The Marsh King's Daughter

by Elizabeth Chadwick

Genres: Historical Fiction; Medieval Romance; International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Despite having signed the Magna Carta and made promises to mend his ways, there is still great dissatisfaction with King John's rule.
Among the rebellious nobles is young Nicholas de Caen. While fighting John's troops, he is captured, but during the trip back to be questioned, the treacherous marshes cause trouble and Nicholas and King John's treasure are both lost. Nicholas is injured and ends up at a nunnery where he is nursed by Miriel of Wisbech.
News of the lost treasure comes to them and the nuns realise the young man they are looking after probably knows something about this...

Release date: December 9, 2010

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

I would like to thank the many people who have helped me along the way in one form or another while writing this novel. On
the publishing front, my gratitude goes out to Barbara Boote for being a wonderful editor and fighting my corner at every
turn and to Filomena Wood for her efforts on my behalf each time publication day comes around. Copy editors are a frequently
vilified breed, but I am delighted by mine, Richenda Todd, and would like to say thank you very much for her help with freeboards,
halyards, furling and clewing! Any mistakes remaining in the terminology and techniques of Medieval shipping, I acknowledge
as mine. I would also like to thank everyone at Blake Friedmann for their tireless endeavours on my behalf, especially Isobel
Dixon and Carole Blake. I am much more knowledgeable about geography these days because I have to get out my atlas to look
up the whereabouts of the myriad countries in which they sell my books and stories! My thanks for their interest and support
also goes out to Richard Lee and Towse Harrison of the Historical Novel Society.


On the domestic front I could not do without the love and support of my husband Roger and our sons Ian and Simon. My parents,
Robert and Joan Chadwick, are always there to back me up and I would like to thank Alison King for her interest and long-standing
friendship.


In the research category, I want to say a huge thank you to members of Regia Anglorum and Conquest for extending my knowledge
and giving me the opportunity to expand my Norman culinary expertise (never ever cook in a posh frock with hanging sleeves!). My appreciation goes out to Gary Golding, Lyn Mcquaid, Patrick O’Connel, Steve, Joe and Daniel Wibberly,
Sharon Goode, Sarah and Mike Doyle, Jon Preston, Simon Carter, Ivor and Simone Lawton, Rosemary and Trevor Watson – and anyone
else who knows me!


Finally, for the inspiration, I would like to extend my gratitude to Bruce Springsteen, Jim Steinman, Runrig and Tori Amos
among a host of others. Thank you for the music.


It was a glorious May morning in the world at large – soft, balmy and harmonious. At the home of Edward Weaver in Lincoln,
however, a violent storm was raging.


‘I won’t go!’ Miriel shrieked at her stepfather. ‘You can’t force me into a nunnery. I’ll run away; I swear I will!’

Nigel Fuller’s light eyes bulged with fury. Planting his legs wide, he adopted a dominant stance. ‘I’m the head of this household
now and you’ll yield me obedience. Your shameless headstrong ways have been indulged for too long!’


‘You’ve wanted rid of me ever since you married my mother!’ Miriel spat. ‘My grandfather’s been buried less than a season
and already you’re at your schemes.’ She tossed her head in contempt. ‘You’ll never match up to him. They’ll still be calling
this Edwin’s house long after they’ve shovelled you into your grave.’


She realised that she had bated him too far. With a roar he swung his fist. Miriel side-stepped the blow and seized a distaff
of raw wool from a basket by the hearth. ‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on me!’ She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry
with fear. Now that her grandfather was no longer here to shield her from Nigel’s rage, a whipping seemed inevitable. She
jabbed the distaff at his soft belly and, as he leaped aside, she darted for the door. Despite his bulk, Nigel was fast. Before
she could raise the latch, he caught her by her thick tawny braid and jerked her back into the middle of the room.


Miriel struck at him with the distaff pole, but he wrenched it from her grasp and hurled it aside. The fleshy side of his
hand clouted her on the temple and his gold seal ring opened a jagged cut. Held fast by her hair, Miriel fought back, gouging
with her nails, biting like a dog until she tasted salt blood between her teeth. Nigel bellowed and struck her again. She
lost her vision; her knees buckled and only the twisting, vicious grip on her braid held her upright.


