The Plague Charmer Page 11

  So walking away from my erstwhile lord’s manor on that bitter day in winter, I made the first real choice I’d ever be granted in my forty-two years of life. I’d choose my own name. I’d called myself William, after that other great bastard, the Conqueror. Made me feel I could do as I pleased now, just like him, even took the sting from my whipped back, and I swaggered down that road, feeling bolder than any longshanks popinjay at the king’s court.

  It didn’t last long. I soon discovered I could call myself whatever I liked: it made not a pig’s fart worth of difference to the rest of the world. The moment I uttered my new name in Porlock Weir, the villagers shortened it to Will. A short man needs a short name, they said. And who was I to argue? There are far worse names a manikin like me can be called.

  I edged along the dark track, hoping I wouldn’t run into any stragglers coming the other way to join Cador’s house-sealing party. Just as I’d hoped, the Holy Hag’s door was firmly shut. We dwarfs, even fake ones, are trained to be light on our feet. We caper and prance. We learn how to creep up behind the unsuspecting guest to pull the chair out from under their backside or slip a live toad on to their platter for the amusement of others, so I easily got past Matilda’s casement in the dark and into the pigpen without stepping on any of her vicious caltrops or cracking a single twig.

  It was a mild night and the old sow – the pig, that is, not Matilda – was grunting and snuffling as she lay outside her hut, her piglets heaped upon each other for warmth. I knew I’d have only one chance, for the moment the piglets started squealing the sow would be on her feet. A pig can chew your hand off as easily as you can bite through a piece of roast crackling. I’ve seen a sow and her brood devour half the carcass of a dead horse in a single night. So I made a lunge for the piglets, grabbed a little wriggler in each hand and was bounding down the slope before the sow had lumbered to her feet.

  I stopped at a safe distance from the cottage to stuff the two piglets into my sack. They were screaming shrilly enough to raise the dead from the deep. But the unholy din up at Elis’s cottage would have drowned out a whole herd of shrieking swine. I couldn’t see the cottage itself, but I saw the flickering orange and red glow of the burning torches above it in the night sky. It sounded as if a dozen blacksmiths and a score of carpenters were hard at work. Banging and hammering mingled with the shouts and bellows. I pitied the prey who found themselves caught in that trap.

  But I still had to get my little piggies safely home before I found myself locked up. The little wrigglers were shrieking louder than ever and I couldn’t risk carrying them past the cottages on the shore. The noise from Elis’s cottage wouldn’t mask the squeals down there. So I squatted down and hauled each out of the sack in turn, swiftly cutting their throats. Scalding blood gushed over my hands and breeches, splashing on to the dry grass. The bloodstains on the ground might be spotted in the morning, especially if the dogs started licking them, but who would be able to prove what had been slaughtered there and whether the killer was human or beast?

  I thrust the steaming carcasses back into my sack, and was just about to clamber to my feet when something came hurtling towards me out of the darkness. A small boy tumbled over me, knocking me backwards. He quickly scrambled to his feet, but I was faster. Grabbing him by his bare leg, I jerked him down again, and held on to him. He struggled to escape from my grasp, but I was having none of that. For all I knew, he’d seen me kill those piglets. I wasn’t about to let him go squealing to Matilda.

  ‘Stay still, you little brat, or I’ll sit on your head!’

  The boy gave a few feeble twists, then sat panting hard, his body taut as a stringed bow, while he considered his next move. It was too dark to see the features of his face.

  ‘So, what are you in such a hurry for? Shouldn’t go running like that at night when you can’t see what’s under your feet. Knew a lad once who fell straight on to a ploughshare, chopped himself clean in two. Your mam know you’re out, does she?’

  He said nothing, but I felt a sob shudder through his little body.

  ‘You in trouble, lad? Someone catch you thieving? That it?’

  A louder burst of hammering and shouting gusted down from the hillside above, and the boy gave a frightened yelp, turning his head towards the flickering red glow that hung over the cottage. Tears glistened on his cheeks and his body heaved with sobs. I suddenly realised he was half naked.

