The Owl Killers (14 page)

For once I had to agree with her. I’d refrained from telling the other Marthas that Lord Robert said I could feed Agatha to the ravens for all he cared. From his attitude to me that day, it was plain he would gladly have seen us too dangling from a gibbet for the birds to peck. Even I could now see that any hope of making peace with the Manor was stillborn. How could we possibly work with a man like that? All we could do was pray that the hostilities between us would not escalate to war.

Healing Martha beamed happily at the other Marthas. “Since we are all agreed that a new room is needed this year, it’s a sign that the Lord has moved us to this decision, so we must trust to Him to help Merchant Martha as she sells for us.”

But Merchant Maratha was determined to have the last word. “I’ll not let any man get the best of me in a bargain, you know that. But take heed all of you, unlike our blessed Lord, I can’t feed five thousand souls from a few loaves and fishes, so you’d best stop handing out alms to every wastrel that comes begging, Servant Martha. And as for you, Kitchen Martha, remember those stores of yours have got to last till next harvest, if we’ve to save the coins we got for the cloth at the May Fair at Swaffham.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Healing Martha wagged a reproving finger at me, her tired eyes twinkling. “You heard her, Servant Martha. I need that infirmary.” Healing Martha winked at me, knowing full well that yet again she had gently managed to win the Marthas over to her cause.

The meeting broke up, but before I could hasten to the chapel, Gate Martha barred my way and led me over to the fire. Something was plainly troubling her and for once the elderly woman’s fingers were not busy with her spindle. As soon as the other Marthas had left the room, she began.

“It’s D’Acaster’s girl. Is there nowhere else she can go? There must be other places that would take her in.”

I gaped at her. “Agatha? Why should she go anywhere else? She has been given into
my
care. What would you have me do with her? Banish her to a nunnery?”

“Girl was born under the Demon star, and the whole village knows
it. Most evil star in the sky that is. Any lass born under that star belongs to the she-devil Lilith.” Gate Martha stared hard into the dying flames of the hearth fire. “There’s those in the beguinage think her coming is an ill omen. She brings a curse with her. Some of us would rest much easier in our beds if that girl was sent to a nunnery far away from this valley, where she’d not able to do harm.”

“And what harm could a young girl possibly do, Gate Martha? She is a Christian child, and she belongs to God, and God alone. No demon can touch her. And tonight we’ll seal her to God with a new name.” I patted her shoulder. “Come now, Gate Martha. You know as well as I do, that when any woman becomes a beguine she is freed from all of her past life and that includes her birth.”

“There’s some things that are not so easily shaken off.” Gate Martha picked up a stick and absently traced a pattern in the soft wood ash of the fire. I peered closer trying to make out the shape. It was a circle quartered by a cross. The old woman realised I was staring at it and hastily obliterated the symbol.

“Think on it,” she murmured. “Today is Avoiding Day, the day when Satan and his demons were cast down on the earth to make mischief. It’s a warning for those who have eyes to read the sign. Mark my words, making Agatha a beguine today of all days is begging for disaster. Just pray we don’t all live to rue the day we gave that girl a beguine name.”

e
VEN BEHIND THE CLOSED GATES
of the beguinage I was scared. Though I was exhausted, I couldn’t sleep that first night. I was too afraid of what I would meet in my dreams. I’d lain awake, rigid, listening to every shriek and bark in the valley. I couldn’t get the horror out of my head—the flames, the screams, the terror as I tried to fight the monster on top of me, the weight of it pressing me down.

All the next day I was scared even to cross the open courtyard, because I knew that creature was crouching out there in the dark shadows of the forest, waiting for me to step outside. Though the foreign beguines were friendly enough, the beguines from the village stared after me coldly wherever I went, as if I was some kind of spy. To them, I was Robert D’Acaster’s daughter. I felt as if any moment they were going to bundle me out through the gate and offer me like wolf bait to that monster.

But that evening in the chapel I finally felt safe for the first time since that night in the forest, maybe for the first time ever in my life. Safe because I was in limbo. My old name hovered outside the chapel door. It couldn’t follow me in, for the beguines had forbidden it. I was nameless, without a shadow, without a reflection. Without a name, that demon couldn’t find me. I didn’t inhabit the world of the living or the dead. I couldn’t be called up to Heaven or down to Hell without a name. If I died now, I’d wander formless over the face of the earth. No one would see me. No one would know me. I wanted that: I wanted to stay like that forever. I wanted to be invisible.

