The Black Hill

by Alison Adare

  Saint Simeon’s stones.

  She felt for her medallion of Saint Sebastian and only remembered it was lost when her fingers closed instead on the thorns of the spray of roses Lew had given her. Sucking her pricked thumb, she eyed that long open stretch of road. Jesus Christ, I beg you, intercede for me … The memory of the chapel crucifix, Tom’s face beneath a crown of thorns and roses, rose up before her and she stopped. Blessed Virgin, mother of Our Lord, I beg you … but what would a virtuous virgin want with Janet Cooper?

  Holy Mary, Tom has a mother. I’ve never met her. I don’t even remember her name, if he ever told me. But if she was here, she’d want me to save him. She’d pray to you that I might save him. She doesn’t know he’s in danger, so she’s not praying to you right now, but please, Blessed Virgin, hear my prayer, intercede for me with your Son and His Father, ask them to protect me from the powers of evil, not for myself, not even for Tom, but for his mother, who will lose a son, as you lost your Son, if I fail.

  She stood silent, listening for some sign she had been heard, but there was nothing.

  Saint Sebastian, I don’t know if you can even hear me. I lost your token, I couldn’t help it, but I did. Please hear me despite it. Please help me, despite it. I’m not a soldier any more. I’m a liar, but I was a liar when I prayed to you for help in the days when I was a soldier, and you heard me then. Saint Sebastian, you brought me safely through all those battles. You sheltered me from discovery all those days and nights. You laid your hand on Tom when he was wounded and kept fever from taking hold. If you give me this, I swear, I will light a candle every day. If you give me this, I swear, I will never ask you for anything again. But Tom was a soldier, too, Saint Sebastian, and he is a better man than me, even if I were a man. He is pious, and good, and he is going to die a horrible, awful death if I don’t stop it, and I don’t think I can do this on my own. Please, Saint Sebastian, please forgive me all my faults and help me, this one more time, in this one more thing. Strengthen my arm, steel my heart, protect me from the Devil’s works — let me save Tom.

  And if I can’t, Saint Sebastian, let me take one or two of the whoresons with me, at least.

  High above, a kite piped, thin and sharp. Janet looked up to see it wheeling lazily above her, the long black feathers at the tip of its wings spread out like the fingers of a hand. It cried again, and then dropped, swooping down to the meadow, flickering in and out of view behind the haystacks until it struck and rose again with a small, limp creature clutched in its claws.

  Well, I wanted a sign.

  Janet took the time to strip Masie’s bridle and gear. She carried them a little way from the road, against the possibility that she and Tom might be fleeing this way as fugitives, in which case the supplies would be welcome. Taking off her sword-belt, she wrapped it around her wrist, holding the scabbard in her hand so it wouldn’t catch on anything and slow her. She waited for the sun to track a little further down toward the western hills and for the shadows of the haystacks to grow long and dark.

  Then she crouched as low as she could and sprinted for the first haystack.

  She had to zig and zag across the meadow to keep the time she was exposed to view from the fort to a minimum, which made the distance she had to travel greater, and before long she had to stop and rest, legs trembling, head pounding, in the shade of every haystack. By the time she reached the protecting screen of the trees and could straighten up and walk steadily and slowly, she was drenched in sweat and shaking with fatigue. She paused to rest, cursing her feebleness, and for good measure cursing whoever it was whose hand had dealt the blow that had caused it.

  Then she made her way into the wood.

  Her trip back along the valley had taken far too long. The sun had almost set. The trees were crowded together, the undergrowth dense, and the shadows thick. Janet worked her way up the hill, climbing and crawling, until she thought she was at around the right height, and began to scramble across.

  A shift in the wind brought the smell of smoke to her, pungent and sweet. It’s begun. She would be too late, too late, in a moment she would hear the screams — stumbling and panting she tore her way through the thickets. Branches seized her like hands grabbing at her arms and legs to slow her progress as if the whole wood were alive, alive and malignant, the trees conspiring with each other to tangle her path and confuse her steps. She tried to follow the scent of smoke but the wind died and rose and eddied unpredictably until she was sure she was going in circles.

