Plague Land Read online

  ‘The Starvecrow cottage?’

  Her smile dropped. ‘You were better off farmed out to a village wife. That was the truth of it.’

  ‘Eleanor!’

  ‘Follow the path by the standard oak. It’s through the coppice and down in the valley.’

  I found the Starvecrow cottage at the bottom of two banks, next to a stream that plunged its way belligerently through the undergrowth. The smell of the place was sickening. I don’t just mean the usual scent of farmyard that attends the poor. There was an additional layer of dankness here – the odour of damp cellar or a woollen vest left too long in the washtub. Mother would never have sent me to such a place as an infant, so I dismissed Eleanor’s story as a wandering of her mind.

  At the bottom of the bank I climbed over an apple tree that had fallen into the stream and was now re-routing the water through a hog hole. As my boots sank into the mud, a young girl appeared at the door of the cottage.

  ‘Are you the boy with no eyes?’ she asked me. Her face was lucent and impassive, like the effigy of a saint.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can see perfectly.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’ve lost one eye. Now it’s a pebble at the bottom of the sea.’

  I scratched my head. ‘Is this some sort of riddle?’

  ‘I still have my own eye,’ she told me. ‘But there is another. A half-eye that looks at the sky.’

  It seems I had progressed from conversing with a wandering mind to a lost one. ‘Are you Matilda Starvecrow?’ I asked. She didn’t answer, preferring to gaze at the swallows that swooped about us in search of flies. ‘I said, are you Matilda Starvecrow!’ Something cold and slimy was seeping into my boots, and squelching between my toes.

  ‘Yes. I’m Matilda,’ she answered at last.

  ‘I need to speak to you.’ I pulled my feet from the mud. ‘We should go inside. The horseflies are biting me.’

  The cottage was no more than a single chamber without windows. As Matilda opened the door I could see a crude wooden bed, a cooking pot, a fire pit, and an axe. The floor was laid with rushes that looked clean enough, but the room was smoky and confining. A small fire smouldered in spite of the warmth of the day.

  I should have felt pity for the girl, having to live in such an ill-favoured place, but there was something sly in her manner. She had not curtsied to me yet. Moreover she had allowed the decrepit door to swing back in my face when I entered the house, and had not apologised. I rubbed my nose and left the door open to let some air blow into the place – but only succeeded in allowing the stench from outside to invade the chamber.

  ‘My name is Oswald de Lacy,’ I told her.

  ‘I know who you are.’

  Her pale blue eyes stood out in the gloom, and suddenly I recognised something about her – just as I had when looking upon the face of her dead sister. Fine hair framed a thin, dainty face. It was an unpleasant recollection, so I looked away, but found it no more comfortable to be glancing about the room, where elongated shadows formed eerie shapes in the rutted daub of the walls. The door opened and closed in a sudden gust, which ignited the embers into a few short-lived flames.

  ‘I’m sorry about your sister Alison,’ I told her. ‘But I will find her murderer.’

  She smiled somewhat scornfully at these words and then started to hum, meaning I had to cough to get her attention. ‘I need to ask you some questions, Matilda.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would assist me in solving the crime.’

  Now she laughed at me.

  ‘Don’t you want to help?’ She only cocked her head and stared at something beyond my shoulder. I persevered nonetheless. ‘I understand your sister recently came to the manor house to see me. Do you know what she wanted?’

  Matilda sat down on the floor. ‘Why ask me? When you know the answer?’

  ‘Because I don’t.’

  She played with the rushes between her fingers. ‘Are you sure? I never saw my sister again. Not after she visited you.’

  ‘But I didn’t see Alison. I was away at market.’

  Now she pushed aside the rushes and drew the outline of an eye in the dust of the floor. ‘Half an eye. Looks at the sky,’ she sang as she began to sway to and fro.

  ‘Please stop doing that,’ I said.

  ‘Half an eye. Looks at the sky,’ she continued, now louder – blowing herself into a frenzy. I tried to lay a hand gently on her shoulder to see if this might pacify her, but the rocking had increased with such violence that it was impossible to get near her. I gave up on this interview and turned to leave when, in a moment, the storm seemed to blow itself out.