The beguinage chapel was beautiful, small and simple, so different from our parish church of St. Michael’s. The altar of white stone, carved with pomegranates and bees, had a Mass stone, a dark green slab, set into the top of it. The green stone was shot through with flecks of madder as if drops of blood had fallen upon a glossy lily pad.

The paintings on the chapel walls were almost completed. The Blessed Virgin Mary in Glory shone down from above the altar, her crown gold-leafed and golden stars circling her raised hand. The other walls were decorated with scenes from the life of a woman who had evidently become a beguine, for she was depicted in the grey kirtle and cloak.

The service was also like no other that I had ever attended. There was no chaplain or priest. Servant Martha stood before the altar, her hands folded. In the candlelight her face no longer looked stern. Her voice was joyous; her words leapt upwards as if they would spring through the chapel roof. Father Ulfrid always hurried through the service, like a bored schoolboy chanting his Latin declensions, eager to get them over and go out to play. But these prayers were swallows
soaring and swooping on the evening air. The words were familiar, but I had not thought they could be spoken like this. A shiver ran down my spine. It felt forbidden, wonderfully forbidden.

Three of the beguines rose and, settling themselves on low stools, took up their instruments. One began the rhythm, beating with a deer horn upon a drum; another much older woman plucked a citole, while a third, waiting until the tune had established itself, ran in and out of it on the pipes like a child between court dancers. The other women joined in, singing a hymn of praise, no solemn and mournful chant, but a song that bubbled and cascaded as a stream over stones. The music fell away as softly as it began. A single sob hung in the dancing candlelight, then it too was gone.

Servant Martha beckoned and suddenly the feeling of safety evaporated and I felt the panic rising. I could feel all eyes on me and I wanted to run out the door, but outside I’d be entirely alone. I shuffled towards her, staring at the floor. My legs still felt shaky. My ribs were still too painful to touch. Why did she have to do this in front of everyone? I watched, as if from a long way off, as Servant Martha sprinkled me with water from a bunch of hyssop. But I didn’t feel the drops fall. Then she pronounced my new name: “Osmanna.”

“Welcome, Osmanna” echoed back from the belly of the chapel.

I half turned, wondering who they addressed. It wasn’t my name. It was borrowed and hung upon me like the beguine’s cloak.

I knew all about Osmanna. She was a princess who fled her parents to live in the forest. A bishop consecrated her as a virgin of Christ, then left her to be raped by the gardener appointed to protect and provide for her. How could they have chosen that name for me? Of all the saints’ names, why did they have to choose that one? Did they not realise what had been done to me?

Servant Martha bent down and pinned a small tin emblem to my kirtle. “The boar—it is the symbol of the blessed Saint. When Saint Osmanna was living as a hermit in the forest she gave shelter to a hunted boar. She protected the beast with her own body and it did not attack her. When the Bishop who was hunting the boar saw how Osmanna miraculously tamed the savage beast, he converted her to Christianity and baptised her. May the symbol of your namesake protect and defend you, Osmanna.”

I wanted to tear the emblem off and grind it into the dust. What use was it now? It was too late. If I’d had Osmanna’s power to strike the gardener blind, I would not have prayed for his healing. I would have laughed as he crawled on his hands and knees through thorns and thickets. I would have snatched the food from his hands and dashed the water from his lips. I would have whispered him into swamps and sung him into icy rivers. I would have taunted him through burning deserts and left him silent in the frozen dark lands. I would have made him know what he had done to me. I was not Osmanna.

i
F YOU DON
’
T GET UP
this instant, you’ll get no breakfast,” Mam yelled.

I pushed off the blanket and shivered. It wasn’t even light yet, but Mam had flung the shutters and door wide to save lighting a rush candle. William shuffled over to the bench, still yawning and rubbing sleep from his eyes. We both knew she meant it about the breakfast.

