The Owl Killers

by Karen Maitland

  “And you can tell your friends this: If we have to waste our time tearing Ulewic apart looking for their scabby animals, they’ll earn themselves a hefty fine into the bargain, or worse, much worse. So they may as well hand the stock over now, save themselves time and money.”

  “Is that so?” Mam put her hands on her hips. “I’m not the one standing around blathering. Seems to me the only person wasting time here is you.”

  The bailiff glared as if he’d like to kill Mam instead of the pigs, but he jerked his head at the men and the three of them strode off round the back of our cottage.

  I tried to run after them, but Mam held me back. “Leave it, lass, there’s nowt can be done.”

  “If Father was here, he’d stop them.”

  Mam sighed and raked back a strand of her hair. “Aye, he’d try, right enough, and get his head cracked open for his pains. Then where would we be?”

  Round the back of the cottage the pigs started to squeal and shriek. Mam winced and closed her eyes tight.

  “But why, Mam, why are they killing our pigs?”

  “Black bane, lass.” She stroked my hair, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes had a faraway look. “If it comes, it’ll kill the pigs anyway.”

  “Who’s Black Bane? Is he like Black Anu?”

  I knew about Black Anu. There was a carving of her over the church door. She was an ogre who lived in a deep dark pool up in the hills where no one ever went. Her face was green and so were her teeth and she had great sharp claws instead of fingers. She came into the village at night looking for bairns for her supper. She couldn’t see, but she could hear the softest squeak or whisper. So we had to be very quiet after dark, so she didn’t know we were there. If Black Anu heard any bairns crying or being naughty, she’d reach in through the window with her great long arms and snatch them. Then she’d carry them back to her pool and suck out all their blood and bones, and leave their skins hanging on an oak tree to dry in the wind, that’s what Mam said.

  William said he was too big to be pulled out through the window, but I was just the right size. If Mam went out after dark and she told William to stay and mind me, he’d call out to Black Anu to tell her where I was. I hated my brother. I couldn’t wait until I was as big as him and then I’d—

  “Black bane’s a sickness, lass,” Mam said. “Beasts get covered in great sores that turn black. If it goes to the lungs and the guts, that’s the end of them. Cruel death it is. You weren’t born last time we had it in these parts. Wish to God, I’d not been neither.”

  “But, Mam, they can’t kill our pigs, not our Sibley. You can’t let them. She hasn’t got any black sores. I fed her this morning and—”

  “How many times have I told you not to go naming animals?” Mam snapped. “No good ever comes of it.”

  There was a loud wail from the road in front of the cottage. “May God and his Holy Virgin save us!” Fat Lettice waddled up the path, flapping her skirts over her flushed face. “They’ve come for yours too? Of course they have.” She didn’t wait for Mam to answer, but peered round the side of the cottage. “Blood everywhere, don’t look, my dear,” she said, as she flapped back to where we stood. “I swear on my dear husband’s grave, God rest him, I’ll not survive the winter. This’ll be the death of me.”

  Something seemed to drain out of Mam and she sank down on the threshold, her head in her hands. “I don’t know what Alan is going to say when he gets back. He’s fetching us salt for the pickling when he comes. We shouldn’t have waited. If we’d slaughtered last week, we’d have had enough salt pork to see us through the next few months.”

  “Who slaughters pigs in fattening month?” Lettice said, spreading her hands wide. “Summer’s been so bad there’s not a pick of flesh on them. They needed two full moons feeding on the forest mast just to put as much fat on as this little mite, and she’s as skinny as a piece of thread.” Her hard fingers poked my belly. “Am I right?” The black bristles on her chin waggled when she talked.

  “But even without fattening, we’d have got something off them.” Mam clenched her hands into fists. “Now we’ve nothing, no meat, no fat to cook with. I’ll not even have the scrimmings to dip the rushes in for candles. Bailiff says the whole carcasses are to be burnt.”

