Murder Most Medieval

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  LONG AFTER DARK, THE cat lifted her head. Robin, an outlaw since boyhood, felt for his knife and checked the back exit. Something scratched at the door like a small dog.

  Rocana admitted a young woman in faded brown. Her belly was swollen and her gown damp at the breasts. She carried a big baby, almost a toddler. She gasped at the witch’s company and, timid as a deer, had to be coaxed inside. She sagged on a stool and relinquished her toddler to Marian, confessed that her child had stopped kicking, and was that right? While Rocana asked questions and ground herbs and seeds in a pestle, Marian cooed and kissed the baby’s blonde head, inhaling its milky fragrance. Robin sat by the fire and fletched an arrow with a gray goose quill.

  “Such a beautiful child.” Marian touched the woman’s swollen belly. “And another on the way. You’re lucky.”

  The young woman smiled vacantly and touched her stomach. “This one’s father is an angel.”

  “What?” Marian bobbled the infant.

  The simple woman was sincere. “His father’s an angel that comes in the night. He’s tall and dark. This child will be doubly blessed.”

  “Yes…” Marian stroked the ash-blonde head. “I see…”

  The cat picked up her head and scooted behind a sheaf of woodruff. Robin Hood laid his arrow on the hearth.

  The door rattled and banged as a priest barged in. “Willa! You’re not to come here! I’ve forbidden it!”

  The young woman upset her stool, but Marian caught her. The priest offered no help. His dark cassock bore buttons from throat to hem and was girdled by a rosary with a wooden cross that banged his knee. His high brow, eagle’s nose, and sharp cheekbones recalled a talking skull.

  “And you, interloper,” he snarled at Marian, “you’ll not talk to this woman either!”

  Robin Hood rose. “How is that your business?”

  “Everything that transpires in this village is my business!”

  The outlaw stifled a rising temper. Robin took clerics as he found them. Friar Tuck was poor as dirt, dedicated, and honest. The greedy Bishop of Hereford had been forced to dance in the Greenwood at arrow-point. Robin kept his voice level. “Not today.”

  Snorting, the priest grabbed Willa’s arm. Robin Hood seized his, and the priest gasped. “Father, pray contain your zeal. The women discuss women’s affairs. Men are not needed.”

  The priest could not wriggle free. “It’s a sin to manhandle a cleric!”

  Up close, Robin was distracted, for the glitter in the priest’s deep eyes was somehow familiar. He brushed the thought aside. “It’s man’s nature to sin. I but do my part.” Robin pitched the priest out the door. The man just missed rapping his head on the lintel. Robin shut the door.

  Rocana swept her mix into a clay cup, then instructed Willa how to brew a tea. It took three tries. Marian surrendered the baby and Willa slipped into the night, tears of fear in her eyes. Fletching again, Robin asked, “Does the priest visit often?”

  Smiling, crinkly, Rocana tidied her work table. “Alwyn’s forbidden the women to come for my curings. They come anyway.”

  Robin licked a split feather. “What does he dislike?”

  “Competition. We wrestle like boars for the same wallow. He’s got his Latin and holy water and incense, I my Gaelic and magic water and herbs.” She banged vessels as she worked. “We villagers are partial to harelips and webbed fingers, living on rabbits and ducks as we do, but you won’t see Alwyn wield a needle or a knife! Yet he rails that I defy God’s will with blasphemous magic! So when Young Gerald slashed his palm with a knife, Alwyn could only pray. I drew the blood poisoning with a sage and apple poultice and saved his arm and his life, thus defying God’s will!”

  The wise woman sighed. The cat rubbed against her hairy leg. “But it happens all over. Witches bein‘ driven out by churchmen. There’re more of them, and better organized, with their bishops and councils and diets and edicts, while we’re a handful of old women who pass on secrets from mother to daughter. And men are hungry as wolves. You know’t, don’t you, Marian? Men rule this world and women endure it.”

  Neither the Fox nor the Vixen of Sherwood denied it. Marian asked, “Why does Willa think her husband is an angel?”

