by Paul Doherty
Alexander shook his head.
‘Always dark, mountains black as night, slashed with precipitous gorges, covered in sombre forests and watered by treacherous, rushing rivers.’ The exorcist stopped speaking, lifting her head as if straining to hear something. ‘Even now,’ she murmured, ‘I dream I am back there. A terrible demon-filled place.’ Her mouth fell slack, open. ‘I can’t describe what happened, but the convoy I was with was ambushed, massacred almost to a man. I and one other escaped, but he soon died of terrible wounds to his neck.’
She paused. Alexander and Sir Godfrey sensed, from her quick breathing, how she did not want to describe the terrors of losing her family. The exorcist shook herself free from her reverie.
‘For a while I wandered like some beast in the forest. At first I thought the only dangers were the Turks, the wild bears and savage wolves but they were mere childish fantasies against the real terrors that existed.’ She stopped and laughed. ‘I was arrogant. In my earlier studies, I had learnt the Greek myths and the story of the Lamiae, ghastly women who lured handsome youths to drink their blood and eat their flesh. In those dark forests of Wallachia, I learnt such dreams were part of our reality. One day I was in a village begging for food and drink. I was invited to attend the funeral of a young man who had fallen from a tree; his body was laid out and I was asked to join the funeral banquet prepared around the corpse. I ate and drank everything I could. The body was buried in a small graveyard next to the church. I went back to the forest and thought nothing of it. I kept clear of the village because a troop of Turkish Spahis—’ Dame Edith gazed blindly at Sir Godfrey, ‘Turkish cavalry entered the area. One night I was sitting by myself before a small fire when a dark figure appeared between the trees, walking towards me. I could not see the glint of any weapon and the man’s hands were outstretched in a gesture of peace. I invited him closer, telling him to warm himself by the fire.’ Dame Edith paused. ‘The figure moved soundlessly towards me. His features were shadowed but, when he sat down, the fire flared and I went cold with terror. His face was white, the eyes red-rimmed and dark-shadowed; it was the same man whose funeral I had attended the previous week. He just sat watching me and I could do nothing. I was frozen with terror. He grinned, baring his teeth like a wolf, rose and slipped silently back into the forest.’
Alexander stirred uneasily, for the woman’s story awakened fresh memories of his own nightmarish experiences in the city.
‘At first,’ Dame Edith continued as if talking to herself, ‘I dismissed it as a phantasm, but the next morning I noticed that the area at the other side of the fire still bore the imprint of where he had sat. I went back to the village headman, thinking perhaps that the young man had not really died but had been buried by mistake.’ The exorcist chewed her lip. ‘Sometimes that happens – the victim falls into a deep swoon, with no trace of a heart beat, and is declared dead. He is buried in a shallow grave, revives and digs himself out.’ Dame Edith paused, listening to the night sounds. Alexander, sitting beside her, struggled to control his own fears.
‘Continue, domina,’ he whispered.
‘The village elder listened carefully to what I described and his terror was apparent. He immediately ordered the men back from the fields and imposed a curfew at night. He told me that the young man, who had been excommunicated by the local priest, had become a Strigoi, one of the living dead.’ Dame Edith wetted her now dry lips, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘Of course, I dismissed it as peasant superstition, so the headman told me to wait. He sent for others from the village council and, with the priest’s permission, the young man’s grave was reopened. I’ll never forget the sight. The corpse was still warm, flesh-coloured with no greenish tinge of corruption. The limbs were pliable, not stiff, the head turned to one side rather than facing the sky. The elder pronounced himself satisfied, a stake was brought and driven straight into the young man’s heart.’ The exorcist’s mouth opened and closed. ‘I will never forget his scream. It was horrible, soul-chilling.’ Dame Edith sighed. ‘The corpse was later burnt. I never discovered whether the man I had seen was a ghost or a demon. A few days later the Turks captured me.’ Her voice hardened. ‘They discovered I was a woman and tried to abuse me. I fought back savagely, so they thrust a red-hot iron bar against my eyes, turning them to water and blinding me for life.’ Edith abruptly paused. ‘Do you hear them?’ she asked softly.
