by Cleo Cordell
Yes. Oh, yes. Why deny himself this pleasure? He no longer cared that the Fetch would exact a price for this service. A few moments’ possession. That was all it wanted. To look out of his eyes, to feel blood coursing through its spirit veins, to experience the heavy beat of his heart, to imagine for that brief time that it was human. It seemed little enough to grant it.
Karolan moaned as the pleasure increased in intensity. Fingertips teased him, running up the insides of his thighs, smoothing and pinching his flesh by turns. A long nail scratched gently at the tight, creased rose of his anus. He was aware that a shadow passed across his face. The warm heaviness of a body settled over him. Thighs clamped the sides of his head. There were perfumed folds against his mouth. He stretched out his tongue, lapping eagerly at the rain-tasting flesh. He stabbed inwards and felt his tongue enclosed by warm, pulsing wetness.
The Fetch’s laughter was soft, exultant as it used its artifice to seduce its master. Karolan was lost in sensation. The Fetch’s flesh seethed, re-formed against him, offering pleasures that no mortal woman ever could. While Karolan’s tongue was still deep inside the perfumed vulva, hands smoothed down his body, gripped his hips and drew him towards a second orifice. And then Karolan was inside her, thrusting his cock deeply into a cleated wet maw.
She was hot and tight. The muscular walls squeezed gently, milking him. He seemed possessed by a welter of aroused flesh. Bucking and thrashing, holding nothing back, he gave vent to all his pent-up frustration. While he toiled, fingers plucked at him, urging him on to greater efforts. He was soaked in sweat, enclosed by sensation, every orifice invaded, plundered. His lips, anus, cock, the whole surface of his skin, throbbed, ached, pulsed. He caged a scream behind his teeth, desperate to reach a climax. The Fetch crooned, its enjoyment as deep as his own. As the pleasure peaked, tipped over, Karolan ejaculated in great, tearing spurts.
Before the last sensations had died away, the Fetch was inside his skin. Karolan’s mouth stretched open in a rictus of agony as the spirit occupied his body. He felt it rattling around inside his skull, pushing against his flesh from the inside. The skin on his arms and legs rippled and bulged as it explored him. His eyeballs burned and his vision clouded as the spirit claimed them for its own. He ground his teeth together. ‘Enough!’
The Fetch left him instantly. Drunk with sensation it scurried over the surface of his skin, tasting his sweat, dabbing at the moist surface with hungry, mindless avidity.
‘Go now,’ Karolan said, tiredly. ‘Leave me in peace. You’ve had what you wanted. Damn you!’
‘As have you, Master,’ it whispered exultantly, the moment before it faded into another dimension. ‘As have you.’
Karolan groaned and turned over, pulling the sheets over his half-naked body. Seconds later he was asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Garnetta hurried down the cobbled street towards Mercer’s Yard.
The basket on her arm was heavy. Inside it, wrapped in a clean cloth, was the dough she had taken along earlier to the bakehouse, now transformed into two crusty loaves. As a treat she had also bought some of the savoury beef coffyns favoured by her father. Although she had looked wistfully at the curd tarts stuffed with dried fruits, she had decided against spending any more of their hard-earned money.
The weather was raw. She pulled the woollen muffler more closely around her head. Even so strands of fair hair whipped across her face stinging her chilled skin, blowing into her eyes. She tucked in her chin, leaning into the wind. Her heavy woollen skirts were forced against her legs, exposing her ankles. She was glad that she had thought to wrap bindings around her boot tops and up to her knees.
It was a moment before she became aware of the church bells. They tolled out a single, doleful, note. Another death then. She crossed herself, mouthing a Miserere for the departed souls. Death was not unusual, yet there was a difference this season. Winter had followed hard on the dismal summer. Many folk were already weakened by lack of food, their faces grey and lacking in vitality. There seemed a tension in the air, as if something was gathering, waiting.
