Wergild

by Boris L Slocum

  As the morning passed, Deirdre, whose fury and anger were never far from the surface, felt burgeoning apprehension, which soon grew to nervousness, then moments of full-bloom fright. Every new traveler seen coming around a bend or over a rise stoked her apprehension. Yet the boy seemed unperturbed, though so different was he in appearance, deportment, and character from either the Fiend or Sir Alexis that, at first, Deirdre found it difficult treating the personable lad as the creature she knew him to be.

  The guise the Fiend had assumed wasn’t that of a typical farmhand by any means, but even that wasn’t terribly surprising. Travelling vendors such as the one the Fiend now mimicked were not as common as they once had been (or so Deirdre had been led to believe), but they had a reputation of being tough, scrappy, and worldly, and even the lads among them had a ferocious repute.

  But this lad? He was but a child, soft and innocent.

  It was still some time before noon when she mustered the resolve to speak beyond their simple chit-chat.

  “What became of Sir Alexis?” she ventured.

  The lad gave her a beaming smile. “Oh, he’ll be along. I’ll keep you company until then, Tuppence.” He hesitated before going on with a hint of apology in his voice. “I haven’t put you off your game, have I? We’ve known each other over a month. I was certain you were accustomed to my ways.”

  The laugh Deirdre gave wasn’t terribly convincing. “No. It’s just a little surprising … the suddenness of it. Why…?”

  “I wanted to see the world through your eyes,” the child-Fiend said with a laugh. He was several inches shorter than Deirdre and had a voice so sweet and high that it might have been that of a girl.

  “It has to be more than that,” she whispered. “What if we’re set upon?”

  “Tuppence!” the boy laughed even more loudly. “You forget who you’re with. Besides, we won’t meet anyone on this road who we don’t want to meet.”

  “How do you know?”

  Again, he flashed the boyish charm. “The wind told me.”

  By that time, a small knot of travelers had formed, and the boy deftly engaged in a series of trades and sales that netted them a small purse of copper. Despite several stops to eat and rest, their business was brisk for the rest of the day. And during that time, Deirdre, her apprehension of their predicament not totally forgotten, walked and seethed. This brisk exercise in free market trading didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere, and she wanted her blood. She wanted blood, poison, fire, and vengeance. The screaming in her head wouldn’t stop.

  But throughout the day, the barrow boy just ambled toward New Market, the largest village in Deirdre’s home township, selling this, that, and the other. He was friendly, kind, and patient to all comers, including Deirdre.

  The makeup of passing travelers galled her even more. She’d seldom spent much time away from her home, but seeing now the way passersby came and went filled her with an additional fury. The few groups of Surrey farmers she saw (in a township that was mostly Surrey) went their way in groups of five or more, worried, probably concealing weapons, and intent on reaching their destination to the exclusion of all else. Many were the Gheet who travelled alone or in pairs, seemingly indifferent to their own safety. Some didn’t even appear to carry weapons. The contrast between the groups they passed during the day was shocking and stoked her frightened and fuming heart.

  As evening swiftly approached, they were still some miles from New Market, and the Fiend made no move to find them shelter. Deirdre’s apprehension, which had ebbed and flowed throughout the day, bounded as she realized night soon would be upon them and the road suddenly was empty. The Fiend, though, continued to amble and to chatter in an affable fashion about the various amusing characters they had met during the day.

  It was nigh on dusk when the final traveler of the day hove into view ahead, and it was some minutes more before Deirdre took full stock of the single mounted man. It was yet another several seconds for her to realize who he was. When she did, her blood froze.

  The rider whose mount paced toward them was none other than Bertrand Servais, the chief magistrate of Blenheim County, a man whose disdain for the Surrey folk was well attested. None had ever known justice in his court, but instead were shown the door with a hard boot and warning about the penalties for perjury and for slandering honest Gheets.

  As he approached them now, his fleshy and corpulent face was filled with hatred and rage.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Boy,” the county magistrate barked as he reined in his horse ten paces in front of them. “There are laws about street peddlers in this county. Come here!”

  The boy went to lift his barrow.

  “Leave it,” the man commanded.

  The boy did as he was told, stepped around the barrow, and in doing so flashed a smile to Deirdre that only she could see. The look on his pretty face sent her blood cold and set her to trembling. “I’ll have his chitlins to sup,” she thought she heard the Fiend-boy whisper in a voice like that of the Fiend she’d first met.

  By that time, the magistrate had dismounted, and when the boy was before him, the man raised his riding crop and lifted the youngster’s face with it. The man’s voice was husky. “My, you are a pretty one.”

  It only was then Deirdre remembered the tales she’d heard of the magistrate, mere gossip she never had imagined true. Men didn’t actually do such things to boys, did they?

  The magistrate said something else to the barrow boy, something so low that even at a scant ten paces Deirdre couldn’t hear. The boy’s quiet response apparently did not please the man, because he drew back the riding crop and struck the lad so hard across the face that it knocked him to the ground. By reflex, Deirdre stepped forward.

  “Stay there, girl,” the man barked. “I’ll have my look at you next.”

