The Powder of Death

by Julian Stockwin

  Jaried cautiously peered out. No one.

  He crawled out and took a ragged breath.

  One thing was certain. This was their usual trail to and from the castle. They’d be coming back this way and he’d been given a second chance.

  Carefully choosing a thicket near the big oak tree he squatted down and waited.

  After some time the easy cantering of horses and carefree banter floated towards him on the summer air, but unaccountably the horses stopped, even as the distant cries rose and faded.

  Then he had it: this was where the River Dene entered the forest and no doubt they’d stopped to quench their thirst after the hard riding.

  He waited but they did not resume. An occasional faint cry could still be heard but that was all. What was going on?

  Cautiously he made his way toward the sounds.

  The briskly flowing river had widened into a broad stretch before disappearing around a bend. And the riders were swimming there, naked.

  About to withdraw he saw a fallen tree, dark and rotten, that lay near submerged and at an angle from the bank. Edging towards it he felt that he’d been granted a miracle.

  Preparations would be simple and he had only to be in position for the next time and he stood fair to snatching back the reality of his fantasy.

  Jared crouched in the undergrowth the following day and the one after that, the seax in its scabbard strapped to his back and gleaming sharp after hours of attention.

  Then on the next day the horses came panting up. He peered out and there, in blazing reality, was the vile cur who this very day would meet justice by his own hand.

  With deadly concentration he watched them strip off and plunge in.

  He slipped soundlessly into the water by the dead tree and made his way to the snug little pool that lay hidden in its lee. There he remained and watched.

  Hoots and mock screams came from all over the wide expanse as the youths frolicked and splashed in the deeper water, but he had eyes for only one, upstream a little and lazily paddling down in the shallows – past him.

  With infinite care Jared took note of the positions of the others and their heedless sporting. In savage elation he knew that he was going to succeed.

  D’Amory drew nearer and nearer; Jared tensed, a loop of rough cordage gripped tightly in his hands.

  For the baron’s son the next instant was violent and incomprehensible as a rope suddenly clamped about his neck and wrenched him underwater. Dragged sideways helplessly he surfaced again, choking and heaving in the little pool and into a nightmare – the figure of a tattered, hairy demon with eyes of a hideous intensity … who held both the rope and a knife pricking at his throat.

  ‘A sound, and you’re spitted!’

  The scream died in his throat and he began trembling in terror. ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘Shut your mouth!’

  Beyond them the gleeful shouts continued, but after a time they fell away and cries of alarm rang out. There was aimless splashing about before one had the wit to realise that if D’Amory was in difficulties it were better to go downstream to find him.

  The sounds faded as they left but Jared didn’t stir, keeping a merciless grip on the rope and the point of the blade unwavering at the soft white throat.

  The cries returned, a note of panic in them and the nervous whickering of horses – then Jared heard them riding off in a body to get help.

  At last!

  ‘Out, you foul monster. Face down – over there!’

  Quickly he sat across the naked body and bound the hands securely, as with a trussed pig to market.

  ‘Up!’

  For the captive it was a brutal march, stumbling through undergrowth that whipped and tore at his nakedness under the burden of the terror of the unknown, but Jared knew only the surging of a fierce resolution.

  At the ruin he threw back the cellar hatch and prodded the whimpering D’Amory down, careful to keep his rope tether taut.

  It was a Stygian darkness below but he’d laid his plans well. A steel against flint, and the punkwood tinder took flame. Two candles were lit, which turned the vast space into an evilly illuminated echoing hell, catching the terror-stricken eyes and rendering perfect the stage for what he was about to do.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jerking the man forward Jared positioned him in front of a pillar, using the rope to fasten his hands behind it. The final scene was set.

  This miserable reptile was the rankest kind of craven vermin, who’d swaggered through life at the cost of those beneath him and hadn’t the guts to face a situation without the cloak of noble privilege.

  ‘Wh-who are y-you? What do you want with me?’

