The Holywell Dead

by Chris Nickson

  She couldn’t hide the tears; she didn’t even try. At the door she clung tight to him, as if her love might protect him from harm. Dame Martha said nothing, staring at the new rushes on the floor and frowning.

  He closed the door behind himself with a heavy heart. Still early in the evening, with the cries and shouts and footsteps of people on their way home. He still had a few hours of light.

  He had no choice. This was something he had to do, or Roland would never give up. He had to keep his family safe. John took the nalbinding needle from his scrip and slid it up his sleeve, then gripped the knife in his right hand as he walked down Soutergate towards the bridge.

  This wasn’t how he wanted things to be. All he’d ever desired was a quiet life, working with wood, raising his family. But the coroner... no matter now. De Harville was dead and in his grave. Nothing could change it now.

  Faces came into his mind. His father, the people he’d known here and there. The girl he thought he’d loved in York who’d proved so faithless. Brother Robert. Dame Martha. Walter. Juliana. Jeanette. Eleanor. Katherine.

  As he moved past the houses, leaving the town behind, there were only the sounds of the country. Animals, birds. The call of a shepherd to his dog. The road was empty, cart tracks in the dust. The lazar house seemed far away. But everything appeared to be an insurmountable distance.

  He was listening closely for any noise, scarcely daring to breathe. Roland might attack anywhere, at any time. But he believed that the man would want his battle. He’d relish the chance to humiliate and savour his victory. And if that was what he chose, so be it.

  Thoughts and distance. One seemed to consume the other. He’d been staring at the leper colony on the horizon and suddenly he was walking by the wall. There was someone sitting by the gate, a bowl on the ground for alms.

  ‘Pity on us, please, Master,’ the rasping voice said. But there was a familiar note to it.

  ‘Alison?’ he asked.

  ‘It is, Master. You shouldn’t come here too often.’ Today she seemed to have a little more difficulty speaking; the words gathered and clogged in her mouth.

  ‘Maybe not. But here I am anyway, seeking another favour.’

  ‘If it’s people to go with you, the priest won’t allow it again. I think he’s terrified of what folk will think if they see us. We rely on their charity.’

  ‘I see.’ He’d been depending on this, to have an army of wraiths at his side. It seemed the only way to defeat Roland.

  ‘I’m sorry, Master.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He started to turn away.

  ‘You look like a man surrounded by death.’

  John smiled. ‘You see that clear enough.’ He looked back. ‘How did you know?’

  The laugh was close to a crone’s cackle. ‘I’ve walked with it for so long that it’s like a friend to me now. I just wish it would come and claim me.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty years, Master. The last five of them in here. I had a husband and three children once. They all died of the plague last month, not that I’d ever let them visit me here. Better that they believed I was already dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘God raised Adam from the mud, isn’t that what they say? And that’s where our bodies go in the end. It comes to everyone and we go back to the ground.’ Her voice had grown hoarse as she spoke. ‘Why are you meeting Death?’

  ‘Because it’s all I can do now.’ He told her. Maybe he simply needed someone to listen, someone who might understand. Maybe he was trying to postpone the moment. Slowly, awkwardly, Alison tried to stand, grasping at the wall to push herself upright. He moved forward to take her other arm but she pushed him away.

  ‘Safer not to touch me,’ she said. She steadied herself, then stopped to take a few breaths. ‘Where is he, do you think?’

  ‘By now I expect he’ll be in the clearing where you found me. That’s where he was yesterday. He’ll have been watching me.’

  ‘He might have run off.’

  ‘No,’ John said. ‘Not him. Not until this is over.’

  ‘Then we should go and meet him, Master.’

  ‘Why? Why would you do this for me?’ He was grateful, but he needed to know.

  ‘Because you showed me a kindness before. You treat me like a person, the way I was before any of this. And because evil shouldn’t walk the earth.’

