Death and the Maiden

by Samantha Norman

  “Falcons then, mistress?” she asked as though it was the most fascinating thing she had ever heard. “And, if I remember rightly, wasn’t it Queen Eleanor who gave you your first one?”

  “It was indeed,” Allie replied, taken aback to be reminded of the time, all those years ago, when she and Gyltha were garrisoned with the queen at Sarum Castle.

  “Only it wasn’t a falcon,” she said, unable to suppress a natural inclination to pedantry. “It was a sparrow hawk . . . But how did you know that? Even I’d forgotten about it.”

  Hawise tapped the side of her nose and grinned. “Gyltha told me!” she said. “Who else? She talks about you all the time. I grew up on stories about you . . . I even tell ’em myself sometimes . . . about you, your ma and pa.”

  “Oh,” Allie said, feeling flattered and a little bemused. After all, she knew that, in certain circles, her upbringing was considered unusual, if, indeed, it was considered at all, but had never imagined it would be of interest to anyone but her. Nevertheless, she found that she was rather enjoying this unexpected moment of fame.

  A few yards ahead of them Peter stopped suddenly. Allie saw him glance up at the sky as a ragged skein of plovers flapped languidly overhead, then hurriedly strike his falcon’s hood and cast the bird from his wrist.

  As the falcon flew upward they all stood still, mouths agape, watching it until it became a tiny, malignant speck high up in the clouds.

  Allie marveled, as she always did, at the way it maneuvered itself into the blind spot between the sun and the unsuspecting birds below and held her breath for the stoop: the tiny death thrust of folded wings and outstretched talons as it tore down from the sky like the wrath of God to descend on its prey with a passion and a violence that made her gasp.

  It was a clean kill, as it always was with peregrines. A mortal blow to the back of the neck sent the ill-fated plover spinning, lifeless, to the ground.

  “Over there!” Peter cried, pointing at a grassy hummock in the marsh where the falcon stood mantling its kill. “Be quick now!” he called back to them as he ran toward it. “Mustn’t let him eat too much or I won’t get him back.”

  By the time they had caught up with him, he had coaxed the falcon back to his fist and was praising it like an indulgent father.

  “Clever boy! And look,” he said, pointing to a stream roughly two bow shots from where they were standing. “He’s even found your watercress for you!”

  Chapter 18

  Allie didn’t say so but the watercress was disappointing. The leaves had turned an unattractive yellow in the frost and were crimped around the edges, but because it was all there was, she rolled up her sleeves and, encouraging Hawise to do likewise, started picking.

  When they had gathered as much as they could and their fingers were too numb to pick any more, she stood up, trying to flex some warmth into her hands and aching back. She had forgotten quite how pernicious the Fenland chill could be, and yet there was nostalgia in the cold this morning, as though a scent of the past had been delivered on the breeze. And, now that she came to think about it, it was a scent more than anything else, more even than the limitless horizons and overarching skies of the place—that unmistakable trace of river water, willow bark and peat that combined and conspired to send her back to her childhood in this strange half land of earth and water.

  She closed her eyes, savoring the moment, then turned to Hawise.

  “Which way is Waterbeach from here?” she asked.

  “That way,” Hawise replied, pointing east. “Where you were born, wasn’t it, mistress?”

  Allie smiled, remembering the humble cottage, not much more than a reed-thatched hut really, that rose out of the marsh on stilts.

  When she was very little the stilts had fascinated her and she had convinced herself that really they were legs whose capricious feet, hidden deep in the reeds, might one day walk off by themselves, making her afraid to stray too far in case her home vanished while her back was turned.

  She had loved it there, especially during the long, hot summer days when she would sit on the stoop beside Gyltha, counting eels in a bucket and watching the swallows dip in the river.

  “How many eels to a stick then, bor?” Gyltha would ask, plucking another wriggling silver streak out of the bucket to tie on the hemp line coiled at their feet.

  “Twenty-five!” Allie would reply, and was invariably rewarded with a bosomy hug and a compliment about her clever counting.

