The Owl Killers

by Karen Maitland

  “We all know what it means, Merchant Martha,” I snapped. “Refuge—the place of refuge.”

  “Refuge for what, though?” Merchant Martha asked mildly. “I think she’s saying you have not understood it.” Merchant Martha sat down on the edge of the cot. “Tell me why you became a beguine.”

  “To serve God,” I said impatiently.

  “Then why not serve God as a nun or anchorite or wife? What did you find in a beguinage?”

  “Freedom. Somewhere I could be—”

  “That’s it, Servant Martha—in a beguinage, you had the freedom to be yourself, do what you thought was right, not what others told you to do. Thoughts. That’s what Healing Martha is trying to tell you. What we safeguard is not our bodies, but our freedom to think.

  “I don’t hold with what Osmanna did, you know that. There was a time when if I’d had the care of her, I’d have taken a strap to her backside, as well you know. But that day in the Marthas’ Council you said, ’Osmanna desires to seek the truth for herself.’ You gave her the freedom to do that. You and me, we may not have liked the truth she found, but she’d the right to try to find it. And if there is to be true refuge for thought, then we must be free to explore any path without hindrance. That’s what you taught me that day in council, Servant Martha. It’s taken me a while to accept it. You know me, I’m a stubborn old goat, but even old goats can change.”

  Merchant Martha slipped off the cot, she touched my shoulder, just for a moment, before she walked away.

  Healing Martha squeezed my hand again. For a moment, I thought I saw her smile, then a sudden spasm of pain twisted her face. Her hand dropped mine and clutched at her chest. She coughed, choking and wheezing, struggling to reach for the cup of herbed wine beside her. I held it to her lips. She drank and slumped back, shaking with the effort. A few drops of the red wine had spilled into her open hand. She gazed at them wonderingly, then slowly closed her fist, letting the drops run through her fingers and fall onto my open palm. By the glow of the fire’s embers, I watched her eyes close. Her good hand fell limp in mine. The flame on the rush candle guttered and died, leaving only the scent of smoke.

  pisspuddle

  iF THE TWO OF YOU DON’T stop squabbling, I’ll tell your father and then neither of you’ll be going to the burning tomorrow. There’s me trying to help your poor dear father out of the goodness of my heart and all you two can do is mither me until my head’s fit to burst. And you can get out of here now.” Lettice flung a ladle of water at the dog trying to slip in through the door behind her. It growled, but slunk off.

  “Now see what you’ve done,” William hissed in my ear. “It’s all your fault, you little pig’s turd.”

  “I can’t be doing with you two under my feet all day,” Lettice grumbled. “Make yourselves useful: Fetch some water—and not from the well that’s still cursed and will be until that wicked girl is ashes. You go down to the river, draw the water from there, and mind you find a nice clear patch, don’t be bringing me back a pail of mud. Now off with you, before I tell your father to take a switch to the pair of you.”

  She hung a pair of leather pails strung together with a rope over William’s shoulder and shooed us out of our cottage.

  William shoved me aside and hurried ahead of me down the path, trying to leave me behind. I had to run to catch up with him. It really annoyed him if I walked with him, that’s why I did it, even though I’d sooner walk by myself. It was hard keeping up with him. Although I was better, my legs still felt wobbly.

  I didn’t remember much about being sick. It was all a jumble—the flood, being ill, the Owlman. Sometimes I didn’t know what had really happened and what was just a bad dream.

  I don’t know how long I’d been in the house of women, but I woke up in a room that was bigger than two cottages together and had lots and lots of beds in it with people moaning. I was scared. I’d eaten the food the grey women had given me and it was witched and now I was going to waste away and die. I’d felt the birds pecking me, like Lettice said. I was so afeared I yelled and wouldn’t stop yelling, but Lettice came to rescue me, not a moment too soon, she said.

  I thought Mam would be waiting for me at the cottage. But she wasn’t there. Father said she wasn’t ever coming back. I didn’t believe him and I kept crying for her till Father smacked me. I still cry, but only at night and I stuff my blanket in my mouth so he can’t hear me.

