stopping, but I tripped and went sprawling onto the sharp stones. My knees burned and stung. They felt wet, but it was too dark now to see if they were bleeding.
Then, as I tried to get up, I saw a scarlet light flickering above the track ahead of me. It was flames of a torch and it was moving fast towards me. I scrambled across to the edge of the road and slithered down into the dry ditch. I didn’t want to touch the bottom with my bare feet, in case there were snakes or weasels in there, but I was more scared of what was coming towards me on the road.
I pressed tightly against the side of the ditch, holding my breath, and peered up. Four muffled shapes were coming along the track, but I couldn’t hear a single footstep. The shapes had great big heads like Saint Walburga and no legs. Maybe they were ghosts, hungry ghosts who’d been driven out of our cottage and were hunting for something to eat. My heart was banging so loudly I was certain they’d hear it. What if they could smell me? William said Black Anu couldn’t see, but she could sniff out little girls.
I held my breath as the creatures came closer and closer, and then they were right above me. The flames of the torch swirled in the wind, lighting up their heads and I saw that instead of faces, they had great hooked beaks and feathers. I stuffed my hands across my mouth to stop myself from screaming. But then they were gone, running lightly down the grass on the side of the road, and I realised who they were. They were the Owl Masters.
I dug my bare toes into the side of the ditch and scrambled out. The stones and dirt stung my skinned knees, but I didn’t cry. Crouching low, I ran to the corner of the road and hid behind some bushes. Far ahead, I could see the torch wobbling, the scarlet flames streaming out behind. Then it stopped. The torch was moving from side to side as it lit three others. The four torches separated and began to move again. The Owl Masters were walking across a field where the grain lay in stooks, drying. It was the only field where the grain had already been cut and it belonged to the house of women.
One of the Owl Masters raised his torch, his cloak swirling out around him in the wind. He touched his blazing torch to the stook in the far corner and at once smoke and flames leapt hungrily up. I wanted to run to the gate and warn the women that the Owl Masters were burning their fields, but I didn’t dare move. William said if you ever told anyone what you saw the Owl Masters doing, they’d come for you in the night and cut your tongue out.
I watched the Owl Master brush the flames of his torch over the next stook, but just as he did, a blinding white flash lit up the sky, then came an immense clap of thunder. Raindrops, fat and hard as hailstones, pounded down. The flames on the two stooks leapt up and then they were gone quicker than a tallow flame is snuffed out. Just like Lettice said, the witch-girl had shaken out her hair and called up a storm. But what if the witch dances?
There was a deafening roar of thunder like all the hills in the world had crashed into one another. I leapt up. I didn’t care if the Owl Masters saw me or not. I didn’t care about my pail. I just ran. Behind me the wind came screaming across the marshes from the sea. I ran faster than I’ve ever run before, slipping on the mud and splashing through the icy puddles, but I didn’t stop. All I wanted was to get home to my mam.
september
patron saint of cripples, lepers, and nursing mothers. in provence he defended a hunted hind from king wamba, and was permanently crippled by the arrow aimed at the deer.
bEATRICE, WAIT A MOMENT,” Healing Martha called after me, as I hurried out from the midday prayers in chapel.
If I ignored her, she might seize on someone else to carry out whatever task she had in mind. The afternoon was sunny, the first good day after more than a week of heavy rain, and I’d no wish to spend it indoors stirring some evil-smelling ointment over the fire or cleaning up the old lady who’d fouled herself again. An afternoon spent gathering rushes reaps cuts and blisters, but at least I could feel the sun on my face. But Catherine tugged on my sleeve, so I could hardly pretend I hadn’t noticed her. Healing Martha limped up to us, still calling my name, pain gouged deep in the lines of her face and her hand pressed to her back.
“I’ve run out of water betony and I’ve no time to go myself, with all the sick in the infirmary. Will you fetch some for me, Beatrice? I believe there was a good patch on the bank further up the river, and you might find some herb Robert thereabouts; bring me as much of that as you can too.”
Catherine was hovering at my elbow looking eager as usual. “Stinking Bob? Is that the one, Healing Martha?”
Healing Martha smiled indulgently. “That’s the one, child. Why don’t you go with Beatrice to learn how to gather it, for I fear that with so many patients to tend I’ll have to depend on others in the future to fetch my herbs.”
It was not the sick that kept Healing Martha from gathering the herbs herself, but her back. Some days she could hardly drag herself around, but she was too proud to admit it.
Catherine beamed and rushed off to get the pokes to carry our harvest before Healing Martha could change her mind. But though I wanted an excuse to be outside, I resented being asked. I was not a Martha, so I was at everyone’s beck and call to run errands and help with tasks, as if I was one of the children.
