The Vanishing Witch

by Karen Maitland

  Chapter 59

  If cut hair is thrown on to a fire and burns brightly it is a sign that the person will have a long life, but if it shrivels or smoulders it is an omen of impending death.

  Lincoln

  There were times when I was sorely tempted to send my ferret Mavet in to bite Robert’s backside, but even that wouldn’t have made him listen, for fear had eaten into the metal of his spirit. Fear makes a man barricade his mind as well as his house, and Robert was starting to believe that everyone he saw was out to kill him. It’s when a man feels under siege that he clings most stubbornly to what he thinks he knows: to break faith with himself, when all around are attacking, would be more than he could bear.

  Wherever he went, Robert was certain he was being watched or followed. And, of course, he was right. Godwin was behind him like his own shadow, constantly changing his garb to disguise himself, dressing in whatever he could steal, but there is something about the way a man stands and walks, the way his sleeve hangs empty that cannot be disguised, and though Robert hastened through the streets, meeting the gaze of no man, he would catch sight of the still figure from the corner of his eye and veer away, like a startled horse. Eventually, though he’d sworn he would never do it, he had even taken to hiring an armed linkman to accompany him whenever he left the house, to ensure that no stranger could get within a yard of him.

  Robert’s nights were no better than his days for the demon horse invariably carried him back to the streets of London, to the blood that flowed in an ever-widening scarlet lake and the feet that pressed sharp as an axe-blade on his neck. He woke sweating and exhausted. And there is nothing more likely to make a man feel hard-done-by than lack of sleep.

  In his misery he concluded that there was only one person who had any thought for his welfare: his sweet and adoring stepdaughter. No one else, especially his new wife, seemed to be in the least concerned about him or his safety. But Leonia could always bring a smile to his face, and she did so now as she entered the solar bearing a jug of wine.

  ‘You shouldn’t be fetching my wine, child. Where are Tenney and Diot?’

  Leonia carefully positioned the jug on the table. ‘Diot’s so slow, and Tenney said he was busy, but he wasn’t. He’s lazy.’

  He’d have to have words with the man. Tenney was growing increasingly moody. It was hard to get two words out of him, and where once he had looked everyone straight in the eye, now he shuffled around with his head bent, like an old beggar in search of lost coins or scraps. Robert supposed that Tenney was still aggrieved because Beata had been sent to the infirmary of St Magdalene, but he wouldn’t tolerate a servant sulking. When hired men were allowed to think they could dictate . . . His hand began to tremble again as he took the goblet of blood-red wine Leonia held out to him. He tried to put it to the back of his mind. He didn’t want the child to see he was unnerved.

  ‘Where’s your mother, Leonia?’

  The girl busied herself straightening the jug on the table, as if she were ashamed to answer. ‘She rode out to meet Edward. He was visiting the cottagers. She’s always going out with Edward, since she made him steward.’

  She made him steward. Robert felt more than a twinge of annoyance. Even an innocent child had observed that Edward’s allegiance was to Catlin, not him. And what reason would Catlin have to visit the cottagers, with or without Edward, leaving little Leonia to perform the duties his wife should have been at home to carry out?

  He forced a smile to his face and drew a stool close to his chair. ‘Come, child, sit down here and tell me all you’ve been doing. Have you spent the gold piece I gave you to make up for not bringing you something pretty from London?’

  She ignored the stool he’d made ready for her and instead slid onto his lap. Putting an arm round his neck, she wriggled her buttocks over his thighs to get herself into a comfortable position. She kicked her legs out straight in front of her.

  ‘I bought new shoes. Do you like them, Père?’

  Her slender feet were clad in soft leather that cradled the ankles. The slit down the front was closed by three horn buttons. The toes were pointed, the points not nearly as long as those worn by Robert, but the height of fashion for a woman. Each shoe was decorated with piercing in the form of an ouroboros, a snake devouring its own tail.

  ‘Charming . . . but did not the cordwainer have something more . . .’ Robert hesitated, unwilling to hurt her feelings. ‘Flowers, perhaps.’

