The Witch of Eye (17 page)

‘It looks awfully cruel, doesn’t it, Jenna? But you mustn’t worry because it’s all right really,’ she explained. ‘The baby swans just have to have nicks cut in their beaks so everybody knows who they belong to. It doesn’t hurt them.’

‘But didn’t you say they all belong to the King?’

‘Well, yes, most of them do, but special people like Abbot Harweden are allowed to have some swans. That’s why Master Jourdemayne has to count them for him.’

‘Why? Can’t Abbot Harweden count?’ asked Jenna, teasing.

‘Yes, of course he can count! He’s probably very good at counting.’ Kitty was all indignation until she realised Jenna was joking. ‘Oh, Jenna! Abbot Harweden is ever so clever at all sorts of things, but he’s very busy. And Tom the Shepherd said he’d heard the Abbot wasn’t very well. He’s got a pain in his belly. But the swans still have to be counted.’

‘I’ve never tasted swan,’ Jenna mused. ‘I wonder what it tastes like. Have you ever eaten swan, Kitty?

‘No, of course I haven’t. It’s only very important people who can have swans for their dinner. And you mustn’t steal them or steal their eggs.’

‘I wasn’t intending to,’ said Jenna, watching in fascination as William shipped his oars and reached out of the skiff. He made a huge lunge for a big swan which suddenly reared up out of the water, flapping its wings and hissing angrily. Almost losing his footing, William grabbed the bird from behind and managed to haul it into the boat. He held it, still struggling and hissing, while Gilbert the Carpenter tied its legs together to hobble it and prevent it escaping. Wading thigh-deep through the water, Gilbert then lugged the bird towards the shore where he set it down on the bank to be counted and marked along with the others already there. Together in a row, the white, adult birds with their downy brown cygnets in front of them, quietened down, seeming resigned to whatever fate awaited them.

It had been quite an entertainment and Jenna smiled down at Kitty, to share the moment with her. But Kitty was nowhere to be seen.

‘Kitty!’ Jenna called. ‘Kitty! Where are you? Hawys, have you seen Kitty anywhere?’

‘She was here a moment ago,’ said Hawys. ‘She won’t have gone far.’

Jenna felt uneasy. Kitty wasn’t a stupid child, but Jenna didn’t like to think of her going too near the water. It wasn’t that she was unused to water, she was learning to wash her clothes in it from time to time just like everyone else, but it was probably quite cold, despite the July heat and, if it was thigh-deep for Gilbert the Carpenter, then it would be waist-deep for Kitty. Anxiously, Jenna moved further up the river bank where she could get a better view of the whole stretch of water.

And then she saw her, just a little way off to the right, crouching on some stones at the water’s edge. Her wayward hair had escaped its ribbon and was dangling in the river as she bent over something with rapt attention. Jenna called out to her.

‘Kitty! Kitty, be careful. Come away from the water.’

‘Oh, Jenna! Come quickly. Come and help me. I’ve caught one of the babies!’

Kitty had something in her hands and, as she turned to beckon to Jenna, so a fluffy brown ball fell from her grasp to the surface of the water, righted itself and started swimming furiously away from her, towards the middle of the river.

‘No, Kitty! Let it go. Let it go. You’ll never reach it!’

Kitty was engrossed in trying to catch the little creature.

‘Kitty! Kitty! Come back!’

Kitty had waded into the water, her hands cupped in front of her in an attempt to reach the cygnet when she stumbled, lost her footing and fell headlong with a scream, her arms flailing above her head.

Without stopping to think, Jenna scrambled towards the water, looking around wildly for help, but no one seemed to have heard Kitty’s screams.

‘William! William!’ Desperation lent volume to Jenna’s voice and, in calling to him, she instinctively used the name she had for him in her private thoughts. No more ‘Master Jourdemayne’: he was William, the man she needed.

‘William! For God’s sake, William!’

Hearing his name, William turned in the boat and saw the little girl floundering helplessly, trying to find her footing but unable to right herself and nearly out of her depth. He grabbed an oar and shoved it hard against the bank to give more impetus to the skiff then began to row strongly towards the spot where Kitty was in the water, screaming loudly, with Jenna wading out towards her. By now, several people on the riverbank were crowding down towards the water’s edge, craning their necks to see.

