The Owl Killers

january

gangs of youths, or plough jacks, dragged a plough from house to house demanding money. if they were refused they ploughed up and wrecked the garden. bawdy and violent plough plays were performed by mummers.

pATCHES OF THE NIGHT FROST STILL LINGERED in the hollows on the hill, glittering oddly against the dark sodden grass. The morning sky had turned pale, almost white against the bare black branches of the trees. Across the river, a flock of sheep ambled across the slope of the hill and I could just make out the familiar shapes of Pega and Shepherd Martha on either side of the flock.

But there was no sign of Gudrun. I hoped she might have gone with them. I’d not seen her since I had gone to check on her in the cote after the midnight service. She was sound asleep then, her lips parted slightly like a baby, her breath soft and sweet. But when I went back in the morning to take her some bread and pottage, the cote was empty.

She had become adept at slipping out of the beguinage, though I never saw her do it. Sometimes she was away all day, not returning until near dark. Kitchen Martha always kept some supper warm for her, however much the other Marthas disapproved. Merchant Martha said if she didn’t work she shouldn’t eat. I suspected she’d complained of it to Servant Martha more than once, but Servant Martha seemed to have given up any attempt to control Gudrun. I sometimes caught Servant Martha staring at the child, frowning as if she was puzzling over something. Maybe she’d given up the struggle. Or perhaps she’d mellowed since Healing Martha was struck down.

Mellowed? What was I thinking? Servant Martha wouldn’t mellow if she lived as long as old Methuselah. You may as well have tried to soften a stone in a vat of oil. If anything Servant Martha was more cold and distant than ever, especially to me. I didn’t need to be told who objected to me being elected a Martha. And no matter what the other Marthas thought, they wouldn’t have stood up to her, even if they all opposed her. That was the real reason she opposed my election, because she knew I would challenge her. At least I had my child, my Gudrun. She couldn’t take that away from me, Martha or not.

On any other day, I wouldn’t have worried about Gudrun so much, but it was Plough Monday and there’d be all kinds of mischief abroad. The day might begin with processions and mummers’ plays to roust the witches and bless the plough, but it always ended in drinking and fighting. No girl’s virtue was safe. My little Gudrun knew how to take care of herself in the hills and forest, but she was such an innocent in other ways and, besides, against two or three strong lads bent on sport what could she do? I couldn’t rest until she was safe inside the beguinage again.

But my feet were too swollen and painful with chilblains to go chasing up the hill on a fool’s errand, especially in this cold. Pega and Shepherd Martha would have to return across the ford, so I sat down on a rock by the river and waited for them to cross. No sense in making my feet worse by plunging them into that icy water. Pega would have spotted Gudrun if she was making for the ruin of her grandmother’s cottage. She wouldn’t come to any harm there. The villagers daren’t go near the old cottage, for they feared old Gwenith’s ghost.

I pulled my feet up under my cloak. My chilblains itched unbearably. They kept cracking open and some mornings when I woke, my feet were covered in blood. Last year, Healing Martha had given me some thick foul-smelling ointment to rub into them which had soothed them, but I wasn’t going to ask that bitch Osmanna if she had any. I’d rather suffer.

Shepherd Martha whistled Leon to heel as she and Pega strode towards the ford. They pulled off their boots and hose. Pega hitched her skirts and lumbered down into the ford, cursing and swearing as the cold water rose up her calves. She splashed across, taking the last few paces at a run. Shepherd Martha followed more cautiously.

“Sheep,” announced Pega, “are the most cussed beasts ever to come out of the ark. I’ll never know how you can abide to be around them all year, Shepherd Martha. If you wanted a sheep to stay out of the valley it would go in as soon as look at you. Ask it to go, and you’d think you were trying to murder it.”

“Not so different from men, then.” Shepherd Martha chuckled. “You don’t need to work with sheep very long before you see why our Lord likened His disciples to them. But when it comes to finding a dry, warm place to sleep, they’ve far more sense than cattle or even old Leon.”

She whistled and Leon bounded enthusiastically out of the river, waiting until he was up close before shaking his thick black shaggy coat vigorously all over us.

“Get away, you great brute,” Pega yelled, but Leon seemed to take that as a mark of affection and happily rolled at her feet, drooling as Pega obligingly rubbed his belly.

“Pega, you’ve not seen Gudrun today, have you, up by the old cottage?” I asked.

“She’s not gone up the hill. Leastways, not unless she’s doubled back, cause I saw her going that way earlier.” She pointed behind us, to the road that led to both the forest and the village. “We called after her, but she took no notice, not that she ever does, and I’d not the time to go chasing after her.”

Shepherd Martha patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t fret. I dare say she’s wandering round in the forest with that raven of hers.”

“I need to make sure,” I said anxiously.

Pega blew on her great broad hands against the cold. “Beatrice, leave the poor bairn be. She’ll be back when she’s hungry. Besides, you’ll never find her in the forest; she could be anywhere. I dare say she knows places in there even the verderers have never found.”

“But what if she’s gone into the village? She’s had nothing to eat this morning; she might go there looking for food if she gets hungry.”

Shepherd Martha glanced at Pega, then shook her head. “It’s no use, Pega, you may as well tell the ewe not to bleat for the lamb. She won’t rest until Gudrun’s back.”

