by Niamh Boyce
The moon hung like a worn slip of silver over the ancient tower. I rushed in the direction of the town walls. It was so dark that I kept veering off into brambles and scratching my hands. The wall was somewhere near, but would I ever find it? My hands eventually met cold stone, sharp in places, smooth in others. I tucked my skirts into my girdle and began to climb. My sleeves snagged on the jagged edges, my foot slipped on moss, vines snapped when I gripped them. I stood there. What if I did manage to get over the wall? What would happen, with nearly a hundred archers ready for any movement within shot of the walls? And what would Líadan think when she woke and found her mother gone? I came to my senses then and journeyed back towards Kytler’s.
In Low Lane, Ulf held a lantern close to my face. ‘I may fetch the mistress. You shouldn’t be out at this hour.’
‘Do and she’ll know you left the door unguarded earlier.’
‘A man has to relieve himself.’
‘If you were gone long enough for someone to get out of the house, someone could’ve easily got in. If I were you, I wouldn’t wake your mistress.’
He let me enter. The sound of the bolt grating as he locked the door behind me made me feel ill. Next morning, when I woke, it might’ve been a bad dream, but for the scratches on my arms and my bramble-torn sleeves.
We had just cleared the trestle after dining, when Ralph ran into the hall.
‘Sir Arnold has forced the tribes to retreat and the Irish have fled south! The crier called word.’
‘Dress me, Petronelle, I want to ride out,’ said Alice.
‘I thought Líadan was dressing you?’
‘I don’t have the time it takes her.’
I followed Alice to her chamber and helped her into a hunting gown. She glanced at the cuts on my wrist and frowned. I tugged my cuffs further down. After scooping her hair into a knot, I pinned her veil and held out her short riding cloak. I asked where my amber necklace was kept, but she didn’t answer my question, just kept telling me to hurry, hurry, hurry.
‘No one is allowed out of town,’ I reminded her, ‘and you can’t go alone.’
‘I’m different, you know that. And Ulf will come.’
She rode out of the stable with Ulf by her side. We gained entry to Sir John’s room, and Líadan, Esme, Helene and I watched the bridge from the window, to see if our mistress got past the keeper. Sir John was snoring lightly in his bed, his skin grey, the bones of his face prominent. He had aged years since his wedding day. The distant bridge went down, and two riders galloped from the town.
Leaving Helene lighting tapers, Esme, Líadan and I went downstairs. How had it happened that the lowest maid held the key to the master’s chamber? Why was Alice tolerating such changes? In the time before, she would’ve had Sir John and his daughters thrown in gaol for their accusations. Yet she made no move to fight him. It was as if she wanted that man under her roof, no matter what. If anyone was under a love spell, it was she, not her husband.
As I followed Líadan, I noticed she made a drily musical sound with each step. It reminded me of bone weights on a loom. At the bottom of the stairs, I bid her to wait up and knelt to lift her skirt. Small ornaments were stitched to the underside of the cloth: mussel shells made smooth, a carved bone heart, some beads – one of which was my stolen bird head. So Helene was not feathering her nest after all. My daughter was the light-fingered one. I should’ve known – from the time Lía could move, if she saw something she liked, she’d just pick it up.
‘Why stitch trinkets to your skirt?’
She stepped away and put her hands on her waist. Then she threw her arms in the air and spun in circles, her skirts widening and chiming like Salome at the Midsummer fair. It was a lovely sound, gentle, hopeful. How could I be vexed at such a small silliness, when people were going to battle? I put my arms about her and held her close. There was an ease between us then, the first in some time.
We all set about our chores while we waited for word. It was late in the day when we heard the screaming. I ran to find Alice doubled over in the hall. She was swearing oaths; her face ran with tears and snot, and she rocked back and forth. I tried to put my arms around her, but she told me to get the hell away. Esme helped her up to her room, and I paced. What was happening? Were the tribes on their way, would Hightown burn?
I went down to the kitchen to keep my hands busy, and to get away from Alice’s wailing. Shortly after, Ulf came in, a little out of breath.
