The Vanishing Witch (35 page)

He’d watched and listened for so many hours that he knew the
names of each person who lived in that house as they were shouted from open windows and called across the yard. Several times, he’d followed Robert, hoping to speak to him at the warehouse, but it had been impossible. None of Robert’s men would let him near the warehouse, thinking he was a beggar or a thief, and when he’d tried to waylay Robert in the street, the merchant had reacted as if he was
an assassin intending to cut his throat. Robert had bellowed for the watchmen and attracted so much attention that the wool-walker was forced to take to his heels for fear of being arrested.

He heard the courtyard gate open again and, to his relief, saw the mistress of the house come riding out on her palfrey. This was the moment he had been waiting for. She turned her mount away from him and
trotted towards the river.

Tenney stood in the open doorway, staring after Mistress Catlin. He was beginning to smell a bad odour around that woman. Master Robert was seldom at home during the day and was therefore unaware of just how often she went off on these jaunts. But it was a mystery to Tenney that he’d failed to sense something was afoot.

He shook his head impatiently. Maybe he was imagining
it. Mistress Edith had been a homebody and couldn’t abide riding, but not all women were like her. He was probably looking for trouble where was none. That was what came of listening to Beata, mithering on morning, noon and night about her distrust of Catlin. He was catching her strange fancies and all the saints in heaven knew she was full of those. When one woman took against another, there
was no reasoning with them. But Tenney had repeatedly warned Beata to say not a word about Catlin to Master Robert, if she valued her job. ‘Like my old mam used to say, see nowt, hear nowt and say nowt. Then they can hold nowt against you.’

But even though he tried to convince himself it was all in Beata’s head, he couldn’t entirely shake off his growing unease about Mistress Catlin. As for that
son of hers, he was not a man you’d ever want to walk alone with, or not without keeping a good grip on your purse and your knife.

Sighing, Tenney began pushing the heavy gate shut, but felt someone pushing against him on the other side. If he’d not been so distracted he would have reacted more swiftly and rammed the gate closed but, like a shadow, the dark figure had slipped through before he
fully realised what was happening.

The wool-walker stood in the courtyard, panting a little, having come within a whisker of being squashed between door and frame. But the last few years spent living by his wits had given him a nimbleness that usually only street-urchins possessed.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Tenney demanded. ‘You can’t come barging in here. You want alms, beg in the marketplace
with the rest.’

The man’s ill-matched clothes looked as if they had once belonged to men both bigger and smaller than himself, which indeed they had, for they had mostly been stolen from bushes where they’d been left to dry. A shirt here, a pair of breeches there, in the hope that the goodwives would think them blown away or snatched by dogs. But the sleeve of the right arm of his over-large
jerkin hung down at an odd angle and Tenney guessed the hand beneath was either missing or wizened and useless.

‘I’m not here to beg for alms,’ the wool-walker said. ‘I must speak with your master. I seek work . . . as a fuller.’

Tenney involuntarily took a step back. Fullers or wool-walkers spent all the day up to their knees in vats of rancid piss, treading the woollen cloth to thicken it.
It was foul work and they carried the stink of it with them, even when the day’s labour was over. In summer they carried their own cloud of flies, too, drawn by the lingering smell, although Tenney had to admit this man seemed somewhat fresher than most in his trade. He’d obviously not worked for some time. ‘If it’s work you’re after, you’ll have to see the steward . . .’

Tenney checked himself.
He kept forgetting there was no steward now, not since Jan’s drowning. He missed the lad, kept expecting him to stroll back in, ready with the latest joke from the quayside, and pretty bawdy most of them had been. He smiled ruefully, remembering. ‘They’ve no steward at present. You’ll need to speak to the overseer. Fulk, they call him. You’ll find him at the warehouse on the quayside – leastways,
that’s where he’s supposed to be, but if he’s not there, try any of the taverns by the Braytheforde. Between you and me, I’d start with the taverns, save yourself a bit of time and shoe-leather.’

‘It’s Master Robert I must speak with. Please, I beg you, tell him—’

‘Tell me what?’ Robert came out of the open back door and strode towards them. ‘What is he doing in here, Tenney? I thought you’d
have more sense than to let strangers in after that business of the bed being slashed.’

