The Arrows of Mercy

By Jill MacLean

The year is 1348. Haunted by the blood on his hands, an archer named Edmund returns home from the French wars to a life of serfdom.
His brutal elder brother doesn't want a hero of Crécy on his doorstep. The woman he loves yearns for a wider world, the ambitious wise-woman challenges him in ways he deplores, and an abused servant-girl is a thorn to his flesh. The priest denounces his mercy killings. Yet, as the days pass, Edmund is impelled to fight for the impossible: love and redemption.
Then plague arrives in the village and everything changes.

"...MacLean's grasp of the setting is remarkable, vividly depicting a place beleaguered by famine, disease, and armed conflict."
-Kirkus Reviews

"...Richly imagined and compellingly realized, The Arrows of Mercy draws the reader into a story of the past that is imbued with the urgency and immediacy of our own time."
- Anne Simpson, award-winning author of Speechless

"...Gripping, immersive, and penned with wisdom and a fiery prescience, The Arrows of Mercy is a story of human desire that pushes the boundaries of language to make a powerful statement on the passions and impulses that shape morality itself. A story for the ages."
-Carol Bruneau, award-winning author of Brighten the Corner Where You Are

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Feb 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9780228887348

Jill MacLean

Jill MacLean's five novels for middle-graders and young adults won several awards and received numerous nominations, four of them international.Wanting a new challenge – and an adult audience – she delved into her abiding fascination with medieval England. She was born in Berkshire, the setting for The Arrows of Mercy, and revisiting it, in reality in the 21st century and in imagination in the 14th, has given her much pleasure. An avid gardener, reader and canoeist, she lives in Nova Scotia near her family.

Book preview

Prologue

Dover, August 1348

The faraway coast of a country he never wants to set foot on again is hidden now by a stone granary. Edmund picks up his pace. He’s behind-hand and if he’s late he’ll miss supper, meagre fare, the prior a clutch-purse. He rushes around the corner into the shadow of a timbered house, sees the bulk of a man’s back in his path and runs full-tilt into it, grunting at the impact.

Hulking shoulders, thick neck, a pelt of dark hair. Bart. Here?

Panic claws his throat.

The man turns around. A stranger, who stinks of sweat and piss-soaked hides. His red-rimmed eyes, startled, rest on Edmund’s scarred face. You been in the wars, sonny.

Normandy, Edmund mutters, his heart rattling in his chest.

Was you at Crécy? Edmund nods. Saved us from them Frenchies burnin’ our houses and stealin’ our women, didn’ you. God’s blessing.

He shambles down the lane towards the tannery at Stembrook. Edmund watches him, forgetting he’s in a hurry. He was indeed one of the thousands of archers who slaughtered French knights on the slopes of Crécy, though he doubts he was as frightened then as an instant ago, waiting for Bart’s rage to be unleashed for an ill-judged collision. Two years since his conscription into the king’s army and him shrunk to a helpless little-un in fear of a beating.

Had it not been for Bart, wouldn’t he have left Maison Dieu months ago, as soon as he’d learned to walk again and his face had healed as much as it ever would?

Walking faster, he leaves the shadows of the houses. A portent, he thinks fiercely. Past time he goes home to confront Bart. Bart, his brother. Brother or half-brother? What difference. He, Edmund, is a grown man, a seasoned soldier who learned many a dirty trick in the army and isn’t afraid to use them, he’ll be a match for Bart now.

Home, a word sharp as verjuice. Home means Sir Roger de Mausley, Flintbourne’s lord, who, depending on his humour, will charge him chevage for his long absence or throw him in the stone gaol under the manor. Home means Mam, once widowed, once shamed, mother of two sons; Ralph, the vill’s smith, who befriended a starveling boy; and – his pulse quickens – Juliana, whose name conjures the delicacy of primroses in spring.

He’d begged her to wait for him before he left.

Home means unrelenting work and constant worry about the weather. Home means walking beside the river where swallows dart, willows dip and sway in the breeze, and the brown trout jump.

Home means Bart, terror and tyrant of his boyhood.

Dagger

He should piss in the ditch.

Herb Robert, blue-men and starflowers are in bloom on the other side of the muddy, stagnant water, the trees speckled with late sunlight, and how long is it since he let himself wander for the pleasure of it? He can easily catch up with the motley group of travellers he’s been trailing as a safeguard on the open road, and outlaws and vagabonds are scarce enough in these woods.

