The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  Raffe nodded, but in truth he didn't see at all. At seventeen he could not imagine feeling such love or loyalty for any man, certainly not for his own father. But now, after all these years, he finally understood what a man will do for love.

  In the end, it had all been in vain. Gerard had arrived at Acre too late to save his father, but that night, that gloriously starry night, it seemed impossible to those two young men that they could ever fail. He and Gerard had sat together under the olive trees. The darkness throbbed with the rasping of the cicadas. The warm air rose from the earth around them, anointing them with scented oils of wild thyme and summer. And all the while they sat there, they talked and talked of nothing and everything, till weariness overcame them and they slept like infants cradled upon the moon-washed earth.

  The Crusaders left the next morning, Raffe riding upon a mule until a better mount could be bought for him. Raffe's father had managed, if not exactly a blessing, at least a mumbled, Take care of yourself, bay. Raffe had not looked back as they trotted away; there would be nothing to see. His mother was already inside her house, trying to repair the devastation the unruly knights had brought to her home. When she and Raffe had said their curt goodbyes to each other, her eyes had been as dry and lifeless as the sun-scorched grass. She had finished weeping over the chickens. They were just bones in her stock pot now. What was the point of any more tears?

  A shrill whistle startled Raffe out of his reverie, and he saw the black smudge of a low craft sculling towards him across the river. He rose and almost fell over as his legs were seized by a cramp. He jiggled them, trying to shake the feeling back into them. God curse the English weather.

  The marsh-boy had borrowed a longer craft than his own light coracle, and despite the chill night his fingers were sweaty as he passed Raffe the rope. His passenger had evidently not helped him to scull the boat. But as Raffe grasped the priest's cold hand to pull him ashore, he realized that he would have been more a hindrance than help, for such soft delicate little fingers as these would have blistered before he'd made half a dozen strokes.

  'The boy says you've got me passage on a ship. Where is it?' The priest shivered, and glanced around him as if he really thought some great sea-going vessel would be moored up in the river.

  Raffe ignored the question and addressed the boy. 'Hide the boat on the other side of the islet. I'll bring the priest back as soon as he's done and I'll make an owl's cry. When you hear it, bring the boat back.'

  He handed the boy the basket of food, which the lad had been gazing at longingly from the moment he moored up.

  'Try not to eat it all, the priest'll want some of it for the journey.'

  The lad nodded, but Raffe had no great faith there'd be anything but crumbs left by the time they returned. He smiled and patted the boy's shoulder. He remembered what it felt like to be constantly hungry as a lad and didn't begrudge him a mouthful, though the priest undoubtedly would.

  'This way, Father. And keep your hood pulled up; though your hair's grown long, it still has the faint shadow of a tonsure for those with eyes to see.'

  He helped the priest up the bank and on to the track that led to the manor.

  'But where is the ship?' the priest repeated, peering nervously at every tree and bush as if he expected them to be bristling with soldiers.

  'When we are done here, we'll return to the boat and get you to the ship.'

  The priest stopped dead. 'We must go now, at once, we might miss it.'

  'I told you that you will not be going anywhere until you've anointed Gerard's body.'

  Seeing the priest was again about to protest, Raffe seized the little man's arm and hurried him forward, growling in his ear, 'Without me, you'll not get to your ship, so unless you want to spend the winter hiding on the freezing marshes or lying chained in some sodden, stinking dungeon I suggest you come with me, and quietly at that.'

  He felt the priest resisting every step as he hurried him along, but Raffe pulled him as easily as a child might drag a rag doll. At the manor gate he stopped and opened the wicket gate as silently as he could, peering in to see if the courtyard was empty. It was. He pulled the priest inside and hurried him across to the vaulted arches under the Great Hall.

  Raffe had taken the precaution of finding a woman to occupy the gatekeeper, promising to keep the watch for Walter in return for some invented favour he'd asked the gatekeeper to do for him. The woman was well past her prime, with straggly grey hair and a face ravaged by the pox, but Walter would not be looking at her face. The gatekeeper had gone off towards the village with a grin broad enough to split his wrinkled old face in two.

  Walter in turn had assured Raffe that he could sleep soundly in the gatehouse, for the pair of hounds would bark loud enough to rouse him from his grave if any should approach the gate. And so they would have done, had Raffe not slipped them each a tasty piece of mutton with a pelt of poppy paste in each one. Now the only sounds which came from the hounds were deep and drooling snores.

  Raffe led the priest to the back of the undercroft and lifted up the trapdoor and then the grid which covered the prisoner hole. As soon as the wooden trapdoor was raised, a stench rose up from the hole which was enough to make even a battle-hardened warrior retch. The priest drew the neck of his hood over his mouth and nose.

  'I've unsealed the wall and opened the coffin ready for you,' Raffe informed him.

  The priest shuddered in disgust. 'I can smell that. But it was unnecessary.'

  The little man glanced uneasily round the dark and silent courtyard, his nose twitching like a frightened mouse that fears danger from all quarters.

  'I'll say the prayers for the dead, but we must make haste,' he said, crossing himself rapidly as he knelt down.

