The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  ‘Are you listening?’ Matilda called out. ‘Do you heed God’s warnings?’

  We hushed her impatiently as Janiveer continued: ‘Men swear they have seen two castles rise from the ground where there was not even a stone before. They stood strong and tall as if they had taken a hundred years to build. At dawn a band of knights rode out from the first castle, pennants streaming. From the other castle, came men dressed in black, their faces hidden. All day they gave battle. First the knights defeated the men in black, then the fortunes of battle turned and the knights were defeated. But those who saw them fall from their horses, or their helmets knocked from their heads, said there were not living men inside the armour but the white skulls and bones of the dead. At sunset the slain rose up from the ground and all the warriors rode back through the castle gates. Then the castles sank into the earth. Only the ground churned up from the horses’ hoofs marked where the fierce battle had been fought.’

  The menfolk huddled round the blazing fire gave a pleasurable shudder. Some murmured that this foreigner was as entertaining as any of the travelling storytellers you could hear at Porlock market. ‘Tell us more,’ someone urged.

  ‘Foxes,’ Janiveer said, gazing not at us, but up at the dark sky. ‘Running in packs, swarming out of the forests into villages and towns, savaging babies in their cradles, attacking their parents when they tried to drive them off. Wolves, too, coming into the villages even while it is day, devouring men alive.’

  ‘Foxes are the devil’s beasts,’ Matilda said triumphantly. ‘Demons in disguise.’

  Little Ibb, clutching the rag doll she always carried, gazed fearfully over her shoulder towards the dark forest and began to wail. She tried to bury herself in Aldith’s arms, almost knocking baby Kitto off her lap.

  Elis raised his head. ‘Heard the same tale about those ghost castles from a pedlar up on the moors. Been seen here too. Wales it was.’

  ‘Wales bain’t here,’ old Abel said firmly. ‘Foreigners, they are. Can’t believe a word that comes out of a Welshman’s mouth, no more than you can any foreigner.’ He jerked his head in the direction of Janiveer to make his meaning plain to the gathering. ‘That’s if you can understand a word they say to start with.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something that isn’t just talk,’ Elis said. ‘Something that’s worse than all the foxes and wolves and demon castles put together. The Great Pestilence has returned.’

  The crackle of the fire, the distant sucking of waves, the creaking of the trees seemed suddenly to be growing louder. But there were no human sounds at all. No one spoke or even moved, waiting for Elis to continue.

  He glanced anxiously at the bailiff. ‘I was all set to bring you the news last night, Cador, soon as I returned, but by the time I came down from the high moor, the storm was raging and the beacon had been fired. And this morning . . .’ he grimaced ‘. . . with all that cleaning up to be done, well, I reckoned the news would get no worse for the keeping. But it’ll not come as much of a surprise to any, I reckon. We’ve all heard rumours of it from the sailors and pedlars these past weeks.’

  ‘Aye, and that’s exactly what they are,’ Cador said. ‘Just rumours, pedlars’ tales to frighten you into buying their potions and charms. It’s a trick as old as the sea, like the merchants tell you some new war’s broken out ’twixt us and France so you’d best buy pepper afore the ports are blocked, or there’s been a plague of insects in the north that’s eaten half the grain, so they’ve had to raise their prices.’

  ‘It’s more than rumours now, Cador,’ Elis said. ‘Every pedlar, merchant and drover on t’other side of the moor brings some fresh tale of it. Broke out in London. Been raging there since Lent, at back end of March. Any man who can afford to is fleeing the city. Any who can’t lie dead in the streets.’

  There was a sudden stirring as if a violent gust had blown through the gathering. Some villagers crossed themselves. Others clenched their fists around their thumbs to ward off the evil. Sweethearts felt for each other’s hands. Women pressed their faces against their babies.

