Death and the Maiden
Page 1
Dedication
This is for my mum.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Samantha Norman
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Ely Cathedral’s almoner, Brother Anselm, stood at his gate flapping his arms to ward off both the insidious cold and the crushing boredom. The great freeze had come unexpectedly, bleaching the landscape overnight and choking the reeds and riverbanks in frost.
“Not a soul,” he murmured as he looked out unhappily over the infinite frozen waste.
Not a soul; not even the poor, it seemed, were hungry enough to venture out in this weather.
He glanced down at the sack of food on the ground at his feet, surplus from yesterday’s table, wondering what on earth he would do with it all. Perhaps feed it to the swans, although it would be a waste. On the other hand, it was better to scatter it over the frozen pond and feed something rather than haul it back to the undercroft, where it would be left to rot. And yet, what else could he do? So far, he hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of a single member of the Wadlow family, whose poverty-sharpened features and grubby outstretched hands were as much a feature of his gate as the hinges it hung on. It was too cold even for such as they to be tempted from their cot, where—according to local gossip—they lived off water rats.
“Primitive, Brother, them Wadlows, like animals they are!” their scandalized neighbors hissed. But Brother Anselm couldn’t get too worked up about rats; they were nourishment of sorts, after all—not that he’d have eaten one himself unless he were starving, mind you, but, when it came down to it, rats were no worse than squirrels, and were at least in plentiful supply even in the depths of winter. He wouldn’t have dared say any of this out loud, of course—to apologize for the Wadlows was to have opprobrium heaped on one—nevertheless he hoped they were eating something today, keeping body and soul together somehow.
Perhaps it was the image of the family in their dilapidated hut with its larder full of rats that made him shiver, but whatever it was, he suddenly felt so bitterly cold that no amount of arm clapping or jumping up and down could warm him up. The only sensation he had left was the unpleasant chafing on his upper thigh from the eel-skin garter one of the abbey fishermen had given him to ward off the rheumatism.
And then, at last, God be praised! The bell rang for terce, releasing him at last from his frozen sojourn.
He bent down, hefted the sack onto his shoulders and was about to return to the almonry when a gaggle of children came running over the meadow toward him . . .
“Wait, Brother, wait!” they called out, their voices shrill and excitable as they jostled one another to be the first in line to greet him.
He smiled at the small bodies swarming around his legs, the dark heads dipping like pigeons’ at the sack as a tangle of nimble fingers sifted and grabbed at the offerings it held.
When the last piece of food had been stuffed into the very last mouth, the children nodded gratefully and left as quickly as they had come . . .
“Good-bye, Brother Anselm!” they called back as they scampered across the frosted meadow. “See you tomorrow! . . .”
He smiled and waved until they disappeared into the mist and was about to turn his back on the gate for a second time when he heard a whistle . . . and a voice.
“Nice arse!”
It was a girl’s voice—several girls’ voices, in fact—coming from somewhere up the lane.
He turned around and froze, a familiar terror thumping in his ears as the pack sauntered down the track toward him.
He knew all of them by sight but only one by name, Martha, the one who always made him catch his breath.
“Walk on, walk on,” he pleaded, pulling his cowl down low over his face to hide his blushes. But it was too late; like the she-wolves they were, they had already scented the blood.
They stopped in front of him, just as he had feared they would, standing so close that his nostrils twitched with their scent and his skin burned with the proximity.
“Come skating with us, Brother?” they asked, mocking him with their eyes, bending their wicked bodies toward him. But Brother Anselm shied away, refusing to look at them.
“Go away . . . In God’s name, go away!” he cried, screwing his eyes shut tight, hoping that if he closed them long enough, when he opened them again they would have vanished.
“What was that, Brother? Did you say something?” one of the girls asked, tossing her hair in his face like a spirited pony so that the ends scoured his cheek. “Oh look, bless ’im,” she said, turning to the others. “He’s blushing, poor love, look . . .”
More giggling, then another voice.
“River’s turned hard, too, see!”
The giggling became raucous, and for the first time in his young life Brother Anselm knew how it felt to want to die . . . and to hate.
“Leave him alone!”
God be praised! A merciful voice at last.
He opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t . . .
Martha was standing in front of him. His stomach lurched at the sight of her and he blushed again, knowing that tonight his memories would drive him to those unquiet, sleep-defeating thoughts of which he was so deeply ashamed.
“I’m sorry.” The merciful voice again, but not Martha’s. Instead it belonged to the girl beside her, whose name he didn’t know but whom he recognized as the local reeve’s daughter.
