by S. D. Sykes
I would have killed him.
And then I felt a gentle hand upon my arm. It was Mirabel. ‘Please stop this, sire,’ she said. ‘Don’t kill this man.’ I stopped to look at her beautiful face. For a moment it tempered my fury, but the madness urged me to finish the job. I went to strike Cornwall again, but she now grasped my arm tightly. ‘Don’t commit a mortal sin. Not for his sake.’ She touched my cheek. ‘Please, Oswald.’
She had said my name. She had touched my face. I lowered the staff. The lust to kill Cornwall had suddenly left me. I was exhausted. I would let him live.
Long enough to answer for his crimes in court.
As Cornwall was dragged away to the gaol house, I chose two large boys from the crowd and told them to carry Leofwin’s body to the churchyard and then to prepare a grave.
They shifted about, uncomfortably. ‘But it was a devil, sire,’ muttered the shorter of the two. ‘We can’t bury it in sacred ground.’
I went to explain my request, but stopped. ‘Just do it,’ I told him. The boy hesitated, but I would not suffer such questioning any longer. I was their lord, and they would obey me. ‘Do it!’ I said. ‘Or be thrown in the gaol house yourself.’
The air was still thick with the smell of smoke as I turned to leave. Then a figure came running towards the church. It was Mother. When she finally reached me, her voice was breathless and eager. ‘Where’s the fire, Oswald?’
‘You’re too late.’
‘The burning is over?’
‘Yes.’
She emitted a squeal and would have stamped her foot, had not half the village been watching her. ‘Damnation!’
I had expected to find Joan Bath in the gaol house, but discovered only Cornwall – groaning in a corner of the cell with the lining of his cape held to his bleeding mouth. I was told Joan had been dumped outside her own home by the earl’s men and told to stay away from the burning under threat of death.
I rode directly to Joan’s remote cottage, where her two sons sat on the doorstep with their skinny dog. When they saw me, they ran inside to alert their mother, who soon appeared on the threshold – her face still swollen with tears. ‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘May I speak to you about Leofwin?’ I asked softly.
She wiped her eyes. ‘How do you know his name?’
I dismounted my horse. ‘I can explain. If you will let me in?’ I looked at her sons with their hostile, grubby faces. The whole family seemed impervious to kindness. ‘I’m not here to trick you.’
She hesitated again.
‘Please.’
She sighed. ‘As you like.’
I followed her inside. As last time, the cottage was dark and the ceilings were low, but the air smelt of sage and lavender without the usual fog of bonfire that inhabited these cramped and airless homes. The bedding was hanging over a low beam to air, and the floor was covered with fresh rushes. I sat on the single bench and insisted she join me, her body still shuddering to suppress her sobs.
‘Why were you pleading to save Leofwin’s life?’ I asked her. ‘Nobody else tried to help him.’
She took a deep breath and held her hands together. Her two sons were peeping around the doorpost, so I shooed them away.
‘He was a boy. Not a beast.’
‘I know.’
Her laugh was hollow. ‘So, why didn’t you stop them?’ She sneered, ‘My lord.’
‘I was too late.’ She looked away from me. ‘He’s to be buried in the churchyard. I’ve made sure of that.’
She didn’t thank me for this gesture. ‘How did you know his name?’ she asked me again. ‘Did your priest tell you?’
‘Brother Peter?’
She gritted her teeth. ‘Yes, Brother Peter. The betrayer.’ She was now shaking as furiously as a lid on a boiling pan. ‘I told him of the boy in confession. He pretended to be my friend. Praying for my sins. Said I reminded him of somebody. Some poor woman he had failed.’
‘Which poor woman?’
‘I don’t know!’ I took her hand and slowly she quietened. ‘But he was no good Samaritan. He betrayed me.’ Then she wiped a glistening tear from the corner of her eye. ‘Though I never told him where to find the boy.’
Her face was drained of its strength, and for the first time she looked old. The boys were peeping around the corner of the door again, and this time she waved them away. ‘Go and feed the chickens!’ she said. ‘And see there is water in the pig’s trough.’
