The Eve of Saint Hyacinth

Chapter Three

At cockcrow the following morning, I sat up quietly on the pile of straw which had been allocated to me in the still-warm kitchen and glanced down at the figure lying beside me.

Jennet remained asleep, the long lashes making two half-moons of reddish gold on her creamy cheeks. Her hair, of the same colour as the lashes and now unbound, streamed across the makeshift pillow of my pack, almost concealing her face. One softly rounded arm was thrown clear of the rough grey blanket which covered us both, and which she had brought with her from the truckle-bed she had abandoned in her mistress’s antechamber.

It had been no surprise when, in the small hours of the chilly June morning, Jennet had crept into the kitchen and snuggled down by my side. Her glances, the previous evening, had half-promised such a visit and she knew that the kitchen would be occupied by no one but myself. No other traveller had disturbed Chilworth’s peace that day and she had herself informed me that the cook, kitchen-maids and pot-boy had sleeping quarters in the main hall, in company with the rest of the servants.

I observed her in silence some moments longer, then touched her gently on the shoulder. She was awake on the instant, tossing back the blanket and sitting up to hug her knees. The mane of hair acted as a cloak, but the swelling curves of her limbs and breasts were visible through the tangled tresses.

‘You must go,’ I whispered reluctantly and nodded towards the cracks of light around the shutters. ‘Some of the servants are already stirring. I can hear them.’ I leaned across and kissed her willing lips. ‘And it’s almost time for me to be on my way.’

Jennet sighed, got up and draped herself in the blanket. She stood looking down at me, a slight smile touching the full, sensuous mouth, a sparkle in the grey-green eyes. Then she winked, hitched the blanket more firmly around her and padded across to the door, her bare feet slapping on the flagstones.

Left alone, I dressed quickly and went outside to the courtyard pump, splashing my face and hands with the icy water. By the time I returned to the kitchen, two of the maids had made their appearance, yawning and rubbing the sleep from their leaden eyes. I cajoled one of them into boiling water for me to shave with, having first agreed to work the bellows and blow some life into last night’s embers, smouldering on the hearth. The second girl, without inducement, said that if I liked she would make me gruel and fry a collop of bacon to go with it, an offer which I gratefully accepted. I was still eating when the cook arrived, but she merely nodded in my direction, making no comment other than that she trusted I’d soon be off, as she didn’t want me under her feet any longer than was necessary.

‘I’m away this minute,’ I assured her cheerfully, shovelling the last of the bacon into my mouth and pulling on my jerkin. ‘It looks as if it’ll be a fine day and I don’t want to waste it.’

‘Where are you heading for?’ she asked, tying on her apron and wielding a massive ladle.

‘Today, Winchester. But eventually London.’

She gave a throaty chuckle. ‘They say the streets there are paved with gold, but I doubt it’s like any other place, mostly horse-shit.’

‘True enough,’ I laughed. ‘And dead dogs and rotting garbage and fly-blown muck. Pigs running amok when they’ve no right to be within city limits and various other contraventions of the law.’

‘And murder,’ she suggested. ‘I dare say there’s plenty of that.’

‘Oh yes,’ I agreed. ‘There’s always wickedness of that sort even in the smallest town.’ I had spoken with more bitterness than I intended and the cook glanced sharply at me. I went on quickly, ‘Is there another path to the Winchester road from here, or must I go back the way I came and return to the ford?’

‘Ay, there is another path,’ she conceded. ‘It’s a track well known to local people and you’ll probably find it easily enough if you follow my directions.’ She accompanied me to the kitchen door and stood looking out at the hazy morning, where the sun was just beginning to penetrate the mist. Somewhere to our right a large bird, a wood pigeon perhaps, clattered through the branches of the trees. The cook gestured with her ladle. ‘When you go from here return to the stream and continue eastwards. Just after leaving demesne lands you’ll come to a woodsman’s cottage at the junction of another track, running north and bearing westwards. It’s a well-trodden path and, if you keep to it, it will join the Winchester road some mile or two south of the town.’

I nodded, picturing the triangle of roads in my mind’s eye, and foresaw no problem in discovering my way. The cook, however, was not so certain.

‘The first league should present few difficulties. It’s well worn and will lead you directly to a hermitage in the middle of the woods. But half a mile or so beyond that, be careful. The main path thereabouts is not so easily discernible from several others which thread the denser woodland and you might get lost. It’s happened to strangers on more than one occasion. Natives such as myself, who know the countryside well from childhood, never miss their way and nor should anyone else if they have been warned and keep their wits about them.’ She tapped me on the arm. ‘You seem a clever lad. Watch out for the signs and keep bearing nor’-westwards.’