Alexander and Sir Godfrey, absorbed by her story, looked up.
‘No, what is it, domina?’ the knight asked.
Edith raised a finger to her lips. ‘Listen!’
They strained their ears and heard a faint squeaking from the darkness outside.
‘Bats,’ Sir Godfrey said. ‘They probably nest under the eaves.’
‘I wonder?’ the exorcist replied. ‘In Wallachia the peasants claimed that bats were the emissaries and heralds of the Strigoi, the blood-drinking night stalkers.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘Domina, the next thing you will be saying is that those bats were also sent.’
‘They could have been.’
‘Then by whom? Are you saying these Strigoi, these night stalkers, are lurking near here? If so, we’ll hunt them down and kill them as your village elder did in Wallachia.’
‘I have only told you half my story, McBain!’ Dame Edith snapped. ‘There’s worse to come. I was captured, blinded, my eyelids sewn up. I became a slave in the fields, to all intents and purposes a peasant in Wallachia. Believe me, Alexander, there’s none lower under Heaven than these peasants. At first I dismissed them as ignorant, crude and unlettered, but they taught me more than I had learnt in any school or in the libraries of our monasteries.
‘Four years into my captivity, the village I lived in was attacked by greater demons. Three cruel, evil men, real sons of Satan, had been executed. The village priest, a holy man, urged that the corpses of all three malefactors be burnt. The Turkish commander just laughed and the bodies were left to hang.’ Edith paused and shook her head. ‘The first attack came within a week. A young girl was found, her throat ripped from ear to ear, her body drained of blood. Attack followed attack, each more gruesome than the last. The Turks moved soldiers in to the area, Spahis and even a crack troop of janissaries. They scoured the countryside but could find no trace of these mysterious attackers.’ Dame Edith grasped Alexander’s hand. ‘Listen!’ she hissed. ‘One day I was in the wood picking berries – I did such things to train my mind and overcome my blindness. A young lad from the village had led me there. Suddenly he tugged at my cloak and begged me to crouch behind a bush. I did so and the boy whispered that he had seen a Spahi coming towards us but that there were attackers waiting for him in the trees. I heard the sound of commotion, the neighing of a horse followed by the most heart-rending scream. The boy beside me eventually fainted away in a dead swoon.’ The exorcist pressed Alexander’s hand as a child would his father’s. ‘I stayed by that boy for over an hour, lost in a blind hell and listening to the most dreadful sounds.’ Dame Edith stopped talking and stared at her companions.
‘What is it?’ Alexander asked.
‘The young boy revived. I half carried him back to the village. For two days he cowered in his hut, unable to speak. Then he told us what he had seen. The Spahi had been attacked by a family of woodcutters, a husband and wife and their son, a young man of no more than seventeen summers. They looked, the boy said, no different from other humans, but the speed and strength of their attack was unbelievable. They sprang at the Spahi bringing both horse and rider to the ground. The son ripped the soldier’s throat with one awful bite, like a fox with a chicken or a weasel with a rabbit. They then strung the poor man up and drained the corpse of blood. Before he fainted, the boy saw them begin to drink the blood.’
Alexander stared at the exorcist, then at Sir Godfrey. He would have dismissed the tale as fanciful, if it hadn’t been for the stark terror on the woman’s face and the beads of perspiration that ran down to soak the bandage across her eye
s. Sir Godfrey had seen fear affect many, but he could remember nothing to equal the sheer terror that now gripped this usually serene woman.
‘At first no one believed the boy, but a watch was set upon the woodcutter’s hut. The woodcutter, his wife and son acted as normal. They looked no different, their attacks were not governed by any change in season, by the sun or the moon. Only one thing was noticed. The local priest declared that, although the woodcutter and his family came to church, they had stopped taking the sacrament and always seemed to position themselves so they did not have to look directly at the altar whilst mass was being celebrated.’ Dame Edith’s grip on Alexander’s hand tightened. ‘Remember that, and you, Sir Godfrey. Forget the old wives’ tales about crosses or spells or any talismans such as garlic or plants.’
