Plague Land (12 page)

I passed a few pleasantries with Henry, informing him that Piers the stableboy would be sent to Rochester to notify the sheriff of the crimes. I was unable to try murder in the manorial court, so would have to wait for a royal judge and the Hundreds court to come to Somershill. It was impossible to predict how long this would take. Justice was known to be a slow-moving cart, but since the Plague its wheels seemed firmly stuck in the mud.

It soon became clear that Henry was not hoping for a quick trial, since he would receive a small stipend for his duties guarding Joan. And Henry was a man in need of a stipend, since his business at the forge had reduced sizeably in the wake of the Plague. It seemed few cared to shoe their horses or mend their tools when a dead neighbour’s goods could be had for nothing.

I found Joan Bath sitting in the corner of the one and only cell. Henry had supplied her with a small chunk of bread and a mug of milk, though I had not requested him to do this. She did not stand up to greet me.

‘I need to find Matilda’s body,’ I told her. ‘The girl deserves to be buried.’

She shrugged at me insolently and carried on chewing her bread. ‘I don’t know where the girl is.’

‘There’s no point lying to me, Mistress Bath. Matilda must be dead. There was too much blood.’

‘If that’s your conclusion. Then she must be dead.’

‘So where’s her body?’

‘I don’t know!’ she said again. I stepped back quickly, as she looked in the mood to assault me once more.

Henry opened the door a little. ‘Are you all right, sire?’

‘Perfectly. Thank you.’ He closed the door again, though stood just the other side of the grille.

Joan then looked up at me in the way my brothers might have, both confident and defiant – the very opposite of the usually demure village woman. Perhaps this explained her appeal amongst the local men.

‘I’ve just been to visit your father,’ I told her. ‘But I couldn’t speak to him as he’s gravely ill.’

‘Will he die?’ Her tongue savoured the word, so I chose not to give her the pleasure of knowing his proximity to death.

‘Just tell me where Matilda’s body is, and I promise your sons will keep your cottage.’

‘My sons can look after themselves.’

‘Can they?’

For a moment she looked unsure of herself. I thought she might open up to me, but her face soon took flight to its well-defended keep and she would say nothing more.

I was wasting my time.

Leaving the gaol house I felt grubby and contaminated, as if I were a linen rag beginning to soak up the filth of this affair. I had also developed a raging thirst, but did not care to call in at the tavern and drink alongside the village men. What would I talk to them about? Instead I headed through the woody glade above the village to the Holy Well, where the waters rose from the rocks beneath the shrine to St Blaise. The water was clean enough, if you could stand the leaden taste.

It was still light, but there was nobody else on the path – my only company the strange whirr of the goatsucker bird as it called across the forest at twilight. The last rays of sun slanted obliquely through the canopy and illuminated the arching leaves of the ground ferns. Thin strands of light glinted from the piles of pine needles in the growing nests of wood ants. It seemed a peaceful and benevolent place, but then I had the unexpected sensation of being watched.

They say the god Pan lurks in forests and spies upon you from secret places. Stand still and you can feel his eyes upon the back of your head. His breath upon your skin. But turn to catch his face and he is gone – leaving only the echo of his laughter and distant patter of his hooves. I pulled my cloak about me and carried on. I was too old to believe in such stories.

As I reached the well, the wooden effigy of St Blaise loomed above me – his beady black eyes staring at something on the horizon. He might be saint to the traders of wool, but would he look kindly upon my efforts at sheep shearing? I doubted it. But then he had done nothing to save my shepherds from the Plague. Perhaps I believed more in the powers of Pan?

Turning my back to the effigy, I climbed down the steps to an underground chamber where the water bubbled up from a spring in the rock face and fell in a lethargic flow into a deep stone trough. When this trough became full, the water then slid over a shallow lip and into a land drain. Where it went then was anybody’s guess.

The water had an odd salty flavour and was the colour of rusting iron. Amongst the wonders ascribed to its holiness were the promise of relief from colic and melancholia. More widely known was its power to have a bride with child within a month of the wedding night. All these cures and small miracles were claimed for its waters, but in my experience its foremost effect was to send a person straight to the nearest latrine.

I drank from my hands and splashed my face in the stone basin, waking myself from the stupor of the day. As the water settled again, a face seemed to appear, just below the surface. Cold blue eyes watched my own. Pale skin glowed from the blackness.

It was Matilda.

I jumped back in terror, nearly winding myself against the rock of the wall behind me. Here was her missing corpse. Submerged in a well.

Taking a deep breath, I crept forward again, but this time saw nothing in the water at all. Now I panicked and plunged my arms into the basin, feeling about desperately in its depths. But my hands found only smooth stones and a forgotten ampulla, left here by a pilgrim.

I waited for the water to settle once again and stared into its darkness. And as the surface calmed to a glassy standstill, somebody stared back at me.

It was a person with Matilda’s blonde hair and Matilda’s thin face. But it was not Matilda. It was my own reflection.

And then I knew for sure. The Starvecrows were my sisters.

I ran back to the village and didn’t stop until reaching the churchyard, coming to a standstill by Alison’s recently dug grave. Looking down at the wooden crucifix that marked the end of her short life, I wished I could pray for them both. For Alison and Matilda. But I couldn’t. My faith was too pale and feeble.

