“Who slaughters pigs in fattening month?” Lettice said, spreading her hands wide. “Summer’s been so bad there’s not a pick of flesh on them. They needed two full moons feeding on the forest mast just to put as much fat on as this little mite, and she’s as skinny as a piece of thread.” Her hard fingers poked my belly. “Am I right?” The black bristles on her chin waggled when she talked.
“But even without fattening, we’d have got something off them.” Mam clenched her hands into fists. “Now we’ve nothing, no meat, no fat to cook with. I’ll not even have the scrimmings to dip the rushes in for candles. Bailiff says the whole carcasses are to be burnt.”
Her shoulders were shaking and she was making strange gulping noises, her face twisting up as if she was trying not to cry. It frightened me. Mam never cried, not ever.
“Mam, don’t, please don’t.” I tried to put my arms round her, but fat Lettice pushed me out of the way and put her arm round Mam instead.
“There, there, dear. Don’t take on so. They’re not burning them all, no matter what that bailiff tells you. Most’ll find their way into D’Acaster’s pickle barrels. His stores will be groaning with the fitches of pork this time next week.”
She looked all round her, then whispered. “That tall one with the bailiff, one with the squint. Get him on his own when bailiff’s not looking. Slip him a coin. He’ll make sure there’s a dead pig that doesn’t reach the cart.” She tapped the side of her nose. “There’s a few carcasses gone missing from that cart round the village. Not that I’m saying anything, of course.”
“Aye, we slipped a few coins to the Owl Masters too. They promised us they’d keep us safe.” Mam’s eyes were red and watery, but her face was angry, not sad. “Said they’d stop anything else going wrong this year. Much good that’s done us. If they show their faces round here again, you’ll not catch me giving them owt but in a flea in their ear.”
“Hush! Hush!” Fat Lettice flapped her hands at Mam. The old woman waddled to the corner of the cottage and peered round the side again. Then she sidled back to Mam. “It doesn’t do to be talking about the Owl Masters like that. You never know who’s listening. Bailiff could be one of them. You heard what happened to old Warren when he refused to pay up? Course you have, who hasn’t? Accident, so his wife said, but everyone knows different.”
I remembered the door to his yard where the old man made his pots and jugs had been closed for nearly a week now, but I thought he’d just got the ague.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
Lettice jerked her head in my direction. “Little pitchers have big ears.”
“Make yourself useful, lass; go fetch some water,” Mam said sharply.
“But, Mam, what did happen to Warren?”
“What will happen to you if you don’t fetch that water. Now off with you.” She pointed. Mam meant it when she pointed. That was a last warning.
I picked up the bucket and walked away as slowly as I could, trying to listen, but fat Lettice was whispering to Mam and I couldn’t hear anything except “smashed and broken.” There were no more squeals coming from the back of the cottage. I glanced behind me. Lettice and Mam were busy talking. I slipped round the side of the cottage.
Scarlet blood was splashed all over the cottage walls and dribbling down the sty walls. There were bright puddles of it on the ground, as if it had been raining red. The pigs were all dead, everyone’s in the whole road. They were lying in a big heap on top of one another. The bailiff was bending over a pig on the ground. Its trotters were jerking and twitching. Then they shuddered and stopped. The bailiff’s men heaved the last pig onto the heap; it fell with a loud wet slap. Its head dropped back and there was a big red gash in its neck, but its eyes were still open, and it was looking at me.
The bailiff still had his back to me, but he must have felt me looking, because he turned. His hands were red and steaming; blood was dripping from his dark hairy elbows onto the ground. He was holding a long pointed knife.
“You, brat, come here, I want you-”
But I didn’t wait to hear more. I ran as if Black Anu herself was after me.
october
samhain, when the world of the dead and the world of the living draw close enough to touch each other. the night when the past, the present, and the future become one.
fOR THE TENTH TIME THAT AFTERNOON I cursed as the thread once more slipped from the eye of the needle. My linen vestment had ripped and I was trying to repair it. I was not accustomed to sewing. In the Cathedral there had been a whole hall full of people kept constantly employed in making and mending the clergy’s robes. Since I’d come to Ulewic, the girl who cooked for me had mended my clothes, and though her work had been clumsy, it was a hundred times better than anything I could manage. But I’d had to let the girl go. It was one of the many things I’d had to sacrifice since the Commissarius’s visit. But no matter how much I tightened my belt I still could not raise the money I needed.
