Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  A violent crash of wood from across the tavern, but I can barely turn my neck. The bar is collapsed. Will and Guy have broken through it. Guy lifts his sword. Ready to bring it down when a leg kicks out and catches him in the gut. Then Little John charges like a great boulder through the line of guards and slams into the back of Guy. He is flung to the floor. There is a furious scramble. Will, Little John, Murphy: all of them running through the wreckage, disappearing from my view.

  I call out to Guy. But the air is being pressed out of my chest by the guard and it is barely a whimper. Yet it is as if he hears me. Fallen, too, he looks across. Meets my eye. Like in the forest that day so many years ago. When he found me or I him and he saved my life.

  Now he pushes up. His face is the ripe red of fury. Or shame. He shouts for the guards. He races through the shattered bar. Away. For a moment, I am bereft. The guard puts a hand on my hair. He whispers again: “Heel…”

  But there is an actual hound among us. Wolf’s growl announces him before the blur of grey fur. He attaches to the guard’s leg. The man yelps, kicks out. His weight upon me is less. I scramble. Without thinking, I head toward the flames. Their heat is close when the guard’s hand seizes my ankle again. I reach for one of the logs that stick out of the fire. Strain every sinew in my arm. They are out of reach.

  I look back. The guard is pulling at my legs. His lips are wet. With my last I stretch out my fingers. By nature’s laws the lion’s cloth should fall from my open palm. But it does not. It clings to me. Glistening in the devil’s light.

  And it is there again: a pulse inside of me. I do not understand it. But it spreads as a dark heat in the veins under my skin and in the swollen pockets under my neck. My hand grows heavy like a glove of steel. The blood thickens down my arms. And then a remarkable thing happens: the sliver of air between my fingertips and the fire starts to glow. It becomes a whitish lace. It burns.

  The guard is at my calf. With rotten teeth he tries to bite my flesh.

  I do not scream only because I am overcome with the heat of the pulse. I return my hand from the fire. The whitish lace stretches. Like a cord of flame shrouded in dust. The smell of sulphur fills my nostrils. Stronger than ever I have known it and heat like steam rises inside me and around me. I thrust my hand back. A wing of fire courses back. Flames engulf the guard: his face, his body.

  He screams. So do I.

  *

  The sight of a man on fire, leaping up, tearing at his limbs, does for the few remaining folk in the tavern. It is suddenly emptied of souls. Most of the Sheriff’s guards have gone in chase of Will and the others. There are only the two who dragged Harvole like a sack across the floor. They gape at me.

  “You are a damned witch,” the fat one spits. “You’ll burn for this!”

  My vision sways with flames as I gather myself from the floor. Sweat crawls over my cheeks and down my neck. The lion’s cloth yet clings to my open hand. The whitish lace is still there. Flickering over it like the tongue of an adder.

  “And you will now, if you do not let him go.”

  The plump guard glances at his mate, then at me. They flee through the tavern doors. I glimpse a group of men outside. A crowd gathered in the dusk. Do they wait for me? Like at Prendergast’s: I feel trapped.

  I kneel down to Old Harvole. He is curled upon the stone. He issues soft cries of agony.

  “We must go, sire.”

  His eyes shut. He does not – will not – look at me. He tries to his feet but fails and I catch him. His body is frail as old wood. No great burden, but my muscles throb with a tiredness that seems to replace the fading pulse of heat. I bear him toward the bar. We follow the smashed path down a passageway to a narrow backstreet. They are all gone. I worry for Guy, chasing after the outlaws, and whisper a prayer for him. But I cannot wait here. The men in the town square, the Sheriff’s guards: they will surely find us soon.

  But they are not really what push me onward.

  Sara. Or is it He?

  The sky’s murk weighs on me. It is a day until the darkest night.

  **

  By sundown Harvole, Wolf, and I are some miles beyond the town. At the walls we had some luck. The watchman was in a row with an old woman. I slipped past with my hood up and face down; and he showed no interest in a wizened man or grey hound. Thereafter we kept to the trees. Winter has covered the earth with barbed leaves. They slow our progress, but they are not the main reason.

