The Innocent (18 page)

Of all the members of the household he’d had most cause to be fearful of what Piers was doing to his wife in the privacy of their chamber, but he’d not known how to intercede. Since this marriage had been of his making, he knew Piers was punishing him through the suffering he imposed on Aveline.

Mathew felt powerless. Often he’d been tempted to intervene, but when he’d asked the advice of Father Bartolph, he had always been cautioned against it.

The priest had reminded him that the husband was his wife’s keeper in the eyes of God—he was the head of this new family in a literal sense and her body had been given to him on the day of their marriage. She must learn obedience to his will, like the patient Griselda, and if God had seen fit to allow Piers to chastise Aveline, possibly for her own good, it was not Mathew’s place to interfere between them. To do so would be to call into question the whole established order on which society was based, and surely this would displease God very much indeed.

But as the months had worn on and the girl had become thinner and thinner and more and more silent, it was hard for Mathew to ignore what was happening. When her pregnancy had begun to show, he and Margaret had both tried, in small ways, to offer support and encouragement to Aveline. Yet each kind word to the girl was paid in extra, even more imaginative brutality by Piers at night, when the door of their room was closed, and that was terrible knowledge.

Mathew’s contemplation was broken by the increasing sound of restless shuffling from the benches behind him. Though he knew this was as close as his people would go to open rebellion, he decided enough was enough. Catching Bartolph’s eye, he shook his head slowly and deliberately. Bartolph paused and then sighed, giving them up as a bad lot. Grumpily, he intoned the words of a blessing and had hardly finished when the congregation fairly bolted out of the door of the chapel, leaving his master and himself alone in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

“I thank you, Father, for a fine sermon. They’re not bad people, you know. They mostly have the knowledge of God in their hearts and it is you who keeps that there. My household is grateful for your presence.”

For Mathew it was a long speech and the priest was startled—and grateful. Sometimes he felt as if he toiled in the German salt mines of the soul for no result and that public revels such as May Day stripped away a thin veneer of goodliness to show the evil pits of paganism lurking under the skin of everyday life. He shuddered when he thought of the Beltane fires; the old ways were a long time dying.

“Come, Father, will you pray with me? If Blessed Lady Mary will intercede with her mother Saint Anne, we will see another member of our household before the bonfires are fully burnt this day. We should pray for the mother, the babe…and the father.”

While the priest and his master intoned the rosary together, upstairs in the bed in which it had been conceived, the child was struggling to be born. So far it had not been a long labor—only a matter of hours from just after midnight—but now Aveline was finding it hard and her painfully thin body was already close to exhausted.

For what seemed a long time now, she had been able to avoid screaming. Margaret and the women with her thought she was very brave. Little did they know she refused to give Piers the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. But with each contraction it was harder, soon she would have to howl, if just to scream the pain out.

The room was very hot, the fire had been built to a huge blaze and the windows stopped up so that no draft of putrid city air should find the laboring woman and harm her or the child. Aveline lay on a mattress filled with fresh straw covered by three layers of thick, coarse canvas with moss between to help soak up the blood and birth waters, and she was slick with sweat though she insisted on wearing her long-sleeved shift. All the women in the chamber—even Anne—had either birthed children or helped others in confinement and, while they were all inherently modest, they were surprised at Aveline’s extreme reticence. What a woman most needed in the laboring bed, or on the birth stool, was freedom of movement, and they were all sisters under the skin—Aveline had no need to cover herself.

But then, when she finally let out a mighty scream and tore at her shift in anguish, they suddenly understood.

There was not much light in the room but what there was showed them a dreadful sight. Aveline’s entire body, belly and all, was covered in bruises and welts, some of which were old, the color around them faded to dirty yellow. She had been repeatedly beaten on the trunk, back, and legs but not around her neck or chest or anywhere where clothes might reveal what had happened.

Margaret set her mouth in a very grim line indeed as she caught Jassy’s eye. She had known things were bad between Aveline and Piers but this was too much: he had deliberately risked his child’s life, not to mention his wife’s, and for that she would not forgive him. Let this child be born and she would reckon with Piers—and force Mathew to as well—before he was allowed to do any more harm.

Aveline, far gone in pain now, was unconscious of the effect her pitiful body had on the women around her. All she needed, prayed for, was relief from this universe of agony. This birth was fitting payment for all her scheming; Satan was punishing her, she could smell him, there was sulfur in the room, surely he was coming for her now, for her and for her child! Now her screams were terrible indeed, the screams of a lost and drowning soul.

Margaret was perplexed and so was the housekeeper. Of course, pain was normal in childbed but Aveline was beginning to sound as if madness had her by the throat. She was biting her lips so hard that blood trickled down her chin, while her eyes rolled back into her head. Margaret forced an ebony wand between her teeth; if Aveline went into fits, the task would become even harder.

Anne could not bear what was happening. Like all the women in the room she was stunned by the ferocity that had been visited on Aveline, and so, summoning up courage she did not feel, she whispered urgently to Margaret. “I know how to help her—please let me try, mistress.” Margaret looked at Anne questioningly for a moment, but seeing the girl’s intensity, the conviction in her eyes, she nodded. That was all Anne needed. One last look at Aveline and she was gone from the room, running as if indeed pursued by Satan himself down to the great kitchen. What she needed now was a pestle, a mortar, hot water, and some honey.

The cavernous room was empty; Maître Gilles, like all the kitchen staff, had left after the Mass and for once the great hearths were black and empty. Not even a pot with stock bones left to simmer.

