The Witch's Brat Read online

  The man said something, and it had the sound of a question, but the words could not make sense through the high white singing in his head. The man tried again, louder; but still the words could not get through. Lovel crouched on the ground and shook his head. The world had begun going round and round. He heard the man curse, and felt himself picked up in a pair of very strong arms; and had just time to notice that the man had the same warm thick smell of pigs, before the whirling and singing in his head turned into a kind of spinning funnel, and he was sucked down into it, faster and faster into the dark.

  The next thing he knew was the warm, red flame-flicker of the fire and the smell of pigs all round him. He lay still, blinking at the flames, while gradually other things began to take shape; the swineherd himself squatting on his heels and tending something in a pannikin among the hot fringes of the fire; the dogs, no longer looking at all like wolves, lying one on either side of him with their long frilled tongues hanging out of their mouths; and beyond them among the tree trunks, the humped dark shapes of sleeping pigs.

  He moved a little, carefully, so as not to set the world spinning again, and the man looked round. ‘Better, eh:?’

  Lovel nodded. He was not afraid of this man.

  ‘Hungry, too, I daresay.’

  Lovel thought about this doubtfully for a few moments, then nodded again.

  The swineherd looked at him more closely. ‘Not dumb are you, as well as all the rest?’

  Lovel just stopped himself from shaking his head.

  ‘No – I – I –’ His tongue felt heavy as though it were made of wood. ‘Not dumb.’

  ‘On the run, are you?’ the man said shrewdly after a few moments.

  ‘No, I got – lost.’

  The swineherd ignored this. ‘Been on the run some time by the looks of you. ’Tisn’t no good, you know, better go back to your Manor and take your punishment, whatever it is.’

  ‘No!’ Lovel dragged himself into a sitting position, the world slipping and swimming about him. ‘And you can’t make me; I won’t tell you where it is!’

  ‘Well now, we’ll see about that later,’ said the swineherd, and took the pannikin off the fire and poured some of the thick, lumpy stirabout into a wooden bowl and pushed it at Lovel. ‘Get that inside you, and you can sleep here by the fire tonight, anyways.’

  Lovel supped the warm stirabout that tasted, as everything smelled in these parts, of pigs; and lay down again under the old bit of sack that the swineherd spread over him.

  At first he slept deep and dark, but as the night wore on he began to toss and turn and wake up more and more often, sometimes very hot and sometimes shivering with cold, and sometimes both together. And when morning came and pigs and dogs and swineherd roused all together, the queer feeling that everything was a dream had come back more strongly than ever, so that Lovel was not sure if he was really there at all.

  The Swineherd was most put out. ‘Here’s a fine tangle!’ he grumbled. ‘I was going to let you go – and a fool I’d have been I know – and tell anyone as asked that I hadn’t seen nobody pass this way; but you’re in no state to go a-roaming round the forest dropping dead all over the place, and that’s flat.’

  Lovel said nothing. It was hard to think straight, in his dream, let alone argue.

  ‘Well, there’s nowt for it but I’ll have to get you back to the Abbey for the Holy Fathers to look after,’ said the swineherd. ‘And the sooner the better.’ He made sure that the fire was out, and spoke to the dogs as though they were Christians, bidding them look after the swine, who had already scattered and begun their daylong snuffing and rooting after acorns, and keep them from straying before he got back, for if he found one missing he’d have the tails off them. Then he turned back to Lovel, ‘Come on, up with you now – can you walk?’

  Lovel could, but only just, because the forest floor with its soft dark covering of leaf-mould felt as though it was made of mist under his feet.

  ‘Hold up, Hobgoblin,’ said the swineherd and grabbed him by the arm, not unkindly.

  Stumbling along with the swineherd’s grip crushing his arm, Lovel was vaguely aware that they had left the trees and then that they were following a driftway like the one that led between the outfields of his old village, but not so steep, and made of mud instead of wet chalk. But almost at once his legs folded under him and he stumbled and fell; and the swineherd grunted like one of his own pigs, and picked him up. ‘Ah well, ’twill be quicker to carry you in the long run, I reckon, and you don’t weight no more than a ’t’Anthony’s piglet.’