  ‘There’s no guarantee we’ll win. He might kill me. And then he’d kill you.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be a blessing if he did. I’m already dead to the world, Master. I’ve been ready for a long time.’

  ‘Then I accept.’

  They walked without speaking. A slow pace, all her feet could manage. She knew the ground around here; it was where they collected the wood for their fires. Alison gestured to a path that cut across some common ground. The cows had been taken in for their evening milking.

  Soon enough the woods surrounded them and the world became hushed. He let her lead, but as he sensed the clearing in the distance John tugged at her sleeve.

  ‘I can’t let you go in there without a weapon,’ he whispered and let the needle slip from his sleeve. He held it by the tip. Her misshapen, ugly hand appeared, more claw than anything human, and closed around it.

  ‘This is what he uses to kill,’ John told her. Hidden inside her cowl, she nodded. ‘Now let me go first. This is my fight.’

  ‘No, Master. You wanted me with you. We go side by side or not at all.’

  He smiled. She had spirit, she had fight. What had Alison been like when she was a young woman, he wondered? He’d never know now. But he was glad she was here with him. One deep breath and then a step...

  • • •

  Roland turned at the sound.

  ‘Scared to face me alone, Carpenter? Yesterday it was a boy with a sling and today it’s a leper.’ He laughed.

  Let him talk. The longer he spoke, the more unnerved he was. Slowly, John edged away from Alison. Enough distance and Roland would have to split his attention between the two of them.

  ‘Which one do I kill first? You or... that?’

  John’s palms were slick with sweat. He could feel drops running down his back inside his shirt. On the way here he’d been filled with fear, wanting to turn back and knowing he couldn’t, that it had to be this way.

  Now it had gone. There was simply the moment. Watching Roland and taking one pace, then another, until he stood across the clearing from Alison. Now Roland looked one way, then the other, and the smile on his face seemed false and frozen.

  ‘Well, John the Carpenter, do you think you can best me?’ He took the dagger from his belt and pushed the tip into the ground. ‘Come for me. You have the advantage.’

  And where else did the man have a blade? In his boot? There would be another, he was willing to wager, probably more than one. But John stood still and said nothing.

  Alison took half a step forward and Roland turned sharply to face her. As soon as his back was turned, John did the same. He couldn’t see the woman’s face, hidden deep in the shadow. He didn’t need to.

  ‘Which first?’ Roland asked. ‘You, or you? Or the pair of you together?’ His voice had the odd, shrill note of worry. Victory wasn’t going to come as easily as he imagined. A bird fluttered away through the branches and the man turned quickly.

  Another half pace from Alison. He followed suit. They were still too far for Roland to reach. John swallowed. His throat was dry, as if he’d never had a drink in his life. Slowly, he raised the knife, ready, and Roland’s lips curled into a smile.

  ‘So it’s you and me, John the Carpenter. You’d have done better staying with your tools.’ His body was tense, ready. But he’d taken his attention from Alison, brushed her from his mind as no more than a nuisance.

  A mistake.

  John didn’t understand how she did it. He never saw, his gaze focused on Roland. But she seemed to soar through the air. She covered the distance in one leap u
ntil she was on his back and the man was screaming and twisting. Roland tried to reach for the dagger he’d hidden inside his jerkin. And then John moved, running. He felt his knife sink into flesh, again and again until the body slumped under him. Roland fell to the floor, Alison on top of him. Gently, John reached under her arms and pulled her away, praying she was still alive.

  The nalbinding needle was still in her hand, clutched between twisted fingers. Blood covered the front of her dark habit, and the handle of a knife stuck from her thin chest. He pulled back the cowl and looked at what remained of her face. Her lips were pulled back in a rictus grin. Eyes empty, lifeless. Tenderly, he lowered her to the ground. Her body seemed to weigh nothing at all.

  He cut the strings of Roland’s scrip and pushed it into his belt. He was dead, too, a tiny blossom of blood on the front of his shirt, over his heart. She’d been the one to kill him.

