Company of Liars

by Karen Maitland

  I pulled a pastry from my scrip, broke it in two and tossed half to her, then hunkered down with my back resting on the tree trunk to eat my share. I was hungry and it was a quiet spot to eat now that the crowd had moved on. And I couldn’t have eaten and not offered the child a bite, now could I? I gazed out at the bustle of the fair, chewing slowly. The pastry was as dry as the devil’s hoof, but the salt mutton inside was sweet enough and well herbed. The girl was holding her pastry in both fists as if she feared someone might snatch it from her. She said nothing, not even a thank you.

  I took a swig of ale to wash the dry mouthful down. ‘Do you have a name, girl?’

  ‘Narigorm.’

  ‘Well, Narigorm, if you’re going to thieve from his sort you’ll need to learn your trade better. You’re fortunate he didn’t send for the bailiff.’

  ‘Wasn’t thieving.’ The words came out muffled from a well-stuffed mouth.

  I shrugged and glanced sideways at her. She’d finished the pastry already and was licking her fingers with great concentration. I wondered when she’d last eaten. Given the man’s mood, I doubted he was going to feed her again that day. But I half believed her about the stealing. A girl who stood out so vividly from the crowd was not likely to survive long as a pickpocket and it occurred to me that with her looks her father or her master, whichever the man was, might well have found a good living renting her out by the hour to men whose taste runs to young virgins. But she’d clearly upset the customer this time. Maybe she’d refused the merchant, or else he’d tried her and discovered he was not the first to come banging on her door. She’d learn ways to conceal that in time. More experienced women would teach her the trick of it, and she’d doubtless earn a good living when she mastered the art. She’d a fair few years ahead of her in the trade, more than most I reckoned, for even when the bloom of her youth was gone there would still be plenty who’d pay handsomely for a woman who looked so different from the rest.

  ‘You want me to do it for you now, for the pastry?’ Her voice was as emotionless as her gaze. ‘We’ll have to be quick before Master comes back, he’ll not be best pleased if you don’t pay in coins.’

  Her small, cold hand tried to insinuate itself into mine. I put it back in her lap, gently but firmly, sad for her that she had already learned not to expect any gifts from life. Not even a crust comes free. Still, the younger you learn that lesson, the fewer disappointments you’ll have.

  ‘I’m past such things now, child. Much too old. Besides, it was only a bite of food. Take it and welcome. You’re a pretty girl, Narigorm. You don’t need to sell yourself so cheaply. Take a tip from an old camelot, the more people pay for something, the more they think it’s worth.’

  She frowned slightly and tilted her head, regarding me curiously. ‘I know why you don’t want me to read the runes for you. You don’t want to know when you’re going to die. Old men say they want to know, but they don’t.’ She rocked back and forth on her bottom like a toddler. ‘I told the merchant he was going to lose all his money and his wife was going to run off and leave him. It’s the truth, but he didn’t like it. Master told him I was teasing and tried to make me give him a better fortune, but I wouldn’t. I can’t lie; if you lie you lose the gift. Morrigan destroys liars.’

  So she was a diviner. A good trick if you can convince others of the truth of it. It’s hard to tell with some of them if they believed in their own art or not. Was she convinced she had told the merchant the truth or had she taken a dislike to the fat toad and given him that ill fortune from devilment? If so, she’d paid for it and might well pay again if her master was forced to spend too much in the tavern appeasing him, but she probably thought it worth a hiding for the look on the merchant’s face. I might have thought so too at her age. I chuckled.

  ‘I did tell him the truth,’ she hissed savagely. ‘I’ll tell yours, then you’ll see.’

  Startled by the malice in her voice, I glanced down, but her pale blue eyes were as wide and emotionless as before and I realized I was being foolish. Children hate to be laughed at. It was natural enough for her to be indignant if she thought she was doubted.

  ‘I believe you, child, but I’ve no wish to have my fortune told. It’s not that I doubt your skill,’ I added quickly, ‘but when you reach my age the future rushes towards you with too much haste as it is, without you running to meet it.’

