The Butcher Bird

by S. D. Sykes

  I turned to de Waart, who was now stirring the foul and astringent-smelling concoction of herbs and pieces of bark in the pan. ‘I will relieve you of Lady Versey’s care,’ I told him.

  De Waart looked up. ‘But sire. Your sister’s care is only in the remedial stage of treatment. To interrupt it now would risk a full recovery.’

  ‘I’ll take that risk, thank you.’

  He stopped stirring. ‘I must object most strongly to this decision.’

  At this very moment the door was flung open as Mother made her entrance. As usual, she had been listening closely to proceedings from the other side of the wall. She went to speak, but the steam from the boiling pan caused her to cough, and she was forced to retreat towards the fresh air of the passage.

  De Waart ran to her aid. ‘Dear lady. You should not have come into this chamber. The miasma is poisonous to your lungs.’

  I picked up the steaming pan by its long handle and removed it to a corner. ‘The miasma in this room is poisonous to everybody’s lungs. Particularly my sister’s.’

  Mother stopped by the door and cleared her throat. ‘Listen to me, Oswald. I insist upon Master de Waart staying to complete Clemence’s treatment.’

  ‘And I insist that he leaves.’

  ‘But—’

  I clapped my hands. ‘I am Lord of Somershill and Versey. And I say de Waart goes.’

  Mother dropped her hand from her mouth and stared at me, and I had the impression she was tempted to say what we were both thinking. That I was neither truly Lord of Somershill nor of Versey. That I was no more the true Oswald de Lacy than the blundering boy servant who held Clemence’s hand. She shook her head haughtily and turned her back on me. ‘Come Master de Waart. I have a malady of the foot which I would like you to examine.’

  De Waart stood his ground. ‘But madam. What of Lady Versey? The fever is still in her chest.’

  Mother crossed her arms and peered over at him. ‘My son has spoken. You are relieved of your duties in this chamber.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Please, sir. Do as you are bid.’

  De Waart performed a fawning bow. ‘But of course, my lady. May I just collect my remedies and equipment?’

  ‘Very well. But be quick about it.’

  As deWaart busied himself about the room, picking up bottles of potions and small bags of dried this and that, I took Mother to one side. ‘Where is the infant?’ She looked confused. ‘Clemence’s son, Mother. Where is he?’

  A scowl formed across her face. ‘With his wet nurse, of course.’ ‘Is he well?’

  ‘Yes. Fat as a piglet. And howls like a hound. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him as you approached Versey.’

  ‘Don’t let de Waart near the child. Do you understand me?’

  She shrugged a little. ‘There’s no need. He’s a healthy child.’ Then she smirked. ‘A vigorous de Lacy boy.’

  The words hung in the air provocatively, and I could not let them pass. ‘No, Mother. This boy is a de Caburn.’

  She turned on her heel, swept up de Waart in her wake, and vacated the room, leaving me alone with Humbert, who would not look up from my sister’s face.

  I approached the boy with some trepidation. ‘We need to lift Clemence from the bed,’ I told him. ‘She needs to be washed.’ The stink was so fetid on this side of the room that I had to hold my nose again.

  Humbert coloured a little, but didn’t say a word.

  ‘Do you want my sister to die?’ I asked.

  Now his eyes jerked quickly from side to side. His huge fingers twitched. ‘No,’ he said warily, as if my question might be a trap.

  ‘Then help me to move Clemence from this stench-ridden bed.’

  Humbert regarded me for a moment longer, and then made the decision to cooperate. He fetched the chair from the passage that Mother had previously been sitting upon, and held Clemence’s hand as she staggered inelegantly across the room. She was sweating at the forehead, and moved as clumsily as a lame heifer.

  I called another servant into the chamber and told the man to remove Clemence’s filthy feather mattress, and to replace it with another – although he soon returned with the news that the only spare mattress available was one made of straw. But no matter, at least it was clean and did not smell like the bedding of a beggar. And then I decided that Mother should donate her feather mattress to Clemence. After all, the woman was responsible for appointing de Waart to my sister’s care. So I told the servant to take the straw mattress into Mother’s bedchamber and swap it with hers. I did not hear a subsequent commotion, so could only assume that Mother was not in the chamber when the exchange took place.

