The Marsh King's Daughter (7 page)

'God have mercy.' The older nun crossed herself and suppressed a heave.

Thinking of Nicholas, Miriel had to swallow her own gorge.

They heard another shout closer to hand. A man dressed in homespun wool and sheepskins was limping towards them from the search party. He carried a shepherd's crook, slick with mud for over half its length. Two shaggy grey and white dogs trotted at his heels, their tongues lolling.

'Sisters,' he greeted Godefe and Miriel. The wind had whipped a flush into his leathery cheeks and he was breathing hard from his walk.

Godefe inclined her head stiffly in return. 'We have come to treat your leg,' she said, frowning. 'You are supposed to be resting it.'

'Not today I'm not.' He turned to view the activity on the foreshore. 'Course, they'll not find much. I've had sheep drown out there and you seldom recover the bodies. Lucky to have found what they have.'

'What exactly are they looking for?' Miriel asked.

The shepherd cocked her a sharp look. 'You've not heard the news then?'

Miriel shook her head.

He fixed the women with a bright stare, paused for a moment to extract the final drop of drama, then said, 'King John's baggage train got bogged down out there in the mist yesterday on the way to Swineshead Abbey. The mud and the tide swallowed it up in less than an hour. Lost everything, so it's said - including his crown.' He winked at the nuns. 'Be a huge reward for anyone as finds it.'

'King John's baggage train,' Miriel repeated and gazed at the people busy on the sands. 'Were there any survivors?'

The shepherd spread his hands. 'A few reached Sutton and raised the alarm, so one o' the soldiers told us, but the rest of them's out there, buried wi' the King's gold. All we found so far are two bodies and a broken candlestick.'

Miriel pursed her lips. 'We saw the ponies tethered behind your cot, and your linens blowing in the wind.'

He met her gaze squarely. 'I discovered them ponies wandering on the sheep pasture; I haven't stolen nothing. If they wants them back, they can come and get them -aye and the laundry too, providing they pay my wife for the washing of it all.'

'Of course,' Miriel said. It was an effort not to laugh at his burst of righteous indignation. Whatever Godefe said about old Wynstan's honesty, Miriel doubted that King John would ever see the return of his ponies, linens, or piss-flask.

The shepherd cleared his throat and looked at Godefe. 'You may as well tend my leg here. I'll be staying awhile yet.'

'Even though there's nothing to find?' Miriel asked innocently—

You got to show willing, haven't you?' He sat down and began unwrapping his hose binding.

Leaving Godefe to deal with the shepherd, Miriel turned her mule and rode him down closer to the shoreline. The wind bustled off the sea, watering her eyes and almost

dislodging her white novice's wimple. A strong salt tang filled her lungs. On the raised causeway above the mud,

nobles wearing furlined cloaks and jewel-bright colours were

supervising the operation. Miriel imagined the tide rolling behind and engulfing them as it must have done to the baggage train yesterday. She gave an involuntary shudder and thrust the thought to the back of her mind, wondering instead how much treasure had been lost.

If someone found it, then it would literally be a King's ransom. In her mind's eye, she saw herself scooping a crown from the muddy sand and holding it aloft, soft pinpoints of light catching exposed areas of gold. How much would it be worth? More than enough to buy her freedom from the cloister and begin a new life. A house of her own, good food and fine clothes. She would be able to do as she pleased with no one to tell her nay. A smile curved her lips. She would build her own weaving business and become the best in all the Midland shires. She would—

'Sister Miriel!' Godefe's insistent voice jolted her from her daydream. The crown vanished, leaving her the plain view of windswept shoreline and the villagers working methodically across the estuary with their hurdle fences and prods.

'I'm coming.' She turned the mule.

'You shouldn't have ridden off like that.'

'I wanted to see what was happening.'

'Yes, but you—'

'Mother Abbess will want to know the details,' Miriel interrupted quickly before Godefe started to lecture in earnest. 'We can give a better account from what we have seen for ourselves.'

Godefe narrowed her eyes, but conceded the point with a sniff as she tugged on her mule's bridle. 'Even so, it is time we returned. They will be ringing the bell for nones soon.'

Then vespers, then compline, Miriel thought grimly, and nothing for sustenance but a piece of dry bread and a small cup of weak, herbal tisane. Concealing a grimace, she followed the older nun.

The shepherd, his leg anointed and rebandaged, touched his forelock to her in passing, and limped back towards the shore and the illusion of royal gold.

Stifling a yawn, Miriel shifted her buttocks on the hard wood of the choir stall and repeated the words of the service after the priest. She knew them by rote. Even if her mind was unwilling, her memory had absorbed the chants with ease. Each phrase intoned was a step closer to the end of the night's prayer in the chapel and the first of two welcome visits to the rectory. Even though breakfast was only barley porridge made with water, and ale to drink, her stomach growled ravenously. There was never enough to eat.

he glanced towards the east window above the altar, but jewelled tints of the glass were dark, as yet unlit by the dawn. The prospect of her first winter at St Catherine's filled with dread. Already the threat of chilblains prickled toes and her voice rose toward the rafters on clouds misty breath.

Beside her, one of the other novices, Sister Adela, had fallen asleep, her head lolling sideways. Before Miriel could nudge her, the girl was noticed by Sister Euphemia. Instead of a dig in the ribs, Sister Adela received a stinging rap across the knuckles from Euphemia's willow switch. The young novice jerked upright, stifling a cry between her teeth. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

Miriel felt a surge of anger and sympathy. On numerous occasions she had been the victim of that switch. The smallest misdemeanour was cause enough for Euphemia to bring it whistling down. Now that the nun no longer had Miriel for a scapegoat, she was testing out the other novices to find a fresh victim.

