Warlord (Outlaw 4)

by Donald, Angus

  The poor, deformed, broken women of the camp were creeping out of their hovels by now, curiosity overcoming their fear, and groups of them were hovering, half-visible, at the tree line, reassured by Nur’s calm conversation with me and my men. I was unmanned by the mutilated witch’s words, and for a brief moment I remembered the beauty she had once been and the passion of our lovemaking, the wonder and the joy that we had made between ourselves; I had indeed promised many things in the first flush of young love that Mediterranean summer, foolish things, the poured-out promises of a pleasure-drunk boy, and I had indeed broken my word. Looking at her now, I understood the pity that Goody said she felt for her; this monstrous creature before me, daubed with chalk and coal-black, gathering her half-baked, childish pretence of magic around her like an invisible cloak: substanceless and pathetic, with only the power to cause a little nervousness in the feeble-minded; this was a poor woman made miserable by a cruel fate and unlucky circumstances, she was no enchantress, she was no true witch. She had no power beyond that of any ordinary human soul to hurt with words or deeds.

  Staring at her in bright daylight, examining her tawdry rags and emaciated, crudely painted face, I found my courage returning like a river in spate, a rushing of hot blood through my arms and legs.

  ‘Come now, Nur,’ I said briskly, ‘you know very well that I have not come here for that. Let us put aside these foolish games. I came here because you have trespassed into my home and hearth, and have frightened the good woman that I love with your silly tricks and ugly threats. And I tell you now that you must stop this attempt at intimidation. I will not allow you to continue to harass my wife-to-be. Do you understand? This foolishness must stop. Now. Else I shall be very angry.’

  For a moment Nur looked at me in stony silence. Then she said quietly: ‘You have become cruel, Alan. You were never like that before. A demon is gnawing on your soul. I can see it. Your heart is now a shard of ice. And you are forsworn; a liar like all your sex; a wretched, lying, worthless man.’ And she turned her back on me and walked to the centre of the clearing, by the pit-fire. She turned again to face me, thrust a hand into the hairy pouch at her waist, and pulled out a handful of dried herbs. Sprinkling them on the fire with her left hand, and holding up the staff in her right, she said: ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay.’ The herbs had caught fire and a thick, pungent, blue-greenish smoke was rising from the pit and enveloping her frail, raggedy body. The smoke seemed to cling to her skeletal frame as she repeated: ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay.’ But this time I could hear the murmurs of the other women repeating the refrain. It began low, but with each repetition the chant became louder. ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay.’ The women were swaying slightly with the rhythm of the chant, and I noticed that they seemed to be, almost imperceptibly, coming closer to the centre of the clearing, moving towards me and my men with shuffling steps, quiet but purposeful.

  I took a pace forward, Fidelity, still sticky with tree sap, naked in my hand, and I said loudly, clearly above the lapping waves of the baleful rhythmical chorus: ‘Nur, stop this now, I will not stand for this—’

  Nur gave a high, clear scream, and pointed the heavy granite end of the staff directly at me. Her body was by now entirely wreathed in smoke. ‘He threatens me; he threatens a woman of the sanctuary! A man, a lying man, a forsworn man – he threatens me, he threatens all women!’

  I glanced down at the bright blade of Fidelity in my fist. ‘No, Nur, I do not mean—’

  A stone sailed out of the crowd of advancing women and smashed into my chest, cutting off my words abruptly.

  I looked beyond the smoke-wrapped form of Nur, pointing her staff, like a lance at my head. A wall of raggedy women, scores of them – old, young, maidens, matrons, crones, goodwives, whores; all hideous in one way or another, all broken or deformed, and all chanting those hateful words: ‘One year, one day, after you wed, you pay’ – was now moving across the clearing towards me. Another stone flew past my head, and another cracked painfully into my shin. Nur gave a long yelping cry, and gestured at me again with her staff. Then Thomas was at my side: ‘We cannot fight them all, Sir Alan, we must retreat,’ he said, his voice steady and calm.

  And we ran.