Feverishly, Anne went about building a fire as quickly as she could. Seizing twigs and straw from the piles neatly left beside the flags in front of the fire mouths, she laid them down as carefully as she could and then, after finding flint, tried to strike a light. It took several attempts but at last a spark leaped into the straw and caught. Breathing gently, praying for help, she nursed the little flame and then the draft from the cavelike shaft of the chimney came to her aid. The dry twigs blazed up suddenly and the fire was away. Now all that was needed was more fuel, and water for the huge blackened kettle she swung over on its trivet to sit above the blaze.

Once the fire looked secure, Anne hurried over to one of the slate-topped benches that lined the walls between the fire mouths. The one nearest to her had an oak barrel on top of it with a spigot. It would either be water or small beer. God was good, for when she turned the tap, sweet water gushed out into the earthenware bowl she had found.

Conscious now that every moment in the kitchen might be critical to Aveline’s survival, she ran back and forth several times between the bench and the fire pot, slopping as much water as she could into it, willing the liquid to boil. Now she needed a pestle and mortar.

Maître Gilles ran a well-ordered kitchen. The cooking equipment was neatly ranged on rough but serviceable shelves attached to the stone walls by sturdy elm pegs. In the light flooding down from the great stone lantern overhead, Anne could see a line of carved stone mortars, ranging in size from tiny—

for spices—to huge, for grinding up large quantities of meat, or almonds for marchpane. She would need something to stand on to reach up so high…

She hauled over a joint stool and was reaching out for one of the smaller pestles when something cold dived under her skirts and up her legs. Startled, she swung around and nearly dropped the vessel she was holding. There grinning up at her was the face of a devil indeed—leering, red open mouth, stumps of blackened teeth, foul breath. And the cold hands went on trying to explore. Corpus.

Enraged, Anne acted without thinking. Picking up the biggest of the pestles, she used it like a club on the old man’s skull. The sneering lust on his face changed to an expression of utter bewilderment, and he dropped like a stone to the flags.

Shaking, the girl dropped the mortar as if it burned her hand, but she had a job to do. She jumped down and, with great distaste, made sure Corpus was still breathing, then ran over to the bench beside the fire and feverishly began to grind a handful of shriveled, blackened seed pods that she pulled out of the skin bag in her pocket. It went slower than she’d hoped but she knew she had to grind the material to dust or it would not act swiftly enough. At last the grinding was done and all she needed now was honey. She remembered Deborah telling her that the powder needed to be well mixed into the honey before it was added to the boiling water, for the honey would help the patient take the bitter-tasting drug. But honey was valuable stuff—anything sweet was—and it was sure to be locked away safely somewhere. The still room? The buttery?

The old man was starting to groan as he lay on the floor. Anne steeled herself; there was no time for delicacy. Picking up a shovel used for sliding bread into the new brick oven—built into one of the ranges—she approached Corpus warily. Standing over him as he opened first one and then the other evil old eye, she carefully placed the blade of the shovel at his scrawny throat.

“If you do not tell me what I need to know, I shall kill you. Do you understand?” It was said so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that the old man didn’t doubt her. He tried to nod, as much as the shovel would let him. “Where does Maître Gilles keep the honey? Quickly now.”

The old man’s eyes bulged. Honey? Now? What did this little slut want with stealing honey? The grim look on Anne’s face told him not to argue. She might look young but she was strong, bigger than him.

If she wanted honey, well, he’d make sure she paid for it…in time. “Buttery. He keeps it in the buttery.”

“It’ll be locked. How do I get in there?”

The old man snorted. He knew where a spare key was kept, but right now, as he felt the pain in his head, maybe he wasn’t going to tell her, after all.

Anne clenched her teeth. So be it. She leaned on the shovel and it pressed into the old man’s throat just under his Adam’s apple; she was calculating he didn’t have enough strength to force himself up against her weight and indeed he didn’t. He flapped his arms ineffectually: she took that to mean he’d show her. She eased off the pressure, conscious that the water in the kettle would boil away very soon.

“Corpus, there isn’t time. If I let you up you have to help me—or it will be worse for all of us in this house.”

He had no conscience at all—a long lifetime living close to the bottom of society had taught him to be pitiless—but something, a note in her voice, caught him off guard. Reluctantly, he nodded and, as she let him up, shambled over to Maître Gilles’s spice cupboard, rubbing his throat grumpily.

“Turn your back.” His voice was a rasp but the command was clear. He didn’t want the slut to see how he’d perfected springing the lock on the cupboard without a key. He’d done well over the years, stealing from this cupboard—nutmeg and saffron, along with pepper, fetched the best prices—and no matter how many investigations Maître Gilles had conducted, he’d never pinned the thefts on him.

Anne did as she was told, but, grasping the shovel, she warned, “Be careful, Corpus—I’m quicker than you.” He knew she was, and anyway, he was curious. He grunted with satisfaction as the door swung clear and there, hanging on a small peg inside, was the key to the buttery. Should he use it as a bargaining chip to find out what was going on? Then he felt the tip of the shovel nudge his back, just near his kidneys. He sighed. No, he’d find out later.

Anne snatched the key from the wizened, filthy old hand, nails black and broken, and for a moment, pity flickered through her. An evil old wretch he might be, but his tiny body told a long story of starvation and bad times. There was no time for compassion now though. Pushing the old man in front of her, she feverishly unlocked the buttery door, and there, sure enough, lay a huge, deep salt-glazed dish with a blanched wooden rack sitting in it. On top of the rack there was a slab of honeycomb dripping its precious contents through the slats.

Quicker than thought she scooped up the honey with another smaller bowl and whirled out again,