The Plague Charmer

by Karen Maitland

  Sara gave a grunt of laughter. ‘You’re a queer one, all right, but a sprat is smaller than a cod, which doesn’t make it any less a fish, nor you any less a man. Fact, you’re more of a man than most twice your size. That’s why we came. Harold here, he thinks he knows where the old hag hid that hand.’

  ‘You heard Janiveer,’ I said. ‘Giving her the hand will not make her leave. She’ll take it and take her revenge too.’

  ‘I know that,’ Sara said impatiently. ‘But only if we give it to her. Harold and me have been talking. He reckons there’s another way we could use that hand.’

  I glanced at the lad, who was drying his skinny legs in the heat of the fire. He kept his head lowered as if he wanted no part of any of this. I’d wager a cartload of herring that if he’d told Sara anything about where the hand was hidden, she’d forced it out of him.

  ‘So what’s this great plan of yours, Harold?’

  He darted a glance at us both, before staring dismally into the flames again. ‘I know what needs to be said, right enough, learned it by heart, and what needs to be done to keep her from working her spells, but I’ve never had to do it. It’s true I exorcise the chrisemores when their fathers bring them to the chapel for baptism.’ He gazed over to the child lying in Sara’s lap, sucking her finger knuckle. ‘Babbies, they do no more than cry, but the sea-witch . . . I’ll not be able to face her alone!’

  ‘You’ll not be alone!’ Sara retorted, sounding so like the Holy Hag that Harold flinched. She shook her head in exasperation and turned to me. ‘We need you to distract Janiveer while Harold does what he must. She’ll not be able to stand against the three of us together.’

  ‘She’s the descendant of a warrior king,’ I said. ‘And I warrant she has more powers than ever he could command. She could stand against the king’s armies if she had to.’

  Sara glared at me, then reached over and briskly patted Harold’s arm. ‘But you’ll have Cadeyrn’s hand, her own blood and bone, to use against her. She’ll not work her magic against that.’ She looked at me again, her eyes full of fire. ‘You’ll help us? You’ll come with us tomorrow night, won’t you, Will?’

  I waddled over and took the sleeping baby from her. Wrapping him even tighter in the sheepskin, I carried him to the mouth of the cave and stared out at the dark waves racing towards us. I hated Janiveer. Every muscle and bone in my crooked body was screaming its loathing of her. I’d allowed myself to listen to her. I’d believed her. I’d trusted her. If I’d taken Christina and my son when I’d first returned to the manor, I’d be holding him in my arms now instead of a stranger’s child. I could have looked after them, kept them safe, made them happy. God’s blood, I wanted Janiveer dead almost as much as I wanted Christina back in my arms.

  But why should I help the villagers? They’d tried to hang me – Sara, all of them. And if they survived, would they treat me any differently? No. I’d still be vermin to them, living out my days like some scavenging crab on the seashore, to be mocked and tormented by their brats, to be accused the moment there was trouble. I had lost Christina, lost my son. I had nothing left! So let Janiveer do her worst. Let the wind rage and the waves drown us all. That was what the world needed, a great flood to sweep it all away. Better that than a living death. They had their fool to dance them to the gallows, so let the executioner do her work. Let the witch make an end of it all.

  Chapter 67

  Men fear death as children fear the dark.

  Medieval Proverb

  ‘Get those doors fastened afore the wind rips them off,’ Master Wallace bellowed, though he might as well not have bothered for none of the men or boys fighting their way across the courtyard heard a word he shouted.

  But they could see as well as he could that if the doors to the stables weren’t secured the wind would get beneath the thatch and lift the whole roof off. Inside the stables, the horses reared and bucked against their tethers, rolling their eyes back, desperate to be set loose. They sensed the danger better than their grooms could see it. The men tried to ram timbers against the doors to hold them shut, but they were working in the dark for the torches had long since been snuffed out, and even the gateman had extinguished his brazier for fear that the wind might whirl burning fragments on to the thatched roofs of the courtyard buildings and set the whole manor ablaze.

