The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  Every morning I looked for my sons along the shore. Every evening I stood on the edge of the forest calling to them. Each time I heard footsteps outside the cottage in the day or woke in the night thinking I’d heard voices, I ran outside, certain it was them coming home. But neither Hob nor Luke had returned.

  Once I thought I saw Hob with another boy out on the rocks in the bay. I tried to pick my way over the slippery stones, yelling his name, terrified he’d vanish before I could reach him. I must have sounded like an angry gull swooping down. But as soon as the lad turned I could see it wasn’t Hob, nothing like him. How could I ever have thought he was?

  I cursed myself a hundred times a day that I hadn’t run after Luke when he broke out, but I couldn’t cross that threshold. It was as if the boards were still nailed across the door keeping me in. How long had it been since we’d felt the sun, smelt the salt air? There had been no days in that cottage, only one everlasting night, and I couldn’t make myself walk out into the light. It didn’t seem real. If I stepped into it, I would vanish.

  Panic seized me. Cador and the villagers would see the broken boards. I had to replace them. My hands trembling, I tried to hang the planks back from the inside, but the wood was smashed and they wouldn’t stay up. Flies buzzed in, hundreds of them, swarming over the goat’s head and the birth blood on the bed. I couldn’t keep them out. If the villagers discovered we’d corpses in the cottage, they’d burn it down with us inside.

  I tried to calm myself. We had to leave the cottage now. I must get Aldith and Goda out before anyone noticed the broken wood. I needed Aldith to help me with Goda and her babby, for Goda was too weak to stand, but Aldith wouldn’t let go of Col’s body. She just clung to him, rocking and moaning. I think we’d have been there still if little Ibb hadn’t suddenly scrambled out through the hole and, before I’d a chance to think, I was chasing after the little heller to catch her afore she went running down to the village.

  We hid among the trees for the rest of that day, but no one went near my cottage except the flies. At nightfall, I crept into the village searching for food and water. That’s when I realised the villagers no longer cared if we were shut in the cottage or not, for by then it was too late.

  I stood in the dark, deserted street, listening to the cries of agony, the wails of fear and grief behind the closed doors. A tide of helplessness and rage flooded over me. All that we had suffered, all that I had lost, had been for nothing. I wanted to be with my Elis, to feel his arms about me. I couldn’t face this alone again. I stumbled down to the shore and waded out into the dark, icy water. I wanted to go on walking deeper and deeper into the waves, till the sea closed over me and all the misery was ended.

  I think I would have done it too, but for the cry. I don’t know if it was the cry of a child in the village I heard or a bird on the cliff, but it was the sound Luke had made when he was first laid in my arms. I knew then I had to live. I had to stay alive until I found my sons and brought them home.

  Not a soul in the village had laid eyes on my chillern since the day we were shut into the cottage, but I wouldn’t give up. They’d come back to me, I knew it. Some of the women tried to tell me that, like Col, they must be dead, but I’d not believe it. I’d never believe it. I was their mam. I’d know if they were gone from this world. I’d feel them leave it, just as I’d felt them stir in my belly before they’d come into it. I prayed my boys had found each other. Together they could survive.

  Hooking my fingers under the fishes’ gills, I trudged back up the path that ran along the shoreline. I’d sent Goda to fetch what water she could from the stream, but I’d no real hope that she’d go there, much less wait till it was her turn to dip her pail into the trickle. She had to be watching the sea all the time, couldn’t bear to be out of sight of it, as if she was the beacon that must keep burning to guide the ship to safety. She was convinced only she could call Jory home.

  Most days, Goda wandered up to the cliffs, clutching that babby of hers as if it was a rare jewel someone might try to steal. But the poor little cheal still had no name. Goda refused to give her one in case the faery folk learned it and stole her afore she could be christened. Said her father must name her when he stood for her in the chapel. I kept telling her that when Jory returned, it would not be to her, but to his wife. He’d never dare stand and admit before the whole village that Goda’s by-blow was of his getting. And I warned her, for her own sake, she’d best not be making it common knowledge either. But Goda would give that far-off smile of hers and say he’d be so proud that he had a babby, he’d shout the news from the ship’s mast. Goda had always been moon-kissed, not daft exactly, but not right either.