Edmund leaps the ditch.

The flowers cheer him and a tangle of brambles and holly soon hides him from the road. He pushes his hood back. Rather than rejoin the travellers, he’ll sleep under a tree tonight, then walk south through the forest until he reaches the river Kennet. That way, he can clean himself up before he arrives at the vill.

He leans bowstave and staff against the grey trunk of a beech and reaches down to loosen his braies. Close behind him a twig snaps, so close he hears it sharp and clear. Quick as a weasel, he jerks sideways, darting a look over his shoulder. Swish of air and a staff cracks his nose; the pain makes him stagger. Light glitters on a dagger, gape of rotten, blackened teeth – two outlaws, not one – and his own dagger is out. Crouch, lunge, drive it into the nearer man’s flesh, tug it free, hear him howl. With vicious force the staff strikes Edmund’s right shoulder, numbing it. His dagger drops. His left hand catches it. Before the thief can raise his staff again, Edmund embraces him like a brother and stabs him to the heart.

The man gives a small, surprised grunt. He slumps to the ground.

Edmund turns in a slow circle, his good ear cocked through the hard thudding of his heart and the groans of the other outlaw, who’s now curled into himself where he fell, blood pooling on the dead leaves from the hole in his belly, his face chalk-white. Edmund drops to his knees, stifles a groan of his own as he jars his nose and makes the sign of the cross. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."

The outlaw’s fingernails claw the ground. His soul flees his body.

Wavering on his feet, blood dripping from his beard, Edmund pisses on beech mast and herb Robert. A hurried search under the ragged tunics of the two men yields not even a farthing, only a half-gnawed, mouldy loaf made, it appears, from acorns and floor-scrapings. He drops the loaf in his pack for he’s been hungry too often to waste food, and wonders dimly what crime exiled the men from their home vill, forcing them to survive by poaching, theft and violence. Outlawry, a dread sentence, a death sentence, because anyone in any shire can kill an outlaw and the law cares not.

No need to bury them. Badgers and wild pigs will gnaw flesh from bone quick enough and carrion crows clean up the scraps. He shudders, picks up his gear, stumbles deeper into the woods and sinks to the ground behind the trunk of an oak. His fingers and tunic are sticky with blood. Bile rises in his throat, vile-tasting. He leans sideways, weeping from the agony in his nose as he retches up slimy lumps of bread and meat.

When the spasms finally cease, he wipes spittle and tears from his chin, rinses out his mouth with water from his pouch and spits onto the leaves. The two men must have been following the group of travellers on the road, hoping for a fool such as himself to enter the woods. Had they killed him, they’d have taken both his purses, the one on his belt and the other strapped under his shirt, full of gold and silver coins.

He tests his shoulder, mumbles a prayer of thanks that his pate isn’t cracked and with the edge of his tunic dabs his nose. Arrows of pain shoot into his forehead. Broken. The scar tissue that criss-crosses it is broken too, oozing blood. He scans the forest floor. Plantain is growing just beyond the oak tree, so he crawls over, plucks a handful of leaves and rubs them between his fingers before tilting his head back and gently putting them to his nose, biting his lip so he won’t whimper like a baby. Not much of a poultice, but better than none.

Instead of stabbing the black-toothed outlaw, he could have punched him, fist to jaw. But nay, he’d taken out his weapon – the army’s way to solve a problem – his dagger-thrust impelled by fury that an English scut should attack a soldier who’d survived the fighting from Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue to Calais. As for the other outlaw…ah Jesu, killing never ends.

The poor sods were nigh dead from starvation. All he did was put them out of their misery. He killed more than once for mercy’s sake in France and what’s two more?

The light is fast fading, long shadows of leaves dancing across his leather boots, good boots as long as he forgets how he got them. Too good for a serf, a villein like himself. He struggles to his feet and picks up bow and staff. He can’t stay here. If the two outlaws were part of a gang and the rest come back at nightfall, they’ll geld him and hang him from the nearest oak, laughing as the life chokes out of him. He’s seen it happen.

Alert for sounds of pursuit, he sets off, keeping to the edge of the woods. A new moon rises, empty as a leper’s bowl. At full dark when he can no longer see where to put his feet, he beds down in a hollow concealed from the road, bundled in the blanket he’d stolen from the neatly folded pile in Maison Dieu’s infirmary, another sin on a conscience already creaking like an over-loaded waggon. In Flintbourne Mam will wash the blanket in the river, marvelling at its fine quality, and spread it on the bushes to dry.

