The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  'You shouldn't speak about your dreams to anyone,' he said quietly. 'If Ma or the other women think they are harbouring a witch, they will not keep you here.'

  'But I don't want them to keep me here,' Elena said. 'It isn't safe.'

  For the first time since she'd entered the room, he turned to face her, staring at her as if she was a stranger. Elena realized it was the first time he'd seen her dyed hair. Her hand slid up, pulling her cap further down over her coiled plaits, but she couldn't hide her eyebrows. Luce had insisted on dyeing those too, saying her pale auburn ones were in too marked contrast to her dark hair.

  Your hair, what happened to your beautiful hair?' Raffaele said, aghast.

  'Luce dyed it. Ma insisted in case the sheriffs men came back.'

  Raffe continued to stare at her, then he seemed to remember where he was. 'Talbot tells me that no one has returned here again to enquire about the murder. That's good. That means they don't link Raoul's death with you.'

  'But what about Hugh?' Elena said. 'He saw me. He didn't seem to remember who I was, but he said he thought I looked familiar. And he asked Finch about me. I can't stay here now. What if he returns?'

  Shock and fear flashed across Raffe's face. He grasped her shoulders, staring down into her eyes so fiercely that she was forced to lower her gaze.

  'What's this about Hugh? He was here? When . . . when was he here?'

  'More than a week ago . . . two maybe.'

  'Was he here looking for you?'

  'I don't think so,' Elena said. 'He was here to . . . use a little boy. He just happened to see me. But what if he remembers where he saw me before? You have to take me away.'

  Raffaele stepped back from her, running his hand distractedly through his thick grizzled hair. 'I will ... I will, I give you my word, but not yet. There's something I must do, and until that's finished, I can't be with you to look after you. This is the only safe place I can leave you.'

  'But it isn't safe!' Elena wailed. 'What if he comes back?'

  Raffaele was pacing the floor, gnawing on the edge of his thumb.

  'Hugh only saw you fleetingly when he was at the manor, one of dozens of servants. He wasn't there when you were accused. Everyone in the manor knows that villein escaped the gallows. There won't be a man in Osborn's retinue who doesn't know he'd pay a fortune to capture you, but even so, Hugh won't be able to link a face to a name. Even if he was the man who you overheard talking about the Santa Katarina, you said yourself he didn't see your face.'

  Elena lurched violently, grabbing hold of the edge of a table, trying to keep herself from falling.

  'Hugh! You think Hugh was the man I heard in Lady Anne's chamber? But. . . but I don't understand. That night when I told you, you said it was one of Osborn's servants.'

  Raffaele shook his head impatiently. 'I know that's what I said, because I couldn't imagine who else it could be. You told me the man you overheard had fought in the Holy Land, but even then it didn't occur to me it could be Hugh. Hugh's a cold-blooded bastard, but I couldn't believe that even he could be so base as to betray his own king and country. And I wouldn't have believed it, unless I'd seen him with my own eyes, skulking among the trees, watching for the Santa Katarina. He was expecting that ship. He must have been the man you heard in the chamber, how else could he have known about it? And why would he have been trying to conceal himself, if he wasn't afraid of being caught by the king's men?'

  'Then you have to take me away from here before he comes back, you have to ... if he knows it was me who heard him, he'll kill me!'

  'I can't!' Raffaele snapped. Then he took a deep breath. His voice was heavy with weariness. 'Hugh can't be certain you heard anything. In fact he must believe by now that you didn't. I've taken great care not to tell anyone what I suspect, in case he realizes what you overheard. Hugh's bound to have heard that Osborn's missing villein is a red-head, and if he glimpsed your red curls that night outside the chamber, he may well have made the connection. But. . .' Raffaele held up a warning hand seeing that she was about to protest again, 'but don't you see that means he's looking for a red-head? That's all he knows of you, and you're not that woman any more.'

  Raffaele crossed over to her and slipped off her cap. He pulled the pins from one of the braids and let it fall. Then, with an almost childlike curiosity, he ran his fingers down it, unravelling the braid, letting the long dark hair fall in soft waves across his palm. Elena, her thoughts still occupied with her fear of Hugh, was too bemused to move. Raffaele gently rubbed the locks of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, then his gaze lifted to her face and, bending his head close to her, his lips parted and she felt his hot breath on her mouth. She stiffened, flinching away.

  Raffe instantly straightened up, letting her hair fall. He turned abruptly back to the casement, but not before Elena glimpsed the dark flush on his cheeks.

  'It is your eyes,' he said in a strangely broken voice. He cleared his throat. 'Luce has done her work well with your hair, and the colour of your brows changes the shape of your face, but still anyone would know your eyes. Though you need have no fears about that where Hugh is concerned, I doubt he's ever noticed a woman's eyes.'

  Elena, thrown entirely by his abrupt change of tone, could only stare at him.

  Raffaele crossed to the door and opened it. 'If Hugh returns, just stay out of sight,' he said without looking back at her.

  Seeing him stride away snapped Elena out of her immobility. She ran after him, catching his arm. 'Please, Master Raffaele, please take me with you. I could stay in an inn or find work as a maid in the town. You said no one would recognize me.'

