The Butcher Bird

by S. D. Sykes

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He smoothed his habit and now looked straight at me, his face as snake-like as an adder’s. ‘It’s no secret that you’re to marry.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘I merely guessed about the baby.’

  When I went to protest, he held up his hand to my face. ‘It’s not unknown for a man to bed his wife before the wedding day, Oswald.’ Then he tried to force a laugh. ‘Goodness me. Many brides are with child as they make their vows. I should know. I’ve performed enough ceremonies.’ Then he laughed again, though it was an ugly, grating sound. ‘Some brides are so heavy they might even give birth in the church porch.’

  I studied his face a while. It is difficult to judge emotion in a stretch of mutated and distorted skin, but behind this mask, his eyes were unable to hide their secrets from me. ‘You’re guilty, Peter. I know it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Henry’s abduction.’

  ‘But I’ve been locked in here for more than a week, Oswald. How could I be involved in his disappearance?’

  Suddenly my pain was forgotten and I ran over to the door of the cell and shouted for Clemence. My sister arrived so quickly that she must indeed have been in the passageway outside, trying to eavesdrop on our conversation, just as Brother Peter had warned. ‘What is it, Oswald,’ she said. ‘Are you ready to confess?’

  I rattled the door. ‘Let me out, Clemence. Please. I know how to find Henry.’

  A key turned in the lock, and Humbert’s solemn face peered through the narrow gap – his hand firmly upon the door in case I should try to push past.

  I didn’t see Clemence, but only heard her voice. Thin and desperate. ‘Where is he, little brother?Tell me, or I shall lock you in the head crusher and screw down the cap until your skull breaks.’

  ‘I need to see Eloise.’

  The door opened a little further and now the light of a candle crept into the cell and illuminated a pathway across the filthy floor to the back wall. Clemence’s face peered around the door and grimaced. ‘Why do you need to see her?’

  ‘She knows where the child is.’

  ‘I’m not falling for your little trick to escape.’ The door shut again, but I managed to put my foot into its path and stop it from closing completely. ‘Please, Clemence. Just listen to me. We don’t have long.’

  The pressure on the door relaxed and I was able to push it open far enough to look into my sister’s eyes. She had been crying. ‘Why should I trust you?’ she said.

  I pushed my arm past Humbert’s chest and grabbed a handful of Clemence’s gown. ‘Just take me to Eloise,’ I said, pulling at the cloth. ‘There isn’t time to argue.’

  Still she just looked at me.

  ‘I’m begging you Clemence.’

  The door opened and I was led away.

  I did not turn to look back at Brother Peter, though he called my name.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Eloise was imprisoned in a cell that was every bit as dank as my own, located at the end of another tunnel beneath Versey. I had rarely ventured down into this maze, being less taken with dungeons than the previous Lord Versey, Walter de Caburn – a man who had spent nearly as much time down in these fetid chambers as he did above ground, particularly in the winter, when it was too wet to hunt. A normal nobleman might spend the colder months attending to his custumnals and ledgers. He might use his spare time for reading a rare manuscript or the learning of Syriac. If he were really bored, he might even sharpen his sword or whittle out some useless thing from a piece of wood. But it takes a particular type of individual to list torture and dungeons amongst their favoured diversions. I shuddered as we passed along the damp tunnel, imagining what horrors these walls had absorbed, digested, and then expelled as their green and spongy slime.

  Before the door to Eloise’s cell was opened, I whispered to Clemence, ‘You must leave me alone with her.’

  Clemence stiffened. ‘Why?’

  ‘She might not reveal the truth if you’re in the room.’ Clemence exchanged a look with Humbert. Maybe she could read the strange impassive expression upon his lumpen face, for I could not. She turned to me. ‘Very well, Oswald. You have a short time alone.’ Then she pinched my cheek. Hard. In just the way she had done when we were children. ‘Don’t try any tricks. I’ll be waiting outside.’

  I found Eloise in the corner of the cell with her back against the wall. Clemence had given me a candle so I might look upon Eloise’s face, but thus far it had only illuminated the foul conditions of the windowless chamber. Filthy straw lay across the stone floor, strewn with rat droppings and small bones.The place smelt as putrid as the River Fleet.

