The Vanishing Witch (53 page)

Edward took the hint and walked out into the hot sunshine. Behind him he could
still hear Catlin talking gently. ‘. . . honest men like Gunter, while other boatmen cheat him by bribing and stealing, getting work that should be putting food in your own children’s bellies . . .’

For the first time that afternoon, he found himself grinning. So that was what Catlin was up to. She was good, he had to admit. His mother could have coaxed the devil himself into giving her the keys
of Hell and he would never realise that he’d been played.

Faggots of wood brought for the fire must contain at least thirteen sticks or more to burn Judas, else good fortune will leave the house with the smoke and bad luck will enter through the door with the wood.

‘Why did you let that woman near him?’

Gunter tossed his mutton-bone spoon back into the pottage. He’d barely swallowed more than two mouthfuls. He’d come home ravenous,
but his appetite had soured as soon as Col had blurted out the news that a lady and a man on horses had come to the cottage. Nonie hadn’t mentioned the visit, which in itself both alarmed and angered him. She’d always shared every scrap of news with him when he returned each evening, usually before he’d a chance to get through the door.

Nonie snatched the abandoned bowl from his hand, tipping
the pottage back into the pot. ‘If you’re not hungry . . .’

‘Why did you even let them in? I told you to keep the door closed. I warned you not to let people come prying.’

Nonie glowered at him. ‘I’d no choice. The new steward said he had to inspect the cottage, and as soon as they came in Mistress Catlin saw Hankin was in pain. She was kind. Said she’d send us some physic to heal him quicker,
so he could go back to work. We have to let her try, else it could be months before he’s right, if he ever is.’

‘Women like her don’t do things to be kind,’ Gunter said. ‘She must have wanted something. What did you tell her? What did she ask you?’

‘How he got hurt, that’s what. And I said what you told me to say, except she’s not stupid, Gunter, no more am I. It’s as plain as a hen’s egg that
boy wasn’t hit by a cargo. His back is burned, even I can see that, and so could she.’

Gunter felt what little pottage he had eaten turn into a hard lump in his craw. ‘Did she say as much?’

Nonie shrugged. ‘Asked if the cargo was on fire. I said you’d seared the wound with a hot knife to stop it turning bad.’

‘And she believed that?’ he asked urgently.

‘I think she did, which is more than
I do,’ Nonie snapped. She glanced at Hankin, who was sleeping, with little Col curled up like a dog at his feet. ‘He says things when the fever takes him, wild things about a man screaming. Keeps begging me to make him stop. Then he says they’ll burn him for the pies. I can’t make head nor tail of it, Gunter. What happened? Why won’t you tell me?’

Gunter shook his head wearily, massaging his
aching stump. ‘Just nightmares is all. Everyone gets them when they’re sick, you know that. When you were taken with milk fever after our Royse was born, you thought the house was sailing off down the river and you were drowning. Remember?’

‘Aye,’ Nonie said darkly. ‘But I wasn’t soaked in river water. That lad’s raving about burning and he’s the burns to go with it.’

She rose and pulled the
pot from the fire, wiping the sweat from her face. It was as hot as a baker’s oven inside the cottage. She dipped a cloth in a pail of water, and as gently as she could, so as not to wake him, she laid the cool cloth across the back of Hankin’s neck.

‘I’ve heard him talking to the two drowned bairns today, Gunter. Said they were calling to him from the river to come and play with them. I had
to hold him down to stop him trying to crawl out to them.’ Nonie lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘This fever’s taking hold and the dead know it.’ She glanced fearfully at the closed door. ‘They’re out there, waiting for him. I tell you this, Gunter, I don’t care what you say, I’ll talk to a hundred Mistress Catlins if one of them can heal my son. I’ll not stand idly by and let the river ghosts take
him.’

Gunter rested his head in his hands and closed his eyes. Every muscle in his body was screaming with tiredness. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. Three men had been seized at Boston. A neighbour had denounced them, said they’d helped the Norfolk rebels. Their families swore it was not so, but all it had taken was one word from a man who bore a grudge. Old
scores were being settled up and down the land. The King’s men were sidling up to people on the quiet, offering money to any who’d give them a name in secret. They said they wouldn’t even have to come to the trial. Their neighbours would never know who’d whispered the poison.

