“Don’t expect me to do it,” I told Pega. “You know full well no one listens to me. Anyway, Servant Martha won’t be dissuaded by anyone, you know that. She treats the word no as if it was a gauntlet slapped across her face. The Manor’s been trying to get rid of us ever since the day we arrived and she’s never taken the slightest notice.”

Pega groped in her scrip for a lump of wax which she kneaded with unnecessary vigour. “The beguinage may be outside the Manor’s rule, but there’s those in these parts who have their own rules and they set no limits to them. No one defies them. Those that do live just long enough to regret it.”

“But if they break the law…” I said.

Pega shook her head impatiently. “If you were birthed in these parts you’d know there are some forces too powerful to be brought to heel, leastways not by the Law or the Church. They’re ancient forces that were worshipped on the mound where St. Michael’s Church stands long afore the parish church was ever built. They’re stronger even than D’Acaster or the King himself. Nothing and no one can stand against them, not even Servant Martha.”

“But there is a church over the place now, as you said, and no one worships in the old way anymore. This is a Christian land. It has been for centuries.”

“Not for some. Not for the Owl Masters.”

Pega pushed the softened wax around the reed to hold it in place and angled it downwards. Almost at once a thick cloudy liquid began to drip into the tub beneath.

“The Owl Masters’ve always been in this valley. They’re toadsmen, horse whisperers, some calls them. They’ve great powers over beasts and men, can stop a runaway stallion in its tracks or get a stubborn one moving. They can see in the dark where normal men’d be blind. And years ago, afore the D’Acasters arrived, the Owl Masters were the law here. Could punish any man as they pleased, even put him to death.

“But when Church and Manor came to the valley, the Owl Masters’ reign was over; it was the King’s law ruled then. But Ulewic folk still carried on going to Owl Masters in secret to get things sorted out. Quarrels over women and disputes that they were afeared to take to the Manor or Church Courts, cause everyone knows you make a complaint to them and you’re just as likely to find yourself fined as the man who’s wronged you. Besides D’Acaster and the priest don’t understand Ulewic affairs, not if it’s to do with rights or grudges going back generations.” Pega frowned. “But of late there’s been talk of the Owl Masters doing more than charming horses or settling fights. Some say they’re taking the law back into their own hands and more besides. It’s been nigh on a hundred years since they last tried and none in these parts will ever forget what happened then.”

She shuddered and stared back in the direction of the forest. “You know I hate D’Acaster and his whole tribe of vermin, but I’ll tell you this, Beatrice: The powers of any lord in this land are nowt compared to what the Owl Masters can do.”

I shivered. The man who’d worn the stag’s hide that night, had he been one of them? Was it their power he’d been trying to gain? If he was, he’d failed. I’d heard his death screams. No one could have survived those creatures. My skin crawled just thinking about them. I longed to tell Pega and ask her what it meant, but how could I? I couldn’t explain what I was doing in the forest at night.

“Are the Owl Masters going to kill us?” little Catherine whispered fearfully. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears.

Pega grinned. “Don’t you fret, lass. You’ve nothing to worry about as long as I’m around. Any man tries to hurt you I’ll rip his bollocks off and give them to you, to play marbles with them.”

Catherine giggled and blushed furiously, managing to look at the same time shocked and delighted.

Pega had a wicked grin and a mischievous tongue to match, but you couldn’t help liking her. I don’t think she ever repented her past life, no matter what the Marthas believed. To repent you must regret, but Pega never regretted. As a cow is born to give milk, Pega was born to give pleasure. A lecherous gap between her front teeth and generous breasts that turned men into little suckling pigs at a glance-no virgin could ever be molded in such a form. Pega practised the trade her body fitted her for. It put bread on the table of her family and more besides. Not from the village lads, she said-they’d think to have a girl for the price of a fairing or for nothing if they could-but merchants and clergy could pay for their comforts and Pega saw to it they did.

When she came to join us in the beguinage, the Council of Marthas gave her the name Pega, after the blessed virgin saint; new life, new name, her virginity restored. Yet in a way, I think that she never really lost it. Perhaps virginity can only be taken, not given.

Catherine, on the other hand, was from a good family, highborn, and if her mother hadn’t died so young I dare say the girl would have been kept closeted at home until her wedding night. But after her mother died, her father thought Catherine would stand more chance of keeping her virtue if she came to us till she was of age rather than remain under the same roof as her brothers and their wayward cousins. From what I’d heard of that pack of young devils, there wasn’t a maid left in the household worthy of the name. Mind you, if her father had ever met Pega, he might have thought twice about sending his daughter to us to safeguard her innocence.

“Leave the lids, you can fasten them later,” Dairy Martha called over to us. “All the food will be gone if you don’t come and eat.”

Every birch trunk that was thick enough to be tapped now had its own reed dripping with the precious sap, and most of the beguines had already settled themselves on heaps of fallen leaves and were tucking into the food with hearty appetites.

Kitchen Martha took no notice of fears of poor harvests; as far as she was concerned the beginning of winemaking was an excuse for a feast, and the great baskets set on the ground seemed bottomless. Out of them came round loaves of bread, pastries as big and broad as Pega’s hands, whole chickens with crisp golden skins glazed with honey and spices, tiny brown pigeons wrapped in slices of smoked pork, thick wedges of milky white cheese, dried apricots and figs, and great flagons of ale and cider.

Smiles and grins broadened as bellies filled. One woman pulled out her pipes and began to play and those who weren’t too stuffed to move joined in the songs, while the children danced around, mostly out of step with the music, but no one cared.

I leaned back against a tree. We were sheltered from the worst of the wind among the trees and I was full and sleepy. “This is almost as good as being back in the Vineyard,” I muttered, yawning.

“Tell me again about Bruges.” Catherine asked eagerly. I’d forgotten she was there. The girl loved to hear stories about the Vineyard. I sometimes wondered if she thought it was Heaven, not the Vineyard, I was describing. Perhaps it was.

“It’s beautiful. We have everything you could want there. A canal comes right inside, bringing water for the latrines and washing right to the door. Our own church, houses, an infirmary, a library for the books, stillrooms for herbs and cordials, and dairies full of butter and cheese. In autumn the air is so heavy with the musts of wine and mead, cider and perry, that it almost sends you to sleep the moment you set foot over the threshold. And every woman who crosses the bridge and enters the gate passes beneath the word Sauvegarde-the place of refuge.”

“So why leave such a paradise?” Pega asked with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

God alone knows how many times I’d asked myself that question in the three years we’d been here in England. I suppose in part, though I could never explain it to Pega, it was the very order and permanence of the beguinage that made me feel ill at ease. I was stepping into another woman’s house again. I was reading labels and lists of supplies written in someone else’s hand. Afraid to change anything that was so neat, so ordered, and so settled; having no reason to change it, except to make it mine and it wasn’t mine.