The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  She must have been muttering aloud, because a frightened little face peered round from behind a raised turf seat that was covered over with fragrant purple flowering thyme and wild marjoram. Then it disappeared at once. Elena tiptoed around to the back of the seat and saw a small boy sitting on the grass behind it, his knees drawn up to his chin, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

  He glanced up briefly, then lowered his head again, as if by not looking at her he could make himself invisible.

  'Hiding?' Elena asked with a smile, but the boy didn't answer.

  Despite the heat, the other young boys were kicking a ball of woven withies boisterously back and forth between them on the gravel path. The still air rang with their shouts of triumph and groans as one side or the other scored a point over their fellows.

  Elena settled herself down on the turf bench, revelling in the cloud of perfume that momentarily enveloped her from the sweet crushed marjoram and thyme. But the little hunched figure didn't move. She reached down and gently fingered the unruly mop of ash-blond curls. His hair was as silky and baby- fine as her own little bairn's. The boy flinched away.

  'Don't you want to play football or won't they let you join in?'

  He made no sign that he'd heard her. She peered down at the soft rosy cheek, which was all she could see of his face.

  'I'm El . . . Holly.' She still couldn't get used to the name and the other girls often had to yell it three or four times before she realized they were addressing her.

  The boy slowly raised his head. A stab of pain went through her as she looked at the child. He was beautiful, with cornflower-blue eyes and long golden lashes. His flawless, milky complexion was marred only by a small silvery scar above one brow. But it wasn't his face which pained her, it was the expression in his large eyes, frozen, dead, as if his mind was completely cut off from the world. Though he looked like an angel, all she could think of was the tales she had heard of corpses risen from their graves who walk without recognizing anyone or anything.

  'Do you have a name?' she asked him gently.

  For a few moments the boy stared right through her, as though she was the ghost of the garden. Then he opened his hand and studied it as if the answer might be written there.

  'F . . . in . . . ch,' he said, striking the palm of his hand with the other one on each syllable, as if the name had been beaten into him, sound by sound.

  'Finch, like the bird, that's a good name.' Elena smiled encouragingly. 'Have you been here a long time, Finch?'

  His face was expressionless. The question of time seemed incomprehensible to him.

  She'd never noticed the child before, but perhaps he kept himself hidden away. She wondered how old he was — seven, eight? It was hard to tell, he was very small, but his fingers were long and thin, almost like a youth's hands. What would her own son look like when he was this age? Softly she began to sing as if she still held her own bairn in her arms.

  Lavender's green, diddle diddle, Lavender's blue

  You must love me, diddle diddle, 'cause I love you.

  She felt a slight pressure on her leg and, glancing down, saw that the child was tentatively leaning his head against her. As if he was indeed a little bird that might take flight at the slightest movement, Elena sat quite still and continued to sing.

  Call up your maids, diddle diddle, set them to work

  Some to make hay, diddle diddle, some to the rock.

  Finch snuggled closer, pressing his face against her legs.

  Let the birds sing, diddle diddle, let the lambs play,

  We shall be safe, diddle diddle, deep in the hay.

  She stopped singing and for a while the two of them sat quite still, Elena on the seat of thyme, little Finch on the ground, both sunk deep in their own thoughts, not hearing the shouts of the children playing or the bees humming among the roses.

  Elena shivered as a white cloud drifted across the sun, casting the garden into shade.

  'You want to see a secret?' Finch suddenly asked, sitting up.

  'Of course,' Elena said, smiling at him indulgently. 'Is it a treasure you have?'

  She knew from her own childhood that all children have secret treasures — a blown thrush's egg, a river-polished pebble that shines like a ruby, a sharp black dragon's tooth — all carefully hidden from adult eyes.

  Finch shook his head. "Tisn't my secret. Come, I'll show you. But you mustn't tell.' He took her hand in his own warm little paw and made to drag her.

  'There you are, kitten. I've been looking everywhere for you, I have.'

  At once the little hand withdrew from hers as Elena wheeled round to see Luce sauntering towards her across the garden. She looked down to say something to Finch, but the boy had vanished.

  'Ma sent me to say you've got a visitor, someone you'll be right glad to see.'

  A bubble of joy shot up through Elena and her face broke into a beaming smile. 'Athan, is it Athan? Where is he?'

  Raffe paced impatiently about the small chamber and finally settled himself awkwardly in a high-backed wooden chair. The room was sparsely furnished. A broad bed occupied one corner, mercifully for this meeting concealed behind heavy but somewhat threadbare drapes. A long, low bench was positioned in another corner and in the third was a tall wooden frame with leather straps hanging from it. Raffe eyed it with disgust. He could guess what implements lay hidden behind the hangings around the bed, but he'd seen too many men's backs laid open to the bone with the lash to find flogging a pleasurable game.

  He gazed hopelessly around the room. On that day he'd chosen Elena from the circle of threshing girls to eat that little piece of bread and salt, how could he have foreseen that it would lead her here? If Raffe had chosen a different girl from the circle, would the outcome have been the same? Ever since he was a child, he had wondered whether you could ever really choose, or if something had already chosen you.

