Plague Land (9 page)

I drew back, though Wallwork hardly seemed to notice and patted my knee a second time.

‘Let’s return to Joan Bath, shall we?’ I said quickly.

Wallwork’s face fell a little. ‘Yes. Of course, sire. What was it you wanted to know?’

‘Please tell me why you suspect this woman?’

Now Wallwork cheered up a little. ‘Well. It’s like this. Joan’s father, Old Ralph, took a fancy to the Starvecrow hogs. So once Alison’s parents were dead, he hatched a plan to marry the girl. And she couldn’t do much to object. Not having any family to see him off.’

‘Surely she was too young to marry?’ I said, thinking back to the fragile corpse we had discovered in the undergrowth.

‘She was fourteen, sire. More than ripe for the marriage bed.’ He winked at me again. ‘I expect you, being of noble and more refined blood, like a girl to be a little more mature. My Abigail is seventeen you know.’

I ignored this comment. ‘Alison Starvecrow was fourteen? Are you sure? She looked only ten or eleven when I saw her dead body.’

Wallwork sighed. ‘Ah yes. Those Starvecrow girls were a sickly pair. Alison was stunted like dwarfed rootstock. And Matilda has a head full of demons. Not that it’s put off Old Ralph. With the older girl dead he’ll marry the sister. That’s if you can find her alive.’ He winked at me and whispered. ‘He likes them young.’

We were interrupted by Abigail who had returned with the pottage and silver spoons, which to my surprise, were finer than most of ours at Somershill. The years before the Plague had been good to yeoman farmers, many of whom prospered as greatly from farming as a lord could from renting out his land. I dipped the spoon into the pottage and found it to be full of fresh peas and tender hoof marrow.

I ate it quickly, and as Abigail leant over me to ladle a second helping into my bowl, I caught her arm. ‘Tell me some more about Joan Bath.’ I watched her pink cheeks redden to a deep crimson.

‘Go on, dear girl,’ said Wallwork, pleased at my sudden, if belated interest in his daughter.

‘Joan is Old Ralph’s daughter by Maggie Wide-legs,’ she told me.

‘That was Margaret Furlong, sire,’ said Wallwork quickly. ‘Maggie Wide-legs is just a silly name some of the rascals gave her when she was alive.’ He coughed. ‘She had dreadful problems with her hips.’

I suppressed an urge to laugh. ‘Why do you think Joan is involved with Alison’s murder?’

‘She didn’t want her father marrying that girl, did she?’ said Abigail.

‘Why not?’

‘’Cause Joan was going to get Old Ralph’s house and land when he dies. And he’s got no teeth.’

‘No teeth?’

‘Boils on his gums, sire. Don’t reckon he’s long to go. His breath smells like a dog’s arse.’ I dropped her arm.

Wallwork scowled, but quickly changed the expression on his face to an obsequious smile. ‘Old Ralph can smell a little stale, sire. That’s all she means, don’t you, dear girl.’ Abigail nodded nervously. ‘Young ladies will get bawdy when they haven’t a husband to tame them.’ He leant over and took my leg again. ‘Now, if you were to think about taking a wife, sire.’ He nodded towards Abigail and she giggled.

I stood up as if this would somehow extricate me from this awkward situation. ‘Thank you, Wallwork. That is a thoughtful suggestion. But I’m not looking for a wife at the present time. My situation is too . . . demanding.’

Wallwork was not as discouraged by this announcement as I had hoped. ‘That’s quite understandable, sire.’ He then joined me by standing up to whisper in my ear. ‘But if you would like to taste the pie before purchase, then I’m sure that Abigail would be amenable to such an arrangement. With certain assurances, I would make no moral objections to such youthful exuberance. After all, it is the summer. And the birds are nesting.’

Abigail had heard every word of this supposedly private conversation, and she smiled, as if being peddled by her own father were just a foolish but amusing embarrassment. I thought of my own father. No doubt such an arrangement would have suited him. But it did not suit me.

‘No thank you, Wallwork,’ I said. And then seeing the girl’s face fall, and in an attempt to alleviate her humiliation I added, ‘It is a very tempting offer, but I believe my mother is looking into my matrimonial options. And I wouldn’t want to upset her.’

Wallwork sighed. ‘Perhaps then, if you need a little diversion in the meantime. Abigail’s as ripe as the cherry on the tree, and ready for picking.’ He winked again. ‘You wouldn’t have to marry her, sire. Just relax my rent a little. I’m sure that her services would more than please you.’

‘No thank you, Wallwork.’

His eyes narrowed to a frown. ‘But the harvest is bad this year, sire. I’ll struggle to pay my rent.’

‘Please, Wallwork. Let the matter drop.’

‘I only have one farmhand left to collect all the grain. So I was thinking we could come to an arrangement. And Abigail’s taken a liking to you, sire. I can tell.’

I looked at the poor girl, who had backed into the shadows with her face to the floor. ‘Wallwork, please stop this. We’re not at the horse fair.’ He went to object, but I held up my hand. ‘The girl is your daughter!’

His head drooped. ‘As you like, sire.’

I dusted down my tunic, thanked him for his hospitality, and then asked to be directed to Joan Bath’s house.

As I rounded up the men in the kitchen, I heard Wallwork call his daughter a foul-mouthed slut.

Chapter Five

Joan Bath lived a way outside the village of Somershill, on a north-facing slope where the lands of my estate started to rise towards the forests of the weald. Nobody else inhabited this area – since the ground was damp and boggy from the waters that drained from the hills. Joan was a cottar with only a small curtilage of land about her cottage, paid for by her services to the manor. But, according to the men, Joan never turned up to labour in the fields herself. She always sent her sons.

