In the clearing, within the circle of the trees, sat a nymph.
I know this seems fanciful, but how else does one name a creature, nay, a female, dressed in a flowing shirt to her thighs, whose form is revealed rather than concealed by the clinging garment? I then realized that she was dressed as a man, her legs encased in immodest breeches.
She turned toward me, her face in shadow, and she pointed with one booted foot at the creature that lay between us. My first thought was to thank God for my deliverance, but then I saw what had befallen him. His open eyes stared up in the moonlight, yet it was his back that faced me, his neck entirely twisted about. His mouth, his eyes—he had died a brute.
“My lady…” I stammered, then cleared my throat. “There are other hunters.”
Then she raised her head, as if basking in the silvery light, and I gasped to see her face. Her mouth, her chin and her neck were all black. I knew without seeing that ruby color that they were bathed in blood. And I knew the arrogant tilt of the head, the thin nose, the gleaming eyes, and I felt a cold shudder of fear.
“We will be gone by the time they find him.” The Countess Elizabeth Báthory walked to the stream and cupped water in her hands to wash her face and dab at the bloodied shirt. Then she pulled on, not a gown as I had expected, but a man’s jacket. She stood, in the moonlight, and raised her face to it as if in sunshine. “Come, Eduárd.”
I crawled forward on hands and knees, and despite the pain, pushed myself onto my feet. There I swayed, looking down at the thing that had once been Enrico. His face was utterly white, the fire gone from his eyes, and his mouth fixed in a scream.
She put out a hand, her long white fingers in the light. “Come.” She seemed at once imperious and gentle. “He is gone.”
I put my hand within my shirt to find my last papers, the drawing I had made of the tablet. “I cannot—I cannot come with you.”
“They are close.” She shook her hand. “Come, Eduárd, at least live. Then you may spurn my help.”
I could hear the howls now, maybe a few minutes away, the one calling to another in animal cries. I took her hand.
She grasped my shaking fingers and ran with unnatural power, dragging me like a child. I put my feet down yards apart and was pulled along until my arm threatened to leave its socket. Finally, we came to a dark glade where I could see nothing but smelled the sweat and ordure of horses.
A man strode out of deep shadow and knelt before the countess. She spoke in her native language, which I have never mastered, and the man rose. He grabbed at my form with both hands, careless of my wounds when I cried out, and he threw me up onto a horse. Not a pony or palfrey but a war horse, and I clung to the saddle with my good arm. He swung himself behind me and the animal half reared in protest. Some four or five men rode out of the shade of the trees, one leading a great stallion for their lady. With one arm around my chest, my rider pulled the reins until the beast subsided. He called out some command to his men, then put spurs to the horse’s twitching flanks.
Each bound of the steed jarred my wounded shoulder, until I nigh swooned with the pain, the arm around me almost suffocating me. Sometimes we were galloping along clearings lit by the moon, other times we pushed through deep shade at a walk, the grass cropped short, we saw, by groups of small deer that bounded away when we disturbed them. I was determined not to faint, and to keep my seat upon the creature for these men represented my only chance of deliverance.
My rescuer rumbled out some question to my lady, who answered with a command. I took it to mean “onward,” as we were thrown again into a canter. I could hear the sounds of pursuit now, the long howls more purposeful, interspersed with yips and barks that I could not believe came from the throats of men and—God protect me—women.
The horse we were sharing stumbled, almost throwing us off, and I clung with my injured hand to the man’s arm, and the other to the saddle. For a moment I looked down—and down. We had come to an escarpment many yards high, a ridge that looked upon the road beneath. Before we could back the horse—for there was no room to turn it—another of the men called out a warning. I cast a glance behind us as the beast beneath us shivered and rolled its eyes as if to see the hunters that had chased and chased us.
