Makepeace was aware of the picture she presented. The live fish between her teeth spasmed, its tail nearly hitting her in the eye. She took it carefully out of her mouth, even as its juices made her want to swallow it whole, and pulled her skirts down over her bare legs.
‘What have you found?’ An older soldier stepped through the hedge, a broad-nosed man with a healing cut above his right eyebrow.
‘There’s something amiss with her,’ the younger man said, never taking his frightened gaze off Makepeace. ‘She was half stripped, and leaping about like a wild thing! She had her teeth in a raw fish, champing it like an animal—’
‘And so would you if you were hungry enough!’ Makepeace retorted quickly.
The older man frowned slightly.
‘Where are you from?’ he asked. Both soldiers had the same accent, and Makepeace guessed that her own had given her away as a stranger.
‘Staffordshire,’ said Makepeace promptly. She hoped that the county was far away enough to explain her accent, but close enough that she might have walked the distance.
‘You’re a long way from that county,’ said the older soldier, his face darkening with suspicion. ‘What brings you from home?’
Makepeace had hoped that the conversation would not reach this point. She stared at the two men, trying to guess which army they served. A cover story that would please one side would enrage the other.
I know that man! Livewell said quietly. The younger one – that’s William Horne. He was in my regiment.
They were Parliament men. Makepeace chose her story accordingly.
‘My stepfather threw me out,’ she said. She rolled up her sleeve, and showed the fading bruises on her arm. ‘He is fierce for the King’s cause. I am not, so he beat me and told me that if I came back he would kill me.’
Sympathy briefly glimmered in the man’s eye, but then cooled again into distrust.
‘You must be very frightened of him to flee across three counties,’ he said.
‘I did not think to come so far!’ Makepeace let a little of her real weariness and desperation creep into her voice. ‘I was looking for work, and chasing rumours of it across the land—’
‘Work?’ The older soldier’s eyes were now steely and hostile. ‘Do you think we’re stupid? This valley’s seething with raiding parties! Who would come here to look for work?’
Tell them God sent a vision, telling you to come to Whitehollow! Livewell said urgently.
What? asked Makepeace silently, bewildered.
One of the generals collects prophets and astrologers! he told her hastily. He keeps them safe at Whitehollow – like prize hens.
‘I had been seeking work . . . but then the Almighty sent me a vision of a place that I must go,’ said Makepeace, trying not to flush bright red. ‘A house by the name of Whitehollow.’
Both men stiffened, and exchanged glances.
‘What did it look like in your vision?’ demanded the older man.
‘A great house of red brick,’ Makepeace said, repeating Livewell’s murmured words. ‘High on a hill, ringed about by woods.’
‘A spy could have that description,’ said the younger man in an undertone. As the two soldiers whispered, however, Makepeace was listening to Livewell’s urgent voice in her head.
‘I have seen you in a vision, William Horne,’ she said.
The young man nearly jumped out of his boots.
‘It was two months ago,’ she said. ‘You were in a village church with two other soldiers. It was a wicked church, full of gaudy, devilish ornaments . . . so you’d come there by night to smash everything you could. You splintered the altar rail, and broke the stained-glass windows. You hacked the carvings on the pews.
‘Then one of your friends took down the crucifix with its man-figure, and smashed it against the slabs.’
William Horne visibly flinched. The older soldier seemed untroubled, though, or if anything rather approving.
‘You all stopped to stare at the smashed pieces of the Christ face,’ Makepeace went on. ‘A terror came on you all . . . but none of you admitted it. You all grew fiercer, more eager to smash and tear. You tried to outdo each other, so you wouldn’t have to look at those broken eyes on the floor.’
William was staring at her now, with a hypnotized look of superstitious fear.
‘You were the one who brought in your horse to drink from the font – to show you weren’t frightened. You all watched its big, white mouth lapping at the water, and you laughed. But the echoes of the church made it sound like a host of devils were laughing along with you . . . and you all ran.’
