Death and the Maiden

by Samantha Norman

  “Evenin’, Father,” Ulf called out from the doorway.

  Father Edward turned around and smiled when he saw him. “Oh, Ulf! Just the person! Perhaps you could help us.” He beckoned him over. “Have you met our friend?” he asked, shuffling sideways to make room for Ulf on the step beside them.

  Now that he could see his face, Ulf recognized the young almoner from the cathedral.

  “Brother John, ain’t it?” he replied.

  “Indeed.” Father Edward nodded. “And also a very talented artist if I may say so. But I fear I’ve had to bring him in because we’re having such trouble with Our Lady’s feet.” He sighed sadly, inclining his head toward the painting on the wall, a depiction of the doom and the Virgin Mary sitting at Christ’s right hand.

  Ulf took off his coif and peered at it, then scratched his head. He could feel Father Edward’s expectant gaze as he awaited his response, but he didn’t have one. The problem with the painting, whatever it was, wasn’t obvious to him. In fact, to his admittedly untrained eye, everything looked pretty much as it had last Sunday and, now he came to think of it, every Sunday before that. In the end, although he was loath to disappoint the young priest, he had to admit defeat.

  “What’s wrong with ’em, then?” he asked.

  “Well! It’s this!” said Father Edward with a pained expression as he wafted his hand in the vicinity of the divine toes. “They’re terribly faint, you see . . . It’s all the kissing!”

  “Kissing?” Ulf turned to Brother John for elucidation. Father Edward wasn’t making any sense.

  “It’s the congregation,” the monk explained. “It’s quite common, actually. They can’t resist kissing the images when they see them and the trouble is, you see, that it takes the paint off eventually. I get an awful lot of this sort of remedial work nowadays.”

  “Oh,” said Ulf. “I see.” And now that it had been pointed out to him, he did: when he looked again—and certainly compared with the images that weren’t within kissing distance—the bottom half of the Blessed Mother was beginning to look distinctly vague.

  They stood in silent contemplation for a while until Ulf had an idea.

  “Perhaps it’s all the flesh,” he said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s what provokes ’em. Give ’er a longer skirt?” he suggested.

  Waiting for Ulf on the porch, looking out over the moonlit graveyard, Hawise found her thoughts drifting to the dead girl who so recently had lain in the crypt beneath her feet.

  “She were about your age,” Ulf had told her when he came back after Allie’s investigation. He had told her other things, too, the few details that he knew, but it was the comparison of their ages that had resonated with her most.

  Ever since that day she had thought about her often, wondering, like everybody else, who she was, where she had come from and whether or not her unshriven soul had been admitted to heaven at last or made to wander the earth a poor lost soul forever. She imagined her rising from her grave in bridal dress, a beautiful blue bliaut, with a jewel-encrusted torque around her neck and golden bracelets on her arms, reaching into the celestial light around the Blessed Virgin.

  Hawise very much hoped that it was less an imagining and more of a vision and that the girl, whoever she was, had found her bliss at last.

  A boisterous rustling in the yew hedge on the other side of the graveyard distracted her from the dead girl and alerted her to the presence of a fox instead, emerging from the earth beneath the knotted roots.

  She watched it saunter through the graveyard, pausing every now and again to either sniff the air or relieve itself against a tombstone, stopping only when it reached the freshly churned earth of Martha’s grave, its ears pricked, eyes sweeping the churchyard until they came to rest on her.

  They stared at one another in mutual curiosity for a while until the fox lowered its head and darted off across the graveyard into the meadow.

  She was still staring after it when the door behind her creaked open and she turned to see Brother John coming through it.

  For a moment he didn’t seem to recognize her, but then his expression clouded and he stopped suddenly, teetering on the step as if unsure whether he should brave pushing past her or retreat into the sanctuary of the church, while Hawise prayed that the ground might open up and swallow them both.