  ‘Ah, it’s young Hob, isn’t it? Now I understand.’

  I scrambled to my feet, hauling him up with me, by the back of his shirt. I could feel him shivering in the chill night air. ‘Right, we’d best get you out of sight before anyone realises that one of their birds has escaped the trap. No one comes near my cave at night. You’ll be safe enough there.’

  At once, the lad started punching and kicking me in an effort to get away, though since his feet were bare, he must have hurt himself more than me.

  ‘Let me go!’ he squealed. ‘You drag chillern into the cave and gobble them up.’

  I chuckled. ‘Now, who told you that, lad? Your brother, I suppose.’

  When I’d first taken up residence in the cave, Luke and his cousin Col, along with a few other boys from the village, had amused themselves by finding ways to annoy me, hurling stones and dung into the cave or hiding rotten fish or sharpened sticks under the bracken I used as a bed. I played a few tricks of my own on them, which mostly kept them away, but I still occasionally heard them dragging some child they were tormenting towards the cave, threatening to toss them to the man-eating dwarf.

  Hob, redoubling his efforts to tear himself away, began to scream. I clamped my bloody paw over his mouth.

  ‘Stop that, boy.’ I turned him so that he could see the light from the flickering torches. ‘See what they’re doing. Want them to do it to you too?’ I spun him to face me. ‘There’s two plump little piglets in this sack. I’m going to cook one of them for my supper tonight. So why would I want to eat a scrawny little runt like you? And I’d wager my own beard you like roasted pork, don’t you? Nice wedge of juicy crackling to go with it?’

  I sat in the mouth of the cave, staring down at the sea rocking in the arms of the bay. I’d become used to the constant hiss and slither of the waves as they broke over the rocks, could even sleep through their pounding and crashing when the sea was in a raging temper. But tonight she was in good humour, the waves rolling in as soft as a lullaby. A broad path of bright moonlight shivered across the black water. The great dome of stars stretched from the cliffs on one side of the bay to the dark forested hills on the other and far out across the sea. Sometimes I imagined that if I could only sail far enough, I could reach the place where the glittering stars touched the horizon and pluck them like silver sprats from a net. Maybe that was what I should do. Sail and keep sailing until I found one of those strange isles the sailors tell of, one where every man and beast is a dwarf. But even there I’d be a fraud, an imposter.

  Behind me the boy was asleep on my bed of bracken, having stuffed himself with so much pork, he could barely stand. When I’d first hauled him in, still wailing that I was going to eat him, he’d crouched in the furthest corner of the cave, wary as a trapped rabbit, watching me eviscerate a piglet. As I cut it into pieces, I kept up a stream of riddles and mindless chatter, as I used to do to amuse the children in the manor, until the need for warmth overcame his fear and he began to edge closer and closer to the fire. Finally, I even persuaded him to turn some pieces of the skewered pork over the flames. He was almost dribbling as the smell of roasting meat filled the cave.

  ‘Why – did they shut my mam in the cottage?’ he blurted out. ‘She wanted to come out. I heard her shouting.’

  I wiped my greasy fingers down my bloodstained tunic. How do you explain the Great Mortality to a boy who’s never known the terror of it, never seen the corpses lying unburied in the fields or looked into the dead eyes of living children who sit rocking themselves in the doorways of empty houses, when even their pet dog has de
serted them?

  ‘They’ll let her out in time,’ I said cheerily, ‘soon as they know she hasn’t got the fever.’

  ‘Is she sick?’ The boy scrambled up in alarm. ‘I – I want to see her!’

  I grabbed his arm, pulling him down. ‘Your mam doesn’t want you getting sick and worrying her.’

  But suppose young Hob already was? I tried to resist the urge to move away from the child.

  ‘They won’t let you back into the cottage. And if Cador or others in the village see you near it, they’ll lock you up all by yourself in the dark. You’d not want that, would you?’

