‘You may take it to the miller and his family.’
‘The miller?’
‘Yes.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Nathaniel? Simon? Martin?’
‘Simon.’
‘Yes, yes. I hear he is taken sick and I am tired out from walking all the way to the far side of the marshes,’ he mutters. ‘With God’s blessing,’ he adds quickly.
‘I could spare a bowl,’ I say, wondering if he truly means me to give away the whole lot and have nothing to eat myself. ‘But I made it for you.’
‘Then you have wasted your time, mistress,’ he says, shrugging off his cloak, which smells like a wet ewe.
It sprawls across the bench. He stares at it until I pick it up, shake it off and hang it on its hook.
‘Does the scent of rabbit displease you?’ I ask, knowing it does not. His eyes are glued to the pot, even if he thinks I am too stupid to notice.
‘Of course not. Your cooking is quite sufficient. But it is Thursday evening.’
‘Yes?’
I must sound truly confused, for he smiles. He always smiles when I do not understand what he has said. I wonder whether he does it on purpose.
‘So I cannot eat flesh.’
‘Thursday is not a fasting day,’ I say, a little uncertainly, for the good Lord may have changed His mind this morning and added Thursday to the dense thicket of days when meat may not be eaten.
‘It is past Compline. I did not think to be so late. But the widow would keep me …’ He draws in a steadying breath. ‘May the Saint bless her and keep her. So it is the eve of Friday. As a man of God, I must fast.’
I look at him. He looks at me. I am not convinced: he looks far too pleased with this act of piety for my taste. But there is nothing I can say. I return to the hearth and set to heating the porray left over from this morning. I consider adding a piece of the rabbit to it, but he would notice and I would get another sermon. I stir the mush so angrily some of it flies out of the pot and lands on the rushes.
I watch the spilled oatmeal dry out. I could scrape it off the floor and put it into his bowl. It is hardly a sin. He says neither a word of praise nor condemnation about the food I cook, whether it is the best dish I ever made or something I hurled into the pot without thinking. I doubt he’d notice if I seasoned his victuals with sheep dung. I know these thoughts come from the Tempter and I should pray, but today I am not in a prayerful mood. I continue to stir, feeling very sorry for myself.
When I first came here, I prepared victuals with the shy hand of a maid who loved and hoped for it to be returned. I thought my store of affection was enough to last many a lean winter, but I was wrong. It has shrivelled away so quickly. I look into the pot. Steam rises off the surface and warms my face with its gentle touch. I hover there a while longer, feel water pool beneath my tongue.
I shape my lips, part them slightly and watch spittle fall in a silver string. It rests on the surface of the pottage, the size of a small coin. I could pretend it is a mistake, one I did not intend to make. But I intend every bit of it. One movement of the ladle and it is gone. No, not gone: hidden. How I will smile if he praises his supper, tonight of all nights! Only I know it is there, and I will watch him eat.
VIXEN
I am sitting in the arms of an oak, picking shreds of rabbit meat out of my teeth when I see them: a flight of starlings moving as one bird, a banner turning the morning dark. I watch the play of their flight. I never tire of the tales they write upon the clouds: marvellous stories of where they have been and the wonders they have witnessed.
I feel that mix of wistfulness that I have no wings to spread and join them, yet happy that my journeys are conducted in solitude and not subject to the squabbling whim of birds. I am so wrapped in the drowsy distraction of a full belly that it takes me a while to realise that something is amiss. Their flapping is troubled, unlike their usual joyous dance. They cast themselves raggedly across the sky, first one way and then the other.
Their cries fill the sky and in them I seem to hear: Come close; follow and we will tell. Half-words, half-news and I must know the whole. The last thing I want to do is venture from the safety of the forest and any closer to the village squatting a stone’s throw away. But something pulls me, like iron to a lodestone.
I slide from my perch, scrambling down fast as a squirrel. My attention is so fixed on the birds that I almost trip over the body stretched across the path. I leap away shrieking, and hear a dry chuckle above my head. Some would say it’s no more than the rattling of rook’s beaks, but I know better.
