The people who had the misfortune to live in the tiny Fenland village of Colne led miserable lives. Their homes were little more than hovels, with walls of woven hazel twigs that had been plastered over with mud from the nearby river. The crude thatching on the roofs leaked, allowing water to pool on the beaten-earth floors and to deposit irregular and unpleasant drips on the huts’ inhabitants. Winter rain and biting winds had stripped away some of the walls’ mud, so that Ralph could see the orange flicker of a hearth fire through them in the darkness. He shifted his position, uncomfortable after the long wait in the frigid chill of a February night. In one of the houses, a dog started to bark. Its yaps were half-hearted, as though it, like its owners, was too dispirited to care much about someone lurking suspiciously in the shadows outside.
Ralph huddled more deeply into his cloak, grateful that he worked for a man who provided clothes that kept him warm through the worst of winter and boots that were equal to wading through the thick, sucking muck of the country’s roads. The same could not be said of the people who lived in the cottages he watched. These were villeins, bound by law for their entire lives to the estates of Lady Blanche de Wake. If their own crops failed and they had not stored enough food for the winter, then they would starve. Blanche was not obliged to help them, and they were not permitted to leave their vermin-infested homes to seek a better life elsewhere. Ralph sniffed softly, thinking that what he was about to do might even help the poor wretches in their cramped, stinking huts, shivering near meagre fires lit with stolen wood.
He had been watching them for the best part of a week now, and knew their daily routine: they trudged home from labouring in Lady Blanche’s stony fields, ate whatever they had managed to poach or steal from her woods — the grain saved from the last harvest had long since gone — and then fell into an exhausted slumber until the first glimmer of light in the east heralded the beginning of another dreary day. Ralph’s careful observations had yielded a great deal of information about the people of Colne and their lives. For example, he knew that the folk in the cottage to his left had feasted on a pigeon that night; the inhabitants of the other two had made do with a thin stew of nettles, a handful of dried beans and some onion skins that had been intended for Blanche’s pigs.
Lady Blanche’s manor house stood in a thicket of scrubby trees some distance away, near the swollen stream that bubbled through the dull winter-brown fields. Ralph had managed to slip inside it earlier that day, when the reeve was out overseeing the peasants at their work. Although Blanche was not currently in residence, the house was always kept in readiness for her. There were clean rushes on the floor, sprinkled with fresh herbs to keep them sweet smelling, and the kitchens were well stocked. Blanche liked her food, and the reeve saw no reason to let standards slip just because his mistress was away. He and his family had certainly not eaten onion skins and nettles that evening.
Ralph turned his attention back to the cottages. The occupants had been sleeping for a while now and Colne was well off the beaten track: no one was likely to come along and disturb him. It was time. Stiffly, because he had been waiting for some hours, Ralph stood and brushed dead leaves and twigs from his cloak. He flexed his limbs, then made his way to the nearest of the three hovels, treading softly. The dog whined, and Ralph grimaced, sensing that he would have to be quick if he did not want to be caught red-handed.
He had thought carefully about what he was going to do, painstakingly planning and making preparations. He had already packed the thatched roofs with dried grass, and had placed small bundles of twigs at strategic points around the backs of the hovels. He would have used straw, but was afraid one of the cottagers would notice if he made too many obvious changes.
The dog barked again when he struck the tinder, but he ignored it as he set the tiny flame to the first clump of dry grass. It caught quickly, then smoked and hissed as the flames licked up the damp thatch. When he was sure it would not blow out, he moved to the second bundle of kindling, and then the next. The dog barked a third time, more urgently now, unsettled by the odour of smoke and the snap of gently smouldering roof. Someone swore at it, there was a thud, and its barks became yelps. Hurrying, Ralph moved to the next cottage, where he set the dancing flame to a bundle of tinder-dry sticks.
