Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  Harvole’s eyes are still open. Locked in terror. Kneeling, I close them. He died in pain so my prayer is a simple one: that he died swiftly.

  I wonder that I should bury him in this place. Otherwise he is crow’s meat – and whatever else may dwell in this haunted wood. But I have nothing with which to dig. And I cannot stop looking over my shoulder. The cat will return.

  But to leave him like this is not right. In the end I take a blanket from his bag. Lay it over his body. From that rotten place I flee.

  *

  I am short of breath by the time the vast lake appears ahead. Having lost all sense of the hour: the age of the day. Looking backwards often, out of hope as well as fear: that I might see Wolf after me. I never do. I have lost him, like I have lost Farragut, like I have lost everyone. I wonder that I should ever see them again.

  At the last trees I stop. Clouds cover the sun. The daylight is strained. Yet I am reluctant to step away from the edge of the weeping wood into the grasslands that lead down to the lakeshore. For one thing there is nothing to step away for. The lake is a great mass of indigo. It has a single island. The island is barren. Scruff earth ringed with needle trees.

  Should I go on? Seek other lakes beyond this one. But where will it end? What if Harvole was wrong? What if this place existed only in his dreams? For all the other things he may be, Will is a traveller. He knows this land. He said there was no castle here.

  Yet something about the lake holds me to this spot. Perhaps it is the water. It has a dark clarity that reminds me of the potions my mother would make in our home. Liquids merged. Shades blended where blue becomes green, and green melts into black. Yet clear enough that I can spy clusters of reeds floating beneath the surface. Other shapes too. Shivering underneath. They must be fish.

  The sky broods the colour of a bruise. Rain snakes towards me from across the lake. Peppering the surface into jagged tents. It races up the grasslands to scour the weeping wood. I take what shelter the needle-trees offer. Raindrops still find my hood and cloak. Seep through to my dress and then lay their cold kisses upon the scorched skin of my back. I chew on my bottom lip to mask the smarting pain.

  Knowing not what else to do, I kneel on the damp earth and go through everything I possess. Marian’s bow. Four arrows. My flint-blade. The lion’s cloth. The mask. All together they do not add up to much. But were I here with an army of soldiers, what good would that do? I have come to the journey’s end and I am none the wiser. Where is Sara? Does she live?

  My heart blackens with dusk. It is the doorway of the night. There will be no moon in the sky. No light in the darkness.

  At a distant rumble I lift my head. Peer across the grasslands. My pulse quickens. They take shape. Riders. They come out from the east. Rounding a stream at the edge of the weeping wood. Three, their horses black and fast. Even as they near I cannot make out their faces. They all look the same. Shadows. Then it is clear why. Each is wearing a mask: the shroud of a black lion. Ill feeling twists in my gut. Remembering how the mask I carry shimmered and bent round my own features.

  From behind the trees, I watch with a rapid heart. The riders slow to the edge of the lake. Disembark. One by one, like penitents they bend their knee in the dusk-rain. Nothing happens at first. The wounds down my back sing in the silence. Then: a flicker from across the water. The island: a wisp of greenish light like a strange spark. There and gone.

  I could have imagined it. I must have. But then…my eyes surely deceive me. For the men: they ride over the lake. I blink. Doubting my vision in the dusk. But the horses walk across the water. Not through it. Across.

  Awe-struck I follow their progress. The horses’ hooves scarcely break the indigo surface of the lake. When they are halfway my gaze is pulled onward to the island. My chewed bottom lip falls. For a long moment I am drunk again. Beyond drunk. Like my blood is wine and the world is a spinning madness.

  Imagine a shape rising. Imagine a shadow like black steam on the island across a lake. But unlike steam it takes form. Substance. Filling between the earth and the sky. Hardening into stone. Ramparts. A castle. It has no flag. It bears no banners. But it is there, real, beyond my doubts: a fortress where none stood a moment ago. Jagged turrets. Slit windows. A broiling moat before its wooden gate.