‘You will obey me!’ he panted. ‘Whether you will it or not, tomorrow you go to the nuns at St Catherine’s!’

‘Never!’ Miriel refuted in blind litany. Her defiance was all she had left. Let him murder her first; she would rather break
than bend.


A crackling sound of small flames growing bigger and the stench of burning wool filled the room. The flung distaff had landed
half in and half out of the hearth and now fire was licking along its length and devouring the nearby basket of raw wool.
There was a belch of air as the door opened and suddenly the room was full of choking, greasy smoke. Fire lashed towards the
rafters.


Cursing, roaring like a goaded bear, Nigel threw Miriel to the ground, kicked her brutally in the ribs and, grabbing the flagon
from the coffer, dashed wine at the blazing remnants of the wool basket.


The woman who had opened the door screamed the alarm and sped to fetch a water pail. Other household members came running
with cloaks and besoms to smother and beat the flames from existence.


Miriel closed her eyes and willed her awareness, already blurred, to vanish, but as with the rest of her life, she could not
have the things she desired even for the fiercest of willing. It was true that her stepfather had almost vanished just now
in a puff of smoke, but almost was not good enough.


‘It is all your daughter’s fault!’ she heard Nigel snarling at her mother. ‘She’s as disrespectful and wild as a vixen. Now
you see the fruit of Edward’s indulgence and pampering. She should have been put in a nunnery at birth!’


‘Yes, Nigel.’

The dutiful murmur caused Miriel’s closed eyelids to twitch with irritation and pain. Even to save her own life, she doubted
her mother would gainsay a man. As far as Annet Fuller was concerned, they were the masters, their orders and opinions all that mattered in the world.


‘She’s not spending another night under this roof. She can sleep in the warehouse with a bolt on the door, and at dawn she
leaves.’


Miriel wondered if she heard the briefest hesitation before the next placatory ‘Yes, Nigel’, but decided it was just wishful
thinking. Then she heard Nigel’s harsh breathing as he stood over her. ‘I hope for your sake that those nuns can find something
worth saving in your soul. God knows, they have a thankless task before them.’ He gave her a vicious nudge with his toe. ‘It’s
no use to play dead, you deceitful wench, I know you can hear me.’


Miriel had an urge to poke out her tongue, but resisted it and lay unresponding. Even if she could not defeat him in battle,
she would not give him the satisfaction of being right.


The floor rushes crackled as he strode to the door. His fingers clicked. ‘Get this mess cleared up before I return.’

‘Yes, Nigel.’

‘And I don’t want to see her again.’

The door banged. There was a brief silence which was swiftly overtaken by the serving women who commenced chattering and clucking
over the state of the room like a pair of disturbed hens. Miriel groaned and opened her eyes. Blood stung in one of them,
making her squint and blink. Huge, sooty fireprints had made violent patterns on the lime-washed walls. The wicker wool basket
was a skeleton fretwork of blackened strands and the stink of charred wool was almost overpowering.


‘Oh, Miriel, what have you done?’ Her mother shook her head in exasperation. Annet Fuller was three and thirty years old with
a swirl of golden-tawny hair like her daughter’s, although hers was decently tucked within a housewife’s wimple. She had clear
grey eyes and fine, thin features which were seldom brightened by a smile.


‘Nothing.’ Miriel sniffed and sat up. Her head was throbbing and her ribs ached sharply with each breath. ‘He started the
fire. I always get the blame; he hates me.’


‘Oh, he doesn’t,’ Annet said in her mild voice. Going to a water pail near the charred basket, she soaked a linen cloth and
wrung it out. ‘Your father only wants what is best for you.’


‘He’s not my father.’ Miriel’s own voice was hard and tight. No one had ever said much about the man who had begotten her.
All she knew, and that gleaned from servants’ gossip and the occasional stray remark of her grandfather’s, was that he had
been a minstrel, an itinerant singer who had taken advantage of the wealthy weaver’s virgin fourteen-year-old daughter and
moved on long before her belly began to swell. It was from him that Miriel had inherited her slender height and honey-brown
eyes.