  Jared said nothing, hefting the seax. It was a long-bladed weapon with a blood guide down its middle and coming to a slender point of exquisite sharpness.

  Suddenly he lunged, the point stopping at the throat but bringing the first bright pinprick of blood.

  ‘No!’ D’Amory gobbled, his eyes hypnotised by the blade. ‘Mercy, I beg!’

  Jared relaxed the knife but now it pointed down to the fear-shrunken genitals, causing a contortion, a writhing in an extremity of fear.

  ‘I … I’ll give you a h-hundred marks – no, a thousand!’ he sobbed.

  ‘The baron’s cub is only worth a thousand?’

  ‘Ten! Thirty thousand – whatever you ask!’ There was hope in his voice, a way out by familiar means, anything but the pitiless death he could see in those eyes.

  ‘You’d go to a hundred thousand?’

  ‘Yes! Of course! I’ll borrow from my father the baron and my uncle and—’

  The knife whipped up again, and leaning close Jared hissed, ‘Not enough. There’s not enough riches in the kingdom to set against what you did!’

  ‘What did I do?’ D’Amory shrieked, seeing his hopes fade and disappear.

  ‘I’ll tell you. You defiled a poor dear innocent …’ he gulped, his eyes misting ‘… and cast her in the river …’

  The tears were blinding now and the knife trembled in his hand.

  ‘I couldn’t help it!’ he howled, ‘She bit me!’

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  In a blaze of unbearable emotion Jared stabbed forward wildly, only at the last split-second thinking to deflect the blade to avoid a killing stroke. It sank deep into the shoulder, bringing an inhuman screech from D’Amory that echoed about the old cellar.

  Curiously, it steadied him. In a detached way Jared pondered at how the blow felt just like sinking a knife into a tender cut of beef. The wound gaped and pulsed with blood, the dark-red stringy fibres of muscle tissue working each side of it.

  ‘For the love of Christ!’ D’Amory screamed from the edge of madness. ‘Mary the mother of God and all the saints, have mercy!’

  Still in an unnatural calm Jared lifted the blade and with the utmost deliberation traced a line, drawing beads of blood directly across the hairless chest.

  The shrieks were now deafening: he frowned in annoyance.

  Another line: this time down to the stomach.

  ‘Jesus! Sweet Jesus, save me!’

  It made him indignant. To call upon one who’d never once raised a hand to a soul on this earth.

  This time the line went across, deeper, and when he’d finished the screams were utterly unhinged, for flopping out of the belly were coils of slimy grey-green veined innards.

  Jared drew back in distaste, the wretched thrashing about of the body making the rupture worse. The man was now unreachable in his torment – was there any point in going on?

  Perhaps not.

  Closing his eyes for a brief moment Jared breathed, ‘I do this for you, my best beloved,’ and thrust out hard. The blade impaled the throat entirely through to grate against the backbone, the shrieks cut off in the same instant in a bubbling spray of blood.

  He turned the knife once in the wound and stepped back, watching unemotionally as the man’s life departed, leaving only a corpse
to twitch spasmodically.

  It was over.

  A wave of trembling reaction seized him. After a moment it subsided.

  The contorted and blood-smeared remains hung down from the pillar and Jared gazed at it for a long time. It didn’t move.

  The roaring fire of vengeance that had so consumed him had now left.

  Dully, he left the scene for the outer world, now with shadows lengthening in a fine summer evening. He went to the lichen-covered anonymous tomb he’d selected and levered aside the lid. Inside were desiccated bones and fragments of a shroud.

  The corpse was heavier than he thought and he was panting fast by the time he dragged it there and tumbled it in, sliding the lid back across.

  Gervaise D’Amory no longer had an existence.

  In a last, almost cleansing act, Jared scattered earth over the pools of blood, rubbing out the stains. The seax he wiped clean – it would be returned to its place behind the forge door, no one the wiser.

  It was done.

  There was nothing to connect him to the disappearance of the baron’s son and he made his way home.

