Knight's Fee by Rosemary Sutcliff

Author:Rosemary Sutcliff [Rosemary Sutcliff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2013-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

11

Witch Hunt!

LIFE AT DEAN went on in its usual way. The swallows came back to the great barn. Bevis and Randal dammed the stream and dipped the sheep, taking their turn to stand waist deep in the cold water, heaving the terrified and struggling beasts off the hurdle jetty. Hay harvest came and went, and the barley in Muther-Wutt Field was almost ripe to the sickle.

But under the surface of things, there was an uneasiness like thunder in the air, gathering ever more thickly as that spring and summer went by. People whispered together that maybe the end of the world was indeed coming. Strange things happened; omens and marvels. Last winter there had been strange lights in the northern sky; now a calf with two heads was born up at Durrington. People had queer, unchancy dreams and talked about them at half-breath afterwards; and as always when people were afraid, they turned back to the old gods. The Prior of Steyning complained of difficulty in getting the tithes in, or any work out of the Priory villeins, and on Lammas Eve, Adam Clerk came to Sir Everard in deep distress, having found the trunk of a certain ancient thorn tree on the Manor smeared with blood.

The next day Sir Everard had some business with de Savage, over at Broadwater, and riding home with the two boys behind him as usual, just where the Bramble Hill dropped into the woods, they came upon Ancret gathering simples. They would not have seen her, but that she heard the soft thud of the hoofbeats on the track, and straightened and came down to meet them, trailing her dusty-coloured kirtle like a queen’s mantle through the dusty-coloured flowers of late summer, the wild marjoram and the swaying yarrow among the dusty hazel bushes. Randal thought, looking at her, that he had never seen anything human that took on the colour of her surrounds as perfectly as Ancret did. Only those deer’s eyes of hers, darker even than Sir Everard’s, were bright.

Sir Everard reined up and greeted her courteously as he always did. And she returned the greeting, ‘God’s joy to you, Sir Everard,’ and stood waiting, her eyes on his face, as though she knew he had something to say to her.

‘Ancret,’ said Sir Everard after a moment, fidgeting with his sword belt, ‘if I had not met with you this evening, I should have come to your cottage. Adam came to see me yesterday with a tale of having found the big thorn tree below Long Down smeared with blood.’

Randal, watching her, had a feeling of a curtain being drawn behind her eyes, though they remained as bright as ever.

‘Did he so, my Lord?’

‘Don’t pretend to me that you did not know about it,’ Sir Everard said sternly.

‘What would d’Aguillon have me do?’

‘Put a stop to it; it is dangerous.’

Ancret came a step nearer, and laid her hand on Valiant’s neck, looking up into the knight’s face with those dark, curtained eyes. ‘This year is not like other years.

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