Narigorm leaped to her feet, her fingers clawing towards my face in fury, but I knocked them aside with my stave. I was too angry to temper the blow and she yelped in pain and surprise, stumbling backwards on to the ground, where she crouched like a cat, her bruised hands clenched tightly under her armpits. Any other child would have cried at such a blow, but Narigorm’s eyes were filled with malice, not tears.
‘It was you,’ I screamed at her. ‘All this time, you made us think we were being followed by a wolf, but there never was a wolf, was there, human or animal?’
‘You heard a wolf.’
‘You made us hear it.’
‘Morrigan made you hear it.’
‘Who is Morrigan?’
‘The shapeshifter, the wolf, the swan, the bringer of chaos and death, the destroyer of liars. You only heard the wolf because you lied. You all lied.’
I suddenly remembered where I had first heard her use that name. It was Midsummer’s Day, the day we first met. ‘If you lie you lose the gift,’ she told me. ‘Morrigan destroys liars.’
‘But you heard the wolf too, Narigorm.’
‘I made it. I control it.’
‘And you controlled it to drive half our company to suicide and murder. You evil, malicious little brat. How could you do that to us when all we’ve done is feed you and take care of you? You accuse us of treachery and betrayal, but it’s you who have betrayed us.’
‘You did it. You lied. I never lie. I only read what is there in the runes. I only tell the truth.’
‘When I first saw you, your master was thrashing you for telling your truth, but if you think that was punishment, you wait until the others find out what you’ve done. You’ll wish you’d never been born, my girl. Your vicious little game is over. You tried to kill Rodrigo, but you failed.’
‘But you’re wrong, Camelot. I haven’t failed. All the time you’ve been talking, Rodrigo has been dying. Morrigan has destroyed him too.’
I spun round. Rodrigo was nowhere to be seen.
Narigorm smiled triumphantly. ‘The mist that rises from the ground in the hollows is poison. Didn’t you see all the dead animals? Didn’t you guess? Now Rodrigo is dead too. And you loved him, didn’t you?’
I stared at her aghast, then, without stopping to think, I turned and ran into the hollow. I desperately tried to remember where I had last seen him. But my feet sent the white mist swirling around my legs, so it was like looking down into a mill race. My heart was pounding and my chest felt so tight I thought it was being crushed. Now that I was in it, the hollow seemed vast. The moon slipped behind the clouds again and all at once I was plunged into darkness. Only the mist still glimmered white. I bent down, trying to grope under it for his body. My senses were reeling. My head ached. I couldn’t think what I was doing there. I was exhausted. All those nights without proper sleep were crowding in on me; my limbs felt stiff and numb as if I had been walking for hours. All I wanted to do was to lie down in the soft white mist and sleep, just for a few minutes, surrender to it and sleep. A few minutes wouldn’t matter, then I’d be able to think, I’d know what to do. I could feel myself sinking to my knees and I was powerless to stop it.
27. The Sending
I heard Narigorm laughing. The sound was like a stinging slap. I pushed hard on my stave and forced myself to stand upright again. I took a big gulp of air. My head was still splitting, but my thoughts suddenly cleared. The mist hung close to the ground, that was why we had been able to walk through it during the day without harm. Only if your head was below it could it work its poison. If you stood above it, you could survive. I began to walk forward, sweeping my stave rapidly, and then it connected with something. I prodded, feeling my stave trace the shape of a human body. I held my breath, sank to my knees, hauled his arm round my neck and pulled down on the wrist as I struggled to my feet again, levering him to his feet.
I didn’t know if he was dead or alive; all I knew was that I had to cross those few yards to the trees before I could let him go. I hauled, but he was taller and heavier than I was and even in my youth I’d have had trouble moving him. It was all I could do to keep his limp body upright without trying to move forward. I dared not lay him down and drag him for I knew I had to keep his head above the pool of poison. I pulled him forward step by painful step. My lungs felt as if they were on fire and my head was throbbing. Only another few yards, but I knew I was never going to make it. I had breathed in too much of the mist and now my legs were beginning to give way, I couldn’t take another step. I stood there in the darkness, the weight of Rodrigo’s body crushing me, the white mist swirling round me. I was so dizzy that I was forced to close my eyes to keep myself from falling. I could feel the world spinning round, the ground slipping sideways, shifting beneath my feet. I was pitching forward into the darkness.