They were assembling behind us in plain view. The silk and velvet robes had been discarded leaving the creatures, for I could not call them human, naked. They were ranged about us in a half circle like the pack of wolves they sounded like. One of the countess’s men, his great sword already unsheathed, shouted a battle cry and swung among them, wielding his weapon in great arcs. One was cut down, another retreated, howling at its half-severed arm, but the others closed about him like hounds upon a wounded hart. It sounded like a battle of wolves, yet when they raised their twisted faces, they were unharmed. The man at their feet had lost his shirt and doublet, and lay bloodied, his neck and chest torn about as if half consumed. As I watched, unable to drag my eyes away, one of the monsters reached between his gleaming ribs and dragged out the heart.
I saw that the savage was Contarini, his face twisted with some animal cruelty. His mane of hair was free, his body sculpted like a Roman gladiator, his skin slick with blood. He raised the organ above his head, and all the others crowded around, some kneeling on all fours at his feet. Again and again they howled and shrieked, the women as crazed as the men. Finally Contarini opened his mouth wide, his lips pulled back revealing his long teeth, and bit into the heart. When he had taken a great bite, he threw it to the fawning women—if they were still women—at his feet. They growled and squabbled over it like dogs.
They turned to us, re-forming their group, the injured as well as the whole. The captain behind me spoke again to the countess, our horse stepping uneasily along the edge of the cliff.
Contarini opened his mouth and howled, then turned to us and spoke.
“Let us have him,” he half growled, half said in Latin. “And we will give you a good start, lady.”
The countess forced her horse forward a step. “You may have my men,” she spake, at one with the black charger she sat astride. “But the sorcerer is mine.”
The growling rose to a scream until I was half deaf, the fiends crouched upon the ground as one, and with blood upon their distorted faces, they sprang toward us.
The man behind me wheeled our great horse about as it whinnied in terror, and forced it to the edge of the precipice. Even with his spurs beating cruelly against its flanks and laying the flat of his sword against it, it trembled upon the top. One of the man-wolves flung itself upon us, making my captor reel in the saddle. It forced its way over his back to me, as I crouched against the pommel. I already had a hand upon my dagger, and stabbed at it blindly, again and again as it fell upon my shoulders trying to force my head down. For a moment, I felt its breath upon the back of my neck and its teeth scraped lightly against my spine, but unlike a real wolf, its teeth were not sharp enough to split the skin. It fell farther, over my shoulders, and I slashed at it wildly as it slid over the horse’s withers. It fell to the ground, much wounded, and this time the horse took a tentative step over the edge of the cliff.
It started to slip down with the sound of rocks and earth thrown up about it, and it sat down upon the slope, tossing its head back and shrieking in fear. It slid, fell and started to roll down the cliff, and I was grasped about by the man, who, quick as thought, leaped clear of the falling animal. We two men rolled and bounced another few yards, hit some boulders on the way, then fell down the rest of the cliff in a heap of soil and stones. I thought the horse was dead, for it moved none at first. I found myself mostly uninjured but for my torn shoulder when our steed shuddered and rocked itself to a sitting position. Shaking like a hart at bay, it stumbled to its feet. The man caught the reins, and spoke gentle words to it. I struggled to stand.
The sound of battle floated overhead, followed by a great shout of triumph. I looked up and saw such a thing as I would never see again. A black stallion, leaping in a gre
at curve over the cliff, its head forced back almost to break its neck and hooves flailing in the air. I curled into a ball lest it land upon me, but it flew over my head and hit the ground with such a crack, such a noise. The creature fell, its legs splayed unnaturally, then rolled forward onto its head. The woman, for it was the countess, sprang from the saddle as it touched the earth and leaped away from the mortally injured animal.
She stood, her face turned toward the first pink of dawn, then snapped a command to the man. He led our horse to her but it strained away from her touch at the end of the reins. She controlled the horse with a cut of the whip she still held, and he stood trembling, his eyes rolling to me as if to implore me to help him. She leaped upon his back then beckoned me closer, and the man grasped my arm to drag me to the countess.
“Up. Behind me,” she commanded.
I could hear the shouts and howls above us had subsided, and looking back I saw a terrible sight.
Many faces, man indistinguishable from woman, masks of snarling hate covered with blood, stared down at us. One started to feel for the edge of the cliff, reaching over.
