The Black and the White

by Alis Hawkins

  ‘But now, it seems that the character of her miracles has changed. She comes and goes. She brings back those who are all but dead. Her wooden hand becomes like living flesh.’

  ‘So?’

  The parson gives Hob the most fleeting of looks. ‘I want to see whether there are records of her doing other miracles like the one she did with Beatrice. Whether there are other stories of her image appearing in response to devotion.’ Neither of us speaks and he continues. ‘The doctors of the church teach us that God made matter ex nihilo — out of nothing — only once, when he made the heavens and the earth. Therefore, it stands to reason that he did not make this image out of nothing but that she must have been removed from one place to appear in another. In other words, for her to appear on your family’s shrine, she must have disappeared from somewhere else. And, if that has happened before, there will be a record of it.’

  Hob is shaking his head. ‘That’s all very well but don’t you think those records might be somewhere else and not in Malmesbury? Perhaps all the records of her miracles are in Salster.’

  The parson’s expression does not change. ‘The abbey at Malmesbury possesses one of the great libraries of Christendom. The life of any saint known to the church will be recorded there.’

  Hob sidesteps so that he’s facing the parson. ‘And what if it isn’t? What if Saint Cynryth’s life isn’t there?’

  Thomas Hassell is not cowed. ‘If her life is not recorded there, then she’s no saint.’

  ‘If she’s not written down she’s not a saint?’

  ‘If she is not recognised by the church, she’s not a saint.’

  ‘Perhaps only the people know her,’ I suggest, trying to keep my voice even, so that the eavesdroppers will not know how much his words, reminiscent as they are of Master William’s, have disturbed me. ‘The people who lived where she lived, who received miracles at her shrine?’

  As the parson meets my eye, it seems — just for a moment — that he will relent but, when he speaks, it is simply to repeat himself. ‘I’m sorry Martin, but if she isn’t recognised by the church, she’s not a saint. And if she’s not a saint —’ he holds me with his deep-set gaze — ‘then she’s done no miracles.’

  ‘So if her life isn’t written at this library in Malmesbury, then Beatrice is lying? Martin is lying?’

  ‘Or mistaken.’ The parson is as composed as Hob is outraged. ‘Or taken for a fool by Satan to do his work.’ Again, he turns his back on Hob and addresses only me. ‘Martin, I think perhaps the time has come to do as people have been asking and give the saint a place in the church —’

  I see the listening ears strain to hear my response to this but Hob speaks first.

  ‘What? So that you and your church can have all the glory of any future miracles she does — so that people come to you with their gifts instead of to us?’

  Hassell looks to me with his answer. ‘So that until we know she is a saint, people will be protected from deceit.’

  ‘No.’ It’s out of my mouth before I can control myself. ‘She belongs here, with me. She’s my saint. You can doubt her but I know what she’s done. What she’s done for me!’

  He holds my eye for an uncomfortably long time. ‘Very well. Then I bid you good day.’ He bows. ‘Tomorrow is the Sabbath. I shall set out for Malmesbury in two days’ time and be back as soon as I’m able.’

  Hob watches him go. ‘I hope he has a slow horse.’

  ‘Why?’

  Hob unfixes his eyes from the retreating priest’s back and turns them on me. ‘If he finds she’s no saint then —’

  ‘She is a saint!’

  ‘Let me finish. If the church’s records don’t know her for a saint then he’ll have been proved right to doubt her and he’ll say she’s done no miracles. But if he does find her life written down in these annals, then he’ll try and claim her because the miracle was done here, in his parish.’

  I stare at him.

  ‘Either way, Master Thomas will bring trouble. We’d do well to be gone before he gets back.’

  CHAPTER 18

  News of Beatrice’s miracle flies from hearth to village to the surrounding country and, within a day, the trickle of pilgrims has become a flood. By the following afternoon there are so many people on the hearth that I have to use the screening hurdles to keep them away from the newly fired stack.

  All the talk is of a wooden hand become flesh and, again and again, I am told that the miracle demonstrates the saint’s wish to remain here, in Tredgham. And, each time, I rein in my resentment and remind folk that this is not her first miracle, that she saved me from death so that I could make my pilgrimage to Salster.