  “I let her think that. Her true husband is Serle, who’s been mad more than a year. Better she’s visited by an angel.”

  Robin Hood cleared his throat. “Rocana, if this village ever drove you out, you’d find a home in Sherwood.”

  The witch cocked her head like a girl. “Would I? That’s very kind. But,” she peered around at leaves and vines and flowers, “you can’t grow a garden in the forest. And I’m rooted here the same way. Whate’er others may think, I’m part of this village.”

  FOR DAYS, THE WOMEN worked on Marian’s “problem.” Married more than a year, she had yet to conceive. Word was Rocana had cures. “Don’t fret, dear. We can fix’t. A good marriage is a prolific marriage.”

  The witch suggested many things. “Like cured like,” so Robin set braided snares around clover patches, and Marian ate rabbit until she swore her ears grew. She drank tea of mugwort picked in May. For lovemaking, husband and wife slept outdoors under a rose arbor and the moon, yet with faces covered lest the moonshine drive them mad. Around their bed of blankets they scratched a six-pointed Seal of Solomon. Before and after making love, they prayed to Saint Anne. Rocana joked she had no pearls, or she’d grind one into Marian’s food. And they eschewed green as unlucky for lovers.

  Robin Hood chafed at probing questions. Did they have relations twice a week? Did he shed enough seed to fill the hollow of her palm? What of their families? Marian listed brothers and sisters while Robin had none, living or dead. Yes, it had taken his mother years to conceive, but how could that matter?

  By day, unneeded, Robin hunted alone. Yet Marian was hopeful. One night, dreaming at the sky, she piped, “Look, Rob, a falling star! The soul of a child coming to be born! Maybe ours!”

  ONE NIGHT, ROCANA WOKE Marian from their pallet, bid her dress, and gave her a knife and basket. The witch carried a frayed rope. Marian pressed her husband’s shoulder to keep him abed. “Rob, stay and watch here, please?” Pleading and apologizing at the same time. Her husband neither nodded nor shook his head.

  A full moon etched the world with silver light. The earth seemed blown of milky glass lit from below. The two women bustled to the dark garden, where the witch slipped the rope around the neck of a brown goat. Then the three hobbled off into the dark.

  Catching up his bow and quiver, Robin followed the witch’s creaking knees and wheezing. He couldn’t hear Marian. They trod the path down the hill. Robin guessed their destination and muttered charms of protection, but wondered what they planned.

  Like a lost scarecrow, the dead poacher Ingram hung from the elm. Under his dangling feet, Marian dug as Rocana instructed. Pressing alongside an oak, Robin watched and listened.

  “I didn’t think it grew in England,” the young woman said. She grubbed in the soil some time. “I don’t find it.”

  “Oh, dear. My memory’s not what it used to be… No, it don’t grow in England. I planted it here before they hanged him. Ah, got it? Careful! Just uncover it, don’t disturb it!” Rocana nickered to the goat and fumbled with the rope. “My rheumatism hates this spring damp. Slip the bight under a stub of it.”

  Robin hissed. Were they both mad?

  “Stay! Stay! Move up the slope, dear. Stay!” Leaving the goat under the hanged man, the women backed past Robin’s post without seeing him. A hundred feet up the slope, the witch warned, “Cover your ears.”

  Robin Hood clamped both hands to his head. Dark against dark in silver-splintered light, the goat tugged, then plodded up the slope toward its mistress. Gingerly, Robin uncovered his ears. He heard the witch reward the goat with a treat. She untied the rope and stuffed their prize into her basket.

  “Yah yah yah!” The raucous blat split the night.

  “There they are!” boomed a voice. Golden torchlight ban
ished the silver moonlight.

  Rocana muttered in Gaelic. Marian trilled, “Shall we run?”

  “No, child. Stay put.”

  Through the trees came the priest, Alwyn, and three villagers, alike as stalks of wheat. They carried torches. Leading the pack like a dog shambled Serle, the madman. The priest’s cassock and rosary flapped about his knees. Catching Serle’s arm, he called, “Rocana! You dare defile the dead? You’ll bring down the wrath of God with your doubly-damned blasphemy!”

