The Vanishing Witch (20 page)

But when I saw them lay the lid upon my poor mistress’s coffin, shutting her up alone in the dark, and when I heard that awful rasp of stone on stone, I felt as if the skin was being ripped from my heart and I fell to sobbing. That great ox Tenney shuffled a little closer and shoved
his arm about me, patting me awkwardly. ‘There, lass, she’s at peace. No cause to take on so,’ he said.

But I heard the catch in his voice, and when I glanced up, I saw a tear running down his cheeks and sinking into his thick black beard.

The churchyard was crowded. All of Master Robert’s guild brothers and their wives had come, as well as neighbours, relatives, tenants and workmen, not out
of grief for my mistress, most barely knew her, but to show their loyalty to Robert. He was an influential man, and men like him had long memories and long fingers. Few would risk slighting him.

As soon as the service was over, the congregation filed past the master and his sons to murmur words of consolation. All of my attention had been on the family and on poor Mistress Edith’s coffin, and
in that great throng I hadn’t noticed if Widow Catlin was there or not. But as the crowd began to thin, she suddenly appeared a few yards behind Master Robert, flanked by that filthy old besom, Diot, and Leonia. For a moment it gave me quite a turn, seeing them standing there so still, gazing at Edith’s coffin, like three ravens watching for the chance to feed on a carcass.

As if he sensed Widow
Catlin behind him, Master Robert turned towards her. He had taken a few steps in her direction when he seemed to remember he’d been talking to a fellow guild member and turned back to excuse himself before walking over to the widow. Catlin nodded to him as formally as any woman there, as if they were mere acquaintances, but it didn’t fool Edith’s cousin, Maud, not for a flea’s breath.

Ever since
the night of Mistress Edith’s death, Master Robert had instructed Tenney and me to say that he was out whenever Maud came calling and he’d avoided her throughout the funeral. But there was no avoiding her now. She picked up her skirts and charged across to him, spitting and railing.

‘. . . your whoring that killed her. She died of shame and a broken heart. Wicked, that’s what you are . . . a
fornicator!’

Master Robert spun around to face her, his arms outstretched on either side as if he were trying to shield Widow Catlin from an assassin. ‘And you are a foul-mouthed old gossip,’ he yelled, his face turning scarlet. ‘You were forever pouring your malice into my wife’s mind. If anyone killed her it was you, filling her head with fears and jealousies that had no ground. They ought
to duck you in the Braytheforde.’

Everyone was goggling at them with undisguised fascination, as if this were a mummers’ play. Jan ran up and tried to pull Maud away, but she was having none of it. Finally Father Remigius puffed his way over to the pair and pushed himself between them.

‘These are evil words to be spoken with the Blessed Host still on your lips. Show some respect for the poor
woman who lies in her grave at your feet.’

With an angry shrug, Robert stalked away, but it took several more earnest entreaties from the priest to prevent Maud running after him and berating him once more. Widow Catlin had melted into the crowd and was nowhere to be seen.

I was turning away, too, when I felt a small, cold hand slip into mine. I glanced down. Adam was standing beside me, his
face as pale as whey and his jaw clenched. He stared at Robert’s retreating back. ‘Father didn’t kill my mother,’ he whispered, so low that I could barely hear him.

‘Course he didn’t, Adam,’ I said. ‘Take no notice of Mistress Maud.’

Adam’s chest heaved. ‘I killed her.’

If a diamond-shaped crease, called a coffin, is seen in a newly ironed sheet, someone who sleeps in that bed will die. If the coffin is seen in a carelessly ironed tablecloth it foretells imminent death for one of the people seated round that table.

A long flight of steps and a cobbled slope run side by side up the hill from the cluster of hovels in Butwerk, outside the city
walls, to the postern gate of the cathedral precincts. They call this way the Greesen. By day it is always crowded with pilgrims and ox carts, pedlars and goodwives, but at night only the foolhardy venture down it, for this, my darlings, is where the ghosts of Lincoln gather. On the cathedral side of the archway lies holy ground, but this side belongs to those who are neither alive nor dead. We
ghosts loiter there most dark evenings. Some slide through the stones as if they were made of mist, which to them they are: they left life long before the walls were ever built. Others laboriously climb the steps as if they still lived.

