for me to reach him before he gabbled out his message.

“My master bids you attend on him at once!”

“Robert D’Acaster,” Gate Martha explained, misinterpreting my frown.

“Bids
me? Is there sickness in the house?” I asked.

The boy shook his head. “Nay, but if you don’t come at once there’ll be murder, for the master is in such a rage with his daughter, that if I don’t fetch you, he’ll like as not kill me.”

“Nonsense!” I said. All boys exaggerate wildly. They are incapable of telling the truth simply and plainly, just as they are incapable of standing still without fidgeting. “Now, child, answer me plainly. What exactly is it that I am
bid
to do? If your master has a quarrel with his daughter, what has that to do with me? I dare say he is quite capable of bringing his own household to order.”

“Please come, Mistress. I daren’t go back without you.” The boy suddenly looked deeply frightened.

Gate Martha coughed. “D’Acaster’s a savage temper on him,” she remarked.

The boy nodded vigorously as if he could testify to that a dozen times over.

I hesitated. I had never spoken with any member of the D’Acaster family, although I’d had several unpleasant disputes with his bailiff, over wood gathering and grazing rights, all of which I’d won. The bailiff had made no secret of the fact that Robert D’Acaster wanted us gone, though since we owned our land there was nothing his master could do to force us out. The man had stormed off in fury, doubtless to inform his master, and I had not had occasion to speak to him since. So, why on earth would D’Acaster suddenly send for me in a matter concerning his daughter?

The boy was watching me, his body tense, pleading silently for me to agree.

Curiosity got the better of me. “Very well then,” I said finally. “I’ll come, if it’ll save you from a whipping.”

Relief flooded his face and he beamed, bounding up onto the back of his long-suffering mount.

“But you’ll have to wait while I fetch my cloak and brush the mud from my kirtle. Gate Martha, would you be so kind as to saddle a horse for me?”

Gate Martha grasped my arm urgently and whispered, “I’d sooner stick my face in a nest of weasels, than trust any up at the Manor. Supposing D’Acaster means to harm you?”

“Under what law could he do that? I have committed no crime.”

Gate Martha shook her head in disbelief. “He doesn’t need no law; he
is
the law. There’s mischief brewing in Ulewic; the Beltane
fires last night were just the start of it. Don’t you be riding to meet it.”

“But surely the fire had nothing to do with D’Acaster. Perhaps he merely wishes to extend the hand of friendship at last.”

“Friendship?” she said incredulously. “Robert D’Acaster loathes women, even his own wife. He’d not make peace with the Holy Virgin herself. You keep a tight hold on your knife, Servant Martha.” She stomped off in the direction of the stables.

“Hurry,” the boy begged. “My master can’t abide to be kept waiting.”

“Then,” I told him firmly, “your master will have to be taught the virtue of patience.”

a
S SOON AS THE WOODEN GATE
of the beguinage banged shut behind us, the wind pounced as if it had been lying in wait. It was a raw wind, whipping across the marshes straight from the sea. But we told each other it would feel warmer once we were in the shelter of the copse. The other beguines ambled ahead of us down the path laughing and chattering. They wouldn’t have been laughing if they’d heard what I had in the forest on May Eve.

You could tell they’d already forgotten all about the Beltane fire now that it was daylight. They were like a pack of little children: When Servant Martha said there was nothing to worry about, they actually believed her. They were gullible enough to believe anything that woman said. They couldn’t see through her like I could. But Pega was still worried about the fire—I could see that—so don’t you tell me there was nothing to worry about.

Pega and I threaded our staves through the rope handles of several empty tubs and shouldered them between us. She strode ahead down the muddy track, her rump, as broad as an ox, swaying as she walked. Little Catherine and I trailed pathetically behind, taking two steps to Pega’s one. The wooden staves ground against my shoulders. Pega was
the tallest woman I’d ever seen. Gate Martha says the villagers called her the Ulewic Giant. So with my being so much shorter than she was the full weight of the laden staves was tipping back on me, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of asking her to slow down. She’d tease me for the rest of the day.

The sodden track had been churned to mud by the many hooves and cart wheels that had passed over it for the fair. I stumbled several times and tried to take small steps, but Pega showed no fear of falling. Nothing and no one could tumble her, unless she’d a mind to let them, which in her younger days she had with a frequency that had earned her a reputation as the most accommodating woman in the village, or so that wicked old gossip Gate Martha said.

We were the last to reach the copse. The other beguines were already scattered among the trees, clearing away old undergrowth from around the trunks. The buds were beginning to open and the branches of the birches shivered in their bright green mist. As if the sap was bubbling up inside them too, the young children and some of the women were playing a boisterous game of tag, shrieking and giggling as they chased one another.

Pega smiled. “Best get started, then we can all join in. Move your arse, lass,” she yelled to Catherine. “Get those holes bored.”

Poor little Catherine had only just caught up with us, but she obediently scampered off to the nearest tree and tried in vain to screw one of the augers into the bark. She could never tell when Pega was teasing.

Pega, grinning, elbowed her aside. “Out the way, lass; at this rate we’ll be here till Lammas. If my mam had whelped a reckling like you, she’d have drowned it at birth.”

Pega rolled up her grey cloak and flung it to one side. Something fell to the ground from her belt. I picked it up. It was a sprig of woodbine wrapped around a twig of rowan.

“Servant Martha would be furious if she knew you were wearing this.” Our sour-faced leader had expressly forbidden the wearing of the charm during the days of Beltane to keep away witches and evil spirits.

“Aye, but what Servant Martha doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Pega
winked, took the twig, and stuffed it into her leather scrip. “A little extra protection never comes amiss and I’ve a feeling we are going to need all the protection we can get.”

“Because of the fire last night? Gate Martha said it meant trouble for us.” So I was right: Servant Martha didn’t know what she was talking about, as usual.

“There was trouble for someone in that fire. It was a warning, make no mistake.” Pega tossed the auger to Catherine and held out her great broad hand for a hollow reed to push into the hole. “Something’s brewing in the village and if the villagers get uneasy, the first people they’ll turn on is us. They’re suspicious of any outlanders; always have been. I grant you they were quick enough to take the beguines’ money while the beguinage was being built and who can blame them, for you were paying three times what D’Acaster would for labour. But that only made them more wary. They don’t understand the notion of a house of women who aren’t nuns or whores. For all there’s not been a man across the threshold since the building work was finished, it hasn’t stopped them gossiping. What they don’t know, they’ll invent, never fear. Someone should tell Servant Martha to take care.”