The Owl Killers

by Karen Maitland

  I stared hard at the rush-covered floor. It looked the same as it always did, but then I saw rushes moving; the water had crept up underneath them and they were floating.

  “What if it reaches the top of the bed, Mam?” I said.

  “It won’t,” Mam said. “It’s come in afore and it’s never been more than hand deep. It’ll not rise any higher.”

  But it had. The rushes were almost floating up to the top of the bed now, but still we sat there. I wondered if the bed would start to float soon. Little trickles of cold water were running over the boards and wetting my skirts. Mam’s eyes were closed and she was whispering something over and over. I wanted her to open her eyes and look, but I didn’t dare speak, for if she stopped praying the water would get even higher.

  I was praying too. “Mam, make it stop, make it go away.”

  There was a huge bang as something crashed against the door of the cottage. The walls shook. Mam jerked upright. She crossed herself and pushed the blanket off me.

  “We have to get out. Now.”

  “We can’t, Mam,” William sounded terrified. “If we open the door, more water will come in.”

  “Out the window at the back.” Mam tugged me off the bed. I yelled as I sank into icy water up to my knees. I could feel the rushes bobbing round my legs like spiders scuttling over my skin. Mam reached for William and pulled him off the bed into the water. We splashed across the floor.

  When Mam flung back the shutters on the small window, the wind tore into the house and at once the tallow candle went out. And we were in the dark. I yelped again as something hard bobbed against my leg. I couldn’t see what it was.

  “You first, William. Get out and then grab hold of your little sister when I push her out.”

  William heaved himself over the edge of the window sill and wriggled through. There was a faint splash from the other side.

  “William, are you all right?”

  His head appeared. “All right, Mam.” We could hardly hear him over the sound of the rain and rushing water.

  “Here—grab hold of your sister’s arms.”

  Mam tried to heave me over the sill. The sharp edge of the window dug into my ribs.

  “No, Mam! No, it hurts! I want to stay with you!”

  I tried to pull away, but William’s strong hands had tight hold of my wrists. Mam gave a great heave. I yelled and fell headfirst into the freezing muddy water, swallowing a great mouthful. I was spluttering, but the next moment William had hauled me upright again. The water was over my knees and so fast I had to cling tight to William to stand still.

  Mam leant out of the window. “It’s no good. I’ll not get out this way. The window’s too small. I’ll have to get out the door. Take your sister up to the church. It’s higher ground there.”

  “No, Mam, we’ll wait here for you.” William sounded really scared.

  “I’ll not be able to get back round to you.” Mam reached out and touched his cheek. “I’ll meet you at the church. Off with you now. Be a brave lad, make your father proud.”

  I heard William’s teeth chattering. Mine were too. He grabbed my hand so tight it hurt. “Come on, you heard Mam.”

  “Don’t let go of your sister, William, don’t let go!” Mam called after us.

  I turned round to wave at her, but there was no one there. The dark square of the window was empty.

  Ahead we could see the black shapes of the cottages at the back of ours. William was dragging me towards the gap between them. I kept stumbling over things I couldn’t see under the cold black water. Something tangled round my legs. I screamed and screamed that it was a snake, but William reached down and pulled it away.

  “Shut up,” he ordered. “It’s only an old bit of rope.”

  Then we were out from between the cottages. It was so dark. The rain was smashing into my face and I could hardly breathe. Floating things kept crashing into our legs, soft hairy things that made me shudder, hard scratchy things that really hurt. I knew I’d cut my hands and my legs. I could feel the stings, but I couldn’t see if there was blood.

  The water was swirling round me and kept tugging me backwards. It was much deeper now, up to my waist. I couldn’t stand up against it. I was sobbing and hanging onto William’s hand. He bent down.

  “Climb onto my back. I’ll piggy you.”

  My legs and arms were so cold it took ages to get up. I clamped my fingers round his neck.

