The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  'Talbot's not here, Master Raffe. That's why Ma set me to mind the door, but she said he'd not be long'

  She'd scarcely got the words out before there was a series of raps on the wooden door.

  'That'll be Talbot now,' she said. 'I know his knock, never uses the bell, he doesn't.'

  She ran to answer the summons as Raffe paced impatiently up and down the long chamber. Talbot started as he saw him. Luce looked from one man to the other, a puzzled frown wrinkling her forehead.

  'Go on back to your quarters now, Luce, there's a good girl,' Talbot ordered, still not taking his eyes off Raffe.

  'Might have known it,' she said lightly. 'Do what a man asks and then . . .' Her voice faltered in the tension of the hall.

  Talbot picked up half a pie and a flagon of wine at random and thrust them at Luce. 'Here, take them.'

  Luce beamed at the unexpected treat.

  'But no one's to know Master Raffe is here, you understand, my girl?'

  'Course I do. Like Ma always says, act like a rose — smell sweet, open your petals and stay dumb. Oh, and scratch them bloody if they try to pluck you without paying'

  'Get!' Talbot jerked his head towards the door and Luce didn't wait to be told twice.

  As soon as the door had closed behind her, Raffe turned to Talbot. 'John's spy. . . it's too late. The couple he was staying with have been arrested, taken to the castle. The bastard led the soldiers straight to them, which means word will already be on the way to John.'

  Talbot turned sharply, accidentally catching a platter with his arm and sending it clattering to the floor. 'God's thundering fart, what possessed you to come here? If they've set a man to tail you . . .'

  'They haven't!' Raffe said with a certainty he didn't feel. 'I looped back several times and kept watch to see if any were trailing me. Besides, Martin doesn't know I'm back in Norwich. If he's discovered who I am by now, he'll be expecting to find me at the manor. They'll have sent men there to arrest me and I plan to be well away from here by the time they find they've been dispatched on a fool's errand.

  'I'm leaving tonight and I'm taking Elena with me. If Osborn learns Hugh came here the evening he was killed, he'll personally search this place from top to bottom, and even with her dyed hair, he'll recognize Elena at once. Hugh wouldn't condescend to notice anyone beneath his rank, but Osborn misses nothing. I have to get her away before he comes. So where is she? In Ma's chamber?'

  Talbot grimaced. 'The girl's not here.'

  'Don't lie to me, Talbot. I know Ma wants her money's worth, but even she must see that Elena's no good to her now. She can't risk keeping her here. Osborn will arrest Ma and you too, if he learns that you've been hiding a fugitive.'

  'I doubt that he'll be in a position to, my darling.'

  Raffe spun on his heel to find Ma standing in the doorway behind him.

  She advanced a few steps into the room. 'Osborn won't arrest us, because Elena is seeing to that as we speak.'

  Raffe stared from Ma to Talbot and back again. 'I ... I don't understand. What do you mean — seeing to that?'

  'She's gone to kill him,' Ma said in the same calm tone in which she might have announced that Elena had gone to fetch a pail of water.

  Raffe felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. He was certain he must have misheard her.

  'The cunning woman from your village came here to see Elena,' Ma said.

  'Gytha?'

  'That's the one. Apparently, some months ago back in the village, Gytha gave Elena a mandrake and now she's come looking for payment. Evidently there's bad blood between Osborn's family and hers. Osborn's father falsely accused Gytha's grandmother of poisoning his wife, then had her executed. Not unreasonably, she cursed him and his descendants. Now Gytha wants Elena to kill Osborn to avenge her grandmother.' Ma smiled. "You needn't look so horrified, my darling, Elena will do it all right. After all, she's killed two men before. She's the strength and resolve of a dozen men when her blood is up.'

  'But she hasn't killed anyone!' Raffe put his head in his hands and groaned. 'I've proof that she didn't murder Raoul or Hugh. She's no more capable of killing a man than a sparrow is of killing a hawk. You've sent a girl... a child . . . after a battle-hardened knight. At the very least, he'll recognize her. What the hell have you done, you malicious old hag?'

  He lunged at Ma, but Talbot stepped between them. His great fist slammed into Raffe's jaw. Raffe staggered backwards, crashing into one of the benches, and fell, sprawling across it.

  His head reeling from the blow, he was only dimly aware of the clanging of the bell. Ma hurried across the room.

  'Get him upstairs to my chamber, Talbot, and keep him quiet. Knock him out cold if you have to.'

  As she pulled some steps into place so that she could peer out of the grid in the door, Talbot heaved Raffe to his feet. And Raffe, feeling the floor tilting alarmingly beneath his feet, allowed himself to be half dragged towards the staircase to Ma's room.

  Elena let go of the bell rope and pounded on the door. It seemed as if she had been standing there for a lifetime before the shutter finally opened and Ma's face peered out.

  'Ma, please, please let me in,' she begged.

  'I'm coming.' The firmness in Ma's voice sounded strangely comforting.

