Power of Darkness

by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  'Gino! Let daylight into this foul den!’

  Gino spat aside and crossed behind him, his feet rustling in the thick rushes, and wrestled with the wooden bar that held the shutters. He tossed it aside and wrenched at them. They broke and crumbled in his hands, and came away in a shower of dirt and rolled wood lice, scuttling spiders and dust of worm-eaten wood. Sharp sunlight pierced the shadows like a sword, and struck full upon the witch.

  She was old, older than Hélie had thought; sixty at least, perhaps as much as seventy. Her puffy moon-face was seamed with line black-engrained crevices, and the flesh sagged from her bones in flabby pouches. Wisps of white hair had escaped from the kerchief to straggle about her forehead, but under white scanty eyebrows the fierce eyes were bright pale blue. He knew them. Enlightenment struck him like a club. They were the Warby eyes. That was the shapely Warby nose, and under the slack flesh he discerned the pointed chin. In youth she must have been fair as any of them. Here too was the Warby arrogance, and the unreasoning courage that derived from it.

  'A Warby bastard!’ he exclaimed.

  She said proudly, ‘I am Rohese, daughter to Reginald who built the castle above, and set his foot on Trevaine’s neck! Grandsire’s sister to Robert and to Hermeline whom you will wed, my lord! Take heed before you scratch up buried scandals like a puppy digging up old bones! In the family, eh?’ She leered up at him and shook with obscene mirth.

  His brows twitched together in surprise. A true witch had power of darkness, and with his own eyes he had seen her do obeisance to the Devil. If her Master had granted her that gift, she must know both that and what was in his mind. The dread that had numbed his wits departed. 'Their favour will not aid you before the King’s Justices in Assize!’ he snapped.

  She had always dealt menace, never encountered it. She stared in sheer unbelief. 'The King’s Justices, whelp? You threaten me?’

  'I will see you hang, unless you tell me truly who bought poison of dwale from you to murder Robert!’

  Surprise broke through her mounting wrath, and he knew that shaft had found no mark. 'Dwale?’ she repeated, and he was sure she had supplied none. There was no dwale in her garden. His heart began to thump.

  ‘As his left-hand kin you should be eager to avenge him!’ he said, his voice sharp and hard. ‘Who poisoned him?'

  She stared in contemptuous surprise, and then grinned. ‘Who but the bitch betrothed to him, that you would save? Fret not, vengeance is in safe hands! Run back to Hermeline, pretty lordling! You have not married Warby yet, nor will unless I choose! Will you have her spit in your face, and yourself wither like a frosted leaf?'

  Hélie laughed aloud in boundless scorn. ‘Curse your fill,’ he invited bleakly. ‘I see that the Devil to whom you sold yourself pays even his servants in false coin.’ Darkness was here, but no power.

  ‘False, lion-cub? There are bones in the graveyard could testify my curses are sure, if ever dead men rise up! Cold earth will be yours too! Your eyes will shrivel in your skull, your flesh wither on your bones, your bowels melt and your seed turn to fire in your loins! You will never marry Warby and rule here!’

  ‘What is your witchcraft, if you do not know I would rather bed a viper than kinswoman of yours?’

  ‘Then embrace it!’ she screeched viciously. Her hands flashed out, scooping something from her wide black lap to the rushes at his feet. Hissing resentment, a veritable viper twitched its boldly-marked length into a coil and poised its blunt blackhead, its forked tongue flickering and its jewelled eyes glowing in the firelight.

  Hélie grinned mirthlessly. While Gino yelped and sprang away as he would never have done from a weapon, he kicked at the reptile. It struck short. As its head thwacked on the rushes he stamped and felt it crunch under his heel. He picked up the squirming leathery body, and tossed it with a sullen plop into the simmering cauldron.

  ‘More meat for your hell-broth!’

  The witch surged to her feet like leviathan emerging from the waves, spitting in speechless fury. Her vast black bulk lunged at Hélie, hands clawing. He ducked aside and thrust her off stiffarmed, his whole body flinching in revulsion from the contact. He felt a sharp tug at his scalp as she snatched at his tousled hair. Gino leaped in, his dagger glinting menace, but she had already checked herself. Her hands fell to her sides. She stood breathing noisily, her face flushed crimson and working with murderous hate.