  I found myself drawing close to Aldith’s cottage. I’d no mind to call on her. She’d been strange since Daveth died, cold. She’d not been near my home since the day we’d escaped from it and would turn from me if we passed on the track, as if she thought I had the evil eye. Yet I’d seen her laughing with some of the other women, as if she was a giddy maid not a grieving widow, and I feared she was becoming as fey as her sister.

  But though I meant to pass by her cottage, I could see at once something was wrong. The door and shutters were closed and there wasn’t a wisp of smoke rising from the thatch. Even through the door, I could hear little Ibb bellering, as if she’d been left to sob for hours.

  ‘Aldith, you there?’

  My heart was thumping. Blessed Virgin, not her fallen sick too, not Aldith. I pushed open the door of the cottage, steeling myself to enter. Death could strike so suddenly, prowling through the village like a great black cat, snatching one here, another there before anyone even glimpsed its shadow.

  But I breathed easier as soon as I saw little Ibb was alone. She was sitting on the bare earth floor, her face covered with snot and the sticky remains of dried pottage. She gazed up at me with big wet eyes, her wails giving way to hiccuping mewls that jerked her little body.

  I made to pick her up, but she drew back from me. ‘You sick, Ibb? Got a pain?’ Even as I said it, I was ashamed of myself. When a little one is ill, they need cuddling, but fear was more easily caught than the pestilence. I crouched down and laid a hand on her forehead. She flinched away, as if she thought I might hit her, but she wasn’t burning up. If anything she was too cold. How long had she been sitting there?

  ‘Where’s your mam, Ibb?’

  She only stared at me.

  ‘How long has she been gone? She give you any breakfast?’

  The fire had not been stirred into life, and the charred embers beneath the thick grey ash were barely warm. No wonder the little ’un was shivering. An empty cooking pot lay on its side on the floor. By the state of Ibb’s face and hands, she had given up waiting for Aldith and dug her own fists into whatever had remained in the cold pot.

  I bent again to her, and again she flinched away from me, her gaze darting sideways to the corner of the room. ‘What’s wrong, cheal? Don’t fret, your mam’ll not scold you for eating food from the pot.’

  I pulled her to her feet. She’d messed herself, her shift was soiled and stinking. ‘Best fetch you home with me, till we can find your mam.’

  I gnawed my lip. Was that wise, though? Aldith had been acting so oddly that she might take it amiss if she found I’d taken Ibb. But Aldith would never let her hearth fire go out if she was close by. Something must have happened to keep her from home.

  I took Ibb’s hand. But she resisted me, craning around to stare at the bundle in the corner, wrapped in the cloth she always used as a blanket for her rag doll.

  ‘What do you want? Your poppet, is it? Fetch it then.’

  She’d fret for it, if we left without it. But she didn’t move. So I bent and picked it up, expecting to lift the rag doll easily in one hand, but it was unexpectedly heavy. Before I could grasp it properly, it thudded down on to the hard earth floor.

  ‘Won’t wake up,’ a plaintive little voice said behind me. ‘Won’t play with me. I wrapped him to make him wa
rm.’

  My hands shaking, I gingerly peeled back the wrapping. The face under the cloth was grey and waxen, the eyes sunk beneath the half-closed lids. I didn’t need to touch the bare skin to know that babby Kitto was dead and had been for many hours.

  I had washed Ibb in the sea and wrapped her in Aldith’s old cloak before hurrying the shivering cheal up the path towards my cottage. Whatever Aldith might think of me, I’d not leave a mite like her alone with that corpse. And for all I knew Aldith herself might be lying dead somewhere, struck down when she went to fetch water or wood.

  Ibb suddenly shrank into my side, refusing to take another step. She was staring ahead at Cador’s cottage. Bangs and shouts were coming from inside, though not cries of sickness or pain but of anger. Sybil and Bald John’s wife, Cecily, were standing outside, trying to peer in through the casements, though the door was shut. The boy, Crabfish, was there too, shuffling from side to side, chuntering away to himself as always. I could hear Cador’s wife, Isobel, bellowing in fury and his gruffer tones answering.

  I wanted to box Isobel’s ears. Everyone was exhausted, irritable, but didn’t she realise how lucky she was, that she still had a husband living, and a child too? Two of Aldith’s children now lay dead, and mine . . . Where were my boys?

