Crown of Stars

by Sophie Jaff

  My heart pounds loud and fast in my ears. I stare at his lifeless body. I have done this. I have done this. Somewhere close, a bird warbles.

  Perhaps he has a wife and children somewhere. Perhaps he was not such a bad man, only trying to survive.

  But I will never know now. There is no going back.

  I am the first to reach the trunk. I sit in its shade, trying to still my thoughts. Waiting has never been so hard. It seems like an eternity, but then Thomas is here, ducking down next to me, breathing heavily.

  I know something is amiss the moment I see his whey complexion. “What is it?”

  He only shakes his head, unable to gain the breath to tell me.

  I have to clasp my hands together in order not to wring the answers from him. “Thomas, what is wrong?”

  Eventually, he answers. “Not all went into the pot,” he mumbles.

  “What?!”

  Now it is his turn to silence me.

  “My hands trembled so, and the wind took it.”

  “How much?”

  He does not answer.

  “How much, Thomas?” Only the knowledge of the camp nearby prevents me from shouting.

  “Half,” he finally mutters.

  Oh God, I think, we are in trouble. What shall we do? There’s nothing we can do except sit and wait. So we sit and wait. We wait while the men return to their camp, while the light fades from the sky and the darkness closes in. The cook is, of course, nowhere to be found. The men grumble, but do not seem unduly worried. He’s probably sleeping somewhere and, after all, the stew is here and still warm. They help themselves, and sit around eating and drinking.

  “What if they give Rudd the stew?” Thomas whispers suddenly.

  I shake my head decisively, though this is a new and terrible thought. “They will not want to waste food on him. Did not you tell me that they will starve him to make him fight?”

  Thomas nods, but his eyes are fearful. I am fearful myself. Nothing is certain.

  As the night draws in, the fire spits and sputters and we continue our vigil. No one falls facedown as the cook did, but I hear groaning, and whenever I feel bold enough to peer over the trunk I see men slumped on the ground. Finally, there is quiet enough for me to shake Thomas awake.

  “We only have a very little time,” I murmur. “Go now.”

  Thomas nods, pale but determined, and then rises to make his way to the silent camp. Soon he is nothing but a shadow fading into the others. I wait and wait some more, my ears aching for the slightest noise. But there is only stillness.

  He’s taking too long. They should be back by now. Images float before my eyes: Thomas lying in a pool of blood; Rudd, a huddled mass of broken bones; the bandits, now alerted, creeping toward me and ready with daggers.

  I hear it then, a faint cry. I cease to think and run past the sprawled bodies. There is no other sound. This must be as a battlefield looks.

  Then I see Thomas, but my relief does not last long. He is bent over, shaking the motionless bulk of Rudd.

  “I cannot wake him,” he hisses.

  My heart sinks. If these were better men than I had thought and they fed Rudd, I have doomed him. I bend over Rudd, and as I do so strong hands circle my waist from behind.

  “Got you,” a man spits into my ear on a gust of vile breath.

  I try to twist around, but I already know that voice. He is the leader, the one who barks out commands.

  Thomas steps toward me, his features grim with determination, but there is a sharp, painful pressure across my throat.

  “Get back.” The leader’s voice slurs a little. “Or I’ll gut her like a fish.”

  I can see him now out of the corners of my eyes, his burned and blistered face drained of its redness. Vomit cakes his chin and covers his chest, yet he is standing firm enough, and judging by his grip around me, he is still hellishly strong.

  “I tasted the stew and I knew something was amiss. All around me my men are falling, but I—” He leers. “I made myself expel it. You rotten whore, I’ll make you wish your mother had never suffered your father’s weight.”

  And then we hear it. A rumbling so deep that our bodies tremble with it. Leaves shiver on their branches, and clumps of dirt roll beneath our feet. The leader’s hand shakes a little, but his grasp does not falter.

  The thunder reverberates and swells as a giant wolf, ten hands at least, thick with muscle and as broad as an ox, pads through the trees toward us. His ashen coat gleams in the moonlight, and his eyes are two glowing embers that fix upon the leader. My heart halts. I gaze in awe.