  Lovel shut his eyes, somehow things were better with his eyes shut, now that he didn’t have to look where he was going; and for a while there was nothing but swimming darkness and the jog-jog-jog of being carried. When he opened his eyes again, the swineherd was carrying him in through a gateway with an arched roof, and inside it there were tall buildings – Lovel had never seen such tall buildings, especially a tower in their midst that soared up and up as though to take the sky on its strong shoulders. A bell rang out from the tall tower, and the bright echoes of it swooped and darted round inside his head like swallows. And then there were men in black habits, and one of them with a bleak face was asking him questions. The man’s voice was dry and brittle like dead sticks, but Lovel could not understand what he said for the bell-notes swooping round in his head; and at last the man said something impatiently to another and went away.

  And then there were roof beams between him and the sky, and lying down, and being covered by a rug, and some kind of bitter broth in a bowl. And then there was nothing but the dream for a long time.

  3

  New Minster

  ONE MORNING, LOVEL woke up with his head feeling quite clear again, though he was so weak that he could hardly turn it on the rustling, straw-filled pillow, to look round him and see where he was.

  He was in a long narrow room like a hall, with limewashed walls and high windows, and more pallet beds like the one he lay on ranged down the length of it; but all the others were empty. And opening from the long room, half-way down, was a little chapel with candles glimmering in the morning light, before an altar and the green and crimson and dim-gold picture of a saint.

  A man in the black habit of a Benedictine monk came out from the little glowing chapel and walked towards him. Not the bleak-faced man he had seen before, but a much younger one who seemed to have come often into his dream; small and plump, and pink as a campion, with a hopeful expression, and a fringe of carrot-red curls round his head.

  He stooped over Lovel, and felt his forehead, and nodded. ‘Ah now, this is better! Much better! This is much, much, much better!’ he said in a quick chirping voice. ‘No fever at all. God’s greeting to you, my child, now that you are back with us again.’

  But Lovel was bewildered by his strange surroundings and still confused from the long tangled days and nights of his dream, and out of all this, he caught at only one word, because it was a word that terrified him. ‘Back? Please no! Don’t send me back! I won’t go back, I can’t!’ He tried to sit up, but he was too weak and fell on to the pillow again.

  ‘No one is sending you back,’ said the little plump kindly monk. ‘No, no, no, of course not! Now lie still, and you shall have some gruel, and then you will sleep, and by God’s grace you will wake up quite strong again. Yes, yes, strong enough to push houses over.’

  And the sudden fear that had leapt up in Lovel sank down again and crept away to where it came from. He was almost asleep when the little monk came back with the gruel; but it smelled so good, hot and milky and as though there was honey in it, that suddenly the soft warm water came into his mouth and he knew that he was hungry. He was just thinking about dragging his eyes open and waking up when he realized that somebody else was standing at the foot of the bed and looking at him.

  He had learned that he need not be afraid of the swineherd, nor of the little monk. But of all other men and women and children he was still very much afraid. They we
re the Throwers of Stones, the Hunt on his trail. He was wide awake on the instant. But he lay quite still, and kept his eyes shut, because he couldn’t escape and so shamming sleep seemed the best thing to do.

  ‘Well now, if he isn’t asleep again!’ chirped the little monk softly. ‘Poor child, poor child. . . . I daresay sleep will do him even more good than gruel at this stage.’

  The other man spoke consideringly; and at once Lovel knew the dry, brittle voice. ‘It was convenient that he talked so freely in his fever. Otherwise if he is as frightened as you say, he would probably have refused to tell us where he came from at all, and I imagine we should have had some difficulty in tracing his Manor.’

  Under the blanket and in the dark behind his closed eyes, Lovel stopped breathing. He was not just wary and shamming sleep now, he was cold with terror, frozen like some small defenceless animal when the shadow of the hawk hangs overhead. If they knew where he came from, they could send him back. He was a villein, bound to the land, not even free to run away – and he was trapped!

  Then his own little fat monk said, ‘Brother Eustace, you are sure there is no question of sending him back?’