  The barrow-boy was slow in rising. As he did, once again a look flashed across his face that only Deirdre could observe. Gone was the face, which moments before had been a canvas of such youthful beauty and innocence, supplanted by a malevolent and gleeful expression that caused Deirdre to let out a shriek.

  “I’ll have that thing you offered now, sir,” said the boy in a meek voice before turning and springing at the magistrate.

  Where once had been a boy’s mouth, now there was an enormous gaping maw like that of a ravening predator, and that maw shot like an arrow for the tender spot of flesh beneath the magistrate’s belt buckle, striking the portly man with such force that it lifted him from the ground. The Gheet worthy didn’t even have time to shriek in pain or fear before the Fiend shook him hard three or four times like a dog thrashing about a rag toy. On the fourth such violent jolt, the magistrate flew from the grasp of the Fiend’s ghastly fangs, sailing twenty or more paces down the road. The Fiend let out a hysterical cry into the heavens, and in one great bound flew to the back of the now rising magistrate and sunk his teeth into the nape of the gasping and whimpering man’s neck.

  As the Fiend’s fangs found their mark, it was as if all the pigs in Albion had been cut at once. The noble Gheet screamed, screeched, squealed, and howled in terror and pain, and Deirdre, whose feet finally pulled free from where they’d been shackled to the ground, lost her balance, tripped over the barrow, and went tumbling head-over-heels down the steep bank beside the road. She landed in a great pile amid the thicket, and many moments passed before she untangled and righted herself.

  By that time, the gleeful baritone howls of the Fiend rose in harmony with the terrified tenor screams and hysterical pleading of the wretched jurist.

  Climbing hand over hand up the steep bank, Deirdre returned to the road just in time to see the magistrate, the Fiend now welded to the back of his neck in some farcical parody of a childhood piggy-back ride, running and jumping and staggering about, all the while twisting and shaking to remove the vicious parasite that gnawed upon his head. The blood flowed freely in great surges, and sufficient light remained for Deirdre to see the man was missing the
skin from most of his face and the lower part of his right arm was hanging by a thread.

  The Surrey lass was a farmgirl who’d many times slopped the abattoir, which was probably why she did not succumb immediately to nausea, but the tableau before her was so shocking and graphic that she crawled to the upturned barrow and, crouching behind it, hid her face in her hands and trembled at that ghastly symphony being played on the broad highway before her.

  It was horrible, simply horrible, a condition she didn’t think could grow worse until the shrieking was replaced by pathetic whimpering and the sounds of guttural and ravenous snarls, tearing flesh, and rapacious swallows. The poor girl gagged three times before crawling closer and pulling the upturned barrow atop her. She huddled beneath her makeshift tortoise shell for how long she did not know, covering her ears and trying not to cry.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The air in Deidre’s makeshift shelter was just becoming unbearable when she heard a slight knock.

  “Tuppence?”

  “Are you going to eat me?” was all she could think to ask. Though weak, her voice didn’t break when she spoke. For that paltry gift she was grateful.

  “No,” replied the barrow boy. “I couldn’t eat another bite. But we have to get going.”

  The end of the barrow nearest her head rose a few feet from the ground. It was now full dark, but she could just make out the boy’s angelic face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to tease. But the night patrol will be out soon, and they’ll arrive all the sooner if someone finds a riderless horse. We really need to go.”

  She hesitated, saying not a word.

  “I really do promise,” he said. “I would never eat you — you’re not nearly old enough or fat enough for a proper meal. And I like you too much.”

  She hesitated, rising only when the boy lifted and righted the barrow onto the ground before her. She then rose and looked about as he collected their belongings and the few potatoes and turnips that remained from their cargo. It was too dark to see much, but there was a shoe lying on the ground in plain view some paces away. The thought that it might also contain a foot goaded her to action.

  “Oh … we really need to get going,” she groaned. In an attempt to hold down her gorge, she covered her mouth and began jogging down the highway in the direction they had been traveling. The sound of the barrow rolling on the earth told her the boy was right behind her.

  The boy soon caught up and after some time steered her to a low hill that was perhaps a furlong off the road. There, in some brush behind a copse of trees, the Fiend sat and urged her to rest. It took her only a short time to realize their location offered a clear view of the spot where the Fiend had gobbled up the magistrate — or the better part of him, as he several times corrected her — and left the man’s remains along the highway. The Fiend meant to observe the effects of his handywork on the local constabulary.

  Deirdre felt tired and faint but was unable to sleep a wink, troubled as she was by the ghastly memory of the Fiend’s attack and by his long stream of hysterical giggles and near constant celebratory muttering. She only dozed once, and that was disrupted when the barrow boy woke her to leave. The night patrol had found the Fiend’s dinner leftovers, and now he and Deirdre needed to quit the locality.

  The boy led her across country in silence after that. She was grateful he returned to his earlier pleasant demeanor, but staying off the highway had slowed their pace, and it was hard going through the thicket. After several hours, the otherwise strong and fit girl very nearly collapsed, and before she could protest, the tiny barrow boy swept her up and placed her butt-first into the barrow, the manner by which she travelled for the last hour of their trip.