  Elena pressed herself against the door in an agony of waiting as she heard Ma loosening the bar and clambering down off the steps. When the door finally swung open she almost fell over the tiny woman in her haste to get inside. Her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Her legs suddenly refused to move and she knew that if she attempted even a single step she would fall over. She stood swaying in the room, her arms wrapped tightly round herself.

  Ma pulled at her hand. Her fingers felt scalding hot against Elena's icy skin.

  Elena's breath came in shallow, jerky little gulps. 'Why couldn't I kill him, Ma? Why couldn't I? I killed Raoul and Hugh. But he wouldn't die. I thought... if I just... pushed the dagger in, it would be over. There was blood, but. . . but he pulled the dagger out and came after me . . . Why couldn't I kill him, Ma? Why was it so easy with the others? They died like they were supposed to but he wouldn't ... he just kept coming. . .'

  'So he's wounded?' Ma gnawed at her lip. 'Did he recognize you?'

  Elena jerked her head in the semblance of a nod.

  Ma took a deep breath. 'Raffe's right, we have to get you both away from here, tonight.'

  'Master Raffaele. Is he ...?'

  'He's here, my darling, come to take you away. Now, you go and sit with him awhile, get your breath back, you'll be needing it. Talbot and I've got work to do.'

  Without even being aware of how she got there, Elena found herself sitting in Ma's chamber clutching a beaker of wine in her trembling fingers. Raffaele was sitting on a stool at her feet. She had allowed him to wash Osborn's blood gently from her hands in a bowl of water. She'd stared in uncomprehending wonder as the water turned pink, then scarlet. The candle flames danced, and she thought she was back in a cottage in Gastmere watching Gytha's blood falling drop by drop, swirling around and around. She shivered. She couldn't seem to get warm.

  Raffaele reached out and touched the bruise where Hugh had struck her, as tenderly as any father might. His eyes were so gentle and kind, searching for hers and gazing into them as if he could see everything inside her and did not judge her.

  She wasn't even aware that she was talking. But somehow all of the events of that evening spilled out of her as if she was a fractured pot and couldn't hold anything in.

  Why couldn't I kill him? Why didn't he die? She was drowning in a thousand terrors: that Osborn would come looking for her; that she had failed Gytha; that her child would be cursed; that she would never find her son again; that Athan would never rest in his grave. And yet the only question that her mind could cling to was — why couldn't I kill him? Why? Why?

  Raffaele took her frozen hands in his, chafing them to warm them. 'You couldn't kill him, Elena, because you don't know how. Yo
u've never killed anyone.'

  'But Hugh and Raoul... I killed them. And they're dead.'

  Raffaele looked earnestly into her face. 'But you didn't kill them. I know now who did, and you must trust me, it wasn't you. You only dreamt of their deaths, as you said all along.'

  'But the mandrake ... I used the mandrake to help me see the dreams clearer. And it was clear. I was in a church. There was a man lying on the floor, stabbed, and his face, his eyes had been put out. There was a monk too ... he was begging me not to defile the holy place.'

  Raffaele frowned. 'But Hugh wasn't stabbed in a church.'

  'Then who was?' Elena said. 'Someone was. I saw them.'

  An expression of horror slowly dawned in Raffaele's eyes. He drew his hands away and covered his face. He was moaning, and for a moment or two Elena thought he was crying. She lightly touched his bent head.

  'Raffaele, the man I dreamed about. Did I kill him too? You know, don't you? You know who it was.'

  For a few minutes he didn't answer her, then he began to speak, staring not at her but at his hands.

  'I think what you saw, was not what would happen, but what did happen four years ago. Gerard and I ... you must understand we had no choice ... or perhaps we did. Can any man really blame another for making him do what he knows to be a crime against God? You didn't dream about what you would do, but what we had already done.'

  'But I saw myself doing it,' Elena protested. 'I was there. I saw the knife in my own hands.'

  Raffaele stared up at her, his face stricken with anguish. 'Do you remember the first day I brought you to the Lady Anne? She asked you to eat and drink from a chest. You remember that?'

  Elena nodded. 'The day before her son died.'

  'When you came into that chamber, Gerard was already dead. I'd put his body into the chest. The food was laid out for you on top of it and you ate from it. Bread and salt, as I asked you to.'

  Elena's eyes had widened in fear. Her throat was closing up so tightly it was as if a hand was pressing its fingers tightly around her neck.

  'But... to take bread and salt that has laid above a corpse, that means you take the dead person's sin upon you! You tricked me . . . you tricked me into becoming a sin-eater!'

  She threw back the chair and frantically paced the chamber, wiping her hands up and down her kirtle as if the blood had seeped back over them again.

  Raffaele struggled up too. 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but I couldn't let Gerard die in mortal sin. I swore to him I would not. I owed him my freedom, my life, everything. He was like a brother to me, more than a brother.'

  Elena turned to him, blazing with anger. 'But you let me carry his sin. How could you? If it was so terrible, how could you make me carry it?'

  'I swear on my life, I truly believed it couldn't hurt you. You were a virgin, pure and untouched. You could not be hurt by it.' Raffaele's hands hung limply at his side like a helpless child's.