  John went to cut branches and vines, lashing them together to make a hurdle. It wasn’t even or strong, but that didn’t matter. All he needed to do was return her body to the lazar hospital. As he worked he started to hear the birds singing their twilight songs, as if the wood had come alive again without him even knowing it.

  How had she done it? The most she’d been able to manage was a slow, hesitant walk. How had she found the strength to leap like that? It was as if something had given her the power for one last thing.

  He couldn’t mourn her. She was ready to die. She wanted it. That was why she’d come with him. But she deserved to be buried and remembered with honour. Alison had taken one small evil out of the world.

  He laid her body on the hurdle and began to pull it along the track to the leper colony. Roland could stay where he was. The animals could devour him. Let his soul rot.

  • • •

  John knocked on the gate until someone finally drew back the bolt, holding up a rushlight in the creeping darkness. The priest.

  ‘My son?’ he asked in confusion.

  ‘I’ve brought Alison home to you, Father.’

  The priest bent, holding the light over her. He crossed himself. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s safer that you never know. But she died doing something good. She was a brave woman.’

  ‘God save her soul.’

  ‘He will, Father. I have no doubt of that.’ He took all the money from Roland’s scrip and tipped it into the priest’s hand. ‘Give her a good funeral, Father, and use the rest here.’

  ‘This is a very fair sum, my son.’

  ‘Then spend it on the people here, Father.’ He looked down at Alison for the last time. She’d finally found the peace she desired.

  • • •

  The walk to Chesterfield felt long. He ached to his bones, a weariness that rose up inside. A sliver of moon hung in the sky, the star bright against the blackness. At the bridge over the Hipper he opened Roland’s scrip again. Just papers, writing on folded sheets of vellum that he couldn’t read. He tossed them down into the water and watched them float away on the current.

  He didn’t want to know who had been behind all the killings. Ignorance was safer. Let every trace of Roland vanish. He held on to the leather scrip for a moment then dropped it into the river.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Katherine was waiting for him. But he knew she’d have waited until the Judgement Call. He closed the door and leaned against it, exhausted. Then she had her arms around him, holding him close, not letting him go.

  He clung to her. At the far end of the hall he saw Martha standing in the doorway of the room that was now hers. She smiled, then disappeared as if she’d never been there.

  Finally he was ready to sit, looking around this new, unfamiliar place before settling on the bench by the table. A rushlight burned smokily.

  ‘It’s over now,’ he said.

  Katherine put her hand over his. ‘There won’t be anything more?’ she asked. ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘I’m positive.’

  Roland had performed his duty. The men he had to kill were dead; those who employed him would be satisfied. And if he never returned, so be it. He doubted that they’d care. All trace of him would be gone. By morning there’d be nothing left in the clearing. If he had a camp somewhere, nature would grow over it. His name would be forgotten.

  ‘Thank God for it all,’ she said. ‘And another day without plague.’

  ‘We’re free now,’ John told her.

  ‘Yes.’ She leaned forward and kissed him.

  No more coroner to arrive on his doorstep with his demands. Whoever took de Harville’s place would have his own ways, his own men. Now John could fade back to working with wood and making his living with his true skill. That was all he’d ever wanted when he arrived in Chesterfield. He’d gained much more than he’d ever expected along the way, that was true. But the ugly parts, the deaths, he could leave those behind.

  ‘I need to sleep.’

  • • •

  He stood by Juliana’s small bed, watching Katherine as she undressed. Unbuckling her girdle, pulling off the old gown until all that remained was her shift. She combed her long hair, pulling down as it tumbled long over her shoulders.

  John rested the tips of his fingers on his daughter’s chest, happy as he felt it move up and down with the rhythm of her breathing. He was a lucky man to have all this.

  Katherine slipped under the sheet and patted the bolster.

  ‘Come and sleep, husband,’ she said.

  He took off his jerkin and tunic, letting them fall to the ground. The belt joined them before he untied his braies and pushed down the hose. And finally the sweetness of bed, with his arms around his wife.