  ‘My dear Brother Peter.’ The other man sounded more brittle than ever with impatience. ‘I had it from the Father Abbot himself. Sir Richard does not want him back – he’s as good as useless, after all, and the rest of the Manor villeins, it seems, are convinced he has the Evil Eye, so he would really be more trouble than he’s worth. He confides the boy into our hands.’ Then with a burst of irritation, ‘It is truly wonderful how the world looks on every House of God as a convenient cupboard in which to stow their lame and witless safely out of the way.’

  ‘Don’t! Please don’t, Brother Eustace! I cannot – I really cannot bear to hear you pretending to be so heartless—’

  Brother Eustace sighed. ‘For an Infirmarer, as for any physician, there are two ways. One is to bleed a little of your own life away with every sick soul who passes through your hands – that will be your way, when you are Infirmarer after me. The other is to do all that may be done for the sick; but stand well back while doing it. That way you don’t break your heart. That is my way, Brother Peter, and I really think the sick recover just as well and as often for me as they do for you.’ His voice sounded as though he was turning away. ‘It is no use leaving that gruel, it will only get cold. Bring him some more later.’

  ‘Gruel – yes, yes of course; you’re perfectly right,’ Brother Peter said absently. ‘But as to the rest – I don’t believe God would agree with you – I know you think I’m very foolish but I really don’t—’

  Lovel lay still and listened to the scuff of their sandals and Brother Peter’s unhappy chirps of protest dying away into the distance.

  He was no longer afraid, only filled with a cold grey misery. A desolation that seemed to fill all the world and leave nothing over.

  And he was still very hungry, and wanted the gruel with honey in it that they had taken away.

  So Lovel stayed on at the Minster.

  It was the great Minster that had once had its home within the walls of the Royal City of Winchester; until the Father Abbot and the monks and something called the Foundation, which, he learned, was really the Minster much more than were the old Monastery buildings and the old church, had moved a mile outside the city, to the fine new buildings that were not quite finished even yet. People called it the New Minster – but then they always had, even when it was still inside the city walls. So as Brother Peter said when he explained all this to Lovel, there was nothing new in that.

  The life of the place folded itself round him, until sometimes as the winter went by, it was hard to believe he had ever known any other life. Only that he still dreamed sometimes at night of faces that were all eyes and open mouths, crowding in on him, and stones whistling round his ears.

  He slept in the long garret above the storerooms, where the rest of the Monastery’s inside servants slept; and every morning he went with them and the farm people to the Mass that was held especially for them between the Service of Prime and the monks’ breakfast. It was never decided whether he was one of the Abbot’s servants, or belonged to the bakehouse or the stables, the garden, the brewhouse, or the kitchen. Nothing about him was ever quite decided; so he had no particular place of his own in the life of the Minster. But he got used to it, and used to answering shouts from all the rest. ‘Hi, you! Come and turn the spit!’ ‘Carry out the pig-swill, Humpy.’ ‘Go and find that good-for-nothing Jehan and tell him I want him!’

  For the most part, his world was the great outer court, round which were ranged the Monastery workshops and storehouses, stables and kitchens, and guest-lodgings. The Monastery had many guests, for the road from London that passed the gatehouse was always busy with people coming and going to Winchester, especially when the King held Court there, or to the great seaport town of Southampton a dozen miles beyond. Merchants and knights, seamen and beggars, strolling ballad-sellers, pilgrims on their way to Rome or back.

  The builders were still at work there too, enlarging the stables; and on saints’ days the people from all the country round flocked into church. And often people would come – Saxons for the most part, but sometimes one speaking the Norman French that all men spoke in Court and castle – to visit the Minster’s chief-most treasure, the tomb before the High Altar where, under a plain slab of Purbeck stone carved with a cross and the two words ALFREDUS REX, King Alfred lay with his battles all behind him.

  So what with one thing and another, the hustle and bustle in the outer court went on all the daylight hours, till sometimes Lovel’s head fairly spun with it.

