Haunted: Dark Delicacies® III

by Del Howison

  Three days ago my virginity was but a shadow that would darken another cloister wall. How swiftly this change of fortune visited me. I never dreamed I would be betrothed but assumed I would remain a wilting maid my whole life. My sisters were married, but I was told there was nothing left for me. Perhaps I misunderstood. I sift through every handful of spilt words these last months, but I remember nothing except the endless procession of ministers, priests, and manor lords come to counsel my father on spoiled crops, uprisings, and political strife as he remains loyal to Paris. I do not recall hearing of a marriage contract, or who the visitors might have been who would bring the bride price. Then three nights ago, Mother’s proclamation of betrothal came to me in my bedchambers like the Angel’s annunciation to the Virgin. I am to wed the son of a duke in the Duchy of Normandy.

  I have only thirteen Yuletides.

  As Mother and I walk into the weak light of morning, my companions weep piteously from the chateau gate. One secretes a small bottle of rose, cardamom, and cumin in a silk handkerchief as a parting gift. We had whispered excitedly about the marriage: Would I run a big household? Would I have lots of children? Is my betrothed handsome? My friends assured me that with my flaxen hair and azure eyes I was pretty enough to love. And I believed them. For a moment, at least.

  Mother sees my distress as I leave my companions, and places a hand on my cheek, withering resignation in her touch. “Worry not,” she says. “In your trousseau are great swaths of Italian damask that are blue as robins’ eggs, linen fair as fresh cream, velvet black as a murder’s wings, and fine woolens to fend off the damp chill of Normandy.”

  I do not recall seeing these fabrics in my trousseau, much less the armoire that holds them. Only the carefully wrapped packs of heavily salted fish and pork, the bulky sacks of trancheor loaves, jugs of cider, dried cheese rinds, and other rations. Far more than needed for four days’ travel. I suppose one cannot underestimate the appetites of men.

  Wrinkled red faces peer from the kitchen. Breezes nuzzle the beech leaves overhead as I am lifted into the gaily colored cart and seated amongst plentiful furs, which I gather around me. I find some toiletries and a few small bundles of rations buried in the furs. It is eerily quiet. No saltarellos, singers, or noisemakers to celebrate my fortune and wish me well.

  “Where are the men who serve my betrothed?” I ask Mother. “Why do they not retrieve me as they did my sisters?”

  “We must hurry,” she says and withdraws her regard. I fall voiceless.

  Leaves crackling beneath their feet, the men in ivory belts brandish their swords, swear oaths to great angels, and troth fealty to my mother’s amaranthine beauty. My heart floats like cobwebs on a breeze when I hear such words. I sit motionless, suspended in the rapture of their praise for Mother’s spiritual and physical perfections. Then they mount their horses with a shout, heraldry held aloft. The horses clop clop clop and we move away from the chateau.

  I brush away the silt of confusion. I am excited to one day soon have the service of such fine warriors who speak words of admiration, to one day inspire the good deeds and thoughts of a man who fights for both me and mild Mother Mary. One day soon, I will be the one protected and honored. (Then again, the wedding might be some years from now. No one can say.) In the meantime, I can write letters to my mother and sisters, and I love my books. Surely I can have more of those too.

  After some distance, I gather my courage and skirts to crawl forward to the curtains. I part them on the far left side to reveal the patchwork bocage of Bretagne passing behind us. The black hedges of oak quilt the borders between great squares of dark verdant grasses dotted with ashy broom bushes and the feathery heads of heather wearing tiny jewels of dew. My tongue curls over my lips as if to taste the succulent vegetation. Then the sour stench of the horses worms into the feast as one canters up to my cart. The squire runs alongside to catch up. The man riding the horse is layered in chain mail and a bright red poplin tunic swathed at the waist with an ivory belt. I am frightened by the breadth of his meaty jaw, the cruel squint of his eyes, and the faded mulberry scar ripping the bridge of his nose. A thin veil of benevolence spreads over his otherwise dark face as he speaks to me. “Hail, little one. It goes well?”

  I nod.

  “You are sick from the cart, no?”

  I shake my head.

  He raises his head to speak to the others. “Hitch a cart to this one! She is strong as an ox!”

