The Owl Killers

by Karen Maitland

  I had prayed for the relic and instead I received something far better—a heretic. That prize was surely enough to cancel out any transgression I had committed in the Bishop’s eyes. I would soon be back in the comfort of the Cathedral at Norwich; then the Owl Masters could do what they liked with this shit-hole of a village; it would be far behind me.

  The church was dark, for little light penetrated the coloured fragments of the stained glass windows. Only the ruby glow of the eternal lamp above the altar stood out from the shadows, but it illuminated nothing. The Commissarius prowled around, peering into the vestry and bell tower to assure himself that the church was empty. Finally he slid onto one of the stone seats which lined the walls where the old or weak rested during the services.

  The wall behind him was painted with the Harrowing of Hell. I could not make out the figures in the gloom, save for the gold of the halo above the head of Christ, but I knew it well enough. Christ standing before the prison of Hades in His winding sheet, breaking the prison door down and offering release to the dead who crowded behind it. It seemed to me in that moment the most blessed of omens, that the Commissarius should have chosen to sit before that painting of redemption and liberation. His first words were also grat-ifyingly comforting.

  “I must congratulate you, Father Ulfrid. You appear to have wasted no time in bringing this grave matter to our attention.”

  “When I learned what had transpired at the house of women, I was naturally appalled. I sent a letter at once to Bishop Salmon.”

  “Quite so.” The Commissarius nodded encouragingly.

  “When the Bishop sent the warrant for her arrest, I saw to it that it was acted upon immediately. I was … a little surprised though, that His Excellency ordered the girl to be held here. I thought he might wish her to be held at his own jail in Norwich. But now that you are here to take the girl back to Norwich for trial, that will be a great relief to the village. Although …”

  I hesitated, not wishing to be seen to offer advice. “Forgive me, Commissarius, I couldn’t help noticing that you have only one lad with you. Naturally I will accompany you to Norwich to testify and of course, a young girl will hardly be able to offer much resistance. We will be able to manage her between us, I’m quite sure. But perhaps … we should take a few other men with us, just as a precaution, in case the foreign women attempt to rescue—”

  “Lord D’Acaster’s daughter on trial in Norwich?” The Commissarius pressed his delicate fingers together. “I think not. You must understand that any accusations brought against a noble family have to be handled with great delicacy. His Excellency, Bishop Salmon, has no wish to publicly humiliate one of our leading families.”

  For a moment I couldn’t seem to catch my breath; I felt winded, as if he had just kicked me in the stomach. Surely he wasn’t going to dismiss this crime merely because she was D’Acaster’s daughter? I felt as if I had grasped a rope to pull myself out of the mire, only to have it come away in my hands.

  “But, Commissarius, she’s a heretic! Countless witnesses will testify to the fact. Surely the Bishop wouldn’t turn a blind eye to such a crime because the girl is highborn?”

  “Father Ulfrid, are you suggesting that the Bishop weights his scales of justice in favour of the wealthy or powerful?” The Commissarius’s voice crackled with ice. “Just because he was unduly lenient with you, Father, do not imagine that he allows crime to go unpunished.”

  “Of course, I didn’t mean …” We both knew that was exactly what I did mean. “Forgive me, Commissarius, but I don’t understand. You just said the girl would not be brought to trial; then how will justice …” I faltered.

  “The girl will not face trial in Norwich, Father. But there will be a trial, make no mistake about that. The Bishop has graciously entrusted me to conduct it myself, here in Ulewic, and if the malefactor is found guilty, the sentence imposed for the crime will also be carried out here.

  “His Excellency desires discretion, Father Ulfrid. There is no need to make a public spectacle of such a tragic affair. One does not punish the father for the sins of the child. Lord D’Acaster is a generous benefactor to the Church. One would hardly wish to see such a devout and godly man publicly shamed for the heinous crimes of his wanton and rebellious daughter. The girl has surely heaped misery enough upon her father’s head. But you need have no fear, Father Ulfrid; she will not escape justice.”