The old man gave his companion a questioning glance. William Horne swallowed and nodded.
‘It was in Crandon,’ he said faintly. ‘It shook us all up. And one of the others – the fellow who smashed the cross – he was never the same after. It broke him inside. He . . . went missing a week later.’ He looked at Makepeace again, eyes wide with fear and doubt. ‘How did you know how the laughter sounded?’
‘Enough,’ said the older man firmly. ‘You were doing the Lord’s work. Put it out of your mind.’ With the back of his hand, he pushed aside his comrade’s sword hilt, so that the trembling blade was no longer pointing at Makepeace. ‘Put it away, William.’
He turned to Makepeace again.
‘Make yourself decent, mistress, and come with us.’
Makepeace rose and adjusted her skirt, then put on her stockings and shoes, her teeth belatedly chattering.
Thank you, she said in her head.
I hope I have not made all worse. Livewell sounded almost as shaky as William. It was the only plan I had.
Some of the dangerous tension seemed to have left the air, but Makepeace knew that she had just raised the stakes. She had intended to approach Whitehollow stealthily and perhaps observe it for a while, to see whether she could spot Symond. She had not planned to march straight in through the front door, and risk coming face to face with him.
On the one hand, it looked like she would be escorted to Whitehollow. On the other hand, her hopes of arriving discreetly had just died a painful death.
PART SIX: WHITEHOLLOW
CHAPTER 29
The older soldier turned out to be one Sergeant Coulter, and six more men were waiting in the lane. The troops kept up a brisk pace, making few allowances for Makepeace’s weak and weary legs, but they did not surround her like a prisoner.
They paid her little attention. This allowed her to finish eating the raw fish, and continue talking to their dead comrade in her head.
Why did you desert? she asked abruptly. The story of the church had intrigued her. She was fairly sure she knew the identity of the man who had gone ‘missing’.
I was a coward, Livewell answered automatically, then fell silent for a while. I do not know, he confessed at last, and sighed. After I broke that image of Christ in the church, I could not forget the way its broken face looked back at me. Those eyes, so bright and empty and sad . . . I had a notion that they were sad for me. A week later, I killed my first man, and when I was standing over him his dead eyes had just the same look.
And after that I had a fancy in my head, that when I met the enemy they would all have cracked faces, and eyes that were sad for me. I don’t know why, but the fear of it stopped my sleep and made my hands shake. One day I slipped away and started walking . . .
There was little Makepeace could say. She started to wonder whether it was such a good idea to bring Livewell back to a camp full of his erstwhile comrades.
After several miles’ walk, they took a lane that wound through up a wooded slope and past a stately gatehouse, until it reached the great house at the top of the hill. Whitehollow was a square, red-brick manor about half the size of Grizehayes. The lawn before it might once have been a well-groomed ground for promenades, but now it was untrimmed, cropped only by half a dozen soldiers’ horses. A few marble ancestral busts lay on the grass with their heads splintered. It looked as though they
had been shot apart.
Whatever the house might once have been, it was now a military stronghold. Nearly everyone seemed to be a soldier rather than a servant. Having served in Grizehayes, it was jarring for Makepeace to walk into a great house and notice all the little tasks left undone, and the defiant acts of vandalism.
On the inside of the main door, papers had been nailed to the carved oak panels, some of them news-sheets trumpeting military victories, some religious tracts sizzling with zeal. The fireplaces had not been raked out properly for a while, and there was thick mud trodden up the stairs by many feet. A fine, carved chair had been broken apart for firewood, and several old chests lay open, their locks hacked out. Apparently righteousness didn’t rule out looting.
For now, however, Makepeace could see no sign of Symond. What would she do if she came face to face with him? Could she signal to him somehow, and beg him not to reveal her identity? Why would he heed her if she did?
The sergeant stepped aside for some quiet, animated conversations with a small group of other people, nodding occasionally in Makepeace’s direction. She was attracting a lot of fearful, inquisitive, appraising stares, and felt herself turning beetroot red.