Annet sighed and her knuckles tightened on the wringing until they were white. ‘He is in the eyes of the law.’ She knelt by
Miriel and laid the cloth against the jagged cut on her temple. ‘You gainsay him at every turn, child. A man has to know he
is master in his own house. I am surprised that he has not taken his belt to you before now.’


Miriel’s teeth chattered with shock and revulsion. ‘My grandfather was master here and he never beat me once.’ The tightness
in her voice grew and strangled her. Suddenly she was choking on tears. She didn’t want to cry, and clenched her fists in
her gown, fighting herself. It was the mention of her grandfather that had caused the damage. The image of his creased, dour
features filled her mind. He had been harsh and stern, but never unfair – and he had loved her. That was what made the world’s
difference.


Her mother’s lips compressed as she continued to dab with the cloth. ‘Your grandfather was an old man.’

‘You mean he would have beaten me if he’d been younger?’ Miriel said with scornful flippancy.

Annet ceased dabbing and sat back on her heels. ‘I mean that his judgement was impaired.’ Her voice remained level, but it
was no longer soft. ‘He indulged you when he should have been strict. He let you wrap him around your little finger. Whatever
you wanted, you received.’


The envy and resentment in her mother’s words came as no surprise to Miriel; the emotions had always been there, unspoken, but until this moment she had not realised how deep and bitter. Being the favoured one, there had been no reason
to probe.


‘You want to send me to the nunnery too,’ she whispered, and the terrible notion rose in her mind that perhaps it had been
her mother’s idea from the beginning.


Annet looked away. ‘It is for the best,’ she said stiffly. ‘You should have been given to St Catherine’s long ago, before
you became too wild.’


‘But I don’t want to be a nun!’ Miriel clutched her aching ribs and rocked her body in anguish.

‘Then what do you want?’ The grey stare was as cold as frost. ‘To stay here?’

Miriel shook her head miserably. Three months ago, with her grandfather in good health and head of the household, it would
have been a different matter.


‘No,’ Annet agreed grimly. ‘None of us could bear it. Nigel would kill you in the end and I would not blame him.’ She looked
at the cloth and folded it in a precise, neat square. ‘We could seek you a husband, but the way you behave, who would want
you unless you came with a great dowry?’ She gave a disapproving sniff. ‘Even if some man did take you in marriage, we would
dwell in constant fear of you shaming this household by being a bad wife.’


‘As you shamed it by bearing me?’ Miriel hit out, then flinched as Annet made an abrupt movement. The slap, however, did not
descend. Annet lowered her hand and clenched it in her lap. Her eyes fastened on the dull gleam of her wedding ring and she
tightened her jaw, emphasising the delicate lines of first ageing between nose and mouth.


‘Yes,’ she said, ‘as I shamed it by bearing you. I was too young, too innocent to see your father for the thief in the night
that he was. He stole my life from me in begetting yours. Now, by God’s grace and the passage of years, I have found a good
man and won back the right to hold my head high.’ She gave Miriel a bright stare, the suspicion of a glitter on her lashes.
‘I’ll not have you jeopardising my future with your tantrums.’ She made an abrupt gesture. ‘Enough of this. I am wasting time
that could be better spent.’ Her glance flickered to the sooty mess around the hearth and the two women who were sweeping up the blackened floor rushes. Their backs were turned, but
that did not mean they had lost their hearing. The scandal would be all over town by dusk.


‘Can you stand?’

Miriel nodded and struggled to her feet. Her head was pounding fit to burst and she felt sick. She shook out the folds of
her gown. It was made of the finest English wool, woven and clipped on her grandfather’s Flemish loom and dyed the colour
of ripe, dark plums. The thought of exchanging such luxury for the scratchy drab folds of a novice’s habit appalled her. As
Edward Weaver’s granddaughter, she was accustomed to wearing the most stylish of garments fashioned from the best fabric.


‘Come.’ Taking Miriel’s arm, her mother drew her towards the door. ‘You heard what your stepfather said. He doesn’t want you
in this house.’


‘And you don’t either.’ Miriel’s voice quivered.

‘Not at the moment,’ Annet said without compassion.