  By rights, of course, she knew it should be her that was swallowed and her alone. After all, her discomfort was the wages of sin for having teased him so mercilessly with the other girls, or, at the very least, not trying harder to stop them; his only crime was to have fallen in love with the beautiful Martha and let it show.

  Withering under the hostile gaze, wondering whether it was too late for an apology, she saw his expression change again as, to her enormous relief, he recovered his wits, tugging his cowl low over his face and pushing past her into the night.

  Just as she let out the breath she had been holding, she felt a hand on her shoulder and gasped it in again.

  “Sorry, little love,” Ulf said, amused by her startled expression as she spun around to him. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, but we can go home now.”

  Chapter 31

  Wolvercote Manor

  “Rowley, Rowley.”

  He woke to Adelia’s singing his name, pressing her lips into the nape of his neck with a noisy kiss. She had been lying beside him fully awake for a while now but she was starting to get fidgety. She had things to do and things she wanted to discuss.

  She gave him a moment and then, when he didn’t respond, kissed him again, softly this time, breathing in the warmth and scent of his skin, feeling the reassuring rise and fall of his chest beneath her arm.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  He opened a wary eye.

  “You mean you want something,” he said.

  “Well . . .” She rolled onto her back. “That, too, I suppose,” she murmured, distracted suddenly by an intricate dusty-looking cobweb in the corner of one of the ceiling rafters, and considered waking that idle Lena next—not with kisses, either—and shoving her nose in it.

  When Rowley still showed no sign of stirring, she sat up.

  “I have received a letter from our daughter,” she said.

  Rowley muttered an unintelligible response, his voice croaky with sleep, and pulled the blanket over his head.

  He was always so tired these days.

  He had arrived late last night, an impromptu visit for some much-needed respite after a series of episcopal meetings prompted by the recent rash of excommunications that had been imposed on almost everybody by Bishop William Longchamp.

  He had sent a letter with the mandate of the Pope, addressed to all bishops, demanding that they should assemble with candles burning and bells ringing to excommunicate and publicly denounce Count John and all his advisers, accomplices and partisans.

  The roster of the names he wanted denounced included Archbishop Walter of Coutances; the bishops of Winchester and Coventry; and the four justiciars: Gerard of Camville; William Marshall; Count John’s chancellor, Stephen Ridel; and Rowley himself.

  Soon after the letter’s publication, however, Longchamp capitulated, postponing the count’s excommunication until Quinquagesima Sunday in February of the following year, hoping that a reprieve might give him time to repent of his wicked ways.

  Nobody took much notice and the directive was roundly ignored, but, nevertheless, it was a symptom of trouble brewing, and there was already more than a whiff of anarchy in the air, not least the rumors that Philip of France—who had ignominiously deserted the Crusade that summer—was plotting against Richard.

  As soon as he got back to France he had attempted to invade Normandy, an act of aggression that his own barons scuppered when they refused to break the truce of God by plundering a crusading noble’s lands. When that failed, he started making overtures to Count John—whose hunger for power, and the English throne in particular, was an ill-kept secret.

  It was this
matter the bishops had met to discuss, because, while they could disregard the odd excommunication or two, it was considered imprudent to ignore a potential invasion or the threat of civil war.

  “Rowley!” Adelia pulled the blanket off his head. “You might show some interest.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, squinting in the harsh morning light. “I was thinking about other things.” He yawned, rubbing his eyes, then added, “You do realize that you have a peculiar tendency toward aggression in the mornings, don’t you?”

  “It’s not aggression, Rowley,” she said, picking a lock of hair out of his eyes. “It’s called being awake. Now, there are things I need to discuss and your daughter is one of them.”

  “My daughter, is it now?” he said. “Then am I to presume there’s a problem of some sort? After all, she’s usually only my daughter when there is.”

  “I received a letter from her,” said Adelia, getting out of the bed. “And I think there is.”