  Now she had calmed herself to a shallow gust, I tried again. ‘I need to know why your sister came to see me, Matilda. Do you think you can remember?’ She swayed and whispered and didn’t respond to my question. Her eyes were distant and glassy, and a faint smile curled upon her lips.

  Once again I was struck by the familiarity of this face. Had I seen the girl about the village? Did she sometimes work at the house? I endeavoured to make the connection, but my memory would not oblige.

  Instead I took her hand and whispered softly. ‘Was there something Alison wanted to tell me? Please try to remember, Matilda. It would be very helpful to know.’

  ‘Oswald. Oswald. Half an eye. Oswald, Oswald, looks at the sky.’

  It was futile. When she resumed her rocking I turned to leave, but now she lunged forward and snatched the tail of my cloak.

  ‘Your father liked to visit my mother,’ she said, her eyes suddenly focussing.

  ‘What nonsense is this?’ I tried to pull my cloak away from her, but she wouldn’t loosen her grip. I pulled again, but she was resolute.

  ‘Father, father. Eye of a lover,’ she sang.

  ‘What do you mean about my father? Stop it!’

  ‘Liked to visit over and over.’

  Each time I succeeded in dragging one corner of my cloak from her, she caught hold of another part – her hands clinging to me like the tentacles of a sea monster. When I had finally removed her from my clothing, she then attached herself to my feet.

  ‘Let go,’ I said.

  ‘Father, father. Eye of a lover.’

  ‘Get off me.’

  ‘Liked to visit over and over.’

  ‘Get away from me or I’ll strike you!’ I didn’t mean it. I don’t even know how such a threat crossed my lips, except that this pale-faced girl had terrified me.

  It must, however, have appeared rather differently to the woman who came forward from the shadows. A woman with a still and stony expression. I had neither seen her enter the room, nor could be sure her grey face was not that of a ghost’s. This place was so strange and ill-omened that anything was possible.

  She did not seem shocked by my harsh words to Matilda, or indeed by my raised hand. Now that I looked at her again, I would almost say that guarded amusement was the most accurate term to describe the expression carved across her hard features.

  I should have asked her name, but instead attempted to defend my actions. ‘I wasn’t going to strike the girl,’ I said nervously. ‘But she wouldn’t release me.’ The woman only continued to stare. ‘She made insulting allegations against my father,’ I added. But the silence endured until I lost my nerve completely and rushed away from the cottage, running up the bank only to slip over, face-first into a bush of stinging nettles. Rubbing at the painful rash that soon appeared on my cheek, I turned to see whether the silent woman had witnessed my indignity.

  Thankfully there was no sign of her at the door, but then I noticed the slightest flicker of movement back into the shadows, and realised she had seen the whole pathetic episode.

  I should have returned to the church to assemble the men for the hue and cry, but instead I rode straight home to search out Brother Peter.

  I found Peter in the great hall with Clemence and Mother, seated at the long table beside a pile of rabbit bones. The air in the room smelt meaty and sharp, as if t
he rabbits had been left too long on the hook.

  Mother was sunning her face in a shard of light, her skin as lined as a puddle of dried mud. On her lap she petted her small dog Hector – an animal I had repeatedly banished to the courtyard but who persistently found his way back inside the house. Clemence was hunched over her tapestry and welcomed me with the rebuke that I was cutting out her light, whilst Peter slept with his head on the table, his lips fluttering at each snore.

  Angry at my approach, Hector leapt from Mother’s lap and ran at my ankles.

  His shrill bark woke Mother with a start. ‘I didn’t know Hector was inside,’ she blustered. ‘The naughty little boy must have crept in.’

  Clemence called her servant Humbert over from the fire and ordered the boy to deal with the small dog, who was now making enough noise to be heard in Rochester.

  Humbert put down the square of Clemence’s tapestry that he had been tenaciously unpicking, scooped up Hector in his great fig-leaf hands and then dropped the dog’s squirming body into the stairwell to the solar, where the spiteful little creature continued to yap and growl at us through the gap at the bottom of the door. Humbert returned to Clemence and awaited his next instruction, before she imperiously waved him back to the stitching without even looking up.

