Someone pushed me from behind and I stumbled forward. I followed the pointing finger.
A body lay facedown in the mud at the Owl Master’s too-human feet. She was naked. Her red hair snaked in thick wet strands across her shoulders. Her wrists and ankles were bound, tied so tightly that the skin was cut and bruised purple where she’d struggled. They had whipped her, lashed her slender back again and again. The water had washed the blood away, but the cuts were bright as poppy petals against the bluish-white of her skin. The whip had curled around her side. Its tip cut into the small mound of her stomach, biting deep into the soft flesh of her little breast.
I dropped to my knees, heedless of the stinking mud, and turned her over, tilting her face towards me as if I needed to see, as if my mind could still cling to any shred of hope that it was not her. Tenderly I plucked the wet weeds of hair out of her wide-open eyes. Livid bruises covered her face and arms, purple as a summer storm. Her lip was swollen. She had not died gently.
All my fear was consumed in fury. I wanted to tear the faces off the men who stood there.
“Why did you do this? She was only a child! You put her through the ordeal of water, and she sank in front of your eyes, proving she was innocent. You could have pulled her out before she drowned, but instead you all stood there and watched her die. How could you do that? She’d never done you any harm!”
The man in the owl mask neither moved nor spoke. In the silence we stared each other down. Father Ulfrid nudged Gudrun’s body with the toe of his shoe as if to assure himself she was really dead.
“She stood accused of malfactorum. Many worthy witnesses testified on oath that she danced up a storm and raised a flood against this village and that she poisoned the water with her evil eye so that our children sickened and died. She was whipped to encourage her to confess her sins and save her soul, but she was so steeped in sin that she stubbornly refused to make confession-”
“She was a mute!” I screamed at him. “You knew that! Each and every one of you knew that. If you had tortured her upon the rack she could not have uttered a single word to save her life.”
“If she couldn’t speak it is yet further proof of her malice, for her soul was so far given over to Satan that he stopped her mouth so that she could not confess and receive divine grace and forgiveness for her sins.”
“She didn’t feel no pain neither,” yelled someone from the back of the crowd. There were murmurs of confirmation from those at the front. “Even when the Owl Master was laying the whip on her good and hard, she never screamed.”
“Not natural that. Even a grown man cries out under the lash.”
“It was the Devil protecting her.”
“Don’t you understand?” I pleaded. “She couldn’t cry out, however much agony she was in.”
But no one was listening to me. All eyes were riveted on Gudrun’s body. A great cry of horror went up from the crowd and they shrank back, crossing themselves. I looked down. Her mouth had fallen open and a green frog was crawling out from between her lips.
january
paul was buried in the desert by two lions who dug his grave with their paws, at the request of saint antony of egypt.
servant martha
tHE WOMEN CROSSED THE COURTYARD in twos and threes, chatting companionably to one another in the glacial winter sunshine. As I stood in the doorway of my room, watching them, a wave of loneliness washed through me. Their solidarity only sharpened my isolation. They could complain to one another, cry on one another’s shoulders, and receive a friendly arm of comfort, but I couldn’t undress my weaknesses before anyone.
Healing Martha lay in her cot as withdrawn from me as if she lay across the sea. Perhaps she heard me when I talked to her, but even if she did, she couldn’t answer. Looking back through all those years when we were friends, I don’t think I ever really told her anything. I never needed to. She had a way of seeing through the most closely veiled silence and would say the word that could lance a boil, however carefully concealed. Now, even if she could understand what troubled me, she couldn’t offer me any words of advice or comfort. A seer without a tongue is as useless as a blind watchman. Until I lost her, I never realised how much I needed her.
The gate burst open and Beatrice stumbled in. Her hands and the front of her kirtle were spattered with mud. She staggered as if she was drunk, and didn’t even seem to see me standing in the doorway of my room. I hurried out.
“Beatrice?”
She stopped and stared up at me, as if I was a stranger. Her eyes were swollen and her face was blotched with red marks.
“Have you fallen?”
She shook her head, but I knew something was wrong.
“Is there some problem with the livestock? The murrain has not struck again?” Merciful God, not that. We needed every shred of meat we could store this winter if we were to survive.
“Why didn’t you at least beg them for her body?” She spat out the words with a look of such venom on her face that I took a step back.
