Hood

by Toby Venables

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  abaddon@rebellion.co.uk

  First published in 2017 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Commissioning Editor: David Moore

  Cover Art: Chris Payton

  Design: Sam Gretton & Oz Osborne

  Marketing and PR: Rob Power

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  Hunter of Sherwood created by David Moore and Toby Venables

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-069-8

  Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  For David Moore,

  who was with it from the beginning.

  PROLOGUE

  Kyrklees Priory

  November, 1161

  THERE HAD BEEN two distinct screams. The first—that of a woman in agony—had jolted Prioress Elizabeth from a sleep troubled by anxious, convoluted dreams. In them, she had been lost in a desert, and she had encountered a column of cascading water in the shape of an angel. The shimmering vision had drawn attention to the Prioress’s nakedness and, as the bemused woman had struggled to cover herself, began to laugh in contempt at her fumbling efforts. Scorn weirdly transformed the divine being’s face: limpid water became opaque flesh. Its eyes turned pink and watery, its pale skin puffy and blotched—finally culminating in a bristled, wet snout.

  A pig’s face.

  And the laugh... The laugh had grown in volume, ringing in her ears, its music changing from a liquid babbling to a masculine boom, and to something far worse—something less than human. It was no longer merely mocking, but mindless and chaotic; a hoarse, croaking squeal thrust in her face.

  As the Prioress shuddered awake, its fading memory merged with the woman’s scream.

  She guessed it had been going on for some time. Beneath the cry, somewhere beyond the thick door of her cell, she already heard hissed whispers—sisters awoken by the commotion, descending from the upper dormitory. But even in her distracted state, she knew to whom that scream belonged. She had known it before her feet hit the cold floor—had recognised those familiar, mewling tones even through the distortions of pain.

  Mary, lately of Hoppewood. Admitted to the order just six months past. And now... what? Dying? The Prioress was briefly thrilled at the thought, but suppressed the feeling.

  The girl’s shriek pierced the air while Elizabeth gathered herself; the harsh tones echoed about the cold stone walls as she hurried out into the cloister.

  The darkness was deep, the arches of the cloister barely visible, and the air had the bone-aching chill of night. Still several hours until the matins bell.

  A glowing apparition jolted unevenly towards her along the cloister and in the direction of the cries, both hands held aloft in the misty air, one curled about a thick candle. Beyond, the Prioress could see nothing but an indistinct white shape and glowing, foggy breaths. It stopped at the sight of her, and hovered hesitantly in the dark. Several pale, ghost-like figures flitted in the background—more sisters spilling from the entrance to the day-stairs.

  Another cry split the night air, then broke off into sudden silence.

  “You!” snapped Prioress Elizabeth. “Don’t just stand there! Light my way!”

  The figure scampered forward—the young novitiate Adela, her coif half awry. A clever girl, practical, but still with much to learn. For a moment the girl dithered, unsure whether or not to walk ahead of the Prioress. Elizabeth shoved her on impatiently. “Go! Go!”

  Then came the second scream, one to which the walls of the Priory were less accustomed: the thin, fragile cry of a newborn babe. At last, full realisation dawned.

  “Hold the candle up, girl,” snapped Elizabeth. “Up! I can’t see where I’m going!”

  The journey to the source of the screaming must have taken only moments, yet it felt like an age. Her panicked senses twisted the world into vivid but weird impressions: the looming, dancing shadows; the pulse of her heart, like a bird battering at her breastbone; that awful, impossible sound.

  Sister Adela stopped dead at the door to the cell. It was not her place to enter here—and judging by her expression, she had a horror of what she thought must lie beyond. The Prioress did not hesitate, flinging open the door and pushing past into the cramped cell.

  There were three within.

  One was supine upon the pallet, her pale, puffy face sweaty and streaked with strands of hair. Her dull cow-eyes glinted like wet pebbles in the candlelight, and widened in terror at the sight of the Prioress. Mary of Hoppewood, sister of the Cistercian order. Now also revealed as fornicator. Somewhere beyond her fury, Elizabeth felt that warm thrill again—she had finally been handed the stick with which to beat this wretch.

  The second figure quelled her mood. Crouched by her patient, momentarily frozen in the act of passing an armful of stained rags to the exhausted Mary, her long face strangely austere in the dim light, was Briga. At forty, Briga had a half-dozen years on Elizabeth—was, in truth, senior in every respect but her station. There were those said Briga could have been Prioress herself a dozen times over had she not felt her mission to be elsewhere. Elizabeth had a vivid memory from the very first week of their acquaintance when she had overheard Briga telling a younger nun: “I ask only to use these two hands to serve God” (here, she clasped her hands together) “and to help His people” (here, she spread them apart).

  The admiration this humility inspired among her sisters could easily have spawned resentment, but the Prioress could not bring herself to feel it. Briga was a soul entirely free of malice, whose wisdom and support had been material in making Elizabeth’s tenure the success it was.

  Now, however, the older sister turned and met the Prioress’s gaze with such stony resolve that it chilled her to the marrow.

