THIRTY
Meredith was drenched by the constant rain and spattered with mud. Her fingers ached from clutching at the bars of the cage, and her head swam with the incessant jolting of the wagon on the stony road. Her hair was loosely glued to her face, and her clothes clung to her like a waterlogged shroud. She had to keep dashing rain out of her eyes, although all she saw were leafless trees advancing through the downpour. She was so cold that she could no longer recall how it felt to be touched by the sun. Above all, however, she felt ashamed of herself.
It seemed that deep down she had hoped for some privilege. She had been captured by the Overlord himself, after all. She would have been glad if the reward of her apparent importance had been a quick death, to take her to her family in Heaven. It was wrong to hope to die – far worse to pray for it, however secretly – and she might have concluded that her plight was a punishment from God. In any case it was naïve to expect so immediate an end when the Overlord had gone to such lengths to find her. Whatever she was marked for lay ahead.
She was in the foremost wagon of three, where she had been escorted by two raiders and the Overlord himself. Not only this suggested a mockery of prestige. Most of the captives were in the other cages, apparently to ensure that Meredith was not crushed to death, and the cart was guarded throughout the interminable journey by four mounted raiders, leaving two alongside each of the vehicles behind. It was plain that her treatment had made her unwelcome, and her fellow captives had glimpsed the mark on her hand as well. None of them would speak to her; perhaps they believed she was associated with the evil that had them in its grasp. She could not have dissuaded them, whatever Captain Kane had said. She had been touched by corruption, and the insensibility of her marked hand felt like the start of the death of her soul. The dullness seemed to be overtaking her thoughts when she saw that the forest was thinning ahead.
At first she could see nothing beyond the trees except a grey veil of rain. As the wagon emerged from the denuded forest the veil retreated across an expanse of sodden fields, revealing black clouds on the horizon. It was not a storm ahead; they were masses of smoke. The horses plodded onwards and the wagon lurched over muddy ruts, and in a few minutes she saw another plundered town on fire.
While many of the buildings had collapsed, the entrance to the town – a stone arch – stood firm. As the wagons trundled down a slope, a band of raiders drove their captives through the arch to meet them. The guards unlocked two of the cages and forced back the occupants to make room for more, but left the foremost cage unopened. Meredith sensed how her companions resented being made to seem favoured by evil. She alone was, and she felt more outcast still – abandoned by her fellows and, she was even more ashamed to think, perhaps by God.
The cages were slammed and locked, and the wagons resumed their journey. The foremost horses shied a little as they passed between the blazing ruins, but the driver quelled them cruelly with his whip. The women in the other cages hid their children’s faces from the conflagration. Perhaps this was the only road west, but Meredith wondered if the raiders were taking a wicked delight in confronting the prisoners with the destruction of their homes – and then she saw that they were being shown far worse. The smoke hovering over the ruins had drifted low as if weighted by the rain, but now it parted raggedly to reveal the heart of the town.
It might have been a diabolical parody of Calvary. Surrounded on every side by fire, three men had been crucified in the town square. Blood trickled down their arms and dripped from their nailed hands into the mud. All three heads were bowed, and Meredith hoped that God had granted them peace. She breathed an entreaty on their behalf as the wagon lumbered across the square, and then she seized the bars of the cage and peered through the rain. Although the face of the victim on the central cross was almost hidden by bedraggled locks of hair, above which the downpour sprouted from his scalp like a translucent spiky crown, she thought she recognised him.
His fists clenched in what might have been a final convulsion. His torso strained against its bonds in an attempt to take the weight off his pierced hands, and his head wavered erect. Some of the hair trailed back from his face, and Meredith cried “Solomon.”
The driver of the wagon turned to stare at her, and then he whipped the horses into a reluctant trot. The cage was past the crosses before Meredith could repeat her appeal. Captain Kane had not opened his eyes; he seemed unaware of anything around him. His head sank as though the strength was draining from him with his blood. Meredith struggled to the back of the cage, heedless of the muttered protests of her fellow captives. She grabbed the bars and sucked in a breath that felt like inhaling rain. As she did so Captain Kane’s head lolled to one side, and his mouth fell slackly open. “Solomon,” she cried, but the wagon was leaving the sight of his limp body behind, and with it the last mockery of her hope.
THIRTY-ONE
Before Kane closed his eyes the world began to leave him. The walls of the burning houses wavered as if they were no more permanent than the rain, and the faces of the raiders seemed close to abandoning their shapes like waxen masks on fire. Perhaps all this was an illusion produced by the waves of heat that even the downpour could not quench, but Kane thought he had come to the end of his senses. A black pall drifted across his vision, and the stench of smoke filled his nostrils. In a while the stink dissipated, but his sight stayed dark. It could show him nothing that would comfort him, and so he let his eyelids fall shut and bowed his head.
