The Owl Killers

  Some of the beguines, like Catherine, refused to come near her. She said she was afraid she’d cry and upset Healing Martha. I think she was afraid that she’d somehow be struck down too, as if Healing Martha had some contagion. But others did come; they couldn’t keep away. I seldom passed her bed in the evening without seeing someone sitting there, one of the beguines or another patient. They came after dark mostly, when the tapers in the room burnt gentle and mellow and her face was veiled in the shadows.

  When daylight came she was left alone save for little gifts tied to her bed: ribbons, sweet-smelling dried herbs, or pressed flowers, their colours faded like ghosts of summer. Votive offerings laid at the feet of the statue of a saint. But what could she grant the beguines? They bent into the shadows and whispered for hours, vomiting all their thoughts. Healing Martha said nothing, only her one impenetrable grunt. Yet they went away looking content, as if there was absolution in that sound. She, not Servant Martha, was the sovereign bee in our hive, helpless and flightless, while we workers gladly danced attendance on her as if she was our liege lord.

  I held a cup to her lips. “Try to drink a little of this, Healing Martha. It’s good for you.”

  She glared at me. “Gar!”

  “Please, Healing Martha. You’ve written it in your own herbals—Lily of the Valley distilled in wine will restore speech. I prepared it exactly as you have written.”

  Would it heal her? If only I could be certain. Her hand had also written that the physician must have patience. Healing waits upon time, she’d written in firm steady strokes. If I could be sure that it would restore her in time I’d have gladly waited. But what if I waited for weeks—for months—and all the while I’d not been giving her what she needed?

  A hand touched my shoulder. I glanced round to find Merchant Martha standing behind me.

  “How is she?” She inclined her head vaguely in the direction of Healing Martha.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” I said, sliding off the stool.

  She took Healing Martha’s useless hand in her own and patted it heartily. “Getting stronger, Healing Martha? That’s good,” she bellowed, as if Healing Martha was deaf. Then, still clutching Healing Martha’s limp hand like a lucky rabbit’s foot, Merchant Martha turned to me with her real errand.

  “There are women at the gate. They bring their sick, three children and an old man. They’ve the fever.”

  “Sick?” I repeated stupidly.

  “The same fever we saw in the village. Must be spreading. Where shall we put them?”

  Merchant Martha shuffled her feet impatiently, as if she already held the supplicants in her arms and was waiting for me to tell her where to lay them down. Her beady gaze darted round the overcrowded infirmary. “It’s to be hoped the whole village don’t bring their sick here. Still I doubt they will, seeing as we are under sentence of excommunication. That priest probably did us a service, else we’d have had them all at our door with Servant Martha insisting on feeding the whole pack of them with no thought as to where we are going to buy more food.” She shook her head as if such recklessness was beyond her comprehension. “Still, we’ll have to deal with those that have come. Best put them in the pilgrims’ room next door. You’ll not want them in here in case the contagion spreads.”

  I nodded gratefully, thankful that she had made the decision. What was I supposed to do for them? Deal with them, Merchant Martha said. She made it sound as easy as milking a cow. But what did I know about fevers? And what if it did spread and the beguines caught the fever too? I could already feel Healing Martha’s good eye staring at me from her cot, telling me in her one sound that I’d killed them.

  I tucked the coverlets unnecessarily firmly around Healing Martha, but she didn’t stir. Placing her limp hand, which Merchant Martha had now discarded, tidily on the covers I smoothed down the fingers to make them lie at ease on the bed. The arm lay at an unnatural angle. I turned it, but still it looked no better. I stared at it, trying to visualise how an arm at rest should look.

  “Come along now,” Merchant Martha urged. “They’re waiting.”

  Merchant Martha scurried ahead and I had to trot to keep up with her, but she always walked as if she had eight legs instead of two, so I could tell nothing about the urgency from her speed. She clutched my arm and steered me to the open gate of the beguinage.

