The Owl Killers

osmanna

hUNCHING FORWARD ON THE STOOL, I tried again to spoon the warm pap into Healing Martha’s mouth. A little of it dribbled out from her lips. I scraped it up with the spoon and shovelled it back in again. It was an improvement. A few days ago, nearly all I spooned in would leak back out again, but either she swallowed better now or I’d mastered the trick of tipping the spoon towards the good side of her mouth. She sank back, worn out by the effort of eating. The edges of her veil were wet where she had puked, as was the front of her shift. I’d have to change them or they’d stink as they dried.

Her good eye missed nothing, although she couldn’t name it. She pointed at anything she saw amiss in the infirmary and, if we couldn’t see it, she grunted her one sound over and over, till she shrieked with frustration. She wouldn’t rest until it was put right; a fouled cot cleaned, a loose bandage fastened, or a smoking fire stirred to flame. Healing Martha never used to be so impatient and angry. But then she had always been busy; now, she could do nothing but watch.

She wept often. Sometimes silent tears rolled down her face and ran into rivulets on her wrinkled neck, wetting her pillow. Other times she made great noisy sobs with her mouth open and snot hanging from her nose, beating her good arm against the wood of her cot until it was purple with bruises. I rubbed oil of lavender on her then to restore her wits and she quietened, but I don’t think it was the oil which dried her eyes but her own pride, for even in her piteous state she remembered what the perfume signified.

Some of the beguines, like Catherine, refused to come near her. She said she was afraid she’d cry and upset Healing Martha. I think she was afraid that she’d somehow be struck down too, as if Healing Martha had some contagion. But others did come; they couldn’t keep away. I seldom passed her bed in the evening without seeing someone sitting there, one of the beguines or another patient. They came after dark mostly, when the tapers in the room burnt gentle and mellow and her face was veiled in the shadows.

When daylight came she was left alone save for little gifts tied to her bed: ribbons, sweet-smelling dried herbs, or pressed flowers, their colours faded like ghosts of summer. Votive offerings laid at the feet of the statue of a saint. But what could she grant the beguines? They bent into the shadows and whispered for hours, vomiting all their thoughts. Healing Martha said nothing, only her one impenetrable grunt. Yet they went away looking content, as if there was absolution in that sound. She, not Servant Martha, was the sovereign bee in our hive, helpless and flightless, while we workers gladly danced attendance on her as if she was our liege lord.

I held a cup to her lips. “Try to drink a little of this, Healing Martha. It’s good for you.”

She glared at me. “Gar!”

“Please, Healing Martha. You’ve written it in your own herbals-Lily of the Valley distilled in wine will restore speech. I prepared it exactly as you have written.”

Would it heal her? If only I could be certain. Her hand had also written that the physician must have patience. Healing waits upon time, she’d written in firm steady strokes. If I could be sure that it would restore her in time I’d have gladly waited. But what if I waited for weeks-for months-and all the while I’d not been giving her what she needed?

A hand touched my shoulder. I glanced round to find Merchant Martha standing behind me.

“How is she?” She inclined her head vaguely in the direction of Healing Martha.

“Why don’t you ask her?” I said, sliding off the stool.

She took Healing Martha’s useless hand in her own and patted it heartily. “Getting stronger, Healing Martha? That’s good,” she bellowed, as if Healing Martha was deaf. Then, still clutching Healing Martha’s limp hand like a lucky rabbit’s foot, Merchant Martha turned to me with her real errand.

“There are women at the gate. They bring their sick, three children and an old man. They’ve the fever.”

“Sick?” I repeated stupidly.

“The same fever we saw in the village. Must be spreading. Where shall we put them?”

Merchant Martha shuffled her feet impatiently, as if she already held the supplicants in her arms and was waiting for me to tell her where to lay them down. Her beady gaze darted round the overcrowded infirmary. “It’s to be hoped the whole village don’t bring their sick here. Still I doubt they will, seeing as we are under sentence of excommunication. That priest probably did us a service, else we’d have had them all at our door with Servant Martha insisting on feeding the whole pack of them with no thought as to where we are going to buy more food.” She shook her head as if such recklessness was beyond her comprehension. “Still, we’ll have to deal with those that have come. Best put them in the pilgrims’ room next door. You’ll not want them in here in case the contagion spreads.”

I nodded gratefully, thankful that she had made the decision. What was I supposed to do for them? Deal with them, Merchant Martha said. She made it sound as easy as milking a cow. But what did I know about fevers? And what if it did spread and the beguines caught the fever too? I could already feel Healing Martha’s good eye staring at me from her cot, telling me in her one sound that I’d killed them.

I tucked the coverlets unnecessarily firmly around Healing Martha, but she didn’t stir. Placing her limp hand, which Merchant Martha had now discarded, tidily on the covers I smoothed down the fingers to make them lie at ease on the bed. The arm lay at an unnatural angle. I turned it, but still it looked no better. I stared at it, trying to visualise how an arm at rest should look.

