The Vanishing Witch (15 page)

Robert tried to push away the pitiful vision of the bright yellow hair lying on the pillow.

‘He says he knows what ails her now. An overheated liver. He’s treating her with a new remedy. She’ll be well again soon.’ Robert was by no means as confident of that as he sounded, but it wouldn’t help
business to have Jan distracted from his work. ‘The boy you sent didn’t say why you wanted to see me, and you still haven’t told me.’

‘I didn’t tell him,’ Jan said quietly. ‘I thought it best that as few people as possible hear, in case it gives the others ideas.’

He led his father to the side of the warehouse, glancing around warily to make sure they were not overheard. ‘Tom, our rent collector,
didn’t return home the night before last. His wife was concerned, but the neighbours told her he was probably holed up in some tavern somewhere.’

Robert frowned. ‘Tom’s not a man for the drink. I’d have never given him the job if I thought he was. Too much temptation having a scrip full of coins. Hugh de Garwell employed a rent collector who was over-fond of wine—’

Jan interrupted: ‘Yesterday
afternoon when Tom still hadn’t come back the neighbours agreed to help her search and took a couple of dogs with them. But they couldn’t find hide nor hair, though they searched as long as the light held. They were on their way home when one of the dogs started barking at something floating in one of the marsh-pools. They thought it was an old sack at first, then realised it was a body. It would
have sunk right to the bottom except that the clothes had snagged on a dead tree half submerged in the water. It was Tom, all right. They think whoever dumped him in there had done it in the dark and couldn’t see properly where they were pitching him. There was a fair bit of mist on the marshes, the night he went missing.’

‘Then isn’t it likely he blundered into the bog himself?’ Robert said.

‘He was found too far from solid ground. If he’d been floundering in there, he’d have been able to grab a hold of the tree. Besides, a man doesn’t get marks like that on his body from falling into a bog. He’d been beaten, and I don’t just mean a black eye. He was covered with bruises from head to toe. They say if he wasn’t dead when he was thrown in, he was as close to it as pork is to pig’s meat.’

Robert shook his head. ‘This is a bad business. You think he was set upon by footpads and robbed? They’re becoming more daring by the day. Remember that friar who was hanging round the warehouse? I swear I’ve seen him lurking in the street where Mistress . . .’

Jan’s chin jerked up and he eyed his father with suspicion.

‘. . . lurking in the streets,’ Robert finished lamely. ‘He could have followed
Tom, if he’d been watching men’s movements, waiting for a chance to steal.’

Jan nodded. ‘I was followed, too, one evening, coming back from Greetwell. I reckon it could well have been the man we saw at the warehouse. But as for him attacking Tom . . .’ Jan frowned. ‘Bailiff’s certainly convinced it was thieves and that’s what the men who found Tom are saying too, but I’m not so sure. His purse
had been cut from the straps, but if it was a band of robbers, they usually rip a man’s tunic off, see if he’s any ingots or valuables strapped to his chest. His shirt was still in place and his belt. He’d not been searched. And if a robber wanted to kill a man he thought might identify him, he’d stab him or slit his throat. A beating takes too long and it’s noisy. Anyone might chance upon them
while it’s happening.’

‘A tavern brawl that went too far?’ Robert said dubiously.

‘You said yourself, Father, that Tom wasn’t a man for taverns or drinking. No, I think it’s more serious than that. His wife said he’d gone to the cottages along the river at Greetwell. Three of them didn’t pay their rent for the second quarter in a row. He was following your orders, Father. Went to give them warning
they’d be out if they didn’t pay up next quarter and Tom wasn’t a man to butter his words. From what I’ve heard there’d been mutterings against him before.’

‘You think the cottagers beat him to death?’ Robert was shocked. In the past month a number of the landowners had reported dung being thrown at their rent-collectors’ houses, their children tormented, even the odd hen killed or vegetables
spoiled, especially if they were thought to favour their own kin or hounded those who couldn’t pay. But murder? No cottager would dare such an attack on those in authority.

‘Have the cottagers been questioned?’

Jan nodded grimly. ‘They have, but they’re sticking together, like burrs on a dog’s backside. They’ve sworn by every saint in Christendom he never arrived at their doors that evening.
The constable’s got men out searching for a gang of robbers and they may well find some too, but it doesn’t mean they’re guilty of this murder. But if the cottagers get away with it, and it looks like they will, what’s to stop others doing the same? I warned you there’d be trouble if you raised the rents.’

