The Golden Helm: More Tales from the Edge of Sleep

by Victoria Randall

  Breathless, she didn’t know what to say. She supposed she should feel complimented, or excited, or . . . she didn’t quite know what. He was an overpowering masculine presence, and made her feel small. She wasn’t sure she liked the feeling. In fact she was sure she didn’t.

  He kissed her again before she could say anything. He pushed her back and slid his hand between her legs, under the skirt. She instinctively tightened her knees.

  “Relax,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you. You need to learn how to enjoy yourself.”

  Maybe Maggie was right, she thought. Just get it over with, whether you liked the guy or not. Then the next time you could focus on who you were with, since it was no longer the first time.

  He was kissing her cheeks and mouth, trying to work his hand up between her knees. “You’re so tense. Just relax.”

  “I’m not—” sure of this, she tried to say, but he kissed her so she couldn’t finish the sentence. Into her mind flashed the unicorn’s eyes, deep as night, looking into her inmost heart. In their depths she saw sadness.

  This is a gift of my self, she thought. And it’s not for Brent. I don’t want to be just another one of his conquests. It should be something to remember, not with this self centered brat of a boy, but the beginning of a family, the beginning of a life together with someone I love.

  She twisted away from him and pushed herself to her feet. “No,” she said. “Just—no.”

  She went to the door, found that he had locked it, and with a jerk unlocked it.

  “Hey, wait, uh . . .” he said.

  She looked back at his angry, disbelieving face. “You don’t even remember my name.” She went out and shut the door behind her.

  The party was in full swing, but Maggie was nowhere in sight. Ellen made her way through the partygoers to the front door. She glanced around for Clarice but there was no sign of her either. A lot of people seemed to have melted away into separate rooms. She pulled open the door and left.

  The cool night air enveloped her, feeling wonderful after the overheated rooms. Overhead the stars glittered in a dark sky. Hugging herself, she went at a quick walk down the driveway.

  As she walked she decided that she would read Pride and Prejudice again, and write a book report on it. And if Ms. P didn’t like it, she could discuss it with her mother.

  Halfway home she realized she had forgotten her sweater. She was starting to feel the cold, but had no choice but to keep walking. There was a shortcut she could take through the woods, but she didn’t think it would be safe alone at night. She tried to push thoughts of Brent and his passion out of her mind. Was it passion, or just pretend? He hardly knew her, they had barely exchanged two words before that night; how could he feel anything for her?

  She felt a warm breath on her cheek and looked up to see the unicorn keeping pace with her, his breath making plumes in the cold air. Her heart jumped. He paused, turned to her and lowered a shoulder.

  She could not believe it, but he was inviting her to ride. She put a hand on his neck and somehow found herself astride his shining back. Burying her hands in the flowing mane, she drew in sweet scented breaths, cold and delicious as a mountain stream.

  The world changed around her. It enlarged, growing brighter and darker at once. Each branch and stone coruscated with rainbow glory.

  He glanced back at her, his eyes dark as night with the spark of a star in their depths. To the music of the leaves’ rustling, he drew himself together and plunged with her into the darkness, into the magical, midnight forest.

  The End

  Scent of Evil

  At first, when Brother John awakened in the chill darkness to the ringing of the bells for dawn prayer, he did not realize that the wet stickiness on his hands was blood.

  It was always a struggle for him to wake at that hour, but this morning he felt in his bones a weariness to death, as if he had been running all night. Torn fragments of dark dreams still haunted him as he sat up, swinging his feet to the cold stone floor, perplexed by both his weariness and the wetness on his hands.

  He groped for his stump of candle and coaxed a flame from it on his third try. By its light, to his horror he saw the dried blood under his fingernails, and the still wet stains on his palms.

  That was why he sat now in the straight-backed chair in my study, a humble devoted brother of the church, his eyes haunted by nightmares. He had washed all trace of blood from his hands, and now kept them clenched on his knees as if they had betrayed him and he wanted no part of them.

  I searched for means to reassure him. “It must have been a scratch,” I said. “A shallow scalp wound will bleed a great deal . . .” I had only been elected prior of the monastery a few months ago, and Brother John had been my prop and mainstay in settling in and accustoming myself to the role. I was a few years older than he, but he was wise and far-seeing, reliable to the utmost. This change in him was as disturbing to me as to him.

  “It was no scratch.” He raised tormented eyes to me. “There was too much blood. It is not mine, I have no wound anywhere. And there is more. I found—” He paused at a shout from outside, the pound of running feet. Someone banged at my door, flung it open without waiting.

  Young Brother Giles stood in the doorway, excitable as ever, breathing hard. “Father! Gerard, the baker from the village, has been badly injured. We’ve brought him to the infirmary. You’d better come and look at him.”

  Brother John paled, half rising.

  “We’ll both go,” I said. “What happened to him?”

  Brother Giles swallowed. “He . . . you’d better ask him yourself, Father.”

  * * *

  The baker lay in the narrow infirmary cot, moaning and screeching as a brother tried to wash his wounds. A great ponderous lump of a man, his stomach hung like a huge bag on him, oozing yellow fat globules and blood. Both abdomen and buttocks had been slashed more than once.

