[Sir Richard Straccan 01] - The Bone-Pedlar

by Sylvian Hamilton

  Her mother smelled of flowers and held her so safely nothing could hurt her, nothing could ever get her as long as Mama was there. But then Mama wasn’t there any more, and Gilla’s next memory was of a plump soft kindly woman in black and white robes, who took her hand and led her to a small covered cart full of cushions and drawn by two white mules. The swaying sleepy motion of the cart seemed to go on for days while the black and white woman and another in exactly the same clothes sat with her on the cushions in the tented space. Occasionally they got out to walk and stretch their legs a while and to pee behind the bushes, but at last they reached this house, the Priory of Saint Catherine at Holystone, the only place Gilla could remember living in at all, for of her first home with her mother she had no memory, being only three years old when her mother died.

  Time passed, and the child laid down more memories as life took on shape and pattern, ordered by bells and peopled entirely by women in black and white, save for Sir Bernard, the nuns’ priest, and Ambrose the bailiff, who was frequently glimpsed stumping along the passage to report to Prioress Hermengarde. Prioress Hermengarde was Gilla’s great-aunt, sister to her mother’s mother, and to her surprise Gilla learned that somewhere far away, over the sea—‘Outremer’ they called it—she had a father! No, pet, not like Sir Bernard, and no, certainly not like Bailiff Ambrose. Your father’s a knight, a brave warrior fighting the Infidel. The Infidel are wicked heathens who captured God’s Holy City, Jerusalem, and make slaves and prisoners of poor Christian pilgrims.

  Knights and heathens took their place in Gilla’s mind-world, along with saints and angels, dragons and wizards, nuns, priests, peasants, horses and dogs. She longed for her father’s return, but by now her mother’s face was fading from her memory, overlaid by Aunt Prioress, dear Dame Domitia who told such splendid stories, and Dame Perdita who tucked Gilla into bed and fussed over her when she had the cough, or the spotted fever, or the earache.

  She was seven when her father came back. Sent for to the guest parlour, she saw the man waiting—a face almost blackened by sun but with blazingly blue eyes and a smile that broke over the little girl like a glorious sunrise as he swept her up into his embrace and held her close. His chin was scratchy, and when she pulled her face back she was horrified to see tears in his eyes and spilling down his cheeks.

  ‘Oh there, there,’ comforted the child. ‘Don’t, don’t cry! Everything will be all right!’ And loved him with all her being. The little girls played in the priory orchard on fine afternoons, watched by a lay sister or one of the nuns. Dame Matilda would sometimes teach them a new game; Hoodman Blind had been such a success that their immoderate mirth brought sharp rebuke. Dame Margaret would sit under a tree and doze while they played. Dame Hawise had produced from her capacious pocket knucklebones from the priory’s own mutton, which occupied them for days and could be played with in the cloister when it was too wet to go into the garden.

  Today it was Dame Margaret, nodding under a pear tree, more than half asleep, only just aware of their light voices and laughter on the edge of consciousness … until there was silence, which the nun realised had lasted some time. She sat up and stared about, seeing the children standing by the orchard wall. Why so quiet? No one hurt, no one crying, but something not as it should be … What? Yes!

  Only three little girls. Not four.

  ‘Where is Devorgilla?’ she called.

  Three little faces turned to her, pale and worried, and three voices answered all together, mixed and muddled.

  ‘We were playing hide-and-seek …’

  ‘Gilla climbed the tree.’

  ‘This one, here, by the wall.’

  ‘Someone sat on top of the wall and called her.’

  ‘He called Gilla’s name, and she climbed higher …’

  ‘And he pulled her up …”

  ‘There were horses, we could hear them’

  ‘And she’s gone, Dame.’

  ‘I shall go myself,’ said the prioress. ‘Dame Januaria will go with me, and Sir Bernard, and Ambrose. A message will not do. I must go’

  She sat in Chapter with her nuns, the officers of the community, the morning after Gilla’s disappearance. They were all shocked and very distressed, but even more upset by the notion of Mother leaving to ride twenty-five miles to some petty farm at the edge of beyond, quite out in the wilds, and in this appalling weather. It had begun to rain in the night and blow hard, and looked as if it intended to rain and blow for ever.