  Her shoulders were shaking and she was making strange gulping noises, her face twisting up as if she was trying not to cry. It frightened me. Mam never cried, not ever.

  “Mam, don’t, please don’t.” I tried to put my arms round her, but fat Lettice pushed me out of the way and put her arm round Mam instead.

  “There, there, dear. Don’t take on so. They’re not burning them all, no matter what that bailiff tells you. Most’ll find their way into D’Acaster’s pickle barrels. His stores will be groaning with the fitches of pork this time next week.”

  She looked all round her, then whispered. “That tall one with the bailiff, one with the squint. Get him on his own when bailiff’s not looking. Slip him a coin. He’ll make sure there’s a dead pig that doesn’t reach the cart.” She tapped the side of her nose. “There’s a few carcasses gone missing from that cart round the village. Not that I’m saying anything, of course.”

  “Aye, we slipped a few coins to the Owl Masters too. They promised us they’d keep us safe.” Mam’s eyes were red and watery, but her face was angry, not sad. “Said they’d stop anything else going wrong this year. Much good that’s done us. If they show their faces round here again, you’ll not catch me giving them owt but in a flea in their ear.”

  “Hush! Hush!” Fat Lettice flapped her hands at Mam. The old woman waddled to the corner of the cottage and peered round the side again. Then she sidled back to Mam. “It doesn’t do to be talking about the Owl Masters like that. You never know who’s listening. Bailiff could be one of them. You heard what happened to old Warren when he refused to pay up? Course you have, who hasn’t? Accident, so his wife said, but everyone knows different.”

  I remembered the door to his yard where the old man made his pots and jugs had been closed for nearly a week now, but I thought he’d just got the ague.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  Lettice jerked her head in my direction. “Little pitchers have big ears.”

  “Make yourself useful, lass; go fetch some water,” Mam said sharply.

  “But, Mam, what did happen to Warren?”

  “What will happen to you if you don’t fetch that water. Now off with you.” She pointed. Mam meant it when she pointed. That was a last warning.

  I picked up the bucket and walked away as slowly as I could, trying to listen, but fat Lettice was whispering to Mam and I couldn’t hear anything except “smashed and broken.” There were no more squeals coming from the back of the cottage. I glanced behind me. Lettice and Mam were busy talking. I slipped round the side of the cottage.

  Scarlet blood was splashed all over the cottage walls and dribbling down the sty walls. There were bright puddles of it on the ground, as if it had been raining red. The pigs were all dead, everyone’s in the whole road. They were lying in a big heap on top of one another. The bailiff was bending over a pig on the ground. Its trotters were jerking and twitching. Then they shuddered and stopped. The bailiff’s men heaved the last pig onto the heap; it fell with a loud wet slap. Its head dropped back and there was a big red gash in its neck, but its eyes were still open, and it was looking at me.

  The bailiff still had his back to me, but he must have felt me looking, because he turned. His hands were red and steaming; blood was dripping from his dark hairy elbows onto the ground. He was holding a long pointed knife.

  “You, brat, come here, I want you—”

  But I didn’t wait to hear more. I ran as if Black Anu herself was after me.

  october

  all hallows’ eve

  samhain, when the world of the dead and the world of the living draw close enough to touch each other. the night when the past, the present, and the future become one.

  f
ather ulfrid

  fOR THE TENTH TIME THAT AFTERNOON I cursed as the thread once more slipped from the eye of the needle. My linen vestment had ripped and I was trying to repair it. I was not accustomed to sewing. In the Cathedral there had been a whole hall full of people kept constantly employed in making and mending the clergy’s robes. Since I’d come to Ulewic, the girl who cooked for me had mended my clothes, and though her work had been clumsy, it was a hundred times better than anything I could manage. But I’d had to let the girl go. It was one of the many things I’d had to sacrifice since the Commissarius’s visit. But no matter how much I tightened my belt I still could not raise the money I needed.

