by Lesley Lodge
His own cries woke him, but it took him a few moments to realise he was in bed, in the living area of his own smithy, sweat trickling through the hairs on his body. He shook off the damp covers, walked through to his stove and poked the fire back to life. He went to check on the boy, Jonathan, but found him still asleep, curled into a foetal position. The boy was used enough now to the regular disturbances of his father’s nightmares, so they seldom woke him. Deciding not to rouse him yet, Wayland went through into the stabling area and began mucking out his horse and the runaway horse. Both were standing, with faces pressed to the iron bars. Wayland was pleased to see that the runaway seemed to have made a full recovery. He checked him over thoroughly anyway.
He’d just laid the clean straw down when Jonathan joined him. Wayland handed him a bucket and indicated that he should feed the new horse. The boy half–smiled, went up to the horse and blew down his own nose gently to the horse’s nostrils – the initial greeting a horse will give another horse. It gave Wayland some pleasure to note that his son was picking up a blacksmith’s ways. He said nothing, though, and father and son fed and watered the two horses together, prepared a basic breakfast of bread and small beer for themselves and ate, all in a companionable silence.
Wayland went through into the smithy and stared at his tools. Business had changed a great deal since the onset of the civil war. There was much less shoeing work since the army had taken most horses away to war. The demand for repairs or new weapons – pike tips and such–like – tended to come in fits and starts as various army units came by the village, on their way to or from rumoured trouble spots. Often there would be no payment for these and because of this Wayland had taken to hiding his raw iron so as to strengthen his bargaining position. There was nothing waiting for him to do in the smithy that was either urgent or even likely to bring in any income any time soon. He went back into the stable and checked the runaway’s feet more thoroughly. They were sound, dark hooves. All four still had reasonable wear left in the iron shoes but he hammered a couple of new nails into the front ones just to be sure, ready for any eventuality.
He and Alun had talked long into this last night; that is, Alun had talked and Wayland had made the occasional point. All they had agreed on so far, though, was that Alun would check with his wife and her brother for any possible leads to the whereabouts of his sister, her husband or her lover. Wayland reflected now on how it was that he found himself thinking all the time about the poor boy’s body. He felt a little guilt for his neglect of Rebecca’s death. He asked himself again and again what sort of man could kill and so mutilate a young lad. In times like these, communities – families even – were split. People died, people killed each other. It wasn’t uncommon. But usually they did it in the heat of battle or at least as part of the war. They didn’t carve religious or other symbols on to bodies afterwards. At least, he didn’t think they did. So what did it mean? It must mean something else why do it? Geddingly had said the gashes formed a religious symbol and Alun had also suggested that there might be a religious element to the crime. Might it be some reference to the country’s bitter religious divisions? And if so, to which side did it point the blame?
Wayland thought hard on this angle. Who could – and might agree to – tell him more? Catholic priests were long gone from this part of Essex and he couldn’t think that any Puritan would be open–minded enough to give an unbiased answer. Then a thought came to him: he remembered an older, wise woman that Rebecca, his wife, used to consult occasionally on questions of herb medicine. She lived a little way out of the village and seldom ventured back into it these past few years, deeming it too risky since the mania for finding witches had sown suspicion even into the minds of ordinary people. He decided to visit her.
He told Jonathan he’d be out for a good while, saddled his horse and set off. A brisk wind and scudding purple clouds promised yet more rain and it was still unseasonably cold for summer. He wasn’t too sure of the way – Mary had been Rebecca’s acquaintance not his – but a number of landmarks such as the end of the animal enclosures, the old gibbet on the hill and the abandoned mill did look reassuringly familiar as he passed them and after about half an hour’s ride he found himself outside Mary’s ramshackle hovel. Still mounted, he called out her name a few times. Nothing. It occurred to him that perhaps his voice was a bit deep, intimidating, maybe, even to a wise woman. He notched it up an octave and tried again. Then he slid down, tied the mare to a sapling and strode up towards entrance. He noticed just before he got there that the door had been smashed and was lying to one side. The two chairs and the table inside had been upended and a number of cooking pots lay scattered on the mud floor. There was no sign of any inhabitant and, at first, he decided the place must have been abandoned.
