Company of Liars (11 page)

One of the more sober village women took pity on her. ‘There, there, lay still, my duck, and it'll soon be over,’ she crooned, catching the bride's wrists and pinning them gently but firmly against the cross behind her head.

‘Is that what she says to you?’ one of the men called out to the woman's husband. The crowd roared with laughter.

‘Go on, my son; give her all you've got. We're all counting on you, so see you make a good job of it.’

The bridegroom stared round, mouth hanging open, unable to believe that he was at last being given permission to do to a woman what had always been forbidden him. How many girls had he longed to do this to? Had he tried several times when he was younger and been repulsed? Perhaps he'd been given a sound thrashing into the bargain by the girls' brothers or his own father. Now everyone in the village was urging him to do it. This might be a dream; he might wake up soon.

After it was all over, the women helped the bride to a dark corner and pressed her hands round a beaker of hot spiced ale.

‘There, there, my duck, at least you didn't have to look at him. Believe me, with a husband like mine, there's many a night when I wish I was blind.’

They left her crouching on the ground under the graveyard wall. She pressed her back hard against the sharp flinty stones as if pain was the only certainty she could trust in
and then she wept. She wept silently, as she did everything; her eyes were sightless, but they could still make tears.

She could console herself with the wedding gifts from the village though – a few pots and pans, an armful of rushlights, some blankets and a pallet, hens and a cockerel, a bag or two of flour and a single-roomed hut which had once been used to store salt, so at least it was dry and had a good stout door. It was a palace compared to what she had owned up until that morning and since the whole community had pitched in she was better set up than many a village girl could expect to be when she wed.

So what if she had no choice in her bridegroom? In that, she was no different from any highborn lady in the land, even a merchant's daughter. For if land, trade or money is entailed, then marriage is simply a business transaction to be negotiated by the parents. Many a bride on her wedding night has passed from girl to woman with her eyes tightly shut and her teeth clenched, praying it will soon be over. No, all things considered, you could argue that the crippled bride had been treated no worse than any royal princess. But then, the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you.

I had not yet given the bride a wedding gift myself. I took out of my scrip a little wisp of stiff coarse hair bound up with a white thread and placed it in her lap. She touched it tentatively, a puzzled expression on her face.

‘A wedding gift for you, a relic. A few hairs from St Uncumber's beard. You know of St Uncumber?’

She slowly shook her head.

‘Her real name was Wilgefortis. She was a princess of Portugal whose father tried to force her to marry the King of Sicily, but she'd taken a vow to remain a virgin, so she prayed that the Blessed Virgin would make her unattractive
to her betrothed and her prayers were answered with a beard that sprouted on her face. The King of Sicily withdrew in horror when he saw it and immediately called off the wedding. But the princess didn't have to live long with her beard, for her father, in a rage, had her crucified. Now women pray to her to be unencumbered from their husbands or any burden they bear. You could use this to pray for that too… if you wished.’

As I turned to go, she pressed her two hands tightly against the relic, the tears coursing once more down her hollow cheeks. A wisp of hair is not much to pin your hopes upon, but sometimes a wisp is all the hope you can give and it can be enough.

A woman standing near me settled herself back on to a bench and offered a flagon to her neighbour. ‘If she doesn't get a bairn from this night's work, it won't be her husband's fault. Did you see him? He was in there quicker than a ferret down a rabbit hole.’

Her friend took a deep swig from the flagon. Cider trickled down her chin and she wiped it with the back of her hand. ‘Never mind a bairn. I didn't part with a good cooking pot just to bring another useless cripple into this world. I want to know if it's done the trick and saved us from the pestilence.’

‘If this doesn't, nothing will. That rune reader's been right about everything else. Her runes said the musicians would come to bless the wedding and it was her runes picked out the cripples to wed, so it's bound to work if the runes chose them.’

‘Did you say a rune reader?’ I blurted out before I could stop myself.

The two women stared at me, somewhat put out at having a stranger interrupt their gossip. Finally one said grudgingly:
‘Aye, no one in the village could agree who they should choose as bride and groom, let's face it, it's not as if we've a shortage of cripples to pick from, so they asked the rune reader to cast the runes to find the lucky couple.’

‘Is she here, the rune reader?’

The woman shook her head. ‘If you want your fortune read, you're too late. She was a traveller same as you, just passing through, left a week or more ago.’

‘Aye,’ the other woman joined in. ‘Queer thing she was. Those eyes of hers, give you the shivers just to look at them. It wouldn't surprise me if she was one of the faerie folk; she certainly had the gift.’

I did not ask more. I didn't want to know. There were many diviners working the roads, most of them fey. They deliberately try to look as if they might be descended from faerie folk; it impresses the customers, convinces them the diviner has second sight. There was no reason in the world why the rune reader who came through here should be Narigorm, and even if it was, why should she not have taken this road? Anyone with any sense was heading north. And if it was her, then it meant she was at least a week ahead of us. She was long gone. It was almost a relief to believe that. If she was ahead of us, she couldn't possibly be following me. Her message had been a simple greeting, nothing more, nothing more sinister than that.

I suddenly felt a great weariness. The revels were still continuing, but I'd had enough. The promise of a dry bed, after so many nights sleeping rough, was more tempting than ale or food. I began to pick my way through the drinkers towards the inn. Osmond had already taken Adela back there. He'd seemed troubled all evening. He had taken Adela to sit as far away from the bridal table as he could get, and several times I'd caught him studying her, looking
down at her swollen belly with a deep and anxious frown. I began to fear that something was amiss with her. Perhaps she'd complained of pain, but if she had, she showed no signs of it now, eating with relish everything that was offered to her and laughing with the villagers around her. Osmond in contrast had hardly eaten a thing and as soon as the meal was ended, he had led Adela away, though she clearly would have liked to stay. Maybe he was jealous of other men speaking to her, but he'd never shown any sign of that before.

