But Raffe knew the name of Faramond only too well. Elena had repeated it when she had spoken of the conversation she'd overheard in the manor. It was this Faramond Hugh had come to meet the night the Santa Katarina burned. That louse Hugh had fought for John once, and been rewarded well for it too, but he thought nothing of betraying him to the French.
There was silence for a moment, then the Frenchman persisted, You are sure Faramond did not make land?'
'Tell me about him,' Raffe said. 'Friend of yours, was he?'
'I did not have the pleasure of meeting him myself, though he was known to me. But if he was betrayed, how am I to know I will not be also? These boatmen you hired, you trust them? They are loyal to our cause?'
'I don't work for your cause!' Raffe blazed. 'I am doing this only because I must. As for the boatmen, they're loyal to gold. And that's the only loyalty you can count on in most men these days.'
'And what of these men I am sent to meet?' the Frenchman asked quietly.
'I told you, I know no one,' Raffe said.
It was all he could do to stop himself adding that if he did, they would already be in irons. But he was supposed to be helping this little piece of French shit. Lady Anne's life and his own depended on delivering him safely to Norwich. Raffe had to disguise his loathing for another few hours at least.
Raffe glanced over at the little Frenchman. 'I don't even know your name. What would you have me call you — spy? In spite of his resolve Raffe couldn't help himself loading the word with the disgust he felt.
The bench creaked as the Frenchman shifted his weight. 'Martin,' he said without any sign that he had taken offence at the word.
Raffe hesitated. Could he ask this Frenchman directly if he was coming to meet Hugh? If he admitted to it, then it would be the proof Raffe needed that Hugh really was the traitor. But if Hugh found out Raffe was asking about him, before Raffe was able to act on the information, he could easily turn the tables on him. No one would take the word of a man like Raffe over that of a nobleman. Besides, Hugh had already been to the brothel once; what if he did remember where he'd seen Elena before and realized she was the girl who had been listening outside that room the night he talked of Faramond? One word that he was suspected might be all it would take to convince Hugh that Elena was a threat to his life and had to be silenced. Raffe couldn't risk that.
The Frenchman's gaze darted once more round the room as if he was trying to memorize all the doors and windows in case of attack. Finally, ignoring the empty pallet, he drew his legs up on to the bench and settled himself in the corner, prepared to sit out the night. He made no attempt to extinguish the oil lamp, so finally Raffe was forced to rise once more and blow it out, leaving only the faint ruby-red glow of the damped-down fire to give any shape to the tiny room.
Outside the little alehouse in Yarmouth, the thunder of the sea grew louder. The narrow Row funnelled the sound from the beach, so that it seemed as if the waves were breaking against the little house itself. The wind dashed sand and stone against its wooden walls, shaking the shutters like a child in a tantrum demanding to be allowed in. Still hunched in the corner of the bench, Martin didn't stir. Raffe, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself, finally drifted into a restless sleep.
He wasn't sure how long he'd slept, but he was jerked awake by something crashing against the wooden wall of the house. The roar of the wind and waves seemed even louder than before, but Raffe could have sworn he heard something else outside, a high-pitched cry, like the shrieking of gulls. But gulls didn't fly at night.
The room was in complete darkness. Even the glow of the fire had vanished. Raffe reached out his hand to adjust the cloak that covered him, and stifled a cry as he felt an icy wetness beneath his fingers. He tried to struggle up from the pallet and promptly slipped sideways with a splash. The floor was awash with water. It wasn't deep, just two or three inches at the most, but it had trickled into the fire pit, extinguishing the embers. He could smell the wet, acrid smoke.
Raffe splashed through the freezing water, cursing vehemently as he blundered into the table and scraped his shins against a bench. He groped along the wall until he felt the edge of the casement and unfastened the shutter of the tiny square window. The wind almost tore the thick wood from his hand. At first he couldn't make sense of what he saw. The ground outside was writhing as if the earth itself was unravelling. Then something black reared up, crashing into white foam inches from his face. The Row was deep in water, waves were being driven up the street, between the houses. The sea was surging in.
Almost blinded by the stinging spray, Raffe struggled to close the shutter, but as he fought with the wind, he became aware of something else. There were figures moving along the Row in the black water. It was so dark that it was hard to make out what they were, but he saw a hand pale against the oily water, a face half turned towards him made blurry by his watering eyes. Fishermen trying to reach their homes? Men trying to rescue the stranded? Raffe didn't know, but it was madness to be out there in this storm. How any man could stand against that surge was beyond his understanding.
He finally managed to slam the shutter against the wind. He groped for one of the benches and swung himself on to it, pulling up his legs as the Frenchman had done. His soaking feet were numb with cold. The water didn't seem to be rising too quickly. The heavy tarred door was doing its job well, but water was seeping in from somewhere, probably up through the floor itself, or else oozing through cracks between the tarred planks of the walls.
The timbers of the house creaked and groaned as the waves surged past it. Raffe found himself wondering how much it could withstand. If it started to collapse, it would go very quickly. They'd be crushed by the timbers. Would it be safer to be outside with those men? Were they fleeing collapsed homes? The walls trembled as the wind beat itself against them, shrieking with frustration and fury, as if the demons in hell were hurling themselves at the house.
