The Scar-Crow Men

by Mark Chadbourn

  ‘Let us not tarry, Master Swyfte,’ Meg said, a flicker of unease in her eyes.

  They ran.

  Halfway across the meadow, with their twin trails snaking out through the long grass behind them, Will glanced back. The lights were now flickering along the tree-line, and he caught a whiff of pitch from the sizzling torches. The otherworldly cry was caught in the wind, setting his teeth on edge.

  When they reached the far side of the meadow, Will realized their time had all but run out. Meg was slowing by the moment, and the pursuers and their dogs were gaining ground. Ahead lay only more meadows, a stream, no tree cover or anywhere they could hide.

  ‘Stop,’ he called, skidding to a halt.

  The Irish woman whirled, her eyes blazing. ‘I never give up!’

  ‘Nor is that my plan.’ He dropped to his knees and pulled his flint from his doublet.

  His companion saw instantly what he was doing, but looking towards the bobbing lights she insisted, ‘There is not enough time.’

  ‘Let us pray that there is. For it is our only hope of escaping that rabble.’ Will struck the flint once, twice, a third time. The crack of the stone was lost beneath the howl of the dogs and the jubilant cries of the villagers who saw their quarry had come to a halt.

  His full attention focused on the flint, the spy struck it again. This time a spark caught on the yellowing grass along the hedgerow. It had not rained for nearly two weeks and under the hot summer sun the countryside had baked and the vegetation had grown tinder-dry. A cloud of fragrant white smoke swirled up. The grass crackled, the red spark licking into golden flames that spread along the foot of the hedgerow.

  Will glanced back at the meadow. White faces now loomed out of the gloom beneath the lights of lantern and torch. The tone of the hounds’ howling became uncertain as they scented the smoke, and the spy watched the pursuers slow. Flames surged up the hedgerow with a sudden roar that carried far over the quiet landscape. Within moments, a wall of red, orange and gold rushed across the grassland. White smoke became grey, billowing in thick clouds that soon obscured the hesitant villagers.

  Shielding his face against the heat, Will stepped away from the fire, coughing as the acrid fumes stung the back of his throat. ‘Come,’ he gasped. ‘This should provide us some cover, at least for a while.’

  Impressed, Red Meg nodded as she lifted her skirts and hurried away from the blaze. ‘Your reputation is not unwarranted, Master Swyfte. But we are still in an ill pickle.’

  Behind them, the dogs’ frightened barks were drowned out by the long howl of the thing they feared more. A note of jubilation edged the cry. Whatever was there sensed its prey at hand.

  All humour now gone, the Irish woman cast a troubled glance at Will. Neither of them spoke as they clambered over a stile and ran across the next meadow.

  When they reached the other side, Meg said in a hesitant voice, ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘You know as well as I there is little to gain by running. If the Enemy is at our backs in open countryside, it will not relent until it has us.’

  ‘Stand and fight, then? But where? And do you have the strength to defeat one of those foul things?’

  Will guessed his companion already knew the answer.

  They reached a rutted lane, the edges lined with nettles. At the top of the stile, Will looked back to the thick fog drifting across the meadow. Dark smudges of villagers moved through it, more hesitant but refusing to give up. Yet the spy’s attention was caught by a wilder activity away to his left. Something bounded across the meadow, outpacing the men with the dogs. Will found it hard to discern its true nature; at times it moved on all fours, at others it rose to two feet, with a loping gait. It kept fast and low at all times.

  Meg had seen it too. ‘It will be on us in moments,’ she said, drawing herself up. ‘Unsheath your sword. I will use my dagger. If we are to die this night, let it be with blood on our blades.’

  Spinning round, Will surveyed the dark countryside. One glint of moonlight stirred a hope.

  ‘I am not ready to die yet.’ He leapt from the stile to run along the lane.

  As they moved away from the roaring of the fire, they could hear the tinkling of water falling across stones.

  A change in the wind brought dense clouds of smoke sweeping all around the two fugitives. The keening cry of their now-hidden pursuer became louder. Will wondered if the thing at their backs was circling them, choosing its moment to strike.

