Plague Land (30 page)

‘But she won’t allow you to treat her, Brother.’

‘Then she risks a stronger fever. Perhaps worse.’

‘Why don’t we fully sedate her?’

He sighed. ‘No. She resists too vigorously. And I will not tend to her wounds without her agreement. It would be a further affront to her dignity.’

‘Then what are we to do?’

Peter looked about the room as if the tapestries or the bed curtains might answer his question. A flock of small birds landed at the window, pecking at the cobwebs on the external glass for flies and spiders.

Peter took a metal flask from the recesses of his tunic. ‘Would you care for some?’ I declined the offer since the wine had been warmed against the bare skin of Peter’s belly and the thought of it was unpleasant.

He took his customary swig and then wiped the red dregs from around his mouth. ‘Clemence must go to the convent of St Margaret. Sister Constance treats women who have suffered at a man’s hands. She has special remedies. Clemence will allow another woman to help her.’

‘Sister Constance is still alive?’

‘I believe so.’

‘But Clemence can’t just arrive, unannounced.’

‘I’ll take her and make all the necessary introductions. I can ensure Clemence receives the correct care. ‘

‘Is Clemence ready to travel?’

‘We’ll take her in the cart. I can give her a draught to numb the pain. If she knows the reason for taking the potion, then she might be more agreeable.’

‘Why are you being so accommodating?’ I whispered. ‘You despise Clemence.’

He touched my shoulder for a moment. ‘She has goodness in her heart . . . somewhere, Oswald.’ He took a last gulp of the wine and placed it back into its hiding hole. ‘I’ll get the cart ready.’

‘You must be careful not to travel near de Caburn’s land. St Margaret’s is close to Versey.’

‘I know the back paths. Don’t be concerned. Nobody will stop an old priest with a covered body in a cart. Especially if I suggest my load is suffering from the Pestilence.’

So, it was agreed. Clemence was changed into a clean gown and cloak, and laid on the back of a hay cart like a sack of barley. But she still would not take Brother Peter’s sleeping draught, claiming that she would rather be knocked about on a rutted road, than tricked into a delirium.

And she would not travel without Humbert. Equally the boy would not be left at Somershill without her. So I gave him my brother Richard’s sword to earn his keep on this journey and told him to guard Clemence with his life. Humbert might not have been violent, but he had the capacity to look so. The boy handled the weapon with some trepidation – who knows what torments he had received at the hands of this very same sword? But when I proposed that Clemence needed protecting from de Caburn, he gripped it as firmly as a crusader charging at an army of infidels. He was Clemence’s champion and would defend my sister’s favour to the end.

Peter would not let me help him load the cart, though he struggled to lift a very heavy casket onto the back.

‘More brandy?’ I asked him.

He smiled. ‘The abbess is as miserly as the bishop.’

‘How long are you planning to be away? You must have a supply in there to last weeks.’

‘I will return as soon as possible.’

‘You promise.’

He looked at me and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Oswald.’ Then he whispered into my ear. ‘Come with me, quickly. There’s something I must show you. Before I leave.’

He led me to Father’s library and shut the heavy door behind us. Shards of light from the window picked out a thousand dancing specks of dust in the air. Peter led me to the back wall. ‘If you come under attack while I’m away, there is somewhere you can hide.’

‘In here?’

He nodded and lifted back the tapestry of the three-headed sea-serpent to reveal the alcove where he kept his brandy and solitary pewter cup.

‘I can’t hide in there,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so foolish, Oswald.’ He then pushed at a small carved angel in the back of the alcove and slowly a panel in the wall moved – rotating outwards in the manner of a door hinge. Its movement was entirely silent, and the heaviness of the wood did not make a single scratch upon the floor. I looked with wonder inside the cavity to see only darkness.

‘It’s an escape tunnel,’ said Peter.

‘Who built it?’

‘Your grandfather. When he redesigned the house.’

‘And how do you know about it?’

‘Your father revealed it to me. Years ago. When I was copying manuscripts for the abbey. He used this tunnel to store his most precious books.’ Peter coughed. ‘Any text that might seem seditious or profane.’ A damp and cold smell crept out from the opening.

‘Where are the books now?’

‘On the shelves in the library. This is no place to keep books, Oswald. They will only warp and rot. I removed them as soon as we returned to Somershill.’

Peter lit a candle and beckoned for me to follow him. ‘Come inside and I will show you how to escape at the other end. You cannot stay too long in here as the air is fetid.’

The thin light of the candle illuminated a set of stone steps and a narrow corridor that sloped gently downwards into the distance. The walls were the work of master masons. Each stone perfectly carved into place in the lancet arch of the tunnel.

‘Are there any other tunnels about the house?’ I asked, as we made our way into the darkness.

‘Just this one, to my knowledge,’ said Peter. ‘At least your father did not tell me of any others.’

‘I wish he had told me about this place.’

‘He didn’t have the opportunity, Oswald.’

‘Does Mother know of this?’

Peter laughed. ‘Of course not. Your father wanted this tunnel to remain a secret!’

‘And nobody else knows? Not Gilbert, nor any of the other servants?’

He shook his head. ‘Not a soul.’

As we climbed the steps at the other end of the tunnel, we were met by another wall. Peter counted down seven stones and then pushed. This door was much heavier and smaller than the one in the library, and was made of stone. Once again it pivoted outwards, and as we peeped through the tiny aperture, I saw that we were now on the outer face of the high crenellated wall that ran from the north-east tower to the north-west. No wonder this part of the wall had been left standing, when the other three sides had been demolished. In front of us stood the stinking remains of the moat.

