The Vanishing Witch (21 page)

He pushed her up the steps with a hearty slap on her backside. The younger watchman sniggered.

She turned and glared
at the lad. ‘I’ll not forget this. It’s the last time you get your bell tolled for nothing.’

‘I didn’t . . . I don’t . . .’ the youth stammered, but his companion wasn’t listening.

‘As for you, young master, I’d find yourself a linkman to see you safe home, afore you end up running into more trouble or breaking a leg falling into a gutter.’

The two watchmen plodded back up the steps. Jan bent
down to retrieve his sword and, pressing his hand to the wall to steady himself, began to edge his way down. Pity about the girl, pretty little thing and good company, but probably as well she’d gone. His head was throbbing now and all he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes to stop the ground heaving.

‘Wait!’ A hand grabbed his shoulder.

He whipped round, clutching his head as the walls
seemed to spin. As he tried to focus, he found himself staring into the face of the friar. Half was in shadow, but he glimpsed sallow skin pulled tight over bones and thin lips barely covering broken teeth. The flames of the torch above glittered deep within the eyes.

‘We must speak.’ The voice was harsh and deep. ‘It concerns your father. Things you should know.’

A tiny spark of recognition
blazed somewhere in the back of Jan’s fogged mind. ‘You . . . you were the man who followed me at Greetwell . . . on the riverbank. My horse went lame.’

‘A nail, that’s all. I had to make you dismount. I hoped I could speak to you before it was too late. But the children . . . those children . . .’ He shuddered.

Even in his stupor, fury boiled in Jan. ‘You deliberately lamed my horse? What were
you doing? Trying to make me break my neck or be thrown into the river and drowned?’

‘I swear—’

But Jan had already come close to being murdered once that night. This time he was on his guard. He shoved the friar as hard as he could. The man fell heavily against the stones, with a cry. Jan did not look back as he staggered as fast as he could down the steps.

‘Listen to me, you fool . . . your
mother’s death. It . . .’

But Jan had gone.

Pebbles or stones with holes through them should be hung near the doors of house and byre to protect the entrances from witches and demons. Keys should be attached to pebbles with holes through them to guard locks against robbers trying to open them and to prevent evil spirits entering through the keyhole.

It was already dark when Gunter and his son Hankin heaved themselves
out of the punt and onto the bank. Still holding the prow rope, Gunter rubbed his aching stump to ease it, but he couldn’t afford to indulge the pain for long. The punt was being dragged back by the current, which threatened to tear the rope from his hand. He could see his son struggling to hold fast to the stern rope as he tied it off on the stout post that Gunter had long ago hammered into the
bank. After all the rain, the Witham was swollen and running fast. Taking the cargo downstream had been easy, but they’d had to fight the surge every inch of the way back.

Gunter strained on the rope, pulling it deep into the cut he had dug out of the riverbank. It was a snug fit, and ensured the boat was moored out of the flow. All kinds of things came floating down the river – timber from the
boatyards, fallen branches, lost barrels, drowned sheep, boats that had broken their moorings. A current as strong as this would smash them against any moored craft hard enough to hole it.

The wind cut sharply across the water, rustling last year’s dried reeds and sedges. Gunter stiffened as the boom of a bittern throbbed through the darkness. He’d always loathed that bird. He’d heard its melancholy
call the night he’d returned home to find his mother dead and his father dying. The villagers who lived on the high cliff said an owl or raven warned of death, but the marsh-men had their own messengers.

It had taken his father two days to die. No one would come to help them and little Gunter alone had tried desperately to save him. On those nights when his father had lain writhing and moaning,
the bittern had mocked the boy’s childish, futile efforts.
You fool! You fool
, it cried, and later,
You failed, you failed
, as he tried to scrape out two shallow graves, tears and icy rain streaming down his dirty face. Inch by painful inch he’d had to drag the bodies of his parents into the pits. He’d piled the sodden earth over bloated bellies and cold grimacing faces, hideous distortions of
those who had once smiled at him. It takes a long time to cover a corpse. The boy had tried hard to think of a single word of the prayers he knew must be said if his parents were not to be dragged down to Hell. But he knew not a word of Latin, and God did not understand any other tongue.