  I scrambled up on to Shaitan just as the first woman reached me. She was elderly, one-eyed, toothless and mangy and armed with no more than a rusty eating knife, but I had no time for mercy. She ran at me, ahead of the pack of her sisters, and I killed her, God forgive me, turning Shaitan in a tight circle and decapitating her with one sweeping blow of Fidelity. The women were screaming now in rage and fear, and they were nearly all upon us. And I put back my spurs and we five big brave men charged away into the safety of the forest.

  Safety – that is an odd word to have chosen. True, we were away from the clearing and the terrifying advancing wall of chanting, stone-throwing women, but we were very far from safe. Our horses could not move swiftly in the thick undergrowth, and while one of the men-at-arms and I dispatched two more crazed women, a burly matron waving a carving knife and a slight pretty girl with one arm, who chased us into the trees, after that there appeared to be no one immediately behind us as we forced our horses through the gaps in the thick green wilderness. I could hear scurrying, however, and the cracking of sticks on either side of our path, and sometimes the grey blur of a figure slipping from tree to tree in the gloom of the forest; half-glimpsed and wraith-like. This was their territory, and we were the interlopers. Worse, I did not know which way to go to find the Great North Road and safety. My heart was beating like a tambour; my skin clammy with fear and the cloying warmth of the forest. The going was as hard as before, and we all took turns to hack a slender path through the undergrowth and create a road between the silent trees with our swords. I cursed myself again and again for my foolish haste in seeking to confront Nur. Rage filled me: I would return, I vowed, with a conroi of hard men, thirty mailed lancers, and scour this village of madwomen from the face of the earth with fire and sword – if God allowed us to escape with our lives today.

  The attack came without warning; two dozen women, running in screaming from our left flank, two of them leaping on to the back of one of our hapless men-at-arms and dragging him from the saddle. They had no proper weapons to speak of – only sticks, stones and clumsy clubs, and one young girl wielding a heavy iron skillet. But they killed our comrade with their numbers. They used their teeth, when they were in range, and battered him bloody with rocks and broken tree branches, anything that came to hand. I killed another woman with a slash that opened her belly, and Thomas fought like a hero, slaying our enemies with short controlled strokes of his sword, but I had no time to admire his growing skills. A young girl of barely fifteen summers leaped down on me from the branch of a tree overhead. For an instant, her glaring, snarling face was inches from my own, her teeth snapping wildly at my nose like a mad dog’s, and then I managed to shrug her off, hurling her down to the leafy ground to my left. Shaitan, who was usually a model of composure in any mêlée, lost himself so far as to buck dangerously, whinnying with terror, and almost causing me to lose my seat. As I tried to calm him, the young madwoman came at me again, and I crushed her skull with one overhand blow of my mace. The women were all around us now; screaming curses, clawing at our legs and battering at our backs with home-made clubs; we killed them as fast as we could – easily spitting skin-and-bone bodies on our swords, hacking clean through scrawny limbs – but still more of these demented creatures came bounding out of the trees, and those we killed too. We feared them and their reckless ferocity, but in truth they were no match for us and, in our fear, we killed without mercy. And we lost another good man in that frenzied, unequal battle, pulled from his horse by the howling pack, and Thomas took a flung stone hard to the face that rattled his teeth, but by the time we had cut ourselves free of them, a dozen of those poor demented women would never breathe again.

  I saw Nur only once more that day, through a nar
row passage amid the trees, both scratched, emaciated arms raised and the staff twitching as if urging on an invisible army of fiends. She caught my eye and gave a great bubbling cry and pointed the staff at me, but no crazed women came hurtling out of the greenwood to attack us, and I think she believed she was assailing us with magic, summoning evil spirits to accomplish her revenge.