  The entrance was blocked by a handcart, as if the owner was determined that nothing would precede him through the gates. An old man lay crumpled up inside, his grey head sagging against a lumpy sack. His beard was matted with vomit, his scarlet face beaded with sweat. He panted, mouth open like a dog. A younger man squatted on the ground in the cart’s shelter, sunk into a stupor. His eyes were closed and he seemed content to doze, knowing nothing could get past the cart without disturbing him.

  Gate Martha was clucking like an old hen, clearly vexed that she couldn’t get her gate closed. I followed her through the open gate, squeezing past the handcart. Outside, two women crouched, their backs to the wall, hunched up against the bitter wind. Both looked worn out. A small girl lay across the knees of one of them, sweating and fretful. Her mother kept up a regular rhythm of patting the child heavily on the back. It didn’t appear to soothe her, but it was as if the mother had been doing it for so long she had forgotten how to stop.

  An older boy rested his head in the second woman’s lap. She couldn’t have carried such a lanky child so far, he was almost as tall as she, but perhaps he had come on the handcart with the old man. Beyond them, alone a little girl lay curled up, whimpering. She’d messed herself and lay in a stinking puddle of liquid shit, the colour of pea broth.

  Gate Martha peered around, then looked down at the solitary child. “There was a lad with this one. William, he called himself, said he was her brother, but by the looks of it, he’s run off. I reckon that’s the last we’ll see of him.”

  Crouching down opposite the woman with the little girl, I touched the child’s leg. She was burning up.

  “How long have the children had this fever?” I asked.

  But neither of the women answered or even looked at me and I began to wonder if I had actually spoken aloud. They gazed down unseeing at their own stained clothes, their thoughts so turned in that if Saint Michael himself had appeared with his sword of flame, I doubt they’d have noticed him. Gate Martha nudged the grime-streaked toes of the nearest woman with her shoe. The woman squinted up at her.

  “Lass asked what ails the bairn,” Gate Martha said.

  The woman protectively pulled her child closer to her, half smothering her. The child wailed and struggled feebly.

  “We’ve come for the cure, for the bairns.”

  I tried to smile encouragingly. “We’ll take your children to a room near the infirmary. They’ll be comfortable there.”

  The two women frowned at me as if they didn’t understand.

  “There are good clean beds, dry and warm,” I added eagerly. Anyone would think I was an innkeeper trying to sell the virtues of his lodging to a passing merchant. “We’ll give them what tinctures and herbs we have to help them.”

  They continued to stare blankly at me and I sensed that I was not telling them what they wanted to hear.

  “We can’t promise to cure them, but we’ll try what remedies we know and if God wills it … We’ll all pray for them.”

  The woman struggled to her feet, weighed down by the burden of the child in her arms. She glowered at me as if she thought I was refusing to help.

  “We want the cure.” She spoke with the grim determination of a cheated housewife demanding her full measure of flour.

  “We can bathe them, give them cordials, bleed them, do whatever we can, but—”

  She took a step forward, angry. “We can wash our own bairns and we’ve not brought them here for potions. We’ve come for the cure. Let the bairns touch it, that’s all we want.”

  I turned in bewilderment to Merchant Martha. “What does she mean—the cure?”

/>   Gate Martha beckoned Merchant Martha and me aside. “Host that was saved from the fire,” she whispered. “That’s the cure they’ve come for.”

  “Andrew’s Host?”

  Gate Martha nodded and Merchant Martha looked as grim as I’d ever seen her.

  “But why do they think it’ll cure the children?” I asked, bewildered. “There’s been no healing.”

  The Host lay in its painted wooden reliquary in the recess near the altar. Everyone said it had protected us from the murrain and even the flood, but no one had claimed it had healed them of any infirmity or sickness. It had not cured Healing Martha.

  Gate Martha shrugged, but offered no explanation. The woman came across to where we stood, swinging her child in her arms like a battering ram.

  “You’ll not deny the cure to the bairns. We’ve money for candles,” she said defiantly. She jerked her head towards the young man still snoring on the ground under the cart. “He’s got money an’ all, so don’t let him tell you he hasn’t. I saw his wife give it him, though he’d sooner spend it on ale and let the old ’un die. He’s wanted him out of the way for years, says the old pisspot’s a useless mouth to feed.”