He scowls into the darkness. Unless Mam’s mightily changed, she’ll not wash as much as the thumb of his glove.

A root digs into his hip. A fox yaps. He turns over, cursing the pain in nose and shoulder, and closes his eyes, dagger to hand, the blanket twisted around him. Sleep shuns him. He repeats Paternosters, Ave Marias, counts in his head all the houses in his vill, names neighbours on his side of the river who’ve known him since he was swaddled, until, unknowing, he slips into the dead sleep of exhaustion. He dreams of stewed apples, of honey from the hive and eggs warm from the hens, then the dream slides into plundered beef gulped before a battle, men’s brains like unboiled puddings, men’s guts like pig-tripe and he’s jerked awake by his own hoarse cry and the frantic tripping of his heart. A dream, only a dream, he should be used to them by now.

Daylight, he sees to his dismay, the sun almost to the treetops. He’d have been easy prey for even a fledgling outlaw.

He eats dried herring from his pack and chokes down hard chunks of acorn loaf as he trudges south towards the Kennet, the clear chalkstream that runs through Flintbourne’s valley. With a lift of his spirits he arrives at its banks. Minnows scurry under the weeds. The current whips any reflection of his face downstream. He hauls his tunic over his head, scrubs the bloodstains from it and after carefully searching his surroundings, takes off the rest of his clothes and lowers himself into the river. His fleas will drown, every one of them. A deep breath, dunk his face in the chill water, raise it and watch blood slither through the ripples.

With a sharp sigh he unsheathes his dagger, pares his nails and trims his beard, then gets dressed and follows the river’s course, chewing water-mint to sweeten his breath. The acorn bread sits lumpen in his belly. The flint that gives his vill its name is scattered everywhere; if a man could eat flint, he’d never go hungry, and although chanterelles, raspberries and red clover are his for the scavenging, still his stomach gripes for food. A handful of watercress from the river will help. Kneeling, he reaches for it.

In the still water he sees a face.

Cropped brown curls, eyes the dark blue of an evening sky, they haven’t changed. But his nose is crooked and swollen, the torn flesh seeping blood and pus, his cheek and eye socket dark-bruised. Beneath all this are the savage ridges where, many months past, a mastiff’s teeth ripped him to the bone.

His fist slams the water, his face dissolving in a churn of foam. A gargoyle’s face. Fit for gawkers at a fair. There’s not a woman in the vill will lie with him now.

Juliana…her name a thin scream between good ear and deaf ear. Juliana…slowly he calms down. He’s taller than most, straight of leg, broad of shoulder and has all his teeth, she’ll see the man he’s become, she’ll not shun him for a few scars and a rowelled ear, she’s loyal and true.

And so beautiful she could marry any man of her choice, from villein to bailiff.

He used to be slow to anger.

His back to the sun, he starts walking; and before Vespers enters Sir Roger’s woods to the east of the vill. His throat tightens when he sees the tall oak where the best mushrooms grew, the grove of beech whose nuts he gobbled and the dip in the ground where he often slept. Layered shades of green beckon him forwards, ash, lime, pollarded willow and coppiced hazel, the rowan trees whose bright berries he gathered for his bird traps. These were his woods, never mind what the lord of the manor thought.

He pushes through the waste, uncultivated land tangled with brambles, briers and blackthorn. And there he stands, as if God-struck.

Nothing has changed. The fields of Flintbourne look as though he could walk across them and find the Edmund he used to be, a young man clad in ignorance. Do the villagers, his neighbours, daily give thanks for a life as steadfast as the seasons, do they understand how blessed they are to be spared an army of invaders who would burn their fields black and litter the ground with corpses of child and beast?

Twenty or so houses stand on each side of the river’s curves, the crofts enclosed by hedges and fences, the fields and meadows spread up the slopes. On the far bank Sir Roger’s manor and St. Edmund’s Church sit like toys made of stone and wood. The wheat and rye are near to ripe, the fields of barley still tinged green, surrounded by dusky patches of peas, vetch and beans. Cattle and sheep graze on the fallow, the ridges lit by the westering sun, the furrows in shadow.

Men are weeding the barley. He’s too far away to pick out Bart.