  The shouts of the hunting party had grown angrier. The hounds were baying again, and they too were drawing nearer.

  Out of the smoke, an old stone bridge emerged, the worn and crumbling parapets dappled with lichen. As Meg ran to cross it, the spy caught an arm around her waist, forcing her off the dusty lane and down the grassy bank to the stream he had heard earlier. Will didn’t slow their pace and they splashed into the cool, black water up to his calves.

  Meg flashed a questioning look, but he only urged her into the dark beneath the bridge’s single arch. Amid the smell of wet vegetation, they came to a halt against the chill stone, drawing the dank air into their burning chests. Through the other arch of the bridge, they could see grey tendrils of smoke floating past and the hellish glare of the fire burning across the meadow.

  ‘Running water dulls the senses of the Enemy,’ Will whispered. So Dr Dee had told him, and he hoped the alchemist was right.

  Meg nodded.

  But would the stream dull those senses enough to mask the presence of the quarry hiding beneath the bridge? the spy wondered.

  The night was punctured by the shouts of the hunting party trying to decide which way to go along the lane. Will heard someone give an order to split into two groups. But then the strange, reedy cry echoed nearby and he felt Meg’s body tense beside him.

  They waited, listening to the distant crack of the fire and the splashing of the water. The cry came again, not far from the bridge, and then ended suddenly.

  It knows we are here, Will thought.

  Meg sensed it too. She held the spy’s gaze, offering a silent prayer. He felt her body grow taut once more, and he was sure their hearts were beating so hard they could be heard beyond their bodies.

  A soft tread rustled above their heads. It paused, began again.

  Searching.

  Nails scraping on stone. Low, rasping breaths. A thump as the predator leapt on to the parapet of the bridge.

  The Irish woman flinched, her mouth working against Will’s hand. Pulling her close, he held her tight to prevent her crying out by accident.

  ‘Can’t see nothing down here!’ a young man’s voice rang out from further up the lane.

  A growl rumbled out from deep in the throat of the thing waiting above. The spy heard it leap from the parapet and scuttle down to the other side of the bridge. Hiding from the approaching men, he guessed.

  Footsteps pounded along the dried mud of the lane to the edge of the bridge. Dogs snuffled in the undergrowth. Within a moment, however, the hounds began to whimper and then turned tail and ran back along the lane.

  ‘What’s wrong with ’em? They afeared a summat?’ Will heard one man say.

  ‘The fire. Beasts don’t like it,’ another replied.

  ‘’Ere. Let’s have a look over the bridge,’ a third said.

  From the sound of the footsteps cresting the stone structure, the spy guessed that three was the total number of villagers in the group. The men tramped a little farther down the other side of the bridge and then stopped. Will imagined them looking out into the night.

  ‘Back home?’ the first began. His next word was drowned out by a terrible roaring. The three men shrieked as one.

  Meg folded into the spy’s body, glancing fearfully through the arch where the hellish fires blazed. The men scrambled backwards, their yells unintelligible beneath the deafening rage of their attacker. Will heard the thing race up the bridge, and then there was a sound like ripping silk again and again and again. The screams of the t
hree men pierced the night.

  Something fell into the stream with a loud splash. When the water settled, Will saw the dead eyes of one of the villagers staring back at him, the mouth wide in terror.

  The cries became whimpers and gradually died away, but the crunch and spatter continued a while.

  Then silence fell.

  The spy realized he had stopped breathing. Meg was rigid too. Will tried to imagine the predator standing above his head, caught in the lamp of the moon, stained red from head to toe. Was it licking its lips? Was it looking hungrily to where the rest of the hunting party searched? Or was it listening slyly, waiting for Will to emerge from hiding?

  Now he could hear the frightened, questioning voices of the other villagers following the screams of the dying men. The thing must have decided it had no further appetite for slaughter, for Will heard it turn and lope from the bridge along the lane in the opposite direction.

  ‘We must be away from here before we are discovered,’ the spy whispered.