Peter pulled me back. ‘Let’s hurry back now, Oswald. There’s no time to waste.’ He showed me how to open and close both the doors from the inside of the tunnel and then we made our way back to the cart, where Clemence and Mother awaited us.

But Mother refused to see the party off – proclaiming she had never seen a de Lacy leave Somershill in a more degraded state, and was ashamed our servants should witness such a thing. It was lucky then that we had no more house servants than Gilbert, Ada and Piers the stable lad.

Before she left I held Clemence’s hand and kissed her scratched cheek. ‘I’m sorry this happened, Sister.’

‘I know, Oswald.’ Her voice was weak, but the next moment she squeezed my hand with surprising vigour. ‘But he will pay.’

Under Brother Peter’s instructions, we shut up the house as if preparing for a siege. He also persuaded me to write another of his letters – this one to the earl. I was to express my dismay at de Caburn’s behaviour towards Clemence and then to plead for men to aid my defence. I was to say nothing about the Starvecrow murders.

I was unconvinced, but Peter felt we must try to invoke old family alliances. The earl was known to be both mercurial and chivalrous. If I pleaded my case poetically, he might be moved to take my side. And if that didn’t work, my agreement to commuting the military service to a money payment might also swing the argument in my favour. So, against my better judgement I sat down and composed the most emotional and florid of appeals, then despatched Piers to the earl’s castle near Rochester.

Those of us left at Somershill took turns to watch from the north-west tower. For three days we feared the approach of de Caburn, but he didn’t come. Instead I looked out morosely upon my fields of wheat and barley, which ripened in the unexpected sun, with nobody to harvest their crop.

At my second watch I saw Gilbert moving the dairy cattle and their calves about in the fields with a long stick. The sunlight gave him a vaporous quality, as if he were an illusion. I wished he would keep the herd nearer the house, but he refused, saying they needed the sweeter meadows of the pastures nearer to the forest and hence nearer to de Caburn’s land. The next day he was gone for so long, we wondered if he had been captured by my enemy. But Gilbert returned at dusk, driving the cattle grumpily into the dairy barn and calling for Ada to help him milk the beasts.

Mirabel joined me on the third evening to watch an orange sun setting in a pale sky. Small bats flitted amongst us, and the squeal of a dog otter drifted up from the river. I looked at my companion. The warm light cast shadows across her beautiful face and lit up the velvet down of her skin.

‘Do you think we will starve this winter, sire?’ she asked.

‘Of course not,’ I lied. ‘The villagers will return soon. The harvest will be a good one.’

I wanted to take her hand and hold her. But she had been distant since that afternoon in the forest, reluctant to say much at all. Mother had plans to train her as a lady’s maid, but I was adamant Mirabel would receive care and attention rather than Mother’s instruction. For even then I had formed ideas regarding Mirabel. Plans that would take both courage and luck.

On the dawn of the fourth day, Gilbert was driving the cattle out through the main gate when I called for him to bring them back. I had been watching the woodland, our most vulnerable point. My eyesight is keen, but I will admit that my imagination can sometimes be keener. Seeing something move in between the distant trees I first dismissed it as the wind, since the early morning was gusty and cold. But this was not air moving about between the oaks and ash. It was people.

I shouted again to Gilbert.‘Quickly, drive the cattle back!’

The man suffered from wilful deafness and held his hand to his ear. ‘What’s that, sire?’

‘We’re under attack, Gilbert. Bring the cattle back!’ He seemed to hear me this time and began to round them up with a shrug, as if being under attack were a tedious nuisance. By the time I had run out of the tower to join him, the cattle had dispersed in all directions.

Gilbert looked into the distance. ‘I can’t see nothing, sire.’

‘Over there!’ We turned to look at the woodland, where some people were now emerging. They were moving slowly and to my mind stealthily. ‘It must be de Caburn and his men,’ I said.

Gilbert snorted. ‘I don’t think so, sire. They don’t look so dangerous to me.’ We looked again, and now they were closer we saw a trickle of people with their backs bent and faces to the ground. They were a string of peasants in dirty brown and grey tunics, followed by a gaggle of children.

I recognised them immediately.

‘They’ve come back,’ Gilbert shouted. ‘That’s the villagers, sire.’ And indeed it was.

We ran across the field to meet them as if they were long-lost family. I even forgot to look angry – though once we caught up with their guilty faces it was clear they were expecting some level of censure from me, so I quickly dropped my look of joy and exchanged it for a frown.

‘I understand you’ve been at Versey Castle,’ I said. They looked from one to the other and then to the ground.

William the ploughman spoke first. ‘We were on a pilgrimage, sire.’

‘We wanted to be saved from them dog heads,’ said Hilda, the ruddy-faced woman who sometimes worked as our dairymaid. ‘Father John said we had to pray at the shrine of the Virgin.’

‘That doesn’t take a week.’

Again silence. It was the ploughman who braved an answer, though he muttered his words, half hoping I wouldn’t hear him properly. ‘Lord Versey asked us to take in his harvest.’

‘There’s a harvest at Somershill,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see it? Rotting in the fields.’

‘But he offered better wages, sire,’ said a boy. ‘Uncle got a farthing more per day.’ The boy was quickly kicked by a man I presumed to be his uncle and told to be quiet.