The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  Ma hesitated. She glanced over at the mask on the wall which was her eyes into the guest hall. She crossed over, climbed the steps in front of it and, after briefly glancing out, she swung the wooden shutter across it and latched it.

  Then she returned to the bed. Standing at the end, her short stubby arms wrapped across her ample breasts, she frowned at Elena.

  'I'll release you, but you stay quiet and keep away from that.' She pointed to the shutter. You make a single sound, or open that shutter, or make any attempt to leave this room, and I will cage you with the other wild beasts. You'll be in good company, for they are man killers too.'

  Four Days after the Full Moon,

  October 1211

  Hare — It is unlucky if a hare crosses the path of a mortal, and if he is setting out on a journey or to take to the seas in a boat, he must turn back and not venture forth that day. If a pregnant woman should chance to see a hare, her child will be born with a harelip. If a man dreams of a hare it is a certain sign his enemies are plotting against him. The name of the creature is never uttered on a ship for fear of raising a storm and if an enemy wishes to curse a ship, he will hide on board a hare's foot and then that ship shall surely founder.

  But a hare's right foot if worn or kept on the person will ward off the aches of age in the limbs or the cramps.

  If a lover deserts a maid and she dies of grief, she will be turned into a white hare. Witches can, at will, turn themselves into hares, and in this form they will sit upon a cow's back and milk her dry, and likewise they will dry the milk of sheep, and in the form of a hare do great mischief on the farm. A witch- hare may only be killed with a silver knife or silver arrowhead, and if a hare is wounded then escapes, mortals search the village to find a woman who is similarly injured and then they know her for the witch.

  But once, long ago, when the old gods ruled the land, the hare was honoured and no mortal man could harm her or eat of her flesh, for she signified the return of spring and was sacred to the goddess Eastre.

  As with mandrakes, those women with gifts that men cannot control, men fashion into witches and demons, that they might destroy them.

  The Mandrake's Herbal

  The Devil's Bargain

  Down in Ma's hidden chamber, Elena heard the bell tolling in the guest hall and moved closer to the hollow mask on the wall. She dared not open the shutter which covered the mask for she guessed the light from the candle in Ma's chamber would shine out of the eyes of the mask and give her away. And she was too afraid of being left in the dark to extinguish the candle.

  Elena had not been permitted to leave the chamber since Ma had hidden her here. She could only count the passing of the hours by the guest hall bell. She knew it must be evening when the bell in the guest hall began to toll repeatedly as the customers arrived and then later she would hear the great door opening and closing as one by one they left. But as far as she could tell it was morning now, too early for customers. Was it the sheriff's men? Her heart began to race.

  So she pressed her ear against the wooden shutter, but she could hear little except Talbot's deep growl. No words of any visitor, which meant there was only one of them, she thought. If there were a group of men in the guest hall, she would surely hear them. The sheriff wouldn't come alone.

  The trapdoor grated above Elena's head. She tripped and almost sprawled headlong in her effort to get back on to the bed before Ma descended the ladder. But there was no creaking of the ladder.

  Instead, Ma put her head through the hatch. 'Come here, my darling.'

  Elena crept over to the foot of the ladder. Ma's face peered down at her, as distorted as one of the grotesques on the wall.

  'Hurry up, my darling, you have a visitor.'

  Slowly, still trembling, Elena mounted the steps and emerged in Ma's chamber. Talbot was standing in the doorway.

  'Best show her visitor up here,' Ma said. 'We can't have Holly seen below.'

  Talbot grunted and moved off down the stairs.

  'Is it Master Raffaele?' Elena asked. Ma must have got word to him that she was no longer safe here. This time he surely would take her away. He must, no matter what he'd said before. Her heart gave a little judder of excitement and fear.

  'Not Master Raffaele, but someone from your village.' Ma glanced up at her curiously. 'Someone you haven't seen for a long time.'

  Despite the dark hollows that fear and sleeplessness had carved around Elena's eyes, they suddenly shone so radiantly that you would have sworn someone had lit a candle behind them.

  'Athan! It's Athan, my husband. I knew he'd come in the end. I knew Raffaele would tell him where I was.'

  But her delight was suddenly tinged with fear. In her joy at the prospect of seeing him, she had almost forgotten her dread of him finding her in this place. But if he'd come here asking for her that surely must mean he wanted her back. She heard footsteps on the staircase and it took every grain of willpower she possessed to stop her feet from running down the steps to meet him.

  Talbot entered the room first and stepped aside. The smile of joy on Elena's face dissolved instantly as a tall, slim figure stepped out from behind him. The woman threw back her hood. Ma was right. It was someone she had not seen for a very long time and someone she had never thought to see again.

  Gytha, the cunning woman, stood in Ma's chambers, gazing round the small shuttered room with a look of admiration and amusement, her eyes darting from the petrified forest of wax to the serpent throne. She ran her fingers lightly across the carved snakes, which almost seemed to ripple and purr under her touch.

  'So the spirits speak to the dwarf too.'

