The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  ‘I think we are the foul creatures,’ I said.

  The look of indignation and outrage that crossed Matilda’s sour face would have made me chuckle except that the figure in the doorway seemed to make up his mind that more was needed to drive us away than curses and rattles. He dropped the clapper and, howling, charged out of the church, brandishing a rusty pollax in both hands, swinging it wildly. All of us fled in different directions. I found my way blocked by the remains of a wall, which, try as I might, I couldn’t scramble over. I heard a shriek of fear behind me and half turned to see Katharine crouching on the ground, her arms raised to shield her face. The hammer side of the pollax blade hung menacingly above her head, as the man shrieked at her to be gone. But Katharine seemed unable to move. The man’s howls were growing ever more maniacal and the lethal iron swung closer and closer to her bent head.

  Even had I not fallen into the hands of the dwarf-maker and had been allowed to grow to my natural stature, I doubt I would have been the kind of man gallantly to charge to the aid of any maiden, fair or otherwise. But I could see that if the stupid woman simply remained cringing on the ground, the madman would crack her skull, like a walnut. Taking a deep breath, I lolloped towards the pair of them, prancing, grimacing and jabbering, as if I was twice as moon-crazed as the man himself, while taking care to stay out of reach of the murderous weapon.

  He stared at me, his jaw hanging slack, but the pollax was still hovering perilously over Katharine’s head.

  ‘Move, mistress,’ I whispered, as I cavorted back and forth in front of him. ‘Crawl away, as fast as you can, then get up and run.’

  I danced away from them, hoping to distract the mad hermit, but though he turned his head, like a dog, to watch me, Katharine remained crouching on the ground, whimpering with fear.

  I pranced a little closer and sang out, ‘Pray tell me, my lord, if a black boar wallows in the mud, but has not a bristle to its back, what should we call it?’

  He frowned, his head tilted to one side, repeating the riddle to himself, then a grin split his face. ‘’Tis a dung beetle, that’s what it is.’ His eyes suddenly narrowed. ‘Who told you about me? Who told you what I know?’

  I bowed low. ‘Why, everyone, my lord. Word of your great wisdom and knowledge spreads far and wide.’

  It’s a dwarf’s stock answer, that one. Flattery diverts a man more swiftly and easily than a horse may be turned aside by a tug on the reins. A dwarf doesn’t survive long in this world if he doesn’t learn that lesson. And I was relieved to see the pollax sink down to the man’s side, where it swung loosely from one hand. But Katharine was still trembling on the ground, her eyes tight shut, as if she thought the blow would fall at any moment.

  ‘I crave an audience, my lord.’ I beckoned to him, jerking my head in the hope of drawing him away from her.

  He preened, like a cockerel, each time I addressed him as my lord and where was the harm in that? Believe me, there are lesser men who demand far higher titles, and that does sour the tongue.

  He took a couple of paces away from Katharine, still gripping the weapon. He was dressed in layers of rags. It appeared that he’d never troubled to remove his threadbare old clothes, but simply added the latest garment he’d acquired on top. I could even glimpse another pair of shoes peeping through the holes in his boots. His black hair and beard had grown into one matted and shaggy fleece around his face, leaving only his hooked nose and a pair of deep-set eyes visible.

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ he repeated, his gaze darting towards the others, who I guessed had withdrawn to a safe distance behind me. ‘No room.’

  Considering the village was deserted except for him, there would have been ample room for twice our number, but I didn’t argue. I couldn’t imagine any in our band had the slightest desire to stay for a gnat’s breath longer than we had to.

  His gaze flicked back to me. ‘Maybe I’ll let you stay. I need a new servant. Can you bark? Need a dog too.’

  I was tempted to show him I could bite, never mind bark, but he was still swinging that pollax, and I was armed only with a knife.

  ‘We seek your wisdom, my lord, nothing more. There was a woman came this way, a few days after the sun turned black and the great storm. Maybe she is still here.’

  ‘No woman here. No one here but me.’

  ‘But do you remember one passing through? Janiveer, she called herself. Foreign way of speaking.’