The bread was dry, flat, and hard. It broke into crumbs as soon as Mam tried to cut it. She stared at it as if she was trying to decide what to do with it. In the end she scraped the crumbs onto a wooden trencher and set it between us. It wasn’t real bread. Mam had pounded up some shrivelled old beans and peas and mixed them with some ground-up bulrush roots, but there were hardly any of those. She turned to the fire to ladle the broth from the big iron pot that swung above it. The broth was thin, mostly sorrel leaves, and it stank.

When she wasn’t looking, William pulled a face.

“There’s no use you turning up your nose like that, my lad.” Mam could see everything, even when you thought she wasn’t looking. “You’ll learn to like it or go hungry, because it’s all you’ll be getting until the harvest comes in.”

“I bet Father isn’t eating this,” William muttered, sniffing the broth in disgust.

“Aye, well, he will be when he gets home, just like the rest of us.” Mam wrapped her hand in her skirt and swung the pot from the fire. “What he earns away at the salterns won’t be enough to buy grain this side of Lammas, not with the prices they’re charging for it at the minute.”

Mam’s mouth was pinched tight. I knew it wasn’t Father she was mad at, but the Owl Masters. They’d taken a whole cake of salt in payment for sweeping the burning branch from the midsummer fire round our cottage to drive out the hungry ghosts. Mam said the salt
was worth twice as much as the dried fish and grain they’d taken from others in the road. And the ghosts were still gobbling up our food.

Mam tipped some of the crumbled bread into her own bowl and pressed it down in the broth to soften it. She pointed her spoon at us. “And don’t either of you go taking any bread off Lettice. She’s a kind old biddy, give you the last bite from her pot if you asked her, but she makes moon bread from poppy and hemp seeds, sometimes darnel too when she’s nothing else. And I don’t want you eating it, hear?”

“Bet it tastes better than this,” William whispered to me behind his hand.

“So it might.” Mam’s hearing was as sharp as a cat’s. “But it’ll drive you mad. There’s grown men who’ve run out into the marsh thinking it solid ground after they’d eaten it. My own mam’s cousin threw herself off the church tower saying she could fly. Though she went a touch fey anyway after her man was drowned at sea, it was the moon bread that turned her, so you take heed.”

She scraped the last of the broth and bread crumbs into her mouth and set down her bowl. “Right, my lass, William and I are off to the haymaking. Bailiff wants to start at first light while this dry weather holds. Make sure you fetch the water and wood for supper, and put a new rush candle out ready and trimmed for dark, because we’ll not be back till light’s gone. Then you get yourself out and get to work, do you hear me?”

I didn’t want to go purefinding. It wasn’t fair. William didn’t have to. A day spent in the warm hay meadow was a lot nicer than picking up pieces of dog shit all day in the hot sun.

“Why can’t I come haymaking with you?” I wailed.

“You know as well as I do that the bailiff won’t pay you because you’re not tall enough to toss hay into the wain. You’d be working for nothing.” Mam was winding a long band of cloth around her hair to keep it from the dust. “At least working the road you’ll earn something, and make sure you only take your pail to the tanner when it’s completely full, otherwise he’ll find an excuse not to pay you.”

“But, Mam …”

“You heard! Are you finished, William? Then out the door with you.”

The cottage was silent. As if she knew Mam had gone, a small brown hen came wandering in through the open door and fluttered up onto the table. Bryde, she was my favourite. She had a white flash in her wing where a cat had once clawed out her feathers. When the feathers grew back, they grew back white just like a scar.

Mam said I shouldn’t give the hens names because if I did, I’d cry when their necks were wrung. But I wouldn’t ever let them wring Bryde’s neck. She was special. I brushed some crumbs of pea bread from the wooden trencher into my hand. Bryde stared at my hand sideways, her bright black eye blinked, and then she took a peck at the crumbs. She made a kind of gurgling in her throat, like she always did when she was happy.

I held my hand very still for Bryde in the long thin stream of light that was just starting to creep in through the window. My fingers were ugly. I now knew they were. I’d never thought about them much before the tumblers came. The tumbler’s girl had long beautiful fingers that curled around the pole and, when she lifted her arms to balance, her fingers spread out wide in the air, like flowers opening. And her hands were both exactly the same. Mine were different.