I thanked her, humped my pack on to my shoulders and started out briskly. Although I glanced back several times, there was no sign of Jennet. I smiled reminiscently. We should probably never meet again, but just for a little while last night we had given each other pleasure and a gentle affection.

I was lost. Somehow, at some point, I had taken the wrong turning, and on reflection I thought I knew where that had been.

I had passed the hermitage, set within its neat patch of vegetable garden, a while ago, and proceeded along the track with confidence. After all, had the cook not called me a ‘clever lad’? And had I not, in my heart of hearts, agreed with her? (And does it not say in Ecclesiasticus that pride is hateful before God and man?) It had been simple enough at first to recognize the lesser paths which began to lace the forest floor with their shady, criss-crossed lines, vanishing deep into a subaqueous gloom. But at last I arrived at a place where two tracks diverged with a stealth so subtle that it should have brought me to a halt while I considered which one to follow. Had I done so, I realized now, I should unhesitatingly have taken the narrower, left-hand path, whose distant prospect curved in a westerly direction and whose surface was beaten flatter than the one I chose. Moreover, memory told me that the overhanging branches had been cut back by the sticks and crops and billhooks of former travellers anxious to ease their way through the crowding trees.

Instead, without even pausing to think – indeed, being deep in happy recollections of Jennet – I had selected the rougher but broader track which, after some quarter-mile, gradually dwindled to little more than a trail of trodden-down grasses between encroaching brakes of elder and thrusting saplings. The trees arched and towered above my head, while sodden leaves, denied any hint of sun, squelched beneath my feet in a treacherous, slippery morass. Furthermore, I was moving inexorably, if almost imperceptibly, in an easterly direction, away from the junction with the Winchester road.

I cursed myself roundly for my foolishness and the uncaring arrogance which had led to my present predicament. Although predicament was perhaps too strong a word, for I had no serious doubt of being able to cut my way through the tangle of undergrowth to my left and rejoin the proper path whenever I chose. I decided, however, to follow the grassy trail for a little while longer, in the hope of finding another such animal track, which would save me the cost of torn hose and a snagged jerkin. Also, my bulky pack could prove a severe handicap in virgin territory, where untamed bramble thickets were as plentiful as the crop of pale blossoms that they at present carried.

Suddenly the trees drew back a little and I found myself in what had once been a small clearing, but was now knee-deep in grass and flowers. And in the middle was an abandoned shrine, the niche where once its saint had stood hollow-eyed and empty. The cracked grey stones thrust above a smother of ivy like bones from broken skin and a tangle of loosestrife, succory and tansy pushed its way through holes and crevices in the crumbling mortar. I moved closer, trampling the long grass underfoot, slid the pack from my back and examined the shrine more carefully. There was no indication as to which saint it had been dedicated to, but I did have some idea as to why it had been so thoroughly forgotten. A swift reconnaissance of the surrounding area showed me humps and bumps in the turf, together with outcroppings of stone which suggested that there might once have been dwellings around the clearing. I suspected that this could have been the site of a small hamlet; probably over a hundred years ago, before the Great Plague devastated Europe in the middle of the preceding century, wiping out whole communities.

Those of you who have read my previous chronicles will know that, although not blessed – or cursed – with the second sight, I have inherited from my mother a sixth sense which sometimes manifests itself in dreams, and at others in a kind of foreboding. It was the latter which suddenly seized me in its grip, causing me to stand stock still, every hair rising on the nape of my neck in fear, droplets of sweat trickling down my spine. I had a strong sense of evil, but whether of some past deed or one yet to come I was unable to tell. The silence was deathly; not a bird sang nor an insect hummed, whereas, seconds before, the woods had been full of such noises. The surrounding trees seemed to move closer, until I felt crushed and stifled by their menacing presence …

The moment passed. I shook myself like a dog which has at last reached dry land after treading water. The trees withdrew. There was a sudden flurry of movement as a bird winged its way through the branches to its nest, calling reassurance to its little ones. Grasshoppers and crickets once again resumed their chattering chorus. I stooped to pick up my pack, noticing as I did so a small bunch of flowers – bluebell, campion, trailing stems of ground ivy – placed at the base of the shrine. They had been torn up from amongst the grasses, some of which had been pulled up with them, and, although not dead, were wilted and faded. I stared at them with interest, wondering who had bothered to make his or her way to this isolated spot in order to honour a saint no longer represented. And why? What was the purpose of the offering?

But the flowers could provide me with no solution and I turned my attention to finding a way out of the clearing. It was then I saw that a narrow track, about the width of a man, had already been flattened through the undergrowth to my left; a rough path hacked between the trees and bushes and yellowing grasses. Using my own cudgel I was able to force my way along it and, ten minutes later, emerged on to the path which I had been travelling before I so stupidly got lost.

