Kathryn Le Veque (28 page)

“Why were they together that night?” In this close copse, I can
hear the whisper louder by some trick of the woods. “It’s a lie, I tell you—
they’re lying to us!”

It is the small carpenter, Geoff, speaking with a dour look.

I have always found him distasteful. Perhaps it is but the memory
I have of Nell whispering to me of his father: a man who defiled his own son.
On that man’s deathbed, she said, there were running sores on his flesh, the
price of Gomorrah. Nothing she could give would help him, and no one believed
the rumors of him.

And she was killed for it.

Geoff, now a man himself, has his father’s choleric looks. He
bears the same harsh voice, the same dark flickering eyes. I wonder if his
father’s desires run in his mind, in the blood.

Geoff is speaking to Liam as they push their way through the
woods, searching for loose branches. “Our lads were
takin
’
a journey—they were dressed in warm cloaks an’ furs!”

Geoff has seen what I saw.

But Liam isn’t listening. Instead, he interrupts before Geoff can
speak again. “You’ve got to promise me to tell no one of my crime. You know
what I did. Benedict knows it too. But keep my secret, an’—” begins Liam. Then
my footsteps through the rotten
snow,
and a branch
cracks.

I tumble forward out of my hiding spot. Liam starts with sudden
fear. He drops the wood he has collected.

But I stumble forward, keeping my face incurious, even while my
heart churns.
What secret?
I wish
Salvius
were
still here, to find the truth of this. He would know what to do.
What crime
does Liam conceal?

When they see it is only me in the snow, they pick up their wood
again. Liam nods his head in greeting, gives me a wink. “
Mear
knows the truth of all things,
dontcha
know? Pity ’
e
can’t talk.”

Geoff grimaces. He stoops and lifts a pair of twigs out of the
thin snow in this copse. “An’ I’ll ask you this—why the rush to get on the
trail at first light?”

“
Aye,
an’ we have no blessing for the
open road.”


“Why does that
matter?” says Geoff.


Liam grimaces.
“Without that, we can be taken,
dontcha
know? Any

man
can
kill us.”


I am surprised
that Liam knows this. He is right that we have no

sanction
from the Lord of our County, Sir Peter of Lincoln, for this jour-
ney
. And without an embroidered Lord’s tunic, or some
such blessing— some holy writ of Church or King would serve—we are prey,
subject to any man’s whim or greed.

“How do you know?” Geoff shakes his head.

“I’ve been out here before. I’ve seen it happen,” whispers Liam.
And this is a surprise to me too—for years, I have thought Liam was born and
bred in the village of Duns.

“There’s a liar here somewhere,” continues Liam. “After all, the
house with boys in it was tied shut, from outside.
Salvius
and I had to break the door to get the bodies out.”

The knot.
I have a sudden vision of the boys pushing
helplessly on the door, striving to get out as the knot holds tight. Smoke
overwhelmed them. My eyes fill with tears.

Liam rips a branch from a small tree, his hands shaking with
anger. “Before this journey is done, I tell you, I will know why they were
gather’d
together. Why did this happen?”

“I blame Benedict,” says Geoff. “It was his
house,
and the first fire this winter where someone died. I don’t believe his story of
the
boys
weav
-
ing
—not for a moment. Here’s my guess—what if the boys were
seeing his wife already?”

My heart sinks. Sophia, even in her fathomless need, would not
seduce boys so young, would she? Liam gives his face a sardonic twist, a leer
that makes his grin unseemly. My skin goes cold at that look. It makes me doubt
him more. Liam always has been at the bottom of the village bounty, scraping
the dregs. What if his need finally broke him and he took vengeance on his betters?

A loud bellow echoes from far away, on the other side of the hill.
It is Hob’s voice. Liam and Geoff lift their heavy load of branches, and we
start back.

The skewed cart lies like a foundered ship in the drift of snow. I
take my turn digging wearily at the frost-hardened ground; then I reach down to
rub my painful feet, and I see a boy in a hooded cloak. He stands on the other
side of the cart, pushing alongside us.

For a moment, my eyes are bewitched. I see Christian standing
alive and hale again. That moment lasts a long breath, and then it is gone.

The boy’s hood drops off his head.


Raven-black hair. Sunken coal-black eyes.


It is only Cole.


He is
Salvius’s
misbegotten ward, the
orphan. But he is here alone.

Hob talks to him, asking of his “Uncle
Salvius
.”


I cannot hear all they say, but it seems Cole was in the woods and

found
us on
the trail. He points at the cart, gesturing toward his dead friends. Hob’s face
is hard and untrusting.