The old woman in Butwerk, who’d been making ointment for Hankin, she’d surely not make the connection herself, but what
if she mentioned the burns to one of her other customers, someone who realised he and Hankin had been missing from the wharf when the riots were at their height? But the justices would need no informers if Master Robert had recognised him that day in London. Was that why he’d sent his wife and steward? To discover if Hankin was also involved?

Should he take Hankin and go before it was too late?
He could lay him in the boat and be far downstream long before dawn. And what then? Where could he go with the boy in that state? They couldn’t live on the river, not without being seen, and he knew from the struggle he’d had to bring the lad home that he couldn’t tramp the countryside with Hankin in his arms, looking for somewhere to hide. A few nights out in the open without proper food or physic
would surely kill the boy. But what was he supposed to do? Sit here and wait for the soldiers to come and drag them at the horse’s tail to the castle? After that, the execution: being hacked to pieces, or the slow strangulation of the rope, if they were lucky?

For the thousandth time, he cursed his own stupidity in speaking out. He should have let Robert die. If it had been the other way round,
the merchant wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save him. Robert would see Gunter hanged as a rebel. For what other cause would a lowly boatman have to be in London?

Gunter struck his forehead with his fists. Why was he such a fool? If he’d bribed Fulk, if he’d stolen like Martin. What did a few thefts matter to a man like Robert? He was so wealthy he’d never even notice a few bales and barrels
going missing. He deserved to lose them, raising the rents when he knew men were struggling to feed their families. If Gunter had only done as the other men had and taken enough to pay the tax, Hankin would never have run off. He’d brought his whole family to ruin for the sake of his pointless honesty. It was men who robbed and lied, bribed and cheated who were rewarded, not the honest men, the stupid,
gullible fools like him.

He’d watch his son hang beside him. His wife and children would be forced into a life of beggary, for as an executed felon all he possessed would be forfeit to the Crown, even the boat. For the first time in his life, Gunter understood why men threw themselves into the river. Maybe that was the only way to help his family. Kill Hankin, then himself. His wife would at
least be able to sell the punt. And Hankin would be spared the misery of prison, then the pain and terror of a public execution. No father could watch his son suffer that.

Gunter wandered out of the cottage, staring up at the vast arch of stars, stretching from the tiny lights in the cottages high above him on the Edge to the dark fenlands, and beneath them the glint of the twisting river, gurgling
in the darkness.

Ever since he was a boy, the river and the stars had been the only constants in his life. When the world had fallen into chaos and the Great Pestilence had swept away everything he knew and all those he loved, the river and the stars had remained. He stared down at the black ribbon of water. He shuddered as he remembered Jan’s corpse in his hands. Could he do it? Would he have
the strength to kill himself when the time came? He didn’t know. The only thing he was sure of was that he must protect his son.

If cut hair is thrown on to a fire and burns brightly it is a sign that the person will have a long life, but if it shrivels or smoulders it is an omen of impending death.

There were times when I was sorely tempted to send my ferret Mavet in to bite Robert’s backside, but even that wouldn’t have made him listen, for fear had eaten into the metal of his spirit. Fear makes a
man barricade his mind as well as his house, and Robert was starting to believe that everyone he saw was out to kill him. It’s when a man feels under siege that he clings most stubbornly to what he thinks he knows: to break faith with himself, when all around are attacking, would be more than he could bear.

Wherever he went, Robert was certain he was being watched or followed. And, of course,
he was right. Godwin was behind him like his own shadow, constantly changing his garb to disguise himself, dressing in whatever he could steal, but there is something about the way a man stands and walks, the way his sleeve hangs empty that cannot be disguised, and though Robert hastened through the streets, meeting the gaze of no man, he would catch sight of the still figure from the corner of his
eye and veer away, like a startled horse. Eventually, though he’d sworn he would never do it, he had even taken to hiring an armed linkman to accompany him whenever he left the house, to ensure that no stranger could get within a yard of him.