He moved towards the doorframe, noticing some crude scratching on it. He traced them with his fingers. They were numerous circles, each overlapping. Next to them was a more structured etching of one circle with two smaller circles, each of a slightly smaller size. Within the smallest circle was some kind of formalized petal pattern. Below all of these the letters “AM” had been roughly carved. ‘Mary!’ he called again, trying for an even more friendly tone. He sniffed the air. There was a faint odour of cooking: cabbage and wild bird maybe. So much for what was there. He tried to focus on what was not present and he supposed there would surely have been some scent of mould or at least mustiness if the place had been without occupants for any substantial length of time. His senses tensed again and he felt his neck hairs lift. He had the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He turned around to face the door. Mary was standing there, a thin, dark figure, silent, just outside.
She looked even older than he remembered and he doubted whether she had washed or changed her clothes in a long while. ‘Mary,’ he said, attempting to smile in what he hoped was a reassuring way.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘‘tis Rebecca’s husband, is it not?’
‘Yes. Wayland, the blacksmith. But Mary! What happened here?’
‘It’s nothing, really,’ she said, coming into the house, ‘they’ve turned the place over so many times I leave it like this. Then they don’t bother again.’
‘They?’ Wayland asked, ‘who are they? Men seeking witches?’ He pointed to the crude markings on the doorframe.
‘Aye,’ she said, ‘they hope to rid themselves of me by marking my home for a witch’s house.’ She pointed to the lettering in the wood. ‘I tried to speak back to them in their way. But they wouldn’t have it. AM is for Ave Maria, of course. But it serves too for Auld Mary.’ she added, a slight smile forming on her face.
‘Mary!’ Wayland reproached her, shocked at such casual blasphemy.
‘They call themselves God–Fearers, Puritans and the like. I call ‘em rabble,’ Mary said, ‘but let’s not worry about them. What is it you want? Is it to do with Rebecca?’
Wayland thought at first that she may not have heard about Rebecca’s death. He told her the basic facts – such as he had discovered. Mary said nothing, but she righted the chairs, sat on one of them and gestured to Wayland to take the other. As he reached the end of his account, Mary covered her face with her hands and let out a low moan. She rocked gently back and forward. Wayland reached a hand towards her, but she flinched. He drew it back. ‘Aye, I did hear.’ was all she said.
There was an awkward silence. ‘But, well, it’s another death I’ve come about.’ he began, unsure how to start.
‘Not her son, Jonathan?’ she asked quickly.
Wayland winced at the words her son. ‘No, thank the Lord, not our Jonathan. But a lad not much younger.’
‘Who, then?’
Wayland told her briefly how he’d found the boy’s body.
‘That’s sad, I know,’ Mary said, ‘but alas, it’s not so rare for these cruel times.’
‘True enough, I know,’ Wayland said, ‘but as to the times, firstly, there’s been no fighting roun
d here these months past. And secondly, as I say, the lad was only young – he looked no more than ten or eleven. And thirdly – and this is the reason I’ve come to you – thirdly, there are strange wounds on his body. Mutilations, really, they are – but in a pattern. Some kind of religious symbol I’ve been told. And I wondered if you might be able to tell me anything about them. Something that might help point to the man – or men – who murdered the poor boy.’
‘Religious you say?’ There was more than a hint of bitterness in her voice, ‘Would that be the new God–fearing religion? Or the old religion?’
‘I don’t know, Mary,’ Wayland said, running his fingers through his hair. He was afraid that to say one or the other might disincline her to help. ‘I simply don’t know. Maybe religion even older than that.’
‘Heathen? God forbid,’ Mary crossed herself – once a simple enough Christian action but now one outlawed in Puritan eyes.