His thoughts a tumble, he re-enters the woods and threads through the trees towards the river and the path to his mother’s house. A beech leaf brushes his arm. He stares at it, transfixed. How long since he looked, really looked, at a beech leaf? His favourite in spring, its crisp folds so fresh a green, its veins straight as arrows laid side by side. Absently he rubs his forearm where twelve thin scars are as neatly arranged.

The leaves are beetle-chewed now, ragged-edged, their green darkened.

Reluctance leadens his feet as he approaches the ditch around Mam’s croft. No smoke from the roof of her cot, which needs new thatch. The walls’ caked mud is crumbling, the hazel withies so brittle he could poke his fist through them with ease.

His weight bows the planks that span her ditch. As he pushes his hood back, she opens the door, carrying the night-bucket, a hen clucking at her heels. Eyes to the ground, she heads towards the privy with careful steps, as if each foot has taken on strangeness and isn’t to be trusted. From his birth this woman ignored him: little boy banging on her door at night begging to be let in, little thief snatching scraps from her cupboard. He says in a cracked voice, Mam, I’ve come home.

She squints at him. She always claimed her sight was useless beyond the length of a cow’s tail, though she could find Bart quick enough in any of the fields. Who is it?

Edmund. Your son.

A vagabond. Her voice quivers. I’ll raise the hue.

He steps closer. You know me. Edmund.

The faint colour in her cheeks vanishes as though wiped by a rag. Edmund’s dead.

I was in Dover. But I’m home now.

She wards him off with her bucket, her chin trembling. I have but one son and his name Bart. A ghost from Purgatory, that’s what you be.

He takes her by the wrist, its bones like knobs. I’m no ghost. Feel me, I have substance and my flesh is warm.

Leprosy leaks from your face – take your hand off me!

I’m not leprous! A war wound new-opened, you remember how I went off to war? He releases her wrist. I’ve not eaten since yesterday, Mam, invite me in and feed me.

You never knowed true hunger.

His anger rises another notch. So you still play famine’s old tune. A piece of bread, an egg or two, tis all I want.

The loaf mouldy and the hens poor layers.

An answer he could have expected. Your fire is unlit, are you without wood?

Her face grows shifty. I lights the fire when I please, she says. Ralph’ll feed you, go there.

She backs up, shuts the door smartly in his face and bangs the latch down. A chunk of daub falls from the wall. Left outside, the hen squawks.

Mam’s shrunk. Shabbier too, her wimple grey with dirt, her tunic grease-stained.

Maybe the whole vill has given him up for dead.

He takes the footpath that follows the river through willow and sallow, then winds past houses, byres and orchards, and because the sun is full on his face he hauls his hood forward. Scars are legion in the shire, pockmarks, birthmarks and diseases of the skin, dagger cuts and the law’s mutilations – at least he didn’t lose eyes or tongue.

A wider track leads uphill towards the fields where the men are weeding, mud sucking at his boots, good Flintbourne mud, which year after year with pitiful little dung raises the crops that feed manor and vill. With an eagerness he hasn’t felt for months he pats the purse beneath his shirt, a purse that holds money enough to rent a half-virgate, buy seed and beasts.

An iron hoof clinks against flint. He stops dead. Bart, leading a team of oxen around the nearest byre. Twelve years older, strong as an ox and ever-willing to cause pain. In unworthy delight, Edmund sees he is now the taller of the two by the span of three fingers.

He pushes back his hood.

Cracked Bell

Bart jerks on the harness. The oxen halt, tossing their heads. His hand shaking, he crosses himself. Edmund?

Aye.

Be you spirit or flesh?

Touch me and you’ll find out.

"Nay…nay."

I’m come to haunt you for the hazel sticks you beat me with. The knife whose blade carved my arm.

I were young. Didn’t know better.

The hand Edmund stretches out is steady. Rejoicing in his newfound supremacy, he says, I dare you, see if your hand will pass through mine.

One of the oxen nudges Bart in the ribs. He swats at it. Ghosts and spirits – their foreheads ain’t red from the sun, they don’t have pus leaking out their noses. Anger roughens his voice, his grip tightening on the ox goad. Trying to make an arse out o’ me, brother?

So you still hate me. Why, Bart? Why?

Do hatred need a reason?

Did you regret those broken hazel sticks?

Oh aye, confessed ’em all to Father Cassian.

