The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  Sybil glanced up as my squat shadow fell across her face, but she didn’t rise. ‘Let you out, did they, runt? You needn’t bother going back to Matilda’s pigsty. All her piglets have been took. I guess you’re not the only thief in this village. She’s only got the old sow left now, and I reckon she’ll not have her much longer, ’less she slaughters her quick.’

  I decided to ignore this. ‘Not baking today?’

  I’d lost count of how long I’d been in the tower. It could well have been a Sunday or feast day, not that Sybil ever took much notice of either. But I hadn’t heard the chapel bell tolling. Come to think of it, I couldn’t recall when I last had.

  ‘What am I to bake with? Fish bones?’ she said, gesturing to the small pot that hung over the smouldering fire. ‘There’s not a barrel of flour or sack of grain left in Porlock Weir. Even the dried beans are used up. What acorns and beechnuts fell in the forest the swine and beasts feasted on over the winter. You were a jester, weren’t you? Good at conjuring. You try conjuring this fish into bread and ale, then. ’Cause if you can’t, fish is all you’ll be eating and water is all you’ll be drinking and there’s precious little of that left in the river too.’

  ‘Cador told me that the track to Porlock’s been blocked, but there are other towns and this village has still got boats. Can’t men sail down to buy—’

  Sybil cut me off with a crackle of laughter. ‘What men would those be – pixies, ghosts? Those are the only kind of men we got left round here. Go you up to the graveyard and see for yourself. It’s the men and young ones that are lying up in there, while their wives and the old folks dig the graves, least those that have still got the strength.’

  It was only as she said it I realised that, apart from Cador, I hadn’t seen a single man so far that morning, or any children out playing or fetching wood or water, only women.

  Sybil let me share her fish and a mouthful or two of the boiled salty slime they called laver. After the dried horse bread I’d been enduring, it was almost a feast. But there’d been many weeks in the sea cave when I’d lived on little else but fish and I knew it didn’t fill the belly in the way bread or beans did. It gave you the flux and left you exhausted. None of us could survive long on fish and seaweed alone and it was plain to see that the beans and onions, which had been planted for this year’s harvest, had already withered into dust in the scorched earth.

  I left Sybil still sitting and clambered around the base of the cliffs towards my cave. It was good to feel the sun hot on my head, taste the salt on the wind and see the gulls bobbing, like little ships, on the clear blue-green waves. I stood watching the white-fringed wavelets roll in over the glistening wet sand, and the terns picking over pebbles in the wet mud. After the brown earth and grey stone of the watchtower prison, the colours of sea and sky danced and cavorted as gaudily as any painting on the walls of my lord’s manor. As I stared out at the rolling waves, it was as if nothing had changed for a thousand years. Yet, the sea had thrown something on to the land that was destroying all, changing everything.

  I felt a woman’s head resting on my shoulder, her hair against my neck, the weight of her soft body in my arms. But the hair was wet, the body cold, and the eyes that stared up at me were as grey as the ocean in winter. Was I the cause of all this? Was this the sea’s revenge, because I had stolen a corpse she had claimed? Or was this Janiveer’s revenge and the sea merely her poor jester?

  I shivered. Hastily scrambling over the sharp wet rocks, I hauled myself up into the cave, suddenly afraid that all I possessed would have vanished. I owned precious little, but that made what poor things I had the more valuable to me. Besides, the treasures I had rescued from the seashore were the things I depended upon to survive – nets I had cobbled together from bits of rope and old cloth, fish hooks, needles and spoons made from animal bones, shells I used as scoops or trenchers and my cooking pots. Yes, I’ll admit I’d stolen those, likewise the sheepskins, which I now called my own, but that didn’t stop me feeling indignant at the thought they might have been snatched from me.