“Why did you let them kill her? You could’ve stopped them. The fever was none of her doing. She didn’t cast the evil eye on them. She wasn’t a witch, she was just a child… an innocent child!”
She gabbled her words so fast that it took me a moment to make sense of what she’d said.
“Do you mean Gwenith’s granddaughter? Beatrice, you know perfectly well that I knew nothing of this matter until you yourself told me of it last night. I’m as appalled as you by what was done to the girl. It was a wicked and evil act, but if anyone could have prevented it, it was you. You insisted on the care of the girl. You encouraged her to wander abroad instead of schooling her to tasks within these walls. It was only a matter of time before she came to grief. I’ve no doubt that Pega warned you of the fear the villagers had of her.”
“What did you expect me to do-lock her up? How could I stop her? She wanted to go out.” Beatrice twisted a handful of her cloak tightly between her fingers as if she was trying to wring water out of it. But the cloak, though filthy, was dry.
“If you’d ever had children, Beatrice, you’d know that infants can’t be allowed to wander freely however much they might want to, for fear of them falling into a stream or being trampled beneath a horse. Sometimes you must tether them to keep them from harm. You said yourself she was just a child with no more sense than a babe in arms.”
Beatrice’s head jerked up, her eyes glittering with rage. “What does an old hag like you know about children? You’ve never wanted a baby, have you? Everything about them disgusts you. Remember what you said about Andrew?” Beatrice screwed up her mouth in what I assume was intended to be a vicious parody of me. “‘Andrew has so mastered her body that God healed the wound of her menses and returned her to the pure state that Eve knew before this curse of filth came upon us.’ You said that we should all pray daily that this curse would be lifted from us too. What kind of a bitter, twisted prayer is that?
“Don’t you understand that when your menses are gone, so is your hope? But that didn’t matter to you, did it? Because even before you were a withered-up old crone, you were never a normal woman. You could never have loved a child because there isn’t a grain of love in you for anyone.”
For a moment I was so stunned, I couldn’t reply. Then I gripped her shoulders and shook her hard. “Control yourself, Beatrice! This is a disgraceful display in a woman of your age. I think it as well that you were not blessed with children, since you seem incapable of behaving any better than a spoilt infant yourself.”
I could feel her trembling violently beneath my grip. I tried to speak soothingly. “I understand that stumbling across the body of the girl in such circumstances was a terrible shock for you, as it would have been to anyone. But why are you saying all this now?”
She stared wildly around her, clenching and unclenching her hands. When she finally spoke, it was in a whisper.
“I went to fetch her little body home, but I was too late. They’d already buried her at the crossroads… like a common murderer. Beggar Tom told me. I found the place. Tried to dig her up with my hands to bring her here. But they’ve laid her too deep… Have to get a spade to dig… I can’t reach her…”
She tried to tear herself away from me, but I held her firmly.
“Beatrice, it is pointless to go running back to the village. I give you my word that we will fetch the body and bring it here. But it must be done after dark when the villagers are safely behind their doors. I’ll see to it that the child is given a proper resting place here. Though she died unshriven, nevertheless she died innocent of the crime of which she was accused and for that alone she deserves a hallowed resting place.
“Now go to the washhouse and clean yourself up at once, before anyone else sees you. And for Heaven’s sake, Beatrice-conduct yourself with some decorum. Pray for Gudrun’s soul if you will, but such unseemly displays of grief, especially for one such as her, are quite unnecessary. After all, it’s not as if she was your own child.”
She flung off my hand from her shoulder, her face twisted with hatred. I leapt back as she struck out, her fingers clawing inches from my cheek. A single cry escaped her, the shriek of a wild animal in pain. She stood rocking backwards and forwards. Then she seemed to collect herself. She walked stiffly away towards the washhouse, her arms wrapped tightly about her chest.
I retraced the few steps to my room, closed the door, and stood over the small blaze in the hearth, warming my hands and trying to stop myself trembling. Beatrice had seemed almost possessed. Was it fear of what the Owl Masters had threatened? I should not have accused her of neglect. For I knew I bore the greater guilt for the child’s death; she had been entrusted to my care. And if she had not been out on the night of the storm…
Every time I closed my eyes at night, I could see the girl standing over me, her naked body glistening white in the flash of lightning, the rain streaming down her bare legs and that great black bird flapping its wings on her shoulder. How had she got there? Why had she come to me of all people? She had always tried to run away from me before.