Years ago when Father Cassian told the tale of Isaac’s two sons, one phrase had lodged in Edmund’s mind: Esau is a hairy man. So too is Bart. He’s coated in coarse hair, shoulders to knuckles, throat to navel, nape to arse to ankles; he has the hot skin of an overworked beast. Today he’s wearing new leather shoes and wooden clogs, his shirt without a tear in it, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, dark-sheened like the off-side ox. His eyes are brown as clay.

Edmund’s sole urge is to run for his life. He says, You look well.

Bart flexes his wrestler’s shoulders, a man in his prime and aware of it. Better ’n you. There are those in the vill who’ll see your face and shout leprosy.

Leprosy, disease of shame and disfigurement. Edmund says tightly, An old war wound, broke open.

We heard you was dead. Months ago, it were…m’ little blue-eyed brother, who liked to play with bows and arrows. Could I still throw you, do you think?

Praying his voice won’t quiver, he says, You can try. If you want your belly slit open.

Did you kill many Frenchmen?

No way of counting. French knights. Genoese mercenaries. Even an Englishman or two. The oxen shift. The harness creaks. You’re on your way home?

Aye. Home to wife and servant-girl.

Who looks after Mam?

Her what’s busy scattering her wits? Bart shrugs. I gives her the portion due to her, eight bushels. Were she happy to see you? A resurrected son, not every day that happens, may God forgive me for blasphemy.

So daftness accounts for the change in Mam. Edmund takes a slow breath. Deflect, he thinks. Always a useful tactic. Two sons Mam had, one brown-eyed, one blue, and her shamed for fornication before I was born. Do we share the same father, Osbern the carter, a brutal man by all account, or am I the son of the drover she met by chance at the market?

Bart shrugs. "Ask her, not me and don’t speak ill of Da. I’ll tell you one thing, my son will know who fathered him."

He’ll know by your fists, if naught else. Who is your wife?

Briefly it hangs on the scale whether Bart will clout him. He chooses a self-satisfied smirk. Edith Sevenok, the baker’s niece. A widow from Swallowbend who inherited ovens, alehouse and virgate last Michaelmas when her uncle upped and died. You can add Mam’s six acres to that ’cause I had ’em transferred to my name. I’m Bartholomew Sevenok now, a man of property.

A widow for wife.

A widow who’s with child. My son won’t be no cottar.

Careful not to finger the weighty purse under his shirt, Edmund says, Nor, when the time comes, will mine.

I envied you the king’s wars, Bart says abruptly. What you seen. What you done. If not for Edith, I might’ve took m’ chances and joined the army.

The king didn’t want wrestlers. He wanted archers, like me.

We heard about Crécy. It irked me to know you was there.

We bowmen were the heroes of that battle. Who told you I’d died?

A soldier on his way home to Swallowbend last winter. Bart hauls the oxen’s heads up. He said you was sore-wounded south o’ Calais and we figured you must be dead since you never come home. Where was you all this time?

Dover. For eleven months, he’d scoured pots in the kitchen and cleaned the privies at Maison Dieu. No need to share that with Bart.

You’d best march right back there. Charity or poaching is all you’ll find in Flintbourne.

I’ll rent land and farm.

Every strip in our fields be rented or leased.

I’ve coin in my purse, and silver has always talked to Sir Roger.

You’d part with it to farm thin air? All over the shire, farmland be scarce.

Bart’s words have the ring of truth. The day crowds in on Edmund, pain and the gnaw of hunger, Mam’s lack of welcome, and now no land for his use and his sleek, well-fed brother gloating over his discomfiture. Since I dislike accusations of leprosy, he says, is there a healer in the vill?

You could visit Agnes, our harpy of a wise-woman who leases land at the top of the hill above Mam’s. Me and the reeve badgered the villagers to vote against her, but more wanted her than didn’t and she stayed. A sorceress, that’s what she be, with her pills and her potions and her plantings by the moon. Be you lorn enough to go there, she’ll mend your face. One way or another. Open venom in his smile. You don’t even talk like us no more. You talk like her.

In Calais one of the king’s squires tutored me in grammar.

King? Squires? Grammar? Bart shifts from foot to foot. You don’t belong here, Edmund, and I ain’t got the time to stand around gossiping, I got beasts to feed and a servant-girl with supper in the pot.

Do you beat her like you used to beat me?