  “I’ve touched not the dead, Alwyn.” The witch waved a crooked hand. “The lord’s tree still bears fruit.”

  The priest ordered a torch held near the grotesque body. “If you don’t trifle with the dead—and we may’ve interrupted your grisly work—what do you do at this witching hour?”

  “It’s none of your business,” the witch snapped, “but we harvest by moonlight. Oak buds and cuckoo’s pintle and such oddments.”

  Hidden in the dark, Robin Hood grunted. Those innocent plants were not what the goat plucked from the ground.

  Unsatisfied, Alwyn refused to leave the women alone with the corpse. “Seize her! Drag her to the chapel! We’ll see if she’s innocent or not! Go on, grab her!”

  Robin Hood startled everyone when he slipped to Rocana and planted his feet. The villagers balked, but the witch muttered, “No, let us go. We’ll get this over with, once and for all.”

  Nonplussed, Robin didn’t move. Marian tugged him away. “Watch and wait, darling. We’ll make sure she suffers no harm.”

  The three men caught Rocana’s elbows, gently, reluctantly, and avoided the basket on her arm. They escorted her up the slope after Alwyn.

  Robin waggled his useless bow and squeezed his wife’s hand. “I’m sorry I broke faith, honey, and spied. It’s hard, but—”

  His wife sniffled in the darkness. “We need help for me to conceive, Rob.”

  “Not that. I won’t let you do it.”

  “Hush. We’ll discuss it later.”

  Torchlight ringed the village chapel and common like fairy fire. Barefoot villagers streamed from their cottages, rubbing their eyes. Alwyn waved a Bible as he exhorted the crowd in a high singsong. The three men held Rocana, who waited, resigned and hardly terrified. Beside her stood the pregnant and confused Willa, wife of Serle. Beyond the crowd, in a disused byre, Robin saw the Jack, an eight-foot cone woven of wicker and thatched with prickly holly leaves for the dance on May Day.

  Alwyn ranted against sin, and the villagers attended. A few men hollered agreement, some women vexed, but most just listened. This was neither sermon nor trial by ordeal but entertainment, another round in an ancient village feud. Robin Hood had seen grimmer football matches.

  “… Too long, witch, has this village tolerated your heathen interfering ways! Like the Witch of Endor, you’ve urged our women to wickedness! You’ve dealt out potions and salves that keep wives from conceiving even when visited by their husbands! You’ve dazzled the minds of good women and made them like drunks so men might ravish them in the fields! You’ve caused father to lie with daughter, brother with sister, and son with mother! You’ve stolen the bowels and members of babies to conjure flying potions…”

  Rocana clucked her tongue. “Stop this rubbish, Alwyn! Everyone knows my healings, and everyone’s profited by them…”

  “Why not mount her on a horse again? Perry, fetch your cob!” a man joked. “Touch her brow with an iron knife!” jibed another. “Float her in the pond!” a woman shrilled. Even the jests were ancient.

  The priest ranted, fulfilling his duty if not moving his audience. Robin Hood wondered if he were drunk. Or partly mad. Madness ran deep in this isolated hamlet… Suddenly, Robin gawked, realizing why the priest seemed familiar. “Marian, Alwyn is Series brother!”

  “Yes, yes, Rob. Listen.”

  Robin Hood pouted. “Why do women always know these things first?”

  “It demands in Exodus, ”Suffer not a witch to live!“ Yet this village harbors a viper at our bosoms!” The priest raised a Bible as if he’d squash a fly, then thumped Rocana’s brow. “Be condemned! Feel the fire of the holy word! Know the burning pits of Hell beckon!”

  Rocana pushed at the book with feeble hands. “Get that thing off me!” As she struggled, her basket upended. A knife and a dirty root thumped at the priest’s feet. Alwyn pounced on the root, holding it up to catch the light. It resembled a triply forked carrot crusted with dirt.

  Silence fell hard on peoples’ ears. Alwyn’s eyes grew feverish in the torchlight. “This you harvested under the gallows tree? You’ve done worse than defile the dead! You use them for purposes too foul to bespeak! You’ll bum for this!”

