‘I am still waiting for this marvel, Sister Fina,’ Nicholas called, from the top of the stairs.
‘I . . . cannot light the candles, Brother.’
She tried to think of some excuse that would stop him coming down. But it was too late – she could already hear his footfalls on the stairs. He’d evidently grown bored with waiting. She ran back up, taking the steps two at a time, heedless of slipping, and almost cannoned into him.
‘The candles are wet, Brother,’ she gabbled breathlessly, ‘too wet to light, and the floor of the cave is slippery with water. The pool sometimes overflows when the spring gushes strongly. You mustn’t soak your fine leather shoes. When it’s safe, I will call you.’
She took a determined step up, though it meant pushing her cheek against his groin. The spiral staircase was only wide enough for one person to move safely and, as she’d hoped, he had no choice but to retreat back into the chapel to allow her to pass. As soon as she was safely through the door to the well, she locked it behind them and, on the pretext of fetching dry candles, she fled.
Her first thought was to warn Prioress Johanne, for she couldn’t possibly open the chapel to pilgrims, not with . . . But as she was hurrying across the courtyard towards the prioress’s chamber, she saw Basilia emerge from the infirmary, leading the boy by the hand. Fina had forgotten about them. There were only two other keys to the well. One hung in the prioress’s chambers, for she had the key to every door in the priory, but the gatekeeper, Meggy, had the third, and if Basilia went to the well door and found it was locked, she might fetch Meggy to unlock it. Basilia must not take the boy down there, not now, not today.
Fina picked up her skirts and ran towards the waddling infirmarer and the boy, intending to steer them away before they reached the chapel, though she hadn’t any notion of what explanation she would give. But charging across a yard as slippery as a greased pig with mud and goose-droppings was bound to end in disaster. Fina had taken no more than a few paces before her foot slid from beneath her and she came crashing down. Spears of pain shot through her arm and knee as she lay in the stinking, wet ooze, wanting to clamber up, but too shaken to attempt it. Basilia dropped the boy’s hand and hurried over, almost slipping herself in her haste.
‘Sister! Sister, are you hurt?’ She prodded and squeezed Fina, as if to discover whether she was fat enough to be slaughtered. The shriek Fina uttered when she touched her arm made her stop. Over Basilia’s plump shoulder, she glimpsed Nicholas emerging from the chapel. He was the last person she wanted to see as she sprawled in the mud and filth. But he had evidently seen her and was approaching all too swiftly.
‘Help me up, Sister,’ she begged, dragging heavily on the infirmarer’s arm. Fina succeeded in standing, but her knee gave way in a flash of pain and she almost collapsed again. ‘Sister,’ she whispered urgently, ‘you mustn’t let anyone unlock the door to that well . . . There is something down there . . . I must find the prioress . . .’
‘The only thing you must do, Sister Fina, is to get that arm and leg attended to,’ Basilia said firmly.
‘Listen, please,’ Fina begged.
‘I have her, Sister Basilia,’ Nicholas’s voice broke in, and before either woman could protest he’d scooped Fina up in his arms and was striding across the courtyard towards the sisters’ dorter.
Chapter 14
Prioress Johanne
‘Whatever possessed you to gallop across the yard like a stable boy, Sister Fina, especially when it was so muddy?’ I snapped, as soon as I reached the narrow bed on which she lay. ‘Even a child would know to take more care.’
I hadn’t intended my words to sound as harsh as they did, but my annoyance was partly born of guilt. The arrival of Brother Nicholas was occupying all my thoughts, so that I’d scarcely noticed how muddy and treacherous the courtyard had become. I should have given orders for it to be scraped and strewn with straw, but there was so little left that the servants were having to use bracken to bed the horses and could scarcely cut enough for that. The tracks were so wet that the horses pulling the sledges became mired to their hocks and it was easier for the servants to fetch what little bracken they could carry on their backs than spend hours dragging the exhausted beasts from the mud.