The cottage itself was humble but not dilapidated. No weeds grew from the thatched roof, and the timbers were not rotten, though they rested in the soil without stone foundations. The cottage sat in the middle of the narrow strip of land that was divided between a densely stocked vegetable patch and a small orchard. A bony cow chewed at some long grass while a pig stretched out beneath one of the apple trees, but there was no stench of animal dung hanging about the place. Instead I had seen a pile of decomposing manure further down the path, next to a mountain of crumbling soil that was dark and sweet smelling.

As we rode towards the cottage we saw two boys picking peas and collecting them in a wicker basket. They looked up at our group suspiciously, as a skeletal dog ran out to greet us with a set of bared teeth.

‘Call off your dog,’ I shouted, as the snarling creature edged towards us. The boys turned to the house and looked for instruction, where a tall woman now leant against the doorpost and watched us with her arms folded. I pulled on Tempest’s reins, for this was the same woman I had seen at the Starvecrow cottage. Her black and glossy hair still uncovered. Her face still grey and stony.

Gower rode up beside me and pointed to the boys. ‘That’s all Joan’s got left, sire. Out of six sons. And each one a bastard.’

‘Do you know her well?’ I asked. Gower looked away and bit his lip. ‘Oh no, sire. She’s nothing to me.’

And then I recalled why the name of Joan Bath had been familiar. She was the widow of a Somershill villein, but since her husband’s death had continued to produce a string of illegitimate children – despite the childwyte fines she received at the manorial court. It was now obvious to me why the men had been reluctant to identify her before. She was the village whore.

In the daylight Joan appeared only slightly less sinister than she had in the gloom of that cottage, and I found myself wondering how she made such a success of her trade, given that there was little to admire in her face other than its severity. Clearly the paying public of this part of the county were not too fussy. Or perhaps it was simply that Joan had the whole market to herself? But then I am a young man and no judge of true beauty, often drawn to girls with the faces of kittens. As Mother has frequently warned me, a pretty foal will make an ugly mare.

‘Here, dog!’ Joan called to the growling beast, which then slunk back towards the house with its tail between its legs, only reviving its spirits after she offered her hand to nuzzle. The dog settled down beside her, watching her face intently for her next instruction. And it was not the only creature expected to obey this woman, for she quickly shooed the two boys into the cottage and then shut the door on them.

We dismounted and tied our horses to the apple tree near the door.

‘What can I do for you?’ she asked as we approached. The five men who had accompanied me to this interview looked at their feet. ‘I only see gentlemen one at a time. You should know that, Gower.’

Gower snorted and turned to me. ‘I don’t never visit this woman, sire. She makes things up to tease us. To make trouble.’ He turned back to Joan. ‘It’s ’cause she knows that no man would take her as his wife. Dirty whore!’

At these words of insult Joan took a stone from a pile by the door and hurled it towards Gower. I had the feeling these small missiles were kept on a ledge for such occasions as these.

‘You pigs!’ she shouted. ‘There isn’t one wife in this parish who could give birth to as many sons as I have.’

Gower picked up the stone from the ground and went to return fire, but I held back his arm. ‘Put it down!’ I said, though he struggled against me. ‘Do as I command you!’ As Gower reluctantly let the stone fall, I turned to Joan. The woman had resumed her indolent lean against the doorpost and was looking straight at me. ‘I’m here to discuss the Starvecrows with you, Mistress Bath.’

‘What about them?’

Gower resumed hostilities. ‘Show respect to Lord Somershill.’

Joan smiled at his words and curtsied to me mockingly. ‘What about them?’ She hesitated a second, ‘sire.’

Her sarcasm provoked Gower to rush upon the woman and seize her roughly by the arm.

‘That’s enough, Gower,’ I said. ‘Let her go.’

The dog growled but Joan only laughed. ‘That’s his problem. He can’t let me go. Can you, Hugh Gower? Always up here, he is.’

‘That’s not true,’ said the man, his face now red and sweating. The dog was now tugging at the wool of his hose and would soon bite into the skin of his leg.

‘Most probably made this one for me,’ she said, patting a flat belly with her free arm.

‘You’re not with child!’

‘That’s what you say.’

Gower dropped her arm. ‘She’s lying, sire.’

She patted her belly again. ‘Hope he’s not as stupid as his father. Then again, I could do with a pig herder.’

The men behind us sniggered and Gower turned to confront them with a thunderous face. Now afraid that this rancour could quickly escalate into hostility, I insisted that Joan call off her dog and then speak with me in private. She was reluctant, but seeing as there were six men at her door, one of them her lord, she had little choice but to admit me to her cottage.

She left the dog outside, where the scabby creature maintained a steady growl by the door.

I had seldom spent as much time amongst the poor as in those few weeks, and in truth it had shocked me to see how they lived. While the churches and monasteries were filled with grand windows and tapestries, it seemed most people in England lived in hovels not much finer than the stall of an animal. And with only a lantern hole at one end of a low ceiling, these structures quickly filled with smoke and smelt as strong as a charcoal kiln.

Not that Joan’s home was dirty. In fact, compared to the Starvecrow cottage, the place was orderly and clean. But it is difficult to shine a floor of mud, or polish a wall of wattle. It is still a hovel.

Bending my head to miss the low door lintel I saw her two sons were now sitting at a bench and shelling the peas they had just been picking. The windowless chamber was as dark as any of the other cottages I had been in recently, with an area screened to one end of the room by a hanging blanket. This, I assumed, was where Mistress Bath entertained her customers. As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I noticed a wooden stool in one corner that was laid with a mixture of offerings, from the petals of a dog rose through to the skulls of small animals. A crucifix sat alongside a dusty corn maiden.

Joan saw my interest in the corn doll. ‘It’s just something my son made last harvest. It’s nothing but a toy.’