The Owl Killers (59 page)

He dragged the shift out of Phillip’s hands and thrust it at me. I hurried to drag it over my head, feeling their gaze groping my body as I struggled to cover myself.

“She’ll be bare-arsed long before the Devil comes for her.” Phillip leant over me, laughing, crushing me against the wall, his hand resting on the wall beside my head. I could smell the sweet wine on his breath. He twisted a curl of my hair round his fingers. “As soon as the flames touch you, this pretty little shift will shrivel away and every hair on your body along with it. You’ll be trussed up there on that bonfire as flesh-naked as a scalded pig. The whole village will see what you’re marked for before your flesh melts away to tallow.”

The young boy giggled nervously. “Maybe we’ll put a grease pan under her to catch the drips. Lay the rushes in it and we can burn her all winter.”

“All winter?” Phillip pulled away from me. “It’s precious little light you need then, boy. There’s not enough fat on her to dip a pennyweight of rushes.”

The floor was writhing under me. My face was burning, but I was freezing cold. A wave of bile rose in my throat. I crouched against the wall, vomiting onto the stinking straw, shivering uncontrollably.

“Are you cold, my sweet cousin? Never mind, you’ll be warm enough tomorrow.”

He cuffed the page boy around the head. “Get on with it, boy; there’s a flagon of wine waiting for me at the Bull Oak Inn.”

It was only then I saw that the boy was holding a pair of sheep shears.

I tried to scramble to my feet, but Phillip seized both my wrists, crushing them together. The boy leant over me and grabbed a handful of my hair. There was a grating rasp and he tossed the hank of cropped hair down on the filthy straw. He grabbed another handful and that too fell, then another and another, until all my hair lay among the vomit in the straw. I hadn’t realised I had so much hair until I saw it scattered in front of me. My scalp felt raw and cold, as if someone had tipped ice over my head. Phillip let me go and I crumpled down onto the straw. It was as if this was happening to someone else and I was hovering somewhere overhead, watching it. Perhaps I wasn’t there at all,
I am a ghost
, I told myself.
I am invisible
.

Father Ulfrid thrust the tall hat at me. “See there.” He shook me. “Look at it, girl.”

I tried to focus my eyes to read the name written on the hat in red letters—
Lílíth
.

“That’s your rightful name. For as your father said, you were born under her evil star. You cannot be allowed to die with a saint’s name upon you. You need a demon’s name to send you straight to hell.”

He stood the hat opposite me, the name turned towards me, like a judge. The door crashed open and shut again, the key grated in the lock. I was alone again.

I sat where I was dropped, as cold as a drowned man. My scalp prickled, but I didn’t want to touch it. Even if I did, I couldn’t have lifted my arms. My body didn’t obey me anymore. I stared at the long brown curls lying among the straw. Heretics, harlots, and nuns—all shorn. Why do men fear our hair so much? The dank stones dug into my back, but I felt no pain. I floated somewhere beyond it. I knew what they said they would do tomorrow, but it couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t. It was only a bad dream. I would wake up soon.

t
HE INFIRMARY WAS SILENT.
The shutters were closed against the cold and only a few tapers burned, barely penetrating the twilight. Most of the patients had gone, those who still had families to collect them. Maybe Merchant Martha was right. Maybe the villagers knew the Owl Masters were planning to attack the beguinage, so they’d rescued their own relatives while there was still time to get them out.

Beatrice was gone too. We knew something was wrong when we saw the door of the pigeon cote flung wide open and the birds wheeling round its roof. At first I feared she might have harmed herself in there, but she’d not done that. The cote was empty, save for the candles. She must have collected up every wax candle in the beguinage and set them all burning. It was a wonder they hadn’t set fire to the straw.

Pega and some of the others had looked for her, but she was not in the fields or barns. I knew we wouldn’t find her. Guilt over Osmanna doubtless weighed heavy on her mind and perhaps she thought the other beguines blamed her, so she had simply slipped away. I should pray for her. I had let her down as I had the others, but how could I pray for her when I couldn’t even pray for myself?

A soft hand stroked mine. From her pallet, Healing Martha lay watching me. I could see the embers of the fire reflected in that one open eye. “I am tired, Healing Martha, so very tired. Tomorrow they will burn Osmanna and all my thoughts should be with her and there is nothing I can do.”

