by S. D. Sykes
‘I’m about to close the coffin,’ I told her. ‘Would you like to see your daughter again, Mistress Tulley?’ She simply shook her head.
I hammered down the lid with one of Thomas’s claw hammers, but missed my stroke and drove a hole into the lid, also catching the end of my finger. The blow was painful, so I cursed and held my finger to my mouth. Mary heard my words and rushed to the door to look at me fiercely, her pale cheeks inflamed with blotches of red. I think she was about to rebuke me for my clumsiness, when we were distracted by noises in the distance. Raised, excited voices, like the tumult of revellers on Lammas Day. There was an edge to their shouting that reminded me of the drunken feasts at Somershill when I was a child – the sort of celebration we would have when my father and his friends returned from the hunt with a stag, or when news reached the village that the king had defeated the French. Whenever I had sensed the imminence of such a celebration, I would lurk in the stables, or even hide under Mother’s bed. But I could not hide behind furniture this time. The shouting was too intense.
The tumult came from the direction of the church – so I ran there immediately to find a crowd gathered, with Tulley at its heart. The man held John Barrow by a rope about his neck.
I pushed through. ‘Let Barrow go.’ But Tulley only pulled the rope tighter, causing the colour of Barrow’s face to deepen to a shade of crimson. ‘I order you to release him,’ I shouted, but the only effect of my command was to silence the crowd. Tulley refused to drop the rope.
I gave the order a third time, but still he ignored me. And then, out of nowhere, a pair of seagulls swooped down upon us, flapping their wings about our heads, and squawking with their yellow, gaping beaks. Barrow now screamed with all the distress his constricted throat could achieve.
Stepping forward, I tried to take the rope from Tulley, but the man withdrew. ‘You can’t have him, sire.’ Tulley pulled at the rope again and now Barrow fell upon the soil. ‘His bird killed Catherine.’ This elicited a small, but enthusiastic cheer from those behind him.
‘Let the man go, Tulley,’ I said, ‘or it will be all of you on trial.’ My tone must have conveyed the level of my anger, for now the crowd shuffled back like a herd of wary cows. The inconstancy of his friends did not deter Tulley, however. Instead it encouraged him to shake Barrow even more vigorously. ‘This man set a butcher bird upon us. To steal our children. Because his own are dead.’
I went to reply, when a voice sounded behind me. It was hoarse and tired. ‘For the love of Christ, Thomas Tulley. Do as Lord Somershill says.’ The crowd parted to reveal Mary Tulley, with her infant children still clinging about her.
Tulley bridled. ‘Go home, Mary,’ he shouted to his wife.
As the oldest of Mary’s boys began to grizzle, she leant down to whisper in his ear. ‘Hush child. Let me talk to your daddy.’
‘Take them home, Mary,’ shouted Tulley again. ‘This is no place for children.’ Now he cracked his rope like a whip, causing Barrow to cry out once again in pain.
His words did not dissuade his wife, however. Instead they inflated her with a great gust of anger. Thrusting her youngest child at an onlooker in the crowd, she kicked the two small boys at her leg away. She then strode up to her husband and pointed a finger into his face. ‘That’s right, Thomas Tulley. Get yourself put on trial. Why not get yourself fined again? That would help your wife and starving children.’
Tulley backed away a little, his voice losing some of its force. ‘But this man released the bird.’
‘Just let him go.’
Tulley was beginning to sweat. I would say he was trembling. ‘He knows where the bird is hiding.’
Mary’s words were delivered with a spray of spittle. ‘Shut up! ‘
‘Don’t you care about Catherine?’
This accusation was the final drop of fat upon the fire. Mary ignited. Launching a series of punches at her husband’s head, she pulled the rope from within his hands. Tulley was too shocked to do anything but cradle his arms about his face.
With Tulley admitting surrender, Mary passed the rope to me. ‘Please don’t think badly of Thomas, sire. He is upset by the death of our poor girl.’ She spoke through clenched teeth, all the while fighting back the tears that now sped their way down her cheeks. ‘He doesn’t mean to offend you.’
Then she marched back to her children and baby, shouting for all to hear. ‘Hurry up Thomas Tulley. There’s a field to sow.’