  ‘For less than that,’ she said, her high voice dropped to a deadly whisper, 'I have seen my father tear out a man’s living heart from his breast and toss it to his dogs!’

  ‘I doubt it not,’ Hélie answered grimly, ‘whether he were Reginald de Warby or, as some might reckon, the Devil himself.’

  The dusky wrath ebbed from her face; pale alarm broke through her malice. He had somehow pricked her arrogance. For a heart’s beat he stared contemptuously into her eyes, disdaining her empty threats. Then he jerked his head at Gino, still wavering on the verge of killing, swung on his heel and stalked from the noisome hut.

  Gino heaved a loud sigh of thankfulness and crossed himself with unwonted fervour as they emerged from the thicket. ‘God’s Head, my hair is still standing upright!’ he complained. He scanned his master’s brown and healthful countenance for visible effects of the witch’s curse, and his face whitened. ‘Holy Mother! My lord, did she pluck your hair from your head?’

  ‘What matter if she did?’

  Gino clutched his arm with a shaking hand. ‘My lord, she will work her will on you through it! A part of you—it gives her power over your body!’

  ‘She has no power but what I give her.’

  ‘We must go back and destroy her—’

  ‘Be still, Gino. She does not prepare my meat.’

  ‘Only let me go, my lord, to kill her and burn her den over her carcase!’

  ‘Murder and arson on Warby land, on a Warby kinswoman? No, Gino. This must be done by process of law or not at all.’ Gino subsided, vowing a candle as long as his arm to Saint Michael if he brought them safely from this coil. Hélie stood on the edge of the waste, the faint wind ruffling his hair, frowning over the processes of law. Witchcraft alone was for the Church’s somewhat ineffective hand to deal with. He could only bring the witch into reach of the King’s Justices in Assize by proving she had procured another’s death or injury by its practice. She had Warby’s protection; the proof must be incontrovertible or she would escape the gallows. Yet he had pricked her, and he wondered what word of his had achieved that, and why. He considered again his parting thrust, and an incredible notion entered his mind. He turned to glance at the woods above.

  'Where now, my lord?’ asked Gino uneasily.

  'The ruin,’ Hélie answered coolly, ignored his yelp of expostulation, and stalked up the slope. Gino followed laggingly, muttering invocations in Italian when he was not protesting against his master’s madness of self-immolation, but his place was at Hélie’s heels and he kept it. They plunged among the trees where they had floundered last night, but today all was green and gold under the autumn sun that was already crisping and gilding the leaves above them. Acorns were still green in their rough cups, the hazels green in their leathery frills, the waist-high arching bracken triumphantly green about them, but the birds were hushed in the moult and the forest’s voice was the brittle whisper of dying leaves overhead.

  Yesterday morning, that seemed a week ago, Hélie had approached the ruin along the ridge from the woods, and he had been half-blind with pain. Now he came to it from below, and it was plain to his searching gaze that the place was not so unfrequented as he had believed. There was nothing so obvious as a track, but he could read the more subtle indications of use; the gaps in the broken walls that were never totally obstructed by bushes, the vague grassy partings in the nettle-beds of the silted ditch, the broad flat stone that lay by apparent accident in the middle of the little stream running down to the river and let him cross dry-shod.

  He walked straight to where the goat-headed thing h
ad appeared last night, with Gino at his heels whispering prayers. A blackbird’s sharp alarm-call from a nearby thicket drew an answering squawk from the Italian, and lifted him a foot from the earth, but Hélie scarcely heard it. He was quartering the ground nose-down like a questing dog, and almost at once was rewarded. Sharp in a wind-blown drift of dry dust by the wall was the print of a cloven hoof, and beside it the small round indentation of the trident’s butt. He went down on one knee, the hair prickling on his nape. The Devil’s hoof was much the size of a cow’s, but narrower. There was no scent of brimstone about the print, and he reckoned that an oversight. His monstrous suspicion hardened to certainty. Who was Hélie de Trevaine that the Lord of Hell should deign to manifest himself to his sight?

  He glanced inside the ruined keep, hesitated, and then decided to investigate the bailey first. Slowly he circled the ruin, pushing past the tall purple-berried plants of dwale, the malevolent dusty tassels of nettles, cautious for the fallen stones and odd corners of masonry that awaited unwary feet.