  Then she smelled the thin sweet fragrance of roses beneath the smoke. Forcing her way through the last of the dense bushes she found the sprawling brambles she had skidded through the first time she had been in the wood. She pushed her way through them, heedless of the thorns, and with every stem she thrust aside a shower of petals from the last heavy blooms clinging to the branches fell over her like snow.

  The last spray of dying roses gave way, and she was standing above that small ledge at the mouth of the cave.

  Chapter 20

  Janet had imagined Modron’s dark ritual to be carried out deep in the recesses of the cave — beneath the hill, as Emlyn’s translation of Davith’s song had said.

  She had been wrong. The smoke she had smelled came from a fire burning, hot and strong, on the ledge below her. Although the ledge was further down than she had remembered, she could feel the heat from the blaze on her face and the smoke was strong enough to make her eyes water. The flicker and dance of the flames cast a shivering circle of light in which Janet struggled to see the edges of the outcrop of stone. How much room is there? Is my choice between dropping into the fire or falling to my death in the dark?

  A voice, coming from further inside the cave, where Janet couldn’t see: a woman’s voice, echoing under the stone, speaking the local language with a singing intonation that made all but a few words incomprehensible to Janet. Men’s voices, answering, and then movement below her, figures at the edge of the firelight turning into giants and then midgets with each billow of smoke or leap of flame. For one gut-twisting moment Janet thought they had no heads, that Modron had gained the power to raise the dead to serve her and she’d chosen those who’d faced the headman’s block for that purpose — and then she realized the men were wearing some sort of black hood or mask.

  She counted four below her, two each side of the fire, and if she couldn’t make out the edges of the ledge, well, at least I know that where they stand is solid ground.

  The woman’s voice paused, and then Janet heard her ask, quite clearly, “Are you ready, lord of Brinday?”

  Despite the echoes caused by the overhanging stone, she would have known the voice that answered anywhere, would have known it if she hadn’t heard it for sixty years. “Yes,” said Tom.

  He’s here, he’s here willingly — and he’s not one of those men by the fire.

  Janet took two steps backwards, ran forward and jumped.

  She landed squarely on one of the masked men on the left side of the bonfire, bearing him to the ground beneath her. She heard the breath go out of him at the impact, helped it along with a knee to his stomach, and smashed where she guessed his jaw to be with her elbow. She heard the back of his head strike the stone with a dull crunch as she turned and rose and drew her sword. The other man on that side flinched from her as she thrust at him, flinched back again and then took an unwary step too far. He made a desperate attempt to recover his balance and managed to grab the edge of the ledge as he fell. Janet brought her heel down hard on his hand and he lost his grip. She heard him crashing through the branches below as she turned to face the others.

  They stood framed by the entrance to the dragon’s heart.

  The sweet smoke was so heavy in the air the figures before her seemed to loom and then recede with each thick swirl of it, but Janet could see that the cave was not as deep as she had imagined, merely a deep alcove with one dark corner that must be the way in from the fort above. Its floor was littered with dead leaves swept in by the
wind. The firelight leapt and danced on the thick trickles of golden blood that crept down the stone, on the naked chests and backs of the four men remaining, on the black hoods covering their heads.

  On the tumbling black curls and green eyes of Lady Modron.

  Janet blinked hard, trying to clear her vision. Which is Tom?

  He should have been easy to tell from the others, but the smoke and the firelight mazed her eyes until she could not tell which of the men was the tallest, and the black masks covered both face and hair. They were all alike, even to the patterns of the paint which swirled from their hands to their shoulders, even to the copper armbands that wound around their wrists and glowed in the light of the flames.

  She raised her sword and took a step toward Lady Modron. All four of the men moved to block her way. One reached towards her and she saw that his right hand was missing the smallest finger. Not Tom. Without hesitating, she stabbed him in the belly. He clutched at the blade as he fell and tore the hilt from her grasp.