The week before, Mistress Bowles and her new baby had died. Nothing unusual in that either, women died all the time; childbirth was fraught with danger. But the Bowleses’ eldest had followed a day later and Master Bowles himself had perished of the same morbidity. All of Mercer’s Yard had paid their respects, standing in silence as the sad little parade made its way to the churchyard. A whole family gone, snuffed out like a candle, Garnetta thought as she passed the little thatched house which stood at the entrance to Mercer’s Yard. Today there was no child playing five-stones in the dust outside, no sound of bustling activity as Mistress Bowles swept and cleaned. The door was boarded up, the unglazed windows bland and shuttered. The only sign of previous occupation was a pile of animal bones near the door and the dung heap at the end of the yard.
She sighed. It seemed only hours since she had taken the scrap of cambric across to the house. ‘For the baby,’ her father, Franklin Mercer, had said as he cut the length of fabric. ‘Tell Mistress Bowles it’s the end of a roll.’
Garnetta had kissed his cheek before she left on her errand. Her father was a kind man. He knew the Bowleses resented being shown charity and had taken care to make them think they were taking the cambric off his hands. It had come in useful after all. The poor babe had not needed a gown, but there had been enough cambric to make a winding sheet for both mother and child.
Garnetta turned into the yard, avoiding the open drain that ran down into the alley opposite. The drain stank strongly of urine and rotting meat. It was clotted with a variety of refuse. Rat turds floated on top of the scummy liquid. She made for the two-storey building, above the door of which hung a painted sign advertising the mercer’s trade of the shop owner. The sound of bells was muted here.
She was proud to live in this place with its fine, half-timbered buildings, many of them with their lower storeys whitened with quicklime. Opposite the shop was the Pen and Flower tavern and next to that the apothecary’s shop, the window shutters spread wide to display neatly labelled boxes of medicaments. Coloured oils in glass jars glinted like jewels. Garnetta walked past a fenced area where a pig was nosing about amongst the mud and straw. At the back of the plot a few chickens were roosting in the open doorway of a coop.
‘God give you good day, Mistress Mercer,’ called out a smiling woman who had come out to scatter grain for the chickens. A ruddy-cheeked babe sat astride her hip, its hand curled around a cracked and chewed marrow bone. Garnetta returned the greeting as she passed by, then waved to a small, round woman who was drawing up water from the central well which served all the buildings in the yard.
Mistress Wood had her hair tied up in a red scarf. She had a small-featured, pointed face which seemed incongruous against her plumpness. Her eyes were bright and alert, like a robin’s. Around her shoulders she wore a brightly patterned shawl. Garnetta liked Mistress Wood who made her living by giving music lessons. She had a room on the top floor of the Pen and Flower and was often to be seen on her balcony in summer tutoring her students. ‘What’s to do, Mistress Mercer?’ Mistress Wood called out, cocking her head. ‘Is it St Bertrina that’s ringing?’
Garnetta nodded. ‘Aye. Three dead, according to the baker.’
Mistress Wood tutted. ‘It’s four now,’ she said. ‘Apothecary was called to the Pen early this morn. Old Dickon the tap-man’s gone to his maker. God rest his soul.’
Garnetta made the holy sign on her breast, the odd feeling gathering pace within her. ‘Dickon was a good age,’ she said. ‘God grant him rest. I’d best get on. The Blessed Virgin keep you, Mistress Wood.’
‘Indeed, my dear,’ Mistress Wood replied. ‘As she keeps all we womenfolk.’ Garnetta quickened her step, feeling a sudden urge to get inside the shop and check that all was well. The bell over the door clanged as she entered. A charcoal brazier in one corner of the shop gave out a fitful heat. The familiar smell of fabric dressing filled her n
ostrils. Clean rushes rustled against her boots as she went across the room. Deep wooden shelves lined the walls, each of them crammed with rolls of cloth, bundles of ribbon, and lace in every shade from wheat to ivory.
Everything looked normal. No reason for her to have the jitters. Her father was using a yardstick to measure lengths from a bolt of cloth. He wore his usual indoor winter attire of a soft velvet hat, thick knitted doublet over a long gown, and woollen gloves with the fingers cut out. Franklin Mercer paused, looked up and smiled. The wooden counter where he worked was transformed into a king’s dais by the shot silks, murry velvets, and embroidered brocades which were unrolled across it.
‘Ah, love, you’re back quickly. Good. I have to get this order filled. Her ladyship’s sending her maid to collect it within the hour.’