  ‘The child was in our care,’ said the prioress. ‘I must tell her father myself and lose no more time about it.’

  Voices were raised in protest but the prioress stood and raised her hand, silencing them. ‘I am going. There’s no more to be said. Sub-Prioress Domitilla will take my place while I’m away. It will only be overnight; I shall be back tomorrow. Dame Januaria, get Sister Hawise to pack our bags, tell Sir Bernard to ready himself you’ll find him in the mews with his mangy sparrowhawk—and tell Ambrose to put pillion-saddles on Sorrell and Roland.’

  Dame Januaria, who had no cushion of flesh on her bones and detested riding, whispered ‘Yes, Mother,’ and fled unhappily out of the room. The others crowded round the prioress, still protesting, several even weeping, but she shook them off as a mother cat shakes off her kittens, blessed them in total and marched to her room. There she took silver from a small coffer and put it in a worn leather purse buckled to her belt. She kicked off her sandals and rummaged in a chest for a pair of sturdy boots. A great hooded cloak over all, and she was ready.

  Presently the two horses clattered out of the priory gates, Sir Bernard with the Prioress behind him and the bailiff with Dame Januaria on a thick-legged mare. Rohese dreaded the meeting ahead and as they rode prayed non-stop for Gilla’s safety.

  Business having taken Straccan to Nottingham, he called at Eleazar’s narrow unobtrusive house to collect a sum due from a client, and found his money-man unhappy and worried. ‘Haven’t you heard? No, I see you haven’t. News just came. That Pluvis, Master Gregory’s man, he met with a dreadful accident. He’s dead, Sir Richard.’

  ‘How? What happened?’

  ‘They found him, well, just bits really, not all of him, by the crossroads at a place called Shawl. Torn to pieces by wild beasts, so they say.’

  ‘What of his escort? He had two men-at-arms.’

  ‘Asleep in their beds, as he should have been too. They saw him to his room, and slept by the fire downstairs. How he came to be wandering about alone in the forest in the middle of the night, no one knows.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Straccan, ‘what wild beasts? Wolves are no trouble at this time of year. Did he fall foul of a boar?’

  ‘Wolves, boars, whatever it was it tore him to pieces. And in truth, they may say wolves, but they don’t believe it. They think some evil spirit got him, they really do, they believe it! You Christians have some very odd notions.’

  ‘We do indeed,’ said Straccan, tucking his money into the breast of his coat and fastening it. It had been a long day. He’d be glad to get home to Stirrup.

  By the time he reached home he was tired and hungry, and none too pleased to be dragged from his supper by the watchbell’s clank, announcing the approach of strangers.

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘Looks like nuns,’ said the watchman, frowning against the sun.

  ‘Nuns?’ Straccan ran up the steps to look out. The three riders were close enough now to recognise. ‘Open the gate,’ he said, feeling sudden dread clamp round his heart as he went down to greet Prioress Rohese.

  Straccan shut his eyes, his mind crying, No, no! He clenched his fist and struck the wall, and again, bursting the skin and leaving blood on the stone. No, no! He leaned, shaking, on the table edge until the shocked stiffness of throat and tongue abated and he could speak, at first with his back to her, but then able to turn and look at her.

  ‘A monastery is not a prison, after all,’ he said harshly. ‘Nuns are not jailers. Why should little girls i
n a garden need warders?’

  ‘That is generous,’ the prioress said. She too was shaking, partly from weariness after the long fast ride and partly with relief, because he had, in the instant of knowledge, looked as if he might kill her.

  ‘Why Gilla?’ he asked, as if to himself. ‘Why was there a man on the wall? To steal fruit? But took a child instead, the nearest within hand’s reach? There are children everywhere, far easier to steal than from behind a monastery wall. I’ll ride to Holystone with you. I want to see for myself just where it happened, and how. Bane! Bane!’

  When Bane did not come, Straccan flung back the door and went to find him. ‘In the yard, Master,’ said Cammo. And there, in the yard, was a stranger, his string of laden dejected ponies straggling in through the gate and around the inner courtyard. A pack-driver, talking to Bane; Bane turning to Straccan, holding out a roll of parchment.