  I am weary. Underneath Marian’s scarf, my blood feels thick and syrupy. And Harvole seems beyond weariness. Hunched with the work of breathing. Pains funnel out of his bearded mouth in uneven whistles. More than once I give my hand to steady him. But he recoils, as if horrified at the prospect of my touch. I wonder that he saw what happened to the mole-faced man in the tavern.

  In the wood everything is cast in the same gloom: the charcoal tree-trunks, the starless sky, the grassless earth. I ask again if this is the way. I have not the map, only my memory of what it told, and Harvole’s. Neither seems the surest thing in which to trust. He grunts in response. At least one of us is alert: Wolf weaves around me. The night never tires him. I am so glad he is with me. I only wish Guy were as well. But he is gone.

  So it is I. Alone. But when I look down at my hand, my palm that wears the gold dust of the lion’s head cloth like a sheet of scales, it is strange. I think of what it wrought in the tavern. The guard: how he burned. The longer I stare, the less it looks like my own hand.

  It makes me think of the Burnt Man.

  Will’s questions return to me. What do you seek? To save this girl you speak of. Or vengeance? It angered me because I could not answer him. And I cannot still. The thought hovers like sulphur in the dark spaces behind my eyes.

  We pass along a stream, black as the sky, and stop for water. I cup it to my cracked lips. Harvole takes an age to kneel. He needs rest but when I say as much, he grunts again. We fight the growing chill of night and the rising slope of the wood. Cold airs play on my face. I must stay awake. I look for flowers I know, I can name. But there are few, and they are wilted. Mostly just the fallen leaves. Will said there was no castle where Harvole pointed on the map. What if he is leading me nowhere?

  And then he is not leading at all. He trips on a root and I am not quick enough this time. He hits leafy ground and lies there, un-moving. It is enough.

  “Let us stop awhile.”

  He does not grunt this time, which I take as agreement. We sit apart. The bark of a tree presses upon my back, needling the burns. At least it helps keep the weariness at bay. Despite the chill that creeps under my layers, I do not risk a fire. Others might be making this journey too. And the tavern has made me wary of flame.

  Instead I place Marian’s bow across my lap. My fingers play along the fine horsehair. Trying to gain its trust. Guy says I am not a patient student. But the arrows never fly where I wish them. The last lesson, he smiled that smile, and said: until they do.

  Harvole sits with legs splayed, his head tilted back. Every now and then he rubs at his wrists. One slit eye stares over. I cannot guess what he thinks. And of course he cannot say.

  “You are free to go, sire. I ask only that you take me as far as this castle.”

  If it exists, I think, but do not say. He eyes the carpet of dead leaves. Perhaps the ale has worn off now. It has for me. Wolf paces around us before settling at a spot at my feet.

  “Where is your home?”

  Harvole sniffs. His eyes close. I sigh. Conversation is hopeless.

  In spite of myself, I try once more. “Will told me you spoke of an alchemist that you served…what did he seek?”

  Harvole’s eyes peel open. After a long moment he lifts a wrinkled hand. With the other he points at me. I do not understand. Until, that is, I suppose he means the lion’s cloth that I am still holding.

  I lean forward with it. “I found this in a clearing. Where the men took a girl.”

  With his arm Harvole reaches awkwardly round to his back.
Again, I fathom a meaning: Vesilly and his cowl as he left the chamber-room.

  “Yes! They wear it. I saw one.”

  Harvole’s brow lifts faintly.

  “But what do they do, these men? What is the ritual of transformation?”

  He chews on his bottom lip. My patience – or trust – wavers.

  “You must know something, sire! I made a promise to her brother, you see. I would find her. Bring her home. But He is too strong. I do not know what to do.”

  In my outburst, my scarf grows tight like a noose round my neck. I yank it down. Cool wind wraps around my skin. Harvole squints. He touches at his neck.

  “I was born with them,” I mumble.

  He makes a curious action. Grabs a handful of leaves. Crushes them. Then he takes a breath and blows at them. The fragments float around like flakes of dark snow.

  He is staring at my neck.

  I sigh, wearily. “I know not what you mean.”