  I feel the leader catch his breath.

  “No,” he exhales. “What devilry is this, you witch?” He stumbles backward, raising his free hand either to finish me or to defend himself.

  With a roar the wolf lunges forward and up at the leader, knocking him back onto the earth. Slick wet fur sweeps against my cheek, and a hot, rank animal cloud envelops me before I too am flung forward, shaken but unharmed. Now the wolf is upon him, but not attacking, not yet. Pinning the man down with his front legs, the wolf merely mouths at his throat, almost delicately, as a mother cat would her kitten.

  “No devilry.” I swallow and find the words. “But revenge.”

  As if in agreement, the wolf flings back his great head and howls. Every hair on my body stiffens. He howls and howls again, and I wonder that the sound does not pierce the moon to bleed into the night, that the trees do not shed their leaves, and the brook’s waters freeze in their courses. Then the wolf returns his attention to the man on the ground.

  Silent as ghosts, the other wolves emerge from the woods. They slip across the camp, great warriors, the sheen of their fur mottled in shadow, their eyes barely banked fires. Each one sits by the side of a fallen man, an executioner waiting patiently to carry out the final sentence.

  Tears slide down the leader’s cheeks. “Please,” he croaks. “Please, call them off. I will give you all we have. Please.”

  “I have no power over them,” I say, for it is the truth. “They are not mine to command.”

  Rising, I move over to Rudd. I bend forward and slap his face. He stirs, grunts.

  “Thomas, help me!”

  My voice breaks through to Thomas, who has been cowering down behind his brother’s bulk, stupefied with fear. He crouches over Rudd and slaps his other cheek. Rudd grunts again. He has been given some of the food, but this is a good sign. His immense size must have saved him. Together, tugging and pulling, we help him to stand. He sways, about to topple over, and it takes all our combined strength to hold him upright between us.

  “For the love of God,” moans the leader, still on the ground, “Have mercy. Do not leave me here to be torn to bloody bits. I beg of you, have pity and call them off.”

  I look inward to see if I can find pity, and can find none. “I told you before, there is nothing I can do,” I repeat.

  Propping up Rudd between us, we turn to leave.

  “Then may my bitterest curse be upon you, you bitch!” His choked cry echoes through the silent camp.

  When I stop in my tracks, Thomas must stop with me or let his brother fall. I turn to look at him, truly look at him. I look down at the doomed man, past his furious face and shivering limbs, beyond the meat and bone of him to the center within.

  The memory of a bloody carcass roasting upon a spit floats before me. Rudd tied to a stake, cringing as he is kicked. A body so badly beaten that it no longer resembles a man; a kneeling woman, her hand outstretched. A young girl, scarcely twelve, shrieking. Pieces of an infant’s blanket, stained red, scattered upon the path.

  And now he dares to lay his curse on me.

  A gully whirls within me yawning wider and wider, pulling me into a blizzard of ash and snow consuming everything in its path. I am a wailing tunnel of black wind, my clawed currents sweeping him up and skinning him alive unraveling him like a woolen skein till only his bones are left, bare.

  “You!” I intone. My arm rise
s, my hand extends, my fingers tingle and glow.

  His face curdles in terror. His mouth opens and shuts, as a dying fish.

  “Margaret,” Thomas says, sounding very small.

  Abruptly, I am brought to my senses and the darkness recedes like a dying storm. Thomas looks at me with fear.

  “Come, we must leave this place. The wolves wait for us, but they will not wait much longer.”

  Thomas nods, desperate to be gone. We turn slowly, Rudd between us, and begin our walk back into the trees and the safety of our camp. It will be a difficult journey, and there is a long night ahead.

  The Man in the Woods

  You stand and watch the three figures, a huge man propped up between a woman and a child, clumsily, awkwardly move toward the woods. They do not turn around. They do not want to see the wolves take their meal.

  Perhaps this is just as well, for it means they do not see you as you lean against a tree. You would be hard to spot anyway, deep in the shadows, cloaked in dark wool.

  You prefer watching to being watched.