  Straccan unrolled it. A few lines of writing and a soft curl of hair, so fine it fluffed up instantly and the wind took it, scattering bright hairs in the mud.

  She is unhurt. You will find Saint Thomas his finger. Send it to the Jew Eleazar, at Nottingham. When I know he has it, she will be returned to you.

  He seized the pack-man’s baggy jerkin and heaved him forward. ‘Who gave you this?’

  ‘A m—m—man at LL—Lincoln.’

  ‘What manner of man?’

  ‘Oh, a f—f—fine lor—lor—lord, on a f—fine b—b—black ha—ha—horse.’

  Outside the convent wall where the great old apple tree overhung the road, Straccan searched the ground not knowing what he hoped to find. It had rained since Gilla’s abduction, but he found hoof marks in the soft earth beside the road. Someone had dismounted, tied the horse to a bush and waited. The marks of a man’s feet were plain enough beneath the wall. There he had stepped back to catch the child, and there the footprints were deep, deep with the added weight as he caught her.

  A clump of ancient holly grew about fifty yards along the road. Behind that he found the hoof marks of two more horses, the dung of one and something strange. A small circle of fieldstones had been made on the ground; in it were some wet feathers, palely stained with rain-washed blood, the blackened and half-burned skull of a bird and the remains of charred twigs and leaves. He crumbled one of the leaves—some herb, by its smell—valerian maybe, he thought. It seemed too much of a coincidence to think that the stone ring was not associated with Cilia’s abductors. But what was it? They hadn’t just been cooking a meal there. Poking about in the holly, he came upon some rat-gnawed remains which seemed to be the headless body of a small white hen. He had no idea what to make of it.

  They’d been seen at Salterhill, ten miles from Holystone. A very beautiful young man, said the giggling girl who remembered him vividly. ‘Fair as a prince in hauberk and leather bonnet.’

  While she eyed the questioners hopefully, her young brother butted in. ‘He had a helmet laced to his saddle bow and a little girl asleep in his arms. There was an older man, wrapped in his cloak and two black men with him, archers—Ow!’ Earning a cuff from his sister and a silver penny from Straccan.

  After that they could find no trace.

  ‘I’ll waste no more time like this,’ said Straccan. ‘Fair man or none, this is to do with that Pluvis and his master, Gregory. Gregory sent word that he’d not got his relic. I sent back that his man had paid for it, taken it and gone, and it was no more business of mine. Now my Gilla is stolen away and there’s that message to find the relic and send it to Nottingham. But we know that Pluvis is dead, at this place called—what is it? Shawl. He was there, and the relic was with him. We’ll go there!’

  Chapter 11

  The crossroads at the forest’s edge near Shawl was a peaceful spot, birds singing in the trees, bees droning in the clover, the view into the gentle valley below bright and fair. In the centre of the crossroads was an ancient weathered lichen-crusted grey stone. There Straccan leaned, holding his bay’s reins, and Bane sat forward in the saddle of his scrawny grey. It looked to be some two miles or so to the village and manor of Shawl below. A few threads of smoke stood straight up above the thatched roofs. Distant small dots moved in the field-strips, and to their right where the forest’s edge curved down the hill and most nearly approached the village about half a mile from the outlying huts, two children followed a small herd of pigs trotting purposefully to their foraging.

  A man had been torn apart here by wolves or perhaps demons. If they hadn’t known that, they’d have eaten their bread and cheese there, but decided instead to ride into Shawl to break their fast. The church or the manor, Straccan wondered, where to ask first? The church was nearer; he’d tackle the priest.

  But Father Osric lay abed, solidly unconscious, snoring wetly, and by the pot-house reek of his foetid hovel which leaned against the church wall, he’d be less than conversational when he did wake. A few very small children played in the spaces between the huts, but as soon as horses were heard an old man, kipper-coloured, swathed in ragged wadmal and limping cruelly on a bandaged foot, shot out from a doorway and hauled and herded every infant inside. He planted himself stick in hand, in his open door, glaring at them.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Straccan. ‘Is your lord in his house?’

  ‘Sir’s away.’

  ‘Where will I find the reeve?’

