The Turn of Midnight Read online

  My Lord’s long absence in Dorseteshire, coupled with the death of most of his household, meant his serfs had been without direction for months. Where Hugh would have set them to work immediately to cure them of idleness, Thurkell began by instructing the handful of remaining house servants to prepare food to feed them. He and his companions assisted in the task by butchering five sheep and milling grain on the castle’s quern-stones to make flour for bread, and the serfs seemed entranced to see a lord and his squires buckle to tasks usually reserved to bonded men. A ripple of curiosity ran through the assembled mass.

  It was a first stirring of life, as if something out of the ordinary was all that was needed to wake them; but what they made of the orders Thurkell gave when their bellies were full was anyone’s guess. Most stood with downcast eyes as he listed the tasks he wanted them to perform. Their village must be burnt to kill the vermin in the thatch, and new homes erected in another location. Their habit of defecating and urinating outside dwellings and in woodland would end. Instead, latrines would be dug at a distance from the new village to bury human waste beneath ground to deter scavengers. Great importance would be placed on the cleanliness of bodies and clothes. The women would run a communal laundry and manufacture thin-toothed combs to pick lice and fleas from the heads of all, including their own.

  Athelstan understood these ideas might seem strange, but he urged compliance. Spring planting was a good two months away and there was time to complete the building work and grow accustomed to the new rules before the call came to return to the fields. For his part, My Lord of Bourne pledged food and shelter for all and an abandonment of the whip for any but the most serious of crimes.

  This last brought looks of disbelief to several faces but only one man dared voice his doubts aloud. Some forty years of age, he stood at the centre of the crowd, his arms laid protectively across the shoulders of children, and he advised his neighbours in an undertone to question everything they were being told. Hugh would have challenged such insolence, but Thurkell saw courage and stepped forward to seize the serf’s hand and make him an ally.

  Did it gall Hugh now that his assessment had been wrong and Thurkell’s right? Not so much as it had galled him to watch Robin Pikeman grow in stature over the weeks that followed. The peasant might never learn the skills of reading and writing, but Thurkell’s patronage and Pikeman’s own knowledge of his master’s demesne won him the ear of My Lord. His fear of Bourne was obvious but, assisted by Thurkell, he found his voice and demonstrated a keen grasp of the difficulties My Lord faced through the loss of so many of his field serfs—not least the inability of one hundred and twenty to farm land that had required six hundred to make profitable before the coming of the pestilence.

  He raised other issues which were rightly the preserve of the steward. The necessary redistribution of peasant strips which had become redundant through the deaths of entire families. The support of orphaned sons, too young to work, who were nevertheless heirs to their fathers’ land entitlements. The protection of orphaned daughters. A recognition of the rights of the elderly to a share in the fruits of their families’ strips whomever was appointed to farm them. The impossibility of selling surplus livestock with markets closed and drovers and merchants too frightened to travel the highways.

  Pikeman numbered My Lord’s sheep and cattle at well over two thousand beasts and argued that slaughter was essential before predicted births in the spring put an even greater burden on already scarce pastureland. Where the pestilence killed humans, it allowed stock to flourish, and My Lord would lose his flocks and herds to starvation if he continued to allow his ram lambs and bull calves to live.

  Bourne studied the serf’s gaunt face and frame and asked why he hadn’t slaughtered and eaten the animals himself, and Pikeman reminded him of the edicts he had issued which listed the punishments for thievery. To hide a handful of grain when taxes were being counted earned twenty lashes. To tickle a trout from the river, forty. To steal a sheep from the pastures or a deer from the forests, death.

  Perhaps the old man felt shame for his own misdeeds, because he ordered the surplus male animals to be slaughtered and preserved as food for his people before turning to the problem of how to farm the demesne’s land without sufficient labour. My Lord of Athelstan had suggested bringing the surviving serfs from his vassal estates to make their homes in Bourne. Did Pikeman foresee difficulties in such an exercise? Would the serfs of Bourne accept strangers in the place of those who had died?

  The serf answered that My Lord’s people would do as they were ordered whether they liked the new arrangement or not but, encouraged by Thurkell to say how best to create one community from four, he advised that leading men from each of the vassal demesnes should be brought to Bourne first. ‘They will know the number and names of those who still live, the size of their present holdings and the rights to which each family is entitled, sire. If they’re persuaded that the distribution of plots and strips in Bourne will be fair, they will take that message to their villages.’

  ‘And My Lord’s own people?’ Thaddeus asked. ‘How will they feel about newcomers?’

  Pikeman hesitated, clearly questioning how bold he could be. ‘To increase each family’s portion by a third will ease any tensions, sire. When a man has the ability to grow more food, his fear of hunger decreases and taxes become less onerous. If the vassal demesnes have suffered as badly as we have, there’s more than enough land to be generous.’ He ducked his head to Bourne. ‘Be assured your people have done their best to till and plant your virgates, sire. We honoured our oaths of fealty even without instruction, for none of us wished you to return and find your own fields uncultivated.’