One woman in fine but faded clothes seemed to be fixing Makepeace with a particularly intense gaze. Her face was lined in a way that made Makepeace think of a rain-streaked window pane. She seemed much the same age as Mistress Gotely.
That is Lady Eleanor, muttered Livewell, sounding as if he would have liked to swear.
Who is she? asked Makepeace.
The general’s favourite prophetess, he answered. She made a lot of enemies here, so I hoped she had gone by now. Unpaid debts. Quarrels. And sometimes she tells people that they are doomed to die – that never goes down well.
Is she ever right? Makepeace tried not to stare back. Do people die when she says?
Yes, Livewell admitted reluctantly. They usually do.
Makepeace’s pulse raced. It was bad enough that she had to bluff her way as a visionary, without doing so in front of a real prophetess. And what would this lady think of some young, ragged upstart rival?
Is she a proud woman? she asked suddenly.
Proud? Livewell sounded perplexed. Yes, she—
Makepeace did not wait for him to finish. Instead, she approached the little group boldly, and then dropped a low, long curtsy in front of Lady Eleanor.
‘My lady!’ she said, with as much awe as she could manage. ‘I have seen you in my visions, raised above the world, with a great shaft of sunlight falling upon you and blessing you! There was a book in your hands, filled with light!’
Coulter looked startled, but Lady Eleanor’s expression brightened into an exultant and magnanimous smile. Makepeace suspected that there was now much less chance of being denounced by her fellow prophet. If Lady Eleanor had made many enemies, she would probably not kick away somebody who treated her like a queen.
When Makepeace was brought in to talk to some of the higher-ranked officers, Lady Eleanor’s arm was firmly looped through hers.
Makepeace was glad of an ally over the next two hours, which she spent being interrogated to within an inch of her life.
The three officers were not rude. They regarded her with the wary respect and suspicion you might show towards an unexpected lion. But they were relentless and steely, and pounced on every inconsistency.
Who was she? Where was she from? Who were her family? She explained that she was Patience Lott, daughter of a cabinet-maker called Jonas. She invented a sickly mother, a younger sister and a small and nameless hamlet on the edge of the moors. All of this could be checked and disproved, but not quickly, and she doubted they would send anybody to Staffordshire to do so just yet.
Another officer asked her lots of knotty religious questions. Had she lived a good life? How well did she know her Bible and her prayer book? Groggy and exhausted, Makepeace stumbled a few times, giving answers that would have been right in Grizehayes but wrong in Poplar, but managed to bluff her way through, with the help of Livewell’s whispers.
Then, heart hammering, Makepeace began to describe her ‘visions’. The room was deadly hushed, apart from the scratch of pens noting down her every word.
‘I saw the King sitting in a great throne, but he was too small for it,’ she said, hoping she sounded portentous enough. ‘There was a huge dog behind him that he did not see. Over his head flew six owls with wings as black as death. He threw down food for them, but they caught up his shadow instead and carried it away in a scroll-case.’
She did not dare look at Lady Eleanor, in case the prophetess’s expression was hardening into suspicion and contempt. But nobody interrupted her.
‘Go on,’ said one of the officers. ‘What else have you seen?’
With growing confidence, Makepeace invented more wild dreams. Her tiredness made it easier. Everything was dreamlike already.
‘I saw fire falling from the sky, and where it fell it set people’s hearts aflame. They ran through the world, and the flame jumped to the heart of everyone they met, until everybody was burning . . .’
Makepeace could not have said later when she started to enjoy it. She could feel herself transforming before the soldiers’ eyes. She was no longer just a muddy, battered vagabond. Being a prophet changed everything. Your bruises showed you were a martyr. Your rags proved how long you had wandered in the wilderness.
She had walked into the room wearing God like a robe.
‘Now tell us what the visions mean,’ said the most senior officer at last.