  ‘Reeve’s at Sir’s.’ He jerked a thumb along the road to where the manor roof could be seen over its surrounding trees.

  Straccan rode on but Bane dismounted and picked up his horse’s right forefoot, examining the shoe. ‘Where’s your smith?’ he asked.

  ‘Forge. Down by river.’ The thumb indicated the opposite direction. Bane turned and led his grey that way, kicking aside a bunch of thin yapping limping curs that sought to follow. ‘The body, Sir? It was horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t want to talk about it; it brings it all back!’

  ‘Torn apart, I was told,’ said Straccan implacably. ‘But was it eaten?’

  ‘Eaten? I suppose so,’ said the reeve. ‘That’s what wolves do, isn’t it? A foot was missing and, er, innards.’

  ‘Were there teeth marks? Were there bites, man?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sir, I didn’t peer that closely at him! He was torn apart; wild beasts do that, what else could do that?’

  ‘For my part I’d settle for wolves,’ said Straccan, ‘but there’s talk of demons.’

  ‘Demons?’ The reeve crossed himself several times rapidly. He looked pale and sick, and sweat sprang out on his forehead and chin. ‘Let’s have no talk of demons and such, Sir, please! I’ll have no hope at all of getting any work out of anyone if they think the forest is full of demons!’

  Straccan stared at the wall hanging—shabby, stained, and rat-nibbled along its bottom. It depicted lovers in a woodland glade. The woman had golden hair in disarray under a red veil and reminded him quite painfully of the vivid dreams that had continued to plague his nights since he met the Lady Julitta; dreams that clogged his memory and worried him by day. He rubbed his tired eyes.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

  ‘No one knows what happened,’ whined the reeve. ‘He went to bed and next morning he was found up there!’

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘Forester.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Came and got me out of bed. I had a look, then I went to tell Sir Guy.’

  ‘Got him out of bed, did you?’

  ‘Well, no. Sir Guy sleeps heavy. No need to upset him. The man was dead.’

  ‘So when did you tell him?’

  ‘After he’d broke his fast.’

  ‘Then the body was lying up there for what, several hours, after you saw it?’

  Tor a while, yes.’

  ‘And anyone might have searched its pockets.’

  ‘No one was about.’

  ‘The forester. What happened to him?’

  ‘He went back into the forest. King’s man. I can’t
tell him to go, stay, whatever.’

  ‘And when your lord had seen the body?’

  ‘He sent for Father Osric.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Nothing. Said it was too late to do anything. Puked in the bushes.’

  Straccan sighed. This didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. But Pluvis and the relic must lead to Gregory, and Gregory had Gilla. Thin as the thread was, he must follow it. It was all he had. ‘What then?’

  ‘Sir Guy went back home, sent men with a litter. They took the body into the stable, put it in an empty stall. Sir Guy, Father Osric and me, and Sir Roger—’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The lord’s son. He was to travel to the wedding with his father.’

  ‘What wedding?’

  ‘It was his wedding day, Sir Roger’s! They wanted to be off before noon to fetch the bride. They’re all away now, visiting her manors. So this nasty business was doubly unwelcome, coming then, with all to do. Sir Guy was as angry as ever I’ve seen him! Sir Roger wasn’t best pleased either. They sent me to the inn to see the dead man’s servants. One of them was still asleep, the other was just up and out back pissing in the cabbages. I asked him where his master was and he said upstairs. I went up and looked in the room. There was his pack beside his bolster and his cloak over the foot of the bed, and the bed had been slept in, and he wasn’t there. And he wouldn’t’ve been, would he, seeing he was dead.’ Sir Guy had questioned the two men-at-arms, the innkeeper, his wife, the scullion and the grubby serving woman, and no one had seen or heard a thing. The man had gone upstairs to bed, and then somehow out to his death.

  ‘So in the end, to save trouble and fuss, the lord and Father Osric decided on wolves,’ said the reeve. ‘And he was buried over by the hazel wood, away from the ditch where we’re stowing everyone else. You know, until they can have proper burial, when there’s no more Interdict.’

  And that should have been that, except that two days later the grave was found open, empty, and the remains were once again at the crossroads.