  A thin cry broke the spell.

  The third figure present had only just come into being. As Briga completed the transfer of the wriggling bundle, Elizabeth spied its tiny hand—splayed like a starfish, grey and glistening—quiver above the crumpled cloth.

  “How could you keep this from me?” she hissed, advancing. “You, of all people!”

  Briga stood, her hands raised in a gesture of defence—not of herself, but of the stricken girl upon the pallet.

  “She came to me for help.” Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “In truth, I had already guessed. Her flushed face, the swell of her breasts... When you’ve seen the signs as often as I...” She glanced back at the pathetic creature upon the bed and the babe now suckling upon her, her face one of pure compassion. She sighed and turned back, her expression hard once more. “She needed aid. So aid was given.”

  The words stung like a subtle rebuke, yet it was not this that dumbfounded Elizabeth. In every nunnery in the land there were women whom God had seen fit to bless—or test—with beauty. There were even those whose beauty and bearing seemed somehow amplified by the plain dress of the sisterhood. Sister Adela was such a one. The fact the girl herself seem
ed blissfully unaware of her own attributes only made it worse; the Prioress, who had known life before the priory, knew that such innocence was as likely to inflame lust as quench it. She kept a close eye on those girls.

  Such was not the case with Sister Mary of Hoppewood. She was plain and dumpy, her hair red yet lacking fire, her skin pale but with an unpleasant sheen, like uncooked pastry. In fact, her whole being had the air of something unfinished.

  Others, like Briga, did not see her this way. They spoke of her energy, her fervour. They found her hard-working and honest and full of promise, if a little lacking in character. Elizabeth, however, had always found the girl strangely disconnected. She said all the right things, to be sure, and did her duties better than most. Yet something about her gnawed at the Prioress. The mere sight of the girl turned her stomach. Several times she had snapped at her, quite unreasonably. Then she had determined to keep her at a distance, and the fruit of that strategy was plain to see.

  The Prioress’s revulsion had been hard to fathom. There seemed to be no cause—and this was what troubled her the most. At first, Elizabeth had done what any decent Christian would do: she had blamed herself, and had meditated hard on her own failings, striven to improve. But the feeling that there was something wrong with the girl—a profound defect that only she, the Prioress, had discovered—grew to become a certainty. As time went on, she became further convinced that the bland being that went by the name of Mary was a disguise—a puppet, skilfully animated to obscure whatever thing it was lay behind.

  Quite what any man had seen in her—even in the throes of drunken lust—was utterly beyond the Prioress. A challenge, perhaps. The challenge of completing what was incomplete. Of fixing what was broken. She had found many men who were slaves to that vain urge—had, at times, seen it override all others. It originated, she supposed, from a noble impulse somewhere in the soul, and therein lay its danger. The world had less to fear from men who knew full well they were acting on base instinct than those who had convinced themselves they were doing good.

  “I want her out of here,” she said, her voice determinedly flat.

  Briga shook her head. “She cannot go anywhere. Not tonight.” There was no other who would dare defy her Prioress this way—no other to whose protests Elizabeth would listen. “She must rest and nurse the babe, or both will be at risk.”

  Mary, meanwhile, shot a panicked glance at the Prioress and gave a kind of whimper. From any other creature, it might have stirred Elizabeth to mercy. But with this... this... The burning fury rose in her again. She wanted to beat the girl’s head against the flagstones.

  “One day,” she said, “then I want her gone. And this cell scrubbed clean.” She turned to leave.

  Before she could reach the doorway, now filled with staring faces, Briga had darted past her and slammed it shut. “Wait...”

  The Prioress glared at her. “If you are going to come to her defence...”

  “She has been with us just six months, and was with child before she even came to us...”

  “And that excuses it?”

  “If she were a fallen woman—”

  “She is a fallen woman!”

  “If she were a fallen woman, one who had come to us now, heavy with child and in distress, you would afford her every protection, every aid.”

  “She is no mere woman. She is a bride of Christ! This cannot go unpunished.”

  “Nor should it,” said Briga. “But if there’s any punishment to be meted out, then it must also be meted out to me. I brought her here. I protected her.”

  The Prioress clenched her jaw. Even Briga could go too far. “It is not merely a question of punishment,” she said. “The girl cannot stay. Surely you must see that? This brings shame on us all.”

  “Of course you are right. But there are other, wider matters here...” Briga came in close, so the others might not hear. “I understand that shame, I do. As does King Henry. He is not the most pious of kings, but his mind is sharp and his eye roves everywhere, ever open to opportunity. Sadly, these facts do not work in our favour. He ever looks for reasons to reduce the power of the church in his realm. Monasteries have been closed for less, and even if that came to nought, there are benefactors upon whom we depend who would likely abandon us at the hint of scandal. And who do we help then? How do we heal? What souls do we save? We may minister to matters of the spirit, but the good Lord made us of flesh and blood, and we cannot help anyone if we do not protect our own.”

