by S. D. Sykes
Mother had also requested that we travel with a priest, as this was the custom for a lady of her status. But here I did make my feelings clear. I would no more travel with that custard pudding of a priest, Father Luke, than I would invite the kitchen cat to join us.
For my own servant I chose young Geoffrey Hayward, causing him nearly to faint with excitement.
‘Will we see the king?’ he asked, his eyes widening.
‘I doubt it,’ I told him.
‘And will we see the white tower?’
‘I hope not.’
Undeterred by my pessimistic answers, he scurried away to pack his few belongings before getting a cuff on the ear from Piers for being a braggart.
Before I left for London there were two conversations I had to conduct – both with some reluctance. The first was with Featherby. I found the man in the bakehouse, cornering one of the younger servants by the bread oven as she kneaded a ball of beery dough.
It took a few moments for him to notice that I’d entered the room, and it was only the nod of the girl that alerted him to my presence.
‘Can you please join me in the library,’ I told him, making my best efforts to sound authoritative. He gave the girl a sly smile. The sort of smile that says, ‘What does this fool want now?’ But I noted the girl kept her eyes fixed upon the dough, not wanting to be drawn into any form of covert alliance with this overbearing man.
Once we were in the library, I insisted Featherby sit down, which he did with the greatest reluctance, only hovering above the stool, ready to leap up again at a moment’s notice.
I cleared my throat and spoke loudly, so that Featherby could not mishear me. ‘When we discussed wages yesterday, I might have given the impression that I was considering a raise in the day rates.’
His face brightened. ‘Indeed, sire.’ _
I took a deep breath. The feel of Edward Hatcher’s ear wax was still fresh on my fingertips. ‘Yes. Well . . . after a lot of thought, I’ve decided that they must remain exactly as before.’
He stood up with some indignation, but I waved for him to sit back down again. I was wearied of his arguments and in no mind to discuss this matter further. Edward Hatcher had been very clear on the subject, though I chose not to share this with Featherby. My reeve should see this as my ruling, and not a decision that had been forced upon me.
‘The Statute is the law, Featherby. I won’t break it.’
He sighed with some dejection. ‘Very well, sire.’ He stood up again. ‘When will you return from London?’
‘Within the week.’
Then he shrugged and turned for the door. ‘Well don’t expect the sowing to be done by the time you get back. At this rate I’ll be hiring the village dogs and cats to do it.’
I went to speak, but he slammed the door on me. He actually slammed it.
My next visit threatened to end just as unpleasantly. I crossed the ditch that ran in front of the Tulleys’ decrepit cottage and knocked loudly at their battered door, noticing eyes upon me from every occupied window along the street.
Thomas Tulley opened the door with typical surliness. ‘Sire?’ Behind him, in the shadows of the room, sat his wife Mary. As ever the poor woman was nursing the younger boy, while the older boys clung to her skirts. In this light she looked no more substantial than a ghost.
‘I’m travelling to London for a few days. Perhaps as long as a week.’Tulley merely raised an eyebrow and pulled a face. I continued nonetheless. ‘I wanted you to know that I’m still searching for Catherine’s murderer. She’s not been forgotten.’ This, I’m ashamed to say was not entirely true. I had not forgotten Catherine’s murder, but I had placed it momentarily to one side.
The man crossed his arms, and didn’t answer.
I drew myself up and leant towards Tulley. ‘If any harm comes to John Barrow while I’m away, I will hold you responsible.’ I looked into his blue eyes, which were clear and defiant, but then something else caught my attention. It was Mary Tulley’s small face. She had crept forward to join this conversation without our noticing.
She curtsied to me. ‘Thomas understands that, sire.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Don’t you,Thomas?’
The man didn’t answer her. His face glowered.
‘Don’t you,Thomas?’ she said again, speaking as sharply as she might to a naughty child. Thomas gave the most desultory of nods before withdrawing into the shadows.