  “Tom?” Janet said. The ledge felt as if it were rocking beneath her feet and the figures before her blurred and doubled. “Tom, Christ’s cod, man, I could use a little help here!”

  “He cannot hear you,” Modron said. “He cannot hear you while he wears the mask.”

  Janet found herself on her hands and knees, the four of them surrounding her. Well, this is a singularly unimpressive rescue.

  She blinked hard, and the four hands braced against the stone became two again.

  A rustle of cloth, and she could see the hem of Modron’s dress before her. Fury urged her to her feet, so as not to even seem a supplicant to the witch, but caution warned her to stay where she was and not risk meeting Modron’s gaze. “You tried to hold him, and failed,” the witch said.

  Janet shook her head, but did not look up. “He’s alive. I haven’t failed yet.”

  Modron laughed, low and musical. “He will give himself willingly, to save Brinday. You will not be able stop him.”

  If Modron can’t make a man act against his nature, how can she have bewitched him to walk so meekly to his death, a lamb led to the slaughter?

  God’s blood, are his dreams so bad he’ll burn alive to escape them, damn his soul as a suicide?

  Cautiously, slowly, Janet sat back on her heels, toes braced against the stone. She looked up, careful not to look directly at the witch, studying each of the three men in turn. All of them were well-muscled, statues of bronze and gold in the firelight. They stood at different distances from her, and she could not focus clearly enough to tell which of them was taller. She looked from one to another, back again, blinked sweat from her eyes.

  Modron laughed again. “You do not know him as well as you thought, do you?”

  And Janet saw, on the left arm of the man right beside Modron, under the paint, a long scar that tracked up one arm nearly to the shoulder, jagged and ugly.

  I remember when he got that, she thought. I remember his face, pale and sweating, his eyes, dazed with pain. I remember my hands, white-knuckled, holding him down.

  She rocked to the left and kicked out to her right, a long, low kick that tumbled the man on that side onto his arse. Her left leg straightened, heaving her upwards, and she grabbed the wrist of the man on her left with both hands and twisted until she heard a snap. She kicked the man who’d been on her right in his hooded head to disabuse him of any notion of getting up again, and flung herself at Tom. The man whose wrist she’d broken grabbed at her with his other hand and she spun back towards him, arm up, heard his nose crunch beneath the mask as her elbow connected, kicked him in the plums as he staggered and, when he doubled over, grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into her rising knee.

  He went down and didn’t move.

  And my mother said soldiering hadn’t left me with any useful skills.

  Janet turned back to Tom. Modron moved towards the fire, and Janet saw a bunch of herbs in her hand. The sweet, dizzying smell in the smoke made sudden sense. One desperate prayer, Saint Sebastian protect me from evil, and she seized Modron’s wrist and squeezed hard, shoved the woman away from her as the herbs fell harmless to the dead leaves.

  Modron recovered her balance and drew herself up, keeping a wary distance from Janet. “Lord of Brinday, are you ready?”

  “Yes,” came the voice from beneath his mask.

  “No,” said Janet, took hold of the mask, and pulled it from his head.

  And it was Tom beneath it, his dear familiar mouth drawn tight, his beautiful eyes staring down at her in shock. “What are you — Jack, get out of here!”

  “No,” she said.

  “What do I have to do?” he said furiously. “I send you on the road east with horses and supplies, and you turn up in my chamber. I ordered Lew to wait in the valley for you today and see you on your way, and you’re here. For the third time, Jack, get yourself gone, and safe!”

  “For the third time, no,” Janet said, and heard Modron gasp. “Tom, what are you doing? What magic has she laid on you, to walk into fire?”

  “He will do it because the old powers require it,” Modron said.

  “God is older than the Devil and this is no godly thing,” Janet retorted.

  She was surprised when Modron laughed. “There are things older than your Christ and His Father, powers that were here long before their priests ever came to this land. First your priests said they did not exist, that it was heresy to believe in them. Now they say they are the Devil, and it is heresy not to. None of that matters. The old powers don’t care.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Janet said.

