by E. M. Powell
‘Quiet lass, isn’t she? Never see her with this lot.’
‘She’s shy. That’s all.’ Palmer walked up to the group as men settled on the dry walls, opening their weak beer to slake their thirst, tearing chunks of dark bread to stuff in their mouths, spooning at thin pottage. His own empty guts and parched mouth made him ache to join them. He eased the basket from Alf’s shoulders and placed it on the ground.
‘That’s more like it,’ said Alf, moving his shoulders up and down. ‘And I’ll be starting with an empty one after dinner.’
‘Your Theodosia’s on her way,’ said Enide. ‘Saw her set off with the young ones.’
Of course she had. Enide would watch mice at crossroads.
‘You shouldn’t be waiting like this.’ She held out the water bag. ‘Go on: have a sup of Alf’s. You’ll sore need this by now.’
Palmer waved it away. ‘My thanks. I’ll go and meet her, save time.’ He didn’t want to give Enide the joy of calling out Theodosia’s shortcomings. He set off with fast steps.
A woman’s scream sounded in a shrill echo.
He paused to glance back at the resting farmers and their wives. One or two raised heads had him realise they’d heard it too. But it hadn’t come from there.
Then another. From within the woods ahead. And another. A child’s shrieks.
Palmer set off at a run.
Theodosia raced to the edge of the pond. ‘Tom!’
Matilde shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Tom’s small face was lost in splashes as he gave a cry. She had to get to him. She put a foot on the tree, but it rolled again.
She hung onto it with one hand and jumped into the muddy, weed-filled shallows. ‘Grab the tree! Try to grab it!’ The ice-cold water reached her thighs, with the dread pull on her skirts. She couldn’t swim. Dear God, she couldn’t swim.
Tom splashed, coughed, thrashed the water. ‘Mam!’ His head ducked under.
She had to try. She surged in further. ‘Somebody help us!’ Her feet slipped on the slimy weeds and mud. She fell in with a gasp, stopped only by her hold on the rough bark of the trunk.
With a string of coughs, Tom came up again, splashing hard.
‘Please, help!’ Her scream came ragged from the cold. She flung a hand towards Tom. He was still too far out. ‘Get hold of the tree!’
Matilde’s shrieks came shrill, fast.
Theodosia got a foothold, took a step, then another. The water deepened to chest height. She kept her head up, panting. Her terror, the cold. She couldn’t get her breath as she waded deeper. Then her right foot sank into liquid mud. It trapped her, held her fast.
Tom was so close, so close. She stretched an arm out. She couldn’t reach him. No. This could not be. ‘Tom!’ She fought to get free. ‘Tom!’
Through her screams, Matilde’s cries, Tom’s struggles, came the sound of rapid steps.
Theodosia wrenched her head round.
A dark-haired woman came at a run, skirts hauled up for speed. ‘Hold!’ She hurled the sack she carried to the ground.
Then she dived into the water and made for Tom.
With branches tearing at his face and hands, Palmer broke through the bushes to the clearing around the pond. Alf and the fastest of the other farmers and their women followed close behind.
A lost-looking Matilde sat on the ground, sobbing. Soaked and muddy, Theodosia clung to an equally soaked and muddy, though dry-eyed, Tom.
A young, dark-haired woman, wet dress and hair stuck to her, stood with them, breathing hard.
‘What’s happened?’ Palmer asked.
Theodosia swung to face him. ‘Oh, Benedict, Tom fell in the pond! He was drowning, and I couldn’t save him—’
‘By the communion of saints!’ An angry shout came from the trees. ‘Where have you gone, woman?’ The branches rustled and parted.
A scarlet-faced Abbot Remigius, head of the local abbey and rector of the parish, rode out on his fine mount, clinging to the saddle with his usual attempt at horsemanship. ‘What have we here? More wrong-doing?’ He took in the scene, his loose mouth curling down in his many-chinned face. His gaze lit on the stranger, and his brows drew together. ‘And you ran from me to join this unsavoury gathering, missy?’
Theodosia moved forward, hands clasped. ‘My Lord Abbot. This woman, a stranger to us, has saved my son’s life. She should be praised, not punished.’