  I pulled Hob to me, hugging him so hard he squealed and tried to wriggle out of my arms. He had no notion of the dread those words conjured. Nor did the other chillern. They were not even born when pestilence first swept across the land, leaving villages deserted and babbies starving beside the rotting corpses of their dead parents. But I remembered it only too well: the men taking turns, night and day, up in that watchtower, ready to light the beacon fire the moment they saw any ship that appeared to be adrift. They’d run to the shore and row out as close as they dared, throwing lighted barrels of tar on to the ship’s deck and firing burning arrows at the sails to set the vessel ablaze, for fear that the crew were dying from the contagion. I was barely thirteen summers the year the pestilence struck, only two years older than my Luke, but even now in my nightmares I still saw the bloated corpse of my mother and woke with the sickly stench of her death in my nostrils.

  Suddenly there was a torrent of voices, as if someone had pulled a bung from a keg of brine. Every man and woman around that cooking fire in the darkness began yelling questions.

  ‘How far has it spread? How close is it?’

  ‘Is the king doing nothing to stop it?’

  ‘What about the physicians? The priests?’

  ‘Quiet, woman! Let the man speak, will you?’

  Elis stared down at his calloused fingers. ‘They say King Edward tried what he might. His physicians said it was a great cattle market they call Smithfield that was the cause of it all. The blood and entrails were giving off bad humours and poisoning the air. So the king gave orders that no beasts were to be slaughtered there. But it did no good. Even bishops and noblemen who can afford the most expensive physic have died. The pestilence takes a man so quick that some are dead afore the physician can even be fetched. King and his court have fled to the New Forest, walled themselves up in Beaulieu Abbey till it’s over.’

  ‘London’s many days’ ride from here,’ Daveth said. ‘We’re safe enough.’

  Others murmured in agreement. ‘If the king’s taken his wife and chillern to the New Forest, he must reckon it’ll not spread out of the city, least not that far at any rate.’

  ‘It did before,’ Elis said.

  ‘But who’s to know if this is the same fever?’ Cador protested. ‘Last time the Great Pestilence came on ships from foreign parts. But if this fever broke out in London, it’ll more than likely be poisoned wells that’s the cause of their sickness or, like the king says, the bad humours from those great beast markets of theirs. Sir Nigel’s steward says they get the bloody flux in that city every year, regular as the tides, but we don’t suffer it.’

  ‘It rages all across France too,’ Janiveer said quietly. ‘It will spread.’

  ‘But not to here!’ Aldith spat on her fingers to ward off the evil words, as if Janiveer was calling the sickness to us.

  Matilda rose, her eyes shining in the firelight. She pointed up at the night sky, where the stars hung like shards of ice. ‘Are you blind and deaf? The wells and springs have been shut up against us. Only yesterday the sun turned black right over the village. Then came a great storm without rain. What more warning do you need? The Great Pestilence will strike us here, in the heart of the village. It will destroy you, your wives and children, your horses and goats. You must repent – repent before you are dragged down to Hell by your heinous sins.’

  She strode away, back down the path towards her cottage. Long after we lost sight of her, we could hear her, flinging psalms and prophecies up into the heavens.

  ‘That old hag has set the babby off now with her ranting,’ Aldith grumbled, pushing Ibb from her lap and gathering the wailing Kitto into her arms. ‘Little wonder her poor husband spends so many months at sea – it’s the only peace he gets from her bitter tongue. When he comes home this time, someone ought to cut him a stick and teach him how to use it on her back.’ She was rocking Kitto so violently that he bellered even louder. �
�Why doesn’t she go and preach to them as has the pestilence? Stands to reason, it’s London that has all the sinners ’cause that’s where the pestilence has struck. I’m telling you, it’ll not come here,’ she repeated emphatically.

  Several others nodded. ‘Course it won’t.’

  ‘The pestilence will come,’ Janiveer said. ‘And it will come soon.’

  Unlike Matilda’s raving, her tone was calm and flat, but it served only to make her words all the more chilling, as if she really knew.

  ‘My darling’s dead,’ Goda shrieked, wrapping her arms round her swollen belly. ‘The pestilence’s taken him. I know it has. He’s dead!’

  Aldith gave her young sister a little shake. ‘It’s done nothing of the sort. You mustn’t dwell on such things. It’s thinking dark thoughts that poisons the womb. Your man’ll be back from the sea just as soon as may be, with a purse full of coins to take care of you and the babby. You think on that.’