The warehouse, where sacks of wool were stored before being sorted, carded and spun, stood across the yard from the main house.
It was a sturdy stone dwelling with solid oak doors and a shuttered gable window. Just now it was almost empty, for the shearing
season had not long begun, and only a few raw fleeces were piled in the far corner.


Miriel heard the wooden bar shoot into place across the doors, and then the large iron key grinding in the lock. Rubbing her
arms, she walked slowly to the middle of the room. Threads of light filtered through gaps in the shutters and sparsely illuminated
the beaten earth floor. Although there were few fleeces in store, thirty years of use had saturated the walls with their ammoniac,
fatty smell. To Miriel, the pungency was comforting and poignant. Her grandfather’s white beard had been like a fleece and
his clothing had always held the aroma of sheep in its creases.


Leaving the centre of the room, she paced its walls, running her fingers along the flinty stone and remembering herself doing
just the same as a small child in her grandfather’s shadow. Following him, asking interminable questions until he was jolted from his taciturn disapproval to laugh and answer.
Her fascination had flattered him and through the years, first at his knee and then at his shoulder, she had learned the weaving
trade until she knew as much as he did, albeit without the seasoning of maturity and experience. Much good it had done her.


Her throat tightened. She plucked a snag of wool from the stone and teased it between her fingers, recognising by the length
of the staple that it had come from a lowland breed. Edwin Weaver her grandfather was dead, and Nigel Fuller ruled the household
like a cockerel on a dunghill. He would no more tolerate her presence in the weaving sheds or at the fulling mill than he
would contemplate sweeping the floor or washing his own dish after he had eaten. Men and women had their place in the world
and never the twain should blend, except at night in the bedchamber, and even there man was the master.


Miriel wandered over to the pile of fleeces in the corner. Five hundred of them from the abbey at St Catherine’s, the nunnery
where she was to be imprisoned, out of sight, out of mind and, more to the point, out of trouble. They always sheared their
flocks early. Her grandfather, with a twinkle of amusement, had called the start of the shearing season St Catherine’s Day,
although the saint did not celebrate her feast until November.


The family’s association with the abbey was a long and profitable one. Her grandfather’s twin sister had been the sacrist
there until her death two years ago, and a distant cousin had taken her vows at St Catherine’s before becoming a prioress
at a Benedictine house near Lincoln. A new oblate from the Weaver household would be welcomed with open arms. Indeed, there
had been hints from the Abbess on several occasions. Aided by Miriel’s pleading, her grandfather had stolidly ignored them,
but Nigel was of a different mind. Her mother was young enough to bear a complete generation of Fuller children. What need
of a troublesome bastard daughter?


Miriel made herself a nest among the pungent, foamy fleeces and curled herself into a foetal ball. If she was going to be forced to callus her knees in a freezing chapel at all
hours of the day and night, she would spend the time praying for God to visit a murrain on her stepfather.


‘A murrain, a murrain, a murrain,’ she chanted through her teeth like a holy song, until the words broke on a sob and the
tears came.


The light ceased to glimmer through the shutters as dusk fell and darkness encroached. No one came to bring Miriel food or
water or comfort. Only once did the heavy wooden draw-bar rattle as someone checked that it was solidly in place. Then the
footsteps trod away in the direction of the house. A small figure, lost in the vastness of the warehouse, Miriel closed her
eyes and sought oblivion in sleep.


There was nothing to see over the sides of the cart but white, clinging mist. Nicholas de Caen knew that if only he could
rid himself of the tough hemp cords binding his wrists and ankles, he could evade his captors in its thickness like a flea
in a blanket. They would not spend precious time searching for him. Despite his bonds, he was to them a minor fish in the
game, trapped in the net and kept in case he was useful.


He was going to disappoint them for they had already taken the only items of value he possessed – his elderly horse, his rusty
mail shirt, and a rather fine old sword that had belonged to his father. Stripped of these, all that remained was a young
man of three and twenty with no living relatives to pay his ransom and nothing to yield but hatred for King John who had beggared
and destroyed the de Caen family.


Nicholas tested the knotted rope with his teeth, but his captors had been thorough and there was no give in the hemp. Undeterred,
having naught better to do, he persisted. Around him the hazy shapes of other baggage carts and lines of roped pack ponies
loomed in the thick sea-mist. Although he could see neither water nor beach, the salt tang of the muddy foreshore filled his
nostrils.


