Chapter Seven
The shock of hearing that name made her freeze. He was breathing beer into her face while looking searchingly at her, squinting a little in the dark. One of the masons here to make the floor, she realised.
‘I’m not Mary.’ She shook him off and began running towards the Priory.
‘Ah, I’d know you for sure, it’s Mary, yes,’ he shouted after her, then turned back into his corner.
Breathing fast, Linnet clung on to the rough stones of the Priory wall.
Should she leave the island? Not now, the tide was in, but tomorrow.
If she didn’t take much with her no one would come looking.
The Prior would be angry she’d not finished the prayer book but he’d find someone else to do it.
Her cloak though…? She couldn’t travel without it – she’d freeze.
And travel? Where could she go? This island had seemed so safe and so far away but now she wasn’t sure.
She had almost no money left from her trip here either, and the Prior was not going to pay her, with the work not finished.
She knew the man, Jack. He’d come out drinking with Guy and the others a few times, both in Ely and in York. How had he recognised her? What did he mean when he said Guy said she might be here? She felt her thoughts whirling around her head.
She’d first met Guy in a tavern, shortly after he had been rusticated from the university.
He was loudly declaiming how unfair this was, how his tutor had it in for him, how he was too clever for them, and calling for more ale.
She didn’t listen to what he was saying, she was thinking about taking the things he had scattered about him, carelessly.
She tested his attention the first time by coming up and clearing some of the mess on the table, sweeping away walnut shells and chicken bones from the food the men had eaten.
As she thought, they didn’t pause in their talk or drinking.
The second time she came up to the table, she took more mess, but also a fine stack of papers, only slightly marked in one corner by spilt ale, which she had quickly put away in her skirts.
But she must have paused too long because suddenly Guy had her wrist in his hand.
She froze, was this the moment she finally got caught?
‘I know what you’re up to, girl, coming back to the table like that.’ He was smiling at her, confident and showing off to the crowd. He pulled at her wrist until she was sitting next to him, half on his lap. His friends roared their approval while she kept thinking fast, what could she say?
‘What’s your name?’
‘Mary.’
It was the first that came to mind. Had she any idea it would be hers for nearly five years or so, she would have chosen something prettier, she sometimes thought.
‘So tell me, Mary, which of us fine men have caught your eye then, that you would keep coming back to the table and pretending to clear?’
She laughed in relief, and said, ‘Why you of course!’ It wasn’t entirely a lie, he was a handsome man, dark hair, good clothes, and he was lively.
After a few days when he told her he was going to scribe to earn himself a living, now that his parents had cut him off and the university had thrown him out, she was happy to help him, sharing her inks, showing him how to cut pens for the best hand.
It was a slow realisation that it was her doing the scribing and the work, and him spending the money, but even so, at the start she was happy to do it.
He flattered her about her hand, showed interest in her ink receipts, took her advice on how to get work for them.
That flattery was only ever when they were alone.
In company he took the compliments for her work with a smile, giving all the impression that she was his maid, his girl, his helper, and nothing more.
She didn’t care, she was living the life her father said she never could, earning a living by her pen. She sometimes thought of sending him a letter to tell him about her happiness, but was unsure where to send it, or even what name he might have been using.
It took less than two years for the shine to wear off, and for her to see Guy for what he was.
He always had to have the finest clothes, even if they didn’t have enough money for lodgings or even food sometimes.
He lied to their customers about how fast they could do the work, leaving her to scribe faster and more carelessly than she wanted to.
And his fine words, they had been the honey to trap her and were worth nothing.
He didn’t waste those on her any more, not now she was doing his work for him.
Even so, she was stuck with him, she felt, for where else would she go?
Jack, she remembered now, was a mason who often came by their home.
She’d never liked him, especially, not after that night at the tavern.
He’d been sitting close to her. She could smell the sweat that had dried on him earlier in the day, warming now by the fire.
He kept looking at her as if to try and find her place, unsure as to whether she was Guy’s girl or just his maid.
Sitting back a bit, Mary tried to breathe lightly, not wanting to take in the sour smell any more than she had to.
She almost missed the quick exchange of signs between Jack and Guy.
A slight gesture from Jack towards her, a shrug from Guy, a giving smile although that touch of steel underneath was there.
And then Jack’s hand was in her lap and feeling up her skirts as he pulled her closer.
Sweaty, warm, thick fingers pinching at her thighs and further up.
‘Go on then, give us a kiss, Mary!’
Without stopping to think, she pulled his hand away and in front of her face, blocking him, and biting down on it.
‘Ow! You bitch!’
Jack’s reaction stopped the other talk as the men turned around to look.
Guy laughed. ‘That’s Mary for you, she’s a wild cat at times!’ She wasn’t sure if he was pleased she’d fought back, or angry that she was showing him up.
Everyone else laughed, including Jack, although he was shaking his hand lightly, trying to take the sting out of it.
She was brought back to herself by a noise, a small whimpering noise carrying across the quiet courtyard.
No one was around so she pushed open the big heavy wooden door into the Priory Church and saw Isabelle.
The child was curled up on the cold floor on the north aisle, next to the rough edges where the new tiles were being laid.
She wasn’t asleep – her eyes were open and staring up at the stone roof.
Linnet could see her in the light from the moon coming through the big windows.
‘What in God’s name are you doing here, child?’ She couldn’t leave her here.
Isabelle sat up but kept looking up at the ceiling at the gilt stars painted there against the dark blue.
‘I killed Brother Oswyn.’
Her voice shook a little. She spoke with a mixture of pride, horror and fear.