  Elena stared at the wax dripping from the candle. 'A virgin, but ... I wasn't. I'd slept with Athan for the first time the night before. That was the night ... he got me with child. What have you done, Raffaele?' she screamed at him. 'What have you done to me and my baby and to Athan'

  'I didn't know. I swear I didn't know. You're the last person on this earth I would hurt. If I'd thought for one moment. . .'

  'But you didn't think. You didn't. You let me carry it. You made me carry it. You made me a murderer.' Her head snapped up and she stared at him. 'My dream about my baby, hurting my baby, was that also what Gerard did?'

  Raffaele lifted his head, bewilderment mingling with his pain. 'But there was no baby in the monastery at Montauban. I don't understand . . . tell me, tell me what you saw.'

  'I was in a room, there was cloth hanging everywhere and baskets full of it. A store room, but round, not square. I could hear a babe crying. I was angry, so angry that they were hiding it from me. When I found it, I just wanted to kill it. I dashed it against the wall. Night after night, I dreamed I was killing that little bairn. I thought... I really believed that was what I was going to do to my own son. That's why I gave him to Gytha, to keep him safe, so that I couldn't hurt him.'

  Raffaele sank back on to the stool. He was murmuring to himself, so softly that Elena could hardly make out the words.

  'This cannot be. The Church promised us that if we took the Cross every sin we had committed before the Holy Wars and while we fought them would be instantly forgiven, wiped out as if they had never been. They promised. He was an infidel. An unbeliever. It was a holy slaying, a righteous act. The Church swore that we were forgiven.'

  'What?' Elena demanded. 'Was there a baby? Did Gerard murder a baby? Tell me, I have to know. I have to know it wasn't me.'

  Raffaele wrapped his arms over his head, then let them fall helplessly. 'Yes, there was a baby, many babies. But this one, this was not like the others. You have to understand ... it was war. Men do things in war . . . things that they would never . . . good men . . .'

  His face convulsed as if he was trying not to cry, and it took several moments before he could continue.

  'Some months after Gerard's father set sail to fight under Richard in the Holy Land, Gytha came to Gerard and told him that the spirits had warned her that his father was in danger and was calling for his son to help him. Lady Anne pleaded with him not to go, but Gerard was adamant. He would not fail his father, he said.

  'As soon as Gerard arrived, he sought out Osborn to whom his father owed allegiance, thinking to find him fighting under his command. Osborn told Gerard he was too late. His father was dead. The sappers had been tunnelling under the city walls to weaken them, Talbot was one of them, but the Saracens were burrowing out the other way, using the tunnels to attack under the cover of the Greek fire which the defenders were hurling from the city ramparts.

  'Gerard's father had been close by the wall when one of the Saracen raiding parties broke out from the tunnels under the cover of smoke. He was last seen fighting them off, but then he disappeared. That night they searched for his body, but they had little hope of finding it. Many corpses were so badly burned or crushed it was impossible to distinguish one man from another. Even the chevrons and emblems that distinguished knight from foot solider were burned or torn away. The best that could be done was to bury the remains of the dead in mass graves, but at least they had priests aplenty to say Masses for their souls.

  'Gerard was grief-stricken by his father's death. He blamed himself for not having arrived sooner, but he vowed to finish what his father had begun and so we joined Richard's army.

  'A few days after we arrived, Acre surrendered. Richard set tough terms. He vowed to spare the lives of all those in the city, if Saladin would give him two hundred thousand golden pieces and release the fifteen hundred Christian prisoners he held. As a pledge of faith, Richard let many of the ordinary men in the city depart in safety with their wives and children, but he kept two thousand of the more prominent men and their families hostage until Saladin should meet his demands.

  'But Saladin refused to hand over the men and money on the appointed day. Some said he had already killed the Christian prisoners, others that he had sent word that he couldn't yet raise the full sum of money demanded, and was asking for more time. Who can tell which was the truth? I only know that these two great leaders could not come to terms, so Richard gave the order that every hostage in the city was to be slain.

  'Gerard and I were mercifully spared the task of actually slaughtering the captives, instead we were sent to drive them out of the city, so that they could be executed in plain sight of Saladin's camp. We were ordered to go from house to house and drive them to the gates of the city. The men were bound and led out like slaves, the women and children left to walk behind or, if they refused, lashed together with ropes and dragged out. Beyond the walls we could hear the screams and wails as Richard's men herded them together. The men they dragged to their knees and struck off their heads; the women and children they ran through with swor
ds and pikes.

  'It was late in the afternoon when we came to a house on the far side of the city. We were exhausted, sodden with sweat and maddened by the flies that crawled over every stone in that city. A man ran out of the house and knelt before Gerard. He seemed to be trying to tell us his name was Ayaz. He had a cloth in his hands and he opened it up to show Gerard. He'd evidently bundled up anything of value he possessed — his wife's jewels, tiny silver cups, coins and other trinkets. He begged Gerard to take them all in exchange for their lives. Gerard refused, but Ayaz continued to plead. He laid the cloth at Gerard's feet, picking up handfuls of the gold and silver, trying to thrust them into Gerard's hand.

  'Gerard was wearily pushing them away. Then suddenly he froze, staring at one of the objects in his hand.