Cole has the curse of lying and of theft. Few folk trust him, least
of all
Salvius
who often must punish him for his many
misdeeds. And Cole’s face is etched by the scars of ringworm. Such marks are
said to be the mark of a devil or a witch, and those scarred are mocked and
called by
names, so as
to torment the devil inside. I do not know the truth of it. I do not concern
myself.

He is a gangly, overgrown orphan boy from the edge of the village,
the one some whisper was abandoned by his own mother. Perhaps they said the
same about my Christian.

In fact, Cole once helped me watch my son. He is a little older
than the boys who died but always he drifts toward those younger than he.
For Cole has a wandering stammer, and no one treats him as a man.
His weak voice is the last echo of the tenderness I once saw in that lad.

Cole says he sought us out, hoping he would find
Salvius
here, want-
ing
to honor
his dead friends.

I think that Cole is like the other children—he will spend the
heat of this winter day walking with us, but he will fade eventually, when he
wearies of the hard track and the heavy cart. In fact, even now, I can see a
few of the other children in the valley below, wandering back along the
switchbacks toward the distant village.

“Cole can come with us,” says Hob. “It’s too late in the day to
send for
Salvius
.”

“Let’s go back ourselves,” says Geoff. “You’re right. It’s
late—I’m
damn’d
tired.”

“None of us are going back!”
Bene
seizes
Geoff’s head with his great weaver’s hands. He turns Geoff, forces him to look
up at the trail ahead. “Look at the tracks, I say, look at them!”

We all stare at the hillside. The virgin snow is spattered with
boot- prints that go out of sight.

“We’re
followin
’ the villain, can’t you
see?” says
Bene
. “The tracks are—”

Geoff wrenches his head out of Benedict’s grasp.
“To hell with yer tracks!
My son is gone—he
ain’t
comin
’ back.”

“Push on,” calls
Hob,
and Geoff’s
complaints are ignored. The cart tilts forward this time and out of the ditch.
Red-haired Liam and I both hold now to the branches of the
whippletree
in front, guiding the way forward.

Hob moves behind me then, goading us to the work. He spits on the
ground and slaps our shoulders. I am the only one to follow his gaze and glance
behind us. He is staring into the distance, along our
backtrail
.

Deep in the vale, a large puff of steam or snow punches into the
air.
A rider.
I watch closely. Some group of
people—another cart—follows along the adjoining trail, but I cannot see them in
the trees.

Hob touches Benedict’s elbow and whispers low. Benedict’s cheek
twitches, and he scratches anxiously at his bald scalp. Hob glances back again,
then
he shouts loud, urging more miles before
nightfall. I put my shoulder to the cart.

We are pushed onward by the force of their will.

CHAPTER 4

The day wanes until the sun is caught once more in the net of the
darkening sky. I struggle ahead of the cart now, into the tracks. “Stay back,”
calls Benedict. “Come back to the cart!”

But I pretend the wind covers his words, that I cannot hear him.
Ice cuts through the canvas rags on my feet, but still my curiosity compels me.
I pretend to stumble, and I fall to the ground so my face is close to the
trail.

The marks of boots and horses are here. That is true.

But the tracks go the wrong direction. There is no
bootprint
going out of our village, no horse going toward
the deep woods. No one fled. Instead, some strangers came into our village.
Three men and at least two horses, by the look of the prints.
But who?

Our village is small, and we should have seen them, unless they
came in the night.

“Come back,
Mear
,” Hob calls out. “The
bandits may be ahead.”


I now know we
chase no bandits, no Jews, no villain here at all. Yet from their vantage
point, these footprints are unseen, and rapidly the steps are disappearing in
the thawing snow. In less than an hour, it will not be possible to see which
direction they came from, even up close.

Soon, the truth will melt away.


Christian would be asking for answers; even in his youth, my son
had

a
penchant for inquiry. Always he wanted to stretch his wings.
Why am I
trapped in this village? And why can’t I go to Lincoln town this spring with
the lads? Why not? Why?

Always asking, Socratic in endless
examination, until finally I would throw up my hands and shake my head in mute
exasperation.
In the night, he would murmur his
questions to me again, and then I would answer as best I could, whispering back
what I hoped was true. I imparted to him all I could of my secrets, of what my
mother taught me.

I also gave him the tools of inquiry and debate. I murmured like a
night animal, teaching Aristotle’s endless coiling logic. In my ear, I can hear
him now—repeating back to me the secret lessons, his sibilant
whis
- per in my ear:

Every art aims at some good end. The end
of the art of medicine is health; the end of shipbuilding a vessel; the end of
strategy in battle that of victory; the end of economics, wealth. The ends of
master arts are preferred to subordinate ends... for all things aim at a good
end.