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘J-Jared! Son – where …?’ His mother tailed off when she saw his condition. Ragged, torn, his features ravaged and eyes bloodshot, he walked unsteadily towards her.

  She looked at him searchingly: had a corner been turned? She would not press him to speak of what he’d been through, but praise be, he now seemed to be in his right mind. Whatever had happened in the forest was over.

  Later, Osbert awkwardly tried to say something. Nolly stood behind him but could find no words to reach out to his friend in his distress and they both withdrew.

  Then Perkyn Slewfoot arrived with a small sweetmeat, which he pressed on Jared. He took it dully: Perkyn stared into his face and left, tears streaming.

  At the evening meal Maud tried to read her son’s features.

  Even the news that Gervaise D’Amory had been carried away to a just death by the very river that had borne his Aldith had not broken the brittle mask.

  He said little other than that he would not return to the bed he’d shared with Aldith but would sleep in the smithy – and made her promise that no mention must ever be made of what was past and now gone.

  That night Jared made up a sleeping area in the smithy outhouse. In the dark stillness around him the rows of pincers, hammers, swages and all the familiar pieces of the blacksmith’s art, still odorous of metal, cinders and burnt oil, were comforting and he let sleep steal up on him.

  Then the nightmares began. Through the tortured face of D’Amory came the distant image of a body, floating, untouchably poignant.

  D’Amory’s face changed to a cunning leer. He’d torn himself away, his naked body acquiring clothes as he ran; rich, noble costumes for he was fleeing towards the louring ramparts of the castle, high on the hill. Once there he could not be touched and would look down on him and mock.

  Jared woke up in a sweat, disoriented. Burning memories and a meaningless panic tore at him.

  The rest of the night passed in a half-sleep of torments and phantasm.

  Osbert cautiously welcomed him back to the forge but at Jared’s moodiness and set face he kept his silence. They worked together on a barn door hinge, striking alternately on the brightly glowing metal, but what he saw was frightening. Jared’s measured blows turned by degrees into smashing, violent hits with hatred in them and when he flipped the piece into the quenching tub it was with an animal snarl.

  There was no easing in the days that followed – nights of delirium racking his brain, days of sullen enduring.

  It couldn’t go on; for Aldith’s sake – for little Daw – he had to break out of this whirlpool of madness.

  Was it the price for what he’d done? A stricken conscience that would not rest until he’d been sent mad – or were the nightmares a divine retribution? No! He would never accept that what he’d done was other than a quickening of God’s justice on a vile creature whose guilt was absolute.

  But now he was being tortured by dreams the hardest to bear – his dearest Aldith coming with outstretched arms to comfort him, the utmost concern and love wreathing the image but overtaken with a hopelessness as it fragmented and dissolved.

  He had to get away. The heartbreak when he reached a corner of the house and expected her to be around it, the sudden stabs of feeling when little things unbearably reminded him of her – was more than he could endure.

  To where? To roam the countryside like a vagabond, take his chances in some town – it didn’t make sense, it had no purpose or object. Yet his overwhelming desire was to be gone from a place with so many hurts.

  It came to him: he’d go on pilgrimage.

  Some went on penance for the absolving of sin, others to see and touch some sacred relic but his reason would be to lay his ghosts.

  The announcement was applauded with relief: that it was in suffrage for the soul of Aldith in Purgatory was quite understood and he stood before his parish priest, Father Bertrand with the calm of certainty.

  Delighted at the piety of one of the more tepid of his flock the cleric spoke to him at length about his journey. Was it to be St Winefride’s Well in the west or St Cuthbert’s in the north? Or for the utmost grace, Thomas Becket at Canterbury? Or even going so far as to commit himself to the arduous and laboured trail that led to Santiago de Compostela?

  Jared knew what he wanted. Not weeks or even months of absence but a year or more until the remembrances had finally quite faded.

  The Holy Land – Jerusalem.

