The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  There was something harsh and menacing about the way he spoke those words. Had I been mistaken and he’d recognised me after all?

  I steeled myself for her touch, but in truth I barely felt it for it was as fleeting and light as the flap of a butterfly’s wing. But I wished I would feel it for ever.

  The young wards giggled and crowded forward, pushing Christina aside and patting my back hard for luck, as if they were petting a boisterous hound.

  ‘Come,’ Lady Pavia said briskly, ‘we must take your young son back to the great hall. This chill air will do him no good and, besides, his christening feast awaits us.’

  The girls were immediately diverted and set off back along the path, their chaperon hobbling behind them.

  ‘Are you going to bless my son, dwarf?’ Randel demanded. ‘I have named him Walter. Father Cuthbert tells me it means ruler of men. My son is destined to become a great knight, what think you to that? I shall have a sword in his hand just as soon as he can walk and see him schooled to a horse before he is out of clouts. Meanwhile, I suppose we could put a saddle on you, dwarf, and he could ride you as his hobbyhorse.’ He looked at Christina and laughed. She smiled as if her lips shared the joke, but in her eyes there was nothing but misery and despair.

  I spread my arm, making a mocking flourish of a courtly bow. ‘I give you a dwarf’s blessing, young Master Walter. May you receive what men are given, but kings can never buy. May you fall in that which you can feel, but none sees with his eye. May you know what a poor man treasures, but is never owned by a lord. For it is stronger by far than iron and cuts deeper than any sword.’

  I thought I heard Christina give a sharp little intake of breath, like a sob, but I dared not look at her, for I saw Randel’s gaze dart suspiciously from one to the other of us as if he was searching for something he couldn’t quite name.

  ‘A strange blessing,’ he said coldly, ‘but, then, you are a queer little beast.’ He tossed a coin into the dirt at my feet. ‘For amusing us, dwarf.’

  Then still holding my son in one arm and taking Christina’s hand with the other, he led her away. She did not look back.

  Chapter 65

  Sara

  The first fish of a catch must be nailed alive to the mast as a thank-offering else no more will be caught.

  Some say Janiveer brought an end to the pestilence, others that it burned itself out as it had the first time it came. I know only that, from the day we buried Matilda under the cairn, there were no more deaths from that fever. We thought the evil had passed and we had survived. But we were wrong. The sea-witch had not finished wreaking her vengeance on the village. What we had seen was only the promise of what she could do. The worst was not over. It was yet to come.

  We took turns at filling in the grave pit though it took us many days for we were weak. Young Harold did his best to say a few words that might make their bodies rest easy in their grave even if their souls were in Purgatory. But he couldn’t say Masses for them. At least I saw my Elis buried, though I couldn’t bear to think of the torment he might be suffering in the next world. But I couldn’t bury my boys. Where their souls were wandering, I didn’t know.

  They say the spirits of unbaptised babies become butterflies, and the spirits of drowned fishermen become gulls, but where do the spirits of young lads go? Sometimes at night, when the moon was bright, I went to the edge of the forest and stared through the dark trunks. I was afraid of ghosts, but how could I be afraid of the ghosts of my own chillern? I longed to glimpse them, even if they were nothing more than wisps of mist. I called to them to come to me out of the darkness. But though I heard creatures running through the bushes and saw birds startled out of their roosts, flying up in the moonlight, I never saw the ghosts of my sons.

  We who were left in the village were learning to live again. We made ourselves new mud-horses, the frames set at a height the women could reach. The first thing we did was take stones out to repair the furthest weir where all the biggest fish were caught. We slid past the blackened timbers of the burned ship, half sunk in the sand. None of us could bring ourselves to look at it at first, but after a few tides had washed in and out, carrying away the charred bodies and the stench, it became naught but another wreck to add to the many that rotted in the bays along those shores.

  There was still no flour and there’d not be any grain to harvest the next year if we couldn’t repair the hoes and tools, for most were broken from digging graves and for water. Bald John, though he’d been near death, had started to recover from the pestilence the day after Matilda was buried, but his arms and legs had turned black, and his hands had rotted away soon after. He lived, if you could call it that, but he’d never work the forge again, that much was certain.