Then I felt Rodrigo’s weight lifting.
‘Let go, Camelot, I’ve got him.’
Osmond was heaving Rodrigo’s body over his shoulder.
‘Mist… poisonous… get him out,’ I murmured, but he was already striding away. I sank to my knees, but almost at once felt myself being hauled up again as Osmond propelled me forward to the trees. I slid down, leaning against a trunk for support, as the trees spun around me.
I could hear Osmond slapping Rodrigo hard. ‘Come on, Rodrigo. Come on, wake up. Holy Mary, Mother of God, let him wake.’
I felt something roll against my leg. My fingers closed over it and I knew what it was without opening my eyes. I grasped the cold, smooth glass of Michelotto’s tear and prayed.
I took several deep breaths and opened my eyes. The ground was still slipping and twisting, but not as badly as before. Osmond held Rodrigo by the shoulders and was trying to flap air over his face. Rodrigo’s face was pale in the moonlight and his eyes were closed. I knew if I attempted to stand upright I would fall. I slipped the flask into my shirt and crawled over on my hands and knees.
Osmond shook his head. ‘It’s no good. I think he’s gone. I came as soon as Narigorm came running for help, but if I’d got to him sooner…’
‘Narigorm?’
‘Yes, she said he tried to cross the hollow, but had fallen. She said the mist in the hollow was poisonous. I did n’t believe her at first, until she said about the animals, then it made sense. Poor little thing, she was terrified.’
That wasn’t right, but my head was swimming too much to think straight. ‘No, no, it was Narigorm who–’
There was a cough. We looked down and saw Rodrigo’s chest give a little flutter. Osmond pulled him up into a sitting position, supporting him against his chest, I pushed his head back to open his mouth and we frantically fanned the air near his face. Then to our relief we saw his chest beginning to heave rapidly, and finally his eyelids fluttered. He rolled over and began to cough violently, then lay back in Osmond’s arms exhausted, his chest heaving painfully. He was alive. Rodrigo was alive.
It took a long time before he had recovered enough to stand and even then he needed both of us to support him on the short walk back to the camp. Adela came running to meet us and half-crushed the breath out of Rodrigo again as she tried to hug both him and Osmond together. We propped Rodrigo up in a half-sitting position on a pile of our packs and he lay coughing and wheezing, too weak to move.
None of us slept that night, though we were all exhausted. Adela and Osmond decided it would be too dangerous to let us sleep in case the poison claimed us again. So they spent all night helping us to sit upright and forcing us to drink hot broth whenever we looked as if we would doze off. My limbs were aching as if I had a fever. I could tell from his groans that Rodrigo felt no better than I did. But we were alive.
While Adela and Osmond watched us anxiously, someone else was watching us carefully too, but her face was expressionless. Flashes of the night’s events kept bursting in my mind, but my head was aching so much, I couldn’t make sense of them. I did n’t want to think about it. I only wanted to sleep.
Never had a d
awn been so welcome. The slow pale stain crept over the distant edge of the marsh, bringing with it the cries of gulls and plovers as the night slipped back like an ebbing tide. With the coming of daylight, Adela finally decided it was safe to let us sleep and we needed no persuasion.
When I woke again the sun was already sinking over the heights. I sat up clutching my cloak around me. The wind was sharpening and it was bitterly cold. Rodrigo was already up, though I guessed he had not been awake long, for he sat by the fire rubbing his swollen eyes as Adela handed him a bowl of something hot and steamy.
He smiled ruefully at me as I struggled over to join them.
‘How are you feeling, Camelot?’ Adela asked anxiously.
‘Worst hangover I’ve ever had, except that I’ve not been drinking. What about you, Rodrigo?’