  He seemed on the verge of saying no again, but hesitated. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Where did she go? That way?’ I pointed towards the coast in the opposite direction to Porlock Weir. ‘Or up?’ I gestured towards the moors high above.

  His lips parted, showing a glimpse of jagged teeth, though it was impossible to see if he was smiling or grimacing beneath his beard.

  ‘Want me to find her for ye, that it? That why you come?’ He thrust his dirt-crusted palm towards me. ‘Well, don’t expect me to read for naught, do ye?’

  ‘I’ve nothing—’

  ‘Then you’ll learn nothing. Get!’ He swung the pollax up in both hands again, as if he meant to drive us from the village.

  I scrambled backwards as fast as my bandy legs would move. ‘Wait, I . . .’

  ‘Will he take this?’ Sara was beside me. She was tugging at a bronze ring on her finger. Bending down, she pressed it into my hand.

  ‘Your wedding band?’

  She gave a curt nod. ‘Was Elis’s granddam’s. She give it him afore she died, for when he took a wife.’

  I tried to thrust it back at her, but she shook her head, clamping her naked hand beneath her armpit as if it might be tempted to grab back what she had stolen from it. ‘Not a wife any more, am I? Meant to keep it, give it to Luke when he was of an age to wed, but what’s the use if I can’t find him?’ She closed her fingers around my fist. ‘You ask him, will you? Ask him if he can see where my boys are?’

  ‘What’s she given ye?’ The crazed hermit was staring intently at my fist. He edged closer and Sara retreated. I opened my hand and he grunted in disgust.

  ‘Gold’s what I want.’ But he snatched the ring anyway and gestured to a fallen stone. ‘Wait there till I collect what I need.’

  He ambled, head bent, through the weeds and rubble, using the handle of the pollax to hold brambles aside and as a stick to balance himself whenever he bent to pick something up. I thought he was collecting stones to cast, though the diviners that came to my lord’s hall always brought theirs with them, unwrapping them as carefully as if they were the rarest jewels of the east instead of worthless pebbles. But it was all part of the diviners’ mummery, and I can hardly criticise any man for making a spectacle of his craft, for where would be the magic in my tricks if I gave them no flummery and flourish?

  The hermit eased himself down opposite me and spread out his treasures. Not stones or bones, but dung – goat’s shit, mice droppings, a human turd, one of his own, I assumed, deer dung and several others of assorted sizes, colours and stenches that I gladly confess I couldn’t name. I’d collected any amount of worthless jetsam since I’d lived in the cave but even I hadn’t hoarded shit. Pulling out the bone rattle again, he shook it vigorously over the dung piles. Then, closing his eyes, he rocked back and forth, humming tunelessly to himself.

  The sun beat down on the stones and my head. The hum of bees and rasp of crickets filled the air. Beads of sweat trickled down my forehead. I wished I’d ignored the place to which he’d pointed and sat myself in the shade of the church walls instead. The rock on which I was perched had a particularly sharp point that was pressed into my arse and my leg kept twitching towards a thistle, whose prickles stabbed right through my breeches. But I knew diviners of old: if you so much as coughed they’d declare you’d driven off the spirits and they could see nothing more – any excuse to flounce off with your payment safely in their purse and you left with nothing to show for it. But Sara was watching us anxiously. She needed hope as badly as a drowning man needs a rope.


  The hermit stopped swaying and leaned forward, peering at the piles of dung. Flies had found them and were crawling over them in drunken circles, clearly favouring the shit of some beasts over others.

  ‘Cleverest creatures in the world, flies,’ the hermit grunted. ‘Not like ants. Ants scurry about from morn to night, hefting great seeds and marching in lines, while flies idle their time away, eating nothing but the best. They dine off the very finest dishes in royal palaces, sip sweet wine from lords’ goblets and steal kisses from the queen’s lips while she sleeps.’

  ‘And with all those riches on offer they choose dung?’

  ‘And what did ye choose, dwarf?’ he said, gazing sharply at me. ‘Flies may go wherever they fancy. Try stopping them.’

  ‘And I suppose they tell you what they’ve seen,’ I said tersely.

