by Alis Hawkins
Quickly, I wrap her in the blanket on which she died and find a half-burned stick in the ashes to mark it with the cross. Then, ashamed of my haste to have done with a Christian soul, I say the words of the Placebo. The same psalm I said over my father’s grave.
She is barely heavier than little Will as I lay her in the cart. I force myself to find another prayer for her but, as I say the words, my gaze is drawn to Edgar, lying in the lee of the fence. As I stare down at him, there is a strange kind of fascination in the knowledge that he would have killed me if he could. He lies, unknowing and unmoving, as if he was just another victim of the pestilence, waiting to die.
I search his features for marks of evil but, in truth, his face is ordinary. It could sell you nails or dig you a ditch; even — though I do not like to think of it — sing mass at your church.
He is so unmoving that I lick my hand and bend to see if there is breath still in him. Only when the back of my hand cools do I realise I had been hoping he would be dead. I stand, quickly, dragging my hand over my tunic as if I can wipe away the sin with the drying spittle. This is what the pestilence has done to us. With death all around, the passing of a man can easily turn into nothing more than the timely solution to a problem.
But at least my conscience is to be troubled by no further sins today. I find Hob waiting at the lychgate, sullen-faced and empty handed.
CHAPTER 9
Hob and I do not have to wait long for our work of mercy to be rewarded. Within the space of a mile, we come across a roadway and a pair of monks who tell us that this is the road from Malmesbury to Cricklade.
‘Where will the road take us after Cricklade?’ I ask.
One shakes his head. ‘Best ask once you get there.’
‘Is the pestilence there?’ Hob wants to know.
The answer is simple. ‘It’s everywhere.’
We stop for the night. As I lift the canvas to take out the ember basket I feel Hob behind me. When I turn he is looking at Edgar.
‘He’s trouble, that one,’ he says.
‘I don’t think he’s going to bother us much, state he’s in.’
‘He’s trouble if he wakes up and trouble if he dies, damn him.’ Hob reaches behind his back. ‘Let’s see what the knife says.’
Though I know what he is about, this time, my stomach still contracts as Hob leans over Edgar’s face, knife in hand. With his blade held to catch the lightest breath, he turns to me. ‘Defenceless as a new-born kitten. Be easy to just slit his throat, eh?’
‘You can’t!’
‘Didn’t say I was going to.’ He withdraws the blade, shows me the misted surface. ‘Said it’d be easy.’
I set about making the fire but Hob won’t let the subject go. ‘Even if he does wake up, his wits could be addled. Like this man I knew before — fell from the roof-timbers of a new tithe barn, right? Knocked witless — just the same. Lay on his bed for two days — not a move, not a moan. Priest called, all that. Then, damn me if he didn’t open his eyes on the third day and start talking the worst kind of nonsense you’ve ever heard in your life!’
He is watching me, wanting a response.
‘Ranted and raved,’ he goes on. ‘Kept shouting that he’d been pushed off the roof, that the man who pushed him wanted his wife, that everybody knew what’d happened but they wouldn’t say because they were taking sides with this other fellow. You’ve never heard such a going-on in your life!’
He clearly expects me to say something.
‘So, what happened?’ I ask. ‘Did he come to his senses in the end?’
‘No. Kept up his nonsense till the day the pestilence killed him. Led his wife a merry dance of black and blue — I reckon she wished he’d died when he hit the ground.’
I meet his eye. ‘And you wish you’d finished Edgar in the wood?’
‘He’d have stabbed you and left you for dead. Left you for the carrion-eaters to finish.’
I turn away from him. ‘If you deal evil for evil it’ll catch up with you in the end.’ Or so Master William was fond of saying.
‘You can live by that if you like but I’ll deal with men as they deal with me. What’re you going to do at this town — Cricklade?’
I am confused by this sudden veering off. ‘What?’
‘Are you still set on taking him —’ he jerks his head back at the cart — ‘to the watch? Because, I’m telling you, if you go down that road, you’re going by yourself. I’m not accounting for him.’