‘You won’t have any problems from us, sire,’ Mary assured me. ‘And we thank you for your interest in our daughter.’ She then curtsied and closed the door. I wouldn’t say she slammed it, as Featherby had done. But I will say this. It was shut with energy.
The village was busy as I rode back to Somershill. I passed a group of men digging marl from a pit, heaving great clods of grey clay into a wagon, before they spread it thinly over their fields. In the distance, I noticed Joan Bath. She was waving to get my attention – as if she had something urgent to tell me. But I knew what she wanted to discuss – it could be nothing else. My progress on improving wages. How could I tell her that I had changed my mind? How could I admit that Hatcher had intimidated me with his threats? I kicked Tempest’s flanks and he broke obligingly into a canter.
I am not proud to admit this, but I pretended not to have seen her.
Chapter Fourteen
Our journey to London began with an argument. My own preference was to take the route from Sevenoaks towards Bromley Saint Peter and Paul, then approach Southwark from the east at Greenwich. Mother preferred to go west to Hever and then follow the road north to Caterham, pass Croydon and then approach Southwark from the south. Unfortunately it was Mother who won this argument, since she had the backing of Edwin, our groom – though their choice of route would involve climbing the North Downs after the Eden Valley, where the carriage was sure to struggle on the steep tracks.
There was another reason for my opposition to this route, which I did not share with Mother, since it would have hurled her humours into a somersault. The route from Hever towards Caterham was heavily wooded, and therefore more likely to harbour the group of people that Mother feared more than anybody else – bandits. I gave young Geoffrey a sword and told him to let it hang obviously at his side. I also dressed both him and Edwin in the livery of the de Lacy family, in some tunics and surcoats that Gilbert had searched out from the chest in the gatehouse. The outfit didn’t fit Geoffrey well, as the arms of the tunic needed to be turned over at his wrists, and the surcoat was belted with great difficulty at his waist. Nevertheless, these uniforms gave our party the air of nobility, which would either profit or harm our progress. Either we would appear a more attractive target to a band of robbers, or they would leave us alone, in fear of some high-ranking retribution.
The sun was thin as we headed west along the drover’s track to Burrsfield, before we turned north-west and followed the Eden Valley towards Hever Castle. The winter had been long and wet, and the soil was often heavy and grey where the clay had worked its sticky way to the surface. At times the mud threatened to fix our carriage as firmly to the road as if the wheels had been smeared with the glue that Gilbert often brewed up from rabbit skins.
Winter still reigned in these forests and valleys, where the paths were carpeted in the fallen saw-edged leaves of the sweet chestnut. As we ventured deeper into the woodland, through the hatches that allowed entrance to the hunting forests, we passed fallen trees that had not been cleared from the tracks after the storms of the previous month. They were often the tallest ash trees, snapped at their waists by the wind and now lying across our path like dying soldiers. Once or twice we had to work our way around these obstacles by taking long diversions, and it was then that I truly cursed Mother and her insistence upon accompanying me on this journey.
Had I travelled on horseback alone with just one companion, then I would have been in Caterham by now. At this pace, I worried we would not even make Hever by nightfall.
We were rarely alone on the road, for
yet again it seemed that England was on the move. We often met small groups – young men mainly.They were on foot, but looked well-enough dressed, making their way silently and steadfastly from one place to another. When our carriage became stuck yet again in a forest mire, a group of such youths helped Edwin and Geoffrey to pull the wheels from the stinking marsh, after the promise of a halfpenny reward. When I asked their destination, they were reticent to say, and only mumbled some responses. When I asked them where they had come from, they quickly made their excuses and left without waiting for their money.
Mother expressed the opinion that these same men would be waiting for us a little further up the track, ready to leap out from behind a rock and rob us, but Edwin told me later that they had confided their plans to him, at least. They were mostly from the farms of Kent. Frustrated by the wage restrictions, they had deserted their estates and were travelling to London to make their fortunes. Now it was obvious why they wouldn’t answer my questions, for no doubt they had left behind such a lord as me – a man who was unwilling to break the law. I thought back to Featherby and his predictions that I would lose all my best men, and a sense of dread settled in my stomach.