  He flapped his hand, motioning me to silence as he peered at the stinking heaps of dung. ‘You has to watch which beast they choose and how they move on it. See the way they crawl contrary over the brock’s droppings.’ His eyes darted back and forth as he watched the creatures buzzing between the mounds of shit, like goodwives at a fair wandering between the stalls.

  Finally he straightened his back again, smoothing the layers of his rags, as if he was a bird preening its feathers. ‘This Janiveer, the flies say she’s come for the bones. Find the bones and you’ll find her.’

  ‘Whose bones?’ I asked.

  ‘Her bones, of course, else she’d not have come for them. I’m only the dung beetle, you’re the dwarf, so ye riddle it.’

  ‘Bones indeed!’ Matilda said, behind me. ‘What right has she, a foreigner, to any bones in these parts? Why are you even listening to such nonsense? I tell you, Janiveer has long gone and she won’t be coming back.’

  Sara, ignoring Matilda, moved a few paces closer. ‘But my sons. Do you know where my sons are?’

  ‘Flies know all. Flies are born in the deep slime and quickened from carcasses of rotting beasts. They walk on the earth and ride in the air.’

  ‘My boys . . .’ Sara pleaded.

  ‘Are not walking on the earth or riding in the air.’

  ‘Not on the earth? . . . Then they’re dead?’ Sara let out a great howl of despair and slowly sank to the ground, her body quivering and jerking as if it was being pierced by a dozen arrows.

  Dung Beetle eyed her curiously, then lumbered to his feet and vanished back inside the shadow of the ruined chapel. I cursed myself as seven kinds of fool for ever allowing the wretched man to speak. I’d wanted to give Sara hope, and all I’d done was extinguish any last spark she still possessed.

  I squatted beside her. ‘Come now, you’d not believe him, would you? He’s a madman who talks to flies, and when have you last seen a fly with any sense? Crawl into a flagon then can’t even remember how to get out again, though the opening’s right above them.’

  ‘He said they were not walking on the earth,’ Sara said dully.

  ‘You know us fools, always talking in riddles. I can run, but never walk. I have a mouth, but cannot talk.’ I gestured to the stream that trickled down the side of the valley. ‘So if they’re not walking, they’re running.’ I caught a look of alarm on her face. ‘I mean riding. Your two lads have probably found themselves a horse to carry them or hitched a ride on the back of a wagon.’

  ‘I think,’ Matilda said coldly, ‘we’ve heard quite enough wisdom from fools this day.’

  She pulled Sara to her feet. ‘Come. I warned you from the beginning this was a ridiculous quest. This is an accursed place and the sooner we leave it and return to our homes, the safer we shall be.’

  ‘But what of Janiveer?’ Katharine asked timidly. ‘Aren’t we going to—’

  ‘Good question,’ I said. ‘We came here to find her. Nothing’s changed. We still need to bring Janiveer back to lift the curse. Sara, do you want to go on?’

  But Sara was staring sightlessly at the ground. I don’t think she even heard what we were saying. She was numb with grief.

  Matilda rounded on Katharine. ‘You should be thankful you’re not lying dead with an axe in your skull, Katharine. But if you insist on going to look for Janiveer, you’re welcome to go off by yourself and try. I warn you though, that madman is certainly not the last you will run into, and there are men out there who will do far worse to a woman travelling alone than merely murder her.

  ‘As for you, dwarf, haven’t you already done enough damage by encouraging poor Sara to come on this fool’s journey? You were all so sure that Janiveer would be here. Well, you’ve seen for yourselves she’s not. She’s miles away by now and she could have travelled in any direction from Kitnor. She came to Porlock Weir aboard a ship, so who’s to say she hasn’t found passage on another boat and set sail for wherever she was going before the shipwreck? You haven’t garnered a single clue as to where to start looking for her, but if you want to wander around this forest for the rest of your life, dwarf, I, for one, would be delighted. You certainly won’t hear me begging a thief and a freak to return to my village.’

  Had the Holy Hag not uttered those last words, I might very well have offered to go on with Katharine to search for Janiveer, if only to make amends to Sara. But, though all the king’s torturers working together couldn’t have forced me to admit it, I knew that for once Matilda was right: we’d no idea where Janiveer had gone and if she had taken a boat, we had no hope of finding her. Besides, I certainly wasn’t going to give the old hag the satisfaction of thinking she’d got rid of me from her village. I’d go back just to torment her.