Despite my wounded shoulder and many sprains and bruises, I put my foot upon the captain’s hand and scrambled up onto the horse. It needed no touch of spur nor cut of crop. The second I was perched on the back of the saddle it sprang forward, almost unseating me. I clung to the woman before me, who urged the creature on. I looked back at the captain, to see him holding several of the man-wolves at bay with his sword, and more crawling down the cliff toward him. Then we were around a bend in the dirt road, and away.
Chapter 37
PRESENT DAY: BEE COTTAGE, LAKE DISTRICT
The bees ready themselves. Advance scouts have seen the clearing of the undergrowth, the elders holding together in a circle, brambles shrieking the scent of cut stalks and rotting stems, leaves barely born. Flies and wasps are stirring and the hive is on alert. Bee maggots squirm for food and the workers can barely keep up.
“You can hear the bees from here.” Maggie was standing in the garden, listening. “They’re incredibly upset.”
Jack shivered in the gray afternoon. Late March or not, there was a nip in the air as the sky started to clear.
“I hate getting stung,” she grumbled, shoveling more bags of manure under the remaining shrubs and trees, she supposed in some gesture of gratitude for allowing them to hack back the brambles. She watched Felix drag another half-strangled branch away to the bonfire, trailing yards of ivy. “I hated the hives we had in Devon.”
Maggie peered into a tangle of vines and thorns, then carefully inserted one arm up to the shoulder. “There! It feels like a hive, and it’s humming. There aren’t many around at this time of year and normally they are sleepy with the cold. These are humming like they are going to take off.”
Felix stamped the long grass and bramble stumps down to reach her.
Jack stepped closer, looking into the shadow of the bushes. “Can you feel underneath? Maisie said it was wrapped in plastic and tied under the hive itself.”
“So she says.” Maggie looked at the two of them with her eyebrows raised. “If the old bat isn’t completely senile.”
“I heard that.” Maisie stood by the back door in Sadie’s boots, which were several sizes too big. “I put it there myself, Magpie, and I’ll thank you to remember I’m old, not stupid.”
Maggie opened her mouth to protest, but shut it again when Jack caught her eye. Maisie had been able to direct their efforts straight to the hives, which was the only way they had a chance to make the potion in time.
Maggie stretched in again. “I can’t reach. You’re going to have to bring the loppers over here and cut these big branches down, but—” She hesitated. “They’re elder. I’m not sure they will allow me to. There might be…consequences.”
Jack checked her watch. “We have less than four hours. We have to read the book, find the herb, make the potion and get to the castle. Just do it.”
Maggie took the loppers and murmured something to the tree. The blades snapped together and a branch fell, and Felix dragged it out of the way. Another, then another, and Jack felt as much as heard the humming of the bees, rising in tone as well as volume.
“Maggie, the bees—” she started to say, but Maggie fell back.
“Run!” she screamed, starting away from the hive, staggering over the loose cuttings on the ground.
Jack turned toward the house as Felix, with Maggie’s hand in his, shot past her. She could see Maisie’s face, slowly morphing into alarm, turning awkwardly in the doorway, getting swept up by Felix out of the way. The world tipped as she staggered, and then the swarm hit.
By a beekeeper’s standard she knew it wasn’t a big swarm. It was early in the year, when most hives were busy rearing young, but it still smacked into the back of her head and clung to her shoulders. Unlike a normal colony, which would be quite peaceful, this hive had launched a massive attack on what it perceived to be a threat, and in the tiny moment as it hit, Jack sidestepped her first instinct to scream, run, swat the bees, whatever, and stopped dead. Calm. Peace. She tried to find it in herself, even as her heart tripped in her chest, and her skin squirmed at the feel of thousands of tiny feet clinging to the skin of her head, her scalp, pulling on her hair. She found herself mumbling to them.