  The Commissarius had received his full measure of tithes. I’d had no choice. If I had defaulted by so much as a clipped farthing, I knew the Commissarius would carry out his threat and I would have found myself in chains in the Bishop’s dungeon within the day. The villagers couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the tithes they owed before the month was up, so I had taken the only way out left open to me. I had pawned the church silver to raise the money.

  I knew it was foolish. It would cost me more in the end, but I had to buy myself time. The jewelled chalice, the engraved paten, the silver candlesticks and altar cross were only ever used for the High Masses of Christmas and Easter; the rest of the year we used the plain pewter and brass. The valuable pieces were kept locked away in a great heavy chest in the church vestry and I had the only key. So all I had to do was to redeem them in time for the Christmas Mass and no one would be any the wiser.

  All I had to do? It sounded so easy. But if I did not retrieve the church silver by Christmas Eve, D’Acaster would notice at once that it was missing. I had just two months to recover the pieces. Two months and I was no nearer raising the money than when I started.

  There was only one person in the world I could confide in and trust. I’d sworn I would never see Hilary again, but I’d said that countless times before. We both knew I didn’t mean it. If I sent word, Hilary would come to me and would get me the money somehow. I deserved that much at least. I had taken the full weight of punishment for what we had done. I had protected Hilary’s identity, even under the most rigorous of questioning. I had never once betrayed my dark angel.

  There was a loud hammering at my door and I jerked, dropping the needle again.

  “Father! Come quickly. He’s gone! He’s gone!”

  “I’m coming,” I called. “There’s no need to break my door down.”

  But the yells and banging only redoubled. I groped for the latch. As the door swung wide, I had to leap back to avoid the wildly beating fists. One of the village women stood on the threshold. It took me a moment to recognise her, for her face was streaked with tears and mud.

  “It’s Aldith, isn’t it?” I said. “What’s happened? Who’s gone?”

  “Oliver, my little Oliver. He’s not there. I went to where … and he wasn’t there!” She broke off in a fit of sobbing, running back and forth in front of my door like a crazed dog.

  Several women were beginning to gather on the other side of the path, clutching each other and staring, but not daring to approach, afraid that her madness might be catching.

  I seized Aldith by the arm. “Come now, you must calm yourself, Mistress. This won’t do you any good. Oliver’s dead, don’t you remember? I buried him myself three days ago.”

  Grief does strange things to a woman. Some refuse to accept that their children or husband are dead. I’d even known women to set a place for the deceased at the table or wash their clothes as if they would return to wear them.

  Aldith shook her head violently. “No, Father, you don’t understand—his body … it’s gone … from the grave.”

  “What! Are you sure?”

  “Grave’s empty, Father. I went to lay some meat and drink on it for All Hallows’, so he’d not feel neglected, but the grave … it was open and his little body was gone.”

  She froze, a look of wonderment spreading slowly across her face, then she clutched my arm. “Father, maybe he wasn’t dead after all, or … maybe God heard my prayers and brought him back to life. Three days, Father, three days, don’t you see … I have to go home. He’ll be there waiting for me.”

  She hitched up her skirts and began to run.

  “Wait!” I called after her. “Aldith, come back. It is not possible. He can’t …” But she only ran faster.

  I snatched up my cloak and hurried down towards the churchyard.

  Oliver had been just five years old, and when he had first fallen ill, it seemed nothing unusual, a sore throat, a slight fever, some vomiting. It was a touch of ague, his mother had said, brought on by the cold weather. But two days later, little Oliver was writhing in agony, his belly swollen up as if he had the dropsy, and he was vomiting blood. Death had followed within the week.

  We had laid the child’s body straight into the half-frozen earth, wrapped only in a simple winding sheet. His mother couldn’t afford a coffin; it was all she could do to raise the money for the soul-scot. I’d thrown earth onto the small body, and watched the villagers add their own clods, while the mother howled and rocked in the arms of her neighbours. Then the grave had been filled in.