Then he heard it, a fist beating on the thick wooden door. The sound was muffled, but there was no mistaking someone was knocking.
'Let me in. For pity's sake, let me in!'
The anguish in the voice was so terrible that Raffe found himself swinging his legs down before he remembered the alewife's instruction not to open the door to anyone. He pulled his legs up again.
The hammering came again. 'Let me in! Merciful heaven, I'm drowning. I'm drowning!'
Raffe tried to ignore it. There were other voices out there, raised above the wind, all begging and whimpering. He knew they were struggling in that freezing water, clinging on to anything they could grasp, desperate not to be dragged back into the raging sea.
'Let me in. I've been betrayed. You must let me in. They tried to kill me.'
Raffe glanced up at the ceiling. Was the alewife lying awake up there listening to the cries? Could she hear them above the wind?
The voice outside rose higher, shrieking desperately to make itself heard. 'Have mercy on me. I'm so cold, so very cold. I cannot bear it. For pity's sake, don't leave me out here in the dark.'
The fist hammered frantically against the door. The man outside was sobbing, screaming. Raffe could stand it no longer. He struggled to his feet, splashing across the room, and with numb hands tried to trace where the bracing beam was positioned in its brackets. He began to wriggle it loose, and had almost succeeded when he felt an ice-cold hand grasp his.
'No, no!' Martin shrieked at him. 'What are you doing? You must not open it.'
Raffe shrugged the hand off. 'Can't you hear him? A man is in trouble out there. We can't leave him to die.'
'Who? Who would be wandering abroad on such a night? I can hear nothing except the wind and water. If you open that door, the water will pour in and we will all drown, maybe even the house will fall.'
The voice outside rose again in a shriek for help, the pleas so tormented that Raffe felt as if a fist was twisting his guts.
'Can't you hear that?' Raffe shouted. He pushed Martin aside a
nd began again to wrestle with the beam.
'It is just the storm you can hear,' Martin said. 'Things banging in the wind.'
Raffe could not believe that Martin was pretending not to hear the man pleading for his life outside. That snivelling little wretch was such a coward, he was willing to let a man drown just inches away from where he stood and do nothing. Raffe fought with the beam and almost had it clear when a fist hit him so hard in the diaphragm that he doubled up, gasping and struggling to draw breath. He sank to his knees in the water, his hands clenching and unclenching, and he tried desperately to force air into his lungs, then finally, with a burst of effort that felt like an explosion inside him, he drew breath. He knelt there in the icy water wheezing painfully as he heard Martin forcing the beam back into place.
Raffe was still on all fours in the water gasping for breath when he felt Martin's legs against his thigh and the cold, sharp prick of a dagger in his back.
'Reach slowly and give me your knife,' Martin ordered.
Raffe reluctantly did as he was told. In his younger days, he could have disarmed the man in a trice, but he had a feeling that Martin, for all his weasel build, knew how to defend himself better than most.
'Now you will sit over there on that bench. And if you go near to the door again, I will kill you.'
The man's tone was suddenly cold and hard. There was a calm resolve in it which left Raffe in little doubt that he meant it.
They sat there opposite each other on the benches until daybreak, listening to the storm rampaging through the streets. Neither spoke again. The voice outside finally fell silent and the howling of the wind now seemed hollow and empty as if all life had vanished from the world.
Towards dawn, the storm died down and, despite the cold and his wet clothes, Raffe must have drifted off into some kind of sleep for he woke to the sound of the ladder creaking as the alewife descended into the room. A pale, milky light filled the room. The shutter stood open and Martin was peering out into the Row.
'The water, it has gone,' he said, turning to the alewife.
'Aye, well, it would. Sea goes back to its bed right enough, soon as the wind dies down.' She heaved the beam from the door and flung it open. Without even bothering to look out, she picked up a birch besom and began sweeping vigorously, shooing the black muddy water along the floor towards the open door.
'You'll be off then.' It was more a statement than a question.
She reminded Raffe of his own mother. She could never wait for the men to leave the house each morning. She regarded men and children as something to be shaken out with the dust, beaten out, if needs be.
Martin extended Raffe's knife to him, offering the hilt with his clawed hand. There was no embarrassment or apology, merely the curt return of it as you might hand over an object someone had accidentally dropped.
Raffe took the knife and at the same time grabbed Martin's arm with his other hand, pulling the little Frenchman in towards him.
'You try that again,' Raffe snarled, 'and you'll find my knife in your ribs instead of in your hand.'
'I hope,' Martin said levelly, 'that it will not be necessary to try that again.'
The alewife's besom nudged pointedly round their feet, compelling them to move towards the door and then leap swiftly out of it, as she swept a wave of filthy water towards them.