  Eloise greeted me with relief. ‘Oswald.Thank God. Are we to be freed?’ She put out her hand so I might help her to her feet, but I didn’t move. Instead I held the candle to her face. Even in this dark cell the woman was handsome. The flame reflected in her green eyes and picked out the Cupid’s bow of her top lip.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve done with Henry,’ I said. ‘Then you may leave.’

  Now her face lost its beauty. ‘What?’

  ‘Just tell me, Eloise. I know you’re in league with Brother Peter.’

  Her eye twitched. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’

  ‘It was Peter who led the girls to London, wasn’t it? Who else could have carried that enormous eagle?’

  She turned her head away from me. ‘They ran away from your cruel sister.’ Then she held her hands about her body. ‘And now we see what the bitch is capable of.’

  ‘He led the girls to London, so that I would follow. I felt his eyes on my back as soon as I crossed London Bridge. He was even the leper in the alley, wasn’t he? Saving us from cutpurses.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Was it also Peter’s idea that you seduce me?’

  She gave a small laugh. ‘You think so much of yourself.’

  I dismissed this gibe. ‘You thought our child would inherit Versey, didn’t you?’

  She looked back at me and put her hands to her belly. ‘Our child should inherit Versey. It’s his birthright.’

  ‘But then you discovered that I’d promised Versey to baby Henry.’

  Her eye twitched again. ‘No.’ She was surprisingly poor at lying. ‘I knew nothing of that. Not until your odious sister informed me, as she threw me into this cell.’ Then she huffed, ‘Though it sounds like a foolish promise to me.’

  ‘No. I think you knew before. Mary or Rebecca told you,’ I said, thinking back to Mother’s ghost in the stairwell. ‘They were eavesdropping.’

  Eloise looked back to the shadows, so I knew I was right. ‘Tell me where Henry is,’ I said, ‘and then you may get out of here.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ she spat. ‘How dare you accuse me of such a crime? I was in your bed the whole of the night that Henry was taken. How could I have abducted a baby?’

  ‘You and Peter had an accomplice.’

  ‘We did not.’

  ‘It’s John Barrow, isn’t it?’

  Now her eye twitched a third time. ‘John Barrow?’ Then she clasped her hands together in a show of astonishment. ‘Oh yes. I remember. The madman you sheltered.’ Now she laughed. ‘But then he escaped.’ She fixed me with a stare – cold and accusing. ‘It is very cowardly to blame me for your own mistakes.’

  I seized her small wrist and squeezed it. ‘Just tell me where Barrow has taken the baby.’

  She tried to wriggle free, but I tightened my grip. ‘Leave me alone,’ she hissed.

  ‘Tell me where they are.’

  ‘No!’ She struggled again. ‘I mean, I don’t know.’

  I dropped her hand and ran to the door of the cell, calling for Clemence.The door was swung open immediately and Clemence faced me with her arms folded. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Has she told you?’

&nbs
p; ‘No’.

  Clemence’s face dropped.

  ‘But she’s confirmed my suspicions.’

  ‘What use is that?’

  I took a deep breath, for this was a gamble. And I am not a person who often plays the fates. ‘Give me one hour, Clemence. That’s all I ask.’ I made sure Eloise could hear every word.

  Clemence’s arms remained folded. ‘And then what?’

  ‘If I’ve not discovered Henry by that time, you may do what you please with Eloise.’

  My eyes met Clemence’s. I could see both panic and indecision. The moment seemed to drag. ‘Even though she carries your child?’

  I attempted the coldest of shrugs. I think it was convincing.

  ‘Very well, little brother,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘You have one hour.’ Then Clemence took my arm. ‘But remember this. You’d better find him. Because this whore will receive no mercy from me.’

  I shook my sister away. ‘You may torture her to death. For all I care.’

  At these words Eloise scrambled to her feet. ‘Oswald. What are you doing?’

  I didn’t turn to look at her, for she might have seen the fear in my face.

