Company of Liars

by Karen Maitland

  ‘I think she’s following me.’

  Adela looked alarmed and began struggling to her feet. ‘Do you think she’s spying on you for those priests, trying to catch you selling relics?’

  I tugged at her skirt. ‘Sit, sit. She’s no spy. Can’t you see how nervous she looks? But I think it is high time I asked her what it is she seeks. Who knows, she may want to buy an amulet.’

  Adela still looked apprehensive. ‘Then why doesn’t she simply come and speak to you? No one who lurks around in the shadows intends any good. You should take care, Camelot. She could be working as part of a gang, waiting for the chance to rob you.’

  ‘You’ve been listening to Zophiel. He sees robber gangs lurking on every corner. Any cutpurse would seize an opportunity to steal if he happened to see a chance in passing, but no one would waste several days following a poor old camelot around when there are much richer pickings on offer in a place like this.’

  I half expected the woman to run off as I approached, but she stood her ground until I had drawn close enough to talk to her.

  ‘Did you want something from me, mistress? A charm, an amulet?’ I lowered my voice. ‘A relic?’

  She glanced right and left as if seeking assurance we were not overheard. But when she spoke it was to the ground. ‘Please, you must come with me.’

  ‘Where must I come?’

  ‘I was sent to fetch you. She said I’d know you by your…’ Her words trailed off and she glanced rapidly up at my face, before lowering her gaze again.

  ‘By my scar,’ I finished for her.

  She had a pale, thin face, sharp cheekbones framed by dark brown hair, tight curls of which were escaping from under the edges of her veil. Her dark blue eyes continually flickered nervously from side to side as if she had been long accustomed to being on her guard.

  ‘And who is this woman who sent you? Why doesn’t she come herself? Is she sick?’

  The woman spat rapidly three times on the back of her two forefingers. ‘It was not the pestilence and she’s well again now. There’s nothing to fear. But please, you must come. She’ll be angry with me if I don’t bring you.’

  It was futile to question her further. Some lady had evidently sent her serving woman to find me; presumably she wanted to buy a relic, and judging by the agitated state of her maid, she was a lady who was well used to getting what she wanted. I despise mistresses who rule their servants with fear and I had half a mind to refuse, but then spoilt women are usually wealthy women and business is business after all.

  ‘I’ll come. Let me get my pack.’

  Adela, still fearing a trap, refused to be left behind. She either came, she said, or she would go to fetch Osmond and Rodrigo. The woman shrugged when this was put to her, as if such matters were beyond her control, and led us both up a maze of little lanes in the poorest quarter of the village.

  In contrast to the prosperous cottages lined up in neat little rows around the church and shrine, this area was a nest of ill-assorted huts and lean-tos thrown up from bits of old wood, hurdles and sacking. You find such quarters in every big town, people scratching a living from the crumbs of others’ prosperity, but it is not often seen in villages except those, like this one, with a well-visited shrine or a popular anchorite to bring in the pilgrims and the money. Foul puddles of mud and muck stagnated between the huts and the piles of rotting garbage. Half-naked children crawled around with the snuffling pigs, collecting dog dung in pails to sell to the tanners and fighting one another for the choicest pieces of shit. It was certainly not the quarter you’d expect to find a woman lodged who could afford to employ a servant.

  Pleasance, as the woman reluctantly divulged was her name, moved rapidly, head down and hood drawn across her face, although whether that was to block out the stench or to conceal her identity was difficult to say. She was forced several times to wait for us to catch up with her. Adela clung to my arm, fearful of slipping in the mud in her condition and trying in vain to sidestep the worst of the rotting guts and slimy pools with which the track was paved. Several times I urged her to go back, but she gamely shook her head and gripping my arm more tightly pressed on.

