by Max Gilbert
'What's going on?' Miles panted.
'They've got Soulis,' said Larktwist. 'Where are your horses? Mine ran away.'
'In that clump of rowans by the stream. There!'
They packed Blaise, unconscious, over his own saddle, and Miles managed to get Straccan astride the other horse. 'You lead that one; I'll take this,' he said. 'Let's keep out of their sight. I think they're pretty well occupied.'
The night was getting warmer.
They dragged him on a hurdle, a strange stiff bundle that howled and screamed but could not struggle because they had wrapped him in lead, a sheet of the lead for the new cisterns which had been stacked in the yard. They had bound and laid him on it, folding the lead round him like a cloak, pressing it down over his shoulders and in below his knees. His screaming head stuck out at one end, his flapping feet at the other.
Everything they needed they had brought from Skelrig. A cart was piled with logs and brushwood, and atop the logs was tied a great iron cauldron, swaying and lurching over the rough ground like a monstrous humped beast. Some men carried long poles and a length of chain.
They made a great pyre in the centre of the Nine Stane Rig and lashed the poles over it as a tripod from which the cauldron hung. They were silent now, the only sound the mad screaming of their prisoner, so continuous it seemed he could not be drawing breath. They looped a chain round his ankles and suspended him head down in the cauldron. Someone thrust a torch into the pyre, and the flames, encouraged by jugs of oil and bowls of grease, leaped to envelop the pot and its dreadful contents. The screaming was followed by prolonged howling as he called on his devils and, at the last, on God.
The molten lead engulfed his head and his crumpling body. Then there was just the crackling of the fire and the soughing of the wind.
Chapter 38
Servants fetched an improvised litter for Blaise, and between them, Miles and Larktwist got Straccan up to the hall.
'Whoops,' said Bane, catching him as he pitched forward, and heaving him on to a bench. 'Come on, ups-a-daisy, let's get you to bed.' He propped Straccan along to a small mural room, away from the noise of the hall, and having got him undressed and between blankets, went to find the children, who had gravitated to the kitchen.
'Sir Blaise is very ill, and your dad's poorly too,' he said, swinging Gilla up in his arms. 'Can you help look after them?'
'Of course I can. What shall I do?'
Bane felt a tug at his tunic and found Hob at his side.
'Hob too,' said Gilla.
'Good boy. The old man just needs rest, I think; there's nothing else we can do for him. But your dad will need a tub of clean water, to wipe him down when he gets hot. Will you get that. Hob? And clean straw; what he's lying on will get wet.' Hob nodded and made for the door. 'And Gilla, somewhere in your Dad's baggage there's a bag full of bits of willow bark. Will you look for it? We have to brew medicine with it, and keep getting it down him.'
The child ran out of the kitchen. Bane looked out of the arrow loop in the direction of the Nine Stane Rig and saw the flickering glow of fire. 'Let em get on with it,' he muttered, crossing himself. 'Good riddance!'
Straccan could hear screaming, faint and far off. 'What?' he mouthed, but though his dry lips moved, no sound came from them. Gilla rinsed another towel in the bucket of water and laid it on his burning forehead. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin before she touched him, and when the towel baked dry, she soaked it again and replaced it.
Hob stood on a stool at the arrow loop, looking out towards the hills. He'd seen the people leave with their prisoner and he could hear the distant shouting and cheering.
'What is it?' Gilla asked, touching his hand. He shook his head and shrugged. She gave him a quick bright smile and went back to the bedside. 'Hob, this water's got warm.' He nodded and picked up the bucket.
They put the invalids in one room, the better to care for them. They lay oblivious to everything, one tossing and muttering as fever waxed and waned, the other corpse-like but for the faint rise and fall of his chest under the blankets. Now Hob came into his own, tending the sick men with a gentle competence that gave him new authority. His demands, filtered through Gilla, for medicines and comforts for his patients were met with alacrity.
'That boy's a born doctor,' Miles observed, obediently warming a blanket by the fire for Hob to wrap round Sir Blaise after he sponged him down. The full tale of Hob's rescue of Gilla from the Nine Stane Rig had emerged, and when, with vividly descriptive mime, he described how he had felled the witch, all those in the hall had clapped and stamped their applause.
Hob was master of the sickroom but Miles and Bane helped lift and turn the men who were too heavy for him alone. Like errand boys, they took it in turns to fetch hot stones, warmed in relays in the kitchen ovens, to pack in towels round Sir Blaise night and day, and round Straccan too when the shivering fit was on him.
'What's the matter with Sir Blaise?' Gilla asked.
Hob banged himself over the heart region and wagged his fingers several times to indicate something amiss with the heartbeat.
'Will he die?'