  He looked down at the little fingers grasping his sleeve and for a moment she almost thought he was going to agree, then he seized her wrist and roughly thrust her back into the chamber.

  'I told you, you will stay here! Do you think I'm Athan or some frog-witted plough-boy who's nothing better to do than dance attendance on you and your selfish little wants? I saved you from the rope, what more do you expect of me? And not one word more about your dreams, do you understand? Better you confess you put a knife in a man's back with your own hand than that you killed him by witchcraft. It is dangerous, can't you see that, you stupid little fool? And I won't be there to save your wretched neck next time.'

  The door crashed shut behind him and Elena stood there, massaging her wrist. Tears filled her eyes, tears of fear, rage and anger, but above all misery. For she suddenly realized that the only person in the world she really trusted, the only person who had believed in her innocence, had just walked away from her. Until that moment she had never understood so completely how it was possible to feel such utter loneliness and desolation surrounded by so many people.

  Raffe bounded up the stairs to Ma Margot's chamber two at a time. He knocked on the heavy oak door, but didn't bother waiting for an answer before he burst in. The chamber was empty. The shutters, as always, were tightly shut and only a single candle burned on the wall behind the serpent chair. A hooded sparrowhawk perched on a block of wood on the table. The bird flapped its wings angrily as the draught from the open door ruffled its downy breast feathers. Raffe instinctively reached out a finger to stroke it, soothing it with murmurs of reassurance, but a vicious peck from the curved beak made him withdraw his finger with a curse, and he sucked it, trying to stem the flow of blood.

  A low chuckle made Raffe jerk round. Ma was standing in front of the curtain.

  'She's been taught to defend herself even when she is hooded. Haven't you, my angel?'

  Raffe's temper reboiled with the throbbing of his finger. 'What's this I hear about Hugh coming here? Talbot didn't tell me that.'

  Ma shook her head warningly, then twitched back the curtain. Luce was standing behind it, her shift clutched in front of her, but otherwise as naked as the day she was born. She was panting slightly. Her face was flushed and her eyes danced brightly in the candlelight. Ma smiled up at her and jerked her head towards the door. With a wink at Raffe,
Luce slid as lithely as an otter from the room.

  Ma mounted the steps to her own serpent's chair.

  'Sit, Master Raffe, you're making the bird nervous. Now come, you know we never discuss our customers. Not, that is, unless they wind up dead at your friend's hands.'

  'Elena didn't kill Raoul!'

  But even as Raffe said it he knew he sounded like a man who was lashing out from uncertainty. He couldn't even convince himself of the truth of that. This was the second time in a few months Elena had been accused of murder. Was that just unlucky? Both times he'd so desperately wanted to believe that she was innocent, but then once he'd thought she was a virgin and all that time she'd been sneaking off behind his back to trysts with that lout Athan, even when she swore to him she was not going to see a man.

  Part of him had dreaded seeing Elena again and yet he couldn't keep away. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at her at first, because he knew that Raoul had had the pleasure of her. He had wanted to punish her, make her the whore she was, but now that it had happened, he was terrified of seeing that look of hardness in her eyes, that loss of innocence that had still remained even after Athan had bedded her. He wanted to seize her and shake her until she told him every single filthy thing that she and Raoul had done together. He wanted to know in each minute detail how she had looked when Raoul had touched her, what she had said, what she'd thought, what she felt.

  Yet Raffe knew that if Elena had told him, he would have pressed his fingers to his ears and run away screaming. He had tried to convince himself that nothing she had done with Raoul would have been done willingly. Yet there was a worm that burrowed into his head, a worm of jealousy and doubt that made him lash himself over and over again with the thought that she might have surrendered herself to Raoul as willingly as she had once done to Athan. Even the smallest whimper of pleasure, the tiniest thrust towards Raoul's body would have been an act of betrayal.

  And yes, Elena could have given herself entirely to Raoul and still have murdered him. He'd known women in the Holy

  Land, fragile, delicate beauties who could whisper words of undying love and press their soft lips to a man's mouth. And then, as they fondled his manhood with one hand, with the other they'd pushed a knife between his ribs, as coldly as any battled-hardened soldier. Women could be far more ruthless than men when they had made up their minds to kill.

  Raffe's face was burning, and he was suddenly aware that Ma was watching him with that usual knowing smile of hers. He was seized with the desire to wring her filthy neck, but instead he contented himself with trying to wound her pride.

  'I thought you always said that not even a tick from a dog could crawl in or out of here without you or Talbot knowing about it. Are you telling me a simple girl managed to escape and get herself back in here and murder someone without you seeing her? You're getting old, Ma, losing your touch. Eyesight failing? Nodding off at your window?'

  But if he hoped to needle her, he should have known better. She merely raised her thick black brows, like a schoolmaster warning an errant pupil.

  'Talbot and I were attending to other things. The girl could easily have slipped out through the door. And there are other ways out of here,' Ma said. 'I found her in the cellar with that boy Finch; who knows what else she or that little brat has discovered. Too inquisitive for their own good, the pair of them. Besides, there's some that have the power to send out their spirits to do mischief while their bodies lie sleeping, even when they are locked in a gaol.'

