We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (41 page)

‘Is this Leicester, sweet mistress?’

It was a cottar’s settlement, with one poor cabin surrounded by a number of byres and barns. Spent, half-frozen, we threw ourselves against the first door. Within there was hay-smelling darkness, redolent of warm animals. I touched a cow’s lean flank. I fell, and lay in straw that smelled of dung and lost summers. O, God! it was sweeter than the fairest bed. One final pain stabbed through my legs, I called ‘Katherine!’ tried to reach out for her, then a whirlwind lifted me and I was gone, conscious at the last of having failed us all.

I woke to soft light, and voices. Lying there, filthy, my hair matted with thistle heads, I saw Edyth, sitting on a milking stool, giving only the shortest answers to a huge man. Although he was seated astride a block of wood, his shadow, cast by a rush lantern, sprang and wavered almost to the roof. A sheep’s fleece, worn over a leather tunic, hung about his shoulders. A wild grey beard spread itself on his chest. He had Katherine comfortably in the crook of his arm, she was sound asleep, one hand curled round a half-empty mug of milk. I lay and watched the man’s face, which was like a badly chiselled stone saint’s, or a pagan god’s, a crag, a cliff; I lay, and was aware that someone had washed my feet and bound them with strips of wool. ‘Edyth?’ I said weakly. The giant peered across.

‘Tha’ be safe,’ he said, as if quietening a child, then continued talking to Edyth, a lengthy tale in a dialect so tortuous that I could catch about one word in ten. He spoke of past villainies wrought against him. Too dark to see now, this was his common land, allotted to him until the farthest tree, and he and his Alison had had the right to pasture four beasts thereon until last month, when he, John, had found that right superseded, one of his cows maimed, and Spinney Field overrun with pigs. It was not as if his neighbour needed the pasture so sore.
He
paid no servile dues, but commuted in hard coin. And he did not lack friends; that was plain when John took the matter to law. John could not ken half of what the Bench said, nor could he read the lumberous legalities concerning it, but he had marked well the sly glances, the veiled smiles from eye to eye. The day after, Alison had driven the cows down as usual, notwithstanding.
He
had been waiting, with others. They flung her to the ground, she was a young woman—a little sport, that was all that was intended, they said. So it was mere accident that his horse had trampled her as she lay. The law had nodded and hummed. And the jury...

He gave us bread and ale and cheese, and packed more for us on the morrow. We ate ravenously. He talked on; Kate slumbered, his beard pillowing her head.

...Every man paid to do perjury. There was no appeal. They told him go home, or be pilloried for a nuisance. He took Alison’s bloody body away, and buried her himself. Yea, we could bide. No harm should come nigh. There was only him, now. Alison had looked a whit like Edyth, only stouter. We slept, among the smells of fecund earth. I have not forgotten. Long John of Derbyshire.

At dawn, he saddled two horses. On a moorland pony he looked comical, his great legs nigh touching the ground, but holy too, with his wild beard blowing beneath that hewn-stone face. He would ride with us to the high road, he said, then he must take the horses back. I wore dead Alison’s shoes, and no payment asked. The thanks would not come; there were not words enough, nor would he have them.

‘Tha’ sholl keep the river at thy left hand till Lincoln,’ he said, painstaking slow and clear. ‘Then comes the Fosse Way. Keep on’t. Tha’ sholl ask anew at Nottingham.’

Riding through a gathering of great oaks, I tried to say, in a way that he would understand: ‘Tha’art good, Master John.’

A smile like the mirthless gash in a torn oak tree split his face. He was looking ahead to the wood’s edge. A man there, his body spiralling slowly from a taut branch, hanging high with dead, violet face, bird-ravaged eye-sockets. The feet dangled heavily, in line with my head. Whoever put him there: must have been a tall man. John reined in. Gazing, he said thunderously:

‘Vengeance is mine, the Lord saith. So blarts Master Priest. He lies. They all lie.’

I looked in the stricken eyes.

‘My vengeance,’ he said. ‘At this spot ’twas
he
’—pointing at the thing that gently spun and jerked in the morning wind—‘took my Alison’s life away.’