  In all the commotion, no one noticed a solitary figure slip through the door of the darkened stillroom, a horn lantern hidden beneath his cloak. Once Father Cuthbert was safely inside and had managed to close the door again by throwing his whole weight against it, he set the lantern on the table and gazed round. The light barely illuminated the dim smudges of jars and boxes on the lower shelves, but the priest dared not risk lighting more candles for fear that the flames would be seen through the chinks in the shutters.

  The letter Lady Pavia had dispatched with Randel, informing Sir Nigel of Sir Harry’s death, would surely reach him any day now, if it hadn’t already. Master Wallace had been only too willing to agree that Sir Harry had suffered the fatal cut by accident. The last thing he wanted was to be forced to admit that a murder had taken place while he was in charge of the manor. But Father Cuthbert knew that Lady Pavia had a more suspicious mind than any of the king’s sheriffs. He was sure she would have voiced her doubts about his death in that letter to her cousin. Sir Harry’s corpse was already in the ground and, Father Cuthbert devoutly prayed, would be too decayed for any coroner to examine, but the tongues of the servants were still very much alive and wagging hard. And the bloodstained knife, his knife, was still lying wherever Rosa had hidden it, like a buried caltrop waiting for a careless step.

  Father Cuthbert had searched for it in the stillroom twice before, but each time the new maid had caught him and he’d been forced to invent some tale of having a bellyache for which he needed a cure. If she stumbled across the stained knife now, with his sign upon it, she was certain to remember his visits. He had to retrieve it.

  He had persuaded Lady Margery to summon the stillroom maid to the solar, convincing her that her slight headache required immediate attention before it proved fatal. He prayed that Lady Margery’s many ailments, which she could and would discuss at length, might occupy the girl for a good hour. But, even so, the priest knew he must make haste, for the maid might return at any time to fetch some unguent or herb for the old woman.

  He had searched many of the shelves before, though not all of them, but after long hours lying awake in a sweat of anxiety, he had convinced himself that if the knife was in or behind any of the jars or boxes on the rest of the shelves, the maid would have found it by now. Anyone taking over the running of a stillroom would surely have examined each jar in the first few days to learn what herbs and cures were stored there and which needed replenishing. So there was little point in wasting time searching the remainder of the shelves.

  He lifted the lantern, sweeping the floor with the candlelight, searching for any signs that the beaten earth had been disturbed. He pushed aside chests and rolled out kegs to peer behind them.

  He was kneeling on the floor, groping beneath the straw pallet of the maid’s bed, when a mocking peal of laughter burst out right behind him. He jerked round, his heart thumping, but he was alone and the door was still fastened, though rattling violently as a gust caught it. He shook himself. It must have been the wind whistling over the cracks, or through the thatch, though the noise had sounded uncannily human.

  A movement above his head made his heart race again. He held the lantern as high as he could, fearing that some imp was peering at him from the rafters, but it was only a bunch of dried herbs swaying. The draught howling in beneath the door or through the cracks in the shutters must have stirred it although, of a great many objects hanging from the beams – ladles, animal bones, bunches of feathers, dried snakeskins, herbs – only that one bunch was rocking quite so violently. Doubtless a mouse had just scurried over it, that was all.

  But all thoughts of mice and imps were elbowed aside
by another more insistent one. That was it! Why hadn’t he thought of looking up there? That was where the witch had hidden it, up on those beams or on the tops of the walls where they met the thatch. Even when the door was opened to bright sunshine, anything up in the eaves would remain in permanent shadow, and none of the servants coming to the stillroom in search of a cure for a headache or a soothing syrup would ever think to find it there. It would be the perfect hiding place for the knife.

  Hob sat propped in the corner of the cave, his head lolling forward on to his chest. Beads of sweat ran down his nose, but he was shivering. He coughed, his chest heaving as he struggled for breath as spasm after spasm racked his thin body. He flopped sideways and Luke hauled on his sleeve, trying to drag him upright. Hob cried out as his bruised back was dragged across the rough wall.

  ‘Sit up, Hob,’ Luke whispered, darting an anxious glance towards Uriel. ‘You’ll not cough as much then.’

  But Hob whimpered, struggling feebly to lie down. ‘Tired, Luke, tired.’