  Hob’s eyes widened in fear. It was a harsh thing to say to him, but I had to make him so afraid that he’d not dare risk trying to return to the cottage. And, in truth, locking him up might be the very least they would do. But just how long could I keep him hidden in the cave, and if he did fall sick, would I be able to conceal it from the villagers? I’d have no choice. There were men and women, too, in Porlock Weir, who wouldn’t hesitate to hurl us both into the sea, like those two children, if they thought it would save their own.

  Chapter 15

  Sara

  If you count the fish you have caught, you will catch no more that day.

  We sleep and wake, not knowing how many hours have passed. I should be washing the clothes in the tub outside, tending my beans or sitting in the doorway cleaning fish. My neighbours would be passing by on the path, chattering to each other, calling out a greeting to me. I listen for those voices now, but there are none. Not a soul comes near the cottage. Only the gulls wheeling above and cockerels in distant gardens call out to us.

  The pisspot is overflowing again. Elis tips it into the gully that runs down the middle of the byre, but there is not enough liquid to wash the shit from the pail out through the tiny gap in the wall. It lies there stinking. Elis covers it with straw as best he can, but that, too, is sodden and soiled by the goats. The air in the cottage is thick and heavy, and when I sleep, I dream that I am being sucked down into quicksand in the bay, gasping and choking as my mouth fills with liquid mud.

  I wake with a jolt as someone bangs on the shutter. ‘Elis, Daveth . . . how goes it in there? Any sick?’ Cador calls.

  The men rush to the window bumping against the table and overturning stools in their haste. Col and Luke are not far behind. Aldith tries to scramble down the ladder so quickly I fear she will overturn it.

  ‘No one’s sick,’ Elis shouts back. ‘We’re all fit as fleas. You can let us out now.’

  ‘Only been three days. A week more, then maybe . . .’

  ‘A week!’ Daveth bellows. ‘You can’t keep us in here that long. What about my weirs, Elis’s widgebeasts?’

  ‘Don’t you fret, they’re being cared for. But if you swear there’s none of you ailing, we’ll open these shutters and pass water and food in. I dare say you could do with some tallows too.’

  ‘And firewood,’ I remind them.

  ‘Firewood,’ Elis yells through the shutters, ‘and fodder for goats ’n’ all.’

  There are mutterings outside, as if some hasty discussion is taking place.

  ‘Next time . . . maybe,’ Cador calls. ‘Now keep far back from the casement, you hear?’

  Planks are prised away with iron crows, and after another warning, as if the bailiff fears we’ve turned into demons and will come flying out of the window, the shutters open. We blink in the sudden rush of light and stand gulping in the blessed fresh air, heavy with the salt tang of the sea and crushed thyme from the bushes I planted beneath the window.

  A face appears, only the eyes showing. The mouth and nose are masked by a piece of sacking tied round the head, which, judging by the smell, has been soaked in herbs and vinegar. After the fetid stench of the cottage I drink in the sharp scent of it, like the perfume of a sweet rose.

  A sack is lowered in on a cord, then a water barrel is raised to the window. But it will not pass through the narrow gap. It vanishes.

  Goda suddenly rouses herself and pushes past us, stretching her arm through the hole in the fish bladders, trying to catch hold of someone or something outside. ‘Let me out! I shouldn’t be in here. I never touched those dead chillern, never, never!’

  She shrieks, as a plank is struck against her hand, beating her back.

  ‘Get away from the casement!’ Bald John yells. ‘Else we’ll not come again.’

  Aldith pulls her sister aside and yells through the gap. ‘If you don’t give us water, we’ll perish of thirst, and I swear to you, Cador, and you ’n’ all, Bald John, if we die, my spirit will haunt you to your grave and beyond for the murderers you are.’

  There are more whispers outside, but it seems the threat of Aldith haunting them is enough. After an age, a cord descends through the window with several old water skins and seal bladders tied down the length of it, like fish caught on a long line.

  No sooner than Elis has caught it and lowered it to the ground than the shutters are slammed and once more comes the sound of hammering as the planks are nailed back. I have to bite my knuckle to stop myself calling out, begging to know if they have seen Hob, if they have hurt him. All too soon, the last plank is laid across the shutters and the cottage is in darkness again.

