I let him go, not that I could have stopped him doing anything he wanted, and sat staring at the sleeping lump on the next bed.
Fleetingly I entered Sarah’s mind. She had opened the door into her husband’s bedroom, and was gazing over at him as he lay in the shadows of his great posted mattress. She had a knife in her hand. It was a long one, the blade slightly curved. It was shining in the starlight through the one open shutter.
But she didn’t approach the bed. Arthur was snoring lightly, turning a little with his mouth half covered by pillows. The knife hung loose in her hand and she knew she couldn’t, shouldn’t do it.
I knew how she felt, for I wouldn’t do it either.
But she lurched, feeling a rush of nausea. Simply seeing the man lying there made her sick.
Her thoughts raced back through the horror, the cruelty, the injustice, misery, humiliation and pain. A thousand times thrown to the bed and treated as a slave. No - far worse than a slave. She had been treated as a lump of inanimate flesh. He had loved hurting her and had often spent the day imagining how he might hurt her more, inventing newly adventurous possibilities, all of which delighted him, until he imagined something even worse.
The air dithered, and I was tugged, gasping for breath, into both existences. I was myself, longing to leave, but staring at the woman who mistreated her nephew and who had raped numerous young boys before murdering with malice and torture, the man who was doing exactly the same that she did herself.
Then I was Sarah, staring into the shadows at the figure in the bed and reliving his years of foul and agonising abuse.
There was a sudden click. I didn’t know who I was. I was her, and me, and she was me, and I was everybody and cold wet suffering splashed its bitter freeze across my eyes. Vespasian’s kisses disappeared. Sarah and I shared the same terrifying headache, and our sight was blurred. I knew the knife I had brought for protection from the kitchens was now in my hand, and I held it tightly with the rough wooden handle grazing against my fingers, but I was also clutching the long hilt of the carving knife held by Sarah. The wooden hilt was solid and smooth, and the ridge that kept my hand from the blade was brass and bright. I felt both knives. Somehow my right hand grasped both knives loosely at my side.
Even quieter than a whisper, I began to whisper to myself. But I was Sarah. “The church tells us of Satan and the wickedness of his witches and demons. So many sad women have been hanged by the state, and yet I am sure most were innocent. But now I have seen the demon dragged from you, my husband. You’ve housed that thing for so many years. But you are worse than any witch. And the one man I have known who truly held magical power, has been the most wondrous and beloved human I have ever known. The church is wrong. Yet magic does exist.”
Between us, my two selves, my sight and my brain were blurred, and I struggled to know what I should do. I was losing all comprehension when shadows formed, looming up before me. Two creatures, one imposed upon the other, an absurd and monstrous ugliness where four eyes were splattered across one face. But the fury was singular, the great double mouth opening as the roar was both deeply masculine and shrilly feminine at one instant, and then the same hands lunged.
Two hands – four hands – long nails and then short stumps – as one body reared – then another – and finally I felt one hand grab my hair while another clasped its fat fingers around my throat.
Arthur’s yellowing teeth were in my face while Agnes reared up and grabbed at Sarah. Then we were indivisible. I felt Sarah’s knife in my hand and could have killed Agnes while Sarah held my knife, threatening Arthur. Then it was my knife in my hand but it was Arthur’s face leering at me. I could no longer know who I was. I was no one. Or I was everyone.
Falling – me falling – Sarah falling – and then the great weight of two bodies hurtling onto me.
Still dazed, I struggled to separate both of me and both of them. Agnes was awake and her eyes held more venom than I’d ever seen in her, even when describing the pleasure of murdering William. She lunged and her fingers clawed at my face while her other hand fisted my hair, tugging like a wild cat until I felt the roots surrender. She snarled but I could hardly hear her. “A man – in my room – the head of a demon – pain – witches – in my bed.”
Yet at the same moment I was struggling with Arthur. His strength was greater, and his fury was greater. I was Sarah, and he was the man who had tortured me night after wretched night across the years. Now he accused me of torturing him and of witchcraft.