Healing Martha’s hand squeezed mine gently as if encouraging me to continue.

“Merchant Martha thinks we should return to Bruges. All the women are packed and ready, waiting for me to give them the word, but I can’t give it. I have failed so many people—you, Osmanna, that poor child Gudrun. I cannot fail again. The decision I make, I must make for the whole beguinage, not just for the beguines here now, but for all the women who will join us in the years, even centuries to come. And for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. If the pagan hordes were massed against us, then our duty would be clear, but when it is the Holy Church herself that seeks to destroy us, on what do we stand?
Pater misericordiam
, why will God not answer me?”

“Gar.”

Not that noise again. Why was that sound the only one left to her, a mockery of a word, so utterly meaningless?

“What do you want, Healing Martha, a drink perhaps, is that it?”

“Sa … gar.”

“Yes, I heard you. Are you cold? Shall I stoke up the fire?”

What was I doing in the infirmary? My duty was to be in the chapel, praying, but my prayers vanished into a void. I didn’t even know if Healing Martha could hear me, but at least her one sound, senseless though it was, was better than cold silence.

“Sau … garde.”

I stared at her. “What? What did you say?”

“Sauve … garde.”

This time there was no mistaking it.
Sauvegarde
—the inscription written above the gateway to the Vineyard in Bruges.

“Is that what you’ve been trying to say all these weeks? No, Healing Martha, no! You cannot ask me to go back to Bruges. We might as well be nuns sheltering from the world, hiding behind thick walls. But we are not called to be
safe
. I thought you of all people understood that.”

She winced and I cursed my own tongue. Hadn’t I hurt her enough?

“Forgive me, Healing Martha. I’ve been selfish. You’re old and sick and it’s right that you should return to spend your last days in the Vineyard with people to care for you properly. I should have listened to you with more patience and realised you were asking to be sent home.”

There was a surprisingly sharp slap on my hand. I rubbed my skin more to acknowledge the rebuke than because it stung.

“Sauvegarde!”
She tapped the side of my head and then her own.

“I believe she’s asking you what
Sauvegarde
means, Servant Martha.” I jumped at the sound of Merchant Martha’s voice behind us.

“We all know what it means, Merchant Martha,” I snapped. “Refuge—the place of refuge.”

“Refuge for what, though?” Merchant Martha asked mildly. “I think she’s saying you have not understood it.” Merchant Martha sat down on the edge of the cot. “Tell me why you became a beguine.”

“To serve God,” I said impatiently.

“Then why not serve God as a nun or anchorite or wife? What did you find in a beguinage?”

“Freedom. Somewhere I could be—”

“That’s it, Servant Martha—in a beguinage, you had the freedom to be yourself, do what you thought was right, not what others told you to do. Thoughts. That’s what Healing Martha is trying to tell you. What we safeguard is not our bodies, but our freedom to
think
.

“I don’t hold with what Osmanna did, you know that. There was a time when if I’d had the care of her, I’d have taken a strap to her backside, as well you know. But that day in the Marthas’ Council you said, ’Osmanna desires to seek the truth for herself.’ You gave her the
freedom to do that. You and me, we may not have liked the truth she found, but she’d the right to try to find it. And if there is to be true refuge for thought, then we must be free to explore any path without hindrance. That’s what you taught me that day in council, Servant Martha. It’s taken me a while to accept it. You know me, I’m a stubborn old goat, but even old goats can change.”

Merchant Martha slipped off the cot, she touched my shoulder, just for a moment, before she walked away.

Healing Martha squeezed my hand again. For a moment, I thought I saw her smile, then a sudden spasm of pain twisted her face. Her hand dropped mine and clutched at her chest. She coughed, choking and wheezing, struggling to reach for the cup of herbed wine beside her. I held it to her lips. She drank and slumped back, shaking with the effort. A few drops of the red wine had spilled into her open hand. She gazed at them wonderingly, then slowly closed her fist, letting the drops run through her fingers and fall onto my open palm. By the glow of the fire’s embers, I watched her eyes close. Her good hand fell limp in mine. The flame on the rush candle guttered and died, leaving only the scent of smoke.

i
F THE TWO OF YOU DON
’
T
stop squabbling, I’ll tell your father and then neither of you’ll be going to the burning tomorrow. There’s me trying to help your poor dear father out of the goodness of my heart and all you two can do is mither me until my head’s fit to burst. And
you
can get out of here now.” Lettice flung a ladle of water at the dog trying to slip in through the door behind her. It growled, but slunk off.