  ‘Cador can’t be drunk,’ I muttered, as I dragged little Ibb past. ‘There’s not a drop of ale in the village.’

  Cecily snorted. ‘It’s not drink has got her rampin. It’s that whore—’

  But her words were cut short as the door burst open. Aldith came tumbling out and fell sprawling on the sun-baked path. Her hair was loose and the laces on the front of her kirtle were undone, so that her breasts flopped out. Isobel stood glaring in the doorway, her cheeks scarlet and her own hair half pulled from its bindings.

  ‘If I so much as see your face near my cottage again, I’ll scratch it off your skull. You stay away from my Cador, do you hear?’

  Aldith clambered to her feet, brushing the dust from her skirt, but made little attempt to straighten her kirtle. ‘I’ll go where I please and with whoever I please. Your man owes me. My Daveth wouldn’t have got sick if Cador hadn’t shut us up in there, nor my boy. My husband, my brother and my two sons taken from me ’cause of your husband, so let him get me with more sons. That’s only fair, isn’t it?’

  ‘Two sons?’ Sybil frowned. ‘But I thought it was only Col you’d lost. Don’t tell me little Kitto . . . When? It can’t be more than a day or so ’cause I saw—’

  Isobel’s eyes flashed wide with fear. ‘You telling me her babe’s newly dead and she comes into my cottage and throws herself all over my husband? And her still befouled with her brat’s sickness!’

  ‘We share everything in Porlock Weir,’ Aldith said. ‘Fish, pestilence, graves. You’ll soon be sharing that ’n’ all. Or do you want a grave all to yourself? Common grave not good enough for the bailiff’s wife?’

  Appalled, I shoved little Ibb towards Aldith, hoping the sight of the shivering cheal might bring my sister-in-law to her senses. ‘Aldith . . . you’ve a daughter still living, have you forgotten?’

  ‘What good’s a daughter with no men to care for us? And who’ll put a babby in her belly when she’s grown?’

  Crabfish suddenly began to giggle, though he looked scared. He often gave that cackling magpie laugh of his when he was anxious. Usually no one paid much heed to it, but Aldith rounded on the moon-faced boy, pulling open her kirtle and thrusting her pendulous breasts so close to his face they almost took his ears off. ‘Reckon you can give me a son, do you? Come on, then, get your breeches down. I’ll take a babby from any mumper that can get it up.’

  Crabfish, who never looked at anything straight on, tried to back away, turning his head, but his eyes seemed glued to the mounds of swinging flesh and his giggling rose to a near scream of terror.

  Cecily bustled forward, dragging the lad away. ‘Be off with you now, boy. Go on, shoo! And as for you,’ she scolded, grabbing the laces on the front of Aldith’s kirtle and jerking them together, ‘you stop this! You’re behaving worse than a tavern whore.’

  Aldith tried to pull away from her, but Cecily slapped her hard. ‘Stand still,’ she ordered, trying to lace up her kirtle. ‘What would your Daveth say if he could see you disgracing his good name like this? He’d be shamed he ever called you wife.’

  Aldith pushed Cecily away. ‘What good is any name to a man when he’s rotting in his grave? It was her husband and yours that put him there. And your husband and hers that’ll pay for it. She always thought she were better than the rest of us, could give us orders just ’cause her man’s the bailiff. But worms can’t tell the difference between a bailiff and a beggar. Cador and Bald John will be lying in that grave pit afore the week is out, do you hear me? And you and her will be crawling into any man’s bed you can find left alive, even Crabfish’s or that crook-backed dwarf’s.’

  Chapter 29

  I heard one of the four living beasts say in a voice of thunder, ‘Come’.

  The Apocalypse of St John

  The girl they called Raguel crouched down and pushed a steaming bowl of pottage into Hob’s hands and held a second out to Luke, which he seized eagerly. But instead of moving away, Raguel leaned towards him, pressing her mouth so close to Luke’s ear that the tickle of her hot breath made his groin throb. Her tangle of long hair brushed against his face. It smelt of damp sheep and wood-smoke.