  The riders reach the island. They pause at the moat. Again they kneel. The dusk rain thickens out. The downpour slays every other sound ahead and behind me in the weeping wood. The great cat could be at my back. Its maw dripping, and I would not know, and I could not even turn to look.

  I am a prisoner to the vision. To the castle that was not there, and the wooden door that cleaves open like a mouth, and the masked riders who cross the moat and disappear into its shadow.

  **

  Lest I dreamt it all more horsemen arrive across the fields. They ride in like so many ghosts in the bleak. Some are alone; others in pairs. I count nine more. They follow the same ritual. Stop at the lake’s edge. Kneel. A green light from the gloom of the island. And then, impossible as it is, their mounts walk on the water to the isle of the unseen castle.

  No more riders for some time after. I cannot wait here. But I can’t just walk up there, can I? The riders were all on horseback, for one thing. And they were all men.

  At least, I think, they all wore trousers. I regard Marian’s beautiful dress, now muddied and trampled. I will have to make amends. If I see her again, that is.

  I take out the flint-blade. Cut at the dress and the cloak she gave me, then into my scarf. Knot the ties down the backs of my legs. Till I, too, am wearing trousers – of a sort. Odd ones clipped around my ankles. If a person looked closely…but if they do so, I am in trouble anyway. I raise my hood over my knotted hair. Finally, reluctantly, I do that which I have put off to last. Before my face the mask shimmers. Then, with a flash that makes me think of moonlight, it takes to my cheeks. Grows tight on my face. The wood pinches like a second skin. I fight the urge to rip it off.

  Crossing the sloping grasslands I walk like I have nothing to hide. Like I am meant to be here. It is an act – for the most part. Yet part of me starts to believe it too. I am not as afraid as I was. Or as I should be. Perhaps it is because I am close now. Or perhaps it is that without my scarf my neck is exposed to the cool rain of the night and my face is a mask and in truth I do not feel like myself at all.

  At the water’s edge I kneel. After a moment, the lake reflects a flame of torrid green. And in it I see now the lie of these waters. A bridge cuts along the surface: a blade of stone. I step out upon it. Indigo licks at my shoes. There are things in the waters. Not fish. Terrible things. I do not look at them. I do not look down.

  The castle reaches into the sky: a blackened hand. The earth of the isle is mossy, sunken like old flesh. The moat stinks of ditch-water. But there is another smell, stronger: the air of sulphur. I do not hate it as I once did. It smells of fury. It also smells of the end.

  I kneel once again. Kneel for my host. For this is His home. The master’s.

  The mouth of His castle grinds open on its hinges.

  14.

  A low man stoops in the hallway. His face is bearded-white and sullen; he turns without acknowledging me. Not even a glance at my face – the mask – and a stir of fear awakens in my belly. He gestures with a stubby arm to a bench along the wall. On it there are bows. Swords. I understand. With reluctance, I slide off Marian’s bow and quiver. Place them beside the others. Beyond, I glimpse a shadowy stable-room. Two large black eyes staring back. I wonder if the horse can sense the fear flickering in a dozen places under my skin. How badly I suddenly wish to flee this place.

  And that is before three shapes scurry out from the passage. More cats. They glide either side of the low man. Leave patches of orange fur on his black cloak. They are small, almost normal-sized. Yet they bear the same twisty grey stripes and swollen heads of the beast from the weeping wood. They might be its children. They watch me like they know what I did to their kin.

  The
low man trudges down the main hall. At my back hinges grind. The wooden door thuds shut. A trickle of panic spreads from the base of my spine. At where I am, and how I have come here alone. I have no bow and the gate is closed.

  To ward off this trepidation, my senses grow keen. A murmur is ahead. Light also. It reaches out like a flame from a cave. Through the slits in my mask, I taste draughts of sulphur in the air. Rich and heavy, as though soaked into the walls. The low man slips round a corner into the light. He does not glance back. He does not seem to care about me, certainly not to fear me. That worries me. He knows that I will follow: that I will obey.

  Approaching the corner, the light coheres and I suck in a breath. Tell myself I am ready. What a lousy lie.