I noticed that a few men amongst the crowd were amused by this performance. A droopy-eyed man made some taunt about disobedient wives – an insult that Tulley thankfully did not hear, for it might have provoked him to go home and beat Mary for belittling him in front of the village. So I shouted to them all before anybody else could come up with a similar gibe. ‘Go home and stay there. All of you.’
Slowly they dispersed, but Thomas Tulley remained. Staring at his feet, he appeared to be daring himself to say something to me, without quite mustering the courage. Sensing his trepidation, I folded my arms and kept my eyes steadfastly upon the man until he thought better of making any further act of defiance.
Wiping his hands through his greasy hair, Tulley eventually sloped away after his angry wife, as awkwardly as a lad who’s been thrown out of a brothel.
And then it was just me and John Barrow. A pitiful man with a tear-streaked face and the quailing body of a tormented dog. I tried to speak with him, but instead he whispered words over and over to himself and twitched like a soul in the first seizures of the falling sickness. I untied the rope from his neck, only for him to take my hand – his skin as filthy and scaly as the foot of a chicken.
In truth, he repulsed me.
But I had saved him.
Now I had no choice but to give him sanctuary.
I led Barrow back to my home, Somershill Manor, with the vague intention of finding him somewhere to sleep while the village settled down. We approached the house from the rear side and made our way around the right-hand end of the clogged-up moat, and then past the remaining curtain wall of the old Norman castle that once stood upon this spot. I had avoided walking across the fields to the front of the building, not wishing to announce Barrow’s arrival to the whole household.
Barrow followed me obediently to the back porch of the house where I asked one of the scullions if Gilbert had returned yet from Versey Castle. The boy nodded and ran away across the chamber to summon my old servant, who appeared after some time with hands covered in flour. Since Brother Peter had disappeared I had no other trusted man to advise me than Gilbert – but he was often as bad-tempered as a boar pig, with little time for conversation.
Gilbert looked Barrow up and down. ‘What’s he doing here?’ I raised my eyebrows. This was rude, even by Gilbert’s standards, and deserved censure – but the episode at the church had been exhausting. I felt a headache brewing.
‘I need to keep Barrow away from the village for a while,’ I said.
Gilbert straightened up, the bones cracking in his back. ‘Why’s that then?’
I frowned. ‘Because he’s in danger, of course.’
‘But—’
I held up my hand as imperiously as I was able. ‘Find him somewhere safe to stay.’
Gilbert wrinkled his nose and then scratched it. ‘I don’t think your mother would thank me for keeping this flea-ridden fellow about the place.’
‘My mother’s at Versey.’ Then I quickly added, ‘And even if she were here, this would be none of her business.’
‘He can’t sleep in the hall with the servants. He’d spook them with all that shaking and dribbling.’
The pain was building behind my left eye. ‘Stop arguing with me, Gilbert.’
Gilbert went to say something, but swallowed the words when he caught sight of my face. ‘Very well, sire,’ he muttered darkly, grasping Barrow by the arm and roughly pushing him away from the house. ‘I’ll put him in the north-west tower.’
I rubbed my eye. ‘And make sure he’s
given something to eat. And a bench to sleep upon.’
Gilbert heaved another great sigh and then carried on towards the tower, driving Barrow forward like a man prodding at a stubborn donkey. A set of floury handprints marked Barrow’s coarse tunic, where Gilbert had pushed repeatedly at his back. Not that this tactic speeded their journey, for. Barrow soon fell to his knees and buried his face in the muddy grass. ‘I want to die,’ he screamed.
Gilbert looked ready to grant his request, for he pulled at one of Barrow’s arms and hissed into his ear, ‘Do you?’
My bed was calling. It had been such a long day and the headache was now threatening to blind my eye completely. But I could not abandon my charge. ‘Be gentle, Gilbert,’ I said, running over to them both. ‘The man is demented with grief.’
‘More like he’s demented with . . .’ but the remaining words of this sentence were just muttered into his chest so that I could not,hear them.
‘What did you say?’
‘Doesn’t matter, sire. It wasn’t important.’