‘I have to find somebody who can tell me which way to go.’
‘So if we find somebody on the road who can tell us, we won’t have to go into the town?’
I hesitate. I need directions but Hob’s talk of suspicion falling on us if we take Edgar to the town’s authorities has rattled me. ‘No. Not if we can find somebody.’
Hob is not what a man would call easy company but I do not want to lose him. Collyers are raised to be always two together — two men to a hearth, one to watch the banked-up pit, the other to sleep. Since I left the forest, I have been trying to sleep and watch at the same time and it has left me half-dead with weariness and worry.
We will have to deal with Edgar ourselves.
CHAPTER 10
The land about us today is different. Yesterday’s dry wolds are gone and the last mile or two has become wet and marshy. The road is raised, shored up here and there at its edges with posts and large stones to stop it being sucked into the marsh. A harrier quarters the air overhead and I am reminded of the country on the banks of the Severn, where she floods one year in three.
As the town that must be Cricklade appears in the distance, I begin to fear that we will have no choice but to venture in and ask the way. There is not a soul on the road, nor on the land on either side. I do not want to broach the subject with Hob for we have argued already this morning.
While Hob was a little way off about his necessary business, I tried to give water to Edgar. It was a laborious task and most of what I poured into his mouth trickled down his beard so, as I tried again, I failed to notice Hob striding back towards the cart.
‘Martin! What are you doing?’
‘Giving him water.’
‘Do you want to live in fear of him coming after you again?’
‘I can’t let him die for lack of water!’
‘If he was meant to live, he’d have come to his senses by now. He hasn’t. You should just leave him.’
I wanted to tell Hob that I am not his servant, that he has no right to tell me what to do, but I did not want to get into a fight with him.
We find ourselves at a fork in the road and Hob turns to me. ‘Now what?’
I look past him, putting off the moment when I must reply. Two score yards away, over a causeway on the right-hand prong of the fork, stands Cricklade’s town bridge, the wharf on the town side of the river as deserted as the road on our side. We are going to have to cross that bridge. I must know the way. But, before I can open my mouth to speak, a figure comes running towards us along the causeway.
‘Hey! You there!’
The shouter is a lad about my own age, but much better dressed.
‘God give you good day, sir.’
He waves a dismissive hand. ‘God give us all grace. Where’ve you come from? What’s the news? Have you seen others on the road, travelling?’
I am taken aback, do not know which question to answer first.
Hob steps forward. ‘We’ve come from the west. There’s been nobody else on the road but two monks making for Malmesbury.’ His voice holds no deference and the town’s name trips off his tongue as if he has known Malmesbury all his life.
‘You’ve come from the west?’
‘From Gloucester, sir,’ I tell him. ‘Bristol and Gloucester have both fallen to the pestilence.’
‘Everyone knows about Bristol. What about Cheltenham — do you know anything of the country there?’
I shake my head. I know Cheltenham — the town is an easy day’s travel
from Gloucester — but I know nothing of its fate.
He sighs. ‘No news but bad news. Perhaps the monks are right and everybody’ll die.’ His eyes flick to the cart. ‘You’re not bringing dead?’
Hob is there first. ‘No.’
‘Just as well. They’ve got no room for any more —’ he inclines his head towards the gatehouse — ‘either living or dead. It’s the prior’s house but the hospital’s so full they’ve had to fill up his hall now.’
I look over his shoulder. If the hospital is as sturdily stone-built as this prior’s house, the town must have a rich lord; or perhaps a nearby abbey has set a daughter-house here.
‘We’re on our way east,’ Hob says.
‘You’re travelling? Not staying here?’ The young man’s questions take on a sudden edge. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To Salster.’
He stares at me. ‘You’re on pilgrimage?’
I shrug, nettled by his lofty disbelief.
He looks from me to Hob and back again. ‘Wait here while I fetch my master. He’ll want to speak to you.’
‘Why?’ Hob asks.
‘Because he needs a messenger.’