He felt all his sensations withdraw from him – the vicious gusts of rain in his face, the rope that bruised his body as it lashed him to the cross, the dull ache that extended along his arms to link him with the anguish of his nailed hands. A surge of that agony reached for him, to return him to his torment on the cross. His head rose in protest, and he struggled to lever up his body against its bonds to relieve the burden on his hands. As his head pounded with the effort, he imagined that he heard his name.
The blood in his ears was louder. It thumped like a funeral drum while he strove to lift himself even an inch without using his arms. He managed to sustain the posture for a very few seconds, and then all his weight dragged at his hands. The swelling agony brought faintness in its wake, and the torment grew remote as Kane’s consciousness drew into itself. He was scarcely aware that his head was drooping onto his chest. It tilted to one side, and his mouth gaped as though it was preparing to expel its final breath. He was urging oblivion to engulf him when someone called his name.
The cry was desperate, almost prayerful. It was so hoarse and shrill that he could hardly believe it was the voice he had never expected to hear again in this life. Was Meredith inviting him to join her in the next world, or was this some diabolical trick? In any case he need not regain his senses, and he was blissfully close to leaving them behind when the voice cried out once more. “Solomon!” it beseeched him.
Kane shook his head dully and opened his blurred eyes, and his sensations flooded back – the onslaught of rain, the clinging icy chill, the aches that racked his exhausted body, the anguish that pierced his hands. He strained his eyes back into focus and peered wearily through the rain and thick drifts of smoke. A train of prison carts was splashing sluggishly through the mud of the ruined square. Faces clustered behind the bars, too closely for Kane’s enfeebled vision to tell them apart – and then he caught sight of a lone figure at the back of the first wagon. He squeezed his eyes shut to rid them of rain, and stared until they felt like cinders embedded in his skull. His vision swam with the agony in his hands, and then it fastened on the captive’s face. At that distance the face was no larger than her image in the locket, but it was unmistakable. “Meredith,” Kane blurted.
His voice was so weak that he feared it would not reach her. All the same, she thrust her face against the bars as if she yearned to force it between them. “Solomon,” she pleaded. It might have been a prayer for him, reduced to its heartfelt essence. A raider scowled towards Kane and struck the bars with his whi
p. The spectacle enraged Kane, who felt as if his helpless anguish had given him back his voice. “Meredith,” he yelled.
She heard him and responded, even as she was borne out of the square. In a moment the horses passed beyond a blazing cottage, and in a few more the wagon was hidden too. As flames reared up to cut her off from Kane, Meredith cried out his name.
The agony that seized him then was not merely physical; it pierced to the depths of his soul. The vow he had made to her parents felt like a reopened wound more grievous than his crucifixion. He would not forsake her while he was capable of drawing breath. He braced himself against the cross and tensed all the muscles of his right arm, and then he hauled it away from the crossbeam. “God give me strength,” he said through his clenched teeth.
It was both a prayer and a snarl of atrocious pain. Sweat indistinguishable from the downpour streamed over his forehead and stung his eyes. His arm shuddered with the dreadful effort, and he felt the hole in his palm gape wider. The head of the nail was not much broader than the shaft, and he dragged it through his hand, tearing flesh and parting gristle. He felt the nail snag on a tendon before it pulled free. The hand fell away from the cross, throbbing like an injury too huge for definition.
Much of Kane’s weight was on his left hand now. The nail ripped through its palm, grinding against a tendon. The hand jerked free, and for a moment he was supported by the rope around the upright of the cross. It was not meant for such a purpose, and perhaps it was rotten with the constant rain. It snapped like a hawser in a typhoon, and Kane fell from the cross to sprawl on his side in the mud.
Though he could barely see for pain, he made out half a dozen blurred shapes advancing on him. Perhaps they thought him superhuman to come at him in such numbers, but he was only a man. He managed to struggle onto all fours with an effort that made his head reel and his limbs shake. Even if he could have sprung at the raiders, what would that achieve? He had no weapon, and his hands were useless. He could only raise his head in a final gesture of defiance as a hulking shape tramped forward, raising a massive axe.
The axe came swooping down, and blood spurted high into the downpour. The axe missed Kane by inches and dropped from the raider’s grasp. The blood was not Kane’s. The raider slumped on his face in the mud, to reveal Telford and the sword with which he had dispatched the man. A band of men had entered the square while all attention was on Kane, and now they rushed upon the raiders, running swords through them or chopping them down. Telford almost decapitated a raider before helping Kane to his feet. “Captain Kane,” he murmured and put an arm around his shoulders. But the last effort had proved too much for Kane, who was not even aware of reeling against him. The world went out like a snuffed candle, and then Kane knew nothing at all.
THIRTY-TWO
Kane heard murmuring and could not understand a word. He thought the voice might be praying for him. It was a woman’s voice, and almost as soft as an absence of sensation – the absence that had Kane in its gentle embrace. He was only just awake, and it seemed to him that his body was staying asleep. It must need to sleep in order to recuperate, and he ought not to rouse it until it was healed. If he had been granted peace at last, surely it must come from God, and to reject it would be a sin. “A elfyntodd dwyr sinddyn duw cerrig yr fferllurig nwyn...” The voice beside him was soothing him, and he need not interpret the words.
