“Next time?”

“Oh yes, there will be a next time, Father, that I can promise you. The Owl Masters reigned in Ulewic long before your whey-faced saints ever trod this land. They have always ruled here. Do not foolishly imagine that because they have been watching from the shadows, they are weak. They are stronger now than ever before. A fire was kindled last night that will never be extinguished. The new era of the Owl Masters has just begun.”

tHE COURTYARD WAS FILTHY, ankle deep in the mud of winter, slimed with hog and poultry droppings and stinking of piss. It was hard work raking it and I was perspiring despite the biting wind, but it was sound penance for body and soul. The muck would make rich nourishment for the soil once it had weathered a while, though the stench of it turned the stomach. And we would need all we could grow, for last year’s harvest had been poor and our stores were dwindling alarmingly fast.

“You need to bind that with reeds and straw, else the next rains will spread it across the yard again,” a voice called out behind me.

I turned to see Merchant Martha scuttling across the yard, her sharp brown eyes darting about as if she was a blackbird on the lookout for worms. I tried not to show to my irritation at the unwanted advice. I was always grateful for Merchant Martha’s ability to organise, but not when it extended to me.

“Thanks be to God you’ve returned safely, Merchant Martha. How did you fare at Swaffham market? Did you get a good price for the cloth?”

Her thin lips shrugged, which was the closest they ever came to a smile. “Tolerable, I suppose. Which is as well, since we need every penny we can get.”

That meant better than she expected, for she would not seal any bargain until she was sure she had wrested the last farthing she could from the buyer.

Merchant Martha shook her head dolefully. “By my reckoning we’ll need to buy more grain before the feast of Saint John. What’s in the barn will not see us through to next harvest, not with the food we’ve given to the beggars this winter. And take it from me, the price of grain won’t be falling.”

“But if our stocks are running low, the poor will be in worse straits. We’ll doubtless see more coming to our gate before this year is out.”

Merchant Martha scowled. “The villagers curse us with their left hand while holding out their right for any meat we’re fool enough to give them. Getting spat at by their lice-ridden brats is all the thanks we get.”

There was no point in contradicting her. Every woman in the beguinage had sensed the growing resentment of the village towards us. I prayed daily that the villagers would stick to spitting and cursing and that their hostility would not boil over into something worse.

I sighed. “Having to ask for charity breeds bitterness in honest men. God grant us all a better harvest this year than last, so that the villagers have no need to beg.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.” Merchant Martha shuffled her feet, impatient to be about her work.

She was a neat, compact woman and though she had a healthy appetite, she was all bones, for she was always restless with a fiery energy that seemed to burn up her flesh. When her husband was alive she had run his wool business single-handed; she’d had to, for when he wasn’t drunk, he was off whoring or gaming. It was only her hard work that kept bread on the table of her household and his fortune intact. And even now, as if she still lived in constant fear of ruin, she couldn’t bear to be idle for a moment.

“Merchant Martha, did you find time to deliver the candles and the book to Andrew?”

“I did because you asked it, but I didn’t linger there. Too many thieves and vagabonds hanging around that church.” She grimaced. “Andrew attracts the worst sort of rogues.”

“Sinners are in more need of her grace-”

Merchant Martha snorted. “They may need her grace, but take it from me that’s not what they’re seeking.”

“Did she send a message?”

Without warning, Merchant Martha pounced on a hen which was ambling across the yard and, tucking it under her arm, poked expertly at its breast to feel the crop. It squawked indignantly.

“Andrew sent you her blessing.” She glanced at me sideways, hesitating. Then she added, “You should go and see Andrew yourself, Servant Martha. She’s… she’s much changed since you last saw her.”

I frowned. “What do you mean-changed?”

Merchant Martha set the hen down. She watched it bustle away, shaking out its feathers. “Go and see Andrew,” she repeated. “And do it as soon as you can.” She peered up at me from under her heavy black brows. “You know I don’t hold with what she does-starving herself like that when she could afford to eat, while all around there are those that starve because they have no choice. I’ve no time for such self-indulgent nonsense. But all the same I feel sorry for the girl, and something tells me she may be in urgent need of friends before long.” With that, Merchant Martha strode rapidly away towards the barn before I could ask more.

I stared after her, puzzled. Merchant Martha always had a good instinct for trouble, acquired from years of buying and selling in the seething marketplaces and squalid ports of Flanders, but I couldn’t imagine why she would think that Andrew of all women might be in need of friends.

Andrew was an anchorite who lived in a tiny cell attached to the church of St. Andrew, never leaving it, receiving all her food through the window on the outside wall and the Blessed Sacrament through the slot that overlooked the church altar. A life devoted solely to the perfection of her own soul was not one I could ever endure, any more than Merchant Martha could, but I envied Andrew all the same. She was so certain that our Lord loved her and approved of what she did. I wished I could feel that kind of certainty, even but once in my life.

Andrew would have been about twenty years of age when I last saw her, though she looked scarcely more than fifteen, with long beechnut hair tumbling loose like a child’s. Such a tiny, fragile girl, her pale face with high cheekbones made sharper by her meagre diet of hard bread and herbs, and her skin so transparent that her veins stood out as blue seams in her white-marble hands. Even though she was young, Andrew had already gained such mastery over her body that it was no longer polluted by the menses.

Men, particularly her confessor at the church, were fascinated by her and guarded her cage jealously as if she was a rare and beautiful animal, but the priest didn’t drive the spectators from her window or silence the cries of the hot food sellers and alewives who spread their wares below the walls of her cell. Nor would the crowds of pilgrims have heard him if he had, for they were too intent on bargaining for the tin emblems and snippets of bloodstained cloth which the cleric swore Andrew had worn next to her skin during her visions. As a living cat is sealed up inside the walls of a new manor to keep the dynasty inside from falling, so Andrew was walled up in the church to keep it wealthy.

I shook myself sternly and picked up my rake, attacking a stubborn patch of compacted mud. A flock of geese wheeled as one, and charged across to the pile of dung, trampling it across the yard again as they squabbled over grubs and worms. A prod from my rake and they scattered, hissing malevolently, and wandered off to find a quieter corner.

The wizened face of Gate Martha appeared at my elbow. “Kitchen Martha’ll not be best pleased if you drive the fat off the birds, Servant Martha. There’s a lad begs leave to see you at the gate,” she added, before I had time to reply.

“What does he want?”

She shrugged unhelpfully.

“Do you know the boy?”

Gate Martha nodded, but didn’t seem to think it necessary to enlighten me. She was a local woman of few words. It was one of the reasons we had appointed her as Gate Martha, for she said she was known for keeping her counsel. But there were times when I wondered where discretion stopped and dour began.