  He tilts back into the trunk. His eyes grow dulled. I remember again what the Burnt Man did to this man. Left him like this: ruined.

  “I am sorry. For the cruelty you have had done.”

  Harvole pulls at his cloak. He manages to grin. But it is a horrific smile. Something Little John said: I don’t think he was smiling cause it pleased him. He could not forget. A shiver works its mouse-feet up my spine. For it is true. We are all prisoners of our pasts. None can truly forget. The wounds we wear on and underneath our skin. My mother’s scream that dark morning in our home. How I slunk away through the damp earth. Left her to die at His hands.

  The wounds live inside of me. I wonder they may destroy me soon.

  “Rest awhile, sire,” I whisper. “We go on soon.”

  Harvole regards me till his lidded eyes shut. I listen to the wind. Listen for voices out there in the night. At some point I begin to hear them. They tell me that He waits in the darkness. The master.

  But I have not the energy to hold off the darkness forever.

  ***

  I am woken by predawn light. Like quicksilver it grows from the distant woods. Cold has bored into my flesh. I have dreamt of terrible things.

  My eyes open fully. The narrow trees take shape. I sit up. I am alone. Harvole is gone.

  He has left a mask upon the ground. And something else: a message carved into the earth. Long I look at the shape. I have seen it before. Staring at it so, I become a ghost of a girl, trapped in my body. As though I am looking back on the day I died.

  PART IV: THE DARKEST NIGHT

  13.

  The woods grow different in this northern country. Strange. Not the fat oaks of home. Here the trees are spaced farther apart. They grow slender like the legs of old men. Their branches droop with brownish leaves, turning the sunlight watery pale. The weeping wood, Will called it. The name fits. Perhaps it is the simply work of age. This feels a very old forest. But it has a sorrow to it as well. Like it is hurt.

  Shadowed.

  I think of Mutch in his stuttering terror. His small frame as he ran from the greenwood. His courage somehow inside his fear. How he looked at me when he said his sister’s name. For him I must go on, and for her.

  The winds rile up. They steal away any heat from the sun that has risen to my right. It shows the way northward: to the castle that does not exist.

  There is no path. No trails. Only shadows pass this way.

  At least Wolf likes it well enough. He adventures. Sometimes going far out of my sight. I am relieved when his grey shape flits again through the trees. He will be hungry as I am. But these woods are disturbingly lifeless. I realised it around the dawn. No birdsong. No squirrels or rabbits. Even the flowers, such as there are, like a small burst of ramsons that turned the air garlicky, wilt palely on their stalks. Like so many young children that have been drained of their lifeblood…

  Why these blackened thoughts?

  It is not only the tiredness. Something deeper. It beats with the heat of my blood. The same blood that infused my being in the clearing and in the chamber. Back then it saved my life. I have no doubt. But there is darkness in its power. It put a blade in Vesilly’s back. It set a man afire.

  It. Or I.

  The truth is, I do not quite trust myself.

  For the thousandth time, I wish that my mother were here. That she were with me, if only for a few moments. So I may know her. So she may tell me who it is I am.

  “My name is Brya of Gisbourne,” I whisper to the wind. Only this does not sound quite true. And then, for the sake of it: “And Myrtle Locksley too.”

  I take out the mask Harvole left on the ground. It covers most of a face: all but the mouth and eyes. The countenance of a black lion and somehow more vile even than the cloth. With reluctance I raise it to my face. The smell is of brimstone. The feeling of the wood as it nears my skin. Perhaps I imagine it but I do not believe so. It seems to shimmer, to bend. Moulding into the contours of my cheeks.

  I thrust it away. Bury it in the folds of my cloak.

  I walk on between the never-changing needle-trees, trying to make sense of Harvole’s other parting gift. The marks he scraped in the earth. Three jagged lines within a circle, branches breaking off from this, and all of it surrounded by a halo. It makes me dizzy. Like I am stood on the edge of a great cliff.

  For I have seen that shape before. When I was a child. It hung in the tapestry over my mother’s bed.

  How can this be?