They had camped the previous evening on the banks of the Wellstream at the hamlet of Cross Keys. This morning they were preparing
to traverse the murky bay of The Wash at the inlet while the tide was out.


‘Ye’ll not loosen them ropes, lad,’ said Alaric the cart-driver not unkindly as he appeared out of the mist, his woollen hood dewed in hoar and clear water droplets sparkling in his beard. ‘I’ve trussed enough chickens in me time to know me trade.’
He made sure the back of the cart was secure, then climbed on to the driving board and lifted the reins.


‘I can but try,’ Nicholas replied wryly. There was no profit in being sullen with his gaoler who was decent enough in his
way. He had let Nicholas keep his cloak against the cold, and had not stinted to give him hot gruel and ale from the supplies
that morning, although he had not been obliged to feed him at all.


‘Then you’re a fool.’ Alaric glanced at Nicholas and scrubbed his nose on his sleeve. ‘We’d not need to chase you with crossbows
and dogs; you’d be sucked into them quicksands yonder faster than a wink.’


Nicholas shrugged. ‘If it is so dangerous, then what is the baggage train doing here? Why didn’t we take the long road with
King John and the rest of the troops?’


‘’Tain’t dangerous if you knows what you’re doing,’ Alaric said gruffly. ‘There’s a causeway straight across and we’ve got
a guide. This way, although we’re slower moving, we’ll make up the distance. We should reach Swineshead Abbey by dusk, about
the same time as the vanguard.’ Facing forward, he clicked his tongue to the horse, and the cart lurched forward.


Nicholas was jolted against the sacks of grain which, apart from himself, were the wain’s cargo. If he focused hard and concentrated,
he could just make out a string of pack ponies following, their sides laden with chests and panniers. Their breath added to
the drifting mist, and their keeper was a dark shape swathed in a broad-brimmed hat and heavy mantle.


If there were other prisoners in the baggage train, Nicholas had not seen them, but then his own capture had been a matter
of pure mischance. If his horse had not cast a shoe, he would not have been at the smithy on the Lincoln road, where John’s
soldiers had seen and seized upon him as one of the escaping rebels from the aborted siege of Lincoln. They had brought him
to Lynn where John was staying. By the time they arrived, the King had moved on to Wisbech, heading for Swineshead, so they
had tossed Nicholas in with the baggage until they had time to interrogate him.


Nicholas had no intention of being present when that moment arrived. He had heard far too much about the techniques employed
by the King’s mercenaries. As far as Nicholas was concerned, red-hot pokers belonged at the hearth and nowhere near a human
orifice. Besides, he had sworn a vow to live until he was ninety and die in his bed.


He worked at the knot, but the tough fibres only cut further into his skin, making angry weals. The cart rumbled on to the
causeway, which was little more than a narrow path raised above the surrounding mud. When the tide turned, that path would
be obliterated by the freezing North Sea.


Nicholas tried not to think of the vast sheet of grey water lurking out beyond the horizon. He had been born to the sound
of waves crashing against a harbour wall, had learned to sail almost before he could walk. The sea-surge was within him, blood
and bone. There was love, and above that love was a deep, deep respect.


The mist cleared a little, a haze of white sun glimmering through somewhere in the region of noon, but Nicholas could see
that it was a temporary respite. Come mid-afternoon, the faery wisps and veils would thicken into true, hobgoblin fog.


Alaric was whistling through his teeth, as much to keep his spirits up, Nicholas suspected, as from natural good humour. The
young man knelt up to glance over the side of the cart, but even though the sun had thinned the cloud there was little enough
to see: a glistening brown expanse of shore populated by gulls and oyster catchers probing the mud for crabs. The landward
side was dun-coloured marshland, fading into a grey, vaporous haze.


John’s baggage train was slightly more interesting. Neither the beginning nor end of the procession could be seen although,
from what he had observed earlier, Nicholas judged that it must extend for about two miles. Not only were general supplies
being transported across the estuary, but also the entire contents of John’s household, including coin to pay his troops,
and the personal treasures and trappings of the royal household.