The Commissarius had received his full measure of tithes. I’d had no choice. If I had defaulted by so much as a clipped farthing, I knew the Commissarius would carry out his threat and I would have found myself in chains in the Bishop’s dungeon within the day. The villagers couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the tithes they owed before the month was up, so I had taken the only way out left open to me. I had pawned the church silver to raise the money.
I knew it was foolish. It would cost me more in the end, but I had to buy myself time. The jewelled chalice, the engraved paten, the silver candlesticks and altar cross were only ever used for the High Masses of Christmas and Easter; the rest of the year we used the plain pewter and brass. The valuable pieces were kept locked away in a great heavy chest in the church vestry and I had the only key. So all I had to do was to redeem them in time for the Christmas Mass and no one would be any the wiser.
All I had to do? It sounded so easy. But if I did not retrieve the church silver by Christmas Eve, D’Acaster would notice at once that it was missing. I had just two months to recover the pieces. Two months and I was no nearer raising the money than when I started.
There was only one person in the world I could confide in and trust. I’d sworn I would never see Hilary again, but I’d said that countless times before. We both knew I didn’t mean it. If I sent word, Hilary would come to me and would get me the money somehow. I deserved that much at least. I had taken the full weight of punishment for what we had done. I had protected Hilary’s identity, even under the most rigorous of questioning. I had never once betrayed my dark angel.
There was a loud hammering at my door and I jerked, dropping the needle again.
“Father! Come quickly. He’s gone! He’s gone!”
“I’m coming,” I called. “There’s no need to break my door down.”
But the yells and banging only redoubled. I groped for the latch. As the door swung wide, I had to leap back to avoid the wildly beating fists. One of the village women stood on the threshold. It took me a moment to recognise her, for her face was streaked with tears and mud.
“It’s Aldith, isn’t it?” I said. “What’s happened? Who’s gone?”
“Oliver, my little Oliver. He’s not there. I went to where… and he wasn’t there!” She broke off in a fit of sobbing, running back and forth in front of my door like a crazed dog.
Several women were beginning to gather on the other side of the path, clutching each other and staring, but not daring to approach, afraid that her madness might be catching.
I seized Aldith by the arm. “Come now, you must calm yourself, Mistress. This won’t do you any good. Oliver’s dead, don’t you remember? I buried him myself three days ago.”
Grief does strange things to a woman. Some refuse to accept that their children or husband are dead. I’d even known women to set a place for the deceased at the table or wash their clothes as if they would return to wear them.
Aldith shook her head violently. “No, Father, you don’t understand-his body… it’s gone… from the grave.”
“What! Are you sure?”
“Grave’s empty, Father. I went to lay some meat and drink on it for All Hallows’, so he’d not feel neglected, but the grave… it was open and his little body was gone.”
She froze, a look of wonderment spreading slowly across her face, then she clutched my arm. “Father, maybe he wasn’t dead after all, or… maybe God heard my prayers and brought him back to life. Three days, Father, three days, don’t you see… I have to go home. He’ll be there waiting for me.”
She hitched up her skirts and began to run.
“Wait!” I called after her. “Aldith, come back. It is not possible. He can’t…” But she only ran faster.
I snatched up my cloak and hurried down towards the churchyard.
Oliver had been just five years old, and when he had first fallen ill, it seemed nothing unusual, a sore throat, a slight fever, some vomiting. It was a touch of ague, his mother had said, brought on by the cold weather. But two days later, little Oliver was writhing in agony, his belly swollen up as if he had the dropsy, and he was vomiting blood. Death had followed within the week.
We had laid the child’s body straight into the half-frozen earth, wrapped only in a simple winding sheet. His mother couldn’t afford a coffin; it was all she could do to raise the money for the soul-scot. I’d thrown earth onto the small body, and watched the villagers add their own clods, while the mother howled and rocked in the arms of her neighbours. Then the grave had been filled in.
I had seen it myself only yesterday, a slender mound of earth, fresh and dark against the surrounding grass and marked with a small wooden
