Plague Land (37 page)

The urge to kick him came over me. ‘Answer me. What drove you to such cruelty?’ The catechism became louder and more urgent.

I pushed my foot against his face. ‘Answer me!’

Peter trembled. ‘The ox was Cornwall’s idea. I couldn’t stop him. The crowd were baying for blood.’

‘But it was a boy.’

He opened an eye that was red with tears. ‘I couldn’t let them hang you, Oswald. You must understand that.’ He held out his right hand to me, but I moved away from him. ‘Help me stand up, Oswald. Please. I’m an old man.’

‘No.’

‘Please. You must forgive me.’

‘I never will.’

At my refusal, he hoisted himself onto a bench awkwardly and wiped his brow with a sleeve. I noticed how old and muddy his habit had become, the folds of black woollen cloth too bulky for his ever-thinning body. ‘I had to do it, Oswald,’ he mumbled. ‘I had to save you from hanging.’

‘I didn’t need your help, Brother. The judge and the earl were ready to believe in my innocence. You should have given me the chance to defend myself.’

‘Against a man like Cornwall?’ He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t have worked.’

‘But I had him cornered, Brother.’

‘No, no. Cornwall would have tightened the noose about your neck with his clever arguments, and squeezed it further with every one of his lies. And now it would be
you
lying dead in a field and not that poor forsaken creature.’

‘He was not a creature. Leofwin was a boy and you murdered him.’

‘Don’t you think I know that, Oswald?’ He breathed out slowly and crossed himself. ‘And may God forgive me.’

And then I noticed something about his hand. A red fluid oozed from between his fingers. ‘You’re bleeding.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘What’s in your hand, Brother?’ He didn’t move. ‘Show me!’

I grabbed his wrist and forced his palm open, revealing the silver blade of a whittle tang knife. Blood now flowed from a slice in the skin of his hand – but it was nothing more than a surface wound. I recognised the knife immediately, even though Peter had removed its handle of horn. I had used it to clear the abscess on Leofwin’s leg. ‘What are you trying to do, Brother?’

He held the blade out to me. ‘Take it away, Oswald. Please. I thought I had the courage, but I don’t.’

‘You would have killed yourself? With this?’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re peddling for my sympathy.’

He wiped his eyes with reddened fingers. ‘That’s not true, Oswald. I wish I could do it, but suicide is a mortal sin.’ The blood from his hands smeared across his cheeks like paint.

‘So is murder.’

Peter’s lunged forward to hold me, but I dodged his advance. ‘I had to turn them against the boy. You must understand that, Oswald.’ Fumbling about in his belt pouch, Brother Peter found his flask of brandy, his hands shaking as he removed the cork.

As he gulped noisily, I turned the knife in my hand. ‘You stole this from Leofwin.’

Peter’s voice was hoarse, but muted. ‘It was stolen already.’

‘You can’t be sure of that.’

‘Such a creature doesn’t own a silver knife.’

‘Stop calling him a creature! He was a boy. The same as me.’

Peter took another gulp from the flask. ‘No, Oswald. He was
not
the same as you. Our Lord doesn’t hand out a face like that without reason. Now please, give me back the knife.’

‘What? So you can pretend to cut your own wrist again?’

‘No. That urge has passed. I will live with the sin and let it torment me. Does that satisfy you? The knife can go to the abbey.’

I put the knife under my belt. ‘No. It belongs to Joan Bath. As she was Leofwin’s mother.’

Peter froze.

‘Don’t pretend to be surprised, Brother. Joan told you of Leofwin in confession. Though you broke another vow by betraying her.’

He looked at me as a tear worked its way slowly down his cheek, forming a thin watery line through the blood.

‘So how did you find Leofwin?’ I asked. ‘Joan didn’t tell you where he was hidden.’ He whispered something in reply. ‘What was that?’ I said. ‘I can’t hear you.’

He cleared his throat. ‘It was you who told me, Oswald.’

‘I did not. You wouldn’t listen to a word of my story about Leofwin. You let me believe I had suffered delirium.’

‘But you did tell me.’

‘Stop lying.’

‘You described the golden eagle to me.’

I felt my stomach turn. ‘What?’

‘You described their size and call.’

‘No. That’s not true. You’re tricking me.’

‘There are few such eagles left in Kent, Oswald. They only survive deep in the weald, on one solitary sandstone ridge.’

‘How would you know that?’

‘Because I sometimes go there. To collect the rare filmy fern.’

‘The what?’

‘I stew it to make a poultice, Oswald. You can use it to—’

‘I don’t care what you use it for!’

So Joan was right. I had been the one to betray Leofwin. Holding my head in my hands, I fell onto the bench.

Peter left me alone for a few moments and then sat down beside me, putting his hand upon my back. ‘This is my sin, Oswald. Not yours.’ He stroked my hair and drew so close to my ear I was forced to shrink away from the vapours of his breath.

‘Dear Oswald,’ he whispered softly. ‘Dear boy. You mustn’t blame yourself. You’re alive. You must be thankful for that.’

I stood up sharply. ‘Get away from me, Brother.’

‘But, Oswald—’

‘You disgust me.’

I did not see Brother Peter for the rest of that day. I believe he hid in the chapel, avoiding me in the hope I would soften. But that would never happen.

Instead I went to the churchyard and laid the poor scalded body of Leofwin to rest. I was not qualified to perform such a ceremony, but the only priests in the parish were both responsible for the boy’s murder. Their evil would not taint his burial.