Fina blinked at me, then struggled to sit up, but I pushed her down. She was deathly pale, whiter even than the bleached linen sheets in which she lay. Basilia, with the help of two servants, had managed to wrestle her dislocated knee back into place. She’d also bandaged Fina’s arm and, though our infirmarer believed it to be cracked, the bone had not snapped in two or pierced the skin. I guessed that she had given Fina something to dull the pain while they had dealt with her knee, for her eyes were unfocused, and when she spoke, her words were slurred.
‘Unclean spirits. The devil’s spirits, mustn’t . . . he mustn’t see.’
‘Sister Fina,’ I said sharply, intentionally so this time, trying to rouse her, ‘are you speaking of little Cosmas again? You are a sister of the Knights of St John, not an ignorant village woman. He is just a child come to us for help, nothing more. You have been taught that our Lord himself said, “Whoever receives a child in my name, receives me.” It is compassion and prayer the boy needs, not accusations of demons and sorcery. The draught Sister Basilia gave you has made you drowsy. I will leave you to sleep. We will speak again when you wake and I trust that by then your good sense will have returned.’
I hoped the syrup Basilia had given her was the cause of this nonsense and not the recurrence of the trouble that had afflicted her when first she joined us. She had come to our priory straight from her father’s house. She had appeared shy and naïve, which was natural enough for any highborn young woman who had seen nothing of the world, but I also sensed a bitter resentment in her.
Not all of our noble sisters enter the order entirely by their own choice, though they must swear that they do. It is not unknown for their kin to persuade them that they have but two alternatives: to become a sister of the Knights of St John where they are comparatively free to travel and work, or to enter a nunnery to be walled up in the cloister with little to do, save pray and idle away the weary hours in games and gossip. Though, if Brother Nicholas had his way, we would not even be offered that semblance of a choice.
But to a young woman who from childhood has dreamed of marriage and being mistress of her own house, even such freedoms as the Knights of St John can offer may seem like the bars of a cage. I knew that Fina saw me as an ageing prioress who could not possibly understand the torment and longings of youth, but I did. I had not made my profession in the order willingly, though my dreams had been very different from hers. But my own father had decided that placing two of his children in different orders was politically and spiritually expedient, for then the religious of two orders would offer masses for his soul when he departed this life, and Christ must surely regard one, at least, with favour.
It was the reason I had appointed Fina keeper of the well, although Clarice had warned me she was far too young. It was true she was immature and often given to strange fancies, but I hoped that such responsibility might help her settle in the order, even grow to love it as I had done. And it had appeared to work. St Lucia’s blessed water had wrought a miracle. Fina had come to treasure the well, as fiercely protective of it as old Meggy was of her gate or Sibyl her kitchen.
I tried to assure myself that her wild words now were due to the shock of the fall and anxiety about who would care for her beloved well. When she was rested, she would doubtless be herself again.
I had already turned away when I felt the tug of a hand on my skirts. ‘Not the boy. The well . . . go alone to the well.’
Fina was trying to drag herself towards the ring of keys that lay on a stool near her bed. She almost tumbled out as she tried to reach them. She was becoming so agitated that I knew she wouldn’t rest until she had them, so I placed them in her hand and, for the second time, pushed her back against the pillow. ‘Lie still, Sister,
or you’ll do yourself more harm.’
But Fina grasped my hand and pressed my fingers around an iron key so hard that the edge bit into my flesh, making me wince.
‘Alone,’ the young woman repeated, her face screwed up in an effort to voice the single word.
I took care picking my way across the courtyard. I certainly didn’t want to find myself lying in a bed with an injured back or worse. I’d given orders that the worst of the mud and dung should be scraped up, and planks and old sacks should be laid in front of doorways for people to walk on. Two of the servants, their skirts looped up to keep them out of the filth, were already at work with Brengy, the stable boy, and his young sister, Dye. They were shovelling piles of stinking sludge into a wheelbarrow. They paused to blow on their wet, cold hands and glowered at me, but I was used to that, and merely nodded. My duty was to manage the priory for the good of all, not to curry affection.