  But his callused knees had scarcely touched the flags when Raffe seized him by the arm and hauled him up again.

  'What do you think I opened the coffin for?' Raffe whispered. 'Go down and give him the unction of God.'

  The priest's jaw went as slack as a hanged man's. 'No! No! Holy unction is for the sick. If he were newly dead and the spirit might yet be lingering near the body, it is permitted.

  But that man has been dead for months, you admitted as much yourself, and even if you hadn't, my nose would testify to the fact. Besides, unction is only permitted once confession has been heard and the sacrament of penance given, or, if a man is too ill to confess, that the priest is assured he has at least undertaken an act of sorrow for his sins.'

  'Gerard lived in constant horror of his sins. Never did a man feel so much sorrow for what he had done.'

  'That's all very well for you to say,' the priest protested, 'but how am I to know that?' Then he added petulantly, 'In any case, it is far too late to anoint a corpse that long dead and . . . and besides, I have no holy oil left.'

  Raffe was gripped by such a rage that it was all he could do to stop himself wringing that scrawny, lying throat.

  'Give me your scrip,' he ordered.

  The man instinctively clutched tightly at the small leather bag that hung from his belt, but the look of fury on Raffe's face was so terrifying that when Raffe held out his great hand, the priest, with trembling fingers, unbuckled his belt as meekly as a bride disrobing for her husband. Raffe reached inside and pulled out a tiny flask of finely wrought silver, inscribed with an image of the crucifixion. He opened it and sniffed, holding the open flask in his hand.

  'A miracle, is it not, Father? God has filled your flask with oil while you lay sleeping'

  'But that is all I have,' the priest wailed. 'And if I should come across the sick and dying, what would I have to anoint them with? It's too late for your friend, but surely you would not condemn other souls to torment? Suppose it was your wife or child . . .' He gulped, plainly realizing too late that mention of wife or child to a man such as Raffe was like jabbing a stick at a roaring bear.

  'Don't give me that,' Raffe snarled. 'You have no more concern for the souls of others than a dog has for its flea
s. You just want to make sure you have oil enough to anoint yourself before death. Thought of a sea voyage scares you, does it, or worse, burning up with fever in one of King John's filthy cells?'

  Raffe took a step nearer the prisoner hole. He held the flask above it.

  'Anoint him properly and you will have some drops left for yourself. Or I shall do it by pouring the whole flask into his coffin.'

  'No, please!' the priest whispered frantically. 'God in heaven, don't! I'll do it. I'll do it!'

  Raffe closed the flask and placed it back in the shaking hands of the priest, who grasped it, pressing it tightly to his lips and kissing it fervently.

  You'd better get on with it then,' Raffe urged. 'Ship sails with the tide and waits for no man.'

  The little man fumbled hopelessly as he put the flask back in his scrip, rebuckled it about his waist and set one foot on the rung of the ladder. He paused, casting one more beseeching glance up at Raffe, but his expression was as implacable as granite. Slowly the priest descended into the stench of hell.

  Raffe crouched on the edge of the hole, holding the lantern down inside. The priest stood in the damp earth, peering into the hole in the side of the wall in which the exposed coffin lay. His body shuddered convulsively as he retched and whimpered like a wounded dog.

  He lifted his pale face to Raffe. There's... nothing to anoint. Just bones and bits of putrefying flesh and . .. and most of it is already melted to liquid. I can't touch him.' Tears ran down the man's face. 'Please, please, don't make me do this,' he begged.

  'If he has bones you can tell where his lips were, his private parts, his hands,' Raffe said with a coldness he didn't feel.

  It was taking every drop of self-control he had not to burst out screaming and sobbing at the sight of the foul, stinking abomination that had taken the place of his dearest friend's face.

  'Do it, Father. Do it now or by God, I shall close these bars and leave you down there to rot until you look just like him.'

  The priest bowed his head. Then, as a palsied man struggles to move a deadened limb, he stretched out his shaking hand into the darkness of the coffin. His fingers coated in the precious drops of holy oil, he made the three-times-five crosses — three for the Trinity, five for the senses — anointing eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, feet and genitals, or at least the places on the rotting flesh where these organs which cause a man to sin had once existed.

  'I anoint... I anoint thee with . . . holy oil in the name of the Trinity that thou mayest be saved for ever and ever.'

  Raffe bowed his head, crossing himself, and so fervently did he pray that he almost missed the sound of the footsteps crossing the courtyard. But a man who has watched through many a long night waiting for that slight intake of breath that the assassin makes before he sticks the dagger in your back or slices his knife across your throat, can never again give himself over to prayer or sleep or even love-making without his sixth sense remaining ever watchful.

  Quicker than an arrow flies from a bow, Raffe had withdrawn the lantern and closed the trapdoor over the prisoner hole. Below him, he heard a shriek of fear from the priest. Raffe stood astride the wooden door in the hope that his voice would carry downwards as well as across the courtyard.

  'Who goes there?' he challenged as loudly as he could.

  He prayed that the priest would have the sense to stay still and would not in his panic lose his wits so far as to cry out.