‘You can say that again.’ Short of breath, Enide held a calmer Matilde in her arms. ‘That were right brave, what she did then.’
‘I’ll say.’ Alf nodded to Palmer.
Palmer caught Tom’s look. Forcurse it, he knew what the lad was going to say.
‘I didn’t need saving.’ His son’s high voice came clear as day.
Theodosia rounded on him. ‘Thomas Palmer, how dare you be so discourteous? Apologise at once for such a brazen lie.’
‘I’m not lying. I can swim. Pa taught me.’
Theodosia raised a bloodless face to Palmer. ‘You put him in water? In water?’ Her voice climbed. ‘You dare to go against me? How could you, how—’
‘Enough.’ Palmer had to stop her. Her fright made her tongue loose.
‘And enough from you also.’ Remigius’s animal jigged at the raised voices, and he grabbed at its mane. ‘I am not here to oversee the brawl of a peasant and his harridan of a fishwife.’
Palmer met Theodosia’s eye with a quick mouthed plea. Not here.
‘I have far more pressing business.’ Remigius swept a pointed finger over the gathering. ‘I have seen strange sights in the woods that carry the stench of sorcery.’ His words were met with gasps and mutters as Palmer shook his head, waiting for more fool’s words.
But Remigius looked to the unknown woman. ‘You might have regretted running through those woods alone, Joan Palmer.’
Joan? Palmer tried to speak, but had no words as those around him echoed his sister’s name in question.
The Abbot smirked. ‘That silenced you. Now come. Your lord summons you both to his manor.’ His gaze went to Theodosia, and his face sobered. ‘You too, God preserve us. And get a move on: Lord Ordell does not like to be kept waiting.’
Chapter Five
‘Father Remigius, you are welcome to my manor as always.’ Lord Nicholas Ordell’s thin, flat tone made his words a lie to Palmer’s ears. Not that Palmer had ever heard or seen the greying, dried-out husk of man show feeling to anyone.
The Abbot didn’t seem to notice. ‘I am always made to feel so under your roof.’ He bobbed a quick bow to Ordell’s quiet, watchful wife, who sat before the enormous fireplace in the left wall of the great stone hall. ‘My lady.’
‘Pray take a seat with Cecily.’ Ordell held a hand out to the empty half of the wooden bench, close to the heat of the flames.
‘Too kind.’ The Abbot had already set off to join her across the rush-strewn floor, his bad hip not slowing him.
No such offer of warmth for Palmer. Or the shivering, wet-clothed Theodosia. Or the equally soaked Joan.
Joan. How much of Theodosia’s shaking came from cold and how much from pure terror, he couldn’t guess. The unsteady Abbot had escorted them here on his horse, still blabbing on about sorcery. Palmer didn’t care if the devil walked near Cloughbrook, and so he had kept silent, as had Theodosia. He was sure her thoughts were his. Could this woman really be his sister? And if she was, who knew of his old life to bring her here? And what else did they know? The message tree had still been empty when he checked it on the way to the fields this morning. Could Henry really have fallen?
The Abbot held out his pudgy hands to the flames. ‘I have some worrying news, Ordell. You will need to come with me to examine a number of dead animals I discovered in the woods.’
‘Dead from what?’ asked Ordell. ‘A pestilence?’
‘I f
ear not,’ said the Abbot. ‘I could see no cause for the creatures to be struck down, nor a reason why so many of them. A strange affliction, which suggests the hand of sorcery.’
Ordell drew in a sharp breath. ‘The devil’s work? Here?’
‘The Martyr preserve us,’ murmured Lady Ordell with a stricken look to her husband.
Remigius addressed Theodosia. ‘You were abroad in those woods.’ He pursed his wet lips.
Ordell focused on her too. ‘You? For what reason?’
‘Only to walk to the fields, my lord,’ she said. ‘I swear to you, on the soul of Saint Thomas Becket.’ She shot a panicked glance at Palmer.
He gave Ordell’s wife a respectful bow. ‘The saint to whom all of Cloughbrook knows you have a godly, special devotion, my lady.’
‘In truth.’ Lady Ordell inclined her head.