  She rounded on Janiveer. ‘My sister’s already lost her first. You want to fright her into losing this ’un and all? Anyhow, what do you know about the pestilence? Reckon yourself cleverer than the king’s physicians, do you?’

  ‘I know how to save you from it,’ Janiveer answered quietly, ‘how to save you all.’

  Bald John, the blacksmith, gave a roar of laughter. ‘Cador’s right. Every friar, pedlar and camelot on the road’ll be claiming they have the certain cure, from the blood of St Sebastian to the alchemist’s stone and every manner of potion and amulet between. Seen it all afore, I have. If the man who’s fool enough to buy their cure lives, then he thinks it’s money well spent. And if the pestilence kills him, he’s not likely to come asking for his coins back, is he? It’s an easy way to earn a living, that’s for sure.’

  Cador nodded his agreement. ‘Aye, so if you’ve some bless-vore you’re trying to sell us, woman, you’d best take it to London. There are enough fools there who’ll buy it. Sir Nigel’s steward reckons some of them have got heads stuffed full of gold pieces instead of brains. But we’ve no coins to waste in Porlock Weir and we’ve more wit than to part with them, if we did.’

  There’s many would have flown into a rage to be mocked like that, but Janiveer remained as calm as if the bailiff had been telling her the price of beans.

  ‘What I offer you cannot be bought with coins. I have a price, but it is not to be paid in gold or silver.’ She swept her sea-cold gaze around the circle of villagers huddled in the firelight. ‘I will save this village if just one among you has the courage to give me what I ask.’

  Chapter 7

  The eye sends a person into a ditch and a camel into a cauldron.

  Medieval Proverb

  The woman from the sea watches the people of the land, and she waits, her great grey-blue eyes unblinking in the firelight. Her mother taught her how to watch and wait. Sometimes it is the only weapon a woman can wield. But in Janiveer’s hand it is sharper and more deadly than any sword even the strongest knight can raise. Under her unblinking gaze she knows the villagers will fall silent, shiver. They will glance at her and, finding her gaze too piercing, too knowing, their eyes will dart away, like a shoal of little fishes.

  But an incubus will creep into their mouths and speak with their tongues. They will find themselves asking the very question they resolved not to ask. But only when they are forced to ask it will they be ready to hear the answer. And that time, she knows, is not yet. Now she watches.

  Her mother gave Janiveer her eyes, all three of them. Two were fashioned in the womb, twins of her mother’s and her grandmother’s before that, stretching back into a time beyond even the stories they tell around the fires in winter. The third eye she received from her mother’s hand, not her womb.

  One frosted night when she was no more than eleven summers, her mother woke Janiveer. Her grandmothers and aunts, wearing their coracles, like shells, upon their backs, waited for her outside her hut. They stripped her of the deer-pelt she had wrapped herself in against the cold and pulled her down to the seashore, naked as a newborn. The women set their coracles on top of the lapping waves and paddled out through the moon-gilded water to the island where no man ever set foot, like a swarm of turtles returning to the shore where they had been hatched. The icy sea breeze had ruffled Janiveer’s skin into goose pimples. But it was not the chill breeze alone that made her shiver. She was afraid of this island, rarely glimpsed behind its curtain of mist. But the child had always known that she would be taken there one day, the day her blood first flowed out like the tide in answer to the moon’s call, the day a girl becomes a woman.

  The aunts had bathed her in saltwater and put a crow’s stone in her mouth to give her knowledge. They had rubbed an ice-smooth pebble, the size and shape of a chicken’s egg, on her human eyes to make her see what was not visible. Then they had held her down while her mother stitched the third eye into her belly with a bone needle, drawing threads soaked in copper and soot beneath the skin, until the blue eye was indelibly marked above her woman’s mound. That was the eye that no man looked upon twice.

  A skein of golden light had risen across the far horizon of the inky sea before the delicate and painful task was completed. Tears had flowed, her own and her mother’s, but Janiveer had not uttered a sound. The lesson in pain had been learned and learned well. But it was only the first of many before she understood what she had been born to do.