  Talbot was staring at the dark-haired woman, his jaw hanging as slack as a pimple-faced youth's. As if Gytha could read his thoughts, she turned swiftly round to face him, her cold, slate-blue eyes regarding him with an unblinking stare. He hastily averted his gaze and backed out of the chamber, surreptitiously spitting on his two forefingers like some old crone warding off a hex.

  Elena, numb with shock, looked round for Ma, but she had vanished.

  Gytha glanced at Elena's hair. 'A good disguise, though I'd still have known you, lass.'

  Shock gave way to fury and Elena suddenly sprang to life. Not caring who might hear her, she screamed, 'Where's my baby? What you have done with my son?'

  Gytha regarded her with amused tolerance. 'Don't fret yourself. He's well enough and safe . . . for now at any rate. I promised you he would be.'

  'Where is he?' Elena demanded again. 'Where did you take him? Why did you disappear like that? They accused me of murdering my baby. I told them I'd given my bairn to you to keep him safe, but they couldn't find you anywhere and they wouldn't believe me. They tried to hang me.'

  'You look very much alive to me,' Gytha answered calmly.

  'Only because . . .' Elena stopped herself just in time.

  She didn't know how much Gytha knew of Raffaele's part in her escape, and yet surely only Raffaele could have told Gytha where she was hiding? Who else knew?

  'How did you find me? Who told you where I was?'

  Gytha let her fingers trail across the box with the carved eye on Ma's desk. She paused, her hand hovering above it like a falcon hunting.

  'The spirits told us. Madron and I, we've been watching you, lass. Her with her bones, me I see things clearer in my bowl, but no matter, the spirits tell us the same things. We've performed some powerful charms for you, and see,' she touched Elena's cheek, 'you're thriving like a cow on fresh pasture.'

  Elena flinched away. 'But then you knew! You knew what I was accused of and still you didn't come back and speak for me.'

  'There was no need, lass. The danger passed.'

  Up to that moment, Elena had been too bemused and angered by Gytha's unexpected visit to think through what this now meant. She had been expecting Raffaele to take her away from this place, but it suddenly occurred to her there was no need. If Gytha simply gave her back her son, she could go home and prove that she had bee
n innocent all along. True, she was still a runaway villein, but surely if they could see she had been falsely accused then all would be well. Only Ma and Talbot knew she'd killed Raoul and Hugh and they wouldn't tell anyone. As Ma said, they'd be putting themselves in danger if they did.

  Athan would be overjoyed to see them both and filled with remorse at not having believed her. She could already feel his arms about her; smell the familiar, comforting warm- hay scent of his neck; hear him say he would do anything to make it up to her. And that bright, multi-coloured dream drove all other thoughts from Elena's head. She was a drunkard who laughs at the pretty dancing flames without realizing that it is her own house that is burning.

  She beamed at Gytha. 'Now that you've come, I can take my son back home to Athan. I don't have to hide here any more.'

  Gytha frowned. 'Athan, but. . .' A curious look came over her face. 'So,' she breathed softly, 'so Madron was right, this will make it easier.'

  'What?' Elena demanded. Then, receiving no answer, she said eagerly, 'When can I see my little son? Is he here in Norwich? Is he grown? I've longed so much to hold him again.'

  Gytha's eyes flicked round each of the chairs in the room, then, drawing up a footstool, she squatted on that instead, as if she was back in her own cottage. She motioned Elena to sit, and without thinking, Elena hunkered down on the wooden floor. It seemed natural now that Gytha was here.

  'Don't fret over your bairn, lass, you'll see him soon enough. But you made a promise, remember? A debt. You must needs pay it afore you can see your son.'

  You mean money for the child's keep?' Elena said. 'I can get that. How much does the wet nurse want?' She was sure Raffaele would give it to her.

  Gytha gave a grunt of laughter. 'Not for the bairn, for Yadua. You bought her from me, remember, so you could learn what the night-hag would show you in your dreams. I told you Yadua can't be got with coins or jewels, only for the same payment for which she was bought. I warned you that some day I would ask you for a small service. And you swore you would do it.' Gytha had leaned forward, and now her cold, hard eyes were boring into Elena's so intensely that Elena felt her skin prickle. 'That day has come, lass. Time to pay what you owe.'

  Without knowing what she was afraid of, Elena's stomach shrank into a knot. What is it... what do you want me to do?'

  Gytha cupped her hands together like a bowl, and stared down into them. Whether it was the angle at which she held them to the candles, or something more, Elena couldn't be certain, but it seemed to her that an ice-blue light was flickering in the hollow of Gytha's palms as if she held a tiny imp imprisoned there.

  'Let me tell how Yadua was bought, lass, the price that was paid for her. Then you'll understand what you must do.'

  Gytha's gaze flickered briefly up to Elena's face before returning to the dancing flame in her hands.

  'Many years before I was born, a poor man called Warren came to visit a healer in the city of Lincoln in the dead of night. This woman's name was Gunilda. Warren told her his little daughter had been cruelly raped by a Norman knight, but being a poor man, he could get no justice for his child who lived in constant terror that the man might return and attack her again. He begged Gunilda for a poison to kill this knight, so his daughter might recover her wits. Gunilda felt pity for him, for she had a daughter of much the same age, and seeing how distraught he was, she agreed to give him the poison, and in exchange he gave her the priceless treasure of a mandrake.