  His companion was loath to move and pressed her back against the stone of the arch, but Will grabbed her cold hand and gently eased her away. Within a moment they were splashing along the stream, scrambling over slippery rocks down the channel between the meadows.

  Horrified shouts echoed through the dark behind them as the villagers found their fallen friends. ‘God’s wounds,’ one man exclaimed. ‘The Devil is abroad this night.’

  And Will could not deny it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  ‘YOU CAN NEVER OUTRUN THE THING THAT THE UNSEELIE COURT has set on your trail,’ Meg warned, her mood dark as she wrung out the hem of her bedraggled skirts. A boiling July sun was beating down on the barleyfields edging the stream where the Irish woman and Will were resting. They had sought the shade of an ash tree five miles away from the bloody bridge.

  ‘Then I will stand and fight.’ His legs weary from the long run, the spy watched the lonely countryside for any sign of movement.

  ‘This is not just any foe,’ the woman pressed. ‘It is one of their hunters. I have seen them at their murderous work, pursuing my countrymen through the forests. They never stop until they have their prey.’

  ‘I have killed their kind before,’ Will said bluntly, ‘and I can do so again.’

  Meg snorted, dragging her fingers through her damp, tangled auburn hair. ‘You are a stubborn man.’

  ‘What do you suggest? That I roll over and die?’

  After a moment’s pause, the woman ventured, ‘Come away with me to Europe. I have seen your worth. There is good pay to be had for men and women of our skills. Spies are always in demand at the courts of great nations. We can change our names, our appearances, and with England fallen, the Unseelie Court will not care about two poor, bedraggled mortals.’ With studied, heavy-lidded eyes, she breathed into his ear, ‘We could become rich. More than that, we could experience many delights in each other’s company.’

  ‘Your offer is tempting, Mistress O’Shee, but I will not abandon England.’ Will could not tell his companion of the notion that truly set him afire: the one slip in his tormentor’s subtle assault when death seemed close in the plague pit, the hint that Jenny still survived in a hot land across the sea.

  Thank you, Kit, the spy thought, still astonished how hope could arise from something so dark and despairing.

  ‘Ho! What have we here?’

  Will leapt to his feet, on guard in an instant. He was looking straight into the barrel of a musket.

  On top of the bank across the stream, four armed men and a woman in dirty, ragged clothes levelled their weapons. The men were old soldiers, morion helmets tied under their chins with red tape, their bodies encased in mud-splattered corselets with tassets to protect their thighs. Two carried matchlocks, the rest rapiers. Wearing filthy grey skirts and only a corset on top, the woman stood with one hand on her hip. From the knowing look in her eye and the brazen way she held herself, Will guessed she was a doxy.

  ‘Have ye not heard,’ the man at the front said with a sneering smile, ‘’tis not safe to travel along the byways of England. Rogues and ruffians wait at every turn. But for a small contribution, we can ensure safe passage for you through these dangerous fields.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Unless, of course, ye be Will Swyfte, in which case there is more than a pretty penny to be had.’

  Will sized up the soldier, noting the easy stance and the confident gleam in his eye, and the cheeks flayed by the elements that suggested he had been living rough for a long time. Was he one of the disenchanted soldiers returned from Sir Francis Drake’s failed attack upon Portugal four years earlier? One of those who had caused such violent trouble in London during the Bartholomew Fair?

  ‘Oh, please, sir, do not harm us,’ Meg protested, instantly adopting a terrified expression. She skipped lightly across the stream to the side of the footpad.

  ‘Leave now,’ Will said in a calm voice, his eyes locked on his opponent’s, ‘and you will not be harmed.’

  The man shook his head in incredulity while his companions fell about in mocking laughter. With a shrug, Will drew his rapier. The group fell silent, their faces darkening.

  ‘Fool,’ the outspoken footpad muttered. He went to strike his flint to ignite the fuse of his matchlock, but before a spark had flown Meg had knocked the musket from his hands, thrusting her dagger towards his neck. The doxy lunged for the Irish woman, but was brought down in a flash when a small fist rammed against her jaw.

  Will bounded across the stream and drove the tip of his rapier into the wrist of the soldier fumbling with the other matchlock. As the footpad fell back, howling, the spy turned his blade on the remaining two men.