Makepeace blanched, suddenly realizing the enormity of what she was doing. She was claiming that God was speaking through her. If these men realized she was lying, then what would they do to someone who committed such blasphemy? But if they did believe her, perhaps her ‘visions’ would affect their battle plans. A careless, ignorant word of hers might cause men to march, or even die.
An army of Livewells or Jameses, dying on her word. It was power, raw power, but she did not want it.
‘I do not know,’ she said abruptly. ‘I . . . came here because I know Lady Eleanor is the only person who can understand them.’
To Makepeace’s relief, Lady Eleanor was delighted to translate them. Makepeace sat there, shaky and dry-mouthed, while the older prophetess went into scriptural raptures.
At last the officers seemed satisfied, and let Makepeace go. She left the room with Lady Eleanor, wondering how much mischief she had done, but was stopped just outside by Sergeant Coulter.
‘When you saw a vision of Whitehollow, did you see any of the people living there?’ he asked quietly. ‘Perhaps a young lord with white hair?’
Makepeace shook her head, her curiosity piqued. His description sounded a lot like Symond.
‘If your visions show you someone of that sort, and he looks to be doing something ill, let me know.’ The sergeant exchanged a look of understanding with Lady Eleanor, who nodded.
‘Who did he mean, my lady?’ Makepeace asked, after the sergeant had moved away.
‘Young Lord Fellmotte,’ answered Lady Eleanor, not quite quietly enough to be discreet.
Lord Fellmotte indeed! Even though Makepeace was no longer a member of the Fellmotte household, she found herself secretly bristling at Symond’s cheek in claiming the title. But then again, as far as Parliament’s side were concerned, perhaps he was the rightful lord. After all, they had denounced the rest of his family, and were trying to seize their lands.
‘Is his lordship at Whitehollow at the moment?’ asked Makepeace, trying to sound casual.
‘No – he is on some business for the general, and will not be back until tomorrow evening. And if my advice were followed, he would not be permitted to return at all!’
‘You do not trust him?’ asked Makepeace.
‘No, I do not!’ exclaimed the prophetess. ‘Neither does Sergeant Coulter. Lord Fellmotte claims to have joined our side in the war, but we think that he is still one of the King’s malignan
ts. The sergeant has his bags and pockets searched now and then, looking for signs of treachery.
‘You must understand, I have fathomed the mysteries of names. The letters of “Symonde Fellmotte” can be rearranged to “sly demon meltt foe”! Of course such a man is not to be trusted!’
Makepeace managed to keep a respectful straight face until
Lady Eleanor had departed.
That woman, said Dr Quick, is entirely insane.
I hope so, said Livewell grimly.
Why? asked Makepeace, surprised.
She says the world will be ending soon, he replied.
At the end of that day, Makepeace decided that there was no greater luxury than a glowing fire, a hot bowl of soup and the chance to sleep on a dry mattress, even if it was just a straw one at the foot of Lady Eleanor’s bed. It was all she could do to stop Bear licking the soup bowl clean.
What do you intend to do when this Symond returns here tomorrow? asked the doctor, after the lights were out, and Makepeace was trying to sleep. How do you propose to stop him denouncing you as soon as he sees you?
It was a good question. Makepeace knew she would need to speak with Symond alone, but on her own terms. He would need a very strong reason to listen to her, and she did not think that appealing to his conscience or sense of kinship would do her much good. She would need some power over him.
She needed to find the charter. Could he be carrying it around on his person? She did not think so. According to Lady Eleanor, Sergeant Coulter was having Symond’s pockets and belongings searched regularly. Symond would be a fool to risk someone finding a paper with the King’s seal on it on his person.
Where had he hidden it, then? He would want it to be somewhere close to hand, so that he could check on it and grab it in a hurry. With luck, it was somewhere at Whitehollow. If only she could find it before he returned, she would have all the power she needed.
A Skinful of Shadows Page 25
