The Marsh King's Daughter by Elizabeth Chadwick Read Free Book Online Page B

made up with a striped cover. Cooking pots and utensils were stacked in an orderly fashion on the trestle under the hut's single window space. Strangely out of place amongst them, Miriel recognised a piss-flask fashioned of clear glass with a design of fluted rays. She wondered how a common rural shepherd came to own such a thing. Her grandfather had possessed one but his had been of thicker glass without the fluting; even that had cost a small fortune.
    Returning outside, she closed the door behind her. 'They can't be far away,' she said.
    Godefe frowned and gave an irritated click of her tongue. 'I didn't see them out on the pasture with the sheep, nor their herd boy.'
    Miriel shrugged and went round to the garden enclosure. Leeks, cabbages and swedes adorned the dark soil in well-tended rows. A sow and five fat weaners squealed at her over the mud wall of the pigsty. Draped over a hemp drying line were several exquisite linen shirts and embroidered towels. Miriel blinked at the sight and began to reassess her ideas on the way that humble shepherds lived.
    Tethered by the house were two sturdy bay pack ponies. One was bright-eyed with a lively swish to its tail; the other, head down, slept on its feet.
    Godefe joined her and she too stared at the line of clothes and the ponies in utter astonishment. 'They're not Wynstan's, that's for sure,' she said.
    'Do you think they're connected with the man we found? 'Perhaps they're his linen and ponies.'
    Mayhap.' Godefe nodded at the possibility. 'But Wynstan's an honest man. He must have come on them by chance.' the women remounted. Torn between returning to the convent to see how Nicholas was faring, and enjoying her freedom for a little longer, Miriel circled her mule while she deliberated. Wynstan might be down at the estuary,' she said. 'It's probably where he found the ponies.' 'I don't think we should ..." Godefe began, but Miriel already set her heels to the mule's flanks and was trotting down the narrow track that led to the shore. 'It won't take long,' she called over her shoulder. Filled with misgiving, Godefe followed her. As they neared the beach, it swiftly became clear that something was afoot. The foreshore was busy with people. Walkways across the treacherous mud had been improvised
    out of wattle hurdles, and it appeared that the entire populations of Sutton and Cross Keys were out on the sands, poking and prodding with long poles, broom handles and spears. There were soldiers amongst them too, their presence marked by bright surcoats and the silver glint of link mail and weapons. Piled on the beach were the battered remnants of several covered wains.
    Miriel and Godefe stared in amazement. 'Something terrible must have happened here yesterday,' Miriel said, her notion of Nicholas as a man alone now destroyed. 'Look at all the debris.' Even as she spoke, a cry went up and a knot of people clustered around something in the mud. Ropes were fetched and, as the women watched in horror, a bedraggled corpse was heaved out of the slime and laid along one of the hurdles. The hands reached, fingers curled in rigid claws and the throat was stretched in extremity.
    'God have mercy.' The older nun crossed herself and suppressed a heave.
    Thinking of Nicholas, Miriel had to swallow her own gorge.
    They heard another shout closer to hand. A man dressed in homespun wool and sheepskins was limping towards them from the search party. He carried a shepherd's crook, slick with mud for over half its length. Two shaggy grey and white dogs trotted at his heels, their tongues lolling.
    'Sisters,' he greeted Godefe and Miriel. The wind had whipped a flush into his leathery cheeks and he was breathing hard from his walk.
    Godefe inclined her head stiffly in return. 'We have come to treat your leg,' she said, frowning. 'You are supposed to be resting it.'
    'Not today I'm not.' He turned to view the activity on the foreshore. 'Course, they'll not find much. I've had sheep drown out there and