‘Just take Barrow to the tower,’ I said. ‘And then bring some pottage and ale to my bedchamber.’
My servant regarded me closely, looking over my face, as if he were sizing up a bull at market. Suddenly his tone was kind. ‘Are you unwell, sire?’ I didn’t dare to nod. Now he whispered. ‘Is it the headaches again?’
His kindness unnerved me, and for a moment I wanted to rest my head upon his soft shoulder as I used to when I was a small boy. This short reverie was disturbed when a great shadow fell across our faces. It was large and swooping, and we had not seen its approach.
Once again Barrow shrieked and flapped his arms about his head, but when we turned to look into the sky, our eyes were blinded by a low sun.
‘The butcher bird,’ said Gilbert as the creature’s wings beat a retreat somewhere in the distance.
‘Of course it’s not,’ I said. ‘It’s just a seagull. There are two of them. Flying about the estate. I saw them by the church.’
I will admit this now, however. Even though I write this from memory, and a mind may warp and inflate an episode until it is hardly more than an imitation of itself. We only saw it for a fleeting moment, but this was no seagull.
Chapter Four
At seven years of age, my family sent me to Kintham Abbey to be educated by the Benedictines.The expectation was that I would become a monk at nineteen and then quickly rise to become abbot, thereby heaping some much-needed ecclesiastical glory upon the de Lacys. I still had two older brothers alive at Somershill, so I could be spared from the estate – there was no reason to believe that these older sons would die.The Plague was just a story from the Bible in those days – a cloud of locusts or a torrent of frogs. It would not turn our rivers to blood, nor our fields to dust. I no more expected to become Lord Somershill than I expected to be King of England.
The first days at the monastery were difficult. I was to sleep in a long dormitory with the other boys, a rabble of noisy, unfriendly creatures who laughed at my affectations and soon stole my satin slippers. As I shivered under my coarse sheet, they made farting noises to incite me. Or they called me such insulting names that I was driven to tears. It would have been bearable if I could have gone to sleep, but I was not used to being sent to bed so early. At Somershill I had slept on Mother’s lap as she gossiped at the fire (though, in my last year there, she often complained that my backside was becoming too bony, and was poking into her legs.)
Brother Peter was my only friend at the monastery – often enquiring after my well-being and education – but Brother Thomas was in charge of the novices, oblates, and students, and would not tolerate any interference, despite Peter’s protestations that he had been charged with the supervision of my welfare by Lady de Lacy herself. I remember Brother Thomas’s expression at the mention of my mother’s name. A grimace spread across his face, as disgusted in attitude as if he had rubbed his upper lip with fish skin, and couldn’t wash away the stink.
I understood, even at such a young age, that I would receive no special treatment from Brother Thomas on account of my birth, as he clearly held the de Lacys in as much regard as a family of local cottars. But I was accustomed to favours and privileges due to my position. I was accustomed to being allowed to run about the great hall, making as much noise as I pleased. I was accustomed to being fed sugared violets and minced beef. I could not cope with the coarse rye bread and fatty ends of meat we were served in the refectory. The hours of silence were not contemplative and serene for me. They were a torture.
But worse than the hours of silence in the chapel, were the hours between the prayers of Compline at bedtime and Lauds at daybreak, when we were tucked under our sheets and expected to sleep. I had done nothing the whole day, other than sit at my desk, or rest on my knees at prayer, so I was not in the least bit tired. Instead I lay in my hard bed, missing my mother and listening to the sounds of the monastery at night. The slamming of a distant door. The rhythmic snoring of Brother Thomas in his curtained cell at one end of the dormitory. The creaks and groans of the ceiling trusses, and the scuttling feet of squirrels as they scampered over the stone slates above my head. All these noises served to nail desperation and loneliness to my post, a feeling that was only supplanted by terror.
Some time during that first week, I became aware that a cloaked figure was moving amongst the beds in the dead of night. I raised my head a little, but could not see the face of this mystery person through the thick gloom of the chamber. I went to sit up but a hand grabbed me. It was the boy in the adjacent bed. A boy I had assumed was sleeping.
He squeezed my arm. ‘Close your eyes,’ he told me in the slightest whisper. ‘Pretend to be asleep.’