  'What are you doing skulking in the shadows, gelding?'

  Devil's arse! It was Hugh. The last man Raffe wanted to see that night.

  Raffe strode as rapidly as he could into the courtyard to draw Hugh away from any sound the priest might be making down there, trapped in the darkness with the rotting corpse.

  'Doing my rounds as a steward should, making sure that no one is helping themselves to the stores. And you, what keeps you awake at this late hour — can't find a woman to warm your bed?'

  By the scowl on Hugh's face he knew he'd hit the mark.

  'A bed-warmer is all the use you can put a woman to, isn't it, gelding?'

  Raffe noticed with some satisfaction that Hugh was limping. The rumour among the sniggering servants was that he'd been thrown from his horse earlier in a hunt that day. His fall and the fact that the hunt had failed to kill a single boar had made him even more foul than usual.

  Hugh nodded in the direction of the gatehouse. 'One of my brother's men, Raoul, has not returned from Norwich. I intend to rouse that bone-idle gatekeeper to learn if Raoul has sent word about his delay.'

  So they didn't yet know about Raoul. Raffe muttered a rapid prayer of thanks for that. But he had to prevent Hugh from going to the gatehouse. If Hugh found the gatekeeeper absent it wouldn't just be Walter who suffered; sooner or later Hugh would be bound to discover who had sent Walter away and his suspicions would be thoroughly aroused.

  But Raffe was careful to betray nothing of his anxiety on his face. 'If a message had come, word would have been sent to you straight away.'

  'Walter would have sent a servant with a message, but since you never bother to school them in their duties, no doubt the numbskull would have forgotten what he was about before he was half-way across the yard. There's not enough wit between the whole pack of servants in this manor to animate a single slug'

  He made to turn in the direction of the gatehouse, but Raffe blocked his way.

  'I wouldn't go into the gatehouse if I were you. Walter's stricken with a fever. It might be nothing more than a touch of marsh ague, but if it's a contagion then it could spread. We won't know how serious it is till morning. In the meantime, I told him to go to his bed and I'd take his watch.'

  Walter and his woman would be sow-drunk by now, and with luck he'd have a raging hangover by morning and would look sick enough to convince anyone he'd spent the night with a fever.

  Hugh rocked on the balls of his feet, half of him plainly determined to see for himself, the other not wanting to go anywhere near a sick man for his own safety.

  Finally caution won out. 'Bring me word at once, no matter what the hour, if there is word from Raoul. I trust you can get that much right at least.'

  Hugh gestured towards the gate. 'Well, go on, gelding. If you're keeping watch, do it. Lie down and keep watch, with the other hounds. At least for once you know your place. I always said it was among the curs.'

  Raffe had to force himself to keep silent, though it almost cost a tooth for he was clenching his jaw so hard, but he meekly walked across to the gate and sat down by the brazier, warming his hands.

  Hugh stood watching, then, apparently satisfied, he climbed the steps up to the Great Hall. An unnerving silence descended on the dark courtyard. It was so quiet Raffe could hear the leaves rustling on the trees outside, but still he dared not move to release the priest from his tomb. A flicker of movement at one of the darkened upper casements told him Hugh was still watching him. Raffe prayed that the priest would not think himself abandoned, and start hollering and banging to be let out. Raffe wrapped his cloak tightly around himself and let his head gradually droop forward on to his chest as if he was dozing.

  There he remained for as long as he dared. Finally he let his eyes flick up to the windows without moving his head. He could not see anyone standing there. Please God, Hugh had grown tired of watching and had at last retired to his bed. Raffe feigned a yawn, stretched and stood up, ambling round the courtyard as if he was merely checking all was well. Once he reached the arches under the Great Hall, where he could no longer be seen, he hurried to the prisoner hole and pulled up the trapdoor; the stench rolled out like a dense cloud of fog.

  'Father,' he whispered. 'I've come to take you to the ship.'

  There was no reply. Raffe lay on his belly and hung the lantern down as low as he could. The feeble light showed a crumpled figure lying at the bottom of the pit. His eyes were closed and he was not stirring. Sweet Holy Virgin, was he dead, suffocated?

  As rapidly as he could, Raffe descended the ladd
er. There was scarcely room at the bottom for him to stand without treading on the prone form of the priest. Raffe bit his lip hard to stop himself from gagging and carefully avoided looking into the black hole in which the open coffin lay. Awkwardly he bent down and shook the priest, but there was no response. He pushed his hand inside the man's shirt and with enormous relief discovered a faint heartbeat, though the man's skin was fish-cold.

  Raffe dragged the limp body upwards and crouched down so that he could hoist it across his shoulders. It wasn't easy mounting a ladder in such a confined space with the dead weight of a man on his shoulders and he repeatedly felt the priest's head bump and graze against the stone wall. They were almost at the top when the rung beneath his foot splintered under their combined weight and Raffe felt himself plunging sideways.

  The ladder twisted, almost throwing Raffe off, but for once the narrow space proved his salvation. His shoulder crashed hard against the wall, but the ladder was prevented from falling any further.