The Owl Killers

servant martha

d’ACASTER’S PAGE BOY RODE AHEAD as fast as his little pony would go. Several times he was forced to stop and wait for me to catch up. But I had no intention of allowing my horse to gallop, despite his pleadings. As I told him, such recklessness on a muddy track would inevitably lead to broken bones, ours or our mounts, and nothing could be so urgent as to justify risking that.

A huddle of women and children planting beans in one of the Manor’s strips paused to watch us ride past, but I think they stared more as an excuse to straighten their backs than from any real curiosity.

“Please hurry, Mistress,” the page begged. “Look, the Manor’s in sight. It’s not far now.”

I gazed up to where he pointed. In front of us, on a slight rise, stood a fine imposing gatehouse protected by a huge wooden gate studded with iron bosses and surmounted by sharp spikes. The gate seemed more fitting for a castle under siege than a manor in such a remote corner of England, which no invading army was ever likely to stumble across unless it was hopelessly lost. The gatekeeper sullenly stirred himself to open the gate at the boy’s cry, before scuttling back to his smoking brazier.

Beyond the gate, the courtyard was almost deserted. I glimpsed a couple of servants lurking in the dark doorways or slinking about their duties in shadows, but it was strangely quiet. Not even the dogs and chickens rooting about in the mud seemed interested in our arrival. The kitchen, bakehouse, and stables were well enough appointed, but the leaking, ill-thatched huts in the corner of the courtyard were evidence that Robert D’Acaster paid better heed to the comfort of his bloodstock than to that of his servants.

In contrast the sturdy grey walls of the Manor were lavishly adorned, though adorned hardly seemed the right term for the carved grotesques of men and imps grimacing down as if turned to stone in the very act of shouting “Go back!” These human figures were similar to those on the village church, but on the Manor house, between each distorted human head, were carved the figures of hounds, wolves, lions, and birds of prey all captured in the act of killing, doubtless to remind all who saw them that there were some powers on earth they should fear more than those in Heaven.

The page raced ahead of me up the stone staircase on the outside of the building and into the great hall. He gabbled something through the open doorway, then fled past me back down the stairs, as if he feared an arrow would come flying after him.

I don’t know to whom he made his address, for when I entered the great hall it too appeared to be deserted. The hall was long and narrow. Tapestries of battle and hunting scenes lined the walls, the bloody wounds of man and beast congealed to brown by the smoke of long winters. Wax from the night candles still hung in yellow waterfalls from the spikes and long tables still bore the platters and beakers from the last meal, but there were no servants busy clearing up the mess. Only the fire had been repaired and the flames were roaring over the logs as though someone had been poking at them violently and repeatedly.

Something moved in the dark corner on the raised dais at the far end of the hall. A peregrine falcon sat on a perch behind the largest and most ornate chair in the room, the one which Lord D’Acaster would surely occupy at meals. The jesses fastening the bird to the perch were long, and it was unhooded. It swivelled its head, watching me, its bright dark eyes ringed with amber. Doubtless it amused Lord D’Acaster to feed the bird during meals, though I had heard some men kept a falcon close by for fear of an assassin’s hand. Such creatures can be trained to fly at the face of anyone foolish enough to lunge at their masters.

The bird’s wings beat furiously as a man burst out from behind one of the tapestries that I now realised concealed a small door. He strode down the length of the hall towards me. I’d seen him often enough to recognise him as Lord Robert D’Acaster, but I had never before had occasion to waste words with him. Well, let him come to me, I thought, for I would not go running to meet him.

“You took your time, Mistress,” he bellowed.

He offered me no courtesies of chair or drink or even greetings. So I stood and waited for him to approach near enough for us to hold a civil conversation. I had no intention of raising my voice.

Though I would not presume to judge the way God designed any man, I couldn’t help thinking if there was a design, it now was unrecognisable beneath the weight of loose flesh that sagged upon my host’s bones. Robert D’Acaster had perhaps been handsome enough in his youth, but what remained of his yellow hair clung to his pate in thinning tufts, like a moulting fowl, and his small eyes had almost disappeared under the florid folds of his puffed face.

He came close and thrust his face into mine, scowling. But if he was hoping I would flinch, he was sadly disappointed. I was a good half a head taller. Clearly unused to a woman staring him down, he quickly moved away to pace up and down before me. Height sometimes has its advantages.

“You will take my daughter,” he commanded. “I want her out of this house this very hour.”

There was a muffled sob behind me. I turned to see a pale, dough-faced woman hunched in a corner of the window seat. Her plump beringed fingers twisted and knotted a handkerchief with such agitation that it appeared her mind did not know what her hands were doing. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was shiny and pink at the tip. She had evidently been crying for some time.