‘What happened?’ Alexander insisted. The chill from the woman’s hands seemed to spread into his own body.
‘A new Turkish commander was appointed. A wise, old man. He ordered the corpses of the three malefactors to be burnt and the immediate destruction of the woodcutter and his family. They were to be taken at dawn, killed, their bodies destroyed, their house razed to the ground.’
‘And the order was carried out?’ Sir Godfrey asked.
‘Yes, the attack was launched but the woodcutter and his family fought like demons. They seemed to possess superhuman strength, speed and agility. The village elder who witnessed it reported that before the young man was killed eight janissaries lay dead.’ The exorcist let out a sigh. ‘And that’s when the real terror began. You’re a soldier, Sir Godfrey, when your enemy falls you forget him.’
‘And these revived?’
‘Oh, no, worse than that! One of the janissary officers suddenly turned on his own men and began to kill them. The Turks realized they were not fighting flesh and blood but spirits that moved from one body to another, like someone moving out of a destroyed house to a more fitting abode.’
Sir Godfrey shook his head. ‘Domina, that’s impossible!’
‘Is it? Read the gospels. Do you remember when Christ exorcized the man, the demon inside begged for a place to be sent to? I have conducted many an exorcism, the procedure is always the same. You ask the demon to name itself and then you begin the solemn ritual. The demon will usually shriek for a place to go and the exorcist’s answer is always the same: “To Hell’s dark abyss”. But what I witnessed in Wallachia was different. These spirits were lords of Hell, having the power to move from a corpse to a living body. That is why the peasants call them Strigoi; they are spirit walkers, the living dead.’
‘But why the blood-letting?’
Edith thumbed the crucifix at her throat. ‘The Strigoi demon inhabits a man’s body and turns him into a killer, the blood-letting is what they want. They draw strength from it.’
‘What happened in that village?’ Sir Godfrey asked.
‘The Turkish commander did a brave thing. He broke off the attack and asked the priest to bring down the ciborium bearing a consecrated host. The priest did this, holding the ciborium aloft as the soldiers launched a second attack. Only this time, when they eventually killed the woodcutter and his wife, they used Greek fire and the bodies were burnt immediately. Apparently, if this is done quickly, the exorcism is complete and the demons must return to their dark pit.’
The exorcist’s voice faded away and Alexander stared into the blackness of the night.
‘Is that what we face here, domina?’
‘Yes, Alexander. We do not fight flesh and blood but the very lords of Hell.’
‘And there is no way of detecting these possessed creatures?’
‘No, there is not. They will speak, they will sing, they will cry, they will eat and they will drink. They act as normal people, be they villeins or lords. But one thing I know is that they cannot take the sacrament during mass. If they are exposed, and that is difficult, they will soon show their true natures.’
‘How many could there be?’ Alexander asked.
‘I don’t know. There could be one, there could be six, ten, twenty, thirty or forty.’
‘Can the number grow?’
‘No, apparently not, but unless the body inhabited by a Strigoi is killed and burnt the demon passes to someone new. It’s like some terrible plague that kills and passes on.’
Alexander closed his eyes and muttered a prayer for strength.
He shivered as he remembered the ghastly scenes in that house. ‘Surely not,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps it could be something else? How do you know the creatures responsible for the deaths we’ve heard about are Strigoi?’
‘For two reasons. First, the university has great archives and libraries. In one there is a chronicle written by a monk of Osney. Now, it’s full of strange stones – of apparitions, miraculous cures and dreadful events. The monk wrote about fifty years after the Conquest and in this chronicle, which the abbess read out to me, there is a reference to a strange order which landed on the coast of Kent, then moved to Oxfordshire. They took over and repaired an old, disused keep in the wilds of the countryside. This group posed as religious men and women, pilgrims carrying out some solemn vow – until the grisly killings began.’
‘These were Strigoi?’ Alexander interrupted.
‘Yes, they came from Wallachia or a place close to it, Moldavia, one of the Balkan principalities. William, the first Norman king, destroyed the entire tower. . .’
‘And the Strigoi?’
‘God knows, but I suspect that not all their bodies were destroyed.’
‘Why do you say that, domina?’