  They only reached the inn on the outskirts of New Market as the sun threatened to illuminate yet another day, and Deirdre, still unable to sleep, was exhausted and feeling feverish when they did. It had been a frightening and troubling night. She didn’t mean to be so cranky, but she started making outraged and fussy noises when the boy stopped the barrow and began speaking with someone she couldn’t see.

  They still hadn’t reached the inn, and Deirdre lifted her head to look about and caught sight of the boy bent over and looking under some brush. Soon, another person came into view. It was the lovely Gheet woman they’d encountered two days before at the Four Quarters, Lady Isabel. Deirdre felt herself saying something, calling out to Isabel and the boy, but she didn’t remember having formed the intent to speak. The effort of raising her head and making those utterances was more than Deirdre could bear, and when she leaned her head back onto the bag that was her pillow, she fainted away.

  Gluttony

  “Mind what you eat … it could be the death of you.”

  —Surrey Proverb

  The boy who woke her that morning was a complete stranger, but Isabel recognized the red-headed beauty who was with him. It wasn’t readily clear why the young woman lay half-conscious in a wheelbarrow, but Isabel didn’t see it as her place to ask. After a long day’s walk and two frightening nights, one spent under the very bush from whence the boy had just roused her, she was grateful to see a familiar face, even that of the recumbent young woman.

  “Are you a friend of Sir Alexis?” she asked the boy.

  “Not exactly, miss. But I do run errands for him.” The boy’s accent was not cultured, but he was polite and seemed to be taking care of … Tuppence. That was her name. “He said I was to keep an eye out for you, a foreign beauty with the eyes and coloration of a pureblood Gheet. You are Lady Isabel, then?”

  “It was all just so sudden,” Tuppence whimpered feebly from the wheelbarrow. “So … sudden … so … terrib….”

  Without thinking, Isabel crossed the ten feet to where Tuppence lay. She spoke to the boy. “I think she’s delirious. Has she been hurt?”

  “No, miss,” said the sweet lad — he was such a lovely and well-mannered boy. “But we heard terrible sounds in the night, like some dreadful monster was stalking the land. It was all quite scary, and Tuppence took a fright. You’re lucky you made it here from Four Quarters alone, miss.”

  Isabel nodded, more worried for the womanchild who lay before her. Tuppence was dour and laconic, but somehow, Isabel had taken an instant liking to her. “We should get her inside.”

  “You let me worry about that, Lady Isabel. You look just as tuckered.” The lad took hold of the wheelbarrow and began moving the contraption toward the inn. “Hopefully they’ll have some accommodation. I think Miss Tuppence just needs a few hours rest and something to eat — as do you, miss.”

  Isabel secured her rucksack and followed immediately behind. It was only a few hundred paces to the inn, a place she had avoided the previous night for fear of being spotted by one of her pursuers, but the idea of staying in the forest yet another day frightened her more. The boy said there were monsters about, and she’d been in Albion long enough not to laugh at such words.

  While Isabel watched over Tuppence, dampening her fevered brow with a wet cloth from the inn’s fountain, the boy made his inquiries. The youngster was gone only a short time.

  “The inn is full-up with Gheet worthies on their way to a tournament, miss. But I’ve spoken with the blacksmith. He has a room off the smithy where you and Miss Tuppence can rest for the day. That’ll give us time to find other accommodations.”

  “Oh, please,” she sighed, “lead the way.”

  The place the boy described was only a few dozen paces distant, and upon opening the door, Isabel was surprised. The room was small but remarkably tidy. There was a chair and but a single bed, one just wide enough for two small people. It was there the boy lay Tuppence.

  As the youngster took off the girls boots and covered her with a blanket, Isabel marveled at the toughness of farm folk. The boy was slight, not over five feet, and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. Yet he carried Tuppence with ease, and he fussed over her with a tenderness she wasn’t accustomed to seeing in the male of
the species.

  “You should stretch out and get some rest too, Lady Isabel. Your bed for last night couldn’t have provided much sleep.”

  “I’m fine, for now. Do you mind if I take the chair?”

  The boy was sitting on the bed, still fussing over Tuppence, as a beloved brother might.

  “Are you and Tuppence related?”

  “Oh, no, miss,” the boy smiled. “We of the barrow don’t reckon kin in quite the same way as you’uns.”

  The barrow? She didn’t understand. “How do you come to know one another?”

  “Sir Alexis, miss. He set me to look over her and to find you. He’s deeply sorry he couldn’t have been here in person, but I’m to fetch Reverend Ainsley once I get you settled. The good reverend will do right by you.”

  An enormous weight was lifted from Isabel’s spirit, and the possibility that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel — a light other than that of an oncoming train — filled her heart.

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” the boy continued, “you’re not from around these parts, are you, miss?”

  The question took Isabel by surprise, not just because it seemed more insightful than she’d expected from a boy of no more than ten years. It was just…. She couldn’t say but felt emboldened. “I grew up in a land far distant, one in which no one has ever heard of Albion or Ghitland or Evaria. It’s another world altogether.”