Outside, the small courtyard was a wreck. Although most of the water had indeed drained down the sloping Rows back into the sea, puddles still filled the smallest hollow. The tables and benches in the yard were smashed again into the pieces of driftwood from which they had been crafted, and lay in a heap against the far wall covered in wet sand. Barrels were stranded on their sides, bound fast in bright green seaweed. Dead fish stared up glassy-eyed from the sand or flopped desperately in the brackish puddles. Starfish, still twitching the tip of an arm, were strewn among lumps of tar, pieces of rope, broken flagons and a single rosy apple.
A movement drew Raffe's attention and as he watched, a large crab crawled out sideways from under a tangled piece of net and scuttled for safety towards the wood pile, holding a piece of something white in its raised claw. Now that the crab had drawn his attention, Raffe could see that there was something large and pale buried under the old net. He couldn't make out what it was. mostly from idle curiosity he bent down and tried to disentangle the net, which had been so long in the sea it was covered with slime and goose barnacle shells. But the net was caught fast. As he pulled, something flopped out of the tangle on to the wet sand. It was the tattered sleeve of a garment, bleached of any colour, but it was not that which made Raffe drop the net hastily. Poking out from the end of the sleeve were the bones of a hand.
It took a whole breath before Raffe realized he was staring at a human corpse, or rather the upper half of one. Whoever the poor bastard was, he had been in the sea for a long time. Most of the face was eaten away and what little flesh remained clinging to the bones of his hands and chest was feathery and bone-white. A cluster of black winkles had adhered themselves to one of the rib bones and purple bladderwrack dangled from the bones of his neck.
There was a cry behind him and Raffe turned to see the alewife standing in the doorway, her birch besom fallen to the ground and both hands pressed across her mouth. A neighbour passing in the Row heard the cry and rushed over to her.
'Whatever is it?' the neighbour cooed soothingly, then, following the wild stare of the alewife, she gasped. She crossed herself several times before throwing her arms around the alewife. She tried to pull her inside, but the stricken woman wouldn't budge.
'It's my man, my Peter.'
The neighbour pressed her own hand over the alewife's mouth.
'Hush now, would you drown your own husband? There's been no word his ship's come to any harm. He'll be walking in that door bold as you like one of these days. And you'll be giving him a right mithering afore he's even got his boots off.'
But the alewife shook her head. 'I knew he was gone that day the cormorant sat on the roof of our house from dawn to dusk. They always come to warn that a ship's foundered. It knew Peter was lost. It knew and came to tell me.'
The neighbour tried to pull her inside again. 'They found another corpse this morning. I've seen that one and that's not your Peter either. Dead always come back from the sea in their own time. But not your Peter, sweeting. Your Peter's not dead.'
The alewife shook her head. 'I know it's him come back to me. I heard him last night in the storm begging for me to let him in. Said he was cold, so cold. You heard him, didn't you, master, you heard my dead husband knocking at the door?'
She raised her head and looked straight at Raffe, though her pale eyes had no sight in them, only an endless streaming tide.
Two Days after the Full Moon,
September 1211
Apples — If fruit and flower appear on the same branch it is an omen of death. For the Celts believe that in Paradise the hills are covered with apple trees that bear fruit and flowers together.
When plucking the fruit, some apples must always be left on the tree for the faerie folk and the spirits of the grove.
On Twelfth Night, all in the village must assemble at dusk bringing with them their iron pots and tools and choose one apple tree to stand for all. And to that tree all present must drink its health in cider and pour cider over the roots and hang bread soaked in cider in the branches. The lowest twigs are dipped in cider and men must bow down three times and rise staggering as if they bear a heavy sack of apples on their backs. Then must all the villagers bang their iron tools together to make as much noise as they can, to awaken the spirits of the tree, so that they will stir the trees to life and bring a good harvest.
Apples cure melancholia and eating an apple at midnight on All Hallows Eve will guard against colds for a year. At Samhain each unwed mortal standing around the fire whirls an apple on a piece of string. Whoever's apple falls first shall be married within the year, but the one whose apple falls last shall die unwed. If a
maid would know if her lover is true, she should lay apple pips around the fire; if the pips burst with a pop her lover is faithful, but if they shrivel and burn silently her lover is deceiving her.
The Mandrake's Herbal
St Michael's Day
Lanterns were being hung all around the brothel garden, though it was not yet noon. Garlands of late flowers were being sprinkled hourly with cold water from the well to keep them fresh, but their perfume was fighting a losing battle against the spices and herbs of the pastries, honeyed fruits, roasting geese, baked meats and syllabubs, which were being stirred, basted and dressed in the kitchens. Low tables had been set ready beside the seats and turf banks, and later, as it grew dark, they would be groaning with food and wine.
Ma had hired extra cooks for the day, for the older women were needed to strew fresh herbs among the rushes, drape cloths artfully over the dark corners to give an illusion of privacy where there was none, and above all to help the girls dress. It was the glorious feast of Michaelmas and Ma Margot was determined not to be outdone in her celebrations. She stood back, hands on hips, gazing up with satisfaction at the centrepiece she had commissioned for her garden. It was a wooden life-sized statue of a standing naked woman with angel wings. One hand was cupped invitingly around her plump painted breast and the other pressed coyly between her open legs.
The Gallows Curse Page 39