Tenney shuffled uneasily. If he said the man had forced his way in, Master Robert would think he was getting too old for the job, that he needed to employ someone younger and fitter. Better to let the master think he’d freely admitted the man.

‘He’s looking for work, Master Robert. Says he’s a fuller by trade.
Not many wanting that kind of work, these days. I thought you might be needing a skilled man. He’s certainly keen enough anyway,’ Tenney added, trying to put in a good word for the wool-walker who, judging by the sharp bones of his face and the dark hollows around his eyes, was surely in desperate need of some means to put food in that shrunken belly.

Robert’s eyes narrowed as he studied the
stranger. Then he took a hasty step backwards. ‘He’s no fuller! Look at his feet.’

Tenney stared down. The man was wearing leather sandals with thick wooden soles. His feet were filthy and the toenails long and black-rimmed, but they were no worse than those of any man who wore sandals in the dirty streets.

‘His feet would be bleached white and the nails eaten away from standing in piss all
day.’

The man shuffled, as if he was trying to bury his toes in the stone of the courtyard. ‘I’ve not had work these many months.’

‘You’ve not had work as a fuller at all. If the nails do grow back, they’re misshapen for life. And your eyes. If you were a fuller, they would be raw from the fumes. Why are you really here? Are you working for Matthew Johan? Do you think to do to me what those
Florentines did to my son?’

‘I’m no Florentine. You must hear me, Master Robert.’ The man took a step towards Robert. ‘I came to warn you.’

Robert’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Get him out! Get him out and bar the gate. Tenney!’ he yelled, backing towards the door of the house. ‘I told you to throw him out.’

‘You’re in grave danger,’ the man said desperately. ‘You must—’

But Tenney had seized
him by the back of the neck and was bundling him towards the street. The man twisted round, thrusting out his foot and jamming the wooden sole of his sandal in the gate. ‘If you care anything for your master, make him listen to reason before it’s too late. That woman he married is not what she pretends to be. Beg your master to come and find me. I’ll tell him everything.’

Tenney glanced behind
him. But Master Robert had retreated into the house and secured the door. He turned back to the wool-walker and lowered his voice. ‘I’m making no promises, mind, but supposing he does want to talk to you, where will he find you?’

‘Look for me at the church of St John the Poor,’ the man said. ‘But urge him to come soon or, before the summer is out, he’ll be lying alongside his wife and son in
that graveyard.’

Witches are unable to shed tears in the presence of judges.

‘What are you two whispering about?’ I said, coming up behind Adam and Leonia in the yard.

Adam jerked away from the girl as if I’d caught them out in some mischief, but Leonia glanced up, a look of annoyance in her face, which plainly said, how dare I, a mere servant, interrupt her? She was as arrogant as her mother,
not that Master Robert could see that. As far as he was concerned the girl pissed rosewater. It cut me to the quick to see the way he spoiled her, yet rarely spared so much as a kind word for his son, who’d lost mother and brother.

‘What’s that you got?’ I’d seen Adam push something hastily into Leonia’s hand. I’d not watched Jan grow up without learning that if a lad were concealing something,
it was bound to be something he shouldn’t have. Adam glanced at Leonia, but neither child answered. I didn’t like it. Adam had always been such an open, honest boy, but in the past few weeks he’d become sly and secretive. I tried not to think badly of him. What could you expect after all that poor boy had been through? But the less time he spent in that girl’s company, the easier my mind would
rest.

‘If school’s finished, your father’ll be expecting you at the warehouse. He’ll not be pleased if you’re late. He gave orders you were to go straight there.’

Adam immediately looked stricken and made towards the gate, but Leonia held him back.

‘Adam won’t be late.’ She gave me one of her knowing smiles, so cold it fair froze the breath in me. ‘Everyone was sent home early from his school
today, weren’t they, Adam? So he won’t be expected at the warehouse yet.’

‘Master Warner must be in a good humour to let you out early. He usually keeps you late. Courting again, is he?’

The schoolmaster was well known for being as peevish as a bear except when a young woman took his fancy. Then you’d think he was a lovelorn youth of fifteen, instead of the five-and-fifty he was. For a few brief
weeks when he was chasing her and showering her with gifts, he was as sunny and jovial as a beggar who’d found a gold piece. But it always ended the same way, for the girls he pursued were young, beautiful and far too wealthy for their fathers ever to consent to them wedding a schoolmaster. Before long Master Warner’s face would be as sour as a pickled herring again.