  ‘I’ll hold you. But you have to stop coughing, Hob, else Brother Praeco’ll think the demon’s still in you and beat it out again.’

  It was easier to hide Hob’s coughing when the cave was full of the bustle of people eating or praying, but most were lying silent around the fire now. The only sounds in the smoky chamber were the snores and farts of the sleepers, their groans and rustles as they turned over on the rocky floor. It must mean it was night – at least, Luke supposed it was – but there was no day or night down there, only firelight or darkness.

  Luke wriggled his arm as gently as he could around his brother and pulled his head against his shoulder. As Hob coughed, he pressed his grubby hand over the child’s mouth, trying to stifle the sound, but it only made him cough more. His brother didn’t seem to remember much about that terrible night, except the pain. Hob said it was the demons who’d hurt him. Luke said nothing. He knew it was a demon, a demon inside him. He tried to tell himself that he’d done it to save Hob, or they’d both have been cast out from the Chosen Ones, like that man Alfred, and what lay waiting for them up there was a million times worse than any beating.

  But sometimes, as he fought from nightmare into waking, Luke found himself whispering that he hated God, which terrified him, for then he knew the demon was devouring him from the inside, like a great worm. What if he shouted those words in his dreams? What if he couldn’t stop them? He fought to keep himself awake. He dared not sleep, for fear the demon would wake.

  Brother Praeco was still in his own quarters in one of the smaller burial chambers back along the tunnel. Raguel was with him. Luke knew he liked her best and hoped she would keep him occupied for many hours. Phanuel would never tell the Prophet that Hob was still coughing, but Uriel most certainly would. He lifted his head, trying to peer over to the niche where she lay. He could just make out her hunched body. She seemed asleep, but you could never be sure.

  Hob coughed again and someone sat up. Luke groaned, as they slid towards him. ‘Here, let him sip this,’ the figure whispered. ‘It’s warm. It might soothe him.’

  It was Phanuel. She pushed a horn beaker into his hands and, with an anxious look towards the sleeping Uriel, slithered back to her place close to the fire.

  Luke held the beaker to his brother’s lips. At first the boy resisted, but then he swallowed a sip or two.

  The sound of grating stone above made those on the ground stir and half struggle up. A blast of cold air shot into the cave, sending clouds of ash and burning sparks flying about the chamber. The Chosen cursed and slapped themselves as the sparks fell on bare skin, clothes and dry bracken. The wind roared above the hole as if a great dragon was flying overhead. Moments later, David clambered down the pole ladder, and the stone was pushed rapidly back into place by hands somewhere above in the darkness. He stepped over the prone bodies and hurried down the tunnel.

  ‘God preserve us,’ Friar Tom muttered. ‘I pity those saints on guard up there. Sounds as if the whole world is a-wailing and gnashing its teeth.’

  Brother Praeco emerged from the tunnel, his face red and sweating, buckling a leather belt around his robe. Raguel came scurrying after, carrying his huge cloak of animal pelts. She was clad only in a thin shift and as she struggled to help the Prophet don the heavy cloak, she passed between Luke and the fire. The firelight glowed through the fine linen of her shift. Luke felt his face grow hot, unable to tear his gaze from the curve of her breasts and buttocks beneath the transparent cloth.

  David coming up behind, must have seen the lad’s expression, for he glanced sharply at Raguel’s body, then bent down and grabbed the front of Luke’s shirt, jerking him so suddenly to his feet that Hob’s head, which had rested on Luke’s shoulder, banged against the rock wall. The little boy yelped.

  ‘You, lad, come with us.’

  Luke felt Hob wrapping his small sweaty hands about his leg.

  ‘Stay quiet. I’ll be back soon, I swear,’ Luke whispered.

  But his brother clung to him.

  David wrenched Hob away and shoved Luke forward. ‘Don’t keep the Prophet waiting.’

  Smoke and ash whirled about the chamber once more as the stone trapdoor was dragged aside, and hands reached down to help Brother Praeco clamber up through the hole. David pushed Luke ahead of him. Luke straddled the ladder, his stomach twisting in knots, his legs as wobbly as a newborn colt’s. He stared helplessly down at his brother. Tears were streaming down little Hob’s face.

