Plague Land (41 page)

She forced a smile. ‘I’m moving into wool. Of course I can.’

I dismounted. ‘I’ve something that belongs to you.’ She shooed the boys to attend to me, so they took Tempest’s reins and tied him to the apple tree that shaded her door. The horse cooperated quite willingly with these two urchins, causing me to dislike him more than ever.

When the two of us were inside the cottage, she removed her apron and washed her hands and arms in a large caldron of water scented with sage and lavender. The smell blotted out the cloying odour of pig blood.

I reached into my belt pouch and took out the knife, the horn handle now re-attached. ‘This was Leofwin’s. It was found in his cave.’

She took the knife from me and eyed it sadly. ‘You mean it was stolen from his cave.’

I didn’t try to contradict her. ‘It’s yours now.’

She sighed deeply and wiped the blade of the knife across her cheek. Then her face crumpled into tears. I went to touch her, but she shrank away from me. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

‘Perhaps you could sell the knife? It would command a good price at the market. Enough to buy a ram even.’

‘No. I won’t sell it. It belonged to my son.’

She placed the blade upon the stool, alongside the dusty corn maiden and a wooden crucifix. ‘Do you still have the red coral beads?’ she asked me. ‘The ones you found under Matilda’s bed?’

‘I do. Why?’

A sly smile now crossed her lips. ‘Matilda has no living relative. But she was betrothed to my father. So, by rights they should belong to me.’

‘They were pulled from Cornwall’s throat as he attacked her.’

Joan’s face hardened. ‘So you will give them to Cornwall? The man who sewed my son inside a bull and burnt him?’

‘Of course not. But the beads are part of my evidence against him.’

‘Yes. But do you need all of them?’

I hesitated, looking about her small cottage at the poverty in which the family lived. Old Ralph’s home might be larger, but it was even more squalid and derelict than this. Joan needed help and I could not condemn her for asking, so I bade the woman hold out her hand as I emptied the beads into her palm. They were such perfect spheres of red coral.

She studied them closely and then counted them from one side of her palm to the other. ‘Eleven, twelve, thirteen.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s fortunate that I’m taking some.’

I smiled. ‘How so?’

‘Because it’s bad luck to keep thirteen of anything.’

There was no point in arguing with such logic. Her son had been killed by superstition, and yet she would judge a simple number capable of harming her. I gave her seven beads and dropped the remaining six back into the bag.

My unwilling mount then carried me towards Versey, but as he ambled along the woodland path, his resentful trudge lulled me into reflection. Something bothered me about my last conversation with Joan, but I was unable to hear its subtle notes over the rattling clamour that echoed about my head these days. Should I do this? How will I do that? The never-ending circle of questions and problems pushed out even the most rudimentary of clear thinking. I couldn’t remember the last time I had read my books. Not even Bacon’s
Opus Minus
.

In the forest the blackberries were already ripening on the bushes, and the oak leaves had begun to deepen to that tired green that signals their last snatch at the sun before autumn. In a clearing, ragged, grey-faced men poked at the walls of a charcoal kiln. I could even smell the mushrooms beginning to grow from the muddy mattress of the forest floor. It seemed the long fade into winter was beginning early.

I dug my heels into Tempest’s flanks to hinder such melancholy thoughts and we galloped towards Versey.

Then the jolt of the saddle once again revived the subtle melody. The tune that had been troubling my thoughts since my visit to the Bath cottage.

And then, suddenly it was louder. I stopped my horse. Removing the six beads from my belt pouch I looked at them closely.

Finally I could hear their song.

Ada was already at Versey to meet me, full of tales of the young de Caburn sisters, Mary and Becky. How reproachable was their behaviour and how dirty were their clothes. I ignored her complaints and asked her to seek out de Caburn’s manservant without delay.

The elderly fellow crept out from the kitchen and shuffled across the floor in a crab-like motion towards me, clearly expecting a beating. When I asked to speak with him privately, two blonde heads threw pine cones at me from behind a screen. Ada dragged the eldest girl out by her earlobe. It was Mary de Caburn. Her tunic was soiled and her locks were tangled into a bird’s nest of hair.

‘Why are they so filthy?’ I asked.

Ada pulled a face of despair. ‘The little runts won’t wash, sire. And they refuse to change their clothes.’

Mary’s face was reddening in pain, so I told Ada to release the girl’s ear. Mary went to escape, but I took her by the arm. ‘Listen to me, Mary. My mother and my sister will be living here soon.’ She tried to wriggle away, but I would not release her. ‘You cannot live with ladies, dressed in such clothes. Now have a bath and put on a dress.’

‘I don’t want to live with them.’ Mary then looked over her shoulder towards her younger sister Becky, whose puckish face peeped around the screen like a demon from a church doom painting. ‘Clemence is a bitch.’ Both girls laughed until Ada boxed Becky’s ears.

‘Don’t use that language,’ I said. ‘And you will call my sister Lady Clemence and my mother Lady Margaret.’

‘Why should we?’

‘Because I would like you to.’

‘This is my estate. You stole it from me.’

‘How would you manage Versey, Mary? You’re no more than eleven.’

‘I’d do a better job than you!’