  Hugh thought the churl overreached himself to pretend such work had been done out of loyalty rather than fear of a flogging, but My Lord readily accepted the lie as reason to offer rewards. He instructed Hugh to make preparations for the reallocation and enlargement of the peasant strips, appointed Pikeman overseer of the digging of latrines and the building of the new village and tasked Thurkell with bringing worthy men from the vassal demesnes. All three estates lay on the highway to Sarum, the farthest some thirty miles distant, and Thurkell requested the use of My Lord’s carriage to bring the selected serfs from their villages.

  At least on this My Lord showed caution. ‘Is that necessary? Surely such privilege will convince them they’re superior to my own people?’

  Thurkell gestured to Pikeman. ‘They’ll be no stronger or better fed than this man, sire. Even to ride a horse saps energy when the body is unaccustomed to the saddle. To request those from the farthest demesne to walk thirty miles will be to kill them before they arrive.’

  Pikeman found the courage to speak without being prompted. ‘They’ll be more afeared than honoured to travel in your wagon, sire. It makes no matter what reasons they’re given for the journey, they’ll expect your anger when they arrive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For bringing the pestilence to your demesnes, sire. The priest told us it was God’s punishment for sin.’

  ‘The Church teaches us so.’

  ‘Yet my wife was a better person than I am, sire, and my children quite innocent. I should have been taken before them . . . and certainly before the priest.’

  Thurkell answered when Bourne stayed silent. ‘It wasn’t by God’s will that your family died, Robin. It was through misfortune. In Develish, where your master took refuge during the autumn, none has fallen to the pestilence. They’ve kept it at bay by using the same methods I’m asking you and your people to follow. If you rid yourselves of vermin and parasites, you have a goodly chance of survival.’

  Pikeman searched his face. ‘We’ve never died of such things before, sire. Why should it be different now?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, my friend. My understanding of the sickness is very limited. I know only what I’ve seen and heard. You and your fellows must decide for yourselves if the advice I give is good.’

  He co
uched his explanation in words the serf would understand, only falsifying the details that related to his status, claiming cousinship with Lady Anne of Develish as his reason for being on her demesne when news of the pestilence first reached them. He explained the measures Lady Anne had taken to protect her people and then told of how he and his soldiers had ventured out in search of grain and livestock to replenish Develish’s dwindling stores as autumn drew in.

  Hugh had first heard the story some three months previously, when he and Develish’s leading serfs had been summoned to the church shortly after Lady Anne had given leave for My Lord of Bourne, Thurkell and his companions to cross the moat. My Lord and Lady Anne were seated in the prayer stalls and the tall figure of Thaddeus Thurkell stood by the chancel window, staring towards the land beyond the moat. He seemed more imposing for his near month-long absence and, as always, Hugh resented having to look up to him. God had dealt him a poor hand when He’d made him a head shorter than a bastard-born English slave.

  At Lady Anne’s invitation, Thurkell had spoken of his journey, neither tempering his language nor sparing his listeners a true picture of what he’d observed. He had described a land almost barren of people. There was evidence that lords and freemen, able to travel at will, had fled north to escape the pestilence while bolder serfs, willing to live by their wits, had seized the opportunity of their lord’s absence to abscond; but the size of the plague pits in abandoned villages were testimony to how many had died. He dismissed any suggestion that the sickness was carried on the wind or in the water, since he and the youths who rode with him remained well, and he respectfully challenged Lady Anne’s belief that sufferers must pass the infection to others on their breath or through their touch.

  Had the disease been confined to Melcombe, where it first appeared, Thurkell would have agreed with her, but the speed with which it had spread made him question whether afflicted travellers could be the carriers. Survivors spoke of the pain sufferers endured from the moment the fever took hold. Boils erupted within hours, and death followed in three to four days. Not even the strongest and most determined of men could have journeyed far enough from Melcombe to cause the whole of Dorseteshire to be wasted in under ten weeks.

  In the demesne of Woodoak, where he and his companions had found people still alive, Thurkell had asked how they’d escaped the pestilence. Not one had claimed goodness as a reason, telling Thurkell their beloved priest had been amongst the first to die. Instead they blamed rats, quoting the words of a wise woman—as versed in medicine as Lady Anne—who had devoted herself to nursing the sick on the priest’s death. Her reward had been to die of the pestilence herself, but her fellow serfs had followed the instructions she’d given them and none had succumbed since. Burn your houses to rid yourselves of rats, she had urged. Immerse yourselves fully in water to cleanse the feeling of dirt on your skin. Sleep outside in the open air, and build a fire each night to keep vermin away.

  Thurkell would have given these warnings little credence had rats been less evident in the demesnes he and his companions visited. The creatures bred faster where peasants had died or fled, leaving easy sources of grain on unharvested strips or in sacks inside abandoned huts. As to how they might pass the pestilence to people, he repeated the descriptions the Woodoak serfs had given of the sick. Some had complained of terrible itching before boils erupted on their necks, and all, including survivors, had spoken of their skin crawling in the presence of the dead and the dying.