Euphemia met Miriel's disgusted stare with one of malice and challenge. The wand twitched in her hand, but she did not lean over to use it. As of two days ago, the Abbess's intervention had given Miriel a certain immunity.

A reluctant dawn brightened the window above the high altar and St Catherine was martyred on her wheel in the gemstone colours of the glass stainer's art. Less than exalted, but feeling sympathy for the saint's plight, Miriel raised her voice and joined the chants. As the service ended, the priest exhorted the nuns to pray for the souls of the wayfarers lost on the estuary and for the recovery of the young man lying sick with fever in their infirmary.

Miriel bowed her head, clasped her hands and prayed. The previous evening, after vespers, she had tried to speak with Nicholas, but there had been no opportunity. Sister Margaret had kept her busy with errands and other patients, and when finally there had been a brief moment, he had been lost in feverish sleep, his brow as hot as a coal to her touch.

'Please, by Your great mercy, let him live,' she entreated, but was answered by nothing more than the hollow voice of the priest echoing against the painted stone columns.

The service completed, the nuns departed the choir stalls and walked in procession to the lavatorium to wash before they breakfasted.

'I'll get you some salve for your knuckles from the infirmary cupboard,' Miriel murmured to Adela as they stood side by side at the long stone trough.

Adela steeped her hands in the icy water and shook her head. 'It was my own fault; I sinned in falling asleep. Sister Euphemia was right to chastise me.'

Miriel rolled her eyes. 'She was just looking for an opportunity. She can't keep that stick to herself. One day I'm going to snatch it out of her hands and shove it—' Miriel broke off as Sister Euphemia herself bore down on the two young women like a large black crow.

'No unnecessary talk,' she hissed. The stick jerked in her grasp.

'No, sister.' Adela hung her head and swished the water with trembling hands.

Miriel said nothing, knowing that her reply would likely result in a sharp rap across her own knuckles and yet another bitter confrontation.

With chewing jaw, Euphemia moved on. Adela's breath escaped on a furtive gasp of relief.

'Shove it up her fat backside,' Miriel concluded, watching the nun waddle down the line. 'No one ever strikes her with a switch for filching provisions from the store rooms to fill her fat belly!'

'Hush, oh hush!' Adela squeaked like an agitated mouse. 'She'll hear you!' 'Oh yes, she's certainly got better ears than God,' Miriel said viciously, but heeded Adela's warning and finished her ablutions in jerky silence. Uppermost in her mind was the sure knowledge that she did not fit in here and never would.

Following the silent breaking of fast in the refectory, Miriel collected a stone costrel of wine and a basket of loaves from the cellaress and crossed the courtyard to the infirmary. Owing to her own disability and her duty to the sick, Sister Margaret had been excused the long, nocturnal hours of prayer in the chapel. The bread and wine were for her patients. There was also a hearth in the infirmary where nourishing meals could be cooked to tempt ailing appetites. Sister Margaret,

although not afflicted by the latter, had availed herself of the frying pan and was devouring the last of a mushroom omelette as Miriel entered, staggering a little beneath her burden.

The delicious smell of the food made Miriel's half-empty stomach churn with longing, but she was not so foolish as to hope that there was any left. She would have to wait for the midday meal several hours hence and hope that the cellaress was feeling generous.

Setting the bread and wine on the trestle, she threw a glance the direction of the curtain screening the man's bed from the three sick nuns occupying the main part of the infirmary.

She could hear a constant low muttering and the swish of bedclothes tossed by a restless body.

'We said a prayer for the young man in chapel, sister,' she ventured. 'How does he fare?'

Leaning on her stick, dabbing her lips with a napkin, the infirmaress heaved to her feet. 'He is in need of prayers for certain,' she said. 'There is nothing more that we can do for him.' She hobbled to the curtain, and drawing it a little to one side, beckoned to the girl.

The gesture surprised Miriel. For the past day and a half she had been kept well away from the patient. She was not, however, going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and hastened to Sister Margaret's side.

'See the red spots on his cheekbones?' the nun said with a grim nod. 'First they will darken until they are the colour of pig's blood, and then the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet will blacken and he will die.'

Miriel swallowed and stared, filled with horror and pity. She did not doubt the nun's word for such a death had happened to a neighbour in Lincoln two years ago after he caught a winter ague.

As if aware of their scrutiny, the patient tossed and groaned. Sweat plastered his hair to his skull in dark spikes and shone in the hollow of his throat, as if he had just been pulled anew from the sea. His eyes were open but blind as unpolished stones. The irises flickered, following some inner vision, and he licked his lips.

'The tide,' he panted. 'Christ Jesu, the tide!' His body threshed and fought.

Without thinking Miriel darted to the bedside. There was a bowl of lavender water on the coffer with a cloth soaking in it. She wrung out the linen and laid it on his brow, then set her arm behind his shoulders and gave him a drink from the cup that also stood on the coffer.

'Surely there is something that can be done for him?' She fixed Sister Margaret with a pleading stare.

The infirmaress shook her head. 'Save for washing him down to cool his body and giving him willow bark in wine, we are powerless. It will be as God wills.'

'But if God had wanted him to die, he would have let him drown out on the estuary, not here with us,' Miriel protested.