  My stomach turns sickeningly with embarrassment as they laugh. I let the curtain close and fall back into darkness. The warriors wheedle me to come out again, but instead I curl up on the furs and sleep until hunger burns all the way into my mouth. My eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. Small blades of light slash through the swaying curtains from the other end of the cart. I fumble for a small bundle of food and devour my rugged, salty déjeuner like a starved beggar. The thick, painful lump in my stomach afterward reminds me that for a few days I will have to endure poor foods.

  The cart stops once for a brief rest as a magpie harshly chirps areprepreprep in the gray branches with yellowish leaves. An ill omen, but also a warning of armed men nearby. Who is he warning of our presence? After emptying my chamber pot over the open lip, I cautiously slide out of the cart and visit the trail. It seems so broken already, as if we were never on a solid road at all. The men in chain mail relieve themselves, murmuring quietly to one another. Their cheeks turn ashen in the mottled light, eyes widening, lips wet with argument. Are they afraid? They cannot possibly be afraid, they who have jousted for Mother. They who have killed infidels, Englishmen, perhaps even brethren. They who have one another. They are never alone. Like me.

  “Let us go, little one!” the frightening man calls to me, wincing as his squire helps him into his saddle. A handsome man helps me scramble back into the cart (“Hup!”), where I hide like a field mouse in the folds of fur. I have never been out of the chateau for more than a few hours. I grow more nervous by the moment, as if evil spirits are stitching back and forth through my skin, around my bones and fingers.

  As we settle down for night, the darkness ladles generous spoonfuls of dread on my skin. The men eat salted fish and drink weak beer with sober looks that skitter loosely around us into the darkness beyond. I cannot understand why they are fasting. It is neither Lent, nor Advent, nor any holy day. Later in my cart’s bed, I shiver from the wolves howling as they prowl sheep fields in the distance. Every small crunch of twig and stone under the men’s feet makes me feel vulnerable to danger rather than protected. A thick heat chokes my nose and mouth as small sobs swell from my stomach. The rummy musk of dead animal skins fills my head as I inhale small fistfuls of air. I clasp the little prayer book against my chest, wordlessly repeating the prayers to The Virgin until sleep overtakes me sometime just before dawn.

  The cart has been moving for some time, it seems, when I finally awaken to the sound of my own rapid, even breathing. Something feels profoundly different about the air beyond the cart’s curtains. A breeze swoops in to bite my nose with a frosty beak. My entire body aches by degrees, my neck and shoulders crying loudest when I shrug them from my bedding. I gather my skirt to crawl to the cart’s end, and as the cart wobbles, I scrape my knees.

  This time when I draw back the curtains, the murky, crippled fingers of fir trees grasp at us from all sides. The soldiers sit bolt upright in their saddles, grizzled faces sweating, eyes fixed on the ominous gaps between the trees. No one notices that I lean far from the cart, twisting upward to see the unbroken canopy of ancient birch limbs whose gnarled, hairy branches strangle one another for the retreating sunlight. The corpselike bark of the trunks contrasts starkly against the somber pines. The damp ground is clotted with rotting leaves that cling to the horses’ hooves as they stomp onward in a death march. A squire slips in the damp every moment or so, then scrambles to get his footing as if a cadaver’s hand might burst through the forest floor to seize his ankle.

  I begin to imagine the most ter
rible things lurking in the darkness of the trees. Filthy naked things with black eyes, bloated bellies, and cracked claws. This place feels cursed with its silence and shadows.

  “Where are we?” I dare whisper.

  The frightening soldier glances at me in a panic, as if by speaking I had broken an oath. Then, a riot of murmurs breaks out from the forest growth and a wind hurtles past us as if chased by the Devil….

  I know exactly where we tread.

  We are in the heart of Paimpont, the hopeless woods where lovers are turned to stone by heartbroken witches, and hapless travelers wander into labyrinths to be devoured by godless monsters.