  This quarter of the village was divided by several deep open sewers which were full to overflowing with the rain. We perilously crossed one of them on a slippery plank and found ourselves picking our way by means of a series of randomly placed stones and odd bits of wood through a stretch of marshy wasteland. Here the huts were more widely spaced, dotted across a neglected expanse of sodden vegetation. Just as it seemed we were leaving the village entirely, Pleasance stopped outside a hut tucked into the shelter of some dripping trees and pulled aside a piece of heavy sacking which functioned as a door, motioning us to go in.

  The hut was made from three sheep hurdles bound together with rope, with an assortment of broken planks nailed together to form a kind of roof which glistened green with slime. Rank vegetation grew waist-high around it and a cloud of winter gnats hung over it like a pillar of smoke. It was the sort of shelter a herdsman might erect as a temporary refuge in bad weather, but it was not the kind of place you’d choose to spend one night, let alone several, unless your purse was empty or you were in hiding. I could see the same thought had also struck Adela and she did not need to be prompted to stay outside and watch my back.

  Despite the many gaps in the walls and roof, it was too dark inside to see the figure clearly at first. Then from out of the darkness came a child’s voice.

  ‘I told her you’d come, Camelot. I told her we had to wait for you.’

  Her pale face turned up towards me and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the hut, I saw the glitter of her ice-blue eyes and the white mist of her hair. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and then an unreasoning rush of anger as if I had been tricked, lured into a place I should have had more sense than to enter. I fought my way out again through the sacking.

  Pleasance and Adela were both waiting outside. Pleasance smiled for the first time, a sad, anxious little smile.

  ‘Narigorm said you’d come,’ she repeated hopefully as if that answered everything.

  Adela brightened. ‘You know this woman Narigorm, then? A kinswoman of yours?’

  ‘She’s not a woman. She’s just a child and she is no relative of mine. I met her once and that briefly, several months ago.’ I turned to Pleasance. ‘She was working as a fortune-teller for a master then; is he hereabouts?’

  Pleasance shook her head. ‘She fell sick. Her master heard I was a healer so fetched me to tend her. But he slipped away in the middle of the night without paying me and leaving the child without anything except the clothes she stood up in and her runes. The woman who ran the inn threw her out. She said she was afraid of the sickness, but I think she knew we’d no money for lodgings. I cared for the child as best I could in the woods until she was well. We’ve worked a little since, her with her runes and me with my herbs, but when we came here…’ She broke off with that now familiar shrug. ‘A priest gave us till the compline bell to leave the bounds, or he said we’d be arrested for devilish practices.’

  Did she mean the rune-casting or the herbs? Probably both, for either would be seen by the ever-jealous priests as rivals to their shrine’s coffers.

  ‘But Narigorm said you were coming. She said we would travel with you, so we hid here until you –’

  ‘She cannot travel with me!’

  The words burst out more vehemently than I had meant them to. The eyes of both women opened wide in surprise.

  It was Adela who broke the silence. ‘But why ever not? There are enough of us travelling together for two more to make little difference. We can’t leave a child or this woman in such a place. Besides, I’d love a child for company and Osmond loves children too.’

  ‘You’re not travelling on until after your child is born, remember. You don’t want to have your baby on the road in the middle of winter, do you? Anyway, why would you want to leave at all? You’ve got a warm dry b
ed here and Osmond is earning good money. You’d be hard put to find better. But these two have been ordered to go. If they’re found here in defiance of the Church it will mean a whipping or worse. They should leave at once, today.’

  It was a well-reasoned argument, a practical argument. It was the best thing for the two of them to leave right away, for their own safety. Pleasance stared at the ground, her shoulders sagging.

  ‘Come now, Pleasance, there are other villages where your skills will be welcomed, you and the child both. You will earn enough to eat well.’

  ‘She said we would travel with you,’ Pleasance repeated dully, as if it was a prayer learned by rote.

  Adela had slipped inside the hut and when she emerged she was leading the child by the hand. Narigorm looked, if possible, even more transparent. Her white woollen shift was nearly black with grime and dirt, but her hair stood out whiter than ever against the dark trees. She lowered her chin and innocently raised her eyes up to Adela. She did not have to speak, that look was enough.