  Humbert was persuaded to leave his mistress momentarily in the chair, and to lift the wooden bathtub into the room. Then water for a hot bath was warmed over the fire in the great hall before being hauled up the stairs and deposited into the tub along with three bottles of Madeira wine and a cup full of salt. When the bath was ready, I left the room, dragging Humbert with me, as the boy was reluctant to quit. With our male eyes removed, my sister was washed by three of the female house servants, before being dressed in a linen nightgown and put back into a clean bed. We then lit another fire in the chamber, though this time it warmed a pan of lavender and sage. If Clemence were to die, then she would pass away without the perfume of a latrine to accompany her passage from this life.

  I remained at one side of her bed with Humbert at the other. Her fever was still high, and I could see, even though she wore a loose gown, that her breasts were hard with milk. So hard that she groaned if she touched them, or even if she turned her body to one side. Looking at Clemence, I thanked the stars that I was not a woman.

  Mother tiptoed into the chamber every so often to prod at Clemence’s breast, but I refused to let the foolish woman apply a hot poultice. She claimed it would draw the milk and relieve Clemence’s pain, but I suspected this sharp-smelling porridge had been prepared by de Waart and would doubtless contain a whole collection of foul, if not poisonous, ingredients. The man was still in the castle. I was sure of it, though I had told Mother to make him leave.

  Mother harrumphed her way around the room, finding any excuse to linger now that the tapestry had been taken from the window and the pot of bitter herbs and bark had been removed from the fire. When she began to complain about the loss of her feather mattress, I banned her from the chamber completely, for I couldn’t listen to her idle conversation and grumbles any further.

  Our only disturbance during those hours came from the young de Caburn sisters, Mary and Rebecca, who liked to run up and down the passage outside the apartments, teasing Mother’s little dog Hector by poking at his face with a stick and making him squeal with fury. More than once I left the room to ask for them to be quiet, whereupon the sisters would skid down the spiral stairs, only for the noise to reoccur in the courtyard below. Thankfully Clemence was too ill to be disturbed by their exuberance, for it was only childish joy and nothing that deserved to be stamped out by my sister’s usual crabbiness.

  When I left the room for a little air, I would watch the girls playing with their leather balls, sometimes brawling and then chasing each other about the inner courtyard. Sometimes merely stroking Mary’s large grey cat and then dangling a length of yarn for the creature to paw. Their games were full of spirit and verve, as if the wave of their wooden swords might save England from an invasion of Saracens; or as if their make-believe spells would turn Medusa herself to stone. I looked upon these games with some envy and thought back to my own staid and stifled childhood – when I had sat upon my mother’s knee having my blond hair combed as I was fed sugared violets. I had no playmates, since my sister and brothers had been so much older than me, and Mother had so thoroughly convinced everybody of my delicate constitution that I was barely allowed to place my feet upon the floor, let alone chase a dog or fight an imaginary foe.

  I requested that Mary and Becky join me at supper on two occasions, hoping to enjoy their noisy comp
any after the sombre silence of Clemence’s bedchamber. On both occasions, however, a servant informed me that the girls had disappeared into the forest, with food they had stolen from the kitchen. They then returned, late at night, with mud on their boots and scratches on their hands, and without a proper explanation of where they had been, or what they had been doing. I was too tired and preoccupied with Clemence’s care to press them for answers. But I should have.

  On the third night, Clemence seemed a little stiller. I would say she remained hot to the touch, but a corner had been turned in this path and it appeared she might be recovering. I was falling asleep on the chair beside her bed, when I heard her say my name. It was so softly spoken that it did not even wake Humbert, though he slept at the end of her bed like a faithful dog.

  I leant over her. ‘Clemence. Is that you? Are you awake?’

  Her sharp black eyes opened. ‘Where’s Henry?’

  At first the name meant nothing to me, as I had more or less forgotten about her son. He now resided in the anteroom to the great hall, where a village girl sat with him attached to her breast, while she consumed as much food as the cook would provide.