  The air blurs as another layer of darkness settles on the narrow path, growing ever more bumpy with pallid tree roots that writhe up through the dirt. I fall back on my side as the cart jerks and rocks, bruising my shoulder. Terror drums in my chest as I try to imagine why we have come so far west. To loathsome Paimpont. I have slept so much that I did not notice we have been following the sun. Prince Jesus, I pray silently. Please take pity on me. I pray that Hell gain no mastery over me, a virgin.

  Eventually the cart rolls to a stop. I hear the general noise of camp being set for the night along with the smaller noises of twilight twittering in the surrounding undergrowth. An argument breaks out amongst the men as to who will forage for firewood. They fight as if one had been asked to sacrifice his squire. The frightening man says that they are to search together and not to roam far from the camp. To watch each other. One of the horses already carries bundles of wood from our last camp.

  The frightening soldier builds a small fire from it as the squires disperse. “Come out, little one,” he orders.

  Wrapped tightly in my cloak, prayer book tucked in my muff, I shuffle to the cart’s opening and draw back the curtains. The brisk air pinches my cheeks. I hear no wildlife, no insects. The solemn movements of the men underscore the darkness of this place. The crackling of brush under the squires’ feet echoes loudly, like the sound of scourges on a prisoner’s back.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Offered pork and bread by the frightening man, I shake my head. The men sit around the low fire and eat salted fish again. I want to ask them why they fast when there is no holy day. No reason to discipline themselves this way. Perhaps I am wrong. The days have turned around in my head like spinning leaves as they fall from the gusts of change. Instead I read from my prayer book by the fire’s light, ignoring the anxious stares I draw from the men as they gulp weak beer.

  Twilight dwindles to obscurity. I notice a breach in the crowded tree trunks that leads to a clearing of sweet grasses enclosed by hunched oak trees. Only the densest of shadows flickers in the grove from our firelight. I watch the dancing shadows, a carole of bleak brushstrokes on the fickle canvas of light. I am startled to find the soldiers have surrounded me from behind. They carry torches, a polished pewter urn of water, blankets of bleached poplin …

  I shrink from their smudged, haunted faces. “What is this?”

  “Your father is in grave danger,” the frightening man says. “There is something you must do for him. It is the only thing that can save him.”

  My father is not ill that I know, but he is in considerable danger from threats of war and all the troubles of nobility. “I cannot imagine what you mean for me,” I say. “I am just a girl. What can I do for my father but marry well and have a son?”

  His big calloused hands grasp my shoulders, turning me toward the clearing. He stoops to speak into my ear, gripping me firmly. “It is a simple thing. You must sit there, in the grove, tonight until the wee hours.”

  “No!” I cry out, digging my heels into the damp earth, wedging them against a clump of roots. “I beg you, sir! Not in the wood!”

  He pushes me forward as I lean back against him, shaking my head desperately. “No! I beg you! No! No!” I sob uncontrollably as he lifts me, his scarred hands easily overpowering me as he carries me into the clearing. I am just a rag doll to him. My feet kick backward against his shins, but my heels painfully strike his metal guards.

  As we enter the clearing the other soldiers chant a monk’s prayer while they spread the white poplin blankets on the grass under the bleeding smoke of the torches. They circle the blankets three times, then set the pewter urn of water to one side and stab a torch in the ground on the other. I sag in my captor’s hands to resist him. “We are watching you carefully, little one. Nothing will happen to you.”

  Rimy tears streak my cheeks as I turn up my face to the distant heavens. So I must sit in the cursed woods. Alone. What would my family say?

  What would my betrothed say?

  “But why must I do this?”

  “That,” he says, turning me toward the urn, “is holy water. And that,” he says, turning me toward the torch, “is made of wood from Jerusalem. More than that, I cannot say.”

  The frightening man sets me down on the blankets, and I slouch with misery, listening to their retreating footsteps. The torch awakens the shadowy dancers against the naked trees. They resume their grotesque dance around me with macabre limbs capering in the smoke. I bury my eyes in my muff, dampening the fur heavily with sobs of fear. I rub my nose in the fur and pull out my prayer book, hands trembling as I leaf open to my favorite prayer. I read aloud.