I had once known another Arthur. A man so vile and so evil, he had worshipped Lilith. Tilda had suffered so much at his hands, and Vespasian had killed him. Another Arthur, worshipping demons, and now Sarah had suffered at this Arthur’s hands, and this time I was going to kill him. Or she was. But that was the same thing.
And being Sarah, I knew his teeth were long, and I’d felt his bite many times before, even tearing pieces from my flesh as though a cannibal.
“A witch,” he roared. “I married a witch. I’ll chain you to this bed, witch, and call Cromwell to have you burned for heresy. Heretics are burned alive, witch, and I’ll stand and watch your skin blister and your flesh peel off your bones as you howl and plead.”
I shouted back at him. So did Sarah because I was her too. She yelled at Arthur, and I yelled at Agnes and it was all the same thing. “Demon,” we shouted. “I’m no witch. ‘Tis you. I saw the demon pulled screeching from your head.”
“I’ve long thought you a witch,” Arthur clawed now at my eyes, “and if I had a demon in me, then t’was you as put it there. I’ll have you whipped, then I’ll have you roped to the stake and light the fire myself.” His grin made both of me heave. “Imagine, witch, as the flames rise up to your groin. Your skin peels off. Your legs are exposed and the fire licks at the hair you keep curled below your belly. I’ll dance while you scream.”
At the same moment Agnes shrieked, “Demons, bitch – I felt my body wracked as you forced the demon inside me. I killed that bugger William because you crawled inside me as a witch and murderer, and I’ll tell the church about it. I reckon they’ll accuse you of murder and they’ll hang your miserable body on the gibbet. And as you swing there, wriggling and screaming, I’ll stand below and kick at your bare feet. I’ll laugh when you breathe your last and the piss trickles down your legs. A witch you are, and a witch you’ll die. I heard it all in my dreams.”
Arthur was bellowing, now both his hands around my neck and squeezing tight. “The church knows all about demons and witches. They’ll have you on trial before you can summon any more demons. Cromwell knows what should be done. Unless I kill you first.”
I lost my breath and felt the force of Arthur’s fingers around my throat. I was dizzy, felt myself falling, but they were Agnes’s fingers, and I wasn’t falling, at all I was stabbing out at her, panic in my stomach, and it was Agnes falling. She wore Arthur’s face.
It was the moment when both Sarah and I grabbed our knives and thrust them up and out – two knives in the same direction – and then one knife and one hand. Two screams and then merging into one scream. The same blood on the same hands.
For a moment I was only me and I recognised the violence of my own impetus, and the squelch of the knife point into the body on top of me. Another scream. Agnes reared up, then plunged down across my legs. My fingers moved, though I would have sworn I’d taken no action nor any decision to act. For a second time my knife plunged in the fat rolling weight clamping me down. This time the blade sliced into her neck and stayed there. Streams of stinking blood gushed and covered me. I felt I was swimming in a lake of blood.
Then the screaming and the rolling stopped, the weight stiffened and stilled. But then it began again with a man’s grip around my neck and pressing against my throat so that I couldn’t yell, and as the fingers squeezed again, so once more I couldn’t breathe. But my long carving knife had already punctured his side, the blood was oozing and although his thumbs seemed inside my flesh, once
again my knife was in his. I pressed it deeper, twisting and then releasing.
His hands dropped from my throat, and his own throat rattled. The carving knife hung from his neck like a scarf from a peg. He wasn’t shouting anymore.
Arthur’s body collapsed backwards and away from me when I pushed. Strange gurgling sounds rushed out with the blood like a little water rat mewling as it swam the river.
I just watched, mesmerised. It hadn’t even seemed to be me. Sarah felt that I had done it, and I felt she had killed Agnes. Yet both of us were the same person, and we knew it because there was only one of us sitting there with two very different, but very dead bodies sprawled before us.
Both Arthur and Agnes lay face up now, their throats slit and the ragged flesh still pumping blood and their fingers twitching in the final blink of life. Or not even life, perhaps. Simply the impulse of dead and dying nerves. No flicker of eyelids frightened me and no whisper of a curse.