  ‘’Give you good day, Lord Hélie,’ said last night’s voice from behind him.

  He whirled about, his hand leaping to his dagger. The man was standing by the broken wall, gravely watching. Hélie’s hand dropped, and his eyes widened.

  He might have been looking into a mirror. This was himself as surely as a reflection; tawny hair, hazel eyes, wide mouth, blunt-featured comeliness; even the long limbs and broad shoulders, masked in dilapidated grey homespun, exactly matched his own in the black broadcloth of mourning. He drew an unsteady breath.

  ‘Do I call you cousin or brother?’ he asked quietly.

  The man smiled faintly. ‘Brother, if you choose it so.’

  ‘How could denial serve me?’ He came closer, frankly staring. He had no illusions about his late sire’s marital shortcomings, and knew of three other indiscretions that had borne embarrassing fruit, though Hervey de Trevaine had at least had grace enough to pursue his adventures outside his estates’ boundaries.

  He extended a hand, and after a moment’s hesitation the other man joined his own broader one to it. ‘Well met, Stephen.’

  There were differences, of course. The bastard was browner of hair and eye, heavier and more solid; he carried himself erect and freely, but without Hélie’s challenging litheness. He was as brown as an English summer could burn him, but that did not match Hélie’s southern bronze. Also he was three or four years the elder, with a settled soberness about him that the young lord would never attain if he lived to knight his grandsons.

  ‘You are gracious, Lord Hélie,’ he said with a slow pleased smile that held a hint of surprise.

  ‘Not I,’ answered Hélie blithely. ‘Lord of Heaven, what else is there to say? We are liker to each other than to our sire, even. But—’ he checked on the hither edge of discretion.

  ‘My mother was a free craftsman’s daughter out of Etherby, and if she knew any regret she never spoke it.’

  ‘Our sire was at least generous,’ Hélie agreed with a grin.

  The man flushed. ‘Aye, my lord,’ he said stiffly. ‘He was generous. And our meeting came by chance, no design of mine.'

  Hélie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Why, what—?’ Then he understood. 'Brother, you jump too soon at offence,’ he said amicably. 'What brings you into this coil?"

  'The witch Rohese and Robert of Warby between them ruined me. He is beyond reach, but she is not.’

  'Tell me.’

  The words came slowly at first, and then in a rush. 'I was always handy with horses. My father set me up with four beasts, and I started as a carrier. Rented an assart by Etherby woods, bred from my mares until I had ten, packed goods over three counties. I come here in June with six. And that—that bladder o' lardy devildom she comes rolling up to offer me a charm for their well-doing. Fine good horses that deserved such guarding, she says, and asks a penny apiece for it! Six pennies!' His voice thickened furiously at the memory, and Hélie nodded grimly at the outrageous demand.

  'I cursed her for devil's get and bade her be off. If I'd had the wit of a sheep in my skull I'd ha' packed and been off myself. But I held them tethered on the waste for the night, and by daybreak they were all down and dying. Someone'd crept up and fed them yew leaves. All for denying that witch, six good beasts dead!'

  'You set a dangerous example.’

  'I cried it to Lord Robert, and he ordered me outside his boundaries for a false accuser, and lucky to be let go wi' my tongue between my teeth. I was in no temper to let it bide there, and I made a noise in Etherby about the King's Justices and the next Assizes. So down comes Robert o' Warby on me wi' a dozen men, that hamstrung my good mares and three new foals, fired my house and trampled my corn and knocked me on the head for slandering his kinswoman. Kinswoman, by the Devil's horns! A fair fine pair, and time they were kin in Hell!' His voice shook with bitter outrage.

  'Time indeed,' agreed Hélie. He eyed his half-brother speculatively. 'Shall I establish you again?'

  'I'd a call on the man that begot me,' Stephen growled sullenly. ‘None on you.’

  'He begot his stiff-necked pride in you, full measure,' cheerfully retorted Hélie, who had escaped that afflictive heritage and derived from some unknown progenitor a sense of humour. He studied him afresh. Last night's encounter had been accident, this was not. The man wanted something of him, if not material help. ‘And how long have you been skulking about Warby waste on this quest?’ he inquired.