‘No, not heathen. At least, I don’t think so, from what I’ve been told. Here,’ said Wayland, ‘I’ll show you.’ He fetched a strong twig from outside and crouched down on to the mud floor. He drew on it – as best as he could – the pattern of the wounds he’d seen on the boy’s body, the unusual cross and the slashed face. ‘These,’ he said, pointing to the long straight slashes, ‘these I reckon were the death wounds. But these,’ here he pointed to the lines across, ‘when the magistrate saw these, he reckoned that together they make a cross. Some kind of special cross, I guess.’
Mary appeared to think a while. ‘The Cross of the Crossed Keys. That’s a Christian symbol all right and widely known as such. I doubt that tells you much though. It’s not disputed; you’ll see it in church, even today,’ she said. She moved closer, looking down at Wayland’s rough sketch. ‘But I suppose such a cross could be considered a Papist symbol now, more likely than not. If you’ve drawn it as it was,’ she continued, more confident now, ‘then, yes, it’s clear to me. ’Tis the Crossed Keys indeed.’
‘Crossed Keys? These loops would signify the keys’ handles then?’
‘Yes.’
‘But keys to what? A money chest? Is it a message about money?’
‘No, not that,’ Mary said, impatient now, ‘did you learn nothing in church – the old church I mean?’
‘Tell me, just tell me,’ he said, trying to hide his annoyance, for although he had quite deliberately withheld from her what the magistrate had already said, he nevertheless found he disliked being thought ignorant, even if it was only ignorance of church matters.
‘They’re the keys to heaven.’
‘Ah, right.’ he said, trying to sound as though he followed her explanation.
‘It’s a Crossed Keys cross,’ she said slowly, ‘so it represents the very keys to Heaven, as given by God to St Peter. And St Peter’s powers, it used to be said – ’
‘Were transferred directly to the Pope, that bit I do know. So, all right, I see the way that goes now,’ he paused, ‘but the face markings,’ he moved the twig up to the top of his crude drawing, ‘would they be religious too?’
‘The face markings, now they’re a different matter.’ she said, crouching closer to look more closely at Wayland’s sketch.
‘Yes,’ said Wayland, ‘that’s what I was thinking.’
Mary frowned. ‘Draw the face again,’ she said, ‘and draw it separately and bigger, here. Just show it as it was.’
Wayland gripped the stick in concentration, struggling to remember the detail of the boy’s pale body, upturned by the magistrate to maximize the fading light. He drew the face again on the dirt floor, larger this time, with its slit across the nose, the flesh hanging down. He carried on, sparing no detail of the mutilations that he could recall. He heard her sharp intake of breath. He looked up at Mary, waiting. He saw something change in her face. ‘What?’ he asked, ‘what is it that you see?’
Mary looked away, not answering at first. ‘Well, one thing is: it’s what I don’t see:’ she said finally, pointing back at the drawing of the torso, ‘you’ve drawn more details now. But how could a man carve such intricacies on the boy’s soft body? There’d be blood, mess, the lines would blur.’
Wayland was quick with his answer. He’d seen enough corpses, days after battle, when men – scavenging, careless and rough in their haste – cut into dead flesh. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not if the carving was done some time after death.’
They were both silent a moment, thinking through the implications of this – and united in not liking them. A murderer who mutilated the corpse seemed somehow much worse than one who slashed in the heat of some moment. ‘Anyways,’ Wayland said, ‘going back to what it all means. If it any of it means aught. Do you think it a message of some kind then?’
‘It may be, yes,’ said Mary, ‘though nowadays the crossed keys are a symbol used only by the old religion. Catholics. Or Papists as some now would say. Think on the teachings from church. God gave the keys to heaven to St Peter. St Peter’s representative here on earth is, of course, the Pope. So, a meaning might be to stress the pope’s authority and –’
‘And by extension the authority of the King then, as upholder of the pope’s authority.’ said Wayland quickly.
‘So maybe the killer is for the King.’ Mary said.
‘That would figure,’
“Or, if not the killer, then at least the brute who carved the sign.’
They thought about that for a moment.
‘No,’ said Wayland, running his hand across his eyes, ‘no, the killer must be the one who did the carving. He has to be. I can’t believe – I won’t believe there could be two separate men out there wanting to inflict such horrors on an innocent lad.’