  ‘But you don’t need the saint with you,’ one says. ‘You could still make the pilgrimage.’

  ‘You see?’ Hob says. ‘The parson’s sown the seed amongst his people — if he finds her to be a true saint of the church he’ll try and keep her here. And they’ll stand with him.’

  I meet his eye. ‘I won’t leave her here, whatever the parson says. He has no claim on her.’

  And besides, the parson’s own words about the saint being transported from elsewhere to our shrine in the Dene have shown me that my pilgrimage has a double purpose. For the saint has surely set my face towards her shrine not simply to pray for my father’s soul but to restore her to her rightful home.

  That night I wake to the sound of my own shouting.

  ‘No. No!’

  I am not in the hut. I am standing on the hearth, the saint clasped to my chest in a desperate embrace.

  Tom, sitting by the fire, stares at me, eyes stretched wide. Hob stands an arm’s length away, his palms upraised towards me.

  ‘Steady, Martin.’

  I take a step back, the saint still fast in my arms.

  ‘Is he awake?’ I hear Tom ask. ‘Or is it like the other times?’

  Hob’s eyes do not leave mine. ‘Course he’s awake. And he’s here — saint and all — to start the day, eh, Martin?’

  I stare at him, his words forming up slowly in my mind. Eventually I understand that a question has been asked and I unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. ‘Yes.’ My voice is a croak.

  Hob turns to Tom. ‘It’s a while off daybreak yet. You may as well sleep for a while. Martin’ll keep watch with me.’

  For a long while, Hob and I sit, unspeaking. As the fire burns down, I fetch more wood from the pile dragged in by Tredgham’s children. The glow of the embers dims beneath the new fuel and I feel a sudden chill.

  In the corner of my eye, Hob reaches behind him to pull out his knife.

  ‘What other times have I walked like that?’

  He looks up, a frown on his face.

  ‘Tom said, “Is he awake, or is it like the other times?” What other times?’

  Hob smooths a finger and thumb along the blade of his knife. ‘Martin —’

  ‘Tell me! If a demon is making me walk, making me do its bidding, I need to know.’

  He looks at me, wordless. I drop my gaze and stare at the knife. He is weaving the handle to and fro between his fingers.

  ‘It seems to me,’ he says, at length, ‘that your demon is a biddable one. When this has happened before, I’ve been able to speak to you, persuade you to go back to your bed.’

  ‘And I’ve gone?’

  ‘Every time.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘That doesn’t m—’

  ‘I can ask Tom if you won’t tell me! How many times?’

  He stabs the knife into the soft ground at his feet. ‘Three times before tonight.’

  ‘Alone, or with the saint?’

  Does he hesitate, or am I simply too impatient for his reply? ‘With the saint.’

  ‘You’re telling me that I’ve been made to walk in my sleep four times and, each time, I’ve brought the saint on to the hearth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve bid me — bid the demon — back to bed?’

  He nods.
‘Until tonight. Tonight you woke before I could speak.’ He pulls up his knife, draws the blade between thumb and forefinger to wipe away the soil.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘If the demon had tried to harm you, I would have. If it’d tried to take you off into the wood or throw you in the fire. But you just held the saint tight — as if you were trying to keep her safe. That didn’t seem a cause for alarm.’

  Why would the demon want me to keep the saint safe? Does he mean to use the saint to do me harm?

  ‘Perhaps, in your sleep, you feel the evil spirit’s desires and you thwart them,’ Hob says quietly, his eyes aglow in the new flames.

  I stare at him. If he is right, I have fought the demon successfully thus far. But who is to say how long I will prevail?

  The following day I cannot but brood on the demon who commands my sleeping self. The hearth is busy with folk but, instead of answering questions about the saint, I find myself helping Tom and Stephen patch holes in the pit’s earthen blanket and cursing myself for not having insisted that they rebuild a section that I could see was unstable.