I clench my fists until the skin whitens and the knuckles crack.
Any- one among us has seen so many die over the years—wave after wave of death
sweeping in like a tide that strikes all, haphazard. The good, the bad, the
virgin, and the harlot: no one is
spared,
all go
rose-spattered with plague lesions. I see no sense, no judgment before doom strikes.
Death takes us all with the black malady or the sweating sickness, or the white
blindness or the winter croup, or the crops failing or bitter water in our
mouths.

There is no justice to such deaths, and there is no sense.

But this fire—the flames that burned our boys—these few deaths
were an act of malevolence. Someone intended this. There was a
judg
-
ment
made, an evil act. And
in this, it is for sure and certain that there is a soul at fault. Someone can
be blamed for these deaths, if not for all that came before.

I look down at the wrong-way tracks. I squint, wishing I could
read more from this trail. I will find out what I can from the signs I do see.
I will know the truth.

What was your good end, Christian?

The cart comes closer. Benedict throws off his hood and shouts at
me for abandoning my post. He says without my guidance, the cart nearly went
off the trail. At this, Hob glares at me too and curses under his breath, as if
I am a wayward child. But I pay them no heed.

**

There is a stab of pain in my side. My limbs are weak as water,
for I have not been able to eat much this winter with no food in the larders or
the mill. And now my feet and toes feel each lump of frozen mud. I am not that
young Miriam who once climbed these hills with a babe in her arms. I am old and
tired now. My legs burn with effort, but still I persevere.

Hob watches us all closely, as if he wants to be sure no one will
go ahead again, and he goads the men harder to push the cart up the long hill
before sundown.

Hours later, as evening shadows surround us, the hillside finally
flat-
tens,
and the path opens out into a hollow
encircled by boulders. Beyond a last steep embankment is the King’s Highway. We
will camp here for the night before gaining the highway.

I collapse into a drift and lie there nearly insensate.

Through my fog comes Liam’s voice. “God’s wounds,
Mear
, you look weary enough for Death himself to dance
with. Why
dontcha
shove off your pack—’
ave
some water and a bite o’ mutton. Tom there, he’s
already
lightin
’ a fire to warm your bones.”

In this makeshift shelter between boulders and under overhanging
snow, Liam lays pine boughs and bracken over cold ground. I let the flow of his
voice settle me onto the branches as he wraps me in a fur-lined cloak. Then he
uncovers my numb feet, examining each inch of whitened, cold skin.

“A hard nip of frost, but they haven’t gone to rot yet,” Liam
says. “But there’s a cut on your toe too—you’ll want to watch it close.”

I open my eyes and look at the campsites in this ravine. There are
six of us, and only five spots out of the wind. Even Cole has found a place. He
puts his bedroll under the cart.

There is not a place left for me, it seems.

Liam has seen the same. “Well, I’ve got to tell you,
Mear
—there’s naught left for another body out of the wind,
is there?
Would you have in mind to share mine own mansion?”

I stare at him. I am so weary that I cannot find the humor, and my
friend
Salvius
never jokes like this.

Liam speaks again, his prattle lifting my spirits. “There’s no
roof, of course. No walls either, I’m afraid to say. And I must admit to a
certain breeziness in the night, but I ’
ave
my
standards, I’ll have you know!”

He wags his finger in my face. “I’ll warn you now,
ol
’
Mear
, with that wild life you
lead,
you can’t be bringing your
brewmaids
and your wenches around here! An’ there
ain’t
no
cows to warm the place either. But hell’s bells, you’ve
got
me
—and what a
cowish
girth I bear.” He
grips his belly and grimaces broadly.

Liam goes on in the same fashion, and by the time he finishes, I
am bent over with laughter, the sounds coming out of my mouth a hacking
hilarity.

I am astonished I am able to laugh at all. Then the chuckles turn
into broad guffaws, and I find that my cheeks are wet, my eyes leaking wildly.
Tears stream down my face, grief melding with mirth in some wild witch’s brew
that brings the fact of Christian’s death deep into me. He is dead and gone; I
am alive and able to laugh. This is the truth of it, and
nothing I do will change it now.

Our camp is in the lee of a slab of rock jutting from the
hillside. The outcropping looms over us, thick with snow-covered moss.

Geoff sidles into our campsite. He takes Liam’s ear and whispers
urgently. “
Lookit
this—my son had this with him.”
Geoff opens his clenched hand. Inside is a small carved wood animal, that great
bird that nurses its young on its own flesh. A pelican—a symbol of the Christ—
and it is scorched by flame.