“Now see what you’ve done,” William hissed in my ear. “It’s all your fault, you little pig’s turd.”

“I can’t be doing with you two under my feet all day,” Lettice grumbled. “Make yourselves useful: Fetch some water—and not from the
well that’s still cursed and will be until that wicked girl is ashes. You go down to the river, draw the water from there, and mind you find a nice clear patch, don’t be bringing me back a pail of mud. Now off with you, before I tell your father to take a switch to the pair of you.”

She hung a pair of leather pails strung together with a rope over William’s shoulder and shooed us out of our cottage.

William shoved me aside and hurried ahead of me down the path, trying to leave me behind. I had to run to catch up with him. It really annoyed him if I walked with him, that’s why I did it, even though I’d sooner walk by myself. It was hard keeping up with him. Although I was better, my legs still felt wobbly.

I didn’t remember much about being sick. It was all a jumble—the flood, being ill, the Owlman. Sometimes I didn’t know what had really happened and what was just a bad dream.

I don’t know how long I’d been in the house of women, but I woke up in a room that was bigger than two cottages together and had lots and lots of beds in it with people moaning. I was scared. I’d eaten the food the grey women had given me and it was witched and now I was going to waste away and die. I’d felt the birds pecking me, like Lettice said. I was so afeared I yelled and wouldn’t stop yelling, but Lettice came to rescue me, not a moment too soon, she said.

I thought Mam would be waiting for me at the cottage. But she wasn’t there. Father said she wasn’t ever coming back. I didn’t believe him and I kept crying for her till Father smacked me. I still cry, but only at night and I stuff my blanket in my mouth so he can’t hear me.

“Stop trying to walk next to me,” William said, deliberately nudging me into the bushes. “You think I want everyone to see me walking with a girl? And you needn’t think you’re coming with me tomorrow, ’cause you’re not. I don’t know what you want to come for anyway. You’ll be pissing yourself and crying for Ma … Anyway, you’ll be bawling before the flames even touch her.”

“I won’t so!”

“You will too. You don’t even know what happens, do you?”

“Neither do you,” I said. My legs were shaking, but I wasn’t going to drop behind.

“I do ’cause Henry told me.” William looked all smug. “He’s seen loads of burnings in Norwich. Shall I tell you?”

I knew it was going to be horrible and I didn’t want him to tell me, but if I said no, he’d make me listen. I shrugged, trying to look as if I really didn’t care.

“First all her clothes burn off and you can see her bubbies and everything. And her skin starts to blister and pop, then it melts and starts running down her legs. The stench is powerful. Just one whiff of it and you’ll be sick as a dog, and she’ll scream and scream and scream and you’ll never be able to get the scream out of your head.”

I pressed my fist against my mouth and shuddered. I already felt sick.

William grinned down at me. “See, I told you, Pisspuddle—you’re scared.”

I ran a few steps ahead of him, so he couldn’t see my face. “Doesn’t bother me. I’m going to go to the Green afore it gets light, so I can get right in the front.”

“Oh yeah.” He grabbed me by my braids. I wriggled and tried to kick him, but his arms were too long and I couldn’t reach him. I bit him hard on the arm, hard as I could. He squawked like a strangled goose and let go.

“Just wait till I catch you, you little turd!”

I ran down the path as fast as I could, round the tanner’s yard and up towards the Green. William was pounding after me, but the pails slowed him down. My legs had cramps and I’d got a stitch in my side.

I tore round the corner so fast I didn’t even see the Owl Master standing in the shadows until he grabbed me. He clamped his leather-gloved hand across my mouth, and before I knew what was happening, he’d pulled a stinking sack over my head and arms. He tipped me over his shoulder. He was walking fast. My chest was banging hard against him and it hurt. I struggled and kicked, but I couldn’t get free. I heard a heavy door creak open, then he stopped. And he dumped me down on the rushes. I curled up tightly in a ball, too scared to move.