Hob shook his head fiercely. Not if he could help it. But he kept up a perpetual barrage of half-threatening prayer to God-and- Mary. Make him better, make them both well, or I'll never go to church again. I'll never dust you, I won't bring you any more flowers. One of his self-imposed duties at the tower had been to keep the chapel clean and occasionally wash the statue, an ancient squat almost featureless Virgin holding a shapeless lump that bore no resemblance to a baby. I know you can do it, Hob nagged silently. You can do anything. So come on! That's what you're for! Father Kenneth would not have agreed with him but Father Kenneth wasn't there, and Hob followed the constant- waterwearethaway-stone school of faith.
On the third morning, the old knight opened his eyes. Hob sent Gilla running for Sir Miles. By the time Miles reached his bedside Sir Blaise was asleep again, but Miles sat patiently until, hours later, the old man's eyes opened once more and his pale gaze found Miles.
'Told you ...' he said, his voice not much more than a thread.
'Not to go there ... disobeyed me.'
'Forgive me,' said Miles, wretchedly. 'How could I let you go alone?' He bowed his head, and his tears fell, surprisingly hot, on the old man's cold waxen hand. Sir Blaise seemed asleep again, and presently Hob chivvied Miles away. Bane found him later, sitting by the fire in the hall, and put a cup of mulled wine in his hand. 'What happened up there?' he asked at last, having nearly burst with the effort not to probe too soon.
Miles frowned. 'It's queer. I know I saw something, and I know it was ... oh, Christ, terrible. But I can't seem to remember what it was. I followed Sir Blaise. He didn't know I was there. I hid outside the ring. He told me not to go but I feared for him; he was pretty groggy but he wouldn't admit it. I saw him doing something, he sort of drew in the air with his hands and he was chanting in some foreign lingo. I thought, when his hands moved they left marks, like lines of light hanging in the air. But they faded, and I couldn't see them any more. It took a lot out of him; he was pretty wobbly. That star-thing he wore round his neck, he buried that too, beside that big fallen stone.
'All the time, he was chanting and getting more and more breathless, and then he just sighed and gasped and fell down.
'That's when I went in. And that's where it gets all blurred. I had a real job to get to him. God knows why, but it was hard to move in there. And my ears hurt. And it got harder and harder to breathe. But I got to him, and he gave me that string of relics and told me what to do. It felt as if a strong man was hanging on to both my arms, to try and hold me. It sounds daft, but it was the hardest thing I've ever done.
'I thought I saw—I don't know, it was so dark and I couldn't look at it—something struggling in a silver net. Something terrible.' Miles's cheerful young face was twisted with distress and his eyes had a faraway haunted look. 'Suddenly Richard was there, then I thought the lightning
had hit us all; there was a God-awful noise and then nothing.'
'Drink your wine before it gets cold,' said Bane.
'What about Soulis?'
'What about him?'
'Will there be trouble, them killing him?'
'God knows! Perhaps not. Though, whatever he was, it was murder.'
It was a week altogether before Sir Blaise could travel and by then Straccan had been on his feet for three days. Although the old knight tired quickly and had not yet recovered his full strength, he was able to sit a horse. It was the last day of June.
The bustle of their departure filled the bailey. The sergeant-at-arms was left in charge pending the arrival of a new lord, and Julitta's servants had elected to remain until then, with a reasonable anticipation of being taken on the strength when the new lord came.
Farewells were said with promises to meet again. Straccan had shared Soulis's letters with Blaise who, taking the journey in easy stages, was riding with an escort of two men for Roxburgh and King William. Sir Miles would return to Durham. Straccan, Bane and Gilla would journey home by the Great North Road, and once Gilla was safe, Straccan would find King John.
They had put their heads together about Hob who stood forlornly by the kitchen door, watching the comings and goings the loading of pack pony and mule. Blaise, not yet mounted, called to him.
'We all have good cause to thank you, Hob. And none of us wants to leave you. What do you want to do? Listen, and tell me. You can stay here and live with your grandsire, if that is your wish. In any event I will see he is paid a pension; he will not go cold or hungry ever again. Or you can go to Sir Richard's home in England, and he will treat you as a son. Or, would you like to come with me? I will take you, after I've seen the king, to the priory at Coldinghame, where you can learn the healing arts from Brother Alan. He'll welcome a young helper. They are gentle folk at the priory. But the work won't be easy. It will take years to learn.'
Hob was smiling and crying all at once; tears ran down his face and dripped off his chin and he was nodding so hard he sprayed tears in all directions. He seized Sir Blaise's hand and kissed it.
'Well,' Bane said, 'that seems settled.'
Gilla was crying too, and she hugged Hob. Til miss you,' she said. 'I won't forget you. I love you, Hob.'
Straccan put his hands on the boy's shoulders. Hob had grown, surely, in just this past week: he was taller and broader. 'I owe you my daughter's life. I could never thank you enough if I spent all my days trying. My home is yours whenever you want it, and I am your servant if ever you need me.'
'Where's Sir Miles?' Larktwist asked. He was to accompany the young knight on his journey south, until his calling waylaid him. Just then Miles emerged from the hall and stood on the steps above them, looking down.