“What is that to you?” asks Liam.

Geoff digs his foot deep into the snow. He cannot meet our eyes.
“It was the first lovely thing he ever made.”

“A memory,” says Liam.
“An heirloom of his
house.”

“Why would he take this to Benedict’s house?” says Geoff. “Why
take something so precious to our family? Was he going away from our
vil
-
lage
? Were they all leaving
us?”

I have a niggling thought in the back of my mind that there is
some- thing here that ties Geoff’s son to my Christian, but I cannot think what
it is right now.

Christian was not leaving me,
my heart says loudly, so that I cannot hear that still-small voice
in me saying something true and painful.

Now Liam is telling his tale. “I saw in the cart that in my son’s
hand was the stick he uses to walk the sheep over to the
Hartvale
meadow.
His walking stick.”

“An’ you weren’t going anywhere with him.”

“You know I can’t leave the village.” Liam’s eyes slide nervously
from side to side. “If the King’s officers found me out here . . . I’m only on
this journey now because my boy is
dead,
and I . . . I
could not leave him.”

Geoff nods. Curiosity eats at me, a poison that makes my skin
crawl.
How much do I really know of Liam?
I raise my eyebrows at him, I
grunt, but the two of them don’t pay me mind.

“Where were the boys going?” hisses Geoff. “I don’t believe for a
moment that Benedict had them weaving—every time he says it, his eyes belie
him.”

“Do you mean to accuse Benedict of doing something with them?”
Liam seems taken aback by the insistence in Geoff’s face.

Geoff whispers. “
Ayuh
, Sophia was
suppos’d
to be in that house that
night
.
An’ what if Benedict was jealous of his own wife?
What if he—?”
Liam sighs wearily.
“Foolishness.
What about the other
fires? And
why would
Benedict burn his own house? Why would
Bene
—?”


There is a sudden, loud laugh. Benedict has stepped into our
campsite. In fact, he almost strides onto my bedroll. He claps Liam on the back

“What’s that you say— ‘Why would
Bene
—’?”


“Nothing,” mutters Liam. “Just talk. It
were
nothing.”


“Nah, tell the
truth.” Benedict gives that laugh again, a forced jollity. Geoff stares with
the bloodlust of the accuser and raises his voice.

“You tell the truth,
Bene
! What journey
did you plan with our boys?” Hob and Tom come closer when Geoff shouts.
Benedict stares back
and forth
between the men, his face flushing slowly red.
“The truth?”
“Yes,” says Geoff. “Tell us, why were the boys there, at your weaving house?”


Bene
breathes out, a long hiss. “I do not know why they died.”


Geoff shouts again. “Goddammit,
Bene
,
you know why they were
there—I can
see you do! Why were the boys there at your house? Were they seeing your wife?”

Now the blood drains out of
Bene’s
face,
his skin white with rage.

“Wait, wait,” says Liam. His hands move nervously. “That’s not
what we meant—”

Benedict makes fists, his fingers clenching and unclenching. “Then
speak plain. What do you mean?”

Geoff does not falter. “Sophia—she saw more than one man, as you
well know—and I just want to know, did she see any of the boys in her chamber,
did she—”

Benedict brings his great weaver’s hand up.
Faster
than I could have imagined, his clenched fist strikes Geoff’s face, knocking
him flat against the ice.

The winter air seems to freeze as Geoff falls. A stray snowflake
hangs in the air. Bright blood spatters from Geoff’s broken lip onto the white
snow.

Benedict
roars,
a sound that has words in
it I cannot decipher until after it is all over. “You
damn’d
scut
-worms! Ah lost my own
son—
my
son
—an’ you lot still accuse my wife, my own Sophia. She lost him too,
you know!”

Benedict glowers in rage. We look away in shame.

“You there,”
Bene
points at Liam. “I can
turn you in, you know. There’s still a reward—in gold—for
poxy
bastards like you.”

“I know,” mutters Liam. “Please . . .”


Liam scurries back from Benedict’s rage. I huddle into my bedroll.
But
Bene
has turned away from him. He glares,
bloodshot and bellowing, at all of us. Only Tom holds his gaze. It would seem
Tom has nothing of mortification in him, but I see a catch in the corner of
Tom’s eye before he locks his gaze, as if he must force himself to do this. It
is as if an actor’s mask drops over his whiskered face.

“Right,” Tom says.
“The boys had naught t’ do
with Sophia.
She’s a pure one.” His tone is sincere, though the pupils
of his eyes move ever so subtly back and forth.