For a moment, Linnet almost believed her. The child spoke with such conviction. Then she started to cry and the spell was broken.
‘What nonsense are you talking, Isabelle? Come sit next to me here and tell me what’s happening.’
Slowly the child unfolded herself and crept over to Linnet’s side. They sat on a hard wooden pew and she began to talk. It was a jumble of Father Oswyn this, Pol that, something about witches and then finally, sobbing, she admitted she’d told him to ‘drown hisself’ and then he had.
‘Start again, Isabelle, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘Pol was in the Father’s room and he got angry with him and with me. Pol had taken some of his papers, I think. He said Pol was my – my family.’
Family? She thought for a minute. ‘Familiar?’
‘Yes and that I was a witch and a witch’s brat and I should stay out of his things and I said if I’m a witch then I curse you and you can go drown and, and—’ She broke off into sobs again.
‘Oh, Isabelle. He just drowned. You didn’t curse him.
’ She hoped she was sounding comforting.
Should she hold the child? Sometimes she felt she’d missed some part of adult life, having no children despite her time with Guy, and not knowing a household.
She knew Ann regarded her as a useless woman, somehow getting away without that burden of house and child.
Still, she had to try. She made a cautious move towards her but Isabelle looked up and bristled slightly. No holding then.
‘But why did he drown hisself this time when he swam safe all the other times? There weren’t a storm or anything?’
It was a good question, one Linnet realised she had also been wondering about. She was surprised, now she thought about it, that neither Tom nor the Prior had mentioned this.
Anyway, it was late and they needed to leave the nave before the monks came in for their next psalms.
‘Come on, Isabelle, where do you sleep? Time to go back there, I think, and where’s your pet?’
Isabelle got to her feet, indignant. ‘He’s not a pet – he’s a raven. He’s hisself and no one else’s. We understand us is all.’
Like a familiar, Linnet thought wryly. She steered the child out of the western doorway not a minute too soon, and Isabelle ran off to the kitchen where she often slept in a corner.
The monks were nearby with their candles and chanting. Linnet could see Cassian amongst them, following close behind the Inspector. She noticed the other monks were leaving space around him, they already knew he would be watching them for his master.
Linnet was too late to leave the church now, she should have gone when Isabelle went, so she stepped back into a darker corner, away from the candles.
The few monks went behind the rood screen to start their prayers.
The Priory Church was only lit with what they needed for prayers as Oswyn kept a close eye on the numbers used.
Or someone else would be doing that now, she supposed.
Once the singing and the chanting were over, the monks filed back to the stairway and the dormitory.
She had never rid herself of the habit of stealing in where she shouldn’t be.
It had served her well as a child and since.
Stiff and cold, Linnet shifted, waiting for the moment when she could get to her bed, but as she was watching, she noticed two of the monks holding back.
One must be Godfreyd, the only monk tall enough to stand out amongst the others in the flickering candlelight.
He was blowing them out one by one. The other, round-bellied and smaller, Benedict, she thought, was helping him with the candles.
But he held onto one of them, and once all the other monks were gone, he and Godfreyd went up another stair to the choir and the triforium up above.
She watched the candlelight flickering but couldn’t see what they were doing. And suddenly the light went out.
Before she could stop herself, she ran across the floor of the church and began creeping up the same stairs.
In the dark, the steps were uneven but solid and she kept her hand on the wall, edging up slowly, wary of what she would find.
She had gone up a dozen or more steps when she heard noises in the alcove just above her.
She froze, alert to the sounds but couldn’t make out any words, just breathing and rustling.
A sudden cry made her jump, and realise the danger she was in, and she turned and went as fast down the stairs as she could, none the wiser about what Godfreyd and Benedict were doing up there, although she had an idea, and it didn’t surprise her.
She went back to her cell above one of the cellarer’s rooms, and Jack’s presence came flooding back into her mind.
Should she run? Or could she persuade him he was wrong.
She’d not changed her appearance but then she didn’t look anything special.
A dark plait, brown eyes, slight, tall but not if she bent her shoulders, then no one noticed that.
She was angry now. Why should she run again? How long would she have to run for?
She couldn’t sleep, thinking about Guy and their life together again.
They’d not lived together anywhere for long, moving on once they had exhausted his credit at a lodging house, flitting before the landlords got suspicious.
She had been so good at taking all her things, wiping a place clean of her presence in minutes, leaving nothing to say where they were going.
She thought her childhood of travelling had perhaps taught her not to feel too easy anywhere.
The road felt natural, and settling in a new place, more like home than a home would have been.
Guy had had a comfortable childhood, he liked good lodgings with good pallets and chairs, and was often tempted to try and take them with him when they left.
She would patiently explain yet again that it would be easier to travel light and the next town would also have a bed and a chair.
She didn’t bother pointing out that he would be chased for theft if he took furniture, a far more serious crime than skipping a week’s lodging fees.
So where had they been when they knew Jack?
Ely first, down in the eastern corner. They were in a small room in a house by the river, swans regularly bursting through the vegetable patch she’d tried to keep, nibbling at the young plants before they could take hold.
Then they’d met again in York later, when they’d fled the east, Jack there to work on the cathedral, she remembered.
The real question was, did he know about Warham and his men?
She’d been so careful when they came up with the scheme but had Guy?
Wary when sober, but a stream of hints and boasts when drunk, and he was sure to have got drunk with Jack.
She reassured herself though, Jack might know something about how she’d left Guy but surely he had no connection to Warham or his men.
She curled up around Tibet who had come in while she was thinking, and fell back asleep.
Her dreams were dark and full of water.