He looked from one to the other and back again but just when he felt his legs beginning to crumple, the deliverance he had been praying for came in a sudden roar and rush of wings. A skein of geese flying in low from the east landed on the frozen fishpond in a succession of clumsy thuds, which startled the girls and sent them laughing and shrieking toward the river.
The girls were still laughing when, halfway to the river, they saw the riders on the horizon and stopped abruptly.
“Run!” Hawise hissed, even though they already were. Just as they knew not to venture into the marsh at night, or get too close to a bittern’s nest, or skate on the river where the ice was thin, they knew to run from the bishop’s men.
Since his investiture, their new bishop, William Longchamp, had brought great wickedness to the diocese. Witchcraft was suspected. How else, everybody wondered, could the king have conferred such power upon such misshapen shoulders? How could such a gargoyle of a man, who had risen without trace from the gutters of Argenton, have been awarded three titles: chancellor, chief justiciar and bishop of Ely? It must be witchcraft! But whatever it was, one thing was certain: no good would ever come of such dominion, and from the moment he came howling into the Fens with his retinue of a thousand and all those diabolical creatures, none did.
Chapter 2
By the time they arrived the river was teeming with people and had adopted the appearance of a small market town. Stalls were dotted everywhere and the air hung thick with the smell of chestnuts roasting on braziers and resounded with the shrieks of excitable children whizzing around on sledges. For safe passage the girls linked arms, pushing their way through the crowd to the middle of the river, where they were immediately encircled by a group of boys like foxes around a chicken coop.
“Hey, Martha, have these!” one of the boys called out, sending an object skidding across the ice toward her. When she bent down to pick it up, she saw that it was a pair of leather-bound skates whose bone blades had been lovingly carved into two sharp edges.
She looked up, searching the faces of the boys until she recognized the handsome lad from Manea whom she remembered from one of Lord Peverell’s boon days last summer.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, sitting down on the ice to put them on, feeling conspicuous as she wrapped the straps around her ankles, under the envious gaze of the other girls.
“Why is it always Martha?” she heard one of them whine to nobody in particular. “It’s not fair! Why’s it always her?”
It was a question even she couldn’t answer. It wasn’t fair. It was just the way things were.
Having always been a pretty child, even as a baby, she was used to the attendant compliments and attention her beauty seemed to bring. But lately something had changed; other people mainly, she had begun to realize, particularly the men, looked at her with strange eyes nowadays, making her feel as though she had unwittingly stepped into a foreign land where, although everything looked the same, the customs were very different, and she felt vulnerable, although to what, exactly, she didn’t know.
“It’s the curse, Martha, love,” her mother had told her when she complained to her about it one day. “It’ll start soon, see, you’ll have to think about that, you know?”
But she didn’t want to think about it—not then, and certainly not now. Whatever this “curse” might be—and her mother had offered no further elucidation—its mystery would have to wait. All she wanted to do now was skate.
She shook the thought from her head and stood up, feeling the familiar thrill in her belly as she took a tentative first step, then another and another, until at last she was moving in beautiful, rhythmic sweeps over the surface of the ice.
Two elderly women, sisters, bundled up against the cold in practically all the clothes they had ever possessed, were sitting on a log on the riverbank watching the impromptu pageant play in front of them.
“A’ternoon, Lady Penda, Gyltha,” the skaters greeted them, although largely unnoticed, as they hissed past.
“Oy, Gylth!” The elder of the two pointed at a lone figure who was inscribing perfect circles in the middle of the ice. “Ain’t that a lovely sight! D’you remember the old days when we could do that?”
“Who?” Gyltha replied, screwing up her eyes against the lowering sun in an attempt to follow the direction of her sister’s finger. When she couldn’t, she replied irritably: “Who? What you pointing at? Can’t see a damn bloody thing, ’cept that bloody Wadlow boy! Get out of it . . . ” She flapped her hand irritably at the young man clowning around in front of them, blocking their view, as he tried but failed to attract the attention of a group of girls.
“Ignore ’im,” Penda said, cupping her hand gently around her chin, turning her head in the direction of the girl. “Look! See? That girl! . . . The one over there.”
“Still can’t see nothing!” Gyltha snapped, but when she tried to stand up to get a better view, she was thwarted by a sharp downward tug on the hem of her mantle.
