Plague Land (25 page)

By the time I reached the churchyard of St Giles, Matilda was already beneath the soil, lying alongside her sister Alison. Onlookers gathered about her grave, shedding their false tears – the very same people who would have seen this pitiful girl married to Old Ralph. A man four times her age.

Old Ralph himself had somehow staggered to the burial, although those about him were giving him and his arm a wide berth. It was little surprise to see he was near death and that his herbal ointment had failed to cure the gangrene.

I interrupted Cornwall in the middle of his prayers. ‘I did not give you permission to bury Matilda.’

Cornwall kept his eyes shut and continued his words.

‘I wished to study her body. And you’ve ruined that possibility.’

The mourners caught their breath at my words. What fools! Dead bodies were routinely examined at the monastery. I was not intending to despoil or dissect her in any way. But since my last comments were clearly offensive to some present, I had the sense to add, ‘I simply wanted to collect more information concerning her death.’

Cornwall opened an eye. ‘We all know who is responsible. No further information is needed.’

‘It was my daughter, Joan Bath,’ shouted Old Ralph from the back of the crowd. ‘It was her that did it. Hang the whore!’ He looked about for the others to endorse his condemnation, but they only edged further away from the man and his appalling stink. ‘Hang the whore!’ he repeated nonetheless.

‘Joan couldn’t have killed this one, could she, Ralph?’ said Woodcock, a peasant farmer with skin the colour of a cobnut. ‘She’s been in the gaol house since the beginning of June.’

‘Joan Bath is still under suspicion,’ I quickly told them. ‘Given the decay in her body, Matilda was murdered at least three weeks ago. Before Mistress Bath was taken into custody.’

‘Then who put her head in the well this morning, sire?’ said Woodcock.

I hesitated. It was a good question. ‘She must have had an accomplice.’

‘But why would they have cut the girl’s head off?’

I did not appreciate being cross-questioned by a farmhand, so I told him sternly that I was investigating all possibilities. But the subsequent expression across his face did not portray any confidence in my powers of detection.

‘Matilda’s body was freshly wounded,’ said Cornwall. ‘Her neck was still bloodied.’ His conclusions were met with nods and amens from the crowd.

I crossed my arms. ‘And you’re an expert on bodily decay and fatal wounds, are you, Cornwall? Perhaps you’re a physician, or a barber surgeon?’

‘I’m guided by the Lord, sire. I pray for answers, and they’re given to me.’

‘How expedient. Does the Lord agree with everything you propose to Him?’

He glared. ‘I am merely the tool of the Almighty. I am His obedient servant and His mouthpiece.’

At this nonsense I nearly demanded they exhume Matilda’s body a second time. But I stopped myself – not because of my promise to Brother Peter, rather because I could not have gleaned any more information from the cadaver since I did not possess the skills required for such an examination. And I would not have demanded Matilda’s dead body be kept above ground until Peter returned, since we had no idea when that might be.

But perhaps more than that, it just felt cruel to disturb Matilda again. Her fragile body had finally been laid to rest, and should remain so.

Then, just as I turned to leave, another commotion unfurled. Following his exertions in attending the burial, Old Ralph had collapsed and was barely breathing. I’ve heard it said that country life is uneventful, but in my experience the opposite is true. A woman slapped Old Ralph about the face as I tried to rouse him with some oil of Hartshorn. But even its pungent, piss-like aroma would not wake the man, since the poison in his arm must have spread to his heart.

With Old Ralph so near to death, I demanded Cornwall administer the last rites, as the gutless fraud was already backing away from the dying man like a child from a harvest spider. With so many witnesses, Cornwall was obliged to cooperate, although he kept his distance from the stench of Ralph’s gangrenous limb.

Minutes later, the old man died. Since we were already in the graveyard I gave the order to bury Old Ralph immediately. Cornwall suggested we lay his body with the Starvecrow sisters, as the ground about their grave was freshly dug. But here, at last, was something I could do for Matilda and Alison. I ordered Old Ralph to be buried at the other side of the graveyard.

He would not lie with them.

Not while I was their lord.

Chapter Fourteen

I left at first light while Ada was sweeping the rushes from the hall and Gilbert was feeding the chickens. Gilbert nodded his head to me, but did not bother to ask where his lord was going at such an early hour of the morning. And I wouldn’t have answered him if he had.

This was a journey I should have undertaken two weeks earlier. Instead, I had allowed cowardice to stand in my path and cloak my inaction with his soft robe of excuses. Two girls lay dead in the churchyard. They were my half-sisters. I was certain of that. But I could no longer be certain their murderer was locked in the gaol house.

The sky was grey and low and reflected its cold dullness onto the millpond as I made my way towards the forest. A few souls were working their own strips of land, hunched over fields like snipe birds wading through the reeds. They paid no attention to me, as I was on foot and cut no particular sight – only stopping to tie a bootlace or to take a drink from my leather bottle. A bottle I had made sure to fill with ale.

Once in the forest I followed Gilbert’s instructions to head south-west and not to deviate. I had described the ridge of stone to my servant and asked him if he knew such a place. Gilbert had nodded, but did not ask why I wanted to go there. I think he was nervous of becoming caught up in my affairs again. And what would I have told him, if he had asked? That I was searching for a boy who lived in a cave. A boy who could tell me where to find creatures with the heads of dogs.

The forest was quiet and dark – absorbing my footsteps into its verdant world. Sometimes I caught sight of the spotted rump of a fallow deer, as the secretive animals glided silently through the oak and willow. The shrill call of the yellowhammer pierced the air. Squirrels leapt from branch to branch in the high canopy – chattering and hissing at my presence.