  But beyond the high doors into the cloisters, where he seldom went, it was so quiet that the scuff of a monk’s sandalled feet sounded like an interruption, and the Brethren passed each other in silence, their hands hidden in their sleeves and their eyes cast down. Only from the North Cloister would come the drone of the novices repeating their lessons.

  To Lovel, going through that door from the outer court was like going from one world into another. But high over both worlds, the bell would ring for Matins or Lauds, Vespers or Prime; the round bronze sound of it like a stone dropped into a pool, the widening ripples humming and thrumming away till they were lost in the silence again; and the Plainsong would echo to and fro in the deep Gregorian chant, among the high, empty spaces of the Minster church that had doors opening into both worlds because it belonged to both.

  One evening just after Candlemas, when the King and his Court were at Winchester, a great gale blew up, driving the stinging sleet before it. In the firelit Monastery kitchen one of the cooks, pounding fennel in a mortar to flavour next day’s fish said, ‘Heaven have pity on any traveller abroad tonight!’ And the very moment after he had said it, there was a lull in the booming wind, and they all heard the sound of horses’ hooves ringing hollow under the arch of the gatehouse. Then the wind swooped back, smothering all sounds from outside.

  The servants looked at each other in the red light of fire and torches. ‘Ours, or the Hospitaller’s?’ somebody said; for the pilgrims and poorest travellers were lodged in the big bare hospice next to the gatehouse, where Brother Dominic the Hospitaller looked after them, while the knights and merchants were housed in the guest-chambers and looked after by the Abbot’s servants; and the great lords were entertained by the Abbot himself, in his own Lodging.

  A little later the Abbot’s steward came through the door from the Lodging, and looked around at the cooks and scullions and table servers, all busily at work under the Master Cook’s watchful eye. ‘Take lights, and wood for a fire, up to the Nazareth Chamber; it is the least draughty of the guest-quarters in this wind; food also when it is ready, the best we can provide. The storm has blown us a guest.’

  When he had gone, the Master Cook said, ‘And not one his High and Mightiness relishes much, by the look on his face. Sour as verjuice!’ He looked round to see who was least busy at the moment, and his eye f
ell on Lovel, who had just come in from the brewhouse with the big jug of ale he had been sent to fetch and was waiting to be told what to do next.

  ‘Hi, you! Humpy, go and fetch some wood and take it up to the Nazareth Chamber; and mind you take dry logs, not ones from the pile that’s still green, as you did last time!’

  Lovel ducked out again into the wild night, where the wind swooped across the great courtyard like a live thing. It was dusk already, and the high tower of the Minster church had lost itself in the driving sleet. A riding horse and an unloaded baggage pony were being led into the stable as he made for the woodstore; and in the light of the shielded stable lantern he saw that the horse was a good one, red as a chestnut, and moving like a courser, the kind, he had learned since he came to the Minster, that a knight rode when travelling.

  The wide thatched eaves of the woodstore, and the wattle work sheathing half its open side, kept out most of the sleet, and he found the stack of dry logs, and spread the big sacking carry-cloth on the ground and dumped as many logs on to it as he could possibly carry, then gathered up the ends and started back with them.

  Lugging the heavy bundle of logs across the forecourt, he saw the torchlight in the window of the Nazareth Chamber. The Nazareth Chamber and the Abbot’s Lodging had real glass in their windows, like the church only not coloured; so the shutters did not have to be closed to keep the wind out. Lovel wondered who was in there – a rich merchant with embroidered silks from Byzantium? A knight in rain-rusted mail, homing from a war in foreign parts?

  In the entrance to the guest-lodging, Jehan, the oldest and largest of the scullions, met him and grabbed the bundle of logs. ‘Those won’t be enough, you mooncalf! Go and get some more.’

  Lovel went back across the courtyard. In the lantern lit stable the horse was being rubbed down while the baggage pony stood waiting his turn; and he checked on his way to the woodstore and stood looking in. Harding, the old man-at-arms who saw to the Monastery’s horses, was a friend of his, and so was Valiant, his big mongrel dog. Valiant came padding across now to poke a welcoming muzzle into Lovel’s hand, and Harding looked round from his task and grinned. ‘He’s a beauty, isn’t he?’