  ‘My son, Henry,’ she repeated. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s well, Clemence. He’s sleeping at the moment.’ I knew this to be true, since Henry’s screaming was not reverberating about the walls of Versey like the screech of a vixen, as it had been for most of the day.

  ‘Would you bring him to me, please,’ she said.

  ‘Now?’

  Her sharpness was still blunted by the birth fever. ‘Yes,’ she said feebly. ‘I wish to see him.’

  I took her limp hand, which was cold and sweaty to the touch. And so small, with tiny, childish fingers. ‘Let me bring Henry to you tomorrow. Rest a little longer.’

  She withdrew her hand with all the affronted belligerence of old, and I was pleased of it. It meant she was recovering. ‘I just want to see my own son,’ she demanded. ‘Why won’t you bring him to me?’ Then her anger subsided and she looked at me with eyes that were both scared and tearful. ‘Please Oswald.’

  The passageways of Versey Castle were eerie and dark at this time of night, with only a prowling kitchen cat or a scampering rat happy to venture along their stony surfaces. After crossing the inner keep, I reached the great hall, where a blazing fire warmed the whole household, though I had not expected to see the face of Henry’s wet nurse glowing in the light of these flames. She had seated herself amongst a group of the younger men, and was keeping them entertained with a gaping tunic. Before the group noticed my presence, one of the men tried to put his hand inside her gown, at which affront she only laughed and took another gulp of ale.

  I coughed loudly, and at the sight of my face the laughter came to an abrupt end.The wet nurse rearranged her tunic and quickly scuttled back to the anteroom where she should have been caring for Clemence’s child. I told the others to settle down for the night and then followed the girl into the chamber, noting that her gait was unsteady. She stood by Henry’s wooden cradle and attempted to focus her eyes upon me. ‘I only left the boy for a minute, sire,’ she said. ‘He’s been suckling all day and was happy to sleep.’

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘No, sire,’ she assured me. ‘Not at all.’

  I regarded her for a moment. Such a pretty face. Without warning, I felt the desire to look inside her gaping tunic myself – just as the men about the fire had been doing. Her breasts were full and rounded, even through the unflattering looseness of her woollen gown. I took a deep breath and quelled such a crude and debased thought. ‘I’m taking the infant to his mother.’

  She didn’t seem to understand what I had just said. ‘I’m not drunk, sire.’

  ‘I know. You just told me so.’

  ‘I’m just sad.’ So, the girl had drunk enough ale to loosen her tongue.

  I should have taken Henry and left, but her face was pretty. So very pretty. ‘Why are you sad?’

  ‘I was thinking of my own boy, sire. It makes me sad to think about him.’ Now she wiped her face. ‘My sister feeds him cow’s milk. Though it makes him sick.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you had a baby.’

  It was such a foolish comment to make, for the existence of a second baby had not occurred to me – though it was an obvious and essential part of this arrangement. The girl now snorted and suddenly focussed upon me. Her words were as sober as those of an anchoress. ‘How else would I be full of milk, sire?’ Then she laughed, a bitter cackle that caused her to double up before she collapsed onto a stool. As I looked upon her face, I suddenly thought of my own mother. My real mother, Adeline Starvecrow. She had been a young village girl such as this, but until last year I had never even heard her name.

  The girl’s laughter stopped. ‘I’m not allowed to see him. Though I have enough milk to feed them both. And then I worry about him, being left alone. They say the butcher bird is flying. Looking for the young and weak.’

  I sighed. ‘That isn’t true.’

  ‘But it took a baby from Somershill. I heard that.’

  ‘No it didn’t. That’s just a foolish tale. How could there be a bird big enough to take a baby? Have you ever seen such a beast?’

  ‘So who killed the child then?’

  ‘A man. Not a bird. Your baby is safe,’ I insisted.

  She shrugged. ‘If he doesn’t die of hunger.’

  ‘Where’s your husband then? Can’t he care for the child?’

  The girl sighed. ‘Poor Hugh. He’s had to move away to Canters Cross.’

  ‘Why?’ I suddenly felt suspicious. I didn’t remember giving anybody with the name of Hugh permission to leave Versey.