  But, to my relief, I saw they were all still there, except they were not where I had left them. I always kept my tools where I needed them. The fishing nets, hooks and rope together by the mouth of the cave; the cooking pot and scoops near the ring of stones that marked my fire, the sheepskins and my supplies of dried food at the far back of the cave where they’d be protected from wind and water. But all had been moved. The empty shells I had collected, even those I had wedged into handles to use as ladles, were now laid in piles: razor shells had been separated from scallops, oysters from mussels. Needles, marrow-spoons and spikes that I had fashioned from bone were piled in another heap. Rope had been separated from cloth, lumps of tar from driftwood. And all my stores of food were gone.

  Hob? Had he crept back and hidden here? I wouldn’t have blamed the lad if he had. It was a good place to camp provided he could stay out of sight. The fire was cold, though. Either he’d let it go out and had not been able to relight it or he had not returned for some days.

  But perhaps someone else had entered, searching for something. Yet people searching usually left possessions in complete disarray, not neatly stacked, unless someone had been planning to take this flotsam to sell. But I couldn’t imagine anyone in these parts who’d want to buy it.

  One thing was certain: I would need to find food, since my visitor had not left me so much as a scrap of dried cod. But the tide was still too far out to attempt to fish and I should fetch fresh water first. If Sybil was to be believed, that was even harder to obtain and I’d not survive long without it.

  I hunted around until I found the two water-skins I’d fashioned out of a dead seal. They were hanging from a rocky projection near the back of the cave. They too were empty and I was about to hook them down when I caught sight of something lying on the floor immediately below them. It was a thin branch of sweet briar, which had been twisted round itself to form a hoop. The leaves had long since dried and the rose petals had withered and fallen, lying scattered on the rock around the thorny stem. But the briar hoop was not really what attracted my attention, it was what it encircled: a dead bird, flattened, dried, the flesh eaten away, so that only the bones and pale feathers remained. It was no seabird, though, a pigeon or a dove, perhaps.

  I crouched, staring at the thing, strangely unnerved by the sight. Birds often took shelter in caves. One could easily have flown in and died. If I’d simply discovered it lying on the floor, I would have tossed it out without another thought, though the Holy Hag would doubtless have told me it was an evil omen. A dove dropping dead where you sleep is hardly likely to be a good one. But if I believed every dead bird was a sign of death, I’d have hanged myself long ago. No, it was the ring of roses around it that made me certain the bird had not simply been blown in by a storm.

  Maybe Hob had brought it in. Young lads have a morbid curiosity for dead creatures, collecting them as treasures and watching in fascination as they decay. Perhaps he had tried to care for an injured bird, but it had died and the rose garland was his attempt to give the poor creature a funeral, as he’d seen adults do. That must be it. The dead roses and the bird had no more significance than the game of a lonely little boy. All the same, I didn’t want to sleep with them.

  I hooked up the briar hoop, trying not to impale myself on the thorns, and picked up the bird by one of its twig legs, but the leg came apart from the body as I lifted it, and the little pile of feathers and bones settled back on the rock. Something small and hard bounced out of its beak and rolled across the floor with a clatter. I groped for it, though it proved to be nothing more than a dried cherry stone. Maybe the bird had choked on its last meal. But I couldn’t imagine where either the dove or Hob had found a ripe cherry in these parts and at this season. I hadn’t tasted cherries since I left my lord’s employ and, come to think of it, I couldn’t recall seeing a cherry tree anywhere in the village.

  The snatch of a troubadour’s song suddenly
rose up from deep in my memory:

  . . . have a young sister across the sea,

  Many be the dowries that she sent to me.

  She sent me a cherry without any stone . . .

  I could hear the lad now, trying to make himself heard above the chatter of the guests, squabbling dogs and the clatter of dishes in my lord’s hall. I could feel the heat of that roaring fire, smell the venison simmering in the rich blood sauce, see the skin on that roasted suckling pig glistening honey-red in the candlelight. My belly growled, reminding me that I didn’t have even a sprat for my supper.

  I scraped up the remains of the bird, with the fallen blossoms, and flung them from the mouth of the cave. The wind caught the dried petals, bones and feathers, scattering them and sending them swirling, like a flock of tiny birds, up into the blue sky and out across the bay. The notes of that troubadour’s song buzzed in my head, like a trapped fly. I’d be humming it all day now . . . She sent me a dove without any bone . . . What was the next line? I couldn’t recall it. That banqueting hall was a lifetime away.