‘I suspect that the leader of these Strigoi, the ones whom William the Norman destroyed, was imprisoned in some vault. That resting place may have been disturbed and the Strigoi’s spirit is now free to roam where it wishes.’
‘So,’ Sir Godfrey intervened, ‘there might only be one?’
‘Yes, but he’s a prince amongst them and has summoned his vassals to his aid.’
‘Why cannot we destroy his resting place?’ Alexander asked.
Dame Edith smiled. ‘But where is it? And the real damage has already been done: the spirit is free. Perhaps even the body.’
‘How do the Strigoi select those they’ll possess?’
The exorcist smiled. ‘People think that only the evil can attract such demons. Sometimes they do, but the spiritually weak, those not prepared, those who do not take the sacrament regularly are all vulnerable to attack.’
Sir Godfrey leaned over. ‘Your story isn’t finished, is it, domina?’
Alexander felt the exorcist’s body tremble with fright.
‘Because I had been instrumental in tracking down the killers, the Turkish commander allowed me to be ransomed by the Hospitallers and returned to England. Now, before I left, this man, a good Muslim, told me something very strange.’ Dame Edith eased the bandage round her eyes.
‘Which is?’
‘He told me that just before the last Strigoi was destroyed in the bloody carnage around the woodcutter’s house, he shrieked out a terrible prophecy.’ The exorcist crossed her arms and bent over as if in pain.
‘Domina, you must tell me!’
‘The Strigoi shrieked, “Tell the blind one we shall all meet again. She will be older and be in the company of a king’s son!”’
Alexander gasped in terror.
‘Oh, don’t you see,’ Edith whispered, ‘the terrible deaths in Oxford and your name, McBain, which means “son of a king”. When the news of the murders reached London and the chancellor asked who should go with me, I learnt about you and knew for certain what demons awaited me in Oxford.’
Alexander stirred restlessly to hide his own panic.
‘So, the Strigoi knew me before I was born?’
‘No, but they prophesied that one day you would be their enemy.’
‘But there’s a flaw. How can these Strigoi from Wallachia be the same as those prowling the streets of Oxford?’
‘I shall tell you, McBain. You asked if the Strig
oi could possibly multiply themselves. They cannot. But regard them as an enemy force that crosses a great river and establishes a bridgehead to allow others to follow.’ The exorcist pushed her face close up to Alexander’s. ‘If we do not destroy the Strigoi here, they will extend their power and others will come.’ She gripped the clerk’s wrist. ‘Alexander, believe me! Days of terror are upon us!’
Dame Edith rose and slipped out into the darkness, leaving Alexander and Sir Godfrey numb and more frightened than they had ever been in their lives. Alexander drew a deep breath, rose, went to the window and gazed up at the stars.
‘In God I put my trust,’ he muttered and began to chant the great prayer of St Patrick: ‘Christ be beside me, Christ be before me, Christ be within me.’
Sir Godfrey joined in, then the knight stood up, genuflected to the east, crossed himself and quietly went up to his chamber. For a while Alexander just sat by the fire and watched the sparks jump like miniature imps in their own small Hell.
‘Alexander, my boy,’ he whispered, ‘you have seen the days!’ He smiled to himself. ‘You will be a hero, Alexander. Say your prayers, boy, and keep your sword arm strong!’
For a while Alexander hummed to himself but, just as he began to feel drowsy, he recalled the words of a great Gaelic epic: ‘Those who fight monsters must be careful not to become monsters and remember, when you stare into the Pit of Hell, the Pit of Hell glares back!’
Chapter 4
The next morning Sir Godfrey and Alexander broke their fast in the small refectory. The merry-faced Mathilda served them manchet loaves, jugs of ale and cheese made from ewe’s milk which tasted tart and spicy. Sir Godfrey had already said his prayers, kneeling beside his bed, dedicating all his actions to the five wounds of Christ and asking for the Blessed Virgin’s protection. Alexander, more practical, had prayed as he dressed. Now both men sat chewing the bread and cheese and reflecting on what the exorcist had told them the previous evening. Alexander picked up one of the small, white loaves and broke the silence.