We reached Hever by nightfall and were begrudgingly given a place to sleep in the solar – though Lord de Hevere regarded me suspiciously, as if I might be an impersonator. If only he had known the truth about my identity, for I am no temporary sham. No player upon an evening stage. I have an enduring role. For I am a permanent imposter, forever playing my part.
It is the custom among families of our status that we will entertain and accommodate each other as we travel about England, but following our second day of slow progress over the hills of the North Downs, we were unable to reach the local manor house by nightfall. Instead we installed ourselves at an inn, and given that I was prepared to pay a good price for a decent bed by this point – a reaction to the frustration I felt at our lack of progress – we were given the best bedchamber in the house.
The innkeeper’s wife, Mistress Nash, was a talkative sort, happy to repeatedly appear with mugs of ale so she might have the opportunity to ask her many questions. I avoided her prying by reading my book, but Mother was delighted to reveal our business to a woman who would coo and curtsy at every disclosure.
‘Are you fleeing the child murderer?’ Mistress Nash asked, upon returning to the chamber with a wax candle, after I had refused to read any longer by the glow of a stinking rushlight.
‘Which child murderer would that be?’ I said, without raising my eyes.
‘The butcher bird, sire.’
Mother butted in, before I had the chance to say anything. ‘Goodness me, dear woman. There is no butcher bird. My son here is investigating the murder, and he is certain of it.’ Mother spoke with the rational air of a woman who had never uttered a foolish story in her life. Of course, this transformation could never last. ‘I shall have to tell everyone at court not to believe such a silly tale.’
Mistress Nash gasped. ‘You’re going to court, my lady?’
Mother picked up Hector from the floor and stroked his bristly head. ‘Oh yes. Once the king hears that the de Lacy family is in London, we shall be sent for.’ Now she whispered. ‘My son has become a famous investigator you know. His name has reached the king’s ears.’
I put down my book. ‘Mother. I don’t think that—’
But Mother silenced me with blustering arms. ‘See how unassuming and modest he is. Though he is quite celebrated in certain circles.’
The innkeeper’s wife studied me. With my head in a book and my lack of interest in gossiping, I hardly seemed the inquiring type – but somehow I knew that everybody to pass this inn in the next few weeks, maybe even years, would hear of the great investigator Oswald de Lacy, and how he had spent the night in this room before he journeyed to London to visit the king.
‘How did you hear the butcher bird story?’ I asked the woman.
Her face wrinkled in delight at this chance to discuss the story further. ‘We have so many travellers now, coming and going along this road.’
‘From Somershill?’
She nodded. ‘From all over. But yes. Many are from the Somershill estate.’
A thought suddenly came to me. ‘Have any children passed this way recently?’
‘Oh yes. Plenty of children.’
‘What about two girls? They would have been travelling alone?’
She stroked her lips, as if trying to tempt the answer from her tongue. ‘Boys I’ve seen in pairs.Yes. But never girls. They always stay with the groups. It’s safer for them, you see. What with this butcher bird flying about.’ I went to object, but she didn’t give me the opportunity. ‘It’s been taking lambs, sire. And rabbits from the warren. Everyone’s been talking about it. And then it tried to snatch poor Cissie’s baby. Even when she had him wrapped across her back.’
I wanted to ignore this story, but knew I couldn’t. ‘Who is Cissie?’ I asked, wearily.
‘She works in the kitchen.’
‘And did she see this bird?’
Mistress Nash nodded proudly. ‘Oh yes. It scratched her head with its talons when she fought it off. Made a set of scabs to be proud of. Would you like to see them?’
‘The scabs?’
She looked at me strangely. ‘No, no, sire. I meant Cissie and her baby. The scabs on her head have healed now.’