  The groaning wakes me. I can’t tell where it is coming from. I ease myself from the bed, trying not to wake Goda. One of the men is sitting up, a blanket pulled over his head and shoulders, trying to shuffle so close to the glowing embers of the fire that I fear he means to clamber on top of them. His teeth are chattering, as he rocks back and forward. Blessed Virgin, let it not be my Elis! Dropping to my knees on the floor, I crawl over and pull the blanket from his face. The dim red glow from the dying fire is scarcely bright enough to distinguish maid from man, but you cannot share a bed with a man for twelve years without knowing his features even in that hell-light.

  He’s shivering, yet his skin is burning, drenched with sweat. I grope for one of the water-skins and pour a little into a beaker. He grabs it, almost upturning it in his haste, gulping it frantically, draining every drop.

  ‘More,’ he begs. ‘So thirsty.’

  I glance over at the others. They’re still sleeping. We had all agreed only to drink together to make sure none was taking more than his share, but I can’t refuse Elis.

  I pour another small measure.

  Daveth stirs, propping himself up on one elbow. He watches us. ‘Sick?’

  ‘A little fever is all,’ I whisper. ‘It’s being cooped up in here . . . and the stench from the pisspots. Foul air is enough to sicken anyone’s stomach.’

  ‘A woman’s maybe, but he’s slept in worse on the pack trail.’

  Daveth scrambles up, gropes for one of the tallow candles and lights it in the embers. A dim yellowish-brown glow fills the room and the stench of burning fat grows with it. He holds the flame close to Elis’s face. He squints, turning his face away as if the light hurts his eyes. The sweat on his skin glistens.

  ‘What ails you?’ Daveth demands.

  Goda is sitting up now and Aldith, gingerly climbing down the ladder, turns to peer at Elis. ‘Is it the . . .’ She will not utter the word.

  Snatching the tallow from her husband’s hand, Aldith pulls open Elis’s blanket, peering at what little skin she can see on his chest. Elis struggles to pull the blanket round himself again, but his movements are weak, clumsy.

  ‘He’s not coughing blood,’ Aldith pronounces. ‘You got any black spots?’ She tugs at the blanket again as if she would see for herself, but I push her away.

  ‘It’s only a summer ague. Anyone can see that. Day or so, he’ll be fit again. Go back to sleep. I’ll tend him.’

  Aldith and Daveth look at each other, frowning.

  ‘I reckon he should sleep in the byre till we’re sure,’ Daveth says.

  ‘So you want to start walling people up now, do you?’ I snap. ‘You’re as bad as Cador. The air in the byre is foul. That’s what’s given him the fever. It’s heat he nee
ds, any luggins can see that.’

  ‘There’ll not be a fire by morning,’ Daveth says. ‘Wood’s finished.’

  ‘Then we’ll burn goat dung or the table if we have to.’

  Elis sinks down into the bracken and curls around the fire. As I pull the blanket over him, I brush his hand and he cries out. It is swollen, the skin tight and shiny in the candlelight. Was that the hand he cut? At any other time I would be worried, but now I am flooded with relief. A cut that’s gone foul, that is all. It can be healed. We can draw the poison and all will be well. He will be well!

  Chapter 16

  Will

  Riddle me this: How many straws go to make a goose’s nest?

  Hob looked more cheerful after a night’s sleep and another bellyful of the pork. I even managed to make him smile. I’d never seen such a small lad eat so much. Several times I had to take it from him and force him to slow down for fear he’d vomit. I guessed meat was a rare treat for him, and when it did come his way, his portion would have been small, when there were working men to be fed first.

  Now that even he was finally satiated, he began to poke about the cave, not that there was much to explore. It was six or seven feet above the sea when the tide was in. A waterfall of rocks and boulders spilled from its lip down on the shore, so it was easy enough to scramble up and down at low tide, and I knew the safest route over those rocks as well as I knew the staircase of my old lord’s manor. At high water, the sea lapped round the base of the rocks, cutting off the cave from all but those prepared to swim.