Robert’s nights were no better than his days for the demon horse invariably carried him back to the streets of London, to the blood that flowed in an ever-widening
scarlet lake and the feet that pressed sharp as an axe-blade on his neck. He woke sweating and exhausted. And there is nothing more likely to make a man feel hard-done-by than lack of sleep.

In his misery he concluded that there was only one person who had any thought for his welfare: his sweet and adoring stepdaughter. No one else, especially his new wife, seemed to be in the least concerned
about him or his safety. But Leonia could always bring a smile to his face, and she did so now as she entered the solar bearing a jug of wine.

‘You shouldn’t be fetching my wine, child. Where are Tenney and Diot?’

Leonia carefully positioned the jug on the table. ‘Diot’s so slow, and Tenney said he was busy, but he wasn’t. He’s lazy.’

He’d have to have words with the man. Tenney was growing
increasingly moody. It was hard to get two words out of him, and where once he had looked everyone straight in the eye, now he shuffled around with his head bent, like an old beggar in search of lost coins or scraps. Robert supposed that Tenney was still aggrieved because Beata had been sent to the infirmary of St Magdalene, but he wouldn’t tolerate a servant sulking. When hired men were allowed
to think they could dictate . . . His hand began to tremble again as he took the goblet of blood-red wine Leonia held out to him. He tried to put it to the back of his mind. He didn’t want the child to see he was unnerved.

‘Where’s your mother, Leonia?’

The girl busied herself straightening the jug on the table, as if she were ashamed to answer. ‘She rode out to meet Edward. He was visiting
the cottagers. She’s always going out with Edward, since she made him steward.’

She made him steward
. Robert felt more than a twinge of annoyance. Even an innocent child had observed that Edward’s allegiance was to Catlin, not him. And what reason would Catlin have to visit the cottagers, with or without Edward, leaving little Leonia to perform the duties his wife should have been at home to
carry out?

He forced a smile to his face and drew a stool close to his chair. ‘Come, child, sit down here and tell me all you’ve been doing. Have you spent the gold piece I gave you to make up for not bringing you something pretty from London?’

She ignored the stool he’d made ready for her and instead slid onto his lap. Putting an arm round his neck, she wriggled her buttocks over his thighs
to get herself into a comfortable position. She kicked her legs out straight in front of her.

‘I bought new shoes. Do you like them, Père?’

Her slender feet were clad in soft leather that cradled the ankles. The slit down the front was closed by three horn buttons. The toes were pointed, the points not nearly as long as those worn by Robert, but the height of fashion for a woman. Each shoe was
decorated with piercing in the form of an ouroboros, a snake devouring its own tail.

‘Charming . . . but did not the cordwainer have something more . . .’ Robert hesitated, unwilling to hurt her feelings. ‘Flowers, perhaps.’

Leonia gazed down, flexing her toes so that the snakes seemed to undulate over her feet. ‘I asked him to make the snakes. I like them, don’t you, Père? I didn’t want to
look like all the other women.’ She turned a beaming smile on him.

‘Trust me, my dear, you will always stand out from them.’

She tilted her head to one side, her eyes filled with anxiety. ‘Is it because I’m ugly? Mother says I am very plain.’

Robert frowned. ‘That’s nonsense. You’re the prettiest child I’ve ever known and you are surely going to flower into a most beautiful woman, one day.’

Robert was not given to praising children. His own parents had never done so and he, like them, believed it spoiled a child’s character to be petted or told they were clever or handsome. He probably would not have complimented Leonia on this occasion, however pretty he thought her, had he not been so annoyed with Catlin that he would have said anything to contradict her.

He reached up and rubbed
a lock of Leonia’s hair between his finger and thumb, bringing it to his nose to smell the sweet perfume of damask roses that clung to it. ‘For one thing, you have these glossy black curls, just like satin.’

A radiant smile lit Leonia’s face. She kissed his cheek, snuggling into him. He was glad he’d made her smile again.

‘Then,’ he said, running a finger lightly over the back of her hand, ‘there
is your golden skin, the colour of the sweetest honey.’