Her hand was cold and limp. ‘Leofwin saved my life,’ I told her. ‘He rescued me from wolves and took me to his cave.’
She pulled her hand away. ‘So it was you. You told them how to find him.’
‘No.’
‘Is that how you repaid his kindness?’
‘No! I would never have done that.’
‘So how did they know where to look?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I really don’t.’
She buried her face in her hands. ‘I’ve spent my whole life keeping him hidden away. To stop his persecution. And they found him anyway.’ She sobbed loudly. ‘And then they burnt him like a pig. My boy.’
‘Your boy?’
‘Yes. He was my son. What of it?’ She had become angry again. Spittle foamed at her mouth. ‘And his father was my father.’
I heaved a heavy sigh. So this was the sin Brother Peter spoke of. I offered Joan my hand once more, but instead she fell against my chest, her shoulders shaking. And then I held her in my arms until the force of her tears had subsided and only sorrow was left.
‘Our sin was punished,’ she whispered. ‘Our son was cursed with the face of a beast.’
‘But it wasn’t your sin, Mistress Bath. You were just a girl.’
She shook her head. ‘I had to hide Leofwin from the village. They would have called him a demon, but he was a sweet boy. A good boy. He should not have borne the punishment for my sins.’ Her warm tears now flowed again into the wool of my tunic. ‘My father wanted to kill the boy. His own son. So I hid him in the forest.’ She let out a long sob. ‘He was a sweet boy. A good boy. I only came back to the village when he was old enough. We needed money. But I took him food every week.’ Her faltering sentences were now muffled. ‘I never left him hungry.’
‘I saw that.’
‘He loved me. But now he has been stolen away. Murdered by priests. Burnt like a pig.’
She looked at the door, where the two boys had made their third, wary appearance. ‘Get back outside, you little bastards. Go on!’ she cried when they hesitated. ‘This is none of your business.’
She turned to me and whispered again. ‘I can never love them as I did Leofwin. But nobody would understand that. They would only see the boy as a gargoyle. A monster.’
I continued to hold her and offer soothing words, but my attempts at sympathy were inept and childish. In the end I rolled out her straw mattress upon the floor and bade her rest. She curled up into a ball and sobbed from her core.
Leaving the cottage, I passed the two boys, who were still sitting on the front step. They looked at me distrustfully.
‘What’s the matter with Mother?’ the taller boy asked. He had such a dirty face, but his tunic was clean and his hair was combed.
‘Be kind to her,’ I told him. ‘Stew some peas. Make her some supper.’
He shrugged at me in the way young boys will, so I caught him by the wrist. ‘Are you listening to me? Your mother needs your help and understanding.’
He shook beneath my grip. ‘I’m sorry, sire,’ he bleated, so I released him – but not until I had stared a while into his pale and terrified eyes. ‘Just be of assistance to your mother. Be quiet and undemanding.’ He nodded to me, and the two of them scampered into the house before I could say another word.
Chapter Twenty
I knew where to find Brother Peter. He would be drunk. But not in the cellar, his usual drinking hole. That secular square of damp would not assist his prayers to Heaven. He needed a
holy place. A silent, sacred place, where he could speak directly to his God.
The door to the chapel was unlocked. The candles were lit at the altar, and Peter lay prostrate on the floor before the Virgin. Her lifeless eyes regarded him blankly, while her polished pink hands held the doll-like Christ child. Peter did not acknowledge my arrival. His eyes were shut.
‘How could you have done it?’ I asked him. ‘You sewed a boy inside an ox and burnt him.’ His eyes remained closed and he ignored me, continuing to mutter the words of his prayers as if his life depended upon it.
The urge to kick him came over me. ‘Answer me. What drove you to such cruelty?’ The catechism became louder and more urgent.
I pushed my foot against his face. ‘Answer me!’
Peter trembled. ‘The ox was Cornwall’s idea. I couldn’t stop him. The crowd were baying for blood.’
‘But it was a boy.’
He opened an eye that was red with tears. ‘I couldn’t let them hang you, Oswald. You must understand that.’ He held out his right hand to me, but I moved away from him. ‘Help me stand up, Oswald. Please. I’m an old man.’
