Plague Land Read online

  Plague Land

  S D Sykes

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © S D Sykes 2014

  Map by Rodney Paull

  The right of S D Sykes to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, or are historical figures

  whose words and actions are fictitious. Any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 78576 0

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Paul

  Contents

  Somershill and its environs, West Kent circa 1350

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  History Lives

  Crime Lines

  The bubonic plague reached London in the autumn of 1348. Carried in the digestive tract of rat fleas, the Great Mortality went on to kill half the population of England in the following two years.

  A Disputation betwixt the body and worms

  Take heed unto my figure above

  And see how sometime I was fresh and gay,

  Now turned to worm’s meat and corruption

  Both foul earth and stinking slime and clay

  Medieval poem

  Anonymous

  Prologue

  Somershill Manor, November 1350

  If I preserve but one memory at my own death, it shall be the burning of the dog-headed beast.

  The fire blazed in the field beside the church – its white smoke rising skyward in a twisted billow. Its odour acrid and choking.

  ‘Let me through,’ I shouted to their backs.

  At first they didn’t respond, only turning to look at me when I grabbed at their tunics. Perhaps they had forgotten who I was? A young girl asked me to lift her so she might see the sinner die. A ragged boy tried to sell me a faggot of fat for half a penny.

  And then a wail cut through the air. It was thin and piteous and came from within the pyre itself – but pushing my way through to the flames, I found no curling and blackened body tied to a stake. No sooty chains or iron hoops. Only the carcass of a bull, with the fire now licking at the brown and white hair of its coat.

  The beast had not been skinned and its mouth was jammed open with a thick metal skewer. I recognised the animal immediately. It was my best Simmental bull, Goliath. But why were they burning such a valuable beast? I couldn’t understand. Goliath had sired most of our dairy herd. We could not afford such waste. And then a strange thing caught my eye. Beneath the creature’s distended belly something seemed to move about like a rat inside a sack of barley. I tried to look closer, but the heat repelled me.

  Then the plaintive call came again. A groan, followed by the high-pitched scream of a vixen. I grasped the man standing next to me. It was my reeve, Featherby. ‘How can the beast be calling?’ I said. ‘Is it still alive?’

  He regarded me curiously. ‘No, sire. I slaughtered him myself.’

  ‘Then what’s making such a noise?’

  ‘The dog-headed beast. It calls through the neck of the bull.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve sewn it inside, sire.’

  I felt nauseated. ‘Whilst still living?’

  He nodded. ‘We hoped to hear it beg for forgiveness as it burns. But it only screams and screeches like a devil.’

  I grabbed the fool. ‘Put the fire out. Now!’

  ‘But sire? The sacrifice of our best bull will cleanse the demon of sin.’

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘The priest.’

  These words might once have paralysed me, but no longer. ‘Fetch water,’ I shouted to those about me. Nobody moved. Instead they stared at the blaze – transfixed by this spectacle of burning flesh. The ragged boy launched his faggot of fat into the fire, boasting that he was helping to cook the sinner’s heart.

  I shook him by the coarse wool of his tunic. ‘Water!’ I said. ‘I command it!’ The boy backed away from me and disappeared into the crowd, only to return sheepishly with a bucket of dirty water. And then, after watching me stamp upon the flames, some others began to bring water from the dew pond. At first it was only one or two of them, but soon their numbers grew and suddenly the group became as frenzied about extinguishing the fire as they had been about fanning it.

  When the heat had died down to a steam, we dragged the sweating hulk of the bull over the embers of the fire to let it cool upon the muddy grass. As we threw yet more water over its rump, their faces drew in about me, both sickened and thrilled as I cut through the stitches in the beast’s belly to release its doomed stuffing. It was a trussed and writhing thing that rolled out in front of us – bound as tightly as a smoked sausage.

  As I loosened the ropes, the blackened form shuddered and coughed, before gasping for one last mouthful of air. Then, as Death claimed his prize, I held the wilting body in my arms and looked about me at these persecutors. I wanted them to see what they had done. But they could only recoil and avert their eyes in shame.

  And what shame. For the face of their sacrifice is stitched into my memory like a tapestry. A tapestry that cannot be unpicked.

  But this is not the beginning of my story.

  It began before. After the blackest of all mortalities. The Great Plague.

  Chapter One

  It was a hot summer’s morning in June of this year when I first saw them – advancing towards Somershill like a band of ragged players. I would tell you they were a mob, except their numbers were so depleted that a gaggle would be a better description. And I would tell you I knew their purpose in coming here, but I had taken to hiding in the manor house and keeping my nose in a book. At their head was John of Cornwall, a humourless clenched-fist of a man, whose recent appointment to parish priest rested purely upon his still being alive.