‘If they or you think I shall be intimidated into lowering them, you’d better think again,’
Robert thundered. ‘Give in to the knaves over this and next they’ll be demanding I let them live there for free and pay them a king’s ransom to punt my cargoes a few yards downriver. I’ll speak to the sheriff and see that he questions them again, more robustly this time. In the meantime, you had better find another rent-collector. Make sure he goes out well armed and takes one of our paggers
with him to watch his back. They’re strong enough to hold their own against the boatmen. See to it, will you?’

‘If I can find any pagger willing to go once the word spreads,’ Jan said darkly.

‘If any man refuses to do as he’s bade, sack him! There are plenty who’d be only too willing to take his place. If you’re not to send my business straight into the ditch, you must be tougher with these
men.’

If a person or animal is bewitched, their nail parings or hair must be added to their urine, which must be boiled in a closed room, but this will only break the spell if every entrance and hole in the room has been sealed shut.

I drift through the marketplace, looking for excitement. But excitement comes from danger, from not knowing what lies around the corner. There is no
danger in being dead. Unseen, I pull an apple from a pile and listen to the shrieks of rage as the whole stack tumbles and bounces into the street and the urchins, who will be blamed, scrabble to snatch them.

I see a butcher cheat a poor old woman by swapping the juicy chop she’d chosen for one that’s as dried-out as old shoe leather. Mavet, my ferret, bites the butcher’s ankle. He gives a startled
howl and the knife in his hand slips, slicing his finger. That is funny, but there’s no danger in it, not for me or Mavet, though I can’t say the same for the butcher.

But for the living, danger lurks around every corner, and it wears the most innocent of masks. They seldom recognise it for what it is, until it’s too late.

It was already dark by the time Robert left the Braytheforde and set
off for home. A misty rain was falling, clinging in tiny beads to clothing and making the cobbles treacherous. Toiling up the street, Robert, though used to the steep incline, felt a heavy reluctance to face it tonight. The last of the shopkeepers were busy pushing up the counters of their stalls and fastening them over the shop fronts to form shutters. In the rooms over the shops, candles and rush
lights burned and the air was thick with peat and woodsmoke, infused with a hundred different cooking smells.

Beggars drifted across the city, like flocks of ragged birds, forsaking their daytime feeding grounds around the markets for their nightly roosts in archways, alleys and church gates. Those citizens lucky enough to have homes, however mean, were hurrying to reach them, anticipating warm
fires and steaming suppers. Others, weary after their day’s labours, dragged themselves, in two and threes, towards the taverns and whorehouses.

Robert, aware of his dry throat and growling belly, was sorely tempted to join them. He knew he should return home to sit with his wife, but each time he saw her, it only increased his sense of helplessness and failure. Watching her cry in pain, and
being unable to relieve it, was more than he could bear. He’d always been able to provide the best for her, had prided himself on it, but no matter how much he spent on cures and remedies, it was all useless, as if Edith’s sickness mocked the wealth he had worked so hard for all these years. Just as he had been unable to take away her grief at losing her babies, he could do nothing now to help her,
nothing. He felt rejected, shut out from her suffering, just as he had done when she had been grieving for her lost babies. He was her husband: he should be able to make her world safe, but he couldn’t.

As if his legs had made their own decision, Robert found he had turned aside from his usual route and was wandering down Hungate, without any thought as to where he was going. He had almost reached
the last house when he stopped. A small familiar carving of a horned imp grinned down at him from the arched door lintel.

He found himself picturing Catlin’s sweet face, her smile, which greeted him whenever she saw him standing on her threshold. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had smiled in his house, much less on seeing him. A brief visit couldn’t hurt. It was only common courtesy,
since he was passing, to enquire if all was well. He wouldn’t stay. He wouldn’t even sit down.

Robert stared up and down the length of Hungate. Save for a couple of stray dogs snarling at each other as they fought for possession of some scrap, the darkened street was empty. The shutters over Maud’s windows were tightly fastened against the cold, though that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have an eye
pressed to the crack. With one final glance around to ensure that no one was abroad, Robert rapped at the door.