I wanted to argue.This boy was amongst my greatest tormentors. So why should I listen to him? It was probably yet another of his tricks to belittle me. But his stare was fierce and his grip was tight. This was not a piece of mischief, it was a warning. Even my naivety could not prevent me from seeing that he meant his words. So I closed my eyes and quickly settled beneath the sheets and pretended to sleep as the figure wandered towards our part of the dormitory, his feet treading lightly upon the reeds of the floor, his cloak soon brushing the edge of my bed.
I forgot to breathe as he drew near, such was my fear. I sensed he had passed, but then he returned. I heard his breathing as he leant over my face. It was laboured, erratic and smelt of brandy. A finger touched my cheek and stroked my skin. It was as cold and hard as an icicle and I felt it might burn into my face if it stayed there a moment longer. And then, just as I felt I could hold my breath no longer, he moved away, his cloak creating a small eddy of air in his wake. He left the dormitory and he did not hear me wet the bed – the hot urine stinging my leg and dripping to the floor.
The boy next to me opened his eyes and pulled a face when he realised what I had done. I wanted to talk to the boy. To ask him who this prowler was, and why he had warned me to keep my eyes shut. But my short-lived friend pulled the blanket over his head and turned his back on me. He would not help me again, I knew it.
The next morning I was beaten for wetting the sheets and made to wash them myself in the spring, rather than leave them in the common laundry chest for the women to take. When Brother Peter saw me by the stream, he attempted to intervene and have a lay monk assist me, but instead he was roundly turned upon by Brother Thomas and told to stay in the infirmary where he belonged. Given that Brother Thomas was older and had the ear of the abbot, Brother Peter kept his distance. How well I remember the freezing water of the brook as it chilled my hands and turned them blue. When I had hung the sheets to dry over the cloister wall, I was then punished to a day in silence – though this hardly made a difference to my life, as none of the other boys spoke to me anyway. Particularly now that I was known as a bed soiler. A fool. A laughing stock.They only pointed and giggled, as they made their way from their lessons to prayers.
That night, as I lay in my damp sheets, the prowler cam
e again to the dormitory. This time there was no arm from my neighbour to grip me and warn me of the man’s presence. But I was already awake, as I had been for hours – hardly daring to close my eyes, in case sleep found me when it was least required. Once again the soft feet stole through the dormitory door – but these were not the wary, timid toes of an opportunistic thief, this person moved with the quiet, sly confidence of a hunter. A fox. And what were we boys, other than an enclosure of chickens, helpless and weak, with only our ability to feign sleep as protection?
I was only a boy. So young. But I determined that his cold hand would not touch me again. His icy finger would not stroke my skin, and his breath would not puff those fumes onto my face. I knew what this person wanted, and he would not have it.
When the cloak once again stopped by my bed, I could not keep up the pretence of sleep. Instead I leapt out of bed, pushed the man aside with a scream and ran for the door, which had been unlocked by the very prowler who sought me out.Then I skidded through the silent cloister, scaled the crumbling wall of the fruit garden and escaped into the forests that surrounded the monastery. I had some notion to make my way home to Somershill – but this was purely a dream, as I had no idea which direction to take. The night was moonless and dank, and soon I was not able to see ahead in the thick undergrowth. The chestnut, hazel and holly grew into a tangle. I turned back towards an open field, where I could see the monastery in the distance – but even though wolves still called in these woods and unseen creatures sniffed and snuffled in the trees behind me – I would not return to that place. For there were no monsters in this forest as dangerous as the one that crawled about the monastery.
I fell asleep beneath a hawthorn tree, and awoke at first light to see the haw berries hanging above my head in bunches, like small beads of blood. A mist lay across the valley – so low that the turrets and towers of the monastery peeped through its gauze like a city in the clouds. But the mist had not only settled upon the fields, it had also settled upon my chest, and as I coughed it hurt my ribs. I struggled back into the woods, once again intending to reunite myself with my mother. But I did not make good progress and it was only a short while before I was lost. I was cold and hungry, and my coughing had become as dry and sharp as the bark of one of my mother’s little dogs.