  ‘Since Robert o’ Warby died. I wanted him most.’

  ‘Lord of Heaven, you had ambition! And you seek my testimony before the King’s Justices?’

  ‘Aye, Lord Hélie. You saw—you know it is time she swung!’

  ‘It was time thirty years ago,’ Hélie agreed, his young face hardening. ‘You shall have your witch.’ He smiled grimly as he turned to thrust again through the bushes. The lines bred true; if arrogance flowed in Warby blood, obstinacy ran in Trevaine’s.

  Behind the keep, under a jagged remnant of curtain-wall and enclosed by thickets, they found a stone-flagged space whose slabs had held back the advancing tide of bushes, admitting only the first thin waves of inexorable grass. At one end squared stones had been set up in a neat rectangular block, and before it a broad blackened patch marred the floor, with fragments of charcoal and half-consumed branches on a bed of blown grey ash.

  Hélie went forward, and the other two followed flinching.

  ‘An altar!’ said Hélie in shock. There were stains on the stones, and ashes of a small fire. Shrinking, he stirred them with a finger. Fragments of frail white bone mingled with the wood, burned and brittle. A faint flutter attracted his eye. He bent, and from a crevice between the stones he drew a singed and broken rust-black feather. Half-forgotten childhood memories of bower whisperings about ancient secrets stirred in him, and he shuddered. He had not realized that this was more than filthy magic wrought by crazed old women, but a faith and worship denying that of God and His Son, with a vile ritual of its own. ‘A black cock sacrificed to Hell,’ he whispered aloud. Gino moaned, and stared at him with the eyes of a frightened hound.

  ‘My lord, my lord, come away before we are blasted!’

  He shook his obstinate head. The grass held no trace of what had been done here, but stooped in dry waves as the wind pressed down its spent seed-heads. He followed round the wall, and found a hidden shelter where horses had been tethered. The other two trailed at his heels, held by shame from deserting him but terrified to their marrow of enchantment. He paid them no heed. His suspicion had gathered substance and become conviction; fiends from Hell and witches of the darker air needed no mortal beasts to bear them through the night, but flew of their own power.

  He came again to the ruin, and thrust back his animal reluctance to leave the sunlight for its gloom. Yet he had yesterday in his ignorance felt no prickle of fear. He squared his shoulders and entered. Go after him the others would not; they stood on either side of the doorway, crossing themselves at intervals
and glancing aside with white-rimmed eyes like balky horses.

  Here were the cobbles, hard and uneven under the dry moss; the thin drifts of dead leaves, the black gape of a wall recess. This had been the undercroft, the store and prison, where rust-eaten rings still stood head-high in the crumbling walls to remind men of Reginald de Warby's ill-fame. Here was the broad gape of the well, choked to the floor with broken rubble and the thickness of two generations' dust and leaves. Here in the intact corner was the stair, its spiral turning upwards to the right. Faint light touched its higher steps as he leaned and peered. There was a window above. It was all but choked with twigs and feathers and the white droppings of jackdaws; he could hear them crying above in the sunshine.

  The narrow space on the stair's right, between the newel and the up-twisting treads that lifted over his head, was half-blocked with rubble. His brows twitched into a frown. This side of the undercroft was intact; the loose stones must have been set there for a purpose. He put his hand to a broad triangle of flagstone standing on edge, and tilted it over and round. He groped into the dark cavity, and encountered a stout wooden rod leaning across it. It clattered forward, and with no surprise he lifted forth the trident, its three points whetted bright. He regarded it for a long moment, his face appallingly grim, and then reached again for what must be there. His fingers recognized the smoothness of leather.

  He unrolled the bulky bundle, and a whistle of elder-pipe fell out. Short tunic and long hose of fine black leather were wrapped about the goat's head. That was a beautifully-contrived mask of goat's skin on a cunning frame of woven wicker, with eyes of thin translucent horn so set that the wearer could see quite clearly through them. The horns of a magnificent he-goat had been mounted firmly with that section of the skull which had grown them. The mask was old, very old; the skin dry and frail, the wicker dark and brittle with many years. The feet of the hose ended in curious wooden shoes carved into cloven hooves, and fashioned stilt-wise so that a man must mince on tiptoe with jerky steps. From the tunic depended a cow's cured tail, stiff and swinging.