I often caught her looking at me when she thought I was occupied. Whenever I felt her watching, the place on my brow where she’d laid her warm mouth seemed to burn as if her lips were still there. I cursed myself a thousand times over for running out of the barn. It was only a kiss and she was only trying to be kind. A hundred times a day, I tried to think of something to say that would mend what I had done and get her to talk to me again, but everything I thought of sounded foolish even in my head.

“Servant Martha, I don’t have the skill for the infirmary. I’m sure there is someone else who could do it much better. Perhaps, Beatr-”

“Nonsense!” The mole on her chin quivered.

If Servant Martha had lived in the time of Noah and God had told her that He was going to send a flood to destroy the world, she would have simply said, “Nonsense.” And He wouldn’t have dared to do it.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Osmanna. I didn’t think that you of all people would refuse to take on a little work, when you know how grave the need is.”

I opened my mouth to indignantly protest that I wasn’t refusing to work, but she didn’t wait for an answer.

“God requires this task of you; therefore He will equip you to perform it. Do you think that some good fairy simply bestowed the skill and knowledge on Healing Martha at her christening? She earned her knowledge through long tiring hours of study and practise. And you will acquire the skills you need if you apply yourself diligently to the mastery of them.”

I knew that she was in no mood to be questioned, but I blurted it out before I could stop myself.

“Servant Martha, doesn’t the parable of the talents teach us that each of us is born with different gifts which we must use in different ways for God’s service?”

Her back stiffened and she slowly rose from her stool, like a father before he strikes a rebellious child. Instead, she moved past me to stand in the open doorway, staring out at hard grey skies beyond the walls.

“The parable speaks not of gifts, Osmanna, but of coins, which are entrusted to us for safekeeping. A gift may be used as the recipient pleases, but the master requires a reckoning of the money entrusted to a servant. A coin must be spent to fulfil its worth, else it remains a useless disc of metal. The coin that God saw fit to place in your keeping is your intelligence, Osmanna, your quickness to learn. Do not squander such a purse on clever arguments and vain questions, but on acquiring such knowledge as may save your soul and that of your fellow man. Read the herbals, Osmanna; read the Psalter. Put other books aside until you are able to bring a goodly measure of knowledge and mature judgement to the studying of them.”

I felt my cheeks burning. I knew exactly which book she meant. When I finally confessed what I’d been reading I expected her to order me to destroy the book or, at the very least, surrender it to her, but I should have realised that she wouldn’t. Servant Martha had spoken so many times in the chapel of the folly of seeking to silence knowledge. She always said that if the words on a page were true, then burning the book would not destroy the truth of them and if they were false, then their falsehood would be exposed in God’s good time, so that all men might mock it. However much the book angered her, she would never break faith with her principles and destroy it.

Servant Martha turned from the doorway and glared down at me, her lips pressed tightly together. I had irritated her from the first moment she saw me in my father’s hall. Every answer I made to her was the wrong answer, but I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth shut. I had to answer back; even when she declared the discussion closed, I couldn’t help myself. But for once I wished she’d talk to me, really talk. There was so much I wanted to know. I wanted to ask her what she felt when she elevated the body of Christ, that moment when she became Christ. What did it feel like to touch the mind of God? If only she had told me that, perhaps I could have understood why eating that little disc of bread was so important.

Servant Martha gripped the edge of the door frame as if she was suddenly weary. “Osmanna, I know that you are young. I know the infirmary is a heavy responsibility for one of your tender years. But you can always seek advice from others. It is not a burden you have to share alone. That is the whole essence of a beguinage-no woman is alone with her burdens. But know this: I would not have entrusted you with the task if I did not believe you were equal to it. I have had to persuade others that you are capable of this, and believe me there are many who think you are not, so do not make me a fool in their eyes, Osmanna. I will not forgive that.”

iS YOUR FATHER AT HOME, WILLIAM?”

The boy glanced apprehensively back over his shoulder into the cottage, then finally he drew back a little from the doorway so that I could squeeze past him. Like all the cottages in Ulewic, this one reeked of the dung heap and decay. The sodden rushes had been gathered up from the floor and thrown into rotting piles in the street. But the earth floor and walls of the cottage had been soaked in flood water awash with all the excrement and refuse from the cottagers’ middens, and there was no way of throwing out that stink.

Alan sat hunched over a smoking fire that only served to draw up a foul clinging mist from the earth floor, chilling the bones. His eyes were unfocused and his hands trembled slightly. I’d seen those signs in many of the villagers since the flood. They were drinking some concoction made from the dried heads of the white poppies that infested the marshlands. It fuddled the mind like strong wine, and blunted the edge of their hunger, numbing the misery. But it was an evil substance, for it robbed a man of all will to labour and eventually sent him mad. I was shocked to see a strong hardworking man like Alan under its influence.

I coughed, but he did not stir or rise to offer me his seat. “God keep you and the children, Alan.”

“God will keep us, will He?” he growled. “He’d best do it then… I can’t. Salterns have gone.” He flung his arm wide, in a wild uncontrolled gesture. “Sea took them, took it all back. My father worked them and his father afore him. Been working them so many generations, no one knows for sure who made them. But they’re gone, just like that, in one night. There’s nowt left.”

“But at least your life was spared, Alan. Many of the other men and boys weren’t so fortunate.”

“Fortunate-that what you call it? Some fortune. How am I supposed to feed my bairns now? You got an answer for that, Father?” Alan spat a glob of yellow phlegm into the flames, which hissed and spat back at him. “D’Acaster’ll be demanding his rent for this pigsty. Church’ll be screaming for their tithes, isn’t that right, Father? All you ever want is money, whole fecking lot of you… Owl Masters too-you’re all a pack of scavenging dogs fighting over our guts. What good are any of you to us? You with your Latin prayers, Owl Masters with their bonfires. There’s not one of you could stop the river taking what she wanted.”

What was I supposed to say to him-Pray and repent? God will forgive and all shall be restored? I knew better than anyone that a whole sea of prayers would not induce God to forgive and restore.

I’d prayed that St. Michael’s would be filled for Christmas and it was. God had sent a flood to herd the villagers into the church, a captive congregation for the Commissarius to see, but God’s vicious joke was that that very flood had also kept the Commissarius away. As the waters receded, the villagers ebbed away again. And as soon as the roads became passable the Commissarius would return. Like a tethered bird, a wing-beat of escape was all I’d been granted, and now it was only a matter of time before I was brought crashing down.