‘No.’
‘Please. You must forgive me.’
‘I never will.’
At my refusal, he hoisted himself onto a bench awkwardly and wiped his brow with a sleeve. I noticed how old and muddy his habit had become, the folds of black woollen cloth too bulky for his ever-thinning body. ‘I had to do it, Oswald,’ he mumbled. ‘I had to save you from hanging.’
‘I didn’t need your help, Brother. The judge and the earl were ready to believe in my innocence. You should have given me the chance to defend myself.’
‘Against a man like Cornwall?’ He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t have worked.’
‘But I had him cornered, Brother.’
‘No, no. Cornwall would have tightened the noose about your neck with his clever arguments, and squeezed it further with every one of his lies. And now it would be you lying dead in a field and not that poor forsaken creature.’
‘He was not a creature. Leofwin was a boy and you murdered him.’
‘Don’t you think I know that, Oswald?’ He breathed out slowly and crossed himself. ‘And may God forgive me.’
And then I noticed something about his hand. A red fluid oozed from between his fingers. ‘You’re bleeding.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘What’s in your hand, Brother?’ He didn’t move. ‘Show me!’
I grabbed his wrist and forced his palm open, revealing the silver blade of a whittle tang knife. Blood now flowed from a slice in the skin of his hand – but it was nothing more than a surface wound. I recognised the knife immediately, even though Peter had removed its handle of horn. I had used it to clear the abscess on Leofwin’s leg. ‘What are you trying to do, Brother?’
He held the blade out to me. ‘Take it away, Oswald. Please. I thought I had the courage, but I don’t.’
‘You would have killed yourself? With this?’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re peddling for my sympathy.’
He wiped his eyes with reddened fingers. ‘That’s not true, Oswald. I wish I could do it, but suicide is a mortal sin.’ The blood from his hands smeared across his cheeks like paint.
‘So is murder.’
Peter’s lunged forward to hold me, but I dodged his advance. ‘I had to turn them against the boy. You must understand that, Oswald.’ Fumbling about in his belt pouch, Brother Peter found his flask of brandy, his hands shaking as he removed the cork.
As he gulped noisily, I turned the knife in my hand. ‘You stole this from Leofwin.’
Peter’s voice was hoarse, but muted. ‘It was stolen already.’
‘You can’t be sure of that.’
‘Such a creature doesn’t own a silver knife.’
‘Stop calling him a creature! He was a boy. The same as me.’
Peter took another gulp from the flask. ‘No, Oswald. He was not the same as you. Our Lord doesn’t hand out a face like that without reason. Now please, give me back the knife.’
‘What? So you can pretend to cut your own wrist again?’
‘No. That urge has passed. I will live with the sin and let it torment me. Does that satisfy you? The knife can go to the abbey.’
I put the knife under my belt. ‘No. It belongs to Joan Bath. As she was Leofwin’s mother.’
Peter froze.
‘Don’t pretend to be surprised, Brother. Joan told you of Leofwin in confession. Though you broke another vow by betraying her.’
He looked at me as a tear worked its way slowly down his cheek, forming a thin watery line through the blood.
‘So how did you find Leofwin?’ I asked. ‘Joan didn’t tell you where he was hidden.’ He whispered something in reply. ‘What was that?’ I said. ‘I can’t hear you.’
He cleared his throat. ‘It was you who told me, Oswald.’
‘I did not. You wouldn’t listen to a word of my story about Leofwin. You let me believe I had suffered delirium.’
‘But you did tell me.’
‘Stop lying.’
‘You described the golden eagle to me.’
I felt my stomach turn. ‘What?’
‘You described their size and call.’
‘No. That’s not true. You’re tricking me.’
‘There are few such eagles left in Kent, Oswald. They only survive deep in the weald, on one solitary sandstone ridge.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘Because I sometimes go there. To collect the rare filmy fern.’
‘The what?’
‘I stew it to make a poultice, Oswald. You can use it to—’
‘I don’t care what you use it for!’