The sun was riding directly overhead by the time I once again joined the main Winchester road from Southampton. The dinner hour was long past, but thanks to my stupidity I had not eaten, so I set off towards the city, hoping to find somewhere to satisfy my hunger. A roadside ale-house, maybe, or a friendly cottage, whose goodwife would be willing to sell me victuals. I had not gone far, however, when I heard the creak of wheels behind me and, glancing over my shoulder, saw an empty cart approaching, pulled by a heavy chestnut horse and driven by a square-set country fellow dressed in a smock of grey homespun and thick, woollen hose. Stout boots of rough brown leather encased the lower part of his legs. The cart drew to a halt beside me.

‘Want a ride, chapman?’ the man asked laconically.

‘I’d be grateful,’ I answered. ‘But I’d be still more grateful if you’d tell me where I can find food and drink round here. I’ve had no dinner.’

The man screwed up his face and tugged at the liripipe of his hood. ‘Missed your tucker, have you?’ He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘Don’t look the sort who’d forget to eat. And it’s midday now. Two hours past dinnertime.’

‘I made a shortcut through the woods and, like a fool, took the wrong turning. You know how it is when you try to be too clever.’

The man laughed. ‘Aye, I know.’ He patted the empty seat. ‘Jump up. I’m going to collect a load of wool from a farm near here. The goodwife’ll feed you, I’ll be bound. A good-hearted, if sharp-tongued soul who’ll be glad, I reckon, to see a pedlar.’

I mounted to sit on the board beside him, placing my pack at my feet. My companion gave his horse the office to start and we began to move forward.

‘Are you a native of these parts?’ I asked.

‘Born and bred within the walls of Southampton.’

‘Do you know the countryside about here? The woods around Chilworth Manor?’

The carter shook his head. ‘I stick to the beaten tracks, although I know Sir Cedric Wardroper. I cart his wool to the spinners and weavers. Why do you want to know?’

‘I wondered if you’d ever heard of a deserted shrine in the woods near here. I stumbled across it, quite by chance, this morning.’

The man scratched his head. ‘Can’t say as I ever have. But then, as I say, my home’s Southampton. But you could inquire at the Catchside farm when we get there. One of the workers might know something of it. Or Master Catchside and his wife. You can but ask, if it’s important to you.’

At this point we turned off the main road and rattled over a mile or two of rough track before arriving at the farm. It appeared to be of sufficient hideage to support a family and its dependants in comfort, boasting a plough and four oxen, hens, cows and a flock of sheep which had recently been sheared, and whose fleeces the carter had called to collect. Most of that particular day’s activity was therefore centred on the barn, where the wool was being packed. The women were rolling the fleeces, their smaller fingers dextrously pulling and smoothing as they did so, and securing each neat bundle with a narrow cord of fine twine. In the centre of the barn a huge sack was suspended almost at floor level by ropes from the beams. Two men stood in the sack, packing and treading down the rolled fleeces as the women passed them in, the wall of wool rising higher and higher until it reached the top, when the men sat astride the sack and sewed it up. It was then lowered to the ground and knotted at each corner in order to ease the handling of such a cumbersome object.

I watched, fascinated, my hunger temporarily forgotten, until the carter hailed the eldest of the women, whose tendency to direct operations rather than participate in them had already marked her down in my mind as likely to be the mistress of the house. I was not mistaken.

‘Goody Catchside, here’s a chapman I picked up on the road, who’d be glad of some dinner.’ The man chuckled. ‘He missed his by getting lost in the woods.’

The farmer’s wife clucked in a motherly fashion.

‘You’d best come with me then, lad,’ she said, ‘and bring your pack with you. There’s one or two things I’m short of, and if you have them it’ll save a journey to Winchester at this busy season. Come along! Don’t loiter!’ She bustled ahead of me, but paused at the barn door to fling an admonition at her husband. ‘Andrew! Make sure the men put aside enough wool for our own use before they go loading up the cart. I know him,’ she added in a grumbling undertone as I followed her in the direction of the house. ‘He’ll sell far too much for the sake of an extra shilling or two and then where does that leave us? Short of winter garments and forced to buy. A false economy, chapman! A false economy.’

I was given bread and cheese and ale, together with a bowl of fish stew, which reminded me that it was Friday. I remembered guiltily the collop of bacon I had eaten at Chilworth Manor for breakfast. I must have grimaced at the memory, for the goodwife asked sharply, ‘What’s the matter? There’s nothing amiss with that soup. I made it myself with fish caught fresh from the stream this morning.’