Both of me heaved, half sick, and pulled back from the lumps of ripped and hated flesh. Both of me were shocked, astonished, very frightened, and even confused at what I had done. I had never meant to kill. But the reactions of these living monsters had forced me into the desperation of self-defence. Twice. And I still didn’t really know who I was.
Now Sarah was crying. No regret, but horror at what she had done, even though it was something she had yearned to do for years. Also, the fear of what would now happen to her.
The other me didn’t cry. I had not hated Agnes as poor Sarah had hated Arthur. But I realised now that my actions had been foreseen and for-ordained. I’d had no choice. Stumbling from the bed, I slipped quietly down the rickety stairs from attic to garden and stopped there in the freezing cold, wondering what I should do next. I held a bloody knife from our kitchens, and my clothes were washed in blood. My guilt would not be hard to prove.
I knew Sarah’s fear. Not guilt, simply fear. She would be imprisoned as a murderer, and would hang. I knew the same. I wanted to comfort her but when I was in her head, I was simply her, frightened and crying. So I couldn’t even comfort myself.
And then I saw Vespasian.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Are you talking to Sarah too?”
“At this moment, no,” Vespasian smiled at me. “But she will soon know what I have done.”
I almost hurled myself into his arms, but then I hesitated, one step from his tall shadow under the night sky. “Are we going home? Can we fly back to Randle? Right now? – But then perhaps someone else will be blamed for the murder. They’ll find Agnes and they’ll look for me – but if I’m not here they may blame Henry or the maid or someone else. And Sarah, they’ll hang her. That would be horrible. I’d feel it was my fault. She did it, but she’s innocent too. Though we still have to leave, don’t we? Or I’ll be arrested and thrown into Newgate or something. Then I’d be hanged and I’d really hate that, even if I come alive back in our modern world again.”
Perhaps I wasn’t making a lot of sense.
“They will not find Agnes, nor will they find Arthur,” Vespasian said, and reached out, his hands on my shoulders. That felt like immediate assurance, a warm wave of comfort, before he then crushed me into his embrace. His whisper tickled my ear. “Such untidiness, to leave corpses abandoned back in our history. Both the bodies have been removed. I have sent them to a place far distant.”
“No one else will be blamed? Not even Sarah? Everyone will know it must have been her. And the blood?”
“Every path forward demands one step before another.”
“And time,’ I acknowledged.
“Time is the relevant answer, and every pathway is fashioned from time,” he said, and took my hand, gently moving me from his embrace. “I will show you, if you wish. Proof is always a little kinder than simply reassurance. Bring Sarah, for she also needs to understand.”
And so I felt Sarah’s consciousness as we travelled. There was no sensation of carrying any weight, but I knew we flew through time. I had done this before. Yet it was the first experience, of course, for Sarah. She wasn’t frightened, she was exhilarated, and her trust was placed in Vespasian yet now she also knew my voice, and without needing to understand what she called magic, she felt utterly safe, and utterly protected. She could feel us although not touch either of us, but neither of us needed to do more than watch.
The sky, which had been star studded, clouded over into a violent purple sunset. It seemed unreal, but it quickly passed and faded into the darkness. We sensed perfumes wafting over, as if time smelled of some delicious nostalgia, and the passing of it was a delicious kindness. Meadow sweet and blossoming lilac swirled into my head as though I was travelling on flower petals.
The next sign of light was sudden, no fragile dawn, but a brilliant dazzle of heat and light. I felt scrubby wisps of grass, and a hillock of burning dryness beneath my feet. I squinted. The light so glaring and abrupt after the undiluted darkness had left me blind, but I blinked a hundred times and rubbed my eyes.
The horizon was as flat as a table, and the sun scorched ground was pure gold. Hillocks rose and fell, rippling in the breezes, like a golden lake. Drifting sand dunes. We were in a desert.