  “Stop trying to walk next to me,” William said, deliberately nudging me into the bushes. “You think I want everyone to see me walking with a girl? And you needn’t think you’re coming with me tomorrow, ’cause you’re not. I don’t know what you want to come for anyway. You’ll be pissing yourself and crying for Ma … Anyway, you’ll be bawling before the flames even touch her.”

  “I won’t so!”

  “You will too. You don’t even know what happens, do you?”

  “Neither do you,” I said. My legs were shaking, but I wasn’t going to drop behind.

  “I do ’cause Henry told me.” William looked all smug. “He’s seen loads of burnings in Norwich. Shall I tell you?”

  I knew it was going to be horrible and I didn’t want him to tell me, but if I said no, he’d make me listen. I shrugged, trying to look as if I really didn’t care.

  “First all her clothes burn off and you can see her bubbies and everything. And her skin starts to blister and pop, then it melts and starts running down her legs. The stench is powerful. Just one whiff of it and you’ll be sick as a dog, and she’ll scream and scream and scream and you’ll never be able to get the scream out of your head.”

  I pressed my fist against my mouth and shuddered. I already felt sick.

  William grinned down at me. “See, I told you, Pisspuddle—you’re scared.”

  I ran a few steps ahead of him, so he couldn’t see my face. “Doesn’t bother me. I’m going to go to the Green afore it gets light, so I can get right in the front.”

  “Oh yeah.” He grabbed me by my braids. I wriggled and tried to kick him, but his arms were too long and I couldn’t reach him. I bit him hard on the arm, hard as I could. He squawked like a strangled goose and let go.

  “Just wait till I catch you, you little turd!”

  I ran down the path as fast as I could, round the tanner’s yard and up towards the Green. William was pounding after me, but the pails slowed him down. My legs had cramps and I’d got a stitch in my side.

  I tore round the corner so fast I didn’t even see the Owl Master standing in the shadows until he grabbed me. He clamped his leather-gloved hand across my mouth, and before I knew what was happening, he’d pulled a stinking sack over my head and arms. He tipped me over his shoulder. He was walking fast. My chest was banging hard against him and it hurt. I struggled and kicked, but I couldn’t get free. I heard a heavy door creak open, then he stopped. And he dumped me down on the rushes. I curled up tightly in a ball, too scared to move.

  “Here’s the brat, Father.”

  “Did you have to bring her like that? You’ve frightened her half to death.”

  I heard a man laugh, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “Doesn’t the Church teach that fear is the beginning of wisdom? Just make sure she does the wise thing, Father. Otherwise, I’ll be having that little chat with the Commissarius about a certain pretty lad of your acquaintance.”

  I heard scuffling in the rushes and Father Ulfrid yelped as if someone was hurting him.

  “Make no mistake, Father—one way or the other the Aodh is determined to finish that foreign woman tonight, her and her whole house of witches. You will bring her to him, or you will be pleading for death yourself before dawn breaks.”

  A door banged with a great hollow echo.

  I shrank as I felt fingers tugging the sack off my head.

  Father Ulfrid was bending over me. He pulled me to my feet. We were standing inside the church.

  “Are you hurt, child?”

  I shook my head, my heart pounding in my throat, glancing
round to see if the Owl Master was still here, but he wasn’t. I tried to edge towards the door, but Father Ulfrid caught my arm.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of, child.” Father Ulfrid knelt down so his face was close to mine. He was sweating, even though it was very cold in the church. “Listen carefully, child. There is something you must do for me. It is very important. Do you know the foreign women that live outside the village?”

  I shook my head.

  Father Ulfrid frowned impatiently. “Yes, you do. You were taken there when you were ill, remember? The women in grey.”

  “I never talked to them, ever.”

  “I need you to talk to them now. I want you to go there and ask the woman on the gate if you may speak to the leader, the one they call the Servant Martha. Can you remember that?”

  “Mam says I mustn’t go near them, ’cause they take little girls and sell them as slaves across the sea.”

