Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [362]
“Damn that Wilson,” he remarked. The fellow should have waited to help them unload; it was not the first time he had been guilty of slackness; and irritably he had stomped down the path that led to Wilson’s cottage, accompanied by two of his children.
The surly villein was standing at the door. As usual, he made no move to welcome the merchant as he came up and when Shockley told him pleasantly enough to go up to the farm to help, he started off without a word. Meanwhile, as they always did, the two Shockley children dived into Wilson’s cottage to satisfy their curiosity, and it was his fair-haired daughter of twelve who now came out with a puzzled expression and called to her father.
“Come and look at Peter.”
The fire in the dark little room had gone out and Wilson’s wife was sitting silently, as she usually did in one corner. In the other, young Peter Wilson lay on a bed of straw. As he entered, Shockley was not conscious of anything especially wrong, beyond the general air of silent hatred he always sensed when he went into Wilson’s little dwelling, but as he came near him, he had a sudden sensation that the boy was very hot. He bent down to look. And as he did so, Peter Wilson sat up bolt upright, and with a terrible retching sound, coughed into his face.
“Out of here. Out!” he roared at his astonished children. A moment later all three had tumbled out of the cottage and were running up the path again. “We leave the farm at once,” he cried.
As they passed Walter Wilson, Shockley was almost certain that the cottager had grinned.
Rose de Godefroi’s cook, Margery Dubber, had her own ideas about how to deal with all kinds of illness. She was a large, solid middle-aged woman with greenish eyes that stared in different directions; when the two women unpacked the Malmsey wine from Christchurch and Rose gave her the recipe for its use, neither eye looked convinced.
“You must boil the wine until a third of it’s gone,” Rose told her. “Then add peppers, ginger and nutmeg and let it simmer for an hour more; then I want you to add this Treacle Venice.” She produced a thick syrup made from honey. “And aqua vitae,” she added. Rose suspected that the spirits were the best part of the cure. “Boil them all up again and we’ll keep the plague at bay.” And so, morning and evening, the Godefrois and their entire household now began to drink this fortifying brew.
But as soon as she was by herself the cook muttered:
“If the plague comes here, it’ll be Margery Dubber’s cures they need.”
When they had taken the bottles of Malmsey wine from their straw packing, neither the cook nor Rose had noticed the flea which had fallen out of the basket and leaped at once into the deep folds of the lady’s cloak.
News that the plague had reached the Shockley farm came to them the next day; but at Avonsford there was still no sign of it.
The only thing disturbing the Godefrois’ calm was the failure of their son Thomas to arrive.
If anything was needed to confirm the view in the village of Avonsford that Agnes Mason was not only wilful, but a little strange in the head, it was her behaviour two days after the lord of the manor began his mysterious preparations for the invisible plague.
The knight’s actions seemed odd; but then the workings of a noble’s mind were often beyond their ken, and could not be questioned. For a villager to behave as Agnes did, however, was inexplicable and outrageous. Why did the two Mason men stand for it?
Within an hour of receiving the knight’s permission, she led her little family out of the village and up onto the ridges. She and her two stepsons each pulled behind them a small handcart piled high with provisions – grain, household possessions, clothes, and certain other items, the need for which her family could not understand.
When they reached the sheep house, she sent the two brothers back to the woods, telling them: “Find all the firewood you can and bring it here.” Meanwhile, she inspected their new accommodation. The holes in the roof and the crumbling