‘Don’t panic, Kitty, I’m coming. Kitty, don’t scream!’ The water felt like heavy syrup around Jenna’s legs and she tried to pull her skirt up and away from it. From the other direction, William was rowing towards them as though the eternal repose of his soul depended on it.

The child was still struggling to regain her footing but failing miserably when William brought the skiff around behind her. He shipped the oars, leaned out and caught her around the waist, pulling her strongly towards him. Kitty was crying and coughing up river water as he hauled her into the skiff just as he had hauled in the big white swan a few moments earlier. When Jenna reached the skiff, Kitty was lying on her back in the bottom of the boat with William kneeling over her.

‘Turn her,’ Jenna ordered, ‘let her cough until she has got rid of all the water from her mouth.’

William managed to turn Kitty on to her side where she retched and coughed while Jenna, standing waist-deep in the river, reached out over the side of the skiff, to rub her back, soothing and calming her. ‘Hush, Kittymouse, you’re all right now. You’re safe, my dove. We’ve got you safe. Just relax, there’s a good girl. Hush, hush, Kittymouse. Hush now.’

‘Well,’ said William, leaning back on his haunches, ‘that was nearly very nasty indeed. What on earth was she doing in the river?’

‘Trying to catch a cygnet, I think, to help the Swan Uppers,’ said Jenna, close to tears. ‘Thank God you were here, William. I don’t know what I would have done if...’

She realised she’d called him William without thinking.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, master!’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I didn’t mean ... that is ... I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have been so familiar.’

He shook his head slowly before replying. ‘Oh, Jenna, please. Let’s not pretend. William is my name and I would be very pleased and proud if that is what you would call me.’ He watched her as she continued massaging Kitty’s back in silence, broken only by the child’s distraught sniffling. When she looked up at him, he said, ‘But you know, don’t you? You must know how I feel.’

Jenna looked away again, confused. Her mouth was pulling involuntarily at the corners and she was in the grip of an emotion she couldn’t name. She didn’t know whether she wanted to smile or weep. There were certainly tears in her eyes, but her heart was thudding slowly with something that felt very akin to elation. She hardly trusted herself to speak.

‘Yes. Yes, I do know,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you. Thank you ... William. But I don’t think ...’ she looked down at Kitty, ‘I don’t think we should be talking like this. Not here. Not in front of –’ She broke off as Gilbert the Carpenter waded up to the prow of the boat, to see if he could help.

The sniffling and retching on the floor of the skiff had subsided into a quiet sobbing as, with infinite gentleness, William lifted up the soaking, shivering Kitty and handed her to Gilbert, who took her weight.

‘There, there, girl,’ Gilbert muttered, comforting her, ‘we’ll soon have you home. Soon have you nice and dry.’ He began wading back towards the shore, cradling Kitty in his strong arms. Jenna trailed close behind them through the water while William anxiously watched the little cavalcade.

At a safe distance from the boat, a fluffy brown cygnet regarded the scene with evident interest.

August 1436

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T
he atmosphere in the scriptorium in the north cloister of the Westminster monastery was one of quiet industry, the silence broken only by the droning voice of a monk who stood behind a lectern in one corner, reading aloud from the writings of St Benedict. At each of the ten carrels in the big room monks in dark habits, their tonsured heads bent over their work, were illustrating and copying manuscripts for use in psalters, missals, books of hours and bibles.

The materials they needed for their work were provided by John Virley, who ensured a steady supply of vellum, parchment, quills, coloured inks and gold leaf. When the work was done, he would then collect the pages of manuscript which the monks so painstakingly produced and collate them correctly before taking them away to Walbrook to be bound and covered. It was a service he provided for several of London’s monasteries, nunneries and priories.

Virley was an intelligent, educated man who could well have realised his early ambitions within the church had it not been for two things: he was reluctant to forgo the pleasures of the flesh and commit himself to taking holy orders and then, some six years previously, he had been plunged into disgrace. He had earnestly repented his sins at the time and was granted absolution. Nevertheless he hadn’t returned to the monastic life.