  The little girl lying by herself gave a convulsive shudder and turned. Even through her coarse shift, I could see her belly was swollen up like a drowned sheep. Her flushed face crumpled in pain. She cried out and another stream of green shit oozed out of her. But she didn’t open her eyes.

  Merchant Martha gripped me fiercely by the arm. “If they’re demanding the relic, I’d best fetch Servant Martha. She’ll want to know about this. Meanwhile you take that little girl inside. If her brother has left her here for us to care for, I warrant that child at least will be grateful for a warm room and a dry bed.”

  pisspuddle

  bLACK, BLACK WATER IS CREEPING towards me. My legs are heavy. They won’t move. I can’t get my arms free. I’m trapped in the stocks and the water’s rising up. It’s running round my feet in a little trickle, like spiders’ feet. It’s crawling up over my belly.

  “Mam, Mam, get me out!”

  Why doesn’t she come? It’s cold. It’s so cold. My teeth are chattering and I can’t get warm. There are monsters swimming in the water, things with big eyes and beaks, sharp beaks stabbing at me, tearing me. I can’t fight them off. I can’t get my hands free.

  “Don’t leave me here, Mam. Where are you?”

  Water’s getting deeper. I’m so thirsty I want to drink the water, but the beaks are jumping out of the water at my face. Sharp beaks, hot beaks, hotter than pincers from the furnace. Black Anu’s in the water, she’s biting my belly with her big teeth. She’s eating me.

  “It hurts. It hurts so much. Mam, make her stop!”

  “Hush, lass, hush. She’s getting worse, Osmanna. I’ve seen bairns taken like it afore. There’s nothing can save them when they get this bad.”

  “Keep wiping her with the cold water, Pega. We have to cool her; she’s burning up.”

  “Mam?”

  “Your mother’s not here, child. It was your brother who brought you here. Try to drink some more of this, please. It’ll make you better.”

  “No, Osmanna, leave the bairn be, she only pukes it back up again and it just makes the poor mite more miserable every time. There’s nowt you can do for her now. She’ll not make it through the night. Let her rest.”

  “No, Pega, she won’t die. I can’t let her die.”

  “Bairns die, that’s the way of it. When they get this bad, there’s nothing can save them.”

  “There’s another way … I remember … I saw Healing Martha do it once on a babe that wouldn’t suckle. Turn her onto her belly, Pega. If the medicine won’t go down, perhaps we can get it up.”

  january

  saint pega’s day

  anchoress and virgin sister of saint guthlac, she lived not far from crowland. when guthlac realised he was dying he invited his sister to the funeral and she sailed down the river welland. following guthlac’s death she went on a pilgrimage to rome, where she died.

  servant martha

  aLL EYES WERE FIXED upon the white wafer raised high above their heads, such a tiny fragile thing, yet it was the very presence, the very substance of the omnipotent God who created all Heaven and earth. I held in my hand a drop of water that is an ocean, a flame that is the essence and being of the whole fire.

  “Salus, victoria et ressurrectio nostra.”

  The blessed mystery, bread made by my hands and transfigured by my words into His very flesh. Upon that fragment stood our immortal souls, the eternity of our existence. My hands had become Christ’s hands. I had climbed the sacred mountain for them.

  But the mountaintop was deserted. I stood barefoot and alone in the holy place and saw that it was empty. Nothing came back from all my prayers and questions except a hollow, mocking silence. I could make bread into flesh for them, but in my own mouth it had turned to dust. My hand trembled and drops of red wine spilled onto the white cloth.

  I BUSIED MYSELF in the chapel cleaning the vessels, until I saw Osmanna rise and make her way towards the door. I called her and she paused with her back to me. Hesitated, just for a moment, a scintilla of defiance was all, but it was enough. Then she turned and walked back meekly, the semblance of obedience.