  Briga’s arguments were always near-impossible to counter. It was her irrepressible pragmatism—her determination to serve body and soul with equal vigour. She’d left the Prioress’s mind a whirl. Before she could respond, Briga stepped in closer still.

  “We have known each other many years, Elizabeth. I know I have no right to speak in this way, but I do so because I know you will listen. Come what may for me, this I counsel: punish her as you see fit. Make her do her penance, for the rest of her days, if necessary—God knows, she is not likely to ever forget this. And if and when she understands and repents her sins, forgive her. Christ forgave her namesake the Magdalene, whose sins were the greater. But, above all, let her stay.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, but Briga raised her palms.

  “It is all she wishes from life. Keep her shame and ours safe within these walls. That way, our work can continue, and all here keep a roof over their heads.”

  It was a sly trick of Briga’s, invoking the saint, and one with which Elizabeth could not easily argue. She stared at Briga for what seemed an age; but Briga, fearless, held her gaze.

  She sighed, cast a glance at the snuffling, sweaty creature upon the pallet, and bit back her distaste. “The babe...”

  “There is a couple I know past Skipton, in service of William le Gros. Their baby son died not a week ago. They have lost two before, but this one hit them hard. I am certain they will take the child as their own, and thank God for it.”

  “For that?”

  “It’s just a child! A boy, come to us just days after theirs was lost—and the grieving mother still with milk. I will not hide the truth from them; why should I? Sister Mary made one mistake, but she is otherwise a virtuous, hard-working girl. If we do this, both they and we are the better for it—in the world, and in here.” She clutched at her breast. “What the Lord saw fit to take from them, He also, in His wisdom, has given us the means to restore.”

  A veteran of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Prioress Elizabeth was not afraid to tread the difficult path. But there was no denying that the solution proposed by Briga seemed to serve the greatest good. Certainly, the alternative would be hard indeed.

  The Prioress nodded. Briga exhaled in relief and grasped Elizabeth’s hand. The Prioress indulged her for a moment before withdrawing it. “I will consider her punishment. And yours.”

  Suddenly aware that the sobbing of Mary had ceased, and sensing that she was listening intently to their conversation, Prioress Elizabeth cast a glance at her. What she saw in those fleeting seconds made her hand go to her mouth in horror. They were the eyes of a dead animal. All trace of emotion had fallen away, but it was not the expressionless mask that shocked the Prioress—it was the dark thing which, in that brief moment, seemed to flicker and uncoil behind it. What Elizabeth glimpsed behind those dead eyes was not fear, not hostility, not even dull confusion. It was no human thing at all, but a great, yawning vacancy—a limitless abyss whose formless oblivion seemed to threaten all light, all life, all meaning.

  Elizabeth felt her face flush hot, and her heart thump in her breast like a bird thrashing to escape its cage. Then, as swiftly as the vision came, it went. The girl’s face screwed up like the pink, bristled snout of a pig, and she snorted and wailed once more. “Oh, thank you! Thank you, Mother Elizabeth! God’s grace be upon you—now and for ever!”

  Prioress Elizabeth shuddered and turned back to Briga. The older woman, ever sensitive to the needs of others, was frowning at her qui
zzically. “Do what you must,” the Prioress snapped. Her throat felt tight, her mouth dry, and she turned and fled along the dark passage without waiting for the candle to light her way.

  SISTER MARY WATCHED as the Prioress departed, the nervous young novitiate flying in pursuit. As the door slammed shut, she turned back to regard the strange, alien creature upon her breast, its lips glistening with her milk.

  “You understand, girl, what is to happen?” said Briga, hovering over her. Mary nodded.

  “We need some mark or token. Something he may carry with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Why...?” Briga laughed. “So you may know him, of course.”

  “But I am a sister of the priory.”

  “And so I hope you shall remain,” said Briga, smoothing Mary’s matted hair. “But I could not live with myself if I let this child out into the world without some means of establishing his provenance, his true blood. It doesn’t mean you have to seek him out again; just that you can. It puts the choice in your hands—and yours alone. Choices, and the ability to make them, are blessings from God; like this poor babe, they must be nurtured and cherished.”

  Why not? thought Mary. Connect the progeny to the sin, and the sin to the sinner. To the man. There could be value in that...

  She opened her palm to reveal a small disc of dark metal, her flesh marked red from where she had gripped it. Briga frowned as Mary held the greenish-brown thing out to her. She took it, turned it over and over. Somewhat larger than a penny and deeply tarnished, it had a crude symmetrical pattern hammered into one side. Towards the edge, a hole had been drilled, where it could be worn on a thong—and now, she supposed, would be again.

  “What is it?” said Briga.

  “I don’t know. I found it in the forest.” That was a lie. It was what the man had tossed at her afterwards. He had promised silver or gold, but by the time she had scrabbled after it and discovered no more than a worthless piece of copper, he had gone. He thought he had cheated her, no doubt, but he knew nothing of her real intentions. Though clearly of little worth to him, it also carried his lordship’s emblem. A foolish oversight on his part.