by S. D. Sykes
I put my foot over the threshold. ‘May I come in?’ She moved aside and led me into the middle hall, where a brass cauldron hung on a broche over the fire. The chamber was empty of furniture other than a wooden stool where Christina’s daughter sat, counting beads on a line of leather. She was a girl of maybe fourteen, but possessed the mind of a small child. The girl smiled at me and pointed, and then made a strange, grunting sound.
Christina was embarrassed and crossly waved the girl into the inner chamber, from where she peeped at me from around the woollen blanket that covered the opening. I noted the door that had once hung in this gap was now cut into strips, ready to be burned. It seemed Mistress Beard and her daughter could afford the reduced rent at this property, but had neither the goods nor the means to live here in any comfort.
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry to hear of your infant’s death.’ The girl behind the curtain made a groan and flapped her arms, only to be rewarded with a quick reprimand from her mother.
‘Get to your bed,’ the woman shouted, as she approached the blanket and shooed the girl back into her hidden corner. ‘Lord Somershill doesn’t want to hear your squawking.’
Christina turned back to face me, though we continued to hear her daughter’s strange gurgling noises. ‘I’m sorry, sire. Faye can be trying when we have visitors.’ Her voice was tired and despairing. ‘She can’t settle in this house. My daughter preferred our small cottage.’
I tried to smile. ‘She must also be upset by her young sister’s death.’
Christina sighed. ‘Yes. We’re both grieving.’ Then she threw me a bitter glance. ‘Though we were unable to bury Margaret, since Lady Clemence said you would want to inspect her dead body.’
‘I’ve finished now,’ I said. ‘The priest will bury her tomorrow.’
‘Did you find anything?’ the woman asked me.
I shook my head. ‘No. Not really.’
She looked at me curiously and then wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. A long silence followed, until I summoned the courage to continue. ‘I need to ask you a few questions, Mistress Beard. About Margaret.’
Now she raised an eyebrow, the tear gone. ‘Oh yes?’
‘About the circumstances of her disappearance.’
She took a deep breath. ‘If you feel it’s necessary, sire.’ Her tone was scathing. ‘Though we all know who’s guilty. John Barrow and his bird.’
‘Did you see Barrow anywhere near your house?’
‘Of course not! I would have raised the hue and cry.’ Then she cleared her throat a little. ‘Anyway, they say it is his bird that steals the child. Not he.’
I went to answer, but we were interrupted by more groaning from the chamber next door. It was now so loud and pitiful that Christina stalked back to the blanket and shouted, ‘Be still, Faye! You foolish girl. Or I’ll come in there and beat you into silence.’ Then she turned to me with a face full of tears. Full and heavy tears this time. ‘I don’t mean to chastise the girl, sire. But she’s so vexing at the moment.’ She threw her hands up in despair. ‘I just wish she would give me a little peace.’
I rose. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, Mistress Beard. When you’re feeling more disposed to speak to me.’
Christina wiped her eye with the corner of her tunic. ‘I wouldn’t bother, sire. I’ve nothing more to tell you.’
‘But—’
She hardened her chin. ‘I swaddled the child. I put her to sleep by the back door, and when I came back with the firewood, she was gone. I have no more information that could help you.’
‘And where was the child found?’
‘On the common pastures. Same as poor Catherine.’
‘And who found her?’
She flicked her hand in front of her face. My questions appeared to be irritating her, like a bothersome fly. ‘Some men from the village. Thomas Tulley told them to look there.’
‘Why?’
‘Because his own child was discovered there, of course.’ She now looked at me with something akin to hatred in her eyes.
I looked away, to ease my discomfort. ‘You can’t think of anything else that would assist in my investigations?’
Her answer was a resolute no.
I left the house soon after, but as I walked down the front path poor Faye opened the shutters of her chamber and called to me, as sadly as a cow yowls for its slaughtered calf.