The monk who hanged himself from the postern gate resents our gathering. He was a miserable old sod in life, and death has made him no more sociable. He seems
to think that because he died on the spot, he has some claim to it, but though the creaking of his noose and his moaning may send the living fleeing in terror, ghosts are not to be deterred.

Other things swarm around the Greesen too. Creatures abandoned by their creator long, long ago. Beasts, half fish and half reptile, with jagged-toothed jaws, claw up those steep steps on their sharp fins,
while ugly black birds with long cruel beaks and human eyes greedily watch the people who scuttle down the stone stairs below. A malevolent darkness flows down those steps, oozing from the tombs of those who lie buried in the cathedral above. Trust me, my darlings, you don’t want to climb them at night.

It was late in the evening when Jan, a girl clinging to his arm, wove his way down a narrow
alley between the darkened houses and out onto the Greesen. The stairs were dark and deserted. At intervals along the walls torches guttered, sending shadows slithering between the pools of orange light. Far below, bright pinpoints of yellow and red twinkled in the distant valley, marking where boatmen far from home were sleeping on the riverbanks or shepherds warmed themselves as they kept watch.

The girl hung back, tugging on Jan’s arm. ‘Not down there. There’s summit that grabs your ankle when you walk up those steps, pulls you back down again. My friend skinned both her knees and spilled all the fish from her basket.’

Jan giggled and flicked the girl’s nose with his finger. ‘If he tries to grab your pretty little ankle, I’ll chop his hand off.’

He fumbled for his sword hilt, but his
hand got twisted in the folds of his cloak.

‘It’s a woman that grabs you,’ the girl said. ‘Anyhow, you’ll break your neck on those stairs. You’re so pickled you can hardly walk straight on the flat.’

‘True!’ Jan said affably. ‘That’s why you’ll have to come with me. My lodgings . . . nice warm bed. Just you and me and a flagon of wine. Forget about the whole damn lot of them.’

Slipping his
hand round her waist, he drew her tightly to him, kissing the base of her throat, before propelling her towards the steps. She laughed and allowed herself to be pulled along.

Jan had made straight for the tavern as soon as he’d left the churchyard. After the row at the graveside between his father and Maud, he was not in the mood for the polite chatter of the guests as they offered their meaningless
twitter of condolence. No one would mention Maud’s accusations at the funeral feast, of course, but they’d be itching to pick over every detail with friends and neighbours the moment they had staggered home. Jan had stayed in the tavern until the yawning innkeeper had shoved the girl and him out of the door, and it was doubtful he’d have left then, had not the girl offered to see him safe
to his lodgings.

They tottered precariously down the steep stairs. The flickering light from the torches made the descent even more perilous for the edges of the uneven steps kept melting away into shadow. Jan leaned heavily on the girl, who struggled to balance him. It occurred to him that he couldn’t remember her name. Had she told him? No matter. She was pretty and willing and didn’t ask questions.
That was all he wanted tonight, enough wine to blunt his misery and a warm body to snuggle up against, so that he was not alone. He could not be alone tonight.

‘It’s the English thief!’ The voice rang out mockingly from below.

The girl jerked back so quickly that Jan almost slipped off the step. Two men were standing on the steps below him. He couldn’t distinguish their faces, but he caught
the accent and guessed them to be Johan’s men. Jan, swaying, blinked down at them. He batted at the air wildly with his arm, as if he was shooing pigeons. ‘Out my way . . . If Johan wants his goods, ask the thieving bastards who stole ours.’

One of the two took a step forward, as if he intended to rush up the stairs, but his companion held him back.

‘Why do you not come down here and say that,
Fog-head? Maybe you are afraid to fight. You, girl, you come with us. We will show you what a real man is. This boy has to get the bailiff to fight his battles.’

Jan gave a roar and stumbled forward, but the girl held him back.

The man laughed. ‘No? Then we come to you.’

Jan caught the flash of daggers, as the men reached beneath their half-cloaks. His reactions were slow, made clumsier by
the girl hanging on his arm. He shoved her towards the wall, meaning only to push her out of the way of the blades and free himself to fight, but the push was more violent than he intended and she crashed into the stones, tumbling down several steps as the men rushed towards Jan. One stumbled over her, falling on top of her. The other only just managed to stop himself tripping over them. He paused
just long enough to see his friend get to his feet, then bounded up towards Jan.