‘Very funny,’ I grumble. ‘I suppose that’s your idea of a joke?’
The man’s arms are stretched out as though nailed to the earth; back arched upwards, his body a bow that Death pulled back and never released. I don’t want to look at him. I cannot take my eyes away.
His scrip is gutted, any coins long gone. His boots must have been fine, for they too have been stolen. His cap bears a leaden badge and just out of reach of his clawing fingers is a tiny book: face down, wings spread, prayers melting into the dirt.
Don’t you want to step a little closer? whispers my old friend. Smell the roses I have planted in his throat?
I don’t need to be a clerk to read this riddle. His flesh is swollen, eyes thrusting from his head, mouth gaping in its final shriek and gagged by the thick tongue bloating between his lips. The pustules at his throat broke open long ago and are congealed with black ooze.
I am muffled in silence, as though the forest is stuffing her fingers into her ears. I wonder if this is what the birds want to show me. I squint through the branches, a dart of disappointment that I have lost them, then spy the flock heading west. The call to be away is clear. I set my shoulders straight, leap over the pilgrim’s carcase and follow them out of the trees.
I keep pace as best I can: running alongside streams and ducking under hedgerows in case I should meet some worthy peasant who takes it upon himself to ask difficult questions of a strange girl wandering where she shouldn’t.
The starlings reel in the direction of the sea, a bowshot distant, chattering, We know what’s coming! Follow us and we’ll tell all! I skirt the village and chase them into the saltmarsh, a scribble of whip-grass and vetch heavy with the brackish reek of sedges. There’s not so much as a bush to provide cover. My feet itch to be back in the forest, my neck prickling with the fear some man is watching. But curiosity drags me forwards. I must know.
‘Come on,’ I growl. ‘If you’ve got something to say, be done with it.’
The mere is raked with drainage ditches, digging their talons through the mud. Weak sunlight catches the surface of the water, turning them from black to silver, silver to black. I jump into one, scuttle along out of sight.
After a few minutes I meet a water rat dashing in the opposite direction, fur sticking out in a shock of frizz. The only thing they fear are dogs, and where there’s a dog there’s a man soon after. I crouch low in the cutting, sending silent thanks to the fleeing creature for its warning. My ears are cocked for barking, for the snuffling of a wet nose on the scent, the encouraging shouts of its master; but there’s nothing save the racket of birds heading further into the marsh.
More water rats bounce past on tiny paws, then a pair of otters, all running inland. The hindmost otter pauses and hops onto her hindquarters. She peers at me and sniffs.
‘What’s afoot?’ I ask her. She pats her broad paws together. ‘That’s right. Tell your old friend. What’s all this business with the birds? I’ve never seen such a commotion.’
For answer, she ruffles her whiskers and dives back into the waterway. With a flick of her tail she catches up with her mate and is gone. I can’t help but laugh. I have always found the beasts of the field far better company than men. The breeze stiffens and I curse myself for leaving my over-tunic in the fork of the tree. I press on, shivering in under-tunic and half-hose.
The starlings continue to swirl, crashing into each other with such force that they
tumble to earth in a sprawl of feathers. I trip over snapped bodies: beetle-wing eyes already dim, the tips of their beaks pointing in the same direction, towards the sea. They are not alone. A wild parliament of birds is gathering there.
Lapwings brush the earth with their bellies, curlews flipping over like cakes on a hot stone. A pair of swans thrash their necks so furiously I think they will snap. Even rooks have joined the throng, drawn from the forest as urgently as myself. The air roughens with the okokok of geese, the clattering of oystercatchers, the booming of bitterns, a hubbub of squawking and screeching. In the melee, more and more collide and plummet, raining down until the earth is pillowed with plumage.
‘What do you want?’ I shout. ‘Why have you brought me here?’
At my words, the company falls silent. They stretch their wingtips and pause, hanging in the thickening air. It is the matter of a moment. Then, as if by some unknown command, they draw together like the fingers of a giant hand, from the greatest to the smallest, till they are one flock. Not one touches the other, not by so much as a tail-feather.
