Plague Land (15 page)

And then, as if another reminder of de Caburn’s menace were needed, I sighted some sheep in the distance, which were not the small, wiry-coated Cotswolds that de Caburn kept for his own use. They were the larger Lincolns we farmed at Somershill for their wool. Turning Tempest, I was intending to inspect the sheep at closer quarters, but the stupid animals scattered into the nearby forest leaving only their piles of dung and the reverberation of their idiotic bleating for company.

I should have followed them into the trees and escaped this place while there was a chance. Yet my bubble of pride had swollen again, and suddenly the idea of returning to Somershill and admitting my mistake to Brother Peter did not appeal. Instead I turned back towards the castle and approached the drawbridge, where a ragged boy jumped out at me and waved a small wooden sword, causing Tempest to rear.

‘Keep away from my horse,’ I shouted. ‘He’ll throw me off.’

‘You should be better at riding then,’ said the boy.

I was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a way. ‘Who are you?’ I demanded to know.

‘I’m Mary. Who are you?’

‘You’re a girl?’

‘Yes. What of it?’ Her face was filthy with mud, and the arms of her doublet swung down well past her wrists. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’ she asked.

‘Where’s the gatekeeper?’

She smiled. ‘Dead. I tell Father who comes and goes.’ She waved the sword again and then performed a perfect advance lunge at Tempest’s legs.

‘You’re Mary de Caburn?’

‘Stop asking me questions.’

So this was how the man treated his own daughter. Dressed in the tattered clothes of a boy, she was working as his house servant. But she was not alone in suffering neglect, as the whole place wore the air of defeat. A tree had fallen into the moat and was gathering debris about itself, with the effect of becoming a dam. A wooden farm cart was decaying by the bridge, and crows circled over the bony carcass of a dog.

‘I’m Oswald de Lacy,’ I told the girl. ‘Lord Somershill. Please advise your father I’m here to speak with him.’

The girl ran off across the drawbridge to announce my arrival, quickly joined by another blonde-haired child who must have been hiding in the beams under the bridge like a water rat. I wondered if this child were also a daughter of the house? She was certainly dressed as badly as the first.

As I waited to be admitted to the castle, the sun made a brief appearance through the clouds, and my mood felt fleetingly lighter. I looked about me. This place was uncared for, but it was not the damp purgatory of Mother’s stories. Perhaps Clemence could be happy here, and I was wrong to prevent the marriage? She would become a lady, with her own castle, husband, and a pair of feral step-daughters to rule over. It might suit Clemence’s character and disposition. In turn, the girls might end up with dresses and manners.

As I stared into the distance, a sudden ball of shimmering blue shot along the river just above the water surface and disappeared into the trees like an enchanted orb. I must have been transfixed by its beauty since I did not notice a man approach.

‘It’s a kingfisher, de Lacy,’ he said. ‘Don’t you have them at Somershill?’ He slapped me resoundingly on the back and nearly winded me.

I turned to find the girl with her father, Walter de Caburn – his striking face framed by grey curls. ‘I believe we have a few, my lord,’ I said, and then immediately regretted using the epithet.

My mistake was not lost on de Caburn. He smiled furtively. ‘Please. Call me Walter. Now we are going to be related by marriage.’ He slapped me again, but this time I had braced my ribcage and was prepared for the blow.

‘It’s the marriage I needed to speak with you about,’ I said. But just as I was about to launch into my prepared speech, the ragged girl poked me with the tip of her sword, which turned out to be a blade of rusty metal and not the wooden toy I had previously supposed. As I dodged the second stab, de Caburn took his daughter by the back of her tunic and held her over the edge of the bridge. The girl quaked with terror but didn’t utter a word.

‘That’s not how to treat an honoured visitor, is it, Mary?’ he said, as she dangled in the air. The girl shook her head. ‘Want to end up in the moat with the shit witch, do you?’ He lowered her a little further.

The girl suppressed a sob. ‘Please forgive my error, Father. I am at fault.’ She spoke the words with the fluency of a mumbled prayer, giving the impression that this was a sentence she was often made to repeat. But by now she had controlled her trembling. Only her left eye twitched.

‘We know what it stinks like down there, don’t we?’ De Caburn shook his daughter again.

It was uncomfortable to watch the girl being so tormented. ‘Please don’t punish Mary on my behalf,’ I said. ‘The girl was only playing. I’m not offended.’

I laid my hand on de Caburn’s arm and for a moment it seemed he might push me roughly away. But then he thought better of the action. Instead he dropped Mary onto the wooden planks of the bridge.

Now he laughed. ‘We were just having a little merriment, weren’t we, girl?’

Mary picked herself up, glanced at me with a look I took to be gratitude, then made a break across the meadow with her sister, evidently to avoid any further opportunities for
merriment
. Their blonde heads bobbed for a few seconds through the grass before they disappeared from sight amongst the elder and chestnut.

De Caburn watched them for a while and then sighed. ‘They need a mother, de Lacy. A woman to instil some discipline. Can she do it?’

I went to nod – for Clemence was nothing if not a disciplinarian. But my purpose in coming here was to prevent this marriage, so I quickly turned my nod into a circling of my neck.

De Caburn regarded me curiously, then led me across the drawbridge and through the inner ward of the castle to his great hall, which was cavernous compared to our own. A dirty servant lay asleep next to the central fire pit, and dogs barked and scratched from behind a heavy wooden door. From the timbre of their howls I decided they must be large deerhounds, the type of dog a man only keeps for hunting. The place smelt strongly of wood smoke and dog hair, but at least the height and width of the hall allowed for frequent draughts to alleviate the stale odour. The heads of stags and boar pigs peered down at me from every wall, like the faces of gloaters at a hanging.