Jan had been too appalled by what he’d done to the girl to do more than gape, but now, even through the wine fumes fuddling his brain, he saw that the two men were dangerously close. He struggled to find the hilt of his sword and draw it, but one of his adversaries lifted his dagger as if he intended to hurl it straight
at Jan’s eye. Jan threw himself sideways against the wall, staggered and fell heavily onto the step below, but at once realised he’d been tricked. The man had not thrown the blade and Jan, sprawled on the step, now had no chance of drawing his sword from the scabbard.

Johan’s men were almost upon him, their daggers raised, ready to plunge into his chest. He tried to twist away, but the daggers
were advancing on either side of him.

A black shadow slithered over his prone body and there was a low, menacing growl that sounded as if it came from the throat of a huge dog. Startled, all three men glanced up the steps above them. Something was flying down towards them, howling as it ran.

‘The monk! The dead monk!’ one man yelled. Grabbing each other, they slipped and slid back down the steps,
vanishing into the darkness below.

Jan got to his feet, finally managing to wrench his sword from the scabbard. Below him, the girl was struggling upright, pointing and shrieking at the figure hurtling towards them. Somewhere a shutter was thrown open and a woman bellowed from an upper casement. A baby started to scream, which seemed to set all the dogs within the city walls howling.

There was
the sound of running feet and two watchmen burst out of the alley and pounded down the steps, their pikes clattering as they ran. They reached the robed stranger first, but ran past him, one making for Jan, the other leaping down to the shrieking girl.

The watchman jabbed his pike at Jan’s stomach. ‘Drop the sword. Drop it, I say!’

Jan let it slip from his fingers and fall with a clatter onto
the stones. He raised both hands to show he was unarmed.

The second watchman hauled the girl to her feet and, with his free arm about her waist, dragged her back up the steps to where Jan stood, his back pressed against the wall’s sharp stones.

The watchman with the pike was a spindly youth, his eyes covered with a long fringe of greasy hair, which he jerked his head to toss aside. The man who
held the girl was bald, with a neck as thick as his head.

The bald one glanced up at the open casement. ‘Leave off screeching,’ he shouted at the woman, who was still leaning out, complaining about the noise. ‘We’ve got them. Get back to bed.’

She closed the shutters with a furious bang, setting the baby off again.

The bald one turned his attention to Jan. ‘Was she trying to rob you?’

‘I never!’
the girl squawked indignantly. ‘Two men tried to attack him. He . . . They knocked me down the steps.’

It wasn’t exactly true, but Jan wasn’t going to argue. He embarked on a long, tortuous explanation about the Florentines, Johan, the missing goods and the warehouse, several times forgetting what he was saying and trying to start again. The watchmen were clearly bemused.

Exasperated, the bald
man brushed away the garbled tale with a sweep of his hand. ‘Just give us the names of the men who attacked you.’

‘Told you already . . . Johan’s men,’ Jan said irritably. ‘Don’t know which.’

The bald man pulled a face at his companion. ‘We won’t get a description out of him. He’s sow-drunk. Wouldn’t know his own mother.’

‘Don’t talk about my mother,’ Jan burst out. ‘She’s dead.’

The men ignored
him and the bald man glanced up the steps. ‘You there, friar. You saw the attack? You’d recognise the men?’

Jan stared up. A man in tattered robes was crouching by the wall, his hood drawn low over his face. He rose to his feet. ‘I saw no one,’ he growled.

‘That’s a barefaced lie,’ the girl said indignantly. ‘He did see them. It was him that drove them off. I reckon they thought he was a ghost.’

The friar seemed vaguely familiar, but Jan’s head was pounding. He couldn’t even try to think where he’d seen the man before, though he was certain he had.

The watchman sighed. ‘Amazing how half the populace of Lincoln become blind and deaf if they think they’ll be called to give evidence. We could take him in, make him talk, but I suppose since there’s been no harm done—’

‘No harm?’ the girl
protested. ‘I’m black and blue all over, and my gown’s torn. It’s new this is.’

‘New to you, maybe, not to the scarecrow who had it afore you,’ the bald watchman said. ‘If you got any sense you’ll take yourself home afore you find yourself arrested for whoring. Off with you!’