  Is this the demon’s doing, too? Is he trying to frustrate our plans, to force us to stay another week while we burn a third pit and my father’s soul hovers about the mouth of hell?

  Why did Hob say nothing to me about this spirit that possesses me at night? Again and again, he has watched it bend my sleeping wits to its will and chosen not to tell me. How long has this spirit been twined about me? Was it him I felt stalking me, before I sheltered in the wood where Edgar attacked me?

  I see, now, how things stand. As the saint came to me in a miracle to protect and guide me on my pilgrimage, so Satan has sent a demon to frustrate and torment me. He is jealous of Saint Cynryth’s power and will try and make me doubt her. Or force me to harm her.

  Is that the demon’s task — to take my hands and use them to destroy the saint?

  No. Hob says I have done nothing but walk about the hearth with her. Then again, perhaps he is right, perhaps I feel the spirit’s designs and have the strength to withstand them. But Hob also said that the spirit was biddable, that he was able to send me — send it — back to bed. Why should a demon be obedient to Hob Cleve’s will?

  I glance over at him, standing with a group of pilgrims at our makeshift shrine. There is something about Hob — people listen to him. And they want him to notice them.

  I hear the sound of thudding feet. Before my wits can catch up, my body remembers Edgar’s murderous attack and I find myself backing swiftly away.

  A half-grown lad pulls up on the hearth and stands, panting.

  Hob comes forward. ‘What’s the hurry?’

  ‘News,’ the lad pants.

  ‘What news?’ A man steps up, takes him by the shoulder.

  ‘It’s Master Thomas, father. He’s dead.’

  ‘Master Thomas —’ my voice is strained in my own ears. ‘The parson?’

  He nods.

  Hob turns to the father. ‘I thought nobody’d died for weeks here?’

  The older man faces him. ‘They haven’t.’

  Dusk is swooping in as the apprentices return from the village. We sit down to eat the food they have brought and they tell us about Thomas Hassell.

  ‘If he’d kept a horse of his own, he wouldn’t’ve been found for a week,’ Stephen declares.

  It seems that, yesterday evening, the parson told his servant that she could go home to her family for a few days while he visited the library at Malmesbury. She prepared food for his journey then did as she was bidden. But Thomas Hassell had no horse and the man whose mare he had arranged to hire became worried when he failed to come for her.

  ‘Or, more likely,’ Stephen says, ‘Jed Sparrow wanted to make sure of his money.’

  ‘He left it a good while,’ Hob points out. ‘You say the parson was supposed to pick the horse up at first light, but this Jed didn’t bother going to his house till nearly halfway through the morning.’

  Tom shrugs, his expression saying that Hob is a foreigner and cannot be expected to know the character of those involved.

  ‘Whatever the way of it,’ Stephen says, ‘Jed went to the parson’s house and found him lying in his bed, dead as a herring.’

  ‘The pestilence?’ I can hardly bring myself to ask the question.

  ‘Nobody knows,’ Tom butts in, ‘but there were no marks of it on him.’

  ‘And his eyes were open,’ Stephen adds, ‘all bloodshot and staring as if he’d seen something horrible.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Stephen shrugs. ‘A ghost? An evil spirit?’

  Hob throws aside the heel of bread he has been gnawing at. ‘Never mind ghosts — it was most likely a seizure.’

  I turn to him, glad of the certainty in his voice. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looks over the fire at Stephen. ‘Your parson didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d be afraid of a ghost or a spirit. He’d’ve been sending them back to hell two ticks after they appeared. They wouldn’t’ve known what’d happened to them.’

  I nod. ‘So, if it’s a natural death, the coroner won’t be called?’

  Tom looks at me curiously.

  ‘I don’t want to get held up,’ I say. ‘If we’re going to have to wait for the coroner he could be days.’

  ‘That’s if he’d even come,’ Stephen says. ‘I heard coroners’ve stopped going out to corpses unless it’s plain what’s killed them.’

  And who could blame them? No man would want to examine a corpse knowing that the contagious stink of the pestilence might lurk beneath its clothes.

  ‘Well, it’ll be up to the bailiff,’ Tom slaps his palms on his knees. ‘The reeve’s gone to see him.’