  I clambered slowly to my feet. I’ve no quarrel with any who make a living by divination, medicine or any other magic art they can use to con a few coins from people. Why should I? Don’t I practise my art on the superstitious and the credulous? But I see no reason to part with my hard-earned money for such services. Besides, if you can read the future, you can read the past, for they are but ends of the same thread and I always take great care that no one should know anything of me except my present.

  The shadows were lengthening on the ground. The breeze, never warm, now had a sharp edge to it. The pig was bones. Some people were returning home, but others, most none too steady on their feet, were drifting towards the forest to continue the celebrations now that the business of the fair was over. I tidied my old bones away in my pack. There would be no more customers today. I heaved it on to my back and followed the raggle-taggle crowd towards the trees. I guessed there’d be some good sack swilled down in the woods that night and rich meats too for those who still had stomach for them, which I had.

  I said nothing more to the girl. I’d done my Christian duty, shared a bite with her, and that was the end of it. And there was something about the way she looked at me that unnerved me. I’ve got used to being stared at over the years. I hardly notice it now. No, it wasn’t that she was staring at my scar that bothered me, it was rather that she was not looking at it; she was staring at me as if she were trying to see beyond it.

  The men in front of me ambled down the track, stumbling over roots and stones. One sprawled on his hands and knees. I helped his friend haul him to his feet. He slapped me on the back and belched; his breath stank worse than a dragon’s fart. There were going to be some sore heads in those parts come morning. As we steadied him until he could work out which foot to move first, I glanced behind me at the Green. Though I could not make out any faces at that distance, I could see a blur of white stark against all the browns, greens and scarlets around. She was standing on the edge of the grass, still watching me. I could feel her staring, trying to prise me open. I found myself suddenly furious with her. My anger was without cause, I knew that, for the poor child had done nothing to me at all, but I swear that if her master had come out of the tavern at that moment and given her another strapping, I would not have been sorry. Like him, I wanted her to cry. Tears are natural. Tears are human. Tears confine your curiosity to yourself.

  So, you may ask, was that it? Was that the beginning? Was that what caused it all, half a pastry offered to a child with eyes of ice? Hardly a day of ill fortune for anyone except the fat merchant. You’re right, if that had been all, it would have been nothing, but there was something else that happened on that day, several miles away, in a little town by the sea called Melcombe. Unconnected, you would have thought, yet those two events were to become as tightly woven as the warp and weft in a length of silk. Threads drawn from different directions, yet destined to become one. The warp thread in this cloth? That was the death of one man. We’ll call him John, for I never knew his name. Someone must have known it, but they never admitted it and so he was buried without it.

  John collapsed in the crowded market place. He was seen to stagger, clutching at the sides of a cart for support. Most thought him drunk, for he had the look of a sailor about him and, as everyone knows, sailors spend what time they have ashore supping liquor until their money runs out and they are forced back to sea again. John bent double, coughing and hacking his lungs out, until frothy spatters of blood sprayed from his mouth on to his hands and the wheels of the cart. Then he sank to his knees and keeled over.

  The passers-by who went to his
aid at once shrank back, gagging and clapping their hands over their noses. This stench was not the ordinary stink of an unwashed drunk, but so fetid it seemed to come from an opened tomb. Nevertheless, those with stronger stomachs did make shift to take him by the arms and turn him over, but he screamed so loudly with pain that they dropped him again, startled. The men stared at him, unwilling to risk touching him again, yet not knowing what to do to help.

  The man who owned the cart prodded John with the toe of his shoe, trying to encourage him to crawl away, since he obviously didn’t want to be lifted up. The carter wasn’t a callous man, but he had to reach the next village by nightfall. He could smell rain on the wind and was anxious to be off before it fell again, turning the tracks into a quagmire. It was the devil’s own job to drive that forest track once it got muddy and if you had to stop to shoulder the cart out of a rut, you were easy prey for any thief who fancied helping himself to your purse and your cart, leaving you as good as dead in a ditch. God knows there was no shortage of such scoundrels in the forest. He prodded John again, trying to make him roll out from under the cart. However anxious he was to leave, the carter could hardly drive over a sick man.

