The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  Elena's eyes burned with tears from exhaustion, hunger, fear, but mostly for the great ache that was the absence of Athan and her son. She loved Athan so much. But the face that rose up in front of her when she tried to picture him was distorted with the doubt she'd seen in his eyes when he'd last looked at her. Did he really believe she could have done it? Why hadn't he spoken up for her to Osborn? Why hadn't he even tried to come to her last night in the pit? He said he would always love her. Those were the last words he had spoken to her and she clung desperately to them. But could you really love someone and believe them capable of murdering your own little son?

  Tears forced their way from under Elena's eyelids but angrily she rubbed them away. Of all of them, Raffaele had been the only one to help her in the end and she must believe he would continue to protect her. Who else was there she could trust? If she allowed herself to think that there was no one, she'd never be able to go on living.

  That first day after he'd taken her to see Lady Anne, Raffaele had promised to be like a father to her and no father would let his daughter be used as a whore. He had sent her here to keep her safe, and it had been a good plan, for Osborn's men would never think to search here. And when Gytha returned to Gastmere and proved her innocent, she would be able to go home again to Athan and he would look at her tenderly the way he had that night they conceived their son. Everything would come right. It must. All she had to do was wait. Clinging to that single thread of hope, Elena finally drifted into an exhausted sleep.

  11th Day after the New Moon,

  June 1211

  Ants — which some call pismires, for they stink of piss.

  As many swellings or warts as a mortal has, he should take that number of ants, bind them in a cloth with a snail and burn it all to ashes and mix with vinegar. Then remove the head of an ant and crushing the body between his fingers anoint the juice on the swellings and they shall shrink.

  Some say ants are Muryans or faeries who undergo many earthly transformations, getting smaller and smaller until they become ants before vanishing for ever. Others say they are the souls of unbaptized children who cannot enter either heaven or hell, therefore an ants' nest must never be destroyed. And if a piece of tin is placed in an ants' nest at just the right moment under a new moon it will turn to silver.

  Ant eggs can be used to destroy the love of a man for a woman, or a maid for a lad, if they should desire that person for themselves. For mortals are fickle in all ways but this, that they burn most fiercely with love for another when that love is not returned.

  The Mandrake's Herbal

  The Stew

  A wisp of lilac smoke filtered up through the bright green leaves of the great beech tree, dissolving before it could touch the pale dawn sky. Beneath the branches, Gytha turned the wizened apple in her hand, counting the thorns pressed into the flesh: eena, deena, dina, das, catiler, weena, winna, was, eena, deena. The counting was to strengthen the power of the fetch, but Gytha knew exactly how many thorns she had used — one to bring the girl, and one for the babe, and now to set them spinning. She plucked the third thorn and dropped it on to a stone in the glowering embers of the fire. It lay for a moment before suddenly blazing into a single flame. Then almost before she could draw breath it had vanished, leaving a tiny mound of ash in the shape of a little grey fox. Gytha smiled to herself as she blew the ash into the wind.

  She added a few sticks to the fire and rocked back on her heels, gazing up at the canopy above. The sunlight trickled down through the branches, illuminating the tiny cobweb of veins in every tender new leaf. It was a good time of year to be living outdoors. She'd missed this.

  Gytha sensed a movement behind her, but she didn't bother to turn her head. She knew a lad had been hovering out of sight in the forest since first light, trying to pluck up the courage to approach the clearing.

  At last the boy cleared his throat. 'There's this lass.'

  He added no further explanation, as if he thought those three words were more than enough for anyone to expect of him. He continued to study her intently as she mended the fire, as though he thought there was dark magic in the way she laid the wood or blew upon the embers.

  'Can you do it?' he finally blurted out.

  'Course she can,' Madron said.

  The boy spun round as if an arrow had struck him.

  'Who was that?' he asked, looking fearfully about him. 'Was it a spirit?'

  'An evil old spirit,' Gytha muttered.

  Then, seeing the boy's terrified expression, she relented and gestured towards a little bothy woven from branches and last year's bracken, half hidden under the trees.

  'Just the old besom in there. She's blind. She'll not hurt you.'

  The boy took several steps backwards, not at all convinced by this assurance.

  He was one of the sons of the charcoal makers who lived most of the year deep in the forest, tending their fires night and day. Every inch of visible skin was grimed with smoke and burnt wood, and his clothes were many layers of mud- coloured rags. He was a tall, angular creature, thin as a sapling that has shot up too fast. His blond hair bushed out wildly from beneath his cap, grazing his shoulders. He fidgeted restlessly like a child, but the sparse growth on his lip and chin suggested he might be older than he looked.

  Gytha sighed. 'So, this girl you're in love with, when did you last see her?'

  With another fearful glance at the bothy, the lad wrenched his attention back to Gytha.