I had sent for Joan with news that we were burying her son, but Piers returned with the message she was performing her own ceremony to bless his parting and would not join us. So Leofwin was buried with just Gilbert and myself to pray for his soul. My prayers were probably useless. As for Gilbert’s, I cannot say.

After that I returned to the gaol house, to speak to Cornwall. When Henry unlocked his cell, I found a deflated, defeated creature cringing in the corner. His face was bruised, and dried blood was matted to his hair. His velvet cloak hung about him like a torn sail.

‘What do you want, de Lacy?’ he said. ‘Come to finish the job and kill me?’ His voice had lost its French pretensions and now he spoke as softly and colloquially as any other Cornishman. He tried to laugh, but the skin around his mouth was purple and swollen.

‘I’ve come to charge you with the murders of the Starvecrow sisters and Walter de Caburn.’

He laughed again, only this time he managed to complete the sound without holding the edge of his cape to his lip. ‘You have no evidence against me.’

‘I caught you and de Caburn about to rape Mirabel.’

‘What does that prove? I didn’t rape the girl, did I? And she’s still alive.’ He dabbed his gums. ‘You’ve broken most of my teeth, damn you.’

‘I also caught you at the Starvecrow cottage. Searching for the beads that she had pulled from your neck as you attacked her.’

‘I was looking for footprints. I told you that before.’

‘Will you keep to that story when your house is searched and we find the remaining beads in your possession?’

He shrugged. ‘Go ahead. You’ll find nothing.’ He then began to laugh at me. ‘You will look so foolish in court, de Lacy. More foolish than ever. You privileged little arse.’

I turned to leave, making certain to swing my cape. My gesture was not lost on Cornwall. He stumbled over to the grate in his cell door and shouted at me as the door was locked.

‘Your time is nearly gone, de Lacy.’ Henry told him to be quiet, but he shouted even louder. ‘The Pestilence was a gift from God. And now the common man will rise against you. It is we who will inherit the earth!’

That evening I took a bath in the buttery next to the kitchen. Gilbert had warmed the water over the stove and filled the wooden tub until it was deep enough for me to sit in and stew. Needing to remove the stink of the fire, I asked Ada to bring me some of Mother’s hard soap, although our servant soon returned saying Mother could not spare any.

An unpleasant and acrid odour lay on my skin and hung about my hair like sticky weed, so I sent Ada back to inform Mother that I would have the soap whether she could spare it or not. Ada returned with a small and well-used lump of mutton fat and wood ash, from which I had to pull one of Mother’s black hairs. I would tell you the soap’s sharp scent of rosemary and lime rid me of the smoke and soot about my body, but each time I put my fingers to my nose I could still discern the smell of a boy burning to death.

We searched Cornwall’s cottage, but he had been right. We did not find the remaining red coral rosary beads, though we did discover a collection of whitened sheep bones, waiting to be sawn into relics. This did not surprise me in the least, but what did amaze me was Cornwall’s collection of richly embroidered clothes and rare and expensive jewellery. Even a cape of weasel fur – which Cornwall could never have worn outside the confines of his private quarters. Such pelts were the preserve of nobility.

I then imagined him, wrapped in this cape – parading up and down the room as king of his own small bedchamber, irked that he could not wear such clothes in society for fear of breaking the sumptuary laws. Laws that prescribed exactly what a person should wear, according to their rank in society. It must have rankled with a man as ambitious and grasping as Cornwall, that no matter how rich he became in his life, he would never be allowed openly to wear such finery.

Perhaps the words he had shouted from his cell were prophetic? If the common man was to inherit the world, then we could all dress exactly as we pleased.

It was disappointing not to find the beads in Cornwall’s home, but it did not deter me from believing in his guilt. I wrote to the sheriff that morning and requested the Hundreds Court return to Somershill. It would be the second request in so many months.

In the field near the church, a black circle of ash scarred the soil like a plague sore. Nobody went near, apart from Joan Bath, but she could not cleanse the bad ground with her tears, no matter how many she cried.

A week after Leofwin’s burning, I dreamt about planting an acorn in this black circle, hoping to heal the soil where no grass would grow. But in my dream an oak sapling did not appear the following spring. Instead, a strange and ugly tree grew from the circle, its branches contorted into snakelike coils, its trunk swollen with cankers and patches of dead bark. And when it fruited, it bore a harvest of hard black acorns that were spread by the jays and poisoned the pigs.

I woke up and ran to the window, breathing the fresh air that seeped through the lead casement. Mirabel was feeding the chickens in the courtyard below, making this most common of chores seem as graceful as a dance. The birds followed every twist of her body, changing direction as often as she did in the hope of catching the next handful of seed.

Watching Mirabel, an idea now hardened to resolve. Brother Peter had been right in one respect. After all the misery and desolation of the past year, I should be thankful to be alive.

It was later that same morning when I caught Mirabel’s arm as she left the hall carrying a pot of my mother’s piss to the moat. Mother was refusing to use the garderobe, which expelled the family’s effluent down the wall of the house, claiming that exposing her arse at such a height had given her a frozen bladder. The pot was dangerously full – the contents threatening to spill over with each of Mirabel’s careful steps. She was not altogether pleased to see me, since any disruption to her balance might have caused the foaming piss to spill onto her tunic.