  “Most of the wounds are not that deep,” said Brother Ansbert, the infirmarian. “If we can stop the bleeding and there is no infection, he will live.”

  “That is fortunate,” I said. “Gerard, man, what happened to you?”

  He peered up at me from pain-dulled eyes. “Who is that? Father Luke? Father, it was horrible. It jumped on me out of the darkness, when I went outside to bring in wood for my ovens. It only growled once, then attacked. When my wife came out with a light, it ran off, or I’d be dead.”

  “But what was it? A bear?”

  He stared at me. “A wolf.”

  “Are you sure? We haven’t seen wolves in the village since winter before last. It could have been a wild dog—”

  “It was a wolf, Father, I’m sure. I saw its great yellow eyes, glaring at me, and it was huge! Oww!”

  I contemplated him, frowning. A grasping, massive bully of a man, he had married his second wife after his first had died of an illness only last spring. There were those who said he had begrudged the money to pay a physician, so had let her die of a catarrh when a few simples might have saved her. But the villagers thrived on gossip. And I was not his judge. I touched his shoulder. “May God grant you healing,” I said. “The brothers will take good care of you.”

  Brother Ansbert stood at my shoulder. “This is a terrible thing,” he said, his deepset eyes intense. “We should set a guard around the village.”

  “The villagers will no doubt do that,” I said.

  Ansbert glanced curiously at Brother John’s white face. “What is wrong, brother?” he asked. “Are you ill?”

  “No, not ill,” Brother John managed to say. “It’s the sight of so much blood . . .”

  Brother Ansbert gave a curt laugh. “Then you had best not frequent the infirmary.” But his eyes continued to follow John as he turned away.

  The baker continued moaning as I followed Brother John outside. When I put a hand on his shoulder, he was shivering. “Come,” I said. “A cup of something hot will calm you—”

  “No,” he whispered. “Come with me
, please. You must see this.”

  He led the way to his cell, one of the outer ones near the rear entrance to the monastery. There without a word he showed me scratches on the wooden door near the latch, and paw prints on the paving outside his door. None going out, but three damp prints returning, rapidly fading as they dried. Still I could see that they were tinged with dried blood.

  “It was I,” he said, hands locked in his armpits, hugging himself and shivering.

  I pulled him into his cell and closed the door. “What do you mean? This makes no sense.”

  He sank down onto his cot. “I’ve had such dreams, these last three nights, and especially last night. Dark, horrible dreams . . . a restlessness consumes me, I begin pacing, I have to get out . . . I can smell evil. It lures me, fascinates me . . . I have to destroy it, to rend and kill. There is the smell of blood, a terrible lust . . . I cannot bear the dreams. And now this.” He buried his head in his hands.

  “I see,” I said, overwhelmed by the glimmer of a terrible truth. “But how can this be?”

  “I don’t know. Unless it was that winter that we were attacked by wolves, you recall . . . I was bitten.”

  “That was long ago.”

  “I have had these dreams for some years. I thought they were a cross to bear, or a temptation to overcome . . . Only lately they have become worse, darker.”

  “So you may be right,” I said. “A cross to bear . . .”

  “But I mean the baker no harm!”

  “What does evil smell like?” I asked.

  He looked inward. “Like something foul, dangerous . . . like something dead that should have been buried long ago.”

  “The man is a sinner, like us all,” I said. “But we are not to judge him. That is for God.”

  “I know. But in my dreams, I do not care. It is a terrible thirst, I cannot control it.”

  “We will help you control it.” I looked down at him. “It is said, ‘blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness . . .”

  “But not those who kill for it.”

  “No.”

  “All men have darkness in them, I know that.” He looked away into the shadows. “I am not so proud as to think my sin is greater than others. But in me, it can take shape—it can destroy.”

  “You are not alone in that either,” I said. “We will find a way to fight this, John. Do not lose hope.”

  * * *

  So it was that we fitted his door with a bolt on the outside, and when a traveling smith passed through, I hired him to repair some hinges, and to forge in secret a shackle at the foot of Brother John’s bed, telling him the partial truth that this brother was subject to sleepwalking. John had told me that his dreams only occurred at the full of the moon, so we had some time. By the next full moon in December, we had all in place.

  Then came the celebration of Our Lord’s birth, with all the festivities and joy that accompany it, and my new duties all but drove John’s dreams from my thoughts, though I never ceased to pray for him as for all the brothers in my charge.

  The baker healed at last and was able to go home again, several pounds thinner, but no whit less a bully. Brother Ansbert was not sorry to see him go, he told me, for he had nigh eaten them out of their allotment of food.

  The moon drew near to full at the end of the month. Brother John came to remind me, and three days before the full, I went after Compline and shot the bolt on his door. We did not use the shackle that first night.

  I rose after midnight Vigils, when all were asleep, and made my way across the snowy court to stand for a few minutes in the dark corridor outside his door and listen. At first I heard nothing, as the thick door barred sounds of breathing. I was about to turn away when I heard a swift scrabbling sound and a clicking on the stone floor. Then I heard a sniffing under the door. “Brother John,” I whispered, not wanting to wake the brothers in adjoining cells.