Hob’s eyes follow him as he runs back towards the prior’s house. ‘We should go,’ he says, turning to me. ‘Quickly, before he comes back.’
‘No!’ The thought of defying a man who employs liveried servants makes my stomach turn over. ‘We can’t!’
‘Martin, there’s no can and can’t anymore! The pestilence kills lords just as quick as it kills villeins! We don’t have to do what young master whats-your-news wants.’
But, before I can answer, a tall man is making his way towards us. His cloak reaches his spurs; a man of influence. He does not wait to come level with us before he speaks. Neither does he feel the need to greet us. ‘Miles tells me you’re going east.’ The liveried young man is at his heels.
‘Yes, master, to Salster.’
I can feel Hob’s silent growl.
‘Then you would do well to go south first. If you go south to Avebury, and then to Marlborough on the Kennet, you will have easy travelling for a good way east.’ Though the English names roll off his tongue easily enough, his manner of speech is odd and I wonder if he is more used to speaking French.
‘You’re a well-travelled man, yourself, sir?’ Hob asks. To my relief, his tone is pleasant.
‘My lord serves Prince Edward and, where my lord goes, I go. I know the road to Dover, and Dover is but a Sunday ride from Salster.’
‘There was talk of a message,’ I manage, nodding towards Miles.
‘Yes. I am here on my lord’s business. A meeting. Which has not taken place. I need to communicate this to my lord.’
‘Why don’t you send Miles?’ Hob asks. He has not taken his eyes from the tall man.
‘I cannot trust such an important message to one person alone,’ he replies, mildly, ‘not with the times as they are.’
‘The times hold just as much danger for us,’ Hob’s chin is high. ‘Why should we take your message?’
The cloaked man raises an eyebrow instead of his fist and my heart slows a little.
‘I will pay you the carrier’s rate.’
‘Then find a carrier.’
‘Hob —’
But both Hob and the lord’s man ignore me.
‘Very well. I will pay you twice the carrier’s rate.’
Hob shakes his head. ‘We’ll have to go out of our way — put ourselves at risk of harm, perhaps. Our aim is to keep away from folk. If we go to your lord’s manor we’ll encounter any number of people.’ He holds the man’s eye until I can scarcely bear it. ‘The pestilence is running all over England.’
‘I am well aware of that. And I know that my lord will demonstrate his gratitude.’
‘Without meaning any offence, sir, your lord could be dead tomorrow — could be dead already for all you or I know. The gratitude of a dead man’s of no use to me.’
I find myself stepping backwards, putting space between myself and Hob before the cloaked man steps up and knocks him to the ground. But he does not move; he responds not to Hob’s insolence but to his argument.
‘Very well. You shall have a second message to take to my lord’s bailiff asking him — or his successor, should he have died — to reward you as we agree.’
‘Ten shillings,’ Hob says.
‘Ten shillings to go hardly any distance out of your way?’
‘Ten shillings to risk our lives on your lord’s manor where we’re not known and where the pestilence may be waiting for us.’
A look of displeasure draws the man’s features together. ‘What manor do you hail from, lad?’
‘I’m no lad. I’m a freeborn man bound for a new fortune.’
‘Then what is your name?’
‘Hob.’
‘Do you have no other?’
‘Cleve.’ Hob says, his eyes unflinching.
The man makes a mocking half-bow. Very well, Hob Cleve, I trust that my lord’s ten shillings will be sufficient draw to take you to him.’
‘It will. And so will the ten shillings you’re going to give me now, in case there’s nobody left alive on your manor when we get there.’
With a great thunderclap of a laugh, the man bends over and strikes his own thigh with a gloved hand. ‘Hob Cleve, tell me why I should not whip you for your impudence?’
‘Because then you’d have no messenger.’
The man shakes his head and slaps his leg once more as he turns away. ‘Fetch them some ale and some bread while they wait,’ he instructs Miles.
With both of them gone, I climb up on the cartwheel and lift the canvas over the clothes press.