Instead I spoke to Alison. Kneeling down and putting my face to the ground, I whispered into the wet and cold soil. I told her Joan had been arrested for the crimes, and that the woman would probably hang. Of course Alison didn’t answer, although I was fanciful enough to put my ear to the grave and listen for a response.

When I promised to find Matilda’s body, the ground sighed.

Chapter Seven

I would keep my promise to Alison and Matilda, but my duties on the estate were beginning to poke at my skin like the bristles on a sack vest, and I could ignore them no longer.

June is the month to shear sheep, or so my reeve, Featherby, had informed me – a man with a looming gait and hair so tightly curled it looked as if his head were covered in worm casts. I had nodded knowingly, but in truth had little idea what he was talking about since my eldest brother William had been destined to become Lord Somershill, not I. My life had been spent in a monastery since the age of seven, where the lay brothers had taken care of the abbey farm, leaving the novices to spend their time in mass, class, or silent contemplation. My only practical skills were setting arms, draining wounds and shaving the other novices’ heads.

But that was an old, forgotten life, to which I could never return. I knew that. And as I looked myself over in the mirror that morning I made myself stand a little taller than before. I even looked back down my nose at my own reflection. Why shouldn’t I be Lord Somershill? I might be young and inexperienced, but I had as much energy as my older brothers, and certainly more education.

There was no reason to be afraid.

I was eating my daybreak bread and cheese with Mother in the great hall later that same morning when Clemence joined us. I should have been pleased to see my sister, since Mother was talking without stopping for breath. But Clemence’s brow was already twisted into her early-morning grimace – a temporary flaw that, with age, was hardening into a permanent warp.

Clemence took her bread and cheese, looked me over, and suddenly cheered up. I was wearing a leather tunic that had belonged to Father and which smelt of mildew and horses. I had purposefully chosen to wear it that morning, since it looked agricultural – having organised to oversee the sheep shearing – but the unpleasant aroma was not the tunic’s only deficiency. It drowned my slim frame, and although I had tried to roll up the cuffs, the leather was hard and resisted being turned over, so that only the ends of my fingers poked out of the sleeves.

Clemence squeezed up to me on the bench and smiled. ‘I hope you’re not stampeded by the rams today, little brother. We wouldn’t want to lose our new lord.’ She then lifted the baggy sleeve of my tunic and pulled a face of mock dismay when she found it so loose. ‘Heavens. Is there an arm in there?’

I went to push her away, but she dodged my hand just in time.

‘No fighting please,’ said Mother, her mouth full of rye bread. ‘It makes me choleric.’ We ignored her. If she wasn’t choleric, she was phlegmatic – her humours rarely in balance.

‘It’s the ewes being sheared today,’ I told Clemence. ‘Not the rams.’

Now she laughed at me. ‘I’m surprised a little monastery boy like you would know the difference. All that time spent with the rams of the abbey.’ Her face had crinkled into an ugly smile, as she helped herself to some bread from my plate.

‘I find a ewe as easy to identify as any man does,’ I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing it to make her let go of the bread. ‘It’s the mutton I find more difficult to notice.’ She tried to wriggle her hand away, but I pressed more tightly. ‘But no doubt, Clemence, you’ve discovered most men suffer from that problem.’

My sister freed her hand and went to strike my face, only deciding against it at the last moment. Instead she stood up, bowed her head to Mother, and left the room in tears.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t goad her,’ said Mother, as Clemence climbed the stairs back to the solar and slammed a distant door. ‘Her womb is suffocated with her own seed as it is.’

‘Find her a husband then. At least we’d be free of her.’

My mother huffed and dipped her bread into her pot of warm beef lard, letting the honeycombed dough soak up as much of the rancid swill as possible. ‘I would love to make a match for her, Oswald. But what am I to do? She’s twenty-six, and practically winter feed.’

My mother still had the mouth of a cowherd, causing me to feel a sudden wave of sympathy for Clemence, and now regret my taunt. My sister’s last two betrothals had ended with the suitor dead before the wedding – meaning Clemence hadn’t even achieved the status of a respectable widow. And she had only narrowly avoided the convent of St Margaret by Father’s reluctance to pay a dowry to Sister Constance. Through a combination of bad luck and avarice, Clemence was stuck at Somershill, like an apple going bad on the tree.

Thankfully my conversation with Mother was ended by Gilbert, who lumbered wearily to the table to announce my reeve was at the back porch. I stood up, attempted to smooth down the bulging tunic, and went out to greet Featherby, finding him fidgeting with a horsewhip and uncharacteristically shrinking against the wall rather than seeming about to pounce upon me. A light rain blew into our faces.

‘Are we all ready for the shearing then?’ I asked, clasping my hands together as if excited by the prospect of the day ahead. ‘Are the men assembled?’

Featherby shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other and wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘I only have the two men, sire. John Penrice and young Wilfred.’

‘Where are the others?’ He didn’t answer. ‘I presume you told them to be here at daybreak?’

There was a long silence. ‘They’re at church, sire.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s these dog heads. The men are uneasy.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘But I’ve arrested Joan Bath for the murders.’

‘It’s the word of Father John, sire. He still says the dog heads did it.’

‘Well they didn’t. Tell the men they have obligations to me on the demesne.’

‘They won’t listen to me, sire. I even threatened to whip them, and that didn’t do any good either.’

‘You mustn’t do that!’ I said, and then quickly added, ‘We need them to be fit to work.’

Now he began to loom, so I stepped back. The rain was drawing the scent of horse hair and matted dung from his clothing.