Nicholas looked down at his bound wrists and grimaced. It was the closest he was ever going to come these days to wealth of
any kind. All he had to his name were the clothes on his back and the prospect of being hanged for a traitor – although it
was King John who had committed treason, not the de Caen family.


They were perhaps halfway across the causeway and the mist was gathering like a murky fleece when the cart jolted to an abrupt
halt and Alaric swore roundly. The impact flung Nicholas on to his side. He rolled over and pushed against the sacks of grain
to right himself. Behind the cart, the pack ponies crowded to a standstill, their breath smoking like witches’ hair. Beyond
them again, a cursing cart-driver hauled his wagon out of line to avoid a collision.


‘What’s happening?’ Nicholas craned his neck. Confused bellows of anger and command drifted to them from further up the convoy.

‘Buggered if I know.’ Alaric leaped down from the cart and disappeared into the gathering fog.

Nicholas stared around. The cold air prickled his nape. Christ Jesu, this was dangerous. They were full out in the estuary
on a narrow causeway with the turn of the tide due far too soon. They couldn’t afford a delay.


A sudden, terrified bellow for help came from the seaward side where the cart-driver had pulled his team out of line. Nicholas
jumped at the sound and narrowed his gaze into the mist. Shadowy forms struggled and twisted, but the quicksand had snared
them and was rapidly sucking them down. The driver danced on top of his cart, crying for help in a voice raw with panic. Men
threw ropes but they slapped on the mud, falling far short. The driver jumped down on to one of the half-sunk wheels, reaching,
pleading. The ropes were cast again, but they grew no longer. Finally, the stranded man’s desperation burst. Leaping from
the safety of the cart, he made a grab for the nearest lifeline. He missed by yards, floundering and clawing at a safety that
was so close and yet beyond his reach. The quicksand slowly drank him, swallowing him down its long, voracious maw until his screams were smothered.


All down the line, the tragedy was re-enacted as drivers and pony-keepers tried to by-pass the blockage and only realised
how narrow their margin of safety was when they found themselves out on the quicksand.


Alaric returned. He was still whistling through his teeth, but now they were bared and there was fear in his eyes. ‘There’s
a cart up front cast a wheel,’ he told Nicholas. ‘Axle’s split and it’s beyond repair. They’re going to try and drag the entire
thing off the causeway, but it’s heavy laden.’


‘How long before the tide turns?’

Alaric shrugged. ‘Not long enough.’ He went to the end of the cart and gave his news to the pony-keeper behind. Together both
men started back up the line.


‘Wait!’ Nicholas cried, his voice choking with the horror that they were just going to leave him. Out on the sands, concealed
in cloud but pitilessly within hearing, the cries of men and horses sounded like a knell as they were sucked into the sludge.
He held out his wrists as Alaric turned. ‘For God’s pity, cut my bonds. I’m another pair of hands!’


Alaric studied him narrowly, then drew the knife from his belt. ‘Aye,’ he said grimly. ‘You’ll not be running anywhere, will
you?’


The blade sliced through the cords at wrist and ankle and Nicholas shook them away with disgust as if they were snakes. Fortunately
the binding, although skin-tight, had not robbed him of feeling. Apart from minor cramp and stiffness, he was able to jump
from the cart and walk without difficulty. Flexing his hands, he followed Alaric and the pony-man to the head of the line.


The broken wain was one of the most heavily laden in the convoy. It heeled to one side, the shattered wheel thrusting at an
awkward angle and half jammed under the strakes of the base. As Nicholas and the men arrived, sections of the royal bed were
being disgorged from its bowels and passed down the line to be distributed among the other carts. Nicholas eyed a gorgeously
painted chest as it followed a feather mattress through the ranks and thought sourly that however short of funds John claimed to be, he still lived in luxury unknown to most men.


‘Here, you, take this.’ One of the soldiers emptying the stricken wain shoved a glass container into Nicholas’s startled hands.
He gaped at the object in astonishment. If he had been told a week ago that he would be standing in the middle of the Wellstream
estuary holding King John’s piss-flask while the North Sea gathered beyond the horizon, he would have dismissed the prediction
with an incredulous guffaw. Now, although he