  “Mistress?”

  She looked up, startled to see Peter looking at her expectantly. She had been miles away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing. “Did you say something?”

  He looked amused to have caught her off guard. “I said . . . if it’s all the same to you, mistress, I think we ought to be getting back.”

  “Yes, of course.” Allie nodded.

  “I’ll be over there, when you’re ready,” he said, pointing to where the dead plover lay. “Best get that bagged up now.”

  When he left they knelt down again to gather up the bushels of watercress and she saw a sharp, sudden movement among the rushes on the other side of the stream.

  She sat up abruptly, her ears pricked, eyes fixed on the still-trembling patch of reeds, wondering what it was. Something large, judging by the violent swishing of the stalks. She sat up taller, craning her neck, and looked again. On second thought, perhaps it wasn’t something but someone—the movement was too clumsy to be an animal, and besides, she also had a peculiar feeling that they were being watched.

  She tapped Hawise on the shoulder and, motioning for her to keep quiet, pointed into the rushes. Crouching down and holding their breath, they peered intently into the rushes until the rustling came again, more vigorous this time and a prelude to a tall, thin young man rearing up at them out of the marsh.

  Allie gasped, automatically thrusting her hand out to grab Hawise and drag her to safety if necessary, but before she could do so Hawise had gotten to her feet and was shouting at him at the top of her voice.

  “You devil, you, Danny Wadlow!” she shrieked, her cheeks red with fury. “You come over here ’stead of sneaking about spying on people and I’ll give you what for.”

  Allie looked anxiously around for Peter, hoping that he had heard all the commotion and was coming to their rescue, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Gi’ me what for, will you?” the man screamed back, his face a rictus of fury. “You an’ whose army, eh, Hawise?”

  To Allie’s increasing horror he made a sudden feint toward them, and for an awful moment, it looked as if he was going to leap across the stream to tear their throats out; he certainly had the teeth for it. And because, at that moment, there was nothing to be gained—other than injury or death—from cowering in the rushes, she stood up and was ready to make a grab for Hawise again when he changed his mind and ran off in the opposite direction instead, stopping only once to shout something at them.

  Allie watched openmouthed until he vanished from sight.

  “What did he say?”

  Hawise shook her head and unclenched her fists at last. “Don’t take any notice, mistress,” she said. “I didn’t catch what he said . . . It was some sort of threat probably, knowing him . . . I think it was something about how I was ‘devil’s bait’ and how I’d ‘be sorry’ about something or another . . . But I wouldn’t take any notice; I don’t.” She added brightly, “He’s a pillard, really, famous for it. Always spying on people . . . But harmless, just . . . well, irritating . . .”

  “Hmm.” But Allie wasn’t convinced. She had seen something dreadful in that face, an incendiary combination of ignorance and brutality that she found terrifying. “I hope you’re right,” she murmured.

  Chapter 19

  When Peter returned with the bagged plover, apparently unaware of the encounter with Danny Wadlow, neither girl mentioned it—there didn’t seem much point—and they set off back to Elsford as though nothing had happened, Hawise chattering away
, barely pausing for breath, much as she had on the way there, apparently untrammeled by the incident. Perhaps, Allie thought, she was inured to peculiar encounters with strange men in marshes. Allie, however, was not, and couldn’t help feeling that the Fens weren’t quite the way she remembered them.

  And yet it wasn’t only the strange young man in the marsh. There was a combination of things troubling her: Gyltha’s aborted conversation in the solar; the drowned girl, who may or may not have been murdered; and the unshakeable feeling she’d had, almost from the moment they’d set foot in the marsh, that they were being watched.

  Something was definitely amiss, and as she followed Peter and Hawise down the track to the house, she determined that, come what may, she would get to the bottom of it. After all, she wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing.

  When they got back to the house, Hawise took her to the kitchen to turn the watercress into a nourishing soup for Gyltha; when she had, they took it up to the solar, where Penda was waiting for them.