  He bent forward, pushing through the water. We were wading up the road, except it wasn’t a road anymore, it was a river. William kept slipping. Several times he fell to his knees and the freezing water would splash over my head. I knew he was getting tired. He was going more and more slowly. What if he couldn’t get us there?

  Ahead of us I saw some other shapes splashing along. I couldn’t see who they were; it was too dark. Maybe one of them was Mam. She’d come back to get us. “Mam, Mam!” I yelled, trying to make her hear over the wind and roar of water. But no one stopped. No one came. The shapes disappeared.

  I didn’t know where we were anymore. It wasn’t that far to the church; why weren’t we there already? Maybe we were going the wrong way. The rain was falling so hard that I couldn’t open my eyes properly to look. I squinted around. There was a faint glow in the darkness ahead. It seemed to be floating high up, appearing and vanishing again through the rain.

  William almost fell again. “Have … to get down … can’t carry you any … more.”

  My hands were so cold they wouldn’t come apart, but he prised them off his neck and I slid down, whimpering, into the icy water. He grabbed my hand.

  The black oily water was creeping up to my armpits. It was too heavy to walk through. My legs were so cold they wouldn’t move properly.

  “I can’t … William … I can’t walk.”

  “You can … See, there’s the churchyard wall. All you have to do is get to the wall … then you don’t have to walk anymore … Come on.”

  He was pulling me forward. Then something hit me hard in the side, knocking me backwards. My head went under the water. I was choking and thrashing. I couldn’t stand up. William still had hold of my hand, but the water was dragging me away from him. I thought my arm was going to break.

  “Hold on to me!” William screamed, but I couldn’t. I could feel William’s fingers slipping out of my hand. My slippery webbed fingers couldn’t curl round his.

  “Help me,” William was yelling. “I can’t hold her.”

  I was so cold, I didn’t want to hold on anymore. Maybe I was turning into a frog or a mermaid. My feet were growing webs just like my hand. I’d swim away right down the river to the sea where Father was. I couldn’t hear William anymore, just a funny booming noise. I was sinking down and down.

  Something heavy was splashing in the water beside me. The next moment I was swept up in thick hairy arms and the water was pouring away from me in a big torrent. I was coughing and spluttering.

  “I’ve got her, lad.” John the blacksmith was carrying me into the church.

  He set me down, but my legs wouldn’t work. I crumpled onto the rushes, and was sick. I heaved again and again. Finally I stopped. My belly ached and my throat was burning. I sat up shivering and blinking in the candlelight.

  The church was full of people. Everyone looked wet and muddy. Babies were crying and grown-ups were shouting. Some clutched sacks round their shoulders, a few had blankets, but most were just dripping wet like me. My brother staggered over to me and crouched on the floor. He was shivering and his lips were blue.

  “Y-you cold?” His teeth were chattering.

  I nodded miserably, trying to wrap my wet arms round my body.

  “Don’t move.”

  He disappeared into the crowd of people. He was gone so long I feared he wasn’t coming back, but when he did he was holding a rolled-up piece of sacking. He pushed it at me. It was heavy and hot.

  “Hold this it against you. It’s a stone warmed in the fire. Can’t get you near t
he brazier, too many people round it, but I pinched one of the stones they were warming.” He looked sort of white under his brown skin and there was a big graze on his forehead that was oozing watery red blood.

  “Come on, Pisspuddle … You know what Mam always says: Dry your feet first, so you don’t get a chill.” He bent down and tried to undo the laces of my soggy shoes, but they were too wet and his fingers were too cold and clumsy. “Stupid, stupid fecking things!”

  “William!” I gasped. Mam would skin his backside if she heard him say that word, but as I looked up I saw there were tears in his eyes. “William, where’s Mam?” I was suddenly frightened again.

  He dashed his hand furiously across his eyes. “I can’t find her … she’s not here yet.”

  I began to sob. “But she said … she said she’d be here … I want her … I feel sick … I want Mam.”

  William sat down beside me on the rushes, and awkwardly pushed his wet arm round my shoulder.