One thing he knew with absolute certainty was that he would not overreach himself ever again nor crave a position above his station in life. And though it pleased him to be at liberty to consort with women, he would never again have anything to do with any women who might, by any stretch of the imagination, be accused of witchcraft: women like Margery Jourdemayne.

It was thanks to the woman he still thought of as the Witch of Eye that he and his colleague, Friar John Ashwell, had spent many months incarcerated in the dungeons beneath Windsor Castle. Ashwell, a gentle friar of the Order of the Holy Cross, was an affable man, inclined to believe the best of everyone. He had introduced John Virley to Margery Jourdemayne, a woman skilled in the use and preparation of herbs. Virley had been charmed to meet her. In truth, he had been quite smitten with her.

Judged by any yardstick, Margery was an attractive woman, fair-haired and small-waisted. But the most attractive thing about her was her enthusiasm, her desire to learn from both the friar and the cleric, two men whose education and scholarship were vastly superior to hers. She was eager to know about the rudiments of mathematics, about reading, writing and improving her vocabulary. Wanting to learn everything she could, with her quick mind and natural intelligence she made an able pupil, absorbing knowledge from her willing teachers as a cloth might soak up spilt milk. Though she resisted John Virley’s physical overtures, she made her admiration for both men quite plain and they were flattered by her attention; they never questioned the wisdom of associating with her.

Margery’s contribution to their mutual pool of knowledge was the skill with plants that she had learned from years of assisting her own mother. She imparted age-old secrets of how each plant might best be used for the healing of ailments. She showed them which medicinal herbs would improve the health of the eyes, the belly, the chest, skin and nails and every other part of the body, as well as which plants fought infectious diseases or eased the pains of childbirth. They in turn taught her what they knew of astrology, showing her how to identify celestial bodies in the night sky. They explained how it was possible to cast horoscopes and predict the future by observing the positions of the stars in their individual orbits, then marrying these observations with what was known about astral influences at the time of a person’s birth.

That was their undoing. Margery, thrilled by her association with men of learning, had been unable to resist boasting to her neighbours in Westminster and to her husband’s family in Acton about her eminent friends. Nobody was ever quite sure how the King’s Council got to know of the association between the three, but the Westminster community was a small one, representing the full spectrum of society from the highest nobility at the palace to the humblest farm labourers on the monastery’s Eye estate, so it could have been anyone. Whoever it was, some blabbermouth reported the unusual fact that a woman of low social standing was consorting with men of learning.

The members of the Royal Council, ever mindful of the dangers posed to the person of the young King by sorcerers, enchanters, necromancers and soothsayers, were very alarmed to learn of Margery Jourdemayne’s connection with Ashwell and Virley. They immediately demanded the arrest of all three, on the assumption that if any respectable clerics willingly associated with a so-called ‘wise woman’ who was the wife of a mere cowherd, then she must be a sorceress who had them in her thrall. Margery was called a ‘python enchantress’ by her accusers and though in pleading her case at her trial she used all the long words she had so recently learned, they impressed no one and did nothing to save her. In the chill of a November morning, the three alleged sorcerers were taken into custody and imprisoned.

John Virley well remembered that long, harsh winter in the dungeons underneath Windsor Castle. He remembered the numbing cold, the dirt and discomfort, the rats, the greasy, inedible food. He vowed then that one day someone would pay for those lost months in his life. He hadn’t been guilty of anything more sinful than consorting with the wrong people. No, the wrong
person
. The friar was an inoffensive soul, but the same could not be said for the Witch of Eye. Virley swore that one day he’d have his revenge on her.

In the following May, the three miscreants were taken to back to Westminster, this time to appear before an ecclesiastical court. Examined again on charges of sorcery, Friar Ashwell and John Virley were first reminded of their duties and responsibilities as men of the church and then discharged. They were required to sign a bond, which prohibited them from indulging in any further activities of this kind. They were both only too pleased to do so.

Margery Jourdemayne was also made to give her word that she would refrain from sorcerous activity. She was further warned that should she ever violate the law again, she would be shown no mercy and would suffer the most severe punishment. It helped her cause, Virley recalled, that her husband was among a group of men who managed to raise the sum of twenty pounds between them, to provide recognisance on her behalf.