  But Raffe wasn't listening. 'The cellar, you found her in the cellar, what has she seen there?'

  The ghost of a smile slid across Ma's mouth. 'My pets, all my pets.'

  A chill ran through Raffe's frame. You told her about the man?'

  Ma pulled the ruby pin from her hair and spun it idly in her fingers so that sparks of blood seemed to fly from it around the room. Told her? Now just what could I tell her, Master Raffe?'

  Raffe tried to resist staring at the whirling ruby lights. He struggled to pull his thoughts together. Think! Hugh, that's what mattered now.

  'Why did Hugh come here?'

  Ma laughed again. 'Why does any man come here? He has needs, desires he can't satiate anywhere else, well, not without a deal of questions being asked. I dare say even he can't do as he pleases with his servant boys without raising a few objections. And, you know, men are curiously shy about having the whole world know the exact depths of those stinking mires in which their desires frolic.'

  'Does Hugh know Raoul came here too?'

  'According to Talbot's informants at the Adam and Eve, Raoul didn't know of this place until he arrived in Norwich, so he won't have told anyone in the manor where he was going, and Talbot saw to it that the bailiff made no report of it to the sheriff.'

  Raffe frowned. He sensed Ma knew something, something she had no intention of telling him. That night Hugh had almost caught the priest anointing Gerard's body, Hugh had claimed to have been waiting for Raoul to return from Norwich. Raffe had been so preoccupied that he hadn't even considered why Hugh was so anxiously waiting until now. If Hugh feared that Raoul had discovered his treachery, or was about to do so, might he not have sent someone to follow Raoul and silence him? Had he been waiting in fact not for Raoul's return, but for news that the deed was done? And now Hugh had come here. Ma had said it was for pleasure, but what if he had realized that Elena had overheard his plotting in the manor? Having got rid of Raoul, he would certainly not hesitate to murder her too to keep his secret.

  Raffe moistened his dry lips with his tongue. 'I must move Elena to a safer place. If Hugh has been here once, he is very likely to return, and even with her dyed hair, he will surely remember her eventually.'

  Ma's brows arched for the second time that evening. 'And if she's caught and tells them where she's been hiding and where she met Raoul? I don't think so, my darling. I want her here where I can make quite sure she doesn't get the chance to open her mouth. Besides, she's hardly paid for her keep and my trouble. And think of all the effort we've put into protecting her.'

  'You can trust her not to talk, I swear, and I will pay what is owed for her keep,'

  Ma's lips curled in a humourless smile. 'Anyone can be made to talk. And unless you've suddenly come into a fortune, my darling, I rather fancy you'll find that paying me and whoever you next ask to shelter the girl will leave you with a debt you cannot possible repay. And not everyone is as patient as I am when they are asked to wait for their money. Tongues grow slack when bellies are empty, and the price on the girl's head as a double murderer will weigh heavier than a crown. There are those unscrupulous rogues who could find themselves sorely tempted, Master Raffe, and we wouldn't want to put temptation in their way, now, would we?'

  Raffe was about to open his mouth to reply when Ma stopped him with a wave of her hand.

  'Before you make up your mind, let's ask my angel, shall we?'

  She reached for a small wooden box on the table. Ma's tastes usually ran to objects that were jewelled and elaborately carved, but this box was plain save for the carving of a single eye framed by a triangle in the centre. The eye had been inlaid with ivory, with a glistening pupil of blackest jet.

  Ma gently slipped the hood from the sparrowhawk's head, and the bird shook out its feathers, staring around the room, its bright yellow eyes searching for something. With the bird's hooked beak inches from his face, and his finger still smarting, Raffe could not help but slide his chair back a little, and Ma laughed.

  'She'll not harm you, unless you touch her.'

  Ma flicked open the box and pulled out a handful of strips of parchment which she fanned out in her hand. Then she spread the other hand, the heavy rings flashing in front of the bird.

  'Tell me, Master Raffe, what can all men feel, but none can hold? What is so strong it can destroy a forest with a single blow and yet is small enough to creep through the smallest chink?'

  'The wind, of course,' Raffe said more sharply than he meant
to, because he couldn't anticipate what she was going to do. 'Every child knows that riddle.'

  'But how easily we forget what we learned as children, my darling. As you say, it is the wind, and it is the wind which carries this bird to the heavens. Every word men utter of truth and lies, knowledge and ignorance is borne on the wind, but only a creature of the wind may catch them.'

  She held out the fan of strips towards the bird. Rapidly it leaned forward and pulled one, two, three strips from her hand and dropped them on the table as if it was plucking feathers from its prey. Ma laid the strips in a neat row, then reached for something in the shadows. It was a tiny wicker cage. She opened the door wide.

  If the skylark had only stayed in its cage, it would have been safe, it would have lived. Whether the foolish creature didn't see the sparrowhawk, or whether it just made a wild, brave dash for freedom, thinking, if indeed it thought at all, that soaring upwards would save it, who can tell? But the skylark didn't even reach the topmost beam in the room. Raffe felt the hawk's wingtip brush his face as it shot past him and heard it land with a thud on the floor, the tiny bird dead between its claws.