Sarah had never seen anything like this, and her experience of any unusual scenery was limited. I had seen more, but I’d never stood before in such an endless nothingness of stretching heat. The immensity made me feel very tiny and very unimportant. I knew Sarah shivered, not with cold but with the heat, and for both of us, our clothes made us sweat within minutes. But the savage onslaught of the sun was soon so dry, it made me gasp for water, but did not burn me as a humid heat would have. It was as if the sweat dried up. I was on a cooking fire.
I saw buzzards gliding overhead like pterodactyl dinosaurs. For a moment I wondered if Vespasian had taken both bodies and myself now back to the cretaceous. A tyrannosaurus would eat the ragged corpses.
I looked to Vespasian, who stood very still beside me. Then he smiled and pointed.
Across a short stretch of soft sand, splayed on a sandy rise, lay two nightmares, each more blood covered than the other. A strange grave, there in the desert, their blood caked black and their open mouths raw scarlet, their tongues baked liked shrivelled sausages.
Dead, each stabbed in the neck, each neck torn deep and wide by the blades which lay beside them. The knives, strewn across the ground, were bloody. No forensic scientist needed to test for DNA since it was clear that each one had caused the death of the other. There was now, after all, no one else. And the horrific knife wounds matched the knives each had carried.
The man, in his pin tucked nightshirt and the remains of a small blue bedcap, lay on his back, eyes closed and mouth open, legs wide and both hands grasping at his belly where another smaller stab wound had bled down to his groin. His neck was open to the gullet. The entire body, rolled fat across the tops of the arms and legs, was reeking with spilled blood. The short, bent legs peeped from his nightshirt, and his hands, fingers clenched, were also blood stained as though they had clutched at the wounds before his final breath.
The woman lay close. She wore her petticoat-shift, equally blood stained with parts of the old worn linen so stiff with hardened stains that it hid the filth which lay beneath.
Her neck was slashed across, less ragged perhaps, but even deeper. The windpipe had been cut and the severed veins splayed out like worms from a nest. Her eyes and mouth both gaped open, her eyes glazed and her mouth dry over rotten and missing teeth. A small knife wound had cut one leg, but only a trickle of blood remained, like an ant crawling down her calf. Her legs were thickly haired, and the long dark hairs on the other leg had matted with the blood, as if it had been painted, hiding the dirt beneath. Yet streaks still patterned her flesh, thick yellow, where the piss had leaked.
A bloated belly swelled beneath the blood stains, breasts flat on her chest and flopping sideways beneath her arms. Her bare feet were thick with mud and so were her fingers, but her hands now reste
d at peace across her bulging hips. The face seemed strangely peaceful, eyes open and watching the stars, but the man’s face remained lined with anger and the lips, although hanging wide, were curled in fury.
No decay yet crept across the bodies, but the buzz of flies, smelling death, surrounded both. There would soon be maggots in both mouths and insects rummaging in the open neck wounds.
Inside my head, Sarah was gulping, disgusted. I was not. I understood. And then, I turned. Immediately she also understood for this was not England and nor was it the 17th century.
She nodded in my head, and I nodded in hers. Vespasian said softly, “When this is over, there will be no sign of attack, blood or death. You, Sarah, will check for blood stains when you return home, and remove any glimpse of what has happened. His body will never be discovered. Even the ruined sheets have been destroyed and the knife is here, hidden forever.”
At first there was silence, only the whisper of the wind. Then I heard the soft tramp of hooves over the sand.
Behind us rode a group of mounted knights, and across their silver armour was emblazoned the sign of the Knights Templar. Even their horses wore embroidered covers and the reins were soft dyed leather. One of these knights dismounted and strode over.
As an intrigued audience, we wore unusual clothes, none appropriate to the centuries of the Crusades, and I was still blood stained. The knight took little notice of Vespasian, however, and did not look at me at all. He knelt, examining the bodies.
Vespasian said, “We come to fight for the holy land but have travelled from far away, and as we moved up from the coast, we saw this couple fighting each other to the death. My wife tried to stop them but was splashed with blood for her pains.” Lies again. My honest husband believed in the old idea that since the truth was so valuable a commodity, it should not be wasted on those who did not need it, nor shared with everybody.
Dark Weather Page 17