“But I can’t reach it.”
“No, but I can. They didn’t call me the Ulewic Giant for nothing. I’ve a rope I can use to haul you up once I’ve made a hole. Someone must have been praying some pretty powerful prayers for you, lass-this sea-mist is sent from Heaven. It’ll cover us while I work and our tracks while we make off.”
Her face vanished from the window and I heard the sound of the reeds being torn away above my head. Gradually a bright white patch began to glimmer through the dark roof.
“But we can’t go back to the beguinage, Pega. They’ll come looking for me there and for you too. Phillip’s bound to tell them what you did.”
“Phillip’ll never admit he let himself be tricked by a whore. But he’ll come looking for me, make no mistake, and I’ve no intention of being around when he does. No, lass-you and I are going to have to disappear. Boat to France, then who knows where? I’ve a hankering to see more than this poxy village before I die. We might not make it, and if they catch us, we’ll likely burn together. But they’ll have to catch us first and we’ll give them a run for their money. What say you, Osmanna: You willing to take a chance? You and me together, lass. I reckon with your learning and my brawn, together we could take on the world.”
january
spanish martyr and the patron saint of drunkards, he refused to sacrifice to heathen gods and was roasted on a gridiron and left in the stocks to die. six ancient english churches bear his name.
iT WAS THE HIGHEST TREE I’d ever climbed. I could see forever, right over Ulewic and the hills beyond it. I was balancing on the branch and I wasn’t even holding on. I just had my hand pressed against rough bark above, but I wasn’t gripping it, just resting my hand. I could walk that branch without holding on if I wanted, but I wasn’t going to, not yet.
There’d be a fair next May Day, I knew there would be. The tumblers would come again and this time they’d take me. I’d be ready by then; if I practised all winter, when the spring came, I’d show them. I’d show everyone. I’d steal Father’s big sharp knife and cut the webs between my fingers and then Ulewic would have to let me go, for I wouldn’t belong here anymore. With the tumblers I’d travel way beyond the hills to castles and towns bigger even than the forest. And one day we’d come back here to the fair. I’d be wearing a red and gold costume and William wouldn’t even recognise me and I wouldn’t even speak to him, not once.
I’d walk the whole length of the springy pole and when the two men holding the pole on their shoulders bounced it upwards, I’d somersault and land on it again, my fingers spread wide like flowers. Everyone would cheer, especially William; then I’d speak to him, but only so he’d know it was me.
I’d be rich then. Father would beg me to stay the night in the cottage and say that I could have all the best bits from the pot and tell William he’d have to sleep on the floor, but I’d not go. I’d be feasted at the Manor. Father and William would have to wait in the rain in the courtyard outside. If they were nice to me, I’d have a few scraps sent out to them from the table, but only if they were really nice, otherwise I wouldn’t.
“Get down here, Pisspuddle!”
The sudden shout startled me. I slipped, grabbed for the branch, and hauled myself back up again. My knees stung like fire, skinned on the rough bark. It hurt. It was all his stupid fault, bellowing like that. He made me slip. I hated him.
“I’ll leave you here in the dark by yourself and the Owlman’ll get you!” William bellowed.
“No, wait, I’m coming, William, don’t go.”
I looked round trying to find the quickest way down. I couldn’t remember how I got up here.
“I’m going right now!”
Below me I could see him walking away from the tree.
“No, wait, wait. Look, the sea fog is coming in again. I can see it from here. Look, William, look!”
A thick mist was rolling across the fields, tumbling over itself, sliding along the ground, then rearing up again.
“This’d better not be one of your games.” William swung himself up into the tree and quickly reached the branch below me. He was good at climbing.
“Isn’t, look there.”
The huge wall of fog drifted beyond the village. William sniffed the air and slapped me across my head. I had to grab on tight with both hands to stop myself falling off.
“What did you do that for?”
“You wouldn’t know it if your own arse was on fire. That’s no fog. That’s smoke that is, you daft beggar.”
“What’s afire?”