  ‘I put more meat in yours, handsome, so you’ll grow tall and strong. You want to be strong for me, don’t you?’ Her fingers ran spider-like up the inside of his thigh, making his leg jerk so that the gravy in the bowl slopped on to the cave floor. She stifled a giggle. ‘Don’t you be telling anyone now, or you’ll get me into trouble with the Prophet.’ Her gaze darted towards the back of the cave, where Brother Praeco sat, but he was too intent on fishing the chunks of goat’s meat from his own bowl to glance in his pretty young wife’s direction.

  Raguel rose, padding softly on bare feet back towards the fire, edging between the twenty or so men and women hunkered down on heaps of bracken and ancient sheepskins, gobbling their share of the fragrant stew. They were a raggle-taggle band. There was one man who hobbled on crutches, his leg as withered and scaly as a bird’s; a blind woman given to visions that left her writhing on the ground; several men who boasted of having been hardened cutthroats before Brother Praeco saved their souls; and a young woman who claimed she’d been a nun, but who, old Friar Tom whispered to Luke, was really a witch. But, then, Friar Tom swore that when he was a hermit, a naked girl had appeared to him while he was praying and tried to tempt him into lustful sin. When he’d resisted, she’d turned into a fiery black goat. Luke was never sure if the old man was teasing him, but compared to the tales Brother Praeco told, girls turning into burning goats seemed as commonplace as hens laying eggs.

  Friar Tom said he’d walked all the way from Winchester following the Prophet. His watery eyes always took on a dreamy look when he told the story, like the old seamen in Porlock when they spoke of the lands across the sea.

  ‘I’d been begging for alms from the pilgrims queuing to pray at St Swithun’s shrine, but the monks from the cathedral drove me off, said I’d no right begging on their land and the pilgrims should give their money to the shrine. Beat me, they did, with their staves. Real savage they were. Then they pitched me into a stinking ditch. But Brother Praeco saw what they did and pulled me out of the filth with his own hand. He got his disciples to push a wagon loaded with kegs of wine hard up against the door of the shrine to block it and climbed on top of the kegs. He shouted to all how God was going to send wind, fire and pestilence to sweep away the putrid corruption of the Church and the Pope. Said God would destroy the bishops and the nobles and even the King of England himself.

  ‘The pilgrims drew close to listen. Some were jeering, but the Prophet told them how the last time God sent the Great Pestilence three popes were struck down by it and they all died, one right after another, cer
tain proof of their corruption. That was God’s warning for the Church to mend her sinful ways, but she hadn’t and now the Day of Wrath was coming when God would destroy them all. Brother Praeco looked like Our Blessed Lord Himself standing up there. This blinding glow shone behind his head as if his very hair were afire, but ’twasn’t burning. I knew then that he was a holy prophet sent to save us.

  ‘Some of the pilgrims and clergy began hurling dung and stones at him, but those of the Chosen that were already with him fought back, giving as good as they got till the men-at-arms arrived with whips, dogs and swords. Brother Praeco and his disciples were thrown out of the city, but I followed them. Been walking from town to town with him ever since. That’s how it always is. He preaches the Word and warns the people of the wrath to come and most mock him, but there’s always some who have ears to hear and follows him to be saved.’

  Little Hob was coughing again. He was always coughing. It was worse when he lay down to sleep. The air in the cave was choked with smoke and the fumes of fishy oil from the dead gannets burning in place of candles. The wicks plaited from rags and thrust deep into their throats smouldered with a muddy flame that turned everything in the cave to the colour of dung. Grotesque shadows crawled over the walls, and crept around the rocks, as if the dead were still there watching, waiting.

  The cave was shaped like a giant egg, except for a short tunnel to one side leading to a shallow recess, just big enough to squat over a bucket and shit. The only way in or out was through a hole high above in the ceiling, reached by a single stout pole with rungs poking out from either side, like the branches of a tree from a trunk. No one entered or left by that ladder without permission from Brother Praeco, and that was only granted to his most trusted disciples.

  On the floor of the cave, covered now with bracken and bodies, the outline of an ancient labyrinth was picked out in white pebbles hammered in edgeways. Sometimes the Prophet walked this labyrinth, while the others pressed themselves against the wall and watched in silence so as not to disturb their leader’s prayers. He said the labyrinth was a holy mystery, a sign left there by God to show His Chosen Ones the way in the Last Days. But when the leader was out of hearing, his little band grumbled that the pebbles only made it harder to sleep, another petty torment sent to test the faith of the Chosen.