* * *
The street was empty apart from a flock of crows that pecked at the cleaved stomach of a dead rat. They rose into the air as I passed, flapping and cawing.The air was warming now that spring was stroking the world with her soft green fingers. Passing the row of cottages where the Tulleys lived, I smelt the piquant, spurge-like scent of herbs as they boiled upon Agnes Salt’s hearth, the odour reminding me of my recent and unpleasant visit to the woman. There was a face at her window. It was Agnes herself, with a countenance as wary and hostile as the old bull’s.
I caught Agnes’s eye and went to acknowledge her, but she only slammed her shutters. And I met this reaction again and again as I walked through the village. Nobody was brave enough to confront me outwardly about John Barrow, but they made their feelings plain with their silent stares or their hastily closed doors.
Only Old Eleanor, Mother’s previous lady’s maid, called to me. ‘Good evening to you, sire.’ As ever she was sitting outside her cottage with her swollen foot resting upon a stool. Her deaf and mute grandson was twisting a gimlet into a block of wood, making a series of deep holes, for no purpose other than his own entertainment.
I bowed to the woman and would have made my usual escape, but on this occasion it seemed worth stopping. She could tell me what was happening with the search for Barrow, if nobody else would. ‘Might I take some ale with you, Eleanor? I’m thirsty.’
Her face crumpled into a smile, and she struggled to her feet. ‘But of course, sire. Come into my home.’ She ushered me inside and pulled the boy to one side, giving him clear instructions to fetch the best ale. He looked at her lips intently and then disappeared into the side room, soon reappearing with a pewter mug.
‘Your dear mother gave me this mug,’ Eleanor told me proudly. ‘I don’t ever use it for usual guests. It only comes out for the proper family.’
I wanted to launch straight into my questions, but since I had been presented with Eleanor’s best ale and mug, I felt obliged to enquire after her health. Though I soon wished I hadn’t.
‘My legs are still cursed with the dropsy,’ she told me. ‘They swell to the size of tree trunks. And the skin is so red, sire. Blistered and cracked it is. Like a side of roasted pork fat.’ She lifted her skirts. ‘Would you like to see it?’
I quickly held up my hand. ‘Thank you, Eleanor. But no. I’m not a physician.’
She dropped her gown a little, cocked her head, and looked at me quizzically. ‘But you trained under an infirmarer, didn’t you? Brother Peter wasn’t it?’
I had to think quickly. ‘Yes. But we only treated men at the monastery. So I am woefully ignorant of the female anatomy.’
She sighed with disappointment. ‘Oh. I see.’
‘But couldn’t you visit Agnes Salt? I hear she produces herbal tinctures. She might have a cure for your legs.’
Now Eleanor pulled a face of disgust. ‘Not her.’ She leant towards me conspiratorially. ‘Agnes Salt doesn’t know a thing about medicine, sire. She says there are no such things as the four humours. And she doesn’t hold at all with leeches.’ She threw up her hands. ‘I ask you. What sort of healer is that?’
Her grandson interrupted us by bringing his log into the chamber and recommencing his attempts to mine a thin shaft from one side to the other. I managed, at this point, to turn the conversation in my favour. ‘Is there any news yet of John Barrow?’ ‘Not so I’ve heard,’ she told me. ‘But what a thing to happen, sire. Another baby gone.’
‘I’ve just been to visit Christina Beard.’
Eleanor shifted from one buttock to the o
ther. ‘Oh yes.’ Then she gave an uneasy cough. ‘Her.’
‘Why does her name make you uneasy?’
She shifted buttocks again. ‘I don’t know if I should say anything, sire.’ I was about to demand an answer, but this story didn’t need any tipping out. ‘It’s God’s punishment,’ she told me.
‘What is?’
She frowned. ‘Her baby being taken. By that bird.’
I sighed. ‘And why would Christina deserve such a punishment?’
She looked at me with some degree of disbelief. ‘That baby was a bastard, my lord. Christina’s husband has been dead well over a year. He was one of the last to die in the Plague. So he couldn’t be the father, could he?’
‘Who is the father then?’
Eleanor gave a knowing smile. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? Christina Beard has always been so godly, sire. Always warning others of their sins,’ she leant towards me and whispered, ‘when in truth she was bedding strangers for money.’