  • • •

  Alan’s mother stared at him.

  ‘It’s safe now,’ he told her. ‘There won’t be any more trouble.’

  She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again and nodded. The boy ran out, the satchel slapping against his small body.

  It was a good summer morning, still with the soft early scent in the air. The heat would come later, but by then they’d be finished with their work.

  In the churchyard he let Alan inspect the bench. He ran his hand over it, feeling the smoothness and all the hours that had gone into its creation. Finally the boy stood back, grinning, and nodded his approval. John ran a cloth over the wood.

  Walter should arrive soon and together they’d carry it into the church. He’d measured carefully, he knew how it would fit.

  Alan’s fingers began to speak. Is he dead? Did you kill him?

  ‘Yes,’ John answered with a sigh. ‘You can put him out of your mind now.’ He didn’t want to talk about it, simply allow it to slide away into the past. But the boy had suffered; he deserved to know. Another question came.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I promise. He can never hurt anyone again.’

  He was glad when Walter arrived. Perhaps he’d have questions, too, or he might just leave it all be. For now, the lad was here for his height and his muscles.

  It took time. First to the porch, where they rested, then halfway down the nave. Finally he nudged it into place and ran a rag over the wood one last time to remove any finger marks.

  This was something to be proud of. It would still be here long after he was dead and nobody recalled his name. But who made a thing wasn’t important. It was the act of doing and the creation itself that mattered.

  ‘I need to leave for a little while,’ he told Alan, and saw the worry on the boy’s face. ‘I’ll be back. Just stay here. It’s cool inside and you’re safe. Completely safe.’

  • • •

  ‘Mistress, Roland is dead.’

  She was wearing a crisp wimple and a plain gown. The dark shadows formed smudges under her eyes. He’d talked his way past the servant, then asked Brother Edmund to fetch her.

  ‘Thank God for that.’ But there was no pleasure in her gaze. ‘Did you...’

  ‘Yes,’ John answered, but she didn’t prompt him for more details. None of it
would bring her husband back. ‘I know it’s a bad time.’

  ‘I don’t know if there will ever be a time that feels good,’ she said. ‘I’m taking my son and we’re going to live with my brother and his wife.’

  ‘I understand. But please, there’s something I’d like you to see. Your husband commissioned it from me.’

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘What is it? He never mentioned anything to me.’

  ‘You’ll have to come and see it at the church.’

  They walked side by side, not talking. People from the town came up to offer their condolences. She nodded her head at each of them but she didn’t speak. John opened the heavy church door and let her pass, giving her time to adjust to the soft light after the brightness outside.

  ‘Here, Mistress.’

  She gazed at it, then at him and Alan by his side.

  ‘You made this?’ she asked.

  ‘At your husband’s command.’ He knew he needed to gild the truth a little. ‘He wanted to give thanks to God for sparing us all.’

  She ran her hand over the curve at the end of the bench, then the flatness of the seat.

  ‘You’ve done his memory proud,’ she said finally. ‘Both of you. Thank you. Did he pay you?’

  ‘No, Mistress.’

  ‘Then I will.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He placed a hand on the boy’s head. ‘Alan did much of the work.’

  ‘Then I thank you, too.’

  He blushed to the roots of his hair.

  ‘You served him well,’ she told John. ‘I’ll always be grateful for that.’ She stroked the bench again. ‘This is beautiful work. I’ll see you’re rewarded for it.’

  • • •

  How long before he came to think of the house on Knifesmithgate as home? He’d lodged there when he first came to Chesterfield, when it had belonged to Dame Martha. Now the room that had been his was hers and he was master of this place, as if the world had tipped upside down.

  The women were still finding nooks and crannies for everything, Juliana tottering around behind her mother, amused by her new surroundings. But there was a jug of ale and a loaf of bread in the buttery and the sun was warm and comforting in the garden.