But I kept walking. Just one foot in front of another. Finding paths through the trees and undergrowth, always maintaining the south-westerly direction Gilbert had advised me to keep. Every so often I would stop to look up at the sky to locate the position of the sun. Once, when the canopy was too dense, I climbed an oak tree, only to find the clouds were still low and white. But I kept going. Determined to reach my destination.

When I finally came upon the outcrop of rock, fear took hold of me. Not the fear of meeting Leofwin again, nor even the fear of the shadowy creatures with the heads of dogs. I was afraid, instead, that Brother Peter had been right. That the episode I remembered so clearly had indeed been a dream. An illusion caused by a fever. When I looked about me, however, I knew for certain that I had been here before. The ledge along the rock face was familiar, as was the call of the eagles – their cries unnatural and sinister. I walked slowly and cautiously, for if these birds saw me, they would announce my arrival by diving at my head from their high eyries.

I positioned myself below the ridge near the entrance to the cave. It was exactly as I recalled, though at first it seemed to be just a gap in the stone – as dark and uninviting as any cave might appear. It did not appear inhabited and it now struck me that I would have to venture inside this gloomy-looking hole to reassure myself that Leofwin had ever existed. Then, thankfully, a thin trail of smoke spiralled out from the cave and before I could get to my feet, Leofwin appeared from the entrance. As he stepped out onto the stone ledge, the light caught the ridged bone of his forehead.

I stifled a gasp. The boy’s face was still astonishing.

But I didn’t call out his name – deciding instead to watch him for a while. To see him come and go from this cave, when he thought nobody was looking. He let the sun warm his skin for a few moments, then disappeared inside and reappeared almost immediately with a hessian sack. This sack looked heavy and bulky, and its underside was stained in red. I now felt uneasy.

Leofwin threw the sack over his shoulder then climbed down the rocks towards me with the ease of a wild cat, and suddenly I crouched down behind my tree, fearing he had discovered my hiding place. He passed within yards of me, but did not turn to look. Flies followed him, landing on the liquid that had seeped through the loosely woven hessian and now formed a dripping trail of red behind him.

I knew then, for certain, what the sack held. Something that was dead.

With my heart in my mouth, I followed Leofwin through the forest, but made sure to keep my distance – although, every so often, he would turn on his heels, as if he sensed somebody was behind him. When at last he seemed to relax, I heard him whistle the same nursery rhyme as before. His thin legs were as bandy as a baby’s, but his stride was as upright and confident as a knight’s – whereas I now felt full of foreboding. Had I been wrong to befriend this boy? Had my pity for him coloured an obvious truth?

After a while we came upon a familiar place – the clearing where the plague pit lay beneath the shade of the beech tree. Vomit rose in my throat as I once again caught the stench of this place.

Wiping my mouth clear of the bitter bile, I looked back into the clearing to see Leofwin untie the sack. I now had the dreadful feeling that he was about to empty the dead thing he carried into the pit alongside the other bodies, where he thought it would lie undetected in its bed of bones. But instead he lifted the sack and dropped its contents upon the ground. Now I almost didn’t want to look, half expecting to see a body. The corpse of another murdered girl?

But this was not a human victim. Instead it was a butchered sheep. Skinned, bloody and hacked into pieces.

I let out a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. For then faces emerged from the trees at the edge of the clearing. Black skulking forms. Strange and sinister creatures, with low, prowling bodies. They crept warily towards the meat, glancing nervously from side to side and tentatively sniffing at the air.

It was then that I realised that Peter had been right all along. I had indeed been fooled the last time I came here by exhaustion and terror. It had been a delusion. I almost laughed at my mistake. For these were not dog-headed beasts. They were simply wolves.

I then stepped a little too far forward and slipped down the leafy bank, announcing my presence to Leofwin and his lupine friends. But only the smallest wolf looked up from the meat and growled at me, baring his long white teeth. The others were too interested in their feast.

Leofwin was angry to see me. ‘What are you doing here? You swore not to return.’

‘Why are you feeding wolves?’

‘None of your business.’ He then looked anxiously over my shoulder. ‘Have you brought others with you?’

‘No.’

Leofwin scanned the clearing nervously. He didn’t believe me. ‘Then what are you doing here? Leave us alone!’

‘Why didn’t you tell me it was wolves who circled me that night? You let me believe it was evil phantoms.’

He threw back his head and laughed, revealing his peculiar teeth to their full glory. ‘Why do you think?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said innocently. The small wolf now advanced towards me, and suddenly the others in his pack began to take interest.

‘Because you would return to hunt them,’ he said.

‘But they’re dangerous animals, Leofwin. Look at them.’ I watched their lithe frames stalk towards me. Their eyes were cruel and yellow. ‘The king has decreed they must be eradicated from England.’

Leofwin reddened at my words. ‘Who cares what the king says. Not me!’

‘But wolves attack people.’

‘Only when they’ve been threatened themselves.’

I instinctively drew my dagger as the creatures began to circle. ‘Call them off.’ I edged towards the boy.

Leofwin smiled. ‘Stay still and drop your knife.’

‘But—’

‘Just do as I say.’

I took a deep breath and obeyed. The wolves regarded me a while longer.

‘Look to the ground and remain still,’ Leofwin told me. ‘Don’t stare them in the eye.’ I followed his instructions and slowly the wolves lost interest, retreating to an easier meal.