  The worthy Father was taken aback. Was Jared aware how expensive the journey was? Yes, he had money put by, and was it not an obligation for the pilgrim to beg alms along the way?

  And, there was the matter of the route. It was a perilous and frightful passage across a Europe in turmoil, bands of thieves and brigands at large in great numbers and godliness nowhere to be found. If he was considering joining a group of pilgrims, he could not choose his companions and if they proved to be robbers in disguise he would be hung along with them.

  Jared told him he would go by sea. As a boy he had met a pilgrim who had; he vaguely remembered his tales of boredom and filthy conditions at sea for weeks at a time, but he was young and strong and could endure that.

  He heard objections about pirates and Devil-conjured storms but his mind was made up.

  Jerusalem it would be.

  The village gathered round. Nolly fashioned a fine ash staff, which Osbert finished with a forged tip calculated to give pause to wolves and robbers both. His mother sewed his sclavein, the distinctive robe that set him apart as a pilgrim, and a broad-brimmed hat with bleached palm emblems arrived anonymously.

  A final touch was the scrip, a pouch that would carry all his worldly means. This he made himself from leather.

  Suddenly, it was time to depart.

  The last rite was to have his raiment blessed at the altar with what seemed to be the entire village in respectful attendance, and after a tearful farewell from his mother and a backward wave at his friends, Jared set forth on his pilgrimage.

  CHAPTER 15

  In only a short while a bend in the road would hide the villagers from sight and he would be alone. He was stepping out on a journey that could bring him back a tranquil soul, or leave his bones in some faraway grave.

  He’d given Daw into his mother’s care; by the time he returned in a year or so how would his little son have changed? Would he be remembered?

  The smithy he’d left with Osbert, a capable pair of hands who’d promised to put by his share of its increase for his return. If he didn’t come back – well, Daw would be an orphan and the parish church would be richer by that amount.

  Jared gripped his staff tighter, the swing of his loose sclavein quite different to the close-fitting tunic he usually wore and the broad-brimmed hat a strange weight. No doubt he’d get used to it – this was only the first few yards of the unknowable miles that lay ahead.


  A figure abruptly emerged from the hedge ahead and began moving toward him with a familiar hobble, Perkyn Slewfoot.

  ‘Jared – Master!’ he blurted. ‘I’m here!’

  ‘A merry meet, good Perkyn,’ he said drily. ‘And so you’re here.’

  ‘Aye, Master.’

  ‘I’ve business in a far place, I’ve no time for talk.’

  ‘Take me with you, I beg! You’re on a pilgrimage, you’ll need a servant and I shall be—’

  ‘What are you saying! You’re a villein, you owe service to Sir Robert and are not free to leave as you will. And besides which, I’m a poor pilgrim, I’ve got no means to pay a wage.’

  ‘Master, if you take me, your man for a year, it’ll settle my conscience of what I’m in debt to you!’

  ‘I thank you, Perkyn, you’re a good soul but you’ve a mother to care for.’

  ‘She’s gone. Died o’ shame when she heard I was to be … so I’ve no one left, Master.’

  Jared had a surge of feeling for the man – they were both running from memories.

  ‘And now you’re wanting to be a vagabond, fleeing from your lord.’

  ‘If you’ll take me, Master, I go with you.’

  It was tempting – a companion and helper through a year or more of hard travel. He glanced at the earnest, beseeching face, the pale-blue eyes framed by fair-haired Saxon curls, and weakened.

  ‘Your foot? It’s more miles than you can count. Won’t you—?’

  ‘Master, I’ve followed the plough for many a league. Will this be so different?’

  ‘You’ll beg your way, pray for alms?’

  ‘As your true servant, Master.’

  ‘And when we come back, what then?’

  A lord’s punishment over an absconding bondsman would be dire.

  Perkyn’s face fell, but he replied obstinately, ‘Master, I still go.’

  ‘You’ve just earned yourself your place, then. And you’ve forgotten something.’

  ‘Thank you! Thank you, Master! Er … forgot?’