  The Commissarius shuffled slightly on the stone seat, revealing a little tongue of red flame among the dark figures on the wall at his back.

  “If the trial is held in Ulewic,” he continued, “it will make it easier for witnesses to come forward, particularly those who might be a little reluctant to testify. It has been my experience that simple men, who have lived all their lives in a village, are apt to become tongue-tied if paraded before their betters in the splendour of a great Cathedral building. They are inclined to become confused about what they heard. And we don’t want our little fish wriggling from the net because some village idiot muddles his testimony, now do we?”

  The Commissarius gave a slight smile. “I am sorry if that disappoints you, Father Ulfrid. No doubt you were looking forward to leaving the village, perhaps renewing old acquaintances in Norwich, or one friend in particular?”

  My heart lurched. The band of pain tightened. Had Phillip told him about Hilary coming here? No, if he had I would be sitting in that jail now instead of D’Acaster’s daughter.

  “I only wished to serve His Excellency in this matter,” I said hastily, glad that the church was too dark for the Commissarius to see my face.

  The Commissarius studied his fingers. “However, Father Ulfrid, I did not bring you here to discuss the conduct of the trial. There is another issue which … concerns me.” He paused before pronouncing the word concern, as if he had devoted much thought to the selection of the word.

  “As I said, you are to be commended for your diligence in reporting the matter of the heresy, Father Ulfrid. Which makes it all the more puzzling as to why you did not immediately report the fact that you had excommunicated the house of women in its entirety. If I am to understand your letter correctly, it would appear that you took this step two months ago. And yet you only thought fit to tell us of it now.”

  “But, Commissarius,” I protested, “it was you yourself who instructed me to use the penalty of excommunication if the people would not pay their tithes.”

  “Quite so. But your letter suggested that you did not impose such sanctions for a failure to tithe. If I have understood you correctly, you excommunicated them for their defiance in refusing to make public penance for a far graver crime, a crime that should have been brought to our attention immediately. Had you done so, the matter might have been resolved long before this girl committed her heinous act, thereby saving Bishop Salmon the embarrassment you have subjected him to and saving me a great deal of trouble.”

  The Commissarius shifted on the cold stone again, revealing more of the flames painted on the wall behind his back. It was too dark to see the details, but I didn’t need to; I knew every detail of that painting by heart. The painted fire burned beneath a great caldron in Hell in which the tormented, their limbs hacked off, were being boiled alive.

  The Commissarius tapped his mouth with a long thin finger as if he was deep in thought, but I was certain that he had already planned every word he was going to say to me.

  “It would appear, Father Ulfrid, that you have knowingly permitted a nest of vermin to breed in your midst, a nest which has been brooding a most evil and wicked heresy, while you have stood by and done nothing. I think, Father Ulfrid, you had better tell me all that has transpired from the beginning concerning these women. And I caution you not to leave anything out, otherwise I may indeed be returning to Norwich with a prisoner for trial, but it will not be the girl.”

  beatrice

  eVERY TIME I WENT INTO THE COTE I looked for my little Gudrun, expecting to see her crouching there with a bird nestling in her
hair, as if the past days had been nothing but an evil dream. She’d simply wandered away as she often did. She wasn’t dead. My Gudrun wasn’t dead.

  Every mother wails to all who will listen that all kinds of disasters have befallen her missing child, only to feel so foolish when the child walks in with a grubby grin, all blithe and innocent, to be startled by her mother’s fierce hug, her slaps and tears, her laughter and her scolding. So, each time I opened that door I expected to be made foolish. I’d shout and cry and she wouldn’t understand. She’d merely lost track of time. She wouldn’t even know I’d been searching for her. She never did.

  I had peeled the wet strands from her face with my own fingers. I could still feel them tangled in my hand, but that was not death. The body I touched wasn’t real. It was a trick, a deception contrived by mummers, a doll made to look like the living, stuck with pins or bound with thorns that could not hurt it, for it was made of wax. The lips painted blue, the green eyes carved out to resemble real eyes … that doll, that pretty semblance of a virgin saint, was not my Gudrun. It was not my Gudrun dead.