“Come along now,” Merchant Martha urged. “They’re waiting.”

Merchant Martha scurried ahead and I had to trot to keep up with her, but she always walked as if she had eight legs instead of two, so I could tell nothing about the urgency from her speed. She clutched my arm and steered me to the open gate of the beguinage.

The entrance was blocked by a handcart, as if the owner was determined that nothing would precede him through the gates. An old man lay crumpled up inside, his grey head sagging against a lumpy sack. His beard was matted with vomit, his scarlet face beaded with sweat. He panted, mouth open like a dog. A younger man squatted on the ground in the cart’s shelter, sunk into a stupor. His eyes were closed and he seemed content to doze, knowing nothing could get past the cart without disturbing him.

Gate Martha was clucking like an old hen, clearly vexed that she couldn’t get her gate closed. I followed her through the open gate, squeezing past the handcart. Outside, two women crouched, their backs to the wall, hunched up against the bitter wind. Both looked worn out. A small girl lay across the knees of one of them, sweating and fretful. Her mother kept up a regular rhythm of patting the child heavily on the back. It didn’t appear to soothe her, but it was as if the mother had been doing it for so long she had forgotten how to stop.

An older boy rested his head in the second woman’s lap. She couldn’t have carried such a lanky child so far, he was almost as tall as she, but perhaps he had come on the handcart with the old man. Beyond them, alone a little girl lay curled up, whimpering. She’d messed herself and lay in a stinking puddle of liquid shit, the colour of pea broth.

Gate Martha peered around, then looked down at the solitary child. “There was a lad with this one. William, he called himself, said he was her brother, but by the looks of it, he’s run off. I reckon that’s the last we’ll see of him.”

Crouching down opposite the woman with the little girl, I touched the child’s leg. She was burning up.

“How long have the children had this fever?” I asked.

But neither of the women answered or even looked at me and I began to wonder if I had actually spoken aloud. They gazed down unseeing at their own stained clothes, their thoughts so turned in that if Saint Michael himself had appeared with his sword of flame, I doubt they’d have noticed him. Gate Martha nudged the grime-streaked toes of the nearest woman with her shoe. The woman squinted up at her.

“Lass asked what ails the bairn,” Gate Martha said.

The woman protectively pulled her child closer to her, half smothering her. The child wailed and struggled feebly.

“We’ve come for the cure, for the bairns.”

I tried to smile encouragingly. “We’ll take your children to a room near the infirmary. They’ll be comfortable there.”

The two women frowned at me as if they didn’t understand.

“There are good clean beds, dry and warm,” I added eagerly. Anyone would think I was an innkeeper trying to sell the virtues of his lodging to a passing merchant. “We’ll give them what tinctures and herbs we have to help them.”

They continued to stare blankly at me and I sensed that I was not telling them what they wanted to hear.

“We can’t promise to cure them, but we’ll try what remedies we know and if God wills it… We’ll all pray for them.”

The woman struggled to her feet, weighed down by the burden of the child in her arms. She glowered at me as if she thought I was refusing to help.

“We want the cure.” She spoke with the grim determination of a cheated housewife demanding her full measure of flour.

“We can bathe them, give them cordials, bleed them, do whatever we can, but-”

She took a step forward, angry. “We can wash our own bairns and we’ve not brought them here for potions. We’ve come for the cure. Let the bairns touch it, that’s all we want.”

I turned in bewilderment to Merchant Martha. “What does she mean-the cure?”

Gate Martha beckoned Merchant Martha and me aside. “Host that was saved from the fire,” she whispered. “That’s the cure they’ve come for.”

“Andrew’s Host?”

Gate Martha nodded and Merchant Martha looked as grim as I’d ever seen her.

“But why do they think it’ll cure the children?” I asked, bewildered. “There’s been no healing.”

The Host lay in its painted wooden reliquary in the recess near the altar. Everyone said it had protected us from the murrain and even the flood, but no one had claimed it had healed them of any infirmity or sickness. It had not cured Healing Martha.

Gate Martha shrugged, but offered no explanation. The woman came across to where we stood, swinging her child in her arms like a battering ram.

“You’ll not deny the cure to the bairns. We’ve money for candles,” she said defiantly. She jerked her head towards the young man still snoring on the ground under the cart. “He’s got money an’ all, so don’t let him tell you he hasn’t. I saw his wife give it him, though he’d sooner spend it on ale and let the old ’un die. He’s wanted him out of the way for years, says the old pisspot’s a useless mouth to feed.”

The little girl lying by herself gave a convulsive shudder and turned. Even through her coarse shift, I could see her belly was swollen up like a drowned sheep. Her flushed face crumpled in pain. She cried out and another stream of green shit oozed out of her. But she didn’t open her eyes.

Merchant Martha gripped me fiercely by the arm. “If they’re demanding the relic, I’d best fetch Servant Martha. She’ll want to know about this. Meanwhile you take that little girl inside. If her brother has left her here for us to care for, I warrant that child at least will be grateful for a warm room and a dry bed.”