We rode on. When the high road came in sight and, a few fields distant, the frosty river glinted, I ventured to warn him. He would not have my counsel.

‘I’ll bide,’ he said. ‘And when they come...’ With difficulty I learned that they would be foolish, if they valued their necks. ‘For naught matters now,’ he said, lifting me from my horse. ‘They took my Alison.’

The river, on our left, saw us in Lincoln just before curfew. And I dared not stop within the town, not even at a religious house. For I mistrusted everybody, and we had no money, and we would not find another John. There was one place only that I would be, and I thought: surely, it’s not much further now. Lincoln town frightened me. We slunk close to the houses, two dirty, unkempt women with a sad little child, being jostled by evening revellers. We were catcalled once or twice, and I thought once a watchman looked suspiciously at Edyth. I hurried us through Lincoln, ashamed. I thought: if my lord could see me now! I swallowed the salt blood from my gums and held my head high. High and haughty in the air, to avoid the stink of my own body.

Then we were on the Fosse Way, and again, it was night.

I do not like to think on this, but it must be told, all of it, because what passed was of my folly, my making. Unable to hide from it, I let my memory reproach me now. We had been on the broad way for some three hours. Last night’s moon, a sliver gnawed from its pale cheek, whitened the road. Though I went stiffly on bloated legs, my feet no longer pained so much; dead Alison’s shoes, too wide and wadded with fleece, protected their wounds, and some of my courage had returned, warmed by John’s food and kindliness. To our distant right, I saw the murky shape of a town and thought: Nottingham already! in careless glee.

‘Leicester?’ Edyth asked, and if her voice was a little more dull and weary, I did not notice. For I was busy turning my joy into dismay. It was midnight; the gates would be fast against us. And now, I was mad to go on. That was my criminal folly.

If we had only found a sheltered sty and lain outside those walls till morning, if we had crept into an aleyard, or rung at some house of charity—or snuggled in the shadow of a wall even—a thousand ifs!

But I was mad. And when a late-returning pedlar with his empty mule hailed us from behind, I was madder still.

‘Leicester?’ he said, pushing back his hood to scratch. ‘Nottingham first, surely. Five leagues or so.’

He looked us over disapprovingly. Another three hours’ walk, I thought, puzzled and disappointed.

‘That there’s Newark!’ he pointed in answer to the dim town. Then he said: ‘Running away?’

Doubtless it was a jest. One which lit a tremor in me.

‘Lord! How yon maid does cough!’ he said. Edyth hung back, writhing and rasping. I turned and took Katherine from her. Impatiently.

‘A babe, too?’ said the pedlar, amazed. His mule blew a wet sigh.

‘See here,’ he said hesitantly. ‘My sister keeps a tavern without Newark town gate. I could knock them up.’

If only I had listened, been wise. But I had been badly frightened.

‘We have no money,’ I said, hating the worn phrase. I felt for the remainder of John’s food, the reassuring flask of milk, tucked inside my bodice.

‘We’ll go on.’

Edyth choked assent. We left the pedlar muttering, were we too haughty to draw ale, wash dishes, in payment? Muttering of my madness.

It took us nearly double the three hours to Nottingham, and while the moon slid up and over the great dome of night, impatience pushed me on, supernormally renewed at first, then dogged, counting a million steps, a million stars. The frost-bitten sky received our fiery breath, puffed out in little heralding clouds. Our feet cracked on brittle ground, the night breeze played with our ragged skirts. A deep hole yawned, in the road, and I fell into it and rose with my cloak dabbled to the knee in icy mud. Katherine cried, a soft pitiful sound that tore me worse than the thorns, or the fatiguing cold or the noise, half-heard, of Edyth’s anguished lungs. We crawled up a long hill and down into a wood where the road became a bog, treacherous with fallen branches. My clothes dragged like a dirty shroud, but through those trees lay Nottingham, and I thought I felt the first essence of dawn, colder than the night. By this time Edyth and I walked as if drunk, weaving a pattern, in the road. My mud-brown hair, like sin, pulled me down.