‘Thrown by a horse and then kicked in the head by it, except I have not been riding. Osmond tells me that you risked your life trying to pull me out last night, Camelot. I am once more in your debt, old friend.’
‘We both owe our lives to Osmond – it was he who got us out.’
‘And Narigorm too,’ Rodrigo added. ‘If she had not realized the nature of the hollow and gone for help… I am so stupid. I did not see the danger.’
At the mention of Narigorm, I frowned. ‘Where is she?’
Adela answered. ‘She’s gone fowling with Osmond. The poor child was so worried about you both, Osmond thought it would cheer her up.’
I glanced up at the sky; they’d be back soon. ‘Rodrigo,’ I said urgently, ‘what do you remember about last night?’
He massaged his temples. ‘Not much. Talking to you, I think, but I can not remember what we spoke about… Then walking through the trees, it was dark, but I do not know where I was going. Back to the camp, I suppose. Then… then I was lying down and Osmond was slapping me.’ He rubbed his cheek and smiled ruefully. ‘He has a hard hand, that husband of yours, Adela. Remind me not to offend him.’
‘Don’t you remember anything else?’ I asked. ‘How you came to be in the hollow? Try, it’s important. Did you hear the wolf?’
He winced and clutched his head. ‘I do remember that. When I was in the trees I heard him. I could not tell where the sound was coming from. I wanted to see him coming so I went out into the hollow where there were no trees. Then… then the swans, a huge flock of swans was flying down towards me. I tried to protect myself. The noise was deafening. I could not breathe.’ He covered his face with his hands, trembling violently as the memory seized him.
‘That’s because you crouched down in the mist, to protect yourself from the swans. But there were no swans and no wolf. It was Narigorm who was conjuring those sounds. I saw her. She was in the trees watching you. The sounds were coming from her. It’s been her all along making the wolf howls.’
They both stared at me as if I had grown two heads.
Adela said gently, ‘How could a little girl make those sounds? When we’ve heard the wolf before, she’s been with us. She hasn’t been howling. It’s the poison of the white mist. It made you imagine things.’
‘No, it’s not the mist. There never has been a wolf. Narigorm has been conjuring a Sending, the power of the runes sent out in the form of a wolf and sometimes a swan. I watched her do it last night. She’s been using the Sending to drive us all to our deaths and she nearly succeeded again with you last night, Rodrigo, and me too. That wasn’t a prophecy that Narigorm read in the runes yesterday, it was a curse, a curse she sent out. She traced the outline of the troll rune with her finger and brought its power to life.’
Rodrigo stared at me. ‘This is madness. Adela is right, the white mist poisoned you, made you see devils and demons. Narigorm came to fetch help, is that not so, Adela? She saved our lives.’
‘No, listen. I scattered her runes, I broke her spell. She delayed me until she was certain you were dead, then she sent me into the hollow. She was watching me, waiting until I collapsed. I could hear her laughing. Only then did she go for Osmond. She thought by the time Osmond found us, I too would be dead. She’s spent hours there watching animals die in the mist. She knew it didn’t take long. Perhaps she even thought Osmond too would succumb to the mist if he started to search for us.’
Rodrigo’s frown deepened. ‘You are imagining this. Maybe you are right, maybe there were no swans and the white mist made this illusion for me, but the wolf is real. Narigorm does not make this sound.’
He rose painfully to his feet and walked back towards the mainland, making it clear he wanted to hear no more.
I turned to Adela. ‘If the wolf is real, did he claim his reliquary last night?’
She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘But that proves nothing, Camelot. With all the commotion, he was hardly likely to risk coming, was he?’
I glanced carefully around to make quite sure we were alone before I spoke. ‘Adela, even if you do not believe me about Narigorm, promise me that you will not let her find out that Osmond is your brother. She must never know.’
‘He’s not! He’s not! He’s my husband.’
I took her hand gently. ‘I think he is your brother and Carwyn is his child.’
She looked away, unable to meet my gaze. ‘How… how long have you known?’
‘I suspected from the first night in the cave, but I became certain the night you gave birth. He took you away from the convent, didn’t he? Did they send you there because of the baby?’