I hastened to reassure her and explained the reason for the face I had pulled. Mistress Catchside snorted in disapproval.

‘I’ve always suspected that the Wardropers were lax in their religious observance. A flighty woman, Lady Wardroper, far too young for Sir Cedric. And young Matthew, as I remember, was never a reverent child. One might have hoped that his years in Leicestershire, or wherever it was, would have improved him. But since his return home I’ve seen him talking and walking about at the back of the nave during Mass in a very disrespectful fashion. However, I’ve no time for gossiping. Let me see what’s in your pack and then you and the carter can be going. We need to have our wool on the way to the weaving sheds before nightfall.’

Yet again I laid out my wares, and while the good wife picked them over I asked her if she knew anything of the shrine in the woods. Her answer was decisive.

‘I’ve never heard anyone mention it,’ she said, ‘and I’ve lived in these parts all my life. Indeed, this was my father’s farm and his father’s before him. Catchside,’ she added, seeming to feel that some explanation was called for, ‘was from the city.’ She shrugged. ‘But there, I was a plain girl and had to take whoever offered. And Andrew had money which he was prepared to put into the farm. My parents thought him a good enough husband for me, at all events, and so I married him.’ She pulled herself up short, turning an uncomfortable red and obviously annoyed at herself for confiding in me. ‘Hmmph! I’ll buy this set of spoons, for mine are worn so thin the edges cut my mouth. How much are you asking for them?’

‘And you’re sure,’ I urged, when the transaction was completed and I had knocked a little off the price to pay for my food, ‘that this woodland shrine is unknown to you? You’ve never heard it spoken of by anyone?’

‘Oh, as to that, never is too final a word. I may, I suppose, have heard it mentioned at some time in my life. I’m past my fortieth birthday.’ She frowned, realizing that once again her tongue had betrayed her into an unnecessary confidence. ‘But no, not that I can instantly recall. Young man,’ she added with asperity, ‘I don’t know what it is about you, but you have a disarming habit of making me say more than I intended and I suspect that that applies to other women. You must learn not to take advantage of us poor, weak females.’

I laughed. ‘I should never be so ungallant, even if it were true. But you overestimate my powers to charm and your own weakness, I do assure you.’

Goody Catchside said ‘Hmmph’ again, but made no further comment, anxious not to hold up the proceedings any longer. We returned to the barn, where the last of three sacks of wool had just been loaded into the wagon. I clambered up beside the carter, thanked my hostess most heartily for my meal and was driven away along the track.

‘Did you find out what you wanted to know?’ the man asked me after we had gone a short distance.

I shook my head. ‘Mistress Catchside was unable to recall hearing the shrine talked of, but admitted that her memory might be faulty. However, someone has been there lately and been at trouble to cut a path through the undergrowth to reach it and lay flowers at its base.’ I sighed. ‘Ah well! It’s of no importance, I suppose. Do you continue towards Winchester now, or return to Southampton?’

‘I have one more call to make and shall lie at Winchester tonight, at a hostelry just outside the city where they know me. I can therefore take you as far as the suburbs.’

‘Aren’t you afraid of thieves,’ I asked, ‘while you are sleeping?’

The carter roared with laughter. ‘Who’d be able to move one of those great, cumbersome things?’ He jerked his head backwards in the direction of the wool sacks. ‘And if you split one open all the contents’d come bursting out. No, no! Wool’s the safest cargo anyone can carry.’

I accompanied the carter to the second farm and, when the wagon was full, helped him cover it with tarred canvas, but not too tightly. (For as my friend instructed me, wool must be kept dry, but never overheated.) By this time the city bells could be heard ringing out over the surrounding countryside for Vespers and we took leave of one another. I made my way to the Hospital of Saint Cross where free ale was always available for travellers, a great consideration with me, as you might imagine. And as I sat in the late-afternoon sunshine sipping my ale, my back against the warm stone of one of the almshouses, my mind went back over the events of the past two days.

I thought of Jennet first, her eager flesh, her passionate kisses, but I knew she would have done as much for any young man who took her fancy. She was one of those loving and giving creatures unhampered by morals. My thoughts ran on to this morning and the abandoned shrine in the woods. Who had had cause to visit it recently? Who had picked and left the flowers?

It was a mystery to which I should probably never know the answer and already the interest of it was beginning to fade a little. I put down my empty beaker on the bench beside me and stretched my arms and legs until the bones cracked. By this time tomorrow I should be on the road to London, selling as I went, but with my goal drawing nearer with every passing mile. It would take me well over two weeks to reach the capital, yet I could feel the excitement even now, stirring in my veins.