  Rocana bleated. The villagers murmured as the game took an ugly and unfamiliar turn. The priest wrung Rocana’s shoulder. “There is no pit deep enough! No damnation strong enough—”

  “Stop!” Rocana writhed in the priest’s grip. “Unhand me, you rake! Must you paw every woman in this village—”

  Quickly, Alwyn slapped her, then raised his hand again.

  Quicker, Robin Hood’s bow snagged the priest’s wrist. “I’ll break your arm, you black-bearded bastard! Don’t you dare strike a woman!” Marian tugged her Irish knife loose in its sheath.

  Maddened by his own ranting, Alwyn pointed at Marian. “You outlaw interloper! You’ll suffer torments unimaginable when your wife conceives a demon’s child!”

  Growling, Robin Hood gripped the man’s throat. The priest struggled as he waved the root in the air. Everyone saw it, and knew it.

  Mandrake was the most ancient and mysterious of herbs. Its manlike shape let it breathe beneath the ground, where it stored up power for fertility and prophecy. Dangerous and jealous, a mandrake hugged the earth and hated to leave, so if carelessly plucked it screamed, loud and harsh to drive men mad. To harvest it, a witch tied the root to a dog or a goat, then whistled the animal from out of earshot to yank it from the ground.

  “See you this?” rapped the priest. “A mandragon! A denial of God! She buried it under a dying man to soak up his seed that spilt upon strangling! And she’ll compel your wife to purge your seed and insert this instead! Thus do Christian women birth devils—”

  “Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no!” A soul-wrenching cry cut through even Alwyn’s bellowing.

  The deluded Willa pushed at her swollen belly with clumsy hands. “No, no! She said’ t‘would make the child strong,” t’would ward off the madness! Oh, get it away! Help me, Mother Mary! Get the devil child out of me!“

  Villagers surged back as if from a mad dog. Rocana reached, but Willa lurched around the firelit circle, grasping at people, pleading. “Get it away, please, sweet Christ, get it away!”

  No one could help, she saw. Her hand snatched at a man’s belt for a knife. The blade flashed yellow in the torchlight.

  “Stop her!” screamed Marian, and shoved at the crowd. Robin tangled with a man backing up. Rocana swiped at the young mother’s hands.

  All too late. Willa drove the blade into her low-slung belly. Transported by passion, unmindful of pain, she stabbed until blood and water gushed red and white and splashed in the dirt. She stabbed until she stumbled and fell. People screamed and howled and prayed as if the world ended.

  Rocana flopped on her knees, clutched the dying woman’s head, and wept. Willa’s bloody hand floated toward Heaven.

  Robin Hood hoicked Alwyn in the air by his cassock. “You—”

  A man howled in the darkness. A woman screamed. “The Jack! It lives! It’s Ingram come back! God have mercy!”

  People shouted, screamed, pushed, ran. Robin fought to see and remember. What about the Jack? And who was Ingram? Then he saw.

  Jerking and jigging, the Jack in the Green, a living dancing tree, thrashed and shivered as it dashed amidst the shrieking villagers. The cone’s shiny leaves shimmered in the wild light as torchbearers ran hither and thither. Only Rocana kept her place, cradling the dying woman’s head.

  Alwyn squirmed f
rom Robin’s grasp. He fumbled his cross high to banish the evil apparition, then his nerve broke and he ran.

  The crowd melted like a breaking sea wave. Despite fear and superstition boiling in his brain, Robin noticed bare feet stamped the turf under the green cone.

  Sensing that the outlaws stood fast, the Jack rushed.

  Shoving Marian aside, Robin snaked an arrow from his quiver, pulled to his cheek, and loosed.

  The arrow slapped into the Jack, parting leaves at the height of a man’s breast.

  The spirit kept coming.

  Superstition conquered reason. Robin hollered, “Run, Marian!” His wife had already bolted for sanctuary. Robin loped after. Marian dove into the chapel like a quail into a hedge. Robin grabbed the door and slammed it shut. In black stillness, their rasping breath was loud.