William shrugged. “House of women, I reckon.”
“Are they burning the women too?”
“Lettice says they’re gone.” William craned to get a better view. “She said Father Ulfrid went out there and there wasn’t a soul left. It was like they’d all vanished in the night.”
The girl they were going to burn was gone too. The door of the jail was still locked, but there was a big hole in the roof. Father Ulfrid said the Owlman had come in the night and torn the roof open with his talons. He ripped her heart out of her chest with his beak and ate it right in front of her while it was still beating. Then he carried her soul straight to Hell in case she repented in the flames and Satan was cheated of her. Father Ulfrid said she was his greatest prize because she was so wicked, but I didn’t believe she was wicked at all.
I was sorry they’d gone. Servant Martha hadn’t got angry when I gave her the hair and the feather. She held them in her hands for a long time staring at them, and then she said softly as if she was remembering something,
“
She looked at me then and gave a tiny sad smile. I’d never seen her smile before. “Remember to choose, child.”
William whacked my leg. “C’mon, we’ve got to get going. It’ll be dark soon. What did you have to climb up here for anyway, you daft beggar? You’ll fall.”
He held my ankle and pushed my foot down safely onto the next branch, then the next, till I was down.
Mostly I hated William, but sometimes since Mam got taken and Father went strange, he looked out for me. Sometimes it felt like William was all I’d got left. It was just the two of us now. When the tumblers came in spring, maybe I’d take him with me. William didn’t have a web. So we could run away together, far, far away and nothing could ever pull us back to Ulewic. Maybe that’s what we’d choose to do one day, very soon.
epilogue
sMOKE BILLOWED UP FROM THE RUINS of the beguinage. Only the buildings burned. They had been stripped of anything moveable as soon as the women and their curse were gone from the village. Looted for valuables first by the Manor, as was their liege-right-even thieves know their place-then by the villagers gleaning for broken furniture, food, pots, and sheer curiosity. The Manor found little worth the bother of their efforts except the livestock, wine, and stores of grain, but the villagers were always glad of any prize they could snatch from their neighbours, be it a straw pallet or a patched blanket. Tables and benches rejected as too rough and plain for the Manor were carried off on cart or foot. They were far too big to fit inside the cottages, but good wood was hard to come by and they could always be made into doors to keep out the cold, or hurdles to keep in the sheep. Even the dead got their dues, for a tabletop makes a serviceable bier.
The villagers stripped the beguinage to the bare bones, but in this world even bones have their scavengers, and finally the beggars were allowed their turn at the carcass. They all took something, even the slowest and feeblest cripple scuttled away with crocks and scraps, for the meanest rag is a fur robe to a naked man.
Too occupied with fighting for the spoils, no one so much as glanced at the two slender mounds in the dirt outside the chapel walls. One was almost grassed over now, invisible. The other, smaller, strip was still bare. A little wooden trolley stood at the foot of the grave. A boy snatched it up; it would make a fine toy. The villagers trampled the tiny grave flat, not knowing or caring that the wasted body of a child lay just below their feet. It was only little Ella, that was all. But she had been loved. Ella and Gudrun, they had both once been loved, and love needs no cross to mark it.
Father Ulfrid hurried straight to the chapel. The green altar stone with its bloodred flecks, the chalice, and the paten were all gone. Carefully wrapped in wool they were safely stowed in the beguines’ chests on the ship bound for Flanders. There was nothing left to show that women had ever served at this altar.
Father Ulfrid was not expecting to find anything of value, but even so he had convinced himself that the reliquary containing Andrew’s Host would be there, waiting for him. The Commissarius had ordered the beguines to surrender it to the church and the Commissarius could not be disobeyed, for he held the keys of Hell in the next world and in this.
But the reliquary was not standing on the altar where the priest expected it to be. Unable to bring himself to accept that his last hope of salvation had vanished, Father Ulfrid spent a long and fruitless time turning the chapel upside down inch by inch, even brushing the rushes aside to see if there were any signs of