  They do not see the way your fingers lightly caress the curved blade of your knife. Nor do they see the slow and winsome smile that plays upon your lips.

  It is hard going, but they keep at it, and you wish you could applaud their efforts. But perhaps it is better not to distract them.

  The first anguished shrieks drift up from the camp. You sigh with pleasure. The wolves have begun to feast.

  Then you gaze back again, and sure enough the three figures quicken their pace, stumbling as fast as they dare. Desperate not to hear their suffering.

  Unlike you. You envy the wolves.

  Ah, well. Soon enough you’ll be able to kill again. You were called forth from the darkness for just such a purpose. You’ve missed it so, the sting of the salt and the tang of blood and the soft surrender of flesh under your blade.

  Give praise, give thanks for the Glorious, Glorious Hunt!

  She’ll be ready, soon enough.

  11

  Margaret

  The tavern’s name, the Black Ewe, is painted on the wooden sign underneath a picture of a stout black sheep. The sign swings violently in the wind. The storm has reached its peak.

  The heavy front door bangs loudly behind us. We stand, drenched and shivering, on the threshold. A silence drifts down upon the room like a cloak as the rain puddles on the floor. I can only imagine how we must appear to those who now sit and stare.

  A short, fat woman with a massive bosom and a terrible scowl bustles our way. She has the bossy air of the innkeeper’s wife. With one glance of her piggy eyes she takes our measure from dripping head to dripping toe, and announces, “We’re full up, no room here.”

  I have opened my mouth to argue, to plead, to beg, when Thomas speaks.

  “Forgive our rough appearance, ma’am, but we were set upon by bandits in the woods.”

  “Bandits?” a small, rheumy-eyed man asks.

  “Aye, they ambushed us along the main road, made off with our horses and our belongings.”

  The woman scoffs. “The only bandits hereabouts are Blacwin’s gang, and they are at least twenty men strong.”

  “Twelve at most. Or were,” I add as an afterthought.

  The woman’s scowl deepens and she turns back to Thomas. “You lie. Those bastards leave no one alive.”

  “How fortunate we were able to persuade them otherwise.” Thomas’s voice is solemn but I can see the impish gleam in his eye.

  This rally brings forth an uneasy laugh as everyone takes stock of Rudd’s size.

  “Their leader,” another man, sitting on a bench calls out. “What did he look like?”

  The innkeeper’s wife rounds on him. “I will hear no more of this!”

  But I can answer the question, as I will remember that face all the rest of my days. “He had burned and blistered skin with scars coursing from cheek to chin.”

  “That do sound like Blacwin,” the man concedes cautiously.

  His neighbor, squat and bearded, wrinkles his heavy forehead with the effort of understanding. “Are you telling us that your trio alone has felled the most murderous fiends the county has ever known?”

  Thomas nods. “Aye. Their bodies can be found in the woods.” He pauses. “That is, those not already eaten by the wolves.”

  A large, stooped man lumbers to his feet. He has kind, almost sad eyes set in a cavernous face. “I will know more!” he declares.

  “Surely you cannot believe this madness!” The woman is full of scorn.

  “Be quiet, Dryllis.” He does not speak loudly, but he is firm.

  Her little eyes waver, and she closes her mouth with a snap.

  The man looks directly at us. “Those whoresons killed my brother, his wife, and their two young children on that road. Slit their throats and left them to die like vermin. If what you say is true, I’ll gladly pay for your drink and board.”

  Dryllis glowers, but she can scarce refuse now. “By all means, then,” she snipes. “But it will be upon your head, Master Alun, if we are all murdered and robbed in the night.”

  It seems a dreadful thing to say to him given what we have just heard of his history, but another drinker, small and merry with plump, flushed cheeks, pipes up.

  “Yes, and if they survive your cooking that will be miracle enough.”

  There is much laughter at this and the room seems to ease and settle.

  Dryllis shoots the jester a venomous look. “You are welcome to drink elsewhere.” She heaves around abruptly and goes back to the kitchen.

  “Come,” Alun beckons us.