Garnetta returned his smile, rubbing her palms together. It was warm inside the shop, but she still had cold shivers running down her back. ‘I’ll just hang up my cloak, then I’ll lend you a hand,’ she said.
Her father’s once handsome face was thin, worn by the worry of keeping up the shop and feeding three unmarried daughters. As he bent over the counter, he pushed his hat back from his forehead. She saw that his grey hair was thinning and felt an almost painful pang of love for him. ‘I bought the pastries you like, father,’ she said, uncovering the basket. ‘Shall you have one at once?’
He nodded. ‘Aye, lass. Jessica has made some mulled wine. Have a cup yourself, then bring me one with the pastry.’
It was dark in the narrow passageway which led into the living quarters. The kitchen was a small separate building at the back. Washing was boiling in a vat of soapy water set over the fire. The room smelt of strong lye soap and was full of steam. From the open door she glimpsed the wet sheets which snapped and danced in the wind. They were lucky to have the large plot, bordered by elderflower trees. Rows of leeks and cabbages, brown-edged with frost burn, covered the soil. Their six hens scratched at the ridged earth between the rows, pecking in vain for worms and insects.
Garnetta smiled with the pride of ownership. Everyone else must beg a space from a neighbour if they wished to plant vegetables. Most women strung washing lines between the overhanging upper storeys, above the filth of the street below. Her father, a gleam in his eye, had once commented that Mistress Wood’s washing was as decorative as bunting. She smiled at the recollection. Who would have thought that the plain little woman wore shifts trimmed with green ribbons?
Garnetta began to relax as she helped herself to a cup of the mulled wine, then replaced the wooden cover on the pitcher. Everything was as it should be. The rhythms and patterns of her ordered life were comforting. In Mercer’s Yard, the spectre of famine and hardship had less power to harm her family. She took another sip of wine. The hippocras with its flavours of lemon and cinnamon warmed her through to her bones. It was quiet in the kitchen, with Jessica and Sellice nowhere to be seen, the only sound the vat of washing bubbling away merrily. Lifting her cup to take another sip, she froze as a sound reached her ears.
The sound came again, louder. A strangled scream. In a trice she was out of the door and into the garden, pushing aside the sheets which flapped wetly against her, impeding her progress. Against the far wall, crouching beside a bundle on the ground was Sellice. ‘Garnetta!’ she called, her voice tight with fear. ‘Come quickly.’
‘What’s happened?’ Garnetta bunched up her skirts and raced across the vegetable patch. ‘By our Lady, Jessica!’
She knelt down and cradled Jessica’s head in her lap. Smoothing back the hair from her eldest sister’s face, Garnetta examined her. There was a bruise on the side of her face and a graze on her forehead, the blood welling from it in tiny beads. Neither injury was serious. She was more concerned with Jessica’s skin which was burning to the touch. Her forehead was clammy. There was a pinched look about her mouth. Jessica moaned faintly, her eyelids flickering.
‘She . . . just fainted,’ Sellice said, her voice rising on a note of panic. ‘Keeled right over, she did. Banged her head on the ground. What’s wrong with her?’
Garnetta shook her head, her earlier worries surfacing again. ‘I don’t know.’ Looking into Sellice’s drawn face, she saw her own fear reflected there. She forced herself to stay calm. ‘It’s probably just a fever. Run and tell father what’s happened, then go across and fetch the apothecary. Hurry now.’
Sellice went at once, glad to be told what to do. As soon as her sister disappeared inside the house the worried look returned to Garnetta’s face. Hands shaking she unfastened the hooks on Jessica’s woollen basque. She peeled open the neckline and pulled down the loose neck of her shift. ‘Oh, dear Lady. Oh, no . . . I had feared this, but I hoped I was wrong.’
Eyes widening with horror, she looked down at the red spots on the white skin, some of them with yellow heads standing proud of the swellings. A few of the eruptions had gathered together into rings. The tell-tale tokens of the pestilence. Not Jessica, she’s the strongest of us all, she thought Oh, not Jessy. She began rocking back and forth, unaware that she was stroking her eldest sister’s hair.