  I sit here for some hours, reading the prayers over and over. My tears dry as I pray. There is no danger for me here. I sigh, set the prayer book open on the blanket. The poplin is unspeakably soft, a delicate weave of pure threads. I am wondering if they have taken this from my trousseau when something rustles beyond the staggering gambol of the shadow dancers. I look up expectantly. Perhaps my strange vigil is ended and the men are coming for me—

  Another hiss as something steps through the overgrowth.

  The sloping snout of a pale beast nods between the trunks of the clearing. The creature bares its teeth viciously, swiping a snowy hoof across the grasses in challenge. It tilts its wooly head to examine me for a heartbeat. I stop breathing as it lopes toward me like a broken apostle with a holy message. Tears of awe and disbelief flood my face as it brandishes the blanching steeple from its forehead. It raises its head for a moment as if to sniff the air, wan lips trembling. Its sallow eyes glisten with distrust and heartache.

  There is nothing in the world for me but this feral miracle. I hold up my open hand to it, as if offering a horse a turnip. Cautiously it sniffs at the pewter urn, laps the water noisily, then paces around the white poplin blankets as it turns an eye to the torch. I admire the supple neck when the snout swings about to lick my palm. I shudder as the rough tongue sweeps my delicate skin with broad, leonine strokes. The back legs fold beneath it, and with breathless grace it rests its muscular, powerful jaw on my lap. I tentatively stroke the wiry alabaster mane. I notice with no little horror that the ridges of the blanching steeple are stained with blood. Its ears flicker contentedly, and its breath rumbles like a weary horse, yet something deadly and brutish pulses beneath that waxy pelt. The blood in my hands throbs faintly in response.

  The sharp whistle of arrows breaks our communion. I scream, throwing my hands over my head. The men have hidden themselves up in the trees and are shooting nets at the beast as it suddenly rears up to meet the challenge. Tangled but not tamed, the creature thrashes at the heavy mesh, slicing it cleanly in places without even a fray. More men rush the trapped beast with their swords but are confounded by the ghastly maw and threatening stance. It leans back on its haunches, squints its sallow eyes, and howls like a damned thing as it wags its frightful jaw. The cries shake some of the weaker men to their knees, ivory belts dangling on the damp ground.

  But not the frightening man and his closest companions. They lunge toward the creature with massive swords drawn, slashing at it to drive it backward. Another volley of arrows sails earthward, pinning another net over the faltering creature. Its eyes begin to fade, to blink like a house cat by a fire. A foreleg bends beneath it awkwardly; a pink froth spatters the wan mout
h. The urn is knocked to the ground, the water surging over the gleaming lip to soak the forest floor. I then realize angrily that the “holy water” was poisoned with some kind of herb to make the creature succumb to the assault.

  With mounting anguish, I watch the creature fall prey to the trap. My miracle bound by the cruelty of ordinary men. Dreams, desires … everything innocent and simple flees from my girlish thoughts during the struggle until the creature’s jaw dips against its breast from the poison and it sleeps. The men quickly bind its legs and fit an odd harness over the sloping snout that grips the neck in a helpless position. The supple neck arcs forward, anchored to the forelocks.

  They spend some time examining the creature, as one fusses over flowers in the garden. Each expresses his admiration for the beast’s courage and fighting spirit, not to mention its strange anatomy. “But will the duke kill it?” one man asks.

  “The beast is a marvel. It should be seen,” another says. He was one whose knees weakened at the howls.

  “Perhaps,” the frightening man responds. “The horn alone is of immense magical value—or so I am told. Enough to save the Duchy of Bretagne for certain. And to have the whole beast, alive …” He hesitates, thinking. “We will go down in legend like our forefathers if we keep it alive for now. Like Arthur and Gawain. And the duke will want the honor of killing the wretched thing for whatever part he wishes.”

  “Legends!” the handsome man cries. “We celebrate!”

  They haul the drowsy beast closer to the periphery of the campsite. Soon, meat is simmering in pots and copious amounts of wine are spilling down gullets. I am not offered anything, nor am I spoken to for any matter. As they brag about the capture, wallowing excessively in glory, the men do not acknowledge me or my part in the treachery against magic itself. They strip off their armor, empty their boots of rocks. I cannot take my eyes off the pitiful beast in its bonds whilst they feast and drink themselves into oblivion.