  “Don’t you dare cry, Pisspuddle, else next time we go gathering wood, I’ll nail your braids to a tree and leave you there for the Owlman to get you. Mam’ll come. She said she would, didn’t she? Mam’ll be walking through that door anytime now and she’d better not catch you gurning, else you’ll be for it.”

  I didn’t care if she did catch me crying. I didn’t care if she was as angry as a whole nest of wasps. I just clung shivering to William, praying for that door to open and my Mam to walk through it.

  december

  saint chaeremon, saint ischyrion,

  and the martyrs

  chaeremon, the elderly bishop of nilopolis, fled with a young companion into the mountains of arabia to escape the persecution of the roman emperor decius. the pair vanished and their bodies were never found.

  osmanna

  tHE COLD WATER IN THE VAT began to bubble violently as Pega tumbled lime into it.

  “Keep well back, else it’ll be all over you. Cover your eyes, Osmanna; you too, Catherine. You get even a speck of lime in them and it’ll feel like someone’s jabbed a red-hot pin in your eyeball. Bastard stuff this is, blinds you.”

  We backed away to the furthest corners of the barn as Pega, with a cloth clamped across her mouth against the fumes, carefully stirred the lime water. She had made us rub butter round our eyes and on our arms and hands for she said you don’t notice a splash on your skin until it begins to burn and then it is too late.

  Earlier that morning Shepherd Martha had lugged two dead sheep into the barn. She told us there were other sheep, floating and tangled in the refuse of the flood, but they were not worth risking a life to retrieve in those powerful currents. Besides, they were too bloated to use for meat.

  How many others we’d lost she wouldn’t know until she could reach the hill pasture on the other side of the river. But the little wooden bridge had been swept away and there was no crossing the ford in its present temper. At least the beguinage itself was on high ground and safe, but the great expanse of brackish water spread out across field and pasture as far as the eye could see.

  Having left the carcasses in the barn, Shepherd Martha had immediately gone out again, to search for other stranded beasts with Leon lolloping at her heels, leaving Beatrice, Pega, Catherine, and me to gut and butcher the dead sheep.

  We ferried the spoils to the kitchen and soon there was no trace of the poor beasts save their bloody skins. The heads, which would not keep, Kitchen Martha set to boil at once and the tails and scraps went into the flesh pot. The rest of the meat would have to be smoked or potted, for there was precious little salt left to spare. But Kitchen Martha had to preserve the meat by some means: We desperately needed it.

  If my mother could have seen me smeared with blood and dung, dismembering a carcass, she’d have fainted. But for once, I wanted to do it. I needed to chop and saw until the sweat poured down my face. I wanted to smash bone and flesh again and again until my arms were too tired to move. I wanted to hack the forest out of my mind, to smell blood and shit, instead of wild onions and rotting leaves.

  Ever since we’d returned from the forest yesterday, I’d not been able to rid myself of its stench. I worked most of the night in the infirmary for I knew if I tried to sleep, the demon would come for me in my dreams. But even the stinks of the infirmary had not obliterated the smell of the forest. That creature was still out there. And it was waiting for me.

  You murdered your own, Beatrice said. She did not say baby, but she didn’t need to; I saw the savage hatred in her face. Did that creature also know I had murdered its spawn? If it could strike Healing Martha so savagely that she was disfigured almost beyond recognition, destroy her speech and paralyse her limbs, what would it do to me if it discovered what I’d done? I shuddered and tried to blot the sight of Healing Martha’s contorted face from my head, but I couldn’t stop seeing it.

  “You finished cleaning those skins?” Pega called out to me.

  Beatrice elbowed me out of the way, tutting over the tiny shreds of scarlet threads still clinging to the greasy hides. “There, and there,” she said, pointing. “Can’t you be trusted even to do that?”

  Pega came across to examine the skins. I expected her to join in Beatrice’s sneers, but she didn’t.

  “Stop mithering, Beatrice. That’ll do fine. Lass here’s been up better part of the night tending to the infirmary and she’s still worked like an ox this morning, which is more than young Catherine’s done. You intending to do anything to help, lass?”