  Now she seemed awkward, ‘He’s a free man, sire. He can go, if he wants to.’

  ‘And he’s being paid more at Canters Cross, I suppose?’ She wouldn’t answer this question, claiming that she knew nothing of such matters. But I knew she was lying. And then I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the girl. As I looked at her closely, she was more pale and sickly than I had first supposed. The firelight had conferred a beauty upon her that was lessened without its flattering glow. Was it a cruelty to separate her from her own baby? If my mother had been prevented from feeding me as well as the de Lacy boy, then I would probably have died.

  ‘You have my permission to bring your son here,’ I said.

  I didn’t receive the gratitude I might have expected for this gesture. Instead she looked up at me with the edge of suspicion in her eye. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said and then almost immediately regretted my decision. What if the girl was unable to feed both infants? ‘Though you must take care of both boys,’ I added. ‘I will be watching you

  ‘But what about my Lady?Your mother.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’ll object to this arrangement.’ ,

  ‘Let her.’

  I lifted baby Henry from his cradle and found him to be heavier than I had expected. He was cocooned in his swaddling as tightly as a fly in a spider’s web, but he did not wake as I clumsily gripped him. He only blew a milky bubble from his lips and then screwed up a face that was as wrinkled and flaky as the crust on a beef and bacon pie. A shock of thick black hair poked out from beneath his lace bonnet and stuck unctuously to his forehead. He was not a handsome child, but then I do not find any newborn infant easy to admire. Most look as if they have been squashed inside a bottle and then steeped in vinegar.

  It was bitingly cold outside as I hurried across the inner keep to the family’s private apartment, but the chill in the air did not stir Henry. He merely turned his head towards my chest and smacked his lips, as if a nipple might drop into his mouth. I now lamented bringing the child to Clemence, afraid that he might wake up and renew his screaming when milk did not appear. There is little in this world as terrifying as a hungry baby. They can shift from gentle disciple to ferocious tyrant in the blink of an eye.

  I opened the door to the ladies
’ bedchamber to find the room in darkness, except for the embers that still glowed in the hearth. Humbert had pulled the thick curtains about Clemence’s bed, and now he sat by the fire, trying to stoke it back into life. The chamber had a peaceful calmness to it, reminding me of the infirmary at the monastery, once all of our troublesome patients were asleep.

  ‘Is Clemence awake?’ I asked Humbert.

  The boy went over to the bed and peeped through the curtains. He shook his head.

  I hesitated now. Should I leave Clemence to sleep, or try to wake her before the baby needed feeding again? While I deliberated over this mild but perplexing dilemma, Humbert sidled over to me and peered cautiously into the swaddling. As Henry blew another of his milky bubbles, Humbert frowned and quickly withdrew.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘It just proves the child is breathing.’

  Humbert bit his lip and returned cautiously to look again at Henry – his face then breaking out into the widest of smiles, for the baby in my arms was now pulling the most amusing of expressions. His soft eyebrows were raised and his tiny lips pursed, as if he were experiencing a wave of ecstasy. And then, suddenly, his skin became a violent shade of crimson before he wriggled and squirmed inside the swaddling, as if he were in excruciating pain. Humbert and I now regarded each other in alarm, before the child emitted the longest fart I have ever heard.

  When the long coil of wind had finally exhausted itself, the baby gave a little sigh of satisfaction, but not so Humbert – for now the foolish boy had retreated to the other side of the room, as if the fart might attack him. He really was the most foolish of servants, and I often wondered why Clemence was so tolerant of his peculiarities.

  ‘Go and find the wet nurse,’ I said. ‘Tell her to come here immediately.’ Humbert sidled about the very edge of the chamber before fleeing through the door. ‘Don’t be long about it!’ I shouted after him.

  Once he had closed the door, I awkwardly lit a candle with one arm and then sat upon the chair, cradling the baby upon my lap. Henry had not woken throughout this episode, but his head was still turning towards my chest with increasing regularity, meaning that we only had a few minutes before he would wake and demand to be fed. His legs started to kick inside the swaddling with surprising strength, and the sweet and sickly perfume of rotting vegetables wafted up towards me.