  My mother bustled over to me. She had spied the group from our upstairs window, despite her claims to be practically blind. ‘Go and see what they want, Oswald,’ she said, digging her pincer claw into my arm.

  I had been trying to decipher last year’s farm
ledgers, but the reeve’s handwriting was poor and he had spilled ale upon the parchment.

  Mother poked at me again. ‘Go on. It’s your duty now.’

  ‘Yes, little brother,’ said my sister Clemence, from the corner where she skulked with her sourly stitched embroidery. ‘Though I’m surprised you allow such people to approach by the main gate.’

  ‘I’ll send Gilbert to deal with them,’ I said, determining not to look up from my work.

  ‘You can’t. He’s attending to the barrels from the garderobe.’ I had my back to Clemence, but I sensed she was pulling a face. ‘You sent him there yourself, Oswald.’

  ‘Then I’ll send somebody else.’ I looked to Clemence’s servant Humbert, a boy the size of a door who was holding both of his enormous hands in the air so that Clemence might wind her yarn about his fingers. His boyish eyes never leaving his mistress’s face.

  She laughed. ‘You can’t have Humbert either. He’s too busy.’

  Abandoning the ledgers, I descended to the great hall where one of the visiting party was now knocking at the main door with intensifying boldness. Lifting the heavy latch I found the culprit to be John of Cornwall, though he quickly dropped his wooden staff on seeing my face and not that of a servant’s on the other side of the threshold. I might have reminded him that such a wooden staff should have been deposited at the gatehouse, like any other potential weapon, but seeing as our gatekeeper was now employed as our valet, I did not challenge him.

  ‘A girl has been savaged in the forest,’ John of Cornwall told me, without so much as a formal greeting.

  I hardly knew what to say to this announcement and must have let my mouth hang open a little too long.

  A man with the skin of a cankered apple then bowed. ‘The girl’s dead, my lord. Gored by a wild animal.’ When I continued to remain silent, the man looked about uneasily at his companions.

  I found my tongue quickly, as they clearly thought me foolish. ‘Was it a wolf attack?’ I asked.

  The man shook his head. ‘No wolves left in Kent, sire.’

  ‘But perhaps they’ve returned? Nobody has hunted the creatures since the outbreak of the Plague. As far as I know.’

  John of Cornwall pushed the man aside. ‘My lord. It is another creature responsible for taking the girl’s wretched life.’ His entourage groaned before falling silent and looking to me again for a response.

  ‘What sort of creature?’

  Cornwall dropped his voice to a staged whisper. ‘The Cynocephalus.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The dog-headed beast, my lord.’

  So this was his notion. I nearly laughed out loud, even though it was hardly a fitting reaction given the news of the girl’s death. ‘That sounds unlikely,’ I said.

  Cornwall’s lips pursed and his eyebrows rallied to a frown. ‘There’s no question. It’s the work of the Devil.’

  How tempting to tell him that I found the Devil to be as improbable as God, but I had the sense to suppress the urge. Instead I asked the girl’s name and was told she was called Alison Starvecrow. It was not a name I recognised.

  ‘Where’s her body now?’ I asked.

  ‘We left her in the forest,’ said a boy with boots too big for his feet.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We thought you’d want to see her, sire.’

  I shook my head. ‘Me? No. You should inform the constable. Surely?’

  ‘But the Constable’s dead, sire.’ The men looked at each other again, only just disguising their scorn.

  ‘What about the Coroner?’ I then immediately held up my hand. ‘Yes. He’s dead too. I knew that.’

  Cornwall cleared his throat and fanned his robe. ‘I have assumed the role of Chief Tithing-Man, my lord.’

  ‘But you’re a priest.’

  He puffed out his chest. ‘Indeed. But we must each suffer new burdens since the ravages of the Plague.’ The man had tried to disguise his Cornish accent by adopting French pronunciation, but the colour of his true voice seeped through his speech like dye in a washtub. I found myself listening to the cadence of his words, rather than to the meaning of them. Sensing my mind was wandering, he coughed. ‘In the absence of a constable,’ he told me, ‘we believe that you, as Lord of the Somershill estate, should take responsibility for the investigation.’

  I hesitated. Was this the case? Was this really my responsibility? But if not me, then who else would take on this unwelcome duty? ‘Yes. I . . . suppose that’s—’

  But suddenly there was a hot and breathy voice at my ear. ‘Did I hear somebody say the Devil has murdered a girl?’ It was my mother, peeking around my shoulder like a curious child at the door.