  Chapter 31

  Matilda

  St Anne is the patron saint of all who sew, for she taught her daughter, the infant Virgin Mary, to sew cloths for the Temple.

  ‘Harold, I have already removed all the holy oil and water from the chapel.’

  The young acolyte stared at me in alarm, opening his mouth to protest, but I would suffer no argument.

  ‘There are some women in this village who would try to steal oil and water to anoint their dead in a wicked mockery of the extreme unction, even when their husbands and sons died in sin. They think it will stop the devil taking their souls, but God has given Satan leave to punish the wicked and these women are damning their own souls with such practices.’

  ‘But I – I am the one in Holy Orders,’ Harold protested. ‘I should take care of the holy water and chrism.’

  ‘Indeed you should, but you don’t,’ I snapped. ‘Left to you, any witch or cunning woman could take them to use in their dark spells and you wouldn’t raise a hand to stop them.’ I pushed past him to reach the reliquary niche. ‘And this we must also put in a place of safety before thieves steal it. The casket is extremely valuable.’

  I drew back the embroidered hanging cloth, which I had stitched with my own hands. The niche behind it was in deep shadow, for Harold, of course, had neglected to light the candles that should burn perpetually before the relic of a holy saint. It was so dark, I couldn’t even see the reliquary. I reached up to lift the casket out, but my fingers touched nothing except empty space.

  I stared in disbelief. ‘It’s gone!’

  Harold, holding a cloth pressed firmly over his nose and mouth against the grave pit stench, squeezed between me and the back of the stone altar and peered into the recess where the reliquary, in the form of a silver arm, had always stood. He thrust his fingers inside, groping around as if he expected to feel what he couldn’t see.

  ‘It hasn’t suddenly become invisible, you blockhead! Where is the hand of St Cadeyrn? What have you done with it?’

  ‘I’ve not touched it,’ he said indignantly. His gaze darted back towards the niche as if he thought it might miraculously have reappeared when he wasn’t looking.

  ‘It was here on the Eve of St Vitus,’ I told him, ‘for I hung the new cloth then, and there have been no services since St Vitus’s Day. You were supposed to be guarding this place and now a costly reliquary has gone missing, not to mention the sacred relic of a saint. So unless you want to find yourself standing trial for the theft, boy, you had better think carefully. Who else have you let in here?’

  Alarm and panic filled his eyes. Harold was clumsy and idle, but I didn’t really believe him to be a thief – at least, not of anything more than an apple or the stub of a candle. He was far too timid to take anything as valuable as a reliquary. Nor would he have had the wit to know where or how to sell it.

  Harold’s pimpled forehead wrinkled in concentration, as if trying to recall the names of a whole multitude of visitors. ‘But there’s not been anyone save you, Mistress Matilda.’

  ‘Nonsense! Of course there have been others. They bring the bodies to the corpse pit at all times of the day and night. And anyone could slip in here, especially that thieving dwarf,’ I said tartly. ‘You should be here on your knees keeping vigil in prayer. Look at this holy place! It’s a desolation, an abomination. Birds flying in, leaving their droppings all over the holy altar. Stray dogs pissing up the walls outside and digging up the bones of the dead.’

  Furiously, I strode over to the far wall where the church chest stood. I held out my hand. ‘The key, Harold.’

  ‘I’ve not got it. Father Cuthbert took it from me when he bade me load the chalice and vestments on to his mount.’

  ‘Then,’ I said grimly, ‘I will have to use this.’ I unfastened the sack I had brought with me and removed an iron twibill.

  Above the rag mask he was holding over his nose, Harold’s pale eyes flashed wide. ‘But you can’t break into the chest, Mistress Matilda! Stealing from the Church, it’s the worst sin. And Father Cuthbert will blame me if—’

  ‘Father Cuthbert has abandoned his duty to his parishioners and to this chapel,’ I reminded his acolyte sternly. ‘The reliquary has already been stolen and that makes it all the more urgent that I remove the linens to prevent them being taken too. If you’d continued to sleep in the chapel and kept watch, this would not be necessary.’