  “Just missed your ma,” she told Hawise. “She came and sat for me, bless ’er, while I went chasing after the bloody abbot’s dog—that bugger’s been at my sheep again, God rot it! And I’ll tell you summat, when I catch that thing I’ll have it lawed, abbot or no bloody abbot.”

  “Not with my Allie around you won’t,” Gyltha said, pushing away the bowl Allie was encouraging her to drink from. “Wouldn’t let anyone lift a finger ’gainst an animal, would you, me darlin’?”

  Penda gave a derisory snort. “Well, in that case,” she said, turning the gimlet eyes on Allie, “I wish there was more like you round ’ere. Another ram’s gone missing, and when I find the bugger that’s took that, I’ll hang ’im and you’ll ’ave nothing to say against that, I hope.”

  Allie was about to reply that she didn’t approve of hanging any more than she approved of lawing, and that they were both brutal, unnecessary practices, when Hawise interrupted her.

  “How do you know it wasn’t a wolf?” she asked.

  Penda gave another snort. “Because I do,” she said. “Some bugger stole it, I tell you. For witchcraft, most likely.”

  There had been a recent rise in the incidence of scapulimancy—the practice of boiling down rams’ bones to determine the future from their shoulder blades—but since Allie didn’t believe in magic and didn’t want to argue with Penda, she left them to discuss it among themselves and went to the window overlooking the village instead.

  A straggle of plainly built huts, with small pyramids of thatch at each end and the ubiquitous stippled rounds of reed bundles stacked in each garden, was settled along a long, thin street that ended abruptly at the gates of a reassuringly squat little church. Beyond the church, and stretching as far as the eye could see, was the causeway, the famously long, cambered strip of land running from Ely to Stuntney that was her father’s favorite road, or so he claimed. It held its place in his affections not simply for the admiration it inspired in him for the monks who had built it, but because it was the fastest, most direct route out of the Fens.

  “Trouble with this place, Allie,” he had once told her—his antipathy for the place was never a secret—“is that, unlike the sea, which can be traversed by boat if necessary, or obstructions of the land, like the hills and forests, which can also be overcome, the marsh is neither land nor water and, as such, is a great, bothersome barrier to movement . . . And that, my darling, is why you won’t find many horses here . . .”

  Perhaps in appealing to her love of horses he had hoped to put her off, but if so it hadn’t worked. Besides, there were horses; in fact, she was looking at one now, a beautiful, sleek creature galloping along the causeway with its rider crouched low over its back.

  She leaned further out of the window to get a better look but was disappointed when it began to slow down.

  “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” she urged under her breath, but the rider was already standing upright in his stirrups, one hand tugging the reins, the other patting the animal’s neck, and although they were too far away for her to be able to see it, somehow she knew his face was creased with delight.

  She turned back to the others. “Who’s that?” she asked, pointing through the window.

  Penda got up to join her. “Who’s what?” she asked, looking out, and when she spotted them, murmured, as if to herself, “Oh, that’s him! That’s Lord Peverell!”

  Allie looked at her and noticed that she was blushing.

  Aware of her scrutiny, Penda cleared her throat.

  “Yes,” she said, sounding more like herself again. “That’s Lord Peverell, all right.”

  Behind them Hawise squealed with excitement and rushed to the window.

  “Let me see! Let me see!” she said, thrusting herself into the narrow gap between them, and then: “Bugger!” when she realized she was too late. “It’s not fair! I’ve still never clapped eyes on him.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have been able to see much from here anyway,” Allie said, holding tight to the back of Hawise’s bliaut, afraid that if she leaned out any further she would topple to her death. “Besides, it was the horse I was interested in . . .”

  Chapter 20

  At supper, to Allie’s dismay, the conversation was all about Lord Peverell, with not a single mention of his horse.