Now Adam looked at Leonia,
as if he were asking her permission to speak. Again, she answered for him: ‘Master Warner had a pain, didn’t he, Adam?’

‘You were there, were you, Leonia?’ I said tartly. ‘I didn’t know they’d started to admit girls to school. Who will they take as pupils next? Beggars and stray cats, I shouldn’t wonder.’

The look she gave me was so venomous it would have brought a bull to its knees, but I wasn’t
going to take any nonsense from Widow Catlin’s brat. ‘You’d best run along, Adam, because if your father hears the school was closed early, and he will, the way news spreads in this town, he’ll still want to know why you didn’t go to the warehouse at once.’

Adam turned towards the gate and Leonia followed as if she had every intention of walking with him.

‘Adam can find his way without your
help, Leonia. You stay here. Your mother may have let you go wandering about town on your own, like a tanner’s urchin, but you live in a respectable household now. Master Robert has a position in this city and he’ll not be best pleased if you disgrace him.’

That was her told. I didn’t wait to see if she would heed me but marched back to my kitchen.

I’d barely finished skinning and gutting a
brace of hares when there came rapping at the gate and as Tenney, as usual, was nowhere to be seen, it was left to me to wipe the blood and mess from my hands and unlock it. Master Edward, Catlin’s son, pushed his way in without so much as a by-your-leave, and strode towards the door as if he was family. He might have been Widow Catlin’s kin, but he was certainly none of Master Robert’s, as far as
I was concerned.

I’d never forgive him for making me out to be a fool in front of Master Robert. He and that mother of his had seen the bird’s skull as plain as I had. Widow Catlin herself had bundled it in a cloth and taken it away, though God alone knows where she threw it. After she denied she’d seen it, I went looking for the skull to prove to the master I wasn’t going mad, but I couldn’t
find any trace of it on the midden. Even Tenney thought I’d imagined it for, as he said, what cause would they have to tell the master about the slashing, but pretend they’d not seen the curse? It made no sense. I could no more explain it than him, but I knew one thing for certain: from now on, I wouldn’t turn my back on that woman or her brats for fear of getting a knife in it.

When Master Robert
was at the warehouse, Edward was usually to be found in the solar with his mother, plotting, no doubt, how to get his hands deeper into the master’s coffers. In the evenings, he took himself to the tavern and you can be sure it wasn’t his own money he was spending. I even saw Catlin give Edward that lovely little rosebud necklace, the one Master Robert had given Leonia. I said nothing. It was
no concern of mine if the brat lost it. The master should never have given anything so fine to a child, and one who was not even his own. But what kind of mother steals a necklace from her daughter and gives it to her son to drink away? Master Robert was being robbed under his very nose only he couldn’t see it.

Once I’d seen Adam off to the warehouse and had set all the pots simmering for dinner,
I went into the great hall to collect the pewter trenchers and goblets to rinse. Although Tenney had cleaned them the night before, all the casements were flung wide in the heat and the dust had settled on everything. Edward and Catlin were up in the solar. I could hear them murmuring and might have been tempted to creep up and listen, except that Leonia was sitting on the window seat in the
great hall. I was gratified to see she had minded me and not followed Adam.

She didn’t look up as I came in, deeply absorbed in some game that lay beside her on the seat. A first I thought she was playing knuckle bones for some bones were arranged in a circle on the seat, but she was not tossing them. Instead her hands were cupped around something. Curious, I moved closer. Still, she ignored
me. There were not just bones in the circle, but a shrivelled brown apple core, a piece of dry bread with a bite out of it, and several other bits of rubbish that she might have fished out of the midden.

Leonia opened her hands and a large black spider ran out between her fingers straight towards one of the bones. As soon as it had scuttled across it, Leonia, pouncing as swiftly as a cat, caught
it again and placed it back in the centre of the circle. She let it escape once more and I watched it run towards a piece of broken comb. I suddenly realised it was my own comb. I’d accidentally snapped it in two only the week before and had thrown it away.