a lazy, incompetent numbskull whose only interest is in filling his personal coffers. He says red-headed girls are as common as bird shit in Norwich, and he doesn't have the men to spare to go banging on every door of the city. So you'll have to do it. I'd go myself, but the king . . .'
'But I've never laid eyes on the girl,' Raoul protested. 'How am I to find her, if the sheriff's men can't?'
'The man who brought the news says he heard talk of it in an inn. The Adam and Eve, he called it. It's a place frequented by all the knaves, rogues and cutpurses in Norwich, or so he says. Take lodgings there. Drink with them. Flirt with their whores. Buy the customers whatever disgusting muck they throw down their poxy throats to get them drunk, so they'll talk freely. I don't care what you have to do, just find that girl. I'll not have any villein on this manor think they can defy me and live.'
Raoul's face brightened a little. Drinking and whoring, now that was something he was good at. A week or two in Norwich maybe wouldn't be so bad after all. And if he couldn't find this girl, he could always tell Osborn she'd been seen boarding a cart or a boat out of the city.
Raoul was still smiling to himself as he mounted the steps to his bed, picturing the slender, lithe body of the king's mistress, so deliciously young and helpless. Yes, he deserved a little treat and if the wenches in Norwich were half as enticing as the king's whore, this was one task he might actually enjoy.
1st Day after the Full Moon,
August 1211
Fox — There are some mortal families which are descended from foxes, and if someone in that family is about to die, many foxes will gather near the house. A mortal who is bitten by a fox will live only seven years more.
He who would find courage must wear a fox's tongue to make him bold. He who would be cured of a swollen leg must carry a fox's tooth. The liver of a fox washed in wine and dried will sooth a cough. If a mortal has a thorn embedded in him, he should lay a fox's tongue on it through the hours of darkness and when dawn breaks the thorn will be drawn out. The ashes of a fox drunk in wine will cure a mortal of complaints of the liver. Bathing in the water in which a fox has been boiled will ease the pain of gout, and if a bald man rubs his pate with fox fat, his hair will be restored.
Witches may take the form of foxes and often when the fox is chased it will seem to vanish and the huntsmen will find only an old woman standing there.
For though its corpse heals men, the living fox is to be feared, for it is the symbol of the Devil, and if a fox should pass a mortal on the track, it is a dark omen that a terrible event shall follow.
The Mandrake's Herbal
The Cage
Osborn's scrawny little clerk looked like a helpless, naked baby bird behind the great wooden table which had been pulled into the centre of the manor courtyard. The sallow- faced man nervously shuffled ledgers and parchments from one side of the table to the other, then began counting the freshly cut quills in his pot, as if the exact number was of vital importance. Osborn, irritated, rapped on the table with the handle of his riding whip to get the little man's attention.
'I want every rent paid in full today, no excuses. If they cannot pay they leave the crofts or workshops this same day. Likewise their field strips, any man who cannot pay for land he is renting will have it ploughed up.'
The clerk opened his mouth to protest, but seeing the thunder gathering on Osborn's brows, thought better of it and nodded vigorously enough to show that he wouldn't dream of disagreeing. Raffe too stood silent. A few weeks before he would have tried to argue with Osborn, but he'd learned that only made the man more savage in his dealings. Better to say nothing and simply ignore the instructions. He could manage to hide the odd late payment, that's if the little scrivener could be trusted to keep his mouth shut and not go squealing to his master. But Raffe was confident that