  “Not married yet, see,” Rosa explained, misinterpreting Allie’s boredom for confusion. “So all the girls get excited when they see ’im, which ain’t too often because ’e’s hardly ever around. So you was lucky, mistress . . . More’n likely we won’t catch sight of ’im again ’til Lammas.” Allie nodded and smiled but didn’t feel at all lucky, and in fact was beginning to rue that she had clapped eyes on him in the first place.

  “He took the cross,” said Penda, who seemed unusually aroused by the subject. Allie noticed that the moment it was introduced, Penda had barely taken her eyes off her, her gaze intensifying disconcertingly at every mention of Lord Peverell’s name. “Brave, too, so they say, when he was wounded in the Holy Land . . . ,” she continued. “Now, when was that?” She turned to Ulf for clarification, flapping her hand at him irritably when he turned out to be too busy eating to reply.

  “Oh, never mind,” she said, turning back to Allie. “Roughly three years ago, if I remember right . . . In fact, I do . . . It were about the same time as the old bishop died and that Longchamp come in ’is stead.”

  “And ain’t we lived to regret that?” added Jodi, hovering over them with a jug of ale. “Been like a curse on us ever since. All them goings-on . . . an’ them poor dead girls . . .”

  The dead girls!

  Allie’s ears pricked up. This was more like it! At last, at long last, somebody might be about to say something interesting for a change. She sat up straighter, willing Jodi to continue, but her hopes were dashed as Ulf thumped his hand on the table with such a resounding bang that the candles guttered and Jodi leapt backward in surprise.

  “Sorry, Jodi,” he said sheepishly, raising his hand to her apologetically. “Didn’t mean to alarm you . . . it’s just that, well . . . we don’t want to go boring Mistress Allie with our stories, now, do we?”

  After that, the evening continued interminably; more inconsequential blather about Lord Peverell and his vast estates and his heroism in the Holy Land, and, and, and . . . If it hadn’t been for one of Penda’s wolfhounds’ choosing Allie’s lap to rest his vast head on, she might have died of boredom.

  When the abbey bells chimed for compline she got up quickly and was heading to the door when Ulf stopped her.

  “Wait here, if you wouldn’t mind,” he told her in a low voice. “I’d like a word if I may.” If he hadn’t looked so grave she would have been tempted to reply that he could have as many words as he liked as long as they didn’t include “Lord” and “Peverell,” but she nodded instead and waited patiently beside him until the others had filed out of the hall.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, drawing up a couple of stools by the fire. “I s
houlda said something before, I know I should, but I didn’t want to frighten you, and besides . . .” He hesitated. “Well . . . you see, it might be something or . . . nothing. No one knows . . . not really.”

  He was trying to smile but his hands were twisting nervously in his lap, making her worry that, any moment now, he would repeat the pattern of the day and change his mind about telling her whatever it was.

  She took a breath, torn between compassion and insatiable curiosity.

  “Is it about Martha?” she asked, hoping the prompt might make it easier for him. She was reluctant to betray Hawise’s confidence, but, when all was said and done, she knew more than he thought she did. “You think she was murdered, don’t you?” she continued. “And, Ulf, if so, you know I can help you, don’t you? I could examine the body . . . See if there’s anything . . . well, you know . . .”

  Of course he knew. Of all people, he had spent enough time with Adelia to know that in the right hands, the voices of the dead could be unsilenced.

  “But tha’s just it,” he said. “There’s nothin’ anyone can do . . . She’ll be buried tomorrow and her parents, God love ’em, don’t want any fuss. They want to believe she drowned . . . Couldn’t bear it else, see.”

  He looked away, haunted by the expression in the eyes of the girl’s mother, the light of hope in them extinguished the moment she opened the door to him and saw the bundle in his arms. A strange alchemy had taken place as they dulled and darkened, against their nature, when, after searching his face for a fragment of comfort to shore herself against the ruin of her life, she found none.

  When she fell to her knees he would have done almost anything, breathed his last breath into the body in his arms if he could have, but he wouldn’t spare her the truth—there was too much at stake, too many other lives at risk, to deny what he knew, and her howls of pain and protest when she heard it still rang in his ears.