  I shook Brother Peter’s arm gently. ‘Brother. Wake up.’

  Peter opened an eyelid. ‘What is it?’ He tried to focus on my face.

  I leant down and whispered into his ear. ‘I need to speak with you, Brother. Alone.’

  I was trying to be discreet, but unfortunately my words were in range of Clemence’s accomplished hearing. She pulled a face and stabbed her needle ever more viciously at her cloth. ‘God forbid a simple woman should hear what you have to say, little brother. My ears might crumble.’

  Peter tried to raise his head from the table and settle his chin onto the palm of his hand, but he missed and fell against Mother.

  ‘Leave the poor man alone,’ said Mother, pushing Peter away from her. ‘Can’t you see he’s ailing?’

  ‘Ailing?’ said Clemence. ‘The man’s been drinking since daybreak. He’s pickled to the pips.’ Then she clapped her hands, and Humbert reappeared at her shoulder. ‘Cut this thread for me,’ she commanded. The boy coloured as if she had asked him for a kiss.

  Sensing a moment’s opportunity I shook Peter a little harder, but still he didn’t respond.

  ‘Why are you pressing Brother Peter for an audience, Oswald?’ asked Mother. ‘Can’t it wait until he’s rested? We opened some Madeira and it has made him a little fatigued.’

  ‘Or why not tell all three of us?’ suggested Clemence. ‘I’m sure our delicate minds can endure it.’ She cocked her head at me and a sly smile crawled across her lips. ‘Or is it one of those secrets only you men from the monastery can divulge to one another?’

  ‘Do be quiet, Clemence,’ said Mother. ‘You’re as cross as a wasp today. Are you bleeding again?’ Clemence gritted her teeth and returned to her sewing.

  ‘If you must know, I’ve just been to visit Matilda Starvecrow,’ I told them both, ‘and now there’s a matter I need to discuss with Brother Peter.’

  ‘Who have you been to visit?’ said Mother, squinting and holding a hand to her ear.

  ‘The sister of the murdered girl,’ said Clemence over-loudly. ‘You didn’t miss an engagement.’

  ‘Thank you, Clemence. I am not deaf,’ said Mother. She turned back to me. ‘Why were you visiting this girl, Oswald?’ Then she clasped her hands together. ‘Have you found the dog-headed beast? Is that why?’

  I heaved a sigh. ‘No, Mother.’

  But her enthusiasm was not dampened. ‘I had a thought this morning, Oswald. Perhaps we should let the wolfhounds out?’

  ‘We haven’t owned wolfhounds for two years.’

  ‘Haven’t we?’

  ‘We could always release Hector instead,’ said Clemence. ‘I’m sure he would savage them to death.’ My sister then smiled at her own wit. And seeing some amusement light up Clemence’s usually fractious face, Humbert quickly joined in with a guttural noise I took to be laughter.

  Mother turned her back on Clemence and then caught my sleeve. ‘Talking of the Starvecrows, have you discovered why that girl wanted to speak to me?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Though it seems she actually called to speak to me.’

  Mother frowned. ‘You? Are you sure, Oswald?’

  ‘I wasn’t at home. That’s why she asked for you.’

  ‘I see.’ Now she seemed affronted. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Gilbert.’

  Mother shook her head. ‘No, no. I’m sure the girl wanted to speak to me. I am the lady of this house.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re squabbling over such a foolish matter,’ said Clemence, biting through a skein of silk with her teeth, since Humbert was struggling to use the scissors. ‘It wasn’t the queen coming to call. It was just some village girl.’

  Her conceit riled me. ‘A village girl who was then murdered.’

  Clemence only huffed. ‘Her type is always knocking at our door, little brother. Wanting a favour here, or a penny there. You’d do well to follow Father’s example. He had no time for such people.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘Because I understand Father rather liked the company of village girls. I believe Alison’s mother was once a favourite.’

  As soon as the words left my lips I regretted them. Mother choked upon her Madeira and a heavy silence fell about the room. Clemence glowered.