  ‘Please, Oswald,’ she begged. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  I stepped out of the cell, let the door close behind me, and then walked the length of the tunnel. I moved with the tremulous steps of a man into a dark cave, holding his breath with the fear of meeting a wolf, or of falling into a hidden hole. I thought my gamble had failed, but finally, as I reached the steps at the other end of the tunnel, my ploy paid off.

  In the distance Eloise screamed my name. ‘Oswald!’

  I stopped, but didn’t answer.

  ‘Oswald!’ she screeched again.

  ‘What is it?’ I shouted back along the tunnel. My words echoed from the walls.

  ‘Go to the watermill. By the River Guise.’

  Clemence let me take my own horse, though she insisted that Humbert join me.

  ‘I had nothing to do with Henry’s disappearance,’ I told her as she watched me saddle Tempest. ‘Now do you believe me?’

  She wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘Just bring back my child, Oswald.’

  ‘I just hope he’s still there.’

  ‘What do you mean?

  ‘Their accomplice may have moved Henry, Clemence.’ I didn’t like to introduce the possibility that Henry might already be dead. Though I think my sister understood this prospect as well as I.

  ‘Their accomplice?’ she said, pulling at her ear.

  ‘They couldn’t have abducted Henry themselves. You had Brother Peter in chains at the time of Henry’s disappearance. And Eloise was with me all that night.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Who is it, then?’

  I took a deep breath and then cleared my throat. ‘I believe it’s John Barrow.’

  She sighed. ‘You’ve been such a fool, Oswald. Such a fool.’

  I kicked my spurs into Tempest’s flanks, moving away across the field before Clemence had a chance to ask me any more questions. Humbert followed astride a horse big enough to pull a felled tree from the forest, its hooves digging up the soil like the coulter blade of a plough.

  As we crossed the field, Clemence shouted after us. ‘Be quick. Find my child.’

  We rode through the wet fields of the Versey estate. This upland terrain was of little use for farming, other than as pasture for cattle and sheep – but before the Plague the villagers had steadfastly attempted to grow their barley and wheat upon its clay soils. And where a villager grows a cereal crop, a lord must build a mill – or face the prospect of his subjects grinding flour with their own quern stones and therefore not paying their banalities.

  The mill on the Guise was abandoned, now that the Versey estate was dedicated almost exclusively to livestock. Any rye, wheat or barley grown in these fields was ground at the mill in Somershill, leaving this old watermill to stand on its lonely bank, with its decaying paddles doing nothing more than picking up the detritus of the river and spinning it over and over in the water.

  We approached the river through the woodland, with the heady scent of the first elderflower in the air. When we could see the mill in the distance, we tied our horses to a tree and then made our way slowly towards the building, making sure to creep forward in the undergrowth, not wishing to alert a soul to our presence.

  As we stepped through the cow parsley, our attention shifted from the mill towards a small clearing, where a clamour of rooks was pecking at something in the grass. Now Humbert gave a small gasp, for we could see that the birds were squabbling over carrion – squawking and flapping their wings as they fought over a lump of bloodied flesh.

  I tried to hold Humbert back, so I might reach this ugly sight first, but the boy had the strength of Heracles, running towards the birds and scattering them into the air. When I caught up with him, I looked down to see a corpse that was stinking and red. Its eyes had been hollowed out by the birds, and its ribcage was open to the air, strings of flesh still clinging miserably onto bone. The rooks skulked menacingly in nearby trees, squawking with indignation at this interruption to their feast.Their beady eyes regarded us cruelly. Their oily feathers caught the sun like polished wood. But it was not the corpse of a child they had been scavenging. Instead it was the remains of a spring lamb – small and rotted. Humbert muttered something that I took to be a prayer, as I put my head in my hands and heaved a heavy sigh of relief.

  We headed back towards the watermill, and above the babble of the river and the churning of the old paddles, we heard something. We stopped and looked at each other with relief, even delight, for at last we were nearing our quarry – this was the faint cry of a baby. It was not the insistent and demanding screams that we usually associated with Henry however – instead it was the thin and helpless call of an infant who has nearly given up on life.