De Caburn nudged the servant with his foot, though I suspected he usually roused him with a kick, as the man instinctively recoiled into a ball. ‘He’s a simpleton, I’m afraid,’ said de Caburn in a whisper, in a mockery of caring for the man’s feelings. ‘Most of my servants have perished.’

We stepped up onto the dais at the far end of the hall and sat down at a table stretching the length of the platform. It could probably seat twenty – yet today it was only laid for one.

‘I remember when this table was full,’ said de Caburn, as if he had read my thoughts. ‘But now we’re such a depleted family.’ He stared along the surface with such a look of melancholy that I suddenly felt equally cheerless. When he offered me a goblet of ale I forgot the warnings of Brother Peter about being poisoned and drank it down in one gulp before asking for more. My throat did not swell. My eyes did not give way to visions and my stomach did not twist itself into cramps. In short, it was simply ale.

Looking back now, it began as a pleasant afternoon. For the next hour or so de Caburn and I sat together at one end of the long table and discussed our neighbouring estates. The ale made it easier to converse with a man twenty years older than myself, and de Caburn was welcome company after the months I had spent cooped up with my mother and sister. He was not only well-informed about farming, but also knew much about the wider world – since he often travelled to London and dined with other knights and barons.

Or so he claimed.

And, of course, he had fought alongside Prince Edward at Cressy, which gave him every right to be welcomed at a nobleman’s table, no matter how grand their birth. But then, such accidents of birth meant nothing to him. Or so he once again claimed. You must judge a man on his own qualities, he told me – but then proceeded to spew out a torrent of abuse against those not as grandly born as himself.

Because, worse than the pompous earls who declined to invite him to supper, were the merchants and traders of London. Though de Caburn farmed few sheep himself, he had taken against this rank of society due to their success at controlling the price of wool. He hated the way they huddled together in towns like pigeons, extending the upper storeys of their houses almost to touch the bedchamber of their neighbour’s opposite. And he despised their wives – women who would openly flout the sumptuary laws of dress, wearing the furs and jewellery of a lady, when they were often no better than dairymaids. They had not been born into nobility, so they had no business pretending to be.

Yet he reserved his blackest bile for the newly empowered poor. The tenants, labourers, bondsmen and villeins. The people who rented our lands and worked our fields. His family had spent many years ruling over the Versey estate, and yet now there were pig-herds, shepherds and reeves, holding him to ransom over their wages.

The more ale we drank, the more attractive seemed his view of the world and its uncomplicated logic. He was a handsome man, despite his leathered and pitted skin, and it was easy to be charmed by him. If we allowed our peasants too much power, then their inexperience and lack of education would lead to chaos and starvation. They didn’t possess the innate skills of the nobility to farm the land and feed the populace. I raised my pewter cup to this incontrovertible truth, though fully conscious, even in my drunken state, that our stableboy Piers would have better known how to plant a field of barley than I.

The gauze of alcohol masks the ugly, and for those hours I was the compatriot of de Caburn. We were brothers in arms. Knights and warriors, fighting a battle against the feeble minds of the peasantry. Even the carved faces in the arches of the hall looked down upon us and grinned.

And then we came to speak about my sister. I took a long swig of ale for courage and turned the conversation to Clemence. ‘I have some concerns, Walter, regarding this marriage you’re proposing.’

His face altered. ‘What manner of concerns, Oswald?’ It was the first time he had used my Christian name and it felt as out of place as dancing by a deathbed. ‘Clemence will be well-cared for at Versey. If that’s what worries you.’

‘I’m sure she will be, Walter. But—’ I tried to remember the words I had prepared on the ride here, but the ale had shuffled my memory and suddenly I felt unable to retrieve the right cards.

Muttering something, I turned to see de Caburn eying me suspiciously. ‘You won’t receive any better offer for your sister,’ he told me. ‘She is a little more saggy in the lower lip than most brides.’

I didn’t care for this comparison of my sister to an aging horse, and my warm feelings towards de Caburn began to cool. ‘I’m not sure I can give my permission for this match,’ I said, perfectly clearly this time.

De Caburn slapped me roundly across the back. ‘Of course you can. Your sister needs a new stable and a good ride.’ He laughed as crudely as a scholar who has just drawn a phallus in the margin of a manuscript, and suddenly I noted that hairs grew from his nostrils. Now he didn’t appear so handsome or charming.

‘I’m not sure the union is in Clemence’s interests,’ I told him. ‘There’s the matter of my father’s codicil.’

De Caburn sat up straight. ‘What did you say, boy? You should speak more clearly.’

So – I was a boy to him, despite our pleasant afternoon of farm talk. ‘There is a codicil in father’s will concerning Clemence’s marital state,’ I said. ‘It may not be in either of your interests to form this union.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What codicil?’

‘Clemence will be cut out from inheriting the Somershill estate as a married woman.’ I looked for a reaction from de Caburn, but none was forthcoming. Not even the twitch of an eye. ‘If Clemence were married and then I were to die, the estate would pass to a distant cousin of my father’s.’

‘And if she wasn’t married?’

‘She would inherit the estate of course.’

De Caburn tipped his head to one side and leant forward. I noticed his hand unfurl on the table like the claws of a cat. ‘And are you intending to die, de Lacy?’

‘No. I’m not.’ I coughed. ‘Though we never know what the future has planned for us.’

I hoped he might nod in agreement. Instead, a cynical smile twisted itself across his lips. ‘It’s admirable you have such concern for Clemence’s inheritance, but I imagine you’re intending to marry and have offspring of your own?’