  'At Michaelmas, at the Herring Fair on the isle of Yarmouth. M'father took us there to sell the charcoal to the ships. M'father and brothers sent me to buy us some supper first day and there she was, walking up the length of the sand selling oysters from a great pannier on her back. I went back the next day, and the next, to buy oysters, twice sometimes, till m'brothers said they were sick of the sight of them, but then I went just to stand and watch her. She was ... like a queen, her hair ... it was sparkling all over like she was wearing jewels. When I told her, she said they were fish scales blown there by the wind, and she laughed and these two little dimples —'

  'Did you tell her you loved her?' Gytha interrupted, knowing from experience that love-lorn youths can easily talk to a woman about their sweethearts all day, given any encouragement.

  The boy hung his head and scuffed the deep leaf litter miserably with his bare toe.

  'You didn't.' Gytha said.

  'But this year when we go back I'll do it. I will this time, only. . . what if she's fallen for another afore I can tell her. . .'

  'Then you'll need something to make her fall out of love with him and fall in love with you.'

  'Can you give me something that'll make it happen?' the lad asked eagerly.

  'I'll need something of hers to use in the charm. Do you have anything that she's touched or worn? A lock of this wondrous hair of hers? A scrap of ribbon?'

  The lad hesitated, then reached into his shirt and pulled out half an oyster shell that dangled round his neck from a bit of twine.

  'She opened this herself and poured the oyster into her own mouth. Then she threw the shell away. But I picked it up and kept it,' he said, touching the flaking shell as reverently as a holy relic.

  Gytha was sure he was blushing beneath the grime. She pressed her lips tightly together to keep from grinning. Men, like dogs, hate to be laughed at. She held out her hand.

  'If she's eaten from it, that'll do fine. Come back at sunset for the charm.'

  Gytha knew that the affair was as doomed as the salmon and the swallow who fell in love. The lad was a creature of the forest; the girl belonged to the sea, so where would they build their nest? But the young foolishly believe love can overcome all obstacles.

  'You'll not lose the shell?' the lad asked anxiously.

  'I'll guard it like pearls.'

  The boy carefully placed the oyster shell in her hand and bounded off.

  Gytha turned the shell over in her hand, caressing the smooth iridescent lining. She tilted it to the sun,
watching the silver, blue and pinks flash across its shining surface like minnows in the brook.

  'You going to use the same charm as you used on Sir Gerard?' Madron called out. 'It'll not last. I told you to use Yadua then, but you wouldn't listen.'

  Gytha rose angrily and crossed to the bothy, glaring down at the old woman who lay inside, propped up on a bed of dried bracken.

  'I told you, I used no charm on him. He wanted me. He would have taken me as his wife, had it not been for his mother.'

  Madron wheezed with laughter. She turned milk-blind eyes towards Gytha, sensing exactly where she was standing.

  'He was happy enough to bed you, lass, but a man of his blood doesn't wed a cunning woman, not even a free-born one, less he's witched. I warned you, it'd take more of a snare than your spread legs to catch a stag like him.'

  You never wanted me to have him,' Gytha spat at her. 'Afraid I'd leave you to rot alone in your cottage with no one to cook and tend to you.'

  'You were too old to be mooning around like a love-sick maid. Besides, you were quick enough to get your own back when Lady Anne stopped him coming near you.'

  Gytha's head whipped up. 'I only spoke the truth.'

  You did that all right, but did the truth need to be spoken?'

  Gytha turned away, striding out through the trees with little idea of where she was going except to get far away from Madron's words. But she knew she could never do that. Madron had used those same words twenty years ago and they had burrowed deep inside Gytha like a tapeworm and would not release their grip.

  Gerard had loved her once. She was certain of that. She had been his first love, older than him by six years, but what did age matter, they told each other. She had led him in his first tentative fumblings, their bodies pressed close together in the warm damp grass on a hot summer's evening.

  But after a few meetings it had been him who'd taken her with a frenzied wonderment, as she helped him discover every secret pleasure of her body and of his. When they rolled from each other exhausted and utterly satisfied, they had lain there staring up at the stars through the trees. He had taught her names for the constellations, names that were foreign and strange, that he'd learned from books: Virgo, Leo and Scorpio. She had taught him her names, handed down for generations, familiar, comforting names: The Path of the Dead, the Plough, the Swan. And they listened to the owl calling to its mate, the nightjar and the vixen screaming, until he took her in his arms again and they heard nothing and saw nothing but the fire in each other's hearts.

  After his mother found out, he did not come to her for many weeks. When he finally appeared, Gytha had been overjoyed to see him, adoring him the more for defying his mother. She'd come running towards him and flung her arms about him, kissing his neck. But he had held her by the shoulders, thrusting her away from him.

  'I cannot. I came only to tell you that I am to be wed as soon as my father returns from the Holy Wars. I thought you should know. I was betrothed when I was a child.'

  'Betrothed?' she repeated, stunned. 'All this time you were whispering your love for me, you were promised to another woman?'