  ‘Drop your weapons or I will kill your leader,’ Meg spat, her face now hard, the edge of her dagger digging into the exposed throat of her opponent.

  ‘Kill him, then,’ one of the other men muttered, his eyes darting from Will’s sword to his mate.

  ‘Honour among thieves,’ the spy said in an acid tone. ‘Come on, then. Let us finish this now.’

  Floating over the meadows came the rhythmic tinkling of bells and the sound of rich, deep voices singing in a strange language. ‘Moon-Men,’ one of the footpads whispered to his mate. ‘They will cut out our hearts and eat them if they catch us here.’

  Sheathing their swords, the two men scrambled up the bank and were soon racing away through the ripening barley. The dazed doxy and the other old soldiers followed close behind.

  ‘What scared them so?’ Meg mused as she watched the robbers disappear into the sun.

  ‘Footpads are all cowards,’ Will replied, plucking up the dropped matchlock. He held out a hand to his companion, who took it with a playful curtsey and they made their way back across the stream and up the bank.

  ‘We make a good team, Master Swyfte. No enemy could stand against us,’ the woman said. ‘We would be rich in no time.’

  ‘Or dead. For we both throw caution to the wind.’

  The sound of the bells and the singing drew nearer. Just beyond the hedgerow a large crowd of people processed along a lane. Poised in thought, Will listened to the music as he watched the bobbing heads pass slowly by. Brilliant scarlets, golds and azure blues blazed among the greenery of the countryside. He saw an opportunity.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let us have some pleasant company and conversation.’

  As they set off across the meadow, Will glanced back at the open countryside. He had the uncomfortable feeling of eyes upon him. Their pursuer had found them again, he was sure, and was biding its time until nightfall.

  At the hedgerow, Meg slowed, growing contemptuous. ‘Egyptians,’ she hissed. ‘Would you have us killed in the night, or my virtue stolen before I am sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast?’

  ‘You have a colourful imagination, my lady,’ Will said. ‘Though now you mention it, perhaps I can get a good penny for you. At least enough to buy me a hot ordinary in a tavern on the way.’

  The Irish woman cursed lo
udly, but the spy only laughed.

  The brightly dressed band of gypsies numbered at least forty, men, women and children, some mounted, others leading laden horses, though the beasts were poor, scrawny things. Many of the travellers had their faces painted yellow or crimson, embroidered turbans on their heads and silk scarves draping their necks. Their clothes were little more than rags stitched together, but the patches had been chosen artfully so the colours swirled across their bodies. The tinkling sound came from bells on small chains they wore around the ankles, and their feet were bare.

  Will understood Meg’s dislike, though he didn’t share it. The Moon-Men were feared as thieves, black magicians, coney-catchers who tricked the gullible, and violent rogues who left for dead anyone who crossed their path. Villagers drove them on whenever they settled for a night. The Privy Council saw them as a threat to the stability of England and had passed more than one Act to control them. And so they continued their wandering across the length and breadth of Europe, playing up to the suspicions and earning a meagre living through begging, fortune-telling or giving displays of ventriloquism and puppetry at the fairs and taverns. Yes, and robbery too. But the spy knew greater truths were hidden among the rumours and gossip.

  ‘What I have seen of the Enemy has made me slower to condemn my fellow men,’ Will said as he helped the Irish woman over a stile. ‘In London, the common man fears the blackamoors and lascars, yes, and the Spanish and Dutch too. The men of Kent loathe the men of Suffolk, for being strange in their ways, and in Bankside the men and women of one street eye with suspicion their neighbours on the next. The Unseelie Court see us all as barely more than beasts fighting anyone who dares stray on to our feeding ground, and sometimes I fear they are right.’

  Meg cast a suspicious glance at him. ‘Siding with the Unseelie Court?’ she said. ‘Some would find treason in your words. I would learn to bite your tongue, for those in other circles may not be as amenable to you as I.’

  ‘Ah. You are amenable to me.’

  Her cheeks flushed. ‘I simply meant—’