  By God’s good grace, we found a path of sorts at our horses’ hooves and we urged our mounts into a canter, and then a gallop. And we were free and clear. A quarter of a mile later, I reined in; my heart still pounding; and looked over what remained of my little patrol; Thomas was there, his cheek red, shiny and already starting to swell; and Alfred, the senior man-at-arms, but beyond that, two riderless horses, their empty saddles mutely accusing me. I’d lost two good men in that pointless woodland skirmish, and had been routed by a gaggle of unarmed women.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  There was no more talk of our wedding at Westbury. A few days later Baldwin discreetly told me that the mistress had asked him to unmake the arrangements; Goody and I never mentioned the subject at all. My beloved was a much-subdued woman for many days after the affair with the lamb-baby, and she listened to my tale of the disastrous foray in the Alfreton woods in silence. When I had finished my story, Goody asked one or two questions, and then she said: ‘You must kill her, Alan. I underestimated her – we both did; but she clearly has a terrible hold over the poor women in that place, and she will surely send them against us again. She will not stop until you and I are dead. You must take enough men this time – end this once and for all.’

  ‘I thought that you felt sorry for her,’ I said.

  ‘I pity her, I really do, Alan – and I do not believe that she has any true magical power. But those outcast women in her encampment, they believe she does. And they are the real threat to our happiness. You do not know very much about women, Alan, but they are keenly aware of each other in a different way to men. When women come together in a group they can change and become quite unlike any gathering of single individuals. Something happens – perhaps it is just a little magical – and powerful bonds are formed; as strong, I believe, as any bond that a company of men can form in the face of battle. In a group of close, loving women, the power and support that each member feels can be almost visible – a great force for good. But it can also be directed towards evil. These woodland women, reviled, rejected by their villages, by their men, have formed such a group. Inside that tattered gathering, these poor women have found love and acceptance; and having tasted that happiness they will not allow an outsider, a man, to take it away. I am not surprised at their ferocity: they will willingly die for their sisters, just as men, I’m told, will give their lives for each other in battle. They will gladly die for their kind, and for Nur, who gave them a home. So you must kill Nur. You must kill her before she truly harms us. Go, Alan, gather the men, and destroy her.’

  But gathering enough fighting men was to prove difficult for me. I had only eleven surviving men-at-arms at Westbury, including Thomas, and that number was about to be greatly reduced. I had agreed with the messenger from Archbishop Hubert Walter that I would present myself, armed, mounted and equipped for war, at London in three days’ time when the moon was full. And if I were to fulfil my obligation, I would have to set off the next day. But I did not wish to leave Goody alone at Westbury under the menace of Nur and her coven of demented harridans.

  It was Goody who came up with the solution to my problem.

  ‘Send Thomas instead,’ she said, when I was discussing it with her, on a sunny morning in late April. Goody and Ada, a servant girl from the village who had wet-nursed Marie-Anne’s baby Miles, were churning butter in the dairy. It was a physically demanding job, requiring stamina and strong muscles, but Goody seemed to relish it, as she did so many humble tasks that another woman might have felt beneath her dignity as the lady of the manor. ‘Send Thomas and three men-at-arms,’ she said. ‘That way Archbishop Walter is getting four men for the price of one – he cannot complain too much, even though I am sure that he and the King would rather have the renowned and most puissant knight, Sir Alan Dale.’ She poked her little pink tongue out and I smiled back at her gentle teasing. ‘What other choice do you have?’ she continued. ‘Either you go and leave me here to face Nur and her women alone, or you refuse the summons and incur the wrath of the King. It is simple. Send Thomas.’

  I looked out of the dairy window and saw my squire in the courtyard. He was training with sword and shield against Alfred, a veteran man-at-arms in his early thirties, and I realized, as I watched the strokes, counter-strokes, parries and blocks, that Thomas was not half bad. He rode well, I mused, and God knew he was a reliable, brave and resourceful fellow. He had not mastered the lance yet, which was my fault, for I had been neglectful of his training in recent months, but as a swordsman he was competent, even skilful. I struggled to remember how old he was at that time: he must be nearly fifteen, I thought, and I’d been of a similar age when I fought my first battle.

  ‘I shall send Thomas in my stead, and two good men-at-arms under Alfred,’ I announced. ‘Thomas can report to Robin when he gets to France and my lord of Locksley will doubtless take him under his wing.’

  ‘What a very wise decision, my lord,’ said Goody, a suspicion of a smile twitching her lips as she pounded the pole of the butter churn up and down, up and down.