  Sara did not resist, but allowed Katharine and Matilda to guide her back towards the stepping stones across the stream, as if she no longer cared or even knew where they were leading her. She stumbled on blindly, not pausing to untangle the brambles that clawed at her skirts as she lumbered through them. The thorns lacerated her arms, but she seemed not to notice the smart of them or the flies that swarmed to the bloody scratches.

  I’ve told stories of corpses who rise from their graves and walk among the living, but though they are fine tales to entertain a lord on a dark winter’s night, I never believed in such things. But seeing that dead, sightless expression in Sara’s eyes, I came close to believing that day.

  Harold crept up behind me as we followed the women, staying tight on my heels as if he thought the mad hermit might suddenly reappear behind a rock or sitting astride one of the ruined walls. ‘Bones?’ he whispered. ‘He said if we find Janiveer’s bones, we’ll find her. Well, course we will, ’cause they’ll be in her body, so that makes not a whit of sense. Unless . . .’ He jerked his chin towards Sara’s back. ‘Did he mean she’s dead, like Luke and Hob?’

  ‘These diviners talk more nonsense than a court of fools,’ I barked, ‘so they can always claim whatever they said came true.’

  Yes, I know what you’re thinking – I was the pot calling the pan burned-arse. But I was not in the most cheerful of humours. My thighbones felt as if they’d been wrenched out of their sockets from clambering through the forest and over that rubble. I was as hot and thirsty as a smoked herring, and if that wasn’t enough to make any man sour, I knew that all I’d achieved was to lose Sara her precious ring, probably the only thing of any real value she had left. And for what? We were no closer to finding Janiveer or Sara’s sons than we had been before we started.

  Harold gave a little shriek, like a woman when a mouse has run up her leg. He was staring towards one of the ruined huts, almost the last at the edge of the village. An ancient tree grew close by a crumbling wall. I followed his gaze and thought I glimpsed something moving in the shadow between the tree and the hut. It was too tall for an animal – probably a beggar or another madman lurking there.

  ‘Come on,’ I urged Harold. ‘I’ve had my fill of hermits for today.’

  But Harold was still staring, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. ‘I think he’s dead!’

  ‘And still standing and moving, that would be a miracle,’ I
said tartly. ‘You’ve been listening to too many tales of saints walking about with their own heads tucked under their arms.’

  All the same, I edged closer, expecting whoever was hiding there to run off.

  And it took me several moments to realise why he didn’t. The man was dead all right, had been for some time, for the birds had long pecked out his eyes and torn lumps from the rotting flesh of his face. His hair and blood-soaked clothes, shredded by wind and sun, waved in the breeze. That must have been what I saw moving. But only then did I see why the dead man still stood. He’d been crucified to the tree with large iron nails through his wrists, fastening his arms behind him about the trunk. And two long iron spikes had been hammered through his shoulders impaling him to the wood. I don’t know how long it takes a man to die of such savage wounds, but I prayed I would never find out.

  A piercing scream rang out behind us, startling me so violently my heart almost stopped. Harold whipped round, feverishly crossing himself. Ahead of us on the track, Matilda, Katharine and even Sara clutched each other.

  ‘What was that?’ Harold whispered, pale as a moonstone in spite of the heat.

  I flapped my hand skyward. ‘Kites probably, or some prey they just killed,’ I said airily, though I was as shaken as he looked.

  ‘But it sounded human,’ Harold said.

  ‘So does a hare when a hawk swoops on it. Come on,’ I urged. ‘Let’s at least get under the cool of the trees.’

  The others hurried forward. But as I glanced uneasily behind me, I saw the hermit standing in the shadow of the church, watching me. He stood more upright than before and there was no sign of madness about him now. I shivered and hurried into the trees. Wherever that scream had come from, it was not the sky and it was not made by any beast – I would have wagered my cods on that. Nor had that poor devil crucified himself. Something told me that the hermit was not alone in Kitnor.

  Chapter 39