“Don’t, don’t—it’s OK, it’s just that we need to get the book. We’re not trying to hurt you.” She shut her mouth as the bees flowed from her forehead down onto her face. They tickled her nostrils, and she tried not to panic at the thought of bees going up her nose, and she clamped her eyes and mouth shut at the prickling on her eyelids, her lips. She carried on speaking in her head, hoping it would translate into body language or pheromones or whatever bees understood. The message was simple. “Please don’t sting me. We’re not trying to hurt the hive.”
Under the humming, now almost deafening as they explored her ears, she could hear Maggie and Maisie. They were chanting something, coming closer. The bees increased their sound for a while, and she froze. Then they seemed to settle down, and the tone of their humming grew lighter and softer.
The weight seemed to slide down and settle on her shoulders, and she sneaked a look through her eyelashes.
“Don’t move,” Felix warned, his voice higher than usual with anxiety. “Just stand completely still.”
There was a sensation of stroking, a gentle sweeping of her hair and face, her shoulders. A burning sensation stabbed her neck, and she tried not to move. Another one. The chanting was constant, the sweeping taking the weight away, the humming more urgent but now from individual bees, not the whole lot.
“You can move in a minute,” said Maggie. “Let me take your jacket off first.”
Jack could feel the zip being tugged on, then the whole thing slid down and away, taking the weight of the swarm. “They stung me.”
“They must have got stuck inside the collar,” said Maisie, her voice hoarse. “I haven’t seen bees do that in many years. Attack someone, I mean.”
Jack still had hundreds of bees wandering over her, a few across her face, others tangled in her hair. Paradoxically, panic started to rise in her at the sight of the remaining insects. “Get them off.”
She looked around, to see Maggie carrying a sheet, presumably carrying the bulk of the swarm, trailing a smoke screen of flying bees back to the area of the hive. “We’re going to have to clear some more,” she said, tipping the insects carefully onto the base of the elder tree that had been lopped. She backed away as the bees started to peel off the main pile, and buzz back through the foliage to the hidden hive. Bees started to lift off from Jack’s skin and clothes.
Felix walked up to Jack, and gently knocked a few more off. She walked into his arms, and buried her face against his chest, smelling the warm wool of his jumper, the fresh sweat of the work, the indefinable Felix scent of him.
After a long moment, possibly more than they could spare, she took a deep breath, shrugged off the pa
nic and turned back to the wall of greenery between them and the hive.
“We’ve got to get that book.”
Felix strode over to Maggie. “Let me try. I’ve got long arms.”
It took two more goes, several stings and a thorn deep in Felix’s hand, before he could reach the twine tying the bundle under the hives. Maggie passed him a knife, and he hacked away at the cord before it sagged onto a pile of leaves beneath it. He stretched his arm in, Jack peering through from ground level calling out directions. Finally he snagged the plastic-wrapped parcel and pulled it through.
It was a relief to get back into the house, to shut the door against the sound of the still restless bees.
Jack took Maggie’s knife, and slid it under the bindings, releasing the book. They fell back as it was revealed.
Almost black with wear and damp and grease, the cover was leather, stitched crudely along the spine. There was no inscription, and it was not much bigger than a paperback. Felix stepped forward as if to open it, but Maggie stopped him.
“It’s a spell book. Let me, just in case…” As cautiously as if it were booby-trapped, Maggie lifted the cover a few inches. It fell open at a page toward the middle.
Felix bent over the words. “That cure or remedie for the grate falling sickness of the Dannick—is that ‘lions’?”
“That’s it. That’s what they’re looking for.” Maggie reached across the table for a pen and an envelope. “Read out the ingredients. Let’s hope they aren’t in some sort of riddle.”
“One hand of mouse-ear, rankle-weed and hare-wyrt, digested in a seething pot with one cup of well water.” He pulled his glasses out of their case and put them on. “It’s not hair-root, it’s hare-wort.”
“Mouse-ear we have, out the front of the house, it’s a common weed. I have no idea what rankle-weed is. And hair-root or hare-wort, leaves us no closer. I’ve never heard of either.” Maggie turned to Jack. “I need my books.”
The Secrets of Blood and Bone Page 26