  ‘I expect your father was collecting rent,’ said Brother Peter making a sudden and welcome interjection, as I had thought him still asleep. ‘Or perhaps he was inspecting the Starvecrows’ pigs.’ He bowed his head to Mother. ‘Lord Henry especially liked pigs didn’t he, my lady? Particularly if they were ready for the spit.’ Peter then attempted to lift the mood by laughing at this thin joke, though Humbert was the only other person to find any amusement in it. The boy quickly became silent when Clemence shoved him in the ribs.

  Mother muttered some platitude regarding the price of hog meat before standing up to leave. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, holding her hand to her forehead. ‘This heat is so perplexing. I may have succumbed to a fever.’ Then, moving her hand quickly from her forehead to her breast: ‘I can barely breathe.’

  She left the room gasping for air, but was healthy enough to lift up her little dog as she passed through the door into the stairwell. ‘I’m putting Hector back into the courtyard,’ she lied, as she climbed the stairs to the solar and bedchambers.

  When we were certain the upper door had closed, Clemence turned on me. ‘Well done, little brother. Why don’t you now really humiliate Mother and invite some of his bastards for supper?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think we should retire to the chapel, Oswald,’ said Brother Peter, taking me by the arm.

  I shook Peter away. ‘No, Brother. I want to hear what Clemence has to say.’

  But Peter took my arm again, more firmly this time and propelled me towards the other end of the hall.

  As we neared the door, Clemence called after me. Her eyes now shining with malice. ‘You really were closeted away in that monastery, weren’t you, little brother?’

  ‘There’s no need for this my lady,’ said Brother Peter. ‘Please don’t say anything more.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from you, priest.’

  ‘Indeed my lady. But perhaps it—’

  Clemence threw down her embroidery. ‘Perhaps it is time Oswald knew what his own father was really like.’

  ‘I knew Father just as well as you,’ I snapped, though it wasn’t true.

  She put her hands upon her hips. ‘Then you shouldn’t be surprised to hear he has a dozen bastards about the estate?’

  ‘Bastards?’

  She smiled at me. ‘Yes, Oswald. Children born to whores.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I shouted back at her. ‘You’re lying!’

  ‘That
’s what lords do, Oswald. And one day it will be you.’

  ‘It will not!’

  And then, Peter pushed me through the door, before I could say another word.

  The chapel was cool and silent, with only my ancestors and the saints for company. When Peter refused to discuss Clemence’s accusations any further, I lay against the carved filial of a bench and breathed deeply with my eyes shut – a practice I had developed at the monastery to prepare myself for the long and tedious hours of prayer. With enough concentration it was possible to remove myself to a place where calmness and peace held sway. It was neither exciting nor boring, but allowed interminable masses to pass without desperation.

  I thought about Father as I lay there. Could he really have a host of children about the estate? My memories of him were as a contrary and unfriendly man, and I had been unable to kindle anything other than a guarded affection for him. But he had been kind enough to me as a young child – particularly when he discovered I could read more proficiently than my older brothers – boys more interested in crossbows than books. Father gave me dried figs when I read aloud to him in the library. He had even wiped away a tear when I left for the monastery.

  However, I saw very little of him from the age of seven. He wrote strange, disjointed letters to me occasionally. Hurried messages, which on the one hand encouraged my intellectual education, urging me to learn Greek and Syriac, and then on the other hand proudly boasted about how many more hours’ labour he had succeeded in exacting from our villeins. When I read the letters to Brother Peter, he had always sighed, making pointed comments under his breath. But I had caught his drift well enough. Peter thought my father a cruel and greedy tyrant.

  Did the man really have bastards about the estate? I could not be sure. Clemence’s grand accusations could be nothing more than mischief, as she was the sort of person who liked to throw fat into a fire, just for the pleasure of watching it burn. I probably shouldn’t trust a word she said.

  I slumped further against the filial of the bench, now trying to ignore the horsefly bites from my visit to the Starvecrow cottage. They were itching, and though I scratched them persistently, the prickling had become so intense that I called for Brother Peter. He was kneeling at the altar in prayer, his lips moving silently but feverishly with the words of his catechism – his brow furrowed with concentration.