  A distant rustling breaks my thoughts. I do not see Wolf. And this sound, it is not like he. There is something deeply unpleasant about it: a sinister kind of purring. I move behind a tree, though it is too slender to offer true cover, and pull the flint-blade from my ankle. There is nought but the needle-trees. The sound grows. Purring. It draws my gaze from the north to the west. Away from the sun toward a slope that stretches as far as the eye can see.

  There, some way off, I make out the origin. My breath catches.

  A body. Fallen to the earth. It is moving. Writhing. A man, I believe.

  Then the body shifts. I see better. How I am mistaken.

  It is something upon a man.

  And this thing: it raises a large ginger head. I swallow but my mouth is bone dry. From a distance, it has the face of a house cat. Yet it is a huge. Overgrown. The size of a large dog: a pony even. Grey stripes criss-cross its muscular body. A tongue lollops from the side of its mottled mouth. The orange fur of its face is bloodied crimson. It is feeding.

  I see all this in an instant. I see this as the creature sees me in turn. It begins to strut in my direction, a leering look in its round green eyes. The flint-blade will surely not be enough against such a beast. I seize Marian’s bow from my back. Pull an arrow to the horsehair.

  The cat starts to run. Pawing at the earth.

  It is Guy’s voice I hear. Steady. Be still. Let only the arrow move.

  But at the last my hand shakes. The arrow flies high and away: a betrayal. It buries into a far away tree. I yell out in frustration and panic. The cat covers the ground in great bounds. Its mouth speckled with red pieces of flesh, wet with drool. My bladder is full. Pressing out. My mind, like my aim, feels clouded, off.

  I reach frantically for a second arrow. Hold it back. My fingers quiver. I am about to release it, no more certain that it will obey my wishes, when I taste sulphur on the wind. It burns my lips. And I make a leap of thought. Several: all at once.

  Harvole last night. Grabbing a handful of leaves. Crushing them before he took a breath and blew them away. The fragments like dark snow. Or dust. Then: the golden sulphur in the clearing that first morning in Wormsley Wood. And how the same reek filled the chamber of Sherwood castle.

  It is part of this power. Part of the dark heat that turns my blood. I am sure of this.

  And the final leap: I carry it with me now.

  I seize the lion’s head cloth from my pocket. Clasp it in my right hand and run it along the smooth wood of the arrow and then take back the fletching. The great cat is less th
an a stone’s throw away. Head to paw, it is near as tall as I. The purring has become a thick hungry mewling. It means to have me. My heart beats at the top of my throat. I focus everything on the arrow. The lion’s head cloth soaks my palm. Slowly and yet in a sudden moment I am still. The dust is in my lungs. My blood.

  My hand opens; the shaft flies.

  It strikes the great cat in the fur below its neck. The beast issues a rending cry before it stumbles. Yet sheer force carries it onward, almost upon me. I tear away. There is no chance to place an arrow. The cat’s muzzle pulls back. A feral scowl: two rows of crooked teeth. Then a living shield comes between us. Growling, his head low to the earth. Wolf is made small before the huge red cat. He squats on his haunches and meets the beast’s charge.

  The cat knocks him onto his back. A long yellowed claw rakes down Wolf’s side. Ripping through his fur. His yelp cuts into me. I seize my flint-blade and try to catch the cat unaware. But it whirls back. With a paw it snaps at the arrow protruding from its flesh. Never taking its emerald eyes from me. Something, I think, unearthly about those eyes: like they have lived many lives and taken lives in all of them.

  Then the cat halts. Those eyes seem to stare at the cloth in my hand. For a moment, its head flits to the side violently, as though tormented. Before its scowl returns, and it comes forward again.

  The pause allows Wolf a chance. He rolls onto his paws and lunches at the cat’s hindquarters. His jaw closes on a leg. The cat swivels to scratch him again, but Wolf is wiser for his wound. He leaps away. But his run is hobbled. The cat mewls, looking at me, those green eyes weighing a decision. It takes after my dog.

  Blood pumps madly in my ears until the sounds of the two creatures fade into the quiet of the weeping wood. I reach the fallen man. His face is wretched with cuts. His body has been mauled like butcher’s meat. He is barely recognisable from the ancient man in the tavern. Then he could not speak a word. Now he never will.