Theodosia clasped her hands. ‘I too have a devotion to the saint, and we have made a pilgrimage to Canterbury, my lady.’
‘Only once and a number of years ago. Hardly the actions of the truly godly.’ Ordell kept his stare on her.
Palmer raised his eyes, keen to control the temper that brewed in him. He needed the truth about this woman calling herself Joan Palmer, not this side-talk. His gaze met that of a stone-carved angel at the top of a pillar, a demon’s severed head in one of its lifeless fists.
‘We will get to the bottom of it, Remigius,’ said Ordell. ‘But first: you, Palmer.’
Palmer dropped his gaze again and saw that Ordell now eyed him.
He tensed. ‘My lord.’
‘This winter sent a wave of pestilence to carry off those who have sin in their hearts, did it not?’
Muttering a reply, Palmer noted Theodosia’s respectful nod. Joan’s seemed less so, though she held her hands tight together.
‘Like the family of Joan Palmer.’
The lord’s words came as a hammer blow. Palmer could only stare at him.
Ordell nodded to Joan. ‘You may speak.’
‘My name is Joan Palmer. My mother’s name was Anna.’
His mother’s name. Was.
‘Your sisters?’
‘They were Margaret, Anne and Alice.’
His sisters’ names. Were.
Was. Were. A shock he’d never seen coming. His mother, his sisters. Left by him so many years before. Yet they’d lived on in his mind, always within reach. He’d seek them out, reunite with them, when the right time came. And now he never could.
‘From the village of ?’
‘Wattick, in Yorkshire.’
Yes.
‘Father?’
‘He died many years ago. I don’t remember him. I was a baby.’
Each true word Joan said came in the long vowels he remembered from his boyhood. He swallowed hard.
‘Brothers?’
‘One. Benedict. My mother told me the lord of our estate sent him away to become a squire. She would never tell me anything more.’
Ordell’s glance slid back to Palmer. ‘Were you the subject of such an odd circumstance?’
Palmer fought for an answer, his mind clouded with grief.
‘It is a perfectly straightforward question. Were you sent away to become a squire? Yes or no?’ Ordell’s voice rang loud against the stone walls.
Palmer couldn’t look at Theodosia. She stayed utterly silent, and he could swear she’d stopped breathing. These two nobles and this powerful man of the church knew who he was, knew of his past. Did they know the whole truth, who Theodosia was?
‘Yes, my lord,’ he said. ‘A very long time ago. But I . . . I didn’t pass muster as a squire. I didn’t have the stomach for fighting; I could never finish a man off. The squire master sent me to the stables instead. To live with the horses.’
Ordell’s gaze remained on him.
Palmer readied himself for the reply. ‘Failed as a squire? And yet you became Sir Benedict Palmer, did you not?’ He tensed for action, knowing the chances of getting out alive from Ordell’s hall were slim. Theodosia still hadn’t uttered a sound.
But Ordell’s question never came. Instead, the Abbot addressed Palmer.
‘As Lord Ordell has said, in this last dread winter, many, many souls have perished. Folk are wandering the land, destitute, seeking any kin and falling on the mercy of the church. I receive lists through the monastic posts of those alone in the world, as I send them also.’
‘Such time spent on those who have nothing,’ said Ordell. ‘I wonder how long it can be maintained.’
‘As do I.’ The Abbot sighed. ‘But I do God’s work. The latest letter came from Sempringham Priory in Lincolnshire about a twenty-one-year-old Joan Palmer seeking a brother, Benedict. I sent for her, and she arrived at my abbey with the monastic post rider this very day. All of her other details are correct?’
Details. Anger surged through Palmer. ‘If by my family’s death, you—’
‘Silence.’ Ordell raised a hand. ‘We have heard all we need from you.’
Theodosia grasped for Palmer’s hand and clutched it tight in a warning to say no more.
Ordell continued. ‘This woman who stands here is your responsibility and is not to be a leech on the charity of the church any more. We have wasted enough time on you already. Now, go.’ He gestured to them to leave. ‘Take her to that hovel you call your home. I need to find out what evil is abroad in my woods.’ His mouth tightened. ‘And when I find it, I will destroy it.’