This story took me by surprise. ‘Are you saying Christina Beard is a whore?’
‘Well. She’s a widow. And she’s as poor as a hermit. She can barely afford to feed that simple daughter of hers.’
I knew the Beards needed money, as I had watched them burning their own doors. But I still found it hard to believe that Christina was a whore. I thought back to the girl by the stew in Southwark. The girl who had called to me in the street. She was jaded perhaps, but she was young and pretty enough to draw custom. Christina had the face of a worn-out donkey and would not have been an attractive proposition – not even to a drunk man in the dark.
‘Are you certain of this story, Eleanor?’
She nodded with a gasp. ‘Oh yes, sire. That’s why she rented that bigger cottage from you. It’s got more rooms for entertaining men, you see. And it’s away from the village. Where nobody could see what the old hypocrite was up to.’ Then she gave a little sigh. ‘Still. At least she got the infant baptised.Though it was a bastard.’
‘Did Father Luke know that the child was illegitimate?’
‘Oh no. Not him.’ Then she laughed. ‘This new priest is such a wet rag of a boy. Don’t you think?’
I coughed. ‘I find him acceptable, thank you Eleanor.’
She folded her arms, disappointed I would not agree with her assessment of Father Luke. ‘If you say so, my lord.’
‘I do.’
I stood up to leave and she struggled to get back to her feet. I told her to stay in her chair, but she insisted on showing me to the door. As I pulled on my gloves, she whispered into my ear, ‘They say he’s a sodomite, sire.’
‘Who is?’
‘The priest.’
I stopped on the threshold. ‘Who’s saying such a thing?’
She hesitated. ‘Just people around the village, sire. They say you shouldn’t have appointed him.’ I looked her straight in the eye until she looked away. ‘But not me, sire. I don’t say such a thing.’
‘Good.’
I walked away from her cottage with some degree of irritation, feeling sullied by this conversation. And what had I learnt? A foolish piece of tittle-tattle about Christina Beard, and an allegation I had already guessed at concerning Father Luke. It served me right for talking to gossips.
As I passed Joan Bath’s cottage, a wagon blocked my path. Her two sons were loading a crate of hens, a bench and a table into its tilt. I grabbed the youngest boy by the ear, though he tried to avoid me.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘We’re moving,’ he said, and then succeeded in squirming away from me like a wriggling cat.
‘Where to?’
The boy ran into the cottage shouting for his mother, and soon Joan appeared at the door, wearing a thick cloak and a shawl about her face that softened its severity.
‘What’s happening here?’ I asked her. ‘You didn’t inform me you were moving.’
A frown criss-crossed her forehead and tarnished her fleeting appeal. ‘I tried to tell you a couple of weeks ago, but you just rode off.Though I’m sure you saw me waving at you.’ Her dog growled at me from the shadows, and though she closed the door on it, I saw that the creature had grown a good deal fatter since our last meeting. ‘In the end I gave notice to your reeve, Master Featherby,’ she said. ‘Everything has been done correctly.’
I sat down upon the bench that the boys were yet to load onto the wagon. She joined me and told her boys to disappear for a while so that we could talk privately. But now alone, we sat in silence for a long while, both awkward and tongue-tied. It was Joan who spoke first. ‘I understand you’re yet to raise the wages,’ she said reprovingly. ‘I asked Featherby.’
I sat up straight. ‘I have other troubles right now, Joan.’
‘I’m not the only person leaving this estate, you know.There’s many of us. Particularly from Burrsfield.’
‘So why are you going then?’ I said. ‘It’s not wages. I don’t pay you anything.’
She looked to her hands. ‘I can’t stay in Somershill, Oswald. You must understand that. I’m going to Norwich. To marry.’
I stifled a laugh. ‘What?’ Then I quickly changed my tone, for I could see she was offended. ‘I’m sorry. I meant to whom?’
‘You’re surprised anybody will marry me. Is that it? Because I used to be a whore.’
