But my feet were too swollen and painful with chilblains to go chasing up the hill on a fool’s errand, especially in this cold. Pega and Shepherd Martha would have to return across the ford, so I sat down on a rock by the river and waited for them to cross. No sense in making my feet worse by plunging them into that icy water. Pega would have spotted Gudrun if she was making for the ruin of her grandmother’s cottage. She wouldn’t come to any harm there. The villagers daren’t go near the old cottage, for they feared old Gwenith’s ghost.

I pulled my feet up under my cloak. My chilblains itched unbearably. They kept cracking open and some mornings when I woke, my feet were covered in blood. Last year, Healing Martha had given me some thick foul-smelling ointment to rub into them which had soothed them, but I wasn’t going to ask that bitch Osmanna if she had any. I’d rather suffer.

Shepherd Martha whistled Leon to heel as she and Pega strode towards the ford. They pulled off their boots and hose. Pega hitched her skirts and lumbered down into the ford, cursing and swearing as the cold water rose up her calves. She splashed across, taking the last few paces at a run. Shepherd Martha followed more cautiously.

“Sheep,” announced Pega, “are the most cussed beasts ever to come out of the ark. I’ll never know how you can abide to be around them all year, Shepherd Martha. If you wanted a sheep to stay out of the valley it would go in as soon as look at you. Ask it to go, and you’d think you were trying to murder it.”

“Not so different from men, then.” Shepherd Martha chuckled. “You don’t need to work with sheep very long before you see why our Lord likened His disciples to them. But when it comes to finding a dry, warm place to sleep, they’ve far more sense than cattle or even old Leon.”

She whistled and Leon bounded enthusiastically out of the river, waiting until he was up close before shaking his thick black shaggy coat vigorously all over us.

“Get away, you great brute,” Pega yelled, but Leon seemed to take that as a mark of affection and happily rolled at her feet, drooling as Pega obligingly rubbed his belly.

“Pega, you’ve not seen Gudrun today, have you, up by the old cottage?” I asked.

“She’s not gone up the hill. Leastways, not unless she’s doubled back, cause I saw her going that way earlier.” She pointed behind us, to the road that led to both the forest and the village. “We called after her, but she took no notice, not that she ever does, and I’d not the time to go chasing after her.”

Shepherd Martha patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t fret. I dare say she’s wandering round in the forest with that raven of hers.”

“I need to make sure,” I said anxiously.

Pega blew on her great broad hands against the cold. “Beatrice, leave the poor bairn be. She’ll be back when she’s hungry. Besides, you’ll never find her in the forest; she could be anywhere. I dare say she knows places in there even the verderers have never found.”

“But what if she’s gone into the village? She’s had nothing to eat this morning; she might go there looking for food if she gets hungry.”

Shepherd Martha glanced at Pega, then shook her head. “It’s no use, Pega, you may as well tell the ewe not to bleat for the lamb. She won’t rest until Gudrun’s back.”

I knew they thought I was fussing and even I told myself I was. This wasn’t the first time Gudrun had disappeared for a whole day. There was no reason for me to be anxious. No reason, except for a feeling I couldn’t name even to myself.

WE’D BEEN TO THE VILLAGE to take food several times since the flood, so I knew at once that there was something wrong as soon as I reached the outlying cottages. There was no one peering from the windows or hunting for dog dung outside. There were no children playing in the road, or women fetching water or firewood. It had been quieter of late because of the fever, but even so there was usually some half-naked infant sitting on the road stuffing fistfuls of dirt in his mouth or a woman sitting in her doorway picking over beans. But I couldn’t see anyone. What if the fever had spread? You hear of whole villages being deserted when a sickness takes hold, the sick fleeing and leaving the dead to rot where they lie.

The path between the houses was empty but for the winter midges. The bugs hung in a thick cloud over the ditches where stagnant river water still ran among the refuse and stinking mud. A dark stain was wrapped around the wall of each cottage; strands of dry yellowish-green slime clung to wattle and fence, marking the height of the water.

The hairy back of a solitary pig poked up from a ditch as it snuffled and rooted among the refuse. It grunted contentedly as if nothing could go amiss in its world. How it had survived the cull, I didn’t know. Most likely one of the villagers had hidden it, or it had wandered out from the forest.

“Think yourself fortunate to have survived, do you, little sow? Well, take my advice, Mistress, you’d best follow the example of the noblemen’s wives and get yourself in litter soon with any boar that passes or you’ll not live to see Candlemass.”

The sow gave another grunt, its snout buried deep in the carcass of some creature too far rotted to own a name.

A couple of moth-eaten hens with long scaly legs and wilted combs scratched beside a doorstep. The door of the house was closed tight and the shutters too, as if that was going to keep the fever out, but it was too late; you could smell it was in there. The stench was unmistakable; it clawed at your throat even through a closed door.

The door to the tanner’s yard lay open, but there was no sound of beating leather. A scraper lay abandoned on the stretched skin. The skin needed wetting again; it was drying out in the cold wind. It would be the Devil’s own job to clean that if the fat dried. But what master would be so lax as to let his apprentice run off leaving a hide to spoil, unless he’d been suddenly struck down? What would take master and apprentice together in the midst of their work and in so much haste they didn’t even stop to put the skins in soak? Not even the fever could do that.

The Owlman! A shiver ran down my back. I spun wildly round and round staring up at the milky sky, terrified that he might be crouching up there in the bare branches of the trees, watching me. Without thinking, I started running back the way I’d come, desperate to get to the safety of the beguinage. I stumbled and went sprawling on the sharp stones. Shaken, I crouched on the ground, trying to get my breath.

There was a harsh croak above me. Covering my head, I threw myself against the wall of a cottage. I cowered there, my heart thumping, but nothing happened. At last, cautiously, I glanced up. It was only a raven. It had settled on the roof of the cottage and was peering down at me.

A raven! Gudrun’s bird; that meant she was here, somewhere in the village. No, it was silly to think that. There were hundreds of ravens; how could you possibly tell one from another? There was no reason why this one should be hers.

Then I heard it, a sound like a great wave breaking on a shingle beach. I couldn’t tell if it was a roar of fury or excitement. It was coming from the centre of the village. I wanted to run in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t leave Gudrun. If she was here, I had to find her. Sick with fear for her, I set off in the direction of the sound.

As I emerged from the lane, the noise of the crowd exploded in my ears. Every man, woman, and child from the village who could walk was there, crowded together around the pond at the far end of the Green, children perched on their fathers’ shoulders for a better view, women at the back standing on tiptoe on upturned buckets or barrels. Another cheer rose, but was abruptly severed, as if the heads of the crowd had been chopped from their bodies in mid-roar.