Mostly I leaves it to Edith. Shoot a lapwing for supper afore it’s too dark to see ’em, then walk east, west, south or north, anywhere that ain’t Flintbourne ’cause I don’t want you shoving your face – what’s left of it – in my alehouse. His smile stretches his lips. Too many teeth, Edmund thinks, and wills his boots to stand firm in the mud.

Bart tucks the ox goad into his belt. Should you be fool enough to stay, you won’t always have your staff and bow and tis easy enough to rid a man of his dagger. One of his big hands, snake-fast, grips Edmund by the throat. I’m still the best wrestler in the shire and I been known to break a man’s neck.

His hand drops. Giddup!

The oxen step forwards. One of them swishes its tail, whapping Edmund on the thigh, the warm, sweaty odour of its hide assaulting his nostrils. He touches his throat, knowing it bears the marks of Bart’s fingers, knowing also, to his shame, that the soldier in him took flight at the first hint of his brother’s hatred, all those months of killing and, aye, courage, gone as if they never were.

What if Juliana also recoils at the thought of leprosy? Or Ralph?

On the far side of the river, Vespers tolls from the church tower, the bell cracked for years, the parish too poor and Sir Roger too miserly to pay for the casting of a new one. Like a wounded deer running for cover, Edmund hurries back the way he came, down the path past Mam’s cot, along the bank where the currents flow deep, further and further into the woods until under the tall oak tree he sinks to the ground, panting, his belly cramped with hunger. He’ll forage for mushrooms, drink from the river and pass the night here.

When he cautiously touches his nose, his fingers come away sticky. His alertness for ambush, the sixth sense which saved him from outlaws on his way here, also served him well in France until that day in a hamlet south of Calais when two serfs dragged him from his cob, stabbed him in shoulder and thigh, and set their mastiff to mauling him. Before then, he’d known he was well-favoured, for hadn’t Lucan, the yellow-haired squire with ambitions to better a villein’s tongue, told him so? But now, even if Juliana accepts the old scars once the new wounds are healed, he’s a man without land or prospects.

On the morrow he’ll decide what to do.

Has he but four choices? East, west, north or south?

He sleeps ill under the canopy of oak leaves and wakes knowing that for now, at least, he’s staying. By law, he’s bound to this manor and could be hanged as vagabond should he leave. Besides, does he want Juliana to hear he came and fled? Is he to abandon Ralph, his long-time friend? Shite, he can’t turn tail and run, hunger alone is enough to keep him here.

He’ll have to avoid Juliana while his face looks like a lump of raw meat.

He washes in the river at first light, stomach growling like a chained dog. At his mother’s house the shutters and door are tight-closed. He walks up the cropped grass of the baulk edging the six acres that are now Bart’s, listening to rooks clamour like village scolds from the wych elms. The winter wheat is heavy-headed and beaded with mist, blackberries ripen in the waste on their thorned red stems and despite all his troubles, the small beauties of the vill tug at him. Home, he thinks, I’m home, and wonders if those words will ever mean what they say.

The house above Mam’s is near Sir Roger’s woods that stretch from east to west along the hilltop, a sturdy house, smoke flattened to the thatch, a fence enclosing herb-gardens bordered with flint. In the far corner, a woman is weeding. Edmund opens the gate, shuts it behind him and walks closer. Dame, God keep you.

She straightens. Bart’s talk of sorcery led him to expect a withered hag. Agnes is a tall woman, no longer young but seeming so, her nose hooked, her chin strong, her linen wimple newly laundered. Grey eyes survey him calmly. I see what brings you here. Who are you?

Edmund, younger son of Matfrid, your nearest neighbour.

Edmund the archer, I’ve heard of your prowess. I heard also of your death.

Twas over-stated, he says. Laughter glimmers in her eyes and is gone, so fast he thinks he could have imagined it. An outlaw hit me with a staff. I have silver for payment.

What if I prefer barter?

I’ll not barter my weapons and I have no chattels other than a stolen blanket and the clothes on my back.

How long ago did this happen?

For a woman called wise, you ask a lot of questions.

The wise foster their curiosity.

The day before yesterday, he says, clipping his words.

If you’ll dig a rod or two behind the fence, Edmund Archer, I’ll heal your face.

You can trust me to dig. But can I trust you to heal?

When she lifts her brows, he thinks of rooks’ wings. Trust is a slow-growing crop, she says.

A crop too easily uprooted.

Indeed. She adds with a mockery that grates his nerves, I thought archers went to Normandy to shoot Frenchmen. Not to learn pretty speech.