  He'd had the grace to look uncomfortable. 'I barely know the girl. We haven't met since we were little children. I thought you would realize all men in my position .. . Besides, you knew we had no future together, it was just a pleasant way to pass the time.'

  'Pleasant!' she shrieked at him.

  He'd tried to stop her raging torrent of words with his fingers, but she bit them, hard enough to draw blood. He swore, clamping his hand under his armpit. He said other things, words that were meant to soothe and mollify. But she did not hear any of them. She did not want to hear any of them.

  After he left, she had raged and cried, planning spells and poisons, curses and love charms in equal measure, but in the end she had done none of those things.

  Madron was right, she could have bound him to her with Yadua. She could have witched him so deeply he would have married her in defiance of a whole army of mothers. But what use is it to win a man by magic? What joy is there to lie in his arms realizing that he only holds you because he has no choice, and knows not what he is doing? What contentment is there to wake every morning wondering if this will be the day when the enchantment fails, and that when he opens his eyes and looks at you, you will see only hatred in them?

  No, Gytha couldn't soothe her pain like that. In the cold grey dawn, after many sleepless nights, she could think of only one thing to avenge the hurt she felt. It would not bring him back to her, but it would punish him far more cruelly than any earthly power could devise. For as Madron had always taught her — the taste of revenge is far sweeter than love.

  Luce led Elena towards the first of the entertaining rooms, as she called them. She flung the door of the chamber open and set about pushing wide the shutters to let in the early morning light.

  You'd best start in here. Straighten the covers, see the oil lamps are filled and wicks trimmed ready. Then rake over the rushes on the floor and strew some fresh herbs in them. Ma likes the place kept sweet. You'll find the lamp oil and sacks of strewing herbs in the stores across the yard.'

  The room, which last night had been filled with grunts of pleasure, this morning was empty and silent save for the gentle snores of a couple lying at the far end. They slept on, tangled in each other, naked except for a cloak which barely covered the girl's buttocks as she lay with one leg thrown across her client's groin.

  Unlike the chamber where Elena had spent the night, this hall had low partitions dividing the pallets from each other, not for privacy, for they were open at one end to the narrow walkway between them, but to keep out the worst of the winter draughts and prevent the more vigorous of the customers from accidentally striking their neighbours or rolling on them as they flailed about in the throes of passion.

  Luce sank down on the nearest cot and curled up, yawning.

  'Best make a start, Holly.'

  Elena moved awkwardly in the overlarge kirtle which Luce had lent her and began to smooth the covers in the first of the stalls. She was almost grateful for the work, for it was an everyday task, something any woman might do in her own croft. But this was not her own cottage, and as she bent she caught the strong, salt-sweet smell of stains on the covers and the thick stench of sweat, overlaid with musky perfumed oils. She recoiled, her hands trembling. Would a stranger force her down among these smells, these stains, till her hair reeked of them as Luce's did?

  Attempting to calm herself, Elena looked around, trying to find something that did not shriek at her of what went on in this room. Nailed to the wall near the door she noticed a long board divided into squares in each of which there seemed to be a painting of sorts. Curiosity drew her closer and for a moment she stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing, then, flushing scarlet, she turned away. She heard Luce chuckling. The girl slithered off the bed and, putting her arm around Elena's shoulder, turned her firmly round to face the board again.

  'That's what's on offer, see.'

  Each of the little squares depicted a crudely painted figure of two or sometimes three people in various strange positions. Elena was not unacquainted with sex; after all, she had grown up surrounded by all of nature's fecundity. Before she could even put names to the beasts, she had seen cocks fluttering on the backs of hens, rams tupping ewes, stallions covering mares and even other stallions. She'd giggled at lads and lasses rolling together in the pasture. It had seemed but a natural expression of life, the grunts and groans and squeals of its daily renewal.

  In the cottages or even the Great Hall, most of these human couplings were little more than animal copulations, rapid, furtively hidden beneath blankets, the noise suppressed for fear of disturbing children, parents or some short-tempered bed-fellow. They required no thought or imagination beyond the basic urge to relieve the burning of nature's honest lust. But as Elena was about to discover, the human mind, if left unoccupied, can create such strange fancies as have never entered the he
ad of a cockerel or dog.

  Luce nodded towards the board. 'We get many foreigners coming here, sailors, merchants and the like. We don't always understand what they want, so they can just point at that. Mind you, we have to use the board with some of the local lads too. They only have to step in here for every word they ever learned since they were weaned to vanish from their poor little heads and they start to babble like babies.' She smiled fondly. 'One lad I had the other day, couldn't even remember whether he was asking for a woman or a boy.'

  'A boy?'

  Luce waved a hand towards the wall. 'Boys work in the chamber next door. Some of the men in here don't like to see a man with a boy, puts 'em off. Funny, that,' she added, almost to herself, 'how what sends one man into ecstasy sends another to vomit.'