  John, feeling the toe against him, seized the carter’s leg and tried to hoist himself up on it. He lifted his sweating face, his eyes rolling back in his head as another wave of pain shuddered through his body, and it was then that the carter saw that John’s face and arms were covered with livid blue-black spots. It was a sight to make any man flinch away, but the carter didn’t comprehend what he was looking at. He didn’t recognize the signs. Why should he? They had not been seen here before, not in this place, not in this land.

  But someone recognized them; someone who had seen those telltale marks before. He was a merchant, well travelled beyond our shores, and he knew the signs only too well. For a moment he stood stupefied, as if he could not believe it could happen here. Then he grabbed the carter and croaked, ‘Morte bleue’. The small crowd that was gathering about them stared uncomprehendingly from the merchant to the writhing figure on the ground. The merchant pointed, his hand trembling. ‘Morte bleue, morte bleue’, he yelled, his voice rising hysterically, then summoning up what few wits he still possessed, he screamed, ‘He has the pestilence!’

  The carter was right. That night it did rain. Not drizzling as it had done at dawn; that had only been the prologue. No, this time it poured. Hard, heavy drops striking leaves, earth, crops and thatches, turning paths into streams and fields into swamps. It rained as if it was the beginning of the flood and perhaps those who saw the first drops fall back in Noah’s day thought, like us, that it signified nothing. Perhaps they too believed that by morning or the following day it would stop.

  2. The Company

  ‘Where have you come from, boy?’

  It wasn’t a friendly enquiry. The innkeeper stood in the doorway, bouncing a stout stick rhythmically against the palm of his hand. He was a big man, his muscular arms covered with black hair. He was not in his prime and his belly was too big to suggest he was nimble of foot, but then he didn’t need to be. One crack from that stick and he would not be required to give chase to his opponents.

  The lad facing him hesitated, his eyes fixed nervously on the bouncing stick. He took a step backwards and stumbled, hampered by his flamboyant travelling cloak. He was a slim youth, shorter than the innkeeper. He grasped the cloak tightly about him against the rain with a hand the colour of rosewood, long and softly elegant. A lute hung over his shoulder. No farmer’s boy, this one.

  ‘Answer me, boy, if you know what’s good for you. Are you come from the south?’

  The lad took another step back and swallowed, plainly uncertain whether yes or no was the right answer.

  ‘Y… yes,’ he finally ventured.

  ‘He means he was born in the lands to the south,’ I said, stepping as rapidly as I could between the raised cudgel and the shrinking boy. ‘But he’s not come from the south these many months. I myself saw him only last week at the Magdalene Fair at Chedzoy, that’s up Bridgwater way. That’s right, isn’t it, boy?’ I slid my foot across his and pressed hard.

  The lad nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, from Chedzoy, we came down from there.’ He shivered miserably, the rain dripping from his hood.

  The innkeeper looked him up and down suspiciously. ‘You, Camelot, you’ll swear you saw him there?’

  ‘On the bones of St Peter.’

  He looked back at the lad, then finally lowered his stick. ‘Two pence for a room, penny for the barn. Hay’s clean. Mind you keep it that way. Dogs sleep outside.’

  There weren’t many men in the inn at Thornfalcon that evening. A few travellers like myself and a handful of locals, but the rain was keeping many by their own hearths. The innkeeper was in as foul a mood as the weather. It was, after all, only the backend of July, and he counted on long, warm summer evenings to fill the benches in his courtyard. He bellowed and raged at his wife, who in turn slammed the ale down on the tables so that it slopped over, glowering at her customers as if they were to blame. Her sour face wasn’t helping trade either. If a man wants bad-tempered company he can usually find it at his own hearth; he doesn’t need to pay someone else for the privilege.