  Sybil said firmly there was as much use him wishing his hands would grow back as there was fishing for mackerel down a well. She persuaded his wife to help her drag Bald John to the forge, whether he would go or not. He still had a tongue, Sybil said, and she had the brawn, so he could tell her what to do. It wasn’t easy to persuade him, but Sybil and Cecily kept at him night and day till they wore him down.

  The two women set to work under his instruction, simple tools at first and they mostly went wrong, shattering at the first use for the metal wasn’t tempered right. The curses that came flying out of that forge were hotter than the fire – Bald John bellowing in frustration at their clumsiness and Sybil yelling back at him for not explaining it well enough. But they were mastering it, even Bald John grudgingly admitted that.

  Most of the village women had taken to cooking together at the bake-house. It was easier to prepare a common pot and to feed the orphans and old ’uns at the same time, for many had lost all their family. There were others who wanted feeding as well, travellers, not from our village, who edged in like stray cats, trying to reach any place they could find shelter or work. We’d no work to offer them, but we made them welcome as best we could till they moved on, though all we had to share was the cauldron of fish.

  One woman arrived pushing her aged mam in a wheelbarrow, another with two small chillern clinging to her skirts, their arms thin as sticks and their stomachs bloated. Then came an old man and woman clinging to each other, as if each was the other’s walking stick. They all moved on after a day or two, but Janiveer remained. We’d glance down at the shore as we ate, watching the flames of her fire on the beach leaping up in the darkness. Sometimes we’d see her too, or the black shadow of her, standing on the shore, staring out at the sea, or pacing round and round those flames, her hair and skirts streaming out behind her as if she was swimming in the sea, not walking on the shore. Sometimes she seemed to swell up till she was twice the height of any normal woman. Sybil said it was a trick of the firelight, but all the same, I crossed myself and saw the others doing so, too. We wanted her gone.

  That night, there was a raw edge to the wind, and no moon or stars to be seen for the clouds hid them. We ate by the light of the fire in the bake-house yard, for the candles and rush lights that remained were too precious to waste. A young girl with moon-crazed eyes had wandered into the village, her belly swollen with a babby. Drawn by the smell of the pot and the warmth of the fire, she edged into the yard and the women made room for her by the fire, though she was so near her time, she could barely lower herself to sit on the ground. She gulped the hot fish broth as if she feared we were going to snatch it from her, her gaze fixed on Will the whole time, as if the rest of us were invisible.

  He wouldn’t look at her, but sat hunched over his bowl, staring miserably into the firelight. You couldn’t seem to get a cheerful word from him. All through the sickness, he’d always had a riddle to tell or a trick to make a child laugh, but now that others were beginning to see hope returning, it seemed to have run out of him.

  The wind moaned through the deserted cottages and the waves crashed on the rocks, but I could have sworn there was another sound, too, that night, like many high voices singing, but sadder than that, as if the sea itse
lf was keening. It made my skin prickle. Several of us glanced uneasily towards the far end of the bay where Janiveer’s fire burned. We could see her ragged silhouette, like some monstrous seabird, perching on the edge of the water.

  ‘Looks like Janiveer’s going for a swim,’ Sybil muttered.

  ‘Wish she’d swim back to where she came from,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t reckon she’s calling up another death ship, do you?’ Katharine asked fearfully.

  Will craned his head to peer at the shore. ‘She said the pestilence is over, and that much I do believe,’ he added dully.

  ‘You speak the truth, Will,’ Janiveer said, stepping into the pool of light cast by the fire.

  We gaped at her. I stared back at the shore and, just for a moment, I thought I could still see her dark outline standing by the sea, her long hair whipping around her head in the wind. Then I realised there was nothing on the beach save her fire. Had I seen her there at all?

  ‘The pestilence is indeed over, but death draws close again in a different guise. I have a riddle for you, Will. It has no mouth, but cries. It has no wings, but flies. And eats—’

  ‘The wind,’ Will interrupted. ‘Even a lord can answer that one.’