  Leonia gazed down, flexing her toes so that the snakes seemed to undulate over her feet. ‘I asked him to make the snakes. I like them, don’t you, Père? I didn’t want to look like all the other women.’ She turned a beaming smile on him.

  ‘Trust me, my dear, you will always stand out from them.’

  She tilted her head to one side, her eyes filled with anxiety. ‘Is it because I’m ugly? Mother says I am very plain.’

  Robert frowned. ‘That’s nonsense. You’re the prettiest child I’ve ever known and you are surely going to flower into a most beautiful woman, one day.’

  Robert was not given to praising children. His own parents had never done so and he, like them, believed it spoiled a child’s character to be petted or told they were clever or handsome. He probably would not have complimented Leonia on this occasion, however pretty he thought her, had he not been so annoyed with Catlin that he would have said anything to contradict her.

  He reached up and rubbed a lock of Leonia’s hair between his finger and thumb, bringing it to his nose to smell the sweet perfume of damask roses that clung to it. ‘For one thing, you have these glossy black curls, just like satin.’

  A radiant smile lit Leonia’s face. She kissed his cheek, snuggling into him. He was glad he’d made her smile again.

  ‘Then,’ he said, running a finger lightly over the back of her hand, ‘there is your golden skin, the colour of the sweetest honey.’

  She giggled. ‘And what about my lips? What are my lips like?’

  He chuckled indulgently, entering into her game and, for the first time in weeks, found himself relaxing a little. ‘Let me see, your lips, what do they remind me of?’

  She parted them slightly, lifted her face and pressed her soft mouth to his own, squirming her round little bottom against his crotch.

  Afterwards, Robert told himself a hundred times it was not his fault. Before he realised what she intended, she’d seized his hand and was pushing it inside her gown, rubbing it against her soft nipple. He felt the silky mound of her little breast in his hand. Her mouth was hot against his. Her kitten tongue fluttered over his lips. He felt his member rising between his legs, the heat rushing up his spine till he couldn’t even think what—

  ‘Leonia!’ Catlin was standing in the doorway, Edward just behind her.

  Leonia turned her head and in a flash her mother had caught her by the wrist and dragged her from Robert’s lap.

  ‘What are you doing with my daughter?’

  Robert struggled up from the chair. ‘Nothing . . . The little slut flung herself on me. Is this how you bring her up to behave?’

  Catlin rounded on her daughter. ‘Is this true? Of course it is. Don’t try to deny it. I’ve seen you flirting with my husband, sitting on his lap like some stew-house whore. I won’t tolerate it, do you hear? This time I shall teach you a lesson you won’t forget!’

  Catlin strode over to a small box that stood on the chest and opened it. Robert saw a flash of silver in her hand. She pushed Leonia onto a chair. Then, before anyone realised what she intended, she grabbed a handful of Leonia’s long black curls. There was a rasping sound and the hank of hair fell to the floor. Leonia shrieked and clapped her hand to the patch of shorn scalp.

  ‘God’s blood, what are you doing?’ Robert tried to catch his wife’s hand, intending to take the scissors from her. ‘There’s no need for that.’

  She spun round, the sharp points of the twin blades just an inch from his chest. He’d never seen such dark fury in her face. ‘It would seem there i
s every need, Robert,’ she said grimly. ‘It’s what they do to whores, isn’t it?’

  Leonia sprang from the chair and ran across the room, but her mother caught her by the hair and dragged her back, flinging her into the chair again.

  ‘Let me go, you old hag! You’ll be sorry. I’ll make you sorry.’ Leonia struggled to free herself, but Catlin was stronger.

  ‘Not as sorry as I will make you. Edward! Hold her.’

  He hesitated, then hurried over and pinned Leonia’s arms to the chair. He looked down at her, grinning, as if he were enjoying every moment. She stopped struggling and stared up at him, unblinking. His smile abruptly vanished, as if a bucket of water had been thrown over him, and he hastily turned his face away, though his fingers tightened round her arms.