He’d lain shivering and wet in the icy cottage, waiting for the fever to come and devour him, waiting to feel
the agony his father had endured, waiting to die alone and terrified in the darkness, with only the bittern’s laughter ringing through that lonely night. But the fever did not take him. Come morning he was still alive. Stiff with cold, he staggered outside to find water to ease his throat, which had shrivelled from crying, and saw that the rain had washed clean the faces of his parents, who were
staring up at him out of their shallow graves. For a wonderful moment, he’d thought they were rising from the dead and coming back to him. But the bittern knew the dead do not live again.

Gunter had always driven the birds off after that, destroying their nests among the reeds wherever he found them, as if they were to blame. He hadn’t heard a bittern call near his cottage for years. A cold fear
gripped him and he stared along the bank. In the darkness he could just make out a tiny yellow light. His wife always set a lantern outside the door to guide her husband home. It had come to be a sign between them that all was well. His fear eased a little.

‘Get you inside, Bor,’ he said to Hankin. ‘Tell your mam I’m coming.’

Hankin didn’t wait to be told twice. He was starving as usual and
ran towards the cottage, as if he’d just had a good night’s sleep instead of a hard day’s work. Gunter smiled after him. Where did the young get their energy?

Gunter dragged mats of woven reeds over the top of his craft to disguise it from anyone on the river. They would not protect it from those who knew it was there, but if any of the thieving river-rats came this way on the lookout for anything
to steal, they would hopefully pass by and take another boat instead. After the murder of Tom, the rent-collector, everyone had done all they could to protect their few belongings, though Gunter suspected the murderers were to be found rather closer to home. Not that he would have said as much to anyone, even if he’d witnessed the killing with his own eyes. River-men did not betray their own
people, not even when they were as foul as Martin and his son.

Satisfied that he had done all he could to protect his livelihood, Gunter dragged his aching limbs along the rough path to the cottage. Pausing to remove the lantern, he pushed open the door. Royse and Hankin were sitting on stools, shovelling bean pottage into their mouths with mutton-bone spoons. Little Col was curled up in the
corner of a narrow bed built into the side of the single-roomed cottage, the edge of a woollen blanket pressed tightly against his nose. He was already sleeping soundly, his empty bowl lying beside him.

Nonie, a cloth wrapped around her hand, swivelled the long metal bar from which an iron cooking pot swung, pulling it away from the fire. She straightened as Gunter entered. ‘You’re late,’ she
said. ‘Supper’s as dry as sheep droppings. I suppose you’ve been carousing with that alewife again.’

‘A dozen of them. Couldn’t fight them off.’

They smiled at each other, knowing it would never be true.

‘River’s running fast tonight. We had to bring her all the way from Tattershall.’ Gunter set the lantern on the table and opened one of the horn panels. The candle had burned low. He licked
his thumb and forefinger and extinguished the flame. His fingers were so calloused from punting that he wouldn’t have felt the heat if they hadn’t been wetted, but it was a habit learned from boyhood and not easily broken. ‘You don’t need to hang this out. I’ve told you a thousand times, Nonie, I could find my way home if I’d been blinded. We don’t have candles to waste on lighting the river for
the ducks.’

His wife pressed her lips together and pushed the pot back over the small fire, stirring it vigorously before ladling the thick, greenish-brown mess into a bowl.

‘Mam thinks if she doesn’t set it out something bad’ll happen to you and you’ll never come home.’ Royse set her spoon down with a grin.

‘And what if I do?’ Nonie said defensively. ‘That river’s a widow-maker. There’s many
a woman said goodbye to her husband at dawn and by evening he’s brought home a corpse or a helpless cripple.’ She glanced at Gunter’s wooden leg, as if that was all the proof she needed of the river’s malice. Gunter knew Nonie hadn’t intended the word ‘cripple’ for him. There were boatmen who’d lost both arms, or broken their backs and couldn’t move from their own beds. Nonie always protested fiercely
that her husband was twice as fit as men half his age with all their limbs. But the name stung, for others had spat it at him over the years and meant it.

Nonie set the bowl on the table with a savage thump. ‘I’ve been putting that lantern out since the night I first came to your bed and I’ll not stop till they carry me out in a winding sheet.’