  I’d had days to think about this moment, yet I’d still not decided how to begin it. I folded the linen cloth. The wine had seeped through it and beneath there was a small bloodred stain on the white stone of the altar on which the Mass stone rested. I scrubbed at it with a little water, but it would not come out.

  “Was there something you wanted me to do, Servant Martha?” God in Heaven, could she not at least wait for me to speak? Her arms were thrust behind her back and she stood watching me, her head on one side and her eyebrows raised quizzically. Did she really not know why I’d asked her to stay?

  “Did you observe, Osmanna, that eight women did not come forward to receive the Blessed Host tonight?”

  Her gaze flinched away from mine and she swallowed hard. At least she appeared to retain some slight awe of me. That was something.

  “I was lost in my prayers, Servant Martha … I didn’t notice who went forward. Surely we’re not supposed to watch—”

  “Lost is indeed an apposite term for you, Osmanna, and for that very state in which you now find yourself. I foolishly trusted that you sought only to come to a greater understanding of the sweet mystery that is the Sacrament, but not only have you not returned in all humility to the table of our blessed Lord, you have incited others to follow your example and turn away.”

  I found myself pacing up and down the chapel and was suddenly aware that my voice had risen to a strident pitch. I forced myself to lower it.

  “Some of the women are not blessed with your reason, Osmanna. They were content in their faith and you have deliberately set out to undermine it. To wrestle with our own doubts is part of every religious life, but it must be done in private. To infect others with that venomous worm—”

  “I have no doubts, Servant Martha.”

  She stood by the altar, glowering at me. Her face was flushed, her hands clenched at her sides as if she was struggling to hold them in check. She looked as she did that first day I laid eyes on her in her father’s house. I was beginning to think he was right about her after all.

  “You have no doubts, Osmanna? Then forgive me, for I see you are indeed blessed above all God’s saints, for I know of no other who makes such a claim.”

  “I didn’t mean … What I … Servant Martha, you yourself say our souls may reach out directly to God and He to us. We don’t need anything else.”

  Blessed Lord, forgive her youth. “I do not need reminding of what I’ve said, Osmanna. I may seem ancient to you, but I can assure you my wits are not wandering yet. I’m flattered that you listen to me so well. That being so, it makes your refusal to take His blessed body the more inexplicable. God laid hands upon me in spirit to consecrate the bread and win
e as He lays His hands upon every one of His servants. Even you, Osmanna, could do this one day if—”

  “No! You don’t understand!”

  How dared she raise her voice to me and in here? Still, at least it was evidence that my words had penetrated that armour of self-possession. I met her gaze unblinking and she finally had the grace to lower her eyes.

  She took a deep breath. “Servant Martha, don’t you see, that’s the whole point.” She spoke unnaturally slowly, as if she was struggling to keep control of her temper. “You said … I mean … doesn’t it say that God is spirit and we should worship Him in spirit? So why do we need to eat bread? Why should this little piece of wheat and water have any more power to save us than the loaves that we share daily in the refectory? It is only our faith that makes it so and our faith does not need physical signs. You taught me that.”

  “It was our Lord’s command that we should do it. That should be enough for you. Did Abraham question why God commanded him to slay his son?”

  “When the women were afraid to take Ralph in you sa … you said God is in each of us, Servant Martha. So if God is already in me, why must I take His flesh into my body? All I have to do is reach out for salvation and take it. I don’t need you or anyone else to give it to me.” Osmanna thrust out her chin as if she could take the world with a snap of her fingers.

  It took every grain of self-control I possessed not to slap her. “Osmanna, I give you nothing. I am merely the channel of His love and mercy.”

  “No, Servant Martha, you are not a channel, you are a guard barring the way. The priests won’t let the people speak to God except through them. They tell us that no one can be saved unless they eat the bread that they alone have the power to consecrate. They control who will eat and be saved and who will be refused and damned. Like some peddler in the marketplace, they offer an elixir of life and they decide the price. You haven’t changed anything, Servant Martha. All you have done is to take the priests’ place in the gateway. Now, instead of them, you stand between us and God.”