‘She’s gone,’ he moans disconsolately and I think he might start wailing again.
I had no idea he was such a big booby. By the Saint, Alice can have him with my blessing.
‘She has not gone,’ I say, with such glib ease I am sure the Maid’s skill of invention on the spur of the moment must be rubbing off on me. ‘She is praying. For strength,’ I add. ‘When she gives gifts of healing, it makes her very tired.’
He wipes his nose on his sleeve and sniffs noisily. ‘I gave her nothing in return!’ he wails. ‘I must go back—’
‘No, cousin!’ I say quickly. I clasp his arm and squeeze it firmly, to reassure him and also to steer him away more swiftly.
‘But I must!’
I rack my brains and am struck with inspiration: how I can please the Maid with the thing she most needs. What we need, if we are to be away. It strikes me then, fully. If she goes, I want nothing more than to be with her.
‘Next time,’ I whisper. ‘Bring a coin. That will suffice.’
I accompany him as far as the ford, basket over my arm. He dawdles by the water, eyes singeing holes into the back of my gown as I hasten eastwards to the Staple. I have helped him. I have also helped myself, and the Maid. I did not lie, but what I said felt nothing like any truth I have spoken before. I have set foot into a new country, and it is strange and unsettling.
I’ve barely crossed the Staple bridge and stepped through the west gate when a lump of mud flies past my ear. I turn and see the little brat that threw it. He stands with his feet apart, sticking out his tongue. His mother scowls at me rather than at him.
‘Is this how you treat visitors?’ I say, when she shows no sign of chiding him.
‘We have no visitors. Nor want them.’
‘That’s a fine welcome.’
‘It’s all you’ll get. Where are you from?’ she asks, with a sharp edge to the question.
‘From Brauntone.’
She sniffs and spits on the ground. The child lets out a wheezing sound I realise is a chuckle.
‘So you say. But you could be lying. You could have crept in from the east, all full of the fever. That’s why we’ve barred the east gate. There’s no one left breathing that way.’
I wrench my coif to one side and show the skin at my throat. ‘See? Clean. Unmarked. I’ve no need to creep.’ I wave the basket and she takes a step back, makes the sign of the Cross. ‘See this? Full of relics from the Maid of Brauntone herself.’
She tosses her head in a gesture that could mean she cares not one whit for my words, or could be the way a horse jerks its head when alarmed. It comes to me that she lives in fear, and I do not. Such a simple realisation, but it cuts my breath in half. I have spent so long thinking myself hard done by because Thomas is not the man I wanted him to be, because I have no child to call me mama, because I do not dine on fine meats, because of this, because of that. Yet here I stand, free of the terror that crouches in this woman’s heart. I straighten my back, burrow my fingers into the basket and pull out a rag.
‘For you,’ I say.
I don’t know why I am being kind to this sourpuss, but since the Maid came to me I have grown in generosity. Her nostrils flare.
‘It stinks,’ she sneers.
‘Take it, don’t take it, it makes no odds. But the Maid says it is proof against the fever.’
A few days ago I would have doubted my words. The Maid may be deceitful, fickle and inconstant as water, yet in this there is no falsehood. The woman snatches the linen from my hand and gawps at it. I raise my skirt an inch or two to show where I’ve bound one round each ankle. She laughs mockingly, but neither does she cast my gift to the ground.
‘Give me another,’ she snaps. ‘One for each leg.’
As she knots them, a gaggle of passers-by stop and stare. Like the woman, they scoff at first, but all the same they want their share. It takes all my strength not to have the basket snatched out of my hands, for there is a panic in these folk I’ve not seen before.
‘Enough. The basket is empty,’ I cry, shaking it upside down. ‘Wait!’ I call as they start to walk away. ‘I seek Catherine, wife of Henry. The farrier.’
‘I don’t know him,’ says the surly woman, more kind-hearted now. ‘But try by the north gate, up towards Pilton. That’s where you’ll find the smithies.’
As I turn north, a man dashes to my side and plucks at my sleeve.
‘My wife says you have relics from the Maid,’ he pants, nodding at my basket.