  Dozens of candles – no, hundreds – burn across the four walls. It is a chamber: a great one. And I appear to be the final guest. Masked men sit round a table that is curved like the moon. They were talking. Now they are silent. The lion-shrouded faces turn. Watch. My throat shrinks into hard rope.

  They will know. They will tell.

  The low man gestures to an empty chair at the edge of the table. I walk to it slowly, fighting every impulse to turn back. I walk as if I belong. My mind reeling off the names of my favourite flowers of the meadow and the greenwood, as though I were not here at all but walking through them, collecting one of my posies: cow parsley and kingcup and chicory and teasel, and then I am sat on a hard chair, and I begin to breathe again.

  The man to my left glances over. Surely he can see through my mask. See my true face. But he nods once. So I nod back, my hand quivering underneath the wood of the table. It forms three-quarters of a circle. Where it breaks it looks upon a high slab of stone, much like the one in the chamber beneath Sherwood Castle. But there is more to this room. Manacles like wild weeds grow from the stone floor. Cauldrons simmer. And overhead, pinned to each wall, there are orbs. For a moment I cannot steal my eyes from these. Their strange lights that pool with smoky vapours.

  My hope at having made it this far is short-lived. There is no sign of Sara. My head throbs from tiredness and a worse condition: a gloom. Somehow, even with all the candles, this place is dark. Motion stirs all of us at the table. I turn to the doorway, where a tall man appears. I grip the arms of my chair.

  He is the only one of us unmasked. He carries a cane. His cheeks are scarred. His bald head shines in the fire-light.

  “The journey has been a long one,” Walter of Mortain says from the threshold. “In service of this great aim. Welcome, men, welcome.”

  The chamber falls to a hush. Men who were brash and loud – perhaps too loud – made silent in his presence. With the crack of his cane, Mortain moves to the middle of the room. Filling the space between our table and the slab of stone. He wears a robe of deep blue plush, his hood resting back upon his muscular neck. His eyes, black as fur, seem to look at all of us and yet none of us at once.

  Us.

  I am not one of them. Only the mask makes me so: the mask and my hood. They offer protection as thin as cloth. I need to find Sara right away. But I must wait my opportunity.

  “All of you are men of fine stock,” Mortain says. “You have your titles and land. You have your women.”

  A few chuckles, and I cringe at being surrounded by these men. The hush descends again. I am reminded of the quiet of twilight. Before the creatures of the night become emboldened in their element.

  “Yet you are all here. I suspect you know why. You seek more. More from this short brutish life we are given. You would own more than soil and stone. You would have more than the pleasures of the flesh.” Mortain glances to one of the orbs attached high to the wall. “You seek…as we all seek, men of the Order…transformation…”

  This last word, he delivers with religious weight. It hangs in the cool air of the chamber and draws my eyes back to the orbs – held in stone cradles that bear them like the eggs of some vast bird. Each is clear as glass. But inside they glimmer with dusts that swirl in constant motion: purple-red and a vicious blue, murky green and burnt gold. There is something potent about them, pure and blinding like the un-shaded sun.

  A thread pulls at the corner of my mind.

  “What is the secret to all life?” Mortain says. “The secret that binds all things.”

  A riddle. I like riddles, I think – uselessly since this one baffles me. Guy and I play a game of riddles. He hates it when I beat him, which I often do. How I wish he were here! Together we would be stronger. We would have a chance.

  Mortain holds his arms out, as if embracing an invisible friend.

  “That it must end, of course. Unless! Unless we transform even as we die.”

  Murmurs spread among the seated men. One or two, I glimpse through the mask, take sharp draughts from their wine. I try to fathom his meaning. His purpose. He is speaking of life. And of death, that much is clear. Beyond that, I do not know. But the skin of my neck has turned wintry cold: at his words and at my growing conviction that the master will soon enter this realm.

  “Unless,” Mortain continues, chancing his eyes across us – a glint of light in their blackness, “we take over that which destroys us.”

  “How?” one of the men blurts out, desperate.

  Mortain frowns. For a flash I sense something beneath the surface of his face: a seething. But he only nods, serene again.