So Joan was right. I had been the one to betray Leofwin. Holding my head in my hands, I fell onto the bench.
Peter left me alone for a few moments and then sat down beside me, putting his hand upon my back. ‘This is my sin, Oswald. Not yours.’ He stroked my hair and drew so close to my ear I was forced to shrink away from the vapours of his breath.
‘Dear Oswald,’ he whispered softly. ‘Dear boy. You mustn’t blame yourself. You’re alive. You must be thankful for that.’
I stood up sharply. ‘Get away from me, Brother.’
‘But, Oswald—’
‘You disgust me.’
I did not see Brother Peter for the rest of that day. I believe he hid in the chapel, avoiding me in the hope I would soften. But that would never happen.
Instead I went to the churchyard and laid the poor scalded body of Leofwin to rest. I was not qualified to perform such a ceremony, but the only priests in the parish were both responsible for the boy’s murder. Their evil would not taint his burial.
I had sent for Joan with news that we were burying her son, but Piers returned with the message she was performing her own ceremony to bless his parting and would not join us. So Leofwin was buried with just Gilbert and myself to pray for his soul. My prayers were probably useless. As for Gilbert’s, I cannot say.
After that I returned to the gaol house, to speak to Cornwall. When Henry unlocked his cell, I found a deflated, defeated creature cringing in the corner. His face was bruised, and dried blood was matted to his hair. His velvet cloak hung about him like a torn sail.
‘What do you want, de Lacy?’ he said. ‘Come to finish the job and kill me?’ His voice had lost its French pretensions and now he spoke as softly and colloquially as any other Cornishman. He tried to laugh, but the skin around his mouth was purple and swollen.
‘I’ve come to charge you with the murders of the Starvecrow sisters and Walter de Caburn.’
He laughed again, only this time he managed to complete the sound without holding the edge of his cape to his lip. ‘You have no evidence against me.’
‘I caught you and de Caburn about to rape Mirabel.’
‘What does that prove? I didn’t rape the girl, did I? And she’s still alive.’ He dabbed his gums. �
��You’ve broken most of my teeth, damn you.’
‘I also caught you at the Starvecrow cottage. Searching for the beads that she had pulled from your neck as you attacked her.’
‘I was looking for footprints. I told you that before.’
‘Will you keep to that story when your house is searched and we find the remaining beads in your possession?’
He shrugged. ‘Go ahead. You’ll find nothing.’ He then began to laugh at me. ‘You will look so foolish in court, de Lacy. More foolish than ever. You privileged little arse.’
I turned to leave, making certain to swing my cape. My gesture was not lost on Cornwall. He stumbled over to the grate in his cell door and shouted at me as the door was locked.
‘Your time is nearly gone, de Lacy.’ Henry told him to be quiet, but he shouted even louder. ‘The Pestilence was a gift from God. And now the common man will rise against you. It is we who will inherit the earth!’
That evening I took a bath in the buttery next to the kitchen. Gilbert had warmed the water over the stove and filled the wooden tub until it was deep enough for me to sit in and stew. Needing to remove the stink of the fire, I asked Ada to bring me some of Mother’s hard soap, although our servant soon returned saying Mother could not spare any.
An unpleasant and acrid odour lay on my skin and hung about my hair like sticky weed, so I sent Ada back to inform Mother that I would have the soap whether she could spare it or not. Ada returned with a small and well-used lump of mutton fat and wood ash, from which I had to pull one of Mother’s black hairs. I would tell you the soap’s sharp scent of rosemary and lime rid me of the smoke and soot about my body, but each time I put my fingers to my nose I could still discern the smell of a boy burning to death.
We searched Cornwall’s cottage, but he had been right. We did not find the remaining red coral rosary beads, though we did discover a collection of whitened sheep bones, waiting to be sawn into relics. This did not surprise me in the least, but what did amaze me was Cornwall’s collection of richly embroidered clothes and rare and expensive jewellery. Even a cape of weasel fur – which Cornwall could never have worn outside the confines of his private quarters. Such pelts were the preserve of nobility.