  Some five days later, while his companions delivered sheep to Develish, Thurkell had returned alone to Woodoak. This time he had asked only about the itching. What had caused it? All cited fleas, having seen the bites on the skin of their dear ones. One spoke of how her small daughter had scratched and clawed at the virulent eruptions on her arms until painful pustules broke out around her neck. The woman was no stranger to fleas and couldn’t account for why these eruptions had been so inflamed, but her husband and son, similarly afflicted, had both died within a week of her daughter.

  Challenged by My Lord of Bourne to explain if it was rats or fleas that passed the pestilence to humans, Thurkell had argued for both. He knew of no illness that moved from animals to humans, but to stand near a mangy cur was to invite a legful of bites. It was the same when humans shared their living space with rats. As a child, he’d found a dead one in his bedding and the straw around it glistened with escaping fleas as he’d lifted it by the tail. To prevent the infestation spreading, his mother had seized a burning brand from the fire and set his bedding alight. Every serf in Develish had suffered similarly until Lady had instructed them on how to rid their homes of vermin and parasites.

  He returned to the question of how the pestilence had spread so quickly through Dorseteshire. If sin wasn’t the determiner of death, and sufferers were too weak to travel, then it must be the healthy who carried the sickness. Yet how? It was inconceivable that a man could be ignorant of a rat in his knapsack, but he could carry a flea without knowing it. Thurkell had pulled back his sleeve to show the darkness of his skin. Whether because of its colour or toughness, he was never troubled in the way that the fair-complexioned were. He could journey many miles with a flea in his clothing before losing it to a more palatable, softer-skinned host.

  My Lord of Bourne had been party to Thurkell’s thoughts during the time they’d spent together outside the moat, yet he still remained wedded to the idea that divine punishment was the reason for the pestilence. Nothing else made sense to him, and he appealed to Lady Anne to explain how a single flea could infect a whole village. She had answered seriously that it wouldn’t be just one. Fleas must breed like any other creature, for God had no cause to make them different. If rats grew in numbers when there were ample supplies of grain, then the fleas that lived on the rats would multiply also. She had no explanation for why they had suddenly become deadly to man, but nor could she say why one pox was mild and another fatal, though experience told her it was so.

  Lady Anne went on to speak of the ease with which the pestilence had entered Melcombe. There had been rumours of a killing sickness in France even before her husband had died, and it made good logic that it had crossed the sea in a ship. If the source of the infection had been dying sailors, they would have had limited contact with people ashore, but rats, bearing fleas, would have disappeared into the sewers and houses of Melcombe where colonies of their fellows already lived. The same was true of every town and village where waste lay above ground and food was unsecured.

  ‘Are you so convinced of God’s hatred for man that you cannot conceive of a different agency being responsible for this sickness?’ Lady Anne asked Bourne. ‘You’re surely not blind to the fact that the moat has kept Develish free both of rats and the sickness?’

  ‘Do you always trust what your eyes tell you, milady?’

  ‘I do, sire. Is there a reason why I should not?’

  ‘God’s truths are as much invisible as they are visible.’

  ‘The Church would have it so,’ she agreed, ‘but it’s written in Proverbs: The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord made them both. And to what purpose would He bestow such wonderful gifts upon us if He didn’t intend us to have faith in what they reveal?’

  ‘It’s a great arrogance to presume to know the mind of God, milady.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said lightly. ‘The bishops took much responsibility upon themselves when they declared sin to be the cause of the pestilence. I grieve deeply for the caring priest of Woodoak who must have breathed his last in terrible distress, wondering how he had erred.’

  Hugh had felt tainted by heresy every time Lady Anne questioned the authority of the Church. He experienced the same sense of dread listening to Thurkell assure Robin Pikeman that his family had not been found wanting. It made no matter that he used reason to support his arguments. Hugh had been taught that the Bible could only be read and interpreted by the clergy and to hear a disbeliever dismiss the Church’s teachings on sin was to conspire in his blasph
emy.

  He had struggled long and hard to accept that a Saxon dissenter might have right on her side but, much as he longed to, he could not avoid the truth: that Lady Anne’s methods of protecting her people had worked. While all in Develish—sinners to their cores—still lived, the records in Bourne showed that eight-tenths of Bourne’s servants and serfs had died.

  Robin Pikeman needed little persuasion that something other than wickedness had caused his family’s deaths. He even endorsed Thurkell’s belief that fleas were the culprit, describing how his eldest son, the first to die, had complained of vexatious itching in the days before he fell to the fever. Nevertheless, he had little confidence that others would agree.

  ‘Most here are persuaded that God intends all men to die, sire, with the worst being kept to last. The youngest still have hope, and may accept that washing will keep them free of the pestilence, but the adults have none. They await death in the belief that their punishment was to endure the loss of those they loved before being taken themselves.’

  This bleak prediction touched a chord in Hugh, for he had always feared God’s wrath, but Thurkell would have none of it. And neither, it seemed, would Bourne. With My Lord’s approval and encouragement, Thurkell tasked himself with restoring the survivors’ faith in the future. The following day, he and his companions assisted Pikeman in building the first house on the plot reserved for the new village. They had it finished by nightfall and attracted a crowd of curious watchers when Thurkell asked Pikeman whose home it should be. The serf consulted with his fellows and all nominated a woman who had made herself responsible for orphaned girls under twelve years old.