I knew they thought I was fussing and even I told myself I was. This wasn’t the first time Gudrun had disappeared for a whole day. There was no reason for me to be anxious. No reason, except for a feeling I couldn’t name even to myself.

WE’D BEEN TO THE VILLAGE to take food several times since the flood, so I knew at once that there was something wrong as soon as I reached the outlying cottages. There was no one peering from the windows or hunting for dog dung outside. There were no children playing in the road, or women fetching water or firewood. It had been quieter of late because of the fever, but even so there was usually some half-naked infant sitting on the road stuffing fistfuls of dirt in his mouth or a woman sitting in her doorway picking over beans. But I couldn’t see anyone. What if the fever had spread? You hear of whole villages being deserted when a sickness takes hold, the sick fleeing and leaving the dead to rot where they lie.

The path between the houses was empty but for the winter midges. The bugs hung in a thick cloud over the ditches where stagnant river water still ran among the refuse and stinking mud. A dark stain was wrapped around the wall of each cottage; strands of dry yellowish-green slime clung to wattle and fence, marking the height of the water.

The hairy back of a solitary pig poked up from a ditch as it snuffled and rooted among the refuse. It grunted contentedly as if nothing could go amiss in its world. How it had survived the cull, I didn’t know. Most likely one of the villagers had hidden it, or it had wandered out from the forest.

“Think yourself fortunate to have survived, do you, little sow? Well, take my advice, Mistress, you’d best follow the example of the noblemen’s wives and get yourself in litter soon with any boar that passes or you’ll not live to see Candlemass.”

The sow gave another grunt, its snout buried deep in the carcass of some creature too far rotted to own a name.

A couple of moth-eaten hens with long scaly legs and wilted combs scratched beside a doorstep. The door of the house was closed tight and the shutters too, as if that was going to keep the fever out, but it was too late; you could smell it was in there. The stench was unmistakable; it clawed at your throat even through a closed door.

The door to the tanner’s yard lay open, but there was no sound of beating leather. A scraper lay abandoned on the stretched skin. The skin needed wetting again; it was drying out in the cold wind. It would be the Devil’s own job to clean that if the fat dried. But what master would be so lax as to let his apprentice run off leaving a hide to spoil, unless he’d been suddenly struck down? What would take master and apprentice together in the midst of their work and in so much haste they didn’t even stop to put the skins in soak? Not even the fever could do that.

The Owlman! A shiver ran down my back. I spun wildly round and round staring up at the milky sky, terrified that he might be crouching up there in the bare branches of the trees, watching me. Without thinking, I started running back the way I’d come, desperate to get to the safety of the beguinage. I stumbled and went sprawling on the sharp stones. Shaken, I crouched on the ground, trying to get my breath.

There was a harsh croak above me. Covering my head, I threw myself against the wall of a cottage. I cowered there, my heart thumping, but nothing happened. At last, cautiously, I glanced up. It was only a raven. It had settled on the roof of the cottage and was peering down at me.

A raven! Gudrun’s bird; that meant she was here, somewhere in the village. No, it was silly to think that. There were hundreds of ravens; how could you possibly tell one from another? There was no reason why this one should be hers.

Then I heard it, a sound like a great wave breaking on a shingle beach. I couldn’t tell if it was a roar of fury or excitement. It was coming from the centre of the village. I wanted to run in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t leave Gudrun. If she was here, I had to find her. Sick with fear for her, I set off in the direction of the sound.

As I emerged from the lane, the noise of the crowd exploded in my ears. Every man, woman, and child from the village who could walk was there, crowded together around the pond at the far end of the Green, children perched on their fathers’ shoulders for a better view, women at the back standing on tiptoe on upturned buckets or barrels. Another cheer rose, but was abruptly severed, as if the heads of the crowd had been chopped from their bodies in mid-roar.

One man, sensing I was there, turned. He touched his neighbour on the arm and they both moved away from me. Others stared sullenly at me, mutinous, like sulky children. There was a movement at the front of the crowd. Father Ulfrid pushed his way through and stood in front of me, his hands tucked into his sleeves as if he was in his own church doing God’s work. His narrowed eyes glittered with triumph, but his body was trembling as if gripped by the kind of giddy relief you see in young boys after battle.

“Crawl back to your nest of vipers, woman. You’ve no business here. There will be no more souls from this village coming to your door. The sickness is over.”

He bellowed these words for the benefit of the crowd, who made a half-hearted cheer in response, but there was strangely little rejoicing in the sound.

I tried to muster what dignity I could. “Praise God for it, if it is so. But can you be sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure. We know the cause. We know who brought the evil upon us and you can rest assured, Mistress, the malefactor will not trouble us again. Take this back to the house of women as a warning: We have dealt with one of your number and should any further misfortune strike this village, we will see to it that the rest of you suffer the same fate. You tell that to your so-called leader.”

“Dealt with?” A dreadful coldness gripped my bowels. “How dealt with?”

He turned and gestured. The sea of people divided and parted. A brown-cloaked man stood at the pond’s edge, legs planted firmly astride, arms folded across his chest. He had a man’s body, but his head was the head of an owl. His bronze beak was hooked and sharp as a wetted scythe. The tawny feathers were smoothed and glossy. His eyes were hooded deep within the feathers, so that I couldn’t see if they were the eyes of a man or a bird. He pointed down at his feet with a slow extravagant gesture, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from his head.

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.