  Gudrun’s straw pallet still lay against the wall and I saw her there, curled up like a cat beneath the covers, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness I looked again and saw her bed was empty. Her breathing form was turned to straw, which no spinning of my prayers would turn again to gold. It’s as if I saw with two pairs of eyes: a pair that lied and a pair that revealed the brutal truth. I wished to God that I had only the lying eyes.

  The pigeons missed her too. Every now and then one flew down and alighted on her bed as if it too saw her there. They wouldn’t come to my hands, nor let me snuggle their warm bodies, fluttering away if I reached out to them, but at night there were always three of them, nestling together where her head used to lie. Everyone else continued with their lives as if she had never been. We were the only ones who missed her, the pigeons and me, for we were the only ones who’d ever loved her.

  I was the keeper of the cote. No one came in except Gudrun and me. I had to sleep in the cote now, in case the others sneaked in during the night. I had to keep them out. They mustn’t know that Gudrun’s bedding was still here. They’d tell Servant Martha and she would order it removed. “A waste of good blankets and straw,” she’d say. “A morbid obsession, unfitting for a beguine. The sooner all traces of that unfortunate mute are removed, the sooner Beatrice will pull herself together again. It is for her own good. She has no right to grieve. She was not the girl’s mother.”

  But that pallet was all I had of Gudrun. My only keepsake. She had nothing to leave, except her scent that still lingered on the linen. If they took it away, she couldn’t come back. She knew her own bed, you see, like the pigeons. If you destroy their nests, they circle round and round. They won’t land. They won’t come home.

  Pega took me to the place where she said the women buried her, close by the chapel wall, hidden from a casual glance. Just a little strip of newly dug earth, swollen and livid in the grass like a fresh weal upon a naked back. That was Servant Martha’s doing, hiding her away in a forgotten corner like you’d bury a dead cat. Her precious saint, the pure virginal Andrew, was given an honoured place under the chapel floor. But not my innocent murdered child; she was nothing more than a gnawed bone to be tossed out of sight.

  Only a week had gone by since Servant Martha and Pega had buried her, yet already the earth was settling back. Old brown leaves were drifting over it, blown against it by the wind, and the rich brown of the newly dug soil was turning grey. There were no flowers to lay on it. No stone marked it. Rain would rinse it away. Frost would trample it flat. By spring it would be gone. That’s what Servant Martha wanted, to obliterate all signs that my child ever lived. That’s what they had always done—tried to pretend that my little ones had never existed.

  None of my graves survived until spring. I’d watched them all fade away. Tiny insubstantial things, they none of them outlasted my grief. Stone babies without a name, without a voice, without a breath. They fled from me, slipping out in a scalding torrent of pain and blood as if they could not bear to be inside me a moment longer. Little fish escaping back to the river. I tried to hold on to them, even when I could feel them escaping. Each time, when the blood began to flow, I knew I had lost them, but still I tried to hold them inside me. But they knew I was not fit to be their mother and they wouldn’t stay. They didn’t want me.

  I remembered a face. I’d slept—the midwife had given me some opiate—and I woke to see a face floating above me, so distant, so blurred I could only make out the eyes and mouth, but I knew it was my baby’s face, so like my husband’s, his eyes, his mouth. He would be overjoyed to have a son who favoured him. The mouth moved and I thought my child cried for me. I stretched out my arms to hold him and felt a stinging slap striking my hands away.

  “Don’t touch me, Wife. There shall be no more embraces between us. Yet another born before its time. I might almost think you had taken some pernicious potion to rob me of my sons for spite, but the physician says it is your wanton lust that kills them. It’s your overheated blood which poisons them. Do you pleasure yourself, Wife, or satiate your appetites in another’s bed? For as God is my witness I have taken every care not to arouse you. You are a whore and it’s well you have not borne a child, for you are not fit to be a mother.”