  I cannot sleep. Thomas Hassell was going to Malmesbury to look for the life of Saint Cynryth, to look for some evidence that she had a claim to be one of the church’s own. And now he is dead.

  Over and over I hear that exchange between Hob and the parson.

  If she isn’t recognised by the church, she’s not a saint. And if she’s not a saint, then she’s done no miracles.

  So if her life isn’t written in this library at Malmesbury, then Beatrice is lying? Martin is lying?

  Or mistaken. Or taken for a fool by Satan to do his work.

  Have I been taken for a fool? Am I doing Satan’s bidding and not Saint Cynryth’s?

  On the very night that Hassell died — possibly even as he was dying — the demon made me walk on to the hearth with the saint. Why did I wake up that time when I had not woken as I walked before?

  And why did I shout, ‘No, no’?

  Who was I shouting at?

  CHAPTER 19

  I drag myself about the hearth in the chilly grey air of dawn, weary and grit-eyed. While Hob and Tom sat watching the pit, I tossed and turned, both craving sleep and fighting it, afraid of what I might do once I was no longer in control of my limbs. Now that daylight is safely here, my body wants nothing more than to lie down and close my eyes.

  My watch-mate, Stephen, scarcely more lively than me, has taken himself off amongst the damp and sullen trees to piss away the ale he has been drinking since Hob roused us. Satisfied that the pit is quiet, I rest my backside on my collyer’s stool, watching the fitful wind smearing smoke from the vent-holes.

  Will the bailiff send for the coroner as soon as he hears what the reeve has to say, or will he wait and see the body for himself? These are strange times, when the customary writ cannot always run.

  I send Stephen into the village to see what is happening.

  A bout of rain has come and gone by the time Stephen gets back.

  ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’ Tom scowls.

  His cousin ignores him and turns to me. ‘There’s rumours flying all over the place.’

  My stomach clenches. ‘What rumours?’

  He looks at me. ‘The hundred bailiff and the coroner are both here. The bailiff’s man’s gone to call up a jury f
rom Lynd and Chirwell and the reeve’s doing the same from here and Appledore.’ He gives a twisted smile. ‘I’ve got to be on the jury — Geoffrey says he wants somebody who was on the hearth while the parson was visiting.’

  I catch Hob’s eye. He said Thomas Hassell would be trouble but even he cannot have foreseen this.

  Stephen sees the look. ‘It’s because you’re strangers here,’ he says. ‘Coroners always look askance at strangers.’

  ‘Does Geoffrey want me on the jury as well?’ Tom asks. ‘He should have men who know Hob and Martin — they’re not strangers to me.’

  His words increase my feeling of unease — does Tom think Hob and I need defending?

  Stephen shakes his head. ‘No. He’s got Will — he can speak for what’s been going on here.’

  Tom is outraged. ‘Will was hardly here three days! And he wasn’t here when the miracle happened.’

  And he has a grudge against us. Against Hob, at any rate.

  ‘So have you done the viewing of the body yet?’ Hob asks.

  ‘No, not until the full jury’s gathered.’ Stephen looks round at us all. ‘But I know what he looked like.’ The look on his face tells me he is enjoying the fact that he can make us wait. But it also tells me that Stephen had no love for Thomas Hassell. Was the priest not well liked in his parish? Perhaps I was not alone in finding his soul-searching gaze troubling.

  ‘Well?’ Hob wants to know. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Terrible sight, so I heard. Bloodshot eyes. And his face was blue.’

  ‘Hob was right then,’ I say, ‘it was a seizure. That’s how my grandfather died and his face went blue.’

  I remember my Gransher sitting down, complaining of a tightness in his chest. Then the pain began and he fell to the ground. He was dead before the parson arrived.

  But Stephen is shaking his head. ‘According to what I heard, the coroner said, “last time I saw a corpse with a face that colour, it’d been dragged out of a cesspit”.’

  Tom frowns. ‘What’d he mean by that?’

  ‘Don’t think he meant anything by it. I think he was just saying.’