'Sir Blaise,' he called. The old man looked questioningly at him. Miles ran down the steps and across the yard to Sir Blaise's stirrup.
'Sir,' he said, all in a rush, for he'd rehearsed it and must get it out before his nerve failed. 'Sir. Master, you spoke of your nephew who died, he that was your pupil. You said there was no one now to whom you could pass on your learning.' Miles stared at the foot in the stirrup, not daring to raise his eyes. 'Sir,' he said again, gathering courage, 'I have no parents, no kin save my Uncle Hoby your friend, no holding, no wife or sweetheart. What I mean is, Sir, if you need another student, well, will I do? I will serve you with all my heart and learn to ... to watch and guard, if you will teach me.'
Blaise leaned down and embraced him. 'I won't ask if you've thought this over,' he said. 'I see that you have. You must go and tell your uncle—you can ride that far with Sir Richard—and then, when you're ready, join me at Coldinghame. God be with you, boy.' Blaise, his escort and his baggage, and Hob, nervous but proud on a Skelrig pony, rode out of the gate and took the Roxburgh road.
A stable man brought Straccan's party their horses. Now, at last, they turned their heads towards home.
Chapter 39
A few fishing boats and two bigger trading vessels moved sluggishly at anchor on the ebbing tide. Crewmen lounged on decks for none could sail as long as the onshore wind pinned them there. Gulls wheeled and screamed above, smoke streamed westward from the chimneys ashore, and more gulls picked along the smelly tideline of weed and dead shellfish.
On the shore sat a few ragged abjurers, criminals condemned to exile but unable to afford a passage oversea, out of reach of justice. Slowly starving, they picked the shoreline as eagerly as the gulls, and ate them too, when they could catch any. From time to time one or more would wade into the water, skinny arms raised in pleading, to wail in vain at the men aboard the trading vessels. Those who could pay bought passage to France, Flanders or Holland; but these penniless leftovers had no hope of safe exile; they must stay on the beach between land and sea until they starved to death, and good riddance.
The hulk Mary Maid was old and small, and looked every inch the smuggler she was. Her crew hadn't expected to put to sea today, or tomorrow either, not with this relentless southeaster.
When the woman came aboard seeking passage to France the skipper eyed her up and down, not that he could see much of her in that all-enveloping cloak; she might be young or old, but she was certainly female and therefore bad luck. He spat contemptuously over the side and refused to take her, until she put a purse in his hand. Then he peered inside and changed his mind. His crew began to argue, but he was the skipper.
While they argued, the wind changed.
A howl rose from the abjurers, seeing vessels suddenly preparing to sail. They surged into the sea, screeching and praying; one even grabbed at a dangling rope that had no business to be there and tried to haul himself aboard the Mary Maid. It took several blows with a boat-hook to knock him back into the water, where he floated face down and bleeding. His fellows in adversity took no notice of him. It was every man for himself. The Mary Maid headed southward, sail taut.
There was a tiny shelter on deck, made of hides tacked on a wooden framework, and the skipper ushered the woman inside, out of sight. His men stared enviously at his disappearing back and grinned at one another, but after a few moments he backed out again, pale and cursing, and laid about him with a rope's knotted end to make them pay for his embarrassment.
Inside the shelter the woman sat still as an image, but her lips moved silently as if she was praying.
The water ran murmuring along the sides, and the wind blew the Mary Maid steadily down to where the Tweed joined the true sea, and the heaving swell grew strong.
Through a gap in the hides, sunlight struck into the shelter. The woman stirred, drew from her belt pouch a flattish piece of grey translucent quartz and angled it towards the light. Shaking back the hood of her mantle, she stared intently into the crystal, seeking her enemy.
Kneeling at the streamside, sunlight hot on her back, Janiva was washing her shift, turning it in the water and beating at a stain with a flat stick. Smooth multicoloured pebbles seemed mere inches below the surface, but here at this deep pool her arm's full length could only just reach them. She sat back on her heels, wringing the water out of the garment. The blue-jewelled flash of a kingfisher caught her eye as it rose from the water clasping a tiny silver fish in its orange beak.
She felt suddenly cold. The light had changed--she looked up the sun still shone but its disc was cold and white, dead as the full moon. The water, a moment before alive with sunlight, now looked grey, cold and hard. Like stone.
She leaned over the pool, curious, off-guard, reached out a hand to touch the grey gleaming surface—and was caught.
Julitta drew in her breath sharply, staring at the face, small and distinct, in the crystal's smoky heart. A woman, and young to have such power! There she was at last, the meddler: the lowborn interfering trull who'd released that bone-pedlar Straccan from the spell which would have rid them of him and, worse, somehow warded his brat from the power of the master and thereby brought all their plans to ruin. Because of her, Arlen and
many others would die. Because of her, Julitta had lost everything, all she had striven for, and must flee into exile to wait on King Philip's coffin-cold mercy.