‘What are you doing?’ Hob hisses.
‘Getting a bag to stow his letters in — he wouldn’t be happy to see either of us putting them in our tunic and we can’t lift the canvas in front of him, can we?’ I shoot a glance at Edgar who lies, still as death, in the bed of the cart.
Hob grunts and glances in the direction of the Prior’s house lest Miles should come back before the cart is safely covered again.
‘Are you one of those madmen who thinks all lordship is corruption?’ I ask, my voice louder than I intended. ‘All that insolence! I don’t know why he didn’t beat you to your knees.’
Hob leans against the cart and watches me tie the canvas down again. ‘The pestilence is changing the world, Martin. It’s not master and man, any more. It’s who’s got something the other wants.’
‘Go over the bridge,’ the lord’s man begins once I have stowed both letters, ‘and keep to the main street through the town. At the south gate keep walking onwards a few minutes until you come to the river. Follow it until you get to another bridge then cross there.’
His instructions go on and on — woods, flat land, Chepying Swindon, east, road, Marlborough, river, south, forest — until I have to beg him to stop and start again.
‘No,’ Hob holds up a hand. ‘I’ve got it.’ He looks the tall man in the eye. ‘Once we’re clear of this Savernake Forest, what then?’
Our instructions complete to the very door of his lord’s house in a village called Slievesdon, the man takes a soft leather purse from Miles and counts out ten shillings. These he hands, twelvepence at a time, to Hob. Throughout the whole transaction neither of them so much as glances at me.
Hob gives a nod that does duty for a bow and tips the last of the money into the purse which hangs from his belt. I must get him to put it in the cart, or at least to tie it to the drawstring of his braies and keep it under his tunic; it’s not wise to be showing off such a heavy purse.
The tall man raises a hand. ‘God speed.’
It is dismissal as much as blessing but Hob has something to say.
‘We weren’t going through the town and now we are, on your business. I don’t want watchmen on the gate pawing through our belongings, laying their hands on us.’
The man turns to his servant. ‘Miles, go w
ith them and tell the gatekeepers to let them through unmolested.’
Clouds are racing low across the sky in the stiff breeze as we leave Cricklade’s southern edge. Rooks are circling and calling in the rising wind and, at the sight of them, I catch myself looking about for magpies.
I feel Hob’s gaze on me.
‘You’re a strange one, Martin. You were pissing yourself like a girl when I wouldn’t bow and scrape to that lordsman, and then you went and ate the bread and drank the ale from that pest-house of as if it was the body and blood!’
The mare suddenly stumbles and pecks at the ground, pulling the rein through my slack fingers. ‘Hold up, girl. Hold up.’ I rein her in, stroking her neck. I run my hands down her legs and look at her hooves. She’s standing squarely and her shoes look tight. I stroke her nose and tell her to be more careful.
‘So how come you’re so milksop on one hand and so fearless on the other? Aren’t you afraid of eating food that’s been handled by the sick?’
I glance sideways at him. He refused to touch what we were offered, despite the looks it got him. ‘You saw me bury five plague-dead yesterday. I’m not afraid of it.’
‘Then you’re a fool.’
I face him across the mare’s back. ‘A fool is one who doesn’t show fear where he should — like you with that lordsman! I’m not afraid of the pestilence because it’s been and gone in me.’
A scowl makes his eyes small. ‘Been and gone?’
‘Yes. I was sick, like the rest of my family. But they died and I lived.’
‘No one outlives the pestilence.’
I grit my teeth. Years of living with resentful half-brothers have accustomed me to hearing that I’m a liar. ‘I did.’
He shakes his head. ‘Perhaps you caught a cold while they were ill —’
‘I coughed blood. I was fevered and senseless. The parson gave me the last eucharist, said the rites over me. I was as sick as anybody the pestilence has killed.’
‘So how are you standing here?’
How carefully did he and his murderous companion watch me in the woods before Edgar’s attack? Did they catch a glimpse of what lies, blanket-wrapped, at the front of the cart? I shrug.