Gunter caught her round the waist, pulled her into
a hug and kissed her. She pushed him off, pretending to be annoyed, but he could tell she was trying not to laugh.

‘Stop that. You’ll wake the bairn.’ She glanced over at her little son in the bed, but Col could sleep through a thunderstorm.

Gunter settled himself to eat. His wife handed him a chunk of coarse bread. What little wheat was in it had been mixed with dried beans and ground bulrush
roots. It fell apart as soon as he bit into it and he dumped the rest in the bowl, mixing it with the pottage to soften it. He stopped chewing suddenly and pulled a little fishbone from his mouth.

‘A perch,’ Nonie said. ‘Col caught it. Badgered me ’til I put it in the pot for you.’

‘Only a tiddler,’ Royse said.

‘Early for them to be rising. Rain must be flushing them out. Col did well to catch
it.’

‘Don’t encourage him,’ Nonie snapped. ‘I don’t like him going near the river when it’s up. If he falls in, like that little mite and his sister did a year back . . . I’ll never forget the look on their poor mam’s face. Half out of her mind, she was. I still see her sometimes searching along the riverbank for their bodies. There’s no one can convince her they’ll never be found now.’

She
crossed herself, to ward off such evil from her own children. ‘Besides, if the bailiff should catch him . . .’

‘Lad knows to be careful and he’s got to learn. We’ll need all the fish he can catch this year, way things are going.’

Royse exchanged a worried glance with her mother. ‘Will it be—’

‘Horses!’ Hankin sprang from the chair but his father grabbed him and pulled him back. Swiftly, Gunter
heaved the stout wooden plank across the door to brace it shut. They all stood rigid, listening intently. Iron horseshoes clattered against the stones on the narrow track, but the riders were moving slowly, cautiously, as well they might, for the night was a dark one.

Gunter glanced at Nonie. He could see the tension in her face. Who would be riding this way so late? None of their neighbours
owned horses, and merchants or monks would keep to the road, if their business was so urgent that they were forced to travel by night.

The hoofbeats came closer to the door, so close they could hear the creaking of the leather saddles. Gunter thought they were going to pass by. He prayed that they were. But then he heard the horses snort as their riders swung from the saddles, and the murmur
of men’s voices. There were two . . . maybe three.

As Gunter reached for his stave, he caught the look of alarm that flashed across the faces of his wife and daughter.

‘They could be robbers,’ Nonie whispered. ‘Same as battered Tom to death. For pity’s sake, don’t let them in, Gunter.’

‘Any man wealthy enough to own a horse wouldn’t trouble to steal from a cottage as poor as this,’ Gunter said,
but he took firmer grip on his stave.

Although they were expecting it, the loud rapping on the door made them jump.

‘Open up in the name of the King.’

‘Who’s out there?’ Gunter’s voice betrayed his fear.

‘The King’s commissioner. I’ve the King’s sergeants-at-arms with me. They’ve the power to arrest you if you refuse to yield to us.’

Gunter spun round on his wooden stump. Dropping the stave,
he crossed to the wall and pulled open a low wicket door in the thin partition between the cottage and the goat’s byre on the other side of the wall. He beckoned frantically to his daughter.

‘Out this way,’ he whispered. ‘Wait in the byre until you hear the men are inside the cottage, then keep low and run as fast as you can to the marsh. Hide until you hear me make the peewit’s call. Understand?’

Royse, terrified and bewildered, for once didn’t argue, but ducked obediently through the wicket. Nonie pushed Hankin towards the opening and made to grab the sleeping Col too, but Gunter stopped her. ‘Lads must stay.’

He fastened the wicket behind Royse, pushing a barrel across it to hide it. Nonie stared at him, evidently as frightened and confused as Royse. Gunter thought she was about to
argue, but before she could protest the thumping on the door redoubled.

‘Do you want us to break this door down?’

As if to demonstrate that they could do just that, someone pounded on the door with the hilt of a sword so hard that it trembled in its frame.

Hands sweating, Gunter struggled to lift the wooden brace from the sockets. He’d scarcely laid it aside before the door burst open and a
corpulent man strode into the tiny cottage, closely followed by two great hulks of men. One kicked the door shut.