Mary looked away. ‘I would wish it were true,’ she said, ‘but all my years have taught me there’s no limit to what evils men can and do think up.’
Saddened, Wayland pulled himself up from his crouched position on the floor and rubbed his aching back. ‘I thank you for your time,’ he said. He had decided to leave but it troubled him that Mary had avoided his question about the boy’s face. ‘The nose, then,’ he said, ‘do you see a further message there?’
Mary looked away again.
‘Tell me,’ he insisted, ‘you must say. I can see you think something of it.’
‘I cannot tell you what it means, exactly,’ said Mary, ‘but I can tell you where it’s from. And then maybe you’ll understand what kind of message it might be. Whoever did this has a history. And bloody one too.’
‘Tell me then. Tell me.’ Wayland pointed to his dirt floor sketch. ‘The slashed nose. What’s that about?’
‘A sign. It signified … a whore.’ she said at last.
‘A whore? Not a witch?’ Wayland asked.
‘A whore: a woman who has lost all virtue, at least in the eyes of some. It’s nothing to do with witches or wizards or the like. Not that such poor souls who’ve had the slash were generally either witches or whores.’
Wayland was silent. He’d told Mary – and more than that, he knew he’d told himself – that he’d come here because of the boy. But he knew too that his thoughts were never very far from Rebecca’s death. Everything always came back to her: plants, herbs, cats, his son and now a body. It was stupid, a long stretch, to think there’d be a link; but he knew he was condemned, like some tragic hero from an old legend, forever to look for one. If he had found a witchcraft connection in the motivation perhaps there would have been some lead, however tenuous, to what happened to Rebecca. He knew now that he was just clutching at straws in the wind. Still, he asked himself, didn’t the boy’s death deserve an answer too? ‘But then why this lad?’ Wayland thumped the floor with such force that a gritty dust enveloped them, ‘What could he have had to do with it?’
‘The slashed nose,’ she said slowly, ‘you see, that’s from Naseby.’
‘Naseby? Wasn’t that a battle, oh
, some three years back when Parliament routed the King’s men? If it is the same one, then I don’t follow.’
‘Not the battle itself. I’m talking about the massacre after.’
‘Massacre? What massacre? I’ve not heard of one.’
‘No,’ said Mary, ‘it’s not one that either side cares to talk about. It was a massacre of women, you see. News spread fast enough amongst women, from one side of the country to another even if men thought nothing of it.’
‘Women, then? Was it only women killed?’
‘Camp followers,’ she said, watching Wayland’s face closely.
‘You mean, ah, the soldiers’ mistresses and the like?’ he asked.
‘I mean womenfolk,’ Mary said – there was an edge to her voice, ‘just womenfolk. Who d’you think bandages the wounded, patches them up, after a battle?’
‘Women, then,’ said Wayland, ‘but what happened?’
‘Welsh women these were. And I know you fought on Parliament’s side, so you’ll not want to hear this.’
‘You know it’s true that I did fight for them,’ said Wayland curtly, ‘’tis also true that I had no choice in that. It was that side that pressed me. It is that side that controls our part of the country.’
He paused, guilty that perhaps he had overstated his views. ‘Though it’s also true,’ he added, ‘that I would pick Parliament against the King each time if I had the liberty to choose for myself. But then again, it’s true that in what they call the heat of battle, in my view, there’s precious little to choose between one army and another. Men – even men who’ve had no calling to fight, who had no choice but to join – they can – and often do – fall into some kind of blood lust. Things happen in war. So tell me now, what happened.’
This speech, such a long one for Wayland, surprised them both.
‘Things happen, yes,’ said Mary, ‘but this was a matter of hundreds of women, slaughtered after the battle. Cut down and cut up.’
‘Cut up?’
‘Slashed and run through, mostly. But here’s my point. Their killers – and they were Fairfax’s men, fair and square, no getting away from it – they marked every single woman they caught, dead or alive, with a slit to the nose. Just such a mark as the likeness you have drawn here shows.’