Candace Robb: The Riddle Of St Leonard's

Father John frowned down at his feet. ‘There are many Ffulfords in the parish.’

Owen could see no point to another search. The child had expressed her desire to choose her own accommodations. ‘I shall trust you to go among her kin and let them know the child’s situation, Father John.’

The priest frowned at the task, but nodded. ‘It is my duty, of course.’ He glanced at the horse and cart. ‘I can see to them.’

Owen could well imagine. ‘Tell her kin the horse and cart are at the farm, priest.’ He began to move away, turned back for a final warning. ‘I will return to check on the child’s safety. And her horse.’

‘You’ll find naught to anger you, Captain.’

In the boat, Magda seemed to nod in slumber. Owen rowed downriver silently, squinting against the afternoon sun that glinted on the brown water of the Ouse. He was thinking about the Ffulfords. So far most of the half a hundred deaths in York had been among the aged or the very young. But today he had seen a couple struck down who looked his wife’s age. They had been very thin, a result of last summer’s failed harvest, perhaps.

‘Winds from the south. Flies. The priest named them harbingers of the pestilence. But what of the bad harvest?’ Owen wondered aloud. ‘Might hunger so weaken the people that they succumb to the pestilence?’

Magda opened one eye. ‘The girl shows no sign of illness.’ She drew a small bottle from the wallet at her waist, opened it, handed it to Owen, who paused in his rowing long enough to take one drink. Then Magda drank. ‘Was a time thou wouldst accept naught from Magda, Bird-eye.’

And not so long ago at that. Owen grinned. ‘Perhaps I was not so thirsty then.’

The Riverwoman gave one of her barking laughs. ‘Aye. Mayhap.’ She took another drink, put the bottle away. ‘Magda would give much to know what calls back the manqualm from time to time, Bird-eye. A bad harvest?’ She tilted her head, thinking. ‘Each time it has followed one, ’tis a fact. But not every bad harvest summons it. Thy priests say ’tis the scourge of thy god, punishing thee for thy unholy ways. Mayhap ’tis why Magda survives. She is invisible to thy god.’ She grinned, showing her teeth, white against her tanned leather skin.

So ancient and still she had all her teeth but one, and that one she had lost as a child. No one knew how long ago that had been. Magda was not inclined to say. But folk round York spoke of her as having lived on her rock in the mud flats of the Ouse just north of the city since the time of King Canute, hence the Viking ship turned upside-down that served as her roof. Owen knew Magda was too mortal for such a life span, but there was no doubt she was old. And rich with the wisdom of a life spent healing the sick and bringing children into the world. And thinking for herself: though she lived as saintly a life as a good Christian, she was not a Christian and found the Church’s teachings poor, superstitious excuses for common sense. A dangerous opinion, but strongly held. Owen valued in her friendship her clear mind, common sense and a fresh perspective, free of fear.

‘But how do thy priests explain the deaths of infants, Bird-eye?’ Magda no longer smiled.

‘To my mind it is the parents who are punished by such a death, Magda, not the child. I have heard it said that such a child was too good to live; God chooses to take such children directly to Heaven so that the world might not taint their souls.’

A snort. ‘So thy god leaves only the unworthy on earth? Bah!’

Owen felt uneasily like agreeing with Magda. But was that not blasphemy? ‘We cannot always know the Lord’s purpose.’

Magda wagged her head. ‘Thou art not taken in by such nonsense. Thou wast wise to send thy children off to Freythorpe Hadden.’

‘Was I?’ Since the first rumours of pestilence, Owen’s wife, Lucie, had wished to get their children out of the city. Eight years earlier she had lost her first child to the plague — Martin, her only child with Nicholas Wilton, her first husband. So Lucie had conceived a plan to send Hugh and Gwenllian to her father’s manor in the countryside, where his efficient sister Phillippa was also in residence. But there was one problem: Lucie had still nursed their son Hugh, born the past winter, and as master apothecary she could not leave the city at such a time. How was one to find a reliable wet nurse in the midst of pestilence?

And then Magda’s granddaughter Tola had come down from the moors with her infant, Emma, and her two-year-old, Nym, grieving for her husband, who had been savaged by a wild boar. Lucie had befriended the young widow and asked her to be Hugh’s wet nurse.

Owen had not been easily persuaded that Tola should take his only son out of the city. It was true that when Death stalked a city, people changed, grew wild in their despair, unpredictable in their deeds. Perhaps the children would be safer in all respects in the country. But … ‘The country did not save the Ffulfords,’ he thought aloud.

Magda, who had let her chin drop to her chest again, opened one eye, squinted up at Owen and grunted in sympathy. ‘Tola and her young ones are best away from Magda’s house, where the sick are wont to come. ’Tis not so different at an apothecary.’

‘The sick are not brought to the apothecary.’

‘Nay. But those who care for them … Oft they succumb. Why dost thou yet debate thy decision? ’Tis done.’

It was difficult for any parent, this pestilence that seemed most fatal to children. But for Lucie it was doubly hard because of the loss of her first to the plague. The hope that her family was protected by God’s grace could not buoy her.

How much worse would it ever be for Alisoun Ffulford, having lost both parents and siblings?

‘Are there any more in Alisoun’s family, Magda?’

The Riverwoman jerked awake. ‘Eh?’ She shaded her sleepy eyes with a hand.

Owen repeated the question.

‘Nay. Parents, three children, ’tis all.’ Magda shifted, began to lay her head back down.

‘So what does she guard in the barn?’

Magda grumbled and rubbed her eyes. ‘Herself. Her valuable horse.’

‘Why did she run from us?’

‘Why should she trust strangers, eh? Be patient, Bird-eye. The child will come to Magda or thee in her own time.’

‘How do you know?’

Magda lay down her head, closed her eyes. ‘Some things cannot be otherwise, Bird-eye.’

As Owen rowed towards home, the fly-ridden farmhouse haunted his thoughts.

The boat rocked dangerously as Magda suddenly sat forward, eyes scouring the sky downstream. ‘Fire in the city. Dost thou smell it on the wind, Bird-eye?’

Owen was breathing deeply with the effort of rowing. But he smelled no more smoke than usual. ‘Even in summer folk tend their fires, Magda.’

The Riverwoman frowned up at the air. ‘Nay. ’Tis more than that, Bird-eye.’

Throwing the shutters wide, Bess Merchet stood with eyes closed, head back, hoping for a breeze to refresh her and clear the dust from her nose. Hardly more air than in her bedchamber. How was a woman to revive her spirit while cleaning? ‘May the Lord grant us an early autumn,’ she muttered as she moved away from the window.

But what was that? She paused, listened. There. She heard it again. Over the usual din of carts on cobbles, children screaming in play, hawkers crying out to the passers-by, a smithy’s clatter, over all these common sounds of a summer’s day in York, and, down below, the maids noisily cleaning the tavern kitchen, over all this were shouts and shrieks and the clanging of a bell signalling an emergency.

Bess returned to the window. And now, as she breathed deeply, she noted how dense with smoke the air was, more like the air in the dead of winter than in July. Squinting and shifting from foot to foot, making good use of her vantage point three full storeys above the ground, Bess at last saw, round the chimneys and gables of her neighbours’ houses, a plume of smoke rising over St Leonard’s Hospital.