‘We’ll make you well,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t you worry, love. We’ll look after you.’
Garnetta sat beside her sister throughout the rest of that day, watching her grow worse with each passing hour. The apothecary was not to be found. When he arrived finally it was far into the night. A tall, robust man normally, he was pale with exhaustion.
Garnetta stood with her arm around the sobbing Sellice’s waist as the apothecary examined Jessica. By now Jessica was raving. They had to tie her wrists and ankles to the bedposts to stop her hurting herself, but there were deep gouges on her face where she had raked herself with her nails.
The apothecary lifted his head and said tiredly, ‘It’s the pestilence right enough. There’s little I can do. I’ve called on twenty similar cases since noon.’ Fumbling in his pack he took out a bottle of ridged green glass. ‘Give her three drops of this electuary in wine, four times a day. It might help. Jessica’s in God’s hands now.’
‘But is there nothing more we can do?’ Garnetta asked. ‘There must be something.’
The man shook his head, his face blank with weariness. ‘You might try praying to St Pernel. He’s patron over fevers.’
Franklin Mercer showed the apothecary out, his face set in lines of sorrow. Garnetta knew what her father was thinking. First my wife and now this. Although their mother had been dead five years, he had never become resigned to the loss. She saw how he averted his eyes from Jessica. He seemed stupefied by grief. It was as if he had given up without a fight and was mourning her before she had gone. Sellice gave a strangled sob and wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth. Garnetta glanced at her elder sister. All day Sellice had been alternating between abject terror and blank acceptance.
‘We’ll all die,’ Sellice whispered. ‘The pestilence spares no one. We must have sinned somehow. God is punishing us. What’ve we done wrong Garnetta?’
Garnetta had no answer. She sighed deeply. It was obvious that neither her father nor Sellice were going to be much help. It seemed that she must take charge. ‘We’ll move Jessy’s bed downstairs,’ she said. ‘Is the laundry dry? We’re going to need plenty of clean linen.’
At that moment Jessica gave a groan. There was a bubbling, liquid sound as she voided her bowels where she lay. A vile, throat-catching smell filled the room.
‘Oh, dear Lord,’ Sellice said, pressing her fist against her mouth.
Garnetta clamped down the revulsion which made her gorge rise and began gathering up the fouled sheets. Doing something, anything, made her feel better, less afraid. The mess that stained Jessica’s shift was thick and as black as tar. The stench was indescribable. ‘Well don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open!’ she said sharply to Sellice. ‘Fetch hot water to wash her. I’ll need a clean shift and sheets, then fill the vat and set it to boil. If we don’t launder this bedding at once it’
ll stink the house out.’
‘Oh, Garnetta . . .’ Sellice whispered. ‘How shall we bear it?’
‘We’ll do it because we must.’ Garnetta made her voice hard. Sellice was lost without Jessica to lead her. The two of them had always been inseparable. ‘We have to be strong for Jessy. For father too. You just go and fetch hot water and soap, there’s a good lass.’
Not until Sellice had left the room, moving slowly as if she had just wakened from a nightmare, did Garnetta give way to the terror that dried her throat and made her ears buzz. She could feel the tears pricking behind her eyes, but she had no time for them. Sorrow was an indulgence she could ill afford while there was work to be done. While she was bundling the linen into a pile and struggling to remove Jessica’s encrusted shift, her father came back into the room. He could see that she was having difficulty undressing Jessica but made no move to help her. He looked ghastly. She forgot her own fear for a moment.
‘Father? What is it? Has the apothecary thought of something more we can do for Jessica?’
Franklin shook his head, his eyes not meeting hers. ‘Nay, lass. It’s not that. We’re to be boarded up. The watch are hammering boards over the windows and doors of the Pen and Flower even now.’
Garnetta rocked back on her heels. ‘The tavern? But Dickon died of old age. Mistress Wood said nought of anyone else when I saw her at the well but a few hours ago . . .’ An awful presentiment twisted her guts. For a moment she was dizzy. The room spun around her. ‘No. Oh, no . . . It cannot be.’
Franklin turned his back, throwing the words bleakly over his shoulder as he left the room. ‘I’m sorry, lass. Mistress Wood died an hour since.’