I couldn't see any of the others except for Zophiel who was talking low and earnestly to a big, square-headed youth. Whatever Zophiel said evidently didn't please the young man, for he broke away and strode across to the girl in the yellow kirtle who was now in the company of several lads and girls, laughing and drinking. He grabbed her arm, none too gently, and began to drag her away. The girl tried to wrest herself out of his grasp.

I glanced across at Zophiel. He had retreated to safety and was lounging against the wall, watching the proceedings with amusement. I wondered what exactly he had said to the girl's boyfriend or brother, whichever Square-head was, to make him so annoyed with her. Whatever it was, I was certain Zophiel had baited him deliberately. Perhaps Zophiel had not been as indifferent about the girl walking away as he had pretended to be.

Sensing trouble, a group of about a dozen lads moved nearer, watching with evident interest. I spotted Jofre among them. His face was flushed and he was laughing with two of the young men beside him and ignoring a baby-faced girl who was entwining her arms about him, trying in vain to get him to take notice of her. He swayed, pulled off balance by the weight of the girl hanging on his arm. It was hard to
tell just how drunk he was from a distance, but he was not sober, that was certain.

Square-head was shouting at the girl in the yellow kirtle now and she was bawling back. She broke free from him and ran behind one of the other lads for protection, clinging on to him. Square-head drew back his fist and punched her protector hard on the nose. He staggered backwards, taking the girl down with him as he fell. All the lads standing around took this as their signal and entered the fray with a will. Fists and flagons flew through the air.

I heard a familiar roar above the screams and shouts.

‘No, Jofre, your hands!
Faccia attenzione!
’

But it was too late; Jofre had pushed forward with the rest and was already lost among the flailing fists and kicking feet.

Bodies crashed down upon benches, tables were overturned and pots came clattering to the ground. Suddenly the screams redoubled. A smashed lantern had sent a snake of flame slithering up the ribbons and dried grain stalks decorating one of the poles and set fire to the canopy. The fire took hold rapidly, sending orange flames leaping into the night. Fragments of blazing cloth and dry grain stalks floated up into the black sky, hovering menacingly over the thatches of the nearby cottages and wooden byres. The lads were too engrossed in the fight even to notice, but those villagers still sober enough to realize the danger came running over, trying to push the wrestling lads aside and pull the blazing canopy to the ground. Others flung the food from dishes and pots, using them to scoop water from the nearby horse trough to throw over the blaze.

The fire was finally doused. Fortunately, everything was so wet from the months of rain that the thatches on the cottages were not even scorched. The fight was extinguished
too. Enough icy water had landed on the combatants to separate those who had not already been knocked out. One by one, the groaning lads were led or dragged away by scolding mothers, wives or girlfriends, their eyes and lips swelling rapidly. It was, you might say, a typical end to a wedding.

Jofre's exit was, if anything, more ignominious. He had thrown a couple of punches, but he was no street fighter. He'd done more damage to himself than his opponents and a vicious punch in his stomach finished him. Rodrigo found him winded and gasping, rolled in a ball, trying to protect his face from the trampling feet around him. His right hand was already purple and swelling. He would not be playing that night or for many nights to come.

6. St John Shorne's Shrine

In early October of that year, amid a cacophony of barking dogs and the blasting horns and raucous cheering of the pilgrims, we finally trundled into North Marston, the home of St John Shorne. We arrived on St Faith's Day, an auspicious day, even though that year there were few griddled Faith cakes on sale, for what little mildewed grain had been salvaged from the rain-sodden fields was already running out. We, like all the travellers arriving that day, gave thanks to St Faith, patron of pilgrims, for a safe conclusion to our journey. And, for once, even I lit a candle in sincere and heart-felt gratitude to her, for never was I more thankful to see a town. No more heaving the wagon out of water-filled ruts fifty times a day. No more trudging through mud and wading through puddles. No more sleeping in wet clothes. We would spend our nights warm and dry until the winter frosts came, bringing an end to the rain and with it, as everyone prayed fervently, an end to the pestilence.

But I, more than anyone, should have remembered that St Faith is also the patron saint of prisoners. I should have taken warning from that and kept on walking. We should never have entered that town.

The shrine of Johannes de Schorne, or John Shorne, as
local people call him, was even busier than I had anticipated. In those early months of the pestilence, shrines flourished. Pilgrimages to the continent were impossible, so those lesser saints in England, whose holy sites had been somewhat neglected in favour of the more fashionable shrines abroad, suddenly found the faithful and the not-so-faithful crowding to them. The waters of St John's well, which tasted strongly of iron, were sworn to be a guaranteed cure for colds and fevers, and though the pestilence was not a common cold, it was certainly a fever, so the crowds teeming around North Marston were more numerous than before. They drank the water to ward off the pestilence and took flasks of it away to drink in their sickbeds in case they did fall prey to it. I too stowed a few flasks in my pack. It always pays to restock whenever the opportunity arises.

The inns and taverns along the road and in the village itself had multiplied like loaves and fishes to feed and shelter the crowds of pilgrims who came to drink the waters of the holy well. The innkeepers had naturally raised their prices extortionately, but we managed to find warm beds in a shabby, but tolerably clean, inn. Zophiel was able to beat the surly innkeeper down a little in price, persuading him that we were there for the winter and that Rodrigo and Jofre would entertain his customers. Not that Zophiel was planning to spend the winter in North Marston, as I soon discovered.