Servant Martha had let me believe that, as the community expanded, there would be a role for me. I had thought that as Healing Martha became more frail and less able to work, I would take her place, under her at first of course, but later to take over as the Healing Martha. But she showed no sign of drawing me in.
They needed me as a Martha, though none of them seemed to realise it. Servant Martha was in the twilight of her days. Did they think she’d live forever? And who would take over when she was gone? Healing Martha was even older. Kitchen Martha was interested only in food. Merchant Martha could scarcely contain herself to sit still in chapel until the prayers were over and she could get back to work. Tutor Martha had great learning, but she couldn’t even control the children, never mind a whole beguinage. Who was there except for me who had the skill and energy to manage such a household? But if I was not even a Martha, how could I become the next Servant Martha?
Catherine returned with our cloaks and we left the gate, heading towards the shallow ford. The branches on the trees hung low, their leaves sodden and heavy. As we turned towards the river, I tried not to look at the villagers’ fields, where the grain lay flat, battered into the mud. We had lost some, but at least ours had been cut and stooked, so most of it could be rescued. Two sheaves had been scorched by the lightning, but the rain had doused them before they could set the field on fire.
Catherine and I stripped off our shoes and hose to wade across the river, giggling like children and holding on to each other as we tried to keep our balance on the slippery stones of the ford. We had to hitch our skirts to our thighs to keep the hems from getting wet. The water was deep after all the rain and so cold. The bones of my feet ached in the chill of it and I rushed the last few steps, almost falling in my hurry to get out, which made Catherine giggle.
We flopped down on the bank. I lay back in the damp grass watching Catherine pat her feet dry with her skirts. The sun was bright, not hot, but pleasantly warm. I could have danced with the bliss of feeling its light on my face after the misery of the rain. It was such a joy to be outside breathing in the fresh air, heavy with the smell of steaming earth and crushed grass, I could almost forgive Healing Martha for sending me.
A great flock of starlings swished across the blue sky, their feathers gleaming as iridescent as oil on water.
“I can fly across the land and rivers, the forests and the villages, and float on the wind.”
Catherine jerked upright, looking horrified, and I realised I must have spoken the words aloud. She stared at me as if she thought I was crazed.
“I mean, wouldn’t you love to be a bird, Catherine?”
Catherine shook her head vehemently. “Some little boy with his slingshot would break my wings and I’d end up in Kitchen Martha’s flesh pot. I wouldn’t like that.” She stood, shuffling from foot to foot. “Oughtn’t we to go? It’s a long walk.”
I sat up reluctantly and dried my feet on the hem of my kirtle.
“Catherine, do you want to stay here as a beguine?”
She looked puzzled as if the answer was so obvious she couldn’t imagine why I asked the question. Then her confusion turned to anxiety. “Has Servant Martha said…? I know I’m not clever like Osmanna, but I will try, really I will.”
“Don’t take on so, child. Servant Martha hasn’t said anything and I know you’d make a truly good beguine. Cleverness is not the only gift. You have gifts too-faith, gentleness-and you work hard.”
Catherine stared miserably at a daisy head and absently pulled the petals from it one by one, as if she was making a test of true love. “But Osmanna reads things. I don’t even understand the words, but Osmanna can debate them with Tutor Martha and even with Servant Martha. I’ve heard her. What does it mean-one God in the three persons and three persons in God alone? Osmanna has tried to explain it over and over to me, but I know I’ll never understand it, so I just say I do.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I just want someone to tell me what it is they want me to do.”
I reached over and stroked her hair. “Osmanna shouldn’t even be thinking about these things at her age.”
Servant Martha should have had more sense than to force Osmanna to read such books, never mind discuss them with her. The poor girl was pale and drawn, as if she already lay awake half the night worrying. Servant Martha would never listen to me, but I would have words with Tutor Martha, tell her to not to burden Osmanna with books. Someone had to look out for the child.
“Come on, Catherine. Let’s find where the water betony grows. Where do you think we’d best look?”
She brightened at once. “This way,” she called, confident again, for that was a task she knew she could perform.
We walked alongside the twisting river, following its line upstream, often having to cut away from its banks to avoid the thick pools of mud and rushes. Autumn was approaching much too swiftly, as if it had been fooled by the storm into thinking it was later in the year than it was. But I was still hungry for the sun; it was too soon for the cold and dark to start to close in around us again. Even worse was the thought of the hours we would soon spend dipping those rushes, sweaty, stinking, suffocating hours circling the cauldrons of hot tallow, eyes stinging and arms smarting from a dozen little blisters from the spitting fat.
In the old days, as mistress of my husband’s house, I’d simply sent a boy to buy the candles we needed. I gave not a thought to them beyond seeing that none disappeared into the sack of some light-fingered servant. Then in Bruges, our sisters who kept bees made candles themselves from wax smelling of