Diot flung it open. ‘Thank Heaven you’ve come, Master Robert. The mistress’ll be so relieved, she’s in such a state.’

‘Is she ill?’ Robert said in alarm.

He didn’t wait for an answer. He squeezed past the stout old woman into the small hall. Catlin was sitting by the fire, both hands
clasped around a steaming beaker of mulled ale. Her face was pale, her lips dry.

‘Robert, thank God. I’ve been so worried.’

Robert crossed the room in a couple of strides and, with some difficulty, knelt in front of her and clasped his hands around her own. ‘What is it? What’s happened? You look as if you’ve seen an apparition.’

He could feel Catlin’s fingers trembling beneath his. Even the
heat from the beaker didn’t seem to be warming them. He took the cup from her and gently chafed her hands.

‘I thought he’d harm you, Robert. I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Who? Who would harm me?’ Robert was starting to feel as frightened as she looked. His rent-collector had been viciously murdered. Was someone now threatening to do the same to him?

‘A friar . . . A dreadful man, with a horrible
voice. He came begging at the door. I gave him what I could spare . . . but then he spoke your name, Robert. He seemed to be looking for you. I slammed the door at once.’

She clutched at his shoulder. ‘Oh, Robert, I was so afraid for you and then just now Leonia went out into the yard and she found . . . she found the puppy you gave her lying dead. See for yourself.’

Reluctant though he was
to leave Catlin, Robert lumbered to his feet and trudged out into the dark courtyard. The fine rain swirled in the wind, but Leonia seemed oblivious to the cold or damp. She was crouching on the wet stones prodding something that lay at her feet. Robert took a lantern from the wall and held it over the dark mass on the ground. The glassy eyes of the dog glinted in the lamplight, but he could see at
once there was no life in them. He’d no desire to touch the creature, but he steeled himself to grasp a cold paw between finger and thumb and roll it over onto its back. He held the lantern lower. A dark wet stain covered the belly and throat of the dog, but it wasn’t rain that had soaked its fur: it was blood.

Leonia pointed. ‘Someone must have stabbed him. They did it four times, I counted.
Look!’

She spread the bloody fur with her little hand and poked her finger into one of the deep puncture wounds in the puppy’s throat.

‘Don’t touch it!’ Robert snapped, and Leonia looked up at him in mild surprise, her fingers smeared with scarlet.

Robert was startled, not just by the savagery of the attack, but by the calm in the child’s voice, as if she were more curious than upset. He had
no time for children who cried at the slightest thing but, having no daughters of his own, he had always assumed that girls were given to shrieking at the sight of a mouse, let alone a viciously slaughtered pet.

He pulled the child to her feet, glancing uneasily around him in the darkness, but the gate leading to the lane beyond was barred and the little yard too small for anyone to be concealed
in it. ‘We’d better get you inside, child. You shouldn’t be out here alone, not . . . after this.’

At that moment, Diot came hurrying out and enveloped Leonia in her arms, holding her tightly against her great breasts as she bustled the girl towards the door. ‘Upstairs with you and I’ll bring you a nice posset to help you sleep.’ She turned back to Robert, shaking her head. ‘I thought the fox
was wicked enough, Master Robert, but what’s the world coming to if they can do that to a defenceless dog?’

‘He wasn’t defenceless, Diot,’ Leonia protested. ‘He could bite. He bit me hard!’

‘That makes it all the worse, then,’ Diot said. ‘If they can stab a dog that can fight back, what chance do we have? We’ll all be murdered in our beds.’

Robert, somewhat shaken, made his way back into the
hall where Catlin was still hunched by the fire. He went to the laver that stood in the corner, rubbing his hands in the water over and over again as if he was trying to wash away the image of the child’s blood-stained fingers.

The old woman’s words at last penetrated his mind and he turned towards Catlin. ‘Diot said something about a fox.’

Catlin rose and handed him a linen cloth to dry his
dripping hands. ‘A few weeks ago she found a sack with a dead fox in it. It had been decapitated, and its muzzle was tied with periwinkle, or so she swears. She was convinced it was some kind of a death-threat. Edward persuaded me it was just boys playing pranks, but after today . . . Robert, I think Diot might have been right. It was a warning. It must have been the friar who did this. But I don’t
understand. Why would this man threaten you, Robert? Has he a grudge against you?’