  Catlin set to work with grim determination, shearing as close to the scalp as she could. There seemed to be far more hair on the floor than there had ever been on the child’s head. The locks kept slithering down until Robert felt he was suffocating under the rising mounds of hair. He knew he should stop his wife, but to do so would make it seem that he was admitting it was his fault. But it wasn’t. The girl had seduced him, deliberately tried to arouse him. She’d taken him entirely unawares. But she was a child, just a child. She couldn’t have understood what she was doing, could she?

  All the time her mother was cutting, Leonia neither moved nor uttered a sound. She kept her furious gaze fixed on Edward, as Catlin roughly pushed her head this way and that, as if she were plucking a dead bird. When only an uneven stubble covered her daughter’s scalp, Catlin straightened. ‘Let her go.’

  Edward sprang away from Leonia as if she were a dog that might savage him as soon as its muzzle was removed, but she rose and walked stiffly to the door. Only once did her hands jerk up as if to touch her head, but she clamped them at her sides before they could. Robert thought she must be weeping and trying to conceal it, but when she reached the door, she turned and there was no trace of a tear in her tawny eyes. The golden flecks were more prominent than Robert remembered. For a moment he thought he was staring into the eyes of a great cat, filled with savage rage and hatred. Then, before he could blink, she was gone.

  Chapter 60

  It is written that King John of England was murdered by a wicked friar who squeezed the secretions of a toad into his drinking cup.

  Lincoln

  As soon as the door closed behind Leonia, Robert staggered to the table and poured himself a goblet of wine, which he drained without setting it down, then choked as he remembered who’d brought it for him. He tried to avoid looking at the mound of black curls encircling the chair.

  ‘That was harsh, my dear. Surely there was a better way . . .’

  ‘I think it will serve as a salient reminder, Robert.’ Catlin calmly returned the scissors to her box, as if she had used them to snip a loose thread. ‘Nuns cut their hair to remove temptation from men, don’t they?’

  Robert flushed, and caught the smirk on Edward’s face. Anger blazed in him. ‘And if you’d been here this afternoon, wife, as was your duty, this would never have happened. Why exactly was it necessary for you to visit the cottages with your son?’

  Catlin’s eyes were as cold as the grave. ‘Edward is not yet acquainted with the area or the tenants. And it’s as well that I did ride out, for I’d the good fortune to meet Sheriff Thomas on the road. He was asking again, Robert, if you had yet made up your mind to sit on the Commission of Array.’

  ‘I made plain when he asked me the first time that I have guild matters to attend to and, with business as poor as it is, I need to be out buying and selling, not wasting my time compiling lists and listening to testimonies. Every hour spent doing that is throwing money into the Braytheforde.’ He flinched as the image of Jan’s bloated white face floated again before his eyes.

  Edward crossed the room and poured two goblets of wine, one of which he handed to Catlin. The other he took back to one of the chairs and sat down with it. The insolence of this gesture made Robert’s jaw clench. His stepson was treating the house as if it were his own.

  ‘But, Father, I’m here to relieve you of that burden so that you can take your place where you should, in the service of the King and Lincoln.’

  Edward had never dared to use such a familiar term as ‘father’ before. Robert had given him no such leave, and only his guilt over Leonia prevented him from seizing his wife’s son by the scruff of his neck and hurling him out of the house.

  ‘If I am any relation to you at all it is as stepfather and I will decide how I shall employ my time, Master Edward,’ Robert said coldly. ‘May I remind you that, thanks to your incompetence, if that indeed was what it was, I lost a cartload of the best cloth. And, thanks to your idiocy, the thieves got clean away. Only the intervention of your mother prevented me having you arrested as an accomplice. She convinced me you really are that stupid.’

  Edward jerked as if he were about to leap from his chair and punch Robert, but Catlin shot out a hand and pushed him down, shaking her head at him. ‘Until such time as my son has proved himself worthy of your trust, naturally he’ll take no more decisions without consulting you. But if business is poor, Robert, that’s all the more reason we shouldn’t risk offending the sheriff by churlishly rejecting this honour. Thomas is an influential man. And, as he said, the King rewards loyalty. With armies on the verge of war in France and Scotland, wool and cloth will be sorely needed for gambesons to protect the soldiers, as well as for tunics. One royal contract would be worth a thousand times more than any other and you wouldn’t need to wear yourself out riding round the country, begging to sell a few bales of cloth here and there.’

