Karen Mailand - The Owl Killers

Men, particularly her confessor at the church, were fascinated by her and guarded her cage jealously as if she was a rare and beautiful animal, but the priest didn’t drive the spectators from her window or silence the cries of the hot food sellers and alewives who spread their wares below the walls of her cell. Nor would the crowds of pilgrims have heard him if he had, for they were too intent on bargaining for the tin emblems and snippets of bloodstained cloth which the cleric swore Andrew had worn next to her skin during her visions. As a living cat is sealed up inside the walls of a new manor to keep the dynasty inside from falling, so Andrew was walled up in the church to keep it wealthy.

I shook myself sternly and picked up my rake, attacking a stubborn patch of compacted mud. A flock of geese wheeled as one, and charged across to the pile of dung, trampling it across the yard again as they squabbled over grubs and worms. A prod from my rake and they scattered, hissing malevolently, and wandered off to find a quieter corner.

The wizened face of Gate Martha appeared at my elbow. “Kitchen Martha’ll not be best pleased if you drive the fat off the birds, Servant Martha. There’s a lad begs leave to see you at the gate,” she added, before I had time to reply.

“What does he want?”

She shrugged unhelpfully.

“Do you know the boy?”

Gate Martha nodded, but didn’t seem to think it necessary to enlighten me. She was a local woman of few words. It was one of the reasons we had appointed her as Gate Martha, for she said she was known for keeping her counsel. But there were times when I wondered where discretion stopped and dour began.

I followed her to the gate. There I found a boy of about eleven or twelve years shuffling from one foot to the other, scarlet in the face and sweating. The pony beside him was also in a lather and no wonder, for the boy had been free enough with his whip, judging by the marks on the beast’s coat. The boy could scarcely wait for me to reach him before he gabbled out his message.

“My master bids you attend on him at once!”

“Robert D’Acaster,” Gate Martha explained, misinterpreting my frown.

“Bidsme? Is there sickness in the house?” I asked.

The boy shook his head. “Nay, but if you don’t come at once there’ll be murder, for the master is in such a rage with his daughter, that if I don’t fetch you, he’ll like as not kill me.”

“Nonsense!” I said. All boys exaggerate wildly. They are incapable of telling the truth simply and plainly, just as they are incapable of standing still without fidgeting. “Now, child, answer me plainly. What exactly is it that I am bidto do? If your master has a quarrel with his daughter, what has that to do with me? I dare say he is quite capable of bringing his own household to order.”

“Please come, Mistress. I daren’t go back without you.” The boy suddenly looked deeply frightened.

Gate Martha coughed. “D’Acaster’s a savage temper on him,” she remarked.

The boy nodded vigorously as if he could testify to that a dozen times over.

I hesitated. I had never spoken with any member of the D’Acaster family, although I’d had several unpleasant disputes with his bailiff, over wood gathering and grazing rights, all of which I’d won. The bailiff had made no secret of the fact that Robert D’Acaster wanted us gone, though since we owned our land there was nothing his master could do to force us out. The man had stormed off in fury, doubtless to inform his master, and I had not had occasion to speak to him since. So, why on earth would D’Acaster suddenly send for me in a matter concerning his daughter?

The boy was watching me, his body tense, pleading silently for me to agree.

Curiosity got the better of me. “Very well then,” I said finally. “I’ll come, if it’ll save you from a whipping.”

Relief flooded his face and he beamed, bounding up onto the back of his long-suffering mount.

“But you’ll have to wait while I fetch my cloak and brush the mud from my kirtle. Gate Martha, would you be so kind as to saddle a horse for me?”

Gate Martha grasped my arm urgently and whispered, “I’d sooner stick my face in a nest of weasels, than trust any up at the Manor. Supposing D’Acaster means to harm you?”

“Under what law could he do that? I have committed no crime.”

Gate Martha shook her head in disbelief. “He doesn’t need no law; he isthe law. There’s mischief brewing in Ulewic; the Beltane fires last night were just the start of it. Don’t you be riding to meet it.”

“But surely the fire had nothing to do with D’Acaster. Perhaps he merely wishes to extend the hand of friendship at last.”

“Friendship?” she said incredulously. “Robert D’Acaster loathes women, even his own wife. He’d not make peace with the Holy Virgin herself. You keep a tight hold on your knife, Servant Martha.” She stomped off in the direction of the stables.

“Hurry,” the boy begged. “My master can’t abide to be kept waiting.”

“Then,” I told him firmly, “your master will have to be taught the virtue of patience.”

aS SOON AS THE WOODEN GATE of the beguinage banged shut behind us, the wind pounced as if it had been lying in wait. It was a raw wind, whipping across the marshes straight from the sea. But we told each other it would feel warmer once we were in the shelter of the copse. The other beguines ambled ahead of us down the path laughing and chattering. They wouldn’t have been laughing if they’d heard what I had in the forest on May Eve.

You could tell they’d already forgotten all about the Beltane fire now that it was daylight. They were like a pack of little children: When Servant Martha said there was nothing to worry about, they actually believed her. They were gullible enough to believe anything that woman said. They couldn’t see through her like I could. But Pega was still worried about the fire-I could see that-so don’t you tell me there was nothing to worry about.

Pega and I threaded our staves through the rope handles of several empty tubs and shouldered them between us. She strode ahead down the muddy track, her rump, as broad as an ox, swaying as she walked. Little Catherine and I trailed pathetically behind, taking two steps to Pega’s one. The wooden staves ground against my shoulders. Pega was the tallest woman I’d ever seen. Gate Martha says the villagers called her the Ulewic Giant. So with my being so much shorter than she was the full weight of the laden staves was tipping back on me, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of asking her to slow down. She’d tease me for the rest of the day.

The sodden track had been churned to mud by the many hooves and cart wheels that had passed over it for the fair. I stumbled several times and tried to take small steps, but Pega showed no fear of falling. Nothing and no one could tumble her, unless she’d a mind to let them, which in her younger days she had with a frequency that had earned her a reputation as the most accommodating woman in the village, or so that wicked old gossip Gate Martha said.

We were the last to reach the copse. The other beguines were already scattered among the trees, clearing away old undergrowth from around the trunks. The buds were beginning to open and the branches of the birches shivered in their bright green mist. As if the sap was bubbling up inside them too, the young children and some of the women were playing a boisterous game of tag, shrieking and giggling as they chased one another.

Pega smiled. “Best get started, then we can all join in. Move your arse, lass,” she yelled to Catherine. “Get those holes bored.”