  When Raffe was just six years old, his father's scythe had hit a stone hidden among the grass. That was all. That was all it took to change the whole course of Raffe's life, just an ordinary lump of stone in the wrong place. The scythe blade bounced off the stone and cut deep into his father's leg. The wound had festered and Raffe's mother was terrified that her husband would die.

  A neighbour swore that St Gregory would surely save the poor man, if Raffe's mother would only seek his help. So his mother decided to make a pilgrimage to the abbey which housed a finger bone of the saint and offer the necklace of amber she'd been given on her wedding day, to secure the saint's aid. Raffe, she insisted, must go too, to pray for his father's life.

  Raffe and his mother had set off before the sun had even risen above the hills. They arrived at the abbey church in the cool of the evening, just as the service of Vespers was beginning, and climbed the great white steps to join the throng of worshippers in the public part of the church. As Raffe entered that great building his thirst and belly-rumbling hunger vanished. His mouth fell open and he stood rooted to the spot in the doorway, unable to tear his gaze from the spectacle before him.

  The tiny village church at home, where he sang in the little choir, was painted with scenes of brightly coloured angels and saints wandering through familiar fields and hovering over cottages exactly like his own. But here the towering walls and pillars were emblazoned with scenes of heaven and hell, of Creation and the Last Judgment. Angelic faces peered down at him from the great dome, and God Himself surveyed the whole church from his golden throne, his dark almond eyes staring directly into Raffe's own.

  Raffe was too busy staring around him to notice the choir singing the psalms, until they began to sing the Magnificat. He had never heard such voices before in his own village choir, so much sweeter, higher and resonant than any boy's. Ignoring his mother as she frantically hissed at him to come back, Raffe pushed through the standing congregation until he was at the front. Still he could see nothing because of the carved screen. So he stooped down and crawled forward, edging around it until he could stare u
p at the beings making the sound.

  He saw monks and novices kneeling in prayer, but this unearthly music was not coming from those plain creatures. He twisted his head around and then he saw them standing together. Some of them were mere youths, the others were men who might have been as old as his father, but they were smooth-cheeked, without a trace of beard. And the notes that were pouring from them sent shivers of awe and delight running up and down Raffe's spine.

  He crouched there in the shadows, listening. Finally, when the service was ended and the monks had gone, the small group of beardless singers, laughing and chattering, began to amble out through a narrow door of their own. Raffe gaped up at them, shaking his head like a dog with sore ears, for he couldn't believe that girls' voices were coming from men's bodies.

  As Raffe watched the girl-men saunter from the church, the last one turned and seemed to be staring right at the dark corner where Raffe was hidden, and then he smiled and winked. Only a demon could have the power to see him in his hiding place. Terrified, little Raffe scrambled to his feet and fled down the church yelling for his mother, not caring that the few people remaining all turned to stare as he tore past them.

  His mother was deep in conversation with one of the priests, and she turned in horror and shame at her son's sacrilege in such a holy place.

  The priest stared down, frowning. 'Is this the boy?'

  'Yes, Father, but I swear he is usually so well behaved. He's never before . . .'

  But the priest silenced her with a wave of his hand. He grasped Raffe's chin, turning his face towards the candlelight. Whatever he saw in it seemed to satisfy him. He ran his fingers over Raffe's throat and down his chest, back, belly and groin. The priest pressed him hard between his legs. Raffe squirmed and tried to wriggle away, but his mother held him firmly.

  Finally the priest straightened up. 'Promising, definitely promising,' he said to Raffe's mother, who beamed back at him.

  The priest looked down at Raffe once more. 'Now, boy, kneel and make your prayers for your father's recovery to health. See you pray in earnest, for God knows if you are not paying attention and praying with all your might. Little boys who displease God go straight to hell; you know that, don't you? But St Gregory will listen to the prayers of children if they are pure and without sin.'

  Raffe's mother pushed him down on to his knees, before a mass of tiny burning candles. The heat from them was so fierce that Raffe felt as if his own face would melt like the wax which ran down from them.

  'You heard, son, pray hard for your father. He is depending on you.'

  If they are pure and without sin. The whole weight of his father's sickness seemed to be crushing down on Raffe's tiny shoulders. All his guilty sins began dancing round him in the candlelight, tiny imps of flame, mocking and jeering. The stolen peaches; the lie about working when he was really climbing trees; the torn shirt he'd tried to hide; the countless nights he'd sworn he'd said his prayers when he hadn't. As he knelt there, each and every one of those wickednesses was leaping around him, rolling their eyes and thumbing their noses at him.

  Little Raffe was certain that when they reached home the next day, his father would be dead. His mother's precious amber necklace that even now dangled beneath the saint's reliquary would have been sacrificed in vain. St Gregory had refused to listen because Raffe had sinned. God would kill his father to punish him. His mother would sob. His family would starve and all of it, all the misery in the whole world, would be his fault.