With stately grace they form a circle the breadth of the heavens: no haste, no sound, even the beating of their wings muted. They glide round and round in a dizzying arc, the maelstrom so thick as to make the morning dark as evenfall. I watch open-mouthed, and in the silence I see what is coming. To the west, massing over the sea, is a mountain of cloud, black as the bottom of a well and greater than any I have ever seen.
‘A storm?’ I yell at the birds. ‘Is that all? You dragged me out of my warm, comfortable tree to tell me it’s going to rain?’
I shake my fist and a bellyful of seagull shit lands on my head. I run my hands through my stinking hair, cursing shitty-arsed birds the world over. My fingers tangle in filth.
‘Why me?’ I yell, dripping with half-digested fish. ‘What did I ever do to you?’
The gulls laugh, a raucous rattle like a stick dragged along a gate. A black-faced bird unpicks itself from the whirlpool of wings and dives so close to my head that I have to crouch to escape its attack. It swoops away without striking. Another does the same, and another, buffeting my head with salt air. I have seen birds mob a cat before, and have laughed mightily at the sport. Now the tables are turned and it is not in the least amusing. Drops of rain strike my shoulders, save it is not rain, it is more bird shit. All join in, pelting me with muck.
‘I hate you!’ I shriek. ‘I’ll kill every one of you! I’ll set fire to every nest and burn your hatchlings to cinders! I’ll burn down the forest and you in it!’
Egg-killer! they shriek. Murderer of our children!
I see the empty nests, all their generations gulped down my gullet. ‘I was hungry!’ I whine.
They make one more turn of their grand dance. The smallest are the first to leave: sparrows and wrens head back to their hedgerows, followed by the larks, the thrushes, the blackbirds, the plovers, the fieldfares, the magpies, unravelling themselves one by one from the tight-wound skein of quill and claw until only the gulls remain, chuckling at the joke I am beginning to understand. I was the fox. Now I am become the quarry.
I look up at the jaundice-yellow sky. I’ll have to take to my heels if I’m going to outrun the storm back to the forest, for it is coming in fast. I hear the cracking of a distant tree, pulling up its roots and crashing through the frail arms of its brothers as it falls to earth. But there are no trees: it the sound of approaching thunder.
I take no more than three paces before the rain begins in earnest. At least it’ll wash off the muck, I think. I race along and soon come upon the drainage channel, now churning with orange water. I can’t believe it is full so quick, for the downpour has barely started.
It is too dangerous to crawl within, so I crouch and run alongside, comforting myself with the knowledge that no other person will be so mad as to venture out in this weather. I am a fool to be so caught, and counsel myself over and over never to follow the flight of birds again, for they bring nothing but trouble.
‘You bastard birds!’ I shout, and am rewarded with another splat on my arm. ‘Ha! Missed my head!’ I cry, and a volley lands on my shoulder.
The marshland is a blur, rain pouring so heavily that I swear it goes up my nose. I am grateful for the straight line of the ditch, guiding me back inland, but the next step thrusts me into mud up to the knee. I sink further and only just manage to drag my foot out. Somehow, I have followed the ditch in the wrong direction and am at the sea’s edge. Rusty water spews into the estuary.
I throw myself backwards and gasp on the quaking edge of the morass. I shove down the shock and remind myself that I have made a simple mistake and gone towards the sea rather than away from it. All I need do is retrace my steps and all will be well.
I turn about and make my way as swiftly as I can, which is not that fast, for the ground sucks at my feet as though unwilling to release me from its grasp. I fortify myself with the thought that soon I will come upon a hedgerow that betokens solid ground. But the ditch is met by two more: one leading to the right and one to the left. It is impossible to see further than five paces in either direction. I hop from sodden foot to foot, the earth softening dangerously as I loiter.
I set off to the left but go barely twenty paces when I am knee-deep in sludge again. I head back, bent beneath the downpour, but all is mud this way also. I have no choice but to strike out across the wasteland and pray that I can hold a straight line away from the sea.
