Candace Robb: The Riddle Of St Leonard's

‘Who are you?’ a child’s voice demanded.

Much comforted by the high timbre, Owen said, ‘Owen Archer, captain of the archbishop’s retainers and husband of Mistress Wilton, master apothecary in York.’ He was not sure which might prove more reassuring.

‘Climb up slowly.’

‘May I use my hands on the ladder?’

‘Slowly.’

Owen obeyed, easing his head up, then moving up one rung, two, and stopping there, at eye level with the girl, who stood sideways, skirt hitched up into her girdle, bare, dirty feet planted firmly apart, her upper body expertly poised with a small bow and arrow read to shoot. ‘Turn so I can see the left side of your face.’

Owen turned towards the light coming from a hole in the thatch, giving the girl a full view of his scarred left cheek and eye, the leather patch.

With no relaxation of her stance, the child demanded, ‘Who accompanies you?’

‘Magda Digby, the Riverwoman.’

Alisoun stepped to the edge of the loft, glanced down. ‘What do you want here?’

Owen was about to chide the child for her disrespectful tone, but Magda spoke before he could. ‘Magda comes to bury thy family and take thee back where she will find a home for thee.’

‘This is my home.’

‘Aye, that it is. But thou must have a mother’s care, eh? Thou art but eleven years.’

‘I would not have you for a mother, you old hag.’

‘You should watch your tongue,’ Owen warned.

Magda again did not react to the discourtesy. ‘Thou blamest Magda for thy mother’s poor state after Tom’s birth, aye. Thou needst not worry. Magda does not yearn to play thy mother.’

Alisoun let the bow slacken. She stared down at the straw. ‘My father is dead then?’

‘Aye, God grant him grace,’ Owen said. ‘So we’re needing to take them to consecrated ground and find a priest. Can you show me the way?’

The child shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘The priest wouldn’t come when Father tried to fetch him.’

Owen was not surprised; it was a common tale in times of pestilence. ‘If you take me to him, I will persuade him to do his duty.’

‘I would not have your wife for a mother, either.’

Tempted to give the unpleasant, dun-coloured child a lashing with his tongue, Owen controlled himself. He must do his duty and be done with her. ‘We shall discuss your future once we’ve buried your family. Now take us to the priest.’ He descended the ladder.

After a few minutes, Alisoun followed. At the bottom of the ladder she let down her skirt and shook out the hay and dust, smoothed back her braided hair, then fixed Owen with a steely glare. ‘My future is my own concern.’

A matter to be discussed later. ‘Come, child, we have much work to do.’

Alisoun rolled her eyes and sullenly headed for the door. As Owen watched her depart, he noted how thin she was, realised she might be hungry. ‘Shall we try to feed her first?’ he asked Magda.

‘Do not waste thy time fretting about that child, Bird-eye. She will not hesitate to demand what she wants.’

‘She is always so wayward, then?’

‘Oh aye. Watch thy back with that one.’

Owen made for the nag. ‘I shall hitch her to the cart.’

‘Magda will prepare the bodies.’

When Owen led the nag from the barn, Alisoun stood halfway across the yard, waiting with an impatient look. Owen noted how the child averted her eyes from the abandoned cart and from the house. She had tender feelings, then, though she hid them well. As he worked with the cart, he tried to talk to her. ‘I would wager you not only hold the bow as a trained archer does, but shoot it well, too?’

‘I can fell coneys and squirrels. Why do you want to know?’

Owen decided to echo her lack of courtesy. ‘Who taught you?’

‘I asked you a question.’

‘I choose not to answer.’

Silence. Then, without preamble, Alisoun said, ‘My father taught me.’

‘For protection?’

‘What else?’

‘There had been trouble?’

Hands on hips, Alisoun squinted up at Owen. ‘You’re nosy.’

‘You are rude. We are quite a pair.’

The child ducked her head, turned, sat down in the dirt. Owen found her silence refreshing. He led the nag closer to the house, so he might more easily shift the bodies.

At first Owen thought the stone church empty, but as he moved to the centre he discovered a prostrate form before the altar. He turned to Alisoun. ‘What is his name?’

‘Father John.’

Owen approached the priest. ‘Father John?’ The figure stirred, but did not rise or respond. Owen knelt beside him, whispered into his fleshy neck, ‘I pray you forgive me for intruding on your prayers, but I’ve come to fetch you to say prayers at the gravesides of four of your parishioners.’

The head turned, an eye peered at Owen, then the priest began to push himself up, but he was lifted to his feet instead. Owen grinned down at the short, corpulent man, filthy and stinking of onions and ale. ‘Gather what you need. We must waste no time.’

Father John glanced at Alisoun. ‘They are dead?’

‘You know they are.’

‘May God have mercy on them.’ Father John crossed himself. ‘How long ago did they perish, my child?’

‘I am not your child.’

‘She says you refused to go to them when her father requested your presence, Father John. Why was that?’ Owen asked.

The fleshy face crinkled round the eyes and mouth as the priest raised his folded hands to his breast and cringed. ‘Whence come you to this place?’

‘York.’

‘Ah. Then surely you noted the portents? The wind that came up from the south. The days the sky was dark, but the rain did not come. And the great multitude of flies. I have felt it my duty to pray. When Duncan Ffulford came, stinking of the pestilence, bringing it into this sacred place, I prayed for his soul and those of his family. But I could not touch them or I might be struck down, unable to pray for the other souls in my care.’

Owen gathered the fabric on the priest’s chest and lifted him off his feet. ‘You have found a convenient way to satisfy your conscience, priest. You do not deserve to wear this gown. But as you are all we have to hand, we must make do.’

Father John’s face was purple. His eyes bulged out. ‘It is a sin to attack a priest,’ he gasped.

Owen let him go.

The priest began to crumple, then caught the pillar beside him and raised himself upright, breathing hard.

‘What you have experienced so far is hardly an attack,’ Owen said. ‘But you might wish to avoid learning the difference. ’Tis a small thing we ask, that you perform your priestly duties.’

Later, as Owen dug, he wondered what had come over him. He was not wont to treat a priest so. Had the child so irritated him? Or was it the madness that came with the pestilence? Might he be infected with it already? He prayed God that if so he died before he carried it to his family. As the priest stepped forward to say his prayers over the graves, Owen found himself praying as much for his own family as for the Ffulfords. Magda stood quietly, eyes closed, one gnarled hand clutching the opposite wrist. She did not pray, so she always said, and yet her stillness suggested a state, if not of devotion, then of concentration. On what?

And what of the child? Owen felt a twinge of guilt about his lack of concern for her. Her obstinacy was no reason to forget she was a child who had just lost her entire family. He glanced over to the foot of the graves where Alisoun had stood. Gone. He looked round, did not see her.

Soon all three were hurrying about, calling the child’s name.

But she had vanished. And the sun was the gold of late afternoon.

‘The river calls,’ Magda said. ‘Has the child any kin nearby?’