‘What on earth happened?’
He sat at the table and reached for the small jug. He drank from its mouth, and buttermilk ran down his chin.
‘A while outside town, just beyond the crossroads, there were bodies on the ground. “They got them,” Alice cried, “ride on.” She cantered ahead, so I followed. Suddenly she veered around and galloped past me. I saw then what she had seen. They’d taken their livery, so we would not know them at first. It wasn’t Gaels who lay slain – they were Arnold’s men. The bodies were scattered but the heads were piled into a cairn. One was staked on a sword, apart from the others. It was Sir Arnold.’
‘Oh, mercy …’
He looked up at me.
‘They might come – they might kill us all.’
‘How many heads?’
Ulf jabbed his finger across, and then down, as if the sorry heap were between us. ‘Twelve.’
‘There were over a hundred men with Sir Arnold. There’s hope yet.’
The man helped himself from the pewter of ale.
‘We must be careful of Alice,’ I added, more to myself than him; ‘her grief will be enormous.’
I went to the Altar Room and prayed for Sir Arnold’s blessed release. I felt saddened for him and his people, but his life had been full, and, for the most part, he seemed a good man, a loyal one. His soul would find its way home. As for us, I would ask Alice to return my amber beads, and my daughter and I would leave. I felt it strongly then, Líthgen’s presence. A memory returned: my mother coming out of the woods, carrying something. She beckoned towards me, wanted me to come. ‘Soon, Mother,’ I whispered, ‘soon.’
Alice wanted everything, everything dyed black. As I prepared one of her cloaks for the vat, I noticed how the woad had stained my scratches. They were like blue scrawbs.
Helene looked at me oddly. ‘What happened to your hands?’
‘I fell when tending the hives.’
‘What tending is done in October?’
‘Watching, Helene – watching can be useful, you know.’
I meant just to confuse her, but she blushed and did not ask any more questions. There was a certain satisfaction in being ruined, to have my longing to escape etched on my skin. What must it be like to be a common woman of the roads, a woman scorned by everyone, yet answerable to no master, no mistress? Was it as bad as we’d been led to believe?
Hightown now had no seneschal and Alice has lost her protector. We waited days but none of Arnold’s men returned. His remains were carted to Waterford, where no interdict prevented their burial. Word came that Castlecomer stood unharmed by fire or raiders – that it had never been attacked in the first place.
Arnold had both allies and enemies amongst the chieftains, but none claimed credit for his death. Alice readily believed that the Gaels had slain Arnold, but the songs, when they came, told a different story: that it had been a trick and that it was Ledrede’s men who had lain in wait. The rest of Arnold’s troop turned up in Athy town, a day’s ride away – their bodies floating in the reeds, their heads staked on the bridge. I thought of Ralph – how he had delivered the false account of victory, the one that meant Alice was the first to find Arnold. As it happened, the boy never crossed our threshold again. His work in Kytler’s was done.
36. Paradise
Around a fire pit in Flemingstown Woods, Líthgen told the boy something she had never told anyone.
‘It was a lifetime ago – a winter of starvation, floods, disease. Old or child, you became savage to survive. My husband was s
laughtered while out hunting. The men heard no call for help, just stumbled upon him lying in a hollow, his throat and eyes open. They told me it must’ve just happened. That their arrival had startled his attacker. And whoever they were, they had run off unsated. The men made a stretcher and carried him home. I told my daughter a wolf killed her father. No need for her to know the desperate things starving people were driven to.
‘Numb with grief, I walked the clay paths between these trees, the shadows of their branches like a quivering ladder beneath my feet. I was a dazed ghost, hardly knowing which world I trod. I had seen my husband laid out, his furs about him, his waxen fingers gripping his dagger. I had sung him away. Yet I woke each morning expecting him to reach out and pull me close.