I leant into her face and tried to make contact with her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at me. I spoke kindly. ‘No, Mary. You wouldn’t. You’re too young.’ Her bottom lip protruded and she fought back tears.

I loosened my grip on her arm and spoke soothingly. ‘I’ll make sure you’re treated fairly. I haven’t forgotten how you helped me to escape that day. But please, for your own sake, learn to be polite.’

She nodded as slightly as it was possible, then pulled herself free of me and ran up the stairs of the north tower with her sister. Ada shouted up the stairwell, telling the girls’ disappearing feet that she would soon fill the bathtub with warm water – but once the water had cooled she would not reheat it.

They neither listened to Ada, nor cared.

Now left alone with de Caburn’s servant, I asked the man to sit down next to me on the bench, though he hardly seemed to know what was being asked of him, giving me to suspect he rarely sat on anything other than the floor. He lowered himself onto the surface of the wood as if he were about to sit on hot tinder.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him, when he had decided once and for all that the bench was a safe place to rest his backside.

‘John Slow,’ he said. The reason for his family name soon became apparent.

‘I want to know about the night Lord Versey rode to the convent.’

Slow looked at the floor nervously. ‘I told you about it before, sire.’

‘Yes. But I want to talk about it again. To see if there is anything else you can remember.’

He bit his lip and now glanced about the room. ‘I’ll try. But my memory’s not so good. Sometimes I forget which month it is. Yesterday I even forgot to wash.’

I found it difficult to believe the man ever washed, so disregarded this excuse. ‘You were the servant who saw the messenger arrive with the letter, weren’t you?’

He nodded vigorously at this. ‘Oh yes. That was me.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘I’ll try, sire. He was a messenger.’ He paused. ‘He came on a horse.’

‘Yes. But what did he look like?’

Slow now wrung his hands as if I were accusing him of stealing some bread from the kitchen. ‘I can’t remember. I really can’t remember.’

‘Calm yourself. This is not a court inquisition.’

‘Sorry, sire. Sorry, sire.’

‘Think carefully. Was he tall? Built like an ox?’

Slow now held his chin thoughtfully. ‘He was a man.’

‘Yes.’

‘And he was riding a horse.’

‘Yes?’

‘And he had a letter for Lord Versey.’

‘Anything more? I need as much information about this person as you can give me.’

‘He came here from the convent.’

‘Yes?’

There was a long silence. ‘And then he went away again.’

It was difficult not to throttle the man. ‘And you don’t remember anything else about him? It’s very important.’

Slow stroked his chin again, and gazed with great concentration at the ceiling as if he were about to pick out a memory from the beams. I held my breath for his answer. ‘He had a letter with him.’

‘Did you see the letter?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Can’t read, sire.’

My frustration was obvious by now and Slow flinched away from me as if I might strike him. I relaxed my hands. ‘You may leave me now.’ The man struggled to his feet, his knees creaking like gateposts after years of sleeping on the cold flagstones of this dismal place.

He hobbled away, but then stopped in the middle of the hall and hobbled back. ‘Sire?’

‘Yes,’ I sighed, wondering what great truth was about to be revealed now. That the messenger had a head atop his neck? Or that the horse had four legs?

‘I do know where the letter is, sire. If that might be of interest?’

I stood up. ‘Of course that’s of interest. Why didn’t you mention this before?’

He flinched from me again. ‘Is it important, sire?’

‘Of course it is!’

‘Lord Versey did say to keep it in his chest.’

‘Take me to it now.’

‘But nobody’s to look in the chest. That’s what Lord Versey says.’

‘Lord Versey is dead!’

I followed Slow to the south tower, a corner of the castle that I had previously assumed had fallen into disuse. We climbed some stone steps, avoiding a badly stacked log pile and a broken roasting spit, until we came to a wooden door ornamented with stud nails and iron bands. Slow felt inside his tunic and pulled out the key, which hung from a chain about his neck. He fitted this key into the lock and pushed at the heavy door.

The room on the other side was dark and damp, with only an arrow slit for a window – so at first it was impossible to see anything. But as light seeped in from the stairwell I could make out shapes – not beds or benches, but instead the apparatus of torture. A Judas chair sat in front of the hearth with polished spikes covering its back, seat, and arm rests. In the corner was a knee splitter, the metal cage of a head brank, and the long thongs of a scourge whip.

‘Was this Lord Versey’s room?’ I asked.

Slow appeared confused at my question. ‘Yes.’

‘And he tortured people in here?’

Slow shrugged. ‘Oh yes. But just thieves or scolds. Though only in the winter.’

‘The winter?’

‘Well, yes. He preferred to be outdoors when the weather was fine.’

I wanted to leave. Evil drifted from the room like a foul miasma. ‘Find me this letter. And be quick.’

Slow shuffled over to a corner, pushing aside a table that looked like a butcher’s block to expose a black and dusty wooden chest. Turning another lock he opened its stiff lid and then delved around amongst the contents, soon revealing this box to be a collection of very particular items.

As he searched for the letter, Slow passed me a succession of objects to hold. The first was a silver mug engraved with the image of a man copulating with a horse. The second a phallus carved in stone. The last, an illustrated compendium of obscenities. I will admit to lingering over this well-thumbed manuscript a little longer than I should have, for Slow had to cough to get my attention.