A thick rolling mass of granite-grey clouds turned morning to twilight. Inside the chapel it was almost too dark to see the pillars. The light from the lamp barely grazed the altar over which it hung. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw that the door leading down to the well lay open. Had the pilgrims been admitted? I crossed to the door through which they would enter the chapel, but it was still bolted.
Footfalls sounded on the stone floor behind me and I turned to see the redoubtable form of Meggy lumbering away from the well door, lantern in hand. She started as she caught sight of me in the shadows, and guilt flashed across her face.
‘Should you not be at the gate, Goodwife Meggy?’
‘Heard poor Sister Fina had a bad fall. Didn’t know if she’d opened the well for pilgrims. Went down to see if candles had been lit.’
‘You could have asked one of the sisters to do that.’
‘Didn’t want trouble them. ’Sides,’ she added, with a mulish shrug, ‘my niece is these two years married and still not with child, so I said I’d fetch some holy water from the well for her, so St Lucia will grant her a babe.’
‘St Lucia is not known for such miracles. Your niece should light a candle to the Blessed Virgin and ask her for a son.’
Before I had banished the cunning woman and her tribe of daughters, barren women had come to bathe naked in the spring, not seeking a blessing from a holy saint of the Church but to ask some pagan goddess to make them fecund. Some still tried, and one had fled dripping, without stopping to pull on her gown, when the sisters had surprised her. I was fond of Meggy. She was a loyal soul and, in her own way, good and honest, but she was still a villager at heart. No matter how often I had reproved her, she still could not entirely shake off the superstitious ways of the moorland people. I had little doubt that if any of the spring water were to be given to Meggy’s niece, it would be the old goddess who would be invoked, not St Lucia.
I was just on the point of reminding Meggy for the hundredth time that she was a gatekeeper in a Hospitallers’ priory, and that the order did not employ those who prayed to idols, when I noticed that the candle flame in the lantern she was clutching was guttering wildly. Her hand was trembling. ‘Are you ill, Meggy?’
The woman shook her head, glancing behind her at the open door leading down to the holy spring.
‘Is something wrong with the well? Sister Fina seemed to want me to inspect it. Did you see anything amiss?’
She made a strangled noise as if she was about to speak, but had choked on the word. She thrust the lantern into my hand. ‘Been coming to the well since I were a girl and old Kendra’s ma was keeper of it. I’ve never seen anything like this afore. You take a look for yourself, Prioress. Don’t know how we’ll get them out, unless they’ve a mind to go.’
‘Get who out?’ I demanded. ‘Is someone down there?’ I edged towards the door and dangled the lantern inside, but all I could see were the first few steps curving down. I strained to listen for any sound of movement below, but heard only Meggy’s ponderous footsteps retreating across the chapel floor behind me.
The gatekeeper paused, grasping the latch of the chapel door. ‘Old Father Guthlac was right. There’s a curse come to this place with that boy and it’ll not lift till he goes.’ With that she wrenched open the door to the courtyard and was gone.
Taking a deep breath and a firm grip of the lantern, I edged down the first of the uneven steps. The craggy walls began to twinkle with the familiar green-gold shimmer. Normally, the sight filled me with a wondrous joy and peace, but today I was too anxious about whom I might discover below to see the beauty of it.
I’d reached the point on the stone steps where I should have been able to see the glow from the candles that burned beside the spring, but the only visible light came from the lantern I carried and the glimmer from the walls. The trickle and splashing of water grew louder as I descended, but I could hear nothing else. No voices or feet rattling loose stones on the cave floor.
I paused on the second to last step. The lamplight had caught a flicker of movement. At first I thought the water in the pool was overflowing and had flooded the cave. I lowered the lantern so that the light fell on the floor. But it wasn’t water rippling across the floor. It was frogs, hundreds of glistening green-gold frogs. There were so many that they were climbing over each other, eyes bulging, throats pulsing in and out. The stone trough was heaving with them, all jostling to find space. Even as I stared, more crawled out over the lip of the pool, and they’d no sooner leaped to the floor than another wave clambered out behind them.