  Now Janiveer watches the villagers in silence. They bluster and mutter, laugh and jeer, trying to dismiss her words. But no one rises, no one leaves. They are afraid to turn their backs on the fragile light of the fire, to venture out alone into the vastness of the night, afraid to enter the darkness of their own homes, for a grave, too, has a roof and four walls and it is a cold dwelling.

  Only Aldith stares at her, glowering. If looks could kill . . . but they can. Janiveer knows that better than most. She saw the hostility in Aldith’s eyes the moment she opened her own. The fisherman’s wife has done nothing to conceal her jealousy. Janiveer wants to laugh. These village women are fearful that their menfolk will be seduced from their beds as easily as puppies are lured from their masters simply by dangling a morsel of fresh meat. What do they imagine she would do with such dull-wits? Are they trying to convince themselves that they have something worth the stealing?

  But Sara is not one of those. She, too, sits in silence. A white scar like a new moon glows on her cheek. Her brown hair gleams copper in the flames. Janiveer has been watching her all day and knows her fear is not that her husband might stray but that she is already losing her first-born son. He is drifting away from her and she cannot understand where he is going or why. She hugs her younger son to her now, gripped by a new and greater terror. Her fists tighten around his shoulders as if she would drag him back from the claws of death. He squeaks and pulls away, pouting resentfully, like a fretful infant. They are all falling silent now, gazing into the fire as if the answer is written there in the twisting flames. And it is, for those who know how to read it, which they do not.

  In the end it is Sara who breaks the silence, her halting voice startling the villagers out of their reverie. ‘You said you could stop the pestilence coming . . . if we had the courage to pay the price.’

  ‘I said, when it comes, I could save you. That is different.’

  Cador gives a snort. ‘Listen to her, words as slippery as a barrelful of eels. Tell your wife to save her breath, Elis. You’ll no more get a straight answer out of this foreigner than you’ll get an honest handshake from a Frenchman.’

  Elis rocks sideways on his hams as if he is farting, glowering at his feet. It shames a man to be told to control his own wife, and it amuses Janiveer to see it.

  ‘It’s naught but sparrow’s shit whether the foreigner answers straight or not,’ he mutters petulantly. ‘How could she turn back the pestilence, when king’s own physicians can’t?’

  ‘But if there’s a chance,’ Sara says hotly, ‘what else are we to do? Sit here like goats staked ou
t as wolf-bait, waiting for it to come? I have to do something to protect my chillern. And you heard her, she says she’s not after coin. So maybe she’s a holy woman, maybe she has got the touch. Saints can perform miracles.’

  ‘Her? A saint?’ Aldith sneers.

  ‘She came alive from that sea, didn’t she?’ Sara says. ‘That’s as close to a miracle as I’ve ever seen. She was dead, or near enough. Now look at her. Maybe she was saved and cast up here so she could protect us. Besides, there’s none of you would decide whether or not to buy so much as a peck of grain till you knew what price was being asked for it. So where’s the harm in asking her?’

  Sara ignores the mew of outrage from Cador’s wife, Isobel, at a mere packman’s woman usurping the authority of the bailiff. She jerks up her chin in the firelight, her eyes boldly meeting Janiveer’s. ‘So, come on, you tell us what this price is of yours. I’m not saying we’ll pay it, but we’ll not know till we’ve heard it.’

  Janiveer gazes round at the tense faces. ‘A human life. That is my price.’

  There is a stunned silence. It pulses on the air, unlike any that has gone before.

  Bald John shatters it with a forced belly laugh, reaching over and slapping the dwarf on his crooked back. ‘What about this ’un? If it’s a sacrifice you want, you can have the dwarf and welcome. We’ll even deliver him trussed up, like a suckling pig, for the spit. Though whether creatures like him are human, you’d best be asking Father Cuthbert.’

  Several of the villagers chuckle, though it is a tense, mirthless laughter. But Janiveer does not smile. Her tone when she speaks again is measured, cold.

  ‘If it is your village that is to be saved, it is your village that must pay. The life must be one of your own – a man, woman or child born on the earth of this village, one who has breathed its air, drunk from its veins. Someone whose flesh is Porlock Weir. Without that, I can do nothing to save you. Which family will offer me one life, just one, to save you all?’