  She went to the basin, with a blanket wrapped around her like a chrysalis, and struggled to lift a large water-filled aquamanile without exposing too much flesh to the chill of the room, then took a piece of willow bark from a pile beside her on the sill to clean her teeth.

  Rowley watched her going about her ablutions with a lustful affection.

  “Come back to bed, you succubus,” he said. “It’s cold in here without you.”

  His heart sank when she turned to him. He knew that expression only too well: the thin but conciliatory smile, the cold eyes. She wouldn’t be coming back to bed; she meant business this morning.

  “I want to know,” she said, ignoring his groan of disappointment, “whether or not I should read you Almeison’s letter.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but actually, he thought it wasn’t necessary. He had heard Allie’s news already because Penda had written to him, delighting him with details of the burgeoning relationship between her and this Lord Peverell. He hadn’t relayed it to Adelia because he had assumed she would be cross.

  “Well, perhaps you don’t need to read it all,” he said, turning over. “Perhaps just the gist.”

  Adelia didn’t reply at first. She didn’t have to; even through the back of his head he could feel the sting of her glare.

  “Very well,” she said. “Well, the gist of it, Rowley, is that it is my opinion that we must go to Elsford immediately. According to our daughter there have been at least two murders recently and she means to investigate them.”

  Rowley sat up. All of a sudden she had his undivided attention.

  “But she can’t!” he said, his voice rising in panic. “What authority does she have? Come to that, what are the authorities doing?”

  “None and nothing,” Adelia replied. “Which is precisely why we need to go. She needs us, Rowley.”

  But for a moment, Rowley was lost, engulfed in a dark, familiar shadow, remembering all the blighted years he had spent worrying about Adelia.

  They had first met one summer in Cambridge, both sent there on separate assignments for the king: Adelia, in her capacity as a doctor, summoned from her native Salerno to investigate the murders of three children; Rowley, as the king’s tax inspector, ostensibly there to protect the Jews who had been falsely accused of the crimes, but really to protect Henry’s zealously sought tax revenue.

  By sheer misfortune he had been in attendance while Adelia performed the autopsies on the children and had ruthlessly co-opted him to help her, first by keeping the flies off the tiny mutilated corpses and then by recording her findings on a slate she had thrust at him for the purpose.

  The abhorrence of what he had witnessed that day still haunted him and there had been times when he had almost hated her for it.

  No female voice, he had thought as he watched her pore over the bodies in that cramped, heat-soaked anchorage, should ever articulate a litany of injuries as hers had, nor become the mouthpiece for a murderer’s brutal crimes. No eyes, certainly no female eyes, should ever be able to look on such a scene without expelling blood, and yet hers had.

  When it was over he had begged her to attend vespers with him, needing the balm of that evening litany like never before. Would she not pray for the souls of the children? he had asked her. But she had turned on him.

  “I’m not here to pray for them,” she had hissed savagely. “I am here to speak for them.”

  And yet, and yet, he had seen her work the oracle that day and, later, bring the children’s killers to justice . . .

  He wiped his brow, a cold sweat pricking his temples at the idea that history was repeating itself in his daughter.

  “God’s teeth! Give me that bloody thing,” he said, snatching the letter.

  Adelia sat beside him, watching fixedly while he read.

  “Well?” she said when he had finished.

  “Write back to her at once! Tell her to do nothing! Nothing, do you understand? Under no circumstances is she to leave Penda’s sight until we get there. She must leave everything to the sheriff or the justices in eyre. She must not interfere!”

  “But, Rowley,” Adelia said, this time pleading with him, “you read the letter! They were just village girls! You know the limits of justice under those circumstances. No one else will lift a finger for them! Besides, a letter could take days! We don’t have time.”

  She put her head in her hands. When she had first read Allie’s letter, delighted to receive one at last, it was with disinterest, her judgment skewed, she realized now, by her hubris at the fact that Allie was following in her footsteps and doing so admirably. Therefore she had assimilated the details only in her capacity as a doctor and not as a mother, which had blinded her temporarily to the risks involved. But now, in the light of Rowley’s reaction, she saw it very differently indeed.