  ‘Kept retching,’ Harold mumbled, through the cloth. ‘It’s the stink.’

  I had to admit that, even though I, too, had taken the precaution of bringing a cloth soaked in strong vinegar, I was finding it hard not to gag at the stench.

  The lad stared miserably at the floor. ‘And at night, when it’s dark, I keep thinking about those corpses outside, not even buried. I hear them clambering out of the pit and slithering round the walls of the chapel, scratching at the door, trying to find their way in.’

  ‘You were trained as an exorcist,’ I snapped.

  ‘They just gave me a book,’ he wailed. ‘Father Cuthbert said I only had to sprinkle the newborn babies with holy water before they were brought into the chapel. He never said anything about driving off armies of the dead.’

  I always itched to give the lad a good shaking whenever I spoke to him, but I suppose he deserved some credit. At least he made an attempt at a burial service for those who were dropped into the pit, though being in Minor Orders he could not say Mass for them.

  The grave pit could not be sealed. No one had the energy to dig fresh graves each time. What charcoal the village had had was finished and the lime too, so they covered the bodies with layers of seaweed to try to counter the smell and keep the sun from them. But the rotting seaweed baking under the sun did nothing to mask the reek of bloated corpses. It merely added a new sickly stench of its own and drew yet more flies.

  But at least the dead of Porlock Weir had a grave of sorts. The bodies of strangers that were washed up from time to time were left on the shore for the next tide to pick up again. Some vanished. Others returned again and again, sprawled on the rocks or washed up behind the fish weirs as if they were determined to claw their way back to the land. Crabs crawled over them, brazenly plucking at their flesh. Living fish flapped against them. Gulls stabbed their bellies open. But we barely glanced at them now.

  Harold kept staring at the heavy oak chest, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to throw himself across it to defend it. But I was determined to have my way. There was no linen left in the village to make winding sheets. The corpses were being wrapped in sacks, old sheepskins or the soiled, bloody blankets in which they had died, and bound tightly with straw rope. But sooner or later someone would remember the linens stored in the chest. Since no Masses could be said, the sanctity of the altar cloths would make them even more desirable coverings in which to wrap the dead, for then neither evil spirits nor the devil himself would b
e able to touch them. But I had sewn a great many of the fine linens with my own hands. I would not see them defiled, or used to keep wicked sinners from their just punishment.

  ‘Stand aside, Harold,’ I ordered.

  He took a determined pace towards me as if he intended to lay hands on me to prevent me by force, but I raised the iron twibill menacingly and he stumbled backwards out of reach of its swing. The twibill belonged to my husband, George. He always kept the two chiselled ends finely ground, so I knew they’d be sharp. When he was home from sea, George lavished all his attention on his tools, grinding and polishing them half the night while I lay alone in our bed waiting for him. He insisted he couldn’t rest until he’d oiled the wooden shafts and wrapped the iron blades in unwashed wool so that they wouldn’t rust, though he never put a single one of his tools to work in my cottage.

  Sliding one of the honed ends of the twibill into the crack between the lid and the hinged side of the chest box, I pumped up and down on the handle. Harold was chewing his nails in agitation. He kept begging me to stop, but I ignored him. Finally, with a cracking and splintering, the wooden lid of the chest was torn from the hinges, and clattered on to the floor.

  Harold darted forward, and peered at the lid. ‘Look, it wasn’t locked after all! But I locked it on St Vitus’s Day. I know I did! And no one’s been nigh it since.’

  I snorted. ‘Just as you were certain no one had been in the chapel, but the reliquary vanished all the same. Next you’ll tell me the corpses you heard scrabbling at the church door were responsible. You will have much to answer for, boy, when the church court next sits. And I suggest you use the time wisely between now and that day to think of a better excuse for this desecration than the walking dead. I can see I have not come to rescue these precious linens a moment too soon.’