‘They have all gone. Come to Brauntone. There are plenty to be had.’ I shake him off and continue.
‘Where are you going?’ he calls after me.
‘To my sister.’
‘I know her house.’ He rolls his eyes sideways.
‘You know my sister?’ I ask.
‘Of course, of course. Come on.’ He does not take his attention from the basket.
‘Where does she live?’ I say.
‘This way. Hurry now.’
‘Why should I hurry?’
He glances left to right and right again, head bobbing like a shuttle. I fold my arms.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Who?’ he asks, tugging his beard.
‘My sister. The one you’re taking me to.’
He lets out a squawk and flies at me; or rather flies at the basket and tries to grapple it from my hands. I crack him over the head with it and he crumples to his knees as though I’ve hit him with an anvil. He sobs, rocking back and forth.
‘Please,’ he whimpers. ‘Please.’
Snot dribbles from his nose, making his beard sticky. I roll back a sleeve, untie the band about my wrist, and give it to him.
‘That’s all I have.’
I expect him to run off, but he weeps even more wildly, hugging it to his breast like a baby and crying, Please, please, over and over. Folk scuttle past as though they cannot see him, just as a stream rushes around a rock in its path without pausing. At the end of the street I turn and he is still there, moaning.
I make my way without further interruptions, asking directions from folk as I go. Despite their suggestions, the streets tangle like a ball of yarn that a cat has got hold of. Thomas’s house is the grandest in our village, but shrivels when compared to some of the palaces I see: houses with glass at the windows, doors speckled with iron rivets, fastened with hefty bolts. I wonder what it must be like to live in a place where a man needs to keep his door locked against his neighbour.
The further I walk northwards, the less the buildings puff themselves out. I am sure I end up walking in circles, for it takes almost as long to find Cat as it did to walk the six miles to the Staple. It is a relief when I find her house, a comfortable-looking place, not overly proud of itself. I stand on the threshold and call her name.
‘Sister, it is me!’ I shout louder when I get no answer.
There’s a thump of something dropped, a cry of irritation. My sister, all right. I step within without needing to duck my head, the lintel is so towering high. Cat dashes into the room, her hair half-braided. She wipes her hands on her skirt with such force it is as though she is angry with them.
‘What? Who is it?’ she barks.
She squints her eyes and I realise she cannot see my face with the light behind me, so I close the door and step closer.
‘Oh,’ she says, the furious pout falling away.
‘My dearest Cat. Beloved sister,’ I exclaim, the words bursting from me with a passion I never felt before.
We fall into each other’s arms and I find tears leaping to my eyes. I stick my nose deep into her hair and breathe her in. She hugs me tight, but breaks the embrace before I do and holds me at arm’s length.
‘Look at you,’ she says, eyes bright. ‘Look at my little sister. By the Saint, Nan. I did not know you. You are – taller.’
She repeats herself a few more times and I have no desire to stop her, for I cannot remember when I heard her so affectionate. After a while, we become more
composed. She draws me to one side, bids me sit and brings a cup of ale. She sits also, taking my hand in hers and squeezing. But I have no desire to prattle about the weather, so I drain the cup, set it down and am all business.
‘Is there trouble?’ she asks, her face returning to its usual serious self.
I consider the question. There is a world of trouble without, but not the sort she means.
‘Mother is well, Father is well,’ I say.
She crosses herself. ‘Praise the Saint. Praise our Holy Mother Mary. But? I know there is a “but”, Nan.’
‘Of course there is. It’s why I am here. I will not talk of Death in case he hears us, but all the same, I have something for you. It is proof against the fever.’
I reach beneath my skirt and untie the rags around my ankles. I hand them to her and she wrinkles her nose.
‘Yes, yes. The smell.’ I flap my hand to brush away her objections. ‘I would not walk all the way here and all the way back simply to give you some pointless piece of nonsense.’
There is a pause. ‘Listen to you. You’ve changed. Grown up. I like it, Nan. Has Thomas become a man at last?’