  Although he did his best to hide it, Thomas was utterly delighted by the prospect of going off to France in my stead. When I gave him his instructions, and told him to report to Robin when he got to the army, he said: ‘As you wish, Sir Alan,’ and bowed formally. But he could not help a sparkle of joy lighting his eye and a grin stretching his mouth. I tried to dig up some special words of wisdom for him to take with him and, as usual, came up woefully short.

  ‘Keep Alfred close during the journey to France, and obey Lord Locksley in all things when you get there. Do not try to be a hero on the battlefield – nobody expects that of you; obey orders, and keep your head down and your shield up. And, uh, stay away from the local women, they may harbour, uh, diseases. If you must indulge yourself, ask Little John’s advice on which are the cleanest whores.’

  After that last gem, we both stood looking at each other in embarrassed silence. Until Thomas said, quietly and sincerely: ‘Thank you, sir, for this opportunity. I will try to be a credit to the proud name of Westbury.’

  And I suddenly felt a great lump in my throat.

  We spent the afternoon outfitting Thomas and his men with hauberks, aketons, helmets, new swords and shields – and I gave them the pick of the best equipment in the armoury; also warm cloaks and cooking kit, horse gear, spare clothing and bedding. The next morning Goody provided each man with a cheese, a bag of onions, and several loaves of twice-baked bread that would keep for weeks. I gave Thomas a small purse of silver and a few final words: ‘Tell Robin that I shall come as soon as I have dealt with Nur and her women and made Westbury safe; and, Thomas …’

  I paused and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be careful, Thomas, and for God’s sake don’t get yourself killed!’

  My squire saluted, smiled, climbed on to his horse and, followed closely by his three men-at-arms, he clattered out of the big gate and embarked on the long road to war.

  I was sad to see him go, but at the same time I could not deny a surge of pride. He was not my son, it was true, but Goody and I were both very fond of him; he was a fine young man – a man, I realized, no longer a boy.

  I had cause to regret the loss of four of my fighting men not two days later.

  It was the night of the full moon, and our rest was interrupted by the sound of drums. I had been sleeping, unusually for me at that time, and awoke with a sense of irritation and grievance rather than fear. I knew that it was Nur before I stepped out of the hall with Fidelity in my hand and crossed the courtyard to climb up to the walkway that ran around the inside of the palisade. I saw Goody emerging from her guest house
, tousled, rubbing her eyes and wrapped in a woollen shawl, as I hurried up the steps to the cloaked figure of the man-at-arms, a young fellow called Kit, waiting at the top.

  Kit pointed, wordlessly and unnecessarily, at a pin-prick of light about three hundred yards away to the west, a fire. It burned in front of a copse that stood beside the stream that ran through my lands. At that very stream, a mere quarter of a mile from the hall, Goody and the village women did their weekly washing, beating the cloth against the rocks and spreading it to dry on the sheep-cropped grass. In choosing that place for their midnight gathering, I felt that Nur was deliberately desecrating my lands, befouling them with her presence. I felt as insulted and perturbed as I might if she had emptied her bowels in the well in my courtyard. The drums beat a simple rhythm – and I realized that it was the rhythm of the curse: one-two, one-two, one-two-three, one-two – or one year, one day, after you wed, you pay.

  I called loudly for Thomas, then realized stupidly that he was no longer with me, and sent Kit down the steps to rouse the manor; I wanted all the men arrayed for battle, armed and mounted as soon as possible. This was a gross provocation, an insult – one I could not ignore.

  The courtyard, below and behind me, flared to light as torches were lit and soon began to echo with the shouts of men and the protesting whinnies of tired horses woken from sleep and hastily saddled. As I looked out over the palisade, I saw the distant fire leap higher and I could make out what appeared to be two posts planted either side of the blaze, and slim figures dancing wildly through the firelight. The drumming continued and I heard snatches of song and shrieks and cries either of pain or ecstasy. Then a number of the figures lifted a pole, with a large lumpen shape in the centre of it and set it horizontally across the two vertical poles above the fire. Something was tied to the pole, a sheep, perhaps, or a pig for roasting – These god-damned witches are having a full-moon feast from one of my slaughtered beasts, I thought with a spurt of savage anger. I would not stand still and let it pass.