Plague Land (33 page)

I crept over cautiously. ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me. Mirabel.’ I looked through the bars and saw she was standing in the overflow from the latrine, but was not tall enough to reach the sill. ‘I’ve brought you some pie, sire.’

‘It’s not safe for you here, Mirabel. The earl’s men are in the village.’

‘They’re sleeping at the inn. They have women with them.’

‘Please. Go back to Somershill. Quickly.’

‘But I baked this pie especially for you, sire. It has a special ingredient.’

I suddenly imagined that she and Brother Peter had baked a knife inside this pie and that now I was expected to murder the guard and make good my escape. Perhaps this was the secret plan to save my life? I hoped not.

‘Did Brother Peter ask you to bake this?’

She seemed confused. ‘No. It was my own idea. It has a special ingredient. Nobody else knows.’

‘What type of special ingredient?’

‘I grated a little of your Mother’s bone of St Peter.’

I suppressed a smile, thinking of the sacred bone that Mother kept in a silver casket next to her bed. At best it was a fragment of a peasant’s skeleton, but it could even have started life as part of a sheep or a cow. I knew the tricks the relic mongers played. Boiling up the carcasses to remove all vestiges of flesh. Dusting the bones with chalk and wood ash. But Mother would not hear of her own precious relic coming from such deceit. She prayed with it nightly – and would not have been at all pleased to hear it had been grated into a pie!

I looked down at Mirabel’s beautiful face and wondered at her gentle compassion, but also her foolishness. ‘Pass the pie up. Then you must leave.’

She held the pastry-covered dish to me, but there was no chance something so large would fit through the bars. So she broke pieces off and squeezed them one by one between the iron poles.

‘I can stay with you for a little while, sire. Are you lonely?’

‘Yes, Mirabel. I am.’

‘Are you frightened?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘I’m sure justice will be served tomorrow.’

‘St Peter will save you. With the dust of his bones.’

She put her hand through the bar, and I held it. It was small but strong – not the limp paw of a gentlewoman. I kissed the rough skin of her fingers, and she agreed to go.

After watching her melt into the shadows, I ate the pie, which tasted every bit as unpleasant as it had promised to be.

Chapter Eighteen

The galloping of hooves is seldom anything but the announcement of trouble. So, on hearing horses the next morning I was quick to jump out of bed and speak to my guard. He was cleaning dried mud from his boots and brushing dust from his over-kirtle. His face was shaven, and his hair was combed for the first time in days.

‘Who’s that arriving?’ I asked.

He didn’t look up at me. ‘The earl and his knights. They are here for your trial.’

‘Or to see me hang. So the earl can take my land.’

The squire looked up at me soberly. ‘The earl can be a just man. Unless you provoke him.’ Then he smiled to himself, and added under his breath, ‘Just make sure you laugh at his jokes.’

I slumped back down onto the bed. Could any man who befriended de Caburn be described as a just man? I doubted so.

It was the day of my trial, but if I had hoped for a bowl of water to wash my face and a blade to shave my chin I was unlucky – for I left my cell feeling as sticky as a ripe damson waiting to be devoured by wasps.

Silent, gawping faces watched my progress through the village towards the place of my trial, which was to be the great hall at Somershill. I expected no less, since it was the usual location for the Hundreds Court, but it felt strange and jarring to be tried under my own tiles. Perversely, it almost made me want to laugh.

As we neared St Giles I noticed old Eleanor at the road-side – the woman who had once been Mother’s lady’s maid. Despite her dropsy, she had struggled out of her cottage to watch me pass.

‘God bless you, sire,’ she said, thrusting a bunch of St John’s Wort into my hands. ‘Wasn’t your fault them dog heads corrupted your soul. It was the milk.’

‘Milk?’

‘Your nursemaid’s, sire. Adeline Starvecrow’s.’ The guards pulled me away. ‘Rub the leaves, sire. The Chase-Devil plant will ward off the demons.’

I tried to pass the small posy of yellow flowers back to Eleanor, but she wouldn’t take it. ‘The Devil stinks of the sewers. This will sweeten your nose.’ I should have dropped this foolish talisman into the mud, but somehow it found its way into my pocket.

The disgrace of being led through my own gate under armed guard was shaming, and I looked to my feet to avoid meeting the eyes of Gilbert or Ada. Fortunately there was no sign of Mother or Mirabel. I then was dumped in the cellar without a candle, and left to contemplate my fate, while the hall was made ready for the trial.

In the velvet of the black, something moved. I was disorientated and called out, but nobody answered. The room smelt mustier than ever and, although my eyes were adjusting to the lack of light, the barrels and sacks seemed instead to be forms waiting to advance upon me.

Something moved again. I felt a breath upon my face. And then suddenly I saw faces in the shadows. At first I thought it was an old woman. Then a girl. Their cadaverous features materialised and then disappeared within moments. A rushed desire came upon me. I would scream out. Demand to be released. For the first time in many weeks I felt the overwhelming need to shit.

The moment passed. I closed my eyes, took long and deep breaths and felt my way across the room to Brother Peter’s secret supply of Madeira. Sure enough a bottle was hidden in a familiar place. Sitting down upon the step near the door, I pulled the cork from the neck and downed the warm and slightly vinegary drink. There were no ghouls or ghosts in this room. The darkness was nothing but a cruel kindling – stirring up my fear of the gallows and the injustice of being accused of crimes I had not committed.