  “But you were in their house and they didn’t sell you, did they?”

  “Only ’cause Lettice came and rescued me afore they could.”

  “Enough of this nonsense.” Father Ulfrid struggled up from his knees and stood over me. I backed away, but he held my shoulders. His hands pinched.

  “You were seen talking to the women before you were ill. You took food from them. You know what happens to little girls who tell lies, don’t you?”

  He pulled me round and pointed at the wall where demons with bird heads on their chests were poking the screaming sinners into the flames of Hell.

  “Now, child, you are to go to the house of women and ask for Servant Martha. When she comes, you are to give her these.”

  He pulled something out of his pocket. “Hold out your hands, child.”

  I shoved my hands behind my back, scared he was going to hit me with a switch, but he grabbed my wrist and pushed something into it. It was soft, and when I looked down, I saw it was only a lock of curly brown hair, tied up with a piece of torn grey cloth.

  Then he took my other hand and pushed a single long feather into it.

  “You are to give these to Servant Martha, but you must put one in each of her hands, like I have done to you. Then you must say just one word—choose.”

  “Choose what?”

  Father Ulfrid shook his head. “Pray you never need to know that, child. Now you go and do exactly what I’ve told you. And if she asks you who sent you, you must say the Owl Masters. You must not mention me, do you understand?”

  I didn’t understand. Why did I have to take a stupid feather to that woman? What if she asked me who gave it to me? Father Ulfrid had just said I’d go to Hell if I told lies. The grey woman would get angry if I wouldn’t tell her. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t.

  I dropped the feather and the hair and ran towards the door, but it was too heavy. I couldn’t wrench it open before Father Ulfrid caught me. He dragged me back and spun me round to face him.

  “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you, the Owl Masters will take you to the top of the church tower and leave you up there alone in the dark for the Owlman. Are you going to do it? Or shall I call them? They’re waiting—”

  servant martha

  iF I HAVE NOT RETURNED by midnight, Merchant Martha, gather the other Marthas, and act as God directs your spirits this night. I know you will do what is right for the women.”

  Merchant Martha held the candle higher and peered up into my face, frowning as she sought to read what was written there. “You are going to see Osmanna? To try to persuade her to recant?”

  I couldn’t answer her. “If I do not return, don’t search for me. Promise me you will not do that or allow anyone else to do it. Your duty is to the women.”

  “I know my duty, Servant Martha,” she answered gruffly. “I pray you remember yours.”

  As I walked away from her room, I heard her call softly behind me, “God go with you, Servant Martha, and keep you safe.” I was grateful for those words.

  I swung myself up onto my horse and urged him forward. The night was still and oddly quiet. I had grown accustomed to the roar of the wind in the trees and the rattling of doors and shutters, but now that the wind had died away the silence was unnerving. Sounds which had been masked before were now magnified—the boom of a bittern crouching somewhere in the reeds, the rustle of the grass as some unseen creature wriggled through it, and the clatter of my horse’s hoofs on the loose stones, a sound which I was sure must have been heard for miles. A sea mist had rolled in across the marshes. A great white curtain hung over the dark fields. Wisps of fog were edging towards me, curling around the horse’s flanks.

  At the fork I stopped; the right track led to the village and Osmanna, the left to the forest. I reached into my scrip for two small scraps—a strand of hair and a single feather. I held one in each hand, just as the child had given them to me. “Choose,” she’d said, as if it was a game.

  Right hand or left, how could I choose between what I held? They were both as soft and unsubstantial as air. Surely such ethereal fragments could not carry the vastness of eternity upon them? But they did. They say the Archangel Michael, when he holds our souls in his scales balanced between salvation and damnation, weighs our deeds against a single feather. Now those scales were in my hands, swinging between life and death, Heaven and Hell, but for which of us? The choice had been given into my hands. Three of us watched through this night—Osmanna and the Owlman and me. By this time tomorrow, one of us would be dead and one of us would be in Hell in this world or the next. But would any of us be left alive in this cursed valley?