  She leapt up, her heart pounding.

  “No,” she said. “There simply isn’t time for letters. We have to go to her now.”

  Rowley looked up at her incredulously. “But we can’t,” he said. “Not now. In a couple of days’ time, perhaps, but I have to go back to London first.”

  When Adelia opened her mouth to remonstrate, he raised his hand and cut her off.

  “Don’t, Adelia,” he said. “For once don’t argue with me, please. Just send that damned letter.”

  Chapter 32

  Penda’s reaction to the news of the murder was to impose new security measures on Elsford; few of them were popular.

  “Don’t know what she thinks she’s doin’,” Jodi grumbled. “It’s as if she’s expectin’ a siege or summat.”

  She had spent the morning having her ear bent by Albert, the gooseherd, who had been railing against the injustice of the extra duty Penda was imposing on him by insisting that, from now on, he let his birds out at night to patrol the perimeter—something to do, so she said, with the alarm calls of geese saving Rome from the Gauls.

  But Albert didn’t know about Romans or Gauls, and cared even less, and continued complaining bitterly even when she upped his pay by a penny a week.

  Geoffrey, the gatekeeper, was also unhappy, but in his case because of the new password she was insisting on using, which, because he had trouble remembering it—remembering much at all these days, to be honest—he found irksome. Besides, he thought it was unnecessary; the cold snap was deterrent enough for most visitors these days, whether welcome or not.

  No one, it seemed, was immune, especially not Allie, whose archery lessons were upped, with immediate effect, from once to twice a week. Long, cold, joyless affairs they were, too, during which any moment of inattention or levity was punishable by even more practice. Under such duress, she felt her marksmanship was unlikely to improve, and it didn’t, but, unbeknownst to her, it was part of the larger plan to keep an eye on her from now on.

  When Penda herself was unavailable for that duty, she sent deputies—in the form of either Jodi, Hawise or Ediva, sometimes even Ulf—who were instructed to follow Allie like shadows.<
br />
  Despite remaining ignorant of the surveillance, Allie was increasingly aware of a pervading atmosphere of tension, so that when, at last, the day of the long-awaited Dunstan feast dawned, it was a relief in more ways than one.

  That morning she woke early, leapt out of bed with an enthusiasm she hadn’t felt in a long time and dashed to the window. Outside, a frost-nipped marsh spread out before her like a glorious ermine cloak.

  At last, a day to savor!

  “Look, Gyltha!” she cried, leaning on the sill, her eyes closed, her face tilted to the sun. “The sun’s shining! It’s a beautiful day!”

  “God’s breath!” Gyltha muttered, refusing the invocation to marvel at it and dragging the bedclothes over her face instead. “So it is. Now close them bloody shutters like a good girl afore you give us both the ague and get back to bed. You’ll regret it else. Lord knows what time you’ll be back from Dunstan.”

  But Allie was too excited to sleep, and when Gyltha had dozed off again, she quietly got washed and dressed and went outside.

  Despite an early sun, the courtyard, when she got there, was still treacherous underfoot, and she had to tread gingerly over the cobbles to get to the ivy-clad door leading to the kitchen garden.

  Of all the spaces at Elsford, this was her favorite.

  Not long after she’d arrived, Penda had given over a large plot of it to grow her herbs, and she had worked tirelessly cultivating the bare earth and filling it with all the medicinal shrubs Adelia had sent, and others—those that had survived the cold weather—that she had found among the rich plant life in the marsh: juniper and sage, mugwort, lavender, vervain, comfrey and catnip, all neatly marked and sectioned off by an intricate latticework of birch twigs that she had made herself.

  She felt an unrivaled sense of pride and peace here, which was why she had come this morning; tending to her plants was the perfect antidote—the only one she could think of—to sitting around in the solar waiting for the hours to pass.