  I saw the lad enter with an older man. He looked round and then, spotting me in the corner behind the fire, pointed me out to his companion. They both came across. The older man had to stoop to pass under the beams. He was olive-skinned like the boy, but whereas the lad was a slender, delicate-looking youth, the man had the broad, muscular frame of maturity, running a little to fat. The lines in the corners of his eyes had set and his dark hair was streaked with grey. He wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but striking enough with his Roman nose and full mouth. He’d doubtless turned more than a few heads in his youth, probably still did. He gave a courtly bow and sat down heavily on the bench opposite.

  ‘Buona sera, signore. I am Rodrigo. Your pardon for the intrusion, but I wanted to thank you. Jofre tells me that you spoke for him. We are in your debt, Camelot.’

  ‘Jofre?’

  He inclined his head towards the young man who stood respectfully at his side.

  ‘My pupil.’

  The young man gave a half bow in imitation of his master.

  I nodded. ‘You’re welcome. It was just a word and words are freely given. But let me offer you one word more. I don’t know where you really come from, and it’s no concern of mine, but these days it’s safest to say you’ve travelled from the north. These rumours make people cautious.’

  The man laughed, a deep laugh that made his tired eyes dance. ‘An innkeeper threatens his customers with a cudgel and that is cautious?’

  ‘You said rumours, what rumours?’ Jofre interrupted. He was plainly on easy terms with his master.

  ‘From your lute and your garb, I took you to be minstrels. I’m surprised you’ve not heard the news on your travels. I thought all England knew by now.’

  The master and pupil exchanged glances, but it was Rodrigo who answered, glancing around first to see if others were eavesdropping on the conversation.

  ‘We have not long been on the road. We were both in the employ of a lord. But… but he is old and his son has taken over the running of his estates. He brought with him his own musicians and so now we try to make our fortune on the road. È buono,’ he added with a forced cheerfulness, ‘there is the whole world to see and many pretty girls as yet unbedded. Is that not right, Jofre?’

  The lad, who was studying his hands with a miserable intensity, nodded briefly.

  Rodrigo clapped him on the shoulder. ‘A new start, is it not, ragazzo?’

  Again the boy nodded and flushed a dull red, but did not raise his eyes.

  A new start for which of them, I wondered. I guessed there was more to the story than Rodrigo had told. Perhaps the gaze of one or the other had strayed too close to a pretty girl in the lord’s family; it’s not unheard of. Bored women left too often alone are not averse to a dalliance wi
th a good-looking minstrel.

  ‘You said there were rumours,’ Jofre reminded me, with a note of urgency in his voice.

  ‘The great pestilence has finally reached our shores.’

  Jofre’s eyes widened in shock. ‘But they said it could not reach this island.’

  ‘They say before a battle that their king cannot be defeated, but they are usually wrong. It was brought on a ship from the isle of Guernsey, so they say, but who knows, they may be wrong about that too. But wherever it came from scarcely matters now; the point is it has arrived.’

  ‘And it is spreading?’ Rodrigo asked quietly.

  ‘Along the south coast, but it will spread inland. Take my advice, travel north and stay well away from the ports.’

  ‘They will close the ports, surely, as they did in Genoa?’

  ‘To the south, maybe, but the merchants will not suffer the ports to be closed on the east and west coasts, at least not until they see the dead lying in the streets. Too much money sails on the waves.’

  A stifled sob made us both glance up. Jofre was standing, fists clenched, face blanched, his mouth working convulsively. Then he turned and barged blindly out of the inn, ignoring the furious curses of the innkeeper’s wife as he rushed past her, knocking a dish out of her hands.

  Rodrigo rose. ‘Your pardon, Camelot, please excuse him. His mother – she was in Venice when the pestilence came there. There has been no word since.’

  ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean the worst. How could she send a message in these times? True, the rumours say half have perished, but if that is so, then half have survived it. Why should she not be one of them?’

  ‘So I tell him, but his heart tells him otherwise. He adores her. His father sent him away, but he did not want to leave her. Distance has translated a mortal woman into Holy Virgin in his memory. And because he worships her, so he is afraid he has lost her. I must find him. The young are impetuous. Who knows what they will do?’