  ‘Don’t cry. Don’t let them see you cry,’ Luke mouthed at him.

  But David was already prodding him from below, driving him upward, up into the Great Desolation.

  A gust of wind flung Sara off balance and she cried out as her shoulder struck a tree. She stood a moment. She felt as if her breath was being sucked from her mouth by the force of the wind. Maybe it would be easier to walk once she was inside the shelter of the forest, but she was afraid to enter. The dark tangle of trees on the rise above her was in constant motion as if they were not solid at all but a huge rolling wave.

  She stared back at the village. Before the sun had set, most of the women had already struggled further up the hill with what little they possessed or could carry. And it was as well they had, for the tide was already thundering towards the shore. In a few hours the sea would be crashing over Aldith’s house again and all those down near the beach, as it had the night Janiveer had been swept ashore. But were the villagers any safer on the hillside? The wind was tearing the thatch from cottages, sending boards and shutters spinning through the air as if they were autumn leaves. Would a single building be left standing by morning?

  Sara pushed herself against the wind, inching forward through the forest towards the cliff top. Several times, she fell to her knees and had to claw her way up again. The wind howled through the branches, cracking them as if they were twigs. The dry ground shook beneath her feet as somewhere a tree came crashing down, its own branches smashing through those of other trees as it fell. Sara stared fearfully up at the dark canopy towering over her. The earth had been parched for so long it could not anchor the roots, and half the trees were dying. Who could tell which might fall next?

  What was she doing there? Janiveer might not even come, and if she did, how could a boy like Harold stand against her? Sara could hear her mocking laughter, see the scorn in her face. It was useless. She should turn back, find somewhere to shelter till the wind had blown itself out. What was the point of surviving so much only to be crushed in the forest?

  She turned to retreat, but as she did, she glimpsed a flash of something bright between the thrashing bushes. She strained to peer into the darkness. There it was again, a glimmer of light, red and yellow. A fire! Harold must already be up there on the cliff top. He’d lit the fire as they’d agreed. He was scarcely older than Luke, but he had guts, did that lad. She knew how terrified he must be, yet still he’d come. She couldn’t leave a boy to face that witch alone.

  Noll grabbed Luke’s
shirt and hauled him up through the hole. Moments later, David clambered out behind him. Luke could see nothing of where he was, for the dim red glow of the fire flickering in the chamber below illuminated only the edge of a stone floor, but he guessed they must be in some kind of building or courtyard. Then the stone was pushed back into place and the light vanished.

  Luke, like Hob and all the new initiates, had been led down into the chambers blindfolded. He remembered the sensation of walking over grass and weeds, then over flat stone, so he’d always imagined that the cave must lie beneath a building, but now he was not so sure. The wind roared around him, almost knocking him sideways, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he thought he could see clouds racing through the night sky. Yet there were walls too.

  ‘Master, see the roof is already torn away and—’ David leaped aside as something heavy crashed to the floor, exploding into fragments.

  ‘Outside! Quickly,’ the Prophet commanded, stumbling the few paces to one of the walls. He groped for a handle. As he dragged the door open, the wind barged through the gap and he tottered backwards. Regaining his balance, he pushed his way outside. Luke, Noll and David wrestled with the blast as they struggled to follow. Brambles tore at Luke’s breeches and loose stones rolled under his feet. After the fug of the cave, the wind bit through his clothes, chilling him to the marrow. He wrapped his arms around himself, huddling in the lee of the three men. Indeed, they were all having to press themselves tightly together just to be heard over the roar.

  David had his mouth close to the Prophet’s ear, but he was still forced to shout. ‘Master, the whole church could come down and the Chosen will be entombed alive. We need to move them.’

  ‘No!’ the Prophet bellowed. ‘They are hidden in the cleft of the rock, as Moses was, until God’s wrath passes over. Like Noah in the ark, they will ride unharmed through flood and tempest, and when the world is cleansed of the stench of sin, God will build his new kingdom with the Chosen.’