  I whispered to Humbert. ‘It must be him. He’s still alive.’

  Once again, my cumbersome companion set off at a pace, but this time I held him back successfully, though it was as difficult as stopping a flighty ox at the plough.

  ‘What are you doing? Leave me alone,’ he said, nearly causing me to drop his tunic in shock. The boy had spoken a whole sentence.

  ‘We mustn’t just run in there, Humbert.’ He eyed me with suspicion. ‘We need to see who is also in there with Henry first.’

  ‘You said it was John Barrow.’

  ‘Even more reason to choose our moment.The man’s a lunatic. We don’t want to alarm him, or he might hurt Henry.’

  The logic of my argument appeared to roll about Humbert’s face like a marble in a bowl, waiting for somewhere to stop, and I could only be thankful when he agreed to use caution, since I could not have held the enormous boy back a moment longer.

  The mill on the Guise is sited in such a lonely place, with its back towards the forest and its face towards a river that moves quickly through this dreary place towards the lower reaches of its path, where its waters lap gently at the bulrushes of Kent until they are eventually pushed out to sea.

  We crept through nettles and dock, but Humbert was no creeper and sneaker, and threatened to give us away with each step forward. With some difficulty I persuaded him to stay by the oak trees situated a few yards from the mill, arguing that he could watch my every move forward from this vantage point. When he still seemed unsure about this plan, I warned him that Clemence would not be forgiving if he scuppered our chance of saving Henry. It seemed that this caution, if nothing else, was enough to secure his cooperation.

  There was a single window in the mill, next to a door that was shut fast. There was no glass in this window, nor even a wooden shutter – instead a length of ragged cloth hung behind its bars. I crept forward as stealthily as a hunting cat and reached the sill without making a single sound. I could now hear Henry crying again, and at first I wondered if the child had been left alone in this abandoned place? This hope was soon frustrated when I heard footsteps across the boards
of the floor within the building.

  Waiting until the sun passed behind a cloud, I peered very slowly around the edge of the window to look inside the mill. Lifting back a corner of the ragged cloth, I could see little through the gloom, other than the outline of a person in the corner of the chamber – a person who sat with their back to me, with a swaddled baby lying next to them on the floor. It was impossible to see their identity, for they wore a brown cloak with a raised hood. But, just as it had been quickly obvious that the rooks were not picking over the bones of baby Henry, I knew immediately that this was not John Barrow. It was a boy.

  And then a memory tugged at me – from the morning I had left London. In the early mists I had seen Eloise and two hooded companions walking away from me along the Strand. The larger man was Brother Peter – of this I was now sure. But who was the third? It had been a small person. As small as a boy.

  A mind will work at speed at times such as these – as if an elixir has been poured into the head, bestowing the fleeting powers to slot each piece of the puzzle together. My mind alighted from nowhere onto Geoffrey – and suddenly I knew the boy was the third person we hunted. His disappearance in London and then his reappearance near Versey was not a coincidence. He was the boy I had seen with Peter and Eloise in that milky-misted London morning. When we had discovered Geoffrey hiding out in the forest, he had even tried to point us towards Barrow. A heavy feeling sank its way down into my stomach, for Geoffrey was yet another person in whom I had put my confidence, for it only to be betrayed. Featherby had been right not to trust him.

  What could have persuaded the boy to do this? The answer was simple enough. He had abducted the child for money.

  I would tell you I crept into the mill and grabbed the boy before he had a chance to escape, but my actions were foolish and naíve. I simply called out Geoffrey’s name. The boy was startled and quickly picked up the infant. He then climbed the wooden ladder inside the building to reach the upper storey of the mill.

  I turned to Humbert, who still watched me from the trees, motioning for him to head around the other side of the mill, in case there were an alternative exit. Pushing at the closed door, I entered a chamber with a ceiling so low that I was forced to bend my head. The place smelt stale – of damp wood and mildewy grain. Looking up, there were large gaps in the planks of the ceiling. As the wood creaked, I could see Geoffrey’s feet above me.