  We make our way to his bench, where there is a great shuffling to make room for us. It is no small feat given Rudd’s size, but finally we are all squeezed in. I am seated between Rudd and the little, jolly-faced man who teased Dryllis about her cooking.

  He introduces himself as Cefwin the Baker. “Though truly I should have been a potter—if only I did not love my own wares so much.” He twinkles at me, and I smile back, my heart warming. It is good to be the heroine and not the witch for once.

  “Now, boy, from the beginning,” orders Alun. His manner is amiable enough, but his gaze never leaves Thomas’s face. He is hungry for details.

  And so Thomas begins. His silver tongue amazes me. Listening to it, I am half inclined to believe him myself. In the tale he spins, Rudd is the hero while Thomas and I play more minor roles diverting the bandits and setting various traps for them. Not for the first time tonight, I marvel at his wit, for it’s a clever move to make Rudd seem so capable of defense. Men who may wish to take advantage of us will think twice in the face of such bravery. He does not mention poison, for which I am glad.

  During the course of Thomas’s story, a sallow, sour-looking girl of about my age brings us mugs of ale and bowls of pottage and thick crusted bread.

  “Her name is Ayleth,” Cefwin informs me. He drops his voice slightly. “She has the visage of her father and the temperament of her mother, the lucky wench with the ability to turn milk to cheese with a single look.” Then he laughs uproariously.

  No matter what has been said of the food, we eat well and drink better. Although I was so hungry for anything from an oven I would have wolfed down thin gruel and hard rye, this pottage is rich with meat and the bread is made with finer flour than I would have given Dryllis credit for. Again and again our bowls are filled and we sop up the gravy with our crusts. For the first time in a long while, the three of us have full bellies and dry feet. Rudd yawns.

  “The weight of our journey bears down upon us,” Thomas apologizes, and yawns himself. “I think we must all go to bed.”

  As the two make their way up the rickety staircase, I pause to thank Alun again for paying for our bed and board, but he brushes my gratitude aside.

  “It is I who owe you a debt,” he whispers in my ear. “Judging by Dryllis’s looks, you’ve made an enemy tonight. If I were you, I would leave at first light.” He sighs ruefully. “My wife and I
would gladly have you, but our small home is bursting at the seams as it is.”

  At the door of our room, I am halted by the innkeeper. As Cefwin said, he and his daughter share the same complexion. He has pale staring eyes, thick wet lips, and a weak chin.

  “Do you have everything you need?” he asks.

  “Yes, and I thank you.” I try to open the door, but he stands in front of it, blocking my way.

  “If you should want for anything, anything at all,” he simpers, revealing a small stub of gray tongue, “you need only fetch me. My wife is a sound sleeper, but I wake easily.”

  His meaning is all too clear.

  “Thank you, but this is more than sufficient.”

  He smiles again. “It is no trouble, I will be awake for some time still.” He pauses. “It is lucky that you were not defiled, a girl as lovely as you.”

  “There was my brother to thank, sir.” I try to remain cool, though my flesh is crawling under his gaze. “He was easily able to defend my honor.”

  He laughs unpleasantly. “I’m glad there was any to defend. Your brother, big lad, silent, isn’t he?”

  “He does not speak unless he has something to say.”

  “I do not think that would be often.”

  “Good night,” I say firmly, and this time I am successful in forcing my way by him and into the room, and pivoting so that I straightaway shut the door. There is no bar against it, though, nor chair or chest to brace it. Rudd is already snoring and Thomas is dead to the world as I lie upon my scratchy pallet and wait for the fleas. I think of Dryllis’s anger and of her husband’s leering smile. I think of Alun’s warning. Tomorrow, I vow, we will depart first thing.

  But when the morning dawns, it’s raining too hard for us to travel anywhere. We cannot go back into the woods. There is nothing to do but wait it out.

  I try to talk to Ayleth, the whey-faced daughter, but I make little progress. She is just as Cefwin described her, in turn both sullen and vicious. I keep to our room as much as I can, but when I descend to the tavern I feel the innkeeper’s eyes constantly upon me. I retreat to a bench in the loneliest corner and watch customers come in from, and go out into, the deluge.