‘Not a bit of it,’ I say and am surprised by the lack of anger in my voice. ‘Margret was right about him. Everyone was.’ I find myself smiling. ‘Thomas is as far from me as Exeter, and a good thing too.’
‘I’ve not seen you for so long. No word. No news.’ Her eyes widen. ‘I thought you were angry with me. Thought you’d grown too high for your own sister.’
‘Never!’ I cry. ‘The truth of it is that I am not allowed visitors. It is one of Thomas’s little ways.’
‘Ah. I begin to understand.’
‘Yes, I have been foolish.’ I clasp my hands around hers. ‘Cat. You were right: I was a spoiled and peevish child.’
‘Nan—’
I hold up my hand. ‘I thought the whole world and everything in it was mine by right. By the Saint, I must have been unbearable.’
‘Oh, Nan.’
‘My dear sister, I am here to say that I am sorry. With all this death around us – well. Let us say there are more pressing considerations than Anne wants this and Anne wants that.’ I smile to show my lightness of heart. ‘I do not wish to fritter away the remainder of my days being selfish. I have made mistakes, not least imagining a life with a priest that was built on clouds. I no longer wish to be that stupid girl. Let us be at peace as I strive to grow into a cleverer woman.’
She begins to cry. The years of bickering ease their burden. I press the linen into her hand.
‘Do you believe this will help?’ she sniffs.
‘I have seen it do its work. I wear it.’ I show the remaining band at my wrist.
‘Then I shall do so also.’
I am about to say that I must hurry back because Thomas will be moaning for his supper, but the truth is that he is not the one drawing me back to the village. Cat looks about to ask a question, so I get in first to steer us to easier subjects. Although the Maid is not here to eavesdrop, I shall prove that I can keep her secrets.
‘Where is your boy?’ I ask.
‘Asleep. I’d just managed to get him down when you arrived. I dropped a jug and thought it’d set him howling, but he didn’t stir. Come.’
She takes my hand and draws me into the solar, the size of Thomas’s private room, but so different. Pegs and hooks cover every inch of the wall, hung with a jumble of cloaks, gowns, towels and tunics. The floor is strewn with wooden animals. She bends and retrieves a horse just as I am about to tread on it.
‘Careful. You’ll break your ankle. By the Saint, I do the same myself ten times a day,’ she says cheerfully.
I turn the creature over in my hand. When I tug the string running through it, its tail flaps up and down.
‘It is pretty.’
‘Father made it. All of them.’
I see my father: broad hands fashioning this tiny beast, down to the curled lip, pricked ears, the hair of the mane picked out with an awl. Her boy sprawls on the mattress, legs flung apart in sleep. Cat leans over, smoothes the hair growing long over his ears. He snuffles but does not wake; chest rising and falling with the rabbit-quick breath of infants.
‘I leave the toys scattered on purpose,’ says Cat quietly. ‘If Death comes in, he’ll trip and snap his neck. It is a silly notion.’ She turns fierce eyes to me. ‘But I would fight Death with my bare hands if he tried to take my son.’
Her kiss when we part is far warmer than that which greeted me. She hugs me to her breast.
‘Oh, my dear little Nan,’ she gasps, her voice hiccupy. ‘Be not so long before you come again.’
We weep like babes, for all that we are full-grown.
‘I shall not. I swear it. By the Saint, I swear it.’
It is a promise I am determined to keep.
VIXEN
When the deaths begin, it is like an outpouring of held breath.
‘It’s Simon. The miller,’ says Anne one morning, dashing into the stable. ‘His son. The youngest.’
She paces from one side of the stable to the other then back again, fiddling with her kerchief. It looks neat enough to me. Her gaze swims around the walls, the floor. I do not ask what she is talking of, nor do I need to.
‘Thomas says it’s river-fever,’ she continues, and at last she looks at me. ‘He won’t—’
‘No, he won’t,’ I say, quietly, and watch her anguish fade a little.
She takes a deep breath. ‘I must go to them.’
‘We will go.’