  ‘And eats no meat, but grows,’ Janiveer finished. ‘It grows. Out there, far across the sea, the wind is gaining strength. Soon it will be greater than any wind that has ever reached these shores. It will tear down trees and bring great churches crashing to the ground, and the waves it whips up will smash all in their path. This village will be destroyed, as easily and swiftly as the first wave of the flowing tide sweeps away a house of sand built by a child.’

  Katharine moaned, burying her face in her hands and rocking. The others were muttering, half fearful, half angry. Only Goda remained silent and unmoving, as if her body was there but her spirit had wandered somewhere else.

  ‘Pay her no heed,’ Sybil finally burst out, darting a furious glance towards Janiveer. ‘She’s still after that relic. Thinks to frighten us into giving it to her.’ She raised her voice, though even the owls in the forest must already have heard her. ‘We’ve told you, we don’t know where the hag hid Cadeyrn’s hand, if she ever had it. Why don’t you ask Father Cuthbert, wherever he is? If anyone knows, he must.’

  Harold shifted uneasily, shuffling back a little so that his face was in shadow. I hadn’t raised two lads without being able to spot the look of a boy trying to hide something. Could he have taken it after all?

  ‘Aye,’ Isobel said. ‘Get you back to wherever you’ve been hiding yourself, sea-witch, and leave us alone. You’ve brought the village enough troubles.’

  Janiveer’s expression did not change. She stared back at us, unblinking. One by one all the furious faces that had been glaring at her turned away as she looked at each of us in turn. None of us wanted to meet those eyes.

  ‘I warned you of the Great Pestilence. You did not believe me. You would not pay me what I asked to protect you. And your menfolk died because you would not listen. When I was given the life I asked for, I charmed the pestilence from among you and threw it into the sea. Now I warn you again of danger, and again I am willing to save you, if you are willing to pay my price.’

  Will’s head snapped up. ‘Pestilence burned itself out like it did before. You knew it had! You charmed nothing.’

  ‘You are bitter because you lost your lover, but your love was false if you’d sooner have seen her in her grave instead of another man’s bed.’ She turned away from him, her eyes glittering in the firelight. ‘You can take your chance, as you did with the pestilence, but when the wind rages and the seas surge over your houses, it will be too late. You have three days to decide. Will you pay my price or will you risk your lives and what little you still possess?’

  The women were silent. Why didn’t they ask her? I pushed myself to my feet and stood facing her across the flames.

  ‘What do you want of us, Janiveer? Cadeyrn’s hand? Sybil’s right. We’ve searched Matilda’s house ourselves and none of us could find it. No one here knows where it is.’

  I tried not to look at Harold, hoping I spoke the truth. I dreaded to think what the sea-witch might do to him if she discovered he’d been keeping it from her.

  ‘The hand of Cadeyrn is mine. You cannot pay me in coin I already own. The great wind will bring the hand of my forefather to me. That is why I wait.’

  ‘Then what, Janiveer?’ I said. ‘Another life as you demanded before?’

  For a moment she did not answer. No one spoke or moved. The only sounds were the waves sucking on the pebbles and the wind sobbing through the empty cottages. The blood-red firelight and dark shadows shifted back and forth across her face as if she had a thousand faces, some young, some ancient, all cruel.

  ‘Not just a life, Sara, a soul. A soul who will take the place of Cadeyrn, whom you trapped here when you separated his bones and offered them to your god. A soul who will suffer all the misery and torment he has suffered. A soul who will descend into the icy caverns of the dead, there to remain for ever and alone in the howling vortex of its darkness. A soul who will pay for all eternity for the blood your ancestors spilled when they betrayed the warrior king.’

  Chapter 66

  Will

  Riddle me this: What doth the contented man desire, the poor have and rich require, the miser spends and the spendthrift saves and all men carry to their graves?

  The woman appeared from nowhere, standing in the entrance to my cave, her rags billowing in the wind, like seaweed in a streaming tide.