  ‘She’s an angel,’ said Adela. ‘We can’t send this child out on the road alone.’

  ‘Plenty of children her age have to fend for themselves and she won’t be alone. She has Pleasance with her. We can’t afford to leave yet and they must go at once.’

  Narigorm turned her unblinking stare upon me. ‘You’ll have to leave too, I saw it in the runes, you’ll be gone by the next new moon.’

  Pleasance raised her head sharply. ‘That’s the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘And the runes never lie,’ said Narigorm. She took a step closer to me and hissed, ‘This time you’ll see.’

  7. The Prophecy

  Narigorm was right, of course, and before the new moon rose as sharp as death’s scythe on the land, our company was once again on the road. I knew I couldn’t blame the child; how could she have brought it about? She merely spoke what she read in the runes. Could she help it if the runes foretold ill fortune? Yet for all that, I did blame her. I felt that somehow, though I could not tell how, she was the instigator as well as the messenger.

  But if truth be told I need have looked no further than human nature for the cause of our misfortune. When Adela and I returned to the inn that evening there was already trouble brewing. A delegation of tin emblers had gone to the shrine officials to protest about the jack-in-boot toys. People were buying those instead of the official tin emblems which were sanctified and blessed by the clergy at the shrine. The priest in charge of the shrine had taken matters into his own hands and arbitrarily ruled that, since the jack-in-boot toys were fashioned after the legend of John Shorne, Osmond should pay a levy to the shrine amounting to half the price of every toy he sold, as payment for the use of their legend and their saint. This was double what the tin emblers paid to the clergy to buy their concession and Osmond, his stubborn Saxon blood rising in his veins, swore he would rather smash every toy himself than hand over one penny. The priest shrugged: Osmond could either smash the toys or pay up; it made no difference to him – either way his problem with the emblers was solved.

  Though it was clear that Osmond would have to turn his hand to other work if we remained, things might still have been well had it not been for Jofre. The following night when he and Rodrigo were playing in the inn, three men burst in and before anyone could stop them, they were bundling Jofre out of the door. By the time we got outside, two big men had him pinned against the wall of the inn and a third, a small, ferret-faced man, was tickling his knife against Jofre’s throat as he struggled in vain.

  Rodrigo roared like a bull and rushed towards him, but Ferret-face did not flinch. He thrust the point of his knife up under the boy’s chin until a tiny trickle of blood oozed out. Jofre gasped and instantly stopped struggling, not daring to move a muscle for fear the blade might sink deeper.

  ‘Stay back – one step closer and he’s had it.’

  Even in his fury Rodrigo could see the man was not bluffing. He took a step back, holding up his hands, palms open.

  ‘I take it you’re the boy’s master?’

  Rodrigo nodded. ‘What is it… what do you want from him?’

  ‘Want?’ Ferret-face gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘I want my money, that’s what I want. Your apprentice laid a wager on the fighting cocks. Thought he was man enough to play with the big boys, but then surprise, surprise, when he lost, he suddenly found his purse was empty. “Must have been robbed,” he said. Really upset he was at not being able to pay up, so me, being a soft-hearted man,’ and again he let out his mirthless little giggle, ‘I said to him, I said, “That’s a shame, lad. You can’t trust anyone these days, terrible lot of villains about. Tell you what I’ll do, my lad,” I said, “I’ll give you two days to come up with the money.” That’s the kind of generous man, I am, aren’t I, boys? Too soft-hearted for my own good, aren’t I? The boys here are always telling me so.’

  The two henchmen holding Jofre by the wrists grinned broadly and ground Jofre’s arms harder into the rough stone wall of the inn.

  ‘Our young friend here was supposed to bring me the money at noon today, only he didn’t show up. So now my lads here are going to break his fingers, one by one, nice and slowly. See if he can play his lute so well then.’