  Robert slammed his goblet onto the table. ‘And what use would a royal contract be if my warehouse is burned to the ground? It’s the work of minutes to destroy a fortune, as I saw in London. You have no idea what these men are capable of, Catlin. Great buildings brought crashing down. Men dragged from their own hearths and slaughtered, wealthy men, noblemen. If you had seen it . . .’

  ‘But that is the point, Robert. None of the council did see it and some are beginning to ask why John of Gaunt has not yet sent reinforcements here. If you refuse to serve on the Commission, some may begin to question if the message was delivered at all, and indeed where exactly your loyalties lie. Thomas says that your close friend Hugh de Garwell is already suspected of being a rebel. He was a Member of Parliament and a mayor of Lincoln.’

  ‘Hugh? Have they arrested him?’

  Catlin lowered her eyes, fingering her goblet. ‘Naturally, Sheriff Thomas would not confide such matters to a woman, but the very fact he mentioned it must surely be a warning that if you do not accept . . .’

  Edward tipped the last of the wine down his throat. ‘It’s all round the wharf that men are being tried and executed within the hour. Not just hanged either, but dragged by horses till they’re dead or having their noses, ears, pricks and limbs hacked off and being left to bleed to death. I give thanks I can prove I was quietly going about my business in Lincoln during the riots. I pity those who can’t.’

  Robert crossed to the casement, staring sightlessly into the street. Not for the first time since he’d returned from London did he wonder if Catlin had any care at all for his safety. The tender, affectionate woman he’d married had vanished, leaving in her place a woman who seemed as hard as the devil’s hoof. The ruthlessness with which she’d punished Leonia had shocked him. Yet perhaps it was him who was being unreasonable. The girl had behaved like a harlot. It was a mother’s duty to correct her. And surely Catlin’s anger was proof she loved her husband and was jealous of any woman, even her own daughter, who might steal his affections. Jealousy sprang from love, didn’t it? He winced, remembering poor Edith’s rages.

  Catlin was right about something else too. He had failed in London. He couldn’t risk any suspicion of disloyalty, not with treason being whispered behind every keyhole. However much he feared the rebels, the fear of being accused of tr
eason was worse. The killings he’d witnessed by the rebels, though brutal, were positively merciful compared to how King Richard and his minions were punishing traitors. Catlin was trying to protect him, as any loving wife would.

  The gibe she had made about him being a coward still burned into him, not least because he had accused himself of the same fault. Were his fellow merchants whispering it behind his back? He could not bear to have anyone, especially his own wife, despise him.

  ‘My sweeting,’ Catlin said softly, as if she could hear his thoughts, ‘Sheriff Thomas has assured you that the names of the commissioners will be kept secret, known only to him and King Richard. No one in Lincoln will have any idea that you are a commissioner. They won’t be lying in wait for you. Why would they? Besides, as Edward says, with the summary executions taking place, even the most hardened rebel will not dare show his hand now. They’ll all be lying low in their cottages or slinking off into the fens and praying they’re not found.’

  ‘I suppose I have no choice.’ Robert sighed. ‘Very well . . . I’ll send word to Thomas.’

  He was still gazing out of the window so he didn’t see Catlin pick up one of the shining black curls and slide it into the hollow behind one of the bloodstones in her necklace. Neither did he witness the knowing smile his wife and her son exchanged. If he had, he might have been even more terrified than he already was.

  Chapter 61

  Peg O’Nell is a water sprite who haunts the river Ribble. She was a maid at Waddow Hall and her mistress drowned her, using witchcraft. Every seven years since then the water sprite has taken a human life in revenge.

  Beata

  I was sitting in the cool of the cloister, with three of the older patients. The afternoon was hot and stifling as a baker’s oven so we’d been allowed to take our mending outside – linen ties that had snapped from caps, sleeves torn from habits, patches to be added to the shifts of the sick, which had been scrubbed so often they’d worn into holes. The work in the infirmary didn’t stop for the lay sisters or for us.