  ‘It was not Satan himself, my lady,’ replied Cornwall, pleased to find an attentive audience at last. ‘It was his emissary. The Cynocephalus.’

  My mother gasped. ‘The dog heads? Here?’

  Cornwall nodded gravely. ‘They’ve been here for two years,’ he said. ‘Did you not know, my lady? They carried the Great Mortality to us from the Orient.’

  The mention of the Plague was enough to provoke an even more fervent reaction from Mother. She clasped her hands to her cheekbones, fell against the doorpost and made a great show of fainting at Cornwall’s feet.

  With Mother providing the finale to this performance, the others in Cornwall’s company were prompted to act out their own parts. The canker-faced man crossed himself feverishly. A tenant I recognised as our pig-herd, Hugh Gower, fell to his knees and prayed with an ardour I had never witnessed him display in church. And a youth with buck teeth muttered garbled words in concocted Latin, whilst pressing a piece of blackened wood to his lips. No doubt it was a fragment of the True Cross.

  I had seen enough. When Gilbert returned from emptying the barrels into the moat, I sent for my boots and demanded to be taken to the girl’s body.

  Our shadows fell westward as we crossed the common pastures towards the forest. The dew was steaming and a host of finches chattered in the hedges. My home, Somershill Manor, rose behind us like a long knoll – the curtain wall of the old fortress now missing from the front of the house, revealing the great hall my grandfather had built. I looked back to see its large windows glinting in the morning sun, wearing their extravagant glass like a set of jewels.

  Cornwall made it plain that he would lead the party to the girl’s body, although it soon became obvious he didn’t know the way. I couldn’t entirely blame him, I suppose. The estate had been neglected for nearly two years – already the paths were overgrown with brambles, and the fields were full of foxgloves and ragwort. We came across sad, forsaken places, where only months ago we had driven off the wild dogs and ravens as they scavenged the bodies of the dead. I watched my step through the long grass, for fear of treading upon something that the dogs had missed.

  When we reached the forest I tried to push to the front, since my father would have led our group, but Cornwall deliberately outpaced me at every attempt, or blocked my progress with the swing of his cloak. The forest was dense and dark, and resisted our attempts to penetrate, even though we walked along identifiable paths and trails. Beard lichen hung from low branches like cobwebs and tried to cling to my face or stick to my hair as I passed. Brambles scratched at my arms and hooked their barbs into the wool of my hose. Strange shapes seemed to dart in and out of the trees, but only ever at the periphery of my vision, so that when I turned to catch them, they had disappeared.

  It was dark and lonely in this place – once the domain of hunting parties with their dogs and hawks – and suddenly I felt the urge to run home and find refuge in the open fields and sunlight of my meadows. But that was hardly how a lord should behave. Even one as young and inexperienced as I. So I continued to follow Cornwall around and around the same glade of willows until he finally accused me of being unreasonable in expecting him to lead the way. After all, he argued, he hadn’t been the one to discover the girl’s body.

  I should have rebuked him for such perversity, b
ut instead I put Gower in charge and said nothing more. At least we now made some progress, walking new paths until we reached a ridge of yew trees where, at last, I recognised our location – on the main drover’s road to Burrsfield.

  Not long after, we stopped by a standard oak that was said to be near the dead girl’s body. I took some ale from my leather bottle, as much to improve my mood as to quench my thirst, and then Gower led us to a thicket of nettles in a small hollow where the girl still lay, face down in a carpet of leaf mould. It was a dark and dismal place, even by the standards of this forest. The watery sun failed to reach its banks, where pale cow parsley looked ready to set seed.

  I bent down to look a little closer at the girl’s body, lifting back her coarse woollen hood while the others in the party backed away behind some holly. They pulled faces and shielded their eyes, evidently repulsed by the sight of death, even though they had spent the last two years engulfed by its stink. Personally I was more disgusted by the pieces of food I had seen in Cornwall’s beard that same morning. But then I was accustomed to dead bodies. As a novice in the infirmary I had regularly dressed them for the grave.

  Even so, the dead of the abbey hospital had never come to their end through this door. They had been killed instead by old age, bad luck, or contagion. Not by another living person.

  I put aside my gloom to examine the girl with clear eyes, and immediately noted the clean wound to her neck. There was no blood beneath her body, nor anywhere else in the hollow. Nor was there the acute stench you might expect to attend a corpse, which suggested the body had been buried almost immediately after death. Her limbs were flaccid, cold, and tinged with blue, which led me to believe that she had been dead for at least three days.