‘It’s not that,’ I lied. ‘It’s just that you don’t need to marry, do you? You’re prosperous in your own right.’
She pulled at the fingers of her gloves. ‘Every woman needs to marry, Oswald. Or to have been married. If only for the sake of her children.’
‘You didn’t used to believe that.’
‘Well I do now. Nobody will give my boys a chance in this place. In their eyes they will always be the sons of a whore. Though their real fathers walk about the village and sit with their wives in church.’ Some of her old sourness came through, seeping into her words like a spoonful of lemon juice. I thought she might even spit upon the ground. Instead she composed herself and returned to her previous manner of speaking – with poise and dignity, as if she had never uttered a curse in her life.
‘The man I intend to marry is old and rich. He has no children left alive after the Plague. He wants a son to inherit his land and sees I have produced a string of boys in the past.’
‘And if you don’t again?’
She smiled, a little hesitantly. ‘I will.’
‘And what of your flock of sheep?’
She pulled back her cape and tapped at a leather purse on her belt. ‘I’ve sold them all to Master Featherby. For a good profit.’ ‘And is he going to rent your land as well?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him yourself.’
I looked at the bulging purse. ‘You must take care, Joan. It’s a long journey to Norwich and you’re travelling with a lot of money on your person.’
‘Richard is meeting me in Rochester.’ It was the first and last time she mentioned his name.
‘Why not come to Somershill?’
‘Nobody knows me in Rochester. It’s easier that way.’
I wiped my hand across my forehead and sighed. ‘I wish you were staying. I have few enough friends here.’
She looked to me. ‘I have to go, Oswald. There are too many bad memories in this place.’ Now her face darkened and a solitary tear ran its course down her face. ‘The people of this village burned my son to death. I see their faces every day as I go about my business. Every time I drive my sheep to the common pasture, I pass the patch of earth where they built the fire. I can still smell the fumes from his burning body when I open the shutters. I’ve tried to forget. But I can’t. And now they are searching for John Barrow. Another man they believe is guilty of a crime. Only this time it’s not a dog-headed man.They think he is in possession of some make-believe bird. When they find him, they will kill him.’
‘I won’t let that happen, Joan. Barrow will be properly tried. At court.’
She raised an eyeb
row. ‘Will he?’
I looked to my hands. They trembled like leaves caught in a spider’s web. ‘Yes.’
She took my hand in hers. Again we sat in silence.
‘I was a fool to give Barrow my protection, wasn’t I?’ I said.
‘No.That piece of kindness is to your credit.’Then she squeezed my hand. ‘You did it because of Leofwin.’ I nodded dolefully. She leant into my ear and whispered, ‘But you must put his burning behind you.’ And then she kissed my cheek. ‘We both must.’
‘Please don’t go,’ I said.
She let go of my hand and stood up. ‘I have to.’
I helped to load the last few remaining items onto the wagon and we embraced, before saying goodbye. As I passed the pony’s reins to her for the last time, a question occurred to me. ‘Can I ask you, Joan? Do you know Christina Beard at all?’
‘Mother of the dead child?’
‘Yes.’
Joan tapped the pony on its hindquarters and the wagon began to move slowly away. ‘Of course I know the woman. She used to call me a Jezebel.’Then a bitter smile worked its way across her lips. ‘Until she produced a bastard of her own. Then she had no right to shout insults at me.’
‘Do you know who the father of the baby was?’
She shook her head.
‘And you never heard that she . . .’ I scratched my head to think of a polite way to put this, as I didn’t want to infuriate my old friend at our parting.
‘Never heard what?’ She cocked her head inquisitively.
I took a deep breath. ‘That Christina was a whore.’
Now Joan pulled on the pony’s reins and brought the animal to a firm halt. ‘For the love of Saint Catherine. Who would pay to spend a night with that old kipper?’ And then she laughed. Soon she could barely speak, such was her amusement.
‘Well, somebody got her with child,’ I said.
The boys ran around from the back of the wagon. ‘What is it Mother? What’s so funny?’ they asked as they pulled at her gown, pleased to see their mother so happy for once.