  But his father did not die. In fact, he made a full recovery and little Raffe almost cried in his relief that his sinful state would not, after all, be revealed to the whole village.

  He thought he had escaped God's punishment, but he hadn't. Two years later, the whole family retraced their steps to the abbey church. And it wasn't until that day when they handed Raffe over to the priest that he learned that, just like his mother's amber necklace, he had been part of her deal with God: her son for her husband's life. Only then was he told how mortal men could conjure those soaring angelic voices. And only on that morning, standing there in the abbey, did he finally realize why it was they had mutilated him.

  The door was flung open and Elena burst through it in a flood of sunlight. Her copper hair gleamed in the light and there was such an expression of eagerness and joy on her face that Raffe almost started up and ran towards her. But as she caught sight of him, she stumbled backwards, the light instantly snuffed out in her eyes. After the briefest of moments, she tried to smile, but he knew it was courtesy, nothing more. That smile hurt him more deeply than he could ever acknowledge.

  She looked much better than the last time he'd seen her when he'd thrust her wet and bedraggled into the boat. As well as cleaner, she was if anything a little plumper, as well she might be, for the food Ma provided for the girls was far more rich and plentiful than the diet of coarse bread, beans and herbs Elena was used to. The fear and misery which had been etched into her face the night he had rescued her had faded so that now once again she looked much younger than her sixteen years.

  Her red hair, instead of hanging in braids, was rolled and pinned at the nape of her neck, though like the other girls in the stew, she wore no net or veil to cover it. Her dress was different too. Gone was the plain, drab homespun kirtle; instead she wore a faded but finely woven green kirtle falling to mid-calf and revealing the white hem of the linen smock beneath. The low, V-shaped neckline was tightly fastened with a cheap pewter pin. Where had she got that from? Not from Ma, that was certain. If Ma Margot had her way, that pin would be unfastened and the swelling of her breasts tantalizingly displayed, like fruit on a monger's stall.

  Who had Elena been expecting to find waiting for her in the chamber? Who had that look of delight been for? His question was answered the moment she began speaking.

  'Have you seen Athan? Is he well? Does he know where I am? Did he try to find me, when he learned I'd escaped?' She babbled like an excited child, not waiting for any answers. 'It was only Joan who thought I'd hurt my bairn. I know deep down Athan didn't; he was just too frightened to say so in front of her. He refused to speak against me at the trial, which proves he knew I was telling the truth. He knows I've never lied to him.'

  Her face was bright and eager once more as she spoke Athan's name. Raffe could see the hope in her eyes and something more, something that made his guts knot hard inside him. There is no mistaking when a woman is in love. Raffe had seen it in others before, though never with himself as the object of that soft, longing look. Elena was still in love with that oaf Athan even now, even after the spineless numbskull had let his mother denounce her to that bastard Osborn. Even that betrayal had not brought Elena to her senses.

  For a moment Raffe came close to breaking his resolve and telling Elena the truth — Your precious Athan is dead, hanged in place of you. In his head, Raffe watched that eager little face crumple, the tears well in her eyes, imagined her throwing herself into his arms, sobbing and clinging to him for comfort. But as he looked again at her face, he knew not even the knowledge of Athan's death would cleanse away her love for the boy. It would only bring despair and guilt, and Raffe had borne too much guilt in his own life to let her suffer that.

  He stood up, turning away from her, and stared out of the open door into the sun-washed garden. 'I have come to tell you that you must start to earn your keep here. Ma Margot is a charitable woman, but she can't afford to keep you here unless you work.'

  'But I thought you were coming to take me away from here?' He could hear the bewilderment in her voice.

  Raffe slammed the door shut and rounded on her in exasperation. 'And where exactly did you imagine I was going to take you? You are a runaway villein and a convicted murderer. Yes, I know you protest your innocence, but in the eyes of the law you are a condemned woman. Unless you're going to tell me you've found this cunning woman and she can produce your child to clear your name?'

  Elena hung her head miserably.

  'I thought not
,' Raffe said. 'Osborn has put a bounty on you. Declared you a fugitive from justice, a wolf's head. Any man in England has the right to kill you on the spot and claim the reward for your body. And believe me, there's not a man out there who wouldn't hesitate to do it for the size of purse Osborn is offering. Who do you think is going to take you in and hide you?'

  'I thought... a nunnery,' Elena murmured weakly.

  'Have you forgotten the whole of England lies under Interdict? Where would we find a priest to seal your vows? Where would you get the dowry to be admitted as a nun? If you couldn't be admitted to holy orders, you'd be nothing more than a lay servant and the nunnery would not be able to protect you. They'd have to hand you over to Osborn.'

  Only when he saw her trembling did he realize how terrified she was.

  He took a deep breath and tried to speak more softly. 'You must remain here for a year and a day; if you can do that undiscovered, you can be declared a free woman instead of a villein and . . .' He paused awkwardly.