  “They are real,” Tom said hollowly. He looked beyond Janet to the fire, eyes dazed. “I’ve seen … things. Sleeping, and waking. They will have their price, Jack, and if I don’t do this, everyone in Brinday will pay it. You’ve seen their warning. The pestilence, the winter crop failing.”

  God protects a man from going against his own nature.

  But Modron can make him go with it to places he’d never reach on his own.

  They’ll all die, he’d said on the wall, and she’d thought of the bloody day that half his Company had been slaughtered following their Captain’s orders, the guilt, the fear of another such mistake that had half-paralyzed him when faced with choices for long months after.

  And Lady Modron, night after night in the great hall, and Janet was sure now it had not just been wine in the cup. What had she whispered to him? Janet could made a good guess. If you do not do this, more will die, and it will be your fault. Do you want to choose to let them die? Is that really a choice at all?

  “Tom, she’s lying. Crops fail. Saint Theodosia’s teats, if the army taught you anything it’s that sickness and plague happen without any need for magic!”

  He shook his head, and took a step toward the fire.

  Janet flung her arms around him, braced her weight, feet sliding on the fallen leaves. “Tom!” she panted. “Tom, stop!” Another step. She dropped her shoulder to take him in the sternum, heard the breath leave his lungs with an oof and felt him stagger. “Tom, God’s blood, listen to me, it’s me, Jack, stop!”

  “Do not listen, lord of Brinday.” Lady Modron’s voice echoed strangely beneath the overhanging stone, and somehow in that echo Janet heard for the first time the way the local people made two words of the manor’s name. Not Brin, she thought. Bryn. Like Lady Modron Bryn of the Bryn family. Now she heard it, rather than seeing it, she knew the word. Hill.

  And not Day, either. Du. Black.

  Bryn Du. The Black Hill.

  Dark and cold beneath the hill, Davith had sung, black fire in the night. And all those men, marrying in to the family, changing their names to declare they had married themselves to the hill, all those lords and ladies with the secret of this place whispering beneath their voices every time they spoke their title.

  “I have to do this, Jack,” Tom said. The hair at his temples was dark with sweat, the strong chest beneath her hands glistening with it. “
The harvest has failed. The people are ill. The flocks are dying.”

  “The flocks are not dying. The tenants are better.” Janet said. Tom took her by the shoulders and tried to set her aside, but she clung with all her strength. You didn’t hold fast, Glyn had said to her, and that was what Emlyn had said about the woman in Davith’s song. She shouldn’t have let him go.

  Hold tight, the man in Davith’s song had said, and hold true.

  “You’re afraid of something that isn’t happening.” Janet’s feet skidded as Tom took another step toward the flames. “Christ’s cod, you were right, when you said you had nothing to offer her, that you came only to take her birthright. Then why did she welcome you, then?” Another step, and she could feel the heat behind her now. Hold fast. “Tom!” Hold true.

  “You know she speaks only from her own jealous heart,” Lady Modron said. “I am sorry to have to tell you, lord of Bryn Du, but your steward is no true friend, but a false heart, and a false man.”

  Tom stared down at Janet, and she felt her heart shrivel and shrink in her chest. Involuntarily she pulled a little away from him, turning her face from the disgust she was sure would be in his face.

  In the space she gave him, he took another step towards the fire.

  And oh, what do I care if he hates me, if only he is alive to do it? Janet threw her weight against his, not caring if he shrank from her touch, not caring about the heat of the flames at her back, not caring about the heat of shame within her, caring only that she hold fast, hold tight, hold true.

  She smelled the wool of her trousers smoldering before she felt it. It would catch in another moment, and it would be her screams echoing up to the fort above as she burned. Heat against her calf, then a lick of pain and she felt the back of her tunic catch and oh, God’s sweet mercy, she didn’t want to die and she most certainly didn’t want to die like this, in shrieking agony …