  “You seek final proof. Of course. Why you should bend your knee and not for our good king, fighting his wars in the Holy Land? Though I might equally ask for proof that you are, indeed, men of worth.” He paces forward. “For the answer is simple, is it not? It is in the power that we possess. But there is no power greater than the mastery of life.”

  He points to a symbol carved midway up the wall behind him. In my obsession with the orbs, I had not noticed it before: three jagged lines. There is a different mark on each wall: beneath each of the orbs. That thread of memory returns, stronger, connecting me to a distant time, to the tapestry in my childhood home.

  They are the Four. They are–

  But Mortain is speaking again and I cannot order my thoughts.

  “You are all noblemen. Used to being obeyed. Yet you have entered a new domain. And once you have seen. Once you know. The anima mundi cares not for title or wealth. It cares only for mastery: for he who may wield it. The burning man!”

  Mortain lifts his chin. I look to the doorway. This is surely the moment the master will appear. But He does not yet. Then Mortain bellows, “So look upon this work and be ready to see into the soul of God, for we are the Order of the Black Lion, and this realm will be ours for a thousand years. And the young and unworthy will serve us all!”

  It happens in the blink of an eye. A hand seizes my shoulder. Where did he come from? I had not heard a thing. But it does not really matter. He has me and he digs in. Long white fingers with nails the colour of bile. I cannot help crying out as one of the fingernails claws my flesh. Looming over me: a milky-white countenance shrouded in black. Its formlessness makes me want to scratch at my eyes.

  Vesilly drags me from the chair. Pulls back my hood, then at my hair. It falls in an exposing wave. The men yell. Cheer. Even then, what I feel above all is not fear, although Vesilly presses his blade that little bit harder against my throat so I can almost taste the metal. Stronger even than that is my shame. I have failed. I would sink into the floor. Disappear. But the stone holds me to this fate.

  Mortain raises a long arm to demand silence. He looks upon me as though I am an irritation: a small, foolish creature that has drifted across his path.

  “Remove your mask.”

  I do not.

  Calmly: “Take it off or have it cut off.”

  What is left? I pull at the wood across my face. Almost stickily, it peels off. Part of me is relieved to escape its cloying touch. Naked to the air my face feels strangely new.

  Mortain is not surprised. “That mask, how did you get it?”

  “It was left to me by a dead man.”

 
; He considers this. “You know this is no place for you, child.”

  “Then let me go.”

  Mortain almost smiles. Almost but not quite, and I wonder if he is a man even capable of smiling.

  “You have courage. That is without doubt. It is a fine trait. It serves well in stories and in legends. In life, it is apt to get you killed. Why did you follow me here, Brya?”

  My name on his lips makes my stomach churn. “Because a girl was taken from near my home. I believe she is here.”

  “You wish to take her back?”

  I stand very still, my back straight. The pate of his head glows as moonlit water under the myriad candles.

  “And what do you propose in exchange?”

  I can think of no thing. Unless…

  “Myself,” I say, against a howl in my mind.

  Mortain nods. “That would be a worthy trade. You impress me.”

  “Then let her go.”

  “Alas, you cannot offer me what I already have.”

  My blood boils. Yet he is right. Vesilly’s knife deepens its touch, breaking the edge of my skin. I gasp but refuse to let them hear me. Mortain steps towards me. Leans down to my ear. He reeks of sulphur.

  “Your death will not be in vain. You will serve us well this night.” Then he steps back and to the hall of men, decrees: “Take our uninvited guest to the hole, for now. She may think on her actions awhile. And be of true value to the Order.”

  The masks roar their approval. They sound like a pack of hounds. Bursting as they near their prey.

  Vesilly leads me to the hallway. Holding onto my shoulder. Like a pet, the low man appears at his side, bearing metal cuffs linked through chain. He clamps them on my wrists. Their heft drags my arms down. We pass down a spiral stairwell, Vesilly at my back, his cold breath like a nightly draught upon my flesh. The corridor below is nearly black. We approach a barred door that the low man unlocks. The space inside is dark as midnight. The floor falls away.