  Jofre had turned deathly pale; he was begging and pleading incoherently, which seemed to amuse Ferret-face all the more. Rodrigo had to be forcibly restrained from knocking him to the ground, but finally managed to get a grip on his anger and in a voice that was barely above a whisper, he asked how much Jofre owed. It was a princely sum even by Jofre’s standards. The sum owed, as Ferret-face patiently explained, was naturally higher than the original wager because he had been forced to wait for his money.

  ‘Let’s call it interest – my interest in getting my money.’ He giggled again.

  There was no question of not paying it. Rodrigo and I pooled the contents of our purses, but it was not enough, and the henchmen looked on the point of carrying out their master’s threat when Zophiel stepped forward and handed over the remaining money, saying savagely to Jofre, ‘You owe me, boy.’

  The men left, Ferret-face clearly pleased with himself, but his two henchmen growling like frustrated wolfhounds who have been called to heel before the kill. As soon as they were out of sight, the innkeeper stepped out of the shadows.

  ‘Right, I want you lot gone at first light. Those lads are trouble wherever they go; they come looking for their money and if they don’t get it, they start smashing the place up. This is a respectable inn for decent folk and I’ll not have that lowlife coming in here again.’

  ‘But they’ve no reason to be back,’ I said. ‘They got their money.’

  ‘This time,’ said the innkeeper darkly, ‘but what happens next time when your lad here lays another wager he can’t pay? Besides, it looks to me as if you three got your purses cleaned out. How are you going to pay for your board? And word is that your friend’s been upsetting the emblers with those toys of his. I don’t need aggravation from them. They’re good customers of mine. It’s all very well for you, you’re just passing through, but some of us have got to live here. So I want you all out before there’s any more trouble. And I’ll thank you to take that fish with you too,’ he added, turning to Zophiel. ‘Stinks the place out.’

  ‘That, you ignorant oaf, is not a fish, it’s a mermaid,’ Zophiel said furiously. ‘It’s an extremely rare and valuable creature and the only one you are ever likely to see in this rancid pigsty you call an inn.’

  ‘What I say is, if it stinks like a fish, it is a fish. And this may not be the smartest inn in the village, but as long as I own it, I say who sleeps in it. So if you and your company of vagabonds are not on the road by sunrise, I’ll be breaking more than just a few fingers. And don’t even think of trying to get lodgings elsewhere in these parts. Once word gets out, you’ll not be welcome anywhere. I’ll see to that.’

  So with the blessings of the innkeeper ringing in our ears we left the inn the following morning,
as the cold, grey dawn oozed across the sodden fields. All our hopes of a safe dry haven had come to nothing. Osmond was blaming himself, distraught at the thought of taking Adela out on the road again, and Zophiel was blaming Jofre. I too was furious with the boy. Any hope I had of leaving the company behind and travelling northward alone was gone. But there was little point in getting angry with Jofre. Blame cannot undo the deed. And I couldn’t just abandon them on the road, could I? So there was nothing for it but to take them with me.

  I was saddled with a pregnant woman and a bunch of novices. We had no money. It was the worst possible weather in which to travel and the pestilence was rapidly closing in on three sides. It could not get any worse. Misery was written on every face as once more we hunched our shoulders against the chilling rain.

  But there is no cloud so black that a glimmer of sun does not shine through it and I consoled myself with the thought that our hasty departure from North Marston meant that at least Narigorm would not be travelling with us. By the time Pleasance had searched for us and discovered we’d gone, we’d already be hours ahead on the road.

  I tried my best to cheer the others. ‘There are other shrines north of here: St Robert’s at Knaresborough and many shrines at York. If we could reach those, we’d be safe. They’re well inland. They won’t close their gates. Adela can have her child in comfort and you’ll all earn good money there, better even than at North Marston.’

  Rodrigo and Osmond nodded gratefully, but I knew that Zophiel would not be so easily swayed. I had to keep him with us. Adela was stronger, but her belly was swelling by the day and her strength would not last if she had to walk far in this mud. She’d never reach York on foot, and neither would the rest of us if we had to slow our pace to hers, especially if we had to carry our food and packs.