I had seen tiny froglets in the damp cave before, but they had vanished into the cracks and crevices of the rocks as soon as light fell upon them, and there’d never been more than two or three at a time. Frogs were generated from the filth of mud and slime, and there was certainly enough mud up on the hills after all this rain to breed a plague of them. If I’d seen them out there on the moor, in that desolation of sucking mires and black pools, I would not have been surprised. All the foul creatures of the night dwelt in those bogs. But that the pure, holy water of the well should spawn such vile beasts, the very symbols of sin and wickedness, was unthinkable. Now I understood what Sister Fina had meant when she spoke of evil spirits. Words from The Apocalypse of St John pounded in my head, accusing, flaying –
de ore pseudoprophetae spiritus tres inmundos in modum ranarum sunt enim spiritus daemoniorum. From the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs, for they are the spirits of devils.
I hastily made the sign of the cross. We would have to close the well to pilgrims until a way could be found to cleanse the cave of such an abomination, but word must not get out. If it became known that the very water that was meant to heal and bless had generated a swarm of evil spirits, the pilgrims would never return. But what reason could I—
I jerked around at the sound of a low whistle. Brother Nicholas was standing on the stairs behind me, staring down over my head. Swiftly I raised the lantern in front of me, trying to plunge the floor of the cave into darkness, but even as I did so, I knew it was too late. The knight had already seen all that I had wanted to conceal.
‘So, this is why Sister Fina was so anxious I shouldn’t visit the well this morning.’
He pulled the lantern from my grasp and, crushing me against the wet wall, squeezed past me. He descended a few paces, peering at the heaving floor and the frogs swarming out of the trough. He raised his foot and stamped on two of the little creatures that were trying to crawl up the steps. They screamed as they died. He ground their corpses beneath his boot, scraping off the gory remains on the edge of the stone step.
‘At least we know they’re made of flesh and blood.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘So, what has brought this plague upon your house, Prioress Johanne? I assume the pilgrims don’t usually have to share their holy water with these foul imps. Some might be tempted to think God is punishing your stubbornness, like he punished the pharaoh of Egypt. But then frogs are a sign of heresy too, are they not? If the Lord Prior learns of this . . .’
We
both knew I did not need him to complete that threat.
‘On the other hand, Prioress, with no pilgrims bringing offerings until our little friends have departed, dear Sister Clarice’s ingenious accounts might, in the end, prove accurate. Wouldn’t that be a curious justice? Perhaps that’s why you have been visited with such a plague, Prioress. She claims the offerings are low, so to keep her from the sin of falsehood, Our Lord is ensuring that they are.’
Brother Nicholas thrust the lantern back at me with a triumphant grin. ‘I should make sure you close the door when you leave. You won’t want Satan’s imps infesting the entire priory. You’ll find that much harder to conceal.’
Chapter 15
Sorrel
I heaved the bucket of wet tailings into the barrow and watched as the lad dragged it up the slope of the spoil heap and tipped it over the edge. Tailings? A month ago I’d not even known the word existed, but in the past few days I’d had to learn fast.
The tinners thought it great sport to talk in a language only they could understand. Carry that to the bundle, they’d say, then crack their sides laughing as I set off in the wrong direction. I’d asked the women what I was meant to do and they’d sighed and rolled their eyes, as if I was a moon-touched bairn, but they’d shown me how to tip the gravel on to a long, sloping stone slab where the water separated it into heads, which contained the heavy tin, and tailings, the lighter waste. They’d warned me they’d only show it me once, mind, for they couldn’t afford to lose time teaching me instead of earning.
But Todde, being a man, wouldn’t ask. The first time, he filled the buckets with the useless stones instead of the tin gravel. The tinners winked and grinned to each other but said naught. They let him heft those buckets all the way up to the crushing stones and watched him pound the gravel till the sweat streamed off him. Only when he’d hauled the broken stone up the slope and into the blowing-house did a bellow of laughter break out from the men below, nearly as loud as the blast of the horn.
A Gathering of Ghosts Page 11