In Calais a squire undertook to smooth a cottar’s mumblings.

Ah, she says. Wait here while I rid my hands of dirt.

Edmund sits on the bench by the door, his palms tight around his knees, and stares at the worn toes of his boots. He must visit the cordwainer soon for shoes, shoes that that will tramp everyone’s acres but his own and why is the wise-woman like blackthorn to his skin?

Agnes comes back and as she tilts his head he catches, elusively, the scent of lavender. Although her fingers are gentle when she touches his nose, he has to clench his fists so he won’t whinge like an infant. Another gentle probe, a shaft of pain and his hand jerks, hitting the softness of a breast. She steps back. Broken, she says composedly. But because tis newly done, I can reset it. I must prepare what I need. The spade is behind the drying-shed.

A long time has passed since he was close enough to a woman to smell her skin or touch her breast. He surges to his feet. Beyond the fence, ignoring the pain in his nose, he drives the blade into ground that’s dotted with flint, tosses earth to one side and rips out a thistle. Sheep are bleating on the fallow, a cow bawls as if her udder’s overfull and in a play of black and white wings three lapwings whistle past…shoot a lapwing for supper. He tugs out more weeds, piling the flint to one side. When, eventually, Agnes calls him, a goodly strip is fresh-dug.

Her house has a central hearth with soup simmering in an iron pot, the floor strewn with fresh rushes, the shelves lined with small linen packets. Drink this, she says, passing him a wooden goblet, you won’t care for the taste, but it will ease the pain a little. A blend of poppy and valerian.

At Maison Dieu the brothers had poured similar potions down his throat to dull the pain of his wounds. But they also dulled his defences, and in a manner worse than any dream, catapulted him back to Normandy’s charred fields and burning vills. He lowers the goblet to the table. I’ll not drink it.

Mending your nose will hurt.

I’ve borne worse.

So I’ve wasted good herbs?

Irritation pricks him. There must be someone in the vill with toothache. Pour it down his gullet.

As she pushes the goblet aside, potion slops over the edge. Lie on the bed. Which means tonight I’ll have your fleas for company.

I wash in the river. A habit of mine.

But not, I warrant, to rid yourself of fleas.

His skin chills. My brother is right, you’re a sorceress.

Your brother should stick to selling ale. Lie flat and feel for the bedframe on both sides. Now grip as hard as you can. You mustn’t move your head.

His nails dig into the rough-planed wood as he presses his back into the straw. She takes the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and pushes. Agony closes his throat, stops his very heartbeat – the mastiff’s great jaws, crush of teeth eating me alive – her hands are leaning on his shoulders, their weight holding him to the bed and he’s soaked in sweat. Lie still, Edmund, tis done and you’re safe.

There is no safety, he knows this, but can’t push the words out.

She says, A poultice will lessen the swelling, I’ll get it.

He lies still, drained of everything except relief that the agony has lessened. When she comes back, the poultice feels cool on his face and the pain is further dulled. He turns his head away, for she’s seen more of him than he cares to show.

It would be best were you to sleep for an hour, then I’ll feed you, she says. In the meantime I’ll be in the garden inspecting what you dug to see if I’m getting good value.

He summons what little strength is left to him. If not, will you take a spade to my nose?

She smiles. I said you were safe. Nor would I undo my good work.

There is no safety. There, he’s gotten the words out. He’s also driven the smile from her face and is strangely sorry for this.

We must take what safety we find, she says, brief though it may be.

She leaves the house. He listens to the fire snap and fights to stay awake, no strength left in him to combat dreams. A dull throbbing behind his forehead. His throat parched. When he judges an hour has passed, he gets up, moving slow as a man of fifty winters rather than twenty-one. Holding the poultice to his face, he brushes mud off the bedcovers, stumbles over to the smaller of the two buckets, cups water in his palm and slurps at it, spilling most of it on the rushes. Outside, the mizzle has thinned. He sits on the bench and leans his head against the wall, eyes wide to the damp air.

Agnes comes round the corner of the house. The soil is well dug, she says, no need for me to wield my spade at you.

As she leans forward to remove the herbs from his face, his nostrils are again teased with the sweetness of lavender and to his consternation his tarse stirs to life. She must be sorceress to have such power over him. Clumsily he pushes himself off the bench and they go indoors, where the smell of fresh