  'But the man had lied. He had no daughter, nor any bairn to his name then. He was himself a wealthy knight and wanted the poison to murder his innocent wife, so that he could marry his pregnant mistress. But when his wife lay in her coffin, the foul deed was discovered. Warren swore that Gunilda had visited his wife and poisoned her while he was away from home. Gunilda was tried by ordeal and found guilty. She was strangled and her body burned in front of her little daughter. Before she died, Gunilda cursed Warren and all his descendants.'

  Elena was staring in bewilderment at Gytha. The story shocked and saddened her. After her own trial, she could feel only too well the despair of the woman at not being believed, the cruel and bitter injustice of it. But she couldn't understand why Gytha was telling her this.

  Gytha opened her palms. The bright blue-white flame darted upwards and vanished, leaving only a curling tongue of silver smoke in the form of a running fox. Gytha cocked her head on one side, watching Elena.

  'You want to know what this has to do with you, don't you, lass? Before you bought Yadua, this story was nothing to you. But now it is your story. You belong to it, as it belongs to you. Before she was executed Gunilda gave the mandrake Warren had given her to her own little daughter. And now you own that very mandrake, because, you see, Gunilda's little daughter is my mother, my own Madron. And she was forced to stand alone in the square in front of the great cathedral and watch her Madron burned to ash. The priests wanted to make sure that Gunilda was utterly destroyed both in this world and the next. For without a body, the priests say she cannot be resurrected at the world's end. They wanted to obliterate any trace of her, any memory. She was nothing to them and they would make sure that nothing of her would remain.

  'And in due course, Warren's mistress, now his new bride, was brought to bed of a boy, a precious son. Now that bairn is grown to a man. And you know that man, lass, you know him only too well. It was he who ordered you to be hanged. Warren's son is Osborn of Roxham.'

  'Osborn!' Elena's eyes opened wide. For a moment all words fled from her. Then she whispered, 'It makes sense that a man as cold as Osborn should have such an evil father. Your poor grandam, and your mam too, she must hate that family.'

  Gytha's mouth twitched in a flicker of a smile. 'More than you could ever know. But many have cause to hate him, especially you.'

  Elena felt suddenly chilled. She had touched the mandrake that this dead woman had held in her own hands, perhaps even lying in a dungeon the night before her execution, as Elena had lain in hers. She felt as if the dead woman's hands were grasping hers and would not let go, but were dragging her back down into the earth.

  Elena drew in a deep, shuddering breath. You said you wanted me to do something for you, but you still haven't told me what it is. When I get back to the village I could—'

  'This will not wait till you return to the village, lass,' Gytha said. Yadua was bought with my grandam's life, a life taken by murder. I warned you that as the mandrake was bought, so she must be paid for. Warren's first-born son is coming here to Norwich to hunt for his brother's killer. And you must kill him. That is how you will pay for Yadua. She was bought with blood, and only in blood can you pay the price for her.'

  Elena sprang to her feet, her eyes wide in horror. 'No, I can't! I can't kill Osborn. I'll give you back the mandrake. I'll fetch it at once and you can take it. I don't want it.'

  She tried to push past Gytha to reach the curtain which concealed the trapdoor. But Gytha reached out a long bony arm and barred her way.

  'I can't take her back, lass. She belongs to you. She has proved that, for she has been your fetch. If she had not truly been yours, she could never have shown you the dreams. You swore on spirit bones that you would pay the price for her. You gave your oath.'

  'But I didn't know you meant this,' Elena pleaded. 'I can't kill anyone. I wouldn't know how. Osborn is a man, a knight, how could I possibly kill someone like him?'

  Gytha smiled. 'But the dwarf tells me you have already killed Raoul and Hugh. Have you forgotten so soon why Osborn is coming here, to find his brother's murderer? To find you!'

  'But I can't have. I only dreamed —'

  Yadua cannot lie. You saw yourself doing it and you have certain proof that you did it, for both men are dead. You killed them, and you know full well you would have murdered your son also, had you not begged me to take him to safety. If Osborn discovers his runaway serf has murdered his own brother, a man of noble blood, he will not just hang you; he will have you executed for treason. You will bur
n to death and you will taste such agony as you have not even imagined. You will scream to die, but they will not let you. It is you or Osborn. It's only a matter of time before he discovers the truth.'

  Elena was pacing the room frantically, almost dashing herself against the walls in a frantic attempt to escape Gytha's words.

  'No, no! It isn't true. I didn't kill Hugh or Raoul. They will find the real killer. God won't let me die for something I didn't do. He protects the innocent. That's why I was able to escape from the manor, because God knew I was innocent.'

  'My grandam was innocent and God did not protect her,' Gytha said savagely. 'Once Osborn discovers you here, that will be all the truth he needs.' She rose, towering over Elena. 'Listen to me. You can deny it to others, but you know in your heart you have already killed twice. Osborn is an old man compared to Hugh. You can do it again easily enough. You are strong. Think about how he tried to hang you, without a second thought.'