“Sit down, you silly bugger,” Penda chided, bumping her back down onto the log. “You don’t want to go slippin’ about on that, not at our age. Old bones don’t mend so easy, remember?”
“Stop fussing.” Gyltha pushed her hand off. “Gettin’ on my nerves, you are . . . Ah, now I see!” she said, brightening all of a sudden. “You mean the pretty girl over in the middle there . . . Tha’s Martha . . . Hawise’s friend . . . Lovely little skater, ain’t she?”
Someone else was watching the girl, too, and had been since she first set foot on the ice, his eyes drawn to her not just for her incomparable beauty but for the grace and ease with which she made her way through the crowd with her friends, unaware that almost every head turned to stare at her as she passed.
His enchantment with her deepened as he watched her put on the skates and take her first steps, introducing herself to the ice with the temerity of a fawn breaking cover, until gradually, as a physical memory returned to her, she began to find her rhythm and move with ease, losing herself to everything but the sensation of the frozen surface beneath her feet.
He felt his heart flutter with a long-forgotten thrill, longing to be close to her, to take her hand and swirl across the ice beside her . . . But, with so many people around still, he knew he would have to be patient, stay hidden in the rushes for the time being, content himself simply with watching her for now . . .
As the afternoon wore on and the light began to fade, the crowd thinned at last. Even the two old ladies, who looked as though they had taken up permanent residence on it, left their perch eventually and shuffled off home. And then, just as the sun began its final descent into the marsh, a swathe of fog rolled in from the east, making it almost perfect.
He shivered, a frisson of exquisite anticipation setting his teeth on edge, lifting the hair on the back of his neck.
Not much longer now . . .
He was about to stand up at last, make his way through the rushes onto the ice, when he heard the other girls calling her and his heart sank.
“Martha! Martha!” Bored, impatient voices rent the air. He glared at them through the reeds, despising the frost-pinched, frustration-contorted faces that were summoning her away.
“Martha! Come! Come on! We’re leaving, Martha! . . . It’s getting dark! . . . We can’t wait any longer! . . . It’s too cold . . . Martha! Martha, Martha!”
But their entreaties froze with their breath in the frigid air and got lost before they reached her. His spirits lifted when he saw them shrug their shoulders and turn for home.
She was alone at last, gliding toward him as if spellbound, and yet somehow he knew that it was his spell, his power, drawing her to him.
“Come,” he murmured softly, fingers twitching inside his gloves. “Come.”
It was time.
Creeping silently through the rushes to the water’s edge, he slipped, sleek as an otter, down the bank and onto the ice.
He put on his skates and, at first, was content simply to follow her, to move in her tracks like a shadow in the moonlight, and it was only when, unable to resist her any longer, he reached and touched her that she noticed him at all . . . but by then, of course, it was too late.
Wolvercote Manor
-Autumn 1191-
Lady Emma of Wolvercote’s usually tranquil cherry orchard was anything but that morning.
Two querulous voices rang out from it, disturbing the static chill of the air, sending a clamor of birds into the sky in search of peace elsewhere. Fortunately there was no one else around to hear them other than Ernulf, Lady Emma’s swineherd, who was watching over his pigs in the nearby oak wood, but he was used to them.
A passing stranger, had there been one, might quickly have discerned that the voices were female and inferred, from their impassioned bickering, that they belonged to two strong personalities whose mutual affection ran a good deal deeper than their current irritation with one another. That they were also educated—the robust invective aside, the argument was conducted in impeccable Norman French—was also indubitable, as was the conclusion that any intervention would be unwelcome and, for the hypothetical stranger at least, extremely unwise.
A visual inspection, however—if that stranger had dared pop his head over the hedge for a peek at them—would have revealed that neither of the women was particularly well dressed. Their clothes, elegant once—judging by the quality of their cloth—were worn for utility, not vanity, which was probably just as well, because they were both kneeling in a puddle of mud on either side of a dead hare . . .
Ah then! Necromancers? Witches perhaps? That would explain it. And their interest in the corpse was unusual to say the least. They appeared to be studying it in forensic detail! Poring over it, poking at it with an interest bordering on unhealthy, examining with appalling fascination the wounds that had killed it! The only blessing was that at least they had stopped quarreling at last, apparently too distracted by the body of the animal to continue their argument.
The older of the two flicked a lock of hair out of her eyes, stretched her hand out and, with practiced fingers, began manipulating the fur around the animal’s neck to reveal two small puncture wounds.
She looked up at her companion defiantly.
“Fox!” she said. “Your turn!”