Something brushed against my leg, but this time I was not startled. It was only the kitchen cat, stalking the cellar for mice and rats. I stroked her soft coat as she arched her back and purred, and somewhere on the other side of the heavy wooden door came the booming voice of a man. It could only be the earl.

Earl Stephen, in common with many noblemen, rarely spoke English. Preferring French, his speech was tainted with long vowels and an awkward emphasis on the second syllable of most words. In order to make himself understood in English, a language he despised, he believed it was necessary to shout. Perhaps he thought all ordinary Englishmen deaf or stupid, because each sentence, even the most modest of requests, was delivered with the boom of a battle cry.

‘Where is the priest?’ I heard him say. The reply was impossible to hear, being merely a sequence of low-sounding murmurs. ‘What is his name? Con Wool?’ Once again the reply was too indistinct to hear. ‘
Oui
.
Lui
. Cornwall. Don’t sit him next to me. And where is that
femme
? That woman?’ The muffled voice was flustered and appeared to be listing women, all of whose names were met with a petulant ‘
non
,
non
,
non
!’ The earl raised his voice another notch. ‘She is a
cadavre
. A skeleton.’ Another pause. The earl’s tone relaxed. ‘
Oui
,
oui
. Madame de Lacy. She must not attend the trial.
Elle parle trop
. She talks too much!’

The conversation now faded, though I could still hear Earl Stephen demanding to be served ‘
vin
’ and ‘
viande
’. Moments later Gilbert burst into the cellar and knocked me from the step.

Flustered by his mistake, he picked me up and dusted me down. ‘I’m so sorry, sire. I’ve to fetch wine. Anybody would think this is some sort of feast.’ He then muttered some obscene remarks about the French, which I will not commit to this account.

‘Is the judge here yet?’ I asked, as Gilbert rooted around behind me, rocking each barrel in turn.

Gilbert stood up straight and sighed. ‘Yes, sire. He’s wanting ale.’

‘I’m not guilty.’

‘I know that. I’ve told them you never left Somershill when Lord Versey was murdered. But they don’t believe me.’

‘Where’s Brother Peter?’

‘I haven’t seen him, sire. But you know how he comes and goes. Never sure where he’s going to appear.’

‘And my mother?’

‘She’s been banished to the solar, with all the other women.’ He let a smile escape. ‘The earl doesn’t like all their talking.’

He picked the barrel up awkwardly and shuffled past me. ‘I’d better go. They’re wanting this wine as well. But I’ve prayed for you. The Lord looks kindly upon the innocent.’ I thanked him for his words. I think he meant them.

The door slammed shut behind him and the chamber returned to darkness. Sitting back down again on the step a cold draught hit the back of my throat and the stone chilled my backside. The walls were damp in this underground chamber, and an ill-favoured miasma filled the room with its dank odours and cold bile. I took the St John’s Wort from my pocket and rubbed it in my hands. The soft leaves gave off an oil – the same oil Brother Peter and I used in the infirmary to treat the bed sores of the oldest monks.

I sighed. Where was Brother Peter? What of his promise to save me?

In the late morning two squires led me from the cellar into the great hall to be tried in front of a jury of free men. But seeing their twelve faces was no consolation, for they were not the local men I had expected – instead my jury was to be a collection of the earl’s knights and squires. Behind them a rabble of villagers vied for position, pushing and shoving each other in a desire to watch this mockery from the closest possible point.

Featherby loomed over his fellow spectators like a gallows tree, while behind him stood my tenant Wallwork and his buxom daughter Abigail. She did not look so keen to marry me now. By her mocking smile she seemed to be enjoying my discomfort, after the shame I had caused her at our last meeting. No doubt she saw this as a fitting repayment.

Three men sat at my dinner table. In the middle was the royal judge – a small and shrivelled man who didn’t seem to fit into his own clothing. The scant hair he possessed was red, and his face was flushed with freckles. I had never met this man before, but from his appearance I knew him to be Deaf Ellingham – the judge famed for sending the wrong man to hang after mishearing his name.

Earl Stephen sat to Ellingham’s right in a cape edged in ermine and a parti-coloured doublet of green and blue, as if it might be mid-winter. He was a tall man with the colouring of a Moor. His long arms spread out like the limbs of a grasshopper, resting indolently across the table as only a man of his standing feels able to do. To Ellingham’s left was Cornwall, with his cloak spread wide revealing a glimpse of red satin. His hands lay upon the buckskin coat of a Bible – a manuscript that should not have left St Giles.

I pointed to the Bible. ‘It’s a pity you cannot read the words inside, Father John.’

‘What was that?’ said Ellingham. He cupped a freckled hand to his ear.

I cleared my throat. There was little point in being reserved. ‘I was wondering why Father John has the Bible with him? When he knows so little Latin.’

An amused smile spread across the earl’s face. He leant forward to stare at Cornwall, cocking his head to listen for an answer.

Cornwall reddened. ‘Must I answer such a foolish question?’ He spoke to Ellingham in a sideways whisper, but the judge merely wrinkled his nose to suggest he had not understood.

The earl answered for him. ‘
Bien sûr
.
Père Jean
. Answer. Please.’