But there were other voices. Several men were speaking in some enclosed space that surrounded them with stony echoes. “We need him whatever his past sins were.” Did Kane recognise that voice? “To swap one evil for another seems like folly,” came a response, and a different speaker remarked “Set a devil to fight a devil.” Kane was attempting to regain the blessed state of unawareness when a man protested “He killed his own brother.”
They were discussing Kane – judging his life. Only God could do that, and he was not ready to be judged. “Os syriaeth ech saffaer tu fewr echlyn mor, necrombor llun...” The woman’s voice seemed to be seeking to lull him, but he would not be sent back to oblivion. Was she trying to cast a spell over him? His soul revolted at the thought, and in a moment he was fully awake.
He was lying on a makeshift bed against the wall of a cave. The mattress and the pillow were rougher than he had imagined, though any bed would have been a comfort. Bandages held objects that felt cool and moist against his palms and the backs of his hands, where he detected no other sensation. A rush-light stood on a shelf of rock next to the bed, showing Kane the woman who was seated beside him, leaning close to him. A canvas cap and a few straggling locks of grey hair framed her wrinkled face. A lifetime’s worth of lines had gathered at the corners of her lips, but her greenish eyes were more ancient still, or some aspect of them was. As Kane fixed his gaze on her, she began to speak in English. “Earth and fire, stone and water...”
If this was meant to reassure him about the nature of her incantations, it merely enraged him. “Keep your filthy pagan magic away from me,” Kane snarled and would have clenched his fists except for fear of injuring them afresh.
The sound of his voice silenced the men in the outer cave. The old woman gripped her stick with fingers as knurled as the wood and sat haughtily upright like a sceptred queen. “It is my pagan magic that has healed you,” she declared.
Kane dragged out his hands from beneath the coarse blankets. Even when he turned them palms upward, no blood was visible on the bandages. “This is God’s work alone,” he said.
“There’s more power here than your Christian god.” The old woman’s gaze strayed around the cave as though she might be speaking of the prehistoric stone. “You would do well to remember that,” she told Kane.
“It is evil,” Kane said doggedly. “Christ came to earth to drive it out and all the other Devil’s works.”
“Some would name you as evil, Captain Kane.”
Not just the form of address but the memories of wickedness that it revived left Kane unwilling to respond. “You,” the old woman persisted, “who came down from the cross and returned from the dead.”
Anger at the suggestion almost robbed Kane of speech. “What do you say of me, witch?” he muttered.
The old woman gave him a pitying look. “Did you not know that you were dead?”
“Those are the Devil’s words. They cannot trick me.” More fiercely still Kane said “I am no Christ. I am but God’s avenger on earth.”
“Did your father not send you forth?” The old woman gazed into his eyes as if she was searching his soul. “Did your life not change when you were taken to a high place and shown all that could have been yours?” she said. “Have you not made a pilgrimage through the wilderness? Did you not mean to atone for the actions of others by your crucifixion? Do you not seek to cast out a demon and perform a miracle?”
“Your casuistry will not sway me, witch. There is one Christ and one alone,” Kane said. “He has always been and always shall be.”
“Your Christ was not the first to rise from the dead when it was time. This land has its own ancient ways.” The old woman grasped her stick and rose effortfully to her feet. “Draw on what powers you must,” she said and left Kane with a look of renewed pity. “You need not know them.”
Kane watched her trudge out of the cave, leaning on the stick. She passed from sight beyond an array of swords in sheaths that were propped against the wall, and then he heard her in the outer cavern. “I have done what you asked,” she said without pride. “His body is healed.”
It was plain that she was making no claims for his soul. “What do you see of our future?” a voice said, and Kane recognised Telford’s.
“Your champion will lead you into blood and darkness,” the old woman said. “Are you ready for that?”
Telford had no audible response. Fortune-telling was the Devil’s snare, forbidden by the Bible. Kane heard the hollow plodding of the stick recede and emerge into the open. Telford and his men had resumed their discussion, too low for Kane to hear. Kane brought up his hand
s to examine them afresh and saw his own breath in the chill air. It might have been a sign of his return to life. He had experienced no pain in his hands since regaining consciousness, and so he risked flexing the fingers. Except for the dragging of the bandages against whatever substance they contained, there seemed to be no hindrance at all.
He picked at the knot on his left wrist with his fingernails and uncovered the hand. A lump of some unfamiliar herb or root had been pressed against each side. When he removed them he saw that the hole through the hand had entirely closed up, leaving only scars. The same was the case with his right hand. He clenched them and then opened the fists wide. They were as supple as they had ever been, but the action emphasised the marks like stigmata, so that for a moment he felt at the mercy of the old woman’s impious comparison. He had to believe the healing came from God, whoever God might have employed as His instrument. Meredith had used herbs to heal Kane, after all. The thought of her made Kane sit up, careless of his state.
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