As cut your hair off by your ear,

Your kirtle by the knee.

Thou, O God, art all my strength, why hast Thou cast me out? Why do I go, mourning, with enemies pressing me so hard?

And this same night, before daylight,

To woodward will I flee...

Kate was so heavy. Warm on my chilled breast, she weighed the whole world. Edyth tugged at me.

‘Sweet mistress, let me bear the jewel.’

So, reluctantly, I gave her up, and we ploughed on, through the foul black mud and the tangling briars. Pale clouds crossed the moon, so that we struck our steps and reeled together, and I was fearful for Katherine, but Edyth, whom fools called witless, held her as if she were the Crown of England. And I thought of Richard, whose face was now scarcely more than a sad heartbeat and strangely not so clear as that of Long John, who by now they had likely taken, and killed. Then Richard came to me again, sharp and clear, the hoofbeats of his horse ringing behind me on the road. We staggered and slipped, and I began to laugh with sobs at the thought of it all and reckoned how Patch would have relished the scene. Two feckless wenches fled from cloister, and a prince’s daughter in their arms!

The hoofs came closer. They were real. Men, riding hard and dangerous, like those who had slain Alison for sport. I heard the rape and murder in their swift jingling ride. Stiff with terror, we crouched behind a bush, its twigs were sparse, and the traitor moon grew bright.

Edyth began to cough, a fiendish noise, her mouth a black cavern. She roared and whooped and choked. Saying, Hush, for the love of God, I clapped a frantic hand over the cough and held her juddering body close while the horsemen galloped by. And they were, in truth, robbers, boasting to each other of their latest feat—a knight dead on the York road and his gold filling their saddle-bags. Kate whimpered, puppy-like. I took my hand from Edyth’s mouth—the palm showed dark and slippery wet, I wiped it on my cloak. She seemed hardly to breathe. Then she said, quite normally:

‘Is this Leicester, sweet... ah, Jesu!’

‘A pain?’ I cried.

Slowly, she stood up.

‘Nay, not a pain. More like... a stone, breaking.’ She touched her breast.

‘We must go on,’ I said.

Now, I bore the double burden. With Kate clinging to my neck and Edyth clipped beneath my left arm, her own about my waist, our progress slowed to well nigh naught. Left foot, then right, but each step a torment of sloth, especially for Edyth. Her great, misshapen foot, the wages of sin, trailed in the slime, her head hung down. Now it seemed that I carried her, then, I hooked my thigh behind hers, pushing her steps forward as if we were two cripples tied together. And all the time I cheered her with talk of Leicester. For the Mother would be there, I told us both.

‘A furred gown for Edyth,’ she said, very faint, and tried to cough and failed.

‘Every day of the week!’ I cried triumphantly, for we lurched round a bend in the road and there was Nottingham Castle, high on its rocky shelf, with turrets shimmering in the weird light of dawn. I looked at it, and the life drained from me. For it gazed back, as if it nodded in grim acknowledgement, and I knew without question that it was a place built by evil spirits. I saw Nottingham, in the greenish dawn, and from it, across the sleeping meadows, came pouring a wave of such dreadful sadness that it struck into my very soul. I stood there weeping as I had never wept, and knew not why. I kissed Katherine; my tears fell upon her icy face. She was very cold; her hands were stiff. Edyth lay in the mud at my feet. I could not raise her up. I could not stir, while Nottingham Castle stood to watch me weep.

A dream of riders surrounded me, bearing bright tabards, burnished arms. Voices assailed me, courtly exclamations. A standard flew over Nottingham, weeping gay colours. They asked my name, and something broke in me...

It was not swooning, in truth, more like a cloud of unknowing that covered me, and I heard my own sad voice crying: ‘Leicester! Leicester!’ and calling on my own dear Mother in the House of Peace...

Yet when one of the knights said, in all regret: ‘This child is dead!’ I gave up, and fell against his arm, and knew no more till I woke, raving, in my own childhood cell, indeed at Leicester, and they told me. They gave me sorrow and joy in a breath. For it was Edyth who had died, and not my Katherine.

And then I knew that everything I touched must die.