‘And I collapsed by the side of the road. That was when the sisters of Sempringham found me.’ Gathered around the fire with Palmer and Theodosia in their home, Joan paused again in her tale to take more mouthfuls of pottage.
Her speed of eating would match a starving dog’s.
‘Just in time, sounds like.’ Palmer stared into the flames. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been Matilde’s age, with dark curls where his daughter’s were fair. He could have lost her with the rest of them, might never have known their fates.
Joan’s tale wrenched his guts. His mother’s heartbreak at him leaving. Her death, his other sisters’ deaths in the cold and disease of the hard winter. Joan’s homelessness and near starvation as she was left alone. An older villager, a man he remembered well, had told her the name of the lord to whom Palmer had been sent away. Joan had set out to try to find the estate and her brother, her only blood. She had soon lost her way. Palmer shook his head. ‘You could’ve been killed.’
Joan’s dark eyes, dark as his own, met his. ‘There were times when that might have been better.’
Theodosia laid a comforting hand on Joan’s shoulder. ‘Do not ever wish for such a thing. Where we have life, we have hope.’ She moved her hand away, catching Joan’s shawl as she did so, and it slipped from her shoulder.
Theodosia put her fingers to her mouth. ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’
Palmer stared. He shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t help himself.
Joan wore only a shift as her woollen dress dried out. The pale skin of her bone-thin arm and shoulder were marked with the red weals of ugly scars.
His sister flushed as she followed their stares and pulled her shawl around her again. ‘It was a hard journey to get here.’ She lifted her chin to lock on Palmer’s gaze again. Two spots of high colour reddened her cheeks. Her look demanded no more questions about what she had been through.
He knew. He’d travelled far and wide as a mercenary knight. Women who travelled alone were assaulted, ravaged, beaten. He doubted if the Sempringham sisters had found her collapsed. They would have found her left for dead.
Theodosia went to speak, but Palmer stayed her with a warning shake of his head. ‘I’m sure it was, Joan.’
‘Thank you both for the food. I’m so grateful for your sharing.’ Joan put her bowl and spoon down. ‘Lord Ordell did not display such charity. Or that Abbot.’ H
er dark brows drew together. ‘Though I doubt if he ever has a hungry day.’
‘No,’ said Palmer, ‘and Ordell’s concern is only for himself. That and the ravings of his own mind.’
Theodosia stayed him with a glance. ‘He is our lord, but you are our family. And you sought to help us today in our distress, even when we were strangers to you. Foolish strangers, perhaps.’ She gave Palmer a rueful glance. She picked up the used bowl and spoon and put them in a pail for washing.
‘Are you not feeding the boy tonight?’ Palmer nodded to the smaller straw bed, where Matilde slept and Tom had been sent in disgrace by Theodosia.
‘He has much to contemplate.’ She laid another log on the fire. ‘Joan, if you will pardon us. Benedict and I have a need for privacy. All of this has been a shock.’
‘Of course.’ Joan went to rise, though her eyes were ringed dark in tiredness.
Theodosia halted her. ‘Pray, keep warm inside.’ She gestured to the clean straw that Palmer had piled in one corner, covered with a couple of sacks. ‘You should get some sleep. It is not much of a bed, but it is all we have.’
‘It calls loud to me,’ said Joan.
‘Then we will leave you to your much-needed rest.’ Theodosia’s gaze met Palmer’s. ‘It is a fine night. We will take a walk out.’
To go out now? That meant only one thing, Palmer knew. Hugo Stanton had arrived. Let it be good news. Today, there had been too much bad.
‘My lady.’ Lit by the small moon that hung above the clearing in the woods, Hugo Stanton gave a deep bow to Theodosia. He straightened up. And bowed again. Less deeply. ‘Sir Benedict.’
‘Stanton.’ Palmer ignored the slight.
The young, blue-eyed Stanton did everything with a swagger, as if he believed his own high worth, although he was only a message boy.
When Tom was born, Theodosia has been taken with a deep desire that her mother should know of his birth. She’d used the monastic posts to get word to Henry. News of a son had meant the King kept watch on them from a distance ever since. Even when Palmer had moved his family to lands where no one could possibly know them.