‘For days on end, I’d set out from our bed and walk the woods, often baring my neck to the glint of the winter sun, with the hope that someone would slice it, too. Once, not far from here, while standing like that, I heard the scrape of a spade entering soil. I followed the sound through the bushes and came across a girl shovelling earth. I stood in the shade, and watched Alice Kytler bury her brother.
‘She gathered leaves and debris, and spread it over the mound, a small smile on her face, as if she were sprinkling petals on a bridal bed. She walked off between the trees then, and disappeared. I waited, watching the leaves tumble in the breeze till the grave was bare dark earth again.
‘I waited, and Alice came back. I knew she would. To check no ribbon, no lock of hair, no fallen bead, was left, to check that she had really done it. And I was there, waiting at the foot of Otto’s grave. I startled her, she said; she came to be alone a while. Her brother had just ridden to battle; she worried for him, for all the men. “He’s beneath this soil,” I answered. “You put him there.” She was only young, but already knew how little my word was worth.
‘“Your daughter did it; they had a lovers’ quarrel. She used poison, you know. The type your people use. Wolf’s bane. I can swear to it. Perhaps you prepared it? Or, perhaps” – she took a deep breath – “he has gone to battle, is just now catching up with the men?”
‘It would be nothing, an afternoon’s work, to string up myself and my daughter, to end us both – outsiders, Gaels, no more than animals under the law they swore by. “How dark the woods have become,” I said. “It is time for home.”’
‘What a story,’ said Milo.
He rose to his feet and plunged his blade into Líthgen’s chest.
If only she had not spoken of it, if only she had kept her silence a while longer. He had grown fond of her, liked her company, her ways. His mistress had wanted her killed months ago, but Milo had waited, because Milo was curious. He wanted to know exactly why Dame Kytler wanted the old woman dead. And now that he knew why, he could demand a much higher price.
37. Basilia
I was the only one allowed into Alice’s chamber after Sir Arnold’s death. My mistress spent days alone, not caring for anything or anyone. Each morning was spent lying across the end of her bed, while she cried into her pillows. One evening, she began to talk: her voice was different, ragged and hoarse. Arnold was a love of hers once, she confessed. I stretched out my arms and legs and stared at the ceiling as she spoke. The first time Arnold was made seneschal, he carried the town seal right to this chamber. He had inked the seal and laid it on the smooth skin between her cunt and belly. Alice remembered exactly how it had looked: the thin black lines of the circle; and, inside the circle, the arched gates; and, beyond the arched gates, the castle turrets.
You’ve done this before, she told him. Never on such fine vellum, he whispered, trying to kiss her navel. No, she had laughed, I want the seal to remain unblemished. You can think of me when you go to battle tomorrow. Remember that under all my clothes, your seal is on my skin. If I had known that, Arnold said, I would’ve sard you soundly first. Alice looked at me and laughed – a dull sad sound that turned into more sobs.
Back on my own bed, I bound yarrow about the poppet and rubbed her heart. She would not fall apart, I vowed, not Alice. And she did not. After another night of crying, she called me to her early. When I entered the room, her face was raw but I saw her mouth was set. She wanted to be dressed in her finest; she planned to meet with the Greater Twelve. That was the start of Alice’s crusade: Arnold’s successor, and the next seneschal of Kilkennie, would be her son, Will.
Though it kept her from the house for days at a time, her scheming came to nothing. Stephen le Poer won the vote for seneschal. Alice was furious. She blamed Will. Stephen had sired children, both in and out of the marriage chamber. ‘My son,’ she said, ‘has yet to prove himself with a whore, let alone a wife.’
The day after the voting, my mistress summoned Will, trussed me up in one of her gowns and left me waiting for him in her chamber. He had given his word to his mother, but it was so late it looked like he might not arrive at all. I stood by the window and watched the river for the pearl-diver, but he wasn’t fishing with the others. I had hoped he’d catch a glimpse of me, be persuaded by my ladylike appearance that I was no sorceress.
I watched the water rush, brown and dark, and suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I saw a nest of reeds littered with tiny white feathers. It was lodged on the river bank, and nearby red apples were rotting in the grass. Beneath the leaves and feathers lay a small child: the taster boy, Jack. The poor boy was close. I would find him, I decided, and bring him to my mother.