  I had seen it myself only yesterday, a slender mound of earth, fresh and dark against the surrounding grass and marked with a small wooden cross. What could Aldith have possibly seen to make her doubt her son was in there? The poor woman had been deranged by grief. She must surely have gone to the wrong grave.

  As I hurried towards the church I could see a group of men standing in the doorway under the obscene carving of the naked old hag, which the villagers call Black Anu. Martin the sexton, the blacksmith John, and two other villagers were deep in conversation. They stopped talking and nudged one another as I approached, as if they’d been discussing me.

  “Martin, Mistress Aldith has just come to me with some tale about her son’s grave. She told me …” I felt foolish even saying it, “… that it has been disturbed. There is no truth in this, I take it.”

  “Grave’s empty,” Martin said tersely.

  “Show me,” I demanded.

  The men glanced at one another.

  “Your memory going, is it, Father?” The sexton coughed and spat a gob of phlegm onto the church step. “You know where the grave is, Father; you buried the lad in it.”

  “I can still remember who pays your wages. This churchyard is your responsibility. Your job is to ensure that the dead are allowed to rest in peace. So if you’ve been negligent in carrying out your duties, I want to see.”

  Martin at least had the grace to look uncomfortable. With another glance at his companions, he led the four of us reluctantly around the side of the church.

  The grave was tucked away beneath an overhanging oak in the far corner of the churchyard. It had not been dug deep; the sexton had complained that tree roots and icy ground had made it hard to go down as far as usual, though I suspected it was because Aldith hadn’t given the man an extra coin, which he seemed to expect as his right.

  Even as we approached I saw that the earth was not heaped over the grave as it should have been, but piled on either side of it. I stared down into the narrow pit. The outline in the wet earth where the small body had lain was plainly visible, but the body itself had vanished.

  An icy shiver crawled up my back. Could Oliver have risen as Aldith said, not as our Lord rose, but as one of the revenant dead, the corpses which clamber from their graves and feast on the living? I crossed myself. “God have mercy on us,” I murmured.

  There’d been such a case when I lived in Norwich. A man, newly buried, had risen from the churchyard and wandered through the streets throttling anyone he encountered. He had been followed by a pack of yellow-eyed cats whose savage yowling terrified all who heard them. In the end Bishop Salmon had commanded the grave be opened and the head of the corpse cut off with the spade that had been used to bury him. When they dug the dead man up, they’d found his corpse as fat and bl
oated as a leech and when they severed his head, a great scarlet spurt had gushed from his neck until the grave was filled with blood.

  Was it possible this boy too had become a revenant? He’d had the simplest of burials, it was true enough, but I had been diligent in giving him all due rites of the Holy Church. And the sins of a child that young could surely not have been as grievous as to make him unworthy of a Christian burial.

  “Do you think …” I stammered. “Is it …is it possible that the corpse has walked?”

  The sexton coughed again and spat into the dark hole. “He’d not be able to leave his grave. I made sure of that myself. I opened it up after his mam had left and hammered iron nails into the soles of the lad’s feet, so he couldn’t walk.”

  I didn’t know whether I was relieved or angry. “You violated a grave after he’d been given a Christian burial?”

  Martin shrugged. “That weren’t the ague that killed him. Bairn died from witchcraft, plain as day. Crosses and holy water wouldn’t be enough to hold him in the grave, not if he was killed by witchery.”

  The other men nodded.

  Blacksmith John exchanged a look with the sexton, then cleared his throat. “Thing is, Father, if the corpse didn’t clamber out of the grave by itself, then someone must have taken it.”

  I gaped at him. “But why? Who could possibly want to steal a corpse?”

  John scratched at a scab on his huge muscular arm. “The way I see it, Father, is the one who killed him is the one that’s taken his corpse. Why else would she want to put the evil eye on a little lad? She needed his body for her black arts.”