  A low growl answered me. Startled, I drew back, unable to credit my ears, though I should have been prepared. I wondered what would happen if I drew back the bolt. Should I be the first to die?

  I did not want to find out. I stood and listened as the creature in the cell paced, turned and paced, and scratched at the door. The bolt would hold. I went back to my room and passed the night in troubled dreams of my own.

  Two days later Brother Ansbert came to me in my study. “I have heard rumors,” he said. “Strange sounds are being heard in the night, in the outer corridor.”

  My heart sank. “Perhaps one of the brothers is having nightmares.”

  He stared at me, his gaze piercing. “Perhaps he should confess them.”

  “Dreams are not sins to be confessed.”

  “It depends of course on whether they are welcomed or not. I just thought you should know.” With an inclination of his head and barely suppressed contempt in his glance, he left the study.

  Brother Ansbert was a man for whom I found it hard to feel brotherly love. I sighed. I am a cautious man, probably not suited for the post of responsibility I have been given. I am easily guided by others, and tend to rely more on their counsel than my own, having doubts of my own wisdom. I find my post a heavy burden, but it is mine and I must bear it as best I can.

  Brother John seemed pale and weary during that week, but meek and uncomplaining. When he came to confession . . . well, he had no great evil to confess, no more than any man. That was a relief. Then came the night of the full moon.

  That night the whole corridor was awake, and brothers came to rouse me from my bed. I went down with them to Brother John’s room, and stood to listen to the scratching and growling coming from behind the locked door.

  “Father, who put the bolt on his door?” asked Ansbert, his eyes shadows of night in the light of the flaring torches. “Do you know anything of this?”

  “It is under control,” I said. “You must all go back to bed.”

  “But it sounds like a wolf has gotten in there!” said Brother James. “Shouldn’t we try to kill it?”

  I met his eyes. “No. Go back to bed and sleep. It is only a few hours to morning prayers,”

  “If there is evil in our house,” said Brother Ansbert, “we must eradicate it.”

  “So we shall,” I said. “And each of us should begin with his own heart.”

  I went back to my bed, though I did not sleep again that night.

  * * *

  So it went, through that month and the next. By the next month the door had sustained such gouges and scratches that we used the shackle. The next morning I dressed Brother John’s bleeding ankle myself, torn even though we had used padding. Through it all he was patient and uncomplaining, though he grew thinner each week, it seemed to me. He did extra penance, and spent many nights when the moon was not full kneeling in the chapel.

  * * *

  Then came February, a colder month than we had had in many a year. The deer had died in great numbers, and the wolves from the mountains grew hungry and bold, venturing closer to the village. Early in the month, I happened to be in the still room with Brother John, who was binding up dried herbs, when the miller and his daughter came from the village.

  The miller was named Baldwin, a dark-browed, surly fellow who looked suspiciously on us before he spoke. A few paces behind him followed a young woman, silent, hooded against the cold. She was not even a woman yet, I thought as I caught a glimpse of the childlike silhouette of her face.

  “We got some herbs of a brother here last fall,” said Baldwin. “We need some more—costmary, he named it.”

  “What do you use it for?” asked Brother John.

  “For this.” He reached out and roughly pulled the hood back from the girl’s head. I was standing to her left, and saw only the clear childish outline of her face, lovely and fresh, with a blush rising to her cheek. But I saw the sudden widening of Brother John’s eyes, and moving behind him I saw why. A hideous growth disfigured the right side of her face, a tumor, huge, pitted and hairy, that made her blind in her
right eye and pulled the right corner of her mouth into a distorted grimace.

  The child cast down her one good eye, and stood in patient silence, enduring our gazes.

  “For that,” said her father in disgust. “Though little good anything does. But the herb keeps it from growing worse.”

  “I see,” said Brother John, his voice neutral. “I will see what I can find.” He went to rummage among the herbs, while the man continued his bitter monologue.

  “It’s a curse the wench has had from shortly after birth. She’s no get of mine, she’s my stepdaughter, but I’ll be stuck with the feeding of her all her life, it looks like, for who would have her to wife, as ugly as she is? Unless I could find a blind man who’d take her on.” Throughout this the girl stood quiet, biting her lip, betraying nothing. A single tear escaped from her good eye, and she wiped it furtively away.

  “We do not know the purposes of God,” Brother John said in reply. “The gift of a daughter is a great one, not to be despised. She will keep you from loneliness in your old age.”

  Baldwin gave a snort of laughter. “Who’d rather not be lonely than have to look at that? And I have to beat her to get a lick of work out of her.”

  Brother John’s hands trembled as he handed the bag to the man. “You should not beat her. Kindness will work better.”

  “Little do you know, brother. Talk to me when you have brats of your own; then your advice will have some weight.” Baldwin grinned and winked, adding, “But maybe you have already; I suppose you have to keep such things under wraps.”

  I saw the brief flare of John’s nostrils, as if he had caught a whiff of an unclean stench. “I have no children. But if I did, I would cherish them as my own flesh.”

  “Easy for you to say, brother. Will you take grain in payment for the herbs?”