  Once the blood is washed from the linen, people say you never had a child. See that woman over there whose infant lived a few months then died? She has the right to cry and mourn and be comforted. She is to be pitied, but what do you know of losing a child? But I did, I did. They were my children no less than those who drew breath and I cried for them, for I had cuddled them inside me. They had drawn nourishment and life from me. I had felt them swell and move, my secret children. I felt them quicken and kick. I had nursed their life. But no one would let me grieve for them, my nameless ones. They were dismissed from life as easily as phantasms born of the moon-crazed. They were buried as carelessly as menstrual rags.

  I used to sit at the window of my house in Flanders looking down on the waterfront. For hours I’d watch the men loading and unloading the barrels of wine, baskets of herring, and bales of cloth. Shouted greetings and bellowed orders, cries of sellers and seagulls were carried upwards to my open window on a rich current of sea salt, leather, spices, and sweat. I’d see the women waddling past, one hand pressed to aching backs, the other cradling bellies stuffed full as pomegranates with new life. I’d hear the squeals of children daring each other to run between the legs of horses or climb up on stacks of teetering bales. I’d watch them swing from ships’ ropes and play tag along the very edge of the quay, while their mothers gossiped or haggled with merchants, indifferent to the danger.

  Why them and not me? How could that whore Osmanna, that blood-smeared bitch, swell with child from some filthy groping with a drooling stableboy, when I, who had never once betrayed my marriage bed, remained barren? I would have made a dozen pilgrimages on my knees for just one of the infants that sluts like her spat out like grape seeds into the mud. I would have doted on my child, never letting it out of my sight, alert to every kind of peril, attentive to every need. Why should other women burst open every year, pushing out a healthy lusty infant with no more effort than a sow, when I couldn’t manage to produce even one?

  But I know now. I know why I could not have a child. My husband and Servant Martha were right: I was not fit to be a mother. I had pleaded and implored and worn God down until He had finally granted me a child of my own. And just like all of those careless mothers I had condemned, I’d let her run straight into danger.

  But there wouldn’t have been any danger if Servant Martha hadn’t turned the priest and villagers against us. If she’d given them the relic, they wouldn’t have taken my Gudrun. But she wouldn’t, because she wanted them to kill my child. Servant Martha didn’t want me to love little Gudrun, because she can’t love anyone. She didn’t want me to have a child. She and Osmanna, they both murdered my babi
es. They don’t want me to have anything that I can call mine.

  THE IRON RING ON THE DOOR turned and I braced myself against it, holding it shut.

  “Beatrice, are you there?” Catherine called out.

  The handle jiggled again. Catherine never had the strength to push open the door easily, even without a body as weighty as mine leaning against it.

  “Beatrice, Servant Martha wants you.”

  Servant Martha mustn’t come in here. I jerked open the door. Catherine fell into my arms. I pushed her back out of the doorway and closed it behind me.

  “What does she want?”

  “There are men with Servant Martha. The same ones who took Osmanna.” Catherine shivered and looked up at me, her forehead wrinkled in concern. “I heard them say they were taking you to testify against Osmanna, but you won’t, will you?”

  A wave of nausea and irritation rolled over me. “I have to look after the pigeons. Tell Servant Martha, tell her I have to look after the pigeons.”

  “They’re taking Servant Martha to the trial too.”

  “Trial?”

  “Beatrice,” Catherine wailed, “you know Osmanna was arrested because of what you … They are putting her on trial. But, Beatrice, you won’t say anything, will you?” She clutched at my arm, peering anxiously up at me.

  “It’s a sin to tell lies, Catherine. Ask Servant Martha. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not … speak.”

  january

  saint wulfstan’s day

  accused of being unworthy to hold office, bishop wulfstan pushed his crosier into the shrine of edward the confessor. he challenged his accusers to pull it out, but no one could for it was stuck fast; then wulfstan effortlessly drew the crosier from the shrine himself proving his fitness for office.