Suspecting this story to be a foolish performance for the sake of getting my attention, I didn’t show the enthusiasm that the innkeeper’s wife had hoped for. Nonetheless Cissie was summoned from somewhere in the tavern.
A sullen, hostile girl was then presented to me, with a face that wore the gaunt mask of unrelenting hunger. I noted that she looked continually at the plate of bread and cheese that was laid on our table.
Mother withdrew into the corner, for the girl exuded the pungent, spicy body odour of a labouring cottar in the summer heat. Hector let out a slow growl at the girl, but couldn’t be bothered to jump down from Mother’s arms to bite her, since he was now being fed the leftovers of our supper. I took a deep breath and attempted to ignore the girl’s biting perfume by asking a flurry of questions. What had she seen? Where and when had this encounter happened? How could she be certain it was a bird that had attacked her baby? Each of my questions was met with very unsatisfactory answers that no more convinced me of the existence of this giant bird than I believed in the miracle of Lazarus.
I then duly inspected some scars upon her head, though they were covered in her thick and sticky hair that did not make my task any easier. There were a few dots of pink-fleshed scarring on her scalp, but these could easily be attributed to the enthusiastic scratching of flea bites. It was not until I asked after the health of Cissies baby boy that our conversation took an unexpected turn. ‘My boy’s dead, sire,’ she told me.
I was taken aback by this announcement. ‘Dead? How did he die?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You must have some idea.’
She shrugged again. ‘They always die.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Now she became maddened. ‘My children always die!’
At these words, the innkeeper’s wife interrupted. ‘Come on, Cissie. Don’t be foolish. Your baby is still alive, isn’t he? You know that. He’s in the kitchen now. Lord Somershill only wants to hear about the bird.’ She began to push the girl out of the room. ‘I think you’d better get back to work, my girl.’
‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘Why does she say that her baby is dead when he’s alive.’
‘Because he’s as good as dead,’ the girl said.
Mistress Nash pulled a face. ‘Of course he isn’t, Cissie. You just fed him. Remember?’
‘Bring me the child,’ I said. ‘I want to see him.’ Mistress Nash hesitated, so I raised my voice. ‘Just bring him to me.’
The two women shuffled quickly from the chamber and soon reappeared with a swaddled infant, whose face was as thin and
sickly as his mother’s. A deep scratch scored his hairless head.
‘You didn’t say the child had also been attacked.’ I ran my finger along the baby’s scab – a wound that ran along the soft spot in the child’s skull. A yellow mucus oozed lightly as I pressed, but the child neither cried, nor even flinched at my touch, leading me to believe that he had already lost his will to live. He was limp and his head rolled in my hand.
‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ I said. When the innkeeper’s wife went to answer, I held up my hand. ‘I want to hear Cissie’s account.’
The girl pulled her ragged tunic about her body and heaved a sigh. ‘I was by the chickens. My baby was on my back.’
‘What time of day was it?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Try.’
The innkeeper’s wife interjected before I had the chance to stop her. ‘It would have been first thing in the morning, wouldn’t it? You’d just fed the little one. I asked you to fetch some eggs.’ The girl shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
‘And the bird?’
‘It swooped down from the trees and tried to take William.’
‘What exactly did it look like?’
At last Cissie began to show some life. ‘It was big. With great talons and a hooked beak.’ She had given me the description of any hawk or merlin, but then she added an unusual detail. ‘It had a great crest of feathers on its head. Like a crown.’
Mistress Nash could not keep silent. ‘You fought it off, didn’t you, Cissie? After it had taken two of my chickens. They were my best layers too.’
‘I see.’ Now a faint odour was rising from this story. ‘And nobody else saw this attack?’
Both women shook their heads.
‘Where is your husband?’ I asked Cissie.
Cissie reddened a little. But only a little. ‘I don’t have one.’ ‘Who is the father of your baby?’ She wouldn’t answer. ‘So how do you feed yourself and the child?’