D’Acaster turned furiously towards her. “I knew that God-cursed whelp of yours would never get a husband. That much was as plain as the prick on a rutting stallion from the day that miserable brat first drew breath and I would to God she never had. I should have drowned her the moment I laid eyes on her, but no, I’m too tender of heart for that. I raised her, put food in that sour mouth of hers and clothes on her back, and this is how she repays me!”

His face ripened to purple as he yelled and his wife shrank back against the walls, as if trying to melt into them. He looked in danger of choking on his own rage. He paused to draw breath, then turned and bellowed as if he was calling a hound to heel. “Agatha! Here! Now!”

There was a slight movement in the shadows of the gallery above our heads.

“Yes, you, girl. I know you’re there. Get down here at once!”

He paced the floor again, pounding his fist into the palm of his hand until a girl appeared at the foot of the narrow staircase.

“Here!” He clicked his fingers.

The child walked cautiously towards him, her arms wrapped tightly around her ribs. She looked no more than thirteen years of age, but something in her expression suggested she might be older. Her gown, though a rich burgundy, was stained and torn, with dead leaves clinging to it and more tangled in her mop of loose brown hair. She was plainly tense and wary, but for all that, she held her head high, her chin jutting out defiantly. She wisely stopped just out of reach of her father’s hand. She didn’t even glance at me, but stared into mid-space as if trying to shut us all out.

“Look at the little slut,” D’Acaster spat, circling around her. “This is my daughter. This is what I have sheltered at my fireside. This is what I have clothed and fed and nurtured-a shrew and a hellcat. And do you know how she repays my generosity? I’ll tell you. She attacks her gentle sisters without provocation. She refuses to master any womanly art. She’s stupid, disobedient, and wilful. And if that was not enough to make any father rue the day he ever bedded her mother, I find she is nothing but a common village whore.”

The girl stood apparently unmoved by this recitation of her many sins. Much of her face was hidden by her tousled hair, but as the light from the window fell on her, I glimpsed a cut on her cheek made livid by the blue and mauve bruise around it. She didn’t look like a demon, but the Devil can be at work in many a seemingly innocent form, even a child.

“Look at her; she is so hardened that she does not even weep with shame. Running around the forest all night like a bitch in heat. Crawling back to my gate at dawn.” He pivoted towards his wife again. “This is your doing.”

“But I was certain she was in the Manor somewhere,” Lady D’Acaster sobbed. “I thought she’d returned from the May Fair with her sisters. She’s never been out unchaperoned before, I swear it.”

“Swear all you like, I’ll not shelter the whore under my roof another night. I’ll not suffer her to corrupt her innocent sisters. Nor will her reputation stain theirs. From now on I have only two daughters.”

He scooped three small leather money bags from the table and thrust them at me so hard I grunted from the impact of his fist against my stomach.

“This is all the dowry that comes with her. I’ll not waste a penny more on her, so do not ask it.” Dragging the child by the wrist, he slapped her small hand into mine as though he were betrothing us. “Take the little hellcat and never let me set eyes on her again.”

“And what exactly would you have me do with her?” I asked him.

“You may feed her to the ravens for all I care.”

He clicked his fingers at his wife, who obediently rose and followed him down the hall.

As she passed her daughter she murmured, “Be a good girl, Agatha.” But she did not once look at her child, not even when she reached the door at the far end of the hall.

I felt the small cold hand clench into a fist inside my own, then the door slammed and Agatha pulled her hand out of my grasp. Wrapping her arms around her chest again, she stood glowering at the table. We would have to talk, but that could wait. The important thing now was to remove her from the house as quickly as possible. The girl might well be all that her father described, but I would not have left a mad dog in the care of such a man.

“Will you take your things now,” I asked her, “or shall I send someone for them later?”

“I want nothing from that… that fat toad.”

“Agatha!” I said severely. “You owe a duty of respect to your father for giving you life.”

She glared at me. “You heard what my life was worth to him: so much carrion.”

I held up the three weighty bags. “Most girls in the village would not have a single penny placed upon their lives. See what you are valued at.”

“You hold the value of my father’s pride, not my worth. He wouldn’t have people say he was too poor to pay a dowry.”

There was such a cold fury in those green eyes that I wondered if her father had been correct in his judgement after all and she was indeed a fiend. Still, even a wildcat may be tamed. It would be a challenge, but I could certainly do no worse than he had. God had given Agatha into my hands so that I might bring her into His grace and I was determined to bring her there, whatever it took.