  I had failed all the women. I had failed myself. Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini. But what could I confess? To say mea culpa was not enough. I had failed, yes, but how, how had I failed? What had old Gwenith said? Not names enough for all my sins. And a sin must have a name or it can neither be confessed nor absolved. Merchant Martha was wrong; it was not pride that kept me from returning to Bruges, it was fear that I had committed the greatest sin of all, the one that God will not name and will never forgive.

  I would have changed places with Osmanna if I could. I would have faced death for Christ. I would even have embraced it. I was not afraid of losing my life. I was not afraid of pain or disfigurement. My sin was that I was not willing to sacrifice my mind and my reason for my Lord. “Go and look at Healing Martha,” Merchant Martha had said. “Ask yourself if you are really willing to risk that.” God had called Healing Martha to fight for Him that night, for she was willing to surrender everything and I was not, because I could not be certain that sacrifice would not be in vain. To give all and discover you had given it for nothing. To climb the holy mountain and find no God there—that is both the unforgivable sin and the eternal punishment.

  I pulled on the reins and turned my horse onto the left-hand road. Not until that moment did I know for certain which I would choose—the hair or the feather, Osmanna or the demon.

  The mist was rolling in behind me and by the time I came to the edge of the forest, it was already slinking in among the trees. I dismounted and tethered my horse to the branch of a tree, where I could be sure to find it again. I patted the leather scrip tied about my waist, where I had placed a crucifix and Andrew’s Host in a small wooden box. Then I lifted the lantern and cast about me into the trees.

  I knew the Owlman was here. I could feel it. On that first night in May I had seen the Beltane fire glowing above the trees in the forest. Whatever evil had been hatched in the fire that night was the beginning of all this, and this is where I was determined it would end. There were no fires burning tonight and the forest was vast, but the demon had sent me his sign. He would find me as surely as he had found us that night in the storm and if he did not, I would call him forth.

  I strode into the trees. The mist rubbed around the trunks and curled over the boulders. The feeble candle flame couldn’t penetrate the dense fog, and white trunks loomed out of it inches from my face. All the time I was listening, conscious o
f the snapping of twigs and crunching of dead leaves under my feet, wondering what hidden creatures in the forest were even now tracking my footfalls. The damp mist clung to my clothes and skin in tiny beads, soaking them faster than rain. Nothing was stirring. It seemed that I was the only thing moving out there in the darkness. All the beasts were still, listening and waiting.

  Then I heard it, a deep echoing oohu-oohu-oohu, the call of the eagle owl hunting. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I glanced fearfully upwards but the mist was pawing around the branches, blocking out even the dark sky above. Perhaps it was only a harmless owl. I stood listening, trying to remember which direction the sound had come from. For a few minutes, I could hear nothing except the rasp of my own breathing.

  Oohu-oohu-oohu. The call came again. This time I knew it was no ordinary bird. It was too strong, too deep, like a pack of bloodhounds baying across the sky. The cry was coming from ahead and to the left. I touched the leather scrip again to reassure myself and stumbled towards the cry.

  Several times I crashed into trees or tripped over rocks and brambles, but I pushed on. Whenever I stopped to look around, the cry would echo again, as if it knew exactly where I was. It was leading me deeper and deeper into the forest. I was aware that I was climbing; the ground was sloping upwards and boulders became more numerous. To the left of me was the sound of crashing water. I must be somewhere near the river. I turned away from the water’s roar, afraid that in the dark and mist I might walk straight into it.

  Suddenly a huge dark shape lumbered out of the mist towards me. I had just time to throw my arm up before my face was smothered in something wet which wrapped itself around me, clinging to my face. I screamed and fought out of its slimy grasp, crashing backwards onto the ground, and the lantern rolled out of my hand. I covered my face, certain the thing would pounce again, but nothing happened. Slowly, I edged my hand towards the lantern. It had fallen onto a great heap of old leaves, and thanks be to God had not smashed or extinguished. I pulled it towards me, tilting it upwards.