  Catherine didn’t seem to hear. She was huddled miserably on an upturned pail, her face and hands smeared with sheep’s blood.

  “Poor child,” Beatrice said. “She’s so upset about Healing Martha, bless her. She’s scarcely eaten a thing since yesterday. She’s shivering. We should send her inside.”

  “Aye, well, she’d not be cold if she got off her bloody arse and did some work. Sitting there moping isn’t going to help Healing Martha. Over here, Catherine, and help get these skins in the lime. Sooner we get done here, the sooner we can all get into the dry.”

  Catherine stumbled across, not looking at any of us. The rain drove in through the open barn doors, swirling the blood in the puddles.

  Pega hitched her skirts even higher up her bare legs as she wrestled with the slimy sodden hides. “So how is Healing Martha? Any better?”

  I shook my head. “She doesn’t seem to be able to speak. Just keeps saying the same word she did in the forest, except it isn’t a proper word. I gave her some lavender to help restore her wits, but—”

  “Who gave you the right to physic Healing Martha?” Beatrice snapped. “You know no more than the rest of us—a great deal less, I should think. Healing Martha was the only one with the skill to mend others and now she has neither the wit nor speech to tell anyone how to heal her.”

  Catherine made a little high-pitched sound like a puppy whimpering. She stared towards the infirmary, her eyes brimming, her hands shaking helplessly by her sides.

  Beatrice put a protective arm around her. “This child is in no state to work; her hands are like ice. I’m taking her inside to get warm—otherwise she’ll be ill herself. And we don’t want to tax Osmanna with another patient, do we?” she added, glowering at me.

  Beatrice gently guided Catherine out of the barn and across the yard. And as the rain wetted her again, the dried blood on Catherine’s hands began to run and dripped from her fingers into the puddles as she walked.

  Pega sighed. “Looks like it’s just you and me, lass. Come on, grab the skin.”

  We carried the heavy skin across to the vat and edged it in, trying not to splash ourselves with the lime.

  “You seen aught of Servant Martha since the night of the storm?” Pega asked, her gaze fixed on the delicate task of sliding the skin in without touching the burning liquid.

  “I don’t think she’s left her room. She let me bind up her arm, but she didn’t speak. She just sat, staring at the wall, and there was such a strange expression on her face, as if
she’d seen …”

  “A demon?” Pega finished.

  I glanced up at Pega to see if she was taunting me, but for once I could see she was serious.

  I nodded.

  “The Owlman,” Pega said gravely. “Servant Martha didn’t believe in him afore, but I reckon she does now. She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known, but I tell you when she staggered towards us out of the storm she looked near to broken, as if she’d been put to the rack.”

  “Have you … have you ever seen the Owlman, Pega?”

  Pega shook her head vehemently. “No, and I don’t want to. My grandam told me the last time he flew, though it was years before she was born, the Owlman caught a villager in his talons one night and carried the man right up to the church tower. Still alive he was. They heard him crying for help as he was carried over the cottages. He was still screaming from the tower for hours after, but no man dared to go up to rescue him. Then at the darkest hour the screams stopped and in the morning, there was a pile of bones lying beneath the church tower, picked clean, but still bloody. They say—”

  “Shepherd Martha told me of the sheep.” We both started violently as a voice rang out from the door. Servant Martha, looking almost as wet as she had that night, strode across to us, limping slightly. She threw back her sodden hood and peered into the vat. She still looked deathly pale. There were dark hollows around her eyes and she cradled her arm protectively.

  “Servant Martha! I didn’t expect … Are you feeling better?” I asked.

  She looked down at me. “You attended to my arm most efficiently, Osmanna. I’ve no doubt it will fully recover.” Her tone was brittle. “Where are the others? I understood Beatrice and Catherine were assisting you with this task.”

  “Beatrice took Catherine inside,” Pega replied. “State little lass was in, she was no use to man nor beast. This business with Healing Martha has scared her half to death. Others too.”