She nodded, staring at the ground, her veil falling across her scarlet cheeks. ‘I was betrothed to a merchant, a friend of my father’s, but he had to travel on business, so the marriage date was set for the month after he returned. But before he returned my cousin told my mother that my linen had not been stained for two months and my mother called the physician. When they learned I was… was with child, they were enraged. They knew the merchant would not marry a woman who was pregnant by another, who would? They demanded to know who the father was, but even though they beat me, I wouldn’t tell them. I couldn’t. They were angry enough that I had slept with a man, but if they had discovered that man was my own brother… So my parents had me taken to a convent in disgrace.
‘The nuns treated me as if I was a whore who should have been made to walk barefoot in a sheet through the town. They kept me locked in a cold, dark penitent’s cell with little food for days at a time. Perhaps they hoped I’d lose the child. “The fruit of sin”, they called him. If they’d really known the nature of that sin… But I wanted Carwyn. Even though I knew he was my shame, I wanted him so much because he was Osmond’s son. As long as I could feel his child growing inside me, I knew they could not separate me from Osmond.
‘But the nuns told me that when the baby was born, he would be sent away to be raised and I would become a nun, spending my life learning to subdue my lusts and atone for my wickedness. I would be a bride of Christ. He would be my husband. I would surrender every part of me to him and if I refused him, his vengeance would be terrible.’
‘But Osmond rescued you?’
She turned and stared out over the desolate marshes, darkening now as the sun began to slip behind the trees. For a few moments she said nothing, then quietly resumed her story, speaking so softly I had to draw closer to hear her.
‘Osmond was away. He was working as journeyman to a master painter. He didn’t know that he had got me with child. When he returned on a visit, he discovered where I had been sent and why. He knew at once that the child must be his and he was appalled at what he had done, but he could tell no one. He came to see me, though our parents had forbidden it. He told the sisters he had come with a message from my father. He could see at once how wretched and thin I had become. He could not bear it, so he bribed one of the laywomen to help me escape. He couldn’t return to his work, because he knew our father would come looking for us there. So we were forced to go on the road. His master still held his papers; he couldn’t go back for them.’
‘And without them, he can’t work as a painter.’<
br />
She nodded miserably.
‘Osmond must love you very much,’ I said gently.
‘And I love him. You cannot know how much. Without him, I feel I’ve been cut in two and as if part of my very being has been taken from me. Maybe Zophiel was right and I have damned his soul to hell, and he mine. But we cannot exist without each other. Can you understand that, Camelot?’
I squeezed her hand and nodded. ‘But, Adela, at all costs you must keep this from Narigorm; she must not find out.’
‘But she adores Osmond. Even if she discovered the truth, she would do nothing to hurt him. She would not report us to the Justices or the Church.’
I did not want to hurt her, but I had to make her understand. ‘Come with me, Adela. I want to show you something.’
I led her into the dark interior of the hermit’s shelter and scrabbled around under some empty sacks until I found what I was looking for.
‘You remember the doll Osmond carved for Narigorm? Look at it, Adela, look at the face, she has destroyed it.’ I thrust the doll into her hands.
She turned and held it towards the doorway. The light outside was fading fast.
‘You’re mistaken, Camelot, she’s hasn’t destroyed her. She’s just painted a new face on her, white like her own. It was stupid of us, we should have realized that the child would want a doll which looked like her.’
I took the doll from her and stepped outside. I held it up so that the last rays of the sun would illuminate its face. Adela was right. Narigorm had given the doll a new face, but it wasn’t painted. Its mouth was formed from the bleached white bones of a mouse, with sharp shrew’s teeth set between the bone lips. The eyes and ears were fashioned from the bones of a frog and the nose was the blanched beak of a little dead bird. It had taken patience to do this, patience and skill far beyond that of a normal child.
Behind me I heard shouts as Osmond and Narigorm returned, swinging several birds by their necks. I just had time to slip back inside the hut to push the doll back under the sacks again.
Company of Liars Page 46