38. Petronelle
That morning, Líadan had awoken screaming from a nightmare she couldn’t or, more likely, wouldn’t share – for if she could scream, surely she could speak. Downstairs, sluggish from broken sleep, I had noticed Líthgen’s tapestry was unravelling. Here and there, bright yellow threads were snipped, as if someone had taken a blade to it. The golden bars of the birdcage hung loose. I looked closer. It was not a bird inside but a girl. It was not a cage but a hut. Just like the one Alice and I had built together once. I had lain in it, waiting for Otto on the day he must’ve died. Thinking he was off to battle, I had wanted to say goodbye. My mother had begun weaving this tapestry around that time. I longed to see her, but I couldn’t. I would make do with mending her work.
The golden thread was not with the others. Of course, it was too valuable. It must be somewhere safe. I needed to choose the right time to approach Alice about it. She so hated Líthgen it might please her to let the tapestry disintegrate. In the evening I found her in the Altar Room, kneeling in prayer. She was patting her tears. Stephen le Poer would be here soon, she told me, and she would have to serve her best wine to the conniving backbiter. Why, she asked, had he not insisted on riding out with Sir Arnold, as a real knight would’ve done? If he had, he might’ve died, too, and her Will would’ve been elected. That Stephen was seneschal of all Kilkennie instead of her son – oh, it was dreadful.
She started to cry. ‘And now my son announces he’s in love!’
Will, she went on, wouldn’t agree to marry. He was a fool for some silly manservant. And, worse, he was insisting he had no interest in moneylending and never would. Alice had demanded he come to the house that very evening.
‘I’ll have a daughter-in-law, if it kills me.’
I listened for a while, wondering how long she would go on for. When she finally paused and began to dry her face, I explained about the tapestry and requested her permission to mend it using her gold yarn. Alice looked at me as if I were mad.
‘Since when did you need permission?’
Since I fell out of favour, and my daughter became your lady’s maid, I could’ve said, but I didn’t want to delay. I could almost feel the tapestry coming undone.
‘Try the ivory chest in my anteroom,’ she said, ‘the one with nightingales.’
She unhooked a loop of keys from her belt and sat up on to the pew with a long sigh.
I found the yarn in the white chest along with all the other threads, beads, sequins, cuffs and collars. I had the skein of gold thread in my hand when I noticed the other t
runk, old and black, ribbed with brass bands and covered in tiny symbols. It might hold my amber beads. It was a chest that Alice guarded closely, where she kept her most personal mementos. I began to test the keys. The smallest one opened the lock.
Inside smelt of rosemary, tinctures and a dry sweet rot. It was brim-full with phials, jars, leather pouches, an engraved horn, minute relics wrapped in white linen and tied in black thread. I knelt and unwrapped one and found a fragment of bone. Beneath were small manuscripts full of suns and moons – miniature almanacs. A sheaf of parchment, scrolled tightly, was sealed with wax. A box held candles, dried yarrow, black ribbons, a gilt-handled dagger. Another contained phials of shimmering powder – my mistress’s Spanish Fly. At the bottom of the chest lay a small parcel, the black fabric faded to violet in places. Inside was an ivory ring. A larger version of the one I kept beneath my mattress. I lifted it up. It was inscribed, as I knew it would be, with one of the few written words I knew: Bébinn.
Otto wore it always.
I thought of what the old Flemish burgess said, after Alice announced she was sole heir. You made yourself so. I realized then exactly what he had meant. I knew it in my gut when I first heard those words. I just couldn’t bear to truly understand. I sat back on my heels, slipped the ring on to my finger. My heart beat so fast, I was afraid I might collapse. I never saw Otto ride out of Flemingstown. My mother said he never left at all, that he was already dead. ‘He left at dawn,’ Alice had said. Why had she lied? The ring on my finger had last been on his. I stroked the smooth cream bone. I don’t know how long I sat there like that.