  ‘You’ll protect my baby,’ she said. ‘Creatures like you can keep us from evil spirits and make the sick well. You’re a . . .’

  She did not need to say the word – dwarf, goblin, beast, half-man. Whichever you choose, it means less than human. And any creature who does not quite belong in this world must belong to another. We stand in the doorway between the kingdoms, straddling the divide, with one bandy leg in the human realm, the other in that of phantasms and faeries, so it follows that we must be able to turn the fates, to curse and bless. Bring us your infants to touch for luck, but know that our hand is not a saint’s hand, but the hand of a gallows thief.

  The woman crouched and laid her baby, not in a manger, on the floor of my cave. It squirmed at my feet, naked and whimpering, wrapped in a bloody goatskin, like an offering to a grotesque little god. I vaguely recalled seeing a heavily pregnant woman by the fire when Janiveer warned us about the wind. Was it the same woman? Her face was hidden in the shadows of the cave, and only the whites of her eyes shone in the firelight, restless and wild as the crests of the waves crashing against the rocks.

  She wasn’t from Porlock Weir, that much I knew. Just another traveller who’d fled her village when the pestilence came, driven mad by hunger and the terror of death. Did the child’s father still live? Maybe the woman herself didn’t know who he was – a sailor with silver in his pocket, a lustful priest, a drunken packman: all might have walked away as I had done, not knowing their seed had taken root in her. Perhaps she had come looking for him or, like so many women in the village, had sat by his bed and watched him die.

  The child’s cries grew louder. I stared down at him as he thrashed his fists, so very small, so very straight and perfect. ‘Take him!’ I shouted. ‘I can’t care for him. I can’t care for any child.’

  But the cave was empty, as if a wave had washed in and swept the woman away. Only the baby remained. I carried him to the cave entrance and stared out into the darkness. The waves foamed white, thundering on to the pebble beach. Clouds raced across the moon. Janiveer had spoken the truth. The storm was coming, and I was glad of it, a storm that would wipe away all the stench and decay, the misery and pain, a storm that would bring a cleansing death to us all.

  I lifted the child high in my arms, holding him out to the sea and wind. ‘Come, what are you waiting for? Do your worst! Take me. Take us all. Sweep all away and make an end of it!’

  A huge black wave reare
d up and crashed down, like a sea-serpent striking. White foam boiled over the glistening rock and sucked back, as if it was pulling its prey down into the depths.

  ‘Ninth wave that was,’ a voice from the sea said. ‘My granddam always said the ninth wave’ll take you. Hurry afore the next one.’

  Two wet white hands clawed over the lip of the cave. The drowned were rising from the sea. The dead were crawling out of the depths and on to the land. Still clutching the baby, I backed away. A hooded head rose up, the firelight glistening on the bone-white visage beneath. It heaved itself on to the floor of the cave. Hands flung back the hood. I stared. Sara was standing in front of me and behind her, clambering up from the rocks below, came Harold.

  They hurried to the fire at the back of the cave, kneeling and spreading their hands over the blaze to warm them.

  ‘Don’t know how you can abide living out here with only the sea for a neighbour,’ Sara said. She jerked round as the baby gave a thin kitten-like wail. ‘Wherever did you find that little mite? He’ll catch his death in this place.’

  She struggled to her feet and lifted the baby from my arms. Dragging an old sheepskin from the heap at the back of the cave, she snuggled the child in it and took him back to the fire, where she sat rocking him.

  ‘Why have you come?’ I demanded.

  ‘You heard what Janiveer said. There’s a storm coming,’ Sara said. ‘Don’t know if she’s the power to call it up or calm it, but one thing I do know. I’ll not let her take another life from this village. It’s revenge she wants and she’ll not stop till we’re all dead. She reckons to make this a village of ghosts like Kitnor, where not a soul can ever rest easy in their grave. Even the ships that come here will be damned. She’s not natural, not human.’

  ‘Like me?’ I said bitterly. ‘You think, because I’m not human either, I can get rid of her for you, is that it?’