A smile lifts the corners of her mouth for a moment, but is swallowed quickly. I am half-ready: I’ve smudged charcoal around my eyes and am draped in one of the good sheets, my head stuck through a hole I snipped in its middle. I spit on my hands and run them through my cropped hair to make it stick out. Anne watches me twist the tangles into points.
‘You look like a hedgehog.’
‘So?’
‘Isn’t it a bit much?’ She waves her hand, encompassing my head, my blackened eyes, the sheet. ‘When you raise your arms it looks like—’
‘Wings? I know.’
She presses her lips together. ‘The people will think—’
‘That I’m an angel?’
‘Not exactly. But I fear you take them for fools.’ She skewers me with a look. ‘Do you?’
I take her hand. ‘Anne. When I first showed you my talisman, what did you think?’ She lowers her eyes. ‘Tell me honestly.’
‘I thought it filthy,’ she whispers.
‘Yes, you did. And rightly too.’ She glances up through her eyelashes. ‘Do you think I relish this smell? Do you think I’ll paddle in horse piss once the Great Dying has run its course?’
‘No?’ she asks.
‘Of course I won’t. I’ll bathe for a week to get the stink out, for it has soaked me to the bone. Until then – I do not mock the villagers, but they need more persuading than you and will listen to an angel a lot sooner than to a plain lass. The faster they do what I tell them, the more they’ll be helped. There is no time to waste on philosophy.’
‘Very well,’ she says.
She arranges me like Gabriel himself and we go out of the stable on to the street. Anne strides ahead, basketful of rags over one arm. It is not difficult to find the way. The wailing guides us, the sound of grief so unbearable that it can loosen a man’s knees and make him lean on the nearest wall to hold himself steady. I have no desire to breathe in that misery, but Anne looks at me sternly.
‘Remember, we can help.’
A wattle gate halfway up the street flaps open and the man called Simon is borne out of the hut by two lads, one beneath each armpit as you would do a wounded soldier. He shakes them off and staggers towards Anne. The villagers shrink away, but Anne stands her ground and claps her hands on his shoulders. There is a sucking-in of breath: she touches him despite the stench of fever. He gulps air like a man who has swum up from the depths of a pond.
‘Where i
s she?’ he croaks, blinking at Anne. ‘The Maid,’ he adds. ‘If she had been here, my boy might—’
It is time for me to play my part. I gather my courage, step forward and speak.
‘People.’
It is a single word, and I speak it quietly, but it cuts through the thicket of babbling. They turn towards me as one and gasp at my outlandish appearance, mouths flopping open. I raise my arms.
‘People,’ I repeat.
Simon totters in my direction. ‘Why were you not here?’ he cries. ‘My little one. My babe—’
‘I am with you now. You should have called me right away,’ I add, gruffly.
‘Oh, God,’ cries Simon and falls back into the arms of the youths, who struggle to bear him upright. ‘Protect us now, Maid! Save us!’
‘Did you sweep your house free of straw?’ I say.
‘No,’ he whimpers.
‘I instructed you. Did I not instruct you?’
‘You did!’ he wails.
I glower at him for the length of time it would take to drink a cup of ale. Then I turn my eyes upon the rest of them and fix them with the same scorching glance. If cozening won’t make them take note, then harsh words will have to do. I find Geoffrey in the shivering herd and scald him with a glare.
‘Did I not entrust you with this task? To tell the people?’
Geoffrey hurls himself on to his face, crying, ‘Mercy, mercy!’
‘Do not deny it!’ I shout. ‘I warned you!’
‘Oh, Maid!’ he snivels. ‘I tried! They called me a fool!’
There is a pause, and no sound fills it. Even the birds hold their beaks shut. I suck in a strengthening breath.
‘You must do this.’
They fall to their knees, muttering contrition and wringing their hands. When I judge they have knelt long enough, I hold up a hand and cut the noise short as fast as a good knife through meat.
‘Will you do as I say now?’
‘Oh God, yes!’ they cry.
I point to Anne, who holds up the basket. ‘Take these,’ I bark. ‘Tie them around the throat of everyone in your house. Ankles, wrists. Sweep the floor as I command you. No straw. Soak the earth with the stale of horses.’
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