The earth quivers like a haystack soaked by a week’s rain. The wind leaps in front of me and slaps my face; I turn and it flings mud into my eye, tearing up clods of earth and hurling them past my ears, twisting me round and round in a game of hoodman blind. Bulrushes uproot themselves and fly past, lashing my body in wet rope.
The storm gathers itself and howls. I am so drenched that I do not know where the rain ends and I begin, my eyes so thick with dirt I’ve no idea which way is up or down. I trudge, half blind, through marshland that is indistinguishable from the estuary mudflats. I no longer know if I am walking into the sea or away from it.
The wind gives me a final clout, knocking me face-forwards into slime. I give in to it. The land was here before me and will be here after I have gone. I have done less than stir the grass upon its face. Of the one hundred deaths I imagined for myself, not one of them was in a filthy puddle in the middle of a swamp.
PRIME
1349
From Saint Alban the Martyr to Saint Mildred
THOMAS OF UPCOTE
When Anne told me a storm was coming, I chastised her, for the spring gales were long past. She raised her eyebrow, quit the house and I lay awake the whole night listening to thunder boom like a sail.
At last the night seeped away, but the dawn was so stifled with cloud I needed a rush-light to find my clogs. Anne came through the door, head bundled in a shawl.
‘I am here, sir. I was with my mother. She was sore afraid. I beseech you, forgive me.’
I smiled at her childishness. ‘I am not angry, mistress. I am glad you are returned safe.’
She fetched me ale, chattering about the weather while I prepared myself for Lauds. The wind had dropped and the sky flapped with mewing gulls tossed inland. The track beside the church slurred with mud, and my heart sorrowed to see the cottages torn so cruelly. I feared for the people, but they were as merry as kids, thronging the path to the fields.
‘Did you see the moon last night, Father? How swollen and red it was.’
‘It presaged a calamity.’
‘No, good luck.’
‘I have never heard such terrible thunder.’
‘I thought this world was brought to an end!’
‘You seem very merry,’ I remarked. There were so many names for me to remember.
‘We are safe, Father.’
‘The Saint protected us, did he not?’
‘We were spared. Not one of us lost.’
‘May God in His mercy send us a good world!’ declared an
other.
I consoled myself in their faith, and resolved to be cheerful with them. After I had said the Office, I followed them to the Great Field, striped with water like rubbed pewter. The common paths were blotted out, and trees turned their roots upwards as though terrified. Stinking mud lay over everything. Above, clouds strung tidemarks across the sky.
I thanked God for the calmness of the morning: thus did He reward Noah after his stormy journey, granting him peace and fruitfulness afterwards. I stored this neat idea in my mind, congratulating myself that it would serve as a theme for my next sermon.
‘I hear the cart-way between Bideford and Appledore is nearly swept away,’ cried one fellow, dragging a hay sledge after him.
‘The causeway at Crow Point also.’
‘Many acres of country are drowned.’
‘But no men.’
I praised the Saint for this miracle. I had feared greatly for souls caught at sea, for their boats would have been chewed to pottage.
The whole village was there, eager to see what wonders had been delivered in the night. I ploughed in their wake through tangled marsh-grass. A great quantity of fish had been cast up, still gasping and leaping upon the earth, and the people rushed about, gathering them in baskets.
They were as happy as children on a feast day, men and women alike stripped of their lower garments. But they were unabashed: the slime was thick as winter hose. All the while they ran to show me some new wonder: a piece of broken wood of great size, an iron bucket with its side broken in by the force of the waters, a strange quaking fish with a mouth wide as my foot.
I ventured further, inspecting the ditches and broken hurdles, but the dykes had held in most part. The water sucked and swallowed, gargling between the piled mud banks, which men were already repairing. I took a shovel and leapt down, and began to dig out the channel with the rest of them.
‘You should let me do that, Father,’ said one. ‘It is not work for a man of God.’ He grasped the handle of my spade.
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